XXV

After this digression and recapitulation, we must finish discussing the problem of décadence decline/decay.

The two types of valuation demonstrated by Nietzsche—Master-Morality and Slave-Morality—are further apart in primitive states than in civilized states. Nietzsche exemplified both moralities, specifically using the palpably clear examples of the Migration Period original: "Völkerwanderung"*) The note in the margin reads: *) From this exemplification (which Nietzsche undertakes as a researcher of morality, but not as a moral preacher), an anxious gentleman by the name of Dr. Türck believed he had to conclude that Nietzsche does not teach the great and tragically minded Zarathustra-human as his ideal, but rather "the lonely, prowling beast and the bestial criminal who knows no consideration and no limits to his own whim"—a similar confusion to that on page 53 of his pamphlet, according to which he considers the description given by Nietzsche of the Southern European Renaissance ("Beyond Good and Evil," Aphorism 262) to be the description of a moral state that has never existed and which only a madman could hope for. He smells behind everything that is called Nietzsche the most terrible collapse of all humanity—while conversely, Nietzsche sees the collapse, the impotence, and the agony of humanity precisely in those whom Dr. Türck addresses as "good," and demands strictness, discipline, and steeling for them.: how robust barbarians became masters over ancient communities, how they felt themselves and their equals to be the magnificent, distinguished creatures of nature, how they perceived the conquered, however, as inept, as not their equals, and how these oppressed people look upward full of hate. Unfortunately, I must (since I currently lack the opportunity to place the following elsewhere) extend my remark to a field I would gladly avoid here. I would have ignored Dr. Türck if he had not allowed himself, out of his lukewarm, powerless moralism, to provide a psychological investigation of Nietzsche's character, with which he has ruined his reputation forever and which, as long as no authentic biography of Nietzsche exists, could easily lead to even more tasteless caricatures than his own. Every conscientious person would have, before such an undertaking, contacted a number of people who had received an immediate impression of Nietzsche's personality: Dr. Türck spares himself this trouble. The only biographical material on which he bases his investigation is the brochure of an immigrant foreigner, Ola Hansson. Hansson never saw Nietzsche. Hansson imagines Nietzsche as an élégant dandy/fashionable man of an aesthetic tea party; he speaks of his "feminism," of the great influence that women had on him, of exaggerated sensitivity, and other traits that were precisely what Nietzsche lacked:—Nietzsche was a military, chivalrous nature; I would think that much would be visible even to a child from his portrait (—certainly not from that wood-carved head with which Hansson's book is adorned). Hansson is said not to be fully proficient in German, therefore he uses his wife as an interpreter in conversations. His statements about Nietzsche's person come from the mouth of a Leipzig professor:—hopefully all the squeamish and absurd things that Hansson reports as supposedly originating from this source are not actually what was reported, but only misunderstood.