His existence on earth contained no end; "What is the purpose of man
at all?" was a question without an answer; the _will_ for man and the
world was lacking; behind every great human destiny rang as a refrain
a still greater "Vanity!" The ascetic ideal simply means this: that
something _was lacking_, that a tremendous _void_ encircled man--he did
not know how to justify himself, to explain himself, to affirm himself,
he _suffered_ from the problem of his own meaning. He suffered also in
other ways, he was in the main a _diseased_ animal; but his problem
was not suffering itself, but the lack of an answer to that crying
question, "_To what purpose_ do we suffer?" Man, the bravest animal
and the one most inured to suffering, does _not_ repudiate suffering in
itself: he _wills_ it, he even seeks it out, provided that he is shown
a meaning for it, a _purpose_ of suffering. _Not_ suffering, but the
senselessness of suffering was the curse which till then lay spread
over humanity--_and the ascetic ideal gave it a meaning!_ It was up
till then the only meaning; but any meaning is better than no meaning;
the ascetic ideal was in that connection the _"faute de mieux" par
excellence_ that existed at that time. In that ideal suffering _found
an explanation_; the tremendous gap seemed filled; the door to all
suicidal Nihilism was closed. The explanation--there is no doubt about
it--brought in its train new suffering, deeper, more penetrating, more
venomous, gnawing more brutally into life: it brought all suffering
under the perspective of _guilt_; but in spite of all that--man was
_saved_ thereby, he had a _meaning_, and from henceforth was no more
like a leaf in the wind, a shuttle-cock of chance, of nonsense, he
could now "will" something--absolutely immaterial to what end, to what
purpose, with what means he wished: _the will itself was saved_. It
is absolutely impossible to disguise _what_ in point of fact is made
clear by every complete will that has taken its direction from the
ascetic ideal: this hate of the human, and even more of the animal,
and more still of the material, this horror of the senses, of reason
itself, this fear of happiness and beauty, this desire to get right
away from all illusion, change, growth, death, wishing and even
desiring--all this means--let us have the courage to grasp it--a will
for Nothingness, a will opposed to life, a repudiation of the most
fundamental conditions of life, but it is and remains _a will_!--and
to say at the end that which I said at the beginning--man will wish
_Nothingness_ rather than not wish _at all_.
[1] An allusion to the celebrated monologue in William Tell.
[2] Mistress Sly.--Tr.
[3] In the German text "Heiland." This has the double meaning of
"healer" and "saviour."--H. B. S.
[4] "Horrible beast."
[5] "Here I stand! I cannot help myself. God help me! Amen"--were
Luther's words before the Reichstag at Worms.--H. B. S.
[6] E.g. Lectureships.
[7] An allusion to the well-known patriotic song.--H. B. S.
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.
[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by Nietzsche to
form a supplement to Chapter VIII. of _Beyond Good and Evil_, dealing
with Peoples and Countries.]
1.
The Europeans now imagine themselves as representing, in the main, the
highest types of men on earth.
2.
A characteristic of Europeans: inconsistency between word and deed;
the Oriental is true to himself in daily life. How the European has
established colonies is explained by his nature, which resembles that
of a beast of prey.
This inconsistency is explained by the fact that Christianity has
abandoned the class from which it sprang.
This is the difference between us and the Hellenes: their morals grew
up among the governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the same as those
that exploded everywhere with Plato.
Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance, for example: always for
the benefit of the arts. Michael Angelo's conception of God as the
"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one.
3.
I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael, because, through all the
Christian clouds and prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a
culture _nobler_ than the Christo-Raphaelian: whilst Raphael truly
and modestly glorified only the values handed down to him, and did
not carry within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts. Michael
Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt the problem of the law-giver of
new values: the problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first had
to subdue the "hero within himself," the man exalted to his highest
pedestal, master even of his pity, who mercilessly shatters and
annihilates everything that does not bear his own stamp, shining in
Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo was naturally only at certain moments
so high and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe: for the most
part he adopted a condescending attitude towards the eternal feminine
in Christianity; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he broke down
before her, and gave up the ideal of his most inspired hours. It was
an ideal which only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of life
could bear; but not a man advanced in years! Indeed, he would have had
to demolish Christianity with his ideal! But he was not thinker and
philosopher enough for that Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci alone of those
artists had a really super-Christian outlook. He knows the East, the
"land of dawn," within himself as well as without himself. There is
something super-European and silent in him: a characteristic of every
one who has seen too wide a circle of things good and bad.
