— Heroism is no form of
selfishness, for one is shipwrecked by it.
selfishness, for one is shipwrecked by it.
Nietzsche - v13 - Genealogy of Morals
" The ascetic ideal s impW
means this rffiaFsomething was lacking, that^
trenrentfous^T^^ encircled man — he did not know"
how to justify himself, to explain himself, to afHrni
himself, Tie suffered Trom the problem'of his owir
memimg. He sufTered also in other ways, he wai
in the main a diseased animal ; but_Jiispro^leiH_^
was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer
to ~that~cryrng~questibri," " ~To'wEatpurpose^sP^^
suffer ? " \ Man7 the bravest animal and l:lie~one
most inured to suffering, does not repudiate suffer ing
in itself : he wills it, he even seeks it out, provIHed
that he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of
su ffering. (T^- A^'i'^ suffering , but the senselessness of
suffering was the curse whichtin_then lay spread
over humanity — -and the ascetic ideal gave~ii~a
meaning ! l ~rF was up till then the only meaning;
but any meaning~is~BeReF than no meaning; the
Ascetic ideaFwas in that connection the "fdute de
■mieux" par excellence that existed at that time.
In that ideal suffering found an explanation ; the
tremendous gap seemed filled ; the door to all
suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation —
there is no doubt about it — brought in its train
new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more
venomous, gnawing more brutally into lifeOt
brought all suffering under the_perspective oT"
"g ml t; b Pt'tn" spite of^ all that — ;man was saved
the'reby7Tle'^d a meaning, and from henceforth
vfantS'Tnore like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-
cock of chance, of nonsense, hejcould now " will "
somethingj— absolutely immaterial to what end,
to what purpose, with what means he wished :
## p. (#225) ################################################
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 211
the will itself was saved. It is absolutely impos-
sible to disguise what in point of fact is made
clear by every complete will that has taken its
direction from the ascetic ideal : this hate of thel
human, and even more of the animal, and more
still of the material, this horror of the senses, of
reason itself, thi s fear of hap pin ess and b eauty,]
this desire to g et right away from all illusion,!
change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring
— airthis means- — -let us have the courage to
grasp it — a will for Nothingness, a wi ll oppose d
to life, a repudiation of the most fundam ental
. condifiohs ot_lite, but it is an d remains a wi ll ! — i
and Td" say at the end that which I said at thej
beginning-pman will w ish Nothingnes s jaX\^t\\^
not wish at oK]
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## p. (#227) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.
## p. (#228) ################################################
## p. (#229) ################################################
[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by
Nietzsche to form a supplement to Chapter VIII. oi Beyond
Good and Evil, dealing with Peoples and Countries. ]
The Europeans now imagine themselves as re-
presenting, in the main, the highest types of men
on earth.
A characteristic of Europeans : inconsistency
between word and deed ; the Oriental is true to
himself in daily life. How the European has
established colonies is explained by his nature,
which resembles that of a beast of prey.
This inconsistency is explained by the fact that
Christianity has abandoned the class from which
it sprang.
This is the difference between us and the
Hellenes: their morals grew up among the
governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the
same as those that exploded everywhere with
Plato.
Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance,
for example : always for the benefit of the arts.
Michael Angelo's conception of God as the
"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one.
## p. (#230) ################################################
2l6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael,
because, through all the Christian clouds and
prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a
culture nobler than the Christo - Raphaelian :
whilst Raphael truly and modestly glorified only
the values handed down to him, and did not carry
within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts.
Michael Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt
the problem of the law-giver of new values : the
problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first
had to subdue the " hero within himself," the man
exalted to his highest pedestal, master even of his
pity, who mercilessly shatters and annihilates
everything that does not bear his own stamp,
shining in Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo
was naturally only at certain moments so high
and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe •
for the most part he adopted a condescending
attitude towards the eternal feminine in Christi-
anity ; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he
broke down before her, and gave up the ideal of
his most inspired hours. It was an ideal which
only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of
life could bear ; but not a man advanced in years !
Indeed, he would have had to demolish Christi-
anity with his ideal ! But he was not thinker
and philosopher enough for that. Perhaps
Leonardo da Vinci alone of those artists had a
really super-Christian outlook. He knows the
East, the " land of dawn," within himself as well
as without himself. There is something super-
## p. (#231) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 217
European and silent in him : a characteristic of
every one who has seen too wide a circle of things
good and bad.
4-
How much we have learnt and learnt anew in
fifty years ! The whole Romantic School with
its belief in " the people " is refuted ! No Homeric
poetry as " popular " poetry ! No deification of
the great powers of Nature ! No deduction from
language-relationship to race-relationship ! No
" intellectual contemplations " of the supernatural !
No truth enshrouded in religion !
The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one.
I am astonished. From this standpoint we regard
such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of care-
lessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of
modesty; we would condemn Plato for his pia
fraus, Kant for the derivation of his Categorical
Imperative, his own belief certainly not having
come to him from this source.
Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt
in doubt. And the question as to the value of
truthfulness and its extent lies there.
5.
