>>7286266In Napoleon Nietzsche admired the man, and Renaissance; not imperalism as in national imperialism.
My Belief in the Virilising of Europe.— We owe
it to Napoleon (and not at all to the French
Revolution, which had in view the " fraternity " of
the nations, and the florid interchange of good
graces among people generally) that several warlike
centuries, which have not had their like in past
history, may now follow one another — in short, that
we have entered upon the classical age of war, war
at the same time scientific and popular, on the
grandest scale (as regards means, talents and
discipline), to which all coming millenniums will
look back with envy and awe as a work of perfection :— for the national movement out of which
this martial glory springs, is only the counter
against Napoleon, and would not have existed
without him. To him, consequently, one will one
day be able to attribute the fact that man in Europe
has again got the upper hand of the merchant and
the Philistine; perhaps even of "woman" also,
who has become pampered owing to Christianity
and the extravagant spirit of the eighteenth
century, and still more owing to " modern ideas."
Napoleon, who saw in modern ideas, and accordingly in civilisation, something like a personal
enemy, has by this hostility proved himself one of
the greatest continuators of the Renaissance : he
has brought to the surface a whole block of the
ancient character, the decisive block perhaps, the
block of granite. And who knows but that this
block of ancient character will in the end get the
upper hand of the national movement, and will
have to make itself in a positive sense the heir and
continuator of Napoleon : — who, as one knows,
wanted one Europe, which was to be mistress of
the world.
