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 Introducing
Meteorology
 Other Titles in this Series

Introducing Astronomy
Introducing Geology ~ A Guide to the World of Rocks (Third Edition)
Introducing Geomorphology
Introducing Geophysics (forthcoming 2020)
Introducing Metamorphism
Introducing Mineralogy
Introducing Natural Resources
Introducing Oceanography
Introducing Palaeontology ~ A Guide to Ancient Life
Introducing Sea Level Change
Introducing Sedimentology
Introducing Stratigraphy
Introducing Tectonics, Rock Structures and Mountain Belts
Introducing the Planets and their Moons
Introducing Volcanology ~ A Guide to Hot Rocks

For further details of these and other Dunedin

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Half-title frontispiece: A tornado-bearing storm supercell near Forgan, Oklahoma, on 17 May 2019. (Photo: Simon Lee.)
Introducing
Meteorology
A Guide to Weather
Second Edition
Jon Shonk

DUNEDIN
EDINBURGH  LONDON
 First published in 2020 by
Dunedin Academic Press Ltd

Head Office: Hudson House,

8 Albany Street, Edinburgh EH1 3QB

London Office: The Towers,

54 Vartry Road, London N15 6PU

ISBNs
9781780460918 (Paperback)
9781780466439 (ePub)
9781780466446 (Amazon Kindle)
9781780466453 (PDF)

© Jon Shonk 2020

The right of Jon Shonk to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means or stored in any retrieval system
of any nature without prior written permission, except for fair
dealing under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or in
accordance with the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright
Licensing Society in respect of photocopying or reprographic
reproduction. Full acknowledgement as to author, publisher and
source must be given. Application for permission for any other use
of copyright material should be made in writing to the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Makar Publishing Production, Edinburgh

Printed in Poland by Hussar Books
Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements and Figure Credits vii

Preface ix
1 Watching the Weather 1
1.1 – The Influence of Weather ~ 1 § 1.2 – Weather Watchers ~ 4

2 From Seaweed to Supercomputers 7

2.1 – The Age of Seaweed ~ 7 § 2.2 – Early Meteorological Advances ~ 8 § 2.3 – The First
Forecasts ~ 11 § 2.4 – Looking Up into the Atmosphere ~ 13 § 2.5 – Towards Modern
Forecasting ~ 14

3 The Weather Station 16

3.1 – Surface Observations ~ 16 § 3.2 – Inside the Stevenson Screen ~ 17 § 3.3 – Outside the
Stevenson Screen ~ 19 § 3.4 – Watching the Skies ~ 22 § 3.5 – Automatic Weather Stations ~ 25

4 Gauging the Atmosphere 27

4.1 – Measuring the Upper Air ~ 27 § 4.2 – Radar and Lidar ~ 29 § 4.3 – Observations from
Space ~ 32

5 Anatomy of the Atmosphere 35

5.1 – Composition of the Atmosphere ~ 35 § 5.2 – Pressure, Temperature and Density ~
37 § 5.3 – The Atmospheric Profile ~ 39

6 Water in the Atmosphere 42

6.1 – The Hydrological Cycle ~ 42 § 6.2 – Humidity and Moisture ~ 43 § 6.3 – Water
Droplets and Rain ~ 44 § 6.4 – Ice Crystals and Snowflakes ~ 46

7 It All Starts with the Sun 49

7.1 – Our Local Star ~ 49 § 7.2 – The Earth in Equilibrium ~ 50 § 7.3 – The Effect of the
Atmosphere ~ 51 § 7.4 – The Effect of Clouds ~ 53

8 Hot and Cold 58

8.1 – Surface Temperature ~ 58 § 8.2 – Adiabatic Ascent ~ 59 § 8.3 – Clouds, Fog, Dew and Frost
~ 60 § 8.4 – The Spherical Earth ~ 62 § 8.5 – Variation of Total Solar Irradiance ~ 64 § 8.6 –
The Earth in Non-Equilibrium ~ 66

9 The Atmosphere in Motion 68

9.1 – Highs, Lows and Circulation of Air ~ 68 § 9.2 – The Coriolis Effect ~ 70 § 9.3 – Hadley
Cells ~ 72 § 9.4 – Heat Transport in the Mid-Latitudes ~ 73 § 9.5 – The Global Circulation ~ 75

10 Mid-Latitude Weather Systems 77

10.1 – The Westerly Flow ~ 77 § 10.2 – Anticyclones and Air Masses ~ 78 § 10.3 – Low-
Pressure Systems ~ 80 § 10.4 – Fronts and Conveyor Belts ~ 83 § 10.5 – When Storms
Become Severe ~ 86

v
vi Contents

11 Weather in the Tropics 88

11.1 – The Easterly Flow ~ 88 § 11.2 – Intertropical Convergence Zone and Monsoons ~ 89 §
11.3 – Tropical Depressions and Hurricanes ~ 91 § 11.4 – El Niño, La Niña and the Southern
Oscillation ~ 95

12 Convective Systems, Tornadoes and Thunderstorms 98

12.1 – Unstable Conditions ~ 98 § 12.2 – Cumulonimbus, Thunder and Lightning ~ 99 §
12.3 – Organised Convective Systems ~ 102 § 12.4 – Supercells and Tornadoes ~ 103

13 Local Weather Effects 106

13.1 – Coastal Weather ~ 106 § 13.2 – Mountain Weather ~ 109 § 13.3 – Desert Weather ~
112 § 13.4 – Urban Weather ~ 113

14 Forecasting the Weather 116

14.1 – Numerical Weather Prediction ~ 116 § 14.2 – The Initial Conditions ~ 117 §
14.3 – Running the Model ~ 119 § 14.4 – Global and Regional Models ~ 121 §
14.5 – Ensemble Forecasting ~ 118

15 The Forecaster’s Challenge 124

15.1 – Making a Weather Forecast ~ 124 § 15.2 – Forecasting Hazardous Weather ~
126 § 15.3 – Users of Forecasts ~ 128 § 15.4 – When Forecasts Go Wrong ~ 129

16 The Changing Climate 131

16.1 – Past Records of Climate ~ 131 § 16.2 – Increasing Greenhouse Gas Concentrations
~ 134 § 16.3 – Climate Models ~ 135 § 16.4 – Simulating Past and Future Climate ~
136 § 16.5 – Adaptation versus Mitigation ~ 139

Glossary 141
Further Reading 154
Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

First, I wish to thank Ross Reynolds and Pete Inness for encouraging me to write the first
edition of this book – their help and support throughout the writing process was invaluable,
as has their willingness to check through various chapters of the manuscript. I also thank
Keith Shine for his careful review of Chapter 16, Mike Stroud and Giles Harrison for permit-
ting me to take photos and use data from the Atmospheric Observatory at the University of
Reading, and David McLeod and Anne Morton at Dunedin Academic Press for their support
and guidance. I must also thank all of the following for agreeing to look through a chapter or
two: Lesley Allison, Laura Baker, Andy Barrett, Sylvia Bohnenstengel, Kirsty Hanley, Emma
Irvine, Nick Klingaman, Keri Nicoll, Daniel Peake, Sam Ridout, Ali Rudd, Claire Ryder, Jane
Shonk, Peter Shonk, Claire Thompson, Rob Thompson, Andy Turner and Curtis Wood.
Finally, I thank all my friends and family for being supportive during preparation of both the
first and second editions, especially my wife, Jess.
This book is dedicated to the memory of David Grimes.

Figure Credits
Figures 0.1, 11.2: NASA Earth Observatory/NOAA.
Figures 1.1, 1.2, 1.5, 2.1, 2.2, 3.7ABCGH, 7.4AB, 7.5, 7.7A, 8.5B, 12.1ABC, 13.5C, 15.5AD: © Jon Shonk.
Figure 1.3: © Tina Dippe.
Figures 1.4, 5.5, 6.5, 7.7BCD, 8.4AB, 13.5B: photographs Copyright © Stephen Burt.
Figures 2.3ABCD, 3.2AB, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5AB, 3.6AB, 4.1, 4.2, 8.1, 10.9: courtesy of the Department of
Meteorology, University of Reading.
Figure 2.4: NOAA Photo Library/US Weather Bureau.
Figures 2.5, 2.6: NOAA Photo Library.
Figure 2.7: US Army Photo.
Figures 3.1, 14.1, 15.1, 15.2: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
Figures 3.7DF: © Mike Blackburn.
Figure 3.7E: © Peter Smith.
Figure 3.8: NOAA (National Data Buoy Center).
Figures 4.3, 4.4, 10.2, 15.3: © British Crown Copyright, Met Office.
Figure 4.7ABC: ©2019, EUMETSAT.
Figure 5.1: NASA Earth Observatory/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth.
Figure 6.6: NOAA Photo Library/Wilson Bentley.

