What the Germans Lack

1 Among Germans today it is not enough to possess intellect: one must also claim it, take the liberty of being intellectual…

Perhaps I know the Germans; perhaps I may even tell them a few truths. The new Germany represents a great quantity of inherited and schooled ability, enough to spend its accumulated store of strength lavishly for a time. What has come to power with it is no high culture, still less a delicate taste, an aristocratic “beauty” of the instincts; but virtues more manly than any other European country can show. Much good courage and self-respect, much reliability in dealings and reciprocal duties, much industry, much perseverance—and an inherited moderation that needs the spur rather than the brake. I add that here people still obey without being humiliated by obedience… And no one despises his opponent…

You see that I wish to do the Germans justice: I would not be untrue to myself in this—and so I must also raise my objection. Coming to power exacts a heavy price: power makes people stupid… The Germans—once called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all today?—The Germans are now bored with intellect, the Germans now distrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness about truly intellectual things—“Germany, Germany above all,” I fear that was the end of German philosophy… “Are there German philosophers? Are there German poets? Are there good German books?” people abroad ask me. I blush, but with the courage I possess even in desperate cases, I answer: “Yes, Bismarck!”—Could I even confess what books are read today?… Accursed instinct for mediocrity!—

2 What German intellect might be—who has not had melancholy thoughts about that! But for almost a thousand years this nation has deliberately made itself stupid: nowhere have the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been more viciously abused. Lately a third has even joined them, one sufficient by itself to finish off all subtle and daring agility of mind: music, our clogged and clogging German music.—How much tiresome heaviness, lameness, dampness, dressing gown, how much beer there is in the German intelligentsia! How is it possible that young men who dedicate their existence to the most intellectual aims do not feel within themselves the first instinct of intellectual life, the mind’s instinct for self-preservation—and drink beer?… The alcoholism of scholarly youth may not yet place a question mark over their scholarship—one can even be a great scholar without intellect—but in every other respect it remains a problem.—Where would one not find the gentle degeneration that beer produces in the mind! Once, in a case that became almost famous, I laid my finger on such degeneration: the degeneration of our foremost German freethinker, the clever David Strauss, into the author of a beer-bench gospel and a “new faith”… Not for nothing had he made his vow in verse to the “lovely brown one”—faithful until death…

3 I spoke of German intellect: of its growing coarseness, its becoming shallow. Is that enough?—At bottom it is something quite different that frightens me: the ever further decline of German seriousness, German depth, German passion in intellectual matters. The passionate feeling has changed, not merely the intellectual capacity.—Here and there I come into contact with German universities: what an atmosphere prevails among their scholars, what desolate intellectual life, grown contented and lukewarm! It would be a profound misunderstanding to confront me here with German scholarship—and proof, moreover, that one had not read a word of mine. For seventeen years I have never tired of exposing the deadening effect of our present scholarly enterprise upon the mind. The harsh servitude to which the enormous scope of the sciences now condemns each individual is a chief reason why natures of fuller, richer, deeper promise no longer find an education and educators suited to them. Nothing afflicts our culture more than the excess of presumptuous street-corner loungers and fragments of humanity; our universities are, against their will, the true hothouses of this stunting of the mind’s instincts. And all Europe already has some idea of it—great-power politics deceives no one… Germany is increasingly regarded as Europe’s flatland.—I am still looking for a German with whom I could be serious in my own way—how much more for one with whom I might be cheerful! Twilight of the Idols: ah, who today could understand the kind of seriousness from which a solitary takes his rest here!—Our cheerfulness is the most incomprehensible thing about us…

4 Take stock: not only is German culture’s decline obvious, there is no lack of sufficient reason for it. In the end no one can spend more than he possesses—this holds for individuals and for nations. If you spend yourself on power, on great-power politics, on the economy, world commerce, parliamentary government, military interests—if you give away in this direction the quantity of understanding, seriousness, will, self-overcoming that you are—then it is missing on the other side. Culture and the state—let us not deceive ourselves here—are antagonists: the “culture-state” is merely a modern idea. One lives off the other, one flourishes at the other’s expense. All great ages of culture are ages of political decline: what is great in the cultural sense was unpolitical, even antipolitical.—Goethe’s heart opened at the phenomenon of Napoleon—it closed at the “Wars of Liberation”… At the very moment Germany rises as a great power, France acquires a changed importance as a cultural power. Even now much new seriousness, much new passion of the intellect has moved to Paris; the question of pessimism, for instance, the Wagner question, almost all psychological and artistic questions are considered there with incomparably greater subtlety and thoroughness than in Germany—the Germans are themselves incapable of this kind of seriousness.—In the history of European culture, the rise of the “Reich” means one thing above all: a shift in the center of gravity. Everywhere people already know it: in what matters most—and that remains culture—the Germans no longer count. People ask: can you point to even one intellect who counts for Europe, as your Goethe, your Hegel, your Heinrich Heine, your Schopenhauer counted?—That there is no longer a single German philosopher is a source of endless astonishment.—

