Chapter six We Scholars two hundred four. At the risk that moralizing may also
reveal itself here as that which it has always been, namely resolutely monterers as
plays. According to Balzac, I would venture to protest against an improper and
injurious alteration of rank, which, quite unnoticed, and as if with the
best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations of science and philosophy.
I mean to say that one must have the right out of one's own
experience. Experience, as it seems to me, always implies unfortunate experience to
treat of such an important question of rank, so as not to speak of
color like the blind, or against science like women and artists. Ah,
this dreadful science sigh their instinct and their shame. It always finds things out.
The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy is
one of the subtler after effects of democratic organization and disorganization. The self glorification
and self conceitedness of the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom and in
its best springtime. Which does not mean to imply that in this case self
praise smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populous cries freedom from all
masters. And after science has, with the happiest results, resisted theology,
whose handmaid it had been too long, it now proposes, in its wantonness
and indiscretion, to lay down laws for philosophy, and in its turn to
play the master. What am I saying to play the philosopher on its own
account? My memory, the memory of a scientific man, If you please,
teams with the naivetes of insolence which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers
from young naturalists and old physicians, not to mention the most cultured and most
conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters, who are both the
one and the other by profession. On one occasion, it was the specialist
and the jack horner, who instinctively stood on the defensive against all synthetic tasks
and capabilities. At another time, it was the industrious worker who had got
a scent of otium and refined juriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher,
and felt himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion, it was the
color blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but a series of
refuted systems and an extravagant expenditure which does nobody any good. At another time,
the fear of disguised mysticism and of the boundary adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous.
At another time, the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily extended
to disregard of philosophy generally in fine I found most frequently behind the proud disdain
of philosophy in young scholars, the evil after effect of some particular philosopher to
whom on the whole obedience had been forsworn, without, however, the spell
of his scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of, the result
of being a general ill will to all philosophy. Such seems to me,
for instance, the after effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern Germany. By
his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in severing the whole of the
last generation of Germans from its connection with German culture, which culture, all
things considered, has been an elevation and a divining refinement of the historical sense.
But precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive and un German
to the extent of ingeniousness. On the whole. Speaking generally, it may
just have been the humanness, all too humanness of the modern philosophers themselves,
in short, their contemptibleness, which has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy
and opened the doors to the instinct of the populace. Let It but be
acknowledged to what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the
world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal and
magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called. And with what justice an honest man
of science may feel himself of a better family and origin in view of such
representatives of philosophy, who, owing to the fashion of the present day,
are just as much aloft as they are down below. In Germany, for
instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist Eugenduring and the amalgamist Eduard
von Haartmann. It is especially the sight of those hotchpotch philosophers who call themselves
realists or positivists, which is calculated to implant a dangerous distrust in the soul
of a young and ambitious scholar. Those philosophers at the best are themselves but
scholars and specialists. That is very evident. All of them are persons who
have been vanquished and brought back again under the dominion of science, who at
one time or another claimed more from themselves without having a right to the more
and its responsibility, and who now creditably rankerously and vindictively represent in word and
deed, disbelief in the master task and supremacy of philosophy. After all,
how could it be otherwise? Science flourishes now a days and has the good
conscience clearly visible on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy
has gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites distrust
and displeasure, if not scorn and pity. Philosophy reduced to a theory of
knowledge no more in fact than a diffident science of epochs and doctrine of forbearance,
a philosophy that never even gets beyond the threshold and rigorously denies itself the
right to enter. That is philosophy in its last throes an end, an
agony, something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy rule two hundred
five. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are in fact so
manifold nowadays that one might doubt whether this fruit could still come to maturity.
The extent and towering structure of the sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also
the probability that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will
attach himself somewhere and specialize, so that he will no longer attain to his
elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection, and
his despection. Or he gets aloft too late when the best of his maturity
and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and deteriorated,
so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no longer
of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his intellectual conscience that
makes him hesitate and linger on the way he dreads the temptatian to become a
dilettante, a millipede, a milli antenna. He knows too well that as
a discerner, one who has lost his self respect no longer commands, no
longer leads, unless he should aspire to become a great play actor, a
philosophical cagliostro and spiritual rat catcher, in short, a misleader. This is,
in the last instance, a question of taste, if it has not
really been a question of conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties.
There is also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict a yea or
nay, not concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life.
