"The lessening of the European man is the great process which may not be impeded; it should be accelerated again. It is the active force which allows one to hope for the arrival of a stronger race, of a race which should possess to excess those very qualities which the impoverished species lack (will, responsibility, certitude, the faculty of fixing an end for oneself)."
Thus at the end of 1887, Nietzsche had succeeded in drawing up a first sketch of the work of synthesis which he had proposed to himself. He concedes a certain right, a certain dignity, to those motives which he formerly reviled. The final rough drafts of Zarathustra had already given us similar indications. "The disciples of Zarathustra," wrote Nietzsche, "give to the humblest, not to themselves, the expectation of happiness. ... They distribute religions and systems, according to a hierarchy." Nietzsche now writes, and the intention is similar: "The humanitarian tendencies are not anti-vital, they suit the masses who live slowly, and thus suit humanity which needs the satisfaction of the masses. The Christian tendencies are also benevolent, and nothing is so desirable," writes Nietzsche, "as their permanence; for they suit all those who suffer, all the feeble, and it is necessary for the health of human societies that suffering, that inevitable weaknesses, be accepted without revolt, with submission, and, if possible, with love." "Whatever I may happen to say of Christianity," wrote Nietzsche in 1881 to Peter Gast, "I cannot forget that I owe to it the best experiences of my spiritual life; and I hope never to be ungrateful to it at the bottom of my heart." This thought, this hope, has never left him; and he rejoices to have found a word of justice for the religion of his childhood, the only one which still offers itself to souls.
On December 14, 1887, he addressed a letter to an old correspondent of the Basle days, Carl Fuchs. The accent is a proud one.
"Almost all that I have written should be erased. During these latter years the vehemence of my internal agitations has been terrible. To-day, at the moment when I should be rising higher, my first task is to modify myself, to depersonalise myself towards higher forms.
"Am I old? I do not know, and moreover I do not know what kind of youth is necessary to me.
"In Germany, people complain strongly of my 'eccentricities.' But as they do not know where my centre is, they can hardly discern when or how I happen to be eccentric."
From the dates of his notes, it seems that Nietzsche approached a different problem in the month of January, 1888. Those humble multitudes whose rights he admits and measures would not deserve to live, if their activity were not, in the last instance, governed by an élite, utilised for glorious ends. What would be the virtues of this élite, what ends would it serve? Nietzsche was thus brought back to the problem which was his torment. Would he define at length this unknown, and perhaps unattainable grandeur, towards which his soul had for so long aspired? He was again a prey to sadness. He complained of his sensibility, of his irritability, which had become such that each day, on the arrival of the post, he hesitated and shivered before opening his letters.
"Never has life appeared so difficult to me," he wrote to Peter Gast on January 15th. "I can no longer keep on terms with any sort of reality: when I do not succeed in forgetting them, they break me.... There are nights when I am overwhelmed with distress. And so much remains to be done—all, so to say!—Therefore I must hold out. To this wisdom I apply myself, at least in the mornings. Music, these days, gives me sensations which I had never known. It frees me, it lets me recover from the intoxication of myself; I seem to consider myself from a great height, to feel myself from a great height; thus it renders me stronger, and regularly, after an evening's music (I have heard Carmen four times), I have a morning full of energetic perceptions and lucky discoveries. It is quite admirable. It is as though I had bathed myself in a more natural element. Without music life is merely a mistake, a weariness, an exile."
Let us try to follow the course of his work. He subjected himself to an historical research and attempted to discover the social class, the nation, the race or the party which authorised the hope of a more noble humanity. Here was the modern European: