No More Learning

Every system of unegoistic mor-
ality which takes itself unconditionally and appeals
to every one, not only sins against good taste, but
is also an incentive to sins of omission, an additional


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OUR VIRTUES.
165
seduction under the mask of philanthropy-and
precisely a seduction and injury to the higher,
rarer, and more privileged types of men. Moral
systems must be compelled first of all to bow
before the gradations of rank; their presumption
must be driven home to their conscience-until
they thoroughly understand at last that it is
immoral to say that “what is right for one is
proper for another. ”—So said my moralistic pedant
and bonhomme. Did he perhaps deserve to be
laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of
morals to practise morality? But one should not
be too much in the right if one wishes to have the
laughers on one's own side; a grain of wrong
pertains even to good taste.
")
222.
Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached
nowadays-and, if I gather rightly, no other re-
ligion is any longer preached_let the psycholo-
gist have his ears open: through all the vanity,
through all the noise which is natural to these
preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a hoarse,
groaning, genuine note of self-contempt. It belongs
to the overshadowing and uglifying of Europe,
which has been on the increase for a century (the
first symptoms of which are already specified
documentarily in a thoughtful letter of Galiani to
Madame d'Epinay)-if it is not really the cause
thereof! The man of "modern ideas," the con-
ceited ape, is excessively dissatisfied with himself-
,
this is perfectly certain. He suffers, and his vanity
wants him only “to suffer with his fellows. "
"


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166
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
223.
The hybrid European-a tolerably ugly plebeian,
taken all in all-absolutely requires a costume:
he needs history as a storeroom of costumes. To
be sure, he notices that none of the costumes fit
him properly-he changes and changes. Let us
look at the nineteenth century with respect to these
hasty preferences and changes in its masquerades
of style, and also with respect to its moments of
desperation on account of "nothing suiting” us,
It is in vain to get ourselves up as romantic, or
classical, or Christian, or Florentine, or barocco, or
"national,” in moribus et artibus : it does not
“clothe us”! But the “spirit,” especially the
“ historical spirit," profits even by this desperation :
once and again a new sample of the past or of
the foreign is tested, put on, taken off, packed up,
and above all studied - we are the first studious
age in puncto of “costumes," I mean as concerns
morals, articles of belief, artistic tastes, and religions;
we are prepared as no other age has ever been for
a carnival in the grand style, for the most spiritual
festival-laughter and carrogance, for the transcen-
dental height of supreme folly and Aristophanic
ridicule of the world. Perhaps we are still dis-
covering the domain of our invention just here, the
domain where even we can still be original, pro-
bably as parodists of the world's history and as
God's Merry-Andrews,-perhaps, though nothing
else of the present have a future, our laughter itself
may have a future!
a
3


## p. 167 (#189) ############################################

OUR VIRTUES.
167
224.
The historical sense (or the capacity for divining
quickly the order of rank of the valuations accord-
ing to which a people, a community, or an indi-
vidual has lived, the “divining instinct” for the
relationships of these valuations, for the relation of
the authority of the valuations to the authority of
the operating forces),--this historical sense, which
we Europeans claim as our speciality, has come to
us in the train of the enchanting and mad semi-
barbarity into which Europe has been plunged by
the democratic mingling of classes and races--it is
only the nineteenth century that has recognised
this faculty as its sixth sense. Owing to this
mingling, the past of every form and mode of life,
and of cultures which were formerly closely con-
tiguous and superimposed on one another, flows
forth into us “modern souls”; our instincts now
run back in all directions, we ourselves are a kind
of chaos: in the end, as we have said, the spirit
perceives its advantage therein. By means of our
semi-barbarity in body and in desire, we have secret
access everywhere, such as a noble age never had;
we have access above all to the labyrinth of imper-
fect civilisations, and to every form of semi-
barbarity that has at any time existed on earth;
and in so far as the most considerable part of
human civilisation hitherto has just been semi-
barbarity, the “historical sense” implies almost the
sense and instinct for everything, the taste and
tongue for everything: whereby it immediately
proves
itself to be an ignoble sense. For instance,


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168
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
we enjoy Homer once more: it is perhaps our
happiest acquisition that we know how to appre-
ciate Homer, whom men of distinguished culture
(as the French of the seventeenth century, like
Saint-Evremond, who reproached him for his esprit
vaste, and even Voltaire, the last echo of the cen-
tury) cannot and could not so easily appropriate-
whom they scarcely permitted themselves to enjoy.
The very decided Yea and Nay of their palate,
their promptly ready disgust, their hesitating reluc-
tance with regard to everything strange, their
horror of the bad taste even of lively curiosity, and
in general the averseness of every distinguished
and self-sufficing culture to avow a new desire, a
dissatisfaction with its own condition, or an admira-
tion of what is strange: all this determines and
disposes them unfavourably even towards the best
things of the world which are not their property or
could not become their prey—and no faculty is more
unintelligible to such men than just this historical
sense, with its truckling, plebeian curiosity. The
case is not different with Shakespeare, that mar-
vellous Spanish-Moorish-Saxon synthesis of taste,
over whom an ancient Athenian of the circle of
Æschylus would have half-killed himself with
laughter or irritation: but we-accept precisely this
wild motleyness, this medley of the most delicate,
the most coarse, and the most artificial, with a
secret confidence and cordiality; we enjoy it as a
refinement of art reserved expressly for us, and
allow ourselves to be as little disturbed by the
repulsive fumes and the proximity of the English
populace in which Shakespeare's art and taste lives,
1