He learns unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to
obtain this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and
the belief only through the most extensive, perhaps disturbing, and destroying experiences,
often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the philosopher has long
been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either with the scientific man and ideal
scholar, or with the religiously elevated, desensualized, desecularized, visionary, and
god intoxicated man. And even yet, when one hears anybody praised because he
lives wisely or as a philosopher, it hardly means anything more than prudently,
and apart wisdom that seems to the populace to be a kind of flight,
a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a bad game. But the genuine
philosopher, does it not seem so to us, my friends, lives unphilosophically
and unwisely, above all imprudently, and feels the obligation and burden of a
hundred attempts and temptations of life. He risks himself constantly. He plays this
bad game two hundred six in relation to the genius, that is to say,
a being who either engenders or produces both words understood in their fullest sense,
the man of learning, the scientific average man has always something of the
old maid about him, for like her, he is not conversant with the
two principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar
and to the old Maid, one concedes respectability as if by way of indemnification.
In these cases one emphasizes the respectability, and yet in the compulsion of
this concession one has the same admixture of vexation. Let us examine more closely
what is the scientific man. Firstly, a commonplace type of man with commonplace
virtues, that is to say, a non ruling, non authoritative, and
non self sufficient type of man. He possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank
and file, equability and moderation in capacity and requirement. He has the instinct
for people like himself and for that which they require, for instance, the
portion of independence and green meadow, without which there is no rest from labor.
The claim to honor and consideration, which first and foremost presupposes recognition and
recognizability, the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value
and usefulness, with which the inward distrust which lies at the bottom of the
heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and again to be
overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also maladies and faults
of an ignoble kind. He is full of petty envy, and has a
lynx eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations he cannot attain.
He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go but does
not flow, and precisely before the man of the great current, he stands
all the colder and more reserved. His eye is then like a smooth and
irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy. The worst
and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results from the instinct of
mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of mediocrity, which labors instinctively for
the destruction of the exceptional man, and endeavors to break, or still better,
to relax every bent bow, To relax, of course, with consideration,
and naturally with an indulgent hand, to relax with confiding sympathy. That
is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to introduce itself
as the religion of sympathy two hundred seven. However, gratefully one may welcome
the objective spirit, and who has not been sick to death of all subjectivity
and its confounded ipsisimosity. In the end, however, one must learn caution,
even with regard to one's gratitude, and put a stop to the exaggeration
with which the unselfing and depersonalizing of the spirit has recently been celebrated, as
if it were the goal in itself, as if it were salvation and glorification,
as is especially accustomed to happen in the pessimist school, which has also
in its turn good reasons for paying the highest honors to disinterested knowledge. The
objective man, who no longer curses and scolds like the pessimist, the ideal
man of learning, in whom the scientific instinct blossoms forth fully after a thousand
complete and partial failures, is assuredly one of the most costly instruments that exist.
But his place is in the hand of one who is more powerful.
He is only an instrument. We may say he is a mirror. He
is no purpose in himself. The objective man is, in truth a mirror,
accustomed to prostration before everything that wants to be known, with such desires
only as knowing or reflecting implies. He waits until something comes, and then
expands himself sensitively, so that even the light footsteps and gliding past of spiritual
beings may not be lost on his surface and film. Whatever personality he still
possesses seems to him accidental, arbitrary, or still oftener disturbing. So much
has he come to regard himself as the passage and reflection of outside forms and
events. He calls up the recollection of himself with an effort, and not
infrequently wrongly, he read confounds himself with other persons. He makes mistakes with
regard to his own needs, and here only is he unrefined and negligent.
Perhaps he is troubled about the health, or the pettiness and confined atmosphere of
wife and friend, or the lack of companions and society. Indeed he sets
himself to reflect on his suffering, but in vain his thoughts already rove away
to the more general case. And tomorrow he knows as little as he knew
yesterday how to help himself. He does not now take himself seriously and devote
time to himself. He is serene not from lack of trouble, but from
lack of capacity for grasping and dealing with his trouble. The habitual complaisance with
respect to all objects and experiences, the radiant and impartial hospitality with which he
receives everything that comes his way, His habit of inconsiderate good nature, of
dangerous indifference. As to yea and nay alas there are enough of cases in
which he has to atone for these virtues of his and as man generally he
becomes far too easily the cuppet mortuum of such virtues. Should one wish love
or hatred from him? I mean love and hatred, as God, woman
and animal understand them. He will do what he can and furnish what he
can. But one must not be surprised if it should not be much,
if he should show himself just at this point to be false, fragile,
questionable, and deteriorated. His love is constrained, his hatred is artificial,
and rather unto de force a slight ostentation and exaggeration. He is only genuine
so far as he can be objective. Only in his serene totality is he
still nature and natural, His mirroring and eternally self polishing soul no longer knows
how to affirm, no longer how to deny. He does not command,
neither does he destroy. Jennet Mepris Press Green, he says with Likenitz,
let us not overlook nor undervalue the press. Neither is he a model man.
