OF THE GOOD. 



249 



socialistic proclivities to bring about what the German 

 nation had written and sung about for two generations 

 — the unity of the German empire — appeared in glaring 

 contrast to the success of the policy of blood and iron ; 

 whilst the struggle for existence and the survival of the 

 fittest, proclaimed by the Darwinians, found a ready 

 response in the exaltation not only of individual talent, 

 of the military virtues of courage and self-control, but 

 also of individual ferocity and aggressiveness.^ 



Thus we have two distinct and novel developments 

 in the ethical province of philosophical thought in 

 Germany, characteristic of academic and extra-academic, 

 of professional and non-professional thinking : a differ- 

 entiation which has made itself felt in German phil- 

 osophical thought much more than in that of any 

 other country in modern times. On the one side we 

 have a new field of research, the general theory of 

 value, a practical acknowledgment and appreciation of 

 Lotze's idea of an independent realm of values or 



^ " Nietzsche is most convincing 

 when the Uebermensch is left un- 

 defined. Imagined as ideal Man, 

 i.e., as morality depicts him, he 

 becomes intelligible ; imagined as 

 Nietzsche describes him, he reels 

 back into the beast, and that 

 distinction which chiefly separates 

 man from the animal world out of 

 which he has emerged, viz., his 

 unique power of self-consciousness 

 and self-criticism is obliterated" 

 (H. H. Williams, Article, " Ethics," 

 'Encyclop. Brit.,' 11th ed., 1910, 

 vol. ix. p. 842). Besides drawing 

 the extreme conclusions of a theory 

 of natural selection which prompted 

 T. H. Green on the other side to 

 seek for a not merely "natural" 



explanation of the facts of morality, 

 Nietzsche has the merit of taking 

 special note of the difference of 

 individual ability and occupation 

 and of facing the question of 

 practical morality. Once sweep 

 away the idea of equality of all 

 men before a Higher Tribunal and 

 the greater part of moral theory 

 which deals with human nature in 

 general and not with human nature 

 as existing in different classes of 

 society, in different peoples, nation- 

 alities, and races of mankind, be- 

 comes purely academic, particular- 

 istic, or parochial, and a relapse into 

 the ancient difference of Herren- 

 moral and Sklavenmoral becomes. 

 almost inevitable. 



