252

These Englishmen are no race of philosophers. Bacon signifies an attack on the spirit of philosophy in general; Hobbes, Hume, and Locke have been a debasement and a devaluing of the idea of a "philosopher" for more than a century. Kant raised himself and rose up in reaction against Hume. It was Locke of whom Schelling was entitled to say, "Je méprise Locke" [I despise Locke]. In the struggle with the English mechanistic dumbing down of the world, Hegel and Schopenhauer (along with Goethe) were unanimous - both of these hostile fraternal geniuses in philosophy, who moved away from each other towards opposite poles of the German spirit and in the process wronged each other, as only brothers can.13 What's lacking in England, and what has always been missing, that's something that semi-actor and rhetorician Carlyle understood well enough, the tasteless muddle-headed Carlyle, who tried to conceal under his passionate grimaces what he understood about himself, that is, what was lacking in Carlyle - a real power of spirituality, a real profundity of spiritual insight, in short, philosophy.14 It is characteristic of such an unphilosophical race that it clings strongly to Christianity. They need its discipline to develop their "moralizing" and humanizing. The Englishman is more gloomy, more sensual, stronger willed, and more brutal than the German - he is also for that very reason, as the more vulgar of the two, more pious than the German. He is even more in need of Christianity. For more refined nostrils this same English Christianity has still a lingering and truly English smell of spleen and alcoholic dissipation, against which it is used for good reasons as a medicinal remedy - that is, the more delicate poison against the coarser one. Among crude people, a subtler poisoning is, in fact, already progress, a step towards spiritualization. The crudity and peasant seriousness of the English are still most tolerably disguised or, stated more precisely, interpreted and given new meaning, by the language of Christian gestures and by prayers and singing psalms. And for those drunken and dissolute cattle who in earlier times learned to make moral grunts under the influence of Methodism and more recently once again as the "Salvation Army," a twitch of repentance may really be, relatively speaking, the highest achievement of "humanity" to which they can be raised: that much we can, in all fairness, concede. But what is still offensive even in the most humane Englishman is his lack of music, speaking metaphorically (and not metaphorically -). He has in the movements of his soul and his body no rhythm and dance - in fact, not even the desire for rhythm and dance, for "music." Listen to him speak, or watch the most beautiful English woman walk - in no country of the earth are there lovelier doves and swans - and finally, listen to them sing! But I'm demanding too much . . .

13. . . . Hobbes : Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), English philosopher.
David Hume (1711-1776), Scottish historian and philosopher.
John Locke (1632-1704), English philosopher.
Schelling: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854), German philosopher.
14. . . . Carlyle : Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish essayist, historian, and biographer.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part VIII - Aphorism # 252

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