,,thoughts ,,out ,,of ,,season ,,part ,,ii ,,the ,,use ,,and ,,abuse ,,of ,,history ,,schopenhauer ,,as ,,educator ,by ,,friedrich ,,nietzsche ,,translated ,,by ,,adrian ,,collins1 ,m4,a4 ,illustration ,the ,complete ,works of ,friedrich ,nietzsche ,the ,first ,complete and ,authorised ,english ,translation ,edited by ,dr ,oscar ,levy ,volume ,five ,t4,n4 ,,foulis #ac #ae ,,frederick ,,street ,,edinburgh3 ,,and ,,london #aiaj ,,to ,l4 ,p4 ,,from ,,the ,,translator4 ,,en ,,reconnaissance4 ,,contents4 ,,introduction ,,the ,,use ,,and ,,abuse ,,of ,,history ,,schopenhauer ,,as ,,educator ,,introduction4 ,the two essays translated in this volume form the second and third parts of the ,unzeitgemsse ,betrachtungen4 ,the essay on history was completed in ,january1 that on ,schopenhauer in ,august1 #ahgd4 ,both were written in the few months of feverish activity that ,nietzsche could spare from his duties as ,professor of ,classical ,philology in ,ble4 ,nietzsche1 who served in an ambulance corps in '#ga1 had seen something of the ,franco-,german ,war1 and to him it was the honest ,german bravery that had won the day4 ,but to the rest of his countrymen it was a victory for ,german culture as well2 though there were still a few elegancies1 a few refinements of manners1 that might veneer the new culture1 and in this regard the conquered might be allowed the traditional privilege of conquering the conquerors4 ,nietzsche answered roundly1 the ,german does not yet know the meaning of the word culture1 and in the essay on history set himself to show that the so-called culture was a morass into which the ,german had been led by a sixth sense he had developed during the nineteenth century--the historical sense3 he had been brought by his spiritual teachers to believe that he was the crown of the world-process and that his highest duty lay in surrendering himself to it4 ,with ,nietzsche1 the historical sense became a malady from which men suffer1 the world-process an illusion1 evolutionary theories a subtle excuse for inactivity4 ,history is for the few not the many1 for the man not the youth1 for the great not the small--who are broken and bewildered by it4 ,it is the lesson of remembrance1 and few are strong enough to bear that lesson4 ,history has no meaning except as the servant of life and action3 and most of us can only act if we forget4 ,this is the burden of the first essay2 and turning from history to the historian he condemns the noisy little fellows who measure the motives of the great men of the past by their own1 and use the past to justify their present4 ,but who are the men that can use history rightly1 and for whom it is a help and not a hindrance to life8 ,they are the great men of action and thought1 the lonely giants amid the pigmies4 ,to them alone can the record of their great forebears be a consolation as well as a lesson4 ,in the realm of thought1 they are of the type of the ideal philosopher sketched in the second essay4 ,to ,nietzsche the only hope of the race lies in the production of the genius1 of the man who can bear the burden of the future and not be swamped by the past3 he found the personal expression of such a man1 for the time being1 in ,schopenhauer4 ,schopenhauer here stands1 as a personality1 for all that makes for life in philosophy1 against the stagnation of the professional philosopher4 ,the last part of the essay is a fierce polemic against state-aided philosophy and the official position of the professors1 who formed1 and still form1 the intellectual aristocracy of ,germany1 with a cathedral authority on all their pronouncements4 ,but there has never been a eulogy on a philosopher1 says ,dr4 ,kgel1 that has had so little to say about his philosophy4 ,the essay on ,schopenhauer is of value precisely because it has nothing to do with ,schopenhauer4 ,we need not be disturbed by the thought that ,nietzsche afterwards turned from him4 ,he truly recognised that ,schopenhauer was here merely a name for himself1 that not ,schopenhauer as educator is in question1 but his opposite1 ,nietzsche as educator 7,ecce ,homo74 ,he could regard ,schopenhauer1 later1 as a siren that called to death2 he put him among the great artists that lead down--who are worse than the bad artists that lead nowhere4 ,we must go further in the pessimistic logic than the denial of the will1 he says in the ,gtzendmmerung2 we must deny ,schopenhauer4 ,the pessimism and denial of the will1 the blank despair before suffering1 were the shoals on which ,nietzsche's reverence finally broke4 ,they could not stand before the ,dionysian outlook1 whose pessimism sprang not from weakness but strength1 and in which the joy of willing and being can even welcome suffering4 ,in this essay we hear little of the pessimism1 save as the imperfect and all-too-human side of ,schopenhauer1 that actually brings us nearer to him4 ,later1 he could part the man and his work1 and speak of ,schopenhauer's view as the ,evil eye4 ,but as yet he is a young man who has kept his illusions1 and1 like ,ogniben1 he judges men by what they might be4 ,afterwards1 he judged himself too in these essays by what he might be4 ,to me1 he said in ,ecce ,homo1 they are promises3 ,i know not what they mean to others4 ,it is also in the belief they are promises that they are here translated for others4 ,the ,thoughts out of ,season are the first announcement of the complex theme of the ,zarathustra4 ,they form the best possible introduction to ,nietzschean thought4 ,nietzsche is already the knight-errant of philosophy3 but his adventure is just beginning4 ,a4 ,c4 ,,the ,,use ,,and ,,abuse ,,of ,,history4 ,,preface4 ,i hate everything that merely instructs me without increasing or directly quickening my activity4 ,these words of ,goethe1 like a sincere ceterum censeo1 may well stand at the head of my thoughts on the worth and the worthlessness of history4 ,i will show in them why instruction that does not quicken1 knowledge that slackens the rein of activity1 why in fact history1 in ,goethe's phrase1 must be seriously hated1 as a costly and superfluous luxury of the understanding3 for we are still in want of the necessaries of life1 and the superfluous is an enemy to the necessary4 ,we do need history1 but quite differently from the jaded idlers in the garden of knowledge1 however grandly they may look down on our rude and unpicturesque requirements4 ,in other words1 we need it for life and action1 not as a convenient way to avoid life and action1 or to excuse a selfish life and a cowardly or base action4 ,we would serve history only so far as it serves life2 but to value its study beyond a certain point mutilates and degrades life3 and this is a fact that certain marked symptoms of our time make it as necessary as it may be painful to bring to the test of experience4 ,i have tried to describe a feeling that has often troubled me3 ,i revenge myself on it by giving it publicity4 ,this may lead some one to explain to me that he has also had the feeling1 but that ,i do not feel it purely and elementally enough1 and cannot express it with the ripe certainty of experience4 ,a few may say so2 but most people will tell me that it is a perverted1 unnatural1 horrible1 and altogether unlawful feeling to have1 and that ,i show myself unworthy of the great historical movement which is especially strong among the ,german people for the last two generations4 ,i am at all costs going to venture on a description of my feelings2 which will be decidedly in the interests of propriety1 as ,i shall give plenty of opportunity for paying compliments to such a movement4 ,and ,i gain an advantage for myself that is more valuable to me than propriety--the attainment of a correct point of view1 through my critics1 with regard to our age4 ,these thoughts are out of season1 because ,i am trying to represent something of which the age is rightly proud--its historical culture--as a fault and a defect in our time1 believing as ,i do that we are all suffering from a malignant historical fever and should at least recognise the fact4 ,but even if it be a virtue1 ,goethe may be right in asserting that we cannot help developing our faults at the same time as our virtues2 and an excess of virtue can obviously bring a nation to ruin1 as well as an excess of vice4 ,in any case ,i may be allowed my say4 ,but ,i will first relieve my mind by the confession that the experiences which produced those disturbing feelings were mostly drawn from myself1--and from other sources only for the sake of comparison2 and that ,i have only reached such unseasonable experience1 so far as ,i am the nursling of older ages like the ,greek1 and less a child of this age4 ,i must admit so much in virtue of my profession as a classical scholar3 for ,i do not know what meaning classical scholarship may have for our time except in its being unseasonable1--that is1 contrary to our time1 and yet with an influence on it for the benefit1 it may be hoped1 of a future time4 ,i4 ,consider the herds that are feeding yonder3 they know not the meaning of yesterday or to-day1 they graze and ruminate1 move or rest1 from morning to night1 from day to day1 taken up with their little loves and hates1 at the mercy of the moment1 feeling neither melancholy nor satiety4 ,man cannot see them without regret1 for even in the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on the beast's happiness4 ,he wishes simply to live without satiety or pain1 like the beast2 yet it is all in vain1 for he will not change places with it4 ,he may ask the beast--,why do you look at me and not speak to me of your happiness8 ,the beast wants to answer--,because ,i always forget what ,i wished to say3 but he forgets this answer too1 and is silent2 and the man is left to wonder4 ,he wonders also about himself1 that he cannot learn to forget1 but hangs on the past3 however far or fast he run1 that chain runs with him4 ,it is matter for wonder3 the moment1 that is here and gone1 that was nothing before and nothing after1 returns like a spectre to trouble the quiet of a later moment4 ,a leaf is continually dropping out of the volume of time and fluttering away--and suddenly it flutters back into the man's lap4 ,then he says1 ,i remember4441 and envies the beast1 that forgets at once1 and sees every moment really die1 sink into night and mist1 extinguished for ever4 ,the beast lives unhistorically2 for it goes into the present1 like a number1 without leaving any curious remainder4 ,it cannot dissimulate1 it conceals nothing2 at every moment it seems what it actually is1 and thus can be nothing that is not honest4 ,but man is always resisting the great and continually increasing weight of the past2 it presses him down1 and bows his shoulders2 he travels with a dark invisible burden that he can plausibly disown1 and is only too glad to disown in converse with his fellows--in order to excite their envy4 ,and so it hurts him1 like the thought of a lost ,paradise1 to see a herd grazing1 or1 nearer still1 a child1 that has nothing yet of the past to disown1 and plays in a happy blindness between the walls of the past and the future4 ,and yet its play must be disturbed1 and only too soon will it be summoned from its little kingdom of oblivion4 ,then it learns to understand the words once upon a time1 the open sesame that lets in battle1 suffering and weariness on mankind1 and reminds them what their existence really is1 an imperfect tense that never becomes a present4 ,and when death brings at last the desired forgetfulness1 it abolishes life and being together1 and sets the seal on the knowledge that being is merely a continual has been1 a thing that lives by denying and destroying and contradicting itself4 ,if happiness and the chase for new happiness keep alive in any sense the will to live1 no philosophy has perhaps more truth than the cynic's3 for the beast's happiness1 like that of the perfect cynic1 is the visible proof of the truth of cynicism4 ,the smallest pleasure1 if it be only continuous and make one happy1 is incomparably a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure that comes as an episode1 a wild freak1 a mad interval between ennui1 desire1 and privation4 ,but in the smallest and greatest happiness there is always one thing that makes it happiness3 the power of forgetting1 or1 in more learned phrase1 the capacity of feeling unhistorically throughout its duration4 ,one who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past1 who cannot stand on a single point1 like a goddess of victory1 without fear or giddiness1 will never know what happiness is2 and1 worse still1 will never do anything to make others happy4 ,the extreme case would be the man without any power to forget1 who is condemned to see becoming everywhere4 ,such a man believes no more in himself or his own existence1 he sees everything fly past in an eternal succession1 and loses himself in the stream of becoming4 ,at last1 like the logical disciple of ,heraclitus1 he will hardly dare to raise his finger4 ,forgetfulness is a property of all action2 just as not only light but darkness is bound up with the life of every organism4 ,one who wished to feel everything historically1 would be like a man forcing himself to refrain from sleep1 or a beast who had to live by chewing a continual cud4 ,thus even a happy life is possible without remembrance1 as the beast shows3 but life in any true sense is absolutely impossible without forgetfulness4 ,or1 to put my conclusion better1 there is a degree of sleeplessness1 of rumination1 of historical sense1 that injures and finally destroys the living thing1 be it a man or a people or a system of culture4 ,to fix this degree and the limits to the memory of the past1 if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present1 we must see clearly how great is the plastic power of a man or a community or a culture2 ,i mean the power of specifically growing out of one's self1 of making the past and the strange one body with the near and the present1 of healing wounds1 replacing what is lost1 repairing broken moulds4 ,there are men who have this power so slightly that a single sharp experience1 a single pain1 often a little injustice1 will lacerate their souls like the scratch of a poisoned knife4 ,there are others1 who are so little injured by the worst misfortunes1 and even by their own spiteful actions1 as to feel tolerably comfortable1 with a fairly quiet conscience1 in the midst of them1--or at any rate shortly afterwards4 ,the deeper the roots of a man's inner nature1 the better will he take the past into himself2 and the greatest and most powerful nature would be known by the absence of limits for the historical sense to overgrow and work harm4 ,it would assimilate and digest the past1 however foreign1 and turn it to sap4 ,such a nature can forget what it cannot subdue2 there is no break in the horizon1 and nothing to remind it that there are still men1 passions1 theories and aims on the other side4 ,this is a universal law2 a living thing can only be healthy1 strong and productive within a certain horizon3 if it be incapable of drawing one round itself1 or too selfish to lose its own view in another's1 it will come to an untimely end4 ,cheerfulness1 a good conscience1 belief in the future1 the joyful deed1 all depend1 in the individual as well as the nation1 on there being a line that divides the visible and clear from the vague and shadowy3 we must know the right time to forget as well as the right time to remember2 and instinctively see when it is necessary to feel historically1 and when unhistorically4 ,this is the point that the reader is asked to consider2 that the unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary to the health of an individual1 a community1 and a system of culture4 ,every one has noticed that a man's historical knowledge and range of feeling may be very limited1 his horizon as narrow as that of an ,alpine valley1 his judgments incorrect and his experience falsely supposed original1 and yet in spite of all the incorrectness and falsity he may stand forth in unconquerable health and vigour1 to the joy of all who see him2 whereas another man with far more judgment and learning will fail in comparison1 because the lines of his horizon are continually changing and shifting1 and he cannot shake himself free from the delicate network of his truth and righteousness for a downright act of will or desire4 ,we saw that the beast1 absolutely unhistorical1 with the narrowest of horizons1 has yet a certain happiness1 and lives at least without hypocrisy or ennui2 and so we may hold the capacity of feeling 7to a certain extent7 unhistorically1 to be the more important and elemental1 as providing the foundation of every sound and real growth1 everything that is truly great and human4 ,the unhistorical is like the surrounding atmosphere that can alone create life1 and in whose annihilation life itself disappears4 ,it is true that man can only become man by first suppressing this unhistorical element in his thoughts1 comparisons1 distinctions1 and conclusions1 letting a clear sudden light break through these misty clouds by his power of turning the past to the uses of the present4 ,but an excess of history makes him flag again1 while without the veil of the unhistorical he would never have the courage to begin4 ,what deeds could man ever have done if he had not been enveloped in the dust-cloud of the unhistorical8 ,or1 to leave metaphors and take a concrete example1 imagine a man swayed and driven by a strong passion1 whether for a woman or a theory4 ,his world is quite altered4 ,he is blind to everything behind him1 new sounds are muffled and meaningless2 though his perceptions were never so intimately felt in all their colour1 light and music1 and he ,seems to grasp them with his five senses together4 ,all his judgments of value are changed for the worse2 there is much he can no longer value1 as he can scarcely feel it3 he wonders that he has so long been the sport of strange words and opinions1 that his recollections have run around in one unwearying circle and are yet too weak and weary to make a single step away from it4 ,his whole case is most indefensible2 it is narrow1 ungrateful to the past1 blind to danger1 deaf to warnings1 a small living eddy in a dead sea of night and forgetfulness4 ,and yet this condition1 unhistorical and antihistorical throughout1 is the cradle not only of unjust action1 but of every just and justifiable action in the world4 ,no artist will paint his picture1 no general win his victory1 no nation gain its freedom1 without having striven and yearned for it under those very unhistorical conditions4 ,if the man of action1 in ,goethe's phrase1 is without conscience1 he is also without knowledge3 he forgets most things in order to do one1 he is unjust to what is behind him1 and only recognises one law1 the law of that which is to be4 ,so he loves his work infinitely more than it deserves to be loved2 and the best works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it1 however great their worth otherwise4 ,should any one be able to dissolve the unhistorical atmosphere in which every great event happens1 and breathe afterwards1 he might be capable of rising to the super-historical standpoint of consciousness1 that ,niebuhr has described as the possible result of historical research4 ,history1 he says1 is useful for one purpose1 if studied in detail3 that men may know1 as the greatest and best spirits of our generation do not know1 the accidental nature of the forms in which they see and insist on others seeing1--insist1 ,i say1 because their consciousness of them is exceptionally intense4 ,any one who has not grasped this idea in its different applications will fall under the spell of a more powerful spirit who reads a deeper emotion into the given form4 ,such a standpoint might be called super-historical1 as one who took it could feel no impulse from history to any further life or work1 for he would have recognised the blindness and injustice in the soul of the doer as a condition of every deed3 he would be cured henceforth of taking history too seriously1 and have learnt to answer the question how and why life should be lived1--for all men and all circumstances1 ,greeks or ,turks1 the first century or the nineteenth4 ,whoever asks his friends whether they would live the last ten or twenty years over again1 will easily see which of them is born for the super-historical standpoint3 they will all answer no1 but will give different reasons for their answer4 ,some will say they have the consolation that the next twenty will be better3 they are the men referred to satirically by ,david ,hume3-- ,and from the dregs of life hope to receive1 ,what the first sprightly running could not give4 ,we will call them the historical men4 ,their vision of the past turns them towards the future1 encourages them to persevere with life1 and kindles the hope that justice will yet come and happiness is behind the mountain they are climbing4 ,they believe that the meaning of existence will become ever clearer in the course of its evolution1 they only look backward at the process to understand the present and stimulate their longing for the future4 ,they do not know how unhistorical their thoughts and actions are in spite of all their history1 and how their preoccupation with it is for the sake of life rather than mere science4 ,but that question to which we have heard the first answer1 is capable of another2 also a no1 but on different grounds4 ,it is the no of the super-historical man who sees no salvation in evolution1 for whom the world is complete and fulfils its aim in every single moment4 ,how could the next ten years teach what the past ten were not able to teach8 ,whether the aim of the teaching be happiness or resignation1 virtue or penance1 these super-historical men are not agreed2 but as against all merely historical ways of viewing the past1 they are unanimous in the theory that the past and the present are one and the same1 typically alike in all their diversity1 and forming together a picture of eternally present imperishable types of unchangeable value and significance4 ,just as the hundreds of different languages correspond to the same constant and elemental needs of mankind1 and one who understood the needs could learn nothing new from the languages2 so the super-historical philosopher sees all the history of nations and individuals from within4 ,he has a divine insight into the original meaning of the hieroglyphs1 and comes even to be weary of the letters that are continually unrolled before him4 ,how should the endless rush of events not bring satiety1 surfeit1 loathing8 ,so the boldest of us is ready perhaps at last to say from his heart with ,giacomo ,leopardi3 ,nothing lives that were worth thy pains1 and the earth deserves not a sigh4 ,our being is pain and weariness1 and the world is mud--nothing else4 ,be calm4 ,but we will leave the super-historical men to their loathings and their wisdom3 we wish rather to-day to be joyful in our unwisdom and have a pleasant life as active men who go forward1 and respect the course of the world4 ,the value we put on the historical may be merely a ,western prejudice3 let us at least go forward within this prejudice and not stand still4 ,if we could only learn better to study history as a means to life6 ,we would gladly grant the super-historical people their superior wisdom1 so long as we are sure of having more life than they3 for in that case our unwisdom would have a greater future before it than their wisdom4 ,to make my opposition between life and wisdom clear1 ,i will take the usual road of the short summary4 ,a historical phenomenon1 completely understood and reduced to an item of knowledge1 is1 in relation to the man who knows it1 dead3 for he has found out its madness1 its injustice1 its blind passion1 and especially the earthly and darkened horizon that was the source of its power for history4 ,this power has now become1 for him who has recognised it1 powerless2 not yet1 perhaps1 for him who is alive4 ,history regarded as pure knowledge and allowed to sway the intellect would mean for men the final balancing of the ledger of life4 ,historical study is only fruitful for the future if it follow a powerful life-giving influence1 for example1 a new system of culture2 only1 therefore1 if it be guided and dominated by a higher force1 and do not itself guide and dominate4 ,history1 so far as it serves life1 serves an unhistorical power1 and thus will never become a pure science like mathematics4 ,the question how far life needs such a service is one of the most serious questions affecting the well-being of a man1 a people and a culture4 ,for by excess of history life becomes maimed and degenerate1 and is followed by the degeneration of history as well4 ,,ii4 ,the fact that life does need the service of history must be as clearly grasped as that an excess of history hurts it2 this will be proved later4 ,history is necessary to the living man in three ways3 in relation to his action and struggle1 his conservatism and reverence1 his suffering and his desire for deliverance4 ,these three relations answer to the three kinds of history--so far as they can be distinguished--the monumental1 the antiquarian1 and the critical4 ,history is necessary above all to the man of action and power who fights a great fight and needs examples1 teachers and comforters2 he cannot find them among his contemporaries4 ,it was necessary in this sense to ,schiller2 for our time is so evil1 ,goethe says1 that the poet meets no nature that will profit him1 among living men4 ,polybius is thinking of the active man when he calls political history the true preparation for governing a state2 it is the great teacher1 that shows us how to bear steadfastly the reverses of fortune1 by reminding us of what others have suffered4 ,whoever has learned to recognise this meaning in history must hate to see curious tourists and laborious beetle-hunters climbing up the great pyramids of antiquity4 ,he does not wish to meet the idler who is rushing through the picture-galleries of the past for a new distraction or sensation1 where he himself is looking for example and encouragement4 ,to avoid being troubled by the weak and hopeless idlers1 and those whose apparent activity is merely neurotic1 he looks behind him and stays his course towards the goal in order to breathe4 ,his goal is happiness1 not perhaps his own1 but often the nation's1 or humanity's at large3 he avoids quietism1 and uses history as a weapon against it4 ,for the most part he has no hope of reward except fame1 which means the expectation of a niche in the temple of history1 where he in his turn may be the consoler and counsellor of posterity4 ,for his orders are that what has once been able to extend the conception man and give it a fairer content1 must ever exist for the same office4 ,the great moments in the individual battle form a chain1 a high road for humanity through the ages1 and the highest points of those vanished moments are yet great and living for men2 and this is the fundamental idea of the belief in humanity1 that finds a voice in the demand for a monumental history4 ,but the fiercest battle is fought round the demand for greatness to be eternal4 ,every other living thing cries no4 ,away with the monuments1 is the watch-word4 ,dull custom fills all the chambers of the world with its meanness1 and rises in thick vapour round anything that is great1 barring its way to immortality1 blinding and stifling it4 ,and the way passes through mortal brains6 ,through the brains of sick and short-lived beasts that ever rise to the surface to breathe1 and painfully keep off annihilation for a little space4 ,for they wish but one thing3 to live at any cost4 ,who would ever dream of any monumental history among them1 the hard torch-race that alone gives life to greatness8 ,and yet there are always men awakening1 who are strengthened and made happy by gazing on past greatness1 as though man's life were a lordly thing1 and the fairest fruit of this bitter tree were the knowledge that there was once a man who walked sternly and proudly through this world1 another who had pity and loving-kindness1 another who lived in contemplation1--but all leaving one truth behind them1 that his life is the fairest who thinks least about life4 ,the common man snatches greedily at this little span1 with tragic earnestness1 but they1 on their way to monumental history and immortality1 knew how to greet it with ,olympic laughter1 or at least with a lofty scorn2 and they went down to their graves in irony--for what had they to bury8 ,only what they had always treated as dross1 refuse1 and vanity1 and which now falls into its true home of oblivion1 after being so long the sport of their contempt4 ,one thing will live1 the sign-manual of their inmost being1 the rare flash of light1 the deed1 the creation2 because posterity cannot do without it4 ,in this spiritualised form fame is something more than the sweetest morsel for our egoism1 in ,schopenhauer's phrase3 it is the belief in the oneness and continuity of the great in every age1 and a protest against the change and decay of generations4 ,what is the use to the modern man of this monumental contemplation of the past1 this preoccupation with the rare and classic8 ,it is the knowledge that the great thing existed and was therefore possible1 and so may be possible again4 ,he is heartened on his way2 for his doubt in weaker moments1 whether his desire be not for the impossible1 is struck aside4 ,suppose one believe that no more than a hundred men1 brought up in the new spirit1 efficient and productive1 were needed to give the deathblow to the present fashion of education in ,germany2 he will gather strength from the remembrance that the culture of the ,renaissance was raised on the shoulders of such another band of a hundred men4 ,and yet if we really wish to learn something from an example1 how vague and elusive do we find the comparison6 ,if it is to give us strength1 many of the differences must be neglected1 the individuality of the past forced into a general formula and all the sharp angles broken off for the sake of correspondence4 ,ultimately1 of course1 what was once possible can only become possible a second time on the ,pythagorean theory1 that when the heavenly bodies are in the same position again1 the events on earth are reproduced to the smallest detail2 so when the stars have a certain relation1 a ,stoic and an ,epicurean will form a conspiracy to murder ,csar1 and a different conjunction will show another ,columbus discovering ,america4 ,only if the earth always began its drama again after the fifth act1 and it were certain that the same interaction of motives1 the same deus ex machina1 the same catastrophe would occur at particular intervals1 could the man of action venture to look for the whole archetypic truth in monumental history1 to see each fact fully set out in its uniqueness3 it would not probably be before the astronomers became astrologers again4 ,till then monumental history will never be able to have complete truth2 it will always bring together things that are incompatible and generalise them into compatibility1 will always weaken the differences of motive and occasion4 ,its object is to depict effects at the expense of the causes--monumentally1 that is1 as examples for imitation3 it turns aside1 as far as it may1 from reasons1 and might be called with far less exaggeration a collection of effects in themselves1 than of events that will have an effect on all ages4 ,the events of war or religion cherished in our popular celebrations are such effects in themselves2 it is these that will not let ambition sleep1 and lie like amulets on the bolder hearts--not the real historical nexus of cause and effect1 which1 rightly understood1 would only prove that nothing quite similar could ever be cast again from the dice-boxes of fate and the future4 ,as long as the soul of history is found in the great impulse that it gives to a powerful spirit1 as long as the past is principally used as a model for imitation1 it is always in danger of being a little altered and touched up1 and brought nearer to fiction4 ,sometimes there is no possible distinction between a monumental past and a mythical romance1 as the same motives for action can be gathered from the one world as the other4 ,if this monumental method of surveying the past dominate the others1--the antiquarian and the critical1--the past itself suffers wrong4 ,whole tracts of it are forgotten and despised2 they flow away like a dark unbroken river1 with only a few gaily coloured islands of fact rising above it4 ,there is something beyond nature in the rare figures that become visible1 like the golden hips that his disciples attributed to ,pythagoras4 ,monumental history lives by false analogy2 it entices the brave to rashness1 and the enthusiastic to fanaticism by its tempting comparisons4 ,imagine this history in the hands--and the head--of a gifted egoist or an inspired scoundrel2 kingdoms will be overthrown1 princes murdered1 war and revolution let loose1 and the number of effects in themselves--in other words1 effects without sufficient cause--increased4 ,so much for the harm done by monumental history to the powerful men of action1 be they good or bad2 but what if the weak and the inactive take it as their servant--or their master6 ,consider the simplest and commonest example1 the inartistic or half artistic natures whom a monumental history provides with sword and buckler4 ,they will use the weapons against their hereditary enemies1 the great artistic spirits1 who alone can learn from that history the one real lesson1 how to live1 and embody what they have learnt in noble action4 ,their way is obstructed1 their free air darkened by the idolatrous--and conscientious--dance round the half understood monument of a great past4 ,see1 that is the true and real art1 we seem to hear3 of what use are these aspiring little people of to-day8 ,the dancing crowd has apparently the monopoly of good taste3 for the creator is always at a disadvantage compared with the mere looker-on1 who never put a hand to the work2 just as the arm-chair politician has ever had more wisdom and foresight than the actual statesman4 ,but if the custom of democratic suffrage and numerical majorities be transferred to the realm of art1 and the artist put on his defence before the court of sthetic dilettanti1 you may take your oath on his condemnation2 although1 or rather because1 his judges had proclaimed solemnly the canon of monumental art1 the art that has had an effect on all ages1 according to the official definition4 ,in their eyes no need nor inclination nor historical authority is in favour of the art which is not yet monumental because it is contemporary4 ,their instinct tells them that art can be slain by art3 the monumental will never be reproduced1 and the weight of its authority is invoked from the past to make it sure4 ,they are connoisseurs of art1 primarily because they wish to kill art2 they pretend to be physicians1 when their real idea is to dabble in poisons4 ,they develop their tastes to a point of perversion1 that they may be able to show a reason for continually rejecting all the nourishing artistic fare that is offered them4 ,for they do not want greatness1 to arise3 their method is to say1 ,see1 the great thing is already here6 ,in reality they care as little about the great thing that is already here1 as that which is about to arise3 their lives are evidence of that4 ,monumental history is the cloak under which their hatred of present power and greatness masquerades as an extreme admiration of the past3 the real meaning of this way of viewing history is disguised as its opposite2 whether they wish it or no1 they are acting as though their motto were1 let the dead bury the--living4 ,each of the three kinds of history will only flourish in one ground and climate3 otherwise it grows to a noxious weed4 ,if the man who will produce something great1 have need of the past1 he makes himself its master by means of monumental history3 the man who can rest content with the traditional and venerable1 uses the past as an antiquarian historian3 and only he whose heart is oppressed by an instant need1 and who will cast the burden off at any price1 feels the want of critical history1 the history that judges and condemns4 ,there is much harm wrought by wrong and thoughtless planting3 the critic without the need1 the antiquary without piety1 the knower of the great deed who cannot be the doer of it1 are plants that have grown to weeds1 they are torn from their native soil and therefore degenerate4 ,,iii4 ,secondly1 history is necessary to the man of conservative and reverent nature1 who looks back to the origins of his existence with love and trust2 through it1 he gives thanks for life4 ,he is careful to preserve what survives from ancient days1 and will reproduce the conditions of his own upbringing for those who come after him2 thus he does life a service4 ,the possession of his ancestors' furniture changes its meaning in his soul3 for his soul is rather possessed by it4 ,all that is small and limited1 mouldy and obsolete1 gains a worth and inviolability of its own from the conservative and reverent soul of the antiquary migrating into it1 and building a secret nest there4 ,the history of his town becomes the history of himself2 he looks on the walls1 the turreted gate1 the town council1 the fair1 as an illustrated diary of his youth1 and sees himself in it all--his strength1 industry1 desire1 reason1 faults and follies4 ,here one could live1 he says1 as one can live here now--and will go on living2 for we are tough folk1 and will not be uprooted in the night4 ,and so1 with his we1 he surveys the marvellous individual life of the past and identifies himself with the spirit of the house1 the family and the city4 ,he greets the soul of his people from afar as his own1 across the dim and troubled centuries3 his gifts and his virtues lie in such power of feeling and divination1 his scent of a half-vanished trail1 his instinctive correctness in reading the scribbled past1 and understanding at once its palimpsests--nay1 its polypsests4 ,goethe stood with such thoughts before the monument of ,erwin von ,steinbach3 the storm of his feeling rent the historical cloud-veil that hung between them1 and he saw the ,german work for the first time coming from the stern1 rough1 ,german soul4 ,this was the road that the ,italians of the ,renaissance travelled1 the spirit that reawakened the ancient ,italic genius in their poets to a wondrous echo of the immemorial lyre1 as ,jacob ,burckhardt says4 ,but the greatest value of this antiquarian spirit of reverence lies in the simple emotions of pleasure and content that it lends to the drab1 rough1 even painful circumstances of a nation's or individual's life3 ,niebuhr confesses that he could live happily on a moor among free peasants with a history1 and would never feel the want of art4 ,how could history serve life better than by anchoring the less gifted races and