He accordingly draws the inference that if a higher form of humanity is to come in the future, great and terrible odds will be required—the superman will need for an antagonist a superdragon.[1] One application of the general idea is made that decidedly jars on us, living in an age of intellectual tolerance as we do. In speaking of what we owe to the Christian church, he says that its very intolerance helped to render the European mind fine and supple, and that in our democratic age with freedom of the press, thought becomes "plump." He thinks that the ancient polis was like-minded with the church and produced similar beneficial effects, while in the Roman Empire, when freedom of belief and unbelief came to be permitted, mind coarsened and degenerated. He speaks of the distinguished appearance which men like Leibnitz and Abelard, Montaigne, Descartes and Pascal present under the régime of the church.[2] Freedom of the press, he repeats, ruins style and finally the mind. "Galiani was aware of it a hundred years ago. 'Freedom of thought' ruins the thinker. Between hell and heaven and in danger of persecutions, banishments, eternal damnations, and ungracious looks of kings and ladies the mind was lithe and bold: alas! what is mind becoming today!"[3] In brief, danger and enmity are good for man. So strongly does he feel this, that he regards it as no more desirable that "good" men alone should inherit the earth, than that there should be uninterrupted good weather.[4] With blended satire and seriousness he says that to ask that every one should be a "good man," a social animal, blue-eyed, benevolent, a "beautiful soul," or as Herbert Spencer wishes, altruistic, would strip existence of its grand character and reduce mankind to a miserable Chinadom.[5] "As the tree needed the storm, that it might become strong, so evil is necessary to the growth of life."
But he goes further. Not only is evil a stimulant to life, it is a constituent of the life-process itself. That which we call evil in an animal may be for it a condition of existence—its
