10 Beyond Good and Evil
I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in
our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century
ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patrio-
tism and soil-attachment, and return once more to reason,
that is to say, to ‘good Europeanism.’ And while digress-
ing on this possibility, I happen to become an ear-witness
of a conversation between two old patriots—they were evi-
dently both hard of hearing and consequently spoke all the
louder. ‘HE has as much, and knows as much, philosophy
as a peasant or a corps-student,’ said the one— ‘he is still
innocent. But what does that matter nowadays! It is the age
of the masses: they lie on their belly before everything that
is massive. And so also in politicis. A statesman who rears
up for them a new Tower of Babel, some monstrosity of em-
pire and power, they call ‘great’—what does it matter that
we more prudent and conservative ones do not meanwhile
give up the old belief that it is only the great thought that
gives greatness to an action or affair. Supposing a statesman
were to bring his people into the position of being obliged
henceforth to practise ‘high politics,’ for which they were
by nature badly endowed and prepared, so that they would
have to sacrifice their old and reliable virtues, out of love to
a new and doubtful mediocrity;— supposing a statesman
were to condemn his people generally to ‘practise politics,’
when they have hitherto had something better to do and
think about, and when in the depths of their souls they have
been unable to free themselves from a prudent loathing of
the restlessness, emptiness, and noisy wranglings of the
essentially politics-practising nations;—supposing such a