The ideas which Nietzsche expresses go to the root of the matter.  In the first place, he drew a distinction between what he regarded as two different types of morality.  One of these he called the morality of masters or nobles, and he called the other the morality of slaves.  Self-reliance and courage may be cited as the qualities typical of the noble morality, for they are the qualities which tend to make the man who possesses them a master over others, to give him a prominent and powerful place in the world, and to help him to subjugate to his will both nature and his fellow-men.  On the other hand, there are the qualities which form the characteristic features of Christian morality—­such as benevolence or love of one’s neighbour, the fundamental precept of the Gospels, and the humility and obedience which have been perhaps unduly emphasised in ecclesiastical ethics.  These are the qualities which he means when he speaks of the morality of the slave.

In the second place, therefore, what is distinctive of Nietzsche is this:  that he explicitly rejects the Christian morality, in particular the virtues of benevolence, of obedience, of humility:  these are regarded by him as belonging to a type of morality which is to be overcome and which he calls the servile morality.  He deliberately sets in antithesis to one another what he calls Christian and what he calls noble virtues:  meaning by the latter the qualities allied to courage, force of will, and strength of arm, such as were manifested in certain Pagan races, but above all in the heroes of the Roman Republic.  He would, therefore, deliberately prefer the older Pagan valuation of conduct to the Christian valuation.

In the third place, he attempts what he calls a transvaluation of all values.  Every moral idea needs revision, every moral idea, every suggestion of value or worth in conduct, must be tried and tested afresh, and a new morality substituted for the old.  And with this claim for revision is connected his idea that the egoistic principle which underlies the Pagan virtues preferred to the Christian, and the higher development of the self-capacities to which it will lead, will evolve a superior kind of men—­“Over-men” or “Uebermenschen”—­to whom, therefore, we may look as setting the tone and giving the rule for subsequent conduct.

Nietzsche is an unsystematic writer, though none the less powerful on that account.  He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument.  It is difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series of propositions that would give a general idea of the complete transmutation of morality which he demands.  So far as I can make out, there is only one point in which he still agrees with the old traditional morality, and that point seems to cause him no little difficulty.  No thinker