many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary
language is called nervous debility and sickliness; it arises
whenever races or classes which have been long separated,
decisively and suddenly blend with one another. In the
new generation, which has inherited as it were different
standards and valuations in its blood, everything is
disquiet, derangement, doubt, and tentativeness; the best
powers operate restrictively, the very virtues prevent each
other growing and becoming strong, equilibrium, ballast,
and perpendicular stability are lacking in body and soul.
That, however, which is most diseased and degenerated in
such nondescripts is the WILL; they are no longer familiar
with independence of decision, or the courageous feeling
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of pleasure in willing—they are doubtful of the ‘freedom
of the will’ even in their dreams Our present-day Europe,
the scene of a senseless, precipitate attempt at a radical
blending of classes, and CONSEQUENTLY of races, is
therefore skeptical in all its heights and depths, sometimes
exhibiting the mobile skepticism which springs impatiently
and wantonly from branch to branch, sometimes with
gloomy aspect, like a cloud over-charged with
interrogative signs—and often sick unto death of its will!
Paralysis of will, where do we not find this cripple sitting
nowadays! And yet how bedecked oftentimes’ How
seductively ornamented! There are the finest gala dresses
and disguises for this disease, and that, for instance, most of
what places itself nowadays in the show-cases as
‘objectiveness,’ ‘the scientific spirit,’ ‘L’ART POUR
L’ART,’ and ‘pure voluntary knowledge,’ is only decked-
out skepticism and paralysis of will—I am ready to answer
for this diagnosis of the European disease—The disease of
the will is diffused unequally over Europe, it is worst and
most varied where civilization has longest prevailed, it
decreases according as ‘the barbarian’ still—or again—
asserts his claims under the loose drapery of Western
culture It is therefore in the France of today, as can be
readily disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most
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infirm, and France, which has always had a masterly
aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of its
spirit into something charming and seductive, now
manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over
Europe, by being the school and exhibition of all the
charms of skepticism The power to will and to persist,
moreover, in a resolution, is already somewhat stronger in
Germany, and again in the North of Germany it is
stronger than in Central Germany, it is considerably
stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, associated with
phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter—
not to mention Italy, which is too young yet to know
what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise
will, but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that
immense middle empire where Europe as it were flows
back to Asia—namely, in Russia There the power to will
has been long stored up and accumulated, there the will—
uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative—waits
threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase
from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and
complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe
from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the
shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the
introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the
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obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I
do not say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should
rather prefer the contrary—I mean such an increase in the
threatening attitude of Russia, that Europe would have to
make up its mind to become equally threatening—namely,
TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a new caste to
rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its
own, that can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that
the long spun-out comedy of its petty-statism, and its
dynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might
finally be brought to a close. The time for petty politics is
past; the next century will bring the struggle for the
dominion of the world—the COMPULSION to great
politics.
209. As to how far the new warlike age on which we
Europeans have evidently entered may perhaps favour the
growth of another and stronger kind of skepticism, I
should like to express myself preliminarily merely by a
parable, which the lovers of German history will already
understand. That unscrupulous enthusiast for big,
handsome grenadiers (who, as King of Prussia, brought
into being a military and skeptical genius—and therewith,
in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of
German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the
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Great, had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of
the genius: he knew what was then lacking in Germany,
the want of which was a hundred times more alarming
and serious than any lack of culture and social form—his
ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of
a profound instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; and he
suspected, to his bitterest regret, that his own son was not
man enough. There, however, he deceived himself; but
who would not have deceived himself in his place? He
saw his son lapsed to atheism, to the ESPRIT, to the
pleasant frivolity of clever Frenchmen—he saw in the
background the great bloodsucker, the spider skepticism;
he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no
longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a
broken will that no longer commands, is no longer ABLE
to command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in his
son that new kind of harder and more dangerous
skepticism—who knows TO WHAT EXTENT it was
encouraged just by his father’s hatred and the icy
melancholy of a will condemned to solitude?—the
skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related to
the genius for war and conquest, and made its first
entrance into Germany in the person of the great
Frederick. This skepticism despises and nevertheless grasps;
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it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe, but
it does not thereby lose itself; it gives the spirit a dangerous
liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the heart. It is the
GERMAN form of skepticism, which, as a continued
Fredericianism, risen to the highest spirituality, has kept
Europe for a considerable time under the dominion of the
German spirit and its critical and historical distrust Owing
to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character of
the great German philologists and historical critics (who,
rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of
destruction and dissolution), a NEW conception of the
German spirit gradually established itself—in spite of all
Romanticism in music and philosophy—in which the
leaning towards masculine skepticism was decidedly
prominent whether, for instance, as fearlessness of gaze, as
courage and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute
will to dangerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized
North Pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies.