5 The whole system of higher education in Germany has lost what matters most: both the end and the means to the end. That education, cultivation, is itself the end—and not the “Reich”—that this end requires educators, not secondary-school teachers and university scholars: people have forgotten this… Educators are needed who are themselves educated, superior, noble minds, proved at every moment, proved through speech and silence, cultures grown mature and sweet—not the learned louts whom secondary school and university offer the young today as “higher nursemaids.” Educators, the first precondition of education, are missing, except for the rarest of exceptions: hence German culture’s decline.—One of those rarest exceptions is my venerable friend Jakob Burckhardt in Basel: to him above all Basel owes its preeminence in humane cultivation.—What Germany’s “higher schools” actually accomplish is brutal drilling, to make countless young men useful, exploitable for state service with the least possible loss of time. “Higher education” and countless numbers—that is a contradiction from the outset. Every higher education belongs only to the exception: one must be privileged to have a right to so high a privilege. All great things, all beautiful things, can never be common property: beauty belongs to the few.—What conditions German culture’s decline? That “higher education” is no longer a prerogative—the democratism of “universal” education, education that has become common… Nor should we forget that military privileges positively compel the overcrowding of higher schools, that is, their destruction.—In present-day Germany no one is any longer free to give his children an aristocratic education: our “higher” schools are all organized for the most dubious mediocrity—in their teachers, their curricula, their aims. And everywhere an indecent haste prevails, as though something had been missed if a young man at 23 were not yet “finished,” not yet able to answer the “main question”: what profession?—A higher kind of person, if you will permit me to say so, does not love “professions,” precisely because he knows himself to have a calling… He has time, he takes his time, he does not even think of becoming “finished”—at thirty, in the sense of high culture, one is a beginner, a child.—Our overcrowded secondary schools, our overburdened teachers made stupid by their burdens, are a scandal: there may be causes for defending these conditions, as the Heidelberg professors recently did—there are no reasons for it.

6 So as not to depart from my own nature, which says yes and deals with contradiction and criticism only indirectly, only unwillingly, I shall at once set down the three tasks for which educators are needed. One must learn to see, one must learn to think, one must learn to speak and write: in all three the goal is a noble culture.—Learning to see—accustoming the eye to calm, to patience, to letting things approach it; postponing judgment, learning to walk around and encompass the individual case from every side. This is the first preliminary schooling for intellectual life: not reacting immediately to a stimulus, but gaining command of the inhibiting, excluding instincts. Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what unphilosophical speech calls a strong will: the essential thing is precisely being able not to “will,” to suspend the decision. All lack of intellect, all vulgarity rests on the inability to resist a stimulus—one must react, one follows every impulse. In many cases this compulsion is already sickness, decline, a symptom of exhaustion—almost everything unphilosophical crudeness calls “vice” is merely that physiological inability not to react.—One practical consequence of having learned to see: as a learner generally, one will have grown slow, distrustful, resistant. At first one will let everything strange and new approach with hostile calm—one will withdraw one’s hand from it. Standing with every door open, lying submissively on one’s belly before every little fact, being forever ready to leap into, plunge into other people and other things—in short, the famous modern “objectivity”—is bad taste, is ignoble above all.—

7 Learning to think: our schools no longer have any conception of it. Even at universities, even among the actual scholars of philosophy, logic as theory, as practice, as craft is beginning to die out. Read German books: no longer the remotest memory that thinking requires a technique, a course of instruction, a will to mastery—that thinking must be learned as dancing must be learned, as a kind of dancing… Who among Germans still knows from experience that subtle shudder which light feet in intellectual matters send flowing through every muscle!—The stiff clumsiness of intellectual gesture, the heavy hand in grasping—these are so German that abroad people mistake them for German character itself. The German has no fingers for nuances… That the Germans could even endure their philosophers, above all the most twisted conceptual cripple there ever was, the great Kant, gives no small idea of German grace.—For dancing in every form cannot be left out of a noble education: being able to dance with the feet, with concepts, with words; need I add that one must also be able to do it with the pen—that one must learn to write?—But at this point I would become a complete riddle to German readers…

1 Among Germans today, having a mind is not enough: you also have to claim it for yourself, take the liberty of using it…

