[6] Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, son of a village pastor of Polish ancestry; born at Röcken in Saxony 1844; served in the German army for a few months in 1867; injured in mounting his horse; 1869-1879 professor of classical philology at Bale which entailed naturalisation as a Swiss subject; served in ambulance in war of 1870-1871; 1879-1889 in bad health, wrote and travelled; 1889 became insane and remained so till his death in 1900. [7] "What is lacking in England, and has always been lacking, that half-actor and rhetorician knew well enough, the absurd muddlehead, Carlyle, who sought to conceal under passionate grimaces what he knew about himself: namely, what was lacking in Carlyle, real _power_ of intellect, real _depth_ of intellectual perception, in short, philosophy."--_Beyond Good and Evil_, p. 210. "The Englishman, more gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German--is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious."--_Ibid._ p. 211. "The English coarseness and rustic demureness is still more satisfactorily disguised by Christian pantomime, and by praying and psalm-singing (or, more correctly, it is thereby explained and differently expressed); and for the herd of drunkards and rakes who formerly learned moral grunting under the influence of Methodism (and more recently as the 'Salvation Army'), a penitential fit may really be the relatively highest manifestation of 'humanity' to which they can be elevated."--_Ibid._ p. 211. "The European ignobleness, the plebeianism of modern ideas, is England's work and invention."--_Ibid._ p. 213. [8] "I believe only in French culture, and regard everything else in Europe which calls itself 'culture' as a misunderstanding. I do not even take the German kind into consideration.... The few instances of higher culture with which I have met in Germany were all French in their origin."--_Ecce Homo_, p. 27. "Wherever Germany extends her sway, she _ruins_ culture."--_Ibid._ p. 38. "Culture and the state are antagonists: a 'culture-state' is merely a modern idea. The one lives upon the other, the one flourishes at the expense of the other. All great periods of culture have been periods of political decline; that which was great from the standpoint of culture was always unpolitical--even anti-political.... In the history of European culture the rise of the (German) Empire signifies, above all, a displacement of the centre of gravity. Everywhere people are already aware of this: in things that really matter--and these after all constitute culture--the Germans are no longer worth considering.... The fact that there is no longer a single German philosopher worth mentioning is an increasing wonder."--_The Twilight of the Idols_, p. 54.