No More Learning

In effect, the old English vice called cant,
which is moral Tartuffism, has insinuated itself also
into these moralists (whom one must certainly read
with an eye to their motives if one must read them),
concealed this time under the new form of the
scientific spirit; moreover, there is not absent from
them a secret struggle with the pangs of conscience,


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OUR VIRTUES.
175
>
from which a race of former Puritans must natur-
ally suffer, in all their scientific tinkering with
morals. (Is not a moralist the opposite of a Puritan?
That is to say, as a thinker who regards morality as
questionable, as worthy of interrogation, in short,
as a problem? Is moralising not-immoral ? ) In
the end, they all want English morality to be re-
cognised as authoritative, inasmuch as mankind, or
the "general utility,” or “the happiness of the
greatest number,"—no! the happiness of England,
will be best served thereby. They would like, by
all means, to convince themselves that the striving
after English happiness, I mean after comfort and
fashion (and in the highest instance, a seat in Parlia-
ment), is at the same time the true path of virtue ;
in fact, that in so far as there has been virtue in the
world hitherto, it has just consisted in such striving.
Not one of those ponderous, conscience-stricken
ñerding-animals (who undertake to advocate the
cause of egoism as conducive to the general wel-
fare) wants to have any knowledge or inkling of
the facts that the “general welfare” is no ideal, no
goal, no notion that can be at all grasped, but is
only a nostrum,—that what is fair to one may not at
all be fair to another, that the requirement of one
morality for all is really a detriment to higher men,
in short, that there is a distinction of rank between
man and man, and consequently between morality
and morality. They are an unassuming and funda-
mentally mediocre species of men, these utilitarian
Englishmen, and, as already remarked, in so far as
they are tedious, one cannot think highly enough of
their utility. One ought even to encourage them,


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176
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
as has been partially attempted in the following
rhymes :
Hail, ye worthies, barrow-wheeling,
“Longer-better," aye revealing,
Stiffer aye in head and knee;
Unenraptured, never jesting,
Mediocre everlasting,
Sans genie et sans esprit!
229.
In these later ages, which may be proud of their
humanity, there still remains so much fear, so much
superstition of the fear, of the “cruel wild beast," the
mastering of which constitutes the very pride of
these humaner ages—that even obvious truths, as
if by the agreement of centuries, have long remained
unuttered, because they have the appearance of
helping the finally slain wild beast back to life
again. I perhaps risk something when I allow
such a truth to escape ; let others capture it again
and give it so much “milk of pious sentiment”* to
drink, that it will lie down quiet and forgotten, in
its old corner. -One ought to learn anew about
cruelty, and open one's eyes; one ought at last to
learn impatience, in order that such immodest gross
errors--as, for instance, have been fostered by
ancient and modern philosophers with regard to
tragedy-may no longer wander about virtuously
and boldly. Almost everything that we call
“higher culture” is based upon the spiritualising
* An expression from Schiller's William Tell, Act IV. ,
Scene 3.


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OUR VIRTUES.
177
>
-*
a
and intensifying of cruelty—this is my thesis ; the
"wild beast” has not been slain at all, it lives, it
flourishes, it has only been-transfigured.
That
which constitutes the painful delight of tragedy is
cruelty ; that which operates agreeably in so-called
tragic sympathy, and at the basis even of everything
sublime, up to the highest and most delicate thrills
of metaphysics, obtains its sweetness solely from the
intermingled ingredient of cruelty. What the Roman
enjoys in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of
the cross, the Spaniard at the sight of the faggot
and stake, or of the bull-fight, the present-day
Japanese who presses his way to the tragedy, the
workman of the Parisian suburbs who has a home-
sickness for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne
who, with unhinged will, “undergoes” the perform-
ance of “ Tristan and Isolde”—what all these enjoy,
and strive with mysterious ardour to drink in, is the
philtre of the great Circe "cruelty. " Here, to be
sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering
psychology of former times, which could only teach
with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight
of the suffering of others: there is an abundant,
superabundant enjoyment even in one's own suffer-
ing, in causing one's own suffering—and wherever
man has allowed himself to be persuaded to self-
denial in the religious sense, or to self-mutilation,
as among the Phænicians and ascetics, or in
general, to desensualisation, decarnalisation, and
contrition, to Puritanical repentance-spasms, to
vivisection of conscience and to Pascal-like sacri-
fizio dell' intelleto, he is secretly allured and impelled
forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of
M


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178
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL,
cruelty towards himself. –Finally, let us consider
that even the seeker of knowledge operates as an
artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that he compels his
spirit to perceive against its own inclination, and
often enough against the wishes of his heart:-he
forces it to say Nay, where he would like to affirm,
love, and adore ; indeed, every instance of taking
a thing profoundly and fundamentally, is a violation,
an intentional injuring of the fundamental will of
the spirit, which instinctively aims at appearance
and superficiality,-even in every desire for know-
ledge there is a drop of cruelty.
230.
Perhaps what I have here said about a “funda-
mental will of the spirit ” may not be understood
without further details; I may be allowed a word
I
of explanation. —That imperious something which
is popularly called “the spirit,” wishes to be master
internally and externally, and to feel itself master :
it has the will of a multiplicity for a simplicity, a
binding, taming, imperious, and essentially ruling
will. Its requirements and capacities here, are the
same as those assigned by physiologists to every-
thing that lives, grows, and multiplies. The power
of the spirit to appropriate foreign elements reveals
itself in a strong tendency to assimilate the new to
the old, to simplify the manifold, to overlook or
repudiate the absolutely contradictory; just as it
arbitrarily re-underlines, makes prominent, and
falsifies for itself certain traits and lines in the foreign
elements, in every portion of the "outside world. ”
Its object thereby is the incorporation of new "ex-


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OUR VIRTUES.
179
periences,” the assortment of new things in the old
arrangements—in short, growth; or more properly,
the feeling of growth, the feeling of increased power
-is its object. This same will has at its service an
apparently opposed impulse of the spirit, a suddenly
adopted preference of ignorance, of arbitrary
shutting out, a closing of windows, an inner denial
of this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of
defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a
contentment with obscurity, with the shutting-in
horizon, an acceptance and approval of ignorance:
as that which is all necessary according to the degree
of its appropriating power, its“ digestive power,” to
speak figuratively (and in fact“ the spirit” resembles
a stomach more than anything else). Here also
belong an occasional propensity of the spirit to let
itself be deceived (perhaps with a waggish suspicion
that it is not so and so, but is only allowed to pass
as such), a delight in uncertainty and ambiguity, an
exulting enjoyment of arbitrary, out-of-the-way
narrowness and mystery, of the too-near, of the
foreground, of the magnified, the diminished, the
misshapen, the beautified—an enjoyment of the
arbitrariness of all these manifestations of power.
Finally, in this connection, there is the not un-
scrupulous readiness of the spirit to deceive other
spirits and dissemble before them—the constant
pressing and straining of a creating, shaping, change-
able power : the spirit enjoys therein its craftiness
and its variety of disguises, it enjoys also its feeling
of security therein—it is precisely by its Protean arts
that it is best protected and concealed ! -Counter to
this propensity for appearance, for simplification, for


