Part 19

_The old Problem: "What is German?"_--Let us count up apart the real acquisitions of philosophical thought for which we have to thank German intellects: are they in any allowable sense to be counted also to the credit of the whole race? Can we say that they are at the same time the work of the "German soul," or at least a symptom of it, in the sense in which we are accustomed to think, for example, of Plato's ideomania, his almost religious madness for form, as an event and an evidence of the "Greek soul"? Or would the reverse perhaps be true? Were they individually as much _exceptions_ to the spirit of the race, as was, for example, Goethe's Paganism with a good conscience? Or as Bismarck's Macchiavelism was with a good conscience, his so-called "practical politics" in Germany? Did our philosophers perhaps even go counter to the _need_ of the "German soul"? In short, were the German philosophers really philosophical _Germans_?--I call to mind three cases. Firstly, _Leibnitz's_ incomparable insight--with which he obtained the advantage not only over Descartes, but over all who had philosophised up to his time,--that consciousness is only an accident of mental representation, and _not_ its necessary and essential attribute; that consequently what we call consciousness only constitutes a state of our spiritual and psychical world (perhaps a morbid state), and is _far from being that world itself_:--is there anything German in this thought, the profundity of which has not as yet been exhausted? Is there reason to think that a person of the Latin race would not readily have stumbled on this reversal of the apparent?--for it is a reversal. Let us call to mind secondly, the immense note of interrogation which _Kant_ wrote after the notion of causality. Not that he at all doubted its legitimacy, like Hume: on the contrary, he began cautiously to define the domain within which this notion has significance generally (we have not even yet got finished with the marking out of these limits). Let us take thirdly, the astonishing hit of _Hegel,_ who stuck at no logical usage or fastidiousness when he ventured to teach that the conceptions of kinds develop _out of one another:_ with which theory the thinkers in Europe were prepared for the last great scientific movement, for Darwinism--for without Hegel there would have been no Darwin. Is there anything German in this Hegelian innovation which first introduced the decisive conception of evolution into science?--Yes, without doubt we feel that there is something of ourselves "discovered" and divined in all three cases; we are thankful for it, and at the same time surprised; each of these three principles is a thoughtful piece of German self-confession, self-understanding, and self-knowledge. We feel with Leibnitz that "our inner world is far richer, ampler, and more concealed"; as Germans we are doubtful, like Kant, about the ultimate validity of scientific knowledge of nature, and in general about whatever _can_ be known _causaliter:_ the _knowable_ as such now appears to us of _less_ worth. We Germans should still have been Hegelians, even though there had never been a Hegel, inasmuch as we (in contradistinction to all Latin peoples) instinctively attribute to becoming, to evolution, a profounder significance and higher value than to that which "is"--we hardly believe at all in the validity of the concept "being." This is all the more the case because we are not inclined to concede to our human logic that it is logic in itself, that it is the only kind of logic (we should rather like, on the contrary, to convince ourselves that it is only a special case, and perhaps one of the strangest and most stupid).--A fourth question would be whether also _Schopenhauer_ with his Pessimism, that is to say, the problem of _the worth of existence,_ had to be a German. I think not. The event _after_ which this problem was to be expected with certainty, so that an astronomer of the soul could have calculated the day and the hour for it--namely, the decay of the belief in the Christian God, the victory of scientific atheism,--is a universal European event, in which all races are to have their share of service and honour. On the contrary, it has to be ascribed precisely to the Germans--those with whom Schopenhauer was contemporary,--that they delayed this victory of atheism longest, and endangered it most. Hegel especially was its retarder _par excellence,_ in virtue of the grandiose attempt which he made to persuade us at the very last of the divinity of existence, with the help of our sixth sense, "the historical sense." As philosopher, Schopenhauer was the _first_ avowed and inflexible atheist we Germans have had: his