82 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 
nasium. Here he received a mental and spiritual shock which to 
one of his temperament and early training had much to do with 
the transformation of his unsophisticated piety and credulity to 
dionysian iconoclasm. 
The influence of Ritschl, the celebrated philologist at Bonn and 
Leipsic, was very great on the developing youth ! but greater yet 
that of the writings of Schopenhauer which he read in 1865, but 
interpreted in the light of Darwin’s theory of natural selection 
with which he became acquainted during his first years at Bonn.? 
Schopenhauer interpreted in the light of the doctrine that progress 
resulis from struggle for existence and survival of the fittest is thus 
the very heart of Nietzscheism.? 
Our author arrived at manhood in the flush of an intellectual 
period when monistic philosophy and the scientific method were 
being turned to a criticism of all of life’s conventions and values. 
The cataclysm in Nietzsche’s moral and religious ideas and beliefs 
made the conventional standards in these departments of life 
values his special concern, and later his special point of attack, 
and he became one of the most virulent and blasphemous of 
moral and religious critics. 
In his attack on David Strauss in 1873, he charges that phi- 
losopher and critic with lack of courage in failing to follow out the 
Darwinian formula to its logical conclusion. The same argu- 
ment would apply to Darwin himself, and to Wallace, Fiske, Bal- 
four and Huxley, as Dr. A. Lilly points out, for none of these apply 
the biological formula in all its rigidity to social progress, or to the 
development of moral sentiments. The consensus of opinion 
today, however, among sociologists is with Darwin rather than 
with Nietzsche and his defenders as we shall point out later. To 
say that the law of natural selection does not apply rigidly in 
social evolution is not to pit man against the cosmic process, for 
man with his intelligence and will is a part of that process, so 
also are society and the social sentiments.’ The reasoning of the 
Nietzscheans is far from conclusive.® 
1 The Philosophy of Nietzsche, p. 16. 2 Tbid., p. 13. 
3 Cf. Mencken, pp. 64 ff., 101 f., 138 f., esp. 142 n. 4 Ibid., p. 30. 
5 For Drummond’s position as against Huxley see his Ascent of Man, ch. I. 
6 Introduction to The Case Against Wagner, etc., cf. Mencken, p. r4o. 
