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From aggravation of ennui, an epistolary quarrel arose between Erwin Rohde and himself. He had occasion to write a word to the most intimate friend of past days, and could not resist the pleasure of adding a malicious touch. "I suit old people only," he wrote; "Taine, Burckhardt, and even you are not old enough for me...." Erwin Rohde did not like this touch. A professor, whereas Nietzsche was nothing; a scholar with a reputation among European scholars, whereas Nietzsche was still unknown despite his eccentric books, he would not permit irreverence, and defended his dignity. His letter must have been strongly worded, for he had it restored to him later, and destroyed it.
This misadventure tried Nietzsche. His health was in every respect impaired; he resolved to follow a rgime of waters, massage and baths, in a special establishment in Switzerland, at Coire. He went there, and surrendered himself to the doctors.
He kept on working, however, and made an energetic effort to discover and define the moral values which he wished to propound. But in vain; do what he would, the problem of his third book—Principle of a New Evaluation—remained unsolved. "We may here transcribe the more precise definition with which we are furnished by another draft.
"Third Book: the problem of the legislator. To bind anew the unregulated energies in such a manner that they are not mutually annihilated by running foul of one another; to mark the real augmentation of force."
What does this mean? What real augmentation, what real direction of things is indicated us by these[Pg 327] words? Is it an augmentation of intensity? Then every shade of energy, provided it be intense, will be good. But we must not take it in this sense. Nietzsche selected, preferred, excluded. This augmentation is then the sign of an order, of a natural hierarchy. But in every hierarchy there must be a criterion by which the ranks are distributed; what should this criterion be? Nietzsche would formerly have said: It will be my logical affirmation, the beliefs which I shall have given. Does he still think it? Doubtless; his thoughts hardly vary. But his audacity was lessened by his sorrows, his critical mind had been rendered more exacting by long indecisions. He desired, he sought, he seemed to ask science, the "doctor-philosopher," for a real basis which all his habits of thought refused him.
Mournful news completed the ruin of his courage. Heinrich von Stein died, before his thirtieth year, of a heart failure.
"This has put me out of my senses," wrote Nietzsche to Peter Gast; "I truly loved him. I always thought that he was reserved for me some day. He belonged to that little number of men whose existence rejoiced me; and he too had great confidence in me.... In this very place how we laughed!... He paid a two days' visit to Sils, he had not a glance for Nature or Switzerland—he came straight from Bayreuth; he went back straight to Halle, to his father;—one of the rarest and most delicate homages I have ever received. It made an impression. He had said at the hotel: 'If I come, it is not for the Engadine.'"
Three weeks passed. He complained of bitter inclinations, of susceptibility which lowered his[Pg 328] soul. Nevertheless, he announced a new work. What was it?
It is not The Will to Power. His impatience, which is added to by fatigue, does not easily bend to the delays of meditation. Of his old gifts, his genius for improvising, his polemical genius alone survive. Herr Widmann, a Swiss critic, had just written a study on Beyond Good and Evil and saw in this work but a manual of anarchism: "This is dynamite," he said. Friedrich Nietzsche wished to reply, and at once drew up at a spurt in fifteen days one, two, three short essays which he entitled as a whole, A Genealogy of Morals. "This work," he wrote on the title-page, "is destined to complete and elucidate my last book, Beyond Good and Evil."
"I have said," he wrote in substance, "that I place myself beyond Good and Evil—Gut und Bse. Does this mean that I wish to liberate myself from every moral category? No. I challenge the exaltation of meekness which is called good; the defamation of energy which is called bad; but the history of the human conscience—do the moralists know that such a history exists?—displays to us a multitude of other moral values, other ways of being good, other ways of being bad, numerous shades of honour and of dishonour. Even here the reality is moving, initiative is free; one must seek, one must create."
But Nietzsche developed his thought further: "I have wished," he wrote some months later propos of this little book, "I have wished to fire a cannon-shot with more sonorous powder." He exposed the distinction between the two moralities, the one dictated by the masters, the other by the slaves; and he thought to recognise in the verbal roots of the words "good" and "evil," their old meaning. Bonus, buonus, said he, comes from[Pg 329] duonus, which signifies warrior; malus comes from , black: the blonde Aryans, the ancestors of the Greek, indicated by this word the type of conduct habitual to their slaves and subjects, the Mediterraneans crossed with Negro and Semitic blood. These primitive notions of what is noble and what is vile, Friedrich Nietzsche does not challenge.
On the 18th of July, writing from Sils-Maria, he announced the new work to Peter Gast.
"I have energetically employed these last days, which were better," he wrote. "I have drawn up a little piece of work which, as I think, puts the problem of my last book in a clear light. Every one has complained of not having understood me; and the hundred copies sold do not permit me to doubt that in effect I am not understood. You know that for three years I have spent about 500 thalers to defray the cost of my books; no honorarium, it goes without saying, and I am 43 years old, and I have written fifteen books! Further: experience, and many applications, more painful to me than I care to say, force me to certify, as a fact, that no German editor wants to have anything to do with me (even if I abandon my author's rights). Perhaps this little book which I am completing to-day will help to sell some copies of my last book (it always pains me to think of the poor Fritzsch on whom all the weight of my work rests). Perhaps my publishers will some day benefit from me. As for myself, I know only too well that when people begin to understand me, I shall not benefit from it."
On the 20th of July, he despatched the manuscript to the publisher. On the 24th July, he called it back by telegram in order to add a few features, a few pages. All his summer was spent in discomfort, melancholy, and the correction of his book, which he never ceased to touch up,[Pg 330] to draw out, to render more violent and more alive. Towards the end of August, perceiving an empty space on the last page of the first section, Nietzsche added this curious note, in which he indicated the unstudied problems which he was to have neither strength nor time to attack.
"Remark.—I take the opportunity presented by this essay to express publicly and formally a wish which, so far, I have only mentioned occasionally to certain scholars, in chance conversations. Some Faculty of Philosophy ought, by a series of academical prize-dissertations, to further studies in the history of morality; perhaps this book will serve to give a vigorous impetus in this direction. I would propose the following question:
"What hints are furnished by philology, more especially by etymological research, with reference to the history of the development of moral concepts?
