Time at War Read Online Free Page B

synthesis between Christianity and some sort of Nietzschean elitism. He had introduced me to Nietzsche when he had been reading his work in Holloway, but from the beginning of my own reading of Nietzsche I had the impression that my father was misunderstanding him; as well as, more expectedly, Christianity.
    I wrote to my father from Ranby –
    I believe that Christ recognises his elect just as much as Nietzsche would like us to recognise his. N’s contention that the
Übermenschen
were ‘beyond good and evil’ is of far greater significance than ‘above morality’. To be above morality is merely to be sufficiently civilised to be able to do without a conventional code of behaviour. To be ‘beyond good and evil’ is to see that such values(both ethical and religious) can be based on entirely different standards.
    With Nietzsche’s values I have very little sympathy. ‘
Heiterkeit
’ (serenity) – yes, that is perhaps the most desirable quality that any mortal can possess. But ‘
Härte
– why always the emphasis in domination and power through hardness? There is no beauty, and I would say very little nobility, in‘
Härte
’. But I have wandered from the point. When I began to talk about ‘beyond good and evil’ I meant to go on to suggest that God is ‘beyond G and E’, in the sense that it is obvious that his values are based upon entirely different standards to our own. And might not this be the answer to the problem of suffering to which we are so faintly now trying to find a solution? All our ethical systems and philosophies on earth are involved so entirely within the necessary limits of our own assessments of good and evil that I do not think that we, in such an elementary state of mental development, can have any close comprehension of God’s conceptions and values. The jump from ‘within G and E’ to ‘beyond G and E’ is so great that at the moment I believe it is beyond the powers of our understanding to see what lies upon the other side. When man has developed sufficiently to take this step he will be superman indeed, and close to God; but it seems that we are extremely (though not infinitely) far from it now.
    I have become involved in a correspondence upon the Church with Aunty Nina. She was rather sensible about my fierce attack on the C of E, but one of her East End priests to whom she sent on my letter wrote me themost absurdly half-witted reply which only aggravated the grievance. I really do believe that these men do not understand what they say – which perhaps is best, for it is happier for them to be charged with ignorance and stupidity than with gross perversion and distortion. I’m afraid Nina thinks I have become over-influenced by Nietzsche. Which is untrue, for as I have said, with N’s ethical values I have no sympathy.
    Later, however, I learned that my anti-C of E diatribe had been sent by my other aunt, my mother’s younger sister Baba, to her own favourite priest who happened to be a Father Talbot, Superior of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection – which, as things turned out, was to play such a large and vital part in my life years later. I wrote to my father –
    Baba’s priest was a very good find – far less bogus than Nina’s, and very tolerant of my rather wild and woolly criticism. I seem to spend most of my spare time writing long and intricate religious letters; which does not help very much. Like GBS I ask the most searching questions, attempt far too vaguely to answer them, and finish in much the same muddle as I began. But it does keep one’s mind feebly ticking over, when one might, in the circumstances, so easily be mentally dead.
    In August I wrote to my aunt to say that at the end of the month I would be coming on embarkation leave before being sent abroad to heaven knows where. My aunt andmy sister Vivien and my brother Michael