Beyond Good and Evil
by
Friedrich Nietzsche
VIII: Peoples and Countries
PrefaceI: Prejudices of Philosophers
II: The Free Spirit
III: The Religious Mood
IV: Apophthegms and Interludes
V: The Natural History of Morals
VI: We Scholars
VII: Our Virtues
VIII: Peoples and Countries
IX: What is Noble?
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Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.
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[4689]
[4690] PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES
[4691]
[4692]
[4693] 240. I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard Wagner's
[4694] overture to the Mastersinger: it is a piece of magnificent,
[4695] gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art, which has the pride to
[4696] presuppose two centuries of music as still living, in order that
[4697] it may be understood:--it is an honour to Germans that such a
[4698] pride did not miscalculate! What flavours and forces, what
[4699] seasons and climes do we not find mingled in it! It impresses us
[4700] at one time as ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter, and
[4701] too modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously traditional, it
[4702] is not infrequently roguish, still oftener rough and coarse--it
[4703] has fire and courage, and at the same time the loose, dun-
[4704] coloured skin of fruits which ripen too late. It flows broad and
[4705] full: and suddenly there is a moment of inexplicable hesitation,
[4706] like a gap that opens between cause and effect, an oppression
[4707] that makes us dream, almost a nightmare; but already it broadens
[4708] and widens anew, the old stream of delight-the most manifold
[4709] delight,--of old and new happiness; including ESPECIALLY the joy
[4710] of the artist in himself, which he refuses to conceal, his
[4711] astonished, happy cognizance of his mastery of the expedients
[4712] here employed, the new, newly acquired, imperfectly tested
[4713] expedients of art which he apparently betrays to us. All in all,
[4714] however, no beauty, no South, nothing of the delicate southern
[4715] clearness of the sky, nothing of grace, no dance, hardly a will
[4716] to logic; a certain clumsiness even, which is also emphasized, as
[4717] though the artist wished to say to us: "It is part of my
[4718] intention"; a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily barbaric
[4719] and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and venerable conceits and
[4720] witticisms; something German in the best and worst sense of the
[4721] word, something in the German style, manifold, formless, and
[4722] inexhaustible; a certain German potency and super-plenitude of
[4723] soul, which is not afraid to hide itself under the RAFFINEMENTS
[4724] of decadence--which, perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a
[4725] real, genuine token of the German soul, which is at the same time
[4726] young and aged, too ripe and yet still too rich in futurity. This
[4727] kind of music expresses best what I think of the Germans: they
[4728] belong to the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow--
[4729] THEY HAVE AS YET NO TODAY.
[4730]
[4731] 241. We "good Europeans," we also have hours when we allow
[4732] ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a plunge and relapse into
[4733] old loves and narrow views--I have just given an example of it--
[4734] hours of national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all other
[4735] sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment. Duller spirits may
[4736] perhaps only get done with what confines its operations in us to
[4737] hours and plays itself out in hours--in a considerable time: some
[4738] in half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to the speed
[4739] and strength with which they digest and "change their material."
[4740] Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even
[4741] in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century ere
[4742] they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and
[4743] soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say,
[4744] to "good Europeanism." And while digressing on this possibility,
[4745] I happen to become an ear-witness of a conversation between two
[4746] old patriots--they were evidently both hard of hearing and
[4747] consequently spoke all the louder. "HE has as much, and knows as
[4748] much, philosophy as a peasant or a corps-student," said the one--
[4749] "he is still innocent. But what does that matter nowadays! It is
[4750] the age of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything
[4751] that is massive. And so also in politicis. A statesman who rears
[4752] up for them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of empire and
[4753] power, they call 'great'--what does it matter that we more
[4754] prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile give up the old
[4755] belief that it is only the great thought that gives greatness to
[4756] an action or affair. Supposing a statesman were to bring his
[4757] people into the position of being obliged henceforth to practise
[4758] 'high politics,' for which they were by nature badly endowed and
[4759] prepared, so that they would have to sacrifice their old and
[4760] reliable virtues, out of love to a new and doubtful mediocrity;--
[4761] supposing a statesman were to condemn his people generally to
[4762] 'practise politics,' when they have hitherto had something better
[4763] to do and think about, and when in the depths of their souls they
[4764] have been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of
[4765] the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the
[4766] essentially politics-practising nations;--supposing such a
[4767] statesman were to stimulate the slumbering passions and avidities
[4768] of his people, were to make a stigma out of their former
[4769] diffidence and delight in aloofness, an offence out of their
[4770] exoticism and hidden permanency, were to depreciate their most
[4771] radical proclivities, subvert their consciences, make their minds
[4772] narrow, and their tastes 'national'--what! a statesman who should
[4773] do all this, which his people would have to do penance for
[4774] throughout their whole future, if they had a future, such a
[4775] statesman would be GREAT, would he?"--"Undoubtedly!" replied the
[4776] other old patriot vehemently, "otherwise he COULD NOT have done
[4777] it! It was mad perhaps to wish such a thing! But perhaps
[4778] everything great has been just as mad at its commencement!"--
[4779] "Misuse of words!" cried his interlocutor, contradictorily--
[4780] "strong! strong! Strong and mad! NOT great!"--The old men had
[4781] obviously become heated as they thus shouted their "truths" in
[4782] each other's faces, but I, in my happiness and apartness,
[4783] considered how soon a stronger one may become master of the
[4784] strong, and also that there is a compensation for the
[4785] intellectual superficialising of a nation--namely, in the
[4786] deepening of another.