What I observe with pleasure in the German is
his Mephistophelian nature ; but, to tell the truth,
one must have a higher conception of Mephis-
topheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary
to diminish his Mephistopheles in order to magnify
his "inner Faust. " The true German Mephis-
## p. (#232) ################################################
2l8 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
topheles is much more dangerous, bold, wicked,
and cunning, and consequently more open-hearted:
remember the nature of Frederick the Great, or
of that much greater Frederick, the Hohenstaufen,
Frederick li.
The real German Mephistopheles crosses the
Alps, and believes that everything there belongs
to him. Then he recovers himself, like Winckel-
mann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and
Hamlet as caricatures, invented to be laughed at,
and upon Luther also. Goethe had his good
German moments, when he laughed inwardly at
all these things. But then he fell back again
into his cloudy moods.
Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a
wrong climate ! There is something in them that
might be Hellenic ! — something that is awakened
when they are brought into touch with the South —
Winckelmann, Goethe, Mozart. We should not
forget, however, that we are still young. Luther
is still our last event ; our last book is still the
Bible. The Germans have never yet " moralised. "
Also, the very food of the Germans was their
doom : its consequence, Philistinism.
7-
The Germans are a dangerous people: they
are experts at inventing intoxicants. Gothic,
rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense
and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner — Leibniz,
## p. (#233) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 219
too (dangerous at the present day) — (they even
idealised the serving soul as the virtue of scholars
and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The
Germans may well be the most composite people
on earth.
" The people of the Middle," the inventors of
porcelain, and of a kind of Chinese breed of Privy
Councillor.
8.
The smallness and baseness of the German
soul were not and are not consequences of the
system of small states ; for it is well known that
the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud
and independent : and it is not a large state per
se that makes souls freer and more manly. The
man whose soul obeys the slavish command :
" Thou shalt and must kneel ! " in whose body
there is an involuntary bowing and scraping to
titles, orders, gracious glances from above — well,
such a man in an " Empire " will only bow all the
more deeply and lick the dust more fervently in
the presence of the greater sovereign than in the
presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted.
We can still see In the lower classes of Italians
that aristocratic self-sufficiency ; manly discipline
and self-confidence still form a part of the long
history of their country : these are virtues which
once manifested themselves before their eyes. A
poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure
than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even
a better man in the end — any one can see this.
Just ask the women.
## p. (#234) ################################################
220 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
9-
Most artists, even some of the greatest (in-
cluding the historians) have up to the present
belonged to the serving classes (whether they
serve people of high position or princes or women
or " the masses "), not to speak of their dependence
upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus
Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but
only according to their vague conception of taste,
not according to his own measure of beauty — on
the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van
Dyck was nobler in this respect : who in all those
whom he painted added a certain amount of what
he himself most highly valued : he did not descend
from himself, but rather lifted up others to him-
self when he " rendered. "
The slavish humility of the artist to his public
(as Sebastian Bach has testified in undying and
outrageous words in the dedication of his High
Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in
music ; but it is all the more deeply engrained.
A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured
to impart my views on this subject. Chopin
possesses distinction, like Van Dyck. The dis-
position of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant ;
of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn,
too, possesses distinction — like Goethe, in the
most natural way in the world.
lo.
We could at any time have counted on the
fingers of one hand those German learned men
## p. (#235) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 221
who possessed wit: the remainder have under-
standing, and a few of them, happily, that famous
"childlike character" which divines. . . . It is
our privilege : with this " divination " German
science has discovered some things which we can
hardly conceive of, and which, after all, do not
exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the
Germans who do not " divine " like them.
II.
As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and esprit
of French society, so do Germans reflect some-
thing of the deep, pensive earnestness of their
mystics and musicians, and also of their silly
childishness. The Italian exhibits a great deal
of republican distinction and art, and can show
himself to be noble and proud without vanity.
12.
A larger number of the higher and better-
endowed men will, I hope, have in the end so
much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their
bad taste for affectation and sentimental darkness,
and to turn against Richard Wagner as much as
against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are
leading us to ruin ; they flatter our dangerous
qualities. A stronger future is prepared for us in
Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in these
racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers
yet
## p. (#236) ################################################
222 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
13-
The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse,
for he is dependent upon himself most of all.
Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany
— for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck.
Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the
face of Germans. Everything that had manly,
exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the
smug populace remaining, the slave-souled people,
there came an improvement from abroad, especially
by a mixture of Slavonic blood.
The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian
nobility in general (and the peasant of certain
North German districts), comprise at present the
most manly natures in Germany.
That the manliest men shall rule : this is only
the natural order of things.
14.
The future of German culture rests with the
sons of the Prussian officers.
15-
There has always been a want of wit in
Germany, and mediocre heads attain there to the
highest honours, because even they are rare.
What is most highly prized is diligence and per-
severance and a certain cold-blooded, critical out-
look, and, for the sake of such qualities, German
scholarship and the German military system have
become paramount in Europe.
## p. (#237) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 223
16.
