DEAR ENGLISHMEN,--In one of my former writings I have made the remark
that the world would have seen neither the great Jewish prophets nor
the great German thinkers, if the people from among whom these eminent
men sprang had not been on the whole such a misguided, and, in their
misguidedness, such a tough and stubborn race. The arrow that is to
fly far must be discharged from a well distended bow: if, therefore,
anything is necessary for greatness, it is a fierce and tenacious
opposition, an opposition either of open contempt, or of malicious
irony, or of sly silence, or of gross stupidity, an opposition
regardless of the wounds it inflicts and of the precious lives it
sacrifices, an opposition that nobody would dare to attack who was not
prepared, like the Spartan of old, to return either with his shield or
on it.
An opposition so devoid of pity is not as a rule found amongst you,
dear and fair-minded Englishmen, which may account for the fact that
you have neither produced the greatest prophets nor the greatest
thinkers in this world. You would never have crucified Christ, as did
the Jews, or driven Nietzsche into madness, as did the Germans--you
would have made Nietzsche, on account of his literary faculties,
Minister of State in a Whig Ministry, you would have invited Jesus
Christ to your country houses, where he would have been worshipped by
all the ladies on account of his long hair and interesting looks, and
tolerated by all men as an amusing, if somewhat romantic, foreigner. I
know that the current opinion is to the contrary, and that your
country is constantly accused, even by yourselves, of its insularity;
but I, for my part, have found an almost feminine receptivity amongst
you in my endeavour to bring you into contact with some ideas of my
native country--a receptivity which, however, has also this in common
with that of the female mind, that evidently nothing sticks deeply,
but is quickly wiped out by what any other lecturer, or writer, or
politician has to tell you. I was prepared for indifference--I was not
prepared for receptivity and that benign lady's smile, behind which
ladies, like all people who are only clever, usually hide their inward
contempt for the foolishness of mere men! I was prepared for abuse,
and even a good fight--I was not prepared for an extremely
faint-hearted criticism; I did not expect that some of my opponents
would be so utterly inexperienced in that most necessary work of
literary execution. No, no: give me the Germans or the Jews for
executioners: they can do the hanging properly, while the English
hangman is like the Russian, to whom, when the rope broke, the
half-hanged revolutionary said: "What a country, where they cannot
hang a man properly!" What a country, where they do not hang
philosophers properly--which would be the proper thing to do to
them--but smile at them, drink tea with them, discuss with them, and
ask them to contribute to their newspapers!
To get to the root of the matter: in spite of many encouraging signs,
remarks and criticisms, adverse or benevolent, I do not think I have
been very successful in my crusade for that European thought which
began with Goethe and has found so fine a development in Nietzsche.
True, I have made many a convert, but amongst them are very
undesirable ones, as, for instance, some enterprising publishers, who
used to be the toughest disbelievers in England, but who have now come
to understand the "value" of the new gospel--but as neither this
gospel is exactly Christian, nor I, the importer of it, I am not
allowed to count my success by the conversion of publishers and
sinners, but have to judge it by the more spiritual standard of the
quality of the converted. In this respect, I am sorry to say, my
success has been a very poor one.
As an eager missionary, I have naturally asked myself the reason of my
failure. Why is there no male audience in England willing to listen to
a manly and daring philosophy? Why are there no eyes to see, no ears
to hear, no hearts to feel, no brains to understand? Why is my
trumpet, which after all I know how to blow pretty well, unable to
shatter the walls of English prejudice against a teacher whose school
cannot possibly be avoided by any European with a higher purpose in
his breast?... There is plenty of time for thought nowadays for a man
who does not allow himself to be drawn into that aimless bustle of
pleasure business or politics, which is called modern life because
outside that life there is--just as outside those noisy Oriental
cities-a desert, a calmness, a true and almost majestic leisure, a
leisure unprecedented in any age, a leisure in which one may arrive at
several conclusions concerning English indifference towards the new
thought.
First of all, of course, there stands in the way the terrible abuse
which Nietzsche has poured upon the heads of the innocent Britishers.
