attractive, ensnaring, and exquisite element in those
iridescences and allurements to life, in the aftersheen of
which the sky of our European culture, its evening sky,
now glows—perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among
the spectators and philosophers, are—grateful to the Jews.
251. It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds
and disturbances—in short, slight attacks of stupidity—pass
over the spirit of a people that suffers and WANTS to
suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition:
for instance, among present-day Germans there is
alternately the anti-French folly, the anti-Semitic folly, the
anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the
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Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just
look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes,
and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these
little obscurations of the German spirit and conscience
may be called. May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on
a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not
remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like every one
else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did
not concern me—the first symptom of political infection.
About the Jews, for instance, listen to the following:—I
have never yet met a German who was favourably inclined
to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of
actual anti-Semitism may be on the part of all prudent and
political men, this prudence and policy is not perhaps
directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only
against its dangerous excess, and especially against the
distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of
sentiment; —on this point we must not deceive ourselves.
That Germany has amply SUFFICIENT Jews, that the
German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and
will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity
of ‘Jew’—as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the
Englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:—
that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a
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general instinct, to which one must listen and according to
which one must act. ‘Let no more Jews come in! And shut
the doors, especially towards the East (also towards
Austria)!’—thus commands the instinct of a people whose
nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily
wiped out, easily extinguished, by a stronger race. The
Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest,
toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe, they
know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in
fact better than under favourable ones), by means of
virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to
label as vices—owing above all to a resolute faith which
does not need to be ashamed before ‘modern ideas’, they
alter only, WHEN they do alter, in the same way that the
Russian Empire makes its conquest—as an empire that has
plenty of time and is not of yesterday—namely, according
to the principle, ‘as slowly as possible’! A thinker who has
the future of Europe at heart, will, in all his perspectives
concerning the future, calculate upon the Jews, as he will
calculate upon the Russians, as above all the surest and
likeliest factors in the great play and battle of forces. That
which is at present called a ‘nation’ in Europe, and is really
rather a RES FACTA than NATA (indeed, sometimes
confusingly similar to a RES FICTA ET PICTA), is in
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every case something evolving, young, easily displaced,
and not yet a race, much less such a race AERE
PERENNUS, as the Jews are such ‘nations’ should most
carefully avoid all hotheaded rivalry and hostility! It is
certain that the Jews, if they desired—or if they were
driven to it, as the anti-Semites seem to wish—COULD
now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy,
over Europe, that they are NOT working and planning
for that end is equally certain. Meanwhile, they rather
wish and desire, even somewhat importunely, to be
insorbed and absorbed by Europe, they long to be finally
settled, authorized, and respected somewhere, and wish to
put an end to the nomadic life, to the ‘wandering Jew’,—
and one should certainly take account of this impulse and
tendency, and MAKE ADVANCES to it (it possibly
betokens a mitigation of the Jewish instincts) for which
purpose it would perhaps be useful and fair to banish the
anti-Semitic bawlers out of the country. One should make
advances with all prudence, and with selection, pretty
much as the English nobility do It stands to reason that the
more powerful and strongly marked types of new
Germanism could enter into relation with the Jews with
the least hesitation, for instance, the nobleman officer from
the Prussian border it would be interesting in many ways
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to see whether the genius for money and patience (and
especially some intellect and intellectuality—sadly lacking
in the place referred to) could not in addition be annexed
and trained to the hereditary art of commanding and
obeying—for both of which the country in question has
now a classic reputation But here it is expedient to break
off my festal discourse and my sprightly Teutonomania for
I have already reached my SERIOUS TOPIC, the
‘European problem,’ as I understand it, the rearing of a
new ruling caste for Europe.
252. They are not a philosophical race—the English:
Bacon represents an ATTACK on the philosophical spirit
generally, Hobbes, Hume, and Locke, an abasement, and a
depreciation of the idea of a ‘philosopher’ for more than a
century. It was AGAINST Hume that Kant uprose and
raised himself; it was Locke of whom Schelling
RIGHTLY said, ‘JE MEPRISE LOCKE"; in the struggle
against the English mechanical stultification of the world,
Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were of one
accord; the two hostile brother-geniuses in philosophy,
who pushed in different directions towards the opposite
poles of German thought, and thereby wronged each
other as only brothers will do.—What is lacking in
England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and
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rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddle-head,
Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces
what he knew about himself: namely, what was
LACKING in Carlyle—real POWER of intellect, real
DEPTH of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy. It
is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race to hold on
firmly to Christianity—they NEED its discipline for
‘moralizing’ and humanizing. The Englishman, more
gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the
German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two,
also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of
Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity
itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and
alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is
used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the
coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in
advance with coarse-mannered people, a step towards
spiritualization. The English coarseness and rustic
demureness is still most satisfactorily disguised by Christian
pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or, more
correctly, it is thereby explained and differently expressed);
and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formerly
learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism
(and more recently as the ‘Salvation Army’), a penitential
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fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of
‘humanity’ to which they can be elevated: so much may
reasonably be admitted. That, however, which offends
even in the humanest Englishman is his lack of music, to
speak figuratively (and also literally): he has neither rhythm
nor dance in the movements of his soul and body; indeed,
not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for ‘music.’