Parliaments may be very useful to a strong and
versatile statesman : he has something there to
rely upon (every such thing must, however, be
able to resist ! ) — upon which he can throw a great
deal of responsibility. On the whole, however, I
could wish that the counting mania and the
superstitious belief in majorities were not estab-
lished in Germany, as with the Latin races, and
that one could finally invent something new even
in politics ! It is senseless and dangerous to let
the custom of universal suffrage — which is still
but a short time under cultivation, and could
easily be uprooted — take a deeper root : whilst,
of course, its introduction was merely an expedient
to steer clear of temporary diiificulties.
17-
Can any one interest himself in this German
Empire ? Where is the new thought ? Is it only
a new combination of power ? All the worse, if
it does not know its own mind. Peace and laisser
aller are not types of politics for which I have
any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest
thoughts to victory — the only things that can
make me interested in Germany. England's
small-mindedness is the great danger now on
earth. I observe more inclination towards great-
ness in the feelings of the Russian Nihilists than
in those of the English Utilitarians. We require
an intergrowth of the German and Slav races, and
## p. (#238) ################################################
224 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
we require, too, the cleverest financiers, the Jews,
for us to become masters of the world.
(a) The sense of reality.
(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the
people's right of representation. We require the
representation of the great interests.
(c) We require an unconditional union with
Russia, together with a mutual plan of action
which shall not permit any English schemata to
obtain the mastery in Russia. No American
future !
(d) A national system of politics is untenable,
and embarrassment by Christian views is a very
great evil. In Europe all sensible people are
sceptics, whether they say so or not.
i8.
I see over and beyond all these national wars,
new " empires," and whatever else lies in the fore-
ground. What I am concerned with — for I see it
preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the
United Europe. It was the only real work, the
one impulse in the souls, of all the broad-minded
and deep-thinking men of this century — this
preparation of a new synthesis, and the tentative
effort to anticipate the future of " the European. "
Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew
old, did they fall back again into the national
narrowness of the " Fatherlanders " — then they
were once more "patriots. " I am thinking of
men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe,
Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps
## p. (#239) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 225
Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number,
concerning whom, as a successful type of German
obscurity, nothing can be said without some such
" perhaps. "
But to the help of such minds as feel the need
of a new unity there comes a great explanatory
economic fact: the small States of Europe — I
refer to all our present kingdoms and " empires '' —
will in a short time become economically un-
tenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle
for the possession of local and international trade.
Money is even now compelling European nations
to amalgamate into one Power. In order, how-
ever, that Europe may enter into the battle for
the mastery of the world with good prospects of
victory (it is easy to perceive against whom this
battle will be waged), she must probably " come
to an understanding " with England. The English
colonies are needed for this struggle, just as much
as modern Germany, to play her new rdle of
broker and middleman, requires the colonial
possessions of Holland. For no one any longer
believes that England alone is strong enough to
continue to act her old part for fifty years more ;
the impossibility of shutting out homines novi
from the government will ruin her, and her con-
tinual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle
to the carrying out of any tasks which require to
be spread out over a long period of time. A man
must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that he
may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant.
Enough; here, as in other matters, the coming
century will be found following in the footsteps of
P
## p. (#240) ################################################
226 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
Napoleon — the first man, and the man of greatest
initiative and advanced views, of modern times.
For the tasks of the next century, the methods of
popular representation and parliaments are the
most inappropriate imaginable.
19-
The condition of Europe in the next century
will once again lead to the breeding of manly
virtues, because men will live in continual danger.
Universal military service is already the curious
antidote which we possess for the effeminacy of
democratic ideas, and it has grown up out of the
struggle of the nations. (Nation — men who speak
one language and read the same newspapers.
These men now call themselves " nations,'' and
would far too readily trace their descent from the
same source and through the same history ; which,
however, even with the assistance of the most
malignant lying in the past, they have not suc-
ceeded in doing. )
20.
What quagmires and mendacity must there be
about if it is possible, in the modern European
hotch-potch, to raise questions of "race" ! (It being
premised that the origin of such writers is not in
Horneo and Borneo. )
21.
Maxim : To associate with no man who takes
any part in the mendacious race swindle.
## p. (#241) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 227
22.
With the freedom of travel now existing,
groups of men of the same kindred can join
together and establish communal habits and
customs. The overcoming of " nations. "
23-
To make Europe a centre of culture, national
stupidities should not make us blind to the fact
that in the higher regions there is already a con-
tinuous reciprocal dependence. France and Ger-
man philosophy. Richard Wagner and Paris
(1830-50). Goethe and Greece. All things
are impelled towards a synthesis of the European
past in the highest types of mind.
24.
Mankind has still much before it — how, gener-
ally speaking, could the ideal be taken from the
past? Perhaps merely in relation to the present,
which latter is possibly a lower region.
25-
This is our distrust, which recurs again and
again ; our care, which never lets us sleep ; our
question, which no one listens to or wishes to
listen to ; our Sphinx, near which there is more
than one precipice : we believe that the men of
present-day Europe are deceived in regard to the
things which we love best, and a pitiless demon
## p. (#242) ################################################
228 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
(no, not pitiless, only indifferent and puerile) —
plays with our hearts and their enthusiasm, as it
may perhaps have already played with everything
that lived and loved ; I believe that everything
which we Europeans of to-day are in the habit of
admiring as the values of all these respected
things called "humanity," "mankind," "sym-
pathy," "pity," may be of some value as the
debilitation and moderating of certain powerful
and dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless,
in the long run all these things are nothing else
than the belittlement of the entire type "man,"
his mediocrisation, if in such a desperate situation
I may make use of such a desperate expression.
