Ecce Homo Complete Works, Volume Seventeen · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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But here nothing shall stop me from being rude, and from telling the Germans one or two unpleasant home truths: who else would do it if I did not? I refer to their laxity in matters historical. Not only have the Germans entirely lost the _breadth of vision_ which enables one to grasp the course of culture and the values of culture; not only are they one and all political (or Church) puppets; but they have also actually _put a ban upon_ this very breadth of vision. A man must first and foremost be "German," he must belong to "_the_ race"; then only can he pass judgment upon all values and lack of values in history--then only can he establish them.... To be German is in itself an argument, "Germany, Germany above all,"[4] is a principle; the Germans stand for the "moral order of the universe" in history; compared with the Roman Empire, they are the up-holders of freedom; compared with the eighteenth century, they are the restorers of morality, of the "Categorical Imperative." There is such a thing as the writing of history according to the lights of Imperial Germany; there is, I fear, anti-Semitic history--there is also history written with an eye to the Court, and Herr von Treitschke is not ashamed of himself.
Quite recently an idiotic opinion _in historicis,_ an observation of Vischer the Swabian æsthete, since happily deceased, made the round of the German newspapers as a "truth" to which every German _must assent_ The observation was this: "The Renaissance _and_ the Reformation only together constitute a whole--the æsthetic rebirth, and the moral rebirth." When I listen to such things, I lose all patience, and I feel inclined, I even feel it my duty, to tell the Germans, for once in a way, all that they have on their conscience. _Every great crime against culture for the last four centuries lies on their conscience...._ And always for the same reason, always owing to their bottomless cowardice in the face of reality, which is also cowardice in the face of truth; always owing to the love of falsehood which has become almost instinctive in them--in short, "idealism." It was the Germans who caused Europe to lose the fruits, the whole meaning of her last period of greatness--the period of the Renaissance.
At a moment when a higher order of values, values that were noble, that said yea to life, and that guaranteed a future, had succeeded in triumphing over the opposite values, the values of degeneration, in the very seat of Christianity itself,--and _even in the hearts of those sitting there,_--Luther, that cursed monk, not only restored the Church, but, what was a thousand times worse, restored Christianity, and at a time too when it lay defeated. Christianity, the _Denial of the Will to Live,_ exalted to a religion! Luther was an impossible monk who, thanks to his own "impossibility," attacked the Church, and in so doing restored it! Catholics would be perfectly justified in celebrating feasts in honour of Luther, and in producing festival plays[5] in his honour. Luther and the "rebirth of morality"! May all psychology go to the devil! Without a shadow of a doubt the Germans are idealists. On two occasions when, at the cost of enormous courage and self-control, an upright, unequivocal, and perfectly scientific attitude of mind had been attained, the Germans were able to discover back stairs leading down to the old "ideal" again, compromises between truth and the "ideal," and, in short, formulæ for the right to reject science and to perpetrate falsehoods.
Leibniz and Kant--these two great breaks upon the intellectual honesty of Europe! Finally, at a moment when there appeared on the bridge that spanned two centuries of decadence, a superior force of genius and will which was strong enough to consolidate Europe and to convert it into a political and economic unit, with the object of ruling the world, the Germans, with their Wars of Independence, robbed Europe of the significance--the marvellous significance, of Napoleon's life. And in so doing they laid on their conscience everything that followed, everything that exists to-day,--this sickliness and want of reason which is most opposed to culture, and which is called Nationalism,--this _névrose nationale_ from which Europe is suffering acutely; this eternal subdivision of Europe into petty states, with politics on a municipal scale: they have robbed Europe itself of its significance, of its reason,--and have stuffed it into a cul-de-sac. Is there any one except me who knows the way out of this cul-de-sac? Does anyone except me know of an aspiration which would be great enough to bind the people of Europe once more together?
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.