The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche VOL V

THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
FRIEDRIC H NIETZSC HE
'The First Complete and Authorised Bnglish 'Tramlatio11
EDITED BY
DR OSCAR LEVY
VOLUME FIVE
\
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON
PART TWO
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FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
THOUGHTS
OUT OF SEASON
PART II
'IHE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR
TRANSLATED BY
ADRIAN: C0LLINS; M.A .

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liN RECONN.A.ISSA.VCE,

CONTENTS.
PACK
INTRODUCTION IX
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY •
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR ~ IOI

INTRODUCTION.
THE two essays translated in this volume form the
second and third parts of the Unzeitg-nr.iisu
Betraclzt1P1gm. The essay on hb-tor}· was com-
pleted in January. that on Schopenhaner in Acgcst,
187+ Both were written in the few motr..hs of
feverish actirity that Xietz.sche could spare fro:::i
his duties as Professor of Classical Philology in
Bale.
N i~.zsche. who serred in an ambulance corps in ~
';1,had seen something of the Franco-German \\Tar,
and to him it was the " honest German bra\'"ery •
that had won the day. But to the rest of his •
conntl)rmen it was a tictory for German culture as
well; though there were still a few elegancies, a
few refinements of manners, that might .eneer the
new culture, a.,d in this reganl the cooqnered
might be allowed the traditional pITI""Jege of
conquering the conqnercns. Xietzsche answered
roundly, • the German does not yet know the
meaning of the word atlture,• and in the essay on-
histon.•
"J -----=--men
set himself to show that the so-called
culture was a morass into the German had
been led by a sixth sense he had dereloped curing
the nineteenth century-the • historical sen.....:e • :
be had been brought by his spiritual teachers t:>

X INTRODUCTION,
believe that he was the "crown of the world .

process" and that his highest duty lay in sur-
rendering himself to it.
With Nietzsche, the historical sense became a l
"malady from which men suffer," the world-process
an illusion, evolutionary theories a subtle excuse
for inactivity. History is for the few not the
many, for the man not the youth, for the great not 1
l
the small-who are broken and bewildered by it.
It is the lesson of remembrance, and few are strong
l
enough to bear that lesson. J;!istory has no
meaning except as the servant of life _and action:
and most of us can only act if we forget. This is -
the burden of the first essay ; 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 own, and use the
past to justify their present.
But who are the men that can use history rightly,
and for whom it is a help and not a hindrance to
life? They are the great men of action and
thought, the "lonely giants amid the pigmies."
To them alone can the record of their great fore-
bears be a consolation as well as a lesson. In the
realm of thought, they are of the type of the ideal
philosopher sketched in the second essay. To
Nietzsche the only hope of the race lies in the
1
"production of the genius," of the man who can
bear the ·burden of the future and not be swamped ,
by the past : he found the personal expression of l
such a man, for the time being, in Schopenhauer. l
Schopenhauer here stands, as a personality, for l
all that makes for life in philosophy, against the

INTRODUCTION, xi
stagnation of the professional philosopher. The

last part of the essay is a fierce polemic against
state-aided philosophy and the official position of
the professors, who formed, and still form, the
intellectual aristocracy of Germany, with a cathe-
dral authority on all their pronouncements.
But " there has never been a eulogy on a
philosopher," says Dr. Kogel, "that has had so
little to say about his philosophy." The essay on
Schopenhauer is of value precisely because it has
1
nothing to do _with Schopenhauer. We need not
be disturbed by the thought that Nietzsche after-
wards turned from him. He truly recognised that
Schopenhauer was here merely a name for himself,
that "not Schopenhauer as educator is in question,
but his opposite, Nietzsche as educator" (Ecce
Homo). He could regard Schopenhauer, later, as
a siren that called to death ; he put him among
the great artists that lead down-who are worse
than the bad artists that lead nowhere. "We
must go further in the pessimistic logic than the
denial of the will," he says in the Gotzendiim-
merung; "we must deny Schopenhauer." The
pessimism and denial of the will, the blank despair
before suffering, were the shoals on which
Nietzsche's reverence finally broke. They could
not stand before the Dionysian outlook, whose
pessimism sprang not from weakness but strength,
and in which the joy of willing and being can even
welcome suffering. In this essay we hear little of
the pessimism, save as the imperfect and "all-too~
human" side of Schopenhauer that actually brings
us nearer to him. Later, he could part the man

xii INTRODUCTION .
and his work, and speak of Schopenhauer's view as

the " Evil eye." But as yet he is a young •man
who has kept his illusions, and, like Ogniben, he
judges men by what they might be.
Afterwards, he judged himself too in these essays
by "what he might be." "To me," he said in Ecce
Homo, " they are promises: I know not what they
mean to others."
It is also in the belief they are promises that
they are here translated " for others." The
Thoughts out of Season are the first announce-
ment of the complex theme of the Z arathustra.
They form the best possible introduction to
Nietzschean thought. Nietzsche is already the
knight-errant of philosophy : but his adventure is
just beginning.
A. c.

THE USE AND ABUSE OF
HISTORY.
VOL. II. A

PREFACE.
11I HATE everything that merely instructs me
without increasing or directly quickening my
activity." These words of Goethe, like a sincere
ceterum censeo, may well stand at the head of ,my
thoughts on the worth and the worthlessness of
history. I will show in them why instruction that
does not "quicken," knowledge that slackens the
rein of activity, why in fact history, in Goethe's
phrase, must be seriously "hated," as a costly and
superfluous luxury of the understanding: for we
are still in want of the necessaries of life, and the
superfluous is an enemy to the necessary. We do
need history, but quite differently from the jaded
idlers in the garden of knowledge, however grandly
they may look down on our rude and unpictur-
esque requirements. In other words, we need it
for life and action, not as a convenient way to
avoid life and action, or to excuse a selfish life and
a cowardly or base action. We would serve history
only so far as it serves life; but to value its study
beyond a certain point mutilates and degrades life:
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 experience.
I have tried to describe a feeling that has often

4 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
troubled me: I revenge myself on it by giving it

publicity. This may lead some one to explain to
me that he has also had the feeling, but that I
do not feel it purely and elementally enough, and
cannot express· it with the ripe certainty of experi-
ence. A few may say so ; but most people will
tell me that it is a perverted, unnatural, horrible,
and altogether unlawful feeling to have, and that I
show myself unworthy of the great historical move-
ment which is especially strong among the German
people for the last two generations.
I am at all costs going to venture on a descrip-
tion of my feelings; which will be decidedly in
the interests of propriety, as I shall give plenty
of opportunity for paying compliments to such a
" movement." And I gain an advantage for my-
self that is more valuable to me than propriety-
the attainment of a correct point of view, through
my critics, with regard to our age.
These thoughts are "out of season," 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 time, believing as I do that we
are all suffering from a malignant historical fever
and should at least recognise the fact. But even if
it be a virtue, Goethe may be right in asserting
that we cannot help developing our faults at the
same time as our virtues ; and an excess of virtue
can.obviously bring a nation to ruin, as.well as an
excess of vice. In any case I may I?e allowed my
say. But I will first relieve my mind by the con-
fession that the experiences which produced those
disturbing feelings were mostly drawn from myself,

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY, S
-and from other sources only for the sake of
comparison ; and that I have only reached such
"unseasonable" experience, so far a~ I am the
nursling of older ages like the Greek, and less a
child of this age. I must admit so much in virtue
of my profession as a classical scholar: for I do
not know what meaning classical scholarship may
have for our time except in its being "unseason-
able,"-that is, contrary to our time, and yet with
an influence on it for the benefit, it may be hoped,
of a future time.

THE USE AND ABUSE OF
HISTORY.
I.
1
CONSIDER the herds that are feeding yonder: they
know not the meaning of yesterday or to-day ;
they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from
morning to night, from day to day, taken up with
their little loves and hates, at the mercy of the
moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety.,
Man cannot see them without regret, for even in
the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on
the beast's happiness. He wishes simply to live
without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is all
in vain, for he will not change places with it. He
may ask the beast-" Why do you look at me and
not speak to me of your happiness?" The beast
wants to answer-" Because I always forget what I
wished to say" : but he forgets this answer too, and
is silent ; and the man is left to wonder.'
' He wonders also about himself, that he cannot
learn to forget, but hangs on the past : however far
or fast he run, that chain runs with him. It is

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY, 7
matter for wonder: the moment, that is here and

gone, that was nothing before and nothing after,
returns like a spectre to trouble the quiet of a later
moment. A leaf is continually dropping out of the
volume of time and fluttering away-and suddenly
it flutters back into the man's lap., Then he says,
"I remember ... ," and envies the beast, that
forgets at once, and sees every moment really die,
sink into night and mist, extinguished for ever.
The beast lives unhistorically; for it" goes into" the
present, like a number, without leaving ? ny curious
remainder. It cannot dissimulate, it conceals
nothing; at every moment it seems what it actually
is, and thus can be nothing that is not honest.
' But man is always resisting; the great and con-
tinually increasing weight of the past; it presses
him down, and bows his shoulders ;1 he travels with
a dark invisible burden that he can plausibly
disown, and is only too glad to disown in converse
with his fellows- in order to excite their envy.
And so it hurts him, like the thought of a lost ·
Paradise, to see a herd grazing, or, nearer still, a
child, that has nothing yet of the past to disown~
and plays in a happy blindness between the walls
of the past and the future, And yet its play must
be disturbed, and only too soon will it be
summoned from its little kingdom of oblivion.
Then it learns to understand the words " once
upon a time," the "open sesaip.e" that lets in
battle, suffering and weariness on mankind, and
reminds them what their existence really is, an 1 ~
imperfect tense that never becomes a present.
And when death brings at last · the desired forget-

fulness, it abolishes life and being together, and

sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is
merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives
by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.
If happiness and the chase for new happiness
f keep alive in any sense the will to live, no
philosophy has perhaps more truth than the
cynic's : for the beast's happiness, like that of
the perfect cynic, is the visible proof of the truth
of cynicism. The smallest pleasure, if it be only
continuous and make one happy, is incomparably
a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure
that comes as an episode, a wild freak, a mad
intena.l between ennui, desire, and prha.tion. But
in the smallest and greatest happiness there is
always one thing that makes it happiness: the
power of forgetting, or, in more learned phrase,
t the capacity of feeling "unhistorically" throughout
its duration. 'One who cannot leave himself behind
on the threshold of the moment and forget the past,
who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess
of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never
know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never
do anything to make others happy., The extreme
case would be the man "ithout any power to
forget, who is condemned to see "becoming " '
everywhere. Such a man believes no more in
himself or his own e.-..:istence, he sees everything
fly past in an eternal succession, and loses himself
in the stream of becoming. At last, like the logical
disciple of Heraclftus, he will hardly dare to raise
his finger. 'Forgetfulness is a property of all action; t
just as not only light but darkness is bound up

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 9
with the life of every organism.' One who wished
to feel everything historically, would be like a man
forcing himself to refrain from sleep, or a beast
who had to live by chewing a continual cud. Thus
'even a happy life is possible without remembrance,
as the beast shows: but life in any true sense is
absolutely impossible without forgetfulness. Or,
to put my conclusion better, 'there is a degree of
sleeplessness, of rumination, of "historical sense,"
that injures and finally destroys the living thing,
be it a man or a people or a system of culture.,
To fix this degree and the limits to the memory
of the past, if it is not to become the gravedigger
of the present, we must see clearly how great· is
the "plastic power" of a man or a community or
a culture; 'I mean the power of specifically growing
out of one's self, of making the past and the strange
one body with the near and the present, of he_aling
W..Q!l!!_~s, replacing _wh,at .J~ l9_g, __ r~p~iring_!>rok~n
moulds,__ There are men who have this power so
slightly that a single sharp experience, a single
pain, often a little injustice, will lacerate their
souls like the scratch of a poisoned knife. There
are others, who are so little injured by the worst
misfortunes, and even by their own spiteful actions,
as to feel tolerably comfortable, with a fairly quiet
conscience, in the midst of them,-or at any rate
shortly aftenvards., The deeper the roots of a
man's inner nature, the better will he take the
past into himself; and the greatest and most
, powerful nature would be known by the absence
of limits for the historical sense to overgrow and 1
work harm. It would assimilate and digest the

past, however foreign, and turn it to sap. Such

a nature can forget what it cannot subdue; there
is no break in the horizon, and nothing to remind
it that there are still men, passions, theories and
aims on the other side. This is a universal law;
1 a living thing can only be healthy, strong and
productive within a certain horizon :1 if it be in-
capable of drawing one round itself, or too selfish
to lose its own view in another's, it will come to
an untimely end. Cheerfulness, a good conscience,
belief in the future, the joyful deed, all depend,
in the individual as well as the nation, on there
being a line that divides the visible and clear from
the vague and shadowy:' we must know the right
time to forget as well as the right time to re-
member; and instinctively see when it is necessary
\ to feel historically, and when unhistorically., This
is the point that the reader is asked to consider;
'<' that the unhistorical and the historical are equally
necessary to the health of an individual, a com-
munity, and a system of culture.,
--- -~ ' Every one has noticed that a mari's historical
knowledge and range of feeling may be very
limited, his horizon as narrow as that of an Alpine
valley, his judgments incorrect and his experience
falsely supposed original, and yet in spite of all the
incorrectness and falsity he may stand forth in
unconquerable health and vigour, to the joy of
all who see him ; whereas another man with far
more judgment and 'learning will fail in comparison,
because the lines of his horizon are continually
changing and shifting, and he cannot shake himself
free from the delicate network of his truth and

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. II
righteousness for a downright act of will or desire. ,

We saw that the beast, absolutely "unhistorical,"
with the narrowest of horizons, has yet a certain
happiness, and lives at least without hypocrisy or
ennui; and so we may hold the capacity of feelin~
(to a certain extent) unhistorically, to be the more
important and elemental, as providing the founda-
tion of every sound and real growth, everything
that is truly great and human. The unhistorical
is like the surrounding atmosphere that can alone
create life, and in whose annihilation life itself
disappears. It is true that man can only become
man by first suppressing this unhistorical element
in his thoughts, comparisons, distinctions, and con-
clusions, letting a clear sudden light break through
these misty clouds by his power of turning the
past to the uses of the present. But an excess of
history makes him flag again, while without the
veil of the unhistorical he would never have the
courage to begin. What deeds could man ever
have done if he had not been enveloped in the
dust-cloud of the unhistorical? Or, to leav~
metaphors and take a concrete example, imagine
a man swayed an~ driven by a strong passion,
whether for a woman or a theory. His world is
quite altered. He is blind to everything behind
him, new sounds are muffled and meaningless;
though his perceptions were never so intimately
felt in all their colour, light and music, and he
seems to grasp them with his five senses together.
All his judgments of value are changed for the
worse; there is much he can no longer value, as
he can scarcely feel it: he wonders that he has so

long been the sport of strange words and opinions,

that his recollections have run round in one un-
wearying circle and are yet too weak and weary
to make a single step away from it. His whole
case is most indefensible; it is narrow, ungrateful
to the past, blind to danger, deaf to warnings, a
small living eddy in a dead sea of night and
forgetfulness. And yet this condition, unhistorical
and antihistorical throughout, is the cradle not
only of unjust action, but of every just and ,
justifiable action in · the world. No artist will
paint his picture, no general win his victory, no
nation gain its freedom, without having striven
and yearned for it under those very" unhistorical"
conditions. ' If the man of action, in Goethe's
phrase, is without conscience, he is also without
knowledge : he forgets most things in order to
do one, he is unjust to what is behind him, and
only recognises one law, the law of that which
is to be. So he loves his work infinitely more
than it deserves to be loved ; and the best works
are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they
must always be unworthy of it, however great
their worth otherwise. , ~,
Should any one be able to dissolve the un-
historical atmosphere in which every great event
happens, and breathe afterwards, he might be
capable of rising to the " super-historical" stand-
point of consciousness, that Niebuhr has de-
scribed as the possible result of historical
research. "History," he says, "is useful for one t
purpose, if studied in detail: that men may know,
as the greatest and best spirits of &lr generation

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY, I3
do not know, the accidental nature of the forms

in which they see and insist on others seeing,-
insist, I say, because their consciousness of them
is exceptionally intense. 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 form." Such
a standpoint might be called "super-historical,"
as one who took it could feel no impulse from
history to any further life or work, for he would
have recognised the blindness and injustice in the
soul of the doer as a condition of every deed : he
would be cured henceforth of taking history too
seriously, and have learnt to answer the question
how and why life should be lived,-for all men
and all circumstances, Greeks or Turks, the first _
century or the nineteenth. Whoever asks his
friends whether they would live the last ten or
twenty years over again, will easily see which of
them is born for the "super-historical standpoint":
they will all answer no, but will give different
reasons for their answer. Some will say they
have the consolation that the next twenty will
be better: they are the men referred to satirically
by David Hume:-
" And from the dregs of life hope to receive,
,, What the first sprightly running could not give."
We will call them the " historical men." '},'heir
vision of the past turns them towards the future,
encourages them to persevere with life, and kindles
the hope that justice will yet come and happiness
is behind the mountain they are climbing. They

believe that the meaning of existence will become

ever clearer in the course of its evolution, they
only look backward at the process to understand
the present and stimulate their longing for the
future. They do not know how unhistorical their
thoughts and actions are in spite of all their history,
and how their preoccupation with it is for the sake
of life rather than mere science.
But that · question to which we have heard the
first answer, is capable of another; also a "no,"
but on different grounds. It is the "no" of the
"super-historical " man who sees no salvation in
evolution, for whom the world is complete and
fulfils its aim in every single moment. ( How could
the next ten years teach what the past ten were
not able to teach ? ,
Whether the aim of the teaching be hapeiness or
res\g_nation, virtue or peuance, these super-historical
men are not agreed ; but as against ;J1 merely
historical ways of viewing the past, they are unani-
mous in the theory 1that the past and the present
are one and the same, typically alike in all their
diversity, and forming together a picture of eternally
present imperishable types of unchangeable value
and significance., Just as the hundreds of different
languages correspond to the same constant and
elemental needs of mankind, and one who under-
stood the needs could learn nothing new from the
languages; so the "super-historical " philosopher
sees all the history of nations and individuals from
within. He has a divine insight into the original
meaning of the hieroglyphs, and comes even to be
weary of the letters that are continually unrolled

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY, I5
before him. How should the endless rush of events

not bring satiety, surfeit, loathing? So the boldest
of us is ready perhaps at last to say from his heart
with Giacomo Leopardi: "Nothing lives that were
worth thy pains, and the earth deserves not a sigh.
Our being is pain and weariness, and the world is
mud-nothing else. Be calm."
1But we will leave the super-historical men to
their loathings and their wisdom : we wish rather
to-day to be joyful in our unwisdom and have a
pleasant _life as active men who go fonvard, and
respect the course of the world. The value we put
on the historical may be merely a Western preju-
dice: let us at least go forward within this pre-
judice and not stand still. If we could only learn
better to study history as a means to life I We
would gladly grant the super-historical people their
superior wisdom, so long as we are sure of having
more life than they: for in that case our unwisdom
would have a greater future before it than their
wisdom. To make my opposition between life and
wisdom clear, -;,
I will take,Jhe usual road oft.he short J-,/1~
V ~ ,....__~.........,,, ....,._._ -i;.,. ;lt...c. , . • . (!...!J,:.
sum_mary. 1 . / ,:
A historical phenomenon, completely understood
and reduced to an item of knowledge, is, in relation
to the man who knows it, dead: for he has found
out its madness, its injustice, its blind passion, and
especially the earthly and darkened horizon that
was the source of its power for history. This ~er
has now become, for him who has recognised it,
powerless ; not yet, perhaps, for him who is alive.
History regarded as pure knowledge and allowed
to sway the intellect would mean for men the final

balancing of the ledger of life. Historical study

is only fruitful for the future if it follow a powerful
life-giving influence, for example, a new system of
culture; only, therefore, if it be guided and domin-
ated by a higher force, and do not itself guide and
dominate.
History, so far as it serves life, serves an un-
historical power, and thus will never become a pure
science like mathematics. The question how far
life needs such a service is one of the most serious
questions affecting the well-being of a man, a people
and a culture. For by excess of history life becomes
maimed and degenerate, and is followed by the
degeneration of history as well.
II.
-+
The fact that life does need the service of history
must be as clearly grasped as that an excess of
history hurts it; this will be proved later. 'History
is necessary to the living man in three ways: in
relation to his action and struggle, his conservatism
..and reverence, his suffering and his desire for de-
., liverance. These three relations answer to the three
kinds of history-so far as they can be distinguished
-the monumental, the antiquarian, and the critical.
1 History is necessary above all to the man of
action and power who fights a great fight and needs

examples, teachers and comforters; he cannot find
them among his contemporaries. It was necessary
in this sense to Schiller ; for our time is so evil,
Goethe says, that the poet meets no nature that

will profit him, among living men. Polybius is
thinking of the active man when he calls political
history the true preparation for governing a state;
it is the great teacher/ that shows us how to bear
steadfastly the reverses of fortune, by reminding us
of what others have suffered. , 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 antiquity. 'He
does not wish to meet the idler who is rushing
through the picture-galleries of the past for a new
distraction or sensation, where he himself is looking
for example and encouragement. 1 To avoid being\' 1
troubled by the weak and hopeless idlers, and those <..-1•.:,· .
whose apparent activity is merely neurotic, he looks 1
behind him and stays his course towards the goal
in order to breathe. His-goal is hapQ!ill!SS..JlOt
perhaps his own, but often the nation's,or humanity's
at large: he avoids quietism, and uses history as a
weapon against it. For the most part he has no
hope of r«;!ward except fame, which means the ex-
pectation of a niche in the temple of history, where
he in his turn may be the consoler and counsellor
of posterity. For his orders are that what has once
been able to extend the conception "man" and give
it a fairer content, must ever exist for the same
office. The great moments in the individual battle
form a chain, a high road for humanity through -·
the ages, and the highest points . of those vanished
moments are yet great and living for men; and
this is the fundamental idea of the beliefin humanity,
that finds a voice in the demand for a" monumental"
history . .,
VOL. II. B

18 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON,
But the fiercest battle is fought round the demand

for greatness to be eternal. Every other living thing
cries no. "Away with the monuments," is the watch-
word. Dull custom fills all the chambers of the
world with its meanness, and rises in · thick vapour
round anything that is great, barring its way to
immortality, blinding and stifling it. And the way
passes through mortal brains I Through the brains
of sick and short-lived beasts that ever rise to the
surface to breathe, and painfully keep off annihila-
tion for a little space. For they wish but one thing:
to live at any cost. Who would ever dream of
any "monumental history" among them, the hard
torch-race that alone gives life to greatness? And
yet there are always men awakening, who are
strengthened and made happy by gazing on past
greatness, as though man's life were a lordly thing,
and the fairest fruit of this bitter tree were the
knowledge that there was once a man who walked
sternly and proudly through this world, another
who had pity and loving-kindness, another who
lived in contemplation,-but all leaving one truth
behind them, that his life is the fairest who thinks ,
least about life. The common man snatches greedily
at this little span, with tragic earnestness, but they,
on their way to monumental history and im-
mortality, knew how to greet it with Olympic
l'aiigirtei-, or at least with a lofty ~QIII; and they
went down to their graves in irony-for what had
they to bury? Only what they had always treated
as dross, refuse, and vanity, and which now falls
into its true home of oblivion, after being so long
the sport of their contempt. One thing will live,

the sign-manual of their inmost being, the rare

flash of light, the deed, the creation ; because
posterity cannot do without it. In this__?piritualised
form faQl~ _is something __more _thaIL.the ...sweetest ./
·-- ,.
morsel for our egoism, m Schopenhauer's phrase:
it is the belief in the oneness and continuity of the
great in every age, and a protest against the change
and decay of generations. 1
What is the use to the modern man of this
"monumental" contemplation of the past, this pre-
occupation with the rare and classic? ' It is the
knowledge that the great thing existed and was
therefore possible, and so m~_e_p~ible again.
He is heartened on his way; for his doubt in weaker
moments, whether his desire be not for the impos-
sible, is struck aside./ Suppose one believe that no
more than a hundred men, brought up in the new
spirit, efficient and productive, were needed to give
the deathblow to the present fashion of education
in Germany; 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 men.
And yet if we really wish to learn something
from an example, how y~~_E,d_e~usive do we
find the comparison! If it is to give us strength,
many of the differences must be neglected, the in-
dividuality of the past forced into a general formula
and all the sharp angles broken off for the sake of
correspondence. Ultimately, of course, what was
once possible can only become possible a second
time on the Pythagorean theory, that when the
heavenly bodies are in the same position again, the

events on earth are reproduced to the smallest detail;

so when · the stars have a· certain relation, a Stoic
and an Epicurean will form a conspiracy to murder
Cresar, and a different conjunction will show
another Columbus discovering America. Only if
the earth always began its drama again after the
fifth act, and it were certain that the same inter-
action of motives, the same deus ex machina, the
same catastrophe would occur at particular intervals,
could the man of action venture to look for the
whole archetypic truth in monumental history, to
see each fact fully set out in its uniqueness : it
would not probably be before the astronomers
became astrologers again. Till then monumental
hist.m:y_w ~Lb~-~ble to have complete truth;
it will always bring together things that are in-
compatible and generalise them into compatibility,
will always weaken the differences of motive and
occasion. Its object is to depict effects at the
expense of the causes-" monumentally," that is, as
examples for imitation: it turns aside, as far as it
may, from reasons7and might be called with far less
exaggeration a collection of" effects in themselves,"
th~_<2.!$.Y.en ts.-tha t will .haye;_ an ~-eff~_c t-0f!~aIT-~ges.
The events of war or religion cherished in our
popular celebrations are such "effects in them-
selves" ; it is these that will not let ambition sleep,
and lie like amulets on the bolder hearts-not the
real his_!.grical nexu.s.......oLcause_ancL.effect, which,
rightly understood, would only prove that nothing
quite similar could ever be cast again from the
dice-boxes of fate and the future.
As long as the soul of history is found in the

great impulse that it gives to a powerful spirit, as

long as the past is principally used as a model for
imitation, it is always in danger of being a little
altered and touched up, and brought nearer to
fiction. Sometimes there is no possible distinction
,bclween a " monumental" past and a mythical
romance, as the same motives for action can be
gathered from the one world as the other. If this
monumental method of surveying the past domin-
ate the others,-the antiquarian and the critical,-
the past itself suffers wrong. Whole tracts of it
are forgotten and despised ; they flow away like, a
dark unbroken river, with only a few gaily coloured ,,,.
islands of fact rising above it. There is something
beyond nature in the rare figures that become
visible, like the golden hips that his disciples attri-
buted to Pythagoras./ Monumental history lives \
by false analogy; it entices the brave to rashness,
and the enthusiastic to fanaticism by its tempting
comparisons. Imagine this history in the hands-
and the head-of a gifted egoist or an inspired
scoundrel; kingdoms will be overthrown, princes
murdered, war and revolution let loose, and the
number of" effects in themselves "-in other words,
effects without sufficient cause - increased. So
much for the harm done by monumental history
to the powerful men of action, be they good or
bad; but what if the weak and the inactive take it
as their servant-or their master ~ i - v - ~ ~
~~e simplest and commo;;;st xample,
the inartistic or half artistic natures whom a monu-
mental history provides with sword and buckler.
They will use the_weapons against their hereditary

enemies, the great artistic spirits, who alone can

learn from that history the one real lesson, how to
live, and embody what they have learnt in noble
action. Their way is obstructed, their free air
darkened by the idolatrous - and conscientious
-dance round the half understood monument of
a great past. "See, that is the true and real art,"
we seem to hear : " of what use are these aspiring
little people of to-day?" The dancing crowd has
apparently the monopoly of "good taste": for the
creator is always at a disadvantage compared with
the mere looker-on, who never put a hand to the
work; just as the arm-chair politician has ever had
/yr1ore wisdom and foresight than the actual states-·
( (man. But if the custom of democratic suffrage
and numerical majorities be transferred to the
realm of art, and the artist put on his defence
before the court of .esthetic dilettanti, you may take
your oath on his condemnation; although, or rather
because, h.is judges had proclaimed solemnly the
canon of " monumental art," the art that has
" had an effect on all ages," according to the
official definition. In their eyes no need nor inclina-
tion nor historical authority is in favour of the
art which is not yet "monumental" because it is
contemporary. Their instinct tells them that art
can be slain by art: the monumental will never be
reproduced, and the weight ofits authority is invoked
from the past to make it sure. They are connois~
seurs of art, primarily because they wish to kill art;
they pretend to be physicians, when their real idea is
to dabble in poisons. They develop their tastes to
a point of perversion, that they may be able to show

a reason for continually rejecting all the nourish-

ing artistic fare that is offered them. For they do
not want greatness, to arise: their method is to say,
" See, the great thing is already here ! " In reality
they care as little about the great thing that is
already.here, as that which is about to arise: their
lives are evidence of that. Monumental history i~
the cloak under which their hatred of present pow~r
and greatness masquerades as an e~treme admira-
tiQ..n of ,the p.ast:-the-reaLmeaning:--0Llhis...wa)L..Of
viewing history is disguised as its opposite; whether
they wish it or nct'they are acting as though their
19-0tto were, "leUhe_d~<;lJ:mry the=1ivi.ng."
Each of the three kinds of history will only )
flourish in one ground and climate: otherwise it )
grows to a noxious weed. If the man who will '
produce something great, have need of the past,
he makes himself its master by means of monu-
mental history: the man who can rest content with
the traditional and venerable, uses the past as an
"antiquarian historian": and only he whose heart
is oppressed by an instant need, and who will cast
the burden off at any price, feels the want of
"critical history," the history that judges and
condemns. There is much harm wrought by
wrong and thoughtless planting: the critic without
the need, the antiquary without piety, the knower
of the great deed who cannot be the doer of it, are
plants that have grown to weeds, they are torn
from their native soil and therefore degenerate. ,,

III
Secondly, history is necessary to the man of
• conservative and reverent nature, who looks back
to the origins of his existence with love and trust;
through it, he gives thanks for life. He is careful
to preserve what survives from ancient days, and
will reproduce the conditions of his own upbringing
for those who come after him; thus he does life a '
service. The possession of his ancestors' furniture
changes its meaning in his soul : for his soul is
rather possessed by it. All that is small and ,
limited, mouldy and obsolete, gains a worth and
inviolability of its own from the conservative and
reverent soul of the antiquary mi~rating into it,
and building a secret nest there. The history of
his town becomes the history of himself; he looks
on the walls, the turreted gate, the town council,.
the fair, as an illustrated diary of his youth, and
sees himself in it all-his strength, industry, desire,
reason, faults and follies. "Here one could live,"
he says, " as one can live here now-and will go
on living; for we are tough folk, and will not be
uprooted in the night." And so, with his "we," he
surveys the marvellous individual life of the past
·and identifies himself with the spirit of the house,
the family and the city. He greets the soul of his
people from afar as his own, across the dim and
troubled centuries : his gifts and hi~ virtues lie in.
such power of feeling and divination, his scent of
a half-vanished trail, his instinctive correctness in
reading the scribbled past, and understanding at

once its palimpsests-nay, its polypsests. Goethe

stood with such thoughts before the monument of
Erwin von Steinbach : the storm of his feeling rent
the historical cloud-veil that hung between them,
and he saw the German work for the first time
" coming from the stern, rough, German soul."
This was the road that the Italians of the Renais-
sance travelled, the spirit that reawakened the
ancient Italic genius in their poets to "a wondrous
echo of the immemorial lyre," as Jacob Burckhardt
says. But the greate~L y:atue_.of th_i~. _an_tiqt1~_rian
spirit of revere_n_q~Ji~~ in the simple emotions of
pl~asure ··ai1d :. contenL~Iiat - ff] en.c!i .to the -~!~,
rough, even painful circumstances of a nation's or
individual's life : Niebuhr confesses that he could
live happily on a moor among free peasants with
a history, and would never feel the want of art.
How could history serve life better than by
anchoring the less gifted races and peoples to the
homes and customs of their ancestors, and keeping
them from ranging far afield in search of better.,
o find only struggle and competition? The
nfluence that ties men down to the same corn-
~ anions and circumstances, to the daily round of
oil, to their bare mountain-side,-seems to be
selfish and unreasonable: but it is a healthy -
unreason and of profit to the community ; as
every one knows who has clearly realised the
terrible consequences of mere desire for migration
and adventure,-perhaps in whole peoples,-or who
watches the destiny of a nation that has lost con-
fidence in its earlier days, and is given up to a
restless cosmopolitanism and an unceasing desire

for novelty. The feeling of the tree that clings to

its roots, the happiness of knowing one's growth to
be not merely arbitrary and fortuitous, but the in-
heritance, the fruit and blossom of a past, that does
not merely justify but crown the present-this is
what we nowadays prefer to call the real historical
sense.
These are not the conditions most favourable to
reducing the past to pure science: and we see here
too, as we saw in the case of monumental history,
that the past itself suffers when history serves life
and is directed by its end. To vary the metaphor,
the tree feels its roots better than it can see them:
the greatness of the feeling is measured by the
greatness and strength of the visible branches.
The tree may be wrong here ; how far more wrong
will it be in regard to the whole forest, which it
only knows and feels so far as it is hindered or
helped by it, and not otherwise! The antiquarian
sense of a man, a city or a nation has always a
very limited field. Many things are not noticed
at all; the others are seen in isolation, as through a
microscope. There is no measure: equal import-
ance is given to everything, and therefore too much
to anything. For the things of the past are never
viewed in their true perspective or receive thejr·
just value; but value and perspective change with
the individual or the nation that is looking back
on its past.
There is always the danger here, that everything
ancient will be regarded as equally venerable, and
everything without this respect for antiquity, like
a new spirit, rejected as an enemy. The Greeks

themselves admitted the archaic style of plastic art
by the side of the freer and greater style; and later,
did not merely tolerate the pointed nose and the
cold mouth, but made them even a canon of taste.
If the judgment of a people harden in this way, and
history's service to the past life be to undermine a
further and higher life ; if the historical sense no
longer preserve life, but mummify it: then the
tree dies, unnaturally, from the top downwards, /
and at last the roots themselves wither. Anti-\/
quarian history degenerates from the moment that
it no longer gives a soul and inspiration to the
fresh life of the present. The spring of piety is
dried up, but the learned habit persists without it
and revolves complaisantly round its own centre.
The horrid spectacle is seen of the mad collector
raking over all the dust-heaps of the past. He
breathes a mouldy air; the antiquarian habit may
degrade a considerable talent, a real spiritual
need in him, to a mere insatiable curiosity for
everything old : he often sinks so low as to be
satisfied with any food, and greedily devour all the
scraps that fall from the bibliographical table.
Even if this degeneration do not take place, ~nd
the foundation be not withered on which anti-
quarian history can •alone take root with profit to
life: yet there are dangers enough, if it become too
powerful and invade the territories of the other
methods. It only understands how to preserve life,
not to create it; and thus always undervalues the
present growth, having, unlike monumental history,
no certain instinct for it. Thus it hinders the
mighty impulse to a new deed and paralyses the

doer, who must always, as doer, be grazing some

piety or other. The fact that has grown old
carries with it a demand for its own immortality.
For when one considers the life-history of such an
ancient fact, the amount of reverence paid to it
for generation~-whether it be a custom, a religious
creed, or a political principle,-it seems presump-
tuous, even impious, to replace it by a new fact,
and the ancient congregation of pieties by a new
piety.
{i Here we see clearly how necessary a third way
1/ of looking at the past is to man, beside the other
two. This is the "critical" way; which is also in
the service of life. Man must have the strength
to break up the _pas.t._; and applyJt_t~o, in order to
li\'."e:-- He m. ~st - ~ring the past to-:-tl_ie bar .. of
judg111ent, interroga~f-irreriiorselessly, and finally
conde!lln it. Every past is worth condemning:
this is the -·rule in mortal . affairs, which always
contain a large measure of human power and
human weakness. It is not justice that sits in
judgment here; nor mercy that proclaims the
verdict ; but only ~~ the dim, driving force that
insatiably desires-itself. Its sentence is always
unmerciful, always unjust, as it never flows from a
pure fountain of knowledge : though it would
generally turn out the same, if Justice herself
delivered it. "For everything that is born is
wortlzy of being destroyed : better were it then ·
that nothing should be born." It requires great
strength to be able to live and forget how far
life and injustice are one. Luther himself once
said that the world only arose by an oversight of
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God ; if he had ever dreamed of heavy ordnance,

he woukl never have created it. The same life
that needs forgetfulness, needs sometimes its
destruction; for should the injustice of some-
thing ever become obvious-a monopoly, a caste,
a dynasty for example-the thing deserves to
fall. Its past is critically examined, the knife
put to its roots, and all the "pieties" are grimly
trodden under foot. The process is always \
dangerous, even for life ; and the men or the
times that serve life in this way, by judging and ·
annihilating the past, are always dangerous to ,
themselves and others. For as we are merely the
resultant of previous generations~ we are also the
resultant of their errors, passions, and crimes: it
? is impossible to shake off this chain. Though we
condemn the errors' and think y.e .J;:i.v:~::=ei~?p~d
them, -~I::-. canr1ot ..,es_c,ape _the fact .. thaLwe. spring . --~
from ..th.~m. At best, it comes to a conflict between!
our innate, inherited nature and our knowledge,
between a stern, new discipline and an ancient
tradition ; and we plant a new way of life, a new
instinct, a second nature, that withers the first. It
is an ~!J~mpt __to .. gain ...a._pas.L q posteriori from
w~ich .we.might spring, as against that from which
we do _?pring; _;~.lways a dangerous . attempt, as it
is diffi~ult to find a limit to _the denial of the past,
and the second natures are genera~_ly_weakl;!r__tha_!]
the fir~t. We stop too often at knowing the good
without doing it, because we also know the better
but cannot do it. Here and there the victory is
won, which gives a strange consolation to the
fighters, to those who use critical history for the

sake of life. The consolation is the knowledge

that this " first nature" was once a second, and
that every conquering "second nature" becomes
a first.
IV.
This is how history can serve life. Every man
and nation needs a certain knowledge of the past,
whether it be through monumental, antiquarian,
or critical history, according to his objects, powers,
and necessities. The need is not that of the mere
thinkers who only look on at life, or the few who
desire knowledge and can only be satisfied with
knowledge; but it has always a reference to th~I
end of life, and is under its absolute rule and
direction. This is the natural relation of an age,
a culture and a people to history; hunger is its
source, necessity its norm, the inner plastic power
assigns its limits. The knowledge of the past is
only desired for the service of the future and theV
present, not to weaken the present or undermine a
living future. All this is as simple as truth itself,
and quite convincing to any one who is not in the
toils of "historical deduction."
And now to take a quick glance at our time!
We fly back in astonishment. The clearness,
naturalness, and purity of the connection between
life and history has vanished; and in what a maze
of exaggeration and contradiction do we now see
the problem! Is the guilt ours who see it, or have
life and history really altered their conjunction
and an inauspicious star risen between them ?

THE USE AND ABUSE OF IIISTORY. 3I
Others may prove we have seen falsely; I am
merely saying what we believe we see. There is
such a star, a bright and lordly star, and the con-
junction is really altered-by science, and the
demand for history to be a science. Life is no
more dominant, and knowledge of the past no
longer its thrall: boundary marks are overthrown
and everything bursts its limits. The perspective 'I
of events is blurred, and the blur extends through
their whole immeasurable course. No generation
has seen such a panoramic comedy as is shown by
the " science of universal evolution," history; that
shows it with the dangerous audacity of its motto-
" Fiat veritas, pereat vita."
Let me give a picture of the spiritual events in
the soul of the modern man. Historical knowledge
streams on him from sources that are inexhaustible,
strange incoherencies come together, memory opens
all its gates and yet is never open ·wide enough,
nature busies herself to receive all the foreign
guests, to honour them and put them in their
places. But they are at war with each other:
violent measures seem necessary, in order to escape
destruction one's self. It becomes second nature
to grow gradually accustomed to this irregular
and stormy home-life, though this second. nature
is unquestionably weaker, more restless, more
radically unsound than the first. The modern
man carries inside him an enormous heap of
indigestible knowledge-stones that occasionally
rattle together in his body, as the fairy-tale has it.
And the rattle reveals the most striking charac-
teristic of · these modern men, the opposition of

✓something inside them to which nothing external

corresponds; and the reverse. The ancient nations
knew nothing of this. Knowledge, taken in excess
without hunger, even contrary to desire, has n!
more the effect of transforming the external life '
and remains hidden in a chaotic inner world tha
the modern man has a curious pride in calling his
" real personality." He has the substance, he says,
and only wants the form; but this is quite an
unreal opposition in a living thing. Our modern
culture is for that reason not a living one, because
it cannot be understood without that opposition. ~~
In other words, it is not a real culture but a kind
of knowledge about culture, a complex of various
thoughts and feelings about it, from which no
decision as to its direction can come. Its real
motive force that issues in visible action is often
no more than a mere convention, a wretched
imitation, or even a shameless caricature. The
man probably feels like the snake that has
swallowed a rabbit whole and lies still in the sun,
avoiding all movement not absolutely necessary.
The "inner life" is now the only thing that
matters to education, and all who see it hope that
the education may not fail by being too indigest-
ible. Imagine a Greek meeting it; he would
observe that for modern men "education" and
"historical education" seem to mean the same
thing, with the difference that the one phrase is
longer. And if he spoke of his own theory, that
a man can be very well educated without any
history at all, people would shake their heads and
think they had not heard aright. The Greeks,

the famous people of a past still near to us, had

the " unhistorical sense" strongly developed in the
periodoTthefr greatest power. If a typical child
of his age were transported to that world by some
enchantment, he would probably find the Greeks
very " uneducated." And that discovery would
betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture
to the laughter of the world. For we modern~
have nothing of our own. We only become worth
notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with
foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and ~
sciences: we are wandering_encycloQ;edjas, as an
ancient Greek who "iiad strayed~into our time
would probably call us. But the only value of
an encyclop::edia lies in the inside, in the contents,
not in what is written outside, in the binding or
the wrapper. And so t_b.e _F9.ole_of-modern_cuJ_t_tU"e
is essentially__ i~~_al; the bookbinder prints
someffiing like this on the cover: " Manual of
internal culture for external barbarians." The
opposition of inner and ~er makes the outer.
side still 11JQFe gar.barous, as it would naturally
be, when the outward growth of a rude people
merely developed its primitive inner needs. For
what means has nature of repressing too great
a luxuriance from without? Only one,-to be
affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside
and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And
so we have the custom of no longer taking real
things seriously, we get the feeble personality on
which ~huea!_~pd the pe_rmanent make so fiftle
impression. Men become at last more careless
ancf a-ccoi"nmodating in external matters, and the
VOL. II, C

considerable cleft between substance and form is-

widened; , until they have no longer any feeling forp
barbarism, if only their memories be kept con-

tinually titillated, and there flow a constant stream
of new things to be known, that can be neatly
packed up in the cupboards of their memory.
The culture of a people as against this barbarism,
can be, I think, described with justice as the
/' unity of artistic style in every outward expres-
(sion of the people's life." This must not be mis-
understood, as though it were merely a question
of the opposition between barbarism and "fine
style." The people that can be called cultured,
must be in a real sense a .!_!,ving unity, and not be
miseqply cleft asunder into form and substance.
If one wish to promote a people's culture, let him
Jtry to promote this higher unity first, and work
rfor the destruction of the modern educative system
for the sake of a true education. Let him dare to
consider how the health of a people that has been
destroyed by history may be restored, and how it
may recover its instincts with its honour.
I am only speaking, directly, about the Germans
of the present day, who have had to suffer more
than other people from the feebleness of personality
and the opposition of substance and form. "Form"
generally implies for us some convention, disgu_ise
or hypocrisy, and if not hated, is at any rate not
loved. We have an extraordinary fear of both the
word convention and the thing. This fear drove
t the German from the French school; for he wished
to become more natural, and therefore more German.
But he seems to have come to a false conclusion

with his "therefore." First he ran away from his
school of convention, and went by any road he
liked: he has come ultimately to imitate voluntarily
in a slovenly fashion, what he imitated painfully
and often successfully before. So now the lazy
fellow lives under French conventions that are
actually incorrect: his manner of walking shows it,
his conversation and dress, his general way of life.
In the belief that he was returning to Nature, he
\ merely followed caprice and comfort, with the
smallest possible amount of self-control. Go
through any German town ; you will see conven-
tions that are nothing but the negative aspect of
the national characteristics of foreign states. Every-
thing is colourless, worn out, shoddy and ill-copied.
Every one acts at his own sweet will-which is not
a strong or serious will-on laws dictated by the
' -luniversal rush and the general desire for comfort.
A dress that made no head ache in its inventing
and wasted no time in the making, borrowed from
foreign models and imperfectly copied, is regarded
as an important contribution to German fashion.
The s ~ of form is ironically disclaimed by the
people-for they have the "sense of substance":
they are famous for their cult of "inwardness."
But there is also a famous danger in their "in-
wardness": the internal substance cannot be
seen from the outside, and so may one day take
the opportunity of vanishing, and no one notice its
absence, any more than its presence before. One
may think the German people to be very far from
this danger: 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 itself. It may in rare cases
show itself finely receptive, earnest and powerful,
richer perhaps than the inward life of other peoples :
but, taken as a whole, it remains weak, as all its
fine threads are not tied together in one strong
knot. The visible action is not the self-manifes-
tation of the i~ward life, but only a weak and crude
attempt of a.......single._thread - tg_:rngk~--~ ~ho; of
r~p~senting . th_~--:~vhole. And thus the German is
not to be judged on any one action, for the indi-
vidual may be as completely obscure after it as
before. He must obviously be measured by his
thoughts and feelings, which are now expressed in
his books; if only the books did not, more than
ever, raise the doubt whether the famous inward ,
life is still really sitting in its inaccessible shrine.
It might one day vanish and leave behind it only
the external life,-with its vulgar pride and vain _
servility,-to mark the German. Fearful thought!
-as fearful as if the in ward life still sat there,
painted and rouged and disguised, become a play-
actress or something worse; as his theatrical
experience seems to have taught the quiet observer
GrilJparzer, standing aside as he did from the
main press. "We feel by theory," he says. "We
· hardly know any more how our contemporarieJ '
give expression to their feelings: we make them use
gestures that are impossible nowadays. Shake-
speare has spoilt us modems."
This is a single example, its general application
perhaps too hastily assumed. But how terrible it
would be were that generalisation justified before

our eyes ! There would be then a note of despair in
the phrase, " We Germans feel by theory, we are
all spoilt by history; "-a phrase that would cut
at the roots of any hope for a future national
culture. For every hope of that kind grows from
the belief in the genuineness and immediacy of
German feeling, from the belief in an untarnished
inward life. Whe@Js ~!!.r hope or belief, when its
spring is muddied, and the Jnward quality has
learned gesturesaf!d danc~and the use.o fcosmetics,
nasie.arned to express itself "with due reflection in
abstract terms," and gradually to lose itself? 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 education, and
uneducated men whose inner life cannot be ap-
proached at all? How should it exist, I say, when
the people has lost its own unity offeeling, and knows
that the feeling of the part calling itself the educated
part and claiming the right of controlling the
artistic spirit of the nation, is false and hypocritical? ~
Here and there the judgment and taste of indi-
viduals may be higher and finer than the rest, but
that is no compensation: it tortures a man to have
to speak only to one section and be no longer in
sympathy with his people. He would rather bury
his treasure now, in disgust at the vulgar patronage
of a class, though his heart be filled with tenderness
for all. The instinct of the people can no longer
meet him half-way; it is useless for them to stretch
their arms out to him in yearning. What remains
but to turn his quickened hatred against the ban,

strike at the barrier raised by the so-called culture,

and condemn as judge what blasted and degraded
him as a living man and a source of life? He takes
a profound insight into fate in exchange for the
godlike desire of creation and help, and ends his ,,
days as a lonely philosopher, with the wisdom of
disillusion. It is the painfullest comedy: he who
sees it will feel a sacred obligation on him, and say
to himself,-" Help must come: the higher_unity in
th~ nature _and soul of a _e~ople must b~.J ~rought
back, the cleft between j _nner and OJJter must again
disappear under the hammer of necessity." But
to wha'f' means can he look? What remains to him
now but his knowledge? He hopes to plant the
feeling of a need, by speaking from the breadth of
that knowledge, giving it freely with both hands.
From the strong need the strong action may one
day arise. And to leave no doubt of the instance
I am taking of the need and the knowledge, my
testimony shall stand, that it is German unity in
its highest_sens~ich is~ goal ofour endeavour,
far more than politic~union : it is,the unit}LQf the
German spirit and life after the annihilation of the
antagonism between form and-;ubstanc~, inward
life and convention,
V.
An excess of history seems to be an enemy to

the life of a time, and dangerous in five ways.
iJ ' Firstly, the contrast of inner and outer is empha- -
sised and personality weakened. Secondly, the
,-Y time comes to imagine that it possesses t~e rarest

of virtues, justice, to a higher degree than any
other time. Thirdly, the instincts of a nation are (,3)
thwarted, the maturity of the individual arrested ··
no less than that of the whole. Fourthly, we get<.¥
the belief in the old age of mankind, the belief, at J
all times harmful, that we are late survivals, mere
Epigoni. Lastly, an age reaches a dangerous con- ti')
dition. of irony with regard to itself, and the still
more dangerous state of _9::nicjsm, when a cunning
egoistic theory of action is matured that maims and
at last destroys the vital strength.
To return to the first point: the modern man
suffers from a weakened personality. The Roman
of the Empire ceased to be a Roman through the
contemplation of the world that lay at his feet; he
lost himself in the crowd of foreigners that streamed
into Rome, and degenerated amid the cosmopolitan
carnival of arts, worships and moralities. It i;; the
same with the modern man, who is continually
having a world-panorama unrolled before his eyes
by his historical artists. He is turned into a
restless, dilettante spectator, and arrives at a con-
dition when even great wars and revolutions cannot
affect him beyond the moment. The war is hardly
at an end, and it is already converted into thousands
of copies of printed matter, and will be soon served
up as the latest means of tickling the jaded palat~s
oT the historical gourmets. It seems impossible ·for
a strong full chord to be prolonged, however
powerfully the strings are swept: it dies away
again the next moment in the soft and strength-
less echo of history. In ethical language, one never
succeeds in staying on a height; your deeds are

sudden crashes, and not a long roll of thunder.

One may bring the greatest and most marvellous
thing to perfection; it must yet go down to Orcus
\ unhonoured and unsung. For art.fl_i ~~yhen
fou are ro.~fing your ?e~~-.~-..~~.!.~.! ~e__ h. i~t~ical .a'Yn-
\ mg. The man who wishes to unaerstand everything
in a moment, when he ought -to-grasp the unint;l-
ligible as the sublime by a long struggle, can be
called intelligent only in the sense of Schiller's
pigram on the "reason of reasonable men."
here is something the child sees that he does
~ ot see; something the child hears that he does
ot hear; and this something is the most important
thing of all. Because he does not understand it,
his understanding is more childish than the child's
and more sim pie than simplicity itself; in spite of
the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face,
and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling
the knots. lle has lo~stroyed his ins!iE<_:t;
he can no lon~rust the "divine animal" and
let the reins hang loose, when his understanding
fails him and his way lies through the desert.
His individuality is shaken, and left without any /
sure belief in itself; it sinks into its own inner
being, which only means here the disordered chaos
of what it has learned, which will never express
itself externally, being mere dogma that cannot
turn to life. Looking further, we see how the
banishment of instinct by history has turned men
to shades and abstractions: no one ventures to
show a personality, but ~ i m ~ man
of cultu.t ~~avant, poet OSE.9litician.
/ If one take hold of these masks, believing he

has }~,,,1~ith a serious thing and not a mere

p u p ~ for they all have an appearance of
seriousness-he will find nothing but rags and
coloured streamers in his hands. He must
deceive himself no more, but cry aloud, "Off with
your jackets, or be what you seem I" A man of
the royal stock of seriousness must no longer be
a Don Quixote, for he has better things to do
than to tilt at such pretended realities. But he
must always keep a sharp look about him, call
his "Halt! who goes there?" to all the shrouded
figures, and tear the masks from their faces. And
see the result! One might have thought that
history encouraged men above all to be honest,
even if it were only to be honest fools : this used
to be its effect, but is so no longer. Historical
education and the uniform frock-coat of the citizen
are both dominant at the same time. While there
has never been such a full-throated chatter about
"free personality," personalities can be seen no
more (to say nothing of free ones); but merely -
men in uniform, with their coats anxiously pulled
over their ears. Individuality has withdrawn itself
to its recesses; it is seen no more from the outside,
which makes one doubt if it be possible to have
causes without effects. Or will a race of eunuchs
prove to be necessary to guard the historical harem
of the world? We can understand the reason for
their aloofness very well. Does it not seem as
if their task were to watch over history to see
that nothing comes out except other histories,
but no deed that might be historical ; to prevent
personalities becoming " free," that is, sincere

towards themselves and others, both in word and

deed ? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present" liberal education" teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its "liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist I She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices: it lives by sighing "if
only ..." and by knowing that" it happened once
upon a time. . .." Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no

expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally : so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in "life." Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
" Are these human beings," one might ask, "or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking?"
Goethe says of Shakespeare : "No one has more
despi;ed correct~ess of costume than he : he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully ;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen ; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them." .
Would it be . possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods," but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-

sidered: "only strong personalities can endure

history, the weak are extinguished by it." History
unsettles the feelings when they are not powerful
enough to measure the past by themselves. The
man who dare no longer trust himself, but asks
history against his will for advice "how he ought
to feel now," is insensibly turned by his timidity
into a play-actor, and plays a part, br generally
many parts,-very badly therefore and superficially.
Gradually all connection ceases between the man
and his historical subjects. We see noisy little
fellows measuring themselves with the Romans
as though they were like them : they burrow in
the remains of the Greek poets, as if these
were corpora for their dissection - and as vi!ia
as their own well - educated corpora might be.
Suppose a man is working at Democritus. The
question is always on my tongue, why _precisely
Democritus? Why not Heraclitus, or Philo, or
Bacon, or Descartes? And then, why a philo-
sopher? Why not a poet or orator? And why
especially a Greek? Why not an Englishman
or a Turk? Is not the past large enough to let
you find some place where you may disport your-
self without becoming ridiculous? But, as I said,
they are a race of eunuchs : and to the eunuch one
woman is the same as another, merely a woman,
" woman in herself," the Ever - unapproachable.
And it is indifferent what they study, if history
itself always remain beautifully "objective" to
them, as men, in fact, who could never make history
themselves. And since the Eternal Feminine
could never "draw you upward," you draw it down

to you, and being neuter yourselves, regard history
as neuter also. But in order that no one may take
my comparison of history and the Eternal Feminine
too seriously, I will say at once that I hold it, on
the contrary, to be the Eternal Masculine: I only
add that for those who are "historically trained "
throughout, it must be quite indifferent which it is;
for they are themselves neither man nor woman,
nor even hermaphrodite, but mere neuters, or, in
more philosophic language, the Eternal Objective.
If __the personality be once emptied . 9.£.lts- sub--
jectivi.cy,.and.come to what men call an.~.objective"
CQ.!!Q!tLQ.!}.1.-.~ .thi~g ca~_ h..?.Y~ .. any -more -- effect-on
i.t__ Something good and true may be done, in
action, poetry or music: but the hollow culture of
the day will look beyond the work and ask the
history of the author. If the author have already
created something, our historian will set out clearly
the past and the probable future course of his
development, he will put him with others and
compare them, and separate by analysis the choice
of his material and his treatment; he will wisely
sum the author up and give him general advice for
his future path. The most astonishing works may
be created ; the swarm of historical neuters will
always be in their place, ready to consider the
author through their long telescopes. The echo is
heard at once: but always in the form of "criti-
cism," though the critic never dreamed of the work's
possibility a moment before. It never comes to
have an influence, but only a criticism: and the
criticism itself has no influence, but only breeds
another criticism, And so we come to consider

the fact of many critics as a mark of influence, that

of few or none as a mark of failure. Actually
everything remains in the old condition, even in
the presence of such "influence": men talk a little
while of a new thing, and then of some other new
thing, and in the meantime they do what they
if1ave always done. The historical training of our
\\~.ritics prevents their having an influence in the
true sense, an influence on life and action. They
put their blotting paper on the blackest writing,
and their thick brushes over the gracefullest de-
signs ; these they call "corrections" ;-and that is
all. Their critical pens never cease to fly, for they
have lost power over them; they are driven by
their pens instead of driving them. The weakness
of modern personality comes out well in the,
measureless overflow of criticism, in the want of
self-mastery, and in what the Romans called
impotentia.
/
VI.
But leaving these weaklings, let us turn rather to
a point of strength for which the modern man is
famous. 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 age. Is
it true that this objectivity has its source in a
heightened sense of the need for justice? Or, being
really an effect of quite other causes, does it only
have the appearance of coming from justice, and
really lead to an unhealthy prejudice in favour

of the modern man? Socrates thought it near
madness to imagine one possessed a virtue with-
out really possessing it. Such imagination has
certainly more danger in it than the contrary
madness of a positive vice. For of this there is
still a cure; but the othe_r makes a man or a time
daily worse, and therefore more unjust.
No one has a higher claim to our reverence than
the man with the feeling and the strength for
justice. For the highest and rarest virtues unite
and are lost in it, as an unfathomable sea abs~rbs
the streams that flow from every side. The harrd
of the just man, who is called to sit in judgment, _,
trembles no more when it holds the scales: he.,
piles the weights inexorably against his own side,
his eyes are not dimmed as the balance rises and
falls, and his voice is neither hard nor broken when
he pronounces the sentence. Were he a cold
demon of knowledge, he would cast round him the
icy atmosphere of an awful, superhuman majesty,
that we should fear, not reverence. But he is a
man, and has tried to rise from a careless doubt to
a strong certainty, from a gentle tolerance to the
imperative "thou must"; from the rare virtue of
magnanimity to the rarest, of justice. He has
come to be like that demon without being more
than a poor mortal at the outset; above all, he has
to atone to himself for his humanity and tragically
shatter his own nature on the rock of an impossible
virtue.-All this places him on a lonely height as )
the most reverend example of the human race.
FQr._truth is __his aim, not in the form of cold
-
ineffectual knowledge, but the truth of the judge

who punishes according to law; not as the selfish

possession of an individual, but the sacred authority
that removes the boundary stones from all selfish
possessions; truth, in a word, as the tribunal of
the world, and not as the chance prey of a single
hunter. The search for truth is often thoughtlessly
praised: but iLonly has a.iiY.thing __great in it if
\ /the seeker have the sin~ere unconditional will for
justice. Its roots are in justice alone-:but a whole
crowd of different motives may combine in the
search for it, that have nothing to do with truth at
all; curiosity, for example, or dread of ennui, envy,
vanity, or amusement. Thus the world seems to
be full of men who "serve truth" : and yet the
virtue of justice is seldom present, more seldom
known, and almost always mortally hated. On
the other hand a throng of sham virtues has
entered in at all times with pomp and honour.
Few in truth serve truth, as only few have the!
pure will for justice; and very few even of these
have the strength to be just. The will alone is not
enough: the impulse to justice without the power
of judgment has been the cause of the greatest
suffering to men. And thus the common good could
require nothing better than for the seed of this
power to be strewn as widely as possible, that the·
fanatic may be distinguished from the true judge,
and the blind desire from the conscious power.
But there are no means of planting a power of
judgment: and so when one speaks to men of
truth and justice, they will be ever troubled by the
doubt whether it be the fanatic or the judge who is
speaking to them. And they must be pardoned

for always treating the "servants of truth" with

special kindness, who possess neither the will nor
the power to judge and have ✓set before them the
task of finding "pure knowledge without reference
to consequences," knowledge, in plain terms, that
comes to nothing. There are very many trut~
which are unimportant; problems that require no
struggle to solve, to say nothing of sacrifice. And
in this safe realm of indifference a man may very
successfully become a" cold demon of knowledge."
And yet-if we find whole regiments of learned
inquirers being turned to such demons in some age
specially favourable to them, it is always unfortun-
ately possible that the age is lacking in a great
and strong Sef1Se of justice, the noblest spring of
the so-called impulse to truth.
fconsider the his!.Q!:ig.l virt1.1,2~f the present
time: is k._!he just.es.t..man of his age? True, he
has developed in himself such a delicacy and sensi-
tiveness that " nothing human is alien to him."
Times and persons most widely separated come
together in the concords of his lyre. H ~
become a passive instrument, whose tones find an
ectio in similar mstrume~ until the whole atmo-
sphere of a time is filled with such echoes, all
buzzing in one soft chord. Yet I think one only
hears the overtones of the original historical note :
its rough powerfu(quality can be no longer guessed
from these thin and shrill vibrations. The original
note sang of action, need, and terror; the overtone
lulls us into a soft dilettante sleep. It is as though
the heroic symphony had been arranged for two
flutes for the use of dreaming opium-smokers. We
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can now judge how these virtuosi stand towards the

claim of the modern man to a higher and purer con-
ception of justice. This virtue has never a pleasing
quality; it never charms; it is harsh and strident.
Generosity stands very low on the ladder of th~
virtues in comparison; and generosity is the mark
of a few rare historians ! Most of them only get a
far as tolerance, in other words ·they le~ve what
cannot be explained away, they c;:orrect it and
touch it up condescendingly, on the tacit assump-
tion that the novice will count it as justice if the
past be narrated without harshness or open ex-
pressions of hatred. But o.n!y~,E__eri~!3trengµu:a.!L
re~iju_g ge ; weakness must tolerate, if _it ~o not
pretend to be strength and turn justice to a play-
actress. There is still a dreadful class of liistorians
emaining-clever, stern and honest, but narrow-
~ minded: who have the "good will" to be just with
pathetic belief in their actual judgments, which
are all false ; for the same reason, almost, as the
verdicts of the usual juries are false. How difficult
it is to find a real historical talent, if we exclude
all the disguised egoists, and the partisans who
pretend to take up an impartial attitude for the
sake of their own unholy game! And we also
exclude the thoughtless folk ~ write history in ~
the naive faith that justice resides in the popular '
view of their time, and that to write in the spirit of
the time is to be just; 2:...[ait~Jhfil: is f9.µnd in all
religions, and which, in religion, serves very well.
The measurement of the opin1ons andae·e as of the
past by the universal opinions of the present is
called "objectivity" by these simple people: they

