The life of Friedrich Nietzsche. Daniel Halevy
the next few weeks he allowed himself to be absorbed by the course of his new life. No doubt he never touched either beer or tobacco. But learned discussions; boatings upon the river; hours of light-headedness in the riverside inns, and, at evening on the way home, improvised choruses—Nietzsche made the best of these simple pleasures. He even wished to fight a duel so that he might become a "finished" student, and, lacking an enemy, chose for his adversary an agreeable comrade. "I am new this year," said he to him, "and I want to fight a duel. I rather like you. Let us fight." "Willingly," said the other. Nietzsche received a rapier thrust.
It was impossible that such a life should content him for long. The mood of infantile gaiety soon passed away. At the beginning of December he withdrew a little from this life. Disquiet was again gaining on him. The festival of Christmas and that of the New Year, passed far from his own people, were causes of sadness. A letter to his mother lets us divine his emotion:
"I like anniversaries, the feast of St. Sylvester or birthdays. To them we owe those hours in which the soul, brought to a pause, discovers a fragment of its own existence. No doubt it is in our own power to experience such moments more frequently; but we allow ourselves too few. They favour the birth of decisive resolutions. At such moments it is my custom to take up again the manuscripts, the letters, of the year that has just gone by, and to write for myself alone the reflections which come to me. During an hour or two, one is, as it were, raised above time, drawn out of one's own existence. One acquires a view of the past that is brief and certain, one resolves with a more valiant and a firmer heart to strike forward on the road once more. And when good wishes and family benedictions fall like soft rain on the soul's intents—Ah! that is fine!"
Of the reflections written by the young student "for himself alone" we possess some traces. He reproaches himself for wasted hours, and decides upon a more austere and concentrated life. Nevertheless, when the time came for him to break with his companions, he hesitated. They were somewhat coarse, it is true, but yet young and brave, like himself. Should he keep in with them? A delicate fear troubled him; he might, as the result of long indulgence, accustom himself to their low way of living, and so come to feel it less acutely. "Habit is a powerful force," he wrote to his friend Gersdorff. "One has already lost much when one has lost one's instinctive distrust of the evil things which present themselves in daily life." He took a third course, a very difficult course, and decided that he would talk frankly to his friends, that he would try to exercise an influence on them, to ennoble their lives. Thus he would commence the apostolate which he dreamed of extending one day over the whole of Germany. He proposed therefore a reform of the rules of the association; he called for the suppression, or at least for a reduction, of those smoking and drinking parties which provoked his disgust.
The proposal met with no success. The preacher was silenced, and set aside. Nietzsche, prompt with sarcasm, avenged himself with words which did not win him any love. Then he knew the worst of solitudes, the solitude of the vanquished. He had not retired from the world; he had been asked to leave it. He was proud, and his stay at Bonn became a misery. He worked energetically and joylessly. He studied philology, which did not interest him. It was an exercise which he had taken up to discipline his mind, to correct his tendencies towards a vague mysticism and dispersion of thought. But it pleased him in no way, this minute analysis of Greek texts the sudden beauty of which he felt by instinct. Ritschl, his master in philology, dissuaded him from any other study. "If you wish to become a strong man," he said, "acquire a speciality." Nietzsche obeyed. He renounced the idea, which he had entertained, of making a deep study of theology. In December he had composed some melodies: now he decided that he would not, for a whole year, allow himself the enjoyment of so vain a pleasure; he wished to submit, and to break himself in to ennui. He was recompensed for his pains, and was able to write a work which Ritschl commended for its rigour and sagacity.
A poor pleasure! It was thought that Nietzsche needed. He listened to the talk of the students. Some repeated without any ardour of conviction the formulas of Hegel, of Fichte, of Schelling: those great systems had lost all their power to stimulate. Others, preferring the positive sciences, read the materialistic treatises of Vogt and Büchner. Nietzsche read these treatises, but did not re-read them. He was a poet and had need of lyricism, intuition, and mystery; he could not be contented with the clear and cold world of science. Those same young people, who called themselves materialists, also called themselves democrats; they vaunted the humanitarian philosophy of Feuerbach; but Nietzsche was again too much of a poet and, by education or by temperament, too much of an aristocrat to interest himself in the politics of the masses. He conceived beauty, virtue, force, heroism, as desirable ends, and he desired them for himself. But he had never desired a happy life, a smooth and comfortable life: therefore he could not interest himself in men's happiness, in the poor ideal of moderate joy and moderate suffering.
Little satisfied as he was by all the tendencies of his contemporaries, what joy could he experience? Repelled by a base politics, a nerveless metaphysics, a narrow science, whither could he direct his mind? Certainly he had his clear and well-marked preferences. He was certain of his tastes. He loved the Greek poets, he loved Bach, Beethoven, Byron. But what was the drift of his own thought?
He had no answer to the problems of life, and now in his twenty-first, as formerly in his seventeenth year, preferring silence to uncertain speech, he kept himself under a discipline of silence. In his writings, his letters, his conversation, he was always on his guard. His friend Deussen suggested that prayer has no real virtue, and only gives to the mind an illusory confidence. "That is one of the asininities of Feuerbach," Nietzsche replied tartly. The same Deussen was speaking on another occasion of the Life of Jesus which Strauss had just published in a new edition, and expressing approval of the sense of the book. Nietzsche refused to pronounce upon the subject. "The question is important," said he. "If you sacrifice Jesus, you must also sacrifice God." These words would seem to show that Nietzsche was still attached to Christianity. A letter addressed to his sister removes this impression. The young girl, who had remained a believer, wrote to him: "One must always seek truth at the most painful side of things. Now one does not believe in the Christian mysteries without difficulty. Therefore the Christian mysteries are true." She at once received from her brother a reply which betrays, by the harshness of its language, the unhappy condition of his soul.
"Do you think that it is really so difficult to receive and accept all the beliefs in which we have been brought up, which little by little have struck deep roots into our lives, which are held as true by all our own kith and kin, and a vast multitude of other excellent people, and which, whether they be true or not, do assuredly console and elevate humanity? Do you think that such acceptance is more difficult than a struggle against the whole mass of one's habits, waged in doubt and loneliness, and darkened by every kind of spiritual depression, nay more, by remorse; a struggle which leaves a man often in despair, but always loyal to his eternal quest, the discovery of the new paths that lead to the True, the Beautiful, and the Good?
"What will be the end of it all? Shall we recover those ideas of God, the world, and redemption which are familiar to us? To the genuine seeker must not the result of his labours appear as something wholly indifferent? What is it we are seeking? Rest and happiness? No, nothing but Truth, however evil and terrible it may be.
" … So are the ways of men marked out; if you desire peace of soul and happiness, believe; if you would be a disciple of Truth, enquire … "
Nietzsche tried to endure this painful life. He walked in the country. Alone in his room he studied the history of art and the life of Beethoven. They were vain efforts; he could not forget the people of Bonn. Twice he went to listen to the musical festivals at Cologne. But each return added to his malaise. In the end he left the town.
"I left Bonn like a fugitive. At midnight I was on the quay of the Rhine accompanied by my friend M. I was waiting for the steamship which comes from Cologne, and I did not experience the slightest impression of pain at the moment of leaving a country-side so flourishing, a place so beautiful, and a band of young comrades. On the contrary, I was actually flying from them. I do not wish to begin again to judge them unjustly, as I have often done. But my nature could find no satisfaction among them. I was still too timidly wrapt up in myself, and I had not the