He does not go in advance of anyone, nor after either. He
places himself generally too far off to have any reason for espousing the cause of
either good or evil. If he has been so long confounded with the philosopher
with the cesarean trainer and dictator of vilization. He has had far too much
honor, and what is more essential in him has been overlooked. He is
an instrument, something of a slave, though certainly the sublimest sort of slave,
but nothing in himself Presque rhienne. The objective man is an instrument,
a costly, easily injured, easily tarnished measuring instrument and mirroring apparatus, which
is to be taken care of and respected. But he is no goal,
not outgoing nor upgoing, no complimentary man in whom the rest of existence justifies
itself, no termination, and still less a commencement, an engendering or primary
cause. Nothing hardy, powerful, self centered that wants to be master,
but rather only a soft, inflated, delicate, movable potter's form that must
wait for some kind of content and frame to shape itself. Thereto, for
the most part, a man without frame and content, a selfless man,
consequently, also nothing for women. In parentheses two hundred eight, when a
philosopher nowadays makes it known that he is not a skeptic, I hope that
has been gathered from the foregoing description of the objective spirit. People all hear
it impatiently. They regard him on that account with some apprehension. They would
like to ask so many many questions. Indeed, among timid hearers, of
whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous with
his repudiation of skepticism. It seems to them as if they heard some evil,
threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were
being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian
nihilinae, a pessimism bonai voluntatis, that not only denies means denial, but
dreadful thought practices denial against this kind of good will, a will to the
veritable actual negation of life. There is, as is generally acknowledged nowadays,
no better soporific and sedative than skepticism. The mild, pleasing, lulling poppy
of skepticism, and Hamlet himself is now prescribed by the doctors of the day
as an antidote to the spirit and its underground noises. Are not our ears
already full of bad sounds, say the skeptics, as lovers of repose and
almost as a kind of safety police. This subterranean neay is terrible. Be
still, ye pessimistic moles, the skeptic, in effect, that delicate creature
is far too easily frightened. His conscience is schooled so as to start at
every nay, and even at that sharp decided yea, and feel something like
a bite. Thereby yea and nay they seem to him opposed to morality.
He loves, on the contrary, to make a festival to his virtue by
a noble aloofness. While perhaps he says with Montaigne, what do I know?
Or with Socrates, I know that I know nothing? Or here I
do not trust myself. No door is open to me, Or even if
the door were open, why should I enter idiately? Or what is the
use of any hasty hypotheses? It might quite well be in good taste to
make no hypotheses at all. Are you absolutely obliged to straighten at once?
What is crooked? To stuff every hole with some kind of oakum? Is
there not time enough for? That? Has not the time? Leisure?
O? Ye, demons, can ye not at all? Weight? The
uncertain also has its charms. The sphinx, too is a Cerce, and
Cerce too was a philosopher. Thus does a skeptic console himself, and in
truth he needs some consolation, for skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a
certain, many sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility
and sickliness. It arises whenever or classes which have been long separated decisively and
suddenly blend with one another. In the new generation, which has inherited,
as it were, different standards and valuations in its blood, everything is disquiet,
derangement, doubt, and tentativeness. The best powers operate restrictively. The
very virtues prevent each other growing and becoming strong. Equilibrium, ballast and perpendicular
stability are lacking in body and soul. That, however, which is most
diseased and degenerated in such nondescripts is the will. They are no longer familiar
with independence of decision or the courageous feeling of pleasure in willing. They are
doubtful of the freedom of the will, even in their dreams. Our present
day Europe the scene of a senseless precipitate attempt at a racial blending of classes,
and consequently of races, is therefore skeptical in all its heights and depths,
sometimes exhibiting the mobile skepticism which springs impatiently and wantonly from branch to branch,
sometimes with gloomy aspect, like a cloud overcharged with interrogative signs, and
often sick unto death of its will. Paralysis of will? Where do we
not find this cripple sitting nowadays? And yet how bedecked oftentimes how seductively ornamented.
