Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely MeditationsI:L11enchaining of them. One has only to recall what Christianity hasgradually become through the greed of the state. Christianity is certainlyone of the purest revelations of the impulse to culture andespecially of the impulse to the ever-renewed production of thesaint; but since it has been employed in a hundred ways to propel themills of state power it has gradually become sick to the very marrow,hypocritical and untruthful, and degenerated into a contradiction ofits original goal. Even the most recent event in its history, the GermanReformation, would have been no more than a sudden and quicklyextinguished flare-up if it had not stolen fresh fuel from the fires ofconflict between the states.Thirdly, culture is promoted by all those who are conscious ofpossessing an ugly or boring content and want to conceal the fact withso-called 'beautifu1fonn' . Under the presupposition that what is insideis usually judged by what is outside, the observer is to be constrainedto a false assessment of the content through externalities, throughwords, gestures, decoration, display, ceremoniousness. It sometimesseems to me that modern men b.l)re one another to a boundlessextent and that they finally feel the need to make themselvesinteresting with the aid of all the arts. They have themselves servedup by their artists as sharp and pungent repasts; they soak themselvesin all the spices of the Orient and the Occident, and to be sure!they now smell very interesting, smelling as they do of all the Orientand the Occident. Now they are suitably prepared for satisfyingevery taste; and everyone shall have something, whether his inclinationbe for the fresh-smelling or foul-smelling, for the sublimatedor for peasant coarseness, for the Greek or the Chinese, for tragediesor fo r dramatized lewdness. The most celebrated chefs for thesemodern men who want to be interesting and interested at any costare, as is well known, to be found among the French, the worstamong the Germans. At bottom this fact is more consoling to the latterthan to the former, and let us not hold it against the French in theleast if they mock at us precisely because we are uninteresting andlack elegance and if, when individual Germans desire to be suaveand elegant, it reminds them of the Indian who wanted a ringthrough his nose and demanded to be tattoQed.- And here I shall make a digression. Since the late war withFrance there have been many changes in Germany and it is clear thatthe return to peace has also brought with it certain new demands inregard to German culture. The war was for many their first visit tothe more elegant half of the world; how unprejudiced the victor now166