Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future - EILFE

Beyond Good and Evil
in the previous century, when all the men and women of Italy knew how
to sing, virtuosity in song (and with it the art of melody too –) reached a
high point. But in Germany there was (until very recently, when a sort of
grandstand verbosity shyly and awkwardly stirred its young wings) really
only one species of public and vaguely artistic rhetoric, and that came
from the pulpit. In Germany, only the preachers knew the weight of a
word or syllable, the extent to which a sentence stumbled, sprang, rang,
ran, or ran away. They were the only ones with a conscience in their ears,
which was often enough an evil conscience: because there was no shortage
of reasons why a German of all people should achieve competence
in rhetoric infrequently and almost always too late. This is why the masterpiece
of German prose is by all rights the masterpiece of its greatest
preacher: the Bible has been the best German book to date. Compared to
Luther’s Bible, almost everything else is merely “literature” – something
that had not grown in Germany and for that reason did not grow and is
not growing into German hearts like the Bible did.
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There are two types of genius: one that fundamentally begets and wants
to beget, and another that is happy to be impregnated and give birth.
Similarly with peoples of genius, there are those who inherit the female
problem of pregnancy and the secret task of forming, ripening, and bringing
to completion – the Greeks, for instance, were this type of people as
well as the French –; and others who need to impregnate and be the cause
of new orders of life, – like the Jews, the Romans, and, to pose a modest
question, the Germans – peoples tortured and delighted by unknown
fevers who irresistibly leave themselves, loving and lusting after foreign
races (after ones who “let themselves be impregnated” –) and also domineering,
like everything that knows itself to be full of creative forces and
consequently knows of “God’s grace.” These two types of genius look
for each other like men and women; but they also misunderstand each
other, – like men and women.
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Every people has its own tartufferies, and calls them its virtues. You do
not know – you cannot know – what is best about yourself.
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