Principles of western civilisation

HII THE POSITION IN MODERN THOUGHT 93

the one hand, and by Nietzsche, on the other, appear as the complements of each other. The principles of Marx represent, as it were, only the extreme socialistic expression of the views of which Nietzsche may be said to represent the extreme individualistic interpretation. For in each case the principle which is held before us is the same, namely, the ascendency of the present in the social process in history.

To Nietzsche, as is well known, the modern world is merely a world in which the real masters and superiors have been robbed of their rights—a world in which the Uedermenschen, the natural ruling caste, have been drugged and anzsthetised by the sentiments and beliefs of our civilisation into yielding their position to a democracy of whom they are the natural superiors, and against whom they would otherwise be immeasurably the stronger.t But to Marx equally, in the last analysis, it is might only which is right. The party whom he champions is, we see, justified in the social process for the same reason as the party which Nietzsche represents, that is to say, in respect of its strength. For there is in Marx’s theories, as Mr. Russell has correctly pointed out, neither justice, nor virtue, nor morality ” —only the blind growth of the productive forces and the resulting necessity, as Marx conceives it, for the dominance in the end of the interests with which he is concerned. In the one case, as in the other, the stand-point is, therefore, the same: we ultimatelystand face to face in the historical process with but one characteristic principle—the ascendency of the pre-

1 The Twilight of the Idols, by Friedrick Nietzsche, trans. by T. Common, Pp. 155. See also Antichrist and Zarathustra.

? German Social Democracy, by Bertrand Russell, i. See also the author’s Social Evolution, ch. viii.