[4787]
[4788] 242. Whether we call it "civilization," or "humanising," or
[4789] "progress," which now distinguishes the European, whether we call
[4790] it simply, without praise or blame, by the political formula the
[4791] DEMOCRATIC movement in Europe--behind all the moral and political
[4792] foregrounds pointed to by such formulas, an immense PHYSIOLOGICAL
[4793] PROCESS goes on, which is ever extending the process of the
[4794] assimilation of Europeans, their increasing detachment from the
[4795] conditions under which, climatically and hereditarily, united
[4796] races originate, their increasing independence of every definite
[4797] milieu, that for centuries would fain inscribe itself with equal
[4798] demands on soul and body,--that is to say, the slow emergence of
[4799] an essentially SUPER-NATIONAL and nomadic species of man, who
[4800] possesses, physiologically speaking, a maximum of the art and
[4801] power of adaptation as his typical distinction. This process of
[4802] the EVOLVING EUROPEAN, which can be retarded in its TEMPO by
[4803] great relapses, but will perhaps just gain and grow thereby in
[4804] vehemence and depth--the still-raging storm and stress of
[4805] "national sentiment" pertains to it, and also the anarchism which
[4806] is appearing at present--this process will probably arrive at
[4807] results on which its naive propagators and panegyrists, the
[4808] apostles of "modern ideas," would least care to reckon. The same
[4809] new conditions under which on an average a levelling and
[4810] mediocrising of man will take place--a useful, industrious,
[4811] variously serviceable, and clever gregarious man--are in the
[4812] highest degree suitable to give rise to exceptional men of the
[4813] most dangerous and attractive qualities. For, while the capacity
[4814] for adaptation, which is every day trying changing conditions,
[4815] and begins a new work with every generation, almost with every
[4816] decade, makes the POWERFULNESS of the type impossible; while the
[4817] collective impression of such future Europeans will probably be
[4818] that of numerous, talkative, weak-willed, and very handy workmen
[4819] who REQUIRE a master, a commander, as they require their daily
[4820] bread; while, therefore, the democratising of Europe will tend to
[4821] the production of a type prepared for SLAVERY in the most subtle
[4822] sense of the term: the STRONG man will necessarily in individual
[4823] and exceptional cases, become stronger and richer than he has
[4824] perhaps ever been before--owing to the unprejudicedness of his
[4825] schooling, owing to the immense variety of practice, art, and
[4826] disguise. I meant to say that the democratising of Europe is at
[4827] the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of
[4828] TYRANTS--taking the word in all its meanings, even in its most
[4829] spiritual sense.
[4830]
[4831] 243. I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving rapidly towards
[4832] the constellation Hercules: and I hope that the men on this earth
[4833] will do like the sun. And we foremost, we good Europeans!
[4834]
[4835] 244. There was a time when it was customary to call Germans
[4836] "deep" by way of distinction; but now that the most successful
[4837] type of new Germanism is covetous of quite other honours, and
[4838] perhaps misses "smartness" in all that has depth, it is almost
[4839] opportune and patriotic to doubt whether we did not formerly
[4840] deceive ourselves with that commendation: in short, whether
[4841] German depth is not at bottom something different and worse--and
[4842] something from which, thank God, we are on the point of
[4843] successfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then, to relearn with
[4844] regard to German depth; the only thing necessary for the purpose
[4845] is a little vivisection of the German soul.--The German soul is
[4846] above all manifold, varied in its source, aggregated and super-
[4847] imposed, rather than actually built: this is owing to its origin.
[4848] A German who would embolden himself to assert: "Two souls, alas,
[4849] dwell in my breast," would make a bad guess at the truth, or,
[4850] more correctly, he would come far short of the truth about the
[4851] number of souls. As a people made up of the most extraordinary
[4852] mixing and mingling of races, perhaps even with a preponderance
[4853] of the pre-Aryan element as the "people of the centre" in every
[4854] sense of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more ample,
[4855] more contradictory, more unknown, more incalculable, more
[4856] surprising, and even more terrifying than other peoples are to
[4857] themselves:--they escape DEFINITION, and are thereby alone the
[4858] despair of the French. It IS characteristic of the Germans that
[4859] the question: "What is German?" never dies out among them.
[4860] Kotzebue certainly knew his Germans well enough: "We are known,"
[4861] they cried jubilantly to him--but Sand also thought he knew them.