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180
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
a disguise, for a cloak, in short, for an outside—for
every outside is a cloak—there operates the sublime
tendency of the man of knowledge, which takes, and
insists on taking things profoundly, variously, and
thoroughly; as a kind of cruelty of the intellectual
conscience and taste, which every courageous thinker
will acknowledge in himself, provided, as it ought
to be, that he has sharpened and hardened his eye
sufficiently long for introspection, and is accustomed
to severe discipline and even severe words. He
will say: “There is something cruel in the tendency
of my spirit”: let the virtuous and amiable try to
convince him that it is not so! In fact, it would sound
nicer, if, instead of our cruelty, perhaps our “extrava-
gant honesty" were talked about, whispered about
and glorified—we free, very free spirits—and some
day perhaps such will actually be our--posthumous
glory! Meanwhile—for there is plenty of time
until then--we should be least inclined to deck our-
selves out in such florid and fringed moral verbiage ;
our whole former work has just made us sick of this
taste and its sprightly exuberance. They are
beautiful, glistening, jingling, festive words :
honesty, love of truth, love of wisdom, sacrifice for
knowledge, heroism of the truthful—there is some-
thing in them that makes one's heart swell with
pride. But we anchorites and marmots have long
ago persuaded ourselves in all the secrecy of an
anchorite's conscience, that this worthy parade of
verbiage also belongs to the old false adornment,
frippery,and gold-dust of unconscious human vanity,
and that even under such flattering colour and
repainting, the terrible original text homo natura


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OUR VIRTUES.
181
must again be recognised. In effect, to translate
man back again into nature; to master the many
vain and visionary interpretations and subordinate
meanings which have hitherto been scratched and
daubed over the eternal original text, homo natura;
to bring it about that man shall henceforth stand
before man as he now, hardened by the discipline
of science, stands before the other forms of nature,
with fearless Edipus-eyes, and stopped Ulysses-
ears, deaf to the enticements of old metaphysical
bird-catchers, who have piped to him far too long :
“ Thou art more! thou art higher thou hast a
different origin ! "—this may be a strange and
foolish task, but that it is a task, who can deny !
Why did we choose it, this foolish task? Or, to
put the question differently: “Why knowledge at
all? " Every one will ask us about this. And thus
pressed, we, who have asked ourselves the question
a hundred times, have not found, and cannot find
any better answer.
231.
Learning alters us, it does what all nourishment 1
does that does not merely “conserve"—as the phy-
siologist knows. But at the bottom of our souls,
quite “ down below," there is certainly something
unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate, of pre-
determined decision and answer to predetermined,
chosen questions. In each cardinal problem there
speaks an unchangeable"I am this"; a thinker can-
not learn anew about man and woman, for instance,
but can only learn fully-he can only follow to the
end what is “ fixed” about them in himself. Occa-


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182
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
9)
sionally we find certain solutions of problems
which make strong beliefs for us; perhaps they
are henceforth called “convictions. " Later on-
one sees in them only footsteps to self-knowledge,
guide-posts to the problem which we ourselves are
--or more correctly to the great stupidity which
we embody, our spiritual fate, the unteachable in us,
quite "down below. "-In view of this liberal com-
pliment which I have just paid myself, permission
will perhaps be more readily allowed me to utter
some truths about “woman as she is,” provided
that it is known at the outset how literally they
are merely—my truths.
232.
Woman wishes to be independent, and therefore
she begins to enlighten men about “woman as she
is”--this is one of the worst developments of the
general uglifying of Europe. For what must these
clumsy attempts of feminine scientificality and
self-exposure bring to light! Woman has so much
i cause for shame; in woman there is so much
pedantry, superficiality, schoolmasterliness, petty
presumption, unbridledness, and indiscretion con-
cealed-study only woman's behaviour towards
children ! —which has really been best restrained
and dominated hitherto by the fear of man. Alas,
if ever the "eternally tedious in woman"-she has
plenty of it ! —is allowed to venture forth! if she
begins radically and on principle to unlearn her
wisdom and art-of charming, of playing, of
frightening-away-sorrow, of alleviating and taking-
easily; if she forgets her delicate aptitude for


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OUR VIRTUES.
183
agreeable desires !
Female voices are already
raised, which, by Saint Aristophanes! make one
afraid :—with medical explicitness it is stated
in a threatening manner what woman first and
last requires from man. Is it not in the very
worst taste that woman thus sets herself up to be
scientific? Enlightenment hitherto has fortunately
been men's affair, men's gift—we remained there-
with "among ourselves"; and in the end, in view
of all that women write about “woman," we may
well have considerable doubt as to whether woman
really desires enlightenment about herself—and can
desire it. If woman does not thereby seek a new ,
ornament for herself—I believe ornamentation be-
longs to the eternally feminine ? —why, then, she
wishes to make herself feared: perhaps she thereby
wishes to get the mastery. But she does not want
truth-what does woman care for truth! From
the very first nothing is more foreign, more repug-
nant, or more hostile to woman than truth—her
1 great art is falsehood, her chief concern is appear-
ance and beauty. Let us confess it, we men:
we honour and love this very art and this very
instinct in woman: we who have the hard task,
and for our recreation gladly seek the company of
beings under whose hands, glances, and delicate
follies, our seriousness, our gravity, and profundity
appear almost like follies to us. Finally, I ask the
question : Did a woman herself ever acknowledge
profundity in a woman's mind, or justice in a
woman's heart ? And is it not true that on the
whole “woman has hitherto been most despised
by woman herself, and not at all by us ? -Wę men


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184
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
desire that woman should not continue to com-
promise herself by enlightening us; just as it was
man's care and the consideration for woman, when
the church decreed : mulier taceat in ecclesia. It
was to the benefit of woman when Napoleon gave
the too eloquent Madame de Staël to understand :
mulier taceat in politicis ! —and in my opinion, he
is a true friend of woman who calls out to women
to-day : mulier taceat de muliere!
233.
It betrays corruption of the instincts-apart from
the fact that it betrays bad taste—when a woman
refers to Madame Roland, or Madame de Staël, or
Monsieur George Sand, as though something were
proved thereby in favour of “woman as she is. ”
Among men, these are the three comical women
as they are nothing more ! --and just the best
involuntary counter - arguments against feminine
emancipation and autonomy.
234.
Stupidity in the kitchen ; woman as cook; the
terrible thoughtlessness with which the feeding of
the family and the master of the house is managed !
Woman does not understand what food means, and
she insists on being cook! If woman had been a
thinking creature, she should certainly, as cook
for thousands of years, have discovered the most
important physiological facts, and should likewise
have got possession of the healing art! Through
bad female cooks—through the entire lack of reason
in the kitchen-the development of mankind has