vii
viii Figure Credits

Figure 7.8: adapted from Trenberth KE, Fasullo JT and Kiehl J (2009): Earth’s global energy budget. Bulletin
of the American Meteorological Society 90: 311–324.
Figure 8.5A: © Daniel Peake.
Figure 8.5C: © Jonathan Beverley.
Figures 8.7, 9.7AB: European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF); plots made using
ERA-Interim data. Reference: Dee DP, Uppala SM, Simmons AJ, Berrisford P, Poli P, Kobayashi S and
Co-authors (2011): The ERA-Interim reanalysis: configuration and performance of the data assimilation
system. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 137: 553–597.
Figure 10.4: adapted from Bjerknes J and Solberg H (1922): Life Cycle of Cyclones and the Polar Front
Theory of Atmospheric Circulation. Geofysiske Publikationer 1: 3–18.
Figures 10.5, 13.4, 13.8: NASA Earth Observatory.
Figure 10.11, 12.2, 13.2A: © Dundee Satellite Receiving Station.
Figures 11.4, 13.2B: NASA Earth Observatory/NOAA/US Department of Defense.
Figure 11.8: based on Halpert MS and Ropelewski CF (1992): Surface Temperature Patterns Associated with
the Southern Oscillation. Journal of Climate 5, 577–593; Ropelewski CF and Halpert MS (1987): Global and
Regional Scale Precipitation Patterns Associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. Monthly Weather
Review 115, 1,606–1,626.
Figures 12.3, 12.6B: © Daniel Gregory.
Figures 12.6A, Half-title Frontispiece: © Simon Lee.
Figure 12.6C: © Beth Saunders.
Figure 13.5A: © Claire Delsol.
Figure 13.9: © Wagner Nogueira Neto.
Figure 15.4: NASA Earth Observatory/USGS Earth Observing-1.
Figures 15.5B: © Jane Shonk.
Figure 15.5C: © Jane Shonk; courtesy of Jason James.
Figure 16.1: data from the Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia. Reference: Morice CP, Kennedy
JJ, Rayner NA and Jones PD (2012): Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change
using an ensemble of observational estimates: the HadCRUT4 dataset. Journal of Geophysical Research 117:
D08101.
Figure 16.2: National Science Foundation, photography by Heidi Roop.
Figure 16.3: adapted from Petit JR, Jouzel J, Raynaud D, Barkov NI, Barnola JM, Basile I, Bender M,
Chappellaz J, Davis J, Delaygue G, Delmotte M, Kotlyakov VM, Legrand M, Lipenkov V, Lorius C, Pépin L,
Ritz C, Saltzman E and Stievenard M (1999): Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years
from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica. Nature 399, 429–436.
Figure 16.4: Dr Pieter Tans (NOAA/ESRL) and Dr Ralph Keeling (Scripps Institution of Oceanography).
Figure 16.5: from IPCC Fifth Assessment Report; Synthesis report, Figure 2.1 (page 59).
Preface

Preface

Every time we step outdoors, or even look out of the window, we experience weather. Sometimes
we are greeted by clear, blue skies; at other times we are faced with grey clouds. On some days,
we feel the wind in our faces; on other days it can be completely calm. Some days are warm,
some days are cold; some bring rain, some stay dry. Some even bring severe weather – heavy
snowfall, freezing rain, tornadoes or dust storms. No two days of weather are the same, and the
weather is always changing.
Weather is the complex interaction of heat and water within the atmosphere. Its power
source, the Sun, provides massive amounts of energy in the form of sunlight, which heats the
Earth’s surface and sets the atmosphere in motion. We experience this motion as wind. Water in
the atmosphere can exist in all three phases – solid ice, liquid water and water vapour – and as
the air circulates, water in the atmosphere can switch between these three phases. Water vapour
is invisible, but when it condenses to liquid or ice, it appears as cloud. These clouds can grow
and bring rain, sleet, snow, hail, thunder and lightning.
Since the dawn of time, mankind has watched the weather changing from day to day and
year to year. Despite this, being able to forecast the changing weather is a skill that has eluded us
until only very recently. The vast numbers of calculations required to produce a reliable weather
forecast have only been possible since the advent of the supercomputer. Modern technology has
played a vital part in the development of the science of meteorology, not just in terms of fore-
casting, but also in improving our observations of the atmosphere, making meteorology perhaps
one of the youngest of all the sciences.
Nowadays, meteorology is a very accessible science. TV weather forecasts are screened many
times a day and a wealth of weather information is now freely available over the internet. Mete-
orologists also find themselves in the public eye a great deal more – every time they make a
forecast, their science is put to public scrutiny. Their research is a constant, ongoing challenge
to improve the ability to forecast the weather, not just through improving weather models, but
also by improving understanding of the background science of meteorology, of how weather
systems form and interact, and even improving techniques of observing the weather. Another
area of increasing research is climate prediction: with rising global temperatures, attention is
often turned to the climate scientist to understand how the future climate might vary.
From a very early age, we are exposed to weather. For some of us, this sparks an enthusi-
astic interest leading to a career in meteorology or climate science; others are encouraged to
become dedicated amateur weather watchers. This book aims to provide a basic understanding
of the science of meteorology for those keen to take it a little further. We begin by summaris-
ing the history of meteorological observations and forecasting (Chapter 2), then we look into
how the weather is observed using a combination of surface observations and remote sensing
techniques (Chapters 3 and 4). The next chapters introduce the basic physical science behind

ix
x Preface

the weather (Chapters 5 to 9). Four chapters then follow (10 to 13) that apply this science to the
atmosphere to explain how various types of weather system evolve and dissipate. Then finally
we move on to look at forecasting: how forecasts are generated from observations, and how the
models we use to forecast the weather can be extended to generate predictions of future climate
(Chapters 14 to 16).

Note: all terms highlighted in bold are defined in the Glossary at the end of this book.

Figure 0.1 The Earth from space. Satellite picture taken on 4 September 2019, showing North and South
America. Hurricane Dorian is clearly visible off the US coast. (Image: NASA Earth Observatory/NOAA.)
Watching the Weather
1 Watching the Weather
Weather is one of those parts of our lives that
we either love or hate. On a clear, sunny day
we all rave about the weather being glorious,
while on a dull, rainy day we rant about the
weather being terrible. We often strike up con-
versations with friends and relatives and even
strangers with an opinion about the weather
– and as the weather is constantly changing,
there is always something to talk about. From
professional meteorologist to enthusiastic
amateur, weather is one of those things of
which we all have some degree of knowledge.
The basic principle of making an observation
and then a forecast is something we all do
every time we look up at the sky and wonder
if it is going to rain. It seems as if we belong to
a world that is obsessed with the weather. But
where does this obsession come from?
1.1 The Influence of Weather
Perhaps our obsession with the weather
stems from the way that it can capture our
imaginations. We may pay little attention to
common, day-to-day weather events, such
as clouds and rain, but when the weather
produces something fascinating, such as a
striking sunset, a stunning cloudscape or a
picturesque snow scene, we often take note
and reach for our cameras (see the figures in
this chapter). The weather is often used as an
evocative way of scene-setting in literature,
and to set the mood of paintings. Indeed, the
use of weather in the arts runs back thou-
sands of years.
The weather influences our actions every
single day without our even having to think
about it. Like it or not, while we have the
technology and knowledge to forecast the
changing weather, there is nothing we can
do to alter what is coming our way. There-
fore, we must adapt our daily routine to the
changes in weather from one day to the next.
Before we leave the house in the morning on
a rainy day, for example, we might choose to
take a raincoat and an umbrella with us; on a
cold day, we wrap up warm; on a hot, sunny
day we might take our sunglasses. Once we
have left our house, the weather can influ-
ence our journey to work: on a warm, sunny
day, we may consider walking; on a rainy day,
we may drive or take the bus. At lunchtime,
we might consider a hot drink if the weather
is cold; in hot weather, a cold, refreshing drink
may be a more appropriate option. And when
we arrive home after a day’s work, the weather
may influence whether we spend the evening
outdoors, or spend it indoors in front of the TV.
It is not just us as individuals that can be
affected by weather. The weather also has
strong influences on businesses and industry.
Agriculture, for example, is very dependent
on the weather. Rain is required for the irri-
gation of crops, so a widespread lack of rain
can result in crop failure and a significant
drop in income to the farming community,
with knock-on effects on food prices. Energy
companies need to know about the forthcom-
ing weather: if colder weather is on the way,
1
2 Introducing Meteorology
Figure 1.1 A sun pillar, seen here just before sunrise on 2 May 2019, over Amsterdam, Netherlands. The vertical
column of light above the Sun is reflected off horizontally aligned ice crystals. (Photo: Jon Shonk.)
there will be an increase in energy demand for
heating. Also, nowadays, with so much energy
being generated from renewable sources such
as solar panels and wind turbines, the influ-
ence of the weather on the energy companies
is perhaps greater than ever. The weather can
even influence the stock put on display by
supermarkets. A period of hot weather, for
example, may inspire them to stock up on
burgers and sausages for barbecues; a spell of
wet weather may encourage them to display
more umbrellas.
The weather can impact sporting events.
Play usually stops during cricket and tennis
matches when it starts to rain. Golf tourna-
ments tend to be more resilient to rain, but the
courses are quickly cleared if there is thunder
and lightning about. The tactics of a motor
racing team can be swung by the weather:
forecasts of rain may affect the choice of
tyres put on the cars. Often top racing teams
will employ meteorologists to keep track of
the weather during a racing weekend. Horse
racing is also affected by weather: the amount
of recent rainfall affects the state of the ground
on which the horses run.
Weather can affect our ability to travel, par-
ticularly when it turns adverse. For example,
ice and snow on the roads can make driving
conditions dangerous, and fog can reduce
our view of traffic ahead. Snow and ice can
also affect rail transport, with the potential
for points and signalling systems to freeze up.
The rail networks can also be affected by very
high temperatures, when thermal expansion
of the rails can lead to potential buckling. The
Watching the Weather 3

Figure 1.2 Wild

seas at Collieston,
Scotland, on 24
December 2013.
Crashing waves
were driven by
winds associated
with a deep
mid-latitude
depression. (Photo:
Jon Shonk.)

