I have met with ridicule from sapient critics for praising Zarathustra and at the same time proclaiming myself a Socialist. But just as it is possible by a deeper view to reconcile Zarathustra and Jesus, so also it is possible to reconcile Zarathustra and Marx. The free spirits and lofty idealists whom Nietzsche dreamed will never be able to function in the world of international profiteers; they are outcasts in such a world, as Nietzsche was in the Junker world. Only when competition for money has been replaced by co-operative order will mankind take seriously those higher activities which were Nietzsche’s concern. Exactly the same thing applies to the war of the sexes; it is not in quarreling with women, like Strindberg, or in avoiding them, like Nietzsche, that the happiness of man is found. There is a saying of Zarathustra most frequently quoted by his enemies: “When thou goest to woman forget not the whip.” That is taken to mean that man should dominate woman by brute power; but Georg Brandes tells me that it does not mean that at all. It means that you must not forget that the woman will seek to wield a whip over you if she can; in other words, the Strindberg terror! Brandes declares that he has seen a photograph of Nietzsche in company with the young lady whom he loved; Nietzsche in this photograph had a child’s harness about his neck and shoulders, and the woman had a whip in her hand. That, of course, was play; but Freud has taught us that play is symbolic, and perhaps it was this picture which Nietzsche had in mind when he wrote his famous sentence. Anyhow, this much is certain: Nietzsche did not know women. Except for this one unhappy love affair, he took toward them the same attitude as the Christian hermits and monks--and for the same reason, because he wanted to live his inner life without disturbance. So extremes meet, and history repeats itself--the “eternal recurrence” which Nietzsche taught! Through much of his life he had the devoted services of his sister; she nursed him and cared for him during those dreadful years when he wandered about the room growling like a wild beast; and after he was dead, she edited his books and his letters. Man flees from woman--but he begins in a woman’s arms, and he ends there. CHAPTER XCIII THE OCTOPUS CITIES Modern civilization is a stepmother to poets; it is crowded, noisy and ugly, and they run away and seek refuge in gardens, or monasteries, or dreams of a happier past. But modern civilization is alive; it is the life of hundreds of millions of human beings, forging a new future. And there comes a new kind of poet, able to penetrate to the inner spirit of that future.