There are the finest gala dresses and disguises for this disease, And that,
for instance, most of what places itself nowadays in the showcases as objectiveness,
the scientific spirit lart, poor lart and pure voluntary knowledge is only decked
out skepticism and paralysis of will. I am ready to answer for this diagnosis
of the European disease. The disease of the will is diffused unequally over Europe.
It is worst and most varied. Where civilization has longest prevailed. It
decreases, according as the barbarian still or again asserts his claims, under the
loose drapery of Western culture. It is therefore in the France of today,
as can be readily disclosed and comprehended that the will is most infirm. And
France, which has always had a masterly aptitude for converting even the portentous crisis
of its spirit into something charming and seductive, now manifests emphatically its intellectual ascendency
over Europe by being the school and exhibition of all the charms of skepticism.
The power to will and to persist moreover, in a resolution, is already
somewhat stronger in Germany, and again in the north of Germany. It is
stronger than in central Germany. It is considerably stronger in England, Spain and
Corsica, associated with phlegm in the former and with hard skulls in the latter,
not to mention Italy, which is too young yet to know what it
wants and must first show whether it can exercise will. But it is strongest
and most surprising of all in that immense Middle Empire, where Europe, as
it were, flows back to Asia, namely in Russia. There the power
to will has been long stored up and accumulated. There, the will,
uncertain whether to be negative or affirmative, waits threateningly to be discharged to borrow
their pet phrase from our physicists. Perhaps not only Indian wars and complications in
Asia would be necessary to free Europe from its greatest danger, but also internal
subversion, the shattering of the Empire into small states, and above all the
introduction of parliamentary imbecility, together with the obligation of everyone to read his newspaper
at breakfast. I do not say this as one who desires it in my
heart. I should rather prefer the contrary. I mean such an increase in
the threatening attitude of Russia that Europe would have to make up its mind to
become equally threatening, namely to acquire one will by means of a new cast
to rule over the continent, a persistent, dreadful will of its own,
that can set its aims thousands of years ahead, so that the long spun
out comedy of its petty statism and its dynastic as well as its democratic,
many willedness might finally be brought to a close. The time for petty politics
is past. The next century will bring the struggle for the dominion of the
world, the compulsion to great politics two hundred nine. As to how far
the new warlike age on which we Europeans have evidently entered, may perhaps favor
the growth of another and stronger kind of skepticism. I should like to express
myself, preliminarily merely by a parable which the lovers of German history will already
understand, that unscrupulous enthusiast for big, handsome grenadiers, who as King of
Russia brought into being a military and skeptical genius, and therewith in reality the
new and now triumphantly emerged type of German. The problematic, crazy father of
Frederick the Great had on one point the very knack and lucky grasp of the
genius. He knew what was then lacking in Germany, the want of which
was a hundred times more alarming and serious than any lack of culture and social
form. His ill will to the young Frederick resulted from the anxiety of a
profound instinct men were lacking, and he suspected, to his bitterest regret that
his own son was not man enough. There however, he deceived himself.
But who would not have deceived himself in his place? He saw his son
lapsed to atheism, to the esprie, to the pleasant frivolity of clever Frenchman.
