Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/46

18 plementary to each other. If, for instance, the democratic interpretation of the principle of freedom were to ignore the need both of self-discipline and of that external system of sanctions which is the school of such self-discipline, then it would be profitable to realize that something may be learnt from the militant state with its uncompromising ideal of a social drill. But it is scarcely in point here to discuss the philosophy of Hegel, more especially seeing that it no longer reflects the spirit of the country where it arose.

In its stead there reigns in the country in question the philosophy of Nietzsche. The world is for the superman. Dominancy within the human kind must be secured at all costs. As for the old values, they are all wrong. Christian humility is a slavish virtue; so is Christian charity. Such values have become 'denaturalized.' They are the by-product of certain primitive activities, which were intended by nature to subserve strictly biological ends, but have somehow escaped from nature's control and run riot on their own account. Hence man, in order to realize his true and natural self, must revert to the primitive. He must put off the new man, and put on the old. Or, if he cannot be archaic in his moral style, at least he can try to be archaistic.

Now, dialectically speaking, it clears the air when one party to a controversy is prepared to define his position in set terms. Often it is only by this means that the other party becomes fully conscious of the purport of his opposition. He who is not with Nietzsche is against him. The adversaries of the nation which appears to find spiritual comfort in a hymn of hate might hesitate to claim a monopoly of the Christian virtues, were it not actually thrust upon them. As between the warring peoples, the religion of love, the philosophy of the brotherhood of man-