Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/430

414 ambitions and aims of trade [such, I may say on my own account, as the present war in Europe] they may none the less serve in some measure as training-ground for the future type. undefined But more than this, the great war may come, the war for an idea, for the rule and organization of the earth (since willing compliance with the idea on the part of all concerned cannot be taken for granted)—and to this, if it comes, Nietzsche's higher men will not merely consent, they will inspire and lead in it. Oddly as it may sound to our ears today, he has a special word of recognition for religious wars, and this just because they turn on intellectual points. In general, he regards the church as a superior institution to the state, since it gives to spiritual things the first place and to spiritual men rather than men of physical force the supreme authority; and if war must needs be, then it is nobler to contend for shades of doctrine than for material possessions. And the great war, the only conflict in which Nietzsche is supremely interested, will be one for a conception, a philosophical doctrine—not with this as a cloak for other aims, but on behalf of it —that conception of an ordered world, a rule and administration of the round earth, to which I have before alluded. He ventured to say—most extravagantly perhaps, and perhaps not—that his ideas would precipitate a crisis in the world's history, wars ensuing such as never had been known before. The supreme result would justify all it cost, and would consecrate those who took part in the struggle—for it is bringing death into connection with the aims we strive for, that makes us reverend (ehrwürdig).

Nietzsche was a passionate spirit and took his ideas greatly, and would have others take them so. He animadverts on the scholars who are content to sit in cool shadows; it is not enough, he says, to prove a thing, one must win men over or lift them