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OUR VIRTUES.
185
been longest retarded and most interfered with;
even to-day matters are very little better. ----A word
to High School girls.
235.
There are turns and casts of fancy, there are
sentences, little handfuls of words, in which a whole
culture, a whole society suddenly crystallises itself.
Among these is the incidental remark of Madame
de Lambert to her son : “ Mon aini, ne vous per-
mettez jamais que des folies, qui vous feront grand
plaisir"—the motherliest and wisest remark, by the
way, that was ever addressed to a son.
236.
I have no doubt that every noble woman will
oppose what Dante and Goethe believed about
woman—the former when he sang, "ella guardava
suso, ed io in lei," and the latter when he interpreted
it, “the eternally feminine draws us aloft"; for this
is just what she believes of the eternally masculine.
237.
Seven Apophthegms for Women.
How the longest ennui flees,
When a man comes to our knees!
Age, alas! and science staid,
Furnish even weak virtue aid.
Sombre garb and silence meet:
Dress for every dame-discreet.
Whom I thank when in my bliss ?
God ! —and my good tailoress!


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186
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
Young, a flower-decked cavern home;
Old, a dragon thence doth roam.
Noble title, leg that's fine,
Man as well : Oh, were he mine!
Speech in brief and sense in mass-
Slippery for the jenny-ass !
237A.
Woman has hitherto been treated by men like
birds, which, losing their way, have come down
among them from an elevation: as something
delicate, fragile, wild, strange, sweet, and animating
-but as something also which must be cooped up
to prevent it flying away.
238.
To be mistaken in the fundamental problem of
man and woman,” to deny here the profoundest
antagonism and the necessity for an eternally
hostile tension, to dream here perhaps of equal
rights, equal training, equal claims and obligations:
that is a typical sign of shallow-mindedness; and
a thinker who has proved himself shallow at this
dangerous spot-shallow in instinct ! -may gener-
ally be regarded as suspicious, nay more, as betrayed,
as discovered; he will probably prove too "short”
for all fundamental questions of life, future as well
as present, and will be unable to descend into any
of the depths. On the other hand, a man who has
depth of spirit as well as of desires, and has also
the depth of benevolence which is capable of severity


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OUR VIRTUES.
187
and harshness, and easily confounded with them,
can only think of woman as Orientals do: he must
conceive of her as a possession, as confinable pro-
perty, as a being predestined for service and accom-
plishing her mission therein-he must take his
stand in this matter upon the immense rationality
of Asia, upon the superiority of the instinct of Asia,
as the Greeks did formerly; those best heirs and
scholars of Asia—who, as is well known, with their
increasing culture and amplitude of power, from
Homer to the time of Pericles, became gradually
stricter towards woman, in short, more oriental.
How necessary, how logical, even how humanely
desirable this was, let us consider for ourselves!
239.
The weaker sex has in no previous age been
treated with so much respect by men as at present
-this belongs to the tendency and fundamental
taste of democracy, in the same way as disrespect-
fulness to old age—what wonder is it that abuse
should be immediately made of this respect? They
want more, they learn to make claims, the tribute
of respect is at last felt to be well-nigh galling;
rivalry for rights, indeed actual strife itself, would
be preferred : in a word, woman is losing modesty.
And let us immediately add that she is also losing
taste. She is unlearning to fear, man: but the
woman who “unlearns to fear" sacrifices her most
womanly instincts. That woman should venture
forward when the fear-inspiring quality in man-or
more definitely, the man in man-is no longer either
desired or fully developed, is reasonable enough and


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188
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
)
also intelligible enough ; what is more difficult to
understand is that precisely thereby — woman
deteriorates. This is what is happening nowadays:
let us not deceiye ourselves about it! Wherever
the industrial spirit has triumphed over the military
and aristocratic spirit, woman strives for the
economic and legal independence of a clerk :
woman as clerkess” is inscribed on the portal of
the modern society which is in course of formation.
While she thus appropriates new rights, aspires to
be "master,' and inscribes" progress" of woman on
her Hags and banners, the very opposite realises
itself with terrible obviousness : woman retrogrades.
Since the French Revolution the influence of woman
in Europe has declined in proportion as she has
increased her rights and claims; and the "emancipa-
tion of woman," in so far as it is desired and de-
manded by women themselves (and not only by
masculine shallow-pates), thus proves to be a re-
markable symptom of the increased weakening and
deadening of the most womanly instincts. There
is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine
stupidity, of which a well-reared woman—who is
always a sensible woman-might be heartily
ashamed. To lose the intuition as to the ground
upon which she can most surely achieve victory;
to neglect exercise in the use of her proper weapons ; ;
to let-herself-go before man, perhaps even "to the
book," where formerly she kept herself in control
and in refined, artful humility; to neutralise with
her virtuous audacity man's faith in a veiled, funda-
mentally different ideal in woman, something
eternally, necessarily feminine; to emphatically


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OUR VIRTUES.
189
а.
12
and loquaciously dissuade man from the idea that
woman must be preserved, cared for, protected, and
indulged, like some delicate, strangely wild, and
often pleasant domestic animal; the clumsy and
indignant collection of everything of the nature of
servitude and bondage which the position of woman
in the hitherto existing order of society has entailed
and still entails (as though slavery were a counter-
argument, and not rather a condition of every higher
culture, of every elevation of culture) :what does
all this betoken, if not a disintegration of womanly
instincts, a de-feminising ? Certainly, there are
enough of idiotic friends and corrupters of woman
amongst the learned asses of the masculine sex, who
advise woman to de-feminise herself in this manner,
and to imitate all the stupidities from which “man
in Europe, European “manliness," suffers,--who
would like to lower woman to "general culture,”
indeed even to newspaper reading and meddling
with politics. Here and there they wish even to
make women into free spirits and literary workers:
as though a woman without piety would not be
something perfectly obnoxious or ludicrous to a
profound and godless man ;-almost everywhere
her nerves are being ruined by the most morbid
and dangerous kind of music (our latest German
music), and she is daily being made more hysterical
)
and more incapable of fulfilling her first and last
function, that of bearing robust children. They
wish to "cultivate" her in general still more, and
“
intend, as they say, to make the "weaker sex" strong
by culture : as if history did not teach in the most
emphatic manner that the "cultivating” of mankind