hostility to Hegel had here its motive. The non-divinity of existence was regarded by him as something understood, palpable, indisputable; he always lost his philosophical composure and got into a passion when he saw anyone hesitate and beat about the bush here. It is at this point that his thorough uprightness of character comes in: unconditional, honest atheism is precisely the _preliminary condition_ for his raising the problem, as a final and hardwon victory of the European conscience, as the most prolific act of two thousand years' discipline to truth, which in the end no longer tolerates the _lie_ of the belief in a God.... One sees what has really gained the victory over the Christian God--, Christian morality itself, the conception of veracity, taken ever more strictly, the confessional subtlety of the Christian conscience, translated and sublimated to the scientific conscience, to intellectual purity at any price. To look upon nature as if it were a proof of the goodness and care of a God; to interpret history in honour of a divine reason, as a constant testimony to a moral order in the world and a moral final purpose; to explain personal experiences as pious men have long enough explained them, as if everything were a dispensation or intimation of Providence, something planned and sent on behalf of the salvation of the soul: all that is now _past,_ it has conscience _against_ it, it is regarded by all the more acute consciences as disreputable and dishonourable, as mendaciousness, femininism, weakness, and cowardice,--by virtue of this severity, if by anything, we are _good_ Europeans, the heirs of Europe's longest and bravest self-conquest. When we thus reject the Christian interpretation, and condemn its "significance" as a forgery, we are immediately confronted in a striking manner with the _Schopenhauerian_ question: _Has existence then a significance at all?_--the question which will require a couple of centuries even to be completely heard in all its profundity. Schopenhauer's own answer to this question was--if I may be forgiven for saying so--a premature, juvenile reply, a mere compromise, a stoppage and sticking in the very same Christian-ascetic, moral perspectives, _the belief in which had got notice to quit_ along with the belief in God.... But he _raised_ the question--as a good European, as we have said, and _not_ as a German.--Or did the Germans prove at least by the way in which they seized on the Schopenhauerian question, their inner connection and relationship to him, their preparation for his problem, and their _need_ of it? That there has been thinking and printing even in Germany since Schopenhauer's time on the problem raised by him,--it was late enough!--does not at all suffice to enable us to decide in favour of this closer relationship; one could, on the contrary, lay great stress on the peculiar _awkwardness_ of this post-Schopenhauerian Pessimism--Germans evidently do not behave themselves here as in their element. I do not at all allude here to Eduard von Hartmann; on the contrary, my old suspicion is not vanished even at present that he is _too clever_ for us; I mean to say that as arrant rogue from the very first, he did not perhaps make merry solely over German Pessimism--and that in the end he might probably "bequeathe" to them the truth as to how far a person could bamboozle the Germans themselves in the age of bubble companies. But further, are we perhaps to reckon to the honour of Germans, the old humming-top, Bahnsen, who all his life spun about with the greatest pleasure around his realistically dialectic misery and "personal ill-luck,"--was _that_ German? (In passing I recommend his writings for the purpose for which I myself have used them, as anti-pessimistic fare, especially on account of his _elegantia psychologica,_ which, it seems to me, could alleviate even the most constipated body and soul). Or would it be proper to count such dilettanti and old maids as the mawkish apostle of virginity, Mainländer, among the genuine Germans? After all he was probably a Jew (all Jews become mawkish when they moralise). Neither Bahnsen, nor Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind, deranged and problematic, his _honourable_ fright) was not only an exceptional case among Germans, but a _German_ event: while everything else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: _"Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles"_[2] consequently _sub specie speciei,_ namely, the German _species_), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No! The Germans of to-day are _not_ pessimists! And Schopenhauer was a pessimist, I repeat it once more, as a good European, and _not_ as a German.