He saw in the background the great blood succor the spider's skepticism. He
suspected the incurable wretchedness of a heart no longer hard enough either for evil or
good, and of a broken will that no longer commands, is no longer
able to command. Meanwhile, however, there grew up in his son that
new kind of harder and more dangerous skepticism. Who knows to what extent It
was encouraged just by his father's hatred and the icy melancholy of a will condemned
to solitude. The skepticism of daring manliness, which is closely related to the
genius for war and conquest, and made its first entrance into Germany in the
person of the Great Frederick. This skepticism despises and nevertheless grasps, It undermines,
and takes possession. It does not believe, but it does not thereby
lose itself. It gives the spirit a dangerous liberty, but it keeps strict
guard over the heart. It is the German form of skepticism, which,
as a continued fredericianism, risen to the highest spirituality, has kept Europe for
a considerable time under the dominion of the German spirit and its critical and historical
distrust owing to the insuperably strong and tough masculine character of the great German philologists
and historical critics, who rightly estimated were also all of them artists of destruction
and dissolution. A new conception of the German spirit gradually established itself, in
spite of all romanticism in music and philosophy, in which the leaning towards masculine
skepticism was decidedly prominent, whether for instance as fearlessness of gaze, as courage
and sternness of the dissecting hand, or as resolute will to dangerous voyages of
discovery to spiritualized North Pole expeditions under barren and dangerous skies. There may be
good grounds for it when warm blooded and superficial humanitarians crossed themselves before this spirit,
say esprit fetaliste ironic Mephistopheliq, as Michela calls it, not without a
shudder. But if one would realize how characteristic is the sphere of the man
in the German spirit which awakened Europe out of its dogmatic slumber, let us
call to mind the former conception, which had to be overcome by this new
one, and that it is not so very long ago that a masculinized woman
could dare with unbridled presumption to recommend the Germans to the interests of Europe as
gentle, good hearted, weak willed, and poetical fools. Finally, let
us only understand profoundly enough Napoleon's astonishment when he saw Gerthe It reveals what had
been regarded for centuries as the German spirit. Voila unom. That was as
much to say, but this is a man, and I only expected to
see a German two hundred ten. Supposing then that in the picture of the
philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps
be skeptics in the last mentioned, since something in them would only be designated
thereby, and not they themselves. With equal right, they might call themselves
critics, and assuredly they will be men of experiments. By the name with
which I ventured to baptize them, I have already expressly emphasized their attempting and
their love of attempting. Is this because as critics in body and soul,
they will love to make use of experiments in a new and perhaps wider and
more dangerous sense. In their passion for knowledge, will they have to go
further in daring and painful attempts than the sensitive and pampered taste of a democratic
century can approve of. There is no doubt these coming ones will be least
able to dispense with the serious and not unscrupulous qualities which distinguish the critic from
the skeptic. I mean the certainty as to standards of worth, the conscious
employment of a unity of method, the wary courage, the standing alone,
and the capacity for self responsibility. Indeed, they will avow among themselves a
delight in denial and dissection, and a certain considerate cruelty which knows how to
handle the knife surely and deftly, even when the heart bleeds. They will
be sterner, and perhaps not always towards themselves, only than humane people may
desire. They will not deal with the truth in order that it may please
them or elevate and inspire them. They will rather have little faith in truth,
bringing with it such revels for the feelings. They will smile those rigorous
spirits when anyone says in their presence that thought elevates me, why should it
not be true? Or that work enchants me? Why should it not be
beautiful? Or that artist enlarges me? Why should he not be great?
Perhaps they will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all
that is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic. And if any
one could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easily find therein the
intention to reconcile Christian sentiments with antique taste, or even with modern parliamentarism,
the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently
very conciliatory century. Critical discipline and every habit that conduces to purity and rigor
in intellectual matters will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the
future. They may even make a display thereof as their special adornment. Nevertheless,
they will not want to be called critics. On that account. It
will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as
is so welcome nowadays, that philosophy itself is criticism and critical science, and
nothing else whatever though this estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the
positivists of France and Germany, and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste
of Kant let us call to mind the titles of his principal works. Our
new philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of the philosopher,
and just on that account, as instruments, they are far from being philosophers
themselves. Even the great Chinaman of Konnigsburg was only a great critic two hundred
eleven. I insist upon it that people finally cease confounding philosophical workers and in
general, scientific men with philosophers, that precisely here one should strictly give each
his own, and not give those far too much these far too little.
It may be necessary for the education of the real philosopher that he himself should
have once stood upon all those steps upon which his servants, the scientific workers
of philosophy, remain standing and must remain standing. He himself must perhaps have
been critic and dogmatist and historian, and besides poet and collector and traveler and
riddle reader and moralist and seer and free spirit and almost everything, in order
to traverse the whole range of human values and nations, and that he may
be able, with a variety of eyes and consciences to look from a height
to any distance, from a depth up to any height, from a nook
into any expanse. But all these are only preliminary conditions for his task.
This task itself demands something else. It requires him to create values. The
philosophical workers, after the excellent pattern of Kant and Hegel, have to fix
and formalize some great existing body of valuations, that is to say, former
determinations of value, creations of value which have become prevalent and are for a
time called truths, whether in the domain of the logical, the political,
moral, or the artistic. It is for these investigators to make whatever has
happened and been esteemed hitherto conspicuous, conceivable, intelligible, and manageable, to
shorten everything long, even time itself, and to subjugate the entire past,
an immense and wonderful task, in the carrying out of which all refined pride,
all tenacious will can surely find satisfaction. The real philosophers, however,
are commanders and law givers, they say, thus shall it be? They
determine first the whither and the why of mankind, and thereby set aside the
previous labor of all philosophical workers and all subjugators of the past. They grasp
at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was becomes for
them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their knowing is
creating. There creating is a law. Giving Their will to truth is will
to power. Are there at present such philosophers? Have there ever been such
philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers some day? Two hundred twelve?