I think that the commedia umana for an epicurean
spectator-god must consist in this : that the
Europeans, by virtue of their growing morality,
believe in all their innocence and vanity that they
are rising higher and higher, whereas the truth
is that they are sinking lower and lower — i. e.
through the cultivation of all the virtues which
are useful to a herd, and through the repression
of the other and contrary virtues which give rise
to a new, higher, stronger, masterful race of men
— the first-named virtues merely develop the herd-
animal in man and stabilitate the animal " man,"
for until now man has been " the animal as yet
unstabilitated. "
26.
Genius and Epoch.
— Heroism is no form of
selfishness, for one is shipwrecked by it. . . . The
## p. (#243) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 229
direction of power is often conditioned by the
state of the period in which the great man happens
to be born ; and this fact brings about the super-
stition that he is the expression of his time. But
this same power could be applied in several
different ways ; and between him and his time
there is always this difference : that public opinion
always worships the herd instinct, — i. e. the instinct
of the weak, — while he, the strong man, fights for
strong ideals.
27.
The fate now overhanging Europe is simply
this: that it is exactly her strongest sons that
come rarely and late to the spring-time of their
existence ; that, as a rule, when they are already
in their early youth they perish, saddened, dis-
gusted, darkened in mind, just because they have
already, with the entire passion of their strength,
drained to the dregs the cup of disillusionment,
which in our days means the cup of knowledge,
and they would not have been the strongest had
they not also been the most disillusionised. For
that is the test of their power — they must first of all
rise out of the illness of their epoch to reach their
own health. A late spring-time is their mark of
distinction ; also, let us add, late merriment, late
folly, the late exuberance of joy ! For this is the
danger of to-day : everything that we loved when
we were young has betrayed us. Our last love —
th & love which makes us acknowledge he r^_our
lo ve for T ruth — let us take care that she, too,
does not betray~u sT~~
## p. (#244) ################################################
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OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
THE RENAISSANCE
By COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU
Translated by Paul V. Cohn, with an Introductory
Essay by Dr. Oscar Levy
"js. dd.
(Heinemann)
(/« the Press)
These five historical dramas cover the flowering-time of the Italian
Renaissance from the rise to prominence of Savonarola (1492) to the
last days of Michaelangelo (about 1560). While grouped round the
leading figures who provide the titles — Savonarola, Cesare Borgia,
Julius II. , Leo X. , and Michaelangelo — the plays introduce almosi
every interesting character of the period. Nor are we only con-
cerned with the great names : the author aims at catching the spiril
of the people, and the thoughts and feelings of soldier, artisan,
trader, and their womenfolk find ample voice in his pages.
The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest to English
readers, not least because of its profound influence on our own
Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the most many-sided period in
history : even fifth-century Greece scarcely contributed so much—
or at any rate so much that has survived — to the world of politics,
art, and thought. Now while this interest is amply reflected in
contemporary literature, from the monumental work of Symonds
down to the flotsam and jetsam of everyday fiction, there is one kind
of man who more than an historian would show insight into this
age, and that is a poet.
It is as a poet's work that Gobineau's " Historical Scenes" recom-
mend themselves to the public. But there are many kinds of poets :
there is the religious and moral kind, there is the irreligious and
submoral kind, and there is the super-religious and super-moral
kind. Only the last-named can understand, can feel, can sympathise
with such mighty figures as Cesare Borgia and JuUus II. — the
religious poet being inclined to paint them as monsters, the sub-
religious as freaks and neurotics. Similia similibus: equals can
only be recognised by their equals, and Gobineau was himself a type
of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an age of low bourgeois and
socialist ideals. In a century swayed by romanticism and democracy,
Gobineau was a classic and an aristocrat. He is a forerunner of
Nietzsche (" the only European spirit I should care to converse with,"
said Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is peculiarly fitted
## p. (#247) ################################################
OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
to deal with one of the few periods that was not dominated by the
moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to attract the large
and ever-growing circle of students of Nietzsche in this country and
America.
Although Gobineau, especially in his masterly touches of irony,
is a thorough Frenchman, he has not attracted in his own country,
even since his death in 1881, the attention he deserves. This is
mainly due to his anti-republican and anti-patriotic bias. In Ger-
many, on the other hand, his work has created great stir : of " La
Renaissance" alone there are no fewer than four different trans-
lations, and acting versions have been and still are produced with
success. We may hope that England — of late years not behindhand
in welcoming continental authors — will to some extent follow the
example of her Teutonic sister-nation. At any rate, the work of
Gobineau does not lack a distinguished English sponsor — one who
was no less a discerning critic than a great creative artist. George
Meredith writes (in a letter to Mrs. J. G. Butcher, Feb. 27th,
1906, : " I return the book of the Comte de Gobineau, I have not
for long read anything so good.