[2] "_Germany, Germany, above all_": the first line of the German national song.--TR.

358.

_The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit._--We Europeans find ourselves in view of an immense world of ruins, where some things still tower aloft, while other objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most things however already lie on the ground, picturesque enough--where were there ever finer ruins?--overgrown with weeds, large and small. It is the Church which is this city of decay: we see the religious organisation of Christianity shaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in God is overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity--it was the last construction of the Romans!--could not of course be demolished..all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it, every sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had to assist in the work of destruction. But that which is strangest is that those who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve Christianity, have been precisely those who did most to destroy it,--the Germans. It seems that the Germans do not understand the essence of a Church. Are they not spiritual enough, or not distrustful enough to do so? In any case the structure of the Church rests on a _southern_ freedom and liberality of spirit, and similarly on a southern suspicion of nature, man, and spirit,--it rests on a knowledge of man an experience of man, entirely different from what the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation in all its length and breadth was the indignation of the simple against something "complicated." To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding, in which much is to be forgiven,--people did not understand the mode of expression of a _victorious_ Church, and only saw corruption; they misunderstood the noble scepticism, the _luxury_ of scepticism and toleration which every victorious, self-confident power permits.... One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as regards all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly endowed; he was fatally short-sighted, superficial and imprudent--and above all, as a man sprung from the people, he lacked all the hereditary qualities of a ruling caste, and all the instincts for power; so that his work, his intention to restore the work of the Romans, merely became involuntarily and unconsciously the commencement of a work of destruction. He unravelled, he tore asunder with honest rage, where the old spider had woven longest and most carefully. He gave the sacred books into the hands of everyone,--they thereby got at last into the hands of the philologists, that is to say, the annihilators of every belief based upon books. He demolished the conception of "the Church" in that he repudiated the belief in the inspiration of the Councils: for only under the supposition that the inspiring spirit which had founded the Church still lives in it, still builds it, still goes on building its house, does the conception of "the Church" retain its power. He gave back to the priest sexual intercourse: but three-fourths of the reverence of which the people (and above all the women of the people) are capable, rests on the belief that an exceptional man in this respect will also be an exceptional man in other respects. It is precisely here that the popular belief in something superhuman in man, in a miracle, in the saving God in man, has its most subtle and insidious advocate. After Luther had given a wife to the priest, he had _to take from him_ auricular confession; that was psychologically right: but thereby he practically did away with the Christian priest himself, whose profoundest utility has ever consisted I in his being a sacred ear, a silent well, and a grave for secrets. "Every man his own priest"--behind such formulæ and their bucolic slyness, there was concealed in Luther the profoundest hatred of "higher men," and of the rule of "higher men," as the Church had conceived them. Luther disowned an ideal which he did not know how to attain, while he seemed to combat and detest the degeneration thereof. As a matter of fact, he, the impossible monk, repudiated the _rule_ of the _homines religiosi_; he consequently brought about precisely the same thing within the ecclesiastical social order that he combated so impatiently in the civic order,--namely a "peasant insurrection."--As to all that grew out of his Reformation afterwards, good and bad, which can at present be almost counted up--who would be naïve enough to praise or blame Luther simply on account of these results? He is innocent of all; he knew not what he did. The art of making the European spirit shallower especially in the north, or more _good-natured,_ if people would rather hear it designated by a moral expression, undoubtedly took a clever step in advance in the Lutheran Reformation; and similarly there grew out of it the mobility and disquietude of the spirit, its thirst for independence, its belief in the right to freedom, and its "naturalness." If people wish to ascribe to the Reformation in the last instance the merit of having prepared and favoured that which we at present honour as "modern science," they must of course add that it is also accessory to bringing about the degeneration of the modern scholar, with his lack of reverence, of shame and of profundity; and that it is also responsible for all naïve candour and plain-dealing in matters of knowledge, in short for the _plebeianism of the spirit_ which is peculiar to the last two centuries, and from which even pessimism hitherto, has not in any way delivered us. "Modern ideas" also belong to this peasant insurrection of the north against the colder, more ambiguous, more suspicious spirit of the south, which has built itself its greatest monument in the Christian Church. Let us not forget in the end what a Church is, and especially in contrast to every "State": a Church is above all an authoritative organisation which secures to the _most spiritual_ men the highest rank, and _believes_ in the power of spirituality so far as to forbid all grosser appliances of authority. Through this alone the Church is under all circumstances a _nobler_ institution than the State.--

359.

_Vengeance on Intellect, and other Backgrounds of Morality._--Morality--where do you think it has its most dangerous and rancorous advocates?--There, for example, is an ill-constituted man, who does not possess enough of intellect to be able to take pleasure in it, and just enough of culture to be aware of the fact; bored, satiated, and a self-despiser; besides being cheated unfortunately by some hereditary property out of the last consolation, the "blessing of labour," the self-forgetfulness in the "day's work "; one who is thoroughly ashamed of his existence--perhaps also harbouring some vices,--and who on the other hand (by means of books to which he has no right, or more intellectual society than he can digest), cannot help vitiating himself more and more, and making himself vain and irritable: such a thoroughly poisoned man--for intellect becomes poison, culture becomes poison, possession becomes poison, solitude becomes poison, to such ill-constituted beings--gets at last into a habitual state of vengeance and inclination for vengeance.... What do you think he finds necessary, absolutely necessary in order to give himself the appearance in his own eyes of superiority over more intellectual men, so as to give himself the delight of _perfect revenge,_ at least in imagination? It is always _morality_ that he requires, one may wager on it; always the big moral words, always the high-sounding words: justice, wisdom, holiness, virtue; always the Stoicism of gestures (how well Stoicism hides what one does _not_ possess!); always the mantle of wise silence, of affability, of gentleness, and whatever else the idealist-mantle is called, in which the incurable self-despisers and also the incurably conceited walk about. Let me not be misunderstood: out of such born _enemies of the spirit_ there arises now and then the rare specimen of humanity who is honoured by the people under the name of saint or sage: it is out of such men that there arise those prodigies of morality that make a noise, and make history,--St Augustine was one of these men. Fear of the intellect, vengeance on the intellect--Oh! how often have these powerfully impelling vices become the root of virtues! Yea, virtue _itself!_--And asking the question among ourselves, even the philosopher's pretension to wisdom, which has occasionally been made here and there on the earth, the maddest and most immodest of all pretensions,--has it not always been _above all_ in India as well as in Greece, _a means of concealment?_ Sometimes, perhaps, from the point of view of education which hallows so many lies, it is a tender regard for growing and evolving persons, for disciples who have often to be guarded against themselves by means of the belief in a person (by means of an error). In most cases, however, it is a means of concealment for a philosopher, behind which he seeks protection, owing to exhaustion, age, chilliness, or hardening; as a feeling of the approaching end, as the sagacity of the instinct which animals have before their death,--they go apart, remain at rest, choose solitude, creep into caves, become _wise_.... What? Wisdom a means of concealment of the philosopher from--intellect?--

360.

