that states are poorly arranged, in which other than statesmen have to interfere in public business, and that they merit their fate if they go to pieces from "these many statesmen."[1] And, thirdly, he felt that politics is actually in a bad way at the present time—commercial aims are ruling it and socialism is threatening; wealth, comfort, "freedom" are the main things aimed at—it is a practically uncontrollable tendency that must have its day. He saw the new tendency, as just explained, taking possession of Germany. Hence he was not at home in the world about him. The Socrates of Plato compared the wise man under the political conditions of the then-existing world to one who takes shelter behind a wall, when the wind is making a hurricane of dust and rain.[2] Something like this was Nietzsche's attitude to the politics of his day. He felt that a valid order did not exist—that a kind of madness was taking possession of men's minds. Or, if I am not again connecting him with too great a name, he was like Plato himself when the latter turned the energy of his thought and imagination to the construction of an ideal res publica—and indeed Nietzsche's conception in detail was not unlike Plato's, save as he gave (particularly at this time) a vital place to the artist, a class whom Plato wished to banish. Nietzsche himself notes that the fire and exaltation of Plato's political passion went in this ideal (rather than practical) direction.[3] He comments on Niebuhr's reproach against Plato that he was a poor citizen, and says, Let one who feels in this way be a good citizen, and let Plato be what he was.[4] In other words, political activity has a quite secondary place in his estimation—though this does not mean that he gave it no place. A state-favored philosophy he counted especially undesirable, states being what they are. The state wants only what is useful to itself. Better let philosophers grow wild or even be persecuted, he once ventures to say, and then perhaps the real ones will be sifted out.[5] A happy contrast, in his judgment, of the Greek state with the prevailing type of state today is, that it did not assume to be a regulator or overseer of culture, but simply a good muscular helper, a hardy escort for it among rough realities.[6]