4.
How much we have learnt and learnt anew in fifty years! The whole
Romantic School with its belief in "the people" is refuted! No Homeric
poetry as "popular" poetry! No deification of the great powers of
Nature! No deduction from language-relationship to race-relationship!
No "intellectual contemplations" of the supernatural! No truth
enshrouded in religion!
The problem of truthfulness is quite a new one. I am astonished. From
this standpoint we regard such natures as Bismarck as culpable out of
carelessness, such as Richard Wagner out of want of modesty; we would
condemn Plato for his _pia fraus_, Kant for the derivation of his
Categorical Imperative, his own belief certainly not having come to him
from this source.
Finally, even doubt turns against itself: doubt in doubt. And the
question as to the _value_ of truthfulness and its extent lies _there_.
5.
What I observe with pleasure in the German is his Mephistophelian
nature; but, to tell the truth, one must have a higher conception of
Mephistopheles than Goethe had, who found it necessary to _diminish_
his Mephistopheles in order to magnify his "inner Faust." The true
German Mephistopheles is much more dangerous, bold, wicked, and
cunning, and consequently more open-hearted: remember the nature
of Frederick the Great, or of that much greater Frederick, the
Hohenstaufen, Frederick II.
The real German Mephistopheles crosses the Alps, and believes that
everything there belongs to him. Then he recovers himself, like
Winckelmann, like Mozart. He looks upon Faust and Hamlet as
caricatures, invented to be laughed at, and upon Luther also. Goethe
had his good German moments, when he laughed inwardly at all these
things. But then he fell back again into his cloudy moods.
6.
Perhaps the Germans have only grown up in a wrong climate! There is
something in them that might be Hellenic!--something that is awakened
when they are brought into touch with the South--Winckelmann, Goethe,
Mozart. We should not forget, however, that we are still young. Luther
is still our last event; our last book is still the Bible. The Germans
have never yet "moralised." Also, the very food of the Germans was
their doom: its consequence, Philistinism.
7.
The Germans are a dangerous people: they are experts at inventing
intoxicants. Gothic, rococo (according to Semper), the historical sense
and exoticism, Hegel, Richard Wagner--Leibniz, too (dangerous at the
present day)--(they even idealised the serving soul as the virtue of
scholars and soldiers, also as the simple mind). The Germans may well
be the most composite people on earth.
"The people of the Middle," the inventors of porcelain, and of a kind
of Chinese breed of Privy Councillor.
8.
The smallness and baseness of the German soul were not and are not
consequences of the system of small states; for it is well known that
the inhabitants of much smaller states were proud and independent:
and it is not a large state _per se_ that makes souls freer and more
manly. The man whose soul obeys the slavish command: "Thou shalt and
must kneel!" in whose body there is an involuntary bowing and scraping
to titles, orders, gracious glances from above--well, such a man
in an "Empire" will only bow all the more deeply and lick the dust
more fervently in the presence of the greater sovereign than in the
presence of the lesser: this cannot be doubted. We can still see in the
lower classes of Italians that aristocratic self-sufficiency; manly
discipline and self-confidence still form a part of the long history
of their country: these are virtues which once manifested themselves
before their eyes. A poor Venetian gondolier makes a far better figure
than a Privy Councillor from Berlin, and is even a better man in the
end--any one can see this. Just ask the women.
9.
Most artists, even some of the greatest (including the historians) have
up to the present belonged to the serving classes (whether they serve
people of high position or princes or women or "the masses"), not to
speak of their dependence upon the Church and upon moral law. Thus
Rubens portrayed the nobility of his age; but only according to their
vague conception of taste, not according to his own measure of beauty
on the whole, therefore, against his own taste. Van Dyck was nobler in
this respect: who in all those whom he painted added a certain amount
of what he himself most highly valued: he did not descend from himself,
but rather lifted up others to himself when he "rendered."
