equally long distance? which finds us lying intoxicated among the débris
of old culture! which finds its only consolation in "being good" and in
holding out the "helping hand," and turns away from all other
consolations!--Does beauty, too, grow out of the ancient culture? I
think that our ugliness arises from our metaphysical remnants . our
confused morals, the worthlessness of our marriages, and so on, are the
cause. The beautiful man, the healthy, moderate, and enterprising man,
moulds the objects around him into beautiful shapes after his own image.


155

Up to the present time all history has been written from the standpoint
of success, and, indeed, with the assumption of a certain reason in this
success. This remark applies also to Greek history: so far we do not
possess any. It is the same all round, however: where are the historians
who can survey things and events without being humbugged by stupid
theories? I know of only one, Burckhardt. Everywhere the widest possible
optimism prevails in science. The question: "What would have been the
consequence if so and so had not happened?" is almost unanimously thrust
aside, and yet it is the cardinal question. Thus everything becomes
ironical. Let us only consider our own lives. If we examine history in
accordance with a preconceived plan, let this plan be sought in the
purposes of a great man, or perhaps in those of a sex, or of a party.
Everything else is a chaos.--Even in natural science we find this
deification of the necessary.

Germany has become the breeding-place of this historical optimism; Hegel
is perhaps to blame for this. Nothing, however, is more responsible for
the fatal influence of German culture. Everything that has been kept