[4862] Jean Paul knew what he was doing when he declared himself
[4863] incensed at Fichte's lying but patriotic flatteries and
[4864] exaggerations,--but it is probable that Goethe thought
[4865] differently about Germans from Jean Paul, even though he
[4866] acknowledged him to be right with regard to Fichte. It is a
[4867] question what Goethe really thought about the Germans?--But about
[4868] many things around him he never spoke explicitly, and all his
[4869] life he knew how to keep an astute silence--probably he had good
[4870] reason for it. It is certain that it was not the "Wars of
[4871] Independence" that made him look up more joyfully, any more than
[4872] it was the French Revolution,--the event on account of which he
[4873] RECONSTRUCTED his "Faust," and indeed the whole problem of "man,"
[4874] was the appearance of Napoleon. There are words of Goethe in
[4875] which he condemns with impatient severity, as from a foreign
[4876] land, that which Germans take a pride in, he once defined the
[4877] famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence towards its own and
[4878] others' weaknesses." Was he wrong? it is characteristic of
[4879] Germans that one is seldom entirely wrong about them. The German
[4880] soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves, hiding-
[4881] places, and dungeons therein, its disorder has much of the charm
[4882] of the mysterious, the German is well acquainted with the bypaths
[4883] to chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the German loves
[4884] the clouds and all that is obscure, evolving, crepuscular, damp,
[4885] and shrouded, it seems to him that everything uncertain,
[4886] undeveloped, self-displacing, and growing is "deep". The German
[4887] himself does not EXIST, he is BECOMING, he is "developing
[4888] himself". "Development" is therefore the essentially German
[4889] discovery and hit in the great domain of philosophical formulas,--
[4890] a ruling idea, which, together with German beer and German music,
[4891] is labouring to Germanise all Europe. Foreigners are astonished
[4892] and attracted by the riddles which the conflicting nature at the
[4893] basis of the German soul propounds to them (riddles which Hegel
[4894] systematised and Richard Wagner has in the end set to music).
[4895] "Good-natured and spiteful"--such a juxtaposition, preposterous in
[4896] the case of every other people, is unfortunately only too often
[4897] justified in Germany one has only to live for a while among
[4898] Swabians to know this! The clumsiness of the German scholar and
[4899] his social distastefulness agree alarmingly well with his physical
[4900] rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the Gods have
[4901] learnt to be afraid. If any one wishes to see the "German soul"
[4902] demonstrated ad oculos, let him only look at German taste, at
[4903] German arts and manners what boorish indifference to "taste"! How
[4904] the noblest and the commonest stand there in juxtaposition! How
[4905] disorderly and how rich is the whole constitution of this soul!
[4906] The German DRAGS at his soul, he drags at everything he
[4907] experiences. He digests his events badly; he never gets "done"
[4908] with them; and German depth is often only a difficult, hesitating
[4909] "digestion." And just as all chronic invalids, all dyspeptics like
[4910] what is convenient, so the German loves "frankness" and "honesty";
[4911] it is so CONVENIENT to be frank and honest!--This confidingness,
[4912] this complaisance, this showing-the-cards of German HONESTY, is
[4913] probably the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the
[4914] German is up to nowadays: it is his proper Mephistophelean art;
[4915] with this he can "still achieve much"! The German lets himself go,
[4916] and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German eyes--and
[4917] other countries immediately confound him with his
[4918] dressing-gown!--I meant to say that, let "German depth" be what it
[4919] will--among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh
[4920] at it--we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its
[4921] appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old
[4922] reputation as a people of depth for Prussian "smartness," and
[4923] Berlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to pose, and LET
[4924] itself be regarded, as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and
[4925] foolish: it might even be--profound to do so! Finally, we should
[4926] do honour to our name--we are not called the "TIUSCHE VOLK"
[4927] (deceptive people) for nothing. . . .
[4928]
[4929] 245. The "good old" time is past, it sang itself out in Mozart--
[4930] how happy are WE that his ROCOCO still speaks to us, that his
[4931] "good company," his tender enthusiasm, his childish delight in
[4932] the Chinese and its flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his
[4933] longing for the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful,
[4934] and his belief in the South, can still appeal to SOMETHING LEFT
[4935] in us! Ah, some time or other it will be over with it!--but who
[4936] can doubt that it will be over still sooner with the intelligence
[4937] and taste for Beethoven! For he was only the last echo of a break
[4938] and transition in style, and NOT, like Mozart, the last echo of a
[4939] great European taste which had existed for centuries. Beethoven
[4940] is the intermediate event between an old mellow soul that is
[4941] constantly breaking down, and a future over-young soul that is
[4942] always COMING; there is spread over his music the twilight of
[4943] eternal loss and eternal extravagant hope,--the same light in
[4944] which Europe was bathed when it dreamed with Rousseau, when it
[4945] danced round the Tree of Liberty of the Revolution, and finally
[4946] almost fell down in adoration before Napoleon. But how rapidly
[4947] does THIS very sentiment now pale, how difficult nowadays is even
[4948] the APPREHENSION of this sentiment, how strangely does the
[4949] language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley, and Byron sound to our
[4950] ear, in whom COLLECTIVELY the same fate of Europe was able to
[4951] SPEAK, which knew how to SING in Beethoven!--Whatever German
[4952] music came afterwards, belongs to Romanticism, that is to say, to
[4953] a movement which, historically considered, was still shorter,
[4954] more fleeting, and more superficial than that great interlude,
[4955] the transition of Europe from Rousseau to Napoleon, and to the
[4956] rise of democracy. Weber--but what do WE care nowadays for
[4957] "Freischutz" and "Oberon"! Or Marschner's "Hans Heiling" and
[4958] "Vampyre"! Or even Wagner's "Tannhauser"! That is extinct,
[4959] although not yet forgotten music. This whole music of
[4960] Romanticism, besides, was not noble enough, was not musical
[4961] enough, to maintain its position anywhere but in the theatre and
[4962] before the masses; from the beginning it was second-rate music,
[4963] which was little thought of by genuine musicians. It was
[4964] different with Felix Mendelssohn, that halcyon master, who, on
[4965] account of his lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired
[4966] admiration, and was equally quickly forgotten: as the beautiful
[4967] EPISODE of German music. But with regard to Robert Schumann, who
[4968] took things seriously, and has been taken seriously from the
[4969] first--he was the last that founded a school,--do we not now
[4970] regard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance, that this
[4971] very Romanticism of Schumann's has been surmounted? Schumann,
[4972] fleeing into the "Saxon Switzerland" of his soul, with a half
[4973] Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assuredly not like
[4974] Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron!)--his MANFRED music is a
[4975] mistake and a misunderstanding to the extent of injustice;
[4976] Schumann, with his taste, which was fundamentally a PETTY taste
[4977] (that is to say, a dangerous propensity--doubly dangerous among
[4978] Germans--for quiet lyricism and intoxication of the feelings),
[4979] going constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring, a noble
[4980] weakling who revelled in nothing but anonymous joy and sorrow,
[4981] from the beginning a sort of girl and NOLI ME TANGERE--this
[4982] Schumann was already merely a GERMAN event in music, and no
[4983] longer a European event, as Beethoven had been, as in a still
[4984] greater degree Mozart had been; with Schumann German music was
[4985] threatened with its greatest danger, that of LOSING THE VOICE FOR
[4986] THE SOUL OF EUROPE and sinking into a merely national affair.