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 5r
find the canon of all truth here : their work is to
adapt the past to the present triviality. And they
call all historical writing "subjective" that does not
regard these popular opinions as canonical.
Might not an illusion lurk in the highest inter-
pretation of the word objectivity? We understand
by it a certain standpoint in the historian, wh2_sees
the procession of motive and <:O!l~equence too clearfy
for 1t to have an effect on his own personality. 'vVe
think of the .esthetic phenomenonof7:he detach-
ment from all personal concern with which the
painter sees the picture and forgets himself, in a
stormy landscape, amid thunder and lightning, or
on a rough sea: and we require the same artistic
vision and absorption in his object from the historian.
But it is only a superstition to say that the picture
given to such a man by the object really.shows the
truth of things. Unless it be that objects are
expected in such moments to paint or photograph
themselves by their own activity on a purely passive
medium!
But this would be a myth, and a bad one at that.
One forgets that this moment is actually the power-
ful and spontaneous moment of creation in the
artist, of "composition" in its highest form, of
which the result will be an a~tically, but not an /
histQricaUy, true picture. To think objectively, in
this sense, of history is the work of the dramatist:
to think one thing with another, and weave the
elements into a single whole; with the presumption
that the unity of plan must be put into the objects
if it be not already there. So man v~ils and sub-
dues the past, and expresses his impulse to art-

but not his impulse to truth or justice. Objectivity V

anc:L.j.ustice have nothing to do with eacnother.
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 objective.
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 him, links
things together whose connection heaven only
knows, replaces the unintelligible by something
intelligible, puts his..,.£_wn ideas of causation into
the external world, which can perhaps be explained
only from within : and assumes the existence of
chance, where thousands o ~ l l c a u s ~ be
really at work. Each man has his own individual
needs, and so millions of tendencies are running
together, straight or crooked, parallel or across,
forward or backward, helping or hindering each
other. They have all the appearance of chance,
and make it impossible, quite apart from all natural
influences, to establish any universal lines on which
past events must have run." But as a result of this/
so-called "objective" way of looking at things, such'-._
a "must" ought to be made clear. It is a pre-
sumption that takes a curious form if adopted
by the historian as a dogma. Schiller is quite
clear about it; truly subjective nature when he
says of the historian, "one event after the other
begins to draw away from blind chance and lawless
freedom, and take its place as the member of an
harmonious whole-which is of course only apparent
in its presentation." But what is one to think of the
innocent statement, wavering between tautology and
· )"
,.
i./
nonsense, of a famous historical virtuoso? "It seems
that all human actions and impulses are subordinate
to t h e ~ ofJhe_materiai ~o;ld, th~t works un-
noticed, powerfully and irresistibly." In such a
sentence one no longer finds obscure wisdom in the
form of obvious folly; as in the saying of Goethe's
gardener, " Nature may be forced but not com-
pelled," or in the notice on the side-show at ·a fair,
in Swift : "The largest elephant in the world, except
himself, to be seen here." For what opposition is
there between human action and the process of the
world? It seems to me that such historians cease
to be instructive as soon as they begin to__g~n.~ralise;
their weakness is shown by their obscurity. In other
sciences the generalisations are the most important
things, as they contain the laws. But if such
generalisations as these are to stand as laws, the
historian's labour is lost; for the residue of truth,
after the obscure and insoluble part is removed,
is nothing but the commonest knowledge. The
smallest range of experience will teach it. But
to worry whole peoples for the purpose, and spend
many hard years of work on it, is like crowding one
scientific experiment on another long after the law
can be deduced from the results already obtained:
and this absurd excess of experiment has been the
bane of all natural science since Zollner. If the
value of a drama lay merely in its final scene, the
drama itself would be a very long, crooked and
laborious road to the goal: and I hope history will
not find its whole significance in general proposi-
tions, and regard them as its blossom and fruit.
On the contrary, its real value lies in inventing v

ing_enious variations--9n __ a prgbably -t0mmotmJace

/ the~~ in raising the popular melody to a universal
symbol and showing what a world of depth, power
and beauty exists in it.
But this requires above all a great artistic faculty,
a creative vision from a height, the loving study of
the data of experience, the free elaborating of a
given type,-objectivity in fact, though this time as
a positive quality. Objectivity is so often merely
a phrase. Instead of the quiet gaze of the artist
that is lit by an inward flame, we have an affecta-
tion of tranquillity; just as a cold detachment may
mask a lack of moral feeling. In some cases a
triviality of thought, the everyday wisdom that is
too dull not to seem calm and disinterested, comes
to represent the artistic condition in which the sub-
jective side has quite sunk out of sight. Everything
is favoured that does not rouse emotion, and the
driest phrase is the correct one. 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 it. This is the usual relation of
the Greeks and the classical scholars. They have
nothing to do with each other-and this is called
"objectivity"! T~ntentional-a.ir...of..de.tach..m.eot
that is assumed foLeffe.c.t.~ b e r art of the super-
ficial motive-hunter is most exasperating when the
highest and rarest things are in question ; and it
is the vpJ:z.ilJ• Qf:. the historian that drives him to
this attj1_y.d.e..of:..indiffer.en_ce. He goes to justify the
axiom that a man's vanity corresponds to his lack
of wit. No, be honest at any rate! Do not pretend
to the artist's strength, that is the real objectivity;

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 55_
do not try to be just, if you are not born to that

dread vocation. As if it were the task of every
time to be just to everything before it! Ages and
generations have never the right to be the judges
of all previous ages and generations: only to the
rarest men in them can that difficult mission fall.
Who compels you to judge? If it is your wish-
you must prove first that you are capable of justice.
As judges, you must stand higher than that which
is to be judged : as it is, you have only come later.
The guests that come lasntnhe table should rightly
take the last places: and will you take the first?
Then do some great and mighty; deed: the place
may be prepared for you then, even though you do
come last.
You can only explain the past by what is highest __,-
in tlte present. Only by straining the noblest
qualities you have to their highest power will you
find out what is greatest in the past, most worth
knowingan'd preserving. Like by like! otherwise
you will draw the past to your own level. Do not
believe a~y history that does · not spring from the
mind of a rare spirit. You will know the quality
of the spirit, by its being forced to say something
universal, or to repeat something that is known
already; the fine historian must have the power
of coining the known into a thing never heard
before and proclaiming the universal so simply and 1 "
profoundly that the simple is lost in the profound,•
and the profound in the simple. No one can be a
great historian and artist, and a shallowpate at the
same time. But one must not despise the workers
who sift and cast together the material because they

can never become great historians. They must,

still less, be confounded with them, for they are the
necessary bricklayers and apprentices in the service
of the master: just as the French used to speak,more
naively than a German would, of the "historiens
de M. Thiers." These workmen should gradually
become extremely_ learned, but never, for that
reason, turn to be masters. Great learning and great
shallowness go together very well under one hat.
Thus, history is to be written by the man of
experience and character. He who has not lived
through something greater and nobler than others,
will not be able to explain anything great and
noble in the past. The language of the past is
always oracular: you will only understand it as
builders of the future who know the present. We
can only explain the extraordinarily wide influence
of Delphi by the fact that the Delphic priests had
an exact knowledge of the past: and, similarly,
only he who is building up the future has a right -
to judge the past. If you set a, great aim before ·.
your eyes, you control at the same time the itch
for analysis that makes the present into a desert
for you, and all rest, all peaceful growth and ripen-
ing, impossible. Hedge yourselves with a great,
all-embracing hope, and strive on. Make of your-
selves a mirror where the future may see itself, and
forget the su.perstition that you are Epigoni. You
have enough to ponder and find out, in pondering
the life 0.£ tl½e future : but...d.o not ask history to
show you the means and the instrument to it. If
you live yourselves back into the history of great
men, you will find in it the high command to come
'

to maturity and leave that blighting system of
cultivation offered by your time : which sees its
own profit in not allowing you to become ripe, that
it may use and dominate you while you are yet
unripe. And if you want biographies, do not look
for those with the legend " Mr. So-and-so and his
times," but for one whose title-page might be in-
scribed "a fighter against his time.'' Feast your
souls on Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves
when you beTieve in his heroes. A hundred such
men-educated against the fashion of to-day,
made familiar with the heroic, and come to
maturity-are enough to give an eternal quietus
to the noisy sham education of this time.
VII.
The unrestrained historical sense, pushed to its
logical extreme, uproots the future, because it(
destroys illusions and robs existing things of the{
only atmt>sphere in which they can live. Historical
justice,' even if practised conscientiously, with a
pure heart, is therefore a dreadful virtue, because
it always undermines and ruins the living thing :
its judgment always means annihilation. If there
be no constructive impulse behind the historical
one, if the clearance of rubbish be not merely to
leave the ground free for the hopeful living future
to build its ·hous'e, 'if justice alone be supreme, the
creative instinct is sapped and discouraged. A
religion, for example, that has to be turned into
a matter of historicaf knowledge by the power of

pure justice, and to be scientifically studied

throughout, is destroyed at the end of it all. For
the historical audit brings so much to light which
is false and absurd, violent and inhuman, that the
condition of pious illusion falls to pieces. And a
l thing can_onl_x live through a pious . illusion. For
man is creative only through love and in the
shadow of love's illusions, only through the uncon-
ditional belief in perfection and righteousness.
Everything that forces a man to be no longer un-
condition~d in his love, cuts at the root of his
strength: · he must ' wither, and be dishonoured.
Art has the opposite effect to _history: and only.
pernaps ifhTstorf suffer transform.~_o_r1_intq_a pure
wcfrl-:- ·ofTrt, can 1t preserve ·ins~incts __or_arouse
them. Such history would be quite against the
ani'fytical and inartistic tendencies of our time, and
even be considered false. But the history that "
merely destroys without any impulse to construct,
will in the long-run make its instruments tired of
life; for such men destroy illusions, and "he who
destroys illusions in himself and others is punished
by the ultimate tyrant, Nature." For a time a man
can take up history like any other study, and it
will be perfectly harmless. Recent theology seems
to have entered quite innocently into partnership
with history, and scarcely sees even now that it has
unwittingly bound itself to the Voltairean lcrasez !
No one need expect from that any new and power-
ful constructive impulse: they might as well have
let the so-called Protestant Uniow serve as the
cradle of a new religion, and the jurist Holtzendorf,
the editor of the far more dubiously named Pro-

testant Bible, be its John the Baptist. This state
of innocence may be continued for some time by
the Hegelian philosophy,-still seething in some
of the older heads,-by which men can distinguish
the " idea of Christianity" from its various imperfect
"manifestations"; and persuade themselves that it
is the "self-movement of the Idea" that is ever
particularising itself in purer and purer forms, and
at last becomes the purest, most transparent, in
fact scarcely visible form in the brain of the present
- theologus liberalis vu!garis. But to listen to this
pure Christianity speaking its mind about the
earlier impure Christianity, the uninitiated hearer
would often get the impression that the talk was
not of Christianity at all but of ...-what are we
to think? if we find Christianity described by the
"greatest theologians of the century" as the re-
ligion that claims to " find itself in all real religions
and some other barely possible religions," and
if the "true church" is to be a thing "which
may become a liquid mass with no fixed outline,
with no fixed place for its different parts, but every-
thing to be peacefully welded together "-what, I
ask again, are we to think?
Christianity has been denaturalised by historical
treatment-which in its most complete form means
"just" treatment-until it has been resolved int~
pure knowledge and destroyed in the process.
This can be studied in everything that has life.
For it ceases to have life if it be perfectly dissected,
and lives in pain and anguish as soon as the
historical dissection begins. There are some who
believe in the saving power of German music to

6o THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
revolutionise the German nature. They angrily

exclaim against the special injustice done to our
culture, 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
criticism. Is it not premature death, or at least
mutilation, for anything whose living influence is
not yet exhausted, when men turn their curious
eyes to the little minuti~ of life and art, and look
for problems of knowledge where one ought to
learn to live, and forget problems? Set a couple
of these modern biographers to consider the origins
of Christianity or the Lutheran ·reformation: their
sober, practical investigations would be quite
sufficient to make all spiritual "actiol!_ at a dis-
tance" impossible: just as the smallest animal
can prevent the growth of the mightiest oak by
simply eating up the acorn. All living things need
an atmosphere, a mysterious mist, around them.
If that veil be taken away and a religion, an art,
or a ,genius condemned to revolve like a star with-
out an atmosphere, we must not be surprised if it
becomes hard and unfruitful, and soon withers. It 1
is so with all great things "that never prosper

without some illusion," as Hans Sachs says in the
Meistersinger.
Every people, every man even, who would
become ripe, needs such a veil of illusion, such a
protecting cloud. But now men hate to become
_,- ripe, for they honour history above life. They cry
in triumph that "science is now beginning to rule
life." Possibly it might; but a life thus ruled is

not of much value. It is not such true life, and

promises much less for the future than the life that
I
used to be guided not by science, but by instincts I
and powerful illusions. But this is not to be the
age of ripe, alert and harmonious personalities, but
of work that may be of most use to the common-
wealth. Men are to be fashioned to the needs of 1
the time, that they may soon take their place in {
the machine. They must work in the factory of
the" common good" before they are ripe, or rather
to prevent them becoming ripe ; for this would
be a luxury that would draw away a deal of power
from the" labour market." Some birds are blinded
that they may sing better; I do not think men ,
sing to-day better than their grandfathers, though
I am sure they are blinded early. But light, too
clear, too sudden and dazzling, is the infamous
Wff.l1Ji !-1.1!d to blind them. The young man is
~'rough all the centuries: boys who know,
nothing of war, diplomacy, or commerce are con-
sidered fit to be introduced to political history.
We modems also run through art galleries and
hear concerts in the same way as the young man
runs through history. We can feel that one thing
sounds differently from another, and pronounce on
the different" effects." And the power of gradually
losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment,
and finally being pleased at anything, is called the
historical sense, or historical culture. The crow~
of influences streaming on the young soul is s
great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at
him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed
stupidity is his only refuge. Where there is a

subtler and stronger self - consciousness we find

another emotion too-disgust. The young man
/has become homeless: he doubts all ideas, all
\moralities. He knows "it was different in every
age, and what you are does not matter." In a
heavy apathy he lets opinion on opinion pass by
him, and understands the meaning of Holderlin's
words when he read the work of Diogenes Laertius
on the lives and doctrines of the Greek philo-
sophers: " I have seen here too what has often
occurred to me, that the change and waste in
men's thoughts and systems is far more tragic
\ \than the fates that overtake
what men are accus-
tomed to call the only realities." No, such study ,
of history bewilders and overwhelms. It is not
necessary for youth, as the ancients show, but even
in the highest degree dangerous, as the -modems ,
show. Consider the historical student, the heir of
ennui, that appears even in his boyhood. He has
\ the "methods" for original work, the "correct
ideas" and the airs of the master at his fingers'
ends. A little isolated period· of the past is marked
out for sacrifice. He cleverly applies his method,
and produces something, or rather, in prouder
phrase, "creates" something. He becomes a
"servant of truth" and a ruler in the great domain
of history. If he was what they call ripe as a
boy, he is now over-ripe. You only · need shak1 ~
him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap; f
but the wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its\
worm. Believe me, if men work in the factory of
science and have to make themselves useful before
they are really ripe, science is ruined as much as

the slaves who have been employed too soon. I
am sorry to use the common jargon about slave-
owners and taskmasters in respect of such con-
ditions, that might be thought free from any
_economic taint: but the words " factory, labour-
market, auction-sale, practical use," and all the
auxiliaries of egoism, come involuntarily to the lips
in describing the younger generation of savant~
Successful mediocrity tends to become still more
mediocre, science still more "useful." Our modern
savants are only wise on one subject, in all the
rest they are, to say the least, different from those
of the old stamp. In spite of that they demand
honour and profit for themselves, as if the state
and public opinion were bound to take the new
coinage for the same value as the old. The carters
have made a trade-compact among themselves,
and settled that genius is superfluous, for every
carrier is being re-stamped as one. And probably
a later age will see that their edifices are only
carted together and not built. To those who have
ever on their lips the modern cry of battle and
sacrifice-" Division of labour! fall into line I" we
may say roundly: "If you try to further th~
progress of science as quickly as possible, you will
end by destroying it as quickly as possible; just
as the hen is worn out which you force to lay too
many eggs," The progress of science has been
amazingly rapid in the last decade; but consider
the savants, those exhausted hens. They are
certainly not "harmonious" natures: they can
merely cackle more than before, because they lay
eggs oftener: but the eggs are always smaller,

though their books are bigger. The natural result

of it all is the favourite "popularising" of science
(or rather its feminising and infantising), the
villainous habit of cutting the cloth of science to
fit the figure of the "general public." Goethe saw
the abuse in this, and demanded that science
should only influence the outer world by way of
a nobler ideal of action. The older generation
of savants had good reason for thinking this abuse
an oppressive burden: the modern savants have an
equally good reason for welcoming it, because,
leaving their little ·corner of knowledge out of
account, they are part of the "general public"
themselves, and its needs are theirs. They only
require to take themselves less seriously to be able
to open their little kingdom successfully to popular
E uriosity. This easy-going behaviour is called" the

modest condescension of the savant to the people" ;
hereas in reality he has only "descended " to
himself, so far as he is not a savant but a plebeian.
Rise to the conception of a people, you learned
men ; you can never have one noble or high
enough. If you thought much of the people, you
would have compassion towards them, and shrink
from offering your historical aquafortis as a refresh-
ing drink. But you really think very little of them,
for you dare not take any reasonable pains for their
future; and you act like practical pessimists, men
who feel the coming catastrophe and become in-
different and careless of their own and others'
existence. " If only the earth last for us: and if
it do not last, it is no matter." Thus they come
to live an ironical existence.

VIII.
It may seem a paradox, though it is none, that I
should attribute a kind of "ironical self-conscious-
, ness" to an age that is generally so honestly, and
clamorously, vain of its historical training ; and
should see a suspicion hovering near it that there
is really nothing to be proud of, and a fear lest
the time for rejoicing at historical knowledge
may soon have gone by. Goethe has shown a
similar riddle in man's nature, in his remarkable
study of Newton: he finds a "troubled feeling of
his own error" at the base-or rather on the height
-of his being, just as if he was c;ons.Q!2_us at titl!,es
of having a deeper insight into things, that vanished
the moment after. This gave him a certain ironical
view of his own nature. 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 is ; the mightiest nations,
mightiest in action and influence, have lived other-
wise, and their youth has been trained otherwise.
The knowledge gives a sceptical turn to their
minds. "The absurdity and · superstition," these
sceptics say, " suit men like ourselves, who come
as the latest withered shoots of a gladder and
mightier stock, and fulfil Hesiod's ' prophecy, that
men will one g_~y _Q~ bo!._n gr~-he~~g, and that •'
Zeus wiff destroy that generation as soon as the
sign be visible." Historical culture is really a kind
of inherited grayness, and those who have borne
VOL. II. E

its mark from childhood must believe instinctively

in the old age of mankind. To old age belongs
the old man's business of looking back and casting
up his accounts, of seeking consolation in the /
m.emories .9_Lthe-pas~istoricar cultute. But
the human race is tough and persistent, and will
not admit that the lapse of a thousand years, or
a hundred thousand, entitles any one to sum up its
progress from the past to the future; that is, it
will not be observed as a whole at all by that
infinitesimal atom, the individual man. 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 beginning,
and "the old age of mankind " at the end of them?
Does not this paralysing belief in a fast-fading
humanity cover the misunderstanding of a theo-
l \ logical idea, inherited from the Middle Ages, that
the end of the world is approaching and we ar~
waiting anxiously for the judgment? Does not
"1:he increasing demand for historical judgment give
us that idea in a new dress? as if our time were
the latest possible time, arid commanded to hold
that universal judgment of the past, which the
Christian never expected from a man, but from
"the Son of Man." The 1itemento mori, spoken ':
to humanity as well as the individual, was a sting
that never ceased to pain, the crown of media!val
knowledge and consciousness.
The opposite message of a later time, me.!!!,!!Jio
vivere, is spoken rather timidly, without the full
power of the lungs ; and there is something almost
dishonest about it, For mankind still keeps to

✓
its memento mori, and shows it by the uni versal
need for history; science may flap its wings as it
will, it has never been able to gain the free air.
A deep feeling of hopelessness has remained, and
_taken the historical colouring that has now darkened
and depressed all higher education. A religion
that, of all the hours of man's life, thinks the last
the most important, that has prophesied the end
of earthly life and condemned all creatures to live
in the fifth act of a tragedy, may· call forth the
subtlest and noblest powers of man, but it is an
enemy to all new planting, to all bold attempts or
free aspirations. It opposes all flight into the
unknown, because it has no life or hope there
itself. It only lets the new bud press forth on
sufferance, to blight it in its own good time: "it
might lead life astray and give it a false value."
What the Florentines did under the influence of
Savonarola's exhortations, when they made the
famous holocaust of pictures, manuscripts, masks
and mirrors, Christianity would like to do with
every culture that allured to further effort and
bore that memento vivere on its standard. 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 culture, though generally
without its connivance; and speaking through its
mouth, turns away every fresh birth with a shrug
of its shoulders, and makes us feel all the more
that we are late-comers and Epigoni, that we are,
in a word, born with gray hair. The deep and ~
serious contemplation of the unworthiness of all ~
past action, of the world ripe for judgment, has ,

been whittled down to the sceptical consc.iousness

that it is anyhow a good thing to know all that has
happened, as it is too late to do anything better.
I-
_ The historical sense makes its servants passive
and retrospective. Only in moments of fQrgetful-
ness, when that sense is dormant, does the man
-
who is sick of the historical fever ever act; though
he only analyses his deed again after it is over
(which prevents it from having any further con-
sequences), and finally puts it on the dissecting
table for the purposes of history. In this sense
we are still living in the Middle Ages, and history
is still a disguised theology; just as the reverence
with which the unlearned layman looks on the
learned class is inherited through the clergy.
What men gave formerly to the Church they give
now, though in smaller measure, to science. But
the fact of giving at all is the work of the Church,
not of the modern spirit, which among its other
good qualities has something of the miser in it,
and is a bad hand at the excellent virtue of
liberality.
These words may not be very acceptable, any
more than my derivation of the excess of history
from the media!val memento mori and the
hopelessness that Christianity bears in its heart
towards all future ages of earthly existence. But
you should always try to replace my hesitating
explanations by a better one. For the origin of ,
historical culture, and of its absolutely radical
antagonism to the spirit of a new time and a
"modern consciousness," must itself be known
by a historical process. History must solve the

problem of history, science must turn · its sting

against itself. This threefold "must" is the im-
perative of the "new spirit," if it is really to con-
tain something new, powerful, vital and original.
Or is it true that we Germans-t o leave the ~
- Romance nations out of account-m ust always be
mere " followers " in all the higher reaches of
culture, because that is all we can be? The words
of Wilhelm Wackernage l are well worth pondering:
"We Germans are a nation of ' followers,' and with )
all our higher science and even our faith, are/
merely the successors of the ancient world. Even
those who are opposed to it are continually
breathing the immortal spirit of classical culture
with that of Christianity : and if any one could
separate these two elements from the living air
surrounding the soul of man, there would not be
much remaining for a spiritual life to exist on."
Even if we would rest content with our vocation to
follow antiquity, even if we decided to take it in an
earnest and strenuous spirit and to show our high
prerogative in our earnestness ,-we should yet be
compelled to ask whether it were our eternal
destiny to be pupils of a fading antiquity. We
might be allowed at some time to put our aim
higher and further above us. And after con-
gratulating ourselves on having brought that
secondary spirit of Alexandrian culture in us to
such marvellous productiven ess - through our
"universal history "-we might go on to place
before us, as our noblest prize, the still higher task
of striving beyond and above this Alexandrian
world; and bravely find our prototypes in the

ancient Greek world, where all was great, natural

and human. But it is just tlzere that we find the
reality of a true unhistorical culture- and in spite
of that, or perhaps because of it, an unspeakably
rich and vital culture. Were we Germans nothing
' but followers, we could not be anything greater or
prouder than the lineal inheritors and followers of
such a culture.
This however must be added. The thought of
being Epigoni, that is often a torture, can yet
c~eate a spring of hope for the future, to the indi-
vidual as well as the people: so far, that is, as we
can regard ourselves as the heirs and followers of
7 the marvellous classical power, and see therein both
our honour and our spur. But not as the late and
bitter fruit of a powerful stock, giving that stock a
further spell of cold life, as antiquaries and grave-
diggers. Such late-comers live truly an ironical
existence. Annihilation follows their halting walk /
on tiptoe through life. They shudder before it in
the midst of their rejoicing over the past. They
a~ living _m.(!mories, and their 0~11_E1_e m~ have
no meaning ; for · there are...none. to_fah~r.i.L them.
And ··thus they are wrapped in the melancholy
thought that their life is an injustice, which no
future life can set right again. ·
Suppose that these antiquaries, these late
arrivals, were to change their painful ironic
modesty for a certain shamelessness. Suppose we
eard them saying, aloud," The race is at its zenith,
{~ it has manifested itself consciously for the first
for
time." We should have a comedy, in which the
dark meaning of a certain very celebrated

philosophy would unroll itself for the benefit of

German culture. 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 philosophy. The belief
that one is a late-comer in the world is, anyhow,
I
harmful and degrading: but it must appear
frightful and devastating wheµ it raises our late-
comer to godhead, by a neat turn of the wheel, as
the true mea'iiin'g and object of all past creation,
and his conscious misery is set up as the perfection
of the world's history. Such a point of view has
accustomed the Germans to talk of a II world-
process," and justify their own time as its necessary
result. And it has put history in the place of the
other spiritual powers, art and religion, as the one
sovereign ; inasmuch as it is the " Idea realising
itself," the "Dialectic of the spirit of the nations,''
and the II tribunal of the world."
- -- -
History understood in this Hegelian way has
been contemptuously called God's sojourn upon
earth,-though the God was first created by the
history. He, at any rate, became transparent and
intelligible inside Hegelian skulls, and has risen
through all the dialectically possible steps in his
being up to the manifestation of the Self: so that
for Hegel the highest and final stage of the world-
process came together in his own Berlin existence.
He ought to have said that everything after him
was merely to be regarded as the musical coda o( . \
the great historical rondo,-or rather, as simply •
superfluous. He has not said it; and thus he has

implanted in a generation leavened throughout by

him the worship of the '' power of history," that
practically turns every moment into a sheer gaping
at success, into an idolatry of the actual: for which
we have now discovered the characteristic phrase
"to adapt ourselves to circumstances." But the
an who has once learnt to crook the knee and
ow the hcao before the power of history, nods
~ yes" at last, like ,a Chinese doll, to every power,
hether it be a government or a public opinion or
a numerical majority; and his limbs move correctly·
as the power pulls the string. If each success
have come by a "rational necessity," and every
event show the victory of logic or the " Idea,"
then-down on your knees quickly, and let every
step in the ladder of success have its reverence!
There are no more living mythologies, you say?
Religions are at their last gasp? Look at the
religion of the p~....Qf.~ry, and the priests of
the mythology of Ideas, with their scarred knees !
Do not all the virtues follow in the train of the ne,v
faith? And shall we not call it unselfishness,
when the historical man lets himself be turned into
an " objective" mirror of all that is? Is it not
magnanimity to renounce all power in heaven and
earth in order to adore the mere fact of power?
Is it not justice, always to hold the balance of forces
in your hands and observe which is the stronger
and heavier? And what a school of politeness is
such a contemplation of the past I To take every-
thing objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love
othing, to understand everything-m akes one
gentle and pliable. Even if a man brought up in

this school will show himself openly offended, one

is just as pleased, knowing it is only-meant in the
artistic sense of ira et studium, though it is really
· sine ira et studio.
What old-fashioned thoughts I have on such a
combination of virtue and mythology! But they
must out, however one may laugh at them. ,
would even say that history always teaches-" it
was once," and morality- " it ought not to be, or.
?
have been." So history becomes a compendium o -
actual immorality. But how wrong would one be
to regard history as the judge of this actual im-
morality! Morality is offended by the fact that
a Raphael had to die at thirty-six; such a being
ought not to die. If you came to the help of
history, as the apologists of the actual, you would
say : "he had spoken everything that was in him
to speak, a longer life would only have enabled
him to create a similar beauty, and not a new
beauty," and so on. Thus you become an advo-
catus diabo!i by setting up the success, the fact,
as your idol: whereas_the fact is always dull, at all
times more like a calf than a god. Your apologies
for history are helped by ignorance: for it is only
because you do not know what a natura naturans
like Raphael is, that y~u are not on fire when
you think it existed once and can never exist
again. Some one has lately tried to tell us that
Goethe had ·out-lived himself with his eighty-two
years : and yet I would gladly take two of Goethe's
"outlived" years in exchange for whole cartloads
of fresh modern lifetimes, to have another set of
such conversations as those with Eckermann, and

