Houston Stewart Chamberlain Quotes

Among the zealous members of the Gobineau Society in Germany was Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose life and works constitute one of the most fascinating ironies in the inexorable course of history which led to the rise and fall of the Third Reich.

The separation wall between religion and sincere scientific thinking, so ingeniously erected by our church doctors, does not really exist; it means rather the acknowledgement of an official lie. This lie, which poisons both the life of the individual and of society, this lie, which will drag us sooner or later into utter barbarism, for it will, as a matter of course, bring victory to the evil and stupid ones among us (for they alone are sincere and therefore strong), this lie results from the fact that we Indo-Europeans — belonging to the most religious tribe of mankind on earth — have degraded ourselves so deeply by adopting Jewish history as the basis and Syro-Egyptian magic as the crown of our alleged 'religion'.

As I have said on another occasion: being 'Aryan' [Divine] is not the point, becoming 'Aryan' [Divine] is what matters. In this respect an enormous task remains to be fulfilled by all of us: the inner liberation from entangling and ensnaring Semitism [Matrix]. This is about the fundamental thinking of all world-views and all religion; there — at the beginning — the roads divide . . . leave the high roads and climb the steep mountain path — the Devayana of the ancient Aryans — that leads to the high summits. Never forget this one thing: by thinking alone thinking can be liberated; he who doesn't have the courage or the staying power to rethink the thoughts of the Aryan race of thinkers, is and will remain a servant, regardless his ancestry, for he is mentally imprisoned, blind, bound to earth.

Tiene mucha razón Schopenhauer cuando califica de ridículo el hablar de un político como de un genio, aunque se tratara de "un carácter histórico úncio". Opina incluso que una super-inteligencia es una desvantaja para un hombre de Estado, pues para hacer algo grande sólo se precisa de un carácter de características excepcionales.

Intellectual anti-Semitism was the special prerogative of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who, in The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, concretised the fantasies of Count Arthur de Gobineau, which had penetrated to Bayreuth. He translated them from the language of harmless snobbery into that of a modernized, seductive mysticism... Contemporary anti-Semitic literature, insofar as it is not simple, crude Jew-baiting, in so far as it claims intellectual consideration, is satisfied to postulate an imposing Teutonism which, examined critically dissolves into thin air like a beautiful Epicurean god. The word blood plays a large part in its phraseology. Blood, the immutable substance, determines the fate of nations and men. Because of the secret laws of blood, Germans and Jews will never be able to mix, must be mutually antagonistic until doomsday. This is romantic, but hardly deep. No real science of nationalities can be based on such flimsy premises. For German and Jewish are not fixed categories established once and for all in some mystic prehistoric age, but rather flexible concepts which change their content with spiritual and economic changes dependent on the general dynamics of history.

The birth of Jesus Christ is the most important date in the whole history of mankind. No battle, no dynastic change, no natural phenomenon, no discovery possesses an importance that could bear comparison with the short earthly life of the Galilean; almost two thousand years of history prove it, and even yet we have hardly crossed the threshold of Christianity. For profoundly intrinsic reasons we are justified in calling that year the "first year," and in reckoning our time from it. In a certain sense we might truly say that "history" in the real sense of the term only begins with the birth of Christ. The peoples that have not yet adopted Christianity — the Chinese, the Indians, the Turks and others — have so far no true history; all they have is, on the one hand, a chronicle of ruling dynasties, butcheries and the like: on the other the uneventful, humble existence of countless millions having a life of bestial happiness, who disappear in the night of ages leaving no trace behind; whether the kingdom of the Pharaohs was founded in the year 3285 or in the year 32850 is in itself of no consequence; to know Egypt under one Rameses is the same as to know it under all fifteen Rameses.

Nothing is more dangerous than science without poetry or technical progress without emotional content,” wrote Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a German philosopher.

