248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and
seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified
and brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are
those on whom the woman's problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the
secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting--the Greeks, for
instance, were a nation of this kind, and so are the French; and others
which have to fructify and become the cause of new modes of life--like
the Jews, the Romans, and, in all modesty be it asked: like the
Germans?--nations tortured and enraptured by unknown fevers and
irresistibly forced out of themselves, amorous and longing for
foreign races (for such as "let themselves be fructified"), and withal
imperious, like everything conscious of being full of generative force,
and consequently empowered "by the grace of God." These two kinds of
geniuses seek each other like man and woman; but they also misunderstand
each other--like man and woman.
249. Every nation has its own "Tartuffery," and calls that its
virtue.--One does not know--cannot know, the best that is in one.
250. What Europe owes to the Jews?--Many things, good and bad, and above
all one thing of the nature both of the best and the worst: the grand
style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands, of
infinite significations, the whole Romanticism and sublimity of moral
questionableness--and consequently just the most attractive, ensnaring,
and exquisite element in those iridescences and allurements to life,
in the aftersheen of which the sky of our European culture, its evening
sky, now glows--perhaps glows out. For this, we artists among the
spectators and philosophers, are--grateful to the Jews.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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