Daniel Halévy

The life of Friedrich Nietzsche Daniel Halévy

The Life of Friedrich Nietzsche

By Daniel Halevy

Translated by j. M. Mone

With an Introduction By T. M. Kettle

The duel between Nietzsche and civilisation is long since over; and that high poet and calamitous philosopher is now to be judged as he appears in the serene atmosphere of history, which--need it be said?--he infinitely despised. The crowd, the common herd, the multitude--which he also despised--has recorded its verdict with its usual generosity to the dead, and that verdict happens to be an ample revenge. It has dismissed Nietzsche's ideas in order to praise his images. It has conceded him in literature a brilliant success, and has treated his philosophy as fundamental nonsense of the sort that calls for no response except a shrug of the shoulders. The immoralist who sought to shatter all the Tables of all the Laws, and to achieve a Transvaluation of all Values, ends by filling a page in Die Ernte and other Anthologies for the Young. And in certifying his style to be that of a rare and real master the "crowd" has followed a true instinct. More than Schopenhauer, more even than Goethe, Nietzsche is accounted by the critics of his country to have taught German prose to speak, as Falstaff says, like a man o' this world.