Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/474

468 and the distrust of the senaes 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 Grerman subjectivism, deserve 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 Socrates," "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 J. J. Rousseau, who raised such a hullabaloo a century and a half ago over the same subject, and for whom Nietzsche professed such an ar- dent hatred. It is easy for a student of real nature to understand why Nietzsche hated Rousseau more spleenishly, if such a thing were pos- sible, then he hated people generally. Probably it was because he vaguely realized that he was doing just what Rousseau tried to do, i. e,, make of nature what he would like to have it; and then saw that what Rousseau wanted nature to be was almost the antithesis of what he himself wanted it to be. While Rousseau wanted nature to be peaceful, gentle, benevo- lent and all that, and so easily found enough in it to make himself believe it to be essentially of this sort, Nietzsche as easily found enough in it to convince him that in its fundamentals nature is of the sort he liked; that is, selfish and powerful and hard and cruel.

Biologists ought to examine right carefully Nietzsche's famous doctrine of "Will to Power." His effort to make this a universal and all-sufficing principle of living nature had its strict counterpart, if not, indeed, its inspiration and model, in struggle survivalism of the Wei&- mannian type. And the doctrine has degenerated into a sort of fiendish crotchet with many of Nietzsche's disciples, much as strugglism has with many biologists. And the reasoning, if reasoning it can justly be called, is much the same by the two sets of persons. "Wherever I found living matter," said Nietzsche, "I found will to power, and even in the servant I found the yearning to be master." (Thus spake Zarathustra.) As an illustration take an alligator, a great hunk of "living matter," sunning itself on a sand bank for hours at a time without so much as flopping its tail. What a striking case of willing to power 1 And what determina- tion of a servant to be a master 1 Or if Nietzsche by chance ever looked through a microscope at the slow come-and-go of protoplasm confined within the cell membrane in a hair of a spider-lily, what a convincing proof of "will to power" and "desire for mastery" he had before him!

And one finds illustrations and arguments quite as convincing almost