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The Old and the Young.—“There is something immoral about Parliaments,”—so many people still think,—“for in them views even against the Government may be expressed.”—“We should always adopt that view of a subject which our gracious Lord commands,”—this is the eleventh commandment in many an honest old head, especially in Northern Germany. We laugh at it as an out-of-date fashion, but in former times it was the moral law itself. Perhaps we shall again some day laugh at that which is now considered as moral by a generation brought up under a parliamentary régime, namely, the policy of placing one's party before one's own wisdom, and of answering every question concerning the public welfare in such a way as to fill the sails of the party with a favourable gust of wind. “We must take that view of a subject which the position of our party calls for”—such would be the canon. In the service of such morals we may now behold every kind of sacrifice, even martyrdom and conquest over one's self.
The Old and the Young.—“There is something immoral about Parliaments,”—so many people still think,—“for in them views even against the Government may be expressed.”—“We should always adopt that view of a subject which our gracious Lord commands,”—this is the eleventh commandment in many an honest old head, especially in Northern Germany. We laugh at it as an out-of-date fashion, but in former times it was the moral law itself. Perhaps we shall again some day laugh at that which is now considered as moral by a generation brought up under a parliamentary régime, namely, the policy of placing one's party before one's own wisdom, and of answering every question concerning the public welfare in such a way as to fill the sails of the party with a favourable gust of wind. “We must take that view of a subject which the position of our party calls for”—such would be the canon. In the service of such morals we may now behold every kind of sacrifice, even martyrdom and conquest over one's self.
Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
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- Author or tradition
- Friedrich Nietzsche
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- Approximate author period: c. 1872 AD · industrial
author lifetime midpoint (1844–1900); not quotation composition date
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- The Dawn of Day (1911 English edition) (1911 AD)
The Dawn of Day, complete printed unit 183; John McFarland Kennedy translation; New York: The MacMillan Company,1911
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The voice behind the words.
Author of Human, All-Too-Human, here represented by complete numbered passages in Helen Zimmern’s 1909 and Paul V. Cohn’s 1913 English editions. Catalogue lifetime 1844–1900; historical philosophical arguments and dated viewpoints require context, rather than treating every sentence as general advice.
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