Our faith in the masculinization of Europe. – We owe it to Napoleon (and not at all to the French Revolution, which aimed at the ‘brotherhood’ of peoples and a general, blooming exchange of hearts) that a few warlike centuries, incomparable to any other in history, are likely to follow in succession – in short, that we have entered the classic age of war, of sophisticated yet popular war on the largest scale (in terms of weapons, talents, discipline); all coming ages will look back on this kind of war with envy and deep respect as something perfect, for the national movement out of which this war glory is growing is merely the countershock against Napoleon and would not exist without Napoleon. He should be credited one day for having enabled man in Europe to become the master over the businessman and the philistine – perhaps even over ‘woman’, who has been spoiled by Christianity and the enthusiastic spirit of the eighteenth century, and even more by ‘modern ideas’. Napoleon, who saw something of a personal enemy in modern ideas and in civilization itself,35 proved through this enmity to be one of the greatest continuators of the Renaissance: he brought back a whole piece, a block of granite, perhaps the decisive one, of antiquity’s essence. And who knows whether this piece of antiquity’s essence will finally again become master of the national movement, and whether it must not make itself the heir and protractor in an affirmative sense of Napoleon – who wanted one Europe, as is known, and wanted it as mistress of the earth. –