Place of Definition, etc., in Philosophical Biology 131 



The items in this which specially concern us are the 

 references to nature and democracy. Nietzsche ap- 

 pears to have felt as genuinely and deeply as any mod- 

 ern whatever the importance of "return to nature" a 

 cry which, though hackneyed, he was willing to adopt. 

 For this feeling he is entitled, as an esthetic philoso- 

 pher, to great credit. The keenness of perception and 

 vigor of expression with which he protests against the 

 repudiation of external nature, the vilification of the 

 human body, and the distrust of the senses, as these 

 abominations have manifested themselves in the great 

 systems of historical philosophy from the later Greek 

 period, on through the heyday of Christian theology, 

 down into the modern era of German subjectivism, de- 

 serve the careful and sympathetic regard of every man 

 of science. The best of his utterances under this head 

 which I have found are contained in "Beyond Good 

 and Evil," and "The Twilight of the Idols." The 

 chapter on "Prejudices of Philosophers" in the first 

 mentioned, and the sections, "The Problem of Soc- 

 rates," "Reason in Philosophy," and "Morality as Anti- 

 naturalness" deserve special mention. 



The disastrous mistake made by Nietzsche and into 

 which his disciples have followed him, was in believing 

 that he actually did "return to nature." As a matter 

 of fact he never came any nearer nature than did Jean 

 Jacques Rousseau, who raised such a hullabaloo a cen- 

 tury and a half ago over the same subject, and for 

 whom Nietzsche professed such an ardent hatred. It is 