The slavish humility of the artist to his public (as Sebastian Bach has
testified in undying and outrageous words in the dedication of his High
Mass) is perhaps more difficult to perceive in music; but it is all the
more deeply engrained. A hearing would be refused me if I endeavoured
to impart my views on this subject. Chopin possesses distinction, like
Van Dyck. The disposition of Beethoven is that of a proud peasant;
of Haydn, that of a proud servant. Mendelssohn, too, possesses
distinction--like Goethe, in the most natural way in the world.
10.
We could at any time have counted on the fingers of one hand those
German learned men who possessed wit: the remainder have understanding,
and a few of them, happily, that famous "childlike character"
which divines.... It is our privilege: with this "divination" German
science has discovered some things which we can hardly conceive of, and
which, after all, do not exist, perhaps. It is only the Jews among the
Germans who do not "divine" like them.
11.
As Frenchmen reflect the politeness and _esprit_ of French society,
so do Germans reflect something of the deep, pensive earnestness of
their mystics and musicians, and also of their silly childishness. The
Italian exhibits a great deal of republican distinction and art, and
can show himself to be noble and proud without vanity.
12.
A larger number of the higher and better-endowed men will, I hope, have
in the end so much self-restraint as to be able to get rid of their bad
taste for affectation and sentimental darkness, and to turn against
Richard Wagner as much as against Schopenhauer. These two Germans are
leading us to ruin; they flatter our dangerous qualities. A stronger
future is prepared for us in Goethe, Beethoven, and Bismarck than in
these racial aberrations. We have had no philosophers yet.
13.
The peasant is the commonest type of noblesse, for he is dependent upon
himself most of all. Peasant blood is still the best blood in Germany
--for example, Luther, Niebuhr, Bismarck.
Bismarck a Slav. Let any one look upon the face of Germans. Everything
that had manly, exuberant blood in it went abroad. Over the smug
populace remaining, the slave-souled people, there came an improvement
from abroad, especially by a mixture of Slavonic blood.
The Brandenburg nobility and the Prussian nobility in general (and the
peasant of certain North German districts), comprise at present the
most manly natures in Germany.
That the manliest men shall rule: this is only the natural order of
things.
14.
The future of German culture rests with the sons of the Prussian
officers.
15.
There has always been a want of wit in Germany, and mediocre heads
attain there to the highest honours, because even they are rare. What
is most highly prized is diligence and perseverance and a certain
cold-blooded, critical outlook, and, for the sake of such qualities,
German scholarship and the German military system have become paramount
in Europe.
16.
Parliaments may be very useful to a strong and versatile statesman:
he has something there to rely upon (every such thing must, however,
be able to resist!)--upon which he can throw a great deal of
responsibility. On the whole, however, I could wish that the counting
mania and the superstitious belief in majorities were not established
in Germany, as with the Latin races, and that one could finally invent
something new even in politics! It is senseless and dangerous to let
the custom of universal suffrage--which is still but a short time under
cultivation, and could easily be uprooted--take a deeper root: whilst,
of course, its introduction was merely an expedient to steer clear of
temporary difficulties.
17.
Can any one interest himself in this German Empire? Where is the new
thought? Is it only a new combination of power? All the worse, if it
does not know its own mind. Peace and laisser aller are not types of
politics for which I have any respect. Ruling, and helping the highest
thoughts to victory--the only things that can make me interested in
Germany. England's small-mindedness is the great danger now on earth.
I observe more inclination towards greatness in the feelings of the
Russian Nihilists than in those of the English Utilitarians. We require
an intergrowth of the German and Slav races, and we require, too, the
cleverest financiers, the Jews, for us to become masters of the world.
(a) The sense of reality.
(b) A giving-up of the English principle of the people's right of
representation. We require the representation of the great interests.
(c) We require an unconditional union with Russia, together with a
mutual plan of action which shall not permit any English schemata to
obtain the mastery in Russia. No American future!
(d) A national system of politics is untenable, and embarrassment by
Christian views is a very great evil. In Europe all sensible people are
sceptics, whether they say so or not.
18.
I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and
whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with--for I
see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly--is the United Europe.
It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the
broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century--this preparation
of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future
of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew
old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the
"Fatherlanders"--then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking
of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal,
Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number,
concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can
be said without some such "perhaps."