be preserved from all the "modern" talk of these

esquires of the moment. How few living men }
have a right to live, as against those mighty dead !
That the many live and those few live no longer,
is simply a brutal truth, that is, a piece of unalter-
able folly, a blank wall of" it was once so" against
the moral judgment "it ought not to have been."
Yes, against the moral judgment ! For you may
speak of what virtue you will, of justice, courage,
magnanimity, of wisdom and human compassion,
-you will find the virtuous man will always rise
against the blind force of facts, the tyranny of the
actual, and submit himself to laws that are not the
fickle laws of history. He ever swims against the
waves of history, either by fighting his passions, as
the nearest brute facts of his existence, or by
training himself to honesty amid the glittering
nets spun round him by falsehood. Were history
nothing more than the "all-embracing system of
passion and error," man would have to read it as
Goethe wished Werther to be read ;-just as if it
called to him, "Be a man and follow me not I"
But fortunately history also keeps alive for us the
\ memory of the great "fighters against history,"
that is, against the blind power of the actual; it
puts itself in the pillory just by glorifying the true
historical nature in men who troubled themselves
very little about the "thus it is," in order that they
might follow a "thus it must be" with greater joy
and greater pride. Not to drag their generation to
the grave, but to found a new one-that is the
motive that ever drives them onward; and even if
they are born late, there is a way of living by

which they can forget it-and future generations

will know them only as the first-comers,
IX.
Is perhaps our time such a" first-comer"? Its
historical sense is so strong, and has such universal
and boundless expression, that future times will
commend it, if only for this, as a first-comer-
if there be any future time, in the sense of future
culture. But here comes a grave doubt. Close to
the modern man's pride there stands his irony
about himself, his consciousness that he must7ive-
in a historical, or twilit, atmosphere, the fear that
he can retain n@~is youthful hopes and powers.
Here and there one goes further into cynicism, and
justifies the course of history, nar,the whole
evolution of the world, as simply leading up to the
modern man, according to the cynical canon :-
" what you see now had to come, man had to be
thus and not otherwise, no one can stand against
this necessity." He who cannot rest in a state of
irony flies for refuge to the cynicism. The last
decade makes him a present of one of its most
beautiful inventions, a full and well-rounded phrase _:
for this cynicism•: he calls his way of living thought-
lessly and after the fashion of his time, " the full )
surrender of his personality to the world-process." \
The personality and the world-process I The world-
process and th!: personality of the earthworm! If
only one did not eternally hear the word "world,
world, world," that hyperbole of all hyperboles;

when we should only speak, in a decent manner,

of " man, man, man" I Heirs of the Greeks and
Romans, of Christianity? All that seems nothing
to the cynics. But "heirs of the world-process" ;
the final target of the world-process; the meaning
and solution of all riddles of the universe, the ripest
fruit on the tree of knowledge I-that is what I call
a right noble thought: by this token are the first-
lings of every time to be known, although they
may have arrived last. The historical imagination
has never flown so far, even in a dream ; for now
the history of man is merely the continuation of
that of animals and plants : the universal historian
finds traces of himself even in the utter depths of
the sea, in the living slime. He stands astounded
in face of the enormous way that man has run,
and his gaze quivers before the mightier wonder,
the modern man who can see all this way ! • He
stands proudly on the pyramid of the world-process :
and while he lays the final stone of his knowledge,
he seems to cry aloud to listening Nature: "We
are at the top, we are the top, we are the comple-
tion of Nature ! "
0 thou too proud European of the nineteenth
century, art thou not mad? Thy knowledge does
not complete Nature, it only kills thine own nature I
Measure the height of what thou knowest by the
depths of thy power to do, Thou climbest the
sunbeams of knowledge up towards heaven-but
also down to Chaos. Thy manner of going is
fatal to thee; the ground slips from . under thy feet
into the unknown ; thy life has no other stay, but
only spider's webs that every new stroke of thy

knowledge tears asunder.-But not another serious
word about this, for there is a lighter side to it all.
The moralist, the artist, the saint and the states-
man, may well be troubled, when they see that all
foundations are breaking up in mad unconscious
rui~, and resolving themselves into the ever flowing
stream of becoming; that all creation is being
tirelessly spun into webs of history by the modern
man, the great spider in the mesh of the world-net.
We ourselves may be glad for once in a way that
we see it all in the shining magic mirror of a
philosophical parodist, in whose brain the time has
come to an ironical consciousness of itself, to a point
even of wickedness, in Goethe's phrase. Hegel
once 'said, "when the spirit makes a fresh start,
we philosophers are at hand." Our time did make
a fresh start-into irony, and lo! Edward von
Hartmann was at hand, with his famous Philosophy
of the Unconscious-or, more plainly, his philo-
sophy of unconscious irony. We have seldom read
a more jovial production, a greater philosophica~l
joke than Hartmann's book. Any one whom it does
not fully enlighten about "becoming," who is no
swept and garnished throughout by it, is ready
to become a monument of the past himself. The
beginning and end of the world-process, from the
first throb of consciousness to its final leap into
nothingness, with the task of our generation settled
for it ;-all drawn from that clever fount of inspira-
tion, the Unconscious, and glittering in Apocalyptic
light, imitating an honest seriousness to the life,
as if it were a serious philosophy and not a huge
joke,-such a system shows its creator to be one

of the first philosophical parodists of all time.

Let us then sacrifice on his altar, and offer the
inventor of a true universal medicine a lock of
hair, in Schleiermac her's phrase. For what
medicine would be more salutary to combat the
excess of historical culture than Hartmann's
parody of the world's history?
If we wished to express in the fewest words
what Hartmann really has to tell us from his
mephitic tripod of unconscious irony, it would be
• something like this: our time could only remain
as it is, if men should become thoroughly sick of
this existence. And I fervently believe he is right.
The frightful petrifaction of the time, the restless
rattle of the ghostly bones, held narvely up to us
by David Strauss as the most beautiful fact of all-
is justified by Hartmann not only from the past,
ex causis effidentt'bus, but also from the future,
ex causa fina!i. The rogue let light stream over
\ our time from the last day, and saw that it
was very good,-for him, that is, who wishes
to feel the indigestibili ty of life at its full
strength, and for whom the last day cannot
come quickly enough. True, Hartmann calls the
old age of life that mankind is approaching the
old age of man": but that is the blessed state,
ccording to him, where there is only a successful
~ ediocrity; where art is the "evening's amuse-
ent of the Berlin financier," and "the time has
o more need for geniuses, either because it would
be casting pearls before swine, or because the time
has advanced beyond the stage where the geniuses
are found, to one more important," to that stage

.. ,,.'
of social evolution, in fact, in which every worker

"leads a comfortable existence, with hours of work
that leave him sufficient leisure to cultivate his
intellect." Rogue of rogues, you say well what is
the aspiration of present-day mankind : but you
know too what a spectre of disgust will arise at the
end of this old age of mankind, as the result of the
intellectual culture of stolid mediocrity. It is very
pitiful to see, but it will be still more pitiful yet.
·« Antichrist is visibly extending his arms : " yet it
must be so, for after all we are on the right road- ,

of disgust at all existence. "Fon~ard then, boldly,
with the world-process, as workers in the vineyard
of the Lord, for it is the process alone that can
lead to redemption ! "
The vineyard of the Lord! The process! To
redemption! Who does not see and hear in this
how historical culture, that only knows the word
"becoming," parodies itself on purpose and says
t the most irresponsible things about itself through
its grotesque mask? For what does the rogue
mean by this cry to the workers in the vineyard ?
By what "work " are they to strive boldly forward?
Or, to ask another question :-what further has the
historically educated fanatic of the world-process
to do,-swimming and drowning as he is in the
sea of becoming,-that he may at last gather in
that vintage of disgust, the precious grape of the
vineyard? Be has nothing to do but to live on )
as he has lived, love what he has loved, hate what
he has hated, and read the newspapers he has
always read. The only sin is for him to live other-
wise than he has lived. We are told how he has

lived, with monumental clearness, by that famous

page with its large typed ·sentences, on which the
whole rabble of our modern cultured folk have
thrown themselves in blind ecstasy, because they
believe they read their own justification there,
haloed with an Apocalyptic light. For the uncon-
scious parodist has demanded of every one of them,
"the full surrender of his personality to the world-
process, for the sake of his end, the redemption of
l
the world": or still more clearly,-" the assertion of
. .__ l the will tb live is pro~~? to be the first step on
~ the righ_!: road : for it is only in theTu1t-•s·urrender
) to life and its sorrow, and not in the cowardice of
1 personal renunciation
and retreat, that anything
can be done for the world-process. . . . The striving
for the denial of the individual will is as foolish as it
is useless, more foolish even than suicide. . . .
The thoughtful reader will understand without
further explanation how a practical philosophy can
be erected on these principles, and that such a t
philosophy cannot endure,, any disunion, but only
the fullest reconciliation with life."
The thoughtful reader will understand! Then
one really could misunderstand Hartmann ! And
what a splendid joke it is, that he should be mis-
understood I Why should the Germans ofto-day be
particularly subtle? 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 splay, something blunt-edged, un-
handy and infelicitous." Could the great German
parodist contradict this? According to him, we are
approaching "that ideal condition in which' the

THE USE AND ABUSE OF IIISTORY. 8r
human race makes its history with full conscious-

ness": but we are obviously far from the perhaps
more ideal condition, in which mankind can read
Hartmann's book with full consciousness. If we
once reach it, the word "world-process" will never
pass any man's lips again without a s,mile. For he
will remember the time when people listened to the
mock gospel of Hartmann, sucked it in, attacked it,
reverenced it, extenaeo1t and canonised it with all
the honesty of that "German mind," with "the un-
canny seriousness of an owl," as Goethe has it. But
the world must go forward, the ideal condition \
cannot be won by dreaming, it must be fought and
wrestled for, and the way to redemption lies only
through joyousness, the way to redemption from
that dull, owlish seriousness. The time will come -
when we shall wisely keep away from all construc-
tions of the world-process, or even of the history of
man ; a tiJlliUVhen_.we.shall no more look 4t masses
but at individu~ls_, who .form...a. sor.L 9f bric!g~.over
the wan stream of becomi~. They·may not per-
haps s§}in_u.~ a p1·0~~?~..~.1:l.~- t~~[.! ~ t .:!Jf""time,
as contemporaries: and thanks to history that per-
mit~ ·such a company, theyiive as the Republic of
geniuses of which Schopenhauerspeaks. One giant
calls to the other across the waste spaces of time,
and the high spirit-talk goes on, undisturbed by
the wanton·noisy dwarfs~-w~o creep among them.
The task of history is to be the mediator between
these, and even to give the motive and power to
produce the great man. The aiin of mankind _can ,
lie ultima~only in it0iighest examples. ~ r~
...._Our 'low comedian has his word on this too with
VOL. II. F

his wonderful dialectic, which is just as genuine

as its admirers are admirable. "The idea of
evolution cannot stand with our giving the
world-process an endless d-qration in the past,
for thus every conceiva,ble evolution must have
taken place, which is not the case (0 rogue!); and
so we cannot allow the process an endless duration
in the future. Both would raise the conception of
evolution to a mere.ideal (And again rogue!), and
would make the world-process like the sieve of the
Danaides. The complete victory of the logical over
the illogical (0 thou complete rogue!) must coin-
cide with the last day, the end in time of the world-
process." No, thou clear, scornful spirit, so long as
the illogical rules as it does to-day,-so long, for
example, as the world-process can be spoken of as
thou speakest of it, amid such deep-throated assent,
-the last day is yet far off. For it is still too joy-
ful on this earth, many an 'illusion still blooms here
-like the illusion of thy contemporaries about thee.
We are not yet ripe to be hurled into thy nothing-
ness: for we believe that we shall have a still more
splendid time, when men once begin to understand
thee, thou misunderstood, unconscious one I But
if, in spite of that, disgust shall come throned in
power, as thou hast prophesied to thy readers if
thy portrayal of the present and the future shall
prove to be right,-and no one has despised them
with such loathing as thou,-1 am ready then to cry
with the majority in the form prescribed by thee,
that next Saturday evening, punctually at twelve
o'clock, thy world shall fall to piece~nd our
decree shall conclude thus-from to-morrow time

shall not exist, and the Times shall no more be

published. Perhaps it ~ill be in vain, and our
decree· of 'no avail: at any rate we have still time
for a fine experiment. Take a balance and put
Hartmann's" Unconscious" in one of the scales, and
his "\Vorld-proces s" in the other. There are some
who believe they weigh equally; for in each scale
there is an evil word-=-and a good joke.
When they are· once understood, no one will take)
Hartmann's words on the world-process as any-
thing but a joke. It is, as a fact, high time to move
forward with the whoie battalion of satire and
malice against the excesses of the· " historical
sense," the wanton love of the world-process at
the expense of life and existence, the blind con-
fusion of all perspective. •And it will be to the
credit of the philosopher of the Unconscious that
he has heen the first to see the humour _oL.tbe
world-process, and to succeed in making others
see 'rt"still ~ore strongly Sy the extraordinary
seriousness of his presentation. The existence of
the "world" and "humanity" need not trouble us
for some time, except to provide us with a good
joke: for the presumption of the small earthworm
is the most uproariously comic thing on the face of
the earth. Ask thyself to what end thou art here,
as an individual; an·d if no one can tell thee;:'-try
then to justify the meaning of thy existence a '
posteriori, by ,putting before thyself a high and
noble end. Perish on that rock ! I know no better {
aim for life than to be broken on something great
and impossible, animtl! magntl! prodijrus. ~
if we have the doctrines of the finality of "be-
'

coming," of the flux of all ideas, types, and species,

of the lack of aU radical difference. between man
and beast (a true but fatal idea as I think),-if we
have these thrust on the people in the usual mad
way for another generation, no one need be surprised
if that people drown on its little miserable shoals
of egoism, and petrify in its self-seeking. At first it
will fall asunder and cease to be a people. In its
place perhaps individualist systems, secret societies
for the extermination of non-members, and similar
utilitarian creations, will appear on the theatre of
the future. Are we to continue to work for these .
...j creations and write history from the standpoint of
\ the masses ; to look for laws in it, to be deduced
from the needs of the masses, the laws of motion
of the lowest loam and clay strata of society? The
masses seem to be worth notice in three aspects
only : first as the copies _o f gr~~! men, printed on
bad paper from worn-out plates, next as a contrast
to the great men, and lastly as their tools : forthe
rest, let the devil and statistics fly away with them!
How could statistics prove that there are laws in
history? Laws? Yes, they may prove how
)
common and abominably uniform the masses are: ~:..-
and should we call the effects of leaden folly, imita-
tion, love and hunger-'-laws? We may admit it:
but we are sure o·f this too-that so far as there are,/
laws in history, the laws are of no value and the V
history of no value either. .i1-JJ.d'J~a.~t valuable
of all is tba_!_kind of history which tak_~~-Jbe·-great
popular movements as ·1:lie most Tmportant events -
of tne past, ancrrega~ds the-"great ·ine1i"ciniyastb.eir
clearest expression, the visible bubbles on ~he stream.

Thus the masses have to produce the great man,
ch~o~ng forth order; and finally all the hymns )
are naturally sung to the t~ing chaos. Every-
thing is called "great" that has moved the masses
for some long time, and becomes, as they say, a
"historical power." But is not this really an in-
tentional confusion of quantity and quality? When
the orutish mob have found some idea, a religious
idea for example, which satisfies them, when they
have defended it through thick and thin for cen-
turies; then, and then only, will they discover its/
inventor to have been a great man. · The highest
and noblest does not affect· the masses at aTI:- The
historical consequet1ces··o fChr.istianity, its "historical
power," toughness and persistence prove nothing,
fortunately, as to its founder's greatness. They
would have been a witness against him. For be-
tween him and the historical success of Christianity
lies a dark heavy weight of passion and error, lust
of power and honour, and the crushing force of the
Roman Empire. From this, Christianity had its
earthly taste, and its earthly foundations too, that
made its ·continuance in this world possible. Great- ✓
ness should not depend 91! __~~£fess ; Demosth~~-es
is great -without it. The purest and noblest ad- J
herents of Christianity have always doubted and I~
hinder~d, rather than helped, its effect in the world,
its so-called " historical power"; for they were ac-
customed to stand outside the "world," and cared
little for the" process of the Christian Idea." Hence
they have generally remained unknown to history,
and their very names are. lost. In Christian terms,
the devil is the prince o~ the world, and the lord ol

progress and consequence: he is the power behind

all " historical power," and so will it remain, how-
ever ill it may sound to-day in ears that are ac-
customed to canonise such power and consequence.
The world has become skilled at giving new names
to things and even baptizing the devil. It is truly
an hour of great danger. Men seem to be near the
discovery that the egoism of individuals, groups
or masses has been at all times the lever of the
" historical movements " : and yet they are in no
way disturbed by' the discovery, but proclaim that
"egoism shall be our god." With this new faith
in their hearts, they begin quite intentionally to
build future history on egoism : though it must be
a clever egoism, one that allows of some limitation,
that it may stand firmer; one that studies history
for the purpose of recognising the foolish kind of
egoism. Their study has taught' them that the
/State has a special mission in all future egoistic
systems: it will be the patron of all the clever
egoisms; to protect them with all the power of its
military and police against the dangerous outbreaks
of the other kind. There is the same idea in intro-
ducing history.....:..natural as well as human history-
among the labouring classes, whose folly makes
them dangerous. ' For men know well that a grain of
historical culture is able to break down the rough,1
blind instincts and desires, or to turn them to the
service of a clever egoism. In fact they are be-
ginning to think, with Edward van Hartmann, of
"fixing themselves with an eye to the future in
their earthly home, and making themselves comfort-
able there." Hartmann calls this life the " man-

hood of humanity" with an ironical reference to
what is now called " manhood ";-as if only our
sober models of selfishness were embraced by it;
just as he prophesies an age of graybeards following
on this stage,-obviously another ironical glance at
our ancient time-servers. 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 for." No, a
manhood of crafty and historically cultured egoism
corresponds to an old age that hangs to life with
no dignity but a horrible tenacity, where the
"last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
Whether the dangers of our life and culture come
from these dreary, toothless old men, or from the
so-called "men" of Hartmann, we have the right
to defend our youth with tooth and claw against
both of them, and never tire of saving the future
from these false prophets. But in this battle we
shall discover an unpleasant truth-that men in-
tentionally help, and encourage, and use, the worst
aberrations of the historical sense from which the
present time suffers.
They use it, however, against youth, in order to
transform it into that ripe '' egoism of manhood "
they so long for: they use it to overcome the natural
reluctance of the young by its magical splendour,.
which unmans while it enlightens them. Yes, we
know only too well the kind of ascendency history

can gain; how it can uproot the strongest instincts

of youth, passion, cour~ge, unselfishness and love;
can cool its feeling for justice, can crush or repress
its desire for a slow ripening by the contrary desire
to be soon productive, ready and useful; and cast
a sick doubt over all honesty and downrightness
of feeling. It can even cozen youth of its fairest
privilege, the power of planting a great thought
with the fullest confidence, and lettif.g it grow of
\
itself to a still greater thought. (An excess of
history can do all that, as we have seen, by no
:J
longer allowing a man to feel and act unhi'storically
for history is continually shifting his horizon and
-
removing the atmosphere surrounding him. From
an infinite horizon he withdraws into himself, back
into the small egoistic circle, where he must become
dry and withered: he may possibly attain to clever-/
ness, but never to wisdom. He lets himself be
talked over, is always calculating and parleying
with facts. He is never enthusiastic, but blinks
his eyes, and understands how to look for his own
profit or his party's in the profit or loss of some-
body else. He unlearns all his useless modesty,
and turns little by little into the "man" or the
"graybeard" of H,!.rtmann. And that is what
they want him to be: 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 end, the redemption of the world, as
the rogue E. von Hartmann tells us. Though
redemption can scarcely be the conscious aim
of these people: the world were better redeemed
by being redeemed from these " men " and

"graybeards." For then would come the reign

of youth.
X.
And in this kingdom of youth I can cry Land !
Land ! Enough, and more than enough, of the
wild voyage over dark strange seas, of eternal
search and eternal disappointment ! The coast is
at last in sight. Whatever it be, we must land
there, and the worst haven is better than tossing
again in the hopeless waves of an infinite scepticism.
Let us hold fast by the land : we shall find the
good harbours later and make the voyage easier
for those who come after us.
The voyage was dangerous and exciting. How
far are we even now from that quiet state of
contemplation with which we first saw our ship
launched l In tracking out the dangers of history,
we have found ourselves especially exposed to them.
We carry on us the marks of that sorrow which an
excess of history brings in its train to the men of
the modern time. And this present treatise, as ~
will not attempt to deny, shows the modern not
of a weak personality in the intemperateness of its '
criticism, the unripeness of its humanity, in the too
frequent transitions from· irony to cynicism, from
arrogance to scepticism. And yet I trust in the
inspiring power that directs my vessel instead of
genius ; I tru§t in youth, that has brought me on
the right road in forcing from me a protest against
the modern historical education, and a demand that
the man must learn to live, above all, and only

use history in the service of the life that he has

learned_tQ_live. He must be young to understand
this protest; and considering the premature gray-
ness of our present youth, he can scarcely be young
enough if he would understand its reason as well.
An example will help me. In Germany, not more
than a century ago, a natural instinct for what is
called "poetry" was awakened in some young men.
Are we to think that the generations who had lived
before that time had not spoken of the art, however 1
really strange and unnatural it may have been
to them? We know the contrary; that they had
thought, written, and quarrelled about it with all
their might-in " words, words, words." Giving
life to such words did not prove the death of the
word-makers; in a certain sense they are living
still. For if, as Gibbon says, nothing but time-
though a long time-is needed for a world to
l perish, so nothing but time-though still more
time-is needed for a false idea to be destroyed in
Germany, the "Land of Little-by-little." j In any
event, there are perhaps a hundred men more now
than there were a century ago who know what
poetry is: perhaps in another century there will be
a hundred more who have learned in the meantime
what culture is, and that the Germans have had
as yet no culture, however proudly they may talk -
about it. The general satisfaction of the Germans
at their culture will seem as foolish and incredible
to such men as the once lauded classicism of
Gottsched, or the reputation of Ramler as the
German Pindar, seemed to us. They will perhaps
think this "culture" to be merely a kind of know-

ledge about culture, and a false and superficial

knowledge at that. False and superficial, because
the Germans endured the contradiction between
life and knowledge, and did not see what was
characteristic in the culture of really educated
peoples, that it can only rise and bloom from life.
But by the Germans it is worn like a paper flower,
or spread over like the icing on a cake ; and so
must remain a useless lie for ever.
. The education of youth in Germany starts from _.,,
this false and unfruitful idea of culture. Its aim,
when faced squarely, is not to form the liberally
educated man, but the professor, the man of science,
who wants to be able to make use of his science
as soon as possible, and stands on one side in order
to see life clearly. The result, even from a ruth-
lessly practical point of view, is the historically and
cesthetically trained Philistine, the babbler of old
saws and new wisdom on Church, State and Art,
the sensorium that receives a thousand impressions,
the insatiable belly that yet knows not what true
hunger and thirst is. An education with such an
aim and result is against nature. But only he who
is not quite drowned in it can feel that; only youth
can feel it, because it still has the instinct of nature,
that is the first to be broken by that education.
- But he who will break through that education in
his turn, must come to the help of youth when
called upon ; must let the clear light of under-
standing shine on its unconscious striving, and
bring it to a full, vocal consciousness. How is he
to attain such a strange end?
Principally by destroying the superstitio_n that

this kind of education is necessary. People think

nothing but this troublesome reality of ours is
possible. Look through the literature of higher
education in school and college for the last ten
years, and you will be astonished-and pained-
to find how much alike all the proposals of reform
have been ; in spite of all the hesitations and violent
controversies surrounding them. You will see how
blindly they have all adopted the old idea of the
"educated man" (in our sense) being the necessary
and reasonable basis of the system. The mono-
tonous canon runs thus : the young man must
begin with a knowledge of culture, not even with a--
knowledge of life, still less with life and the living
of it. This knowledge of culture is forced into the ......_
young mind in the form of historical knowledge;
which means that his head is filled with an enormous ,
mass of ideas, taken second-hand from past timj
and peoples, not from immediate contact with lifi -
He desires to experience something for himself, an
feel a close-knit, living system of experiences grow-
ing within himself. But his desire is drowned and
dizzied in the sea of shams, as if it were possible to
sum up in a few years the highest and notablest
experiences of ancient times, and the greatest times
too. It is the same mad method that carries our
young artists off to picture-galleries, instead of the
studio of a master, and above all the one studio
of the only master, Nature. As if one could dis- 1
cover by a hasty rush through history the ideas and
technique of past times, and their individual outlook .....,
on life I For life itself is a kind of handicraft that
must be learned thoroughly and industriously~ and
-.
TIIE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY, 93
diligently practised, if we are not to have mere
botchers and babblers as the issue of it all I
Plato thought it necessary for the first generation
of his new society (in the perfect state) to be brought
up with the. help of a "mighty lie." The children
were to be taught to believe that they had all lain
dreaming for a long time under the earth, where
they had been moulded and formed by the master-
hand of Nature. It was impossible to go against
the past, and work against the work of gods I And
so it had to be an unbreakable law of nature, that
he who is born to be a philosopher has gold in his
body, the fighter has only silver, and the workman
iron and bronze. As it is not possible to blend
these metals, according to Plato, so there could
never be any confusion between the classes: the
belief in the ceterna veritas of this arrangement was
the basis of the new education and the new state.
So the modern German believes also in the ceterna
veritas of his education, of his kind of culture:
and yet this belief will fail-as the Platonic state
would have failed-if the mighty German lie be
ever opposed by the truth, that the German has no
culture because he cannot build one on the,basis of
his education. He wishes for the flower without
the root or the stalk ; and so he wishes in vain.
That is the simple truth, a rude and unpleasant
truth, but yet a mighty one.
But our first generation must be brought up in
this " mighty truth," and must suffer from it too;
for it must educate itself through it, even against
its own nature, to attain a new nature and manner
of life, which shall yet proceed from the old. So

it might say to itself, in the old Spanish phrase,

" Defienda me Dios de my," God keep me from ,,
myself, from the character, that is, which has been
put into me. It must taste that truth drop by drop,
like a bitter, powerful medicine. And every man
in this generation must subdue himself to pass the
judgment on his own nature, which he might pass
more easily on his whole time :-"We are without
instruction, nay, we are too corrupt to live, to see
and hear truly and simply, to understand what is
near and natural to us. We have not yet laid even
the foundations of culture, for we are not ourselves
convinced that we have a sincere life in us.'' We
crumble and fall asunder, our whole being is divided,
half mechanically, into an inner and outer side ;
we are sown with ideas as with dragon's teeth, and
bring forth a new dragon-brood of them; we suffer\
from the malady of words, and have no trust in any
feeling that is not stamped with its special word,
And being such a dead fabric of words and ideas,
that yet has an uncanny movement in it, I have
still perhaps the right to say cogito ergo sum,
though not vivo ergo cogito. I am permitted the
empty esse, not the full green vivere. A primary
feeling tells me that I am a thinking being but not
a living one, that I am no "animal," but at most a
"cogital." " Give me life, and I will soon make
you a culture out of it "-will be the cry of every
man in this new generation, and they will all know
each other by this cry. But who will give them
this life?
No god and no man will give it-only their own
routk. Set this free, and you will set life free as
Downloaded from https://www.holybooks.com I

1
well. For it only lay concealed, in a prison ; it is
not yet withered or dead-ask your own selves!
But it is sick, this life that is set free, and must
be healed. It suffers from many diseases, and not
only from the memory of its chains. It suffers
from the malady which_ _I h~ve -~poken of, the
malady of history. Excess of history has attacked
the plastic power of life, that no more understands
how to use the past as a means of strength and
nourishment. It is a fearful disease, and yet, if
youth · had not a natural gift for clear vision, no
one would see that it is a disease, and that a
paradise of health has been lost. But the same
youth, with that same natural instinct of health,
has guessed how the paradise can be regained.
It knows the magic herbs and sim_eles for the
malady of history, and the excess of it. And
what are they called?
It is no marvel that they bear the names of
poisons :-the antidotes to history are the "un-
historical" and the "super-historical." With these
names we return to the _beginning of our inquiry
and draw near to its final close.
By the word "unhistorical" I mean the power,
the art of forgetting, and of drawing a limited :x
horizon round one's self. I call the power "super-
historical " which turns the eyes from the process
of becoming to that which gives existence an
eternal and staQ}e....character, to arLand...J1iligiQn.
Science-for it ·is science that makes us speak of
"poisons "-sees in these powers contrary powers:
for it considers only that view of things to be true
and right, and therefore scientific, which regards

something as finished and historical, not as con-

tinuing and eternal. Thus it lives in a deep
antagonism towards the powers that make for
eternity-art and religiQn,-:-:-:.f<?r .tthates the_fu_~get-
fulness _tl:iat is the death of knqwledge, and- tries
to remove all limitation o( horizon and cast men.
into an infinite boundless_sea, whose waves are
bdght with Hi;~jei~ k~-o~ledge.,=_of be.c oming!
If they could only live therein ! Just as towns
are shaken by an avalanche and become desolate,
and man builds his house there in fear and for a
season only ; so life is broken in sunder and
becomes weak and spiritless, if the avalanche of
ideas started by science take from man the founda-
tion of his rest and security, the belief in what is
stable and eternal. Must life dominate knowledge,
or knowledge life? Which of the two is the
higher, and decisive power? There is no room
for doubt : life is the higher, and the dominating
power, for the knowledge that annihilated life
would be itself annihilated too. Knowledge pre-
supposes life, and has the same interest in main-
taining it that every creature has in its own pre-
servation. Science needs very careful watching:
there is a hygiene of life near the volumes of
science, and one of its sentences runs thus :-The
unhistorical and the super-historical are the natural J
antidotes against the overpowering of life by
history ; they are the cures for the historical
disease. We who are sick of the disease, may
suffer a little from the antidote. But this is no
proof that the treatment we have chosen is wrqng.
And here I see the mission of the youth that

forms the first generation of fighters and dragon-
slayers: it will bring a more beautiful and blessed
humanity and culture, but will have itself no more
than a glimpse of the promised land of happiness
and wondrous beauty. This youth will suffer both
from the malady and its antidotes: and yet it
believes in strength and health and boasts a nature
closer to the great Nature than its forebears, the
cultured men and graybeards of the present. But
its mission is to shake to their foundations the
present conceptions of" health" and "culture," and
erect hatred and scorn in the place of this rococo
mass of ideas. And the clearest sign of its own
strength and health is just the fact that it can
use no idea, no party-cry from the present-day
mint of words and ideas to symbolise its own
existence: but only claims conviction from the
power in it that acts and fights, breaks up and
destroys; and from an ever heightened feeling of
lif;_,,,when the hour strikes. You may deny this
youth any culture-but 'how would youth count
that a reproach? You may speak of its rawness
and intemperateness-but it is not yet old and wise
enough to be acquiescent. It need not pretend to
a ready-made culture at all ; but enjoys all the
rights-and the consolations-of youth, especially
the right of brave unthinking honesty and the con-
solation of an inspiring hope.
I know that such hopeful beings understand all
these truisms from within, and can translate them
into a doctrine for their own use, through their
personal experience. To the others there will
appear, in the meantime, nothing but a row of
VOL. II. . G

covered dishes, that may perhaps seem empty:

until they see one day with astonished eyes that
the dishes are full, and that all ideas and impulses
and passions are massed together in these tn,iisms
th<=!-t cannot lie covered for long. I leave those
doubting ones to time, that brings all things to
light; and turn at last to that great company of
hope, to tell them the way and the course of their
I
salvation, their rescue from the disease of history,
and their own history as well, in a parable; where~-
by they may again become healthy enough to study
........_history anew, and under the guidance of life make
use of the past in that threefold way-monumental,
antiquarian, or critical. At first they will be more .
ignorant than the "educated men" of the present:
for they will have unlearnt much and have lost any
desire even to discover what those educated men
especially wish to know : in fact, their chief mark
from the educated point of view will be just their
)/'( ! want of science; their indifference and inaccessi-
bility to all the good and famous things. But at
the end of the cure, they are men again and have
ceased to be mere shadows of humanity. That
is something; there is yet hope, and do not ye
who hope laugh in your hearts?
How can we reach that end? you will ask. The
Delphian god cries his oracle to you at the begin-
ning of your wanderings, "Know thyself." It is a
hard saying : for that god "tells nothing and con-
ceals nothing but merely points the way," as
Heraclitus said. But whither does he point?
In certain epochs the Greeks were in a similar
danger of being overwhelmed by what was past

and foreign, and perishing on the rock of" history."