While France and the Latin countries, while the Orient and India, are
within the range of his sympathies, this most outspoken of all
philosophers, this prophet and poet-philosopher, cannot find words
enough to express his disgust at the illogical, plebeian, shallow,
utilitarian Englishman. It must certainly be disagreeable to be
treated like this, especially when one has a fairly good opinion of
one's self; but why do you take it so very, very seriously? Did
Nietzsche, perchance, spare the Germans? And aren't you accustomed to
criticism on the part of German philosophers? Is it not the ancient
and time-honoured privilege of the whole range of them from Leibnitz
to Hegel -- even of German poets, like Goethe and Heine -- to call you
bad names and to use unkind language towards you? Has there not always
been among the few thinking heads in Germany a silent consent and an
open contempt for you and your ways; the sort of contempt you
yourselves have for the even more Anglo-Saxon culture of the
Americans? I candidly confess that in my more German moments I have
felt and still feel as the German philosophers do; but I have also my
European turns and moods, and then I try to understand you and even
excuse you, and take your part against earnest and thinking Germany.
Then I feel like telling the German philosophers that if you, poor
fellows, had practised everything they preached, they would have had
to renounce the pleasure of abusing you long ago, for there would now
be no more Englishmen left to abuse! As it is, you have suffered
enough on account of the wild German ideals you luckily only partly
believed in: for what the German thinker wrote on patient paper in his
study, you always had to write the whole world over on tender human
skins, black and yellow skins, enveloping ungrateful beings who
sometimes had no very high esteem for the depth and beauty of German
philosophy. And you have never taken revenge upon the inspired masters
of the European thinking-shop, you have never reabused them, you have
never complained of their want of worldly wisdom: you have invariably
suffered in silence and agony, just as brave and staunch Sancho Panza
used to do. For this is what you are, dear Englishmen, and however
well you brave, practical, materialistic John Bulls and Sancho Panzas
may know this world, however much better you may be able to perceive,
to count, to judge, and to weigh things than your ideal German Knight:
there is an eternal law in this world that the Sancho Panzas have to
follow the Don Quixotes; for matter has to follow the spirit, even the
poor spirit of a German philosopher! So it has been in the past, so it
is at present, and so it will be in the future; and you had better
prepare yourselves in time for the eventuality. For if Nietzsche were
nothing else but this customary type of German philosopher, you would
again have to pay the bill largely; and it would be very wise on your
part to study him: Sancho Panza may escape a good many sad experiences
by knowing his master's weaknesses. But as Nietzsche no longer belongs
to the Quixotic class, as Germany seems to emerge with him from her
youthful and cranky nebulosity, you will not even have the pleasure of
being thrashed in the company of your Master: no, you will be thrashed
all alone, which is an abominable thing for any right-minded human
being. "Solamen miseris socios habuisse malorum."[6]*
[Footnote * : It is a comfort to the afflicted to have companions in
their distress.]
The second reason for the neglect of Nietzsche in this country is that
you do not need him yet. And you do not need him yet because you have
always possessed the British virtue of not carrying things to
extremes, which, according to the German version, is an euphemism for
the British want of logic and critical capacity. You have, for
instance, never let your religion have any great influence upon your
politics, which is something quite abhorrent to the moral German, and
makes him so angry about you. For the German sees you acting as a
moral and law-abiding Christian at home, and as an unscrupulous and
Machiavellian conqueror abroad; and if he refrains from the reproach
of hypocrisy, with which the more stupid continentals invariably
charge you, he will certainly call you a "British muddlehead." Well, I
myself do not take things so seriously as that, for I know that men of
action have seldom time to think. It is probably for this reason also
that liberty of thought and speech has been granted to you, the
law-giver knowing very well all the time that you would be much too
busy to use and abuse such extraordinary freedom. Anyhow, it might now
be time to abuse it just a little bit, and to consider what an
extraordinary amalgamation is a Christian Power with imperialistic
ideas. True, there has once before been another Christian conquering
and colonising empire like yours, that of Venice--but these Venetians
were thinkers compared with you, and smuggled their gospel into the
paw of their lion.... Why don't you follow their example, in order not
to be unnecessarily embarrassed by it in your enterprises abroad? In
this manner you could also reconcile the proper Germans, who
invariably act up to their theories, their Christianity, their
democratic principles, although, on the other hand, in so doing you
would, I quite agree, be most unfaithful to your own traditions, which
are of a more democratic character than those of any other European
nation.