But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there
comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe--I
refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires"--will in a short time
become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle
for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even
now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In
order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery
of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive
against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to
an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for
this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new rôle of
broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland.
For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to
continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility
of shutting out _homines novi_ from the government will ruin her, and
her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the
carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long
period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that
he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here,
as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in
the footsteps of Napoleon--the first man, and the man of greatest
initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the
next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are
the most inappropriate imaginable.
19.
The condition of Europe in the next century will once again lead to the
breeding of manly virtues, because men will live in continual danger.
Universal military service is already the curious antidote which we
possess for the effeminacy of democratic ideas, and it has grown up out
of the struggle of the nations. (Nation--men who speak one language
and read the same newspapers. These men now call themselves "nations,"
and would far too readily trace their descent from the same source and
through the same history; which, however, even with the assistance of
the most malignant lying in the past, they have not succeeded in
doing.)
20.
What quagmires and mendacity must there be about if it is possible,
in the modern European hotch-potch, to raise questions of "race"! (It
being premised that the origin of such writers is not in Horneo and
Borneo.)
21.
Maxim: To associate with no man who takes any part in the mendacious
race swindle.
22.
With the freedom of travel now existing, groups of men of the same
kindred can join together and establish communal habits and customs.
The overcoming of "nations."
23.
To make Europe a centre of culture, national stupidities should not
make us blind to the fact that in the higher regions there is already a
continuous reciprocal dependence. France and German philosophy. Richard
Wagner and Paris (1830-50). Goethe and Greece. All things are impelled
towards, a synthesis of the European past in the highest types of mind.
24.
Mankind has still much before it--how, generally speaking, could
the ideal be taken from the past? Perhaps merely in relation to the
present, which latter is possibly a lower region.
25.
This is our distrust, which recurs again and again; our care, which
never lets us sleep; our question, which no one listens to or wishes
to listen to; our Sphinx, near which there is more than one precipice:
we believe that the men of present-day Europe are deceived in regard
to the things which we love best, and a pitiless demon (no, not
pitiless, only indifferent and puerile)--plays with our hearts and
their enthusiasm, as it may perhaps have already played with everything
that lived and loved; I believe that everything which we Europeans
of to-day are in the habit of admiring as the values of all these
respected things called "humanity," "mankind," "sympathy," "pity," may
be of some value as the debilitation and moderating of certain powerful
and dangerous primitive impulses. Nevertheless, in the long run all
these things are nothing else than the belittlement of the entire type
"man," his mediocrisation, if in such a desperate situation I may make
use of such a desperate expression. I think that the commedia umana for
an epicurean spectator-god must consist in this: that the Europeans, by
virtue of their growing morality, believe in all their innocence and
vanity that they are rising higher and higher, whereas the truth is
that they are sinking lower and lower--i.e. through the cultivation of
all the virtues which are useful to a herd, and through the repression
of the other and contrary virtues which give rise to a new, higher,
stronger, masterful race of men--the first-named virtues merely develop
the herd-animal in man and stabilitate the animal "man," for until now
man has been "the animal as yet unstabilitated."
26.
Genius and Epoch.--Heroism is no form of selfishness, for one is
shipwrecked by it.... The direction of power is often conditioned by
the state of the period in which the great man happens to be born; and
this fact brings about the superstition that he is the expression of
his time. But this same power could be applied in several different
ways; and between him and his time there is always this difference:
that public opinion always worships the herd instinct,--_i.e._ the
instinct of the weak,--while he, the strong man, rights for strong
ideals.
27.
The fate now overhanging Europe is simply this: that it is exactly
her strongest sons that come rarely and late to the spring-time of
their existence; that, as a rule, when they are already in their early
youth they perish, saddened, disgusted, darkened in mind, just because
they have already, with the entire passion of their strength, drained
to the dregs the cup of disillusionment, which in our days means the
cup of knowledge, and they would not have been the strongest had
they not also been the most disillusionised. For that is the test of
their power--they must first of all rise out of the illness of their
epoch to reach their own health. A late spring-time is their mark of
distinction; also, let us add, late merriment, late folly, the late
exuberance of joy! For this is the danger of to-day: everything that we
loved when we were young has betrayed us. Our last love--the love which
makes us acknowledge her, our love for Truth--let us take care that
she, too, does not betray us!