The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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What might not German intellect have been!—who has not thought sadly upon this question! But this nation has deliberately stultified itself for almost a thousand years: nowhere else have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been so viciously abused as in Germany. Recently a third opiate was added to the list, one which in itself alone would have sufficed to complete the ruin of all subtle and daring intellectual animation, I speak of music, our costive and constipating German music. How much peevish ponderousness, paralysis, dampness, dressing-gown languor, and beer is there not in German intelligence! How is it really possible that young men who consecrate their whole lives to the pursuit of intellectual ends, should not feel within them the first instinct of intellectuality, the _self-preservative instinct of the intellect_—and should drink beer? The alcoholism of learned youths does not incapacitate them for becoming scholars—a man quite devoid of intellect may be a great scholar,—but it is a problem in every other respect. Where can that soft degeneracy not be found, which is produced in the intellect by beer! I once laid my finger upon a case of this sort, which became almost famous,—the degeneration of our leading German free-spirit, the _clever_ David Strauss, into the author of a suburban gospel and New Faith. Not in vain had he sung the praises of “the dear old brown liquor” in verse—true unto death.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.