leads men of today to do all kinds of shady things to get rich.[1] "Often slime sits on the throne and the throne on slime."[2] Mistaken instincts for power, too, are behind the philosopher's will for a system—really a will, Nietzsche thinks, to make one's self more stupid than one is, "stronger, simpler, more imperious, ruder, more tyrannical."[3] Will to power lies behind religious domination: priests became the ruling class in later Israel; Israel itself, through Christianity, has become a ruling influence in our Western world—such domination is objectionable to Nietzsche.[4] The people, i.e., the mass, are coming to power in modern states—Nietzsche opposes the tendency.[5] Occasionally violent men take advantage of popular disorders to put themselves and their arbitrary will through; but the nobility he wishes to see will be enemies both of the lustful populace and of these upstarts (Gewalt-Herren).[6] Of the Germany of today, he remarks, "It costs dear to come to power: power makes stupid (verdummt);"[7] he means that the interests of culture suffer from this preoccupation with external matters. Again, "Can one interest oneself in the German Empire? Where is the new thought?… To rule and help the highest thought to victory—that is the only thing that could interest me in Germany."[8] Of a certain statesman (Bismarck, presumably), he says, "Strong. Strong. Strong and mad! Not great!"[9] He has misgivings about the book, Will to Power, he is preparing, wishing that it could be written in French, so as not to have the appearance of giving countenance to German imperial aspirations.[10] Indeed, he becomes almost contemptuous: "Power is tiresome (langweilig)—witness the Empire."![11]
- ↑ Ibid., § 204; cf. Emerson of Americans, "We are great by exclusion, grasping, and egotism" ("Success" in Society and Solitude).
- ↑ Zarathustra, I, xi.
- ↑ Werke, XIV, 353, § 216.
- ↑ Cf. Dawn of Day, § 205; The Antichristian, § 27.
- ↑ Cf. Zarathustra, III, xii, § 11; IV, xiii, § 3 (the "Pübel-Mischmasch" are the "Herren von Heute"); Werke, XIV, 218, § 440 (lower kind of men victorious—strange clashing of two principles of morality).
- ↑ Zarathustra, III, xii, § 11.
- ↑ Twilight etc., viii, § 1; cf. Werke, XIII, 350-1, § 870.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 352, § 872; cf. XIV, 374, § 251 (on the lowering effect of national egoism and hate).
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 241.
- ↑ Werke, XIV, 420, § 304.
- ↑ Ibid., 244, § 505.