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190
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
and his weakening—that is to say, the weakening,
dissipating, and languishing of his force of will—
have always kept pace with one another, and that
the most powerful and influential women in the
world (and lastly, the mother of Napoleon) had just
to thank their force of will--and not their school-
masters! —for their power and ascendency over men.
That which inspires respect in woman, and often
enough fear also, is her nature, which is more
"natural" than that of man, her genuine, carnivora-
like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath the
glove, her naïveté in egoism, her untrainableness
and innate wildness, the incomprehensibleness,
extent, and deviation of her desires and virtues. . .
That which, in spite of fear, excites one's sympathy
for the dangerous and beautiful cat, “woman," is
that she seems more afflicted, more vulnerable, more
necessitous of love and more condemned to dis-
illusionment than any other creature. Fear and
sympathy: it is with these feelings that man has
hitherto stood in presence of woman, always with
one foot already in tragedy, which rends while it
delights. -What? And all that is now to be at an
end ? And the disenchantment of woman is in
progress? The tediousness of woman is slowly
evolving? Oh Europe! Europe! We know the
horned animal which was always most attractive
to thee, from which danger is ever again threatening
thee! Thy old fable might once more become
" history”—an immense stupidity might once again
overmaster thee and carry thee away! And no
God concealed beneath it-no! only an “idea," a
modern idea”! . . . .
")


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EIGHTH CHAPTER.
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
240.
I HEARD, once again for the first time, Richard
Wagner's overture to the Mastersingers : it is a
piece of magnificent, gorgeous, heavy, latter-day art,
which has the pride to presuppose two centuries of
music as still living, in order that it may be under-
stood :-it is an honour to Germans that such a
pride did not miscalculate! What flavours and
forces, what seasons and climes do we not find
mingled in it! It impresses us at one time as
ancient, at another time as foreign, bitter, and too
modern, it is as arbitrary as it is pompously
traditional, it is not infrequently roguish, still oftener
rough and coarse—it has fire and courage, and at
the same time the loose, dun-coloured skin of fruits
which ripen too late. It flows broad and full: and
suddenly there is a moment of inexplicable hesita-
tion, like a gap that opens between cause and effect,
an oppression that makes us dream, almost a night-
mare; but already it broadens and widens anew, the
old stream of delight—the most manifold delight,
-of old and new happiness; including especially
the joy of the artist in himself, which he refuses to


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192
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
conceal, his astonished, happy cognisance of his
mastery of the expedients here employed, the new,
newly acquired, imperfectly tested expedients of
art which he apparently betrays to us. All in all,
however, no beauty, no South, nothing of the delicate
southern clearness of the sky, nothing of grace, no
dance, hardly a will to logic; a certain clumsiness
even, which is also emphasised, as though the artist
wished to say to us : “ It is part of my intention ";
a cumbersome drapery, something arbitrarily
barbaric and ceremonious, a flirring of learned and
venerable conceits and witticisms; something
German in the best and worst sense of the word,
something in the German style, manifold, formless,
and inexhaustible; a certain German potency and
super-plenitude of soul, which is not afraid to hide
itself under the raffinements of decadence-which,
perhaps, feels itself most at ease there; a real,
genuine token of the German soul, which is at the
same time young and aged, too ripe and yet still
too rich in futurity. This kind of music expresses
best what I think of the Germans: they belong to
the day before yesterday and the day after to-
morrow--they have as yet no to-day.
241.
We “good Europeans," we also have hours when
we allow ourselves a warm-hearted patriotism, a
plunge and relapse into old loves and narrow views
-I have just given an example of it-hours of
national excitement, of patriotic anguish, and all
other sorts of old-fashioned floods of sentiment.
Duller spirits may perhaps only get done with what


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PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
193
confines its operations in us to hours and plays
itself out in hours—in a considerable time : some in
half a year, others in half a lifetime, according to
the speed and strength with which they digest and
“ change their material. ” Indeed, I could think of
sluggish, hesitating races, which, even in our rapidly
moving Europe, would require half a century ere
they could surmount such atavistic attacks of
patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more
to reason, that is to say, to "good Europeanism. ”
And while digressing on this possibility, I happen
to become an ear-witness of a conversation between
two old patriots—they were evidently both hard of
hearing and consequently spoke all the louder.
“ He has as much, and knows as much, philosophy
as a peasant or a corps-student," said the one-"he
is still innocent. But what does that matter now-
adays! It is the age of the masses : they lie on
their belly before everything that is massive. And
so also in politicis. A statesman who rears up for
them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of
empire and power, they call 'great'-what does it
matter that we more prudent and conservative ones
do not meanwhile give up the old belief that it is
only the great thought that gives greatness to an
action or affair. Supposing a statesman were to
bring his people into the position of being obliged
henceforth to practise 'high politics,' for which they
were by nature badly endowed and prepared, so
that they would have to sacrifice their old and
reliable virtues, out of love to a new and doubtful
mediocrity ;—supposing a statesman were to con-
demn his people generally to 'practise politics,
N


## p. 194 (#216) ############################################

194
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
when they have hitherto had something better to
do and think about, and when in the depths of their
souls they have been unable to free themselves from
a prudent loathing of the restlessness, emptiness,
and noisy wranglings of the essentially politics-
practising nations ;-supposing such a statesman
were to stimulate the slumbering passions and
avidities of his people, were to make a stigma out
of their former diffidence and delight in aloofness,
an offence out of their exoticism and hidden per-
manency, were to depreciate their most radical pro-
clivities, subvert their consciences, make their minds
narrow, and their tastes 'national'—what!
a states-
man who should do all this, which his people would
have to do penance for throughout their whole future,
if they had a future, such a statesman would be great,
would he? "_" Undoubtedly! ” replied the other
old patriot vehemently; “otherwise he could not have
done it! It was mad perhaps to wish such a thing!
But perhaps everything great has just been mad at
its commencement ! "_" Misuse of words ! ” cried
his interlocutor, contradictorily—“strong! strong!
Strong and mad! Not great! ”—The old men had
obviously become heated as they thus shouted their
“ truths" in each other's faces ; but I, in my happi-
ness and apartness, considered how soon a stronger
one may become master of the strong; and also
that there is a compensation for the intellectual
superficialising of a nation--namely, in the deepen-
ing of another,
-
"