For Democracy, as every schoolboy knows, was born in an English
cradle: individual liberty, parliamentary institutions, the sovereign
rights of the people, are ideas of British origin, and have been
propagated from this island over the whole of Europe. But as the
prophet and his words are very often not honoured in his own country,
those ideas have been embraced with much more fervour by other nations
than by that in which they originated. The Continent of Europe has
taken the desire for liberty and equality much more seriously than
their levelling but also level-headed inventors, and the fervent
imagination of France has tried to put into practice all that was
quite hidden to the more sober English eye. Every one nowadays knows
the good and the evil consequences of the French Revolution, which
swept over the whole of Europe, throwing it into a state of unrest,
shattering thrones and empires, and everywhere undermining authority
and traditional institutions. While this was going on in Europe, the
originator of the merry game was quietly sitting upon his island
smiling broadly at the excitable foreigners across the Channel,
fishing as much as he could out of the water he himself had so
cleverly disturbed, and thus in every way reaping the benefit from the
mighty fight for the apple of Eros which he himself had thrown amongst
them. As I have endeavoured above to draw a parallel between the
Germans and the Jews, I may now be allowed to follow this up with one
between the Jews and the English. It is a striking parallel, which
will specially appeal to those religious souls amongst you who
consider themselves the lost tribes of our race (and who are perhaps
even more lost than they think),--and it is this: Just as the Jews
have brought Christianity into the world, but never accepted it
themselves, just as they, in spite of their democratic offspring, have
always remained the most conservative, exclusive, aristocratic, and
religious people, so have the English never allowed themselves to be
intoxicated by the strong drink of the natural equality of men, which
they once kindly offered to all Europe to quaff; but have, on the
contrary, remained the most sober, the most exclusive, the most
feudal, the most conservative people of our continent.
But because the ravages of Democracy have been less felt here than
abroad, because there is a good deal of the mediaeval building left
standing over here, because things have never been carried to that
excess which invariably brings a reaction with it--this reaction has
not set in in this country, and no strong desire for the necessity of
it, no craving for the counterbalancing influence of a Nietzsche, has
arisen yet in the British mind. I cannot help pointing out the grave
consequences of this backwardness of England, which has arisen from
the fact that you have never taken any ideas or theories, not even
your own, seriously. Democracy, dear Englishmen, is like a stream,
which all the peoples of Europe will have to cross: they will come out
of it cleaner, healthier, and stronger, but while the others are
already in the water, plunging, puffing, paddling, losing their
ground, trying to swim, and even half-drowned, you are still standing
on the other side of it, roaring unmercifully about the poor swimmers,
screamers, and fighters below,--but one day you will have to cross
this same river too, and when you enter it the others will just be out
of it, and will laugh at the poor English straggler in their turn!
The third and last reason for the icy silence which has greeted
Nietzsche in this country is due to the fact that he has--as far as I
know--no literary ancestor over here whose teachings could have
prepared you for him. Germany has had her Goethe to do this; France
her Stendhal; in Russia we find that fearless curiosity for all
problems, which is the sign of a youthful, perhaps too youthful
nation; while in Spain, on the other hand, we have an old and
experienced people, with a long training away from Christianity under
the dominion of the Semitic Arabs, who undoubtedly left some of their
blood behind,--but I find great difficulty in pointing out any man
over here who could serve as a useful guide to the heights of the
Nietzschean thought, except one, who was not a Britisher. I am
alluding to a man whose politics you used to consider and whose
writings you even now consider as fantastic, but who, like another
fantast of his race, may possess the wonderful gift of resurrection,
and come again to life amongst you--to Benjamin Disraeli.
The Disraelian Novels are in my opinion the best and only preparation
for those amongst you who wish gradually to become acquainted with the
Nietzschean spirit. There, and nowhere else, will you find the true
heroes of coming times, men of moral courage, men whose failures and
successes are alike admirable, men whose noble passions have
altogether superseded the ordinary vulgarities and moralities of lower
beings, men endowed with an extraordinary imagination, which, however,
is balanced by an equal power of reason, men already anointed with a
drop of that sacred and noble oil, without which the High
Priest-Philosopher of Modern Germany would not have crowned his Royal
Race of the Future.