Figure 1.3 Ice

crystals forming
on a flower on a
frosty morning.
(Photo: Tina
Dippe.)
4 Introducing Meteorology
aviation industry is perhaps the most sensi-
tive to weather conditions: snow and ice at
airports can result in closures and mass can-
cellations of flights. Western Europe also saw
the effects of volcanic ash on aviation in April
2010. The eruption of the Icelandic volcano
Eyjafjallajökull coincided with north-westerly
winds across the Atlantic that spread its ash
cloud over most of Western Europe, leading to
cancelled flights and grounded aircraft.
In extreme cases, of course, weather can be
devastating. It may be easy to forget on a fine,
sunny day that, if conditions are right, intense
weather systems can develop and bring strong,
damaging winds and torrential rain. The
impact of severe weather on humanity can be
high, particularly if it strikes inhabited regions.
Hurricanes, typhoons and extreme low-pres-
sure systems can cause widespread damage,
and not just caused by the wind. Many of these
systems can cause flooding, either by intense
rainfall or storm surges in coastal areas. Trends
in weather over longer periods can also be very
damaging. For example, a long-term lack of
rainfall in a region can lead to drought, which
can have devastating effects on agriculture
and cause widespread famine.
1.2 Weather Watchers
Whether fine or adverse, it always pays to
know what weather is just around the corner.
Fortunately, these days we have technol-
ogy in place that can provide us with ample
warning of severe weather. Weather forecasts
are beamed into our lives on a daily basis
– every day, we are presented with weather
maps that show both the current weather situ-
ation and how the weather is likely to change
over the next few days. The weather is often a
hot topic on TV, with any noteworthy weather
events around the world usually grabbing a
few minutes on a news programme, and occa-
sional TV series are commissioned describing
the basics of meteorology. In combination, this
media coverage is a strong influence on our
knowledge and understanding of the weather.
In fact, we can gain a great deal of basic
understanding of the weather by watching
weather forecasts. Some TV forecasts still use
maps of atmospheric pressure and weather
fronts, and animate how the pressure field
is predicted to evolve over the next few days.
As a consequence, most of us are aware that
areas of high pressure are usually associated
with fine, settled weather, while low-pressure
systems bring unsettled, rainy and stormy
weather. We are also largely aware that the
more closely packed the lines of constant
pressure (known as isobars) are over an area,
the stronger the wind will be; we probably also
know that wind from the direction of the poles
tends to bring much colder conditions than
wind from the direction of the tropics.
These days, it is possible for any one of us
to take an interest in the weather. The internet
contains a vast wealth of meteorological
information, both in terms of weather data,
weather maps and openly available forecasts,
enabling the enthusiastic weather watcher to
constantly keep up to date with the current
weather situation and keep track of how the
weather might change over the next few days. It
is also very straightforward to set up a weather
observation station in our back garden, with
thermometers and barometers readily avail-
able in the shops and online. Entire integrated
weather stations, often combining tempera-
ture and pressure sensors with anemometers
to measure wind, hygrometers to measure
humidity and automatic rain gauges, are also

Figure 1.4 A misty and frosty winter morning near Reading, UK, on 30 December 2016. (Photo: Copyright ©
Stephen Burt.)
now becoming cheaper to purchase. These are
often sold with data loggers that can be con-
nected to a computer, allowing us to create
our own archives of weather records.
Even without such technology, it is still
possible to remain very much connected to
the weather. Measuring devices allow us to
quantitatively observe many aspects of the
weather. However, keeping track of what the
weather is doing does not necessarily require
such measurement. Indications of weather
are often plainly visible in the sky: the dis-
tribution and shape of clouds can indicate
what the current weather is like and also give
Watching the Weather 5
warning of imminent change. Movements
of the clouds can show the general direction
of the wind. And, of course, our bodies have
the ability to sense changes in temperature.
Over time, if we observe the weather for long
enough, it is possible to see patterns emerg-
ing, allowing simple forecasts of changes in
weather to be made. In short, a lifetime of
exposure to the changing weather has made
us into a world obsessed with observing and
forecasting the weather and, with mete-
orology becoming ever more accessible to
the public, everyone can become a weather
watcher.
6 Introducing Meteorology

Figure 1.5 Clouds forming over Table Mountain, South Africa, on 29 August 2015. (Photo: Jon Shonk.)
From Seaweed to Supercomputers
2 From Seaweed to Supercomputers
It may be surprising that, despite the fact that the
weather has been influencing us since the dawn
of time, the science of meteorology remains
fairly young, with most of the significant devel-
opments only happening relatively recently.
To perform the two important steps required
in meteorology, observation and forecasting,
we need suitable measurement methods and
computational ability – in other words, technol-
ogy. Up until about 60 years ago meteorology
has progressed fairly slowly. However, recent
technological advances have been pivotal in
enabling the science of meteorology to grow
rapidly into the rich field of science that it is
today.
2.1 The Age of Seaweed
The weather must have played a huge role in
the lives of prehistoric man. In a time before
thermally insulated houses and central heating,
we would have had to adapt to and endure
the swing of temperature from day to day and
year to year. The weather would have affected
the behaviour of animals, varying the supply
of food. It would also have had an impact (as
indeed it still does today) on crop yields.
Descriptive records of weather conditions
exist from thousands of years BC. However, the
first people to attempt to explain the science
behind the weather were the Ancient Greeks.
In a time when the Greek mathematicians
such as Pythagoras and Euclid were laying
down the basics of mathematics and physics,
a few were trying to explain the complicated
interactions that led to weather. Perhaps the
first ‘book’ about weather was written by Aris-
totle in about 340 BC. Entitled Meteorologica,
it gave explanations for many different types
of weather, and was the accepted text on
the matter for well over one thousand years.
However, it had a number of inaccuracies –
mostly brought about by Aristotle’s attempt
to explain everything using the interaction of
the four classical elements: earth, air, fire and
water. Nevertheless, some descriptions within
it, such as the hydrological cycle, were actually
quite accurate.
Weather watching and forecasting during
this period remained qualitative and impre-
cise, mainly making use of natural indica-
tors. Seaweed, for example, becomes dry
and crisp when the humidity of the air is low,
but becomes limp and moist when the air is
humid and rain is more likely. Also, pine cones
close when the air is humid and open when
it is drier. Longer-range forecasts were based
on, for example, the flowering of trees or the
appearance of insects.
The use of such natural indicators led to
the development of so-called weather lore
– sayings about the weather that have been
passed down through the generations. Even
today, with the availability of forecasts on TV
and online, a red sunset often inspires us to
quote: ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight;
red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.’
This particular saying works only when
weather systems approach from the west
7
8 Introducing Meteorology
Figure 2.1 Red sky at
night over Aberdeenshire,
Scotland. A red sky at
sunset indicates clearer
skies to the west, hence
finer weather on the way.
(Photo: Jon Shonk.)
– something that they normally do. A red sky
at sunset (Fig. 2.1) indicates clearer sky to the
west, hence finer weather on the way; a red
sky at sunrise suggests clearer sky to the east,
and that the fine weather has passed. Many of
these sayings, however, have been shown by
modern weather observations to be very unre-
liable. For example, ‘oak before ash, we’ll have
a splash; ash before oak, we’ll have a soak’,
linking summer rainfall to the order in which
the oak and the ash trees come into leaf, shows
no particular reliability. Indeed, in some lan-
guages, ash before oak is linked to a splash.
2.2 Early Meteorological Advances
The big step forward in the science of meteor-
ology, made in the seventeenth century, was
the invention of two instruments that remain
at the heart of meteorological observations
today: the thermometer and the barometer.
These allowed weather observers to monitor
temperature and pressure. The earliest ther-
mometer, often attributed to Italian scientist
Galileo Galilei, used a number of glass spheres
of a fixed mass suspended in a fluid. Each
sphere is designed to float at a slightly differ-
ent temperature, meaning that the number of
spheres floating at the top gives an indication of
how warm it is. Even today, such thermometers
are sold as Galileo thermometers (Fig. 2.2),
although their slow response to temperature
change limits their location to mantelpieces
rather than weather stations.
The first barometer was invented by Evan-
gelista Torricelli, another Italian scientist of
Galileo’s era, in 1644. His design was referred to
as the mercury barometer – a design also still
in use today (see left side of Fig. 2.3A). Torri-
celli filled a long tube of glass with mercury,
and then inverted it into a bowl of mercury.
He found that the height of the column of
mercury settled at about 760 mm, and that it
was atmospheric pressure pressing down on
the surface of the mercury that was holding
the mercury in place. From this, he was able
to monitor atmospheric pressure by observing

Figure 2.2 A Galileo thermometer. Each glass sphere
floats at a different temperature, indicated by the metal
tag on the bottom. The temperature here is 21°C.
(Photo: Jon Shonk.)
From Seaweed to Supercomputers 9
changes in the height of the mercury column.
Shortly afterwards, a number of Galileo’s
students set up a scientific society – the Acca-
demia del Cimento – in Florence in 1657 with
the aim of carrying out scientific investiga-
tions. One of the members of the Academy,
Ferdinand II de Medici, deployed these early
meteorological instruments at a number of
locations across Europe and set up the first
observational network. The scientists of the
Academy also invented a number of primi-
tive devices for measuring other atmospheric
quantities, including a hygrometer that
measured humidity by quantifying the amount
of condensation onto a bucket of ice. Other
scientific societies started forming in other
European cities, including the Royal Society,
founded in London in 1660, and the Académie
des Sciences, founded in Paris in 1666.
Further observational developments
occurred over the next century. One of the
shortcomings of early weather records was the
lack of consistent scales, particularly for tem-
perature. This was remedied independently
by Gabriel Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius.
Both the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature
scales are still used today, with the Celsius
scale being more popular in Europe and the
Fahrenheit scale preferred in the USA. Initially,
the Celsius scale was set to run from 0°C to
100°C between the freezing and boiling points
of water at standard atmospheric pressure; the
Fahrenheit scale was set to run between 32°F
and 96°F between the freezing point of water
and human body temperature. Fahrenheit’s
other major addition to observational mete-
orology was the design of both the alcohol-in-
glass and the mercury-in-glass thermometers
in 1724 – again, a design that has remained
largely unchanged.
10 Introducing Meteorology
A B
C D
Figure 2.3 Some historical
weather instruments. (A) Left:
a mercury barometer. Right: a
Fitzroy barometer, containing
another mercury barometer,
a thermometer and a storm
glass. The wooden casing
explains how to interpret
the readings to give simple
weather forecasts. (B) A pair
of thermometers that record
maximum and minimum tem-
peratures. (C) An anemom-
eter. The speed of rotation
of the cups is converted to a
wind speed on the analogue
dial. (D) A tipping-bucket
rain gauge. Rain falls into
the funnel at the top and
accumulates in one side of
the copper bucket. When
full, the bucket tips and the
mechanism records a unit of
rainfall. (Photos: Department
of Meteorology, University of
Reading.)