Perhaps I know the Germans; perhaps I may even tell them a few truths. The new Germany represents a great store of ability, inherited and learned. For a while, it can even afford to spend its accumulated stock of strength wastefully. What has come to power with it is not a high culture, still less a delicate taste or a noble “beauty” of instincts. But it has more manly virtues than any other country in Europe can show. A great deal of courage and self-respect, a great deal of reliability in dealings with others and in mutual duties, a great deal of hard work and endurance—and an inherited moderation that needs a spur rather than a brake. I would add that people here still obey without being humiliated by obedience… And no one despises his opponent…

You can see that I want to be fair to the Germans. I would not want to be untrue to myself in this, so I must also state my objection to them. Coming to power costs dearly: power makes people stupid… The Germans—they were once called the people of thinkers: do they still think at all today?—The Germans are now bored by the intellect; the Germans now distrust the intellect. Politics swallows up all seriousness about truly intellectual matters. “Germany, Germany above everything”—I fear that was the end of German philosophy… “Are there German philosophers? Are there German poets? Are there good German books?” people ask me abroad. I blush, but with the courage I have even in desperate cases, I answer: “Yes, Bismarck!”—Could I even admit what books people read today?… That damned instinct for mediocrity!—

2 —What the German mind could be—who has not had gloomy thoughts about that! But this people has deliberately made itself stupid for almost a thousand years. Nowhere have Europe’s two great narcotics, alcohol and Christianity, been more viciously abused. Recently a third has even been added, one that can single-handedly finish off all the mind’s delicate and daring agility: music, our clogged-up, clogging German music.—How much tiresome heaviness, lameness, dampness, lounging in dressing gowns, how much beer there is among German intellectuals! How is it actually possible for young men who dedicate their lives to the highest intellectual goals not to feel the first instinct of intellectual life, the mind’s instinct for self-preservation—and to drink beer?… The alcoholism of young scholars may not yet cast doubt on their scholarship. You can even be a great scholar without having a mind. But in every other respect it remains a problem.—Where can you fail to find the gentle degeneration that beer produces in the mind! Once, in a case that has almost become famous, I put my finger on just such a degeneration: that of our foremost German free spirit, the clever David Strauss, into the author of a beer-bench gospel and a “new faith”… Not for nothing had he pledged himself in verse to the “lovely brown one”—faithful until death…

3 —I spoke of the German mind becoming coarser and more shallow. Is that enough?—At bottom, what frightens me is something quite different: how German seriousness, German depth, and German passion in intellectual matters are declining more and more. The emotional intensity has changed, not merely the intellect.—I come into contact with German universities here and there. What an atmosphere prevails among their scholars! What barren intellectual life, grown complacent and lukewarm! It would be a profound misunderstanding to hold up German scholarship against me here—and proof, besides, that you had not read a word of mine. For seventeen years I have never tired of exposing how our current system of scholarly work drains away the spirit. Today, the enormous scope of the fields of knowledge condemns every individual to harsh servitude. This is a main reason why people whose natures are fuller, richer, and deeper no longer find the education and educators suited to them. Nothing harms our culture more than its surplus of arrogant street-corner loafers and fragments of human beings. Against their will, our universities are the real greenhouses for this kind of withering of the mind’s instincts. And all Europe already has some idea of this—great-power politics fools no one… Germany is increasingly regarded as Europe’s flatlands.—I am still looking for a German with whom I could be serious in my own way—how much more for one with whom I could be cheerful! Twilight of the Idols: ah, who today could understand the kind of seriousness from which a hermit is recovering here!—Our cheerfulness is the least understandable thing about us…

4 Take stock. It is not only obvious that German culture is declining; there is also no shortage of adequate reasons for it. In the end, no one can spend more than they have. This applies to individuals and to peoples. If you spend yourself on power, great-power politics, the economy, global trade, parliamentary government, and military interests—if you devote the store of understanding, seriousness, will, and self-overcoming that makes you who you are to those things—you do not have it left for the other side. Culture and the state—let’s not deceive ourselves about this—are opponents. The “cultural state” is merely a modern idea. One lives off the other; one flourishes at the other’s expense. All great ages of culture are ages of political decline. What was great in a cultural sense was nonpolitical, even antipolitical.—Goethe’s heart opened at the phenomenon of Napoleon; it closed during the “Wars of Liberation”… At the very moment Germany rises as a great power, France gains a different importance as a cultural power. Already today, much new seriousness and much new intellectual passion have moved to Paris. The question of pessimism, for example, the question of Wagner, and almost all psychological and artistic questions are considered there with incomparably more subtlety and thoroughness than in Germany. The Germans are themselves incapable of this kind of seriousness.—In the history of European culture, the rise of the “Reich” means one thing above all: a shift in the center of gravity. People everywhere already know it: in the main thing—and that remains culture—the Germans no longer count. People ask: can you point to even one mind that matters to Europe, as your Goethe, your Hegel, your Heinrich Heine, your Schopenhauer mattered?—There is no end to the astonishment that there is no longer a single German philosopher.—