means this rffiaFsomething was lacking, that^
trenrentfous^T^^ encircled man — he did not know"
how to justify himself, to explain himself, to afHrni
himself, Tie suffered Trom the problem'of his owir
memimg. He sufTered also in other ways, he wai
in the main a diseased animal ; but_Jiispro^leiH_^
was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer
to ~that~cryrng~questibri," " ~To'wEatpurpose^sP^^
suffer ? " \ Man7 the bravest animal and l:lie~one
most inured to suffering, does not repudiate suffer ing
in itself : he wills it, he even seeks it out, provIHed
that he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of
su ffering. (T^- A^'i'^ suffering , but the senselessness of
suffering was the curse whichtin_then lay spread
over humanity — -and the ascetic ideal gave~ii~a
meaning ! l ~rF was up till then the only meaning;
but any meaning~is~BeReF than no meaning; the
Ascetic ideaFwas in that connection the "fdute de
■mieux" par excellence that existed at that time.
In that ideal suffering found an explanation ; the
tremendous gap seemed filled ; the door to all
suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation —
there is no doubt about it — brought in its train
new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more
venomous, gnawing more brutally into lifeOt
brought all suffering under the_perspective oT"
"g ml t; b Pt'tn" spite of^ all that — ;man was saved
the'reby7Tle'^d a meaning, and from henceforth
vfantS'Tnore like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-
cock of chance, of nonsense, hejcould now " will "
somethingj— absolutely immaterial to what end,
to what purpose, with what means he wished :
## p. (#225) ################################################
WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ASCETIC IDEALS ? 211
the will itself was saved. It is absolutely impos-
sible to disguise what in point of fact is made
clear by every complete will that has taken its
direction from the ascetic ideal : this hate of thel
human, and even more of the animal, and more
still of the material, this horror of the senses, of
reason itself, thi s fear of hap pin ess and b eauty,]
this desire to g et right away from all illusion,!
change, growth, death, wishing and even desiring
— airthis means- — -let us have the courage to
grasp it — a will for Nothingness, a wi ll oppose d
to life, a repudiation of the most fundam ental
. condifiohs ot_lite, but it is an d remains a wi ll ! — i
and Td" say at the end that which I said at thej
beginning-pman will w ish Nothingnes s jaX\^t\\^
not wish at oK]
## p. (#226) ################################################
## p. (#227) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.
## p. (#228) ################################################
## p. (#229) ################################################
[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by
Nietzsche to form a supplement to Chapter VIII. oi Beyond
Good and Evil, dealing with Peoples and Countries. ]
The Europeans now imagine themselves as re-
presenting, in the main, the highest types of men
on earth.
A characteristic of Europeans : inconsistency
between word and deed ; the Oriental is true to
himself in daily life. How the European has
established colonies is explained by his nature,
which resembles that of a beast of prey.
This inconsistency is explained by the fact that
Christianity has abandoned the class from which
it sprang.
This is the difference between us and the
Hellenes: their morals grew up among the
governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the
same as those that exploded everywhere with
Plato.
Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance,
for example : always for the benefit of the arts.
Michael Angelo's conception of God as the
"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one.
## p. (#230) ################################################
2l6 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael,
because, through all the Christian clouds and
prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a
culture nobler than the Christo - Raphaelian :
whilst Raphael truly and modestly glorified only
the values handed down to him, and did not carry
within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts.
Michael Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt
the problem of the law-giver of new values : the
problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first
had to subdue the " hero within himself," the man
exalted to his highest pedestal, master even of his
pity, who mercilessly shatters and annihilates
everything that does not bear his own stamp,
shining in Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo
was naturally only at certain moments so high
and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe •
for the most part he adopted a condescending
attitude towards the eternal feminine in Christi-
anity ; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he
broke down before her, and gave up the ideal of
his most inspired hours. It was an ideal which
only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of
life could bear ; but not a man advanced in years !
Indeed, he would have had to demolish Christi-
anity with his ideal ! But he was not thinker
and philosopher enough for that. Perhaps
Leonardo da Vinci alone of those artists had a
really super-Christian outlook. He knows the
East, the " land of dawn," within himself as well
as without himself. There is something super-
## p. (#231) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 217
European and silent in him : a characteristic of
every one who has seen too wide a circle of things
good and bad.
4-
How much we have learnt and learnt anew in
fifty years ! The whole Romantic School with
its belief in " the people " is refuted ! No Homeric
poetry as " popular " poetry ! No deification of
the great powers of Nature ! No deduction from
language-relationship to race-relationship ! No
" intellectual contemplations " of the supernatural !
No truth enshrouded in religion !
The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one.
I am astonished. From this standpoint we regard
such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of care-
lessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of
modesty; we would condemn Plato for his pia
fraus, Kant for the derivation of his Categorical
Imperative, his own belief certainly not having
come to him from this source.
Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt
in doubt. And the question as to the value of
truthfulness and its extent lies there.
5.
What I observe with pleasure in the German is
his Mephistophelian nature ; but, to tell the truth,
one must have a higher conception of Mephis-
topheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary
to diminish his Mephistopheles in order to magnify
his "inner Faust. " The true German Mephis-
## p. (#232) ################################################
2l8 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
topheles is much more dangerous, bold, wicked,
and cunning, and consequently more open-hearted:
remember the nature of Frederick the Great, or
of that much greater Frederick, the Hohenstaufen,
Frederick li.
