Untimely Meditations 111nature. If we can catch nature in the act, we will be able to determine
its essence.
This outlook provided a crucial impetus to Marxism in the second
half of the nineteenth century. Marx painstakingly dissected the frame-
work of society and identified capital as its soul. Ultimately, it was no
longer altogether clear whether the messianic mission of the proletariat
(Marx's pre-1850 contribution to German idealism) would stand any
chance at all against the unshakable law of capital (Marx's post-1850
contribution to the spirit of determinism). Marx also wished to scruti-
nize the spirit that had once reigned supreme. He traced back its super-
structure to the basis of the work done by society as a whole.
Work had become a reference point well beyond its practical signifi-
cance. More and more aspects of life were interpreted and evaluated in
relation to work. Society was a society of work, and, in it, you were what
work you did. Even nature was at work in the process of evolution.
Work became a sanctuary, a myth to knit together the fabric of society.
The image of the great machinery of society—which turns individuals
into cogs and bolts—took over people's images of themselves and pro-
vided a horizon of orientation. This view was Nietzsche's focus in his
critique of David Friedrich Strauss, the popular enlightener of the sec-
ond half of the century. With his first book, Das lieben Jesu (The Life of
Jesus, 1835), Strauss had brought rationalist criticism of Christianity to
the attention of the public at large, and decades later, as an old man, he
published a widely read confessional book Der alte und der neue Glaube
(Old and New Faith, 1872). Strauss was a sworn enemy of Wagner's new
mythology of art and of all attempts to elevate art to a replacement for
religion. For this reason, he was instantly hated by Wagner. Wagner, in
turn, inflamed Nietzsche to disparage this author in the first of his
Untimely Meditations. In that essay, Nietzsche called Strauss a symptom of
the prevailing work-driven scientific and utilitarian culture.
Strauss declared that there is every reason to be satisfied with the cur-
rent era and its many achievements: the railroad system, vaccinations,
blast furnaces, biblical exegesis, the founding of the German empire,