During October and the first days of November, alone with his own people in that Naumburg whose provincial virtues he did not love, he bore hardly with the vulgarity of the little people, of the functionaries with whom he mixed. Naumburg was a small Prussian town; Friedrich Nietzsche did not care for this robust and vulgar Prussia. Metz had capitulated; the finest army of France was taken captive: a delirium of conceit swept all Germany off its feet. Friedrich Nietzsche resisted the general tendency. The sentiment of triumph was a repose which his exacting soul might not know. On the contrary, he was disgusted and alarmed.
"I fear," he wrote to his friend Gersdorff, "that we shall have to pay for our marvellous national victories at a price to which I, for my part, will never consent. In confidence—I am of opinion that modern Prussia is a Power highly dangerous to culture.... The enterprise is not easy, but we must be philosophers enough to keep our sang-froid in the midst of all this smoke, we must keep watch so that no robber may come and steal any part of what, in my opinion, is commensurable with nothing beside, not even the most heroic of military actions, not even our national exaltation."
Then a document appeared which deeply moved Friedrich Nietzsche. It was the date of the centenary of Beethoven. The Germans, occupied with their war, had neglected to commemorate it. Richard Wagner's voice was raised, it alone was strong enough to recall to the conquerors the memory of another glory: "Germans, you are brave," he cried; "remain brave in peace.... In this marvellous year 1870 nothing is better suited to your pride in being brave than the memory of the great Beethoven.... Let us celebrate that great pioneer and path-hewer, let us celebrate him worthily, not less worthily than the victory of German courage: for he who gives joy to the world is raised higher among men than he who conquers the world."
Germans, you are brave; remain brave in peace—no saying could move Friedrich Nietzsche more deeply. He desired to be near the master again, and, though not yet restored to health, he left Naumburg.
He saw Richard Wagner again and was not entirely satisfied. This man, who had been so splendid in misfortune, seemed to have lost stature. There was a vulgar quality in his joy. Well had the German victory avenged him for those Parisian cat-calls and railleries which he had had to endure; now he "ate Frenchmen" with an enormous and peaceable relish. Nevertheless he declined certain offers; he was promised the highest office and honours if he accepted residence in Berlin. He refused, being unwilling to let himself be enthroned as poet-laureate of a Prussian Empire; and his disciple was thankful for the refusal.
Friedrich Nietzsche found at Basle an even better confidant of his anxieties. The historian Jacob Burckhardt, a great scholar of arts and civilisations, was melancholy; all brutality was odious to him, and he detested war and its destruction. A citizen of the last city in Europe which maintained its independence and its old customs, proud of this independence and of these customs, Jacob Burckhardt disliked those nations of thirty or forty millions of souls which he saw establishing themselves. To the designs of Bismarck and of Cavour he preferred the counsel of Aristotle—"So arrange that the number of citizens does not exceed ten thousand; otherwise they would not be able to meet together on the public square."
He had studied Athens, Venice, Florence, and Sienna. He held in high esteem the ancient and Latin disciplines, in very moderate esteem the German disciplines: he dreaded German hegemony. Burckhardt and Nietzsche were colleagues. They often met in the intervals between two lectures. Then they would talk and, on fine days, stroll together along that terrace over which all European travellers lean, that is between the cathedral of red sandstone and the Rhine, here so young still but already so strong, as it passes with a long murmur of ruffled waters. The simply-built University is situated quite near, on the slope, between the river and the Museum.
The two colleagues were eternally examining their common thought. How should that tradition of culture and beauty be continued, that fragile and oft-broken tradition which two tiny States, Attica and Tuscany, have transmitted to our care? France had not deserved censure; she had known how to maintain the methods and a school of taste. But had Prussia the qualities fitting her heritage? Friedrich Nietzsche repeated the expression of his hope. "Perhaps," said he, "this war will have transformed our old Germany; I see her more virile, endowed with a firmer and more delicate taste." Jacob Burckhardt listened. "No," said he, "you are always thinking of the Greeks, for whom war had no doubt an educative virtue. But modern wars are superficial; they do not reach, they do not correct the bourgeois, laissez-aller style of life. They are rare; their impressions are soon effaced; they are soon forgotten; they do not exercise people's thought." What did Nietzsche answer? A letter to Erwin Rohde enables us to divine the ill-assured accent of his observations. "I am very anxious," he writes, "as regards the immediate future. I seem to recognise there the Middle Ages in disguise.... Be careful to free yourself from this fatal Prussia, with its repugnance to culture! Flunkeys and priests sprout from its soil like mushrooms, and they are going to darken all Germany with their smoke!"
Jacob Burckhardt, long a recluse amid his memories and his books, had the habit of melancholy and made the best of it. By way of discreet protest against the enthusiasms of his contemporaries, he delivered a lecture upon Historical Greatness. "Do not take for true greatness," said he to the students of Basle, "such and such a military triumph, such and such an expansion of a State. How many nations have been powerful who are forgotten and merit their oblivion! Historical greatness is a rarer thing; it lies wholly in the works of those men whom we call great men, using that vague term because we cannot truly fathom their nature. Some unknown genius leaves us Notre Dame de Paris; Goethe gives us his Faust; Newton his law of the Solar System. This is greatness, and this alone." Friedrich Nietzsche listened and applauded. "Burckhardt," wrote he, "is becoming a Schopenhauerian...." But a few wise words do not satisfy his ardour. Nor can he so quickly renounce the hope which he has conceived; he wishes to act, to save his Fatherland from the moral disaster which in his judgment menaces her.