## p. 195 (#217) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
195
THAT
bege
242.
Whether we call it "civilisation," or "humanis-
ing,” or “progress,” which now distinguishes the
European; whether we call it simply, without praise
or blame, by the political formula : the democratic
movement in Europe-behind all the moral and
political foregrounds pointed to by such formulas,
an immense physiological process goes on, which is
ever extending : the process of the assimilation of
Europeans; their increasing detachment from the
conditions underwhich, climatically and hereditarily,
united races originate; their increasing independ-
ence of every definite milieu, that for centuries
would fain inscribe itself with equal demands on
soul and body;-that is to say, the slow emergence
of an essentially super-national and nomadic species
of man, who possesses, physiologically speaking, a
maximum of the art and power of adaptation as his
typical distinction. This process of the evolving
European, which can be retarded in its tempo by
great relapses, but will perhaps just gain and grow
thereby in vehemence and depth-the still raging
storm and stress of “national sentiment” pertains
to it, and also the anarchism which is appearing at
present--this process will probably arrive at results
on which its naïve propagators and panegyrists, the
apostles of "modern ideas," would least care to
reckon. The same new conditions under which on
an average a levelling and mediocrising of man will
take place—a useful, industrious, variously service-
able and clever gregarious man-are in the high-
est degree suitable to give rise to exceptional
maca
1
CTS
st
Suivant
len ha
han
lectus
epic


## p. 196 (#218) ############################################

196
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
men of the most dangerous and attractive qualities.
For, while the capacity for adaptation, which is
ever trying changing conditions, and begins a new
work with every generation, almost with every
decade, makes the powerfulness of the type im-
possible ; while the collective impression of such
future Europeans will probably be that of numerous,
talkative, weak-willed, and very handy workmen
who require a master, a commander, as they require
their daily bread; while, therefore, the democratising
of Europe will tend to the production of a type
prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense of the
term : the strong man will necessarily in individual
and exceptional cases, become stronger and richer
than he has perhaps ever been before—owing to
the unprejudicedness of his schooling, owing to the
immense variety of practice, art, and disguise. I
meant to say that the democratising of Europe is
at the same time an involuntary arrangement for
the rearing of tyrants—taking the word in all its
meanings, even in its most spiritual sense.
1
243.
I hear with pleasure that our sun is moving
rapidly towards the constellation Hercules : and I
hope that the men on this earth will do like the
And we foremost, we good Europeans !
sun.
244.
There was a time when it was customary to call
Germans “deep," by way of distinction ; but now
that the most successful type of new Germanism is
covetous of quite other honours, and perhaps misses


## p. 197 (#219) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
197
a
"smartness" in all that has depth, it
'
is most
opportune and patriotic to doubt whether we did
not formerly deceive ourselves with that commenda-
tion : in short, whether German depth is not at
bottom something different and worse--and some-
thing from which, thank God, we are on the point
of successfully ridding ourselves. Let us try, then,
to relearn with regard to German depth; the only
thing necessary for the purpose is a little vivi-
section of the German soul. -The German soul is
above all manifold, varied in its source, aggregated
and superimposed, rather than actually built: this
is owing to its origin. A German who would em-
bolden himself to assert: “Two souls, alas, dwell in my
breast," would make a bad guess at the truth, or, more
correctly, he would come far short of the truth about
the number of souls. As a people made up of the most
extraordinary mixing and mingling of races, per-
hapseven with a preponderance of the pre-Aryanele-
ment, as the “ people of the centre ” in every sense
of the term, the Germans are more intangible, more
ample, more contradictory, more unknown, more
incalculable, more surprising, and even more terrify-
ing than other peoples are to themselves :—they
escape definition, and are thereby alone the despair
of the French. It is characteristic of the Germans
that the question: "What is German ? " never dies
out among them. Kotzebue certainly knew his
Germans well enough: "we are known,” they cried
jubilantly to him—but Sand also thought he knew
them. Jean Paul knew what he was doing when
he declared himself incensed at Fichte's lying but
patriotic flatteries and exaggerations, but it is
C


## p. 198 (#220) ############################################

198
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
1
probable that Goethe thought differently about
Gerrhans from Jean Paul, even though he acknow-
ledged him to be right with regard to Fichte. It
is a question what Goethe really thought about the
Germans ? —But about many things around him he
never spoke explicitly, and all his life he knew how
to keep an astute silence—probably he had good
reason for it. It is certain that it was not the
“Wars of Independence" that made him look up
more joyfully, any more than it was the French
Revolution, the event on account of which he
reconstructed his "Faust," and indeed the whole
problem of “man," was the appearance of Napoleon.
There are words of Goethe in which he condemns
with impatient severity, as from a foreign land, that
which Germans take a pride in: he once defined
the famous German turn of mind as "Indulgence
towards its own and others' weaknesses. " Was he
wrong? it is characteristic of Germans that one
is seldom entirely wrong about them. The German
soul has passages and galleries in it, there are caves,
hiding-places, and dungeons therein ; its disorder
has much of the charm of the mysterious ; the
German is well acquainted with the by-paths to
chaos. And as everything loves its symbol, so the
German loves the clouds and all that is obscure,
evolving, crepuscular, damp, and shrouded: it
seems to him thateverything uncertain, undeveloped,
self-displacing, and growing is “deep. ” The German
himself does not exist : he is becoming, he is
“ developing himself. ” “Development” is therefore
the essentially German discovery and hit in the
great domain of philosophical formulas,—a ruling


## p. 199 (#221) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
199
idea, which, together with German beer and German
music, is labouring to Germanise all Europe.
Foreigners are astonished and attracted by the
riddles which the conflicting nature at the basis of
the German soul propounds to them (riddles which
Hegel systematised and Richard Wagner has in the
end set to music). “Good-natured and spiteful”
—such a juxtaposition, preposterous in the case of
every other people, is unfortunately only too often
justified in Germany: one has only to live for a
while among Swabians to know this! The clumsi-
ness of the German scholar and his social distaste-
fulness agree alarmingly well with his psychical
rope-dancing and nimble boldness, of which all the
Gods have learnt to be afraid. If any one wishes to
see the “German soul” demonstrated ad oculos, let
him only look at German taste, at German arts and
manners: what boorish indifference to "taste"! How
the noblest and the commonest stand there in juxta-
position ! How disorderly and how rich is the whole
constitution of this soul! The German drags at his
soul, he drags at everything he experiences. He
digests his events badly; he never gets “done"
with them; and German depth is often only a
difficult, hesitating "digestion. ” And just as all
chronic invalids, all dyspeptics, like what is con-
venient, so the German loves “frankness" and
"honesty"; it is so convenient to be frank and
honest! - This confidingness, this complaisance, this
showing-the-cards of German honesty, is probably
the most dangerous and most successful disguise
which the German is up to nowadays : it is his
proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can


