Note 150 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal (continued 2)

‘No one has the right to be indifferent to the disasters of his country; but the philosopher, like the Christian, always has reasons for living. The Kingdom of God knows neither conquerors nor conquered; that Kingdom resides in the joys of the heart, the mind, and the imagination, which the conquered enjoys more than the conqueror if he is morally on a higher plane and has more mind. Your great Goethe, your admirable Fichte have taught us, have they not, how to lead a noble and consequently happy life, when our country is humiliated abroad.’ (First Letter to Strauss.)

Need I say that Nietzsche, who seems to me a bad ‘clerk’ from the nature of his teaching, seems to me one of the finest from his entire devotion to the passions of the spirit alone?