Listen to him speaking; look at the most beautiful
Englishwoman WALKING—in no country on earth are
there more beautiful doves and swans; finally, listen to
them singing! But I ask too much …
253. There are truths which are best recognized by
mediocre minds, because they are best adapted for them,
there are truths which only possess charms and seductive
power for mediocre spirits:—one is pushed to this
probably unpleasant conclusion, now that the influence of
respectable but mediocre Englishmen—I may mention
Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer—begins to
gain the ascendancy in the middle-class region of
European taste. Indeed, who could doubt that it is a useful
thing for SUCH minds to have the ascendancy for a time?
It would be an error to consider the highly developed and
independently soaring minds as specially qualified for
determining and collecting many little common facts, and
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deducing conclusions from them; as exceptions, they are
rather from the first in no very favourable position towards
those who are ‘the rules.’ After all, they have more to do
than merely to perceive:—in effect, they have to BE
something new, they have to SIGNIFY something new,
they have to REPRESENT new values! The gulf between
knowledge and capacity is perhaps greater, and also more
mysterious, than one thinks: the capable man in the grand
style, the creator, will possibly have to be an ignorant
person;—while on the other hand, for scientific
discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain narrowness,
aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short, something
English) may not be unfavourable for arriving at them.—
Finally, let it not be forgotten that the English, with their
profound mediocrity, brought about once before a general
depression of European intelligence.
What is called ‘modern ideas,’ or ‘the ideas of the
eighteenth century,’ or ‘French ideas’—that, consequently,
against which the GERMAN mind rose up with profound
disgust—is of English origin, there is no doubt about it.
The French were only the apes and actors of these ideas,
their best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first and
profoundest VICTIMS; for owing to the diabolical
Anglomania of ‘modern ideas,’ the AME FRANCAIS has
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in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present
one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its
profound, passionate strength, its inventive excellency,
almost with disbelief. One must, however, maintain this
verdict of historical justice in a determined manner, and
defend it against present prejudices and appearances: the
European NOBLESSE—of sentiment, taste, and manners,
taking the word in every high sense—is the work and
invention of FRANCE; the European ignobleness, the
plebeianism of modern ideas—is ENGLAND’S work and
invention.
254. Even at present France is still the seat of the most
intellectual and refined culture of Europe, it is still the
high school of taste; but one must know how to find this
‘France of taste.’ He who belongs to it keeps himself well
concealed:—they may be a small number in whom it lives
and is embodied, besides perhaps being men who do not
stand upon the strongest legs, in part fatalists,
hypochondriacs, invalids, in part persons over- indulged,
over-refined, such as have the AMBITION to conceal
themselves.
They have all something in common: they keep their
ears closed in presence of the delirious folly and noisy
spouting of the democratic BOURGEOIS. In fact, a
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besotted and brutalized France at present sprawls in the
foreground—it recently celebrated a veritable orgy of bad
taste, and at the same time of self- admiration, at the
funeral of Victor Hugo. There is also something else
common to them: a predilection to resist intellectual
Germanizing—and a still greater inability to do so! In this
France of intellect, which is also a France of pessimism,
Schopenhauer has perhaps become more at home, and
more indigenous than he has ever been in Germany; not
to speak of Heinrich Heine, who has long ago been re-
incarnated in the more refined and fastidious lyrists of
Paris; or of Hegel, who at present, in the form of Taine—
the FIRST of living historians—exercises an almost
tyrannical influence. As regards Richard Wagner,
however, the more French music learns to adapt itself to
the actual needs of the AME MODERNE, the more will
it ‘Wagnerite"; one can safely predict that beforehand,—it
is already taking place sufficiently! There are, however,
three things which the French can still boast of with pride
as their heritage and possession, and as indelible tokens of
their ancient intellectual superiority in Europe, in spite of
all voluntary or involuntary Germanizing and vulgarizing
of taste. FIRSTLY, the capacity for artistic emotion, for
devotion to ‘form,’ for which the expression, L’ART
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POUR L’ART, along with numerous others, has been
invented:—such capacity has not been lacking in France
for three centuries; and owing to its reverence for the
‘small number,’ it has again and again made a sort of
chamber music of literature possible, which is sought for
in vain elsewhere in Europe.—The SECOND thing
whereby the French can lay claim to a superiority over
Europe is their ancient, many-sided, MORALISTIC
culture, owing to which one finds on an average, even in
the petty ROMANCIERS of the newspapers and chance
BOULEVARDIERS DE PARIS, a psychological
sensitiveness and curiosity, of which, for example, one has
no conception (to say nothing of the thing itself!) in
Germany. The Germans lack a couple of centuries of the