[4987]
[4988] 246. What a torture are books written in German to a reader who
[4989] has a THIRD ear! How indignantly he stands beside the slowly
[4990] turning swamp of sounds without tune and rhythms without dance,
[4991] which Germans call a "book"! And even the German who READS books!
[4992] How lazily, how reluctantly, how badly he reads! How many Germans
[4993] know, and consider it obligatory to know, that there is ART in
[4994] every good sentence--art which must be divined, if the sentence
[4995] is to be understood! If there is a misunderstanding about its
[4996] TEMPO, for instance, the sentence itself is misunderstood! That
[4997] one must not be doubtful about the rhythm-determining syllables,
[4998] that one should feel the breaking of the too-rigid symmetry as
[4999] intentional and as a charm, that one should lend a fine and
[5000] patient ear to every STACCATO and every RUBATO, that one should
[5001] divine the sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs,
[5002] and how delicately and richly they can be tinted and retinted in
[5003] the order of their arrangement--who among book-reading Germans is
[5004] complaisant enough to recognize such duties and requirements, and
[5005] to listen to so much art and intention in language? After all,
[5006] one just "has no ear for it"; and so the most marked contrasts of
[5007] style are not heard, and the most delicate artistry is as it were
[5008] SQUANDERED on the deaf.--These were my thoughts when I noticed
[5009] how clumsily and unintuitively two masters in the art of prose-
[5010] writing have been confounded: one, whose words drop down
[5011] hesitatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp cave--he
[5012] counts on their dull sound and echo; and another who manipulates
[5013] his language like a flexible sword, and from his arm down into
[5014] his toes feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-sharp
[5015] blade, which wishes to bite, hiss, and cut.
[5016]
[5017] 247. How little the German style has to do with harmony and with
[5018] the ear, is shown by the fact that precisely our good musicians
[5019] themselves write badly. The German does not read aloud, he does
[5020] not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he has put his ears
[5021] away in the drawer for the time. In antiquity when a man read--
[5022] which was seldom enough--he read something to himself, and in a
[5023] loud voice; they were surprised when any one read silently, and
[5024] sought secretly the reason of it. In a loud voice: that is to
[5025] say, with all the swellings, inflections, and variations of key
[5026] and changes of TEMPO, in which the ancient PUBLIC world took
[5027] delight. The laws of the written style were then the same as
[5028] those of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly on the
[5029] surprising development and refined requirements of the ear and
[5030] larynx; partly on the strength, endurance, and power of the
[5031] ancient lungs. In the ancient sense, a period is above all a
[5032] physiological whole, inasmuch as it is comprised in one breath.
[5033] Such periods as occur in Demosthenes and Cicero, swelling twice
[5034] and sinking twice, and all in one breath, were pleasures to the
[5035] men of ANTIQUITY, who knew by their own schooling how to
[5036] appreciate the virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty in
[5037] the deliverance of such a period;--WE have really no right to the
[5038] BIG period, we modern men, who are short of breath in every
[5039] sense! Those ancients, indeed, were all of them dilettanti in
[5040] speaking, consequently connoisseurs, consequently critics--they
[5041] thus brought their orators to the highest pitch; in the same
[5042] manner as in the last century, when all Italian ladies and
[5043] gentlemen knew how to sing, the virtuosoship of song (and with it
[5044] also the art of melody) reached its elevation. In Germany,
[5045] however (until quite recently when a kind of platform eloquence
[5046] began shyly and awkwardly enough to flutter its young wings),
[5047] there was properly speaking only one kind of public and
[5048] APPROXIMATELY artistical discourse--that delivered from the
[5049] pulpit. The preacher was the only one in Germany who knew the
[5050] weight of a syllable or a word, in what manner a sentence
[5051] strikes, springs, rushes, flows, and comes to a close; he alone
[5052] had a conscience in his ears, often enough a bad conscience: for
[5053] reasons are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should be
[5054] especially seldom attained by a German, or almost always too
[5055] late. The masterpiece of German prose is therefore with good
[5056] reason the masterpiece of its greatest preacher: the BIBLE has
[5057] hitherto been the best German book. Compared with Luther's Bible,
[5058] almost everything else is merely "literature"--something which
[5059] has not grown in Germany, and therefore has not taken and does
[5060] not take root in German hearts, as the Bible has done.
