of life, as expressed in the social and political experience, that Nietzsche seeks to uncover in various works. He builds The Birth of Tragedy around the metaphorical opposition of Apollo (reason) and Dionysus (passion), and the tension between the excesses of one or the other becomes almost a category of self-regulating thought about social and political history. Nietzsche far more laments the damage done by reason than the damage done by passion. He felt that Western civilization reflected the negation of passion by reason: "History indeed became the descending arc of a great cycle in which these two drives repeatedly fought each other. . . . In this way Paul had blunted the message of Jesus, Aquinas had done the same to St. Francis, and so had Calvin to Luther, and European nationalists to Napoleon" (Barker, 1982, p. 224). Where Nietzsche discerns a need for history, he cautions against making it an antique icon upon which later generations may not maintain the appropriate perspective on events and trends.
The trouble with antiquarian history from the political point of view is that veneration of the past causes creative politics of the future and the past itself to suffer: "The antiquarian sense of a man, a city, or a nation has always a very limited field. . . . For the things of the past are never viewed in their true perspective or receive their just value" (Nietzsche, Use, 1957, p. 19). The critical historian has "strength to break up the past, and apply it, too, in order to live. He must bring the past to the bar of judgment, interrogate it remorselessly, and finally condemn it" (Nietzsche, Use, 1957, p. 21).
Historical study is only fruitful for the future if it follows a powerful life-giving influence, for example, a new system of culture--only, therefore, if it is guided and dominated by a higher force, and does not itself guide and dominate. History, so far as it serves life, serves an unhistorical power, and thus wil...