He thinks that already modern tendencies—commerce and industry, the interchange of books and letters, the common features in all higher culture, the easy changing of abode—are weakening nations and tending in the direction of a European man. j Not the interest of the many, as is often said, but above all the interests of certain princely dynasties, and then of certain commercial and social classes, push in the nationalist direction.[1]
Taking this larger view, Nietzsche finds the Catholic church suggestive, i.e., the catholicity of it, particularly when it was a sovereign and super-national power in the Middle Ages and made states and nations look petty in comparison! The church met fictitious needs, it is true, but some day there may be equally universal institutes to meet man's real needs.[2] He boldly anticipates "the united states of Europe," holding that while the uniting of the various German governments in one state was a "great idea," this is a still "greater idea."[3] He even broaches the idea of an international ministry of education, which should consider the intellectual welfare of the entire human race, independently of national interests.[4] Europe has a lofty dignity; in his eyes: its task, once united, will be to guide and watch over the development of the entire earth.[5] In this connection an extraordinary suggestion is thrown out that a medical geography of the globe be made, so that, as a physician sends his patients to this and that climate or particular environment for the cure of their varying ailments, so ailing peoples and families may be gradually taken to zones and circumstances favorable to them till their infirmities are overcome—the whole earth becoming thus in time a set of health-stations.[6] One may skeptically ask who is to be the physician for so great a task, and to this Nietzsche gives no formal answer, but may be presumed to have in mind some such organization of the accumulated science and wisdom of mankind as a "united Europe" might effect. Continuing these large prospects, he speaks of an "economy of the earth," of letting poorer races die out and training better ones, of one language—in general, of entirely new conditions for human
