Thoughts out of Season, part 1 | Page 3

which
began with Goethe and has found so fine a development in Nietzsche.
True, I have made many a convert, but amongst them are very
undesirable ones, as, for instance, some enterprising publishers, who
used to be the toughest disbelievers in England, but who have now
come to understand the "value" of the new gospel--but as neither this
gospel is exactly Christian, nor I, the importer of it, I am not allowed to
count my success by the conversion of publishers and sinners, but have
to judge it by the more spiritual standard of the quality of the converted.
In this respect, I am sorry to say, my success has been a very poor one.
As an eager missionary, I have naturally asked myself the reason of my
failure. Why is there no male audience in England willing to listen to a
manly and daring philosophy? Why are there no eyes to see, no ears to
hear, no hearts to feel, no brains to understand? Why is my trumpet,
which after all I know how to blow pretty well, unable to shatter the
walls of English prejudice against a teacher whose school cannot
possibly be avoided by any European with a higher purpose in his
breast?... There is plenty of time for thought nowadays for a man who
does not allow himself to be drawn into that aimless bustle of pleasure
business or politics, which is called modern life because outside that
life there is--just as outside those noisy Oriental cities-a desert, a
calmness, a true and almost majestic leisure, a leisure unprecedented in
any age, a leisure in which one may arrive at several conclusions
concerning English indifference towards the new thought.
First of all, of course, there stands in the way the terrible abuse which
Nietzsche has poured upon the heads of the innocent Britishers. While
France and the Latin countries, while the Orient and India, are within
the range of his sympathies, this most outspoken of all philosophers,
this prophet and poet-philosopher, cannot find words enough to express
his disgust at the illogical, plebeian, shallow, utilitarian Englishman. It
must certainly be disagreeable to be treated like this, especially when
one has a fairly good opinion of one's self; but why do you take it so
very, very seriously? Did Nietzsche, perchance, spare the Germans?
And aren't you accustomed to criticism on the part of German

philosophers? Is it not the ancient and time-honoured privilege of the
whole range of them from Leibnitz to Hegel -- even of German poets,
like Goethe and Heine -- to call you bad names and to use unkind
language towards you? Has there not always been among the few
thinking heads in Germany a silent consent and an open contempt for
you and your ways; the sort of contempt you yourselves have for the
even more Anglo-Saxon culture of the Americans? I candidly confess
that in my more German moments I have felt and still feel as the
German philosophers do; but I have also my European turns and moods,
and then I try to understand you and even excuse you, and take your
part against earnest and thinking Germany. Then I feel like telling the
German philosophers that if you, poor fellows, had practised
everything they preached, they would have had to renounce the
pleasure of abusing you long ago, for there would now be no more
Englishmen left to abuse! As it is, you have suffered enough on
account of the wild German ideals you luckily only partly believed in:
for what the German thinker wrote on patient paper in his study, you
always had to write the whole world over on tender human skins, black
and yellow skins, enveloping ungrateful beings who sometimes had no
very high esteem for the depth and beauty of German philosophy. And
you have never taken revenge upon the inspired masters of the
European thinking-shop, you have never reabused them, you have
never complained of their want of worldly wisdom: you have
invariably suffered in silence and agony, just as brave and staunch
Sancho Panza used to do. For this is what you are, dear Englishmen,
and however well you brave, practical, materialistic John Bulls and
Sancho Panzas may know this world, however much better you may be
able to perceive, to count, to judge, and to weigh things than your ideal
German Knight: there is an eternal law in this world that the Sancho
Panzas have to follow the Don Quixotes; for matter has to follow the
spirit, even the poor spirit of a German philosopher! So it has been in
the past, so it is at present, and so it will be in the future; and you had
better prepare yourselves in time for the eventuality. For if Nietzsche
were nothing else but