Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/384

368 ." It is simply a pictorial, but perhaps for all that quite exact description of our distant Aryan forefathers. In the other passage, superior (vornehme) Germans of the early Middle Ages are spoken of as fine examples of the "blond beast."

Undoubtedly Nietzsche in a certain sense "celebrates" these conquering Aryans. Many of us too are proud of our descent from them, though Nietzsche undermines our feeling somewhat by suggesting that the blood of most of us is probably much mixed. Relatively to those whom they conquered they were the more vigorous stock and had the higher promise of life—even supposing that the subjected populations were more industrious, more peaceful, more moral (in the sense in which morality stands for sympathy and mutual help). Overflowing vitality is the condition of all that is really excellent in Nietzsche's estimation. Not in lessening or depressing this, but in refining and spiritualizing it is the way of progress. But it does not follow that those in whom vitality has risen to higher and finer forms shall make the "blond beast" (in his early form) their model and shall go back to marauding and killing as our fathers did. We may indeed do it on occasion, or something like it—modern European states are doing it in their colonial ventures, though even so the work might be done in a finer and less bungling manner. But in general it is no more necessary that power shall always remain on the animal level than that a grown-up man shall repeat the exuberances of his youth, and it is gratuitious to imagine that Nietzsche proposes any such thing. All the same, this seems to be the ordinary interpretation of Nietzsche, and it is sometimes shared by those from whom one expects more discriminating judgments—professional scholars and philosophers. undefined Among the few to discriminate are Professor Riehl, Professor René Berthelot, and Professor Frank Thilly. undefined While as against weakness, stagnation, or degeneration, with whatever accompaniment of refined feelings and peaceful manners, the "blond beast," the primitive Aryan, was the better man and had more promise for the race, this is not true when the contrast is with a higher, more spiritual development of the same forces that were in him. Emerson speaks