118 PROF. D. S. MARGOLIOUTH, D.LITT., ON THE INFLUENCE OF 



To what circumstance they owe their popularity it might be 

 hard to say ; possibly the mode of expression has something to 

 do with it : many of the volumes take the form of fairly brief 

 aphorisms, which Bacon appears to have thought the correct form 

 for philosophical utterances ; the intellectual effort required for 

 their perusal is certainly smaller than that demanded by what 

 is continuous and systematic ; and they contain a judicious 

 mixture of the paradoxical with the commonplace. But it is 

 difficult to suppose that they have had any serious political 

 influence in either the one country or the other. 



It is further to be noticed that Nietzsche is by no means an 

 apostle of either German Kultur or German aggression. He 

 appears to be in favour of a united Europe and to regard national- 

 ism as a serious mistake. His words on the subject are as follows : 

 {Jenseits von Gut und Bosc 228): Thanhs to the f r< rish estrange- 

 ment which the nationalist craze has set and is still setting between 

 the nations of Europe, thanks moreover to shortsighted politicians 

 wlw at present by thea/id of hasty methods have the upper hand and 

 have no notion that the separatist p>olicy vjhich they favour can 

 only be a temporary policy — thanks to all this and much which 

 may not now be expressed, men overlook or arbitrarily and menda- 

 ciously misinterpret the mod unambiguous signs wherein it is clearly 

 expressed that Europe means to be one. With all the deeper and 

 more comprehensive personages of this century the actual and 

 common tendency in the secret labour of the soul has been to prepare 

 the way for that new synthesis and anticipate tentatively what the 

 future European is to execute ; only ostensibly or in their vjeaker 

 liours, or in their old age did they belong to their fatherlands ; if 

 ever they became patriots, they were taking a holiday from their 

 real selves. In the same passage Nietzsche admits that the 

 Germans are nearer the barbarous state than the French, and 

 asserts that France is still the seat of the most spiritual and the 

 most refined European culture. The axiom of historic justice 

 which, he says, must be firmly maintained and defended against 

 illusion is this : European noblesse, of sentiment, taste and morals, 

 in short in every sense of the word, is the work and the discovery 

 of France ; whereas European vulgarity, the plebeianism of 

 modern ideas, is that of England. Treitschke is mentioned 

 by him in a context which indicates anything but approval : 

 One must be prepared, he says, to find many a cloud and many a 

 disturbance, and many a slight attack of stidtification pass over a 

 nation tohich suffers and wisJies to suffer from national nervous 

 fever and political ambition ; as, for example, among the Germans 

 of to-day, now the anti-Erench craze, now the anti-Polish, now the 



