dear and fair-minded Englishmen, which may account for the fact that
you have neither produced the greatest prophets nor the greatest
thinkers in this world. You would never have crucified Christ, as did
the Jews, or driven Nietzsche into madness, as did the Germans--you
would have made Nietzsche, on account of his literary faculties,
Minister of State in a Whig Ministry, you would have invited Jesus
Christ to your country houses, where he would have been worshipped by
all the ladies on account of his long hair and interesting looks, and
tolerated by all men as an amusing, if somewhat romantic, foreigner. I
know that the current opinion is to the contrary, and that your
country is constantly accused, even by yourselves, of its insularity;
but I, for my part, have found an almost feminine receptivity amongst
you in my endeavour to bring you into contact with some ideas of my
native country--a receptivity which, however, has also this in common
with that of the female mind, that evidently nothing sticks deeply,
but is quickly wiped out by what any other lecturer, or writer, or
politician has to tell you. I was prepared for indifference--I was not
prepared for receptivity and that benign lady's smile, behind which
ladies, like all people who are only clever, usually hide their inward
contempt for the foolishness of mere men! I was prepared for abuse,
and even a good fight--I was not prepared for an extremely
faint-hearted criticism; I did not expect that some of my opponents
would be so utterly inexperienced in that most necessary work of
literary execution. No, no: give me the Germans or the Jews for
executioners: they can do the hanging properly, while the English
hangman is like the Russian, to whom, when the rope broke, the
half-hanged revolutionary said: "What a country, where they cannot
hang a man properly!" What a country, where they do not hang
philosophers properly--which would be the proper thing to do to
them--but smile at them, drink tea with them, discuss with them, and