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The proposal met with no success. The preacher was silenced, and set aside. Nietzsche, prompt with sarcasm, avenged himself with words which did not win him any love. Then he knew the worst of solitudes, the solitude of the vanquished. He had not[Pg 44] retired from the world; he had been asked to leave it. He was proud, and his stay at Bonn became a misery. He worked energetically and joylessly. He studied philology, which did not interest him. It was an exercise which he had taken up to discipline his mind, to correct his tendencies towards a vague mysticism and dispersion of thought. But it pleased him in no way, this minute analysis of Greek texts the sudden beauty of which he felt by instinct. Ritschl, his master in philology, dissuaded him from any other study. "If you wish to become a strong man," he said, "acquire a speciality." Nietzsche obeyed. He renounced the idea, which he had entertained, of making a deep study of theology. In December he had composed some melodies: now he decided that he would not, for a whole year, allow himself the enjoyment of so vain a pleasure; he wished to submit, and to break himself in to ennui. He was recompensed for his pains, and was able to write a work which Ritschl commended for its rigour and sagacity.
A poor pleasure! It was thought that Nietzsche needed. He listened to the talk of the students. Some repeated without any ardour of conviction the formulas of Hegel, of Fichte, of Schelling: those great systems had lost all their power to stimulate. Others, preferring the positive sciences, read the materialistic treatises of Vogt and Bchner. Nietzsche read these treatises, but did not re-read them. He was a poet and had need of lyricism, intuition, and mystery; he could not be contented with the clear and cold world of science. Those same young people, who called themselves materialists, also called themselves democrats; they vaunted the humanitarian philosophy of Feuerbach; but Nietzsche was again too much of a poet and, by education or by temperament, too much of an aristocrat to interest himself in the[Pg 45] politics of the masses. He conceived beauty, virtue, force, heroism, as desirable ends, and he desired them for himself. But he had never desired a happy life, a smooth and comfortable life: therefore he could not interest himself in men's happiness, in the poor ideal of moderate joy and moderate suffering.
Little satisfied as he was by all the tendencies of his contemporaries, what joy could he experience? Repelled by a base politics, a nerveless metaphysics, a narrow science, whither could he direct his mind? Certainly he had his clear and well-marked preferences. He was certain of his tastes. He loved the Greek poets, he loved Bach, Beethoven, Byron. But what was the drift of his own thought?
He had no answer to the problems of life, and now in his twenty-first, as formerly in his seventeenth year, preferring silence to uncertain speech, he kept himself under a discipline of silence. In his writings, his letters, his conversation, he was always on his guard. His friend Deussen suggested that prayer has no real virtue, and only gives to the mind an illusory confidence. "That is one of the asininities of Feuerbach," Nietzsche replied tartly. The same Deussen was speaking on another occasion of the Life of Jesus which Strauss had just published in a new edition, and expressing approval of the sense of the book. Nietzsche refused to pronounce upon the subject. "The question is important," said he. "If you sacrifice Jesus, you must also sacrifice God." These words would seem to show that Nietzsche was still attached to Christianity. A letter addressed to his sister removes this impression. The young girl, who had remained a believer, wrote to him: "One must always seek truth at the most painful side of things. Now one does not believe in the Christian mysteries without difficulty. Therefore the Christian mysteries are true." She at once received from her[Pg 46] brother a reply which betrays, by the harshness of its language, the unhappy condition of his soul.
"Do you think that it is really so difficult to receive and accept all the beliefs in which we have been brought up, which little by little have struck deep roots into our lives, which are held as true by all our own kith and kin, and a vast multitude of other excellent people, and which, whether they be true or not, do assuredly console and elevate humanity? Do you think that such acceptance is more difficult than a struggle against the whole mass of one's habits, waged in doubt and loneliness, and darkened by every kind of spiritual depression, nay more, by remorse; a struggle which leaves a man often in despair, but always loyal to his eternal quest, the discovery of the new paths that lead to the True, the Beautiful, and the Good?
"What will be the end of it all? Shall we recover those ideas of God, the world, and redemption which are familiar to us? To the genuine seeker must not the result of his labours appear as something wholly indifferent? What is it we are seeking? Rest and happiness? No, nothing but Truth, however evil and terrible it may be.
"... So are the ways of men marked out; if you desire peace of soul and happiness, believe; if you would be a disciple of Truth, enquire ..."
Nietzsche tried to endure this painful life. He walked in the country. Alone in his room he studied the history of art and the life of Beethoven. They were vain efforts; he could not forget the people of Bonn. Twice he went to listen to the musical festivals at Cologne. But each return added to his malaise. In the end he left the town.
"I left Bonn like a fugitive. At midnight I was on the quay of the Rhine accompanied by my friend M. I was waiting for the steamship which comes from Cologne, and I did not experience the slightest impression of pain at the moment of leaving a country-side so flourishing, a place so beautiful, and a band of young comrades. On the contrary, I was actually flying from them. I do not wish to begin again to judge them unjustly, as I have often done. But my nature could find no satisfaction among them. I was still too timidly wrapt up in myself, and I had not the strength to stick to my rle amid so many influences which were exercising themselves on me. Everything obtruded on me, and I could not succeed in dominating my surroundings.... I felt in an oppressive manner that I had done nothing for science, and little for life, and that I had only clogged myself with faults. The steamer came, and took me off. I stayed on the bridge in the damp wet night, and as I watched the little lights which marked the river bank at Bonn slowly disappear, everything conspired to give me the impression of flight."
He went to spend a fortnight at Berlin with a comrade whose father was a rich bourgeois, ready with his censure and his regrets. "Prussia is lost," this old man affirmed; "the Liberals and the Jews have destroyed everything with their babblings ... they have destroyed tradition, confidence, thought itself." Young Nietzsche welcomed these bitter words. He judged Germany from the students of Bonn and saw his own sick discomfort everywhere. At the concert he suffered from being in community of impressions with a low public. In the cafs whither his hosts took him he would neither drink nor smoke, nor did he address a word to the people who were introduced to him.
He was determined not to see Bonn again, and decided to go to Leipsic to complete his studies. He arrived in the unknown town and at once inscribed himself on the roll of the University. The day was a festival. A Rector harangued the students and told them that on that same date a hundred years before Goethe had come to inscribe himself among their elders. "Genius has its own ways," the prudent official was quick to add, "and it is dangerous to follow them. Goethe was not a good student; do not take him for model during your years of study." "Hou, hou!" roared the laughing young men; and Friedrich Nietzsche, lost in the crowd, was glad at the chance that had brought him thither at the moment of such an anniversary.
