such as the Pan-Germanists desire to make of Germany, but of an essentially super-national and nomadic species of man, possessing, physiologically speaking, " a maximum of the art and power of adaptation of his typical distinction." Referring to Germans and Germany in this connection, he stigmatised the Germans as a "people of the centre " in every sense of the term. No German, according to Nietzsche, knows what a German really is or desires. As a result of this ignorance, the German assumes an air of "Frankness" and "Honesty." " It is so convenient to be frank and honest!—This confidingness, this complaisance, this showing-the cards of German honesty, is probably the most dangerous and most successful disguise which the German is up to nowadays: but his is proper Mephistophelean art; with this he can ' still achieve much! ' . . . The German lets himself go, and thereby gazes with faithful, blue, empty German eyes—and other countries immediately confound him with his dressing-gown!—I meant to say that, let' German depth ' be what it will—among ourselves alone we perhaps take the liberty to laugh at all—we shall do well to continue henceforth to honour its appearance and good name, and not barter away too cheaply our old reputation as a people of depth for Prussian 'smartness,' and Berlin wit and sand. It is wise for a people to pose and let itself be regarded as profound, clumsy, good-natured, honest, and foolish, it might even be—profound to do so!"
Nietzsche regarded the present-day national nervous fever and political ambition among the Germans, as a "Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes and their closely bandaged heads) " of the same class as the Anti-Semitic folly and the Anti-Polish folly. He was convinced that Europe wishes to be one. "Owing to the morbid estrangement which the nationality-craze has induced and still induces among the nations of Europe," wrote Nietzsche, "owing also to the short-sighted and hasty-handed politicians who, with the help of this craze, are at present in power, and do not suspect to what extent the disintegrating policy they pursue must necessarily only be an interlude policy—owing to all this and much else that is altogether unmentionable at present, the most unmistakable signs that Europe wishes to be one are now overlooked or arbitrarily and falsely misinterpreted. With all the more profound and large-minded men of this century, the real general tendency of the mysterious labour of their souls was to prepare the way for that new synthesis and tentatively to anticipate the European of the future; only in their stimulations, or in their weaker moments, in old age, perhaps, did they belong to the 'fatherlands '—they only rested from themselves when they became 'patriots.' I