peoples to the homes and customs of their ancestors1 and keeping them from ranging far afield in search of better1 to find only struggle and competition8 ,the influence that ties men down to the same companions and circumstances1 to the daily round of toil1 to their bare mountain-side1--seems to be selfish and unreasonable3 but it is a healthy unreason and of profit to the community2 as every one knows who has clearly realised the terrible consequences of mere desire for migration and adventure1--perhaps in whole peoples1--or who watches the destiny of a nation that has lost confidence in its earlier days1 and is given up to a restless cosmopolitanism and an unceasing desire for novelty4 ,the feeling of the tree that clings to its roots1 the happiness of knowing one's growth to be one not merely arbitrary and fortuitous1 but the inheritance1 the fruit and blossom of a past1 that does not merely justify but crown the present--this is what we nowadays prefer to call the real historical sense4 ,these are not the conditions most favourable to reducing the past to pure science3 and we see here too1 as we saw in the case of monumental history1 that the past itself suffers when history serves life and is directed by its end4 ,to vary the metaphor1 the tree feels its roots better than it can see them3 the greatness of the feeling is measured by the greatness and strength of the visible branches4 ,the tree may be wrong here2 how far more wrong will it be in regard to the whole forest1 which it only knows and feels so far as it is hindered or helped by it1 and not otherwise6 ,the antiquarian sense of a man1 a city or a nation has always a very limited field4 ,many things are not noticed at all2 the others are seen in isolation1 as through a microscope4 ,there is no measure3 equal importance is given to everything1 and therefore too much to anything4 ,for the things of the past are never viewed in their true perspective or receive their just value2 but value and perspective change with the individual or the nation that is looking back on its past4 ,there is always the danger here1 that everything ancient will be regarded as equally venerable1 and everything without this respect for antiquity1 like a new spirit1 rejected as an enemy4 ,the ,greeks themselves admitted the archaic style of plastic art by the side of the freer and greater style2 and later1 did not merely tolerate the pointed nose and the cold mouth1 but made them even a canon of taste4 ,if the judgment of a people harden in this way1 and history's service to the past life be to undermine a further and higher life2 if the historical sense no longer preserve life1 but mummify it3 then the tree dies1 unnaturally1 from the top downwards1 and at last the roots themselves wither4 ,antiquarian history degenerates from the moment that it no longer gives a soul and inspiration to the fresh life of the present4 ,the spring of piety is dried up1 but the learned habit persists without it and revolves complaisantly round its own centre4 ,the horrid spectacle is seen of the mad collector raking over all the dust-heaps of the past4 ,he breathes a mouldy air2 the antiquarian habit may degrade a considerable talent1 a real spiritual need in him1 to a mere insatiable curiosity for everything old3 he often sinks so low as to be satisfied with any food1 and greedily devour all the scraps that fall from the bibliographical table4 ,even if this degeneration do not take place1 and the foundation be not withered on which antiquarian history can alone take root with profit to life3 yet there are dangers enough1 if it become too powerful and invade the territories of the other methods4 ,it only understands how to preserve life1 not to create it2 and thus always undervalues the present growth1 having1 unlike monumental history1 no certain instinct for it4 ,thus it hinders the mighty impulse to a new deed and paralyses the doer1 who must always1 as doer1 be grazing some piety or other4 ,the fact that has grown old carries with it a demand for its own immortality4 ,for when one considers the life-history of such an ancient fact1 the amount of reverence paid to it for generations--whether it be a custom1 a religious creed1 or a political principle1--it seems presumptuous1 even impious1 to replace it by a new fact1 and the ancient congregation of pieties by a new piety4 ,here we see clearly how necessary a third way of looking at the past is to man1 beside the other two4 ,this is the critical way2 which is also in the service of life4 ,man must have the strength to break up the past2 and apply it too1 in order to live4 ,he must bring the past to the bar of judgment1 interrogate it remorselessly1 and finally condemn it4 ,every past is worth condemning3 this is the rule in mortal affairs1 which always contain a large measure of human power and human weakness4 ,it is not justice that sits in judgment here2 nor mercy that proclaims the verdict2 but only life1 the dim1 driving force that insatiably desires--itself4 ,its sentence is always unmerciful1 always unjust1 as it never flows from a pure fountain of knowledge3 though it would generally turn out the same1 if ,justice herself delivered it4 ,for everything that is born is worthy of being destroyed3 better were it then that nothing should be born4 ,it requires great strength to be able to live and forget how far life and injustice are one4 ,luther himself once said that the world only arose by an oversight of ,god2 if he had ever dreamed of heavy ordnance1 he would never have created it4 ,the same life that needs forgetfulness1 needs sometimes its destruction2 for should the injustice of something ever become obvious--a monopoly1 a caste1 a dynasty for example--the thing deserves to fall4 ,its past is critically examined1 the knife put to its roots1 and all the pieties are grimly trodden under foot4 ,the process is always dangerous1 even for life2 and the men or the times that serve life in this way1 by judging and annihilating the past1 are always dangerous to themselves and others4 ,for as we are merely the resultant of previous generations1 we are also the resultant of their errors1 passions1 and crimes3 it is impossible to shake off this chain4 ,though we condemn the errors and think we have escaped them1 we cannot escape the fact that we spring from them4 ,at best1 it comes to a conflict between our innate1 inherited nature and our knowledge1 between a stern1 new discipline and an ancient tradition2 and we plant a new way of life1 a new instinct1 a second nature1 that withers the first4 ,it is an attempt to gain a past a posteriori from which we might spring1 as against that from which we do spring2 always a dangerous attempt1 as it is difficult to find a limit to the denial of the past1 and the second natures are generally weaker than the first4 ,we stop too often at knowing the good without doing it1 because we also know the better but cannot do it4 ,here and there the victory is won1 which gives a strange consolation to the fighters1 to those who use critical history for the sake of life4 ,the consolation is the knowledge that this first nature was once a second1 and that every conquering second nature becomes a first4 ,,iv4 ,this is how history can serve life4 ,every man and nation needs a certain knowledge of the past1 whether it be through monumental1 antiquarian1 or critical history1 according to his objects1 powers1 and necessities4 ,the need is not that of the mere thinkers who only look on at life1 or the few who desire knowledge and can only be satisfied with knowledge2 but it has always a reference to the end of life1 and is under its absolute rule and direction4 ,this is the natural relation of an age1 a culture and a people to history2 hunger is its source1 necessity its norm1 the inner plastic power assigns its limits4 ,the knowledge of the past is only desired for the service of the future and the present1 not to weaken the present or undermine a living future4 ,all this is as simple as truth itself1 and quite convincing to any one who is not in the toils of historical deduction4 ,and now to take a quick glance at our time6 ,we fly back in astonishment4 ,the clearness1 naturalness1 and purity of the connection between life and history has vanished2 and in what a maze of exaggeration and contradiction do we now see the problem6 ,is the guilt ours who see it1 or have life and history really altered their conjunction and an inauspicious star risen between them8 ,others may prove we have seen falsely2 ,i am merely saying what we believe we see4 ,there is such a star1 a bright and lordly star1 and the conjunction is really altered--by science1 and the demand for history to be a science4 ,life is no more dominant1 and knowledge of the past no longer its thrall3 boundary marks are overthrown everything bursts its limits4 ,the perspective of events is blurred1 and the blur extends through their whole immeasurable course4 ,no generation has seen such a panoramic comedy as is shown by the science of universal evolution1 history2 that shows it with the dangerous audacity of its motto--,fiat veritas1 pereat vita4 ,let me give a picture of the spiritual events in the soul of the modern man4 ,historical knowledge streams on him from sources that are inexhaustible1 strange incoherencies come together1 memory opens all its gates and yet is never open wide enough1 nature busies herself to receive all the foreign guests1 to honour them and put them in their places4 ,but they are at war with each other3 violent measures seem necessary1 in order to escape destruction one's self4 ,it becomes second nature to grow gradually accustomed to this irregular and stormy home-life1 though this second nature is unquestionably weaker1 more restless1 more radically unsound than the first4 ,the modern man carries inside him an enormous heap of indigestible knowledge-stones that occasionally rattle together in his body1 as the fairy-tale has it4 ,and the rattle reveals the most striking characteristic of these modern men1 the opposition of something inside them to which nothing external corresponds2 and the reverse4 ,the ancient nations knew nothing of this4 ,knowledge1 taken in excess without hunger1 even contrary to desire1 has no more the effect of transforming the external life2 and remains hidden in a chaotic inner world that the modern man has a curious pride in calling his real personality4 ,he has the substance1 he says1 and only wants the form2 but this is quite an unreal opposition in a living thing4 ,our modern culture is for that reason not a living one1 because it cannot be understood without that opposition4 ,in other words1 it is not a real culture but a kind of knowledge about culture1 a complex of various thoughts and feelings about it1 from which no decision as to its direction can come4 ,its real motive force that issues in visible action is often no more than a mere convention1 a wretched imitation1 or even a shameless caricature4 ,the man probably feels like the snake that has swallowed a rabbit whole and lies still in the sun1 avoiding all movement not absolutely necessary4 ,the inner life is now the only thing that matters to education1 and all who see it hope that the education may not fail by being too indigestible4 ,imagine a ,greek meeting it2 he would observe that for modern men education and historical education seem to mean the same thing1 with the difference that the one phrase is longer4 ,and if he spoke of his own theory1 that a man can be very well educated without any history at all1 people would shake their heads and think they had not heard aright4 ,the ,greeks1 the famous people of a past still near to us1 had the unhistorical sense strongly developed in the period of the greatest power4 ,if a typical child of this age were transported to that world by some enchantment1 he would probably find the ,greeks very uneducated4 ,and that discovery would betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture to the laughter of the world4 ,for we moderns have nothing of our own4 ,we only become worth notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with foreign customs1 arts1 philosophies1 religions and sciences3 we are wandering encyclopdias1 as an ancient ,greek who had strayed into our time would probably call us4 ,but the only value of an encyclopdia lies in the inside1 in the contents1 not in what is written outside1 in the binding or the wrapper4 ,and so the whole of modern culture is essentially internal2 the bookbinder prints something like this on the cover3 ,manual of internal culture for external barbarians4 ,the opposition of inner and outer makes the outer side still more barbarous1 as it would naturally be1 when the outward growth of a rude people merely developed its primitive inner needs4 ,for what means has nature of repressing too great a luxuriance from without8 ,only one1--to be affected by it as little as possible1 to set it aside and stamp it out at the first opportunity4 ,and so we have the custom of no longer taking real things seriously1 we get the feeble personality on which the real and the permanent make so little impression4 ,men become at last more careless and accommodating in external matters1 and the considerable cleft between substance and form is widened2 until they have no longer any feeling for barbarism1 if only their memories be kept continually titillated1 and there flow a constant stream of new things to be known1 that can be neatly packed up in the cupboards of their memory4 ,the culture of a people as against this barbarism1 can be1 ,i think1 described with justice as the unity of artistic style in every outward expression of the people's life4 ,this must not be misunderstood1 as though it were merely a question of the opposition between barbarism and fine style4 ,the people that can be called cultured1 must be in a real sense a living unity1 and not be miserably cleft asunder into form and substance4 ,if one wish to promote a people's culture1 let him try to promote this higher unity first1 and work for the destruction of the modern educative system for the sake of a true education4 ,let him dare to consider how the health of a people that has been destroyed by history may be restored1 and how it may recover its instincts with its honour4 ,i am only speaking1 directly1 about the ,germans of the present day1 who have had to suffer more than other people from the feebleness of personality and the opposition of substance and form4 ,form generally implies for us some convention1 disguise or hypocrisy1 and if not hated1 is at any rate not loved4 ,we have an extraordinary fear of both the word convention and the thing4 ,this fear drove the ,german from the ,french school2 for he wished to become more natural1 and therefore more ,german4 ,but he seems to have come to a false conclusion with his therefore4 ,first he ran away from his school of convention1 and went by any road he liked3 he has come ultimately to imitate voluntarily in a slovenly fashion1 what he imitated painfully and often successfully before4 ,so now the lazy fellow lives under ,french conventions that are actually incorrect3 his manner of walking shows it1 his conversation and dress1 his general way of life4 ,in the belief that he was returning to ,nature1 he merely followed caprice and comfort1 with the smallest possible amount of self-control4 ,go through any ,german town2 you will see conventions that are nothing but the negative aspect of the national characteristics of foreign states4 ,everything is colourless1 worn out1 shoddy and ill-copied4 ,every one acts at his own sweet will--which is not a strong or serious will--on laws dictated by the universal rush and the general desire for comfort4 ,a dress that made no head ache in its inventing and wasted no time in the making1 borrowed from foreign models and imperfectly copied1 is regarded as an important contribution to ,german fashion4 ,the sense of form is ironically disclaimed by the people--for they have the sense of substance3 they are famous for their cult of inwardness4 ,but there is also a famous danger in their inwardness3 the internal substance cannot be seen from the outside1 and so may one day take the opportunity of vanishing1 and no one notice its absence1 any more than its presence before4 ,one may think the ,german people to be very far from this danger3 yet the foreigner will have some warrant for his reproach that our inward life is too weak and ill-organised to provide a form and external expression for itself4 ,it may in rare cases show itself finely receptive1 earnest and powerful1 richer perhaps than the inward life of other peoples2 but1 taken as a whole1 it remains weak1 as all its fine threads are not tied together in one strong knot4 ,the visible action is not the self-manifestation of the inward life1 but only a weak and crude attempt of a single thread to make a show of representing the whole4 ,and thus the ,german is not to be judged on any one action1 for the individual may be as completely obscure after it as before4 ,he must obviously be measured by his thoughts and feelings1 which are now expressed in his books2 if only the books did not1 more than ever1 raise the doubt whether the famous inward life is still really sitting in its inaccessible shrine4 ,it might one day vanish and leave behind it only the external life1--with its vulgar pride and vain servility1--to mark the ,german4 ,fearful thought6--as fearful as if the inward life still sat there1 painted and rouged and disguised1 become a play-actress or something worse2 as his theatrical experience seems to have taught the quiet observer ,grillparzer1 standing aside as he did from the main press4 ,we feel by theory1 he says4 ,we hardly know any more how our contemporaries give expression to their feelings3 we make them use gestures that are impossible nowadays4 ,shakespeare has spoilt us moderns4 ,this is a single example1 its general application perhaps too hastily assumed4 ,but how terrible it would be were that generalisation justified before our eyes6 ,there would be then a note of despair in the phrase1 ,we ,germans feel by theory1 we are all spoilt by history2--a phrase that would cut at the roots of any hope for a future national culture4 ,for every hope of that kind grows from the belief in the genuineness and immediacy of ,german feeling1 from the belief in an untarnished inward life4 ,where is our hope or belief1 when its spring is muddied1 and the inward quality has learned gestures and dances and the use of cosmetics1 has learned to express itself with due reflection in abstract terms1 and gradually lose itself8 ,and how should a great productive spirit exist among a nation that is not sure of its inward unity and is divided into educated men whose inner life has been drawn from the true path of education1 and uneducated men whose inner life cannot be approached at all8 ,how should it exist1 ,i say1 when the people has lost its own unity of feeling1 and knows that the feeling of the part calling itself the educated part and claiming the right of controlling the artistic spirit of the nation1 is false and hypocritical8 ,here and there the judgment and taste of individuals may be higher and finer than the rest1 but that is no compensation3 it tortures a man to have to speak only to one section and be no longer in sympathy with his people4 ,he would rather bury his treasure now1 in disgust at the vulgar patronage of a class1 though his heart be filled with tenderness for all4 ,the instinct of the people can no longer meet him half-way2 it is useless for them to stretch their arms out to him in yearning4 ,what remains but to turn his quickened hatred against the ban1 strike at the barrier raised by the so-called culture1 and condemn as judge what blasted and degraded him as a living man and a source of life8 ,he takes a profound insight into fate in exchange for the godlike desire of creation and help1 and ends his days as a lonely philosopher1 with the wisdom of disillusion4 ,it is the painfullest comedy3 he who sees it will feel a sacred obligation on him1 and say to himself1--,help must come3 the higher unity in the nature and soul of a people must be brought back1 the cleft between inner and outer must again disappear under the hammer of necessity4 ,but to what means can he look8 ,what remains to him now but his knowledge8 ,he hopes to plant the feeling of a need1 by speaking from the breadth of that knowledge1 giving it freely with both hands4 ,from the strong need the strong action may one day arise4 ,and to leave no doubt of the instance ,i am taking of the need and the knowledge1 my testimony shall stand1 that it is ,german unity in its highest sense which is the goal of our endeavour1 far more than political union3 it is the unity of the ,german spirit and life after the annihilation of the antagonism between form and substance1 inward life and convention4 ,v4 ,an excess of history seems to be an enemy to the life of a time1 and dangerous in five ways4 ,firstly1 the contrast of inner and outer is emphasised and personality weakened4 ,secondly1 the time comes to imagine that it possesses the rarest of virtues1 justice1 to a higher degree than any other time4 ,thirdly1 the instincts of a nation are thwarted1 the maturity of the individual arrested no less than that of the whole4 ,fourthly1 we get the belief in the old age of mankind1 the belief1 at all times harmful1 that we are late survivals1 mere ,epigoni4 ,lastly1 an age reaches a dangerous condition of irony with regard to itself1 and the still more dangerous state of cynicism1 when a cunning egoistic theory of action is matured that maims and at last destroys the vital strength4 ,to return to the first point3 the modern man suffers from a weakened personality4 ,the ,roman of the ,empire ceased to be a ,roman through the contemplation of the world that lay at his feet2 he lost himself in the crowd of foreigners that streamed into ,rome1 and degenerated amid the cosmopolitan carnival of arts1 worships and moralities4 ,it is the same with the modern man1 who is continually having a world-panorama unrolled before his eyes by his historical artists4 ,he is turned into a restless1 dilettante spectator1 and arrives at a condition when even great wars and revolutions cannot affect him beyond the moment4 ,the war is hardly at an end1 and it is already converted into thousands of copies of printed matter1 and will be soon served up as the latest means of tickling the jaded palates of the historical gourmets4 ,it seems impossible for a strong full chord to be prolonged1 however powerfully the strings are swept3 it dies away again the next moment in the soft and strengthless echo of history4 ,in ethical language1 one never succeeds in staying on a height2 your deeds are sudden crashes1 and not a long roll of thunder4 ,one may bring the greatest and most marvellous thing to perfection2 it must yet go down to ,orcus unhonoured and unsung4 ,for art flies away when you are roofing your deeds with the historical awning4 ,the man who wishes to understand everything in a moment1 when he ought to grasp the unintelligible as the sublime by a long struggle1 can be called intelligent only in the sense of ,schiller's epigram on the reason of reasonable men4 ,there is something the child sees that he does not see2 something the child hears that he does not hear2 and this something is the most important thing of all4 ,because he does not understand it1 his understanding is more childish than the child's and more simple than simplicity itself2 in spite of the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face1 and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling the knots4 ,he has lost or destroyed his instinct2 he can no longer trust the divine animal and let the reins hang loose1 when his understanding fails him and his way lies through the desert4 ,his individuality is shaken1 and left without any sure belief in itself2 it sinks into its own inner being1 which only means here the disordered chaos of what it has learned1 which will never express itself externally1 being mere dogma that cannot turn to life4 ,looking further1 we see how the banishment of instinct by history has turned men to shades and abstractions3 no one ventures to show a personality1 but masks himself as a man of culture1 a savant1 poet or politician4 ,if one take hold of these masks1 believing he has to do with a serious thing and not a mere puppet-show--for they all have an appearance of seriousness--he will find nothing but rags and coloured streamers in his hands4 ,he must deceive himself no more1 but cry aloud1 ,off with your jackets1 or be what you seem6 ,a man of the royal stock of seriousness must no longer be ,don ,quixote1 for he has better things to do than to tilt at such pretended realities4 ,but he must always keep a sharp look about him1 call his ,halt6 who goes there8 to all the shrouded figures1 and tear the masks from their faces4 ,and see the result6 ,one might have thought that history encouraged men above all to be honest1 even if it were only to be honest fools3 this used to be its effect1 but is so no longer4 ,historical education and the uniform frock-coat of the citizen are both dominant at the same time4 ,while there has never been such a full-throated chatter about free personality1 personalities can be seen no more 7to say nothing of free ones72 but merely men in uniform1 with their coats anxiously pulled over their ears4 ,individuality has withdrawn itself to its recesses2 it is seen no more from the outside1 which makes one doubt if it be possible to have causes without effects4 ,or will a race of eunuchs prove to be necessary to guard the historical harem of the world8 ,we can understand the reason for their aloofness very well4 ,does it not seem as if their task were to watch over history to see that nothing comes out except other histories1 but no deed that might be historical2 to prevent personalities becoming free1 that is1 sincere towards themselves and others1 both in word and deed8 ,only through this sincerity will the inner need and misery of the modern man be brought to the light1 and art and religion come as true helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of convention and masquerade1 to plant a common culture which will answer to real necessities1 and not teach1 as the present liberal education teaches1 to tell lies about these needs1 and thus become a walking lie one's self4 ,in such an age1 that suffers from its liberal education1 how unnatural1 artificial and unworthy will be the conditions under which the sincerest of all sciences1 the holy naked goddess ,philosophy1 must exist6 ,she remains1 in such a world of compulsion and outward conformity1 the subject of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or the chance prey of any hunter1 the dark secret of the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and children at the university4 ,no one dare fulfil the law of philosophy in himself2 no one lives philosophically1 with that single-hearted virile faith that forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a ,stoic1 wherever he was and whatever he did1 if he had once sworn allegiance to the ,stoa4 ,all modern philosophising is political or official1 bound down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by our modern governments1 churches1 universities1 moralities and cowardices3 it lives by sighing if only4444 and by knowing that it happened once upon a time4444 ,philosophy has no place in historical education1 if it will be more than the knowledge that lives indoors1 and can have no expression in action4 ,were the modern man once courageous and determined1 and not merely such an indoor being even in his hatreds1 he would banish philosophy4 ,at present he is satisfied with modestly covering her nakedness4 ,yes1 men think1 write1 print1 speak and teach philosophically3 so much is permitted them4 ,it is only otherwise in action1 in life4 ,only one thing is permitted there1 and everything else quite impossible3 such are the orders of historical education4 ,are these human beings1 one might ask1 or only machines for thinking1 writing and speaking8 ,goethe says of ,shakespeare3 ,no one has more despised correctness of costume than he3 he knows too well the inner costume that all men wear alike4 ,you hear that he describes ,romans wonderfully2 ,i do not think so3 they are flesh-and-blood ,englishmen2 but at any rate they are men from top to toe1 and the ,roman toga sits well on them4 ,would it be possible1 ,i wonder1 to represent our present literary and national heroes1 officials and politicians as ,romans8 ,i am sure it would not1 as they are no men1 but incarnate compendia1 abstractions made concrete4 ,if they have a character of their own1 it is so deeply sunk that it can never rise to the light of day3 if they are men1 they are only men to a physiologist4 ,to all others they are something else1 not men1 not beasts or gods1 but historical pictures of the march of civilisation1 and nothing but pictures and civilisation1 form without any ascertainable substance1 bad form unfortunately1 and uniform at that4 ,and in this way my thesis is to be understood and considered3 only strong personalities can endure history1 the weak are extinguished by it4 ,history unsettles the feelings when they are not powerful enough to measure the past by themselves4 ,the man who dare no longer trust himself1 but asks history against his will for advice how he ought to feel now1 is insensibly turned by his timidity into a play-actor1 and plays a part1 or generally many parts1--very badly therefore and superficially4 ,gradually all connection ceases between the man and his historical subjects4 ,we see noisy little fellows measuring themselves with the ,romans as though they were like them3 they burrow in the remains of the ,greek poets1 as if these were corpora for their dissection--and as vilia as their own well-educated corpora might be4 ,suppose a man is working at ,democritus4 ,the question is always on my tongue1 why precisely ,democritus8 ,why not ,heraclitus1 or ,philo1 or ,bacon1 or ,descartes8 ,and then1 why a philosopher8 ,why not a poet or orator8 ,and why especially a ,greek8 ,why not an ,englishman or a ,turk8 ,is not the past large enough to let you find some place where you may disport yourself without becoming ridiculous8 ,but1 as ,i said1 they are a race of eunuchs3 and to the eunuch one woman is the same as another1 merely a woman1 woman in herself1 the ,ever-unapproachable4 ,and it is indifferent what they study1 if history itself always remain beautifully objective to them1 as men1 in fact1 who could never make history themselves4 ,and since the ,eternal ,feminine could never draw you upward1 you draw it down to you1 and being neuter yourselves1 regard history as neuter also4 ,but in order that no one may take any comparison of history and the ,eternal ,feminine too seriously1 ,i will say at once that ,i hold it1 on the contrary1 to be the ,eternal ,masculine3 ,i only add that for those who are historically trained throughout1 it must be quite indifferent which it is2 for they are themselves neither man nor woman1 nor even hermaphrodite1 but mere neuters1 or1 in more philosophic language1 the ,eternal ,objective4 ,if the personality be once emptied of its subjectivity1 and come to what men call an objective condition1 nothing can have any more effect on it4 ,something good and true may be done1 in action1 poetry or music3 but the hollow culture of the day will look beyond the work and ask the history of the author4 ,if the author have already created something1 our historian will set out clearly the past and the probable future course of his development1 he will put him with others and compare them1 and separate by analysis the choice of his material and his treatment2 he will wisely sum the author up and give him general advice for his future path4 ,the most astonishing works may be created2 the swarm of historical neuters will always be in their place1 ready to consider the authors through their long telescopes4 ,the echo is heard at once3 but always in the form of criticism1 though the critic never dreamed of the work's possibility a moment before4 ,it never comes to have an influence1 but only a criticism3 and the criticism itself has no influence1 but only breeds another criticism4 ,and so we come to consider the fact of many critics as a mark of influence1 that of few or none as a mark of failure4 ,actually everything remains in the old condition1 even in the presence of such influence3 men talk a little while of a new thing1 and then of some other new thing1 and in the meantime they do what they have always done4 ,the historical training of our critics prevents their having an influence in the true sense1 an influence on life and action4 ,they put their blotting paper on the blackest writing1 and their thick brushes over the gracefullest designs2 these they call corrections2--and that is all4 ,their critical pens never cease to fly1 for they have lost power over them2 they are driven by their pens instead of driving them4 ,the weakness of modern personality comes out well in the measureless overflow of criticism1 in the want of self-mastery1 and in what the ,romans called impotentia4 ,,vi4 ,but leaving these weaklings1 let us turn rather to a point of strength for which the modern man is famous4 ,let us ask the painful question whether he has the right in virtue of his historical objectivity to call himself strong and just in a higher degree than the man of another age4 ,is it true that this objectivity has its source in a heightened sense of the need for justice8 ,or1 being really an effect of quite other causes1 does it only have the appearance of coming from justice1 and really lead to an unhealthy prejudice in favour of the modern man8 ,socrates thought it near madness to imagine one possessed a virtue without really possessing it4 ,such imagination has certainly more danger in it than the contrary madness of a positive vice4 ,for of this there is still a cure2 but the other makes a man or a time daily worse1 and therefore more unjust4 ,no one has a higher claim to our reverence than the man with the feeling and the strength for justice4 ,for the highest and rarest virtues unite and are lost in it1 as an unfathomable sea absorbs the streams that flow from every side4 ,the hand of the just man1 who is called to sit in judgment1 trembles no more when it holds the scales3 he piles the weights inexorably against his own side1 his eyes are not dimmed as the balance rises and falls1 and his voice is neither hard nor broken when he pronounces the sentence4 ,were he a cold demon of knowledge1 he would cast round him the icy atmosphere of an awful1 superhuman majesty1 that we should fear1 not reverence4 ,but he is a man1 and has tried to rise from a careless doubt to a strong certainty1 from gentle tolerance to the imperative thou must2 from the rare virtue of magnanimity to the rarest1 of justice4 ,he has come to be like that demon without being more than a poor mortal at the outset2 above all1 he has to atone to himself for his humanity and tragically shatter his own nature on the rock of an impossible virtue4--,all this places him on a lonely height as the most reverend example of the human race4 ,for truth is his aim1 not in the form of cold intellectual knowledge1 but the truth of the judge who punishes according to law2 not as the selfish possession of an individual1 but the sacred authority that removes the boundary stones from all selfish possessions2 truth1 in a word1 as the tribunal of the world1 and not as the chance prey of a single hunter4 ,the search for truth is often thoughtlessly praised3 but it only has anything great in it if the seeker have the sincere unconditional will for justice4 ,its roots are in justice alone3 but a whole crowd of different motives may combine in the search for it1 that have nothing to do with truth at all2 curiosity1 for example1 or dread of ennui1 envy1 vanity1 or amusement4 ,thus the world seems to be full of men who serve truth3 and yet the virtue of justice is seldom present1 more seldom known1 and almost always mortally hated4 ,on the other hand a throng of sham virtues has entered in at all times with pomp and honour4 ,few in truth serve truth1 as only few have the pure will for justice2 and very few even of these have the strength to be just4 ,the will alone is not enough3 the impulse to justice without the power of judgment has been the cause of the greatest suffering to men4 ,and thus the common good could require nothing better than for the seed of this power to be strewn as widely as possible1 that the fanatic may be distinguished from the true judge1 and the blind desire from the conscious power4 ,but there are no means of planting a power of judgment3 and so when one speaks to men of truth and justice1 they will be ever troubled by the doubt whether it be the fanatic or the judge who is speaking to them4 ,and they must be pardoned for always treating the servants of truth with special kindness1 who possess neither the will nor the power to judge and have set before them the task of finding pure knowledge without reference to consequences1 knowledge1 in plain terms1 that comes to nothing4 ,there are very many truths which are unimportant2 problems that require no struggle to solve1 to say nothing of sacrifice4 ,and in this safe realm of indifference a man may very successfully become a cold demon of knowledge4 ,and yet--if we find whole regiments of learned inquirers being turned to such demons in some age specially favourable to them1 it is always unfortunately possible that the age is lacking in a great and strong sense of justice1 the noblest spring of the so-called impulse to truth4 ,consider the historical virtuoso of the present time3 is he the justest man of his age8 ,true1 he has developed in himself such a delicacy and sensitiveness that nothing human is alien to him4 ,times and persons most widely separated come together in the concords of his lyre4 ,he has become a passive instrument1 whose tones find an echo in similar instruments3 until the whole atmosphere of a time is filled with such echoes1 all buzzing in one soft chord4 ,yet ,i think one only hears the overtones of the original historical note3 its rough powerful quality can be no longer guessed from these thin and shrill vibrations4 ,the original note sang of action1 need1 and terror2 the overtone lulls us into a soft dilettante sleep4 ,it is as though the heroic symphony had been arranged for two flutes for the use of dreaming opium-smokers4 ,we can now judge how these virtuosi stand towards the claim of the modern man to a higher and purer conception of justice4 ,this virtue has never a pleasing quality2 it never charms2 it is harsh and strident4 ,generosity stands very low on the ladder of the virtues in comparison2 and generosity is the mark of a few rare historians6 ,most of them only get as far as tolerance1 in other words they leave what cannot be explained away1 they correct it and touch it up condescendingly1 on the tacit assumption that the novice