Both Disraeli and Nietzsche you perceive starting from the same
pessimistic diagnosis of the wild anarchy, the growing melancholy, the
threatening Nihilism of Modern Europe, for both recognised the danger
of the age behind its loud and forced "shipwreck gaiety," behind its
big-mouthed talk about progress and evolution, behind that veil of
business-bustle, which hides its fear and utter despair--but for all
that black outlook they are not weaklings enough to mourn and let
things go, nor do they belong to that cheap class of society doctors
who mistake the present wretchedness of Humanity for sinfulness, and
wish to make their patient less sinful and still more wretched. Both
Nietzsche and Disraeli have clearly recognised that this patient of
theirs is suffering from weakness and not from sinfulness, for which
latter some kind of strength may still be required; both are therefore
entirely opposed to a further dieting him down to complete moral
emaciation, but are, on the contrary, prescribing a tonic, a
roborating, a natural regime for him --advice for which both doctors
have been reproached with Immorality by their contemporaries as well
as by posterity. But the younger doctor has turned the tables upon
their accusers, and has openly reproached his Nazarene colleagues with
the Immorality of endangering life itself, he has clearly demonstrated
to the world that their trustful and believing patient was shrinking
beneath their very fingers, he has candidly foretold these Christian
quacks that one day they would be in the position of the quack
skin-specialist at the fair, who, as a proof of his medical skill,
used to show to the peasants around him the skin of a completly cured
patient of his. Both Nietzsche and Disraeli know the way to health,
for they have had the disease of the age themselves, but they
have--the one partly, the other entirely-- cured themselves of it,
they have resisted the spirit of their time, they have escaped the
fate of their contemporaries; they therefore, and they alone, know
their danger. This is the reason why they both speak so violently, why
they both attack with such bitter fervour the utilitarian and
materialistic attitude of English Science, why they both so ironically
brush aside the airy and fantastic ideals of German Philosophy--this
is why they both loudly declare (to use Disraeli's words) "that we are
the slaves of false knowledge; that our memories are filled with ideas
that have no origin in truth; that we believe what our fathers
credited, who were convinced without a cause; that we study human
nature in a charnel house, and, like the nations of the East, pay
divine honours to the maniac and the fool." But if these two great men
cannot refrain from such outspoken vituperation--they also lead the
way: they both teach the divinity of ideas and the vileness of action
without principle; they both exalt the value of personality and
character; they both deprecate the influence of society and
socialisation; they both intensely praise and love life, but they both
pour contempt and irony upon the shallow optimist, who thinks it
delightful, and the quietist, who wishes it to be calm, sweet, and
peaceful. They thus both preach a life of danger, in opposition to
that of pleasure, of comfort, of happiness, and they do not only
preach this noble life, they also act it: for both have with equal
determination staked even their lives on the fulfilment of their
ideal.
It is astonishing--but only astonishing to your superficial student of
the Jewish character--that in Disraeli also we find an almost
Nietzschean appreciation of that eternal foe of the Jewish race, the
Hellenist, which makes Disraeli, just like Nietzsche, confess that the
Greek and the Hebrew are both amongst the highest types of the human
kind. It is not less astonishing--but likewise easily intelligible for
one who knows something of the great Jews of the Middle Ages--that in
Disraeli we discover that furious enmity against the doctrine of the
natural equality of men which Nietzsche combated all his life. It was
certainly the great Maimonides himself, that spiritual father of
Spinoza, who guided the pen of his Sephardic descendant, when he thus
wrote in his Tancred: "It is to be noted, although the Omnipotent
Creator might have formed, had it pleased him, in the humblest of his
creations, an efficient agent for his purpose that Divine Majesty has
never thought fit to communicate except with human beings of the very
highest order."
But what about Christianity, to which Disraeli was sincerely attached,
and whose creation he always considered as one of the eternal glories
of his race? Did not the Divine Majesty think it fit then to
communicate with the most humble of its creatures, with the fishermen
of Galilee, with the rabble of Corinth, with the slaves, the women,
the criminals of the Roman Empire? As I wish to be honest about
Disraeli, I must point out here, that his genius, although the most
prominent in England during his lifetime, and although violently
opposed to its current superstitions, still partly belongs to his
age--and for this very pardonable reason, that in his Jewish pride he
overrated and even misunderstood Christianity. He all but overlooked
the narrow connection between Christianity and Democracy. He did not
see that in fighting Liberalism and Nonconformity all his life, he was
really fighting Christianity, the Protestant Form of which is at the
root of British Liberalism and Individualism to this very day. And
when later in his life Disraeli complained that the disturbance in the
mind of nations has been occasioned by "the powerful assault on the
Divinity of the Semitic Literature by the Germans," he overlooked
likewise the connection of this German movement with the same
Protestantism, from the narrow and vulgar middle-class of which have
sprung all those rationalising, unimaginative, and merely clever
professors, who have so successfully undermined the ancient and
venerable lore. And thirdly, and worst of all, Disraeli never
suspected that the French Revolution, which in the same breath he once
contemptuously denounced as "the Celtic Rebellion against Semitic
laws," was, in spite of its professed attack against religion, really
a profoundly Christian, because a democratic and revolutionary
movement. What a pity he did not know all this! What a shower of
splendid additional sarcasms he would have poured over those
flat-nosed Franks, had he known what I know now, that it is the
eternal way of the Christian to be a rebel, and that just as he has
once rebelled against us, he has never ceased pestering and rebelling
against any one else either of his own or any other creed.