## p. 200 (#222) ############################################

200
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
“still achieve much"! The German lets himself go,
and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German
eyes—and other countries immediately confound
him with his dressing-gown ! -I meant to say that,
let “German depth " be what it will—among our-
selves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh
at it—we shall do well to continue henceforth to
honour its appearance and good name, and not
barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a
people of depth for Prussian “smartness," and
Berlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to
pose, and let itself be regarded, as profound, clumsy,
good-natured, honest, and foolish: it might even be
-profound to do so! Finally, we should do honour
to our name-we are not called the “tiusche Volk"
(deceptive people) for nothing.
245.
The "good old” time is past, it sang itself out in
Mozart-how happy are we that his rococo still
speaks to us, that his “good company,” his tender
enthusiasm, his childish delight in the Chinese and
in flourishes, his courtesy of heart, his longing for
the elegant, the amorous, the tripping, the tearful,
and his belief in the South, can still appeal to some-
thing left in us! Ah, some time or other it will be
over with it! —but who can doubt that it will be
over still sooner with the intelligence and taste for
Beethoven! For he was only the last echo of a
break and transition in style, and not, like Mozart,
the last echo of a great European taste which had
existed for centuries. Beethoven is the inter.
mediate event between an old mellow soul that is


## p. 201 (#223) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
201
L.
constantly breaking down, and a future over-young
,
soul that is always coming ; there is spread over
his music the twilight of eternal loss and eternal
extravagant hope, the same light in which Europe
was bathed when it dreamed with Rousseau, when
it danced round the Tree of Liberty of the Revolu-
tion, and finally almost fell down in adoration
before Napoleon. But how rapidly does this very
sentiment now pale, how difficult nowadays is even
the apprehension of this sentiment, how strangely
does the language of Rousseau, Schiller, Shelley,
and Byron sound to our ear, in whom collectively
the same fate of Europe was able to speak, which
knew how to sing in Beethoven ! -Whatever Ger-
man music came afterwards, belongs to Roman-
ticism, that is to say, to a movement which, histori-
cally considered, was still shorter, more fleeting, and
more superficial than that great interlude, the
transition of Europe from Rousseau to Napoleon,
and to the rise of democracy. Weber—but what do
we care nowadays for "Freischutz" and "Oberon”!
Or Marschner's “Hans Heiling" and "Vampyre"!
Or even Wagner's "Tannhäuser"! That is extinct,
although not yet forgotten music. This whole
music of Romanticism, besides, was not noble
enough, was not musical enough, to maintain its
position anywhere but in the theatre and before
the masses; from the beginning it was second-rate
music, which was little thought of by genuine
musicians. It was different with Felix Mendels-
sohn, that halcyon master, who, on account of his
lighter, purer, happier soul, quickly acquired admira-
tion, and was equally quickly forgotten : as the


## p. 202 (#224) ############################################

202
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
beautiful episode of German music. But with regard
to Robert Schumann, who took things seriously,
and has been taken seriously from the first-he was
the last that founded a school,- do we not now
regard it as a satisfaction, a relief, a deliverance,
that this very Romanticism of Schumann's has
been surmounted ? Schumann, fleeing into the
“Saxon Switzerland” of his soul, with a half
Werther-like, half Jean-Paul-like nature (assuredly
not like Beethoven! assuredly not like Byron ! )-
his Manfred music is a mistake and a misunder-
standing to the extent of injustice; Schumann,
with his taste, which was fundamentally a petty
taste (that is to say, a dangerous propensity-
doubly dangerous among Germans - for quiet
lyricism and intoxication of the feelings), going
constantly apart, timidly withdrawing and retiring,
a noble weakling who revelled in nothing but
anonymous joy and sorrow, from the beginning a
sort of girl and noli me tangere—this Schumann
was already merely a German event in music, and
no longer a European event, as Beethoven had
been, as in a still greater degree Mozart had been;
with Schumann German music was threatened with
its greatest danger, that of losing the voice for the
soul of Europe and sinking into a merely national
affair.
246.
What a torture are books written in German to
a reader who has a third ear! How indignantly
he stands beside the slowly turning swamp of sounds
without tune and rhythms without dance, which


## p. 203 (#225) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
203
Germans call a "book”! And even the German
who reads books! How lazily, how reluctantly,
how badly he reads! How many Germans know,
and consider it obligatory to know, that there is art
in every good sentence-art which must be divined,
if the sentence is to be understood! If there is a
misunderstanding about its tempo, for instance, the
sentence itself is misunderstood! That one must
not be doubtful about the rhythm-determining
syllables, that one should feel the breaking of the
too-rigid symmetry as intentional and as a charm,
that one should lend a fine and patient ear to every
staccato and every rubato, that one should divine the
sense in the sequence of the vowels and diphthongs,
and how delicately and richly they can be tinted
and retinted in the order of their arrangement-
who among book-reading Germans is complaisant
enough to recognise such duties and requirements,
and to listen to so much art and intention in lan-
guage? After all, one just “has no ear for it";
and so the most marked contrasts of style are not
heard, and the most delicate artistry is as it were
squandered on the deaf. -These were my thoughts
when I noticed how clumsily and unintuitively
two masters in the art of prose-writing have been
confounded : one, whose words drop down hesi-
tatingly and coldly, as from the roof of a damp
cave-he counts on their dull sound and echo;
and another who manipulates his language like a
flexible sword, and from his arm down into his toes
feels the dangerous bliss of the quivering, over-
sharp blade, which wishes to bite, hiss, and cut.
-


## p. 204 (#226) ############################################

204
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
247.
How little the German style has to do with
harmony and with the ear, is shown by the fact
that precisely our good musicians themselves write
badly. The German does not read aloud, he does
not read for the ear, but only with his eyes; he
has put his ears away in the drawer for the time.
In antiquity when a man read—which was seldom
enough—he read something to himself, and in a
loud voice; they were surprised when any one read
silently, and sought secretly the reason of it. In a
loud voice: that is to say, with all the swellings, in-
flections, and variations of key and changes of tempo,
in which the ancient public world took delight. The
laws of the written style were then the same as those
of the spoken style; and these laws depended partly
on the surprising development and refined require-
ments of the ear and larynx; partly on the strength,
endurance, and power of the ancient lungs. In the
ancient sense, a period is above all a physiological
whole, inasmuch as it is comprised in one breath.
Such periods as occur in Demosthenes and Cicero,
swelling twice and sinking twice, and all in one
breath, were pleasures to the men of antiquity, who
knew by their own schooling how to appreciate the
virtue therein, the rareness and the difficulty in the
deliverance of such a period ;- we have really no
right to the big period, we modern men, who are
short of breath in every sense! Those ancients,
indeed, were all of them dilettanti in speaking, con-
sequently connoisseurs, consequently critics—they
thus brought their orators to the highest pitch ; in