5 The whole system of higher education in Germany has lost the main thing: both its purpose and the means to that purpose. People have forgotten that education, the development of culture, is itself the goal—not the “Reich”—and that this goal needs educators, not high school teachers and university scholars… We need educators who have themselves been educated: superior, noble minds, proving themselves at every moment, through speech and silence; mature cultures that have grown sweet—not the learned louts whom high school and university now offer the young as “higher nursemaids.” Apart from the rarest of exceptions, we lack educators, the first condition of education. Hence the decline of German culture.—One of these extremely rare exceptions is my deeply respected friend Jakob Burckhardt in Basel. More than anyone, he is the reason for Basel’s leading place in humanistic culture.—What Germany’s “higher schools” actually achieve is a brutal drilling designed to make countless young men useful—and exploitable—for state service, with as little loss of time as possible. “Higher education” and countless numbers contradict each other from the start. All higher education belongs only to the exception: you must be privileged to have a right to so high a privilege. Nothing great, nothing beautiful, can ever belong to everyone: beauty is for the few.—What causes the decline of German culture? The fact that “higher education” is no longer a privilege—the democratism of “universal” education, education that has become common… Nor should we forget that military privileges virtually force the higher schools to take too many students—that is, force their ruin.—In present-day Germany, no one is free anymore to give their children a noble education. All our “higher” schools are arranged for the most dubious mediocrity: in their teachers, their curricula, and their educational aims. And everywhere there is an indecent hurry, as if something had been missed if a young man is not yet “finished” at 23, not yet able to answer the “main question”: what career?—A higher kind of person, if I may say so, does not love “careers,” precisely because he knows he has a calling… He has time, he takes his time, he has no thought of becoming “finished.” At thirty, in the sense of high culture, you are a beginner, a child.—Our overcrowded high schools and our overloaded, stupefied high school teachers are a scandal. There may be causes for defending these conditions, as the Heidelberg professors recently did—but there are no reasons for it.

6 —So as not to act against my nature, which says yes and deals with contradiction and criticism only indirectly, only unwillingly, I will immediately state the three tasks for which educators are needed. We have to learn to see; we have to learn to think; we have to learn to speak and write. In all three, the goal is a noble culture.—Learning to see: training the eye to be calm and patient, to let things come to it; putting off judgment, learning to walk around and take in an individual case from every side. This is the first preparatory training for intellectual life: not reacting to a stimulus at once, but gaining control of the instincts that hold us back and shut things out. Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what unphilosophical language calls a strong will. The essential thing is precisely the ability not to “will,” to suspend a decision. All lack of intellect, all commonness, rests on the inability to resist a stimulus. You have to react; you follow every impulse. In many cases this compulsion is already sickness, decline, a symptom of exhaustion. Almost everything that unphilosophical crudity calls “vice” is merely this physical inability not to react.—One practical result of having learned to see: as a learner in general, you will have become slow, suspicious, and resistant. At first you will let anything strange or new approach with hostile calm—you will draw your hand back from it. Standing open with every door, lying submissively on your stomach before every little fact, always ready to spring into other people and other things, to plunge into them—in short, the famous modern “objectivity”—is bad taste, is as common and low as it gets.—

7 Learning to think: our schools no longer have any idea what that means. Even at universities, even among the actual scholars of philosophy, logic is beginning to die out—as theory, as practice, as a craft. Read German books: there is no longer the faintest memory that thinking needs a technique, a course of training, a will to mastery—that thinking has to be learned as dancing has to be learned, as a kind of dancing… Who among the Germans still knows from experience that delicate shiver which light feet in intellectual matters send through every muscle!—The stiff clumsiness of intellectual gestures, the heavy hand when grasping something—these are so German that abroad they are confused with the German character as a whole. The German has no fingers for nuances… The fact that the Germans have even put up with their philosophers, above all the most deformed conceptual cripple who ever lived, the great Kant, gives no small idea of German grace.—Dancing in every form cannot, in fact, be left out of a noble education: being able to dance with your feet, with ideas, with words. Do I still have to say that you must be able to do it with your pen too—that you must learn to write?—But here I would become a complete riddle to German readers…