see one side of a thing and now the other, we cannot very well see both at once.[1]
I have said that now Nietzsche is first independent. The independence, however, shows itself more negatively than positively—the period is a critical rather than a constructive one. There is more analysis in it—particularly psychological analysis—than anything else. "Reflection about the human, the all-too human, or, as the scientific phrase is, the psychological view"—such is in effect a description of its first and most characteristic book.[2] He is not so much in things and movements, as looking at them, above all at the human element in them. If he has construction in mind, it is principally in seeing what there is to construct out of—and in ruthlessly rejecting unsound material, all the vain imaginations of men. Sometimes it is called a positivistic stage—and there is a plain reaction against far flights of speculation; he wants life to rest on what is sure, demonstrable, not on the remote, indefinite, cloud-like[3]—but he is not positivist in any party sense. So it may be called a scientific stage—for at no other time does he give so high a place to science; d still he does not become master in any particular branch of scientific knowledge, e and he thinks that the best and healthiest thing in science is, as in the mountains, the keen air that blows there.[4]
Partly perhaps because of the new turn his mind is taking, he appreciates the English as he never had before. He even ventures to say that they are ahead of all other peoples in philosophy, natural science, history, in the field of discovery, and in the spreading of culture,[5] and he speaks with admiration of the distinguished scholars among them who write scientific books for the people[6]—men, we must suppose, of the type of Huxley and Tyndall. The French, too, come in for praise. We find frequent references to Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Fontenelle, Vauvenargues, Chamfort. His style of composition is perhaps influenced by his study of these writers, for it has noticeably gained in simplicity and clearness, and is sometimes exquisitely polished—he owns himself that it has been often swollen and turgid before. He dedicates Human,
