always too late. The masterpiece of German prose is therefore with good reason the masterpiece of its greatest preacher: the BIBLE has hitherto been the best German book.

Compared with Luther’s Bible, almost everything else is merely “literature” — something which has not grown in Germany, and therefore has not taken and does not take root in German hearts, as the Bible has done.

248. There are two kinds of geniuses: one which above all engenders and seeks to engender, and another which willingly lets itself be fructified and brings forth. And similarly, among the gifted nations, there are those on whom the woman’s problem of pregnancy has devolved, and the secret task of forming, maturing, and perfecting — the Greeks, for instance, were a nation of