offer two, and the Hegelians may take their choice.

My first interpretation is this. The Hegelian dialectic is a logical reaction (masked as a metaphysical reaction) against the false distinctions of scholasticism and of traditional philosophy in general; it is a paradoxical defense against those who have sought to stop the course of thought by putting insistent dilemmas in its way. Hegelianism, then, in the presence of false distinctions, has sought to fuse and to mingle at all costs, in such a way as to produce confusions which in their turn require new distinctions, presumably better than the old ones. Hegelianism is in a certain sense the declaration of our right to disregard apparent antinomies. To those who say "either this or that" Hegelianism replies "both this and that." Hegel represents the warfare of the and's against the or's, the point of view of those who instead of "cutting off the bull's head" prefer simply to cut off his horns. There have been false antinomies in all the sciences (heavy and light, terrestrial and celestial, for instance), and scientists have removed them one by one. Hegel, instead of performing the same task in the field of philosophy by a direct criticism of false philosophic antinomies, chose the form of metaphysics, and was led on by his enthusiasm to give the appearance of a system of

reality to what was in fact merely a correction of method.

It

And if you do not like my first interpretation, here is my second. The Hegelian dialectic is a sort of historic law, a theory of the manner in which social forms or scientific theories succeed each other. It amounts to saying this: that an exaggerated assertion is usually succeeded by an assertion which exaggerates in the opposite direction, without regard to the restrictions which in part justify the original assertion; and that these two contrary assertions then give place to a third, which takes account of the modicum of truth contained in each of the first two, and consolidates them by reëstablishing the tacit restrictions and suppressing the exaggerations. amounts, in short, to saying that it takes two opposite errors to establish a truth. This generalization, which could be amply instanced, is of the same order as Comte's law of the three states, and constitutes a similarity between Hegelianism and positivism. Both of these laws, though they refer to entirely different classes of facts, simplify to a high degree; but roughly, and within certain limits, they do represent the movement of the history of ideas. They afford material, then, rather for the psychology of philosophers or of scientists than for philosophy itself, as the Hegelians would have us believe.

In short, the choice lies between the hypothesis

that the Hegelian dialectic is a disguised logical reaction, and the hypothesis that it is a historic law. In the first case Hegel assumes the semblance of a pragmatist; in the second case he is linked with the positivists. Let the Hegelians choose.

IX

NIETZSCHE1

WE OWE a debt of love, all of us, to Friedrich Nietzsche, and it is time to pay it. His brain stopped thinking in January, 1889; his heart stopped beating in August, 1900. Ten years,

twenty years, have passed; and we may smile again with the wise, sad smile of a poor Zarathustra who fainted on the mountain-tops for holy envy of heaven, a loving spirit eternally repulsed by fellow men unworthy of his love, a convalescent Siegfried banished to the pensions de luxe of the Darwinian and Wagnerian Europe of our childhood. How unkind we have been to him! That cold, white, plump face of his; those eyes, now soft as the poetry of a lonely lake, now fiery as if reflecting the mad course of a comet; that sonorous voice, too loud and full and orchestral, perhaps, for smaller and more sensitive ears we have forgotten them all, and we have been willing to forget. His books are put aside, sold, lost, behind others, under others. His thought, if it ever passes before our thought, is

Written à propos of Daniel Halévy's La Vie de F. Nietzsche, Paris, 1909.

like one of Hoffmann's revenants before an "oval mirror," like the last trace of a glowing, dazzling electric light fit for the Götterdämmerung, or like the memory of a thousand meteors that have sped hissing through the sky, mocking the rockets of men and the rays of the sun, and fallen, dust and ashes, into the silent dark of nothingness.

But who among us cannot recall some August day, some hour of intense heat and of manly joy, when the words of Nietzsche lashed our hearts to the gallop, pulsed in our veins, and brought us an Alpine wind of strength and liberty? Can you forget, O friend lost to me now though still alive, that lonely summit of Pratomagno whence our voices, musical with emotion, shouted the red and shameless phrases of the Zarathustra into the cool air of the Casentino? Later on came that criticism which trails greatness and seeks to belittle it; later still the senile calm of the years of reflection. As we grew serious we grew weak and faint in spirit. Philosophy opened its mouth, set all things in place, began and closed its paragraph; and life, that had overflowed and sped toward shores unnamed in atlases, shrank within the brick beds of straight canals, and mirrored without restlessness the white clouds of heaven and the grasses of the narrow banks.

Perhaps the time has come for setting sail again. Whither?

The turmoil of passions has been stilled, ship