[5061]
[5062] 248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all
[5063] engenders and seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets
[5064] itself be fructified and brings forth. And similarly, among the
[5065] gifted nations, there are those on whom the woman's problem of
[5066] pregnancy has devolved, and the secret task of forming, maturing,
[5067] and perfecting--the Greeks, for instance, were a nation of this
[5068] kind, and so are the French; and others which have to fructify
[5069] and become the cause of new modes of life--like the Jews, the
[5070] Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the Germans?--
[5071] nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and
[5072] irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for
[5073] foreign races (for such as "let themselves be fructified"), and
[5074] withal imperious, like everything conscious of being full of
[5075] generative force, and consequently empowered "by the grace of
[5076] God." These two kinds of geniuses seek each other like man and
[5077] woman; but they also misunderstand each other--like man and
[5078] woman.
[5079]
[5080] 249. Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," and calls that its
[5081] virtue.--One does not know--cannot know, the best that is in one.
[5082]
[5083] 250. What Europe owes to the Jews?--Many things, good and bad,
[5084] and above all one thing of the nature both of the best and the
[5085] worst: the grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty
[5086] of infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole
[5087] Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionableness--and
[5088] consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite
[5089] element in those iridescences and allurements to life, in the
[5090] aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening
[5091] sky, now glows--perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among the
[5092] spectators and philosophers, are--grateful to the Jews.
[5093]
[5094] 251. It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and
[5095] disturbances--in short, slight attacks of stupidity--pass over
[5096] the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to suffer from
[5097] national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance,
[5098] among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French
[5099] folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the
[5100] Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic
[5101] folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians,
[5102] the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads),
[5103] and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit
[5104] and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that I, too,
[5105] when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not
[5106] remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one else,
[5107] began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern
[5108] me--the first symptom of political infection. About the Jews, for
[5109] instance, listen to the following:--I have never yet met a German
[5110] who was favourably inclined to the Jews; and however decided the
[5111] repudiation of actual anti-Semitism may be on the part of all
[5112] prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is not
[5113] perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but
[5114] only against its dangerous excess, and especially against the
[5115] distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of sentiment;
[5116] --on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany has
[5117] amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood,
[5118] has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only
[5119] of this quantity of "Jew"--as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the
[5120] Englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:--that is
[5121] the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct,
[5122] to which one must listen and according to which one must act.
[5123] "Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards
[5124] the East (also towards Austria)!"--thus commands the instinct of
[5125] a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it
[5126] could be easily wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger
[5127] race. The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest,
[5128] toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they know
[5129] how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better
[5130] than under favourable ones), by means of virtues of some sort,
[5131] which one would like nowadays to label as vices--owing above all
[5132] to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before
[5133] "modern ideas", they alter only, WHEN they do alter, in the same
[5134] way that the Russian Empire makes its conquest--as an empire that
[5135] has plenty of time and is not of yesterday--namely, according to
[5136] the principle, "as slowly as possible"! A thinker who has the
[5137] future of Europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives
[5138] concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he will
[5139] calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and
[5140] likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces. That
[5141] which is at present called a "nation" in Europe, and is really
[5142] rather a RES FACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes confusingly
[5143] similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in every case something
[5144] evolving, young, easily displaced, and not yet a race, much less
[5145] such a race AERE PERENNUS, as the Jews are such "nations" should
[5146] most carefully avoid all hotheaded rivalry and hostility! It is
[5147] certain that the Jews, if they desired--or if they were driven to
[5148] it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish--COULD now have the
[5149] ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe, that they
[5150] are NOT working and planning for that end is equally certain.
[5151] Meanwhile, they rather wish and desire, even somewhat
[5152] importunely, to be insorbed and absorbed by Europe, they long to
[5153] be finally settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish
[5154] to put an end to the nomadic life, to the "wandering Jew",--and
[5155] one should certainly take account of this impulse and tendency,
[5156] and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly betokens a mitigation of the
[5157] Jewish instincts) for which purpose it would perhaps be useful
[5158] and fair to banish the anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country.
[5159] One should make advances with all prudence, and with selection,
[5160] pretty much as the English nobility do It stands to reason that
[5161] the more powerful and strongly marked types of new Germanism
[5162] could enter into relation with the Jews with the least
[5163] hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from the Prussian
[5164] border it would be interesting in many ways to see whether the
[5165] genius for money and patience (and especially some intellect and
[5166] intellectuality--sadly lacking in the place referred to) could
[5167] not in addition be annexed and trained to the hereditary art of
[5168] commanding and obeying--for both of which the country in question
[5169] has now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break
[5170] off my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for I have
[5171] already reached my SERIOUS TOPIC, the "European problem," as I
[5172] understand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for Europe.
