in Nietzsche could
be stated in the derivation of one word, the word "valour." Valour means
_valeur_; it means a value; courage is itself a solid good; it is an
ultimate virtue; valour is in itself _valid_. In so far as he maintained
this Nietzsche was only taking part in that great Protestant game of
see-saw which has been the amusement of northern Europe since the
sixteenth century. Nietzsche imagined he was rebelling against ancient
morality; as a matter of fact he was only rebelling against recent
morality, against the half-baked impudence of the utilitarians and the
materialists. He thought he was rebelling against Christianity;
curiously enough he was rebelling solely against the special enemies of
Christianity, against Herbert Spencer and Mr. Edward Clodd. Historic
Christianity has always believed in the valour of St. Michael riding in
front of the Church Militant; and in an ultimate and absolute pleasure,
not indirect or utilitarian, the intoxication of the spirit, the wine of
the blood of God.

There are indeed doctrines of Nietzsche that are not Christian, but
then, by an entertaining coincidence, they are also not true. His hatred
of pity is not Christian, but that was not his doctrine but his disease.
Invalids are often hard on invalids. And there is another doctrine of
his that is not Christianity, and also (by the same laughable accident)
not common-sense; and it is a most pathetic circumstance that this was
the one doctrine which caught the eye of Shaw and captured him. He was
not influenced at all by the morbid attack on mercy. It would require
more than ten thousand mad Polish professors to make Bernard Shaw
anything but a generous and compassionate man. But it is certainly a
nuisance that the one Nietzsche doctrine which attracted him was not the
one Nietzsche doctrine that is human and rectifying. Nietzsche might
really have done some good if he had taught Bernard Shaw to draw the
sword, to drink wine, or even to dance. But he only succeeded in putting
into his head a new superstition, which bids fair to be the chief
superstition of the dark ages which are possibly in front of us--I mean
the superstition of what is called the Superman.

In one of his least convincing phrases, Nietzsche had said that just as
the ape ultimately produced the man, so should we ultimately produce
something higher than the man. The immediate answer, of course, is
sufficiently obvious: the ape did not worry about the man,