like to have Russia's menace so increased that Europe would be forced to combine against it, to get one will, a long formidable will that could propose aims for thousands of years—this by means of a new ruling caste that should transcend national lines and put an end to the old comedy of petty rival states and dynasties and peoples. This would be a great politics for which he would have heart. "The time for small politics is past; the next [our] century will bring on the struggle for the mastery of the earth (Erd-Herrschaft)—the compulsion to great politics."[1] There is still a third possibility. It is that of a combination of Germany and Russia, "a new common program," even a mixing of the two races.[2]
V
And yet behind these varying and more or less contradictory attitudes and forecasts there is a comparatively constant idea—that of some kind of a united Europe and organization of the world. Nietzsche's fundamental problem was human, and the utilization and destination of mankind is always in the background of his mind. It is true that here also there is no definitive (at least definitively wrought-out) view. There is even apparent inconsistency. Once we find him saying that it is not his ideal to turn humanity into one organism—that there should be rather many organisms succeeding one another (wechselnde) and differing types, each coming to its ripeness and perfection and letting its fruit drop.[3] In another place, after speaking of the struggle between the various social units or complexes of power, he says that if law (eine Rechtsordnung) became sovereign and universal and hence were directed against struggle in general, this would be hostile to life and progress.[4] But, on the other hand, he speaks of a "world-economy," of laying the foundations for an oligarchy
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 208.
- ↑ Werke, XIII, 352-3, § 872; 356, § 880 ("a German-Slav rule of the earth does not belong to the most improbable things"); XII, 208, § 441 (Slav-Germanic-Northern culture—lesser, but robuster and more laborious!").
- ↑ Werke, XII, 204, § 434. If I am right in my interpretation of "wechselnde" in this passage, it might be compared with ibid., XII, 114, § 272, where eternal "states" are said to be something unnatural and fresh formations to be desirable.
- ↑ Genealogy etc., II, § 11.
