There
may have been little method, but there was a great deal of genius, in
his madness. While he always overstates his case,--his colossal egoism
leads him to exaggerate any doctrine,--and while I do not think that
the actual doctrines of Nietzsche in the way he puts them will ever
gain any general acceptance, while his system of morality may not have
any chance of being the moral code of the next generation or even of
being regarded as the serious alternative to Christian morality, yet
it is not too much to say that he is symptomatic of a new tendency in
ethical thought, a tendency of which he is the greatest, if also the
most extravagant exponent, but which has its roots in certain new
influences which have come to this generation with the ideas and the
triumphs, scientific and material, of the preceding generation.
There are two quite different kinds of influence to which the
formation of an ethical doctrine may be due. In the first place, there
are the moral sentiments and opinions of the community and of the
moralist himself; and, in the second place, there are the scientific
and philosophical doctrines accepted by the writer or inspiring what
is loosely called the spirit of the time. In most ethical movements
the two kinds of influence will be found co-operating, though the
latter is almost entirely absent in some cases.
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