To-day one again hears "seriousness" praised, "seriousness in the presence of highly important subjects and discussions," "German seriousness," etc. This sort of seriousness proclaims clearly how old and grave lunacy and possession have already become. For there is nothing more serious than a lunatic when he comes to the central point of his lunacy; then his great earnestness incapacitates him for taking a joke. (See madhouses.)
The historical reflections on our Mongolism which I propose to insert episodically at this place are not given with the claim of thoroughness, or even of approved soundness, but solely because it seems to me that they may contribute toward making the rest clear.
The history of the world, whose shaping properly belongs altogether to the Caucasian race, seems till now to have run through two Caucasian ages, in the first of which we had to work out and work off our innate _negroidity_; this was followed in the second by _Mongoloidity_ (Chineseness), which must likewise be terribly made an end of. Negroidity represents _antiquity_, the time of dependence on _things_ (on cocks' eating, birds' flight, on sneezing, on thunder and lightning, on the rustling of sacred trees, etc.); Mongoloidity the time of dependence on thoughts, the _Christian_ time. Reserved for the future are the words "I am owner of the world of things, and I am owner of the world of mind."
In the negroid age fall the campaigns of Sesostris and the importance of Egypt and of northern Africa in general. To the Mongoloid age belong the invasions of the Huns and Mongols, up to the Russians.
The value of _me_ cannot possibly be rated high so long as the hard diamond of the _not-me_ bears so enormous a price as was the case both with God and with the world. The not-me is still too stony and indomitable to be consumed and absorbed by me; rather, men only creep about with extraordinary _bustle_ on this _immovable_ entity, _i. e._ on this _substance_, like parasitic animals on a body from whose juices they draw nourishment, yet without consuming it. It is the bustle of vermin, the assiduity of Mongolians. Among the Chinese, we know, everything remains as it used to be, and nothing "essential" or "substantial" suffers a change; all the more actively do they work away _at_ that which remains, which bears the name of the "old," "ancestors," etc.