Beyond Good and Evil

1 Beyond Good and Evil

ing towards masculine skepticism was decidedly prominent
whether, for instance, as fearlessness of gaze, as courage and
sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to dan-
gerous voyages of discovery, to spiritualized North Pole
expeditions under barren and dangerous skies. There may
be good grounds for it when warm-blooded and superficial
humanitarians cross themselves before this spirit, CET ES-
PRIT FATALISTE, IRONIQUE, MEPHISTOPHELIQUE,
as Michelet calls it, not without a shudder. But if one would
realize how characteristic is this fear of the ‘man’ in the
German spirit which awakened Europe out of its ‘dogmatic
slumber,’ let us call to mind the former conception which
had to be overcome by this new one—and that it is not so
very long ago that a masculinized woman could dare, with
unbridled presumption, to recommend the Germans to the
interest of Europe as gentle, goodhearted, weak-willed, and
poetical fools. Finally, let us only understand profoundly
enough Napoleon’s astonishment when he saw Goethe it re-
veals what had been regarded for centuries as the ‘German
spirit’ ‘VOILA UN HOMME!’—that was as much as to say
‘But this is a MAN! And I only expected to see a German!’

Supposing, then, that in the picture of the philosophers of

the future, some trait suggests the question whether they

must not perhaps be skeptics in the last-mentioned sense,

something in them would only be designated thereby—

and not they themselves. With equal right they might call

themselves critics, and assuredly they will be men of exper-

iments. By the name with which I ventured to baptize them,