[5173]
[5174] 252. They are not a philosophical race--the English: Bacon
[5175] represents an ATTACK on the philosophical spirit generally,
[5176] Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a depreciation of the
[5177] idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. It was AGAINST
[5178] Hume that Kant uprose and raised himself; it was Locke of whom
[5179] Schelling RIGHTLY said, "JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in the struggle
[5180] against the English mechanical stultification of the world, Hegel
[5181] and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one accord; the two
[5182] hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy, who pushed in different
[5183] directions towards the opposite poles of German thought, and
[5184] thereby wronged each other as only brothers will do.--What is
[5185] lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor
[5186] and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head,
[5187] Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he
[5188] knew about himself: namely, what was LACKING in Carlyle--real
[5189] POWER of intellect, real DEPTH of intellectual perception, in
[5190] short, philosophy. It is characteristic of such an
[5191] unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to Christianity--they NEED
[5192] its discipline for "moralizing" and humanizing. The Englishman,
[5193] more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German--is
[5194] for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most
[5195] pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer
[5196] nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a
[5197] characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for
[5198] which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote--the
[5199] finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning
[5200] is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, a step
[5201] towards spiritualization. The English coarseness and rustic
[5202] demureness is still most satisfactorily disguised by Christian
[5203] pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or, more correctly,
[5204] it is thereby explained and differently expressed); and for the
[5205] herd of drunkards and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting
[5206] under the influence of Methodism (and more recently as the
[5207] "Salvation Army"), a penitential fit may really be the relatively
[5208] highest manifestation of "humanity" to which they can be
[5209] elevated: so much may reasonably be admitted. That, however,
[5210] which offends even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of
[5211] music, to speak figuratively (and also literally): he has neither
[5212] rhythm nor dance in the movements of his soul and body; indeed,
[5213] not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for "music." Listen to
[5214] him speaking; look at the most beautiful Englishwoman WALKING--in
[5215] no country on earth are there more beautiful doves and swans;
[5216] finally, listen to them singing! But I ask too much . . .
[5217]
[5218] 253. There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre
[5219] minds, because they are best adapted for them, there are truths
[5220] which only possess charms and seductive power for mediocre
[5221] spirits:--one is pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion,
[5222] now that the influence of respectable but mediocre Englishmen--I
[5223] may mention Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer--begins
[5224] to gain the ascendancy in the middle-class region of European
[5225] taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it is a useful thing for SUCH
[5226] minds to have the ascendancy for a time? It would be an error to
[5227] consider the highly developed and independently soaring minds as
[5228] specially qualified for determining and collecting many little
[5229] common facts, and deducing conclusions from them; as exceptions,
[5230] they are rather from the first in no very favourable position
[5231] towards those who are "the rules." After all, they have more to
[5232] do than merely to perceive:--in effect, they have to BE something
[5233] new, they have to SIGNIFY something new, they have to REPRESENT
[5234] new values! The gulf between knowledge and capacity is perhaps
[5235] greater, and also more mysterious, than one thinks: the capable
[5236] man in the grand style, the creator, will possibly have to be an
[5237] ignorant person;--while on the other hand, for scientific
[5238] discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain narrowness, aridity,
[5239] and industrious carefulness (in short, something English) may not
[5240] be unfavourable for arriving at them.--Finally, let it not be
[5241] forgotten that the English, with their profound mediocrity,
[5242] brought about once before a general depression of European
[5243] intelligence.
[5244]
[5245] What is called "modern ideas," or "the ideas of the eighteenth
[5246] century," or "French ideas"--that, consequently, against which
[5247] the GERMAN mind rose up with profound disgust--is of English
[5248] origin, there is no doubt about it. The French were only the apes
[5249] and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, and likewise,
[5250] alas! their first and profoundest VICTIMS; for owing to the
[5251] diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the AME FRANCAIS has in
[5252] the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present one recalls
[5253] its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profound, passionate
[5254] strength, its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief. One
[5255] must, however, maintain this verdict of historical justice in a
[5256] determined manner, and defend it against present prejudices and
[5257] appearances: the European NOBLESSE--of sentiment, taste, and
[5258] manners, taking the word in every high sense--is the work and
[5259] invention of FRANCE; the European ignobleness, the plebeianism of
[5260] modern ideas--is ENGLAND'S work and invention.
[5261]
[5262] 254. Even at present France is still the seat of the most
[5263] intellectual and refined culture of Europe, it is still the high
[5264] school of taste; but one must know how to find this "France of
[5265] taste." He who belongs to it keeps himself well concealed:--they
[5266] may be a small number in whom it lives and is embodied, besides
[5267] perhaps being men who do not stand upon the strongest legs, in
[5268] part fatalists, hypochondriacs, invalids, in part persons over-
[5269] indulged, over-refined, such as have the AMBITION to conceal
[5270] themselves.
[5271]
[5272] They have all something in common: they keep their ears closed in
[5273] presence of the delirious folly and noisy spouting of the
[5274] democratic BOURGEOIS. In fact, a besotted and brutalized France
[5275] at present sprawls in the foreground--it recently celebrated a
[5276] veritable orgy of bad taste, and at the same time of self-
[5277] admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo. There is also
[5278] something else common to them: a predilection to resist
[5279] intellectual Germanizing--and a still greater inability to do so!