They never lived proud and untouched. Their
"culture" was for a long time a chaos of foreign
forms and ideas,-Semitic, Babylonian, Lydian and
Egyptian,-and their religion a battle of all the
gods of the East ; just as German culture and) -
religion is at present a death-struggle of all foreign(
nations and bygone times. And yet, Hellenic
culture was no mere mechanical unity, thanks to
that Delphic oracle. The Greeks gradually learned
_..,_----........,..,.
'-·
to organise the chaos, by taking Apollo's advice

-and thinking back to themselves, to their own true
necessities, and letting all the sham necessities
go. Thus they again came into possession of
themselves, and did not remain long the Epigoni
of the whole East, burdened with their inheritance. 1
After that hard fight, they increased and enriched )
the treasure they had inherited by their o~edien,~~ t•.-.r'\
to the oracle, and they became the ancestors an
models for all the cultured nations of the future.
This is a parable for each one of us: he musr--
organise the chaos in himself by "thinking himself
back" to' his true needs. He will want all his
honesty, all the sturdiness and · sincerity in his
character to help him to revolt against second-
hand thought, second-hand learning, second-hand
action. And he will begin then to understand
that culture can be something more than a
0
"decoration of life "-a con~ealment and disfigur-

ing of it, in other words ; for all adornment hides
what is adorned. And thus the Greek idea, as
against the 'Roman, will be discovered to h'im, the
idea of culture as a new and finer nature, without

IOO THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
distinction of inner and outer, without convention

or disguise, as a unity of thought and will, life
and appearance. He wjJ) )earn taa, from ..h.is...,own
experience, that it was by a greater force OI m.9ral
character that the Greeks were victorious, and that
evecything which _makes far sioc~esity is a further
may harm the ideals a£ e~ooili_at ate rever-

.
enced at the._ttme,er-even--have-pewel'.--to -
step_tQwards_tr.ue__culti,m~, however this sincerity
.~.hatter
a__wcie...sy_stem__of_merely_cJecorative culture.
~ -----

.
'
SCHOPENHAUER AS
EDUCATOR.

SCHOPENHAUER AS
EDUCATOR.
I.
vVHEN the traveller, w·ho had seen many countries
and nations and continents, was asked what common
attribute he had found everywhere existing among
men, he answered," They have a tendency to sloth."
Many may think that the fuller truth would have
been," They are all timid," They hide themselves
behind " manners" and "opinions." At bottom
every man knows well enough that he is a unique
being, only once on this earth ; and by no extra-
ordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque
piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put to-
gether a second time. He knows this, but hides
it like an evil conscience ;-and why? From fear
of his neighbour, who looks for the latest conven-
tionalities in him, and is wrapped up in them
himself. But what is it that forces the man to
fear his neighbour, to think and act with his herd,
and not seek his own joy? Shyness perhaps, in
a few rare cases, but in the majority it is idleness,

l04 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the " taking things easily," in a word the " tendency

to sloth," of which the traveller spoke. He was
right ; men are more slothful than timid, and their
greatest fear is of the burdens that an uncom-
promising honesty and nakedness of speech and
action would lay on them. It is only the artists
who hate this lazy wandering in borrowed manners
and ill-fitting opinions, and discover the secret of
the evil conscience, the truth that each human
being is a unique marvel. They show us, how in
every little movement of his muscles the man is
an individual self, and further-as an analytical
deduction from his individuality-a beautiful and
interesting object, a new and incredible phenomenon
(as is every work of nature), that can never become
tedious. If the great thinker despise mankind, it
is for their laziness; they seem mere indifferent
bits of pottery, not worth any commerce or im-
provement. The_man who will not belong to the
general mass, has only to stop "taking himself
easily"; to follow his conscience, which cries out
I to him, "Be thyself! all that thou doest and
thinkest and desirest, is not-thyself!"
Every youthful soul hears this cry day and night,
and quivers to hear it : for she divines the sum
of happiness that has been from eternity destined
for her, if she think of her true deliverance; and
towards this happiness she can in no wise be
helped, so long as she lies in the chains of Opinion
and of Fear. And how comfortless and unmeaning
may life become without this deliverance! There
is no more desolate or Ishmaelitish creature in nature
than the man who has broken away from his true

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 105
genius, and does nothing but peer aimlessly about

him. There is no reason to attack such a man at
all, for he is a mere husk without a kernel, a
painted cloth, tattered and sagging, a scarecrow
ghost, that can rouse no fear, and certainly no pity.
And though one be right in saying of a sluggard
that he is " killing time," yet in respect of an age
that rests its salvation on public opinion,-that is,
on private laziness,-one must be quite determined
that such a time shall be " killed," once and for all :
I mean that it shall be blotted from life's true
History of Liberty. Later generations will be
greatly disgusted, when they come to treat the move-
ments of a period in which no living men ruled,
but shadow-men on the screen of public opinion;
and to some far posterity our age may well be
the darkest chapter of history, the most unknown
becau·se the least human. I have walked through
the new streets of our cities, and thought how of
all the dreadful houses that these gentlemen with
their public opinion have built for themselves, not
a stone will remain in a hundred years, and that
the opinions of these busy masons may well have
fallen with them. But how full of hope should
they all be who feel that they are no citizens of
this age I If they were, they would have to help
on the work of "killing their time," and of perish-
ing with it,-when they wish rather to quicken the
time to life, and in that life themselves to lz've.
But even if the future leave us nothing to hope
for, the wonderful fact of our existing at this
present moment of time gives us the greatest en-
couragement to live after our own rule and measure;

Io6 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
so inexplicable is it, that we should be Hving just

to-day, though there have been an infinity of time
wherein we might have arisen; that we own
nothing but a span's length of it, this "to-day,"
and must show in it wherefore and whereunto we
have arisen. We have to answer for our existence
to ourselves ; and will therefore be our own true
pilots, and not admit that our being resembles a
blind fortuity. One must take a rather impudent
and reckless way with the riddle ; especially as the
key is apt to be lost, however things turn out. Why
cling to your bit of earth, or your little business,
or listen to what your neighbour says? It is so
provincial to bind oneself to views which are no
longer binding a couple of hundred miles away.
East and West are signs that somebody chalks up
in front of us to fool such cowards as we are. " I
will make the attempt to gain freedom," says the
youthful soul; and will be hindered, just because
two nations happen to hate each other and go to
war, or because there is a sea between two parts
of the earth, or a religion is taught in the vicinity,
which did not exist two thousand years ago. " And
this is not-thyself," the soul says. "No one can
build thee the bridge, over which thou must cross
the river of life, save thyself alone. There are paths
and bridges and demi-gods without number, that
will gladly carry thee over, but only at the price
of thine own self: thy self wouldst thou have to
give in pawn, and then lose it. There is in the
world one road whereon none may go, except thou:
ask not whither it lead, but go forward. 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 '?"
But how can we " find ourselves" again, and how
can man "know himself"? He is a thing obscure
and veiled : if the hare have seven skins, man can
cast from him seventy times seven, and yet will
not be able to say " Here art thou in very truth ;
this is outer shell no more." Also this digging
into one's self, this straight, violent descent into the
pit of one's being, is a troublesome and dangerous
business to start. A man may easily take such
hurt, that no physician can heal him. And again,
what were the use, since everything bears witness
to our essence,-our friendships and enmities, our
looks and greetings, our memories and forgetful-
nesses, our books and our writing I This is the
most effective way :-to let the youthful soul look
back on life with the question, " What bast thou
up to now truly loved, what has drawn thy soul
upward, mastered it and blessed it too?" Set up
these things that thou hast honoured before thee,
and, maybe, they will show thee, in their being
and their order, a law which is the fundamental
law of thine own self. Compare these objects,
consider how one completes and broadens and
transcends and explains another, how they form
a ladder on which thou hast all the time been
climbing to thy self: for thy true being lies not
deeply hidden in thee, but an infinite height above
thee, or at least above that which thou dost
commonly take to be thyself. The true educators
·and moulders reveal to thee the real groundwork
and import of thy being, something that in itself

cannot be moulded or educated, but is anyhow

difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy
educators can be nothing but thy deliverers. And
that is the secret of all culture: it does not give
artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the
eyes- a thing that could buy such gifts is but
the base coin of education. But it is rather a libera-
tion, a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and
vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the stream-
ing forth of light and warmth, the tender 'dropping
of the night rain ; it is the following and the
adoring of Nature when she is pitifully-minded as
a mother ;-her completion, when it bends before
her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to
good, and draws a veil over all expression of her
tragic unreason-for she is a step-mother too,
sometimes.
There are other means of "finding ourselves," of
coming to ourselves out of the confusion wherein
we all wander as in a dreary cloud ; but I know
none better than to think on our educators. So
I will to-day take as my theme the hard teacher
Arthur Schopenhauer, and speak of others later,
II.
In order to describe properly what an event my
first look into Schopenhauer's writings was for me, I
must dwell for a minute on an idea, that recurred
more constantly in my youth, and touched me more
nearly, than any other. I wandered then as I
pleased in a world of wishes, and thought that

destiny would relieve me of the dreadful and

wearisome duty of educating myself: some philo-
sopher would come at the right moment to do it
for me,-some true philosopher, who could be
obeyed without further question, as he would be
trusted more than one's self. Then I said within
me: "What would be the principles, on which he .
might teach thee?" And I pondered in my mind
what he would say to the two maxims of education
that hold the field in our time. The first demands
that the teacher should find out at once the strong
point in his pupil, and then direct all his skill and
will, all the moisture and all the sunshine, to bring
the fruit of that single virtue to maturity. The
second requires him to raise to a higher power all
the qualities that already exist, cherish them and
bring them into a harmonious relation. But, we
may ask, should one who has a decided talent for
working in gold be made for that reason to learn
music? And can we admit that Benvenuto
Cellini's father was right in continually forcing
him back to the "dear little horn "-the "cursed
piping," as his son called it? \Ve cannot think so
in the case of such a strong and clearly marked
talent as his, and it may well be that this maxim
of harmonious development applies only to weaker
natures, in which there is a whole swarm of desires
and inclinations, though they may not amount to
very much, singly or together. On the other hand,
where do we find such a blending of harmoni-
ous voices-nay, the soul of harmony itself-as we
see in natures like Cellini's, where everything-
knowledge, desire, love and hate-tends towards a

I JO THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON,
single point, the root of all, and a harmonious

system, the resultant of the various forces, is built
up through the irresistible domination of this vital
centre? And so perhaps the two maxims are not
contrary at all : the one merely saying that man
must have a centre, the other, a circumference as
well. The philosophic teacher of my dream would
not only discover the central force, but would know
how to prevent its being destructive of the other
powers : his task, I thought, would be the welding
of the whole man into a solar system with life and
movement, and the discovery of its paraphysical
laws.
In the meantime I could not find my philosopher,
however I tried; I saw how badly we moderns
compare with the Greeks and Romans, even in the
serious study of educational problems. You can
go through all Germany, and especially all the
universities, with this need in your heart, and will
not find what you seek; many humbler wishes
than that are still unfulfilled there. Foc example,
if a German seriously wish to make himself an
orator, or to enter a "school for authors," he will
find neither master nor school : no one yet seems
to have thought that speaking and writing are arts
which cannot be learnt without the most careful
method and untiring application. But, to their
shame, nothing shows more clearly the insolent
self-satisfaction of our people than the lack of
demand for educators; it comes partly from mean-
ness, partly from want of thought. Anything will
do as a so-called "family tutor," even among our
most eminent and cultured people : and what a

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. III
menagerie of crazy heads and mouldy devices

mostly go to make up the belauded Gymnasium !
And consider what we are satisfied with in our
finishing schools,-our universities. Look at our
professors and their institutions ! And compare
the difficulty of the task of educating a man to be
a man ! Above all, the wonderful way in which
the German savants fall to their dish of knowledge,
shows that they are thinking more of Science than
mankind ; and they are trained to lead a forlorn
hope in her service, in order to encourage ever
new generations to the same sacrifice. If their
traffic with knowledge be not limited and controlled
by any more general principles of education, but
allowed to run on indefinitely,-" the more the
better,"-it is as harmful to learning as the
economic theory of lai'sser faire to common
morality. No one recognises now that the educa-
tion of the professors is an exceedingly difficult
problem, if their humanity is not to be sacrificed
or shrivelled up :-this difficulty can be actually
seen in countless examples of natures warped and
twisted by their reckless and premature devotion to
science. There is a still more important testimony
to the complete absence of higher education,
pointing to a greater and more universal danger.
It is clear at once why an orator or writer cannot
now be educated,-because there are no teachers ;
and why a savant must be a distorted and perverted
thing,-because he will have been trained by the
inhuman abstraction, science. This being so, let a
man ask himself: " Where are now the types of
moral excellence and fame for all our generation-

II2 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
learned and unlearned, high and low-the visible

abstract of constructive ethics for this age ? Where
has vanished all the reflection on moral questions
that has occupied every great developed society at
all epochs? " There is no fame for that now, and
there are none to reflect: we are really drawing on
the inherited moral capital which our predecessors
accumulated for us, and which we do not know
how to increase, but only to squander. Such things
are either not mentioned in our society, or, if at all,
with a narve want of personal experience that
makes one disgusted. It comes to this, that our
schools and professors simply turn aside from any
moral instruction or content themselves with
formul~; virt}le is a word and nothing more, on
both sides, an old-fashioned word that they laugh
at-and it is worse when they do not laugh, for
then they are hypocrites.
· An ~.¥planation of this faint-heartedness and
ebbi~g of all moral strength would· be difficult and
complex : but whoever is considering the influence
of Christianity in its hour of victory on the
morality of the medi~val world, must not forget
that it reacts also in its defeat, which is apparently
its position to-day. By its lofty ideal, Christianity
has outbidden the ancient Systems of Ethics and
their invariable naturalism, with which men came
to feel a dull disgust : and afterwards when they
did reach the knowledge of what was better and
higher, they found they had no longer the power,
for all their desire, to return to its embodiment in
the antique virtues. And so the life of the modern
man is passed in see-sawing between Christianity

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. I l3
and Paganism, between a furtive or hypocritical

approach to Christian morality, and an equally shy
and spiritless dallying with the antique: and he
does not thrive under it. His inherited fear of
naturalism, and its more recent attraction for him,
his desire to come to rest somewhere, 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 with?ut joy or fruit.
Never were moral teachers more necessary and never
were they more unlikely to be found : physicians
are most in danger themselves in time:5 when they
are most needed and many men are sick. For
where are our modern physicians wh,b are strong
and sure-footed enough to hold up arlo.ther or lead
him by the hand ? There lies a certain _heavy
gloom on the best men of our time, an eternal
loathing for the battle that is fought in th~ir h~~s
between honesty and lies, a wavering of trust•1&
themselves, which makes them quite incapable of
showing to others the way they must go.
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 insufficiency, and teach me again simply and
honestly to be in my ,thoughts and life, in the
deepest sense of the word, "out of season"; simply
and honestly-for men have now become such
complicated machines that they must be dishonest,
if they speak at all, or wish to act on their words.
With such needs and desires within me did I
come to know Schopenhauer.
VOLIL H

I 14 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
I belong to those readers of Schopenhauer who

know perfectly well, after they have turned the
first page, that they will read all the others, and
listen to every word that he has spoken. My trust
in him sprang to life at once, and has been the same
for nine years. I understood him as though he
had written for me (this is the most intelligible,-
though a .rather foolish and conceited way of
expressing it). Hence I never found a paradox
in him, though occasionally some small errors:
for paradoxes are only assertions that carry no
conviction, because the author has made them
himself without any conviction, wishing to appear
brilliant, or to mislead, or, above all, to pose.
Schopenhauer never poses: he writes for himself,
and no one likes to be deceived-least of all a
philosopher who has set this up as his law:
"deceive nobody, not even thyself," neither with
the "white lies " of all social intercourse, which
writers almost unconsciously imitate, still less
with the more conscious deceits of the platform,
and the artificial Jnethods of rhetoric. Schopen-
hauer's speeches are to himself alone; or if you
like to imagine an auditor, let it be a son whom
the father is instructing. It is a rough, honest,
good-humoured talk to one who "hears and loves."
Such writers are rare. His strength and sanity
surround us at the first sound of his voice: it is
like entering the heights of the forest, where we
breathe deep and are well again. We feel a
bracing air everywhere, a certain candour and
naturalness of his own, that belongs to men who
are at home with themselves, and masters of a

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. llj
very rich home indeed: he is quite different from

the writers who are surprised at themselves if they
have said something intelligent, and whose pro•
nouncements for that reason have something
nervous and unnatural about them. We are just
as little reminded in Schopenhauer of the pro-
fessor with his stiff joints worse for want of
exercise, his narrow chest and scraggy figure, his
slinking or strutting gait. 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 Frenchmen ; and no one
will find in him the gilded imitations of pseudo-
gallicism that our German writers prize so highly.
His style in places reminds me a little of Goethe,
but is not otherwise on any German model. For
he knows how to be profound with simplicity,
striking without rhetoric, and severely logical
without pedantry: and of what German could he
have learnt that? He also keeps free from the
hair-splitting, jerky and (with all respect) rather
un-German manner of Lessing: no small merit
in him, for Lessing is the most tempting of all
models for prose style. The highest praise I can
give his manner of presentation is to apply his
own phrase to himself:-" A philosopher must be
very h'o nest to avail himself of no aid from poetry
or rhetoric." That honesty is something, and even
a virtue, is one of those private opinions which are
forbidden in this age of public opinion ; and so J
shall not be praising Schopenhauer, but only giving
him a distinguishing mark, when I repeat that he
is honest, even as a writer: so few of them are

I 16 THOUGHTS OUT OF ,SEASON.
that we are apt to mistrust every one who writes

at all. I only know a single author that I can
rank with Schopenhauer, or even above him, in
the matter of honesty; and that is Montaigne.
The joy of living on this earth is increased by the
existence of such a man. The effect on myself,
at any rate, since my first acquaintance with that
strong and masterful spirit, has been, that I can
say of him as he of Plutarch-" As soon as I open
him, I seem to grow a pair of wings." If I had
the task of making myself at home on the earth,
I would choose him as my companion.
Schopenhauer has a second characteristic in
common with Montaigne, besides honesty; a joy
that really makes others joyful. "Aliis lcetus,
sibi sapiens." There are two very different kinds
of joyfulness. The true thinker always communi-
cates joy and life, whether he is showing his serious
or comic side, his human insight or his godlike
forbearance: without surly looks or trembling
hands or watery eyes, but simply and truly, with
fearlessness and strength, a little cavalierly perhaps,
and sternly, but always as a conqueror: and it is
this that brings the deepest and intensest joy, to
see the conquering god with all the monsters that
he has fought. But the joyfulness one finds here
and there in the mediocre writers and limited
thinkers makes some of us miserable; I felt this,
for example, with the" joyfulness" of David Strauss.
We are generally ashamed of such a quality in our
contemporaries, because they show the nakedness
of our time, and of the men in it, to posterity.
Such fils de Joie do not · see the sufferings and

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. I 17
the monsters, that they pretend, as philosophers,

to see and fight; and so their joy deceives us, and
we hate it; it tempts to the false belief that they
have gained some ' victory. At bottom there is
only joy where there is victory: and this applies
to true philosophy as much as to any work of art.
The contents may be forbidding and serious, as
the problem of existence always is ; the work will
only prove tiresome and oppressive, if the slipshod
thinker and the dilettante have spread the mist of
their insufficiency over it: 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 vital,
and whose wisdom has found its goal in beauty.
They really speak : they are no stammerers or
babblers; they live and move, and have no part
in the danse macabre of the rest of humanity.
And so in their company one feels a natural man
again, and could cry out with Goethe-" What a
wondrous and priceless thing is a living creature!
How fitted to his surroundings, how true, and
real l"
I have been describing nothing but the first,
almost physiological, impression made upon me
by Schopenhauer, the magical emanation of inner
force from one plant of Nature to another, that
follows the slightest contact. Analysing it, I find
that this influence of Schopenhauer has three
elements, his honesty, his joy, and his consistency.
He is honest, as speaking and writing for himself
alone; joyful, because his thought has conquered
the greatest difficulties; consistent, because he

cannot help being so. His strength rises like a

flame in the calm air, straight up, without a
tremor or deviation. He finds his way, without
our noticing that he has been seeking it: so surely
and cleverly and inevitably does he run his course,
as if by some law of gravitation. If any one have
felt what it means to find, in our present world of
Centaurs and Chimceras, a single-hearted and un-
affected child of nature who moves unconstrained
on his own road, he will understand my joy and
surprise in discovering Schopenhauer: I knew in
him the educator and philosopher I had so long
desired. Only, however, in his writings: which
was a great los~. All the more did I exert myself
to see behind the book the living man whose
testament it was, and who promised his inheritance
to such as could, and would, be more than his
readers-h~s pupils and his sons.
III.
I get profit from a philosopher, just so far as he
can be an example to me. There is no doubt that
a man can draw whole nations after him by his
example; as is shown by Indian history, which is
practically the history of Indian philosophy. But
this example must exist in his outward life, not
merely in his hooks; it must follow the way of the
Grecian philosophers, whose doctrine was in their
dress and bearing and general manner of life rather
than in their speech or writing. We have nothing
yet of this "breathing testimony" in German philo-

SCHOl'ENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 119
sophical life; the spirit has, apparently, long com-

pleted its emancipation, while the flesh has hardly
begun; 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 movement. Kant held to his
university, submitted to its regulations, and be-
longed, as his colleagues and students thought, to
a definite religious faith: and naturally his example
has produced, above all, University professors of
philosophy. Schopenhauer makes small account
of the learned tribe, keeps himself exclusive, and
cultivates an independence from · state and society
as his ideal, to escape the chains of circumstance
here : that is his value to us. Many steps in the
enfranchisement of the philosopher are unknown
in Germany; they cannot always remain so. Our
artists live more bravely and honourably than our
philosophers ; and Richard Wagner, the best
example of all, shows how genius need not fear a
fight to the death with the established forms and
ordinances, if we wish to bring the higher truth
and order, that lives in him, to the light. The
"truth," however, of which we hear so much from
our professors, seems to be a far more modest
being, and no kind of disturbance is to be feared
from her; she is an easy-going and pleasant
creature, who is continually assuring the powers
that be that no one need fear any trouble from
her quarter: for man is only" pure reason." And
therefore I will say, that philosophy in Germany
has more and more to learn not to be "pure

reason": and it may well take as its model

" Schopenhauer the man."
It is no less than a marvel that he should have
come to be this human kind of example : for he
was beset, within and without, by the most frightful
dangers, that would have crushed and broken a
weaker nature. I think there was a strong likeli-
hood of Schopenhauer the man going under, and
leaving at best a residue of "pure reason": and
only "at best "-it was more probable that neither
man nor reason would survive.
A modern Englishman sketches the most usual
danger to extraordinary men who live in a society
that worships the ordinary, in this manner:-" Such
uncommon characters are first cowed, then become
sick and melancholy, and then die. A Shelley
could never have lived in England: a race of
Shelleys would have been impossible." Our
Holderins and Kleists were undone by their un-
conventionality, and were not strong enough for
the climate of the so-called German culture; and
only iron natures like Beethoven, Goethe, Schopen-
hauer and Wagner could hold out against it. Even
in them the effect of this weary toiling and moil-
ing is seen in many lines and wrinkles; their
breathing is harder and their voice is forced. The
old diplomatist who had only just seen and spoken
to Goethe, said to a friend-" Voila un homme qui
a eu de grands chagrins ! " which Goethe translated
to mean "That is a man who has taken great pains
in his life." And he adds, " If the trace of the
sorrow and activity we have gone through cannot
be wiped from our features, it is no wonder that

all that survives of us and our struggles should

bear the same impress." And this is the Goethe
to whom our cultured Philistines point as the
happiest of Germans, that they may prove their
thesis, 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 them. Hence they push their doctrine, in
practice, to its merciless conclusion, that there is
always a secret guilt in isolation. Poor Schopen-
hauer had this secret guilt too in his heart, the
guilt of cherishing his philosophy more than his
fellow-men ; and he was so unhappy as to have
learnt from Goethe that he must defend his philo-
sophy at all costs from the neglect of his contem-
poraries, to save its very existence : for there is a
kind of Grand Inquisitor's Censure in which the
Germans, according to Goethe, are great adepts :
it is called-inviolable silence. This much at least
was accomplished by it ;-the greater part of the
first edition of Schopenhauer's masterpiece had to
be turned into waste paper. The imminent risk that
his great work would be undone, merely by neglect,
bred in him a state of unrest-perilous and uncon-
trollable ;-for no single adherent of any note
presented himself. It is tragic to watch his search
for any evidence of recognition : and his piercing
cry of triumph at last, that he would now really be
read (legor et legar), touches us with a thrill of
pain. All the traits in which we do not see the
great philosopher show us the suffering man,
anxious for his noblest possessions ; he was tortured
by the fear of losing his little property, and perhaps