The development of meteorology contin-
ued into the nineteenth century. The modern
scheme for classifying clouds was proposed in
1802 by Luke Howard, using the Latin words
cirrus, stratus, cumulus and nimbus to cat-
egorise all the different types of cloud. Shortly
after, Francis Beaufort standardised measure-
ments of wind using 13 categories spanning
calm conditions (0) to hurricane-force con-
ditions (12). This qualitative scale, known as
the Beaufort Scale, allowed wind speeds to
be determined by observable features, such
as waves at sea or movements of trees, in the
absence of accurate measuring devices.
In the nineteenth century, the background
science of meteorology started to become
a subject of interest, with the physicists of
the time beginning to understand the prin-
ciples of thermodynamics and the flow of
heat. These were investigated by a number
of earlier scientists, but first summarised by
Sadi Carnot. Out of this work, the laws of ther-
modynamics were defined by, among others,
Émile Clapeyron, Hermann von Helmholtz,
Rudolf Clausius and Lord Kelvin. In 1848, Lord
Kelvin postulated the existence of a minimum
possible temperature, known now as absolute
zero. The Kelvin unit of temperature was later
defined as the benchmark temperature unit,
with the modern definitions of the Celsius and
the Fahrenheit scales fixed to reference points
on the Kelvin scale (slightly different from
their original definitions).
The reporting of weather observations
was hugely facilitated by the invention of the
electric telegraph. Many inventors created tel-
egraph systems through the early nineteenth
century, with the 1836 system of Samuel Morse
and his collaborators being the most suc-
cessful. This allowed weather reporting to be
From Seaweed to Supercomputers 11
much more ‘real-time’ – weather occurring in
a given location could be reported instantly to
a central location. This speed of communica-
tion was vital to the development of opera-
tional forecasting. Joseph Henry of the Smith-
sonian Institution set up a full observation
system using Morse’s telegraph in the USA in
1849. Using this network, daily reports of the
weather nationwide were published in the
Washington Evening Post.
2.3 The First Forecasts
Using the telegraph system, it was there-
fore possible to amass observations from a
network of stations and plot weather maps.
Early on, it was noted that stormy weather
observed at one site was usually not a one-off
event, but related to an area of low pressure
that moved. Forecasts of the passage of storms
across Europe were provided during the 1850s
by the Paris Observatory in France.
Robert Fitzroy made significant contri-
butions to the world of weather forecasting.
As well as being an officer in the Royal Navy,
perhaps most famously captaining the HMS
Beagle on the expedition that took naturalist
Charles Darwin around the world, Fitzroy was
a keen meteorologist. He collected weather
data from a number of sites around the UK
via telegraph and plotted weather charts. By
comparing the current conditions with past
weather maps, he was able to provide the first
regular forecasts to be published in a newspa-
per – these appeared daily from 1861 in The
Times. Fitzroy was also instrumental in organ-
ising weather data collection at sea by provid-
ing captains with meteorological instruments.
His weather department was a forerunner
of the current UK Met Office. Over the next
40 years or so, other national meteorological
12 Introducing Meteorology

services began to appear, such as the Indian
Meteorological Department, the US Weather
Bureau (later to become the National Weather
Service) and the Australian Bureau of Mete-
orology. An early analysis chart from the US
Weather Bureau is shown in Figure 2.4.
Norwegian scientist Vilhelm Bjerknes made
the next step towards modern forecasting in
1904. He made fundamental mathematical
connections between thermodynamics and
fluid mechanics, generating a set of math-
ematical equations that could, in theory, be
used to numerically predict the weather. The
first numerical forecast was produced several
years later by Lewis Fry Richardson in 1922.
Using a grid of weather data from 07:00 on
20 May 1910, he set out to create a six-hour
forecast. Of course, he had to perform all the
calculations by hand, as computing resources
were unavailable at the time. The forecast
turned out to predict unrealistically large
changes in surface pressure because the equa-
tions he used allowed fluctuations to develop
on a scale not observed in the atmosphere
(modern forecasts mathematically filter out
these unrealistic fluctuations). Even so, he had
a vision of the first global numerical weather
prediction, with a large number of forecasters

Figure 2.4 A map of weather over the USA on 22 January 1922. Contours of pressure (in inches of mercury) and
temperature (in °F) are shown. (Image: NOAA Photo Library/US Weather Bureau.)

within a massive spherical room representing
the Earth, with each forecaster calculating the
weather at a given point based on the results
found by the surrounding forecasters.
In the 1910s and 1920s, the earlier work on
the passage of storms was advanced by a group
of scientists based in Norway that included
Vilhelm Bjerknes and his son Jakob. They devel-
oped a simple model describing the life cycle
and evolution of mid-latitude depressions
that used the now familiar concept of fronts,
where cold air and warm air meet. Despite their
limited observational techniques at the time,
their description of how depressions develop
was very accurate. Research has since added
further understanding to the process, yet most
elements of their so-called Norwegian model
are still used today to explain how depressions
form and develop.
2.4 Looking Up into the Atmosphere
Of course, forecasters needed information
about the weather conditions not only at
the surface, but also high up in the atmos-
phere. Early attempts to measure condi-
tions at height used kites with instruments
attached. However, as they had to be secured
to the ground by ropes, they could never get
particularly high into the atmosphere, as
long ropes are very heavy. Manned ascents in
hot-air balloons allowed some instrumented
measurements – English meteorologist James
Glaisher made many trips up through the
atmosphere in hot-air balloons during the
1860s. However, this was often risky, with low
levels of oxygen often causing observers to
pass out during the flight. The development
of the radiosonde during the 1920s made the
routine collection of data aloft far less hazard-
ous. The first true radiosonde was invented by
From Seaweed to Supercomputers 13
French meteorologist Robert Bureau, although
modern radiosondes follow the design of
Russian meteorologist Pavel Molchanov.
The increase in aviation throughout this
period necessitated the invention of the radio-
sonde, particularly during the Second World
War, where in-depth forecasts and observa-
tions were required for military aircraft. The
Second World War also led to the develop-
ment of rainfall radar, another system that we
still use today. Radar, an acronym for radio
detection and ranging, was originally used as
a means to detect incoming aircraft at airfields
and military installations. Pulses of radio
waves are emitted and reflect back off any
solid objects, such as approaching aircraft.
The radar operators also noted, however,
that radio waves also reflected off areas of
rain. After the war, a group of meteorological
researchers investigated this effect further and
noted that, if the wavelength of the emitted
radio waves was tuned to about 50 mm, infor-
mation about the raindrop size and location
could be obtained. This became a valuable
tool in the real-time monitoring of rainfall. An
early rainfall radar image is seen in Figure 2.5.
The final big step in weather observation
came in 1960s, when the first weather satellite
were launched. Earlier investigations using
cameras mounted on rockets showed the
immense amounts of information available
from a space-based observation platform.
NASA’s ‘TIROS-1’ (Television Infrared Obser-
vation Satellite) is considered the first suc-
cessful weather satellite, returning pictures
of clouds from space. Launched in 1960, it
provided a wealth of images of cloud cover
around the world, such as in Figure 2.6. Sub-
sequent TIROS satellite missions through
the 1960s continued the research into the
14 Introducing Meteorology
Figure 2.5 An early radar image, showing a line of
storms over New Jersey, USA, taken on 16 July 1944.
(Image: NOAA Photo Library.)
Figure 2.6 An early visible satellite image from TIROS,
showing storm systems over the central USA on 27
May 1960. (Image: NOAA Photo Library.)
viability of weather observations from space.
Nowadays, the Earth is surrounded by a fleet
of weather satellites constantly monitoring
the atmosphere and feeding information back
to control centres on Earth, providing data
that is used both for forecasting and research
purposes.
2.5 Towards Modern Forecasting
Richardson’s vision of a supercomputer con-
sisting of a large number of human forecasters
came several decades before the development
of any computer capable of actually running
a forecast model. Hence, despite these break-
throughs in the principles of numerical mod-
elling of the weather, forecasting methods
remained simplistic and based on pressure
trends and comparison of weather conditions
on a day with previous weather patterns. The
demand for forecasts through the Second
World War was high, with military aircraft
requiring forecasts of wind patterns at height,
along with cloud forecasts.
By 1947, the first computer capable of
being programmed to run a weather forecast
model was built by a group at the University
of Pennsylvania in the USA. The ENIAC (Elec-
tronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)
was the world’s first fully electronic computer
(Fig. 2.7). It used vacuum tubes and resistor
technology and filled a whole room. A group
of scientists, including American meteorolo-
gist Jule Charney and mathematician John
von Neumann, performed a simple forecast
of atmospheric pressure. It took about a day
to produce the 24-hour forecast, and much of
this time was spent manually dealing with the
punch-cards required to feed the input into
the computer. The results were very promising
and paved the way for future forecast models.
From this initial forecast, the world of meteor-
ology has grown massively, with the develop-
ment of faster and more powerful computers.
Soon after the success with ENIAC, a number