## p. 205 (#227) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
205
L
the same manner as in the last century, when all
Italian ladies and gentlemen knew how to sing, the
virtuosoship of song (and with it also the art of
melody) reached its elevation. In Germany, how-
ever (until quite recently when a kind of platform
eloquence began shyly and awkwardly enough to
flutter its young wings), there was properly speak-
ing only one kind of public and approximately
artistical discourse—that delivered from the pulpit.
The preacher was the only one in Germany who
knew the weight of a syllable or a word, in what
manner a sentence strikes, springs, rushes, flows,
and comes to a close; he alone had a conscience in
his
ears, often enough a bad conscience: for reasons
are not lacking why proficiency in oratory should
be especially seldom attained by a German, or
almost always too late. The masterpiece of Ger-
man prose
is therefore with good reason the master-
piece of its greatest preacher: the Bible has hitherto
been the best German book. Compared with
Luther's Bible, almost everything else is merely
“ literature"-something which has not grown in
Germany, and therefore has not taken and does not
take root in German hearts, as the Bible has done.
248.
There are two kinds of geniuses: one which
above all engenders and seeks to engender, and
another which willingly lets itself be fructified and
brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted
nations, there are those on whom the woman's
problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the secret
task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the


## p. 206 (#228) ############################################

206
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
2.
Greeks, for instance, were a nation of this kind, and
so are the French; and others which have to
fructify and become the cause of new modes of
life-like the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty
be it asked : like the Germans --nations tortured
and enraptured by unknown fevers and irresistibly
forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for
foreign races (for such as “let themselves be
fructified”), and withal imperious, like everything
conscious of being full of generative force, and con-
sequently empowered “by the grace of God. ”
These two kinds of geniuses seek each other like
man and woman; but they also misunderstand
each other-like man and woman,
249.
Every nation has its own “Tartuffery," and
calls that its virtue. --One does not know-cannot
know, the best that is in one.
250.
What Europe owes to the Jews ? --Many things,
good and bad, and above all one thing of the
nature both of the best and the worst: the grand
style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of
infinite demands, of infinite significations, the whole
Romanticism and sublimity of moral questionable-
ness—and consequently just the most attractive,
ensnaring, and exquisite element in those irides-
cences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of
which the sky of our European culture, its evening
sky, now glows---perhaps glows out. For this, we


## p. 207 (#229) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
207
artists among the spectators and philosophers, are
-grateful to the Jews.
251.
It must be taken into the bargain, if various
clouds and disturbances-in short, slight attacks of
stupidity-pass over the spirit of a people that
suffers and wants to suffer from national nervous
fever and political ambition: for instance, among
present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-
French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the anti-Polish
folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian
folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just
look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treit-
schkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and
whatever else these little obscurations of the Ger-
man spirit and conscience may be called. May it
be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring
sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain
wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one
else, began to entertain thoughts about matters
which did not concern me—the first symptom of
political infection. About the Jews, for instance,
listen to the following :-I have never yet met a
German who was favourably inclined to the Jews;
and however decided the repudiation of actual
anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent
and political men, this prudence and policy is not
perhaps directed against the nature of the senti-
ment itself, but only against its dangerous excess,
and especially against the distasteful and infamous
expression of this excess of sentiment;-on this
point we must not deceive ourselves. That Ger-


## p. 208 (#230) ############################################

208
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
many has amply sufficient Jews, that the German
stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and
will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this
quantity of “ Jew"-as the Italian, the Frenchman,
and the Englishman have done by means of
a stronger digestion that is the unmistakable
declaration and language of a general instinct, to
which one must listen and according to which one
must act. “Let no more Jews come in ! And
shut the doors, especially towards the East (also
towards Austria)! ”—thus commands the instinct
of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain,
so that it could be easily wiped out, easily extin-
guished, by a stronger race. The Jews, however,
are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and
purest race at present living in Europe; they know
how to succeed even under the worst conditions
(in fact better than under favourable ones), by
means of virtues of some sort, which one would like
nowadays to label as vices—owing above all to a
resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed
before "modern ideas"; they alter only, when they
do alter, in the same way that the Russian Empire
makes its conquest—as an empire that has plenty
of time and is not of yesterday-namely, according
to the principle, "as slowly as possible”! A
thinker who has the future of Europe at heart, will,
in all his perspectives concerning the future, calcu-
late upon the Jews, as he will calculate upon the
Russians, as above all the surest and likeliest
factors in the great play and battle of forces. That
which is at present called a "nation" in Europe,
and is really rather a res facta than nata (indeed,


## p. 209 (#231) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
209
1
sometimes confusingly similar to a res ficta et picta),
is in every case something evolving, young, easily
displaced, and not yet a race, much less such a
race are perennius, as the Jews are: such "nations"
should most carefully avoid all hot-headed rivalry
and hostility! It is certain that the Jews, if they
desired—or if they were driven to it, as the anti-
Semites seem to wish-could now have the ascend-
ency, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe ;
that they are not working and planning for that
end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather
wish and desire, even somewhat importunately, to
be insorbed and absorbed by Europe; they long to
be finally settled, authorised, and respected some-
where, and wish to put an end to the nomadic life,
to the "wandering Jew";—and one should certainly
take account of this impulse and tendency, and
make advances to it (it possibly betokens a mitiga-
tion of the Jewish instincts): for which purpose it
would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the anti-
Semitic bawlers out of the country. One should
make advances with all prudence, and with selec-
tion; pretty much as the English nobility do.
It stands to reason that the more powerful and
strongly marked types of new Germanism could
enter into relation with the Jews with the least
hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from
the Prussian border: it would be interesting in many
ways to see whether the genius for money and
patience (and especially some intellect and intel-
lectuality-sadly lacking in the place referred to)
could not in addition be annexed and trained to
the hereditary art of commanding and obeying-


## p. 210 (#232) ############################################

210
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
for both of which the country in question has now
a classic reputation. But here it is expedient to
break off my festal discourse and my sprightly
Teutonomania: for I have already reached my
serious topic, the “European problem,” as I under-
stand it, the rearing of a new ruling caste for
Europe.
)
252.
They are not a philosophical race—the English:
Bacon represents an attack on the philosophical
spirit generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an
abasement, and a depreciation of the idea of a
“philosopher” for more than a century. It was
against Hume that Kant uprose and raised him-
self; it was Locke of whom Schelling rightly said,
“Je méprise Locke"; in the struggle against the
English mechanical stultification of the world,
Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were
of one accord; the two hostile brother-geniuses
in philosophy, who pushed in different directions
towards the opposite poles of German thought,
and thereby wronged each other as only brothers
will do. - What is lacking in England, and has
always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetori-
cian knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head,
Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate
grimaces what he knew about himself: namely,
what was lacking in Carlyle-real power of in-
tellect, real depth of intellectual perception, in
short, philosophy. It is characteristic of such
an unphilosophical race to hold on firmly to
Christianity--they need its discipline for "moral-