The real German Mephistopheles crosses the
Alps, and believes that everything there belongs
to him. Then he recovers himself, like Winckel-
mann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and
Hamlet as caricatures, invented to be laughed at,
and upon Luther also. Goethe had his good
German moments, when he laughed inwardly at
all these things. But then he fell back again
into his cloudy moods.
Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a
wrong climate ! There is something in them that
might be Hellenic ! — something that is awakened
when they are brought into touch with the South —
Winckelmann, Goethe, Mozart. We should not
forget, however, that we are still young. Luther
is still our last event ; our last book is still the
Bible. The Germans have never yet " moralised. "
Also, the very food of the Germans was their
doom : its consequence, Philistinism.
7-
The Germans are a dangerous people: they
are experts at inventing intoxicants. Gothic,
rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense
and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner — Leibniz,
## p. (#233) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 219
too (dangerous at the present day) — (they even
idealised the serving soul as the virtue of scholars
and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The
Germans may well be the most composite people
on earth.
" The people of the Middle," the inventors of
porcelain, and of a kind of Chinese breed of Privy
Councillor.
8.
The smallness and baseness of the German
soul were not and are not consequences of the
system of small states ; for it is well known that
the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud
and independent : and it is not a large state per
se that makes souls freer and more manly. The
man whose soul obeys the slavish command :
" Thou shalt and must kneel ! " in whose body
there is an involuntary bowing and scraping to
titles, orders, gracious glances from above — well,
such a man in an " Empire " will only bow all the
more deeply and lick the dust more fervently in
the presence of the greater sovereign than in the
presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted.
We can still see In the lower classes of Italians
that aristocratic self-sufficiency ; manly discipline
and self-confidence still form a part of the long
history of their country : these are virtues which
once manifested themselves before their eyes. A
poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure
than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even
a better man in the end — any one can see this.
Just ask the women.
## p. (#234) ################################################
220 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
9-
Most artists, even some of the greatest (in-
cluding the historians) have up to the present
belonged to the serving classes (whether they
serve people of high position or princes or women
or " the masses "), not to speak of their dependence
upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus
Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but
only according to their vague conception of taste,
not according to his own measure of beauty — on
the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van
Dyck was nobler in this respect : who in all those
whom he painted added a certain amount of what
he himself most highly valued : he did not descend
from himself, but rather lifted up others to him-
self when he " rendered. "
The slavish humility of the artist to his public
(as Sebastian Bach has testified in undying and
outrageous words in the dedication of his High
Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in
music ; but it is all the more deeply engrained.
A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured
to impart my views on this subject. Chopin
possesses distinction, like Van Dyck. The dis-
position of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant ;
of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn,
too, possesses distinction — like Goethe, in the
most natural way in the world.
lo.
We could at any time have counted on the
fingers of one hand those German learned men
## p. (#235) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 221
who possessed wit: the remainder have under-
standing, and a few of them, happily, that famous
"childlike character" which divines. . . . It is
our privilege : with this " divination " German
science has discovered some things which we can
hardly conceive of, and which, after all, do not
exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the
Germans who do not " divine " like them.
II.
As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and esprit
of French society, so do Germans reflect some-
thing of the deep, pensive earnestness of their
mystics and musicians, and also of their silly
childishness. The Italian exhibits a great deal
of republican distinction and art, and can show
himself to be noble and proud without vanity.
12.
A larger number of the higher and better-
endowed men will, I hope, have in the end so
much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their
bad taste for affectation and sentimental darkness,
and to turn against Richard Wagner as much as
against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are
leading us to ruin ; they flatter our dangerous
qualities. A stronger future is prepared for us in
Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in these
racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers
yet
## p. (#236) ################################################
222 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
13-
The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse,
for he is dependent upon himself most of all.
Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany
— for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck.
Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the
face of Germans. Everything that had manly,
exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the
smug populace remaining, the slave-souled people,
there came an improvement from abroad, especially
by a mixture of Slavonic blood.
The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian
nobility in general (and the peasant of certain
North German districts), comprise at present the
most manly natures in Germany.
That the manliest men shall rule : this is only
the natural order of things.
14.
The future of German culture rests with the
sons of the Prussian officers.
15-
There has always been a want of wit in
Germany, and mediocre heads attain there to the
highest honours, because even they are rare.
What is most highly prized is diligence and per-
severance and a certain cold-blooded, critical out-
look, and, for the sake of such qualities, German
scholarship and the German military system have
become paramount in Europe.
## p. (#237) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 223
16.
Parliaments may be very useful to a strong and
versatile statesman : he has something there to
rely upon (every such thing must, however, be
able to resist ! ) — upon which he can throw a great
deal of responsibility. On the whole, however, I
could wish that the counting mania and the
superstitious belief in majorities were not estab-
lished in Germany, as with the Latin races, and
that one could finally invent something new even
in politics ! It is senseless and dangerous to let
the custom of universal suffrage — which is still
but a short time under cultivation, and could
easily be uprooted — take a deeper root : whilst,
of course, its introduction was merely an expedient
to steer clear of temporary diiificulties.