There may be good grounds for it when warm-blooded
and superficial humanitarians cross themselves before this
spirit, CET ESPRIT FATALISTE, IRONIQUE,
MEPHISTOPHELIQUE, as Michelet calls it, not without
a shudder. But if one would realize how characteristic is
this fear of the ‘man’ in the German spirit which
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awakened Europe out of its ‘dogmatic slumber,’ let us call
to mind the former conception which had to be overcome
by this new one—and that it is not so very long ago that a
masculinized woman could dare, with unbridled
presumption, to recommend the Germans to the interest
of Europe as gentle, goodhearted, weak-willed, and
poetical fools. Finally, let us only understand profoundly
enough Napoleon’s astonishment when he saw Goethe it
reveals what had been regarded for centuries as the
‘German spirit’ ‘VOILA UN HOMME!’—that was as
much as to say ‘But this is a MAN! And I only expected to
see a German!’
Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers
of the future, some trait suggests the question whether
they must not perhaps be skeptics in the last-mentioned
sense, something in them would only be designated
thereby—and not they themselves. With equal right they
might call themselves critics, and assuredly they will be
men of experiments. By the name with which I ventured
to baptize them, I have already expressly emphasized their
attempting and their love of attempting is this because, as
critics in body and soul, they will love to make use of
experiments in a new, and perhaps wider and more
dangerous sense? In their passion for knowledge, will they
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have to go further in daring and painful attempts than the
sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic century can
approve of?—There is no doubt these coming ones will be
least able to dispense with the serious and not
unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from
the skeptic I mean the certainty as to standards of worth,
the conscious employment of a unity of method, the wary
courage, the standing-alone, and the capacity for self-
responsibility, indeed, they will avow among themselves a
DELIGHT in denial and dissection, and a certain
considerate cruelty, which knows how to handle the knife
surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds They will be
STERNER (and perhaps not always towards themselves
only) than humane people may desire, they will not deal
with the ‘truth’ in order that it may ‘please’ them, or
‘elevate’ and ‘inspire’ them—they will rather have little
faith in ‘TRUTH’ bringing with it such revels for the
feelings. They will smile, those rigourous spirits, when any
one says in their presence ‘That thought elevates me, why
should it not be true?’ or ‘That work enchants me, why
should it not be beautiful?’ or ‘That artist enlarges me,
why should he not be great?’ Perhaps they will not only
have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus
rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic, and if
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any one could look into their inmost hearts, he would not
easily find therein the intention to reconcile ‘Christian
sentiments’ with ‘antique taste,’ or even with ‘modern
parliamentarism’ (the kind of reconciliation necessarily
found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and
consequently very conciliatory century). Critical
discipline, and every habit that conduces to purity and
rigour in intellectual matters, will not only be demanded
from themselves by these philosophers of the future, they
may even make a display thereof as their special
adornment— nevertheless they will not want to be called
critics on that account. It will seem to them no small
indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as is so
welcome nowadays, that ‘philosophy itself is criticism and
critical science—and nothing else whatever!’ Though this
estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the
Positivists of France and Germany (and possibly it even
flattered the heart and taste of KANT: let us call to mind
the titles of his principal works), our new philosophers will
say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of the
philosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, they
are far from being philosophers themselves! Even the great
Chinaman of Konigsberg was only a great critic.
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211. I insist upon it that people finally cease
confounding philosophical workers, and in general
scientific men, with philosophers—that precisely here one
should strictly give ‘each his own,’ and not give those far
too much, these far too little. It may be necessary for the
education of the real philosopher that he himself should
have once stood upon all those steps upon which his
servants, the scientific workers of philosophy, remain
standing, and MUST remain standing he himself must
perhaps have been critic, and dogmatist, and historian, and
besides, poet, and collector, and traveler, and riddle-
reader, and moralist, and seer, and ‘free spirit,’ and almost
everything, in order to traverse the whole range of human
values and estimations, and that he may BE ABLE with a
variety of eyes and consciences to look from a height to
any distance, from a depth up to any height, from a nook
into any expanse. But all these are only preliminary
conditions for his task; this task itself demands something
else—it requires him TO CREATE VALUES. The
philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern of Kant
and Hegel, have to fix and formalize some great existing
body of valuations—that is to say, former
DETERMINATIONS OF VALUE, creations of value,
which have become prevalent, and are for a time called
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‘truths’—whether in the domain of the LOGICAL, the
POLITICAL (moral), or the ARTISTIC. It is for these
investigators to make whatever has happened and been
esteemed hitherto, conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible,
and manageable, to shorten everything long, even ‘time’
itself, and to SUBJUGATE the entire past: an immense
and wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all
refined pride, all tenacious will, can surely find satisfaction.
THE REAL PHILOSOPHERS, HOWEVER, ARE
COMMANDERS AND LAW-GIVERS; they say: ‘Thus
SHALL it be!’ They determine first the Whither and the
Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous
labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of
