The Genealogy of Morals: The Complete Works, Volume Thirteen, edited by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Nietzsche · en
[5] "Here I stand! I cannot help myself. God help me! Amen"--were
Luther's words before the Reichstag at Worms.--H. B. S.
[6] E.g. Lectureships.
[7] An allusion to the well-known patriotic song.--H. B. S.
PEOPLES AND COUNTRIES. Translated by J. M. KENNEDY.
[The following twenty-seven fragments were intended by Nietzsche to
form a supplement to Chapter VIII. of _Beyond Good and Evil_, dealing
with Peoples and Countries.]
1.
The Europeans now imagine themselves as representing, in the main, the
highest types of men on earth.
2.
A characteristic of Europeans: inconsistency between word and deed;
the Oriental is true to himself in daily life. How the European has
established colonies is explained by his nature, which resembles that
of a beast of prey.
This inconsistency is explained by the fact that Christianity has
abandoned the class from which it sprang.
This is the difference between us and the Hellenes: their morals grew
up among the governing castes. Thucydides' morals are the same as those
that exploded everywhere with Plato.
Attempts towards honesty at the Renaissance, for example: always for
the benefit of the arts. Michael Angelo's conception of God as the
"Tyrant of the World" was an honest one.
3.
I rate Michael Angelo higher than Raphael, because, through all the
Christian clouds and prejudices of his time, he saw the ideal of a
culture _nobler_ than the Christo-Raphaelian: whilst Raphael truly
and modestly glorified only the values handed down to him, and did
not carry within himself any inquiring, yearning instincts. Michael
Angelo, on the other hand, saw and felt the problem of the law-giver of
new values: the problem of the conqueror made perfect, who first had
to subdue the "hero within himself," the man exalted to his highest
pedestal, master even of his pity, who mercilessly shatters and
annihilates everything that does not bear his own stamp, shining in
Olympian divinity. Michael Angelo was naturally only at certain moments
so high and so far beyond his age and Christian Europe: for the most
part he adopted a condescending attitude towards the eternal feminine
in Christianity; it would seem, indeed, that in the end he broke down
before her, and gave up the ideal of his most inspired hours. It was
an ideal which only a man in the strongest and highest vigour of life
could bear; but not a man advanced in years! Indeed, he would have had
to demolish Christianity with his ideal! But he was not thinker and
philosopher enough for that Perhaps Leonardo da Vinci alone of those
artists had a really super-Christian outlook. He knows the East, the
"land of dawn," within himself as well as without himself. There is
something super-European and silent in him: a characteristic of every
one who has seen too wide a circle of things good and bad.
4.