Two years ago, in this same hall, I had the honour of addressing an audience on the subject of Nietzsche's moral and evolutionary views, and, since then, I have wondered whether I really selected the more important side of his philosophy for my first lectures. If it were not for the fact that the whole of his thought is, as it were, of one single piece, harmoniously and consistently woven, I should doubt that I had selected the more vital portion of it; for it is impossible to overrate the value of his Art doctrine--especially to us, the children of an age so full of perplexity, doubt and confusion as this one is. In taking Nietzsche's Art principles and Art criticism as a basis for a new valuation of Art, I am doing nothing that is likely to astonish the careful student of Nietzsche's works. Friends and foes alike have found themselves compelled to agree upon this point, that Nietzsche, whatever he may have been besides, was at least a great artist and a great thinker on Art. On the ground that he was solely and purely an artist some have even denied his claim to the title Philosopher. Among the more celebrated of modern writers who have done this, is the Italian critic Benedetto Croce;[3] while Julius Zeitler declares that "Nietzsche's artistic standpoint should be regarded as the very basis of all his thought," and that "no better access could be discovered to his spirit than by way of his æsthetic."[4] Certainly, from the dawn of his literary career, Art seems to have been one of Nietzsche's most constant preoccupations. Even the general argument of his last work, _The Will to Power_, is an entirely artistic one; while his hatred of Christianity was the hatred of an artist long before it became the hatred of an aristocratic moralist, or of a prophet of Superman. In _The Birth of Tragedy_, a book in which, by the bye, he declares that there can be but one justification of the world, and that is as an æsthetic phenomenon,[4] we find the following words-- "To the purely æsthetic world interpretation ... taught in this book, there is no greater antithesis than the Christian dogma, which is _only_ and will be only moral, and which, with its absolute standards, for instance, its truthfulness of God, relegates--that is, disowns, convicts, condemns--Art, all Art, to the realm of falsehood. Behind such a mode of thought and valuation, which, if at all genuine, must be hostile to Art, I always experienced what was _hostile to life_, the wrathful vindictive counter will to life itself: for all life rests on appearance, Art, illusion, optics, and necessity of perspective and error."[5] Nietzsche's works are, however, full of the evidences of an artistic temperament. Who but an artist, knowing the joy of creating, for instance, could have laid such stress upon the creative act as the great salvation from suffering and an alleviation of life?[6] Who but an artist could have been an atheist out of his lust to create?