Excepting, perhaps, one or two recent cases, such as Dr. Parry and Mr. Hadow, our men of light and leading have had nothing important to say about music, whereas for Nietzsche, a scholar and critic of commanding reputation, music was the one art possessing genuine vitality in the modern world, and the questions of musical æsthetics were anything but an affair of dilettantes; they were the questions connected with a tremendous power for good or evil. Of all Nietzsche's fantastic conceptions that which has produced the most curious results is the famous "blonde beast," a sort of bogey invented for the purpose of annoying and frightening Socialists. The satirist begins by expressing contempt of herding creatures and admiration of "beautiful solitary beasts of prey." Sheep and cattle, he reminds the Socialists, are naturally gregarious, but lions have never been known to acquire the gregarious instinct. Next he develops the theory of analogy between great men of the conquering type and common criminals--the same theory as is set forth, ostensibly as a joke but really with much seriousness, in Fielding's "Jonathan Wild." This theory stands in high repute among Socialists, who find it useful for attacking great men of the conquering and warfaring type, so that when Nietzsche turns it against Socialism he strikes with a two-edged sword. Lastly, he conjures up a fearsome image of predatory and unscrupulous vigour, a combination of Napoleon and feudal aristocrat. This is the "blonde beast" which, according to the programme of the Nietzschian apocalypse, is to devour the enfeebled man of the modern world. It is one of Nietzsche's happiest inspirations, and has already provoked a literature. Quite recently, for example, a book appeared in Germany accepting with perfect gravity and recommending for immediate practical adoption the principles of the "blonde beast." One might almost imagine that Nietzsche foresaw some such result with secret satisfaction at the idea of his posthumous revenge on the "flat-land." There are signs, too, in the English press that the popular imagination is about to fix on Nietzsche as a writer who recommends promiscuous ruffianism. Was not Darwin known for many years as the preposterous eccentric who said men were descended from monkeys? It is, however, advisable to warn those who are not greatly concerned with mental problems, who value tradition and take a hopeful view of life, that they had better leave Nietzsche alone. His influence is on the whole gloomy, disquieting, and profoundly unsettling, though in relation to the critical literature of the Continent he is unquestionably one of the great originals, one of the few "voices" that find many echoes. [Sidenote: =Nietzsche in English.= _August 4, 1899._]