[5280] In this France of intellect, which is also a France of pessimism,
[5281] Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and more indigenous
[5282] than he has ever been in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine,
[5283] who has long ago been re-incarnated in the more refined and
[5284] fastidious lyrists of Paris; or of Hegel, who at present, in the
[5285] form of Taine--the FIRST of living historians--exercises an
[5286] almost tyrannical influence. As regards Richard Wagner, however,
[5287] the more French music learns to adapt itself to the actual needs
[5288] of the AME MODERNE, the more will it "Wagnerite"; one can safely
[5289] predict that beforehand,--it is already taking place
[5290] sufficiently! There are, however, three things which the French
[5291] can still boast of with pride as their heritage and possession,
[5292] and as indelible tokens of their ancient intellectual superiority
[5293] in Europe, in spite of all voluntary or involuntary Germanizing
[5294] and vulgarizing of taste. FIRSTLY, the capacity for artistic
[5295] emotion, for devotion to "form," for which the expression, L'ART
[5296] POUR L'ART, along with numerous others, has been invented:--such
[5297] capacity has not been lacking in France for three centuries; and
[5298] owing to its reverence for the "small number," it has again and
[5299] again made a sort of chamber music of literature possible, which
[5300] is sought for in vain elsewhere in Europe.--The SECOND thing
[5301] whereby the French can lay claim to a superiority over Europe is
[5302] their ancient, many-sided, MORALISTIC culture, owing to which one
[5303] finds on an average, even in the petty ROMANCIERS of the
[5304] newspapers and chance BOULEVARDIERS DE PARIS, a psychological
[5305] sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one has no
[5306] conception (to say nothing of the thing itself!) in Germany. The
[5307] Germans lack a couple of centuries of the moralistic work
[5308] requisite thereto, which, as we have said, France has not
[5309] grudged: those who call the Germans "naive" on that account give
[5310] them commendation for a defect. (As the opposite of the German
[5311] inexperience and innocence IN VOLUPTATE PSYCHOLOGICA, which is
[5312] not too remotely associated with the tediousness of German
[5313] intercourse,--and as the most successful expression of genuine
[5314] French curiosity and inventive talent in this domain of delicate
[5315] thrills, Henri Beyle may be noted; that remarkable anticipatory
[5316] and forerunning man, who, with a Napoleonic TEMPO, traversed HIS
[5317] Europe, in fact, several centuries of the European soul, as a
[5318] surveyor and discoverer thereof:--it has required two generations
[5319] to OVERTAKE him one way or other, to divine long afterwards some
[5320] of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured him--this strange
[5321] Epicurean and man of interrogation, the last great psychologist
[5322] of France).--There is yet a THIRD claim to superiority: in the
[5323] French character there is a successful half-way synthesis of the
[5324] North and South, which makes them comprehend many things, and
[5325] enjoins upon them other things, which an Englishman can never
[5326] comprehend. Their temperament, turned alternately to and from the
[5327] South, in which from time to time the Provencal and Ligurian
[5328] blood froths over, preserves them from the dreadful, northern
[5329] grey-in-grey, from sunless conceptual-spectrism and from poverty
[5330] of blood--our GERMAN infirmity of taste, for the excessive
[5331] prevalence of which at the present moment, blood and iron, that
[5332] is to say "high politics," has with great resolution been
[5333] prescribed (according to a dangerous healing art, which bids me
[5334] wait and wait, but not yet hope).--There is also still in France
[5335] a pre-understanding and ready welcome for those rarer and rarely
[5336] gratified men, who are too comprehensive to find satisfaction in
[5337] any kind of fatherlandism, and know how to love the South when in
[5338] the North and the North when in the South--the born Midlanders,
[5339] the "good Europeans." For them BIZET has made music, this latest
[5340] genius, who has seen a new beauty and seduction,--who has
[5341] discovered a piece of the SOUTH IN MUSIC.
[5342]
[5343] 255. I hold that many precautions should be taken against German
[5344] music. Suppose a person loves the South as I love it--as a great
[5345] school of recovery for the most spiritual and the most sensuous
[5346] ills, as a boundless solar profusion and effulgence which
[5347] o'erspreads a sovereign existence believing in itself--well, such
[5348] a person will learn to be somewhat on his guard against German
[5349] music, because, in injuring his taste anew, it will also injure
[5350] his health anew. Such a Southerner, a Southerner not by origin
[5351] but by BELIEF, if he should dream of the future of music, must
[5352] also dream of it being freed from the influence of the North; and
[5353] must have in his ears the prelude to a deeper, mightier, and
[5354] perhaps more perverse and mysterious music, a super-German music,
[5355] which does not fade, pale, and die away, as all German music
[5356] does, at the sight of the blue, wanton sea and the Mediterranean
[5357] clearness of sky--a super-European music, which holds its own
[5358] even in presence of the brown sunsets of the desert, whose soul
[5359] is akin to the palm-tree, and can be at home and can roam with
[5360] big, beautiful, lonely beasts of prey . . . I could imagine a music
[5361] of which the rarest charm would be that it knew nothing more of
[5362] good and evil; only that here and there perhaps some sailor's
[5363] home-sickness, some golden shadows and tender weaknesses might
[5364] sweep lightly over it; an art which, from the far distance, would
[5365] see the colours of a sinking and almost incomprehensible MORAL
[5366] world fleeing towards it, and would be hospitable enough and
[5367] profound enough to receive such belated fugitives.
