Nietzsche makes the same statement Hardy makes. There is no writing today for the ear. There are no architects of the sonorous sentence, sculptured phrase, hinting at vast resources, wherein a multitude of minds could swarm and find safety; no sentence of mighty curve, powerful sweep. Cicero wrote such sentences. So did Demosthenes. Speech is crumbling. The rock is fretting itself back again to sand. It is no longer strong enough to contend with the forces of creation, chaos, the desolating forces so rapidly destroying the old, it is suitable now for petty writers, the little men, and the wilful winds. A force of disintegration is at work. That is why the little men with swollen ego are able to handle it, then feel proud. Nietzsche impresses me as an artist gone wrong rather than philosopher _sang pur_. He makes reasoning conform to eye-delight in noble line, distinguished color. He feels, he enjoys first, thinks afterward. Sometimes he impresses me as an artist who did not have courage to try his artist’s wings, who felt, feared, perhaps, they were feeble. So he fell back upon brilliant, learned, fault-finding. He became the distinguished spier-out of men’s weaknesses. It is not easy for Nietzsche to see without passion. To see with passion is not of the philosopher. His seeing is bound too closely to the emotions of self. His hatreds, his envies, play commanding part. His hatred, for example, for Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Spencer, Locke, Carlyle, and so forth, and so forth. And his envy of Wagner and the Songs of Schumann. A strange combination of opposites for a man of his gifts! But it is a powerful, outreaching comprehension such as is not given to two of one race in a generation. In Nietzsche I think sometimes I found what the word _comprehension_ means, (namely), a wide reaching out, then a skillful pulling together of many far powers, with the quick, firm, magic welding into one; the swift, clean focus. However important Nietzsche may be as philosopher, I am sure his greatest merit is as master of words. In the German tongue, his is virtuosity. He recreates the language, as a Pope once said d’Annunzio had done with Italian. He has made possible a new, a different tempo. He has increased too its flexibility. Ruskin has not written with greater joy of art of Turner, than Nietzsche of music that charmed him. Nietzsche can do such things with words as Wagner with tone. The power of the two has kinships broader than racial, the kinship of men who had climbed patiently to heights. Nietzsche declares that the appearance of Napoleon in the world made Goethe change his opinion of man. Evidently Napoleon demonstrated something that not even the imagination of a Goethe could reach. The Little Grandson of the Great Revolution made men of genius open their eyes. In few has there been such will to power.