17-
Can any one interest himself in this German
Empire ? Where is the new thought ? Is it only
a new combination of power ? All the worse, if
it does not know its own mind. Peace and laisser
aller are not types of politics for which I have
any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest
thoughts to victory — the only things that can
make me interested in Germany. England's
small-mindedness is the great danger now on
earth. I observe more inclination towards great-
ness in the feelings of the Russian Nihilists than
in those of the English Utilitarians. We require
an intergrowth of the German and Slav races, and
## p. (#238) ################################################
224 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
we require, too, the cleverest financiers, the Jews,
for us to become masters of the world.
(a) The sense of reality.
(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the
people's right of representation. We require the
representation of the great interests.
(c) We require an unconditional union with
Russia, together with a mutual plan of action
which shall not permit any English schemata to
obtain the mastery in Russia. No American
future !
(d) A national system of politics is untenable,
and embarrassment by Christian views is a very
great evil. In Europe all sensible people are
sceptics, whether they say so or not.
i8.
I see over and beyond all these national wars,
new " empires," and whatever else lies in the fore-
ground. What I am concerned with — for I see it
preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the
United Europe. It was the only real work, the
one impulse in the souls, of all the broad-minded
and deep-thinking men of this century — this
preparation of a new synthesis, and the tentative
effort to anticipate the future of " the European. "
Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew
old, did they fall back again into the national
narrowness of the " Fatherlanders " — then they
were once more "patriots. " I am thinking of
men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe,
Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps
## p. (#239) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 225
Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number,
concerning whom, as a successful type of German
obscurity, nothing can be said without some such
" perhaps. "
But to the help of such minds as feel the need
of a new unity there comes a great explanatory
economic fact: the small States of Europe — I
refer to all our present kingdoms and " empires '' —
will in a short time become economically un-
tenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle
for the possession of local and international trade.
Money is even now compelling European nations
to amalgamate into one Power. In order, how-
ever, that Europe may enter into the battle for
the mastery of the world with good prospects of
victory (it is easy to perceive against whom this
battle will be waged), she must probably " come
to an understanding " with England. The English
colonies are needed for this struggle, just as much
as modern Germany, to play her new rdle of
broker and middleman, requires the colonial
possessions of Holland. For no one any longer
believes that England alone is strong enough to
continue to act her old part for fifty years more ;
the impossibility of shutting out homines novi
from the government will ruin her, and her con-
tinual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle
to the carrying out of any tasks which require to
be spread out over a long period of time. A man
must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that he
may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant.
Enough; here, as in other matters, the coming
century will be found following in the footsteps of
P
## p. (#240) ################################################
226 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
Napoleon — the first man, and the man of greatest
initiative and advanced views, of modern times.
For the tasks of the next century, the methods of
popular representation and parliaments are the
most inappropriate imaginable.
19-
The condition of Europe in the next century
will once again lead to the breeding of manly
virtues, because men will live in continual danger.
Universal military service is already the curious
antidote which we possess for the effeminacy of
democratic ideas, and it has grown up out of the
struggle of the nations. (Nation — men who speak
one language and read the same newspapers.
These men now call themselves " nations,'' and
would far too readily trace their descent from the
same source and through the same history ; which,
however, even with the assistance of the most
malignant lying in the past, they have not suc-
ceeded in doing. )
20.
What quagmires and mendacity must there be
about if it is possible, in the modern European
hotch-potch, to raise questions of "race" ! (It being
premised that the origin of such writers is not in
Horneo and Borneo. )
21.
Maxim : To associate with no man who takes
any part in the mendacious race swindle.
## p. (#241) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 227
22.
With the freedom of travel now existing,
groups of men of the same kindred can join
together and establish communal habits and
customs. The overcoming of " nations. "
23-
To make Europe a centre of culture, national
stupidities should not make us blind to the fact
that in the higher regions there is already a con-
tinuous reciprocal dependence. France and Ger-
man philosophy. Richard Wagner and Paris
(1830-50). Goethe and Greece. All things
are impelled towards a synthesis of the European
past in the highest types of mind.
24.
Mankind has still much before it — how, gener-
ally speaking, could the ideal be taken from the
past? Perhaps merely in relation to the present,
which latter is possibly a lower region.
25-
This is our distrust, which recurs again and
again ; our care, which never lets us sleep ; our
question, which no one listens to or wishes to
listen to ; our Sphinx, near which there is more
than one precipice : we believe that the men of
present-day Europe are deceived in regard to the
things which we love best, and a pitiless demon
## p. (#242) ################################################
228 THE GENEALOGY OF MORALS.
(no, not pitiless, only indifferent and puerile) —
plays with our hearts and their enthusiasm, as it
may perhaps have already played with everything
that lived and loved ; I believe that everything
which we Europeans of to-day are in the habit of
admiring as the values of all these respected
things called "humanity," "mankind," "sym-
pathy," "pity," may be of some value as the
debilitation and moderating of certain powerful
and dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless,
in the long run all these things are nothing else
than the belittlement of the entire type "man,"
his mediocrisation, if in such a desperate situation
I may make use of such a desperate expression.