But it is so easy for me to be carried away by that favourite sport of
mine, of which I am the first inventor among the Jews--Christian
baiting. You must forgive this, however, in a Jew, who, while he has
been baited for two thousand years by you, likes to turn round now
that the opportunity has come, and tries to indulge on his part also
in a little bit of that genial pastime. I candidly confess it is
delightful, and I now quite understand your ancestors hunting mine as
much as they could--had I been a Christian, I would, probably, have
done the same; perhaps have done it even better, for no one would now
be left to write any such impudent truisms against me-- rest assured
of that! But as I am a Jew, and have had too much experience of the
other side of the question, I must try to control myself in the midst
of victory; I must judge things calmly; I must state fact honestly; I
must not allow myself to be unjust towards you. First of all, then,
this rebelling faculty of yours is a Jewish inheritance, an
inheritance, however, of which you have made a more than generous, a
truly Christian use, because you did not keep it niggardly for
yourselves, but have distributed it all over the earth, from Nazareth
to Nishni-Novgorod, from Jerusalem to Jamaica, from Palestine to
Pimlico, so that every one is a rebel and an anarchist nowadays. But,
secondly, I must not forget that in every Anarchist, and therefore in
every Christian, there is also, or may be, an aristocrat--a man who,
just like the anarchist, but with a perfectly holy right, wishes to
obey no laws but those of his own conscience; a man who thinks too
highly of his own faith and persuasion, to convert other people to it;
a man who, therefore, would never carry it to Caffres and Coolis; a
man, in short, with whom even the noblest and exclusive Hebrew could
shake hands. In Friedrich Nietzsche this aristocratic element which
may be hidden in a Christian has been brought to light, in him the
Christian's eternal claim for freedom of conscience, for his own
priesthood, for justification by his own faith, is no longer used for
purposes of destruction and rebellion, but for those of command and
creation; in him--and this is the key to the character of this
extraordinary man, who both on his father's and mother's side was the
descendant of a long line of Protestant Parsons--the Christian and
Protestant spirit of anarchy became so strong that he rebelled even
against his own fellow-Anarchists, and told them that Anarchy was a
low and contemptible thing, and that Revolution was an occupation fit
only for superior slaves. But with this event the circle of
Christianity has become closed, and the exclusive House of Israel is
now under the delightful obligation to make its peace with its once
lost and now reforming son.
The venerable Owner of this old house is still standing on its
threshold: his face is pale, his expression careworn, his eyes
apparently scanning something far in the distance. The wind--for there
is a terrible wind blowing just now--is playing havoc with his long
white Jew-beard, but this white Jew-beard of his is growing black
again at the end, and even the sad eyes are still capable of quite
youthful flashes, as may be noticed at this very moment. For the eyes
of the old Jew, apparently so dreamy and so far away, have suddenly
become fixed upon something in the distance yonder. The old Jew looks
and looks-- and then he rubs his eyes--and then he eagerly looks
again. And now he is sure of himself. His old and haggard face is
lighting up, his stooped figure suddenly becomes more erect, and a
tear of joy is seen running over his pale cheek into that long beard
of his. For the old Jew has recognised some one coming from afar--some
one whom he had missed, but never mentioned, for his Law forbade him
to do this--some one, however, for whom he had secretly always
mourned, as only the race of the psalmists and the prophets can
mourn--and he rushes toward him, and he falls on his neck and he
kisses him, and he says to his servants: "Bring forth the best robe
and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet.
And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it and let us eat and be
merry!" AMEN.