will count it as justice if the past be narrated without harshness or open expressions of hatred4 ,but only superior strength can really judge2 weakness must tolerate1 if it do not pretend to be strength and turn justice to a play-actress4 ,there is still a dreadful class of historians remaining--clever1 stern and honest1 but narrow-minded3 who have the good will to be just with a pathetic belief in their actual judgments1 which are all false2 for the same reason1 almost1 as the verdicts of the usual juries are false4 ,how difficult it is to find a real historical talent1 if we exclude all the disguised egoists1 and the partisans who pretend to take up an impartial attitude for the sake of their own unholy game6 ,and we also exclude the thoughtless folk who write history in the nave faith that justice resides in the popular view of their time1 and that to write in the spirit of the time is to be just2 a faith that is found in all religions1 and which1 in religion1 serves very well4 ,the measurement of the opinions and deeds of the past by the universal opinions of the present is called objectivity by these simple people3 they find the canon of all truth here3 their work is to adapt the past to the present triviality4 ,and they call all historical writing subjective that does not regard these popular opinions as canonical4 ,might not an illusion lurk in the highest interpretation of the word objectivity8 ,we understand by it a certain standpoint in the historian1 who sees the procession of motive and consequence too clearly for it to have an effect on his own personality4 ,we think of the sthetic phenomenon of the detachment from all personal concern with which the painter sees the picture and forgets himself1 in a stormy landscape1 amid thunder and lightning1 or on a rough sea3 and we require the same artistic vision and absorption in his object from the historian4 ,but it is only a superstition to say that the picture given to such a man by the object really shows the truth of things4 ,unless it be that objects are expected in such moments to paint or photograph themselves by their own activity on a purely passive medium6 ,but this would be a myth1 and a bad one at that4 ,one forgets that this moment is actually the powerful and spontaneous moment of creation in the artist1 of composition in its highest form1 of which the result will be an artistically1 but not an historically1 true picture4 ,to think objectively1 in this sense1 of history is the work of the dramatist3 to think one thing with another1 and weave the elements into a single whole2 with the presumption that the unity of plan must be put into the objects if it be not already there4 ,so man veils and subdues the past1 and expresses his impulse to art--but not his impulse to truth or justice4 ,objectivity and justice have nothing to do with each other4 ,there could be a kind of historical writing that had no drop of common fact in it and yet could claim to be called in the highest degree objective4 ,grillparzer goes so far as to say that history is nothing but the manner in which the spirit of man apprehends facts that are obscure to him1 links things together whose connection heaven only knows1 replaces the unintelligible by something intelligible1 puts his own ideas of causation into the external world1 which can perhaps be explained only from within3 and assumes the existence of chance1 where thousands of small causes may be really at work4 ,each man has his own individual needs1 and so millions of tendencies are running together1 straight or crooked1 parallel or across1 forward or backward1 helping or hindering each other4 ,they have all the appearance of chance1 and make it impossible1 quite apart from all natural influences1 to establish any universal lines on which past events must have run4 ,but as a result of this so-called objective way of looking at things1 such a must ought to be made clear4 ,it is a presumption that takes a curious form if adopted by the historian as a dogma4 ,schiller is quite clear about its truly subjective nature when he says of the historian1 one event after the other begins to draw away from blind chance and lawless freedom1 and take its place as the member of an harmonious whole--which is of course only apparent in its presentation4 ,but what is one to think of the innocent statement1 wavering between tautology and nonsense1 of a famous historical virtuoso8 ,it seems that all human actions and impulses are subordinate to the process of the material world1 that works unnoticed1 powerfully and irresistibly4 ,in such a sentence one no longer finds obscure wisdom in the form of obvious folly2 as in the saying of ,goethe's gardener1 ,nature may be forced but not compelled1 or in the notice on the side-show at a fair1 in ,swift3 ,the largest elephant in the world1 except himself1 to be seen here4 ,for what opposition is there between human action and the process of the world8 ,it seems to me that such historians cease to be instructive as soon as they begin to generalise2 their weakness is shown by their obscurity4 ,in other sciences the generalisations are the most important things1 as they contain the laws4 ,but if such generalisations as these are to stand as laws1 the historian's labour is lost2 for the residue of truth1 after the obscure and insoluble part is removed1 is nothing but the commonest knowledge4 ,the smallest range of experience will teach it4 ,but to worry whole peoples for the purpose1 and spend many hard years of work on it1 is like crowding one scientific experiment on another long after the law can be deduced from the results already obtained3 and this absurd excess of experiment has been the bane of all natural science since ,zollner4 ,if the value of a drama lay merely in its final scene1 the drama itself would be a very long1 crooked and laborious road to the goal3 and ,i hope history will not find its whole significance in general propositions1 and regard them as its blossom and fruit4 ,on the contrary1 its real value lies in inventing ingenious variations on a probably commonplace theme1 in raising the popular melody to a universal symbol and showing what a world of depth1 power and beauty exists in it4 ,but this requires above all a great artistic faculty1 a creative vision from a height1 the loving study of the data of experience1 the free elaborating of a given type1--objectivity in fact1 though this time as a positive quality4 ,objectivity is so often merely a phrase4 ,instead of the quiet gaze of the artist that is lit by an inward flame1 we have an affectation of tranquillity2 just as a cold detachment may mask a lack of moral feeling4 ,in some cases a triviality of thought1 the everyday wisdom that is too dull not to seem calm and disinterested1 comes to represent the artistic condition in which the subjective side has quite sunk out of sight4 ,everything is favoured that does not rouse emotion1 and the driest phrase is the correct one4 ,they go so far as to accept a man who is not affected at all by some particular moment in the past as the right man to describe it4 ,this is the usual relation of the ,greeks and the classical scholars4 ,they have nothing to do with each other--and this is called objectivity6 ,the intentional air of detachment that is assumed for effect1 the sober art of the superficial motive-hunter is most exasperating when the highest and rarest things are in question2 and it is the vanity of the historian that drives him to this attitude of indifference4 ,he goes to justify the axiom that a man's vanity corresponds to his lack of wit4 ,no1 be honest at any rate6 ,do not pretend to the artist's strength1 that is the real objectivity2 do not try to be just1 if you are not born to that dread vocation4 ,as if it were the task of every time to be just to everything before it6 ,ages and generations have never the right to be the judges of all previous ages and generations3 only to the rarest men in them can that difficult mission fall4 ,who compels you to judge8 ,if it is your wish--you must prove first that you are capable of justice4 ,as judges1 you must stand higher than that which is to be judged3 as it is1 you have only come later4 ,the guests that come last to the table should rightly take the last places3 and will you take the first8 ,then do some great and mighty deed3 the place may be prepared for you then1 even though you do come last4 ,you can only explain the past by what is highest in the present4 ,only by straining the noblest qualities you have to their highest power will you find out what is greatest in the past1 most worth knowing and preserving4 ,like by like6 otherwise you will draw the past to your own level4 ,do not believe any history that does not spring from the mind of a rare spirit4 ,you will know the quality of the spirit1 by its being forced to say something universal1 or to repeat something that is known already2 the fine historian must have the power of coining the known into a thing never heard before and proclaiming the universal so simply and profoundly that the simple is lost in the profound1 and the profound in the simple4 ,no one can be a great historian and artist1 and a shallowpate at the same time4 ,but one must not despise the workers who sift and cast together the material because they can never become great historians4 ,they must1 still less1 be confounded with them1 for they are the necessary bricklayers and apprentices in the service of the master3 just as the ,french used to speak1 more navely than a ,german would1 of the historiens de ,m4 ,thiers4 ,these workmen should gradually become extremely learned1 but never1 for that reason1 turn to be masters4 ,great learning and great shallowness go together very well under one hat4 ,thus1 history is to be written by the man of experience and character4 ,he who has not lived through something greater and nobler than others1 will not be able to explain anything great and noble in the past4 ,the language of the past is always oracular3 you will only understand it as builders of the future who know the present4 ,we can only explain the extraordinarily wide influence of ,delphi by the fact that the ,delphic priests had an exact knowledge of the past3 and1 similarly1 only he who is building up the future has a right to judge the past4 ,if you set a great aim before your eyes1 you control at the same time the itch for analysis that makes the present into a desert for you1 and all rest1 all peaceful growth and ripening1 impossible4 ,hedge yourselves with a great1 all-embracing hope1 and strive on4 ,make of yourselves a mirror where the future may see itself1 and forget the superstition that you are ,epigoni4 ,you have enough to ponder and find out1 in pondering the life of the future3 but do not ask history to show you the means and the instrument to it4 ,if you live yourselves back into the history of great men1 you will find in it the high command to come to maturity and leave that blighting system of cultivation offered by your time3 which sees its own profit in not allowing you to become ripe1 that it may use and dominate you while you are yet unripe4 ,and if you want biographies1 do not look for those with the legend ,mr4 ,so-and-so and his times1 but for one whose title-page might be inscribed a fighter against his time4 ,feast your souls on ,plutarch1 and dare to believe in yourselves when you believe in his heroes4 ,a hundred such men--educated against the fashion of to-day1 made familiar with the heroic1 and come to maturity--are enough to give an eternal quietus to the noisy sham education of this time4 ,,vii4 ,the unrestrained historical sense1 pushed to its logical extreme1 uproots the future1 because it destroys illusions and robs existing things of the only atmosphere in which they can live4 ,historical justice1 even if practised conscientiously1 with a pure heart1 is therefore a dreadful virtue1 because it always undermines and ruins the living thing3 its judgment always means annihilation4 ,if there be no constructive impulse behind the historical one1 if the clearance of rubbish be not merely to leave the ground free for the hopeful living future to build its house1 if justice alone be supreme1 the creative instinct is sapped and discouraged4 ,a religion1 for example1 that has to be turned into a matter of historical knowledge by the power of pure justice1 and to be scientifically studied throughout1 is destroyed at the end of it all4 ,for the historical audit brings so much to light which is false and absurd1 violent and inhuman1 that the condition of pious illusion falls to pieces4 ,and a thing can only live through a pious illusion4 ,for man is creative only through love and in the shadow of love's illusions1 only through the unconditional belief in perfection and righteousness4 ,everything that forces a man to be no longer unconditioned in his love1 cuts at the root of his strength3 he must wither1 and be dishonoured4 ,art has the opposite effect to history3 and only perhaps if history suffer transformation into a pure work of art1 can it preserve instincts or arouse them4 ,such history would be quite against the analytical and inartistic tendencies of our time1 and even be considered false4 ,but the history that merely destroys without any impulse to construct1 will in the long-run make its instruments tired of life2 for such men destroy illusions1 and he who destroys illusions in himself and others is punished by the ultimate tyrant1 ,nature4 ,for a time a man can take up history like any other study1 and it will be perfectly harmless4 ,recent theology seems to have entered quite innocently into partnership with history1 and scarcely sees even now that it has unwittingly bound itself to the ,voltairean crasez6 ,no one need expect from that any new and powerful constructive impulse3 they might as well have let the so-called ,protestant ,union serve as the cradle of a new religion1 and the jurist ,holtzendorf1 the editor of the far more dubiously named ,protestant ,bible1 be its ,john the ,baptist4 ,this state of innocence may be continued for some time by the ,hegelian philosophy1--still seething in some of the older heads1--by which men can distinguish the idea of ,christianity from its various imperfect manifestations2 and persuade themselves that it is the self-movement of the ,idea that is ever particularising itself in purer and purer forms1 and at last becomes the purest1 most transparent1 in fact scarcely visible form in the brain of the present theologus liberalis vulgaris4 ,but to listen to this pure ,christianity speaking its mind about the earlier impure ,christianity1 the uninitiated hearer would often get the impression that the talk was not of ,christianity at all but of 444--what are we to think8 if we find ,christianity described by the greatest theologians of the century as the religion that claims to find itself in all real religions and some other barely possible religions1 and if the true church is to be a thing which may become a liquid mass with no fixed outline1 with no fixed place for its different parts1 but everything to be peacefully welded together--what1 ,i ask again1 are we to think8 ,christianity has been denaturalised by historical treatment--which in its most complete form means just treatment--until it has been resolved into pure knowledge and destroyed in the process4 ,this can be studied in everything that has life4 ,for it ceases to have life if it be perfectly dissected1 and lives in pain and anguish as soon as the historical dissection begins4 ,there are some who believe in the saving power of ,german music to revolutionise the ,german nature4 ,they angrily exclaim against the special injustice done to our culture1 when such men as ,mozart and ,beethoven are beginning to be spattered with the learned mud of the biographers and forced to answer a thousand searching questions on the rack of historical criticism4 ,is it not premature death1 or at least mutilation1 for anything whose living influence is not yet exhausted1 when men turn their curious eyes to the little minuti of life and art1 and look for problems of knowledge where one ought to learn to live1 and forget problems8 ,set a couple of these modern biographers to consider the origins of ,christianity or the ,lutheran reformation3 their sober1 practical investigations would be quite sufficient to make all spiritual action at a distance impossible3 just as the smallest animal can prevent the growth of the mightiest oak by simply eating up the acorn4 ,all living things need an atmosphere1 a mysterious mist1 around them4 ,if that veil be taken away and a religion1 an art1 or a genius condemned to revolve like a star without an atmosphere1 we must not be surprised if it becomes hard and unfruitful1 and soon withers4 ,it is so with all great things that never prosper without some illusion1 as ,hans ,sachs says in the ,meistersinger4 ,every people1 every man even1 who would become ripe1 needs such a veil of illusion1 such a protecting cloud4 ,but now men hate to become ripe1 for they honour history above life4 ,they cry in triumph that science is now beginning to rule life4 ,possibly it might2 but a life thus ruled is not of much value4 ,it is not such true life1 and promises much less for the future than the life that used to be guided not by science1 but by instincts and powerful illusions4 ,but this is not to be the age of ripe1 alert and harmonious personalities1 but of work that may be of most use to the commonwealth4 ,men are to be fashioned to the needs of the time1 that they may soon take their place in the machine4 ,they must work in the factory of the common good before they are ripe1 or rather to prevent them becoming ripe2 for this would be a luxury that would draw away a deal of power from the labour market4 ,some birds are blinded that they may sing better2 ,i do not think men sing to-day better than their grandfathers1 though ,i am sure they are blinded early4 ,but light1 too clear1 too sudden and dazzling1 is the infamous means used to blind them4 ,the young man is kicked through all the centuries3 boys who know nothing of war1 diplomacy1 or commerce are considered fit to be introduced to political history4 ,we moderns also run through art galleries and hear concerts in the same way as the young man runs through history4 ,we can feel that one thing sounds differently from another1 and pronounce on the different effects4 ,and the power of gradually losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment1 and finally being pleased at anything1 is called the historical sense1 or historical culture4 ,the crowd of influences streaming on the young soul is so great1 the clods of barbarism and violence flung at him so strange and overwhelming1 that an assumed stupidity is his only refuge4 ,where there is a subtler and stronger self-consciousness we find another emotion too--disgust4 ,the young man has become homeless3 he doubts all ideas1 all moralities4 ,he knows it was different in every age1 and what you are does not matter4 ,in a heavy apathy he lets opinion on opinion pass by him1 and understands the meaning of ,hlderlin's words when he read the work of ,diogenes ,laertius on the lives and doctrines of the ,greek philosophers3 ,i have seen here too what has often occurred to me1 that the change and waste in men's thoughts and systems is far more tragic than the fates that overtake what men are accustomed to call the only realities4 ,no1 such study of history bewilders and overwhelms4 ,it is not necessary for youth1 as the ancients show1 but even in the highest degree dangerous1 as the moderns show4 ,consider the historical student1 the heir of ennui1 that appears even in his boyhood4 ,he has the methods for original work1 the correct ideas and the airs of the master at his fingers' ends4 ,a little isolated period of the past is marked out for sacrifice4 ,he cleverly applies his method1 and produces something1 or rather1 in prouder phrase1 creates something4 ,he becomes a servant of truth and a ruler in the great domain of history4 ,if he was what they call ripe as a boy1 he is now over-ripe4 ,you only need shake him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap2 but the wisdom is rotten1 and every apple has its worm4 ,believe me1 if men work in the factory of science and have to make themselves useful before they are really ripe1 science is ruined as much as the slaves who have been employed too soon4 ,i am sorry to use the common jargon about slave-owners and taskmasters in respect of such conditions1 that might be thought free from any economic taint3 but the words factory1 labour-market1 auction-sale1 practical use1 and all the auxiliaries of egoism1 come involuntarily to the lips in describing the younger generation of savants4 ,successful mediocrity tends to become still more mediocre1 science still more useful4 ,our modern savants are only wise on one subject1 in all the rest they are1 to say the least1 different from those of the old stamp4 ,in spite of that they demand honour and profit for themselves1 as if the state and public opinion were bound to take the new coinage for the same value as the old4 ,the carters have made a trade-compact among themselves1 and settled that genius is superfluous1 for every carrier is being re-stamped as one4 ,and probably a later age will see that their edifices are only carted together and not built4 ,to those who have ever on their lips the modern cry of battle and sacrifice--,division of labour6 fall into line6 we may say roundly3 ,if you try to further the progress of science as quickly as possible1 you will end by destroying it as quickly as possible2 just as the hen is worn out which you force to lay too many eggs4 ,the progress of science has been amazingly rapid in the last decade2 but consider the savants1 those exhausted hens4 ,they are certainly not harmonious natures3 they can merely cackle more than before1 because they lay eggs oftener3 but the eggs are always smaller1 though their books are bigger4 ,the natural result of it all is the favourite popularising of science 7or rather its feminising and infantising71 the villainous habit of cutting the cloth of science to fit the figure of the general public4 ,goethe saw the abuse in this1 and demanded that science should only influence the outer world by way of a nobler ideal of action4 ,the older generation of savants had good reason for thinking this abuse an oppressive burden3 the modern savants have an equally good reason for welcoming it1 because1 leaving their little corner of knowledge out of account1 they are part of the general public themselves1 and its needs are theirs4 ,they only require to take themselves less seriously to be able to open their little kingdom successfully to popular curiosity4 ,this easy-going behaviour is called the modest condescension of the savant to the people2 whereas in reality he has only descended to himself1 so far as he is not a savant but a plebeian4 ,rise to the conception of a people1 you learned men2 you can never have one noble or high enough4 ,if you thought much of the people1 you would have compassion towards them1 and shrink from offering your historical aquafortis as a refreshing drink4 ,but you really think very little of them1 for you dare not take any reasonable pains for their future2 and you act like practical pessimists1 men who feel the coming catastrophe and become indifferent and careless of their own and others' existence4 ,if only the earth last for us3 and if it do not last1 it is no matter4 ,thus they come to live an ironical existence4 ,,viii4 ,it may seem a paradox1 though it is none1 that ,i should attribute a kind of ironical self-consciousness to an age that is generally so honestly1 and clamorously1 vain of its historical training2 and should see a suspicion hovering near it that there is really nothing to be proud of1 and a fear lest the time for rejoicing at historical knowledge may soon have gone by4 ,goethe has shown a similar riddle in man's nature1 in his remarkable study of ,newton3 he finds a troubled feeling of his own error at the base--or rather on the height--of his being1 just as if he was conscious at times of having a deeper insight into things1 that vanished the moment after4 ,this gave him a certain ironical view of his own nature4 ,and one finds that the greater and more developed historical men are conscious of all the superstition and absurdity in the belief that a people's education need be so extremely historical as it is2 the mightiest nations1 mightiest in action and influence1 have lived otherwise1 and their youth has been trained otherwise4 ,the knowledge gives a sceptical turn to their minds4 ,the absurdity and superstition1 these sceptics say1 suit men like ourselves1 who come as the latest withered shoots of a gladder and mightier stock1 and fulfil ,hesiod's prophecy1 that men will one day be born gray-headed1 and that ,zeus will destroy that generation as soon as the sign be visible4 ,historical culture is really a kind of inherited grayness1 and those who have borne its mark from childhood must believe instinctively in the old age of mankind4 ,to old age belongs the old man's business of looking back and casting up his accounts1 of seeking consolation in the memories of the past1--in historical culture4 ,but the human race is tough and persistent1 and will not admit that the lapse of a thousand years1 or a hundred thousand1 entitles any one to sum up its progress from the past to the future2 that is1 it will not be observed as a whole at all by that infinitesimal atom1 the individual man4 ,what is there in a couple of thousand years--the period of thirty-four consecutive human lives of sixty years each--to make us speak of youth at the beginning1 and the old age of mankind at the end of them8 ,does not this paralysing belief in a fast-fading humanity cover the misunderstanding of a theological idea1 inherited from the ,middle ,ages1 that the end of the world is approaching and we are waiting anxiously for the judgment8 ,does not the increasing demand for historical judgment give us that idea in a new dress8 as if our time were the latest possible time1 and commanded to hold that universal judgment of the past1 which the ,christian never expected from a man1 but from the ,son of ,man4 ,the memento mori1 spoken to humanity as well as the individual1 was a sting that never ceased to pain1 the crown of medival knowledge and consciousness4 ,the opposite message of a later time1 memento vivere1 is spoken rather timidly1 without the full power of the lungs2 and there is something almost dishonest about it4 ,for mankind still keeps to its memento mori1 and shows it by the universal need for history2 science may flap its wings as it will1 it has never been able to gain the free air4 ,a deep feeling of hopelessness has remained1 and taken the historical colouring that has now darkened and depressed all higher education4 ,a religion that1 of all the hours of man's life1 thinks the last the most important1 that has prophesied the end of earthly life and condemned all creatures to live in the fifth act of a tragedy1 may call forth the subtlest and noblest powers of man1 but it is an enemy to all new planting1 to all bold attempts or free aspirations4 ,it opposes all flight into the unknown1 because it has no life or hope there itself4 ,it only lets the new bud press forth on sufferance1 to blight it in its own good time3 it might lead life astray and give it a false value4 ,what the ,florentines did under the influence of ,savonarola's exhortations1 when they made the famous holocaust of pictures1 manuscripts1 masks and mirrors1 ,christianity would like to do with every culture that allured to further effort and bore that memento vivere on its standard4 ,and if it cannot take the direct way--the way of main force--it gains its end all the same by allying itself with historical culture1 though generally without its connivance2 and speaking through its mouth1 turns away every fresh birth with a shrug of its shoulders1 and makes us feel all the more that we are late-comers and ,epigoni1 that we are1 in a word1 born with gray hair4 ,the deep and serious contemplation of the unworthiness of all past action1 of the world ripe for judgment1 has been whittled down to the sceptical consciousness that it is anyhow a good thing to know all that has happened1 as it is too late to do anything better4 ,the historical sense makes its servants passive and retrospective4 ,only in moments of forgetfulness1 when that sense is dormant1 does the man who is sick of the historical fever ever act2 though he only analyses his deed again after it is over 7which prevents it from having any further consequences71 and finally puts it on the dissecting table for the purposes of history4 ,in this sense we are still living in the ,middle ,ages1 and history is still a disguised theology2 just as the reverence with which the unlearned layman looks on the learned class is inherited through the clergy4 ,what men gave formerly to the ,church they give now1 though in smaller measure1 to science4 ,but the fact of giving at all is the work of the ,church1 not of the modern spirit1 which among its other good qualities has something of the miser in it1 and is a bad hand at the excellent virtue of liberality4 ,these words may not be very acceptable1 any more than my derivation of the excess of history from the medival memento mori and the hopelessness that ,christianity bears in its heart towards all future ages of earthly existence4 ,but you should always try to replace my hesitating explanations by a better one4 ,for the origin of historical culture1 and of its absolutely radical antagonism to the spirit of a new time and a modern consciousness1 must itself be known by a historical process4 ,history must solve the problem of history1 science must turn its sting against itself4 ,this threefold must is the imperative of the new spirit1 if it is really to contain something new1 powerful1 vital and original4 ,or is it true that we ,germans--to leave the ,romance nations out of account--must always be mere followers in all the higher reaches of culture1 because that is all we can be8 ,the words of ,wilhelm ,wackernagel are well worth pondering3 ,we ,germans are a nation of 'followers1' and with all our higher science and even our faith1 are merely the successors of the ancient world4 ,even those who are opposed to it are continually breathing the immortal spirit of classical culture with that of ,christianity3 and if any one could separate these two elements from the living air surrounding the soul of man1 there would not be much remaining for a spiritual life to exist on4 ,even if we would rest content with our vocation to follow antiquity1 even if we decided to take it in an earnest and strenuous spirit and to show our high prerogative in our earnestness1--we should yet be compelled to ask whether it were our eternal destiny to be pupils of a fading antiquity4 ,we might be allowed at some time to put our aim higher and further above us4 ,and after congratulating ourselves on having brought that secondary spirit of ,alexandrian culture in us to such marvellous productiveness--through our universal history--we might go on to place before us1 as our noblest prize1 the still higher task of striving beyond and above this ,alexandrian world2 and bravely find our prototypes in the ancient ,greek world1 where all was great1 natural and human4 ,but it is just there that we find the reality of a true unhistorical culture--and in spite of that1 or perhaps because of it1 an unspeakably rich and vital culture4 ,were we ,germans nothing but followers1 we could not be anything greater or prouder than the lineal inheritors and followers of such a culture4 ,this however must be added4 ,the thought of being ,epigoni1 that is often a torture1 can yet create a spring of hope for the future1 to the individual as well as the people3 so far1 that is1 as we can regard ourselves as the heirs and followers of the marvellous classical power1 and see therein both our honour and our spur4 ,but not as the late and bitter fruit of a powerful stock1 giving that stock a further spell of cold life1 as antiquaries and grave-diggers4 ,such late-comers live truly an ironical existence4 ,annihilation follows their halting walk on tiptoe through life4 ,they shudder before it in the midst of their rejoicing over the past4 ,they are living memories1 and their own memories have no meaning2 for there are none to inherit them4 ,and thus they are wrapped in the melancholy thought that their life is an injustice1 which no future life can set right again4 ,suppose that these antiquaries1 these late arrivals1 were to change their painful ironic modesty for a certain shamelessness4 ,suppose we heard them saying1 aloud1 ,the race is at its zenith1 for it has manifested itself consciously for the first time4 ,we should have a comedy1 in which the dark meaning of a certain very celebrated philosophy would unroll itself for the benefit of ,german culture4 ,i believe there has been no dangerous turning-point in the progress of ,german culture in this century that has not been made more dangerous by the enormous and still living influence of this ,hegelian philosophy4 ,the belief that one is a late-comer in the world is1 anyhow1 harmful and degrading3 but it must appear frightful and devastating when it raises our late-comer to godhead1 by a neat turn of the wheel1 as the true meaning and object of all past creation1 and his conscious misery is set up as the perfection of the world's history4 ,such a point of view has accustomed the ,germans to talk of a world-process1 and justify their own time as its necessary result4 ,and it has put history in the place of the other spiritual powers1 art and religion1 as the one sovereign2 inasmuch as it is the ,idea realising itself1 the ,dialectic of the spirit of the nations1 and the tribunal of the world4 ,history understood in this ,hegelian way has been contemptuously called ,god's sojourn upon earth1--though the ,god was first created by the history4 ,he1 at any rate1 became transparent and intelligible inside ,hegelian skulls1 and has risen through all the dialectically possible steps in his being up to the manifestation of the ,self3 so that for ,hegel the highest and final stage of the world-process came together in his own ,berlin existence4 ,he ought to have said that everything after him was merely to be regarded as the musical coda of the great historical rondo1--or rather1 as simply superfluous4 ,he has not said it2 and thus he has implanted in a generation leavened throughout by him the worship of the power of history1 that practically turns every moment into a sheer gaping at success1 into an idolatry of the actual3 for which we have now discovered the characteristic phrase to adapt ourselves to circumstances4 ,but the man who has once learnt to crook the knee and bow the head before the power of history1 nods yes at last1 like a ,chinese doll1 to every power1 whether it be a government or a public opinion or a numerical majority2 and his limbs move correctly as the power pulls the string4 ,if each success have come by a rational necessity1 and every event show the victory of logic or the ,idea1 then--down on your knees quickly1 and let every step in the ladder of success have its reverence6 ,there are no more living mythologies1 you say8 ,religions are at their last gasp8 ,look at the religion of the power of history1 and the priests of the mythology of ,ideas1 with their scarred knees6 ,do not all the virtues follow in the train of the new faith8 ,and shall we not call it unselfishness1 when the historical man lets himself be turned into an objective mirror of all that is8 ,is it not magnanimity to renounce all power in heaven and earth in order to adore the mere fact of power8 ,is it not justice1 always to hold the balance of forces in your hands and observe which is the stronger and heavier8 ,and what a school of politeness is such a contemplation of the past6 ,to take everything objectively1 to be angry at nothing1 to love nothing1 to understand everything--makes one gentle and pliable4 ,even if a man brought up in this school will show himself openly offended1 one is just as pleased1 knowing it is only meant in the artistic sense of ira et studium1 though it is really sine ira et studio4 ,what old-fashioned thoughts ,i have on such a combination of virtue and mythology6 ,but they must out1 however one may laugh at them4 ,i would even say that history always teaches--it was once1 and morality--it ought not to be1 or have been4 ,so history becomes a compendium of actual immorality4 ,but how wrong would one be to regard history as the judge of this actual immorality6 ,morality is offended by the fact that a ,raphael had to die at thirty-six2 such a being ought not to die4 ,if you came to the help of history1 as the apologists of the actual1 you would say3 he had spoken everything that was in him to speak1 a longer life would only have enabled him to create a similar beauty1 and not a new beauty1 and so on4 ,thus you become an advocatus diaboli by setting up the success1 the fact1 as your idol3 whereas the fact is always dull1 at all times more like calf than a god4 ,your apologies for history are helped by ignorance3 for it is only because you do not know what a natura naturans like ,raphael is1 that you are not on fire when you think it existed once and can never exist again4 ,some one has lately tried to tell us that ,goethe had out-lived himself with his eighty-two years3 and yet ,i would gladly take two of ,goethe's out-lived years in exchange for whole cartloads of fresh modern lifetimes1 to have another set of such conversations as those with ,eckermann1 and be preserved from all the modern talk of these esquires of the moment4 ,how few living men have a right to live1 as against those mighty dead6 ,that the many live and those few live no longer1 is simply a brutal truth1 that is1 a piece of unalterable folly1 a blank wall of it was once so against the moral judgment it ought not to have been4 ,yes1 against the moral judgment6 ,for you may speak of what virtue you will1 of justice1 courage1 magnanimity1 of wisdom and human compassion1--you will find the virtuous man will always rise against the blind force of facts1 the tyranny of the actual1 and submit himself to laws that are not the fickle laws of history4 ,he ever swims against the waves of history1 either by fighting his passions1 as the nearest brute facts of his existence1 or by training himself to honesty amid the glittering nets spun round him by falsehood4 ,were history nothing more than the all-embracing system of passion and error1 man would have to read it as ,goethe wished ,werther to be read2--just as if it called to him1 ,be a man and follow me not6 ,but fortunately history also keeps alive for us the memory of the great fighters against history1 that is1 against the blind power of the actual2 it puts itself in the pillory just by glorifying the true historical nature in men who troubled themselves very little about the thus it is1 in order that they might follow