Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller

“ Indeed, his very love of life may itself be regarded as an indignant revolt against the toils that were inexorably closing in around him. He directs this spirit of revolt also against the sources of his own inspiration; he turns bitterly against Wagner, whose intimate friend and enthusiastic admirer he had been, and denounces him as the musician of decadent emotionalism; he rejects his “educator” Schopenhauer’s pessimism, and transforms his will to live into a “Will to Power.” ”

“ Revolt against the whole civilized environment in which he was brought up is the keynote of Nietzsche’s literary career. His revolt against Christian faith and morals turns him into a proudly atheistic “free-thinker,” and preacher of a new “master” morality, which transposes the current valuations, deposes the “Christian virtues,” and incites the “over-man” ruthlessly to trample under foot the servile herd of the weak, degenerate and poor in spirit. His revolt against the theory of state supremacy turns him into an anarchist and individualist ”

“ Nietzsche’s writings must be understood in their relation to these circumstances of his life, and as the outcome of a violent revolt against them on the part of an intensely emotional and nervous temperament. His philosophy, consequently, is neither systematic in itself nor expounded in systematic form. It is made up of a number of points of view which successively appeared acceptable to a personality whose self-appreciation verges more and more upon the insane, and exhibits neither consecutiveness nor consistency. ”