253

There are truths which are best recognized by mediocre heads, because they are most appropriate for them; there are truths which have charm and seductive power only for mediocre minds: - at this very point we are pushed back onto this perhaps unpleasant proposition, since the time the spirit of respectable but mediocre Englishmen - I cite Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer - has succeeded in gaining pre-eminence in the middle regions of European taste.15 In fact, who could doubt how useful it is that such spirits rule for a while? It would be a mistake to think that highly cultivated spirits who fly off to great distances would be particularly skilful at establishing many small, common facts, collecting them, and pushing to a conclusion: - they are, by contrast, as exceptional men, from the very start in no advantageous position vis-à-vis the "rules." And finally, they have more to do than merely to have knowledge - for they have to be something new, to mean something new, to present new values! The gap between know and can is perhaps greater as well as more mysterious than people think. It's possible the man who can act in the grand style, the creating man, will have to be a man who does not know; whereas, on the other hand, for scientific discoveries of the sort Darwin made a certain narrowness, aridity, and diligent carefulness, in short, something English, may not make a bad disposition. Finally we should not forget that the English with their profoundly average quality have already once brought about a collective depression of the European spirit. What people call "modern ideas" or "the ideas of the eighteenth century" or even "French ideas" - in other words, what the German spirit has risen against with a deep disgust - were English in origin. There's no doubt of that. The French have been only apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, as well, and at the same time unfortunately their first and most complete victims. For with the damnable Anglomania of "modern ideas" the âme française [French soul] has finally become so thin and emaciated that nowadays we remember almost with disbelief its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profoundly passionate power, its resourceful nobility. But with our teeth we must hang on to the following principle of historical fairness and defend it against the appearance of the moment: European noblesse - in feeling, in taste, in customs, in short, the word taken in every higher sense - is the work and invention of France; European nastiness, the plebeian quality of modern ideas, the work of England.

15. . . . Charles Darwin (1809-1882) English scientist, whose Origin of Species was published in 1859;
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), English utilitarian philosopher and economist;
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part VIII - Aphorism # 253

« Prev - Random - Next »