I think that the commedia umana for an epicurean
spectator-god must consist in this : that the
Europeans, by virtue of their growing morality,
believe in all their innocence and vanity that they
are rising higher and higher, whereas the truth
is that they are sinking lower and lower — i. e.
through the cultivation of all the virtues which
are useful to a herd, and through the repression
of the other and contrary virtues which give rise
to a new, higher, stronger, masterful race of men
— the first-named virtues merely develop the herd-
animal in man and stabilitate the animal " man,"
for until now man has been " the animal as yet
unstabilitated. "
26.
Genius and Epoch.
— Heroism is no form of
selfishness, for one is shipwrecked by it. . . . The
## p. (#243) ################################################
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. 229
direction of power is often conditioned by the
state of the period in which the great man happens
to be born ; and this fact brings about the super-
stition that he is the expression of his time. But
this same power could be applied in several
different ways ; and between him and his time
there is always this difference : that public opinion
always worships the herd instinct, — i. e. the instinct
of the weak, — while he, the strong man, fights for
strong ideals.
27.
The fate now overhanging Europe is simply
this: that it is exactly her strongest sons that
come rarely and late to the spring-time of their
existence ; that, as a rule, when they are already
in their early youth they perish, saddened, dis-
gusted, darkened in mind, just because they have
already, with the entire passion of their strength,
drained to the dregs the cup of disillusionment,
which in our days means the cup of knowledge,
and they would not have been the strongest had
they not also been the most disillusionised. For
that is the test of their power — they must first of all
rise out of the illness of their epoch to reach their
own health. A late spring-time is their mark of
distinction ; also, let us add, late merriment, late
folly, the late exuberance of joy ! For this is the
danger of to-day : everything that we loved when
we were young has betrayed us. Our last love —
th & love which makes us acknowledge he r^_our
lo ve for T ruth — let us take care that she, too,
does not betray~u sT~~
## p. (#244) ################################################
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OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
THE RENAISSANCE
By COUNT ARTHUR DE GOBINEAU
Translated by Paul V. Cohn, with an Introductory
Essay by Dr. Oscar Levy
"js. dd.
(Heinemann)
(/« the Press)
These five historical dramas cover the flowering-time of the Italian
Renaissance from the rise to prominence of Savonarola (1492) to the
last days of Michaelangelo (about 1560). While grouped round the
leading figures who provide the titles — Savonarola, Cesare Borgia,
Julius II. , Leo X. , and Michaelangelo — the plays introduce almosi
every interesting character of the period. Nor are we only con-
cerned with the great names : the author aims at catching the spiril
of the people, and the thoughts and feelings of soldier, artisan,
trader, and their womenfolk find ample voice in his pages.
The Italian Renaissance is an epoch of peculiar interest to English
readers, not least because of its profound influence on our own
Elizabethan age. It is perhaps the most many-sided period in
history : even fifth-century Greece scarcely contributed so much—
or at any rate so much that has survived — to the world of politics,
art, and thought. Now while this interest is amply reflected in
contemporary literature, from the monumental work of Symonds
down to the flotsam and jetsam of everyday fiction, there is one kind
of man who more than an historian would show insight into this
age, and that is a poet.
It is as a poet's work that Gobineau's " Historical Scenes" recom-
mend themselves to the public. But there are many kinds of poets :
there is the religious and moral kind, there is the irreligious and
submoral kind, and there is the super-religious and super-moral
kind. Only the last-named can understand, can feel, can sympathise
with such mighty figures as Cesare Borgia and JuUus II. — the
religious poet being inclined to paint them as monsters, the sub-
religious as freaks and neurotics. Similia similibus: equals can
only be recognised by their equals, and Gobineau was himself a type
of the Renaissance flung by destiny into an age of low bourgeois and
socialist ideals. In a century swayed by romanticism and democracy,
Gobineau was a classic and an aristocrat. He is a forerunner of
Nietzsche (" the only European spirit I should care to converse with,"
said Nietzsche of him in a letter), and as such is peculiarly fitted
## p. (#247) ################################################
OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
to deal with one of the few periods that was not dominated by the
moral law. For this reason Gobineau cannot fail to attract the large
and ever-growing circle of students of Nietzsche in this country and
America.
Although Gobineau, especially in his masterly touches of irony,
is a thorough Frenchman, he has not attracted in his own country,
even since his death in 1881, the attention he deserves. This is
mainly due to his anti-republican and anti-patriotic bias. In Ger-
many, on the other hand, his work has created great stir : of " La
Renaissance" alone there are no fewer than four different trans-
lations, and acting versions have been and still are produced with
success. We may hope that England — of late years not behindhand
in welcoming continental authors — will to some extent follow the
example of her Teutonic sister-nation. At any rate, the work of
Gobineau does not lack a distinguished English sponsor — one who
was no less a discerning critic than a great creative artist. George
Meredith writes (in a letter to Mrs. J. G. Butcher, Feb. 27th,
1906, : " I return the book of the Comte de Gobineau, I have not
for long read anything so good.