## p. 211 (#233) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
21I
>
ising" and humanising. The Englishman, more
gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the
German-is for that very reason, as the baser of
the two, also the most pious : he has all the more
need of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English
Christianity itself has still a characteristic English
taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which,
owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote-
the finer poison to neutralise the coarser: a finer form
of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-
mannered people, a step towards spiritualisation.
The English coarseness and rustic demureness
is still most satisfactorily disguised by Christian
pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing
(or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and
differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards
and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting
under the influence of Methodism (and more re-
cently as the “Salvation Army "), a penitential fit
may really be the relatively highest manifestation
of “humanity" to which they can be elevated : so
much may reasonably be admitted. That, however,
which offends even in the humanest Englishman is
his lack of music, to speak figuratively (and also
literally): he has neither rhythm nor dance in the
movements of his soul and body; indeed, not even
the desire for rhythm and dance, for “music. "
Listen to him speaking ; look at the most beautiful
Englishwomen walking-in no country on earth
are there more beautiful doves and swans; finally,
listen to them singing! But I ask too much.
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212
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
a
253
There are truths which are best recognised by
mediocre minds, because they are best adapted for
them, there are truths which only possess charms
and seductive power for mediocre spirits :-one is
pushed to this probably unpleasant conclusion, now
that the influence of respectable but mediocre
Englishmen-I may mention Darwin, John Stuart
Mill, and Herbert Spencer-begins to gain the
ascendency in the middle-class region of Euro-
pean taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it is
a useful thing for such minds to have the ascend-
ency for a time?
It would be an error to consider
the highly developed and independently soaring
minds as specially qualified for determining and
collecting many little common facts, and deducing
conclusions from them; as exceptions, they are
rather from the first in no very favourable position
towards those who are " the rules. ” After all, they
have more to do than merely to perceive in
effect, they have to be something new, they have to
signify something new, they have to represent new
values ! The gulf between knowledge and capacity
is perhaps greater, and also more mysterious, than
one thinks: the capable man in the grand style,
the creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant
person ;-while on the other hand, for scientific
discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain narrow-
ness, aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short
something English) may not be unfavourable for
arriving at them. -Finally, let it not be forgotten
that the English, with their profound mediocrity,
(
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## p. 213 (#235) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
213
-
brought about once before a general depression of
European intelligence. What is called "modern
ideas," or "the ideas of the eighteenth century,"
or “French ideas” – that, consequently, against
which the German mind rose up with profound
disgust—is of English origin, there is no doubt
about it. The French were only the apes and actors
of these ideas, their best soldiers, and likewise, alas !
their first and profoundest victims; for owing to
the diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the
âme français has in the end become so thin and
emaciated, that at present one recalls its sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, its profound, passionate
strength, its inventive excellency, almost with dis-
belief. One must, however, maintain this verdict of
historical justice in a determined manner, and
defend it against present prejudices and appear-
ances: the European noblesse-of sentiment, taste,
and manners, taking the word in every high sense,
-is the work and invention of France; the Euro-
pean ignoblenéss, the plebeianism of modern ideas-
is England's work and invention.
254.
Even at present France is still the seat of the most
intellectual and refined culture of Europe, it is still
the high school of taste; but one must know how to
find this “France of taste. " He who belongs to it
keeps himself well concealed :-they may be a
small number in whom it lives and is embodied, be-
sides perhaps being men who do not stand upon
the strongest legs, in part fatalists, hypochondriacs,
invalids, in part persons over-indulged, over-refined,
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## p. 214 (#236) ############################################

214
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
such as have the ambition to conceal themselves.
They have all something in common : they keep
their ears closed in presence of the delirious folly
and noisy spouting of the democratic bourgeois.
In fact, a besotted and brutalised France at present
sprawls in the foreground-it recently celebrated a
veritable
orgy of bad taste, and at the same time
of self-admiration, at the funeral of Victor Hugo.
There is also something else common to them:
a predilection to resist intellectual Germanising
--and a still greater inability to do so! In this
France of intellect, which is also a France of pessi-
mism, Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at
home, and more indigenous than he has ever been
in Germany; not to speak of Heinrich Heine, who
has long ago been re-incarnated in the more re-
fined and fastidious lyrists of Paris; or of Hegel,
who at present, in the form of Taine—the first of
living historians--exercises an almost tyrannical
influence. As regards Richard Wagner, however,
the more French music learns to adapt itself to the
actual needs of the âme moderne, the more will it
“Wagnerise"; one can safely predict that before-
hand,—it is already taking place sufficiently! There
are, however, three things which the French can
still boast of with pride as their heritage and pos-
session, and as indelible tokens of their ancient
intellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of all
voluntary or involuntary Germanising and vulgar-
ising of taste. Firstly, the capacity for artistic
emotion, for devotion to "form," for which the
expression, l'art pour l'art, along with numerous
others, has been invented :-such capacity has


## p. 215 (#237) ############################################

PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES.
215
not been lacking in France for three centuries; and
owing to its reverence for the "small number," it
has again and again made a sort of chamber music
of literature possible, which is sought for in vain
elsewhere in Europe. —The second thing whereby
the French can lay claim to a superiority over
Europe is their ancient, many-sided, moralistic
culture, owing to which one finds on an average,
even in the petty romanciers of the newspapers and
chance boulevardiers de Paris, a psychological sensi-
tiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one
has no conception (to say nothing of the thing
itself! ) in Germany. The Germans lack a couple
of centuries of the moralistic work requisite thereto,
which, as we have said, France has not grudged:
those who call the Germans “naïve "on that account
give them commendation for a defect. (As the
opposite of the German inexperience and inno-
cence in voluptate psychologica, which is not too
remotely associated with the tediousness of German
intercourse, and as the most successful expression
of genuine French curiosity and inventive talent
in this domain of delicate thrills, Henri Beyle may
be noted; that remarkable anticipatory and fore-
running man, who, with a Napoleonic tempo,
traversed his Europe, in fact, several centuries of
the European soul, as a surveyor and discoverer
thereof:-it has required two generations to over-
take him one way or other, to divine long afterwards
some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured
him—this strange Epicurean and man of interroga-
tion, the last great psychologist of France).