Principles of western civilisation

128 WESTERN CIVILISATION CHAP.

materialistic interpretation of history, carries with it in its bosom its own answer, and its own final criticism.

It is modern Germany which has given the world the first glimpse of the nature of the real answer—as that answer must be enacted in history —to a theory of Social Democracy founded, in actual practice, on the materialistic interpretation of history. In modern Germany Nietzsche, equally with the Sozzaldemokrat and Arséne Dumont, anticipates the day when “l’hypothese Dieu” shall be expelled from human brains. Like Marx, he regards the form of religious belief on which our civilisation is founded as a cause associated with existing economic conditions. Progress to him also is a gradual emancipation from the system of morality proceeding from that belief. But here Nietzsche once and for ever parts company with the

“scientific socialist.” It continues to be the same materialistic interpretation of history. But the application is different. “The great European

narcotic of Christianity”* is associated with the

existing order of things. Only too true, asserts Nietzsche in effect. It has enabled the serf population in our civilisation to invent a “slave morality,” to enlist sympathy, to obtain votes, to slowly gain predominance over their natural and destined superiors. What is this ideal of ‘‘ sympathy and brotherly love” made by Western Liberalism to support these movements of the modern world ?

Marx, therefore, as soon as they work for the realisation of his theories, are forced to rest their claims on those very moral ideas which formed Marx’s facts” (p. 167).

1 The Twilight of the Idols : the works of Friedrick Nietzsche, translated by Thomas Common, p. 155.