a thus it must be with greater joy and greater pride4 ,not to drag their generation to the grave1 but to found a new one--that is the motive that ever drives them onward2 and even if they are born late1 there is a way of living by which they can forget it--and future generations will know them only as the first-comers4 ,,ix4 ,is perhaps our time such a first-comer8 ,its historical sense is so strong1 and has such universal and boundless expression1 that future times will commend it1 if only for this1 as a first-comer--if there be any future time1 in the sense of future culture4 ,but here comes a grave doubt4 ,close to the modern man's pride there stands his irony about himself1 his consciousness that he must live in a historical1 or twilit1 atmosphere1 the fear that he can retain none of his youthful hopes and powers4 ,here and there one goes further into cynicism1 and justifies the course of history1 nay1 the whole evolution of the world1 as simply leading up to the modern man1 according to the cynical canon3--what you see now had to come1 man had to be thus and not otherwise1 no one can stand against this necessity4 ,he who cannot rest in a state of irony flies for refuge to the cynicism4 ,the last decade makes him a present of one of its most beautiful inventions1 a full and well-rounded phrase for this cynicism3 he calls his way of living thoughtlessly and after the fashion of his time1 the full surrender of his personality to the world-process4 ,the personality and the world-process6 ,the world-process and the personality of the earthworm6 ,if only one did not eternally hear the word world1 world1 world1 that hyperbole of all hyperboles2 when we should only speak1 in a decent manner1 of man1 man1 man6 ,heirs of the ,greeks and ,romans1 of ,christianity8 ,all that seems nothing to the cynics4 ,but heirs of the world-process2 the final target of the world-process2 the meaning and solution of all riddles of the universe1 the ripest fruit on the tree of knowledge6--that is what ,i call a right noble thought3 by this token are the firstlings of every time to be known1 although they may have arrived last4 ,the historical imagination has never flown so far1 even in a dream2 for now the history of man is merely the continuation of that of animals and plants3 the universal historian finds traces of himself even in the utter depths of the sea1 in the living slime4 ,he stands astounded in face of the enormous way that man has run1 and his gaze quivers before the mightier wonder1 the modern man who can see all this way6 ,he stands proudly on the pyramid of the world-process3 and while he lays the final stone of his knowledge1 he seems to cry aloud to listening ,nature3 ,we are at the top1 we are the top1 we are the completion of ,nature6 ,o thou too proud ,european of the nineteenth century1 art thou not mad8 ,thy knowledge does not complete ,nature1 it only kills thine own nature6 ,measure the height of what thou knowest by the depths of thy power to do4 ,thou climbest the sunbeams of knowledge up towards heaven--but also down to ,chaos4 ,thy manner of going is fatal to thee2 the ground slips from under thy feet into the unknown2 thy life has no other stay1 but only spider's webs that every new stroke of thy knowledge tears asunder4--,but not another serious word about this1 for there is a lighter side to it all4 ,the moralist1 the artist1 the saint and the statesman may well be troubled1 when they see that all foundations are breaking up in mad unconscious ruin1 and resolving themselves into the ever flowing stream of becoming2 that all creation is being tirelessly spun into webs of history by the modern man1 the great spider in the mesh of the world-net4 ,we ourselves may be glad for once in a way that we see it all in the shining magic mirror of a philosophical parodist1 in whose brain the time has come to an ironical consciousness of itself1 to a point even of wickedness1 in ,goethe's phrase4 ,hegel once said1 when the spirit makes a fresh start1 we philosophers are at hand4 ,our time did make a fresh start--into irony1 and lo6 ,edward von ,hartmann was at hand1 with his famous ,philosophy of the ,unconscious--or1 more plainly1 his philosophy of unconscious irony4 ,we have seldom read a more jovial production1 a greater philosophical joke than ,hartmann's book4 ,any one whom it does not fully enlighten about becoming1 who is not swept and garnished throughout by it1 is ready to become a monument of the past himself4 ,the beginning and end of the world-process1 from the first throb of consciousness to its final leap into nothingness1 with the task of our generation settled for it2--all drawn from that clever fount of inspiration1 the ,unconscious1 and glittering in ,apocalyptic light1 imitating an honest seriousness to the life1 as if it were a serious philosophy and not a huge joke1--such a system shows its creator to be one of the first philosophical parodists of all time4 ,let us then sacrifice on his altar1 and offer the inventor of a true universal medicine a lock of hair1 in ,schleiermacher's phrase4 ,for what medicine would be more salutary to combat the excess of historical culture than ,hartmann's parody of the world's history8 ,if we wished to express in the fewest words what ,hartmann really has to tell us from his mephitic tripod of unconscious irony1 it would be something like this3 our time could only remain as it is1 if men should become thoroughly sick of this existence4 ,and ,i fervently believe he is right4 ,the frightful petrifaction of the time1 the restless rattle of the ghostly bones1 held navely up to us by ,david ,strauss as the most beautiful fact of all--is justified by ,hartmann not only from the past1 ex causis efficientibus1 but also from the future1 ex causa finali4 ,the rogue let light stream over our time from the last day1 and saw that it was very good1--for him1 that is1 who wishes to feel the indigestibility of life at its full strength1 and for whom the last day cannot come quickly enough4 ,true1 ,hartmann calls the old age of life that mankind is approaching the old age of man3 but that is the blessed state1 according to him1 where there is only a successful mediocrity2 where art is the evening's amusement of the ,berlin financier1 and the time has no more need for geniuses1 either because it would be casting pearls before swine1 or because the time has advanced beyond the stage where the geniuses are found1 to one more important1 to that stage of social evolution1 in fact1 in which every worker leads a comfortable existence1 with hours of work that leave him sufficient leisure to cultivate his intellect4 ,rogue of rogues1 you say well what is the aspiration of present-day mankind3 but you know too what a spectre of disgust will arise at the end of this old age of mankind1 as the result of the intellectual culture of stolid mediocrity4 ,it is very pitiful to see1 but it will be still more pitiful yet4 ,antichrist is visibly extending his arms3 yet it must be so1 for after all we are on the right road--of disgust at all existence4 ,forward then1 boldly1 with the world-process1 as workers in the vineyard of the ,lord1 for it is the process alone that can lead to redemption6 ,the vineyard of the ,lord6 ,the process6 ,to redemption6 ,who does not see and hear in this how historical culture1 that only knows the word becoming1 parodies itself on purpose and says the most irresponsible things about itself through its grotesque mask8 ,for what does the rogue mean by this cry to the workers in the vineyard8 ,by what work are they to strive boldly forward8 ,or1 to ask another question3--what further has the historically educated fanatic of the world-process to do1--swimming and drowning as he is in the sea of becoming1--that he may at last gather in that vintage of disgust1 the precious grape of the vineyard8 ,he has nothing to do but to live on as he has lived1 love what he has loved1 hate what he has hated1 and read the newspapers he has always read4 ,the only sin is for him to live otherwise than he has lived4 ,we are told how he has lived1 with monumental clearness1 by that famous page with its large typed sentences1 on which the whole rabble of our modern cultured folk have thrown themselves in blind ecstasy1 because they believe they read their own justification there1 haloed with an ,apocalyptic light4 ,for the unconscious parodist has demanded of every one of them1 the full surrender of his personality to the world-process1 for the sake of his end1 the redemption of the world3 or still more clearly1--the assertion of the will to live is proclaimed to be the first step on the right road3 for it is only in the full surrender to life and its sorrow1 and not in the cowardice of personal renunciation and retreat1 that anything can be done for the world-process4444 ,the striving for the denial of the individual will is as foolish as it is useless1 more foolish even than suicide4444 ,the thoughtful reader will understand without further explanation how a practical philosophy can be erected on these principles1 and that such a philosophy cannot endure any disunion1 but only the fullest reconciliation with life4 ,the thoughtful reader will understand6 ,then one really could misunderstand ,hartmann6 ,and what a splendid joke it is1 that he should be misunderstood6 ,why should the ,germans of to-day be particularly subtle8 ,a valiant ,englishman looks in vain for delicacy of perception and dares to say that in the ,german mind there does seem to be something splay1 something blunt-edged1 unhandy and infelicitous4 ,could the great ,german parodist contradict this8 ,according to him1 we are approaching that ideal condition in which the human race makes its history with full consciousness3 but we are obviously far from the perhaps more ideal condition1 in which mankind can read ,hartmann's book with full consciousness4 ,if we once reach it1 the word world-process will never pass any man's lips again without a smile4 ,for he will remember the time when people listened to the mock gospel of ,hartmann1 sucked it in1 attacked it1 reverenced it1 extended it and canonised it with all the honesty of that ,german mind1 with the uncanny seriousness of an owl1 as ,goethe has it4 ,but the world must go forward1 the ideal condition cannot be won by dreaming1 it must be fought and wrestled for1 and the way to redemption lies only through joyousness1 the way to redemption from that dull1 owlish seriousness4 ,the time will come when we shall wisely keep away from all constructions of the world-process1 or even of the history of man2 a time when we shall no more look at masses but at individuals1 who form a sort of bridge over the wan stream of becoming4 ,they may not perhaps continue a process1 but they live out of time1 as contemporaries3 and thanks to history that permits such a company1 they live as the ,republic of geniuses of which ,schopenhauer speaks4 ,one giant calls to the other across the waste spaces of time1 and the high spirit-talk goes on1 undisturbed by the wanton noisy dwarfs who creep among them4 ,the task of history is to be the mediator between these1 and even to give the motive and power to produce the great man4 ,the aim of mankind can lie ultimately only in its highest examples4 ,our low comedian has his word on this too1 with his wonderful dialectic1 which is just as genuine as its admirers are admirable4 ,the idea of evolution cannot stand with our giving the world-process an endless duration in the past1 for thus every conceivable evolution must have taken place1 which is not the case 7,o rogue672 and so we cannot allow the process an endless duration in the future4 ,both would raise the conception of evolution to a mere ideal 7,and again rogue671 and would make the world-process like the sieve of the ,danaides4 ,the complete victory of the logical over the illogical 7,o thou complete rogue67 must coincide with the last day1 the end in time of the world-process4 ,no1 thou clear1 scornful spirit1 so long as the illogical rules as it does to-day1--so long1 for example1 as the world-process can be spoken of as thou speakest of it1 amid such deep-throated assent1--the last day is yet far off4 ,for it is still too joyful on this earth1 many an illusion still blooms here--like the illusion of thy contemporaries about thee4 ,we are not yet ripe to be hurled into thy nothingness3 for we believe that we shall have a still more splendid time1 when men once begin to understand thee1 thou misunderstood1 unconscious one6 ,but if1 in spite of that1 disgust shall come throned in power1 as thou hast prophesied to thy readers2 if thy portrayal of the present and the future shall prove to be right1--and no one has despised them with such loathing as thou1--,i am ready then to cry with the majority in the form prescribed by thee1 that next ,saturday evening1 punctually at twelve o'clock1 thy world shall fall to pieces4 ,and our decree shall conclude thus--from to-morrow time shall not exist1 and the ,times shall no more be published4 ,perhaps it will be in vain1 and our decree of no avail3 at any rate we have still time for a fine experiment4 ,take a balance and put ,hartmann's ,unconscious in one of the scales1 and his ,world-process in the other4 ,there are some who believe they weigh equally2 for in each scale there is an evil word--and a good joke4 ,when they are once understood1 no one will take ,hartmann's words on the world-process as anything but a joke4 ,it is1 as a fact1 high time to move forward with the whole battalion of satire and malice against the excesses of the historical sense1 the wanton love of the world-process at the expense of life and existence1 the blind confusion of all perspective4 ,and it will be to the credit of the philosopher of the ,unconscious that he has been the first to see the humour of the world-process1 and to succeed in making others see it still more strongly by the extraordinary seriousness of his presentation4 ,the existence of the world and humanity need not trouble us for some time1 except to provide us with a good joke3 for the presumption of the small earthworm is the most uproariously comic thing on the face of the earth4 ,ask thyself to what end thou art here1 as an individual2 and if no one can tell thee1 try then to justify the meaning of thy existence a posteriori1 by putting before thyself a high and noble end4 ,perish on that rock6 ,i know no better aim for life than to be broken on something great and impossible1 anim magn prodigus4 ,but if we have the doctrines of the finality of becoming1 of the flux of all ideas1 types1 and species1 of the lack of all radical difference between man and beast 7a true but fatal idea as ,i think71--if we have these thrust on the people in the usual mad way for another generation1 no one need be surprised if that people drown on its little miserable shoals of egoism1 and petrify in its self-seeking4 ,at first it will fall asunder and cease to be a people4 ,in its place perhaps individualist systems1 secret societies for the extermination of non-members1 and similar utilitarian creations1 will appear on the theatre of the future4 ,are we to continue to work for these creations and write history from the standpoint of the masses2 to look for laws in it1 to be deduced from the needs of the masses1 the laws of motion of the lowest loam and clay strata of society8 ,the masses seem to be worth notice in three aspects only3 first as the copies of great men1 printed on bad paper from worn-out plates1 next as a contrast to the great men1 and lastly as their tools3 for the rest1 let the devil and statistics fly away with them6 ,how could statistics prove that there are laws in history8 ,laws8 ,yes1 they may prove how common and abominably uniform the masses are3 and should we call the effects of leaden folly1 imitation1 love and hunger--laws8 ,we may admit it3 but we are sure of this too--that so far as there are laws in history1 the laws are of no value and the history of no value either4 ,and least valuable of all is that kind of history which takes the great popular movements as the most important events of the past1 and regards the great men only as their clearest expression1 the visible bubbles on the stream4 ,thus the masses have to produce the great man1 chaos to bring forth order2 and finally all the hymns are naturally sung to the teeming chaos4 ,everything is called great that has moved the masses for some long time1 and becomes1 as they say1 a historical power4 ,but is not this really an intentional confusion of quantity and quality8 ,when the brutish mob have found some idea1 a religious idea for example1 which satisfies them1 when they have defended it through thick and thin for centuries then1 and then only1 will they discover its inventor to have been a great man4 ,the highest and noblest does not affect the masses at all4 ,the historical consequences of ,christianity1 its historical power1 toughness and persistence prove nothing1 fortunately1 as to its founder's greatness1 ,they would have been a witness against him4 ,for between him and the historical success of ,christianity lies a dark heavy weight of passion and error1 lust of power and honour1 and the crushing force of the ,roman ,empire4 ,from this1 ,christianity had its earthly taste1 and its earthly foundations too1 that made its continuance in this world possible4 ,greatness should not depend on success2 ,demosthenes is great without it4 ,the purest and noblest adherents of ,christianity have always doubted and hindered1 rather than helped1 its effect in the world1 its so-called historical power2 for they were accustomed to stand outside the world1 and cared little for the process of the ,christian ,idea4 ,hence they have generally remained unknown to history1 and their very names are lost4 ,in ,christian terms the devil is the prince of the world1 and the lord of progress and consequence3 he is the power behind all historical power1 and so will it remain1 however ill it may sound to-day in ears that are accustomed to canonise such power and consequence4 ,the world has become skilled at giving new names to things and even baptizing the devil4 ,it is truly an hour of great danger4 ,men seem to be near the discovery that the egoism of individuals1 groups or masses has been at all times the lever of the historical movements3 and yet they are in no way disturbed by the discovery1 but proclaim that egoism shall be our god4 ,with this new faith in their hearts1 they begin quite intentionally to build future history on egoism3 though it must be a clever egoism1 one that allows of some limitation1 that it may stand firmer2 one that studies history for the purpose of recognising the foolish kind of egoism4 ,their study has taught them that the state has a special mission in all future egoistic systems3 it will be the patron of all the clever egoisms1 to protect them with all the power of its military and police against the dangerous outbreaks of the other kind4 ,there is the same idea in introducing history--natural as well as human history--among the labouring classes1 whose folly makes them dangerous4 ,for men know well that a grain of historical culture is able to break down the rough1 blind instincts and desires1 or to turn them to the service of a clever egoism4 ,in fact they are beginning to think1 with ,edward von ,hartmann1 of fixing themselves with an eye to the future in their earthly home1 and making themselves comfortable there4 ,hartmann calls this life the manhood of humanity with an ironical reference to what is now called manhood2--as if only our sober models of selfishness were embraced by it2 just as he prophesies an age of graybeards following on this stage1--obviously another ironical glance at our ancient time-servers4 ,for he speaks of the ripe discretion with which they view all the stormy passions of their past life and understand the vanity of the ends they seem to have striven for4 ,no1 a manhood of crafty and historically cultured egoism corresponds to an old age that hangs to life with no dignity but a horrible tenacity1 where the last scene of all ,that ends this strange eventful history1 ,is second childishness and mere oblivion1 ,sans teeth1 sans eyes1 sans taste1 sans everything4 ,whether the dangers of our life and culture come from these dreary1 toothless old men1 or from the so-called men of ,hartmann1 we have the right to defend our youth with tooth and claw against both of them1 and never tire of saving the future from these false prophets4 ,but in this battle we shall discover an unpleasant truth--that men intentionally help1 and encourage1 and use1 the worst aberrations of the historical sense from which the present time suffers4 ,they use it1 however1 against youth1 in order to transform it into that ripe egoism of manhood they so long for3 they use it to overcome the natural reluctance of the young by its magical splendour1 which unmans while it enlightens them4 ,yes1 we know only too well the kind of ascendency history can gain2 how it can uproot the strongest instincts of youth1 passion1 courage1 unselfishness and love2 can cool its feeling for justice1 can crush or repress its desire for a slow ripening by the contrary desire to be soon productive1 ready and useful2 and cast a sick doubt over all honesty and downrightness of feeling4 ,it can even cozen youth of its fairest privilege1 the power of planting a great thought with the fullest confidence1 and letting it grow of itself to a still greater thought4 ,an excess of history can do all that1 as we have seen1 by no longer allowing a man to feel and act unhistorically3 for history is continually shifting his horizon and removing the atmosphere surrounding him4 ,from an infinite horizon he withdraws into himself1 back into the small egoistic circle1 where he must become dry and withered3 he may possibly attain to cleverness1 but never to wisdom4 ,he lets himself be talked over1 is always calculating and parleying with facts4 ,he is never enthusiastic1 but blinks his eyes1 and understands how to look for his own profit or his party's in the profit or loss of somebody else4 ,he unlearns all his useless modesty1 and turns little by little into the man or the graybeard of ,hartmann4 ,and that is what they want him to be3 that is the meaning of the present cynical demand for the full surrender of the personality to the world-process--for the sake of his end1 the redemption of the world1 as the rogue ,e4 von ,hartmann tells us4 ,though redemption can scarcely be the conscious aim of these people3 the world were better redeemed by being redeemed from these men and graybeards4 ,for then would come the reign of youth4 ,x4 ,and in this kingdom of youth ,i can cry ,land6 ,land6 ,enough1 and more than enough1 of the wild voyage over dark strange seas1 of eternal search and eternal disappointment6 ,the coast is at last in sight4 ,whatever it be1 we must land there1 and the worst haven is better than tossing again in the hopeless waves of an infinite scepticism4 ,let us hold fast by the land3 we shall find the good harbours later and make the voyage easier for those who come after us4 ,the voyage was dangerous and exciting4 ,how far are we even now from that quiet state of contemplation with which we first saw our ship launched6 ,in tracking out the dangers of history1 we have found ourselves especially exposed to them4 ,we carry on us the marks of that sorrow which an excess of history brings in its train to the men of the modern time4 ,and this present treatise1 as ,i will not attempt to deny1 shows the modern note of a weak personality in the intemperateness of its criticism1 the unripeness of its humanity1 in the too frequent transitions from irony to cynicism1 from arrogance to scepticism4 ,and yet ,i trust in the inspiring power that directs my vessel instead of genius2 ,i trust in youth1 that has brought me on the right road in forcing from me a protest against the modern historical education1 and a demand that the man must learn to live1 above all1 and only use history in the service of the life that he has learned to live4 ,he must be young to understand this protest2 and considering the premature grayness of our present youth1 he can scarcely be young enough if he would understand its reason as well4 ,an example will help me4 ,in ,germany1 not more than a century ago1 a natural instinct for what is called poetry was awakened in some young men4 ,are we to think that the generations who had lived before that time had not spoken of the art1 however really strange and unnatural it may have been to them8 ,we know the contrary2 that they had thought1 written1 and quarrelled about it with all their might--in words1 words1 words4 ,giving life to such words did not prove the death of the word-makers2 in a certain sense they are living still4 ,for if1 as ,gibbon says1 nothing but time--though a long time--is needed for a world to perish1 so nothing but time--though still more time--is needed for a false idea to be destroyed in ,germany1 the ,land of ,little-by-little4 ,in any event1 there are perhaps a hundred men more now than there were a century ago who know what poetry is3 perhaps in another century there will be a hundred more who have learned in the meantime what culture is1 and that the ,germans have had as yet no culture1 however proudly they may talk about it4 ,the general satisfaction of the ,germans at their culture will seem as foolish and incredible to such men as the once lauded classicism of ,gottsched1 or the reputation of ,ramler as the ,german ,pindar1 seemed to us4 ,they will perhaps think this culture to be merely a kind of knowledge about culture1 and a false and superficial knowledge at that4 ,false and superficial1 because the ,germans endured the contradiction between life and knowledge1 and did not see what was characteristic in the culture of really educated peoples1 that it can only rise and bloom from life4 ,but by the ,germans it is worn like a paper flower1 or spread over like the icing on a cake2 and so must remain a useless lie for ever4 ,the education of youth in ,germany starts from this false and unfruitful idea of culture4 ,its aim1 when faced squarely1 is not to form the liberally educated man1 but the professor1 the man of science1 who wants to be able to make use of his science as soon as possible1 and stands on one side in order to see life clearly4 ,the result1 even from a ruthlessly practical point of view1 is the historically and sthetically trained ,philistine1 the babbler of old saws and new wisdom on ,church1 ,state and ,art1 the sensorium that receives a thousand impressions1 the insatiable belly that yet knows not what true hunger and thirst is4 ,an education with such an aim and result is against nature4 ,but only he who is not quite drowned in it can feel that2 only youth can feel it1 because it still has the instinct of nature1 that is the first to be broken by that education4 ,but he who will break through that education in his turn1 must come to the help of youth when called upon2 must let the clear light of understanding shine on its unconscious striving1 and bring it to a full1 vocal consciousness4 ,how is he to attain such a strange end8 ,principally by destroying the superstition that this kind of education is necessary4 ,people think nothing but this troublesome reality of ours is possible4 ,look through the literature of higher education in school and college for the last ten years1 and you will be astonished--and pained--to find how much alike all the proposals of reform have been2 in spite of all the hesitations and violent controversies surrounding them4 ,you will see how blindly they have all adopted the old idea of the educated man 7in our sense7 being the necessary and reasonable basis of the system4 ,the monotonous canon runs thus3 the young man must begin with a knowledge of culture1 not even with a knowledge of life1 still less with life and the living of it4 ,this knowledge of culture is forced into the young mind in the form of historical knowledge2 which means that his head is filled with an enormous mass of ideas1 taken second-hand from past times and peoples1 not from immediate contact with life4 ,he desires to experience something for himself1 and feel a close-knit1 living system of experiences growing within himself4 ,but his desire is drowned and dizzied in the sea of shams1 as if it were possible to sum up in a few years the highest and notablest experiences of ancient times1 and the greatest times too4 ,it is the same mad method that carries our young artists off to picture-galleries1 instead of the studio of a master1 and above all the one studio of the only master1 ,nature4 ,as if one could discover by a hasty rush through history the ideas and technique of past times1 and their individual outlook on life6 ,for life itself is a kind of handicraft that must be learned thoroughly and industriously1 and diligently practised1 if we are not to have mere botchers and babblers as the issue of it all6 ,plato thought it necessary for the first generation of his new society 7in the perfect state7 to be brought up with the help of a mighty lie4 ,the children were to be taught to believe that they had all lain dreaming for a long time under the earth1 where they had been moulded and formed by the master-hand of ,nature4 ,it was impossible to go against the past1 and work against the work of gods6 ,and so it had to be an unbreakable law of nature1 that he who is born to be a philosopher has gold in his body1 the fighter has only silver1 and the workman iron and bronze4 ,as it is not possible to blend these metals1 according to ,plato1 so there could never be any confusion between the classes3 the belief in the terna veritas of this arrangement was the basis of the new education and the new state4 ,so the modern ,german believes also in the terna veritas of his education1 of his kind of culture3 and yet this belief will fail--as the ,platonic state would have failed--if the mighty ,german lie be ever opposed by the truth1 that the ,german has no culture because he cannot build one on the basis of his education4 ,he wishes for the flower without the root or the stalk2 and so he wishes in vain4 ,that is the simple truth1 a rude and unpleasant truth1 but yet a mighty one4 ,but our first generation must be brought up in this mighty truth1 and must suffer from it too2 for it must educate itself through it1 even against its own nature1 to attain a new nature and manner of life1 which shall yet proceed from the old4 ,so it might say to itself1 in the old ,spanish phrase1 ,defienda me ,dios de my1 ,god keep me from myself1 from the character1 that is1 which has been put into me4 ,it must taste that truth drop by drop1 like a bitter1 powerful medicine4 ,and every man in this generation must subdue himself to pass the judgment on his own nature1 which he might pass more easily on his whole time3--,we are without instruction1 nay1 we are too corrupt to live1 to see and hear truly and simply1 to understand what is near and natural to us4 ,we have not yet laid even the foundations of culture1 for we are not ourselves convinced that we have a sincere life in us4 ,we crumble and fall asunder1 our whole being is divided1 half mechanically1 into an inner and outer side2 we are sown with ideas as with dragon's teeth1 and bring forth a new dragon-brood of them2 we suffer from the malady of words1 and have no trust in any feeling that is not stamped with its special word4 ,and being such a dead fabric of words and ideas1 that yet has an uncanny movement in it1 ,i have still perhaps the right to say cogito ergo sum1 though not vivo ergo cogito4 ,i am permitted the empty esse1 not the full green vivere4 ,a primary feeling tells me that ,i am a thinking being but not a living one1 that ,i am no animal1 but at most a cogital4 ,give me life1 and ,i will soon make you a culture out of it--will be the cry of every man in this new generation1 and they will all know each other by this cry4 ,but who will give them this life8 ,no god and no man will give it--only their own youth4 ,set this free1 and you will set life free as well4 ,for it only lay concealed1 in a prison2 it is not yet withered or dead--ask your own selves6 ,but it is sick1 this life that is set free1 and must be healed4 ,it suffers from many diseases1 and not only from the memory of its chains4 ,it suffers from the malady which ,i have spoken of1 the malady of history4 ,excess of history has attacked the plastic power of life1 that no more understands how to use the past as a means of strength and nourishment4 ,it is a fearful disease1 and yet1 if youth had not a natural gift for clear vision1 no one would see that it is a disease1 and that a paradise of health has been lost4 ,but the same youth1 with that same natural instinct of health1 has guessed how the paradise can be regained4 ,it knows the magic herbs and simples for the malady of history1 and the excess of it4 ,and what are they called8 ,it is no marvel that they bear the names of poisons3--the antidotes to history are the unhistorical and the super-historical4 ,with these names we return to the beginning of our inquiry and draw near to its final close4 ,by the word unhistorical ,i mean the power1 the art of forgetting1 and of drawing a limited horizon round one's self4 ,i call the power super-historical which turns the eyes from the process of becoming to that which gives existence an eternal and stable character1 to art and religion4 ,science--for it is science that makes us speak of poisons--sees in these powers contrary powers3 for it considers only that view of things to be true and right1 and therefore scientific1 which regards something as finished and historical1 not as continuing and eternal4 ,thus it lives in a deep antagonism towards the powers that make for eternity--art and religion1--for it hates the forgetfulness that is the death of knowledge1 and tries to remove all limitation of horizon and cast men into an infinite boundless sea1 whose waves are bright with the clear knowledge--of becoming6 ,if they could only live therein6 ,just as towns are shaken by an avalanche and become desolate1 and man builds his house there in fear and for a season only2 so life is broken in sunder and becomes weak and spiritless1 if the avalanche of ideas started by science take from man the foundation of his rest and security1 the belief in what is stable and eternal4 ,must life dominate knowledge1 or knowledge life8 ,which of the two is the higher1 and decisive power8 ,there is no room for doubt3 life is the higher1 and the dominating power1 for the knowledge that annihilated life would be itself annihilated too4 ,knowledge presupposes life1 and has the same interest in maintaining it that every creature has in its own preservation4 ,science needs very careful watching3 there is a hygiene of life near the volumes of science1 and one of its sentences runs thus3--,the unhistorical and the super-historical are the natural antidotes against the overpowering of life by history2 they are the cures for the historical disease4 ,we who are sick of the disease may suffer a little from the antidote4 ,but this is no proof that the treatment we have chosen is wrong4 ,and here ,i see the mission of the youth that forms the first generation of fighters and dragon-slayers3 it will bring a more beautiful and blessed humanity and culture1 but will have itself no more than a glimpse of the promised land of happiness and wondrous beauty4 ,this youth will suffer both from the malady and its antidotes3 and yet it believes in strength and health and boasts a nature closer to the great ,nature than its forebears1 the cultured men and graybeards of the present4 ,but its mission is to shake to their foundations the present conceptions of health and culture1 and erect hatred and scorn in the place of this rococo mass of ideas4 ,and the clearest sign of its own strength and health is just the fact that it can use no idea1 no party-cry from the present-day mint of words and ideas to symbolise its own existence3 but only claims conviction from the power in it that acts and fights1 breaks up and destroys2 and from an ever heightened feeling of life when the hour strikes4 ,you may deny this youth any culture--but how would youth count that a reproach8 ,you may speak of its rawness and intemperateness--but it is not yet old and wise enough to be acquiescent4 ,it need not pretend to a ready-made culture at all2 but enjoys all the rights--and the consolations--of youth1 especially the right of brave unthinking honesty and the consolation of an inspiring hope4 ,i know that such hopeful beings understand all these truisms from within1 and can translate them into a doctrine for their own use1 through their personal experience4 ,to the others there will appear1 in the meantime1 nothing but a row of covered dishes1 that may perhaps seem empty3 until they see one day with astonished eyes that the dishes are full1 and that all ideas and impulses and passions are massed together in these truisms that cannot lie covered for long4 ,i leave those doubting ones to time1 that brings all things to light2 and turn at last to that great company of hope1 to tell them the way and the course of their salvation1 their rescue from the disease of history1 and their own history as well1 in a parable2 whereby they may again become healthy enough to study history anew1 and under the guidance of life make use of the past in that threefold way--monumental1 antiquarian1 or critical4 ,at first they will be more ignorant than the educated men of the present3 for they will have unlearnt much and have lost any desire even to discover what those educated men especially wish to know3 in fact1 their chief mark from the educated point of view will be just their want of science2 their indifference and inaccessibility to all the good and famous things4 ,but at the end of the cure1 they are men again and have ceased to be mere shadows of humanity4 ,that is something2 there is yet hope1 and do not ye who hope laugh in your hearts8 ,how can we reach that end8 you will ask4 ,the ,delphian god cries his oracle to you at the beginning of your wanderings1 ,know thyself4 ,it is a hard saying3 for that god tells nothing and conceals nothing but merely points the way1 as ,heraclitus said4 ,but whither does he point8 ,in certain epochs the ,greeks were in a similar danger of being overwhelmed by what was past and foreign1 and perishing on the rock of history4 ,they never lived proud and untouched4 ,their culture was for a long time a chaos of foreign forms and ideas1--,semitic1 ,babylonian1 ,lydian and ,egyptian1--and their religion a battle of all the gods of the ,east2 just as ,german culture and religion is at present a death-struggle of all foreign nations and bygone times4 ,and yet1 ,hellenic culture was no mere mechanical unity1 thanks to that ,delphic oracle4 ,the ,greeks gradually learned to organise the chaos1 by taking ,apollo's advice and thinking back to themselves1 to their own true necessities1 and letting all the sham necessities go4 ,thus they again came into possession of themselves1 and did not remain long the ,epigoni of the whole ,east1 burdened with their inheritance4 ,after that hard fight1 they increased and enriched the treasure they had inherited by their obedience to the oracle1 and they became the ancestors and models for all the cultured nations of the future4 ,this is a parable for each one of us3 he must organise the chaos in himself by thinking himself back to his true needs4 ,he will want all his honesty1 all the sturdiness and sincerity in his character to help him to revolt against second-hand thought1 second-hand learning1 second-hand action4 ,and he will begin then to understand that culture can be something more than a decoration of life--a concealment and disfiguring of it1 in other words2 for all adornment hides what is adorned4 ,and thus the ,greek idea1 as against the ,roman1 will be discovered in him1 the idea of culture as a new and finer nature1 without distinction of inner and outer1 without convention or disguise1 as a unity of thought and will1 life and appearance4 ,he will learn too1 from his own experience1 that it was by a greater force of moral character that the ,greeks were victorious1 and that everything which makes for sincerity is a further step towards true culture1 however this sincerity may harm the ideals of education that are reverenced at the time1 or even have power to shatter a whole system of merely decorative culture4 ,,schopenhauer ,,as ,,educator4 ,i4 ,when the traveller1 who had seen many countries and nations and continents1 was asked what common attribute he had found everywhere existing among men1 he answered1 ,they have a tendency to sloth4 ,many may think that the fuller truth would have been1 ,they are all timid4 ,they hide themselves behind manners and opinions4 ,at bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being1 only once on this earth2 and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is1 ever be put together a second time4 ,he knows this1 but hides it like an evil conscience2--and why8 ,from fear of his neighbour1 who looks for the latest conventionalities in him1 and is wrapped up in them himself4 ,but what is it that forces the man to fear his neighbour1 to think and act with his herd1 and not seek his own joy8 ,shyness perhaps1 in a few rare cases1 but in the majority it is idleness1 the taking things easily1 in a word the tendency to sloth1 of which the traveller spoke4 ,he was right2 men are more slothful than timid1 and their greatest fear is of the burdens that an uncompromising honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them4 ,it is only the artists who hate this lazy wandering in borrowed manners and ill-fitting opinions1 and discover the secret of the evil conscience1 the truth that each human being is a unique marvel4 ,they show us1 how in every little movement of his muscles the man is an individual self1 and further--as an analytical deduction from his individuality-- a beautiful and interesting object1 a new and incredible phenomenon 7as is every work of nature71 that can never become tedious4 ,if the great thinker despise mankind1 it is for their laziness2 they seem mere indifferent bits of pottery1 not worth any commerce or improvement4 ,the man who will not belong to the general mass1 has only to stop taking himself easily2 to follow his conscience1 which cries out to him1 ,be thyself6 all that thou doest and thinkest and desirest1 is not--thyself6 ,every youthful soul hears this cry day and night1 and quivers to hear it3 for she divines the sum of happiness that has been from eternity destined for her1 if she think of her true deliverance2 and towards this happiness she can in no wise be helped1 so long as she lies in the chains of ,opinion and of ,fear4 ,and how comfortless and unmeaning may life become without this deliverance6 ,there is no more desolate or ,ishmaelitish creature in nature than the man who has broken away from his true genius1 and does nothing but peer aimlessly about him4 ,there is no reason to attack such a man at all1 for he is a mere husk without a kernel1 a painted cloth1 tattered and sagging1 a scarecrow ghost1 that can rouse no fear1 and certainly no pity4 ,and though one be right in saying of a sluggard that he is killing time1 yet in respect of an age that rests its salvation on public opinion1--that is1 on private laziness1--one must be quite determined that such a time shall be killed1 once and for all3 ,i mean that it shall be blotted from life's true ,history of ,liberty4 ,later generations will be greatly disgusted1 when they come to treat the movements of a period in which no living men ruled1 but shadow-men on the screen of public opinion2 and to some far posterity our age may well be the darkest chapter of history1 the most unknown because the least human4 ,i have walked through the new streets of our cities1 and thought how of all the dreadful houses that these gentlemen with their public opinion have built for themselves1 not a stone will remain in a hundred years1 and that the opinions of these busy masons may well have fallen with them4 ,but how full of hope should they all be who feel that they are no citizens of this age6 ,if they were1 they would have to help on the work of killing their time1 and of perishing with it1--when they wish rather to quicken the time to life1 and in that life themselves to live4 ,but even if the future leave us nothing to hope for1 the wonderful fact of our existing at this present moment of time gives us the greatest encouragement to live after our own rule and measure2 so inexplicable is it1 that we should be living just to-day1 though there have been an infinity of time wherein we might have arisen2 that we own nothing but a span's length of it1 this to-day1 and must show in it wherefore and whereunto we have arisen4 ,we have to answer for our existence to ourselves2 and will therefore be our own true pilots1 and not admit that our being resembles a blind fortuity4 ,one must take a rather impudent and reckless way with the riddle2 especially as the key is apt to be lost1 however things turn out4 ,why cling to your bit of earth1 or your little business1 or listen to what your neighbour says8 ,it is so provincial to bind oneself to views which are no longer binding a couple of hundred miles away4 ,east and ,west are signs that somebody chalks up in front of us to fool such cowards as we are4 ,i will make the attempt to gain freedom1 says the youthful soul2 and will be hindered1 just because two nations happen to hate each other and go to war1 or because there is a sea between two parts of the earth1 or a religion is taught in the vicinity1 which did not exist two thousand years ago4 ,and this is not--thyself1 the soul says4 ,no one can build thee the bridge1 over which thou must cross the river of life1 save thyself alone4 ,there are paths and bridges and demi-gods without number1 that will gladly carry thee over1 but only at the price of thine own self3 thy self wouldst thou have to give in pawn1 and then lose it4 ,there is in the world one road whereon none may go1 except thou3 ask not whither it lead1 but go forward4 ,who was it that spake that true word--',a man has never risen higher than when he knoweth not whither his road may yet lead him'8 ,but how can we find ourselves again1 and how can man know himself8 ,he is a thing obscure and veiled3 if the hare have seven skins1 man can cast from him seventy times seven1 and yet will not be able to say ,here art thou in very truth2 this is outer shell no more4 ,also this digging into one's self1 this straight1 violent descent into the pit of one's being1 is a troublesome and dangerous business to start4 ,a man may easily take such hurt1 that no physician can heal him4 ,and again1 what were the use1 since everything bears witness to our essence1--our friendships and enmities1 our looks and greetings1 our memories and forgetfulnesses1 our books and our writing6 ,this is the most effective way3--to let the youthful soul look back on life with the question1 ,what hast thou up to now truly loved1 what has drawn thy soul upward1 mastered it and blessed it too8 ,set up these things that thou hast honoured before thee1 and1 maybe1 they will show thee1 in their being and their order1 a law which is the fundamental law of thine own self4 ,compare these objects1 consider how one completes and broadens and transcends and explains another1 how they form a ladder on which thou hast all the time been climbing to thy self3 for thy true being lies not deeply hidden in thee1 but an infinite height above thee1 or at least above that which thou dost commonly take to be thyself4 ,the true educators and moulders reveal to thee the real groundwork and import of thy being1 something that in itself cannot be moulded or educated1 but is anyhow difficult of approach1 bound and crippled3 thy educators can be nothing but thy deliverers4 ,and that is the secret of all culture3 it does not give artificial limbs1 wax noses1 or spectacles for the eyes--a thing that could buy such gifts is but the base coin of education4 ,but it is rather a liberation1 a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and vermin that attack the delicate shoots1 the streaming forth of light and warmth1 the tender dropping of the night rain2 it is the following and the adoring of ,nature when she is pitifully-minded as a mother2--her completion1 when it bends before her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to good1 and draws a veil over all expression of her tragic unreason--for she is a step-mother too1 sometimes4 ,there are other means of finding ourselves1 of coming to ourselves out of the confusion wherein we all wander as in a dreary cloud2 but ,i know none better than to think on our educators4 ,so ,i will to-day take as my theme the hard teacher ,arthur ,schopenhauer1 and speak of others later4 ,,ii4 ,in order to describe properly what an event my first look into ,schopenhauer's writings was for me1 ,i must dwell for a minute on an idea1 that recurred more constantly in my youth1 and touched me more nearly1 than any other4 ,i wandered then as ,i pleased in a world of wishes1 and thought that destiny would relieve me of the dreadful and wearisome duty of educating myself3 some philosopher would come at the right moment to do it for me1--some true philosopher1 who could be obeyed without further question1 as he would be trusted more than one's self4 ,then ,i said within me3 ,what would be the principles1 on which he might teach thee8 ,and ,i pondered in my mind what he would say to the two maxims of education that hold the field in our time4 ,the first demands that the teacher should find out at once the strong point in his pupil1 and then direct all his skill and will1 all the moisture and all the sunshine1 to bring the fruit of that single virtue to maturity4 ,the second requires him to raise to a higher power all the qualities that already exist1 cherish them and bring them into a harmonious relation4 ,but1 we may ask1 should one who has a decided talent for working in gold be made for that reason to learn music8 ,and can we admit that ,benvenuto ,cellini's father was right in continually forcing him back to the dear little horn--the cursed piping1 as his son called it8 ,we cannot think so in the case of such a strong and clearly marked talent as his1 and it may well be that this maxim of harmonious development applies only to weaker natures1 in which there is a whole swarm of desires and inclinations1 though they may not amount to very much1 singly or together4 ,on the other hand1 where do we find such a blending of harmonious voices--nay1 the soul of harmony itself--as we see in natures like ,cellini's1 where everything--knowledge1 desire1 love and hate--tends towards a single point1 the root of all1 and a harmonious system1 the resultant of the various forces1 is built up through the irresistible domination of this vital centre8 ,and so perhaps the two maxims are not contrary at all2 the one merely saying that man must have a centre1 the other1 a circumference as well4 ,the philosophic teacher of my dream would not only discover the central force1 but would know how to prevent its being destructive of the other powers3 his task1 ,i thought1 would be the welding of the whole man into a solar system with life and movement1 and the discovery of its paraphysical laws4 ,in the meantime ,i could not find my philosopher1 however ,i tried2 ,i saw how badly we moderns compare with the ,greeks and ,romans1 even in the serious study of educational problems4 ,you can go through all ,germany1 and especially all the universities1 with this need in your heart1 and will not find what you seek2 many humbler wishes than that are still unfulfilled there4 ,for example1 if a ,german seriously wish to make himself an orator1 or to enter a school for authors1 he will find neither master nor school3 no one yet seems to have thought that speaking and writing are arts which cannot be learnt without the most careful method and untiring application4 ,but1 to their shame1 nothing shows more clearly the insolent self-satisfaction of our people than the lack of demand for educators2 it comes partly from meanness1 partly from want of thought4 ,anything will do as a so-called family tutor1 even among our most eminent and cultured people2 and what a menagerie of crazy heads and mouldy devices mostly go to make up the belauded ,gymnasium6 ,and consider what we are satisfied with in our finishing schools1--our universities4 ,look at our professors and their institutions6 ,and compare the difficulty of the task of educating a man to be a man6 ,above all1 the wonderful way in which the ,german savants fall to their dish of knowledge1 shows that they are thinking more of ,science than mankind2 and they are trained to lead a forlorn hope in her service1 in order to encourage ever new generations to the same sacrifice4 ,if their traffic with knowledge be not limited and controlled by any more general principles of education1 but allowed to run on indefinitely1--the more the better1--it is as harmful to learning as the economic theory of laisser faire to common morality4 ,no one recognises now that the education of the professors is an exceedingly difficult problem1 if their humanity is not to be sacrificed or shrivelled up3--this difficulty can be actually seen in countless examples of natures warped and twisted by their reckless and premature devotion to science4 ,there is a still more important testimony to the complete absence of higher education1 pointing to a greater and more universal danger4 ,it is clear at once why an orator or writer cannot now be educated1--because there are no teachers2 and why a savant must be a distorted and perverted thing1--because he will have been trained by the inhuman abstraction1 science4 ,this being so1 let a man ask himself3 ,where are now the types of moral excellence and fame for all our generation--learned and unlearned1 high and low--the visible abstract of constructive ethics for this age8 ,where has vanished all the reflection on moral questions that has occupied every great developed society at all epochs8 ,there is no fame for that now1 and there are none to reflect3 we are really drawing on the inherited moral capital which our predecessors accumulated for us1 and which we do not know how to increase1 but only to squander4 ,such things are either not mentioned in our society1 or1 if at all1 with a nave want of personal experience that makes one disgusted4 ,it comes to this1 that our schools and professors simply turn aside from any moral instruction or content themselves with formul2 virtue is a word and nothing more1 on both sides1 an old-fashioned word that they laugh at--and it is worse when they do not laugh1 for then they are hypocrites4 ,an explanation of this faint-heartedness and ebbing of all moral strength would be difficult and complex3 but whoever is considering the influence of ,christianity in its hour of victory on the morality of the medival world1 must not forget that it reacts also in its defeat1 which is apparently its position to-day4 ,by its lofty ideal1 ,christianity has outbidden the ancient ,systems of ,ethics and their invariable naturalism1 with which men came to feel a dull disgust3 and afterwards when they did reach the knowledge of what was better and higher1 they found they had no longer the power1 for all their desire1 to return to its embodiment in the antique virtues4 ,and so the life of the modern man is passed in see-sawing between ,christianity and ,paganism1 between a furtive or hypocritical approach to ,christian morality1 and an equally shy and spiritless dallying with the antique3 and he does not thrive under it4 ,his inherited fear of naturalism1 and its more recent attraction for him1 his desire to come to rest somewhere1 while in the impotence of his intellect he swings backwards and forwards between the good and the better course--all this argues an instability in the modern mind that condemns it to be without joy or fruit4 ,never were moral teachers more necessary and never were they more unlikely to be found3 physicians are most in danger themselves in times when they are most needed and many men are sick4 ,for where are our modern physicians who are strong and sure-footed enough to hold up another or lead him by the hand8 ,there lies a certain heavy gloom on the best men of our time1 an eternal loathing for the battle that is fought in their hearts between honesty and lies1 a wavering of trust in themselves1 which makes them quite incapable of showing to others the way they must go4 ,so ,i was right in speaking of my wandering in a world of wishes when ,i dreamt of finding a true philosopher who could lift me from the slough of insufficiency1 and teach me again simply and honestly to be in my thoughts and life1 in the deepest sense of the word1 out of season2 simply and honestly--for men have now become such complicated machines that they must be dishonest1 if they speak at all1 or wish to act on their words4 ,with such needs and desires within me did ,i come to know ,schopenhauer4 ,i belong to those readers of ,schopenhauer who know perfectly well1 after they have turned the first page1 that they will read all the others1 and listen to every word that he has spoken4 ,my trust in him sprang to life at once1 and has been the same for nine years4 ,i understood him as though he had written for me 7this is the most intelligible1 though a rather foolish and conceited way of expressing it74 ,hence ,i never found a paradox in him1 though occasionally some small errors3 for paradoxes are only assertions that carry no conviction1 because the author has made them himself without any conviction1 wishing to appear brilliant1 or to mislead1 or1 above all1 to pose4 ,schopenhauer never poses3 he writes for himself1 and no one likes to be deceived--least of all a philosopher who has set this up as his law3 deceive nobody1 not even thyself1 neither with the white lies of all social intercourse1 which writers almost unconsciously imitate1 still less with the more conscious deceits of the platform1 and the artificial methods of rhetoric4 ,schopenhauer's speeches are to himself alone2 or if you like to imagine an auditor1 let it be a son whom the father is instructing4 ,it is a rough1 honest1 good-humoured talk to one who hears and loves4 ,such writers are rare4 ,his strength and sanity surround us at the first sound of his voice3 it is like entering the heights of the forest1 where we breathe deep and are well again4 ,we feel a bracing air everywhere1 a certain candour and naturalness of his own1 that belongs to men who are at home with themselves1 and masters of a very rich home indeed3 he is quite different from the writers who are surprised at themselves if they have said something intelligent1 and whose pronouncements for that reason have something nervous and unnatural about them4 ,we are just as little reminded in ,schopenhauer of the professor with his stiff joints worse for want of exercise1 his narrow chest and scraggy figure1 his slinking or strutting gait4 ,and again his rough and rather grim soul leads us not so much to miss as to despise the suppleness and courtly grace of the excellent ,frenchmen2 and no one will find in him the gilded imitations of pseudo-gallicism that our ,german writers prize so highly4 ,his style in places reminds me a little of ,goethe1 but is not otherwise on any ,german model4 ,for he knows how to be profound with simplicity1 striking without rhetoric1 and severely logical without pedantry3 and of what ,german could he have learnt that8 ,he also keeps free from the hair-splitting1 jerky and 7with all respect7 rather un-,german manner of ,lessing3 no small merit in him1 for ,lessing is the most tempting of all models for prose style4 ,the highest praise ,i can give his manner of presentation is to apply his own phrase to himself3--,a philosopher must be very honest to avail himself of no aid from poetry or rhetoric4 ,that honesty is something1 and even a virtue1 is one of those private opinions which are forbidden in this age of public opinion2 and so ,i shall not be praising ,schopenhauer1 but only giving him a distinguishing mark1 when ,i repeat that he is honest1 even as a writer2 so few of them are1 that we are apt to mistrust every one who writes at all4 ,i only know a single author that ,i can rank with ,schopenhauer1 or even above him1 in the matter of honesty2 and that is ,montaigne4 ,the joy of living on this earth is increased by the existence of such a man4 ,the effect on myself1 at any rate1 since my first acquaintance with that strong and masterful spirit1 has been1 that ,i can say of him as he of ,plutarch--,as soon as ,i open him1 ,i seem to grow a pair of wings4 ,if ,i had the task of making myself at home on the earth1 ,i would choose him as my companion4 ,schopenhauer has a second characteristic in common with ,montaigne1 besides honesty2 a joy that really makes others joyful4 ,aliis ltus1 sibi sapiens4 ,there are two very different kinds of joyfulness4 ,the true thinker always communicates joy and life1 whether he is showing his serious or comic side1 his human insight or his godlike forbearance3 without surly looks or trembling hands or watery eyes1 but simply and truly1 with fearlessness and strength1 a little cavalierly perhaps1 and sternly1 but always as a conqueror3 and it is this that brings the deepest and intensest joy1 to see the conquering god with all the monsters that he has fought4 ,but the joyfulness one finds here and there in the mediocre writers and limited thinkers makes some of us miserable2 ,i felt this1 for example1 with the joyfulness of ,david ,strauss4 ,we are generally ashamed of such a quality in our contemporaries1 because they show the nakedness of our time1 and of the men in it1 to posterity4 ,such fils de joie do not see the sufferings and the monsters1 that they pretend1 as philosophers1 to see and fight2 and so their joy deceives us1 and we hate it2 it tempts to the false belief that they have gained some victory4 ,at bottom there is only joy where there is victory3 and this applies to true philosophy as much as to any work of art4 ,the contents may be forbidding and serious1 as the problem of existence always is2 the work will only prove tiresome and oppressive1 if the slip-shod thinker and the dilettante have spread the mist of their insufficiency over it3 while nothing happier or better can come to man's lot than to be near one of those conquering spirits whose profound thought has made them love what is most vital1 and whose wisdom has found its goal in beauty4 ,they really speak3 they are no stammerers or babblers2 they live and move1 and have no part in the danse macabre of the rest of humanity4 ,and so in their company one feels a natural man again1 and could cry out with ,goethe--,what a wondrous and priceless thing is a living creature6 ,how fitted to his surroundings1 how true1 and real6 ,i have been describing nothing but the first1 almost physiological1 impression made upon me by ,schopenhauer1 the magical emanation of inner force from one plant of ,nature to another1 that follows the slightest contact4 ,analysing it1 ,i find that this influence of ,schopenhauer has three elements1 his honesty1 his joy1 and his consistency4 ,he is honest1 as speaking and writing for himself alone2 joyful1 because his thought has conquered the greatest difficulties2 consistent1 because he cannot help being so4 ,his strength rises like a flame in the calm air1 straight up1 without a tremor or deviation4 ,he finds his way1 without our noticing that he has been seeking it3 so surely and cleverly and inevitably does he run his course1 as if by some law of gravitation4 ,if any one have felt what it means to find1 in our present world of ,centaurs and ,chimras1 a single-hearted and unaffected child of nature who moves unconstrained on his own road1 he will understand my joy and surprise in discovering ,schopenhauer3 ,i knew in him the educator and philosopher ,i had so long desired4 ,only1 however1 in his writings3 which was a great loss4 ,all the more did ,i exert myself to see behind the book the living man whose testament it was1 and who promised his inheritance to such as could1 and would1 be more than his readers--his pupils and his sons4 ,,iii4 ,i get profit from a philosopher1 just so far as he can be an example to me4 ,there is no doubt that a man can draw whole nations after him by his example2 as is shown by ,indian history1 which is practically the history of ,indian philosophy4 ,but this example must exist in his outward life1 not merely in his books2 it must follow the way of the ,grecian philosophers1 whose doctrine was in their dress and bearing and general manner of life rather than in their speech or writing4 ,we have nothing yet of this breathing testimony in ,german philosophical life2 the spirit has1 apparently1 long completed its emancipation1 while the flesh has hardly begun2 yet it is foolish to think that the spirit can be really free and independent when this victory over limitation--which is ultimately a formative limiting of one's self--is not embodied anew in every look and movement4 ,kant held to his university1 submitted to its regulations1 and belonged1 as his colleagues and students thought1 to a definite religious faith3 and naturally his example has produced1 above all1 ,university professors of philosophy4 ,schopenhauer makes small account of the learned tribe1 keeps himself exclusive1 and cultivates an independence from state and society as his ideal1 to escape the chains of circumstance here3 that is his value to us4 ,many steps in the enfranchisement of the philosopher are unknown in ,germany2 they cannot always remain so4 ,our artists live more bravely and honourably than our philosophers2 and ,richard ,wagner1 the best example of all1 shows how genius need not fear a fight to the death with the established forms and ordinances1 if we wish to bring the higher truth and order1 that lives in him1 to the light4 ,the truth1 however1 of which we hear so much from our professors1 seems to be a far more modest being1 and no kind of disturbance is to be feared from her2 she is an easy-going and pleasant creature1 who is continually assuring the powers that be that no one need fear any trouble from her quarter3 for man is only pure reason4 ,and therefore ,i will say1 that philosophy in ,germany has more and more to learn not to be pure reason3 and it may well take as its model ,schopenhauer the man4 ,it is no less than a marvel that he should have come to be this human kind of example3 for he was beset1 within and without1 by the most frightful dangers1 that would have crushed and broken a weaker nature4 ,i think there was a strong likelihood of ,schopenhauer the man going under1 and leaving at best a residue of pure reason3 and only at best--it was more probable that neither man nor reason would survive4 ,a modern ,englishman sketches the most usual danger to extraordinary men who live in a society that worships the ordinary1 in this manner3--,such uncommon characters are first cowed1 then become sick and melancholy1 and then die4 ,a ,shelley could never have lived in ,england3 a race of ,shelleys would have been impossible4 ,our ,hlderlins and ,kleists were undone by their unconventionality1 and were not strong enough for the climate of the so-called ,german culture2 and only iron natures like ,beethoven1 ,goethe1 ,schopenhauer and ,wagner could hold out against it4 ,even in them the effect of this weary toiling and moiling is seen in many lines and wrinkles2 their breathing is harder and their voice is forced4 ,the old diplomatist who had only just seen and spoken to ,goethe1 said to a friend--,voil un homme qui a eu de grands chagrins6 which ,goethe translated to mean ,that is a man who has taken great pains in his life4 ,and he adds1 ,if the trace of the sorrow and activity we have gone through cannot be wiped from our features1 it is no wonder that all that survives of us and our struggles should bear the same impress4 ,and this is the ,goethe to whom our cultured ,philistines point as the happiest of ,germans1 that they may prove their thesis1 that it must be possible to be happy among them--with the unexpressed corollary that no one can be pardoned for feeling unhappy and lonely among them4 ,hence they push their doctrine1 in practice1 to its merciless conclusion1 that there is always a secret guilt in isolation4 ,poor ,schopenhauer had this secret guilt too in his heart1 the guilt of cherishing his philosophy more than his fellow-men2 and he was so unhappy as to have learnt from ,goethe that he must defend his philosophy at all costs from the neglect of his contemporaries1 to save its very existence3 for there is a kind of ,grand ,inquisitor's ,censure in which the ,germans1 according to ,goethe1 are great adepts3 it is called--inviolable silence4 ,this much at least was accomplished by it2--the greater part of the first edition of ,schopenhauer's masterpiece had to be turned into waste paper4 ,the imminent risk that his great work would be undone1 merely by neglect1 bred in him a state of unrest--perilous and uncontrollable2--for no single adherent of any note presented himself4 ,it is tragic to watch his search for any evidence of recognition3 and his piercing cry of triumph at last1 that he would now really be read 7legor et legar71 touches us with a thrill of pain4 ,all the traits in which we do not see the great philosopher show us the suffering man1 anxious for his noblest possessions2 he was tortured by the fear of losing his little property1 and perhaps of no longer being able to maintain in its purity his truly antique attitude towards philosophy4 ,he often chose falsely in his desire to find real trust and compassion in men1 only to return with a heavy heart to his faithful dog again4 ,he was absolutely alone1 with no single friend of his own kind to comfort him2 and between one and none there lies an infinity--as ever between something and nothing4 ,no one who has true friends knows what real loneliness means1 though he may have the whole world in antagonism round him4 ,ah1 ,i see well ye do not know what isolation is6 ,whenever there are great societies with governments and religions and public opinions--where there is a tyranny1 in short1 there will the lonely philosopher be hated3 for philosophy offers an asylum to mankind where no tyranny can penetrate1 the inner sanctuary1 the centre of the heart's labyrinth3 and the tyrants are galled at it4 ,here do the lonely men lie hid3 but here too lurks their greatest danger4 ,these men who have saved their inner freedom1 must also live and be seen in the outer world3 they stand in countless human relations by their birth1 position1 education and country1 their own circumstances and the importunity of others3 and so they are presumed to hold an immense number of opinions1 simply because these happen to prevail3 every look that is not a denial counts as an assent1 every motion of the hand that does not destroy is regarded as an aid4 ,these free and lonely men know that they perpetually seem other than they are4 ,while they wish for nothing but truth and honesty1 they are in a net of misunderstanding2 and that ardent desire cannot prevent a mist of false opinions1 of adaptations and wrong conclusions1 of partial misapprehension and intentional reticence1 from gathering round their actions4 ,and there settles a cloud of melancholy on their brows3 for such natures hate the necessity of pretence worse than death3 and the continual bitterness gives them a threatening and volcanic character4 ,they take revenge from time to time for their forced concealment and self-restraint3 they issue from their dens with lowering looks3 their words and deeds are explosive1 and may lead to their own destruction4 ,schopenhauer lived amid dangers of this sort4 ,such lonely men need love1 and friends1 to whom they can be as open and sincere as to themselves1 and in whose presence the deadening silence and hypocrisy may cease4 ,take their friends away1 and there is left an increasing peril2 ,heinrich von ,kleist was broken by the lack of love1 and the most terrible weapon against unusual men is to drive them into themselves2 and then their issuing forth again is a volcanic eruption4 ,yet there are always some demi-gods who can bear life under these fearful conditions and can be their conquerors3 and if you would hear their lonely chant1 listen to the music of ,beethoven4 ,so the first danger in whose shadow ,schopenhauer lived was-- isolation4 ,the second is called--doubting of the truth4 ,to this every thinker is liable who sets out from the philosophy of ,kant1 provided he be strong and sincere in his sorrows and his desires1 and not a mere tinkling thought-box or calculating machine4 ,we all know the shameful state of things implied by this last reservation1 and ,i believe it is only a very few men that ,kant has so vitally affected as to change the current of their blood4 ,to judge from what one reads1 there must have been a revolution in every domain of thought since the work of this unobtrusive professor3 ,i cannot believe it myself4 ,for ,i see men1 though darkly1 as themselves needing to be revolutionised1 before any domains of thought can be so4 ,in fact1 we find the first mark of any influence ,kant may have had on the popular mind1 in a corrosive scepticism and relativity4 ,but it is only in noble and active spirits who could never rest in doubt that the shattering despair of truth itself could take the place of doubt4 ,this was1 for example1 the effect of the ,kantian philosophy on ,heinrich von ,kleist4 ,it was only a short time ago1 he writes in his poignant way1 that ,i became acquainted with the ,kantian philosophy2 and ,i will tell you my thought1 though ,i cannot fear that it will rack you to your inmost soul1 as it did me4--,we cannot decide1 whether what we call truth is really truth1 or whether it only seems so to us4 ,if the latter1 the truth that we amass here does not exist after death1 and all our struggle to gain a possession that may follow us even to the grave is in vain4 ,if the blade of this thought do not cut your heart1 yet laugh not at another who feels himself wounded by it in his ,holy of ,holies4 ,my one highest aim has vanished1 and ,i have no more4 ,yes1 when will men feel again deeply as ,kleist did1 and learn to measure a philosophy by what it means to the ,holy of ,holies8 ,and yet we must make this estimate of what ,schopenhauer can mean to us1 after ,kant1 as the first pioneer to bring us from the heights of sceptical disillusionment or critical renunciation1 to the greater height of tragic contemplation1 the nocturnal heaven with its endless crown of stars4 ,his greatness is that he can stand opposite the picture of life1 and interpret it to us as a whole3 while all the clever people cannot escape the error of thinking one comes nearer to the interpretation by a laborious analysis of the colours and material of the picture2 with the confession1 probably1 that the texture of the canvas is very complicated1 and the chemical composition of the colours undiscoverable4 ,schopenhauer knew that one must guess the painter in order to understand the picture4 ,but now the whole learned fraternity is engaged on understanding the colours and canvas1 and not the picture3 and only he who has kept the universal panorama of life and being firmly before his eyes1 will use the individual sciences without harm to himself2 for1 without this general view as a norm1 they are threads that lead nowhere and only confuse still more the maze of our existence4 ,here we see1 as ,i said1 the greatness of ,schopenhauer1 that he follows up every idea1 as ,hamlet follows the ,ghost1 without allowing himself to turn aside for a learned digression1 or be drawn away by the scholastic abstractions of a rabid dialectic4 ,the study of the minute philosophers is only interesting for the recognition that they have reached those stages in the great edifice of philosophy where learned disquisitions for and against1 where hair-splitting objections and counter-objections are the rule3 and for that reason they evade the demand of every great philosophy to speak sub specie ternitatis--this is the picture of the whole of life3 learn thence the meaning of thine own life4 ,and the converse3 read thine own life1 and understand thence the hieroglyphs of the universal life4 ,in this way must ,schopenhauer's philosophy always be interpreted2 as an individualist philosophy1 starting from the single man1 in his own nature1 to gain an insight into his personal miseries1 and needs1 and limitations1 and find out the remedies that will console them3 namely1 the sacrifice of the ego1 and its submission to the nobler ends1 especially those of justice and mercy4 ,he teaches us to distinguish between the true and the apparent furtherance of man's happiness3 how neither the attainment of riches1 nor honour1 nor learning1 can raise the individual from his deep despair at his unworthiness2 and how the quest for these good things can only have meaning through a universal end that transcends and explains them2--the gaining of power to aid our physical nature by them and1 as far as may be1 correct its folly and awkwardness4 ,for one's self only1 in the first instance3 and finally1 through one's self1 for all4 ,it is a task that leads to scepticism3 for there is so much to be made better yet1 in one and all6 ,applying this to ,schopenhauer himself1 we come to the third and most intimate danger in which he lived1 and which lay deep in the marrow of his being4 ,every one is apt to discover a limitation in himself1 in his gifts of intellect as well as his moral will1 that fills him with yearning and melancholy2 and as he strives after holiness through a consciousness of sin1 so1 as an intellectual being1 he has a deep longing after the genius in himself4 ,this is the root of all true culture2 and if we say this means the aspiration of man to be born again as saint and genius1 ,i know that one need not be a ,buddhist to understand the myth4 ,we feel a strong loathing when we find talent