and over against it and public business and talk, the free personality wins force and opportunity for contemplation."
c Cf. Mazzini's description of Austria as "not a nation, but a system of government," and a casual remark of Nietzsche to his sister after hearing some patriotic songs, "Fatherland is to be sure something other than state" (Hamburgischer Correspondent, September 15, 1914, p. 2). Similarly R. M. MacIver speaks of the Roman Empire as "not a society, not a living thing, but an imposed system, an institution" (International Journal of Ethics, January, 1913, p. 134). Meyer explains Nietzsche's antagonism to the state, to the extent it existed, as due partly to the circumstances and tendencies of the time, and maintains that he always thought of the organization of society as realizing itself through essentially political forms (op. cit., pp. 24-6, and 441).
d Only from a similar point of view, i.e., because he placed the Poles high in the scale of rank, can I account for the opinion once expressed that their political unruliness and weakness, even their extravagances, indicate their superiority rather than anything else (Werke, XII, 198, §421).
e I may refer in this connection to my little book. Anarchy or government? An Inquiry in Fundamental Politics (1895).
f As bearing on the future of marriage he proposes in one place heavier inheritance taxes, also a longer period of military duty, on bachelors; special privileges for fathers who bring a goodly number of boys into the world, in certain circumstances the right to cast several votes; a medical record to precede every marriage and be signed by the communal authorities (in which a variety of questions by the parties and the physicians are to be answered, "family history"); as an antidote to prostitution (or an ennobling transformation of it) the legalizing of marriages for given terms (a year, a month), with guarantees for the children; every marriage answered for and recommended by a certain number of trustworthy men in the community, as a community affair (Will to Power, § 733).
g Nietzsche found the literary class as well as the political parties and the socialists repulsive (Werke, XIV, 358, § 223; cf. the reference to the literary class who "live" off their opinions, ibid., 357, § 222; also Joyful Science, § 366); and Berthelot comments on his opposition to the conservatives and reactionaries who were only bent on retaining their material goods and maintaining Christian morality (Grande Eycyclopédie, art. "Nietzsche"). Ironically enough, in Germany the literary class and artists seem to have been most affected by Nietzsche—probably through admiration for his qualities of style rather than from any considerable understanding of his thought.
h It may be said, however, that a united Europe was once a possibility at the hands of another Frenchman, earlier than Napoleon—Henry IV, who had an end put to his career by the dagger of Ravaillac.
