The style of "The Genealogy of Morals" is less aphoristic than any of the books which immediately preceded or followed it. Few new doctrines are propounded in it; and since it was for the most part an analytic commentary on what had gone before, its expositional needs were best met by Nietzsche's earlier style of writing. I have spoken before of the desultory and sporadic manner in which Nietzsche was necessitated to present his philosophy. Nowhere is his method of work better exemplified than in this new work. Nearly every one of his books overlaps another. Propositions are sketchily stated in one essay, which receive elucidation only in future volumes. "Beyond Good and Evil" was a commentary on "Thus Spake Zarathustra"; "The Genealogy of Morals" is a commentary on the newly propounded theses in "Beyond Good and Evil" and is in addition an elaboration of many of the ideas which took birth as far back as "Human, All-Too-Human." Out of "The Genealogy of Morals" in turn grew "The Antichrist" which dealt specifically with the theological phase of the former's discussion of general morals. And all of these books were but preparations for "The Will to Power." For this reason it is difficult to acquire a complete understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy unless one follows it consecutively and chronologically. The book at present under discussion is a most valuable one from an academic standpoint, for, while it may not set forth any new and important doctrines, it goes deep into the origins and history of moral concepts, and explains many of the important conclusions in Nietzsche's moral code. It brings more and more into prominence the main pillars of his ethical system and explains at length the steps in the syllogism which led to his doctrine of master-morality. It ascertains the origin of the concept of sin, and describes the racial deterioration which has followed in the train of Christian ideals.
In many ways this book is the profoundest of all the writings Nietzsche left us. For the first time he separates theological and moral prejudices and traces them to different origins. This is one of the most important steps taken by him. By so doing he became an explorer of entirely new fields. The moral historians and psychologists who preceded him had considered moral precepts and Christian injunctions as stemming from the same source: their genealogies had led them to the same common spring. Nietzsche entered the search with new methods. He applied the philologie test to all moral values. He brought to his task, in addition to a historical sense, what he calls "an innate faculty of psychological discrimination _par excellence._" He posed the following questions, and endeavoured to answer them by inquiring into the minutest aspects of historical conditions: "Under what conditions did Man invent for himself those judgments of value, 'good' and 'evil'? _And what intrinsic value do they possess in themselves?_ Have they up to the present hindered or advanced human well-being"? Are they a symptom of the distress, impoverishment, and degeneration of Human Life? Or, conversely, is it in them that is manifested the fulness, the strength, and the will of Life, its courage, its self-confidence, its future?" In his research, Nietzsche first questioned the value of pity. He found it to be a symptom of modern civilisation--a quality held in contempt by the older philosophers, even by such widely dissimilar minds as Plato, Spinoza, La Rochefoucauld and Kant--but a quality given high place by the more modern thinkers. Despite the seemingly apparent isolation of the problem of pity-morality, Nietzsche saw that in truth it was a question which underlay all other moral propositions; and, using it as a ground-work for his research, he began to question the utility of all those values held as "good," to apply the qualities of the "good man" to the needs of civilisation, and to inquire into the results left upon the race by the "bad man."