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"To the pure all things are pure!—I, however, say unto you: To the swine all things are swinish."[3]

Nietzsche's sensitive car caught curious notes in the daily dronings of those around him—notes that made him suspicious of the whole melody of modern life, and still more suspicions of the chorus executing it.

He heard to his astonishment: ... "the wretched alone are the good; the poor, the impotent, the lowly alone are good; only the sufferers, the needy, the sick, the ugly are pious only they are godly; them alone blessedness awaits—but ye, the proud and potent, ye are for aye and evermore the wicked, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless; ye will also be, to all eternity, the unblessed, the cursed, and the damned."[4]

He continued listening intently, and, with his ear attuned anew, these sentiments broke strangely upon his senses:—

"Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."[5]

There was no time for brooding over stray thoughts; there was still much to be seen and hoard. When you want to catch some one napping, you keep your eye eagerly upon him, and turn neither to the right nor to the left. Nietzsche, it must be remembered, was at this stage treading softly towards Europe whom he believed to be "napping."

In his lonely hermit cell he was able to catch all the sounds that rose from the city beneath him, and he heard perhaps more than the inhabitants themselves.

He could see them all fighting and quarrelling, and he was cheered, because he knew that where the great fight for power ceases, the standard of life falls. But some he saw were wounded, others were actually unfit for the battlefield, a large number looked tired and listless, and there were yet others—a goodly multitude—who were resentful at the sight of their superiors and who, like sulky children, dropped their arms in a pet and declared that they would not play any more. And what were all these feeble and less viable mortals doing? They were crying aloud, and making their deepest wishes known. They were elevating their desiderata to the highest places amongst earthly virtues—and driving back the others with words! Nietzsche thought of Reynard the Fox, who, at the very moment that he was about to be hanged, and with the rope already round his neck, succeeded by his dialectical skill in persuading the crowd to release him. For Nietzsche could hear the weary, the wounded, and the incapable of the fight, crying quite distinctly through their lips parched for rest: "Peace is good! Love is good! Love for one's neighbour is good! Ay, and even love for one's enemy is good!"[6]

And some cried: "It is God that avengeth me!" to those who oppressed them, and others said: "The Lord avenge me!"[7]

Whereupon Nietzsche thought of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the God of revenge and thunderbolts; he recalled the sentiment: "Ye shall chase your enemies and they shall fall fall before you by the sword," and he wondered how this had come to mean "love your enemies," in the New Testament. Had another type of men perhaps made themselves God's mouthpiece?

Yes, that must be so; for, in their holy book, he came across this passage, ascribed to one of their greatest saints:

"Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

"For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

"... Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called:

"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty:

"And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are."[8]

Here, Nietzsche tells us, he began to hold his nose; but he still listened; for there was yet more to be heard. From the smiles that were breaking over the lips of those who read the above words, he gathered that they must have overcome their unhappiness. Yes, indeed, they had. But what did they call it? This was important—even the Christian view of unhappiness seemed significant to Nietzsche in this inquiry.

Their unhappiness, their wretchedness, they called a trial, a gift, a distinction! Not really? Yes indeed! As Nietzsche points out: "They are wretched, no doubt, all these mumblers and underground forgers, though warmly seated together. But they tell us their wretchedness is a selection and distinction from God, that the dogs which are loved most are whipped, that their misery may perhaps also be a preparation, a trial, a schooling; perhaps even more—something which at some time to come will be refuted and paid back with immense interest in gold. No! in happiness. This they call 'blessedness.'"[9]

At this point Nietzsche declares that he could stand it no longer. "Enough, enough! Bad air! Bad air!" he cried. "Methinks this workshop of virtue positively reeks."

He had now realised in whose company he had been all this time.

These people who halted at nothing in order to elevate their weaknesses to the highest place among the virtues, and to monopolise goodness on earth—who called that good which was tame and soft and harmless, because they themselves could only survive in litters of cotton wool; who coloured the earth with the darkness that was in their own bodies; —who did not scruple to dub all manly and vital virtues odiously sinful and wicked, and who preferred to set the life of the whole world at stake, rather than acknowledge that it was precisely their own second-rate, third-rate, or even fourth-rate, vitality which was the greatest sin of all; who in one and the same breath preached their utilitarian "universal love" to the powerful, and then sent them to eternal damnation in another world: Nietzsche asks, are these people the supporters of a noble or of a slave morality?

The answer is obvious, and we need not labour the point. But it was so obvious to the lonely hermit, that the thought of it filled him with horror and dread, and he was moved to leave his cell and to descend into the plain, while there was yet time, with the object of urging us to transvalue our values.

In Christian values, Nietzsche read nihilism, decadence, degeneration, and death. They were calculated to favour the multiplication of the least desirable on earth: and, as such, despite his antecedents, and with his one desire, "the elevation of the type man," always before him, he condemned Christian morality from top to bottom. This magnificent attempt on the part of the low, the base, and the worthless, to establish themselves as the most powerful on earth, must be checked at all costs, and with terrible earnestness he exhorts us to alter our values.

"O my brethren, with whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and the just?

"Break up, break up, I pray you, the good and the just!"

This condemnation of Christian values, as slave values—which Nietzsche regarded as his greatest service to mankind—he says he would write on all walls. He tells us he came just in the nick of time; to-morrow might be too late.