## p. 169 (#191) ############################################

OUR VIRTUES.
169
»
as perhaps on the Chiaja of Naples, where, with all
our senses awake, we go our way, enchanted and
voluntarily, in spite of the drain-odour of the lower
quarters of the town. That as men of the "historical
sense" we have our virtues, is not to be disputed :
we are unpretentious, unselfish, modest, brave,
habituated to self-control and self-renunciation,
very grateful, very patient, very complaisant—but
with all this we are perhaps not very "tasteful. ”
Let us finally confess it, that what is most difficult
for us men of the “historical sense to grasp, feel,
taste, and love, what finds us fundamentally pre-
judiced and almost hostile, is precisely the perfec-
tion and ultimate maturity in every culture and art,
the essentially noble in works and men, their
moment of smooth sea and halcyon self-sufficiency,
the goldenness and coldness which all things show
that have perfected themselves. Perhaps our great
virtue of the historical sense is in necessary contrast
to good taste, at least to the very best taste; and we
can only evoke in ourselves imperfectly, hesitatingly,
and with compulsion the small, short, and happy
godsends and glorifications of human life as they
shine here and there: those moments and mar-
vellous experiences, when a great power has volun-
tarily come to a halt before the boundless and
infinite, -when a superabundance of refined delight
has been enjoyed by a sudden checking and
petrifying, by standing firmly and planting oneself
fixedly on still trembling ground. Proportionate-
ness is strange to us, let us confess it to ourselves;
our itching is really the itching for the infinite,
the immeasurable. Like the rider on his forward


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170
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
panting horse, we let the reins fall before the infinite,
we modern men, we semi-barbarians—and are only
in our highest bliss when we-are in most danger.
225.
Whether it be hedonism, pessimism, utili-
tarianism, or eudæmonism, all those modes of
thinking which measure the worth of things accord-
ing to pleasure and pain, that is, according to
accompanying circumstances and secondary con-
siderations, are plausible modes of thought and
naïvetés, which every one conscious of creative
powers and an artist's conscience will look down
upon with scorn, though not without sympathy.
Sympathy for you! —to be sure, that is not sympathy
as you understand it: it is not sympathy for social
"distress," for "society” with its sick and mis-
fortuned, for the hereditarily vicious and defective
who lie on the ground around us; still less is it
sympathy for the grumbling, vexed, revolutionary
slave-classes who strive after power--they call it
“ freedom. ” Our sympathy is a loftier and further-
sighted sympathy:-we see how man dwarfs himself,
how you dwarf him! and there are moments when
we view your sympathy with an indescribable
anguish, when we resist it,--when we regard your
seriousness as more dangerous than any kind of
levity. You want, if possible and there is not a
more foolish “if possible”--to do away with suffer-
ing; and we? —it really seems that we would rather
have it increased and made worse than it has
ever been! Well-being, as you understand it-


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OUR VIRTUES.
171
>
is certainly not a goal ; it seems to us an end ; a
condition which at once renders man ludicrous and
contemptible—and makes his destruction desirable !
The discipline of suffering, of great suffering—know
ye not that it is only this discipline that has pro-
duced all the elevations of humanity hitherto?
The tension of soul in misfortune which communi-
cates to it its energy, its shuddering in view of rack
and ruin, its inventiveness and bravery in under-
going, enduring, interpreting, and exploiting mis-
fortune, and whatever depth, mystery, disguise,
spirit, artifice, or greatness has been bestowed upon
the soul-has it not been bestowed through suffer-
ing, through the discipline of great suffering ? In
man creature and creator are united : in man there
is not only matter, shred, excess, clay, mire, folly,
chaos; but there is also the creator, the sculptor,
the hardness of the hammer, the divinity of the
,
spectator, and the seventh day-do ye understand
this contrast? And that your sympathy for the
creature in man" applies to that which has to be
fashioned, bruised, forged, stretched, roasted, an-
nealed, refined to that which must necessarily
suffer, and is meant to suffer ? And our sympathy
-do
ye
not understand what our reverse sympathy
applies to, when it resists your sympathy as the
worst of all pampering and enervation ? --So it is
sympathy against sympathy ! -But to repeat it
once more, there are higher problems than the pro-
blems of pleasure and pain and sympathy; and all
systems of philosophy which deal only with these
are naïvetés.
C


