INTRODUCTION
of the old principles, Gobineau, like Nietzsche, had no hope whatever in this respect. It is the great merit of both Nietzsche and Gobineau, that they were not, like Disraeli, trying to revive a corpse, but that they frankly acknowledged, the one that the corpse was dead, the other that it was positively poisoning the air. The occasional bows which Gobineau makes to the Church cannot, I repeat, mislead any serious critics of his work, especially if they likewise consult his later books, about which, by the way, I have spoken at greater length elsewhere.[1] Both Spinoza and Montaigne had the same laudable habit, and they did not mean it either. For the first business of a great free- thinker is not to be mistaken for a little one ; his greatest misfortune is to be "understood " by the wrong class of people, and thus an occasional bow to the old and venerable Power — apart from the safety which it procures — protects him from an offensive handshake with enthusiastic and unbalanced disciples and apostles.
- Geneva, July 1915
- ↑ See my Introduction to Count Gobineau's "Renaissance" (Heinemann).
