THE ARBITER OF ETHICS 259 



much of Nietzsche's protest against the excesses of 

 humanitarianism was sound and well directed, I for 

 one am quite ready to admit. He saw, as few other 

 men of our day have seen, the danger that threatens 

 true progress in any system of education and gov- 

 ernment which makes the advantage of the ordinary 

 rather than the distinguished man its first object. He 

 saw with terrible clearness that much of our most ad- 

 mired art is not art at all in the higher sense of the 

 word, but an appeal to morbid sentimentality. . . . 

 But the cure Nietzsche proposed for these evils was it- 

 self a part of the malady. The Superman, in other 

 words, is a product of the same naturalism which pro- 

 duced the disease it would counteract; it is the last and 

 most violent expression of the egotism, or self-interest, 

 which Hume and all his followers balanced with sym- 

 pathy, as the two springs of human action." 



If the predominant object of science is to acquire 

 power, how can we escape the conclusion that if it 

 should become the arbiter of ethics, society would tend 

 to a condition closer to the ideals of Nietzsche than of 

 sentimental eugenics ? Can we look with complaisance 

 on the unrestricted development of either of these 

 ideals? Nietzsche teaches a gospel of scientific evolu- 

 tion when the restraints are removed from the free 

 exercise of self-interest. The gospel of the Superman, 

 when transferred to the ambitions of a nation, as has 

 been done by Treitschke, shows its results in that doc- 



