Mainländer, nor even Eduard von Hartmann, give us a reliable grasp of the question whether the pessimism of Schopenhauer (his frightened glance into an undeified world, which has become stupid, blind, deranged and problematic, his _honourable_ fright) was not only an exceptional case among Germans, but a _German_ event: while everything else which stands in the foreground, like our valiant politics and our joyful Jingoism (which decidedly enough regards everything with reference to a principle sufficiently unphilosophical: _"Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles"_[2] consequently _sub specie speciei,_ namely, the German _species_), testifies very plainly to the contrary. No! The Germans of to-day are _not_ pessimists! And Schopenhauer was a pessimist, I repeat it once more, as a good European, and _not_ as a German. [2] "_Germany, Germany, above all_": the first line of the German national song.--TR. 358. _The Peasant Revolt of the Spirit._--We Europeans find ourselves in view of an immense world of ruins, where some things still tower aloft, while other objects stand mouldering and dismal, where most things however already lie on the ground, picturesque enough--where were there ever finer ruins?--overgrown with weeds, large and small. It is the Church which is this city of decay: we see the religious organisation of Christianity shaken to its deepest foundations. The belief in God is overthrown, the belief in the Christian ascetic ideal is now fighting its last fight. Such a long and solidly built work as Christianity--it was the last construction of the Romans!--could not of course be demolished..all at once; every sort of earthquake had to shake it, every sort of spirit which perforates, digs, gnaws and moulders had to assist in the work of destruction. But that which is strangest is that those who have exerted themselves most to retain and preserve Christianity, have been precisely those who did most to destroy it,--the Germans. It seems that the Germans do not understand the essence of a Church. Are they not spiritual enough, or not distrustful enough to do so? In any case the structure of the Church rests on a _southern_ freedom and liberality of spirit, and similarly on a southern suspicion of nature, man, and spirit,--it rests on a knowledge of man an experience of man, entirely different from what the north has had. The Lutheran Reformation in all its length and breadth was the indignation of the simple against something "complicated." To speak cautiously, it was a coarse, honest misunderstanding, in which much is to be forgiven,--people did not understand the mode of expression of a _victorious_ Church, and only saw corruption; they misunderstood the noble scepticism, the _luxury_ of scepticism and toleration which every victorious, self-confident power permits.... One overlooks the fact readily enough at present that as regards all cardinal questions concerning power Luther was badly endowed;