s [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

out skepticism and paralysis of will I am ready to answer
for this diagnosis of the European disease The disease of
the will is diffused unequally over Europe, it is worst and
most varied where civilization has longest prevailed, it
decreases according as  the barbarian still or again
asserts his claims under the loose drapery of Western
culture It is therefore in the France of today, as can be
readily disclosed and comprehended, that the will is most
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infirm, and France, which has always had a masterly
aptitude for converting even the portentous crises of its
spirit into something charming and seductive, now
manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendancy over
Europe, by being the school and exhibition of all the
charms of skepticism The power to will and to persist,
moreover, in a resolution, is already somewhat stronger in
Germany, and again in the North of Germany it is
stronger than in Central Germany, it is considerably
stronger in England, Spain, and Corsica, associated with
phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter
not to mention Italy, which is too young yet to know
what it wants, and must first show whether it can exercise
will, but it is strongest and most surprising of all in that
immense middle empire where Europe as it were flows
back to Asia namely, in Russia There the power to will
has been long stored up and accumulated, there the will
uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative waits
threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase
from our physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and
complications in Asia would be necessary to free Europe
from its greatest danger, but also internal subversion, the
shattering of the empire into small states, and above all the
introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the
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obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I
do not say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should
rather prefer the contrary I mean such an increase in the
threatening attitude of Russia, that Europe would have to
make up its mind to become equally threatening namely,
TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a new caste to
rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its
own, that can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that
the long spun-out comedy of its petty-statism, and its
dynastic as well as its democratic many-willed-ness, might
finally be brought to a close. The time for petty politics is
past; the next century will bring the struggle for the
dominion of the world the COMPULSION to great
politics.
209. As to how far the new warlike age on which we
Europeans have evidently entered may perhaps favour the
growth of another and stronger kind of skepticism, I
should like to express myself preliminarily merely by a
parable, which the lovers of German history will already
understand. That unscrupulous enthusiast for big,
handsome grenadiers (who, as King of Prussia, brought
into being a military and skeptical genius and therewith,
in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged type of
German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the
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Great, had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of
the genius: he knew what was then lacking in Germany,
the want of which was a hundred times more alarming
and serious than any lack of culture and social form his
ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of
a profound instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; and he
suspected, to his bitterest regret, that his own son was not
man enough. There, however, he deceived himself; but
who would not have deceived himself in his place? He
saw his son lapsed to atheism, to the ESPRIT, to the
pleasant frivolity of clever Frenchmen he saw in the
background the great bloodsucker, the spider skepticism;
he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no
longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a
broken will that no longer commands, is no longer ABLE
to command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in his
son that new kind of harder and more dangerous
skepticism who knows TO WHAT EXTENT it was
encouraged just by his father s hatred and the icy
melancholy of a will condemned to solitude? the
skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related to
the genius for war and conquest, and made its first
entrance into Germany in the person of the great
Frederick. This skepticism despises and nevertheless grasps;
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it undermines and takes possession; it does not believe, but
it does not thereby lose itself; it gives the spirit a dangerous
liberty, but it keeps strict guard over the heart. It is the
GERMAN form of skepticism, which, as a continued
Fredericianism, risen to the highest spirituality, has kept
Europe for a considerable time under the dominion of the
German spirit and its critical and historical distrust Owing
to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character of
the great German philologists and historical critics (who,
rightly estimated, were also all of them artists of
destruction and dissolution), a NEW conception of the
German spirit gradually established itself in spite of all
Romanticism in music and philosophy in which the
leaning towards masculine skepticism was decidedly
prominent whether, for instance, as fearlessness of gaze, as [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]