statistics prove that there are laws in history? Laws? Yes, they prove how common and pitifully uniform the mass are: are we to call the operation of gravity, of stupidity, of blind imitation, of love, and of hunger, laws? Well, suppose we do; but if so, it also holds good that so far as there are laws in history, the laws are worth nothing and the history is worth nothing."[1] Effect, permanence, success are no real argument. Christianity became "an historical power," but it was because earthly passions, errors, ambitions, survivals of the imperium Romanum, mingled with it, not because of its finer elements, and the purest and truest disciples it has had lived without appreciable results and remain for the most part unknown and unnamed. "Demosthenes had greatness, though he had no success." To speak in Christian language, the Devil is the ruler of this world and the master of results here—he is the prime factor in all the so-called "historical powers," however unpleasantly the remark may strike the ear of those who deify success and baptize the Devil with a new name.[2] No, "let us not expect of the noblest things the toughness of leather." Indeed, not continuance at all, not life and victory, but tragic death may be the highest thing, as we feel on occasion in listening to a Greek tragic drama.[3]
All this may be far from a complete statement of the relation of ethics to reality and the temporal order, but it touches certain aspects of the subject, and brings home to us the impetuous earnestness of the young thinker.
II
But if our aim is not given to us from without, it must be born from within. The fact is, we human beings judge what we see or learn—we face it with certain requirements. The gist of our requirements we call our ideal, and the ideal, so far as we make it an end to strive for, becomes our aim. Nietzsche is conscious at the present time of no essential divergence from customary morality, and the ideal he has does not differ from that large vague ideal of good which most of us have, and which, when we hypostatize it, as we commonly do, and
