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It must be taken into the bargain, if various clouds and disturbances⁠—in short, slight attacks of stupidity⁠—pass over the spirit of a people that suffers and wants to suffer from national nervous fever and political ambition: for instance, among present-day Germans there is alternately the anti-French folly, the antisemitic folly, the anti-Polish folly, the Christian-romantic folly, the Wagnerian folly, the Teutonic folly, the Prussian folly (just look at those poor historians, the Sybels and Treitschkes, and their closely bandaged heads), and whatever else these little obscurations of the German spirit and conscience may be called. May it be forgiven me that I, too, when on a short daring sojourn on very infected ground, did not remain wholly exempt from the disease, but like everyone else, began to entertain thoughts about matters which did not concern me⁠—the first symptom of political infection. About the Jews, for instance, listen to the following:⁠—I have never yet met a German who was favourably inclined to the Jews; and however decided the repudiation of actual antisemitism may be on the part of all prudent and political men, this prudence and policy is not perhaps directed against the nature of the sentiment itself, but only against its dangerous excess, and especially against the distasteful and infamous expression of this excess of sentiment;⁠—on this point we must not deceive ourselves. That Germany has amply sufficient Jews, that the German stomach, the German blood, has difficulty (and will long have difficulty) in disposing only of this quantity of “Jew”⁠—as the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Englishman have done by means of a stronger digestion:⁠—that is the unmistakable declaration and language of a general instinct, to which one must listen and according to which one must act. “Let no more Jews come in! And shut the doors, especially towards the East (also towards Austria)!”⁠—thus commands the instinct of a people whose nature is still feeble and uncertain, so that it could be easily wiped out, easily