of national weather services began to run
their own operational forecasts. As comput-
ers became faster, more and more processes
could be included in the weather models,
giving increasingly detailed forecasts.
Developments in technology over the last
50 years or so have allowed massive advances
in computing technology. Since about 1970,
computing speed and power have risen expo-
nentially with time. According to Moore’s
Law, over the last few decades, the number
of transistors that can be placed on an inte-
grated circuit has been doubling every two
years. This means that much greater compu-
tational power can also be condensed down
into a smaller space. For example, the compu-
tational power of a modern mobile phone that
fits into the palm of our hand is much greater
than the power of the early computers, which
sometimes filled several rooms.
Computational power has also become
cheaper. This has allowed advanced com-
puting systems to become commonplace in
research agencies and universities all over
From Seaweed to Supercomputers 15
Figure 2.7 ENIAC, the first fully
electronic computer. It was used to run
the first numerical weather forecast.
(Image: US Army Photo.)
the world, allowing cutting-edge research
into understanding the science behind the
weather. Modern meteorological research
encompasses three main areas: the develop-
ment and improvement of instrumentation
to increase our ability to observe the weather;
analysis of the observed data to increase our
understanding of the processes that take
place in the atmosphere; and building better
methods of modelling these aspects of the
weather. Each of these areas of research spans
a wide range of disciplines and, with improved
computer technology, we can now analyse
our data and model the weather in far greater
detail than ever before.
One final chain of research branched off
from the development of weather forecasts
while computer power was still in the early
stages of development. This was the reali-
sation that these weather models could be
modified and run over much longer periods.
This opened the door to the principle of
climate modelling and allowed scientists to
investigate future climate change.
The Weather Station
3 The Weather Station
Before we can start to forecast the weather,
we need a set of data describing the condi-
tion of the atmosphere at a given time. In
forecasting circles, such data is referred to
as initial conditions. We need observations
of temperature, pressure, humidity, cloud
cover, cloud type, wind speed and many
other quantities, ideally at as many points on
the Earth’s surface as possible, and sampled
throughout the depth of the atmosphere. Of
course, it is impractical to observe the entire
atmosphere at quite this level of detail. Even
so, the modern global weather observa-
tion network consists of over 10,000 land-
based weather sites, thousands of automatic
weather stations mounted on buoys and
ships at sea, hundreds of sites that monitor
the conditions aloft, and an array of weather
satellites in constant orbit around the Earth.
Data from all of these sources can be used
to initialise our forecast. We begin our tour
of the global observation network on the
ground – at the meteorological observation
station.
3.1 Surface Observations
Of all the types of weather observation, the
first to develop was the land-based surface
observation station. These have been around
for centuries and were, in the past, manned by
observers making records of the weather using
sometimes very simple meteorological instru-
ments. Back then, there were no set stand-
ards on the location and siting of observation
16
stations, so weather readings were sometimes
variable in quality. Even so, there were enough
weather data archived in various historical
records from around the Midlands of England
to allow English scientist Gordon Manley to
create a temperature record stretching all the
way back to 1659. This series is known as the
Central England Temperature series, and is
the longest observational record of climate in
existence. Since Manley completed the series
in 1953, it has been updated every year. The
modern UK operational surface observation
network consists of several hundred stations.
Many of these are fully automated and return
their measurements electronically, but some
still employ an observer to make measure-
ments in the traditional way.
A great number of countries in the world
now have networks of surface observation
stations. Figure 3.1 indicates the typical global
coverage of surface observations. But, if the
data they report is to be useful, it is impor-
tant that international standards are set so
that data from one country is consistent with
data from the next. The World Meteorological
Organization (WMO), a branch of the United
Nations, defines these standards. For a global
set of weather observations to be useful to
a forecaster, it is much better if they are all
made at exactly the same time. Therefore,
irrespective of time zone, the meteorological
world sets its clocks to Universal Time Co-
ordinated (UTC), chosen by convention to
be synchronised with Greenwich Mean Time.
 ECMWF data coverage (all observations) - SYNOP-SHIP-METAR
06/09/2019 06 The Weather Station 17
Total number of obs = 125625
SYNOP-LAND TAC (28637) METAR (19566) SHIP-TAC (4888) METAR-AUTO (38123)
SYNOP-SHIP BUFR (2634) SYNOP-LAND BUFR (31777)
150°W 120°W 90°W 60°W 30°W 0°E 30°E 60°E 90°E 120°E 150°E

80°N 80°N

60°N 60°N

40°N 40°N

20°N 20°N

0°N 0°N

20°S 20°S

40°S 40°S

60°S 60°S

80°S 80°S

150°W 120°W 90°W 60°W 30°W 0°E 30°E 60°E 90°E 120°E 150°E

Figure 3.1 Each coloured spot shows the location of one of the 125,625 surface stations and ships that provided
a weather report at 00:00 UTC on 6 September 2019. Note the uneven distribution of the observations over the
globe. (Data: ECMWF.)

That way, making observations worldwide at
00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and 18:00 UTC gives global
snapshots of the weather every six hours.
Often, however, weather observations
are made much more frequently than six-
hourly. In operational stations, readings are
normally made every hour throughout the
day. These include readings of temperature,
pressure, humidity, wind speed, wind direc-
tion and many more. Such observations are
referred to as synoptic observations. Some
stations also make climatic observations.
These are measurements that are made once
a day (usually at 09:00 local time) and sum-
marise the weather over the course of the
preceding 24-hour period. Climatic obser-
vations include maximum and minimum
temperatures, total rainfall accumulation
and hours of sunshine.
When made, these observations are relayed
back to the national weather services, where
the data is collated and shared with the world.
Again, so that the observations can be inter-
preted by any meteorologist anywhere in the
world, the observations are reported using a
coding system managed by the WMO. For a
weather agency in a particular country to be
able to generate a forecast, it needs weather
data from all over the world. The observa-
tions collated by the national services are then
gathered and archived at one of the WMO’s
World Meteorological Centres.
3.2 Inside the Stevenson Screen
Even with the onset of modern technologi-
cal advances, the instrumentation found on
weather stations managed by an observer has,
in many cases, undergone little change in the
18 Introducing Meteorology

Figure 3.2 (A) A modern Stevenson screen. (B)

A The standard arrangement of thermometers inside
consists of dry-bulb and wet-bulb thermometers
(mounted vertically to the left and right respectively)
and maximum and minimum thermometers (mounted
horizontally, top and bottom). (Photos: Department of
Meteorology.)

last century. This is mainly for consistency: for

ease of comparison of current readings with
older readings, it is far more convenient if the
same conventions are followed. Again, the
WMO sets standards on measuring devices. It
also has a set of standards for the location of
weather stations. Ideally, they need to be as far
away as possible from any obstacles that may
affect the background meteorological condi-
tions – certainly nowhere near buildings or
trees that can block the wind or shelter the site
from rain.
A signature feature of many a weather sta-
tion is the Stevenson screen – a ventilated box
to shelter instruments from sunlight while still
B allowing air to freely pass over them (Fig. 3.2A).
Very early measurements of temperature were
made with the thermometer exposed to full
sunshine. However, it was later realised that
exposing a thermometer in such a way results
in unrealistic measurements of the air temper-
ature. This inspired British engineer Thomas
Stevenson in 1864 to design the Stevenson
screen. Modern Stevenson screens are still
based on Stevenson’s original design and are
made of louvred panels that are painted white.
The standard height of a Stevenson screen is
1.5 m above the ground.
A Stevenson screen usually contains four
thermometers: a dry-bulb thermometer, a
wet-bulb thermometer, a maximum ther-
mometer and a minimum thermometer (Fig.
3.2B). The thermometers found in a Stevenson
screen are usually mercury-in-glass, still
Another random document with
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And then first the political tension within the Faustian world-
consciousness discharged itself. For the Greeks, Hellas was and
remained the important part of the earth’s surface, but with the
discovery of America West-Europe became a province in a gigantic
whole. Thenceforward the history of the Western Culture has a
planetary character.
Every Culture possesses a proper conception of home and
fatherland, which is hard to comprehend, scarcely to be expressed in
words, full of dark metaphysical relations, but nevertheless
unmistakable in its tendency. The Classical home-feeling which tied
the individual corporally and Euclidean-ly to the Polis[420] is the very
antithesis of that enigmatic “Heimweh” of the Northerner which has
something musical, soaring and unearthly in it. Classical man felt as
“Home” just what he could see from the Acropolis of his native city.
Where the horizon of Athens ended, the alien, the hostile, the
“fatherland” of another began. Even the Roman of late Republican
times understood by “patria” nothing but Urbs Roma, not even
Latium, still less Italy. The Classical world, as it matured, dissolved
itself into a large number of point-patriæ, and the need of bodily
separation between them took the form of hatreds far more intense
than any hatred that there was of the Barbarian. And it is therefore
the most convincing of all evidences of the victory of the Magian
world-feeling that Caracalla[421] in 212 A.D. granted Roman citizenship
to all provincials. For this grant simply abolished the ancient,
statuesque, idea of the citizen. There was now a Realm and
consequently a new kind of membership. The Roman notion of an
army, too, underwent a significant change. In genuinely Classical
times there had been no Roman Army in the sense in which we
speak of the Prussian Army, but only “armies,” that is, definite
formations (as we say) created as corps, limited and visibly present
bodies, by the appointment of a Legatus to command—an exercitus
Scipionis, Crassi for instance—but never an exercitus Romanus. It
was Caracalla, the same who abolished the idea of “civis Romanus”
by decree and wiped out the Roman civic deities by making all alien
deities equivalent to them, who created the un-Classical and Magian
idea of an Imperial Army, something manifested in the separate
legions. These now meant something, whereas in Classical times
they meant nothing, but simply were. The old “fides exercituum” is
replaced by “fides exercitus” in the inscriptions and, instead of
individual bodily-conceived deities special to each legion and ritually
honoured by its Legatus, we have a spiritual principle common to all.
So also, and in the same sense, the "fatherland"-feeling undergoes a
change of meaning for Eastern men—and not merely Christians—in
Imperial times. Apollinian man, so long as he retained any effective
remnant at all of his proper world-feeling, regarded “home” in the
genuinely corporeal sense as the ground on which his city was built
—a conception that recalls the “unity of place” of Attic tragedy and
statuary. But to Magian man, to Christians, Persians, Jews,
“Greeks,”[422] Manichæans, Nestorians and Mohammedans, it means
nothing that has any connexion with geographical actualities. And for
ourselves it means an impalpable unity of nature, speech, climate,
habits and history—not earth but “country,” not point-like presence
but historic past and future, not a unit made up of men, houses and
gods but an idea, the idea that takes shape in the restless
wanderings, the deep loneliness, and that ancient German impulse
towards the South which has been the ruin of our best, from the
Saxon Emperors to Hölderlin and Nietzsche.
The bent of the Faustian Culture, therefore, was overpoweringly
towards extension, political, economic or spiritual. It overrode all
geographical-material bounds. It sought—without any practical
object, merely for the Symbol’s own sake—to reach North Pole and
South Pole. It ended by transforming the entire surface of the globe
into a single colonial and economic system. Every thinker from
Meister Eckhardt to Kant willed to subject the “phenomenal” world to
the asserted domination of the cognizing ego, and every leader from
Otto the Great to Napoleon did it. The genuine object of their
ambitions was the boundless, alike for the great Franks and
Hohenstaufen with their world-monarchies, for Gregory VII and
Innocent III, for the Spanish Habsburgs “on whose empire the sun
never set,” and for the Imperialism of to-day on behalf of which the
World-War was fought and will continue to be fought for many a long
day. Classical man, for inward reasons, could not be a conqueror,
notwithstanding Alexander’s romantic expedition—for we can discern
enough of the inner hesitations and unwillingnesses of his
companions not to need to explain it as an “exception proving the
rule.”[423] The never-stilled desire to be liberated from the binding
element, to range far and free, which is the essence of the fancy-
creatures of the North—the dwarfs, elves and imps—is utterly
unknown to the Dryads and Oreads of Greece. Greek daughter-cities
were planted by the hundred along the rim of the Mediterranean, but
not one of them made the slightest real attempt to conquer and
penetrate the hinterlands. To settle far from the coast would have
meant to lose sight of “home,” while to settle in loneliness—the ideal
life of the trapper and prairie-man of America as it had been of
Icelandic saga-heroes long before—was something entirely beyond
the possibilities of Classical mankind. Dramas like that of the
emigration to America—man by man, each on his own account,
driven by deep promptings to loneliness—or the Spanish Conquest,
or the Californian gold-rush, dramas of uncontrollable longings for
freedom, solitude, immense independence, and of giantlike contempt
of all limitations whatsoever upon the home-feeling—these dramas
are Faustian and only Faustian. No other Culture, not even the
Chinese, knows them.
The Hellenic emigrant, on the contrary, clung as a child clings to
its mother’s lap. To make a new city out of the old one, exactly like it,
with the same fellow citizens, the same gods, the same customs,
with the linking sea never out of sight, and there to pursue in the
Agora the familiar life of the ζῷον πολιτικόν—this was the limit of
change of scene for the Apollinian life. To us, for whom freedom of
movement (if not always as a practical, yet in any case as an ideal,
right) is indispensable, such a limit would have been the most crying
of all slaveries. It is from the Classical point of view that the oft-
misunderstood expansion of Rome must be looked at. It was
anything rather than an extension of the fatherland; it confined itself
exactly within fields that had already been taken up by other culture-
men whom they dispossessed. Never was there a hint of dynamic
world-schemes of the Hohenstaufen or Habsburg stamp, or of an
imperialism comparable with that of our own times. The Romans
made no attempt to penetrate the interior of Africa. Their later wars
were waged only for the preservation of what they already
possessed, not for the sake of ambition nor under a significant
stimulus from within. They could give up Germany and Mesopotamia
without regret.
If, in fine, we look at it all together—the expansion of the
Copernican world-picture into that aspect of stellar space that we
possess to-day; the development of Columbus’s discovery into a
worldwide command of the earth’s surface by the West; the
perspective of oil-painting and of tragedy-scene; the sublimed home-
feeling; the passion of our Civilization for swift transit, the conquest
of the air, the exploration of the Polar regions and the climbing of
almost impossible mountain-peaks—we see, emerging everywhere
the prime-symbol of the Faustian soul, Limitless Space. And those
specially (in form, uniquely) Western creations of the soul-myth
called “Will,” “Force” and “Deed” must be regarded as derivatives of
this prime-symbol.
 CHAPTER X
SOUL-IMAGE AND LIFE-FEELING
II
BUDDHISM, STOICISM, SOCIALISM
 CHAPTER X
SOUL-IMAGE AND LIFE-FEELING
 II
BUDDHISM, STOICISM, SOCIALISM