_Two Kinds of Causes which are Confounded._--It seems to me one of my most essential steps and advances that I have learned to distinguish the cause of an action generally from the cause of an action in a

## particular manner, say, in this direction, with this aim. The first

kind of cause is a quantum of stored-up force, which waits to be used in some manner, for some purpose; the second kind of cause, on the contrary, is something quite unimportant in comparison with the first, an insignificant hazard for the most part, in conformity with which the quantum of force in question "discharges" itself in some unique and definite manner: the lucifer-match in relation to the barrel of gunpowder. Among those insignificant hazards and lucifer-matches I count all the so-called "aims," and similarly the still more so-called "occupations" of people: they are relatively optional, arbitrary, and almost indifferent in relation to the immense quantum of force which presses on, as we have said, to be used up in any way whatever. One generally looks at the matter in a different manner: one is accustomed to see the _impelling_ force precisely in the aim (object, calling, &c.), according to a primeval error,--but it is only the _directing_ force; the steersman and the steam have thereby been confounded. And yet it is not even always a steersman, the directing force.... Is the "aim" the "purpose," not often enough only an extenuating pretext, an additional self-blinding of conceit, which does not wish it to be said that the ship _follows_ the stream into which it has accidentally run? That it "wishes" to go that way, _because_ it _must_ go that way? That it has a direction, sure enough, but--not a steersman? We still require a criticism of the conception of "purpose."

361.

_The Problem of the Actor_--The problem of the actor has disquieted me the longest; I was uncertain (and am sometimes so still) whether one could not get at the dangerous conception of "artist"--a conception hitherto treated with unpardonable leniency--from this point of view. Falsity with a good conscience; delight in dissimulation breaking forth as power, pushing aside, overflowing, and sometimes extinguishing the so-called "character"; the inner longing to play a rôle, to assume a mask, to put on an _appearance;_ a surplus of capacity for adaptations of every kind, which can no longer gratify themselves in the service of the nearest and narrowest utility: all that perhaps does not pertain _solely_ to the actor in himself?... Such an instinct would develop most readily in families of the lower class of the people, who have had to pass their lives in absolute dependence, under shifting pressure and constraint, who (to accommodate themselves to their conditions, to adapt themselves always to new circumstances) had again and again to pass themselves off and represent themselves as different persons,--thus having gradually qualified themselves to adjust the mantle to _every_ wind, thereby almost becoming the mantle itself, as masters of the embodied and incarnated art of eternally playing the game of hide and seek, which one calls _mimicry_ among the animals:--until at last this ability, stored up from generation to generation, has become domineering, irrational and intractable, till as instinct it begins to command the other instincts, and begets the actor and "artist" (the buffoon, the pantaloon, the Jack-Pudding, the fool, and the clown in the first place, also the classical type of servant, Gil Blas: for in such types one has the precursors of the artist, and often enough even of the "genius"). Also under higher social conditions there grows under similar pressure a similar species of men: only the histrionic instinct is there for the most part held strictly in check by another instinct, for example, among "diplomatists";--for the rest, I should think that it would always be open to a good diplomatist to become a good actor on the stage, provided his dignity "allowed" it. As regards the _Jews,_ however, the adaptable people _par excellence,_ we should, in conformity to this line of thought, expect to see among them a world-wide historical institution at the very first, for the rearing of actors, a proper breeding-place for actors; and in fact the question is very pertinent just now: what good actor at present is _not--_a Jew? The Jew also, as a born literary man, as the actual ruler of the European press, exercises this power on the basis of his histrionic capacity: for the literary man is essentially an actor,--he plays the part of "expert," of "specialist."--Finally _women._ If we consider the whole history of women, are they not _obliged_ first of all, and above all to be actresses? If we listen to doctors who have hypnotised women, or, finally, if we love them--and let ourselves be "hypnotised" by them--what is always divulged thereby? That they "give themselves airs," even when they--"give themselves." ... Woman is so artistic ...

362.