[5368]
[5369] 256. Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze
[5370] has induced and still induces among the nations of Europe, owing
[5371] also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians, who with
[5372] the help of this craze, are at present in power, and do not
[5373] suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must
[5374] necessarily be only an interlude policy--owing to all this and
[5375] much else that is altogether unmentionable at present, the most
[5376] unmistakable signs that EUROPE WISHES TO BE ONE, are now
[5377] overlooked, or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all
[5378] the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real
[5379] general tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to
[5380] prepare the way for that new SYNTHESIS, and tentatively to
[5381] anticipate the European of the future; only in their simulations,
[5382] or in their weaker moments, in old age perhaps, did they belong
[5383] to the "fatherlands"--they only rested from themselves when they
[5384] became "patriots." I think of such men as Napoleon, Goethe,
[5385] Beethoven, Stendhal, Heinrich Heine, Schopenhauer: it must not be
[5386] taken amiss if I also count Richard Wagner among them, about whom
[5387] one must not let oneself be deceived by his own misunderstandings
[5388] (geniuses like him have seldom the right to understand
[5389] themselves), still less, of course, by the unseemly noise with
[5390] which he is now resisted and opposed in France: the fact remains,
[5391] nevertheless, that Richard Wagner and the LATER FRENCH
[5392] ROMANTICISM of the forties, are most closely and intimately
[5393] related to one another. They are akin, fundamentally akin, in all
[5394] the heights and depths of their requirements; it is Europe, the
[5395] ONE Europe, whose soul presses urgently and longingly, outwards
[5396] and upwards, in their multifarious and boisterous art--whither?
[5397] into a new light? towards a new sun? But who would attempt to
[5398] express accurately what all these masters of new modes of speech
[5399] could not express distinctly? It is certain that the same storm
[5400] and stress tormented them, that they SOUGHT in the same manner,
[5401] these last great seekers! All of them steeped in literature to
[5402] their eyes and ears--the first artists of universal literary
[5403] culture--for the most part even themselves writers, poets,
[5404] intermediaries and blenders of the arts and the senses (Wagner,
[5405] as musician is reckoned among painters, as poet among musicians,
[5406] as artist generally among actors); all of them fanatics for
[5407] EXPRESSION "at any cost"--I specially mention Delacroix, the
[5408] nearest related to Wagner; all of them great discoverers in the
[5409] realm of the sublime, also of the loathsome and dreadful, still
[5410] greater discoverers in effect, in display, in the art of the
[5411] show-shop; all of them talented far beyond their genius, out and
[5412] out VIRTUOSI, with mysterious accesses to all that seduces,
[5413] allures, constrains, and upsets; born enemies of logic and of the
[5414] straight line, hankering after the strange, the exotic, the
[5415] monstrous, the crooked, and the self-contradictory; as men,
[5416] Tantaluses of the will, plebeian parvenus, who knew themselves to
[5417] be incapable of a noble TEMPO or of a LENTO in life and action--
[5418] think of Balzac, for instance,--unrestrained workers, almost
[5419] destroying themselves by work; antinomians and rebels in manners,
[5420] ambitious and insatiable, without equilibrium and enjoyment; all
[5421] of them finally shattering and sinking down at the Christian
[5422] cross (and with right and reason, for who of them would have been
[5423] sufficiently profound and sufficiently original for an ANTI-
[5424] CHRISTIAN philosophy?);--on the whole, a boldly daring,
[5425] splendidly overbearing, high-flying, and aloft-up-dragging class
[5426] of higher men, who had first to teach their century-and it is the
[5427] century of the MASSES--the conception "higher man." . . . Let the
[5428] German friends of Richard Wagner advise together as to whether
[5429] there is anything purely German in the Wagnerian art, or whether
[5430] its distinction does not consist precisely in coming from SUPER-
[5431] GERMAN sources and impulses: in which connection it may not be
[5432] underrated how indispensable Paris was to the development of his
[5433] type, which the strength of his instincts made him long to visit
[5434] at the most decisive time--and how the whole style of his
[5435] proceedings, of his self-apostolate, could only perfect itself in
[5436] sight of the French socialistic original. On a more subtle
[5437] comparison it will perhaps be found, to the honour of Richard
[5438] Wagner's German nature, that he has acted in everything with more
[5439] strength, daring, severity, and elevation than a nineteenth-
[5440] century Frenchman could have done--owing to the circumstance that
[5441] we Germans are as yet nearer to barbarism than the French;--
[5442] perhaps even the most remarkable creation of Richard Wagner is
[5443] not only at present, but for ever inaccessible, incomprehensible,
[5444] and inimitable to the whole latter-day Latin race: the figure of
[5445] Siegfried, that VERY FREE man, who is probably far too free, too
[5446] hard, too cheerful, too healthy, too ANTI-CATHOLIC for the taste
[5447] of old and mellow civilized nations. He may even have been a sin
[5448] against Romanticism, this anti-Latin Siegfried: well, Wagner
[5449] atoned amply for this sin in his old sad days, when--anticipating
[5450] a taste which has meanwhile passed into politics--he began, with
[5451] the religious vehemence peculiar to him, to preach, at least, THE
[5452] WAY TO ROME, if not to walk therein.--That these last words may
[5453] not be misunderstood, I will call to my aid a few powerful
[5454] rhymes, which will even betray to less delicate ears what I mean
[5455] --what I mean COUNTER TO the "last Wagner" and his Parsifal music:--
[5456]
[5457] --Is this our mode?--From German heart came this vexed ululating?
[5458] From German body, this self-lacerating? Is ours this priestly
[5459] hand-dilation, This incense-fuming exaltation? Is ours this
[5460] faltering, falling, shambling, This quite uncertain ding-dong-
[5461] dangling? This sly nun-ogling, Ave-hour-bell ringing, This wholly
[5462] false enraptured heaven-o'erspringing?--Is this our mode?--Think
[5463] well!--ye still wait for admission--For what ye hear is ROME--
[5464] ROME'S FAITH BY INTUITION!
[5465]
[5466]