We are now at last in a position to approach the phenomenon of

Morale,[424] the intellectual interpretation of Life by itself, to ascend
the height from which it is possible to survey the widest and gravest
of all the fields of human thought. At the same time, we shall need
for this survey an objectivity such as no one has as yet set himself
seriously to gain. Whatever we may take Morale to be, it is no part of
Morale to provide its own analysis; and we shall get to grips with the
problem, not by considering what should be our acts and aims and
standards, but only by diagnosing the Western feeling in the very
form of the enunciation.
In this matter of morale, Western mankind, without exception, is
under the influence of an immense optical illusion. Everyone
demands something of the rest. We say “thou shalt” in the conviction
that so-and-so in fact will, can and must be changed or fashioned or
arranged conformably to the order, and our belief both in the efficacy
of, and in our title to give, such orders is unshakable. That, and
nothing short of it, is, for us, morale. In the ethics of the West
everything is direction, claim to power, will to affect the distant. Here
Luther is completely at one with Nietzsche, Popes with Darwinians,
Socialists with Jesuits; for one and all, the beginning of morale is a
claim to general and permanent validity. It is a necessity of the
Faustian soul that this should be so. He who thinks or teaches
“otherwise” is sinful, a backslider, a foe, and he is fought down
without mercy. You “shall,” the State “shall,” society “shall”—this form
of morale is to us self-evident; it represents the only real meaning
that we can attach to the word. But it was not so either in the
Classical, or in India, or in China. Buddha, for instance, gives a
pattern to take or to leave, and Epicurus offers counsel. Both
undeniably are forms of high morale, and neither contains the will-
element.
What we have entirely failed to observe is the peculiarity of moral
dynamic. If we allow that Socialism (in the ethical, not the economic,
sense) is that world-feeling which seeks to carry out its own views on
behalf of all, then we are all without exception, willingly or no,
wittingly or no, Socialists. Even Nietzsche, that most passionate
opponent of “herd morale,” was perfectly incapable of limiting his
zeal to himself in the Classical way. He thought only of “mankind,”
and he attacked everyone who differed from himself. Epicurus, on
the contrary, was heartily indifferent to others’ opinions and acts and
never wasted one thought on the “transformation” of mankind. He
and his friends were content that they were as they were and not
otherwise. The Classical ideal was indifference (ἀπάθεια) to the
course of the world—the very thing which it is the whole business of
Faustian mankind to master—and an important element both of Stoic
and of Epicurean philosophy was the recognition of a category of
things neither preferred nor rejected[425] (ἀδιάφορα). In Hellas there
was a pantheon of morales as there was of deities, as the peaceful
coexistence of Epicureans, Cynics and Stoics shows, but the
Nietzschean Zarathustra—though professedly standing beyond good
and evil—breathes from end to end the pain of seeing men to be
other than as he would have them be, and the deep and utterly un-
Classical desire to devote a life to their reformation—his own sense
of the word, naturally, being the only one. It is just this, the general
transvaluation, that makes ethical monotheism and—using the word
in a novel and deep sense—socialism. All world-improvers are
Socialists. And consequently there are no Classical world-improvers.
The moral imperative as the form of morale is Faustian and only
Faustian. It is wholly without importance that Schopenhauer denies
theoretically the will to live, or that Nietzsche will have it affirmed—
these are superficial differences, indicative of personal tastes and
temperaments. The important thing, that which makes
Schopenhauer the progenitor of ethical modernity, is that he too feels
the whole world as Will, as movement, force, direction. This basic
feeling is not merely the foundation of our ethics, it is itself our whole
ethics, and the rest are bye-blows. That which we call not merely
activity but action[426] is a historical conception through-and-through,
saturated with directional energy. It is the proof of being, the
dedication of being, in that sort of man whose ego possesses the
tendency to Future, who feels the momentary present not as
saturated being but as epoch, as turning-point, in a great complex of
becoming—and, moreover, feels it so of both his personal life and of
the life of history as a whole. Strength and distinctness of this
consciousness are the marks of higher Faustian man, but it is not
wholly absent in the most insignificant of the breed, and it
distinguishes his smallest acts from those of any and every Classical
man. It is the distinction between character and attitude, between
conscious becoming and simple accepted statuesque becomeness,
between will and suffering in tragedy.
In the world as seen by the Faustian’s eyes, everything is motion
with an aim. He himself lives only under that condition, for to him life
means struggling, overcoming, winning through. The struggle for
existence as ideal form of existence is implicit even in the Gothic age
(of the architecture of which it is visibly the foundation) and the 19th
Century has not invented it but merely put it into mechanical-
utilitarian form. In the Apollinian world there is no such directional
motion—the purposeless and aimless see-saw of Heraclitus’s
“becoming” (ἡ ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω) is irrelevant here—no
“Protestantism,” no “Sturm und Drang,” no ethical, intellectual or
artistic “revolution” to fight and destroy the existent. The Ionic and
Corinthian styles appear by the side of the Doric without setting up
any claim to sole and general validity, but the Renaissance expelled
the Gothic and Classicism expelled the Baroque styles, and the
history of every European literature is filled with battles over form-
problems. Even our monasticism, with its Templars, Franciscans,
Dominicans and the rest, takes shape as an order-movement, in
sharp contrast to the “askesis” of the Early-Christian hermit.
To go back upon this basic form of his existence, let alone
transform it, is entirely beyond the power of Faustian man. It is
presupposed even in efforts to resist it. One fights against
“advanced” ideas, but all the time he looks on his fight itself as an
advance. Another agitates for a “reversal,” but what he intends is in
fact a continuance of development. “Immoral” is only a new kind of
“moral” and sets up the same claim to primacy. The will-to-power is
intolerant—all that is Faustian wills to reign alone. The Apollinian
feeling, on the contrary, with its world of coexistent individual things,
is tolerant as a matter of course. But, if toleration is in keeping with
will-less Ataraxia, it is for the Western world with its oneness of
infinite soul-space and the singleness of its fabric of tensions the
sign either of self-deception or of fading-out. The Enlightenment of
the 18th Century was tolerant towards—that is, careless of—
differences between the various Christian creeds, but in respect of
its own relation to the Church as a whole, it was anything but tolerant
as soon as the power to be otherwise came to it. The Faustian
instinct, active, strong-willed, as vertical in tendency as its own
Gothic cathedrals, as upstanding as its own “ego habeo factum,”
looking into distance and Future, demands toleration—that is, room,
space—for its proper activity, but only for that. Consider, for instance,
how much of it the city democracy is prepared to accord to the
Church in respect of the latter’s management of religious powers,
while claiming for itself unlimited freedom to exercise its own and
adjusting the “common” law to conform thereto whenever it can.
Every “movement” means to win, while every Classical “attitude” only
wants to be and troubles itself little about the Ethos of the neighbour.
To fight for or against the trend of the times, to promote Reform or
Reaction, construction, reconstruction or destruction—all this is as
un-Classical as it is un-Indian. It is the old antithesis of Sophoclean
and Shakespearian tragedy, the tragedy of the man who only wants
to exist and that of the man who wants to win.
It is quite wrong to bind up Christianity with the moral imperative. It
was not Christianity that transformed Faustian man, but Faustian
man who transformed Christianity—and he not only made it a new
religion but also gave it a new moral direction. The “it” became “I,”
the passion-charged centre of the world, the foundation of the great
Sacrament of personal contrition. Will-to-power even in ethics, the
passionate striving to set up a proper morale as a universal truth,
and to enforce it upon humanity, to reinterpret or overcome or
destroy everything otherwise constituted—nothing is more
characteristically our own than this is. And in virtue of it the Gothic
springtime proceeded to a profound—and never yet appreciated—
inward transformation of the morale of Jesus. A quiet spiritual morale
welling from Magian feeling—a morale or conduct recommended as
potent for salvation, a morale the knowledge of which was
communicated as a special act of grace[427]—was recast as a morale
of imperative command.[428]
Every ethical system, whether it be of religious or of philosophical
origin, has associations with the great arts and especially with that of
architecture. It is in fact a structure of propositions of causal
character. Every truth that is intended for practical application is
propounded with a “because” and a “therefore.” There is
mathematical logic in them—in Buddha’s “Four Truths” as in Kant’s
“Critique of Practical Reason”[429] and in every popular catechism.
What is not in these doctrines of acquired truth is the uncritical logic
of the blood, which generates and matures those conduct-standards
(Sitten) of social classes and of practical men (e.g., the chivalry-
obligations in the time of the Crusades) that we only consciously
realize when someone infringes them. A systematic morale is, as it
were, an Ornament, and it manifests itself not only in precepts but
also in the style of drama and even in the choice of art-motives. The
Meander, for example, is a Stoic motive. The Doric column is the
very embodiment of the Antique life-ideal. And just because it was
so, it was the one Classical “order” which the Baroque style
necessarily and frankly excluded; indeed, even Renaissance art was
warned off it by some very deep spiritual instinct. Similarly with the
transformation of the Magian dome into the Russian roof-cupola,[430]
the Chinese landscape-architecture of devious paths, the Gothic
cathedral-tower. Each is an image of the particular and unique
morale which arose out of the waking-consciousness of the Culture.