without such aspiration1 in the circle of the learned1 or among the so-called educated2 for we see that such men1 with all their cleverness1 are no aid but a hindrance to the beginnings of culture1 and the blossoming of genius1 the aim of all culture4 ,there is a rigidity in them1 parallel to the cold arrogance of conventional virtue1 which also remains at the opposite pole to true holiness4 ,schopenhauer's nature contained an extraordinarily dangerous dualism4 ,few thinkers have felt as he did the complete and unmistakable certainty of genius within them2 and his genius made him the highest of all promises1--that there could be no deeper furrow than that which he was ploughing in the ground of the modern world4 ,he knew one half of his being to be fulfilled according to its strength1 with no other need2 and he followed with greatness and dignity his vocation of consolidating his victory4 ,in the other half there was a gnawing aspiration1 which we can understand1 when we hear that he turned away with a sad look from the picture of ,ranc1 the founder of the ,trappists1 with the words3 ,that is a matter of grace4 ,for genius evermore yearns after holiness as it sees further and more clearly from its watch-tower than other men1 deep into the reconciliation of ,thought and ,being1 the kingdom of peace and the denial of the will1 and up to that other shore1 of which the ,indians speak4 ,the wonder is1 that ,schopenhauer's nature should have been so inconceivably stable and unshakable that it could neither be destroyed nor petrified by this yearning4 ,every one will understand this after the measure of his own character and greatness3 none of us will understand it in the fulness of its meaning4 ,the more one considers these three dangers1 the more extraordinary will appear his vigour in opposing them and his safety after the battle4 ,true1 he gained many scars and open wounds3 and a cast of mind that may seem somewhat too bitter and pugnacious4 ,but his single ideal transcends the highest humanity in him4 ,schopenhauer stands as a pattern to men1 in spite of all those scars and scratches4 ,we may even say1 that what was imperfect and all too human in him1 brings us nearer to him as a man1 for we see a sufferer and a kinsman to suffering1 not merely a dweller on the unattainable heights of genius4 ,these three constitutional dangers that threatened ,schopenhauer1 threaten us all4 ,each one of us bears a creative solitude within himself and his consciousness of it forms an exotic aura of strangeness round him4 ,most men cannot endure it1 because they are slothful1 as ,i said1 and because their solitude hangs round them a chain of troubles and burdens4 ,no doubt1 for the man with this heavy chain1 life loses almost everything that one desires from it in youth--joy1 safety1 honour3 his fellow-men pay him his due of--isolation6 ,the wilderness and the cave are about him1 wherever he may live4 ,he must look to it that he be not enslaved and oppressed1 and become melancholy thereby4 ,and let him surround himself with the pictures of good and brave fighters such as ,schopenhauer4 ,the second danger1 too1 is not rare4 ,here and there we find one dowered by nature with a keen vision2 his thoughts dance gladly in the witches' ,sabbath of dialectic2 and if he uncautiously give his talent the rein1 it is easy to lose all humanity and live a ghostly life in the realm of pure reason3 or through the constant search for the pros and cons of things1 he may go astray from the truth and live without courage or confidence1 in doubt1 denial and discontent1 and the slender hope that waits on disillusion3 ,no dog could live long thus6 ,the third danger is a moral or intellectual hardening3 man breaks the bond that united him to his ideal3 he ceases to be fruitful and reproduce himself in this or that province1 and becomes an enemy or a parasite of culture4 ,the solitude of his being has become an indivisible1 unrelated atom1 an icy stone4 ,and one can perish of this solitude as well as of the fear of it1 of one's self as well as one's self-sacrifice1 of both aspiration and petrifaction3 and to live is ever to be in danger4 ,beside these dangers to which ,schopenhauer would have been constitutionally liable1 in whatever century he had lived1 there were also some produced by his own time2 and it is essential to distinguish between these two kinds1 in order to grasp the typical and formative elements in his nature4 ,the philosopher casts his eye over existence1 and wishes to give it a new standard value2 for it has been the peculiar task of all great thinkers to be law-givers for the weight and stamp in the mint of reality4 ,and his task will be hindered if the men he sees near him be a weakly and worm-eaten growth4 ,to be correct in his calculation of existence1 the unworthiness of the present time must be a very small item in the addition4 ,the study of ancient or foreign history is valuable1 if at all1 for a correct judgment on the whole destiny of man2 which must be drawn not only from an average estimate but from a comparison of the highest destinies that can befall individuals or nations4 ,the present is too much with us2 it directs the vision even against the philosopher's will3 and it will inevitably be reckoned too high in the final sum4 ,and so he must put a low figure on his own time as against others1 and suppress the present in his picture of life1 as well as in himself2 must put it into the background or paint it over2 a difficult1 and almost impossible task4 ,the judgment of the ancient ,greek philosophers on the value of existence means so much more than our own1 because they had the full bloom of life itself before them1 and their vision was untroubled by any felt dualism between their wish for freedom and beauty on the grand scale1 and their search after truth1 with its single question ,what is the real worth of life8 ,empedocles lived when ,greek culture was full to overflowing with the joy of life1 and all ages may take profit from his words2 especially as no other great philosopher of that great time ventured to contradict them4 ,empedocles is only the clearest voice among them--they all say the same thing1 if a man will but open his ears4 ,a modern thinker is always in the throes of an unfulfilled desire2 he is looking for life1--warm1 red life1--that he may pass judgment on it3 at any rate he will think it necessary to be a living man himself1 before he can believe in his power of judging4 ,and this is the title of the modern philosophers to sit among the great aiders of ,life 7or rather of the will to live71 and the reason why they can look from their own out-wearied time and aspire to a truer culture1 and a clearer explanation4 ,their yearning is1 however1 their danger2 the reformer in them struggles with the critical philosopher4 ,and whichever way the victory incline1 it also implies a defeat4 ,how was ,schopenhauer to escape this danger8 ,we like to consider the great man as the noble child of his age1 who feels its defects more strongly and intimately than the smaller men3 and therefore the struggle of the great man against his age is apparently nothing but a mad fight to the death with himself4 ,only apparently1 however3 he only fights the elements in his time that hinder his own greatness1 in other words his own freedom and sincerity4 ,and so1 at bottom1 he is only an enemy to that element which is not truly himself1 the irreconcilable antagonism of the temporal and eternal in him4 ,the supposed child of his age proves to be but a step-child4 ,from boyhood ,schopenhauer strove with his time1 a false and unworthy mother to him1 and as soon as he had banished her1 he could bring back his being to its native health and purity4 ,for this very reason we can use his writings as mirrors of his time2 it is no fault of the mirror if everything contemporary appear in it stricken by a ravaging disease1 pale and thin1 with tired looks and hollow eyes1--the step-child's sorrow made visible4 ,the yearning for natural strength1 for a healthy and simple humanity1 was a yearning for himself3 and as soon as he had conquered his time within him1 he was face to face with his own genius4 ,the secret of nature's being and his own lay open1 the step-mother's plot to conceal his genius from him was foiled4 ,and now he could turn a fearless eye towards the question1 ,what is the real worth of life8 without having any more to weigh a bloodless and chaotic age of doubt and hypocrisy4 ,he knew that there was something higher and purer to be won on this earth than the life of his time1 and a man does bitter wrong to existence who only knows it and criticises it in this hateful form4 ,genius1 itself the highest product of life1 is now summoned to justify life1 if it can3 the noble creative soul must answer the question3--,dost thou in thy heart say ',yea6' unto this existence8 ,is it enough for thee8 ,wilt thou be its advocate and its redeemer8 ,one true ',yea6' from thy lips1 and the sorely accused life shall go free4 ,how shall he answer8 ,in the words of ,empedocles4 ,,iv4 ,the last hint may well remain obscure for a time3 ,i have something more easy to explain1 namely how ,schopenhauer can help us to educate ourselves in opposition to our age1 since we have the advantage of really knowing our age1 through him2--if it be an advantage6 ,it may be no longer possible in a couple of hundred years4 ,i sometimes amuse myself with the idea that men may soon grow tired of books and their authors1 and the savant of to-morrow come to leave directions in his will that his body be burned in the midst of his books1 including of course his own writings4 ,and in the gradual clearing of the forests1 might not our libraries be very reasonably used for straw and brushwood8 ,most books are born from the smoke and vapour of the brain3 and to vapour and smoke may they well return4 ,for having no fire within themselves1 they shall be visited with fire4 ,and possibly to a later century our own may count as the ,dark age1 because our productions heated the furnace hotter and more continuously than ever before4 ,we are anyhow happy that we can learn to know our time2 and if there be any sense in busying ourselves with our time at all1 we may as well do it as thoroughly as we can1 so that no one may have any doubt about it4 ,the possibility of this we owe to ,schopenhauer4 ,our happiness would of course be infinitely greater1 if our inquiry showed that nothing so hopeful and splendid as our present epoch had ever existed4 ,there are simple people in some corner of the earth to-day--perhaps in ,germany--who are disposed to believe in all seriousness that the world was put right two years ago1#a and that all stern and gloomy views of life are now contradicted by facts4 ,the foundation of the ,new ,german ,empire is1 to them1 the decisive blow that annihilates all the pessimistic philosophisers1--no doubt of it4 ,to judge the philosopher's significance in our time1 as an educator1 we must oppose a widespread view like this1 especially common in our universities4 ,we must say1 it is a shameful thing that such abominable flattery of the ,time-,fetish should be uttered by a herd of so-called reflective and honourable men2 it is a proof that we no longer see how far the seriousness of philosophy is removed from that of a newspaper4 ,such men have lost the last remnant of feeling1 not only for philosophy1 but also for religion1 and have put in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as of journalism1 the evil spirit that broods over the day--and the daily paper4 ,every philosophy that believes the problem of existence to be shelved1 or even solved1 by a political event1 is a sham philosophy4 ,there have been innumerable states founded since the beginning of the world2 that is an old story4 ,how should a political innovation manage once and for all to make a contented race of the dwellers on this earth8 ,if any one believe in his heart that this is possible1 he should report himself to our authorities3 he really deserves to be ,professor of ,philosophy in a ,german university1 like ,harms in ,berlin1 ,jurgen ,meyer in ,bonn1 and ,carrire in ,munich4 #a ,this was written in #ahgc4--,,tr4 ,we are feeling the consequences of the doctrine1 preached lately from all the housetops1 that the state is the highest end of man and there is no higher duty than to serve it3 ,i regard this not a relapse into paganism1 but into stupidity4 ,a man who thinks state-service to be his highest duty1 very possibly knows no higher one2 yet there are both men and duties in a region beyond1--and one of these duties1 that seems to me at least of higher value than state-service1 is to destroy stupidity in all its forms--and this particular stupidity among them4 ,and ,i have to do with a class of men whose teleological conceptions extend further than the well-being of a state1 ,i mean with philosophers--and only with them in their relation to the world of culture1 which is again almost independent of the good of the state4 ,of the many links that make up the twisted chain of humanity1 some are of gold and others of pewter4 ,how does the philosopher of our time regard culture8 ,quite differently1 ,i assure you1 from the professors who are so content with their new state4 ,he seems to see the symptoms of an absolute uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and hurry of life1 and the decay of all reflection and simplicity4 ,the waters of religion are ebbing1 and leaving swamps or stagnant pools3 the nations are drawing away in enmity again1 and long to tear each other in pieces4 ,the sciences1 blindly driving along1 on a laisser faire system1 without a common standard1 are splitting up1 and losing hold of every firm principle4 ,the educated classes are being swept along in the contemptible struggle for wealth4 ,never was the world more worldly1 never poorer in goodness and love4 ,men of learning are no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of this turmoil of worldliness2 they themselves are daily becoming more restless1 thoughtless1 loveless4 ,everything bows before the coming barbarism1 art and science included4 ,the educated men have degenerated into the greatest foes of education1 for they will deny the universal sickness and hinder the physician4 ,they become peevish1 these poor nerveless creatures1 if one speak of their weakness and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them4 ,they would gladly make one believe that they have outstripped all the centuries1 and they walk with a pretence of happiness which has something pathetic about it1 because their happiness is so inconceivable4 ,one would not even ask them1 as ,tannhuser did ,biterolf1 ,what hast thou1 poor wretch1 enjoyed6 ,for1 alas6 we know far better ourselves1 in another way4 ,there is a wintry sky over us1 and we dwell on a high mountain1 in danger and in need4 ,short-lived is all our joy1 and the sun's rays strike palely on our white mountains4 ,music is heard2 an old man grinds an organ1 and the dancers whirl round1 and the heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see it3 everything is so disordered1 so drab1 so hopeless4 ,even now there is a sound of joy1 of clear thoughtless joy6 but soon the mist of evening closes round1 the note dies away1 and the wanderer's footsteps are heard on the gravel2 as far as his eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and desolate face of nature4 ,it may be one-sided1 to insist only on the blurred lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern life3 yet the other side is no more encouraging1 it is only more disturbing4 ,there is certainly strength there1 enormous strength2 but it is wild1 primitive and merciless4 ,one looks on with a chill expectancy1 as though into the caldron of a witch's kitchen2 every moment there may arise sparks and vapour1 to herald some fearful apparition4 ,for a century we have been ready for a world-shaking convulsion2 and though we have lately been trying to set the conservative strength of the so-called national state against the great modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness1 it will only be1 for a long time yet1 an aggravation of the universal unrest that hangs over us4 ,we need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if they knew nothing of all this anxiety3 their own restlessness shows how well they know it4 ,they think more exclusively of themselves than men ever thought before2 they plant and build for their little day1 and the chase for happiness is never greater than when the quarry must be caught to-day or to-morrow3 the next day perhaps there is no more hunting4 ,we live in the ,atomic ,age1 or rather in the ,atomic ,chaos4 ,the opposing forces were practically held together in medival times by the ,church1 and in some measure assimilated by the strong pressure which she exerted4 ,when the common tie broke and the pressure relaxed1 they rose once more against each other4 ,the ,reformation taught that many things were adiaphora--departments that needed no guidance from religion3 this was the price paid for its own existence4 ,christianity paid a similar one to guard itself against the far more religious antiquity3 and laid the seeds of discord at once4 ,everything nowadays is directed by the fools and the knaves1 the selfishness of the money-makers and the brute forces of militarism4 ,the state in their hands makes a good show of reorganising everything1 and of becoming the bond that unites the warring elements2 in other words1 it wishes for the same idolatry from mankind as they showed to the ,church4 ,and we shall yet feel the consequences4 ,we are even now on the ice-floes in the stream of the ,middle ,ages3 they are thawing fast1 and their movement is ominous3 the banks are flooded1 and giving way4 ,the revolution1 the atomistic revolution1 is inevitable3 but what are those smallest indivisible elements of human society8 ,there is surely far more danger to mankind in transitional periods like these than in the actual time of revolution and chaos2 they are tortured by waiting1 and snatch greedily at every moment2 and this breeds all kinds of cowardice and selfishness in them3 whereas the true feeling of a great and universal need ever inspires men1 and makes them better4 ,in the midst of such dangers1 who will provide the guardians and champions for ,humanity1 for the holy and inviolate treasure that has been laid up in the temples1 little by little1 by countless generations8 ,who will set up again the ,image of ,man1 when men in their selfishness and terror see nothing but the trail of the serpent or the cur in them1 and have fallen from their high estate to that of the brute or the automaton8 ,there are three ,images of ,man fashioned by our modern time1 which for a long while yet will urge mortal men to transfigure their own lives2 they are the men of ,rousseau1 ,goethe1 and ,schopenhauer4 ,the first has the greatest fire1 and is most calculated to impress the people3 the second is only for the few1 for those contemplative natures in the grand style who are misunderstood by the crowd4 ,the third demands the highest activity in those who will follow it3 only such men will look on that image without harm1 for it breaks the spirit of that merely contemplative man1 and the rabble shudder at it4 ,from the first has come forth a strength that led and still leads to fearful revolution3 for in all socialistic upheavals it is ever ,rousseau's man who is the ,typhoeus under the ,etna4 ,oppressed and half crushed to death by the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth1 spoilt by priests and bad education1 a laughing-stock even to himself1 man cries in his need on holy mother ,nature1 and feels suddenly that she is as far from him as any god of the ,epicureans4 ,his prayers do not reach her2 so deeply sunk is he in the ,chaos of the unnatural4 ,he contemptuously throws aside all the finery that seemed his truest humanity a little while ago--all his arts and sciences1 all the refinements of his life1--he beats with his fists against the walls1 in whose shadow he has degenerated1 and goes forth to seek the light and the sun1 the forest and the crag4 ,and crying out1 ,nature alone is good1 the natural man alone is human1 he despises himself and aspires beyond himself3 a state wherein the soul is ready for a fearful resolve1 but calls the noble and the rare as well from their utter depths4 ,goethe's man is no such threatening force2 in a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to those dangerous agitations of which ,rousseau's man is a prey4 ,goethe himself in his youth followed the gospel of kindly ,nature with all the ardour of his soul3 his ,faust was the highest and boldest picture of ,rousseau's man1 so far at any rate as his hunger for life1 his discontent and yearning1 his intercourse with the demons of the heart could be represented4 ,but what comes from these congregated storm-clouds8 ,not a single lightning flash6 ,and here begins the new ,image of man--the man according to ,goethe4 ,one might have thought that ,faust would have lived a continual life of suffering1 as a revolutionary and a deliverer1 as the negative force that proceeds from goodness1 as the genius of ruin1 alike religious and dmonic1 in opposition to his utterly undmonic companion2 though of course he could not be free of this companion1 and had at once to use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism--which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary deliverers4 ,one is wrong1 however1 to expect anything of the sort3 ,goethe's man here parts company with ,rousseau's2 for he hates all violence1 all sudden transition--that is1 all action3 and the universal deliverer becomes merely the universal traveller4 ,all the riches of life and nature1 all antiquity--arts1 mythologies and sciences--pass before his eager eyes1 his deepest desires are aroused and satisfied1 ,helen herself can hold him no more--and the moment must come for which his mocking companion is waiting4 ,at a fair spot on the earth1 his flight comes to an end3 his pinions drop1 and ,mephistopheles is at his side4 ,when the ,german ceases to be ,faust1 there is no danger greater than of becoming a ,philistine and falling into the hands of the devil--heavenly powers alone can save him4 ,goethe's man is1 as ,i said1 the contemplative man in the grand style1 who is only kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the great and memorable things that have ever existed1 and by living from desire to desire4 ,he is not the active man2 and when he does take a place among active men1 as things are1 you may be sure that no good will come of it 7think1 for example1 of the zeal with which ,goethe wrote for the stage672 and further1 you may be sure that things as they are will suffer no change4 ,goethe's man is a conciliatory and conservative spirit1 though in danger of degenerating into a ,philistine1 just as ,rousseau's man may easily become a ,catiline4 ,all his virtues would be the better by the addition of a little brute force and elemental passion4 ,goethe appears to have seen where the weakness and danger of his creation lay1 as is clear from ,jarno's word to ,wilhelm ,meister3 ,you are bitter and ill-tempered--which is quite an excellent thing3 if you could once become really angry1 it would be still better4 ,to speak plainly1 it is necessary to become really angry in order that things may be better4 ,the picture of ,schopenhauer's man can help us here4 ,schopenhauer's man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain of telling the truth3 this pain serves to quench his individual will and make him ready for the complete transformation of his being1 which it is the inner meaning of life to realise4 ,this openness in him appears to other men to be an effect of malice1 for they think the preservation of their shifts and pretences to be the first duty of humanity1 and any one who destroys their playthings to be merely malicious4 ,they are tempted to cry out to such a man1 in ,faust's words to ,mephistopheles3-- ,so to the active and eternal ,creative force1 in cold disdain ,you now oppose the fist infernal-- and he who would live according to ,schopenhauer would seem to be more like a ,mephistopheles than a ,faust--that is1 to our weak modern eyes1 which always discover signs of malice in any negation4 ,but there is a kind of denial and destruction that is the effect of that strong aspiration after holiness and deliverance1 which ,schopenhauer was the first philosopher to teach our profane and worldly generation4 ,everything that can be denied1 deserves to be denied2 and real sincerity means the belief in a state of things which cannot be denied1 or in which there is no lie4 ,the sincere man feels that his activity has a metaphysical meaning4 ,it can only be explained by the laws of a different and a higher life2 it is in the deepest sense an affirmation3 even if everything that he does seem utterly opposed to the laws of our present life4 ,it must lead therefore to constant suffering2 but he knows1 as ,meister ,eckhard did1 that the quickest beast that will carry you to perfection is suffering4 ,every one1 ,i should think1 who has such an ideal before him1 must feel a wider sympathy2 and he will have a burning desire to become a ,schopenhauer man2--pure and wonderfully patient1 on his intellectual side full of a devouring fire1 and far removed from the cold and contemptuous neutrality of the so-called scientific man2 so high above any warped and morose outlook on life as to offer himself as the first victim of the truth he has won1 with a deep consciousness of the sufferings that must spring from his sincerity4 ,his courage will destroy his happiness on earth1 he must be an enemy to the men he loves and the institutions in which he grew up1 he must spare neither person nor thing1 however it may hurt him1 he will be misunderstood and thought an ally of forces that he abhors1 in his search for righteousness he will seem unrighteous by human standards3 but he must comfort himself with the words that his teacher ,schopenhauer once used3 ,a happy life is impossible1 the highest thing that man can aspire to is a heroic life2 such as a man lives1 who is always fighting against unequal odds for the good of others2 and wins in the end without any thanks4 ,after the battle is over1 he stands like the ,prince in the re corvo of ,gozzi1 with dignity and nobility in his eyes1 but turned to stone4 ,his memory remains1 and will be reverenced as a hero's2 his will1 that has been mortified all his life by toiling and struggling1 by evil payment and ingratitude1 is absorbed into ,nirvana4 ,such a heroic life1 with its full mortification-- corresponds very little to the paltry ideas of the people who talk most about it1 and make festivals in memory of great men1 in the belief that a great man is great in the sense that they are small1 either through exercise of his gifts to please himself or by a blind mechanical obedience to this inner force2 so that the man who does not possess the gift or feel the compulsion has the same right to be small as the other to be great4 ,but gift and compulsion are contemptible words1 mere means of escape from an inner voice1 a slander on him who has listened to the voice--the great man2 he least of all will allow himself to be given or compelled to anything3 for he knows as well as any smaller man how easily life can be taken and how soft the bed whereon he might lie if he went the pleasant and conventional way with himself and his fellow-creatures3 all the regulations of mankind are turned to the end that the intense feeling of life may be lost in continual distractions4 ,now why will he so strongly choose the opposite1 and try to feel life1 which is the same as to suffer from life8 ,because he sees that men will tempt him to betray himself1 and that there is a kind of agreement to draw him from his den4 ,he will prick up his ears and gather himself together1 and say1 ,i will remain mine own4 ,he gradually comes to understand what a fearful decision it is4 ,for he must go down into the depths of being1 with a string of curious questions on his lips--,why am ,i alive8 what lesson have ,i to learn from life8 how have ,i become what ,i am1 and why do ,i suffer in this existence8 ,he is troubled1 and sees that no one is troubled in the same way2 but rather that the hands of his fellow-men are passionately stretched out towards the fantastic drama of the political theatre1 or they themselves are treading the boards under many disguises1 youths1 men and graybeards1 fathers1 citizens1 priests1 merchants and officials1--busy with the comedy they are all playing1 and never thinking of their own selves4 ,to the question ,to what end dost thou live8 they would all immediately answer1 with pride1 ,to become a good citizen or professor or statesman1--and yet they are something which can never be changed3 and why are they just--this8 ,ah1 and why nothing better8 ,the man who only regards his life as a moment in the evolution of a race or a state or a science1 and will belong merely to a history of becoming1 has not understood the lesson of existence1 and must learn it over again4 ,this eternal becoming something is a lying puppet-show1 in which man has forgot himself2 it is the force that scatters individuality to the four winds1 the eternal childish game that the big baby time is playing in front of us--and with us4 ,the heroism of sincerity lies in ceasing to be the plaything of time4 ,everything in the process of becoming is a hollow sham1 contemptible and shallow3 man can only find the solution of his riddle in being something definite and unchangeable4 ,he begins to test how deep both becoming and being are rooted in him--and a fearful task is before his soul2 to destroy the first1 and bring all the falsity of things to the light4 ,he wishes to know everything1 not to feed a delicate taste1 like ,goethe's man1 to take delight1 from a safe place in the multiplicity of existence3 but he himself is the first sacrifice that he brings4 ,the heroic man does not think of his happiness or misery1 his virtues or his vices1 or of his being the measure of things2 he has no further hopes of himself and will accept the utter consequences of his hopelessness4 ,his strength lies in his self-forgetfulness3 if he have a thought for himself1 it is only to measure the vast distance between himself and his aim1 and to view what he has left behind him as so much dross4 ,the old philosophers sought for happiness and truth1 with all their strength3 and there is an evil principle in nature that not one shall find that which he cannot help seeking4 ,but the man who looks for a lie in everything1 and becomes a willing friend to unhappiness1 shall have a marvellous disillusioning3 there hovers near him something unutterable1 of which truth and happiness are but idolatrous images born of the night2 the earth loses her dragging weight1 the events and powers of earth become as a dream1 and a gradual clearness widens round him like a summer evening4 ,it is as though the beholder of these things began to wake1 and it had only been the clouds of a passing dream that had been weaving about him4 ,they will at some time disappear3 and then will it be day4 ,v4 ,but ,i have promised to speak of ,schopenhauer1 as far as my experience goes1 as an educator1 and it is far from being sufficient to paint the ideal humanity which is the ,platonic idea in ,schopenhauer2 especially as my representation is an imperfect one4 ,the most difficult task remains2--to say how a new circle of duties may spring from this ideal1 and how one can reconcile such a transcendent aim with ordinary action2 to prove1 in short1 that the ideal is educative4 ,one might otherwise think it to be merely the blissful or intoxicating vision of a few rare moments1 that leaves us afterwards the prey of a deeper disappointment4 ,it is certain that the ideal begins to affect us in this way when we come suddenly to distinguish light and darkness1 bliss and abhorrence2 this is an experience that is as old as ideals themselves4 ,but we ought not to stand in the doorway for long2 we should soon leave the first stages1 and ask the question1 seriously and definitely1 ,is it possible to bring that incredibly high aim so near us1 that it should educate us1 or 'lead us out1' as well as lead us upward8--in order that the great words of ,goethe be not fulfilled in our case--,man is born to a state of limitation3 he can understand ends that are simple1 present and definite1 and is accustomed to make use of means that are near to his hand2 but as soon as he comes into the open1 he knows neither what he wishes nor what he ought to do1 and it is all one whether he be confused by the multitude of objects or set beside himself by their greatness and importance4 ,it is always his misfortune to be led to strive after something which he cannot attain by any ordinary activity of his own4 ,the objection can be made with apparent reason against ,schopenhauer's man1 that his greatness and dignity can only turn our heads1 and put us beyond all community with the active men of the world3 the common round of duties1 the noiseless tenor of life has disappeared4 ,one man may possibly get accustomed to living in a reluctant dualism1 that is1 in a contradiction with himself2-- becoming unstable1 daily weaker and less productive3--while another will renounce all action on principle1 and scarcely endure to see others active4 ,the danger is always great when a man is too heavy-laden1 and cannot really accomplish any duties4 ,stronger natures may be broken by it2 the weaker1 which are the majority1 sink into a speculative laziness1 and at last1 from their laziness1 lose even the power of speculation4 ,with regard to such objections1 ,i will admit that our work has hardly begun1 and so far as ,i know1 ,i only see one thing clearly and definitely--that it is possible for that ideal picture to provide you and me with a chain of duties that may be accomplished2 and some of us already feel its pressure4 ,in order1 however1 to be able to speak in plain language of the formula under which ,i may gather the new circle of duties1 ,i must begin with the following considerations4 ,the deeper minds of all ages have had pity for animals1 because they suffer from life and have not the power to turn the sting of the suffering against themselves1 and understand their being metaphysically4 ,the sight of blind suffering is the spring of the deepest emotion4 ,and in many quarters of the earth men have supposed that the souls of the guilty have entered into beasts1 and that the blind suffering which at first sight calls for such pity has a clear meaning and purpose to the divine justice1--of punishment and atonement3 and a heavy punishment it is1 to be condemned to live in hunger and need1 in the shape of a beast1 and to reach no consciousness of one's self in this life4 ,i can think of no harder lot than the wild beast's2 he is driven to the forest by the fierce pang of hunger1 that seldom leaves him at peace2 and peace is itself a torment1 the surfeit after horrid food1 won1 maybe1 by a deadly fight with other animals4 ,to cling to life1 blindly and madly1 with no other aim1 to be ignorant of the reason1 or even the fact1 of one's punishment1 nay1 to thirst after it as if it were a pleasure1 with all the perverted desire of a fool--this is what it means to be an animal4 ,if universal nature leads up to man1 it is to show us that he is necessary to redeem her from the curse of the beast's life1 and that in him existence can find a mirror of itself wherein life appears1 no longer blind1 but in its real metaphysical significance4 ,but we should consider where the beast ends and the man begins--the man1 the one concern of ,nature4 ,as long as any one desires life as a pleasure in itself1 he has not raised his eyes above the horizon of the beast2 he only desires more consciously what the beast seeks by a blind impulse4 ,it is so with us all1 for the greater part of our lives4 ,we do not shake off the beast1 but are beasts ourselves1 suffering we know not what4 ,but there are moments when we do know2 and then the clouds break1 and we see how1 with the rest of nature1 we are straining towards the man1 as to something that stands high above us4 ,we look round and behind us1 and fear the sudden rush of light2 the beasts are transfigured1 and ourselves with them4 ,the enormous migrations of mankind in the wildernesses of the world1 the cities they found and the wars they wage1 their ceaseless gatherings and dispersions and fusions1 the doctrines they blindly follow1 their mutual frauds and deceits1 the cry of distress1 the shriek of victory--are all a continuation of the beast in us3 as if the education of man has been intentionally set back1 and his promise of self-consciousness frustrated2 as if1 in fact1 after yearning for man so long1 and at last reaching him by her labour1 ,nature should now recoil from him and wish to return to a state of unconscious instinct4 ,ah6 she has need of knowledge1 and shrinks before the very knowledge she needs3 the flame flickers unsteadily and fears its own brightness1 and takes hold of a thousand things before the one thing for which knowledge is necessary4 ,there are moments when we all know that our most elaborate arrangements are only designed to give us refuge from our real task in life2 we wish to hide our heads somewhere as if our ,argus-eyed conscience could not find us out2 we are quick to send our hearts on state-service1 or money-making1 or social duties1 or scientific work1 in order to possess them no longer ourselves2 we are more willing and instinctive slaves of the hard day's work than mere living requires1 because it seems to us more necessary not to be in a position to think4 ,the hurry is universal1 because every one is fleeing before himself2 its concealment is just as universal1 as we wish to seem contented and hide our wretchedness from the keener eyes2 and so there is a common need for a new carillon of words to hang in the temple of life1 and peal for its noisy festival4 ,we all know the curious way in which unpleasant memories suddenly throng on us1 and how we do our best by loud talk and violent gestures to put them out of our minds2 but the gestures and the talk of our ordinary life make one think we are all in this condition1 frightened of any memory or any inward gaze4 ,what is it that is always troubling us8 what is the gnat that will not let us sleep8 ,there are spirits all about us1 each moment of life has something to say to us1 but we will not listen to the spirit-voices4 ,when we are quiet and alone1 we fear that something will be whispered in our ears1 and so we hate the quiet1 and dull our senses in society4 ,we understand this sometimes1 as ,i say1 and stand amazed at the whirl and the rush and the anxiety and all the dream that we call our life2 we seem to fear the awakening1 and our dreams too become vivid and restless1 as the awakening draws near4 ,but we feel as well that we are too weak to endure long those intimate moments1 and that we are