NIETZSCHE’S EARLY PIETY

Evening Star, Issue 18809, 6 December 1924, Page 13

NIETZSCHE’S EARLY PIETY

YOUTHFUL LETTERS TO BE BUB- | LISHED. A volume of the greatest interest to students of psychology, with particular reference to tho development of the adolescent, will ho issued on October 15 in j Munich (writes a correspondent of the ‘Observer’). This date coincides with the eightieth birthday of Friedrich Nietzkpchc, and tho book is a collection of letters edited by his sister, Frau Elizabeth Forster Neitzsche, who has issued all the memoirs connected with him. The letters were all written by Nietzsche between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five, and none have ever been published before. They begin with a review of the fourteen-year-old’s past liio, when the pastor’s little son -writes with ' tlio utmost reverence and simplicity to his I ir,oilier flora school. He thanks God for helping him on his way till now, and is determined to devote his life to serving Him in the future. He lias just written an account of his life up to tho present moment, the Writing lias given him the greatest pleasure, and ho hopes to fill many such exercise bonks in future, showing the development of his spiritual life. Five years later, in his nineteenth year, he writes in the same filial strain, utterly heartbroken at the terrible news lie lias to tell. He was drunk, for the first time, the Sunday before. Not only the fact of drunkenness in itself is abhorrent to I him, but a master at the school where he is finishing his studies saw him, and reprimanded him severely, curtailing an hour of next Sunday's leave, and degrading him in the classroom. He begs forgiveness, and urges his mother to write a severe letter hack to him, because he deserves it. Two years later a remarkable lei ter tells how lie picks up the works of Schopenhauer for the first time in a sec-ond-hand, bookseller’s shop and does not know, after a fortnight of agony, what daemon whispered in Lis car: ‘ Take this hook home with you.” He saw in it a mirror of the cosmos and of himself as a microcosm ; lie begins to hate himself with a violent hatred that is only i cured by forcing himself to go out and I take up" his normal studies and regular | inode of living again. Another two year,?, and the evolution is complete. The Iwcnty-tlircc-yoar-okl Nietzsche writes:

“ Tho Greeks were not pedants of learning, nor were they mcrciy conlL-.ss gymnasts. Has the necessity to choose between becoming eillu-r the one or the oilier arisen through Christianity causing a breach in man's normal nature that the nation of harmony never knew? Should not (he picture of a Sophocles who knew so well how to dance and to play ball and yet displayed so much mental agilily put our men of letters to shame? Our attitude towards these tilings is tho same one wo display towards everything in life. Wc are able to recognise an evil when we sec it, but this does not imply our having lifted one finger to overcome it.”