II

The old riddles and perplexities now resolve themselves. There

are as many morales as there are Cultures, no more and no fewer.
Just as every painter and every musician has something in him
which, by force of inward necessity, never emerges into
consciousness but dominates a priori the form-language of his work
and differentiates that work from the work of every other Culture, so
every conception of Life held by a Culture-man possesses a priori (in
the very strictest Kantian sense of the phrase) a constitution that is
deeper than all momentary judgments and strivings and impresses
the style of these with the hall-mark of the particular Culture. The
individual may act morally or immorally, may do “good” or “evil” with
respect to the primary feeling of his Culture, but the theory of his
actions is not a result but a datum. Each Culture possesses its own
standards, the validity of which begins and ends with it. There is no
general morale of humanity.
It follows that there is not and cannot be any true “conversion” in
the deeper sense. Conscious behaviour of any kind that rests upon
convictions is a primary phenomenon, the basic tendency of an
existence developed into a “timeless truth.” It matters little what
words or pictures are employed to express it, whether it appears as
the predication of a deity or as the issue of philosophic meditation,
as proposition or as symbol, as proclamation of proper or confutation
of alien convictions. It is enough that it is there. It can be wakened
and it can be put theoretically in the form of doctrine, it can change
or improve its intellectual vehicle but it cannot be begotten. Just as
we are incapable of altering our world-feeling—so incapable that
even in trying to alter it we have to follow the old lines and confirm
instead of overthrowing it—so also we are powerless to alter the
ethical basis of our waking being. A certain verbal distinction has
sometimes been drawn between ethics the science and morale the
duty, but, as we understand it, the point of duty does not arise. We
are no more capable of converting a man to a morale alien to his
being than the Renaissance was capable of reviving the Classical or
of making anything but a Southernized Gothic, an anti-Gothic, out of
Apollinian motives. We may talk to-day of transvaluing all our values;
we may, as Megalopolitans, “go back to” Buddhism or Paganism or a
romantic Catholicism; we may champion as Anarchists an
individualist or as Socialists a collectivist ethic—but in spite of all we
do, will and feel the same. A conversion to Theosophy or
Freethinking or one of the present-day transitions from a supposed
Christianity to a supposed Atheism (or vice versa) is an alteration of
words and notions, of the religious or intellectual surface, no more.
None of our “movements” have changed man.
 A strict morphology of all the morales is a task for the future. Here,
too, Nietzsche has taken the first and essential step towards the new
standpoint. But he has failed to observe his own condition that the
thinker shall place himself “beyond good and evil.” He tried to be at
once sceptic and prophet, moral critic and moral gospeller. It cannot
be done. One cannot be a first-class psychologist as long as one is
still a Romantic. And so here, as in all his crucial penetrations, he got
as far as the door—and stood outside it. And so far, no one has done
any better. We have been blind and uncomprehending before the
immense wealth that there is in the moral as in other form-
languages. Even the sceptic has not understood his task; at bottom
he, like others, sets up his own notion of morale, drawn from his
particular disposition and private taste, as standard by which to
measure others. The modern revolutionaires—Stirner, Ibsen,
Strindberg, Shaw—are just the same; they have only managed to
hide the facts (from themselves as well as from others) behind new
formulæ and catchwords.
But a morale, like a sculpture, a music, a painting-art, is a self-
contained form-world expressing a life-feeling; it is a datum,
fundamentally unalterable, an inward necessity. It is ever true within
its historical circle, ever untrue outside it. As we have seen already,
[431]
what his several works are to the poet or musician or painter, that
its several art-genera are for the higher individual that we call the
Culture, viz., organic units; and that oil-painting as a whole, act-
sculpture as a whole and contrapuntal music as a whole, and
rhymed lyric and so on are all epoch-making, and as such take rank
as major symbols of Life. In the history of the Culture as in that of the
individual existence, we are dealing with the actualization of the
possible; it is the story of an inner spirituality becoming the style of a
world. By the side of these great form-units, which grow and fulfil
themselves and close down within a predeterminate series of human
generations, which endure for a few centuries and pass irrevocably
into death, we see the group of Faustian morals and the sum of
Apollinian morals also as individuals of the higher order. That they
are, is Destiny. They are data, and revelation (or scientific insight, as
the case may be) only put them into shape for the consciousness.
 There is something, hardly to be described, that assembles all the
theories from Hesiod and Sophocles to Plato and the Stoa and
opposes them collectively to all that was taught from Francis of
Assisi and Abelard to Ibsen and Nietzsche, and even the morale of
Jesus is only the noblest expression of a general morale that was
put into other forms by Marcion and Mani, by Philo and Plotinus, by
Epictetus, Augustine and Proclus. All Classical ethic is an ethic of
attitude, all Western an ethic of deed. And, likewise, the sum of all
Indian and the sum of all Chinese systems forms each a world of its
own.

