[A PROTEST AGAINST HIMSELF]
Nietzsche is far from regarding his philosophy as timely. He was a proud and aristocratic character, spoiled from childhood by an unfaltering admiration on the part of both his mother and sister. It was unfortunate for him that his father had died before he could influence the early years of his son through wholesome discipline. Not enjoying a vigorous constitution Nietzsche was greatly impressed with the thought that a general decadence was overshadowing mankind. The truth was that his own bodily system was subject to many ailments which hampered his mental improvement. He was hungering for health, he envied the man of energy, he longed for strength and vigor, but all this was denied him, and so these very shortcomings of his own bodily strength—his own decadence—prompted in him a yearning for bodily health, for an unbounded exercise of energy, and for success. These were his dearest ideals, and his desire for power was his highest ambition. He saw in the history of human thought, the development of the notion of the "true world," which to him was a mere subjective phantom, a superstition; but a reaction would set in, and he prophesied that the doom of nihilism would sweep over the civilized world applying the torch to its temples, churches and institutions. Upon the ruins of the old world the real man, the overman, would rise and establish his own empire, an empire of unlimited power in which the herds, i. e., the common people would become subservient.
Nietzsche's philosophy forms a strange contrast to his own habits of life. A model of virtue, he made himself the advocate of vice, and gloried in it. He encouraged the robber[1] to rob, but he himself was honesty incarnate; he incited the people to rebel against authority of all kinds, but he himself was a "model child" in the nursery, a "model scholar" in school, and a "model soldier" while serving in the German army. His teachers as well as the officers of his regiment fail to find words enough to praise Nietzsche's obedience.[2]
Nietzsche's professors declare that he distinguished himself "durch pünktlichen Gehorsam" (p. 3); his sister tells us that she and her brother were "ungeheuer artig, wahre Musterkinder" (p. 36). He makes a good soldier, and, in spite of his denunciations of posing, displays theatrical vanity in having himself photographed with drawn sword (the scabbard is missing). His martial mustache almost anticipates the tonsorial art of the imperial barber of the present Kaiser; and yet his spectacled eyes and good-natured features betray the peacefulness of his intentions. He plays the soldier only, and would have found difficulty in killing even a fly.
Nietzsche disclaims ever having learned anything in any school, but there never was a more grateful German pupil in Germany. He composed fervid poems on his school—the well known institution Schulpforta, which on account of its severe discipline he praises, not in irony but seriously, as the "narrow gate."[3]
