I. DIONYSUS _vs._ APOLLO 63 II. THE ORIGIN OF MORALITY 74 III. BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL 88 IV. THE SUPERMAN 100 V. ETERNAL RECURRENCE 117 VI. CHRISTIANITY 126 VII. TRUTH 147 VIII. CIVILIZATION 162 IX. WOMEN AND MARRIAGE 174 X. GOVERNMENT 192 XI. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 208 XII. EDUCATION 216 XIII. SUNDRY IDEAS 226 XIV. NIETZSCHE _vs._ WAGNER 242 NIETZSCHE THE PROPHET I. NIETZSCHE'S ORIGINS 255 II. NIETZSCHE AND HIS CRITICS 268 HOW TO STUDY NIETZSCHE 290 INDEX 297 NIETZSCHE THE MAN FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE I BOYHOOD AND YOUTH Friedrich Nietzsche was a preacher's son, brought up in the fear of the Lord. It is the ideal training for sham-smashers and freethinkers. Let a boy of alert, restless intelligence come to early manhood in an atmosphere of strong faith, wherein doubts are blasphemies and inquiry is a crime, and rebellion is certain to appear with his beard. So long as his mind feels itself puny beside the overwhelming pomp and circumstance of parental authority, he will remain docile and even pious. But so soon as he begins to see authority as something ever finite, variable and all-too-human--when he begins to realize that his father and his mother, in the last analysis, are mere human beings, and fallible like himself--then he will fly precipitately toward the intellectual wailing places, to think his own thoughts in his own way and to worship his own gods beneath the open sky. As a child Nietzsche was holy; as a man he was the symbol and embodiment of all unholiness. At nine he was already versed in the lore of the reverend doctors, and the pulpit, to his happy mother--a preacher's daughter as well as a preacher's wife--seemed his logical and lofty goal; at thirty he was chief among those who held that all pulpits should be torn down and fashioned into bludgeons, to beat out the silly brains of theologians. The awakening came to him when he made his first venture away from the maternal apron-string and fireside: when, as a boy of ten, he learned that there were many, many men in the world and that these men were of many minds. With the clash of authority came the end of authority. If A. was right, B. was wrong--and B. had a disquieting habit of standing for one's mother, one's grandmother or the holy prophets. Here was the beginning of intelligence in the boy--the beginning of that weighing and choosing faculty which seems to give man at once his sense of mastery and his feeling of helplessness. The old notion that doubt was a crime crept away. There remained in its place the new notion that the only real crime in the world--the only unmanly, unspeakable and unforgivable offense against the race--was unreasoning belief. Thus the orthodoxy of the Nietzsche home turned upon and devoured itself.