III

Every Classical ethic that we know or can conceive of constitutes

man an individual static entity, a body among bodies, and all
Western valuations relate to him as a centre of effect in an infinite
generality. Ethical Socialism is neither more nor less than the
sentiment of action-at-a-distance, the moral pathos of the third
dimension; and the root-feeling of Care—care for those who are with
us, and for those who are to follow—is its emblem in the sky.
Consequently there is for us something socialistic in the aspect of
the Egyptian Culture, while the opposite tendency to immobile
attitude, to non-desire, to static self-containedness of the individual,
recalls the Indian ethic and the man formed by it. The seated
Buddha-statue (“looking at its navel”) and Zeno’s Ataraxia are not
altogether alien to one another. The ethical ideal of Classical man
was that which is led up to in his tragedy, and revealed in its
Katharsis. This in its last depths means the purgation of the
Apollinian soul from its burden of what is not Apollinian, not free from
the elements of distance and direction, and to understand it we have
to recognize that Stoicism is simply the mature form of it. That which
the drama effected in a solemn hour, the Stoa wished to spread over
the whole field of life; viz., statuesque steadiness and will-less ethos.
Now, is not this conception of κάθαρσις closely akin to the Buddhist
ideal of Nirvana, which as a formula is no doubt very “late” but as an
essence is thoroughly Indian and traceable even from Vedic times?
And does not this kinship bring ideal Classical man and ideal Indian
man very close to one another and separate them both from that
man whose ethic is manifested in the Shakespearian tragedy of
dynamic evolution and catastrophe? When one thinks of it, there is
nothing preposterous in the idea of Socrates, Epicurus, and
especially Diogenes, sitting by the Ganges, whereas Diogenes in a
Western megalopolis would be an unimportant fool. Nor, on the other
hand, is Frederick William I of Prussia, the prototype of the Socialist
in the grand sense, unthinkable in the polity of the Nile, whereas in
Periclean Athens he is impossible.
Had Nietzsche regarded his own times with fewer prejudices and
less disposition to romantic championship of certain ethical
creations, he would have perceived that a specifically Christian
morale of compassion in his sense does not exist on West-European
soil. We must not let the words of humane formulæ mislead us as to
their real significance. Between the morale that one has and the
morale that one thinks one has, there is a relation which is very
obscure and very unsteady, and it is just here that an incorruptible
psychology would be invaluable. Compassion is a dangerous word,
and neither Nietzsche himself—for all his maestria—nor anyone else
has yet investigated the meaning—conceptual and effective—of the
word at different times. The Christian morale of Origen’s time was
quite different from the Christian morale of St. Francis’s. This is not
the place to enquire what Faustian compassion—sacrifice or
ebullience or again race-instinct in a chivalrous society[432]—means
as against the fatalistic Magian-Christian kind, how far it is to be
conceived as action-at-a-distance and practical dynamic, or (from
another angle) as a proud soul’s demand upon itself, or again as the
utterance of an imperious distance-feeling. A fixed stock of ethical
phrases, such as we have possessed since the Renaissance, has to
cover a multitude of different ideas and a still greater multitude of
different meanings. When a mankind so historically and
retrospectively disposed as we are accepts the superficial as the real
sense, and regards ideals as subject-matter for mere knowing, it is
really evidencing its veneration for the past—in this particular
instance, for religious tradition. The text of a conviction is never a
test of its reality, for man is rarely conscious of his own beliefs.
Catchwords and doctrines are always more or less popular and
external as compared with deep spiritual actualities. Our theoretical
reverence for the propositions of the New Testament is in fact of the
same order as the theoretical reverence of the Renaissance and of
Classicism for antique art; the one has no more transformed the
spirit of men than the other has transformed the spirit of works. The
oft-quoted cases of the Mendicant Orders, the Moravians and the
Salvation Army prove by their very rarity, and even more by the
slightness of the effects that they have been able to produce, that
they are exceptions in a quite different generality—namely, the
Faustian-Christian morale. That morale will not indeed be found
formulated, either by Luther or by the Council of Trent, but all
Christians of the great style—Innocent III and Calvin, Loyola and
Savonarola, Pascal and St. Theresa—have had it in them, even in
unconscious contradiction to their own formal teachings.
We have only to compare the purely Western conception of the
manly virtue that is designated by Nietzsche’s “moralinfrei” virtù, the
grandezza of Spanish and the grandeur of French Baroque, with that
very feminine ἀρετή of the Hellenic ideal, of which the practical
application is presented to us as capacity for enjoyment (ἡδονή),
placidity of disposition (γαλήνη, ἀπάθεια), absence of wants and
demands, and, above all, the so typical ἀταραξία. What Nietzsche
called the Blond Beast and conceived to be embodied in the type of
Renaissance Man that he so overvalued (for it is really only a jackal
counterfeit of the great Hohenstaufen Germans) is the utter
antithesis to the type that is presented in every Classical ethic
without exception and embodied in every Classical man of worth.
The Faustian Culture has produced a long series of granite-men, the
Classical never a one. For Pericles and Themistocles were soft
natures in tune with Attic καλοκἀγαθία, and Alexander was a
Romantic who never woke up, Cæsar a shrewd reckoner. Hannibal,
the alien, was the only “Mann” amongst them all. The men of the
early time, as Homer presents them to our judgment—the
Odysseuses and Ajaxes—would have cut a queer figure among the
chevaliers of the Crusades. Very feminine natures, too, are capable
of brutality—a rebound-brutality of their own—and Greek cruelty was
of this kind. But in the North the great Saxon, Franconian and
Hohenstaufen emperors appear on the very threshold of the Culture,
surrounded by giant-men like Henry the Lion and Gregory VII. Then
come the men of the Renaissance, of the struggle of the two Roses,
of the Huguenot Wars, the Spanish Conquistadores, the Prussian
electors and kings, Napoleon, Bismarck, Rhodes. What other Culture
has exhibited the like of these? Where in all Hellenic history is so
powerful a scene as that of 1176—the Battle of Legnano as
foreground, the suddenly-disclosed strife of the great Hohenstaufen
and the great Welf as background? The heroes of the Great
Migrations, the Spanish chivalry, Prussian discipline, Napoleonic
energy—how much of the Classical is there in these men and
things? And where, on the heights of Faustian morale, from the
Crusades to the World War, do we find anything of the “slave-
morale,” the meek resignation, the deaconess’s Caritas?[433] Only in
pious and honoured words, nowhere else. The type of the very
priesthood is Faustian; think of those magnificent bishops of the old
German empire who on horseback led their flocks into the wild
battle,[434] or those Popes who could force submission on a Henry IV
and a Frederick II, of the Teutonic Knights in the Ostmark, of Luther’s
challenge in which the old Northern heathendom rose up against old
Roman, of the great Cardinals (Richelieu, Mazarin, Fleury) who
shaped France. That is Faustian morale, and one must be blind
indeed if one does not see it efficient in the whole field of West-
European history. And it is only through such grand instances of
worldly passion which express the consciousness of a mission that
we are able to understand those of grand spiritual passion, of the
upright and forthright Caritas which nothing can resist, the dynamic
charity that is so utterly unlike Classical moderation and Early-
Christian mildness. There is a hardness in the sort of com-passion
that was practised by the German mystics, the German and Spanish
military Orders, the French and English Calvinists. In the Russian,
the Raskolnikov, type of charity a soul melts into the fraternity of
souls, in the Faustian it arises out of it. Here too “ego habeo factum”
is the formula. Personal charity is the justification before God of the
Person, the individual.
This is the reason why "compassion"-morale, in the everyday
sense, always respected by us so far as words go, and sometimes
hoped for by the thinker, is never actualized. Kant rejected it with
decision, and in fact it is in profound contradiction with the
Categorical Imperative, which sees the meaning of Life to lie in
actions and not in surrender to soft opinions. Nietzsche’s “slave-
morale” is a phantom, his master-morale is a reality. It does not
require formulation to be effective—it is there, and has been from of
old. Take away his romantic Borgia-mask and his nebulous vision of
supermen, and what is left of his man is Faustian man himself, as he
is to-day and as he was even in saga-days, the type of an energetic,
imperative and dynamic Culture. However it may have been in the
Classical world, our great well-doers are the great doers whose
forethought and care affects millions, the great statesmen and
organizers. "A higher sort of men, who thanks to their
preponderance of will, knowledge, wealth and influence make use of
democratic Europe as their aptest and most mobile tool, in order to
bring into their own hands the destinies of the Earth and as artists to
shape ‘man’ himself. Enough—the time is coming when men will
unlearn and relearn the art of politics." So Nietzsche delivered
himself in one of the unpublished drafts that are so much more
concrete than the finished works. “We must either breed political
capacities, or else be ruined by the democracy that has been forced
upon us by the failure of the older alternatives,”[435] says Shaw in
Man and Superman. Limited though his philosophic horizon is in
general, Shaw has the advantage over Nietzsche of more practical
schooling and less ideology, and the figure of the multimillionaire
Undershaft in Major Barbara translates the Superman-ideal into the
unromantic language of the modern age (which in truth is its real
source for Nietzsche also, though it reached him indirectly through
Malthus and Darwin). It is these fact-men of the grand style who are
the representatives to-day of the Will-to-Power over other men’s
destinies and therefore of the Faustian ethic generally. Men of this
sort do not broadcast their millions to dreamers, “artists,” weaklings
and “down-and-outs” to satisfy a boundless benevolence; they
employ them for those who like themselves count as material for the
Future. They pursue a purpose with them. They make a centre of
force for the existence of generations which outlives the single lives.
The mere money, too, can develop ideas and make history, and
Rhodes—precursor of a type that will be significant indeed in the
21st Century—provided, in disposing of his possessions by will, that
it should do so. It is a shallow judgment, and one incapable of
inwardly understanding history, that cannot distinguish the literary
chatter of popular social-moralists and humanity-apostles from the
deep ethical instincts of the West-European Civilization.
Socialism—in its highest and not its street-corner sense—is, like
every other Faustian ideal, exclusive. It owes its popularity only to
the fact that it is completely misunderstood even by its exponents,
who present it as a sum of rights instead of as one of duties, an
abolition instead of an intensification of the Kantian imperative, a
slackening instead of a tautening of directional energy. The trivial
and superficial tendency towards ideals of “welfare,” “freedom,”
“humanity,” the doctrine of the “greatest happiness of the greatest
number,” are mere negations of the Faustian ethic—a very different
matter from the tendency of Epicureanism towards the ideal of
“happiness,” for the condition of happiness was the actual sum and
substance of the Classical ethic. Here precisely is an instance of
sentiments, to all outward appearance much the same, but meaning
in the one case everything and in the other nothing. From this point
of view, we might describe the content of the Classical ethic as
philanthropy, a boon conferred by the individual upon himself, his
soma. The view has Aristotle on its side, for it is exactly in this sense
that he uses the word φιλάνθρωπος, which the best heads of the
Classicist period, above all Lessing, found so puzzling. Aristotle
describes the effect of the Attic tragedy on the Attic spectator as
philanthropic. Its Peripeteia relieves him from compassion with
himself. A sort of theory of master-morale and slave-morale existed
also in the early Hellenism, in Callicles for example—naturally, under
strictly corporeal-Euclidean postulates. The ideal of the first class is
Alcibiades. He did exactly what at the moment seemed to him best
for his own person, and he is felt to be, and admired as, the type of
Classical Kalokagathia. But Protagoras is still more distinct, with his
famous proposition—essentially ethical in intention—that man (each
man for himself) is the measure of things. That is master-morale in a
statuesque soul.

IV
 When Nietzsche wrote down the phrase “transvaluation of all
values” for the first time, the spiritual movement of the centuries in
which we are living found at last its formula. Transvaluation of all
values is the most fundamental character of every civilization. For it
is the beginning of a Civilization that it remoulds all the forms of the
Culture that went before, understands them otherwise, practises
them in a different way. It begets no more, but only reinterprets, and
herein lies the negativeness common to all periods of this character.
It assumes that the genuine act of creation has already occurred,
and merely enters upon an inheritance of big actualities. In the Late-
Classical, we find the event taking place inside Hellenistic-Roman
Stoicism, that is, the long death-struggle of the Apollinian soul. In the
interval from Socrates—who was the spiritual father of the Stoa and
in whom the first signs of inward impoverishment and city-
intellectualism became visible—to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius,
every existence-ideal of the old Classical underwent transvaluation.
In the case of India, the transvaluation of Brahman life was complete
by the time of King Asoka (250 B.C.), as we can see by comparing
the parts of the Vedanta put into writing before and after Buddha.
And ourselves? Even now the ethical socialism of the Faustian soul,
its fundamental ethic, as we have seen, is being worked upon by the
process of transvaluation as that soul is walled up in the stone of the
great cities. Rousseau is the ancestor of this socialism; he stands,
like Socrates and Buddha, as the representative spokesman of a
great Civilization. Rousseau’s rejection of all great Culture-forms and
all significant conventions, his famous “Return to the state of
Nature,” his practical rationalism, are unmistakable evidences. Each
of the three buried a millennium of spiritual depth. Each proclaimed
his gospel to mankind, but it was to the mankind of the city
intelligentsia, which was tired of the town and the Late Culture, and
whose “pure” (i.e., soulless) reason longed to be free from them and
their authoritative form and their hardness, from the symbolism with
which it was no longer in living communion and which therefore it
detested. The Culture was annihilated by discussion. If we pass in
review the great 19th-Century names with which we associate the
march of this great drama—Schopenhauer, Hebbel, Wagner,
Nietzsche, Ibsen, Strindberg—we comprehend in a glance that