CHAPTER XII
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEWS AND FORECASTS
In no way, perhaps, did Nietzsche come to differ more from Schopenhauer than in his sense of the possibility of change—whether in the individual or in society generally. What may be called the historical view of reality was almost lacking in Schopenhauer—owing in part no doubt to his conviction of the subjectivity of time. a No thoroughgoing Kantian, I may say, can believe in the final reality of an historical process. It is possible that Nietzsche's vivid sense of his own changes had something to do with the formal relinquishment of his early subjectivism as to time, which we shall come upon later on. b
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In any case the area of possible change for men and society is now large to him. Disillusioned about the near advent of a new tragic culture, he is not without compensatory thoughts. Is it not possible, he asks, to remove some evils rather than merely try to turn them into subjects of art, or to find consolation for them in religion?[1] The ancients strove to forget the sufferings of existence, or else to make them agreeable through art—they worked palliatively; we today wish to work prophylactically and attack the causes of suffering.[2] "Artists glorify continually—they do nothing else," he somewhat impatiently observes.[3] He thinks that art is a resource for moments and becomes dangerous when it sets up for more—a halt should be called to its fanatical pretensions.[4] With a touch of irony, he notes that removing evil may make it hard for the tragic poets, whose stock of material would so far diminish, and harder still for the priests, whose main business hitherto has been to narcotize; but both classes, he thinks, belong to the non-progressive
