Strindberg came close to the line of insanity; he spent two or three years in a sanitarium, and wrote a book about these borderland states, “Inferno.” Then he took up with Swedenborg, and evolved into a Christian mystic, and went back into a second childhood of bible-worship. But that did not keep him from carrying on frantic quarrels with his enemies, and pouring out many volumes of personalities. Strangely enough, there is a kind of impersonality in it all, because the man is so tragically earnest. He is trying to find the truth, and puts himself before us as a document; no one but Rousseau has done this so completely. Therefore, we think of Strindberg as one of the great teachers. Let the artist give us truth, and we can always find use for it. CHAPTER XCII THE OVERMAN Another great writer of this time was troubled about the problem of the ladies. August Strindberg married three, and experienced three tragedies. Friedrich Nietzsche sought to marry one, but she would not have him; after which he wrote contemptuously of them all. Despite the fact that he was a clergyman’s son, he suffered from hereditary syphilis, and went insane--a tragic waste of the greatest genius of modern times. Nietzsche was born in 1844, and became a professor of philology at a Swiss university. His health broke down from eye-strain at the age of thirty-five, and he retired upon a small pension. His insanity came at the age of forty-five, and he lived eleven years longer, slowly rotting to pieces, and meantime growling like a wild beast. Nietzsche’s enemies, of course, made the most of this cruel fate; they said that he was insane all the time. That is an easy way to dispose of his writings--easy for the average person, who has never experienced such emotional states as Nietzsche dealt with, and does not wish to be troubled by them. But a few who have experienced these states are in better position to decide. Nietzsche’s mature work is perfectly sane; it contains many contradictions, but we have to permit an original mind to grow. His masterpiece, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” contains the greatest imaginative writing of several centuries. But we must remember that these books were written by a man who was ill and suffering atrociously. He declared that every year meant for him two hundred days of pain. His view of life is the product of a pain-driven mind, like the ecstasy experienced by martyrs undergoing torture. We do not expect ordered and systematic thought from such persons; but we may learn from them strange secrets concerning the possibilities of the human spirit.