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When a people is suffering from nationalistic nervous fever and political ambition and wants to suffer, we have to accept the fact that various kinds of clouds and disturbances - in short, small attacks of dullness - will pass over its spirit: for example, among contemporary Germans sometimes the anti-French stupidity, sometimes the anti-Jewish, sometimes the anti-Polish, sometimes the Christian-Romantic, sometimes the Wagnerian, sometimes the Teutonic, sometimes the Prussian (take a look at these poor historians Sybel and Treitzschke and their thickly bandaged heads -), and whatever else all these small obfuscations of the German spirit and conscience may call themselves.¹¹ May I be forgiven for the fact that I, too, during a short and risky stay in a very infected region did not remain wholly free of this illness and, like all the world, began to have ideas about things which were no concern of mine, the first sign of the political infection. For example, about the Jews. Hear me out.- I have not yet met a single German who was well disposed towards the Jews. And no matter how absolute the rejection of real anti-Semitism on the part of all cautious and political types may be, nonetheless this caution and politics directs itself not against this type of feeling itself, but only against its dangerous excess, in particular against the tasteless and disgraceful expression of this excessive feeling - on that point people should not deceive themselves. That Germany has a richly sufficient number of Jews, that the German stomach and German blood have difficulty (and will still have difficulty for a long time to come) absorbing even this quantum of "Jew" - in the way the Italians, the French, and the English have absorbed them, as a result of a stronger digestive system - that is the clear message and language of a general instinct which we must listen to and according to which we must act. "Let no more Jews in! And especially bar the doors to the east (also to Austria)!" So orders the instinct of a people whose type is still weak and uncertain, so that it could be easily erased, easily dissolved away by a stronger race. But the Jews are without any doubt the strongest, most tenacious, and purest race now living in Europe. They understand how to assert themselves even under the worst conditions (better even than under favourable conditions), as a result of certain virtues which today people might like to stamp as vices - thanks, above all, to a resolute faith which has no need to feel shame when confronted by "modern ideas." They always change, if they change, only in the way the Russian empire carries out its conquests - as an empire that has time and was not born yesterday - that is, according to the basic principle "as slowly as possible!" A thinker who has the future of Europe on his conscience will, in all the designs which he draws up for himself of this future, take the Jews as well as the Russians into account as, for the time being, the surest and most probable factors in the great interplay and struggle of forces. What we nowadays call a "nation" in Europe is essentially more a res facta [something made] than a res nata [something born] (indeed sometimes it looks confusingly like a res ficta et picta [something made up and unreal]- ), in any case something developing, young, easily adjusted, not yet a race, to say nothing of aere perennius [more enduring than bronze], as is the Jewish type. But these "nations" should be very wary of every hot-headed competition and enmity! That the Jews, if they wanted to - or if people were to force them, as the anti-Semites seem to want to do - could even now become predominant, in fact, quite literally gain mastery over Europe, is certain; that they are not working and planning for that is equally certain. Meanwhile by contrast they desire and wish - even with a certain insistence - to be absorbed into and assimilated by Europe. They thirst to be finally established somewhere or other, allowed, respected, and to bring to an end their nomadic life, to the "Wandering Jew." And people should pay full attention to this tendency and impulse (which in itself perhaps even expresses a moderating of Jewish instincts) and accommodate it. And for this, it might perhaps be useful and reasonable to expel the anti-Semitic ranters out of the country. We should comply with all caution, and selectively, more or less the way the English aristocracy does it. It's clear that the stronger and already firmly established type of the new Germanism could involve itself with them with the least objection, for example, the aristocratic officers from the Mark [of Brandenburg].¹² It would be interesting in all sorts of ways to see whether the genius of gold and patience (and above all of some spirit and spirituality, which are seriously deficient in the people just referred to) could be added to and bred into the inherited art of commanding and obeying - in both of which the land mentioned above is nowadays a classic example. But at this point it's fitting that I break off my cheerful Germanomania [Deutschthümelei] and speech of celebration. For I'm already touching on something serious to me, on the "European problem," as I understand it, on the breeding of a new ruling caste for Europe.-