This word ‘Aryan’ was a linguistic term, originally referring to the Indo-European group of languages. Since before the end of the nineteenth century it had already been distorted as a concept by a number of writers, among them Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who gave it racial connotations, and used it to denote superiority over the ‘Semitic’ races. Yet the term ‘Semitic’ itself was originally not a racial but a linguistic term, relating, not to Jews and non-Jews, but to a language group which includes Hebrew and Arabic. None of these refinements troubled the new racialism. For Hitler, ‘Aryan’ was synonymous with ‘pure’, while ‘Semitic’ was synonymous with ‘Jew’, and hence ‘impure’.

For the Indo-Aryan, the basic principle is: harmony with nature, for the Buddhists: denial of nature. The pessimism of the Indo-Aryan stands in relation to his entire world-view like the evening to the day, like autumn to spring and summer . . . Here also the denial of the will to live was considered as highest wisdom; but this insight wasn't the starting point, it was the end, it was the last fruit of life, the heraldess of approaching death. Isn't this insight, that the most acute, most withdrawn metaphysics of the Indo-Aryan had still not lost direct contact with the cosmic world, almost an abyss of contemplation? Surely such an appearance could originate from organical growth only. In contrast, Buddhism is the revolt against what has arisen organically, against the 'Law'; it denies both what surrounds him directly — the historical organization of society and the teachings of the Veda's — and, logically, the entire order of the universe. Here pessimism isn't the end, it is the beginning: absolute chastity, absolute poverty are the first laws. Also in the entire outward structure of both religions this opposition becomes apparent: theBrahmans had no churches, no saints, all that wasimported by Buddhism, and in the place of everdeveloping mythological metaphysics, with that wonderful ancient Aryan conception of the God-man, born again and again for the benefit of the world, came the rigid, infallible dogma, the 'revelations of the Sublime One.

For the Indo-Aryan, the basic principle is: harmony with nature, for the Buddhists: denial of nature. The pessimism of the Indo-Aryan stands in relation to his entire world-view like the evening to the day, like autumn to spring and summer . . . Here also the denial of the will to live was considered as highest wisdom; but this insight wasn't the starting point, it was the end, it was the last fruit of life, the heraldess of approaching death. Isn't this insight, that the most acute, most withdrawn metaphysics of the Indo-Aryan had still not lost direct contact with the cosmic world, almost an abyss of contemplation? Surely such an appearance could originate from organical growth only. In contrast, Buddhism is the revolt against what has arisen organically, against the 'Law'; it denies both what surrounds him directly — the historical organization of society and the teachings of the Veda's — and, logically, the entire order of the universe. Here pessimism isn't the end, it is the beginning: absolute chastity, absolute poverty are the first laws. Also in the entire outward structure of both religions this opposition becomes apparent: the Brahmans had no churches, no saints, all that was imported by Buddhism, and in the place of ever developing mythological metaphysics, with that wonderful ancient Aryan conception of the God-man, born again and again for the benefit of the world, came the rigid, infallible dogma, the 'revelations of the Sublime One.

There are things, that can be proven, and there are things, that can not be proven. When the Aryan founds his entire thinking onto his deepest conviction of the moral meaning of the world — his own existence and the existence of the universe —, his thinking is mounted on an 'inner knowing', beyond 'all occupation with proofs'. This 'substance' can not be adopted from observing surrounding nature. Yet we see the Indo-Aryan, as early as the Rigveda, consider nature as something that is closely related to him and as a consequence as something that has moral meaning. This shows up in his mythology, so complicated because the gods, who appear in the first place as embodiments of natural phenomena, are at the same time allegories of the internal forces in the human bosom. It seems, as if these Aryans felt the inner urge, to project what moved deep inside them on that what surrounded them, and as if in turn the great natural phenomena — the heavenly lights, the clouds, the fire, etc. — returned on the same beams that radiated from the inside to the outside, entered the human bosom and whispered: yes, my friend, you and I are the same!