December 17.
I am quite willing to be called a "good European," less so to be called a "missionary of culture." I have a horror of all missionary effort—because I have come across none but moralising missionaries—and I am afraid I do not altogether believe in what is called culture. Our culture as a whole cannot inspire enthusiasm, can it? and what would a missionary be without enthusiasm! In other words, I am more isolated than you think. All I meant by being German was that you write more for yourself, think more of yourself in writing, than for the general public; whereas most non—German writers have been obliged to force themselves into a certain discipline of style, which no doubt makes the latter clearer and more plastic, but necessarily deprives it of all profundity and compels the writer to keep to himself his most intimate and best individuality, the anonymous in him. I have thus been horrified at times to see how little of my inmost self is more than hinted at in my writings.
I am no connoisseur in music. The arts of which I have some notion are sculpture and painting; I have to thank them for my deepest artistic impressions. My ear is undeveloped. In my young days this was a great grief to me. I used to play a good deal and worked at thorough-bass for a few years, but nothing came of it. I can enjoy good music keenly, but still am one of the uninitiated.
I think I can trace in your works certain points of agreement with my own taste: your predilection for Beyle, for instance, and for Taine; but the latter I have not seen for seventeen years. I am not so enthusiastic about his work on the Revolution as you seem to be. He deplores and harangues an earthquake.
I used the expression "aristocratic radicalism" because it so exactly defines my own political convictions. I am a little hurt, however, at the offhand and impetuous pronouncements against such—phenomena as socialism and anarchism in your works. The anarchism of Prince Kropotkin, for instance, is no stupidity. The name, of course, is nothing. Your intellect, which is usually so dazzling, seems to me to fall a trifle short where truth is to be found in a nuance. Your views on the origin of the moral ideas interest me in the highest degree.
You share—to my delighted astonishment—a certain repugnance which I feel for Herbert Spencer. With us he passes for the god of philosophy. However, it is as a rule a distinct merit with these Englishmen that their not very high-soaring intellect shuns hypotheses, whereas hypothesis has destroyed the supremacy of German philosophy. Is not there a great deal that is hypothetical in your ideas of caste distinctions as the source of various moral concepts?
I know Rée whom you attack, have met him in Berlin; he was a quiet man, rather distinguished in his bearing, but a somewhat dry and limited intellect. He was living—according to his own account, as brother and sister—with a quite young and intelligent Russian lady, who published a year or two ago a book called Der Kampf um Gott, but this gives no idea of her genuine gifts.
I am looking forward to receiving the books you promise me. I hope in future you will not lose sight of me.
Yours,
GEORGE BRANDES.
4. NIETZSCHE TO BRANDES.