not the men to whom universal nature looks as her redeemers4 ,it is something to be able to raise our heads but for a moment and see the stream in which we are sunk so deep4 ,we cannot gain even this transitory moment of awakening by our own strength2 we must be lifted up--and who are they that will uplift us8 ,the sincere men who have cast out the beast1 the philosophers1 artists and saints4 ,nature--qu nunquam facit saltum--has made her one leap in creating them2 a leap of joy1 as she feels herself for the first time at her goal1 where she begins to see that she must learn not to have goals above her1 and that she has played the game of transition too long4 ,the knowledge transfigures her1 and there rests on her face the gentle weariness of evening that men call beauty4 ,her words after this transfiguration are as a great light shed over existence3 and the highest wish that mortals can reach is to listen continually to her voice with ears that hear4 ,if a man think of all that ,schopenhauer1 for example1 must have heard in his life1 he may well say to himself--,the deaf ears1 the feeble understanding and shrunken heart1 everything that ,i call mine1--how ,i despise them6 ,not to be able to fly but only to flutter one's wings6 ,to look above one's self and have no power to rise6 ,to know the road that leads to the wide vision of the philosopher1 and to reel back after a few steps6 ,were there but one day when the great wish might be fulfilled1 how gladly would we pay for it with the rest of life6 ,to rise as high as any thinker yet into the pure icy air of the mountain1 where there are no mists and veils1 and the inner constitution of things is shown in a stark and piercing clarity6 ,even by thinking of this the soul becomes infinitely alone2 but were its wish fulfilled1 did its glance once fall straight as a ray of light on the things below1 were shame and anxiety and desire gone for ever--one could find no words for its state then1 for the mystic and tranquil emotion with which1 like the soul of ,schopenhauer1 it would look down on the monstrous hieroglyphics of existence and the petrified doctrines of becoming2 not as the brooding night1 but as the red and glowing day that streams over the earth4 ,and what a destiny it is only to know enough of the fixity and happiness of the philosopher to feel the complete unfixity and unhappiness of the false philosopher1 'who without hope lives in desire'3 to know one's self to be the fruit of a tree that is too much in the shade ever to ripen1 and to see a world of sunshine in front1 where one may not go6 ,there were sorrow enough here1 if ever1 to make such a man envious and spiteful3 but he will turn aside1 that he may not destroy his soul by a vain aspiration2 and will discover a new circle of duties4 ,i can now give an answer to the question whether it be possible to approach the great ideal of ,schopenhauer's man by any ordinary activity of our own4 ,in the first place1 the new duties are certainly not those of a hermit2 they imply rather a vast community1 held together not by external forms but by a fundamental idea1 namely that of culture2 though only so far as it can put a single task before each of us--to bring the philosopher1 the artist and the saint1 within and without us1 to the light1 and to strive thereby for the completion of ,nature4 ,for ,nature needs the artist1 as she needs the philosopher1 for a metaphysical end1 the explanation of herself1 whereby she may have a clear and sharp picture of what she only saw dimly in the troubled period of transition1--and so may reach self-consciousness4 ,goethe1 in an arrogant yet profound phrase1 showed how all ,nature's attempts only have value in so far as the artist interprets her stammering words1 meets her half-way1 and speaks aloud what she really means4 ,i have often said1 and will often repeat1 he exclaims in one place1 the causa finalis of natural and human activity is dramatic poetry4 ,otherwise the stuff is of no use at all4 ,finally1 ,nature needs the saint4 ,in him the ego has melted away1 and the suffering of his life is1 practically1 no longer felt as individual1 but as the spring of the deepest sympathy and intimacy with all living creatures3 he sees the wonderful transformation scene that the comedy of becoming never reaches1 the attainment1 at length1 of the high state of man after which all nature is striving1 that she may be delivered from herself4 ,without doubt1 we all stand in close relation to him1 as well as to the philosopher and the artist3 there are moments1 sparks from the clear fire of love1 in whose light we understand the word ,i no longer2 there is something beyond our being that comes1 for those moments1 to the hither side of it3 and this is why we long in our hearts for a bridge from here to there4 ,in our ordinary state we can do nothing towards the production of the new redeemer1 and so we hate ourselves in this state with a hatred that is the root of the pessimism which ,schopenhauer had to teach again to our age1 though it is as old as the aspiration after culture4--,its root1 not its flower2 the foundation1 not the summit2 the beginning of the road1 not the end3 for we have to learn at some time to hate something else1 more universal than our own personality with its wretched limitation1 its change and its unrest--and this will be when we shall learn to love something else than we can love now4 ,when we are ourselves received into that high order of philosophers1 artists and saints1 in this life or a reincarnation of it1 a new object for our love and hate will also rise before us4 ,as it is1 we have our task and our circle of duties1 our hates and our loves4 ,for we know that culture requires us to make ready for the coming of the ,schopenhauer man2--and this is the use we are to make of him2--we must know what obstacles there are and strike them from our path--in fact1 wage unceasing war against everything that hindered our fulfilment1 and prevented us from becoming ,schopenhauer's men ourselves4 ,,vi4 ,it is sometimes harder to agree to a thing than to understand it2 many will feel this when they consider the proposition--,mankind must toil unceasingly to bring forth individual great men3 this and nothing else is its task4 ,one would like to apply to society and its ends a fact that holds universally in the animal and vegetable world2 where progress depends only on the higher individual types1 which are rarer1 yet more persistent1 complex and productive4 ,but traditional notions of what the end of society is1 absolutely bar the way4 ,we can easily understand how in the natural world1 where one species passes at some point into a higher one1 the aim of their evolution cannot be held to lie in the high level attained by the mass1 or in the latest types developed2--but rather in what seem accidental beings produced here and there by favourable circumstances4 ,it should be just as easy to understand that it is the duty of mankind to provide the circumstances favourable to the birth of the new redeemer1 simply because men can have a consciousness of their object4 ,but there is always something to prevent them4 ,they find their ultimate aim in the happiness of all1 or the greatest number1 or in the expansion of a great commonwealth4 ,a man will very readily decide to sacrifice his life for the state2 he will be much slower to respond if an individual1 and not a state1 ask for the sacrifice4 ,it seems to be out of reason that one man should exist for the sake of another3 ,let it be rather for the sake of every other1 or1 at any rate1 of as many as possible6 ,o upright judge6 ,as if it were more in reason to let the majority decide a question of value and significance6 ,for the problem is--,in what way may your life1 the individual life1 retain the highest value and the deepest significance8 and how may it least be squandered8 ,only by your living for the good of the rarest and most valuable types1 not for that of the majority1--who are the most worthless types1 taken as individuals4 ,this way of thinking should be implanted and fostered in every young man's mind3 he should regard himself both as a failure of ,nature's handiwork and a testimony to her larger ideas4 ,she has succeeded badly1 he should say2 but ,i will do honour to her great idea by being a means to its better success4 ,with these thoughts he will enter the circle of culture1 which is the child of every man's self-knowledge and dissatisfaction4 ,he will approach and say aloud3 ,i see something above me1 higher and more human than ,i3 let all help me to reach it1 as ,i will help all who know and suffer as ,i do1 that the man may arise at last who feels his knowledge and love1 vision and power1 to be complete and boundless1 who in his universality is one with nature1 the critic and judge of existence4 ,it is difficult to give any one this courageous self-consciousness1 because it is impossible to teach love2 from love alone the soul gains1 not only the clear vision that leads to self-contempt1 but also the desire to look to a higher self which is yet hidden1 and strive upward to it with all its strength4 ,and so he who rests his hope on a future great man1 receives his first initiation into culture4 ,the sign of this is shame or vexation at one's self1 a hatred of one's own narrowness1 a sympathy with the genius that ever raises its head again from our misty wastes1 a feeling for all that is struggling into life1 the conviction that ,nature must be helped in her hour of need to press forward to the man1 however ill she seem to prosper1 whatever success may attend her marvellous forms and projects3 so that the men with whom we live are like the dbris of some precious sculptures1 which cry out--,come and help us6 ,put us together1 for we long to become complete4 ,i called this inward condition the first initiation into culture4 ,i have now to describe the effects of the second initiation1 a task of greater difficulty4 ,it is the passage from the inner life to the criticism of the outer life4 ,the eye must be turned to find in the great world of movement the desire for culture that is known from the immediate experience of the individual2 who must use his own strivings and aspirations as the alphabet to interpret those of humanity4 ,he cannot rest here either1 but must go higher4 ,culture demands from him not only that inner experience1 not only the criticism of the outer world surrounding him1 but action too to crown them all1 the fight for culture against the influences and conventions and institutions where he cannot find his own aim1--the production of genius4 ,any one who can reach the second step1 will see how extremely rare and imperceptible the knowledge of that end is1 though all men busy themselves with culture and expend vast labour in her service4 ,he asks himself in amazement--,is not such knowledge1 after all1 absolutely necessary8 ,can ,nature be said to attain her end1 if men have a false idea of the aim of their own labour8 ,and any one who thinks a great deal of ,nature's unconscious adaptation of means to ends1 will probably answer at once3 ,yes1 men may think and speak what they like about their ultimate end1 their blind instinct will tell them the right road4 ,it requires some experience of life to be able to contradict this3 but let a man be convinced of the real aim of culture--the production of the true man and nothing else2--let him consider that amid all the pageantry and ostentation of culture at the present time the conditions for his production are nothing but a continual battle of the beasts3 and he will see that there is great need for a conscious will to take the place of that blind instinct4 ,there is another reason also2--to prevent the possibility of turning this obscure impulse to quite different ends1 in a direction where our highest aim can no longer be attained4 ,for we must beware of a certain kind of misapplied and parasitical culture2 the powers at present most active in its propagation have other casts of thought that prevent their relation to culture from being pure and disinterested4 ,the first of these is the self-interest of the business men4 ,this needs the help of culture1 and helps her in return1 though at the price of prescribing her ends and limits4 ,and their favourite sorites is3 ,we must have as much knowledge and education as possible2 this implies as great a need as possible for it1 this again as much production1 this again as much material wealth and happiness as possible4--,this is the seductive formula4 ,its preachers would define education as the insight that makes man through and through a child of his age in his desires and their satisfaction1 and gives him command over the best means of making money4 ,its aim would be to make current men1 in the same sense as one speaks of the currency in money2 and in their view1 the more current men there are1 the happier the people4 ,the object of modern educational systems is therefore to make each man as current as his nature will allow him1 and to give him the opportunity for the greatest amount of success and happiness that can be got from his particular stock of knowledge4 ,he is required to have just so much idea of his own value 7through his liberal education7 as to know what he can ask of life2 and he is assured that a natural and necessary connection between intelligence and property not only exists1 but is also a moral necessity4 ,all education is detested that makes for loneliness1 and has an aim above money-making1 and requires a long time3 men look askance on such serious education1 as mere refined egoism or immoral ,epicureanism4 ,the converse of course holds1 according to the ordinary morality1 that education must be soon over to allow the pursuit of money to be soon begun1 and should be just thorough enough to allow of much money being made4 ,the amount of education is determined by commercial interests4 ,in short1 man has a necessary claim to worldly happiness2 only for that reason is education necessary4 ,there is1 secondly1 the self-interest of the state1 which requires the greatest possible breadth and universality of culture1 and has the most effective weapons to carry out its wishes4 ,if it be firmly enough established not only to initiate but control education and bear its whole weight1 such breadth will merely profit the competition of the state with other states4 ,a highly civilised state generally implies1 at the present time1 the task of setting free the spiritual forces of a generation just so far as they may be of use to the existing institutions1--as a mountain stream is split up by embankments and channels1 and its diminished power made to drive mill-wheels1 its full strength being more dangerous than useful to the mills4 ,and thus setting free comes to mean rather chaining up4 ,compare1 for example1 what the self-interest of the state has done for ,christianity4 ,christianity is one of the purest manifestations of the impulse towards culture and the production of the saint3 but being used in countless ways to turn the mills of the state authorities1 it gradually became sick at heart1 hypocritical and degenerate1 and in antagonism with its original aim4 ,its last phase1 the ,german ,reformation1 would have been nothing but a sudden flickering of its dying flame1 had it not taken new strength and light from the clash and conflagration of states4 ,in the third place1 culture will be favoured by all those people who know their own character to be offensive or tiresome1 and wish to draw a veil of so-called good form over them4 ,words1 gestures1 dress1 etiquette1 and such external things1 are meant to produce a false impression1 the inner side to be judged from the outer4 ,i sometimes think that modern men are eternally bored with each other and look to the arts to make them interesting4 ,they let their artists make savoury and inviting dishes of them2 they steep themselves in the spices of the ,east and ,west1 and have a very interesting aroma after it all4 ,they are ready to suit all palates3 and every one will be served1 whether he want something with a good or bad taste1 something sublime or coarse1 ,greek or ,chinese1 tragedy or gutter-drama4 ,the most celebrated chefs among the moderns who wish to interest and be interested at any price1 are the ,french2 the worst are the ,germans4 ,this is really more comforting for the latter1 and we have no reason to mind the ,french despising us for our want of interest1 elegance and politeness1 and being reminded of the ,indian who longs for a ring through his nose1 and then proceeds to tattoo himself4 ,here ,i must digress a little4 ,many things in ,germany have evidently been altered since the late war with ,france1 and new requirements for ,german culture brought over4 ,the war was for many their first venture into the more elegant half of the world3 and what an admirable simplicity the conqueror shows in not scorning to learn something of culture from the conquered6 ,the applied arts especially will be reformed to emulate our more refined neighbours1 the ,german house furnished like the ,french1 a sound taste applied to the ,german language by means of an ,academy on the ,french model1 to shake off the doubtful influence of ,goethe--this is the judgment of our new ,berlin ,academician1 ,dubois-,raymond4 ,our theatres have been gradually moving1 in a dignified way1 towards the same goal1 even the elegant ,german savant is now discovered--and we must now expect everything that does not conform to this law of elegance1 our music1 tragedy and philosophy1 to be thrust aside as un-,german4 ,but there were no need to raise a finger for ,german culture1 did ,german culture 7which the ,germans have yet to find7 mean nothing but the little amenities that make life more decorative--including the arts of the dancing-master and the upholsterer2--or were they merely interested in academic rules of language and a general atmosphere of politeness4 ,the late war and the self-comparison with the ,french do not seem to have aroused any further desires1 and ,i suspect that the ,german has a strong wish for the moment to be free of the old obligations laid on him by his wonderful gifts of seriousness and profundity4 ,he would much rather play the buffoon and the monkey1 and learn the arts that make life amusing4 ,but the ,german spirit cannot be more dishonoured than by being treated as wax for any elegant mould4 ,and if1 unfortunately1 a good many ,germans will allow themselves to be thus moulded1 one must continually say to them1 till at last they listen3--,the old ,german way is no longer yours3 it was hard1 rough1 and full of resistance2 but it is still the most valuable material--one which only the greatest modellers can work with1 for they alone are worthy to use it4 ,what you have in you now is a soft pulpy stuff3 make what you will out of it1--elegant dolls and interesting idols--,richard ,wagner's phrase will still hold good1 ',the ,german is awkward and ungainly when he wishes to be polite2 he is high above all others1 when he begins to take fire4' ,all the elegant people have reason to beware of this ,german fire2 it may one day devour them with all their wax dolls and idols4--,the prevailing love of good form in ,germany may have a deeper cause in the breathless seizing at what the moment can give1 the haste that plucks the fruit too green1 the race and the struggle that cut the furrows in men's brows and stamp the same mark on all their actions4 ,as if there were a poison in them that would not let them breathe1 they rush about in disorder1 anxious slaves of the three m's1 the moment1 the mode and the mob3 they see too well their want of dignity and fitness1 and need a false elegance to hide their galloping consumption4 ,the fashionable desire of good form is bound up with a loathing of man's inner nature3 the one is to conceal1 the other to be concealed4 ,education means now the concealment of man's misery and wickedness1 his wild-beast quarrels1 his eternal greed1 his shamelessness in fruition4 ,in pointing out the absence of a ,german culture1 ,i have often had the reproach flung at me3 ,this absence is quite natural1 for the ,germans have been too poor and modest up to now4 ,once rich and conscious of themselves1 our people will have a culture too4 ,faith may often produce happiness1 yet this particular faith makes me unhappy1 for ,i feel that the culture whose future raises such hopes--the culture of riches1 politeness1 and elegant concealments-- is the bitterest foe of that ,german culture in which ,i believe4 ,every one who has to live among ,germans suffers from the dreadful grayness and apathy of their lives1 their formlessness1 torpor and clumsiness1 still more their envy1 secretiveness and impurity3 he is troubled by their innate love of the false and the ignoble1 their wretched mimicry and translation of a good foreign thing into a bad ,german one4 ,but now that the feverish unrest1 the quest of gain and success1 the intense prizing of the moment1 is added to it all1 it makes one furious to think that all this sickness can never be cured1 but only painted over1 by such a cult of the interesting4 ,and this among a people that has produced a ,schopenhauer and a ,wagner6 and will produce others1 unless we are blindly deceiving ourselves2 for should not their very existence be a guarantee that such forces are even now potential in the ,german spirit8 ,or will they be exceptions1 the last inheritors of the qualities that were once called ,german8 ,i can see nothing to help me here1 and return to my main argument again1 from which my doubts and anxieties have made me digress4 ,i have not yet enumerated all the forces that help culture without recognising its end1 the production of genius4 ,three have been named2 the self-interest of business1 of the state1 and of those who draw the cloak of good form over them4 ,there is fourthly the self-interest of science1 and the peculiar nature of her servants--the learned4 ,science has the same relation to wisdom as current morality to holiness3 she is cold and dry1 loveless1 and ignorant of any deep feeling of dissatisfaction and yearning4 ,she injures her servants in helping herself1 for she impresses her own character on them and dries up their humanity4 ,as long as we actually mean by culture the progress of science1 she will pass by the great suffering man and harden her heart1 for science only sees the problems of knowledge1 and suffering is something alien and unintelligible to her world--though no less a problem for that6 ,if one accustom himself to put down every experience in a dialectical form of question and answer1 and translate it into the language of pure reason1 he will soon wither up and rattle his bones like a skeleton4 ,we all know it3 and why is it that the young do not shudder at these skeletons of men1 but give themselves blindly to science without motive or measure8 ,it cannot be the so-called impulse to truth3 for how could there be an impulse towards a pure1 cold and objectless knowledge8 ,the unprejudiced eye can see the real driving forces only too plainly4 ,the vivisection of the professor has much to recommend it1 as he himself is accustomed to finger and analyse all things--even the worthiest6 ,to speak honestly1 the savant is a complex of very various impulses and attractive forces--he is a base metal throughout4 ,take first a strong and increasing desire for intellectual adventure1 the attraction of the new and rare as against the old and tedious4 ,add to that a certain joy in nosing the trail of dialectic1 and beating the cover where the old fox1 ,thought1 lies hid2 the desire is not so much for truth as the chase of truth1 and the chief pleasure is in surrounding and artistically killing it4 ,add thirdly a love of contradiction whereby the personality is able to assert itself against all others3 the battle's the thing1 and the personal victory its aim1--truth only its pretext4 ,the impulse to discover particular truths plays a great part in the professor1 coming from his submission to definite ruling persons1 classes1 opinions1 churches1 governments1 for he feels it a profit to himself to bring truth to their side4 ,the following characteristics of the savant are less common1 but still found4--,firstly1 downrightness and a feeling for simplicity1 very valuable if more than a mere awkwardness and inability to deceive1 deception requiring some mother-wit4--7,actually1 we may be on our guard against too obvious cleverness and resource1 and doubt the man's sincerity47--,otherwise this downrightness is generally of little value1 and rarely of any use to knowledge1 as it follows tradition and speaks the truth only in adiaphora2 it being lazier to speak the truth here than ignore it4 ,everything new means something to be unlearnt1 and your downright man will respect the ancient dogmas and accuse the new evangelist of failing in the sensus recti4 ,there was a similar opposition1 with probability and custom on its side1 to the theory of ,copernicus4 ,the professor's frequent hatred of philosophy is principally a hatred of the long trains of reasoning and artificiality of the proofs4 ,ultimately the savants of every age have a fixed limit2 beyond which ingenuity is not allowed1 and everything suspected as a conspirator against honesty4 ,secondly1 a clear vision of near objects1 combined with great shortsightedness for the distant and universal4 ,the professor's range is generally very small1 and his eye must be kept close to the object4 ,to pass from a point already considered to another1 he has to move his whole optical apparatus4 ,he cuts a picture into small sections1 like a man using an opera-glass in the theatre1 and sees now a head1 now a bit of the dress1 but nothing as a whole4 ,the single sections are never combined for him1 he only infers their connection1 and consequently has no strong general impression4 ,he judges a literary work1 for example1 by certain paragraphs or sentences or errors1 as he can do nothing more2 he will be driven to see in an oil painting nothing but a mass of daubs4 ,thirdly1 a sober conventionality in his likes and dislikes4 ,thus he especially delights in history because he can put his own motives into the actions of the past4 ,a mole is most comfortable in a mole-hill4 ,he is on his guard against all ingenious and extravagant hypotheses2 but digs up industriously all the commonplace motives of the past1 because he feels in sympathy with them4 ,he is generally quite incapable of understanding and valuing the rare or the uncommon1 the great or the real4 ,fourthly1 a lack of feeling1 which makes him capable of vivisection4 ,he knows nothing of the suffering that brings knowledge1 and does not fear to tread where other men shudder4 ,he is cold and may easily appear cruel4 ,he is thought courageous1 but he is not1--any more than the mule who does not feel giddiness4 ,fifthly1 diffidence1 or a low estimate of himself4 ,though he live in a miserable alley of the world1 he has no sense of sacrifice or surrender2 he appears often to know in his inmost heart that he is not a flying but a crawling creature4 ,and this makes him seem even pathetic4 ,sixthly1 loyalty to his teachers and leaders4 ,from his heart he wishes to help them1 and knows he can do it best with the truth4 ,he has a grateful disposition1 for he has only gained admittance through them to the high hall of science2 he would never have entered by his own road4 ,any man to-day who can throw open a new province where his lesser disciples can work to some purpose1 is famous at once2 so great is the crowd that presses after him4 ,these grateful pupils are certainly a misfortune to their teacher1 as they all imitate him2 his faults are exaggerated in their small persons1 his virtues correspondingly diminished4 ,seventhly1 he will follow the usual road of all the professors1 where a feeling for truth springs from a lack of ideas1 and the wheel once started goes on4 ,such natures become compilers1 commentators1 makers of indices and herbaria2 they rummage about one special department because they have never thought there are others4 ,their industry has something of the monstrous stupidity of gravitation2 and so they can often bring their labours to an end4 ,eighthly1 a dread of ennui4 ,while the true thinker desires nothing more than leisure1 the professor fears it1 not knowing how it is to be used4 ,books are his comfort2 he listens to everybody's different thoughts and keeps himself amused all day4 ,he especially chooses books with a personal relation to himself1 that make him feel some emotion of like or dislike2 books that have to do with himself or his position1 his political1 sthetic1 or even grammatical doctrines2 if he have mastered even one branch of knowledge1 the means to flap away the flies of ennui will not fail him4 ,ninthly1 the motive of the bread-winner1 the cry of the empty stomach1 in fact4 ,truth is used as a direct means of preferment1 when she can be attained2 or as a way to the good graces of the fountains of honour--and bread4 ,only1 however1 in the sense of the particular truth3 there is a gulf between the profitable truths that many serve1 and the unprofitable truths to which only those few people devote themselves whose motto is not ingenii largitor venter4 ,tenthly1 a reverence for their fellow-professors and a fear of their displeasure--a higher and rarer motive than the last1 though not uncommon4 ,all the members of the guild are jealously on guard1 that the truth which means so much bread and honour and position may really be baptized in the name of its discoverer4 ,the one pays the other reverence for the truth he has found1 in order to exact the toll again if he should find one himself4 ,the ,untruth1 the ,error is loudly exploded1 that the workers may not be too many2 here and there the real truth will be exploded to let a few bold and stiff-necked errors be on show for a time2 there is never a lack of moral idiosyncrasies1--formerly called rascalities4 ,eleventhly1 the savant for vanity1 now rather rare4 ,he will get a department for himself somehow1 and investigate curiosities1 especially if they demand unusual expenditure1 travel1 research1 or communication with all parts of the world4 ,he is quite satisfied with the honour of being regarded as a curiosity himself1 and never dreams of earning a living by his erudite studies4 ,twelfthly1 the savant for amusement4 ,he loves to look for knots in knowledge and to untie them2 not too energetically however1 lest he lose the spirit of the game4 ,thus he does not penetrate the depths1 though he often observes something that the microscopic eyes of the bread-and-butter scientist never see4 ,if ,i speak1 lastly1 of the impulse towards justice as a further motive of the savant1 ,i may be answered that this noble impulse1 being metaphysical in its nature1 is too indistinguishable from the rest1 and really incomprehensible to mortal mind2 and so ,i leave the thirteenth heading with the pious wish that the impulse may be less rare in the professor than it seems4 ,for a spark in his soul from the fire of justice is sufficient to irradiate and purify it1 so that he can rest no more and is driven for ever from the cold or lukewarm condition in which most of his fellows do their daily work4 ,all these elements1 or a part of them1 must be regarded as fused and pounded together1 to form the ,servant of ,truth4 ,for the sake of an absolutely inhuman thing--mere purposeless1 and therefore motiveless1 knowledge--a mass of very human little motives have been chemically combined1 and as the result we have the professor1--so transfigured in the light of that pure unearthly object that the mixing and pounding which went to form him are all forgotten6 ,it is very curious4 ,yet there are moments when they must be remembered1--when we have to think of the professor's significance to culture4 ,any one with observation can see that he is in his essence and by his origin unproductive1 and has a natural hatred of the productive2 and thus there is an endless feud between the genius and the savant in idea and practice4 ,the latter wishes to kill ,nature by analysing and comprehending it1 the former to increase it by a new living ,nature4 ,the happy age does not need or know the savant2 the sick and sluggish time ranks him as its highest and worthiest4 ,who were physician enough to know the health or sickness of our time8 ,it is clear that the professor is valued too highly1 with evil consequences for the future genius1 for whom he has no compassion1 merely a cold1 contemptuous criticism1 a shrug of the shoulders1 as if at something strange and perverted for which he has neither time nor inclination4 ,and so he too knows nothing of the aim of culture4 ,in fact1 all these considerations go to prove that the aim of culture is most unknown precisely where the interest in it seems liveliest4 ,the state may trumpet as it will its services to culture1 it merely helps culture in order to help itself1 and does not comprehend an aim that stands higher than its own well-being or even existence4 ,the business men in their continual demand for education merely wish for--business4 ,when the pioneers of good form pretend to be the real helpers of culture1 imagining that all art1 for example1 is merely to serve their own needs1 they are clearly affirming themselves in affirming culture4 ,of the savant enough has already been said4 ,all four are emulously thinking how they can benefit themselves with the help of culture1 but have no thoughts at all when their own interests are not engaged4 ,and so they have done nothing to improve the conditions for the birth of genius in modern times2 and the opposition to original men has grown so far that no ,socrates could ever live among us1 and certainly could never reach the age of seventy4 ,i remember saying in the third chapter that our whole modern world was not so stable that one could prophesy an eternal life to its conception of culture4 ,it is likely that the next millennium may reach two or three new ideas that might well make the hair of our present generation stand on end4 ,the belief in the metaphysical significance of culture would not be such a horrifying thing1 but its effects on educational methods might be so4 ,it requires a totally new attitude of mind to be able to look away from the present educational institutions to the strangely different ones that will be necessary for the second or third generation4 ,at present the labours of higher education produce merely the savant or the official or the business man or the ,philistine or1 more commonly1 a mixture of all four2 and the future institutions will have a harder task2--not in itself harder2 as it is really more natural1 and so easier2 and further1 could anything be harder than to make a youth into a savant against nature1 as now happens8--,but the difficulty lies in unlearning what we know and setting up a new aim2 it will be an endless trouble to change the fundamental idea of our present educational system1 that has its roots in the ,middle ,ages and regards the medival savant as the ideal type of culture4 ,it is already time to put these objects before us2 for some generation must begin the battle1 of which a later generation will reap the victory4 ,the solitary man who has understood the new fundamental idea of culture is at the parting of the ways2 on the one he will be welcomed by his age1 laurels and rewards will be his1 powerful parties will uphold him1 he will have as many in sympathy behind him as in front1 and when the leader speaks the word of deliverance1 it will echo through all the ranks4 ,the first duty is to fight in line1 the second to treat as foes all who will not fall in4 ,on the other way he will find fewer companions2 it is steeper and more tortuous4 ,the travellers on the first road laugh at him1 as his way is the more troublesome and dangerous2 and they try to entice him over4 ,if the two ways cross1 he is ill-treated1 cast aside or left alone4 ,what significance has any particular form of culture for these several travellers8 ,the enormous throng that press to their end on the first road1 understand by it the laws and institutions that enable them to go forward in regular fashion and rule out all the solitary and obstinate people who look towards higher and remoter objects4 ,to the small company on the other road it has quite a different office3 they wish to guard themselves1 by means of a strong organisation1 from being swept away by the throng1 to prevent their individual members from fainting on the way or turning in spirit from their great task4 ,these solitary men must finish their work2 that is why they should all hold together2 and those who have their part in the scheme will take thought to prepare themselves with ever-increasing purity of aim for the birth of the genius1 and ensure that the time be ripe for him4 ,many are destined to help on the labour1 even among the second-rate talents1 and it is only in submission to such a destiny that they can feel they are living for a duty1 and have a meaning and an object in their lives4 ,but at present these talents are being turned from the road their instinct has chosen by the seductive tones of the fashionable culture1 that plays on their selfish side1 their vanities and weaknesses2 and the time-spirit ever whispers in their ears its flattering counsel3--,follow me and go not thither6 ,there you are only servants and tools1 over-shadowed by higher natures with no scope for your own1 drawn by threads1 hung with fetters1 slaves and automatons4 ,with me you may enjoy your true personality1 and be masters1 your talents may shine with their own light1 and yourselves stand in the front ranks with an immense following round you2 and the acclamation of public opinion will rejoice you more than a wandering breath of approval sent down from the cold ethereal heights of genius4 ,even the best men are snared by such allurements1 and the ultimate difference comes not so much from the rarity and power of their talent1 as the influence of a certain heroic disposition at the base of them1 and an inner feeling of kinship with genius4 ,for there are men who feel it as their own misery when they see the genius in painful toil and struggle1 in danger of self-destruction1 or neglected by the short-sighted selfishness of the state1 the superficiality of the business men1 and the cold arrogance of the professors2 and ,i hope there may be some to understand what ,i mean by my sketch of ,schopenhauer's destiny1 and to what end ,schopenhauer can really educate4 ,,vii4 ,but setting aside all thoughts of any educational revolution in the distant future2--what provision is required now1 that our future philosopher may have the best chance of opening his eyes to a life like ,schopenhauer's--hard as it is1 yet still livable8 ,what1 further1 must be discovered that may make his influence on his contemporaries more certain8 ,and what obstacles must be removed before his example can have its full effect and the philosopher train another philosopher8 ,here we descend to be practical4 ,nature always desires the greatest utility1 but does not