It might be said that, in a certain sense, the nineteenth century also strove after all that Goethe himself aspired to: catholicity in understanding, in approving; a certain reserve towards everything, daring realism, and a reverence for every fact. How is it that the total result of this is not a Goethe, but a state of chaos, a nihilistic groan, an inability to discover where one is, an instinct of fatigue which _in praxi_ is persistently driving Europe _to hark back to the eighteenth century_? (—For instance in the form of maudlin romanticism, altruism, hyper-sentimentality, pessimism in taste, and socialism in politics). Is not the nineteenth century, at least in its closing years, merely an accentuated, brutalised eighteenth century,—that is to say a century of decadence? And has not Goethe been—not alone for Germany, but also for the whole of Europe,—merely an episode, a beautiful “in vain”? But great men are misunderstood when they are regarded from the wretched standpoint of public utility. The fact that no advantage can be derived from them—_this in itself may perhaps be peculiar to greatness._ 51 Goethe is the last German whom I respect: he had understood three things as I understand them. We also agree as to the “cross.”[9] People often ask me why on earth I write in _German:_ nowhere am I less read than in the Fatherland. But who knows whether I even _desire_ to be read at present?—To create things on which time may try its teeth in vain; to be concerned both in the form and the substance of my writing, about a certain degree of immortality—never have I been modest enough to demand less of myself. The aphorism, the sentence, in both of which I, as the first among Germans, am a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book,—what everyone else does _not_ say in a whole book. I have given mankind the deepest book it possesses, my _Zarathustra;_ before long I shall give it the most independent one. [1] The German word _Rausch_ as used by Nietzsche here, suggests a blend of our two English words “intoxication” and “elation.”—TR. [2] An allusion to a verse in Luther’s hymn: “_Lass fahren dahin_ ... _das Reich muss uns doch bleiben,_” which Nietzsche applies to the German Empire.—TR. [3] A disciple of Schopenhauer who blunted the sharpness of his master’s Pessimism and who watered it down for modern requirements.—TR. [4] Quotation from the Libretto of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” Act I, Sc. 3.—TR. [5] This alludes to Parsifal. See my note on p. 96, vol. i., “The Will to Power.”—TR. [6] This is a playful adaptation of Max von Schenkendorfs poem “_Freiheit_” The proper line reads: “_Freiheit die ich meine_” (The freedom that I do mean).—TR. [7] See “Memoirs of a House of the Dead,” by Dostoiewsky (translation by Marie von Thilo: “Buried Alive”).—TR. [8] Clothilde de Veaux.—TR. [9] See my note on p. 147 of Vol. I. of the _Will to Power._—TR.