· I 22 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
of no longer being able to maintain in its purity

his truly antique attitude towards philosophy. He
often chose falsely in his desire to find real trust
and compassion in men, only to return with a heavy
heart to his faithful dog again. He was absolutely
alone, with no single friend of his own kind to
comfort him ; and between one and none there lies
an infinity-as ever between something and noth-
ing. No one who has true friends knows what
real loneliness means, though he may have the
whole world in antagonism round him. Ah, I see
well ye do not know what isolation is ! Whenever
there are great societies with governments and
religions and public opinions-where there is a
tyranny, in short, there will the lonely philosopher
be hated: for philosophy offers an asylum to man-
kind where no tyranny can penetrate, the inner
sanctuary, the centre of the heart's labyrinth: and
the tyrants are galled at it. Here do the lonely
men lie hid: but here too lurks their greatest
danger. These men who have saved their inner
freedom, must also live and be seen in the cuter
world : they stand in countless human relations by
their birth, position, education and country, their
own circumstances and the importunity of others :
and so they are presumed to hold an immense
number of opinions, simply because these happen
to prevail : every look that is not a denial counts
as an assent, every motion of the hand that does
not destroy is regarded as an aid. These free and
lonely men know that they perpetually seem other
than they are. While they wish for nothing but
truth and honesty, they are in a net of misunder-

standing; and that ardent desire cannot prevent

a mist of false opinions, of adaptations and wrong
conclusions, of partial misapprehension and in-
tentional reticence, from gathering round their
actions. And there settles a cloud of melancholy
on their brows : for such natures hate the necessity
of pretence worse than death: and the continual
bitterness gives them a threatening and volcanic
character, They take revenge from time to time
for their forced concealment and self-restraint:
they issue from their dens with lowering looks :
their words and deeds are explosive, and may lead
to their own destruction. Schopenhauer lived
amid dangers of this sort. Such lonely men need
love, and friends, to whom they can be as open and
sincere as to themselves, and in whose presence the
deadening silence and hypocrisy may cease. Take
their friends away, and there is left an increasing
peril ; Heinrich von Kleist was broken by the lack
of love, and the most terrible weapon against
unusual men is to drive them into themselves;
and then their issuing forth again is a volcanic
eruption. Yet there are always some demi-gods
who can bear life under these fearful conditions
and can be their conquerors: and if you would hear
their lonely chant, listen to the music of Beet-
hoven.
So the first danger in whose shadow Schopen-
hauer lived was-isolation. The second is called
-doubting of the truth. To this every thinker is
liable who sets out from the philosophy of Kant,
provided he be strong -and sincere in his sorrows
and his desires, and not a mere tinkling thought-

box or calculating machine. We all know the

shameful state of things implied by this last
reservation, and I believe it is only a very few men
that Kant has so vitally affected as to change the
current of their blood. To judge from what one
reads, there must have been a revolution in every
domain of thought since the work of this unob-
trusive professor: I cannot believe it myself. For
I see men, though darkly, as themselves needing
to be revolutionised, before agy "domains of
thought" can be so. In fact, we find the first
mark of any influence Kant may have had on the
popular mind, in a corrosive scepticism and
relativity. 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 doubt. This was, for example, the effect
of the Kantian philosophy on Heinrich von Kleist.
" It was only a short time ago," he writes in his
poignant way," that I became acquainted with the
Kantian philosophy; and I will tell you my
thought, though I cannot fear that it will rack you
to your inmost soul, as it did me.-We cannot
decide, whether what we call truth is really truth,
or whether it only seems so to us. If the latter,
the truth that we amass here does not exist after
death, and all our struggle to gain a possession
that may follow us even to the grave is in vain.
If the blade of this thought do not cut your heart,
yet laugh not at another who feels himself wounded
by it in his Holy of Holies. My one highest aim
has vanished, and I have no more." Yes, when
will men feel again deeply as Kleist did, and learn

to measure a philosophy by what it means to the

" Holy of Holies"? And yet we must make this
estimate of what Schopenhauer can mean to us,
after Kant, as the first pioneer to bring us from
the heights of sceptical disillusionment or" critical"
renunciation, to the greater height of tragic con-
templation, the nocturnal heaven with its endless
crown of stars. His greatness is that he can stand
opposite the picture of life, and interpret it to us
as a whole: while all the clever people cannot
escape the error of thinking one com_es nearer to
the interpretation by a laborious analysis of the
colours and material of the picture; with the con-
fession, probably, that the texture of the canvas
is very complicated, and the chemical composition
of the colours undiscoverable. Schopenhauer knew
that one must guess the painter in order to under-
stand the picture. But now the whole learned
fraternity is engaged on understanding the colours
and canvas, and not the picture: and only he who
has kept the universal panorama of life and being
firmly before his eyes, will use the individual
sciences without harm to himself; for, without
this general view as a norm, they are threads that
lead nowhere and only confuse still more the maze
of our existence. Here we see, as I said, the
greatness of Schopenhauer, that he follows up
every idea, as Hamlet follows the Ghost, without
allowing himself to turn aside for a learned
digression, or be drawn away by the scholastic
abstractions of a rabid dialectic. 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 against, where hair-splitting
objections and counter-objections are the rule :
and for that reason they evade the demand of
every great philosophy to speak sub specie
<eternitatis-" this is the picture of the whole of
life: learn thence the meaning of thine own life."
And the converse: " read thine own life, and
understand thence the hieroglyphs of the universal
life.'' In this way must Schopenhauer's philosophy
always be interpreted; as an individualist
philosophy, starting from the single man, in his
own nature, to gain an insight into his personal
miseries, and needs, and limitations, and find out
the remedies that will console them : namely, the
sacrifice of the ego, and its submission to the
nobler ends, especially those of justice and mercy.
He teaches us to distinguish between the true and
the apparent furtherance of man's happiness: how
neither the attainment of riches, nor honour, nor
learning, can raise the individual from his deep
despair at his unworthiness; and how the quest
for these good things can only have meaning
through a universal end that transcends and
explains them ;-the gaining of power to aid our
physical nature by them and, as far as may be,
correct its folly and awkwardness. For one's self
only, in the first instance: and finally, through
one's self, for all. It is a task that leads to scepti-
cism : for there is so much to be made better yet,
in one and all !
Applying this to Schopenhauer himself, we
come to the third and most intimate danger in

SCHOPENHAUE R AS EDUCATOR, 127
which he lived, and which lay deep in the marrow

of his being. Every one is apt to discover a
limitation in himself, in his gifts of intellect as well
as his moral will, that fills him with yearning and
melancholy; and as he strives after holiness
through a consciousness of sin, so, as an intellectual
being, he has a deep longing after the "genius"
in himself. This is the root of all true culture;
and if we say this means the aspiration of man to
be "born again " as saint and genius, I know that
one need not be a Buddhist to understand the
myth. We feel a strong loathing when we find
talent without such aspiration, in the circle of the
learned, or among the so-called educated; for we
see that such men, with all their cleverness, are no
aid but a hindrance to the beginnings of culture
and the blossoming of genius, the aim of all
culture. There is a rigidity in them, parallel to
the cold arrogance of conventional virtue, which
also remains at the opposite pole to true holiness.
Schopenhauer's nature contained an extraordin-
arily dangerous dualism. Few thinkers have felt
as he did the complete and unmistakable certainty
of genius within them ; and his genius made him
the highest of all promises,-tha t there could be no
deeper furrow than that which he was ploughing
in the ground of the moder:n world. He knew one
half of his being to be fulfilled according to its
strength, with no other need ; and he followed
with greatness and dignity his vocation of con-
solidating his victory, In the other half there was
a gnawing aspiration, which we can understand,
when we hear that he turned away with a sad look

' 128 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
from the picture of Rance, the founder of the

Trappists, with the words: "That is a matter of
grace.'' For genius evermore yearns after holiness
as it sees further and more clearly from its watch- ·
tower than other men, deep into the reconciliation
of Thought and Being, the kingdom of peace and
the denial of the will, and up to that other shore,
of which the Indians speak. The wonder is, that
Schopenhauer's nature should have been so incon-
ceivably stable and unshakable that it could
neither be destroyed nor petrified by this yearning.
Every one will understand this after the measure
of his own character and greatness : none of us will
understand it in the fulness of its meaning.
The more one considers these three dangers, the
more extraordinary will appear his vigour in
opposing them and his safety after the battle.
True, he gained many scars and open wounds:
and a cast of mind that may seem somewhat too
bitter and pugnacious. But his single ideal tran-
scends the highest humanity in him. Schopenhauer
stands as a pattern to men, in spite of all those
scars and scratches. We may even say, that what
was imperfect and "all too human" in him, brings
us nearer to him as a man, for we see a sufferer
and a kinsman to suffering, not merely a dweller
on the unattainable heights of genius.
These three constitutional dangers that threat-
ened Schopenhauer, threaten us all. Each one
of us bears a creative solitude within himself,
and his consciousness of it forms an exotic aura of
strangeness round him. Most men cannot endure
it, because they are slothful, as I said, and because

SCHOPENIIAUER AS EDUCATOR. 129
their solitude hangs round them a chain of troubles

and burdens. No doubt, for the man with this
heavy chain, life loses almost everything that one
desires from it in youth-joy, safety, honour: his
fellow-men pay him his due of-isolation I The
wilderness and the cave are about him, wherever
he may live. He must look to it that he be not
enslaved and oppressed, and become melancholy
thereby. And let him surround himself with the
pictures of good and brave fighters such as
Schopenhauer.
The second danger, too, is not rare. Here and
there we find one dowered by nature with a keen
vision ; his thoughts dance gladly in the witches'
Sabbath of dialectic; and if he uncautiously give
his talent the rein, it is easy to lose all humanity
and live a ghostly life in the realm of " pure
reason": or through the constant search for the
"pros and cons" of things, he may go astray from
the truth and live without courage or confidence,
in doubt, denial and discontent, and the slender
hope that waits on disillusion: "No dog co~ld live
long thus!"
The third danger is a moral or intellectual
hardening: man breaks the bond that united him
to his ideal: he ceases to be fruitful and reproduce
himself in this or that province, and becomes an
enemy or a parasite of culture. The solitude of
his being has become an indivisible, unrelated
atom, an icy stone. And one can perish of this
solitude as well as of the fear of it, of one's self as
well as one's self-sacrifice, of both aspiration and
petrifaction : and to live is ever to be in danger.
VOL. II. I

Beside these dangers to which Schopenhauer

would have been constitutionally liable, in whatever
century he had lived, there were also some produced
by his own time; and it is essential to distinguish
between these two kinds, in order to grasp the
typical and formative elements in his nature. The
philosopher casts his eye over existence, and wishes
to give it a new standard value; for it has been
the peculiar task of all great thinkers to be law-
givers for the weight and stamp in the mint of
reality. And his task will be hindered if the men
he sees near him be a weakly and worm-eaten
growth. To be correct in his calculation of
existence, the unworthiness of the present time
must be a very small item in the addition. The
study of ancient or foreign history is valuable, if
at all, for a correct judgment on the whole destiny
of man; which must be drawn not only from an
average estimate but from a comparison of the
highest destinies that can befall individuals or
nations. The present is too much with us; it
directs the vision even against the philosopher's
will: and' it will inevitably be reckoned too high
in the final sum. And so he must put a low figure
on his own time as against others, and suppress
the present in his picture of life, as well as in
himself; must put it into the background or paint
it over ; a difficult, and almost impossible task.
The judgment of the ancient Greek philosophers
on the value of existence means so much more
than our own, because they had the full bloom of
life itself before them, and their vision was un-
troubled by any felt dualism between their wish

for freedom and beauty on the grand scale, and

their search after truth, with its single question
"What is the real worth of life?" Empedocles lived
when Greek culture was full to overflowing with
the joy of life, and all ages may take profit from
his words; especially as no other great philosopher
of that great time ventured to contradict them.
Empedot:les is only the clearest voice among them
-they all say the same thing, if a man will but
open his ears. A modern thinker is always in the
throes of an unfulfilled desire ; he is looking for
life,-warm, red life,-that he may pass judgment
on it: at any rate he will think it necessary to be
a living man himself, before he can believe in his
power of judging. And this is the title of the
modern philosophers to sit among the great aiders
of Life (or rather of the will to live), and the reason
why they can look from their own out-wearied
time and aspire to a truer culture, and a clearer
explanation. Their yearning is, however, their
danger ; the reformer in them struggles with the
critical philosopher. And whichever way the
victory incline, it also implies a defeat. How was
Schopenhauer to escape this danger?
We like to consider the great man as the noble
child of his age, who feels its defects more strongly
and intimately than the smaller men: and therefore
the struggle of the great man against his age is
apparently nothing but a mad fight to the death
with himself. Only apparently, however: he only
fights the elements in his time that hinder his own
.greatness, in other words his own freedom and
sincerity: And so, at bottom, he is only an enemy

to that element which is not truly himself, the

irreconcilable antagonism of the temporal and
eternal in him. The supposed "·child of his age"
proves to be but a step-child. From boyhood
Schopenhauer strove with his time, a false and
unworthy mother to him, and as soon as he had
banished her, he could bring back his being to its
native health and purity. For this very reason we
can use his writings as mirrors of his time; it is no
fault of the mirror if everything contemporary
appear in it stricken by a ravaging disease, pale
and thin, with tired looks and hollow eyes,-the
step-child's sorrow made visible. The yearning
for natural strength, for a healthy and simple
humanity, was a yearning for himself: and as soon
as he had conquered his time within him, he was
face to face with his own genius. The secret of
nature's being and his own lay open,. the step-
mother's plot to conceal his genius from him was
foiled. And now he could turn a fearless eye
towards the question, "What is the real worth of
life?" without having any more to weigh a blood-
less and chaotic age of doubt and hypocrisy. He
knew that there was something higher and purer
to be won on this earth than the life of his time,
and a man does bitter wrong to existence who
only knows it and criticises it in this hateful form.
Genius, itself the highest product of life, is now
summoned to justify life, if it can : the noble
creative soul must answer the question :-" Dost
thou in thy heart say' Yea!' unto this existence?
Is it enough for thee? Wilt thou be its advocate
and its redeemer? One true 'Yea' from thy lips,

and the sorely accused life shall go free." How
shall he answer? In the words of Empedocles.
IV.
The last hint may well remain obscure for a
time: I have something more easy to explain,
namely how Schopenhauer can help us to educate
ourselves in opposition to our age, since we have
the advantage of really knowing our age, through
him ;-if it be an advantage! It may be no longer
possible in a couple of hundred years. I some-
times amuse myself with the idea that men may
soon grow tired of books and their authors, and
the savant of to-morrow come to leave directions
in his will that his body be burned in the midst of
his books, including of course his own writings.
And in the gradual clearing of the forests, might
not our libraries be very reasonably used for straw
and brushwood? Most books are born from the
smoke and vapour of the brain: and to vapour and
smoke may they well return. For having no fire ,
within themselves, they shall be visited with fire.
And possibly to a later century our own may count
as the "Dark age," because our productions heated
the furnace hotter and more continuously than
ever before. We are anyhow happy that we can
learn to know our time; and if there be any sense
in busying ourselves with our time at all, we may
as well do it as thoroughly as we can, so that no
one may have any doubt about it. The possibility
of this we owe to Schopenhauer.

Our happiness would of course be infinitely

greater, if our inquiry showed that nothing so
hopeful and splendid as our present epoch had
ever existed. 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 ago,* and that
all stern and gloomy views of life are now con-
tradicted by "facts." The foundation of the ·New
German Empire is, to them, the decisive blow that
annihilates all the " pessimistic " philosophisers,-
no doubt of it. To judge the philosopher's signifi-
cance in our time, as an educator, we must oppose
a widespread view like this, especially common in
our universities. We must say, 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 men; it is a proof that
we no longer see how far the seriousness of
philosophy is removed from that of a newspaper.
Such men have lost the last remnant of feeling, not
only for philosophy, but also for religion, and have
put in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as
of journalism, the evil spirit that broods over the
day-and the daily paper. Every philosophy that
believes the problem of existence to be shelved,
or even solved, by a political event, is a sham
philosophy. There have been innumerable states
founded since the beginning of the world ; that is
an old story. How should a political innovation
manage once and for all to make a contented race
* This was written in r873.-TR,

of the dwellers on this earth? If any one believe
in his heart that this is possible, he should report
himself to our authorities: he really deserves to be
Professor of Philosophy in a German university,
like Harms in Berlin, Jiirgen Meyer in Bonn, and
Carriere in Munich.
We are feeling the consequences of the doctrine,
preached lately from all the housetops, that the
state is the highest end of man and there is no
higher duty than to serve it: I regard this not a
relapse into paganism, but into stupidity. A man
who thinks state-service to be his highest duty,
very possibly knows no higher one; yet there are
both men and duties in a region beyond,-and one
of these duties, that seems to me at least of higher
value than state-service, is to destroy stupidity in
all its forms-and this particular stupidity among
them. And I have to do with a class of men
whose teleological conceptions extend further than
the well-being of a state, I mean with philosophers
-and only with them in their relation to the world
of culture, which is again almost independent of the
"good of the state." Of the many links that make
up the twisted chain of humanity, some are of gold
and others of pewter.
How does the philosopher of our time regard
culture? Quite differently, I assure you, from the
professors who are so content with their new state.
He seems to see the symptoms of an absolute
uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and
hurry of life, and the decay of all reflection and
simplicity. The waters of religion are ebbing, and
leaving swamps or stagnant pools: the nations are

136 THqUGHTS OUT OF SEASON,
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear

each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhauser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed!" For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old· man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it : everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-

less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear

thoughtless joy ! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reac9 there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen ; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion ; 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 destructiveness, it
will only. be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the ·universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in medireval times

by the Church, and in some measure assimilated

by the strong pressure which she exerted. When
the common tie broke and the pressure relaxed,
they rose once more against each other. The
Reformation taught that many things were
"adiaphora "-departments that needed no guid-
ance from religion : this was the price paid for its
own existence. Christianity paid a similar one to
guard itself against the far more religious antiquity:
and laid the seeds of discord at once. Everything
nowadays is directed by the fools and the knaves,
the selfishness of the money-makers and the brute
forces of militarism. The state in their hands
makes a good show of reorganising everything,
and of becoming the bond that unites the warring
elements; in other words, it wishes for the same
idolatry from mankind as they showed to the
Church.
And we shall yet feel the consequences. We
are even now on the ice-floes in the stream of the
Middle Ages: they are thawing fast, and their
movement is ominous: the banks are flooded, and
giving way. The revolution, the atomistic revolu-
tion, is inevitable: but what are those smallest
indivisible elements of human society?
There is surely far more danger to mankind in
transitional periods like these than in the actual
time of revolution and chaos ; they are tortured
by waiting, and snatch greedily at every moment;
and this breeds all kinds of cowardice and selfish-
ness in them : whereas the true feeling of a great
and universal need ever inspires men, and makes
them better. In the midst of such dangers, who

will provide the guardians and champions for

Humanity, for the holy and inviolate treasure that
has been laid up in the temples, little by little, by
countless generations ? Who will set up again
the Image of Man, when men in their selfishness
and terror see nothing but the trail of the serpent
or the cur in them, and have fallen from their high
estate to that of the brute or the automaton?
There are three Images of Man fashioned by our
modern time, which for a long while yet will urge
mortal men to transfigure their own lives; they
are the men of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schopen-
hauer. The first has the greatest fire, and is most
calculated to impress the people: the second is
only for the few, for those contemplative natures
"in the grand style" who are misunderstood by
the crowd. The third demands the highest activity
in those who will follow it: only such men will
look on that image without harm, for it breaks
the spirit of that merely contemplative man, and
the rabble shudder at it. From the first has come
forth a strength that led and still leads to fearful
revolution: for in all socialistic upheavals it is ever
Rousseau's man who is the Typhoeus under the
Etna. Oppressed and half crushed to death by
the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth,
spoilt by priests and bad education, a laughing-
stock even to himself, man cries in his need on
"holy mother Nature," and feels suddenly that she
is as far from him as any god of the Epicureans.
His prayers do not reach her; so deeply sunk is
he in the Chaos :of the unnatural. He contemptu-
ously throws aside all the finery that seemed his

truest humanity a little while ago-all his arts

and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, "Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
raan is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the "gospel of kindly Nature" with all
the ardour of his soul : his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man-the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and da!monic, in opposition to his utterly un-
da!monic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
-which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers, One is wrong, however, to expect

anything of the sort : Goethe's man here parts

company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition-that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
_traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity-arts, mythologies and sciences-pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more-and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end : his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man ; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage !) ; and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are"
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to

Wilhelm Meister: "You are bitter and ill-tempered

-which is quite an excellent thing: if you could
one~ become really angry, it would be still better."
To speak plainly, it is necessary to become really
angry in O,!der that things may be better. The
picture of Schopenhauer's man can help us here.
Schopenhauer's man voluntarily takes upon himself
the pain of telling the truth : this pain serves to
quench his individual will and make him ready for
the complete transformation of his being, which it
is the inner meaning of life to realise. This open-
ness in him appears to other men to be an effect
of malice, for they think the preservation of their
shifts and pretences to be the first duty of humanity,
and any one who destroys their playthings to be
merely malicious. They are tempted to cry out to
such a man, in Faust's words to Mephistopheles:-
" So to the active and eternal
Creative force, 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 is, to our weak modern eyes, which
always discover signs of malice in any negation.
But there is a kind of denial and destruction that
[ is the effect of that strong aspiration after holiness
and deliverance, which Schopenhauer was the first
philosopher to teach our profane and worldly genera-
tion. Everything that can be denied, deserves to
be denied ; and real sincerity means the belief in
a state of things which cannot be denied, or in
which there is no lie. The sincere man feels that

his activity has a metaphysical meaning. It can

only be explained by the laws of a different and
a higher life; it is in the deepest sense an affirma-
tion: even if everything that he does seem utterly
opposed to the laws of our present life. It must
lead therefore to constant suffering ; but he knows,
as Meister Eckhard did, that "the quickest beast
that will carry you to perfection is suffering,"
Every one, I should think, who has such an ideal
before him, must feel a wider sympathy; and he
will have a burning desire to beccme a" Schopen-
hauer man" ;-pure and wonderfully patient, on
his intellectual side full of a devouring fire, and
far removed from the cold and contemptuous
"neutrality" of the so-called scientific man; so
high above any warped and morose outlook on
life as to offer himself as the first victim of the
truth he has won, with a deep consciousness of the
sufferings that must spring from his sincerity.
His courage will destroy his happiness on earth,
he must be an enemy to the men he loves and
the institutions in which he grew up, he must spare
neither person nor thing, however it may hurt him,
he will be misunderstood and thought an ally of
forces that he abhors, in his search for righteous-
ness he will seem unrighteous by human standards:
but he must comfort himself with the words that
his teacher Schopenhauer once used : " A happy
life is impossible, the highest thing that man can
aspire to is a heroic life; such as a man lives, who
is always fighting against unequal odds for the
good of others ; and wins in the end without any
thanks. After the battle is over, he stands like

the Prince in the re corvo of Gozzi, with dignity

and nobility in his eyes, but turned to stone. His
memory remains, and will be reverenced as a
hero's ; his will, that has been mortified all his life
by toiling and struggling, by evil payment and
ingratitude, is absorbed into Nirvana," Such a
heroic life, with its full "mortification' "-corre-
sponds very little to the paltry ideas of the people
who talk most about it, and make festivals in
memory of great men, in the belief that a great
man is great in the sense that they are small,
either through exercise of his gifts to please himself
or by a blind mechanical obedience to this inner
force; 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 great. But "gift" and
"compulsion" are contemptible words, mere means
of escape from an inner voice, a slander on him
who has listened to the voice-the great man ; he
least of all will allow himself to be given or com-
pelled to anything: 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-creatures : all the regulations of mankind
are turned to the end that the intense feeling of
life may be lost in continual distractions. Now
why will he so strongly choose the opposite, and
try to feel life, which is the same as to suffer from
life? Because he sees that men will tempt him to
betray himself, and that there is a kind of agree-
ment to draw him from his den. He will prick
up his ears and gather himself together, and say,

'' I will remain mine own." He gradually comes
to understand what a fearful decision it is. For
he must go down into the depths of being, with a
string of curious questions on his lips-" Why am
I alive? what lesson have I to learn from life?
how have I become what I am, and why do I
suffer in this existence?" He is troubled, and
sees that no one is troubled in the same way; but
rather that the hands of his fellow-men are passion-
ately stretched out towards the fantastic drama of
the political theatre, or they themselves are tread-
ing the boards under many disguises, youths, men
and graybeards, fathers, citizens, priests, merchants
and officials,-busy with the comedy they are all
playing, and never thinking of their own selves.
To the question "To what end dost thou live?"
they would all immediately answer, with pride,
"To become a good citizen or professor or states-
man,"-and yet they are something which can
never be changed: and why are they just-this?
Ah, and why nothing better? The man who only
regards his life as a moment in the evolution of a
race or a state or a science, and will belong merely
to a history of " becoming," has not understood
the lesson of existence, and must learn it over
again. This eternal "becoming something" is a
lying puppet-show, in which man has forgot him-
self; it is the force that scatters individuality to
the four winds, the eternal childish game that the
big baby time is playing in front of us-and with
us. The heroism of sincerity lies in ceasing to be
the plaything of time. Everything in the process
of "becoming" is a hollow sham, contemptible and
VOL. II. K

shallow: man ·can ,only find the solution of his

riddle in "being" something definite and unchange-
able. He begins to test how deep both "becoming"
and " being" are rooted in him-and a fearful task
is before his soul ; to destroy the first, and bring
all the falsity of things to the light. He wishes to
know everything, not to feed a delicate taste, like
Goethe's man, to take delight, from a safe place,
in the multiplicity of existence: but he himself is
the first sacrifice that he brings. The heroic man
does not think of his happiness or misery, his
virtues or his vices, or of his being the measure of
things ; he has no further hopes of himself and
will accept the utter consequences of his hopeless-
ness. His strength lies in his self-forgetfulness:
if he have a thought for himself, it is only to
measure the vast distance between himself and his
aim, and to view what he has left behind him as
so much dross. The old philosophers sought for
happiness and truth, with all their strength: and
there is an evil principle in nature that not one
shall find that which he cannot help seeking. But
the man who looks for a lie in everything, and
becomes a willing friend to unhappiness, shall have
a marvellous disillusioning: there hovers near him
something unutterable, of which truth and happiness
are but idolatrous images born of the night; the
earth loses her dragging weight, the events and
powers of earth become as a dream, and a gradual
clearness widens round him like a summer evening.
It is as though the beholder of these things began
to wake, and it had only been the clouds of a
passing dream that had been weaving about him.

They will at some time disappear: and then will

it be day.
V.
But I have promised to speak of Schopenhauer,
as far as my experience goes, as an educator, and
it is far from being sufficient to paint the ideal
humanity which is the "Platonic idea" in Schopen-
hauer; especially as my representation is an im-
perfect one. The most difficult task remains ;-to
say how a new circle of duties may spring from
this ideal, and how one can reconcile such a tran-
scendent aim with ordinary action ; to prove, in
short, that the ideal is educative. One might other-
wise think it to be merely the blissful or intoxicating
vision of a few rare moments, that leaves us after-
wards the prey of a deeper disappointment. It is
certain that the ideal begins to affect us in this
way when we come suddenly to distinguish light
and darkness, bliss and abhorrence; this is an
experience that is as old as ideals themselves. But
we ought not to stand in the doorway for long ; we
should soon leave the first stages, and ask the
question, seriously and definitely, " Is it possible to
bring that incredibly high aim so near us, that it
should educate us, or 'lead us out,' as well as lead
us upward ?"-in order that the great words of
Goethe be not fulfilled in our case-" Man is born
to a state of limitation : he can understand ends
that are simple, present and definite, and is ac-
customed to make use of means that are near to
his hand ; but as soon as he comes into the open,

he knows neither what he wishes nor what he ought

to do, and it is all one whether he be confused by
the multitude of objects or set beside himself by
their greatness and importance. It is always his
misfortune to be led to strive after something which
he cannot attain by any ordinary activity of his
own." The objection can be made with apparent
reason against Schopenhauer's man, that his great-
ness and dignity can only turn our heads, and put
us beyond all community with the active men of
the world : the common round of duties, the noise-
less tenor of life has disappeared. One man may -
possibly get accustomed to living in a reluctant
dualism, that is, in a contradiction with himself;-
becoming unstable, daily weaker and less pro-
ductive :-while another will renounce all action
on principle, and scarcely endure to see others
active. The danger is always great when a man
is too heavy-laden, and cannot really accomplish
any duties. Stronger natures may be broken by
it; the weaker, which are the majority, sink into
a speculative laziness, and at last, from their lazi-
ness, lose even the power of speculation.
With regard to such objections, I will admit that
our work has hardly begun, and so far as I know,
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 accom-
plished ; and some of us already feel its pressure.
In order, however, to be able to speak in plain
language of the formula under which I may gather
the new circle of duties, I must begin with the
following considerations.