## p. 172 (#194) ############################################

172
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
226.
(6
-
We Immoralists. This world with which we are
concerned, in which we have to fear and love, this
almost invisible, inaudible world of delicate com-
mand and delicate obedience, a world of “ almost
in every respect, captious, insidious, sharp, and
tender — yes, it is well protected from clumsy
spectators and familiar curiosity! We are woven
into a strong net and garment of duties, and cannot
disengage ourselves-precisely here, we are “men
of duty," even we! Occasionally it is true we
dance in our “ chains” and betwixt our "swords ";
it is none the less true that more often we gnash our
teeth under the circumstances, and are impatient at
the secret hardship of our lot. But do what we
will, fools and appearances say of us :
men without duty," —we have always fools and
appearances against us!
o these are
227.
Honesty, granting that it is the virtue from which
we cannot rid ourselves, we free spirits—well, we
will labour at it with all our perversity and love, and
not tire of "perfecting” ourselves in our virtue,
which alone remains : may its glance some day
overspread like a gilded, blue, mocking twilight this
aging civilisation with its dull gloomy seriousness !
And if, nevertheless, our honesty should one day
grow weary, and sigh, and stretch its limbs, and find
us too hard, and would fain have it pleasanter,
easier, and gentler, like an agreeable vice, let us


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OUR VIRTUES.
173
66
remain hard, we latest Stoics, and let us send to its
help whatever devilry we have in us our disgust
at the clumsy and undefined, our "nitimur in veti-
tum," our love of adventure, our sharpened and
fastidious curiosity, our most subtle, disguised,
intellectual Will to Power and universal conquest,
which rambles and roves avidiously around all the
realms of the future-let us go with all our devils"
to the help of our “God”! It is probable that
people will misunderstand and mistake us on that
account: what does it matter! They will say :
“ Their 'honesty '—that is their devilry, and nothing
else ! ” What does it matter! And even if they
were right-have not all Gods hitherto been such
sanctified, re-baptized devils ? And after all, what
do we know of ourselves ? And what the spirit that
leads us wants to be called ? (It is a question of
names. ) And how many spirits we harbour ? Our
honesty, we free spirits—let us be careful lest it be-
come our vanity, our ornament and ostentation, our
limitation, our stupidity! Every virtue inclines to
stupidity, every stupidity to virtue ; "stupid to the
point of sanctity," they say in Russia,- let us be care-
ful lest out of pure honesty we do not eventually
become saints and bores! Is not life a hundred
times too short for us—to bore ourselves ? One
would have to believe in eternal life in order to. . . .
228.
I hope to be forgiven for discovering that all
moral philosophy hitherto has been tedious and has
belonged to the soporific appliances — and that


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174
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.
virtue,” in my opinion, has been more injured by
the tediousness of its advocates than by anything
else ; at the same time, however, I would not wish
to overlook their general usefulness. It is desirable
that as few people as possible should reflect upon
morals, and consequently it is very desirable that
morals should not some day become interesting!
But let us not be afraid! Things still remain to-
day as they have always been: I see no one in
Europe who has (or discloses) an idea of the fact
that philosophising concerning morals might be
conducted in a dangerous, captious, and ensnaring
manner-that calamity might be involved therein.
Observe, for example, the indefatigable, inevitable
English utilitarians : how ponderously and respect-
ably they stalk on, stalk along (a Homeric metaphor
expresses it better) in the footsteps of Bentham,
just as he had already stalked in the footsteps of
the respectable Helvétius! (no, he was not a a
dangerous man, Helvétius, ce sénateur Pococurante,
to use an expression of Galiani). No new thought,
nothing of the nature of a finer turning or better
expression of an old thought, not even a proper
history of what has been previously thought on the
subject : an impossible literature, taking it all in all,
unless one knows how to leaven it with some mis-
chief. 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,


## p. 175 (#197) ############################################

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,


## p. 176 (#198) ############################################

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.


## p. 177 (#199) ############################################

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


## p. 178 (#200) ############################################

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-


## p. 179 (#201) ############################################

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


## p. 180 (#202) ############################################

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


## p. 181 (#203) ############################################

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


## p. 183 (#205) ############################################

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


## p. 184 (#206) ############################################

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


## p. 185 (#207) ############################################

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!


## p. 186 (#208) ############################################

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


## p. 187 (#209) ############################################

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


## p. 188 (#210) ############################################

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


## p. 189 (#211) ############################################

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


## p. 190 (#212) ############################################

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”! . . . .
")


## p. 191 (#213) ############################################

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


## p. 192 (#214) ############################################

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


## p. 193 (#215) ############################################

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


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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.
-


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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.