II
Nietzsche's intellectual history falls, roughly speaking, into three periods. In the first, he is under the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner—the influence of the latter might be almost called a spell. It is the time of his discipleship—lasting approximately to 1876. In the second, he more or less frees himself from these influences. It is the period of his emancipation—and of his coolest and most objective criticism of men and things (including himself)—continuing to 1881 or 1882. In the third, his positive constructive doctrine more and more appears. The early idealistic instinct reasserts itself, but purified by critical fire. It is the period of independent creation. This division into periods is more or less arbitrary (particularly so are the dates assigned); something of each period is in every other; but change, movement, to a greater or less extent, existed in his life, and the "three periods" serve roughly to characterize it.
III
Beneath all changes, however, there were, as already hinted, certain constant points of view, and it may be of service to the reader to mention some of them briefly in advance. There was, for example, an underlying pessimism—so it would be ordinarily called—and yet with it increasingly a practical optimism. Nietzsche felt keenly man's imperfection—more than once he even speaks of mankind as a "field of ruins."[1] One thinks of John Henry Newman's readiness to credit the "fall of man" on general principles, so little did man's state agree with the notion of something Perfect from which he came. Nietzsche's sense of the perfect, however, simply shows itself in projecting a possible semi-Divine outcome of humanity. This, indeed, becomes a supreme and governing idea with him. From its standpoint the callings of men and men themselves are judged. Learning and science are not ends in themselves, nor do the rank and file of human beings exist on their own account. The scholar or man of science is a tool in the hands of one with a sense of the supreme values, the philosopher,
- ↑ "Schopenauer as Educator," sect. 6, Will to Power, § 713.