The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for

animals, because they suffer from life and have
not the power to turn the sting of the suffering
against themselves, and understand their being
metaphysically. The sight of blind suffering is
the spring of the deepest emotion. And in many
quarters of the earth men have supposed that the
souls of the guilty have entered into beasts, and
that the blind suffering which at first sight calls
for such pity has a clear meaning and purpose to
the divine justice,-of punishment and atonement:
and a heavy punishment it is, to be condemned to
live in hunger and need, in the shape of a beast,
and to reach no consciousness of one's self in this
life. I can think of no harder lot than the wild
beast's; he is driven to the forest by the fierce
pang of hunger, that seldom leaves him at peace;
and peace is itself a torment, the surfeit after horrid
food, won, maybe, by a deadly fight with other
animals. To cling to life, blindly and madly, with
no other aim, to be ignorant of the reason, or even
the fact, of one's punishment, nay, to thirst after
it as if it were a pleasure, with all the perverted
desire of a fool-this is what it means to be an
animal. If universal nature leads up to man, it is
to show us that he is necessary to redeem her from
the curse of the beast's life, and that in him exist-
ence can find a mirror of itself wherein life appears,
no longer blind, but in its real metaphysical signifi-
cance. But we should consider where the beast
ends and the man begins-the man, the one concern
of Nature. As long as any one desires life as a
pleasure in itself, he has not raised his eyes above

the horizon of the beast ; he only desires more

consciously what the beast seeks by a blind impulse,
It is so with us all, for the greater part of our lives.
We do not shake off the beast, but are beasts our-
selves, suffering we know not what.
But there are moments when we do know; and
then the clouds break, and we see how, with the
rest of nature, we are straining towards the man,
as to something that stands high above us. We
look round and behind us, and fear the sudden
rush of light; the beasts are transfigured, and our-
selves with them. The enormous migrations of
mankind in the wildernesses of the world, the cities
they found and the wars they wage, their ceaseless
gatherings and dispersions and fusions, the doctrines
they blindly follow, their mutual frauds and deceits,
the cry of distress, the shriek of victory-are all a
continuation of the beast in us: as if the education
of man has been intentionally set back, and his
promise of self-consciousness frustrated; as if, in
fact, after yearning for man so long, and at last
reaching him by her labour, Nature should now
recoil from him and wish to return to a state
of unconscious instinct. Ah ! she has need of
knowledge, and shrinks before the very knowledge
she needs : the flame flickers unsteadily and fears
its own brightness, and takes hold of a thousand
things before the one thing for which knowledge
is necessary. There are moments when we all
know that our most elaborate arrangements are
only designed to give us refuge from our real
task in life; we wish to hide our heads somewhere,
as if our Argus-eyed conscience could not find us

out; we are quick to send our hearts on state-

service, or money-making, or social duties, or
scientific work, in order to possess them no longer
ourselves ; we are more willing and instinctive
slaves of the hard day's work than mere living
requires, because it seems to us more necessary not
to be in a position to think. The hurry is universal, ·
because every one is fleeing before himself; its con-
cealment is just as universal, as we wish to seem
contented and hide our wretchedness from the
keener eyes ; and so there is a common need for
a new carillon of words to hang in the temple of
life, and peal for its noisy festival. We all know
the curious way in which unpleasant memories
suddenly throng on us, and how we do our best
by loud talk and violent gestures to put them out
of our minds; but the gestures and the talk of our
ordinary life make one think we are all in this
condition, frightened of any memory or any inward
gaze. What is it that is always troubling us? what
is the gnat that will not let us sleep? There are
spirits all about us, each moment of life has some-
thing to say to us, but we will not listen to the
spirit-voices. When we are quiet and alone, we
fear that something will be whispered in our ears,
and so we hate the quiet, and dull our senses in
society.
We understand this sometimes, as I say, and
stand amazed at the whirl and the rush and the
anxiety and all the dream that we call our life; we
seem to fear the awakening, and our dreams too
become vivid and restless, as the awakening draws
near. But we feel as well that we are too weak to

endure long those intimate moments, and that we

are not the men to whom universal nature looks as
her redeemers. It is something to be able to raise
our heads but for a moment and see the stream in
which we are sunk so deep. We cannot gain even
this transitory moment of awakening by our own
strength; we must be lifted up-and who are they
that will uplift us ?
The sincere men who have cast out the beast,
the philosophers, artists and saints. Nature-
quce nunquam facit saltum-has made her one
leap in creating them ; a leap of joy, as she feels
herself for the first time at her goal, where she
begins to see that she must le,;rn not to have goals
above her, and that she has played the game of
transition too long. The knowledge transfigures
her, and there rests on her face the gentle weariness
of evening that men call " beauty." Her words
after this transfiguration are as a great light shed
over existence: and the highest wish that mortals
can reach is to listen continually to her voice with
ears that hear. If a man think of all that Schopen-
hauer, for example, must have heard in his life,
he may well say to himself-" The deaf ears, the
feeble understanding and shrunken heart, every-
thing that I call mine,-how I despise them I Not
to be able to fly but only to flutter one's wings!
To look above one's self and have no power to
rise! To know the road that leads to the wide
vision of the philosopher, and to reel back after
a few steps I Were there but one day when the
great wish might be fulfilled, how gladly would
we pay for it with the rest of life! To rise as high

as any thinker yet into the pure icy air of the
mountain, where there are no mists and veils, and
the inner constitution of things is shown in a
stark and piercing clarity I Even by thinking of
this the soul becomes infinitely alone; but were
its wish fulfilled, did its glance once fall straight as
a ray of light on the things below, were shame and
anxiety and desire gone for ever-one could find
no words for its state then, for the mystic and
tranquil emotion with which, like the soul of
Schopenhauer, it would look down on the
monstrous hieroglyphics of existence and the
petrified doctrines of " becoming" ; not as the
brooding night, but as the red and glowing day
that streams over the earth, 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 philosopher,
'who without hope lives in desire': to know one's
self to be the fruit of a tree that is too much in the
shade ever to ripen, and to see a world of sunshine
in front, where one may not go I"
There were sorrow enough here, if ever, to make
such a man envious and spiteful : but he will turn
aside, that he may not destroy his soul by a vain
aspiration ; and will discover a new circle of duties.
I can now give an answer to the question whether
it be possible to approach the great ideal of Schopen-
hauer's man "by any ordinary activity of our own."
In the first place, the new duties are certainly not
those of a hermit ; they imply rather a vast com-
munity, held together not by external forms but
by a fundamental idea, namely that of culture;

though only so far as it can put a single task

before each of us-to bring the philosopher, the
artist and the saint, within and without us, to the
light, and to strive thereby for the completion of
Nature. For Nature needs the artist, as she needs
the philosopher, for a metaphysical end, the
explanation of herself, whereby she may have a
clear and sharp picture of what she only saw
dimly in the troubled period of transition,-and
so may reach self-consciousness. Goethe, in an
arrogant yet profound phrase, showed how all
Nature's attempts only have value in so far as the
artist interprets her stammering words, meets her
half-way, and speaks aloud what she really means.
"I have often said, and will often repeat," he
exclaims in one place, "the causa finalz's of natural
and' human activity is dramatic poetry. Other-
wise the stuff is of no use at all."
Finally, Nature needs the saint. In him the
ego has melted away, and the suffering of his life
is, practically, no longer felt as individual, but as
the spring of the deepest sympathy and intimacy
with all living creatures: he sees the wonderful
transformation scene that the comedy of "becom-
ing" never reaches, the attainment, at length, of
the high state of man after which all nature is
striving, that she may be delivered from herself.
Without doubt, we all stand in close relation to
him, as well as to the philosopher and the artist:
there are moments, sparks from the clear fire of
love, in whose light we understand the word "I"
no longer; there is something beyond our being
that comes, for those moments, to the hither side

SCHOPENHAUE R AS EDUCATOR. 155
of it: and this is why we long in our hearts for a
bridge from here to there. In our ordinary state
we can do nothing towards the production of the
new redeemer, 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 age,
though it is as old as the aspiration after culture.
-Its root, not its flower; the foundation, not the
summit; the beginning of the road, not the end :
for we have to learn at some time to hate some-
thing else, more universal than our own personality
with its wretched limitation, its change and its
unrest-and this will be when we shall learn to love
something else than we can love now. When we
are ourselves received into that high order of philo-
sophers, artists and saints, in this life or a reincarna-
tion of it, a new object for our love and hate will
also rise before us. As it is, we have our task and
our circle of duties, our hates and our loves. For
we know that culture requires us to make ready
for the coming of the Schopenhauer man ;-and
this is the " use" we are to make of him ;-we must
know what obstacles there are and strike them
from our path-in fact, wage unceasing war against
everything that hindered our fulfilment, and pre-
vented us from becoming Schopenhauer's men
ourselves.
VI.
It is sometimes harder to agree to a thing than
to understand it; many will feel this when they
consider the proposition-" Mankind must toil

unceasingly to bring forth individual great men:

this and nothing else is its task." One would like
to apply to society and its ends a fact that holds
universally in the animal and vegetable world;
where progress depends only on the higher in-
dividual types, which are rarer, yet more per-
sistent, complex and productive. But traditional
notions of what the end of society is, absolutely
bar the way. We can easily understand how in
the natural world, where one species passes at
some point into a higher one, the aim of their
evolution cannot be held to lie in the high level
attained by the mass, or in the latest types
developed ;-but rather in what seem accidental
beings produced here and there by favourable
circumstances. 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 redeemer, simply because men can
have a consciousness of their object. But there
is always something to prevent them. They find
their ultimate aim in the happiness of all, or the
greatest number, or in the expansion of a great
commonwealth. A man will very readily decide
to sacrifice his life for the state; he will be much
slower to respond if an individual, and not a state,
ask for the sacrifice. It seems to be out of reason
that one man should exist for the sake of another:
"Let it be rather for the sake of every other, or,
at any rate, of as many as possible ! " 0 upright
judge! As if it were more in reason to let the
majority decide a question of value and signifi-
cance I For the problem is-" In what way may

your life, the individual life, retain the highest
value and the deepest significance? and how may
it least be squandered?" Only by your living for
the good of the rarest and most valuable types,
not for that of the majority,-who are the most
worthless types, taken as individuals. This way
of thinking should be implanted and fostered in
every young man's mind : he should regard himself
both as a failure of Nature's handiwork and a
testimony to her larger ideas. " She has succeeded
badly," he should say; "but I will do honour to
her great idea by being a means to its better
success."
With these thoughts he will enter the circle
of culture, which is the child of every man's self-
knowledge and dissatisfaction. He will approach
and say aloud: " I see something above me, higher
and more human than I: let all help me to reach
· it, as I will help all who know and suffer as I do,
that the man may arise at last who feels his
knowledge and love, vision and power, to be
complete and boundless, who in his universality
is one with nature, the critic and judge of exist-
ence." It is difficult to give any one this courageous
self-consciousness, because it is impossible to teach
love ; from love alone the soul gains, not only the
clear vision that leads to self-contempt, but also
the desire to look to a higher self which is yet
hidden, and strive upward to it with all its strength.
And so he who rests his hope on a future great
man, receives his first "initiation into culture."
The sign of this is shame or vexation at one's self,
a hatred of one's own narrowness, a sympathy with

the genius that ever raises its head again from our
misty wastes, a feeling for all that is struggling
into life, the conviction that Nature must be helped
in her hour of need to press forward to the man,
however ill she seem to prosper, whatever success
may attend her marvellous forms and projects :
so that the men with whom we live are like the
debris of some precious sculptures, which cry out-
" Come and help us ! Put us together, for we long
to become complete.''
I called this inward condition the "first initia-
tion into culture." I have now to describe the
effects of the "second initiation," a task of greater
difficulty. It is the passage from the inner life to
the criticism of the outer life. . 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 individual ; who must use his
own strivings and aspirations as the alphabet to
interpret those of humanity. He cannot rest here
either, but must go higher. Culture demands from
him not only that inner experience, not only the
criticism of the outer world surrounding him, but
action too to crown them all, the fight for culture
against the influences and conventions and insti-
tutions where he cannot find his own aim,-the
production of genius.
Any one who can reach the second step, will
see how extremely rare and imperceptible the
knowledge of that end is, though all men busy
themselves with culture and expend vast labour
in her service. He asks himself in amazement-
" Is not such knowledge, after all, absolutely

necessary? Can Nature be said to attain her

end, if men have a false idea of the aim of their
own labour?" And any one who thinks a great
deal of Nature's unconscious adaptation of means
to ends, will probably answer at once: "Yes, men
may think and speak what they like about their
ultimate end, their blind instinct will tell them the
right road." It requires some experience of life
to be able to contradict this : but let a man be
convinced of the real aim of culture-the pro-
duction of the true man and nothing else ;-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 beasts": and he will see
that there is great need for a conscious will to take
the place of that blind instinct. There is another
reason also ;-to prevent the possibility of turning
this obscure impulse to quite different ends, in a
direction where our highest aim can no longer be
attained. For we must beware of a certain kind
of misapplied and parasitical culture; the powers
at present most active in its propagation have
other casts of thought that prevent their relation
to culture from being pure and disinterested.
The first of these is the self-interest of the
business men. This needs the help of culture,
and helps her in return, though at the price of
prescribing her ends and limits. And their favourite
sorites is: "We must have as much knowledge
and education as possible; this implies as great
a need as possible for it, this again as much pro-
duction, this again as much material wealth and

happiness as possible."-This is the seductive

formula. Its preachers would define education as
the insight that makes man through and through
a " child of his age " in his desires and their
satisfaction, and gives him command over the
best means of making money. Its aim would
be to make "current" men, in the same sense as
one speaks of the "currency'! in money; and in
their view, the more "current" men there are,
the happier the people. The object of modern
educational systems is therefore to make each
man as "current" as his nature will allow him,
and to give him the opportunity for the greatest
amount of success and happiness that can be got
from his particular stock of knowledge. He is
required to have just so much idea of his own
value (through his liberal education) as to know
what he can ask of life ; and he is assured that
a natural and necessary connection between
"intelligence and property" not only exists, but
is also a moral necessity. All education is de-
tested that makes for loneliness, and has an aim
above money-making, and requires a long time:
men look askance on such serious education, as
mere "refined egoism " or "immoral Epicurean-·
ism." The converse of course holds, according
to the ordinary morality, that education must be
soon over to allow the pursuit of money to be
soon begun, and should be just thorough enough
to allow of much money being made. The amount of
education is determined by commercial interests. In
short, " man has a necessary claim to worldly happi-
ness; only for that reason is education necessary.''

SCHOPENHA UER AS EDUCATOR. 161
There is, secondly, the self-interest of the state,

which requires the greatest possible breadth and
universality of culture, and has the most effective
weapons to carry out its wishes. If it be firmly
enough established not only to initiate but control
education and bear its whole weight, such breadth
wiil merely profit the competition of the state with
other states. A "highly civilised state" generally
implies, at the present time, the task of setting
free the spiritual forces of a generation just so far as
they may be of use to the existing institutions ,-
as a mountain stream is split up by embankmen ts
and channels, and its diminished power made to
drive mill-wheels, its full strength being more
dangerous than useful to the mills. And thus
"setting free" comes to mean rather "chaining
up." Compare, for example, what the self-interest
of the state has done for Christianity. Christianity
is one of the purest manifestations of the impulse
towards culture and the production of the saint:
but being used in countless ways to turn the mills
of the state authorities, it gradually became sick
at heart, hypocritical and degenerate, and in
antagonism with its original aim. Its last phase,
the German Reformation, would have been nothing
but a sudden flickering of its dying flame, had it
not taken new strength and light from the clash
and conflagration of states.
In the third place, culture will be favoured by
all those people who know their own character to
be offensive or tiresome, and wish to draw a veil
of so-called " good form " over them. Words,
gestures, dress, etiquette, and such external things,
VOL. II, L

are meant to produce a false impression, the inner

side to be judged from the outer. I sometimes
think that modern men are eternally bored with
each other and look to the arts to make them
interesting. They let their artists make savoury
and inviting dishes of them ; they steep themselves
in the spices of the East and West, and have a
very interesting aroma after it all. They are ready
to suit all palates: and every one will be served,
whether he want something with a good or bad
taste, something sublime or coarse, Greek or
Chinese, tragedy or gutter - drama. The most
celebrated chefs among the modems who wish to
interest and be interested at any price, are the
French ; the worst are the Germans. This is
really more comforting for the latter, and we have
no reason to mind the French despising us for our
want of interest, elegance and politeness, and being
reminded of the Indian who longs for a ring
through his nose, and then proceeds to tattoo
himself.
Here I must digress a little. Many things in
Germany have evidently been altered since the
late war with France, and new requirements for
German culture brought over. The war was for
many their first venture into the more elegant half
of the world: and what an admirable simplicity
the conqueror shows in not scorning to learn some-
thing of culture from the conquered I The applied
arts especially will be reformed to emulate our more
refined neighbours, the German house furnished
like the French, a "sound taste" applied to the
German language by means of an Academy on the

French model, to shake off the doubtful influence

of Goethe-this is the judgment of our new Berlin
Academician, Dubois-Raymond. Our theatres
have been gradually moving, in a dignified way,
towards the same goal, even the elegant German
savant is now discovered - and we must now
expect everything that does not conform to this
law of elegance, our music, tragedy and philosophy
to be thrust aside as un-German. But there were
no need to raise a finger for German culture, did
German culture (which the Germans have yet to
find) mean nothing but the little amenities that
make life more decorative-including the arts of
the dancing-master and the upholsterer ;-or were
they merely interested in academic rules of
language and a general atmosphere of politeness.
The late war and the self-comparison with the
French do not seem to have aroused any further
desires, and I suspect that the German has a strong
wish for the moment to be free of the old obliga-
tions laid on him by his wonderful gifts of serious-
ness and profundity. He would much rather play
the buffoon and the monkey, and learn the arts
that make life amusing. But the German spirit
cannot be more dishonoured than by being treated
as wax for any elegant mould.
And if, unfortunately, a good many Germans will
allow themselves to be thus moulded, one must
continually say to them, till at last they listen :-
"The.old German way is no longer yours : it was
hard, rough, and full of resistance; but it is still
the most valuable material-one which only the
greatest modellers can work with, for they alone

are worthy to use it. What you have in you now

is a soft pulpy stuff: make what you will out of
it,-elegant dolls and interesting idols-Richard
Wagner's phrase will still hold good, ' The German
is awkward and ungainly when he wishes to be
polite; he is high above all others, when he begins
to take fire.'" All the elegant people have reason to
beware of this German fire; it may one day devour
them with all their wax dolls and idols.-The
prevailing love of " good form" in Germany may
have a deeper cause in the breathless seizing at
what the moment can give, the haste that plucks
the fruit too green, the race and the struggle that
cut the furrows in men's brows and stamp the same
mark on all their actions. As if there were a
poison in them that would not let them breathe,
they rush about in disorder, anxious slaves of the
"three m's," the moment, the mode and the mob :
they see too well their want of dignity and fitness,
and need a false elegance to hide their galloping
consumption. The fashionable desire of "good
form" is bound up with a loathing of man's inner
nature : the one is to conceal, the other to be con-
cealed. Education means now the concealment
of man's misery and wickedness, his wild-beast
quarrels, his eternal greed, his shamelessness in
fruition. In pointing out the absence of a German
culture, I have often had the reproach flung at me:
"This absence is quite natural, for the Germans
have been too poor and modest up to now. Once
rich and conscious of themselves, our people will
have a culture too." Faith may often produce
happiness, yet this particular faith makes me un-

happy, for I feel that the culture whose future

raises such hopes-the culture of riches, politeness,
and elegant concealments-is the bitterest foe of
that German culture in which I believe. Every
one who has to live among Germans suffers from
the dreadful grayness and apathy of their lives,
their formlessness, torpor and clumsiness, still
more their envy, secretiveness and impurity: he is
troubled by their innate love of the false and the
ignoble, their wretched mimicry and translation of
a good foreign thing into a bad German one. But
now that the feverish unrest, the quest of gain and
success, the intense prizing of the moment, is added
to it all, it makes one furious to think that all this
sickness can never be cured, but only painted over,
by such a "cult of the interesting." And this
among a people that has produced a Schopenhauer
and a Wagner! and will produce others, unless we
are blindly deceiving ourselves; for should not
their very existence be a guarantee that such forces
are even now potential in the German spirit? Or
will they be exceptions, the last inheritors of the
qualities that were once called German? I can
see nothing to help me here, and return to my
main argument again, from which my doubts and
anxieties have made me digress. I have not yet
enumerated all the forces that help culture without
recognising its end, the production of genius.
Three have been named ; the self-interest of
business, of the state, and of those who draw the
cloak of " good form " over them. There is
fourthly the self-interest of science, and the
peculiar nature of her servants-the learned.

Science has the same relation to wisdom as

current morality to holiness : she is cold and dry,
loveless, and ignorant of any deep feeling of dis-
satisfaction and yearning. She injures her servants
in helping herself, for she impresses her own
character on them and dries up their humanity.
As long as we actually mean by culture the
progress of science, she will pass by the great
suffering man and harden her heart, for science
only sees the problems of knowledge, and suffering
is something alien and unintelligible to her world
-though no less a problem for that!
If one accustom himself to put down every
experience in a dialectical form of question and
answer, and translate it into the language of " pure
reason," he will soon wither up and rattle his bones
like a skeleton. We all know it: and why is it
that the young do not shudder at these skeletons
of men, but give themselves blindly to science
without motive or measure? It cannot be the
so-called "impulse to truth": for how could there
be an impulse towards a pure, cold and objectless
knowledge? The unprejudiced eye can see the
real driving forces only too plainly. The vivisection
of the professor has much to recommend it, as he
himself is accustomed to finger and analyse all
things-even the worthiest! To speak honestly,
the savant is a complex of very various impulses
and attractive forces-he is a base metal through-
out,
Take first a strong and increasing desire for
intellectual adventure, the attractio1! of the new
and rare as against the old and tedious. Add

to that a certain joy in nosing the trail of dialectic,

and beating the cover where the old fox, Thought,
lies hid ; the desire is not so much for truth as the
chase of truth, and the chief pleasure is in surround-
ing and artistically killing it. Add thirdly a love
of contradiction whereby the personality is able to
assert itself against all others : the battle's the
thing, and the personal victory its aim,-truth only
its pretext. The impulse to discover "particular
truths " plays a great part in the professor, coming
from his submission to definite ruling persons,
classes, opinions, churches, governments, for he
feels it a profit to himself to bring truth to their
side.
The following characteristics of the savant are
less common, but still found.-Firstly , downright-
ness and a feeling for simplicity, very valuable if
more than a mere awkwardness and inability to
deceive, deception requiring some mother-wit.-
(Actually; we may be on our guard against too
obvious cleverness and resource, and doubt the
man's sincerity.) - Otherwise this downrightness
is generally of little value, and rarely of any use
to knowledge, as it follows tradition and speaks
the truth only in " adiaphora "; it being lazier to
speak the truth here than ignore it. Everything
new means something to be unlearnt, and your
downright man will respect the ancient dogmas
and accuse the new evangelist of failing in the
sensus recti. There was a similar opposition, with
probability and custom on its side, to the theory
of Copernicus. The professor's frequent hatred of
philosophy is principally a hatred of the long

trains of reasoning and artificiality of the proofs.

Ultimately the savants of every age have a fixed
limit; beyond which ingenuity is not allowed, and
everything suspected as a conspirator against
honesty.
Secondly, a clear vision of near objects, com-
bined with great shortsightedness for the distant and
universal. The professor's range is generally very
small, and his eye must be kept close to the object.
To pass from a point already considered to another,
he has to move his whole optical apparatus. He
cuts a picture into small sections, like a man using
an opera-glass in the theatre, and sees now a head,
now a bit of the dress, but nothing as a whole.
The single sections are never combined for him,
he only infers their connection, and consequently
has no strong general impression. He judges a
literary work, for example, by certain paragraphs
or sentences or errors, as he can do nothing more ;
he will be driven to see in an oil painting nothing
but a mass of daubs.
Thirdly, a sober conventionality in his likes and
dislikes. Thus he especially delights in history
because he can put his own motives into the
actions of the past. A mole is most comfortable
in a mole-hill. He is on his guard against all
ingenious and extravagant hypotheses; but digs
up industriously all the commonplace motives of
the past, because he feels in sympathy with them.
He is generally quite incapable of understanding
and valuing the rare or the uncommon, the great
or the real.
Fourthly, a lack of feeling, which makes him

capable of vivisection. He knows nothing of the
suffering that brings knowledge, and does not fear
to tread where other men shudder. He is cold
and may easily appear cruel. He is thought
courageous, but he is not,-any more than the
mule who does not feel giddiness.
Fifthly, diffidence, or a low estimate of himself.
Though he live in a miserable alley of the world,
he has no sense of sacrifice or surrender; he appears
often to know in his inmost heart that he is not
a flying but a crawling creature. And this makes
him seem even pathetic.
Sixthly, loyalty to his teachers and leaders.
From his heart he wishes to help them, and knows
he can do it best with the truth. He has a grate-
ful disposition, for he has only gained admittance
through them to the high hall of science; he would
never have entered by his own road. Any man
to-day who can throw open a new province where
his lesser disciples can work to some purpose, is
famous at once; so great is the crowd that presses
after him. These grateful pupils are certainly a
misfortune to their teacher, as they all imitate him ;
his faults are exaggerated in their small persons,
his virtues correspondingly diminished.
Seventhly, he will follow the usual road of all
the professors, where a feeling for truth springs
from a lack of ideas, and the wheel once started
goes on. Such natures become compilers, com-
mentators, makers of indices and herbaria; they
rummage about one special department because
they have never thought there are others. Their
industry has something of the monstrous stupidity

of gravitation; and so they can often bring their

labours to an end.
Eighthly, a dread of ennui. While the true
thinker desires nothing more than leisure, the
professor fears it, not knowing how it is to be
used. Books are his comfort; he listens to every-
body's different thoughts and keeps himself amused
all day. He especially chooses books with a per-
sonal relation to himself, that make him feel some
emotion of like or dislike ; books that have to do
with himself or his position, his political, cesthetic,
or even grammatical doctrines; ifhe have mastered
even one branch of knowledge, the means to flap
away the flies of ennui will not fail him.
Ninthly, the motive of the bread-winner, the
"cry of the empty stomach," in fact. Truth is
used as a direct means of preferment, when she
can be attained; or as a way to the good graces
of the fountains of honour - and bread. Only,
however, in the sense of the " particular truth " :
there is a gulf between the profitable truths that
many serve, and the unprofitable truths to which
only those few people devote themselves whose
motto is not ingenii largitor venter.
Tenthly, a reverence for their fellow-professors
and a fear of their displeasure-a higher and rarer
motive than the last, though not uncommon. All
the members of the guild are jealously on guard,
that the truth which means so much bread and
honour and position may really be baptized in the
name of its discoverer. The one pays the other
reverence for the truth he has found, in order to
exact the toll again if he should find one himself.

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. IJI
The Untruth, the Error is loudly exploded, that the

workers may not be too many; here and there
the real truth will be exploded to let a few bold
and stiff-necked errors be on show for a time; there
is never a lack of" moral idiosyncrasies,"-formerly
called rascalities.
Eleventhly, the "savant for vanity," now rather
rare. He will get a department for himself some-
how, and investigate curiosities, especially if they
demand unusual expenditure, travel, research, or
communication with all parts of the world. He is
quite satisfied with the honour of being regarded
as a curiosity himself, and never dreams of earning
a living by his erudite studies.
Twelfthly, the "savant for amusement." He
loves to look for knots in knowledge and to untie
them ; not too energetically however, lest he lose
the spirit of the game. Thus he does not penetrate
the depths, though he often observes something
that the microscopic eyes of the bread-and-butter
scientist never see.
If I speak, lastly, of the . "impulse towards
j ustice" as a further motive of the savant, I may
be answered that this noble impulse, being meta-
physical in its nature, is too indistinguishable from
the rest, and really incomprehensible to mortal
mind ; and so I leave the thirteenth heading with
the pious wish that the impulse may be less rare
in the professor than it seems. For a spark in his
soul from the fire of justice is sufficient to irradiate
and purify it, 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 work,

All these elements, or a part of them, must be

regarded as fused and pounded together, to form
the Servant of Truth. For the sake of an absolutely
inhuman thing-mere purposeless, and therefore
motiveless, knowledge-a mass of very human
little motives have been chemically combined, and
as the result we have the professor,-so transfigured
in the light of that pure unearthly object that the
mixing and pounding which went to form him are
all forgotten ! It is very curious. Yet there are
moments when they must be remembered,-when
we have to think of the professor's significance to
culture. Any one with observation can see that he
is in his essence and by his origin unproductive, ,
and has a natural hatred of the productive; and
thus there is an endless feud between the genius
and the savant in idea and practice. The latter
wishes to kill Nature by analysing and compre-
hending it, the former to increase it by a new living
Nature. The happy age does not need or know
the savant; the sick and sluggish time ranks him
as its highest and worthiest.
Who were physician enough. to know the health
or sickness of our time ? It is clear that the pro-
fessor is valued too highly, with evil consequences
for the future genius, for whom he has no com-
passion, merely a cold, contemptuous criticism, a
shrug of the shoulders, as if at something strange and
perverted for which he has neither time nor in-
clination. And so he too knows nothing of the
aim of culture.
In fact, all these considerations go to prove that
the aim of culture is most unknown precisely where

the interest in it seems liveliest. The state may
trumpet as it will its services to culture, it merely
helps culture in order to help itself, and does not
comprehend an aim that stands higher than its own
well-being or even existence. The business men
in their continual demand for education merely
wish for-business. When the pioneers of "good
form " pretend to be the real helpers of culture,
imagining'that all art, for example, is merely to serve
their own needs, they are clearlyaffirmingthemselves
in affirming culture. Of the savant enough has
already been said. All four are emulously thinking
how they can benefit themselves with the help of
culture, but have no thoughts at all when their own
interests are not engaged. And so they have
done; nothing to improve the conditions for the
birth of genius in modern times; and the opposi-
tion to original men has grown so far that no
Socrates could ever live among us, and certainly
could never reach the age of seventy.
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
culture. 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 end.
The belief in the metaphysical significance of
culture would not be such a horrifying thing, but
its effects on educational methods might be so.
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 generation.

At present the labours of higher education produce

merely the savant or the official or the business
man or the Philistine or, more commonly, a mixture
of all four; and the future institutions will have a
harder task ;-not in itself harder, as it is really
more natural, and so easier; and further, could any-
thing be harder than to make a youth into a savant
against nature, as now happens ?-But the difficulty
lies in unlearning what we know and setting up a
new aim ; it will be an endless trouble to change
the fundamental idea of our present educational
system, that has its roots in the Middle Ages and
regards the medi.!!val savant as the ideal type of
culture. It is already time to put these objects
before us; for some generation must begin the
battle, of which a later generation will reap the
victory. The solitary man who has understood
the new fundamental idea of culture is at the
parting of the ways ; on the one he will be
welcomed by his age, laurels and rewards will be
his, powerful parties will uphold him, he will have
as many in sympathy behind him as in front, and
when the· leader speaks the word of deliverance,
it will echo through all the ranks. The first duty
is to "fight in line," the second to treat as foes all
who will not "fall in." On the other way he will
find fewer companions; it is steeper and more
tortuous. The travellers on the first road laugh
at him, as his way is the more troublesome and
dangerous; and they try to entice him over. If
the two ways cross, he is ill-treated, cast aside or
left alone. What significance has any particular
form of culture for these several travellers? The

enormous throng that press to their end on the
first road, 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 objects. To
the small company on the other road it has quite
a different office: they wish to guard themselves,
by means of a strong organisation, from being
swept away by the throng, to prevent their in-
dividual members from fainting on the way or
turning in spirit from their great task. These
solitary men must finish their work; that is why
they should all hold together ; 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 genius, and ensure that the time
be ripe for him. Many are destined to help on
the labour, even among the second-rate talents,
and it is only in submission to such a destiny that
they can feel they are living for a duty, and have
a meaning and an object in their lives. But at
present these talents are being turned from the
road their instinct has chosen by the seductive
tones of the "fashionable culture," that plays on
their selfish side, their vanities and weaknesses ;
and the time-spirit ever whispers in their ears its
flattering counsel:-" Follow me and go not thither!
There you are only servants and tools, over-
shadowed by higher natures· with no scope for
your own, drawn by threads, hung with fetters,
slaves and automatons. With me you may enjoy
your true personality, and be masters, your talents
may shine with their own light, and yourselves

stand in the front ranks with an immense following

round you; and the acclamation of public opinion
will rejoice you more than a wandering breath of
approval sent down from the cold ethereal heights
of genius," Even the best men are snared by such
allurements, and the ultimate difference comes not
so much from the rarity and power of their talent,
as the influence of a certain heroic disposition at
the base of them, and an inner feeling of kinship
with genius. For there are men who feel it as
their own misery when they see the genius in
painful toil and struggle, in danger of self-destruc-
tion, or neglected by the short-sighted selfishness
of the state, the superficiality of the business men,
and the cold arrogance of the professors ; and I
hope there may be some to understand what I
mean by my sketch of Schopenhauer's destiny,
and to what end Schopenhauer can really educate.
VII.
But setting aside all thoughts of any educa-
tional revolution in the distant future ;-what pro-
vision is required now, that our future philosopher
may have the best chance of opening his eyes to a
life like Schopenhauer's-hard as it is, yet still
livable? What, further, must be discovered that
may make his influence on his contemporaries
more certain? And what obstacles must be re-
moved before his example can have its full effect
and the philosopher train another philosopher?
Here we descend to be practical.

