intelligence of a Luther!"[1] They robbed Europe of the harvest, the meaning of the last great period in history, the Renaissance, through Luther and his Protestantism, "the most impure (unsauberste) type of Christianity that exists."[2] Twice, when straight, unambiguous, wholly scientific ways of thinking might have established themselves, they found—through Leibnitz and Kant—furtive paths (Schleichwege) back to the old ideals.[3] The nobility itself is almost absent in the history of the higher culture—Christianity and alcohol being large contributory factors to the result.[4] There has never been, properly speaking, a German culture—there have been great solitaries who had their own, but Germany in general has been in this respect rather like a moor in which every step of the foreigner left its mark, but itself was without character."[5] It has clever and well-instructed scholars—that is the principal thing one can say; in particular, a high-water mark and divinatory refinement of the historical sense has been reached.[6] Nietzsche speaks caustically at times of the smallness and pitiableness of the German soul, their "Bedientenseele," their involuntary bowing before titles of honor, etc.;[7] they know how to obey better than to command, and if they occupy themselves with morality, they proceed to idealize the impulse to obedience. "Man must have something he can unconditionally obey"—it is a characteristically German sentiment and piece of logic.[8] Yet, inspired
- ↑ Ibid., XIII, 338, § 840; 340, § 845.
- ↑ The Antichristian, § 61; Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2.
- ↑ Ecce Homo, III, x, § 2.
- ↑ In the Crusades (a kind of higher piracy), the German nobles, Viking nobles at bottom, were in their element—the Church knew well what it had in them: they were its "Swiss," ever in service of its bad instincts, but well-paid (The Antichristian, § 60).
- ↑ Will to Power, § 791; cf. Werke, XIII, 334, § 829; 336, § 833; also Joyful Science, § 357, where Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel are represented as German in their characteristic ideas, but not Goethe or Schopenhauer or Bismarck.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 792; Beyond Good and Evil, § 204. "In psychologicis the German mind has always lacked in fineness and divination (Will to Power, § 107).
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 336, § 834; 344, §§ 854-5; 347, § 859. The Bedientenseele becomes "idealized as scholars-and-soldiers-virtue." "How degenerate in taste, how servile before dignities, rank, dress, pomp, and parade must a people have been that estimated the simple and plain as the bad (das Schlichte als das Schlechte), the simple and plain man as the bad man!" (Dawn of Day, § 231).
- ↑ Dawn of Day, § 207.
