mative--waits
threateningly to be discharged (to borrow their pet phrase from our
physicists) Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in Asia would
be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal
subversion, the shattering of the empire into small states, and above
all the introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the
obligation of every one to read his newspaper at breakfast I do not
say this as one who desires it, in my heart I should rather prefer the
contrary--I mean such an increase in the threatening attitude of
Russia, that Europe would have to make up its mind to become equally
threatening--namely, TO ACQUIRE ONE WILL, by means of a new caste to
rule over the Continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own, that
can set its aims thousands of years ahead; so that the long spun-out
comedy of its petty-statism, and its dynastic as well as its democratic
many-willed-ness, might finally be brought to a close. The time for
petty politics is past; the next century will bring the struggle for the
dominion of the world--the COMPULSION to great politics.

209. As to how far the new warlike age on which we Europeans have
evidently entered may perhaps favour the growth of another and stronger
kind of skepticism, I should like to express myself preliminarily
merely by a parable, which the lovers of German history will already
understand. That unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers
(who, as King of Prussia, brought into being a military and skeptical
genius--and therewith, in reality, the new and now triumphantly emerged
type of German), the problematic, crazy father of Frederick the Great,
had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the genius: he knew
what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which was a hundred times
more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social form--his
ill-will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a profound
instinct. MEN WERE LACKING; and he suspected, to his bitterest regret,
that his own son was not man enough. There, however, he deceived
himself; but who would not have deceived himself in his place? He saw
his son lapsed to atheism, to the ESPRIT, to the pleasant frivolity of
clever Frenchmen--he saw in the background the great bloodsucker, the
spider skepticism; he suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no
longer hard enough either for evil or good, and of a broken will that no
longer com