even among the lower classes an aristocratic self-sufficiency and manly breeding (which showed, by the way, that it was not necessary, as Germans sometimes said, to have a great state to make the soul free and manly); "a poor Venetian gondolier is ever a better figure than a Berlin Geheimrath, and in the end, indeed, a better man."[1] He finds too the Italian genius able to make the freest and finest use of what it borrows from abroad, and to contribute more than it takes—this in contrast with the ways of the English or French or German genius.[2]
As to Russia, Nietzsche's attitude varies—indeed, he has almost contradictory views. He finds Germany stronger in will than France, and North Germany stronger than the central parts, England with its phlegm stronger than Germany, and Russia strongest of all, thanks in part at least to its absolutist type of government and the lack [limited extent, we must now say] of the "parliamentary imbecility."[3] Force of will has been long accumulating there, and is now in threatening manner awaiting its release. Russia is the one power that has durability in its body, that can still promise something—Russia the antithesis of the pitiable European system of small states and nervosity, which with the founding of the German Empire has passed into a critical state. It is an analogue of the imperium Romanum.[4] With a view like this Nietzsche contemplates the possibility of its becoming the world-power, colonizing, gaining China and India, ruling Asia and Europe—Europe coming to stand to it somewhat as Greece did in its later days to Rome,[5] and Germany, which already owes much to Russia, being its advance-post and preparing the way for a pan-Slavist Europe. An extraordinary perspective! And yet he contemplates a quite different possibility. From Europe's own standpoint Russia is a danger, Europe's "greatest" danger;[6] and for his own part he would prefer a combination against it. Indeed, he would
- ↑ Ibid., XIII, 344-5, § 855.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 831.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 208; Werke, XIII, 356, § 880.
- ↑ Twilight etc., ix, § 39.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 359, § 884; 346, § 858.
- ↑ This danger would only disappear with inner revolutions in Russia, the splitting up of the empire into little bodies, above all the introduction of the parliamentary imbecility and "the obligation of everybody to read his newspapers at breakfast."