understand how to find the best and handiest means to her end2 that is her great sorrow1 and the cause of her melancholy4 ,the impulse towards her own redemption shows clearly her wish to give men a significant existence by the generation of the philosopher and the artist3 but how unclear and weak is the effect she generally obtains with her artists and philosophers1 and how seldom is there any effect at all6 ,she is especially perplexed in her efforts to make the philosopher useful2 her methods are casual and tentative1 her failures innumerable2 most of her philosophers never touch the common good of mankind at all4 ,her actions seem those of a spendthrift2 but the cause lies in no prodigal luxury1 but in her inexperience4 ,were she human1 she would probably never cease to be dissatisfied with herself and her bungling4 ,nature shoots the philosopher at mankind like an arrow2 she does not aim1 but hopes that the arrow will stick somewhere4 ,she makes countless mistakes that give her pain4 ,she is as extravagant in the sphere of culture as in her planting and sowing4 ,she fulfils her ends in a large and clumsy fashion1 using up far too much of her strength4 ,the artist has the same relation to the connoisseurs and lovers of his art as a piece of heavy artillery to a flock of sparrows4 ,it is a fool's part to use a great avalanche to sweep away a little snow1 to kill a man in order to strike the fly on his nose4 ,the artist and the philosopher are witnesses against ,nature's adaptation of her means1 however well they may show the wisdom of her ends4 ,they only reach a few and should reach all--and even these few are not struck with the strength they used when they shot4 ,it is sad to have to value art so differently as cause and effect2 how huge in its inception1 how faint the echo afterwards6 ,the artist does his work as ,nature bids him1 for the benefit of other men--no doubt of it2 but he knows that none of those men will understand and love his work as he understands and loves it himself4 ,that lonely height of love and understanding is necessary1 by ,nature's clumsy law1 to produce a lower type2 the great and noble are used as the means to the small and ignoble4 ,nature is a bad manager2 her expenses are far greater than her profits3 for all her riches she must one day go bankrupt4 ,she would have acted more reasonably to make the rule of her household--small expense and hundredfold profit2 if there had been1 for example1 only a few artists with moderate powers1 but an immense number of hearers to appreciate them1 stronger and more powerful characters than the artists themselves2 then the effect of the art-work1 in comparison with the cause1 might be a hundred-tongued echo4 ,one might at least expect cause and effect to be of equal power2 but ,nature lags infinitely behind this consummation4 ,an artist1 and especially a philosopher1 seems often to have dropped by chance into his age1 as a wandering hermit or straggler cut off from the main body4 ,think how utterly great ,schopenhauer is1 and what a small and absurd effect he has had6 ,an honest man can feel no greater shame at the present time than at the thought of the casual treatment ,schopenhauer has received and the evil powers that have up to now killed his effect among men4 ,first there was the want of readers1--to the eternal shame of our cultivated age2--then the inadequacy of his first public adherents1 as soon as he had any2 further1 ,i think1 the crassness of the modern man towards books1 which he will no longer take seriously4 ,as an outcome of many attempts to adapt ,schopenhauer to this enervated age1 the new danger has gradually arisen of regarding him as an odd kind of pungent herb1 of taking him in grains1 as a sort of metaphysical pepper4 ,in this way he has gradually become famous1 and ,i should think more have heard his name than ,hegel's2 and1 for all that1 he is still a solitary being1 who has failed of his effect4--,though the honour of causing the failure belongs least of all to the barking of his literary antagonists2 first because there are few men with the patience to read them1 and secondly1 because any one who does1 is sent immediately to ,schopenhauer himself2 for who will let a donkey-driver prevent him from mounting a fine horse1 however much he praise his donkey8 ,whoever has recognised ,nature's unreason in our time1 will have to consider some means to help her2 his task will be to bring the free spirits and the sufferers from this age to know ,schopenhauer2 and make them tributaries to the flood that is to overbear all the clumsy uses to which ,nature even now is accustomed to put her philosophers4 ,such men will see that the identical obstacles hinder the effect of a great philosophy and the production of the great philosopher2 and so will direct their aims to prepare the regeneration of ,schopenhauer1 which means that of the philosophical genius4 ,the real opposition to the further spread of his doctrine in the past1 and the regeneration of the philosopher in the future1 is the perversity of human nature as it is2 and all the great men that are to be must spend infinite pains in freeing themselves from it4 ,the world they enter is plastered over with pretence1--including not merely religious dogmas1 but such juggling conceptions as progress1 universal education1 nationalism1 the modern state2 practically all our general terms have an artificial veneer over them that will bring a clearer-sighted posterity to reproach our age bitterly for its warped and stunted growth1 however loudly we may boast of our health4 ,the beauty of the antique vases1 says ,schopenhauer1 lies in the simplicity with which they express their meaning and object2 it is so with all the ancient implements2 if ,nature produced amphor1 lamps1 tables1 chairs1 helmets1 shields1 breastplates and the like1 they would resemble these4 ,and1 as a corollary1 whoever considers how we all manage our art1 politics1 religion and education--to say nothing of our vases6--will find in them a barbaric exaggeration and arbitrariness of expression4 ,nothing is more unfavourable to the rise of genius than such monstrosities4 ,they are unseen and undiscoverable1 the leaden weights on his hand when he will set it to the plough2 the weights are only shaken off with violence1 and his highest work must to an extent always bear the mark of it4 ,in considering the conditions that1 at best1 keep the born philosopher from being oppressed by the perversity of the age1 ,i am surprised to find they are partly those in which ,schopenhauer himself grew up4 ,true1 there was no lack of opposing influences2 the evil time drew perilously near him in the person of a vain and pretentious mother4 ,but the proud republican character of his father rescued him from her and gave him the first quality of a philosopher--a rude and strong virility4 ,his father was neither an official nor a savant2 he travelled much abroad with his son1--a great help to one who must know men rather than books1 and worship truth before the state4 ,in time he got accustomed to national peculiarities3 he made ,england1 ,france and ,italy equally his home1 and felt no little sympathy with the ,spanish character4 ,on the whole1 he did not think it an honour to be born in ,germany1 and ,i am not sure that the new political conditions would have made him change his mind4 ,he held quite openly the opinion that the state's one object was to give protection at home and abroad1 and even protection against its protectors1 and to attribute any other object to it was to endanger its true end4 ,and so1 to the consternation of all the so-called liberals1 he left his property to the survivors of the ,prussian soldiers who fell in #ahdh in the fight for order4 ,to understand the state and its duties in this single sense may seem more and more henceforth the sign of intellectual superiority2 for the man with the furor philosophicus in him will no longer have time for the furor politicus1 and will wisely keep from reading the newspapers or serving a party2 though he will not hesitate a moment to take his place in the ranks if his country be in real need4 ,all states are badly managed1 when other men than politicians busy themselves with politics2 and they deserve to be ruined by their political amateurs4 ,schopenhauer had another great advantage--that he had never been educated for a professor1 but worked for some time 7though against his will7 as a merchant's clerk1 and through all his early years breathed the freer air of a great commercial house4 ,a savant can never become a philosopher3 ,kant himself could not1 but remained in a chrysalis stage to the end1 in spite of the innate force of his genius4 ,any one who thinks ,i do ,kant wrong in saying this does not know what a philosopher is--not only a great thinker1 but also a real man2 and how could a real man have sprung from a savant8 ,he who lets conceptions1 opinions1 events1 books come between himself and things1 and is born for history 7in the widest sense71 will never see anything at once1 and never be himself a thing to be seen at once2 though both these powers should be in the philosopher1 as he must take most of his doctrine from himself and be himself the copy and compendium of the whole world4 ,if a man look at himself through a veil of other people's opinions1 no wonder he sees nothing but--those opinions4 ,and it is thus that the professors see and live4 ,but ,schopenhauer had the rare happiness of seeing the genius not only in himself1 but also outside himself--in ,goethe2 and this double reflection taught him everything about the aims and culture of the learned4 ,he knew by this experience how the free strong man1 to whom all artistic culture was looking1 must come to be born2 and could he1 after this vision1 have much desire to busy himself with the so-called art1 in the learned1 hypocritical manner of the moderns8 ,he had seen something higher than that--an awful unearthly judgment-scene in which all life1 even the highest and completest1 was weighed and found too light2 he had beheld the saint as the judge of existence4 ,we cannot tell how early ,schopenhauer reached this view of life1 and came to hold it with such intensity as to make all his writings an attempt to mirror it2 we know that the youth had this great vision1 and can well believe it of the child4 ,everything that he gained later from life and books1 from all the realms of knowledge1 was only a means of colour and expression to him2 the ,kantian philosophy itself was to him an extraordinary rhetorical instrument for making the utterance of his vision1 as he thought1 clearer2 the ,buddhist and ,christian mythologies occasionally served the same end4 ,he had one task and a thousand means to execute it2 one meaning1 and innumerable hieroglyphs to express it4 ,it was one of the high conditions of his existence that he really could live for such a task--according to his motto vitam impendere vero--and none of life's material needs could shake his resolution2 and we know the splendid return he made his father for this4 ,the contemplative man in ,germany usually pursues his scientific studies to the detriment of his sincerity1 as a considerate fool1 in search of place and honour1 circumspect and obsequious1 and fawning on his influential superiors4 ,nothing offended the savants more than ,schopenhauer's unlikeness to them4 ,,viii4 ,these are a few of the conditions under which the philosophical genius can at least come to light in our time1 in spite of all thwarting influences2--a virility of character1 an early knowledge of mankind1 an absence of learned education and narrow patriotism1 of compulsion to earn his livelihood or depend on the state1--freedom in fact1 and again freedom2 the same marvellous and dangerous element in which the ,greek philosophers grew up4 ,the man who will reproach him1 as ,niebuhr did ,plato1 with being a bad citizen1 may do so1 and be himself a good one2 so he and ,plato will be right together6 ,another may call this great freedom presumption2 he is also right1 as he could not himself use the freedom properly if he desired it1 and would certainly presume too far with it4 ,this freedom is really a grave burden of guilt2 and can only be expiated by great actions4 ,every ordinary son of earth has the right of looking askance on such endowments2 and may ,providence keep him from being so endowed-- burdened1 that is1 with such terrible duties6 ,his freedom and his loneliness would be his ruin1 and ennui would turn him into a fool1 and a mischievous fool at that4 ,a father may possibly learn something from this that he may use for his son's private education1 though one must not expect fathers to have only philosophers for their sons4 ,it is possible that they will always oppose their sons becoming philosophers1 and call it mere perversity2 ,socrates was sacrificed to the fathers' anger1 for corrupting the youth1 and ,plato even thought a new ideal state necessary to prevent the philosophers' growth from being dependent on the fathers' folly4 ,it looks at present as though ,plato had really accomplished something2 for the modern state counts the encouragement of philosophy as one of its duties and tries to secure for a number of men at a time the sort of freedom that conditions the philosopher4 ,but1 historically1 ,plato has been very unlucky2 as soon as a structure has risen corresponding actually to his proposals1 it has always turned1 on a closer view1 into a goblin-child1 a monstrous changeling2 compare the ecclesiastical state of the ,middle ,ages with the government of the ,god-born king of which ,plato dreamed6 ,the modern state is furthest removed from the idea of the ,philosopher-king 7,thank ,heaven for that6 the ,christian will say72 but we must think whether it takes that very encouragement of philosophy in a ,platonic sense1 ,i mean as seriously and honestly as if its highest object were to produce more ,platos4 ,if the philosopher seem1 as usual1 an accident of his time1 does the state make it its conscious business to turn the accidental into the necessary and help ,nature here also8 ,experience teaches us a better way--or a worse3 it says that nothing so stands in the way of the birth and growth of ,nature's philosopher as the bad philosophers made by order4 ,a poor obstacle1 isn't it8 and the same that ,schopenhauer pointed out in his famous essay on ,university philosophy4 ,i return to this point1 as men must be forced to take it seriously1 to be driven to activity by it2 and ,i think all writing is useless that does not contain such a stimulus to activity4 ,and anyhow it is a good thing to apply ,schopenhauer's eternal theories once more to our own contemporaries1 as some kindly soul might think that everything has changed for the better in ,germany since his fierce diatribes4 ,unfortunately his work is incomplete on this side as well1 unimportant as the side may be4 ,the freedom that the state1 as ,i said1 bestows on certain men for the sake of philosophy is1 properly speaking1 no freedom at all1 but an office that maintains its holder4 ,the encouragement of philosophy means that there are to-day a number of men whom the state enables to make their living out of philosophy2 whereas the old sages of ,greece were not paid by the state1 but at best were presented1 as ,zeno was1 with a golden crown and a monument in the ,ceramicus4 ,i cannot say generally whether truth is served by showing the way to live by her1 since everything depends on the character of the individual who shows the way4 ,i can imagine a degree of pride in a man saying to his fellow-men1 take care of me1 as ,i have something better to do--namely to take care of you4 ,we should not be angry at such a heightened mode of expression in ,plato and ,schopenhauer2 and so they might properly have been ,university philosophers1--as ,plato1 for example1 was a court philosopher for a while without lowering the dignity of philosophy4 ,but in ,kant we have the usual submissive professor1 without any nobility in his relations with the state2 and thus he could not justify the ,university philosophy when it was once assailed4 ,if there be natures like ,schopenhauer's and ,plato's1 which can justify it1 ,i fear they will never have the chance1 as the state would never venture to give such men these positions1 for the simple reason that every state fears them1 and will only favour philosophers it does not fear4 ,the state obviously has a special fear of philosophy1 and will try to attract more philosophers1 to create the impression that it has philosophy on its side1--because it has those men on its side who have the title without the power4 ,but if there should come one who really proposes to cut everything to the quick1 the state included1 with the knife of truth1 the state1 that affirms its own existence above all1 is justified in banishing him as an enemy1 just as it bans a religion that exalts itself to be its judge4 ,the man who consents to be a state philosopher1 must also consent to be regarded as renouncing the search for truth in all its secret retreats4 ,at any rate1 so long as he enjoys his position1 he must recognise something higher than truth--the state4 ,and not only the state1 but everything required by it for existence--a definite form of religion1 a social system1 a standing army2 a noli me tangere is written above all these things4 ,can a ,university philosopher ever keep clearly before him the whole round of these duties and limitations8 ,i do not know4 ,the man who has done so and remains a state-official1 is a false friend to truth2 if he has not1--,i think he is no friend to truth either4 ,but general considerations like these are always the weakest in their influence on mankind4 ,most people will find it enough to shrug their shoulders and say1 ,as if anything great and pure has ever been able to maintain itself on this earth without some concession to human vulgarity6 ,would you rather the state persecuted philosophers than paid them for official services8 ,without answering this last question1 ,i will merely say that these concessions of philosophy to the state go rather far at present4 ,in the first place1 the state chooses its own philosophical servants1 as many as its institutions require2 it therefore pretends to be able to distinguish the good and the bad philosophers1 and even assumes there must be a sufficient supply of good ones to fill all the chairs4 ,the state is the authority not only for their goodness but their numbers4 ,secondly1 it confines those it has chosen to a definite place and a definite activity among particular men2 they must instruct every undergraduate who wants instruction1 daily1 at stated hours4 ,the question is whether a philosopher can bind himself1 with a good conscience1 to have something to teach every day1 to any one who wishes to listen4 ,must he not appear to know more than he does1 and speak1 before an unknown audience1 of things that he could mention without risk only to his most intimate friends8 ,and above all1 does he not surrender the precious freedom of following his genius when and wherever it call him1 by the mere fact of being bound to think at stated times on a fixed subject8 ,and before young men1 too6 ,is not such thinking in its nature emasculate8 ,and suppose he felt some day that he had no ideas just then--and yet must be in his place and appear to be thinking6 ,what then8 ,but1 one will say1 he is not a thinker but mainly a depository of thought1 a man of great learning in all previous philosophies4 ,of these he can always say something that his scholars do not know4 ,this is actually the third1 and the most dangerous1 concession made by philosophy to the state1 when it is compelled to appear in the form of erudition1 as the knowledge 7more specifically7 of the history of philosophy4 ,the genius looks purely and lovingly on existence1 like a poet1 and cannot dive too deep into it2--and nothing is more abhorrent to him than to burrow among the innumerable strange and wrong-headed opinions4 ,the learned history of the past was never a true philosopher's business1 in ,india or ,greece2 and a professor of philosophy who busies himself with such matters must be1 at best1 content to hear it said of him1 ,he is an able scholar1 antiquary1 philologist1 historian1--but never1 ,he is a philosopher4 ,i said1 at best3 for a scholar feels that most of the learned works written by ,university philosophers are badly done1 without any real scientific power1 and generally are dreadfully tedious4 ,who will blow aside1 for example1 the ,lethean vapour with which the history of ,greek philosophy has been enveloped by the dull though not very scientific works of ,ritter1 ,brandis and ,zeller8 ,i1 at any rate1 would rather read ,diogenes ,laertius than ,zeller1 because at least the spirit of the old philosophers lives in ,diogenes1 but neither that nor any other spirit in ,zeller4 ,and1 after all1 what does the history of philosophy matter to our young men8 ,are they to be discouraged by the welter of opinions from having any of their own2 or taught to join the chorus that approves the vastness of our progress8 ,are they to learn to hate or perhaps despise philosophy8 ,one might expect the last1 knowing the torture the students endure for their philosophical examinations1 in having to get into their unfortunate heads the maddest efforts of the human mind as well as the greatest and profoundest4 ,the only method of criticising a philosophy that is possible and proves anything at all--namely to see whether one can live by it--has never been taught at the universities2 only the criticism of words1 and again words1 is taught there4 ,imagine a young head1 without much experience of life1 being stuffed with fifty systems 7in the form of words7 and fifty criticisms of them1 all mixed up together1--what an overgrown wilderness he will come to be1 what contempt he will feel for a philosophical education6 ,it is1 of course1 not an education in philosophy at all1 but in the art of passing a philosophical examination3 the usual result being the pious ejaculation of the wearied examinee1 ,thank ,god ,i am no philosopher1 but a ,christian and a good citizen6 ,what if this cry were the ultimate object of the state1 and the education or leading to philosophy were merely a leading from philosophy8 ,we may well ask4--,but if so1 there is one thing to fear--that the youth may some day find out to what end philosophy is thus mis-handled4 ,is the highest thing of all1 the production of the philosophical genius1 nothing but a pretext1 and the main object perhaps to hinder his production8 ,and is ,reason turned to ,unreason8--,then woe to the whole machinery of political and professorial trickery6 ,will it soon become notorious8 ,i do not know2 but anyhow university philosophy has fallen into a general state of doubting and despair4 ,the cause lies partly in the feebleness of those who hold the chairs at present3 and if ,schopenhauer had to write his treatise on university philosophy to-day1 he would find the club no longer necessary1 but could conquer with a bulrush4 ,they are the heirs and successors of those slip-shod thinkers whose crazy heads ,schopenhauer struck at3 their childish natures and dwarfish frames remind one of the ,indian proverb3 men are born according to their deeds1 deaf1 dumb1 misshapen4 ,those fathers deserved such sons1 according to their deeds1 as the proverb says4 ,hence the students will1 no doubt1 soon get on without the philosophy taught at their university1 just as those who are not university men manage to do without it already4 ,this can be tested from one's own experience3 in my student-days1 for example1 ,i found the university philosophers very ordinary men indeed1 who had collected together a few conclusions from the other sciences1 and in their leisure hours read the newspapers and went to concerts2 they were treated by their academic colleagues with politely veiled contempt4 ,they had the reputation of knowing very little1 but of never being at a loss for obscure expressions to conceal their ignorance4 ,they had a preference for those obscure regions where a man could not walk long with clear vision4 ,one said of the natural sciences1--,not one of them can fully explain to me the origin of matter2 then what do ,i care about them all8--,another said of history1 ,it tells nothing new to the man with ideas3 in fact1 they always found reasons for its being more philosophical to know nothing than to learn anything4 ,if they let themselves be drawn to learn1 a secret instinct made them fly from the actual sciences and found a dim kingdom amid their gaps and uncertainties4 ,they led the way in the sciences in the sense that the quarry leads the way for the hunters who are behind him4 ,recently they have amused themselves with asserting they are merely the watchers on the frontier of the sciences4 ,the ,kantian doctrine is of use to them here1 and they industriously build up an empty scepticism on it1 of which in a short time nobody will take any more notice4 ,here and there one will rise to a little metaphysic of his own1 with the general accompaniment of headaches and giddiness and bleeding at the nose4 ,after the usual ill-success of their voyages into the clouds and the mist1 some hard-headed young student of the real sciences will pluck them down by the skirts1 and their faces will assume the expression now habitual to them1 of offended dignity at being found out4 ,they have lost their happy confidence1 and not one of them will venture a step further for the sake of his philosophy4 ,some used to believe they could find out new religions or reinstate old ones by their systems4 ,they have given up such pretensions now1 and have become mostly mild1 muddled folk1 with no ,lucretian boldness1 but merely some spiteful complaints of the dead weight that lies on the intellects of mankind6 ,no one can even learn logic from them now1 and their obvious knowledge of their own powers has made them discontinue the dialectical disputations common in the old days4 ,there is much more care and modesty1 logic and inventiveness1 in a word1 more philosophical method in the work of the special sciences than in the so-called philosophy1 and every one will agree with the temperate words of ,bagehot#b on the present system builders3 ,unproved abstract principles without number have been eagerly caught up by sanguine men1 and then carefully spun out into books and theories1 which were to explain the whole world4 ,but the world goes clear against these abstractions1 and it must do so1 as they require it to go in antagonistic directions4 ,the mass of a system attracts the young and impresses the unwary2 but cultivated people are very dubious about it4 ,they are ready to receive hints and suggestions1 and the smallest real truth is ever welcome4 ,but a large book of deductive philosophy is much to be suspected4 ,who is not almost sure beforehand that the premises will contain a strange mixture of truth and error1 and therefore that it will not be worth while to spend life in reasoning over their consequences8 ,the philosophers1 especially in ,germany1 used to sink into such a state of abstraction that they were in continual danger of running their heads against a beam2 but there is a whole herd of ,laputan flappers about them to give them in time a gentle stroke on their eyes or anywhere else4 ,sometimes the blows are too hard2 and then these scorners of earth forget themselves and strike back1 but the victim always escapes them4 ,fool1 you do not see the beam1 says the flapper2 and often the philosopher does see the beam1 and calms down4 ,these flappers are the natural sciences and history2 little by little they have so overawed the ,german dream-craft which has long taken the place of philosophy1 that the dreamer would be only too glad to give up the attempt to run alone3 but when they unexpectedly fall into the others' arms1 or try to put leading-strings on them that they may be led themselves1 those others flap as terribly as they can1 as if they would say1 ,this is all that is wanting1--that a philosophaster like this should lay his impure hands on us1 the natural sciences and history6 ,away with him6 ,then they start back1 knowing not where to turn or to ask the way4 ,they wanted to have a little physical knowledge at their back1 possibly in the form of empirical psychology 7like the ,herbartians71 or perhaps a little history2 and then they could at least make a public show of behaving scientifically1 although in their hearts they may wish all philosophy and all science at the devil4 #b ,physics and ,politics1 chap4 v4 ,nietzsche has altered the order of the sentences without any apparent benefit to his own argument1 and to the disadvantage of ,bagehot's4 ,i have restored the original order4--,,tr4 ,but granted that this herd of bad philosophers is ridiculous--and who will deny it8--how far are they also harmful8 ,they are harmful just because they make philosophy ridiculous4 ,as long as this imitation-thinking continues to be recognised by the state1 the lasting effect of a true philosophy will be destroyed1 or at any rate circumscribed2 nothing does this so well as the curse of ridicule that the representatives of the great cause have drawn on them1 for it attacks that cause itself4 ,and so ,i think it will encourage culture to deprive philosophy of its political and academic standing1 and relieve state and university of the task1 impossible for them1 of deciding between true and false philosophy4 ,let the philosophers run wild1 forbid them any thoughts of office or civic position1 hold them out no more bribes1--nay1 rather persecute them and treat them ill1--you will see a wonderful result4 ,they will flee in terror and seek a roof where they can1 these poor phantasms2 one will become a parson1 another a schoolmaster1 another will creep into an editorship1 another write school-books for young ladies' colleges1 the wisest of them will plough the fields1 the vainest go to court4 ,everything will be left suddenly empty1 the birds flown3 for it is easy to get rid of bad philosophers1--one only has to cease paying them4 ,and that is a better plan than the open patronage of any philosophy1 whatever it be1 for state reasons4 ,the state has never any concern with truth1 but only with the truth useful to it1 or rather1 with anything that is useful to it1 be it truth1 half-truth1 or error4 ,a coalition between state and philosophy has only meaning when the latter can promise to be unconditionally useful to the state1 to put its well-being higher than truth4 ,it would certainly be a noble thing for the state to have truth as a paid servant2 but it knows well enough that it is the essence of truth to be paid nothing and serve nothing4 ,so the state's servant turns out to be merely false truth1 a masked actor who cannot perform the office required from the real truth--the affirmation of the state's worth and sanctity4 ,when a medival prince wished to be crowned by the ,pope1 but could not get him to consent1 he appointed an antipope to do the business for him4 ,this may serve up to a certain point2 but not when the modern state appoints an anti-philosophy to legitimise it2 for it has true philosophy against it just as much as before1 or even more so4 ,i believe in all seriousness that it is to the state's advantage to have nothing further to do with philosophy1 to demand nothing from it1 and let it go its own way as much as possible4 ,without this indifferent attitude1 philosophy may become dangerous and oppressive1 and will have to be persecuted4--,the only interest the state can have in the university lies in the training of obedient and useful citizens2 and it should hesitate to put this obedience and usefulness in doubt by demanding an examination in philosophy from the young men4 ,to make a bogey of philosophy may be an excellent way to frighten the idle and incompetent from its study2 but this advantage is not enough to counterbalance the danger that this kind of compulsion may arouse from the side of the more reckless and turbulent spirits4 ,they learn to know about forbidden books1 begin to criticise their teachers1 and finally come to understand the object of university philosophy and its examinations2 not to speak of the doubts that may be fostered in the minds of young theologians1 as a consequence of which they are beginning to be extinct in ,germany1 like the ibexes in the ,tyrol4 ,i know the objections that the state could bring against all this1 as long as the lovely ,hegel-corn was yellowing in all the fields2 but now that hail has destroyed the crop and all men's hopes of it1 now that nothing has been fulfilled and all the barns are empty1--there are no more objections to be made1 but rather rejections of philosophy itself4 ,the state has now the power of rejection2 in ,hegel's time it only wished to have it--and that makes a great difference4 ,the state needs no more the sanction of philosophy1 and philosophy has thus become superfluous to it4 ,it will find advantage in ceasing to maintain its professors1 or 7as ,i think will soon happen7 in merely pretending to maintain them2 but it is of still greater importance that the university should see the benefit of this as well4 ,at least ,i believe the real sciences must see that their interest lies in freeing themselves from all contact with sham science4 ,and further1 the reputation of the universities hangs too much in the balance for them not to welcome a severance from methods that are thought little of even in academic circles4 ,the outer world has good reason for its widespread contempt of universities2 they are reproached with being cowardly1 the small fearing the great1 and the great fearing public opinion2 it is said that they do not lead the higher thought of the age but hobble slowly behind it1 and cleave no longer to the fundamental ideas of the recognised sciences4 ,grammar1 for example1 is studied more diligently than ever without any one seeing the necessity of a rigorous training in speech and writing4 ,the gates of ,indian antiquity are being opened1 and the scholars have no more idea of the most imperishable works of the ,indians--their philosophies--than a beast has of playing the harp2 though ,schopenhauer thinks that the acquaintance with ,indian philosophy is one of the greatest advantages possessed by our century4 ,classical antiquity is the favourite playground nowadays1 and its effect is no longer classical and formative2 as is shown by the students1 who are certainly no models for imitation4 ,where is now the spirit of ,friedrich ,august ,wolf to be found1 of whom ,franz ,passow could say that he seemed a loyal and humanistic spirit with force enough to set half the world aflame8 ,instead of that a journalistic spirit is arising in the university1 often under the name of philosophy2 the smooth delivery--the very cosmetics of speech--with ,faust and ,nathan the ,wise for ever on the lips1 the accent and the outlook of our worst literary magazines and1 more recently1 much chatter about our holy ,german music1 and the demand for lectures on ,schiller and ,goethe1--all this is a sign that the university spirit is beginning to be confused with the ,spirit of the ,age4 ,thus the establishment of a higher tribunal1 outside the universities1 to protect and criticise them with regard to culture1 would seem a most valuable thing1 and as soon as philosophy can sever itself from the universities and be purified from every unworthy motive or hypocrisy1 it will be able to become such a tribunal4 ,it will do its work without state help in money or honours1 free from the spirit of the age as well as from any fear of it2 being in fact the judge1 as ,schopenhauer was1 of the so-called culture surrounding it4 ,and in this way the philosopher can also be useful to the university1 by refusing to be a part of it1 but criticising it from afar4 ,distance will lend dignity4 ,but1 after all1 what does the life of a state or the progress of universities matter in comparison with the life of philosophy on earth6 ,for1 to say quite frankly what ,i mean1 it is infinitely more important that a philosopher should arise on the earth than that a state or a university should continue4 ,the dignity of philosophy may rise in proportion as the submission to public opinion and the danger to liberty increase2 it was at its highest during the convulsions marking the fall of the ,roman ,republic1 and in the time of the ,empire1 when the names of both philosophy and history became ingrata principibus nomina4 ,brutus shows its dignity better than ,plato2 his was a time when ethics cease to have commonplaces4 ,philosophy is not much regarded now1 and we may well ask why no great soldier or statesman has taken it up2 and the answer is that a thin phantom has met him under the name of philosophy1 the cautious wisdom of the learned professor2 and philosophy has soon come to seem ridiculous to him4 ,it ought to have seemed terrible2 and men who are called to authority should know the heroic power that has its source there4 ,an ,american may tell them what a centre of mighty forces a great thinker can prove on this earth4 ,beware when the great ,god lets loose a thinker on this planet1 says ,emerson4#c ,then all things are at risk4 ,it is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city1 and no man knows what is safe1 or where it will end4 ,there is not a piece of science1 but its flank may be turned to-morrow2 there is not any literary reputation1 not the so-called eternal names of fame1 that may not be revised and condemned4444 ,the things which are dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on their mental horizon1 and which cause the present order of things as a tree bears its apples4 ,a new degree of culture would instantly revolutionise the entire system of human pursuits4 ,if such thinkers are dangerous1 it is clear why our university thinkers are not dangerous2 for their thoughts bloom as peacefully in the shade of tradition as ever tree bore its apples4 ,they do not frighten2 they carry away no gates of ,gaza2 and to all their little contemplations one can make the answer of ,diogenes when a certain philosopher was praised3 ,what great result has he to show1 who has so long practised philosophy and yet has hurt nobody8 ,yes1 the university philosophy should have on its monument1 ,it has hurt nobody4 ,but this is rather the praise one gives to an old woman than to a goddess of truth2 and it is not surprising that those who know the goddess only as an old woman are the less men for that1 and are naturally neglected by the real men of power4 #c ,essay on ,circles4 ,if this be the case in our time1 the dignity of philosophy is trodden in the mire2 and she seems herself to have become ridiculous or insignificant4 ,all her true friends are bound to bear witness against this transformation1 at least to show that it is merely her false servants in philosopher's clothing who are so4 ,or better1 they must prove by their own deed that the love of truth has itself awe and power4 ,schopenhauer proved this and will continue to prove it1 more and more4