seems to consist, in the fact that despite this secret fundamental conservatism he does not affirm culture, does not fight for its "conservation," does not simply make pedagogic threats of death and corruption in order to maintain it; but he affirms civilization, forces it upon his will with a fatalistic fury, justifies it over against culture with a cold derision . . . for the future belongs to civilization, and the cultural lacks every prospect of living. This frigidly heroic thinker seems to assume just so gruesome a self-conquest and self-denial. A secret conservative, a champion of culture, he seems to be affirming civilization inversely; but that is simply the appearance of an appearance, a twofold vexation, for he really does affirm it—not only with his words, which his nature opposed, but even with his nature itself.
He is an instance of the very thing which he denies by prophesying its triumph—civilization. His doctrine is saturated with everything that belongs to civilization, everything that constitutes its ingredients: intellectualism, rationalism, relativism, cult of causality, of "natural laws." It consists of all this; and over against its leaden historical materialism the teachings of a Marx are sky-blue idealisms. This is nothing but the nineteenth century, completely vieux jeu, bourgeois through and through. And in that it paints civilization apocalyptically on the wall as the coming period, it simply becomes thereby its closing flourish, its swan song.
The author borrows from Goethe the concept of morphology; but in his hands this idea fares very much the same as the Goethian idea of development in the hands of Darwin. He has learned from Nietzsche how to write, and mimics Nietzsche's weighty accents; but his false loveless rigour has not caught the least hint of the nature behind this truly strong and amiable spirit, the inaugurator of something ineffably new. He is hostile to the spirit—not in the sense of culture, but in the sense of the materialistic civilization whose province is our yesterday and not our to-morrow. He is its true son, its last talent, and he prophesies its coming with "pessimistic" relentlessness—meanwhile permitting us to see that he is secretly a conservative champion of culture.
In a word, he is a snob—and shows himself as such also in his attachment to nature, to natural laws, and in his derision of the spiritual. "Should not the changeless laws of nature be considered a deception, and highly unnatural?" asks Novalis; "Everything
