But there is a point here of some curious psychological interest, to which we are attracted by a certain treacherous red glow upon his words when he speaks of this sultry, crouching, spotted, tail-lashing mood. Why is it precisely this Borgian type, this Renaissance type, among the world's various Lust-Darlings that he chooses to select?
Why does he not oppose, to the Christian Ideal, its true opposite—the naive, artless, faun-like, pagan "child of Nature," who has never known "remorse"?
The answer is clear. He chooses the Borgian type—the type which is not free from "superstition," which is always wrestling with "superstition"—the type that sprinkles holy water upon its dagger—because such a type is the inevitable product of the presence among us of the Christian Ideal. The Christian Ideal has made a certain complication of "wickedness" possible, which were impossible without it.
If Nietzsche had not been obsessed by Christianity he would have selected as his "Ideal Blond Beast" that perfectly naive, "unfallen" man, of imperturbable nerves, of classic nerves, such as Life abounded in before Christ came. He makes, indeed, a pathetic struggle to idealize this type, rather than the "conscience-stricken" Renaissance one. He lets his fingers stray more than once over the red-stained limbs of real sun-burnt "Pompeian" heathenism. He turns feverishly the wanton pages of Petronius to reach this unsullied, "imperial" Animal. But he cannot reach him. He never could reach him. The "consecrated" dagger of the Borgia gleams and scintillates between. Even, therefore, in the sort of "wickedness" he evokes, Nietzsche remains Christ-ridden and Christ-mastered. The matter is made still more certain when one steals up silently, so to speak, behind the passages where he speaks of Napoleon.
If a reader has the remotest psychological clairvoyance, he will be aware of a certain strain and tug, a certain mental jerk and contortion, whenever Napoleon is introduced.
Yes, he could engrave that fatal "N" over his mantlepiece at Weimar—to do so was the last solace of his wounded brain. But he was never really at ease with the great Emperor. Never did he—in pure, direct, classic recognition—greet him as "the Demonic Master of Destiny," with the Goethean salutation! Had Goethe and Napoleon, in their notorious encounter, wherein they recognized one another as "Men," been interrupted by the entrance of Nietzsche, do you suppose they would not have both stiffened and recoiled, recognizing their natural Enemy, the Cross-bearer, the Christ-obsessed one, "Il Santo"?
The difference between the two types can best be felt by recalling the way in which Napoleon and Goethe treated the Christ-Legend, compared with Nietzsche's desperate wrestling.
Napoleon uses "Religion" calmly and deliberately for his High Policy and Worldly Statecraft.
Goethe uses "Religion" calmly and deliberately for his aesthetic culture and his mystic symbolism. Neither of them are, for one moment, touched by it themselves.
They are born Pagans; and when this noble, tortured soul flings himself at their feet in feverish worship, one feels that, out of their Homeric Hades, they look wonderingly, unintelligently, at him.