What resource is left to him? He has bound himself to seek in his own time the points of support for a higher culture. For a moment he thinks he has found them; he has deceived himself, and turns away, for these supports impose a narrowness of direction which his mind cannot tolerate. "There is this that is extraordinary in the life of a thinker," he wrote in 1875--the age of the text proves the permanence of the conflict--" that two contrary inclinations oblige him to follow, at the same moment, two different directions and hold him under their yokes; on the one hand he wishes to know and, abandoning without weariness the firm ground which sustains the life of men, he adventures into unknown regions; on the other hand he wishes to live, and, without ever wearying, he seeks a place in which to five...." Nietzsche had abandoned Wagner, wandered in uncertain regions. He seeks a final security; what does he find? The narrow refuge of nationalism. He withdraws from it: it may be a vulgar recourse, a useful artifice for maintaining some solidity in the crowds, a certain principle of taste and of severity; it may not be, it must not be, the doctrine of the European élite, a scattered and, no doubt, non-existent élite to whom his thoughts are addressed. Nietzsche put the idea of nationalism out of his mind; it was the expedient of a weak century. He ceased to devote himself to his search. What mattered to him the beliefs which should be beneficent to the humble? He thought of Napoleon and of Goethe, both of whom rose superior to their times, and to the prejudices of their countries. Napoleon was contemptuous of the Revolution, but artfully turned its energy to advantage; he despised France, but ruled her. Goethe held Germany in poor esteem and took little interest in her struggles: he wished to possess and reanimate all the ideas, all the dreams of men, to conserve and enrich the vast heritage of moral riches which Europe had created. Napoleon knew the grandeur of Goethe, and Goethe joyfully observed the life of the conqueror, _ens realissimum._ The soldier, the poet, the one who kept men in submission and silence, held them to effort, the other who watched, meditated, and glorified, such is the ideal couple that reappear at every decisive instant in Friedrich Nietzsche's life. He had admired the Greece of Theognis and Pindar, the Germany of Bismarck and Wagner; a long winding course led him back towards his dream, towards that unrealised Europe of strength and beauty of which Goethe and Napoleon were, upon the morrow of the Revolution, the solitary representatives. * * * * *