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR, 177
Nature always desires the greatest utility, but
does not understand how to find the best and
handiest means to her end; that is her great sorrow,
and the cause of her melancholy. The impulse to-
wards her own redemption shows clearly her wish
to give men a significant existence by the generation
of the philosopher and the artist: but how unclear
and weak is the effect she generally obtains with
her artists and philosophers, and how seldom is
there any effect at all I She is especially perplexed
in her efforts to make the philosopher useful ; her
methods are casual and tentative,. her failures in-
numerable; most of her philosophers never touch
the common good of mankind at all. Her actions
seem those of a spendthrift ; but the cause lies in
no prodigal luxury, but in her inexperience. Were
she human, she would probably never cease to be
dissatisfied with herself and her bungling. Nature
shoots the philosopher at mankind like an arrow;
she does not aim, but hopes that the arrow will
stick somewhere. She makes countless mistakes,
that give her pain. She is as extravagant in the
sphere of culture as in her planting and sowing. She
fulfils her ends in a large and clumsy fashion, using
up far too much of her strength. The artist has
the same relation to the connoisseurs and lovers of
his art as a piece of heavy artillery to a flock of
sparrows. It is a fool's part to use a great avalanche
to sweep away a little snow, to kill a man in order
to strike the fly on his nose. The artist and the
philosopher are witnesses against Nature's adapta-
tion of her means, however well they may show the
wisdom of her ends. They only reach a few and
VOL. II. M

should reach all-and even these few are not struck

with the strength they used when they shot. It is
sad to have to value art so differently as cause and
effect; how huge in its inception, how faint the
echo afterwards! The artist does his work as
Nature bids him, for the benefit of other men-no
doubt of it ; but he knows that none of those men
will understand and love his work as he understands
and loves it himself. That lonely height of love
and understanding is necessary, by Nature's clumsy
law, to produce a lower type; the great and noble
are used as the means to the small and ignoble.
Nature is a bad manager; her expenses are far
greater than her profits: for all her riches she must
one day go bankrupt. She would have acted more
reasonably to make the rule of her household-
small expense and hundredfold profit ; if there had
been, for example, only a few artists with moderate
powers, but an immense number of hearers to ap- .
preciate them, stronger and more powerful char-
acters than the artists themselves; then the effect
of the art-work, in comparison with the cause, might
be a hundred-tongued echo. One might at least
expect cause and effect to be of equal power; but
Nature lags infinitely behind this consummation.
An artist, and especially a philosopher, seems often
to have dropped by chance into his age, as a
wandering hermit or straggler cut off from the main
body. Think how utterly great Schopenhauer is,
and what a small and absurd effect he has had I
An honest man can feel no greater shame at the
present time than at the thought of the casual treat-
ment Schopenhauer has received and the evil powers

that have up to now killed his effect among men.

First there was the want of readers,-to the eternal
sh.a me of our cultivated age ;-then the inadequacy
of his first public adherents, as soon as he had any;
further, I think, the crassness of the modern man
towards books, which he will no longer take
seriously. As an outcome of many attempts to
adapt Schopenhauer to this enervated age, the new
danger has gradually arisen of regarding him as an
odd kind of pungent herb, of taking him in grains,
as a sort of metaphysical pepper. In this way he
has gradually become faµ1ous, and I should think
more have heard his name than Hegel's ; and, for
all that, he is still a solitary being, who has failed
of his effect.-Though the honour of causing the
failure belongs least of all to the barking of his
literary antagonists ; first because there are few
men with the patience to read them, and secondly,
because any one who does, is sent immediately to
Schopenhauer himself; for who will let a donkey-
driver prevent him from mounting a fine horse,
however much he praise his donkey?
Whoever has recognised Nature's unreason in our
time, will have to consider some means to help her;
his task will be to bring the free spirits and the
sufferers from this age to know Schopenhauer;
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 philosophers. Such
men will see that the identical obstacles hinder the
effect of a great philosophy and the production of
the great philosopher; and so will direct their aims
to prepare the regeneration of Schopenhauer, which

means that of the philosophical genius. The real

opposition to the further spread of his doctrine in
the past, and the regeneration of the philosopher in
the future, is the perversity of human nature as it
is; and all the great men that are to be must spend
infinite pains in freeing themselves from it. The
world they enter is plastered over with pretence-
including not merely religious dogmas, but such
juggling conceptions as "progress," " universal
education," "nationalism," "the modern state";
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 growth, however loudly we may boast
of our "health." The beauty of the antique vases,
says Schopenhauer, lies in the simplicity with which
they express their meaning and object; it is so
with all the ancient implements; if Nature produced
amphora!, lamps, tables, chairs, helmets, shields,
breastplates and the like, they would resemble
these. And, as a corollary, whoever considers how
we all manage our art, politics, religion and educa-
tion-to say nothing of our vases !-will find in
them a barbaric exaggeration and arbitrariness of
expression. Nothing is more unfavourable to the
rise of genius than such monstrosities. They are
unseen and undiscoverable, the leaden weights on
his hand when he will set it to the plough; the
weights are only shaken off with violence, and his
highest work must to an extent always bear the
mark of it.
In considering the conditions that, at best, keep
the born philosopher from being oppressed by the

SCHOPENHAUE R AS EDUCATOR, 181
perversity of the age, I am surprised to find they

are partly those in which Schopenhauer himself
grew up. True, there was no lack of opposing in-
fluences ; the evil time drew perilously near him in
the person of a vain and pretentious mother. 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 virility. His father
was neither an official nor a savant; he travelled
much abroad with his son,- a great help to one
who must know men rather than books, and worship
truth before the state. In time he got accustomed
to national peculiarities: he made England, France
and Italy equally his home, and felt no little sym-
pathy with the Spanish character. On the whole,
he did not think it an honour to be born in Germany,
and I am not sure that the new political conditions
would have made him change his mind. He held
quite openly the opinion that the state's one object
was to give protection at home and abroad, and
even protecticn against its "protectors," and to
attribute any other object to it was to endanger its
true end. And so, to the consternation of all the
so-called liberals, he left his property to the survivors
of the Prussian soldiers who fell in 1848 in the fi ght
for order, To understand the state and its duties
in this single sense may seem more and more hence-
forth the sign of intellectual superiority ; for the man
with the furor philosophicus in him will no longer
have time for the furor politicus, and will wisely
keep from reading the newspapers or serving a
party; though he will not hesitate a moment to
take his place in the ranks if his country be in real

need. All states are badly managed, when other

men than politicians busy themselves with politics;
and they deserve to be ruined by their political
amateurs.
Schopenhauer had another great advantage-
that he had never been educated for a professor,
but worked for some time (though against his will)
as a merchant's clerk, and through all his early
years breathed the freer air of a great commercial
house. A savant can never become a philosopher :
Kant himself could not, but remained in a chrysalis
stage to the end, in spite of the innate force of his
genius. Any one who thinks I do Kant wrong in
saying this does not know what a philosopher is-
not only a great thinker, but also a real man; and
how could . a real man have sprung from a savant?
He who lets conceptions, opinions, events, books
come between himself and things, and is born for
history (in the widest sense), will never see anything
at once, and never be himself a thing to be "seen
at once"; though both these powers should be
in the philosopher, as he must take most of his
doctrine from himself and be himself the copy
and compendium of the whole world. If a man
look at himself through a veil of other people's
opinions, no wonder he sees nothing but-those
opinions. And it is thus that the professors see
and live. But Schopenhauer had the rare happiness
of seeing the genius not only in himself, but also
outside himself-in Goethe; and this double re-
flection taught him everything about the aims and
culture of the learned. He knew by this experience
how the free strong man, to whom all artistic culture

was looking, must come to be born; and could he,

after this vision, have much desire to busy himself
with the so-called "art," in the learned, hypocritical
manner of the modems? He had seen something
higher than that-an awful unearthly judgment-
scene in which all life, even the highest and com-
pletest, was weighed and found too light; he had
beheld the saint as the judge of existence. We
cannot tell how early Schopenhauer reached this
view of life, and came to hold it with such intensity
as to make all his writings an attempt to mirror it;
we know that the youth had this great vision, and
can well believe it of the child. Everything that
he gained later from life and books, from all the
realms of knowledge, was only a means of colour
and expression to him ; the Kantian philosophy
itself was to him an extraordinary rhetorical instru-
ment for making the utterance of his vision, as he
thought, clearer; the Buddhist and Christian myth-
ologies occasionally served the same end. He
had one task and a thousand means to execute it;
one meaning, and innumerable hieroglyphs to
express it.
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 resolution;
and we know the splendid return he made his father
for this. The contemplative man in Germany
usually pursues his scientific studies to the detri-
ment of his sincerity, as a "considerate fool," in
search of place and honour, circumspect and obse-
quio~s, and fawning on his influential superiors,

'
Nothing offended the savants more than Schopen-

hauer's unlikeness to them,
VIII.
These are a few of the conditions under which
the philosophical genius can at least come to light
in our time, in spite of all thwarting influences;-
a virility of character, an early knowledge of
mankind, an absence of learned education and
narrow patriotism, of compulsion to earn his
livelihood or depend on the state,-freedom in
fact, and again freedom ; the same marvellous and
dangerous element in which the Greek philosophers
grew up. The man who will reproach him, as
Niebuhr did Plato, with being a bad citizen, may
do so, and be himself a good one ; so he and
Plato will be right together ! Another may call
this great freedom presumption; he is also right,
as he could not himself use the freedom properly
if he desired it, and would certainly presume too
far with it. This freedom is really a grave burden
of guilt ; and can only be expiated by great
actions. Every ordinary son of earth has the
right of looking askance on such endowments;
and may Providence keep him from being so
endowed-burdened, that is, with such terrible
duties! His freedom and his loneliness would be
his ruin, and ennui would turn him into a fool, and
a mischievous fool at that.
A father may possibly learn something from
this that he may use for his son's private education,

though one must not expect fathers to have only
philosophers for their sons. It is possible that
they will always oppose their sons becoming
philosophers, and call it mere perversity; Socrates
was sacrificed to the fathers' anger, for "corrupting
the youth," and Plato even thought a new ideal
state necessary to prevent the philosophers' growth
from being dependent on the fathers' folly. It
looks at present as though Plato had really accom-
plished something; 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
philosopher. But, historically, Plato has been
very unlucky; as soon as a structure has risen
corresponding actually to his proposals, it has
always turned, on a closer view, into a goblin-child,
a monstrous changeling; compare the ecclesiastical
state of the Middle Ages with the government of
the "God-born king" of which Plato dreamed I
The modern state is furthest removed from the
idea of the Philosopher-king (Thank Heaven for
that! the Christian will say); but we must think
whether it takes that very "encouragement of
philosophy" in a Platonic sense, I mean as seriously
and honestly as if its highest object were to pro-
duce more Platas. If the philosopher seem, as
usual, an accident of his time, does the state make
it its conscious business to turn the accidental into
the necessary and help Nature here also?
Experience teaches us a better way-or a worse:
it says that nothing so stands in the way of the
birth and growth of Nature's philosopher as the

bad philosophers made "by order." A poor

obstacle, isn't it? and the same that Schopenhauer
pointed out in his famous essay on University
philosophy. I return to this point, as men must
be forced to take it seriously, to be driven to
activity by it; and I think all writing is useless
that does not contain such a stimulus to activity.
And anyhow it is a good thing to apply Schopen-
hauer's eternal theories once more to our own
contemporaries, as some kindly soul might think
that everything has changed for the better in
Germany since his fierce diatribes. Unfortunately
his work is incomplete on this side as well,
unimportant as the sid~ may be.
The" freedom" that the state, as I said, bestows
on certain men for the sake of philosophy is,
properly speaking, no freedom at all, but an
office that maintains its holder. The "encourage-
ment of philosophy" means that there are to-day
a number of men whom the state enables to make
their living out of philosophy ; whereas the old
sages of Greece were not paid by the state, but at
best were presented, as Zeno was, with a golden
crown and a monument in the Ceramicus. I
cannot say generally whether truth is served by
showing the way to live by her, since everything
depends on the character of the individual who
shows the way. I can imagine a degree of pride
in a man saying to his fellow-men, "take care of
me, as I have something better to do-namely to
take care of you." We should not be angry at
such a heightened mode of expression in Plato
and Schopenhauer; and so they might properly

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR, 187
have been University philosophers,-as Plato, for

example, was a court philosopher for a while
without lowering the dignity of philosophy. But
in Kant we have the usual submissive professor,
without any nobility in his relations with the
state; and thus he could not justify the University
philosophy when it was once assailed. If there be
natures like Schopenhauer's and Plato's, which can
justify it, I fear they will never have the chance, as
the state would never venture to give such men
these positions, for the simple reason that every
state fears them, and will only favour philosophers
it does not fear. The state obviously has a special
fear of philosophy, and will try to attract more
philosophers, to create the impression that it has
philosophy on its side,-because it has those men
on its side who have the title without the power.
But if there should come one who really proposes
to cut everything to the quick, the state included,
with the knife of truth, the state, that affirms its
own existence above all, is justified in banishing
him as an enemy, just as it bans a religion that
exalts itself to be its judge. The man who con-
sents to be a state philosopher, must also consent
to be regarded as renouncing the search for truth
in all its secret retreats. At any rate, so long as
he enjoys his position, he must recognise some-
thing higher than truth-the state. And not only
the state, but everything required by it for existence
-a definite form of religion, a social system, a
standing army; a noli me tangere is written
above all these things. Can a University
philosopher ever keep clearly before him the

whole round of these duties and limitations? I

do not know. The man who has done so and
remains a state-official, is a false friend to truth;
if he has not,-1 think he is no friend to truth either.
But general considerations like these are always
the weakest in their influence on mankind. Most
people will find it enough to shrug their shoulders
and say, "As if anything great and pure has ever
been able to maintain itself on this earth without
some concession to human vulgarity I Would you
rather the state persecuted philosophers than paid
them for official services?" Without answering
this last question, I will merely say that these
" concessions" of philosophy to the state go rather
far at present. In the first place, the state chooses
its own philosophical servants, as many as its
institutions require ; it therefore pretends to be
able to distinguish the good and the bad
philosophers, and even assumes there must be
a sufficient supply of good ones to fill all the
chairs. The state is the authority not only for
their goodness but their numbers. Secondly, it
confines those it has chosen to a definite place and
a definite activity among particular men ; they
must instruct every undergraduate who wants
instruction, daily, at stated hours. The question
is whether a philosopher can bind himself, with a
good conscience, to have something to teach every
day, to any one who wishes to listen. Must he not
appear to know more than he does, and sp~ak,
before an unknown audience, of things that he
could mention without risk only to his most
intimate friends? And above all, does he not

surrender the precious freedom of following his

genius when and wherever it call him, by the mere
fact of being bound to think at stated times on a
fixed subject? And before young men, too! Is
not such thinking in its nature emasculate? And
suppose he felt some day that he had no ideas just
then-and yet must be in his place and appear to
be thinking! What then ?
" But," one will say, "he is not a thinker but
mainly a depository of thought, a man of great
learning in all previous philosophies. Of these
he can always say something that his scholars
do not know." This is actually the third, and the
most dangerous, concession made by philosophy
to the state, when it is compelled to appear in the
form of erudition, as the knowledge (more specific-
ally) of the history of philosophy. The genius
looks purely and lovingly on existence, like a poet,
and cannot dive too deep into it ;-and nothing is
more abhorrent to him than to burrow among the
innumerable strange and wrong-headed opinions.
The learned history of the past was ·never a true
philosopher's business, in India or Greece; and
a professor of philosophy who busies himself with
such matters must be, at best, content to hear it
said of him, " He is an able scholar, antiquary,
philologist, historian,"-but never, "He is a
philosopher." I said, "at best": for a scholar
feels that most of the learned works written by
University _philosophers are badly done, without
any real scientific power, and generally are dread-
fully tedious. Who will blow aside, for example,
the Lethean vapour with which the history of

Greek philosophy has been enveloped by the dull

though not very scientific works of Ritter, Brandis
and Zeller? I, at any rate, would rather read
Diogenes Laertius than Zeller, because at least the
spirit of the old philosophers lives in Diogenes,
but neither that nor any other spirit in Zeller.
And, after all, what does the history of philosophy
matter to our young men ? Are they to be dis-
couraged by the welter of opinions from having
any of their own; or taught to join the chorus
that approves the vastness of our progress? Are
they to learn to hate or perhaps despise philosophy?
One might expect the last, knowing the torture
the students endure for their philosophical ex-
aminations, in having to get into their unfortunate
heads the maddest efforts of the human mind as
well as the greatest and profoundest. 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
universities; only the criticism of words, and
again words, is taught there. Imagine a young
head, without much experience of life, being stuffed
with fifty systems (in the form of words) and fifty
criticisms of them, all mixed up together,-what
an overgrown wilderness he will come to be, what
contempt he will feel for a philosophical education I
It is, of course, not an education in philosophy
at all, but in the art of passing a philosophical
examination : the usual result being the pious
ejaculation of the wearied examinee, "Thank God
I am no philosopher, but a Christian and a good
citizen I"

What if this cry were the ultimate object of the

state, and the "education" or leading to philosophy
were merely a leading from philosophy? We may
well ask.-But if so, there is one thing to fear-
that the youth may some day find out to what
end philosophy is thus mis-handled. " Is the
highest thing of all, the production of the
philosophical genius, nothing but a pretext, and
the main object perhaps to hinder his production?
And is Reason turned to U nreason ? "-Then woe
to the whole machinery of political and professorial
trickery l
Will it soon become notorious? I do not know ;
but anyhow university philosophy has fallen into
a general state of doubting and despair. The
cause lies partly in the feebleness of those who
hold the chairs at present: and if Schopenhauer
had to write his treatise on university philosophy
to-day, he would find the club no longer necessary,
but could conquer with a bulrush. They are the
heirs and successors of those slip-shod thinkers
whose crazy heads Schopenhauer struck at: their
childish natures and dwarfish frames remind one of
the Indian proverb: " men are born according to
their deeds, deaf, dumb, misshapen." Those fathers
deserved such sons, " according to their deeds," as
the proverb says. Hence the students will, no
doubt, soon get on without the philosophy taught
at their university, just as those who are not
university men manage to do without it already.
This can be tested from one's own experience :
in my student-days, for example, I found the
university philosophers very ordinary men indeed,

192 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON
who had collected together a few conclusions from

the other sciences, and in their leisure hours read
the newspapers and went to concerts; they were
treated by their academic colleagues with politely
veiled contempt. They had the reputation of
knowing very little, but of never being at a loss for
obscure expressions to conceal their ignoranc~.
They had a preference for those obscure regions
where a man could not walk long with clear
v1s1on. One said of the natural sciences,-" Not
one of them can fully explain to me the origin of
matter; then what do I care about them all?"-
Another said of history, " It tells nothing new to
the man with ideas": in fact, they always found
I
reasons for its being more philosophical to know
nothing than to learn anything. If they let them-
selves be drawn to learn, a secret instinct made
them fly from the actual sciences and found a dim
kingdom amid their gaps and uncertainties. They
"led the way" in the sciences in the sense that the
quarry " leads the way" for the hunters who are
behind him. Recently they have amused them-
selves with asserting they are merely the watchers
on the frontier of the sciences. The Kantian
doctrine is of use to them here, and they industri-
ously build up an empty scepticism on it, of which
in a short time nobody will take any more notice.
Here and there one will rise to a little metaphysic
of his own, with the general accompaniment of
headaches and giddiness and bleeding at the nose
After the usual ill-success of their voyages into the
clouds and the mist, some hard-headed young
student of the real sciences will pluck them down

SCHOPENIIAUE R AS EDUCATOR, 193
by the skirts, and their faces will assume the
expression now habitual to them, of offended
dignity at being found out. They have lost their
happy confidence, and not one of them will venture
a step further for the sake of his philo~ophy. Some
used to believe they could find out new religions
or reinstate old ones by their systems. They
have given up such pretensions now, and have
become mostly mild, muddled folk, with no
Lucretian boldness, but merely some spiteful
complaints of the "dead weight that lies on the
intellects of mankind " ! No one can even learn
logic from them now, and their obvious knowledge
of their own powers has made them discontinue
the dialectical disputations common in the old
days. There is much more care and modesty,
logic and inventiveness, in a word, more philo-
sophical method in the work of the special sciences
than in the so-called " philosophy," and every one
will agree with the temperate words of Bagehot *
on the present system builders: " U nproved abstract
principles without number have been eagerly caught
up by sanguine men, and then carefully spun out
into books and theories, which were to explain the
whole world. But the world goes clear against
these abstractions, and it must do so, as they
require it to go in antagonistic directions. The
mass of a system attracts the young and impresses
the unwary ; but cultivated people are very
* Physics and Politics, chap. v. Nietzsche has altered the
order of the sentences without any apparent benefit to his
own argument, and to the disadvantage of Bagehot's. 1
have restored the original order.-TR.
VOL. II. N

194 'i'HOUGHTS our OF SEASON.
dubious about it. They are ready to receive hints

and suggestions, and the smallest real truth is
ever welcome. But a large book of deductive
philosophy is much to be suspected. Who is not
almost sure beforehand that the premises will
contain a strange mixture of truth and error, and
therefore that it will not be worth while to spend
life in reasoning over their consequences?" The
philosophers, especially in Germany, used to sink
into such a state of abstraction that they were in
continual danger of running their heads against
a beam ; but there is a whole herd of Laputan
flappers about them to give them in time a gentle
stroke on their eyes or anywhere else. Sometimes
the blows are too hard ; and then these scorners of
earth forget themselves and strike back, but the
victim always escapes them. "Fool, you do not
see the beam," says the flapper; and often the
philosopher does see the beam, and calms down.
These flappers are the natural sciences and history ;
little by little they have so overawed the German
dream-craft which has long taken the place of
philosophy, that the dreamer would be only too
glad to give up the attempt to run alone: but
when they unexpectedly fall into the others' arms,
or try to put leading-strings on them that they may
be led themselves, those others flap as terribly as
they can, as if they would say, "This is all that is
wanting,-that a philosophaster like this should lay
his impure hands on us, the natural sciences and
history ! Away with him ! " Then they start
back, knowing not where to turn or to ask the way.
They wanted to have '- a little physical knowledge

at their back, possibly in the form of empirical

psychology (like the Herbartians), or perhaps a
little history; and then they could at least make a
public show of behaving scientifically, although in
their. hearts they may wish all philosophy and all
science at the devil.
But granted that this herd of bad philosophers is
ridiculous-and who will deny it ?-how far are
they also harmful? They are harmful just because
they make philosophy ridiculous. As long as this
imitation-thinking continues to be recognised by
the state, the lasting effect of a true philosophy
will be destroyed, or at any rate circumscribed ;
nothing does this so well as the curse of ridicule
that the representatives of the great cause have
drawn on them, for it attacks that cause itself.
And so I think it will encourage culture to deprive
philosophy of its political and academic standing,
and relieve state and university of the task, im-
possible for them, of deciding between true and
false philosophy. Let the philosophers run wild,
forbid them any thoughts of office or civic position,
hold them out no more bribes,-nay, rather persecute
them and treat them ill,-you will see a wonderful
result. They will flee in terror and seek a roof
where they can, these poor phantasms; one will
become a parson, another a schoolmaster, another
will creep into an editorship, another write school-
books for young ladies' colleges, the wisest of them
will plough the fields, the vainest go to court.
Everything will be left suddenly empty, the birds
flown : for it is easy to get rjd of bad philosophers,
-~e only has_!o cease paying them. And that

is a better plan than the open patronage of any

philosophy, whatever it be, for state reasons.
The state has never any concern with truth, but
only with the truth useful to it, or rather, with
anything that is useful to it, be it truth, half-truth,
or error. A coalition between state and philosophy
has only meaning when the latter can promise to
be unconditionally useful to the state, to put its
well-being higher than truth. It would certainly
be a noble thing for the state to have truth as a
paid servant ; but it knows well enough that it is
the essence of truth to be paid nothing and serve
nothing. So the state's servant turns out to be
merely "false truth," a masked actor who cannot
perform the office required from the real truth-
the affirmation of the state's worth and sanctity.
When a medireval prince wished to be crowned
by the Pope, but could not get him to consent,
he appointed an antipope to do the business for
him. This may serve up to a certain point; but
not when the modern state appoints an "anti-
philosophy" to legitimise it; for it has true
philosophy against it just as much as before, or
even more so. I believe in all seriousness that it
is to the state's advantage to have nothing further
to do with philosophy, to demand nothing from it,
and let it go its own way as much as possible.
Without this indifferent attitude, philosophy may
become dangerous and oppressive, and will have
to be persecuted.-The only interest the state can
have in the university lies in the training of
obedient and useful citizens ; and it should hesitate
to put this obedience and usefulness in doubt by

demanding an examination in philosophy from the

young men. To make a bogey of philosophy may
be an excellent way to frighten the idle and in-
competent from its study; 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 spirits. They
learn to know about forbidden books, begin to
criticise their teachers, and finally come to under-
stand the object of university philosophy and its
examinations; not to speak of the doubts that
may be fostered in the minds of young theologians,
as a consequence of which they are beginning to
be extinct in Germany, like the ibexes in the
Tyrol.
I know the objections that the state could bring
against all this, as long as the lovely Hegel-corn
was yellowing in all the fields; but now that hail
has destroyed the crop and all men's hopes of it,
now that nothing has been fulfilled and all the
barns are empty,-there are no more objections
to be made, but rather rejections of philosophy
itself. The state has now the power of rejection ;
in Hegel's time it only wished to have it- and
that makes a great difference. The state needs
no more the sanction of philosophy, and
philosophy has thus become superfluous to it. It
will find advantage in ceasing to maintain its
professors, or (as I think will soon happen) in
merely pretending to maintain them; but it is of
still greater importance that the university should
see the benefit of this as well. At least I believe
the real sciences must see that their interest lies

in freeing themselves from all contact with sham

science. And further, 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 circles.
The outer world has . good reason for its wide-
spread contempt of universities; they are re-
proached with being cowardly, the small fearing
the great, and the great fearing public opinion; it
is said that they do not lead the higher thought
of the age but hobble slowly behind it, and cleave
no longer to · the fundamental ideas of the
recognised sciences. Grammar, for example, is
studied more diligently than ever without any one
seeing the necessity of a rigorous training in speech
and writing. The gates of Indian antiquity are
being opened, and the scholars have no more idea
of the most imperishable works of the Indians-
their philosophies-than a beast has of playing
the harp ; though Schopenhauer thinks that the
acquaintance with Indian philosophy is one of the
greatest advantages possessed by our century.
Classical antiquity is the favourite playground
nowadays, and its effect is no longer classical and
formative; as is shown by the students, who are
certainly no models for imitation. Where is now
the spirit of Friedrich August Wolf to be found,
of whom Franz Passow could say that he seemed
a loyal and humanistic spirit with force enough
to set half the world aflame ? Instead of that a
journalistic spirit is arising in the university, often
under the name of philosophy; the smooth
delivery-the very cosmetics of speech - with

Faust and Nathan the Wise for ever on the lips,

the ac_cent and the outlook of our worst literary
magazines and, more recently, much chatter
about our holy Germ.an music, and the demand
for lectures on Schiller and Goethe,- all this is a
sign that the university spirit is beginning to be
confused with the Spirit of the Age. Thus the
establishment of a higher tribunal, outside the
universities, to protect and criticise them with
regard to culture, would seem a most valuable
thing, and as soon as philosophy can sever itself
from the universities and be purified from every
unworthy motive or hypocrisy, it will be able to
become such a tribunal. It will do its work with-
out state help in money or honours, free from the
spirit of the age as well as from any fear of it; being
in fact the judge, as Schopenhauer was, of the
so-called culture surrounding it. And in this way
the philosopher can also be useful to the university,
by refusing to be a part of it, but criticising it
from afar. Distance will lend dignity.
But, after all, what does the life of a state or the
progress of universities matter in comparison with
the life of philosophy on earth I For, to say quite
frankly what I mean, it is infinitely more important
that a philosopher should arise on the earth than
that a state or a university should continue. The
dignity of philosophy may rise in proportion as
the submission to public opinion and the danger
to liberty increase; it was at its highest during the
convulsions marking the fall of the Roman
Republic, and in the time of the Empire, when the
names of both philosophy and history became

ingrata principibus nomina. Brutus shows its

dignity better than Plato; his was a time when
ethics cease to have commonplaces. Philosophy
is not much regarded now, and we may well ask
why no great soldier or statesman has taken it up ;
and the answer is that a thin phantom has met him
under the name of philosophy, the cautious wisdom
of the learned professor; and philosophy has soon
come to seem ridiculous to him. It ought to have
seemed terrible; and men who are called to
authority should know the heroic power that has
its source there. An American may tell them
what a centre of mighty forces a great thinker can
prove on this earth. " Beware when the great God
lets loose a thinker on this planet," says Emerson.*
"Then all things are at risk. It is as when a con-
flagration has broken out in a great city, and no
man knows what is safe, or where it will end.
There is not a piece of science, but its flank may
be turned to-morrow; there is not any literary
reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame,
that may not be revised and condemned. . . . The
things which are dear to men at this hour are so
on account of the ideas which have emerged on
their mental horizon, and which cause the present
order of things as a tree bears its apples. A new
degree of culture would instantly revolutionise the
entire system of human pursuits." If such thinkers
are dangerous, it is clear why our university
thinkers are not dangerous ; for their thoughts
bloom as peacefully in the shade of tradition "as
* Essay on "Circles."

ever tree bore its apples." They do not frighten;

they carry away no gates of Gaza; and to all their
little contemplations one can make the answer of
Diogenes when a certain philosopher was praised:
"What great result has he to show, who has
so long practised philosophy and yet has hurt
nobody?" Yes, the university philosophy should
have on its monument, " It has hurt nobody." But
this is rather the praise one gives to an old woman
than to a goddess of truth; and it is not surprising
that those who know the goddess only as an old
woman are the less men for that, and are naturally
neglected by the real men of power.
If this be the case in our time, the dignity of
philosophy is trodden in the mire ; and she seems
herself to have become ridiculous or insignificant.
All her true friends are bound to bear witness
against this transformation, at least to show that
it is merely her false servants in philosopher's
clothing who are so. Or better, they must prove
by their own deed that the love of truth has itself
awe and power.
Schopenhauer proved this and will continue to
prove it, more and more.

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THE COMPLETE WORKS

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Of the Third Edition,

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'IHE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY

ADRIAN: C0LLINS; M.A .

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN E5 UNWIN LTD.

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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(All rights reserved)

Printed ;,. Gr~at Britain by

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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY •

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR ~ IOI

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believe that he was the "crown of the world .

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stagnation of the professional philosopher. The

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and his work, and speak of Schopenhauer's view as

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troubled me: I revenge myself on it by giving it

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matter for wonder: the moment, that is here and

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fulness, it abolishes life and being together, and

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past, however foreign, and turn it to sap. Such

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righteousness for a downright act of will or desire. ,

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long been the sport of strange words and opinions,

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do not know, the accidental nature of the forms

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believe that the meaning of existence will become

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before him. How should the endless rush of events

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balancing of the ledger of life. Historical study

action and power who fights a great fight and needs

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But the fiercest battle is fought round the demand

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the sign-manual of their inmost being, the rare

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events on earth are reproduced to the smallest detail;

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great impulse that it gives to a powerful spirit, as

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enemies, the great artistic spirits, who alone can

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