It is always more obvious to me that the philosopher, as a man indispensable
for the morrow and the day after the morrow, has ever found himself,
and has been obliged to find himself in contradiction to the day in which he
lives. His enemy has always been the ideal of his day. Hitherto all
those extraordinary furtherers of humanity, whom one calls philosophers, who rarely regarded themselves
as lovers of wisdom, but rather as disagreeable fools and dangerous interrogators, have
found their mission their hard, involuntary imperative mission. In the end, however,
the greatness of their mission in being the bad conscience of their age.
In putting the vivisector's knife to the breast of the very virtues of their age,
they have betrayed their own secret. It has been for the sake of
a new greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his aggrandizement. They
have always disclosed how much hypocrisy, indolence, self indulgence, and self neglect,
how much falsehood was concealed under the most venerated types of contemporary morality,
how much virtue was outlived. They have always said, we must remove,
hence to where you are least at home. In the face of a world
of modern ideas which would like to confine everyone in a corner in a specialty,
a philosopher, if there could be philosophers nowadays, would be compelled to
place the greatness of man, the conception of greatness, precisely in his comprehensiveness
and multifariousness, in his all roundness. He would even determine worth and rank
according to the amount and variety of that which a man could bear and take
upon himself, according to the extent to which a man could stretch his responsibility.
Nowadays, the taste and virtue of the age weaken and attenuate the will.
Nothing is so adapted to the spirit of the age as weakness of will.
Consequently, in the ideal of the philosopher, strength of will, sternness
and capacity for prolonged resolution must specially be included in the conception of greatness with
as good a right as the opposite doctrine, with its ideal of a silly,
renouncing, humble, selfless humanity, was suited to an opposite age,
such as the sixteenth century, which suffered from its accumulated energy of will and
from the wildest torrents and floods of selfishness. In the time of Socrates among
men only of worn out instincts, old conservative Athenians, who let themselves go
for the sake of happiness, as they said, for the sake of pleasure,
as their conduct indicated, and who had continually on their lips the old
pompous words to which they had long forfeited the right by the life they led.
Irony was perhaps necessary for greatness of soul. The wicked Socratic assurance of
the old physician and plebeian who cut ruthlessly into his own flesh, as into
the flesh and heart of the noble, with a look that said, plainly
enough, do not dissemble before me. Here we are equal at present.
On the contrary, when throughout Europe the hurting animal alone attains to honors and
dispenses honors, when equality of right can too readily be transformed into equality and
wrong, I mean to say, into general war against everything rare, strange
and privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty,
the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence, and lordliness. At present,
it belongs to the conception of greatness to be noble, to wish to be
a part, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to
have to live by personal initiative. And the philosopher will betray something of his
own ideal when he asserts he shall be the greatest, who can be,
the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond
good and evil, the master of his virtues and of superabundance of will.
Precisely this shall be called greatness, as diversified as can be entire, as
ample as can be full. And to ask once more the question is greatness
possible nowadays two hundred and thirteen. It is difficult to learn what a philosopher
is, because it cannot be taught. One must know it by experience,
or one should have the pride not to know it. The fact that at
present people all talk of things of which they cannot have any experience is true.
More especially, and unfortunately, as concerns the philosopher and philosophical matters.
The very few know them are permitted to know them, and all popular ideas
about them are false. Thus, for instance, the truly philosophical combination of
a bold, exuberant spirituality which runs at presto pace, and a dialectic rigor
and necessity which makes no false step, is unknown to most thinkers and scholars
from their own experience, and therefore should anyone speak of it in their presence,
it is incredible to them. They conceive of every necessity as troublesome,
as a painful, compulsory obedience and state of constraint. Thinking itself is regarded
by them as something slow and hesitating, almost as a trouble, and often
enough as worthy of the sweat of the noble, but not at all as
something easy and divine. Closely related to dancing and exuberance to think and to
take a matter seriously arduously, that is one and the same thing to them.
Such only has been their experience. Artists have here perhaps a finer intuition,
they who know only too well that precisely, when they no longer do
anything arbitrarily and everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, of subtlety,
of power of creatively fixing, disposing, and shaping reaches its climax. In
short, that necessity and freedom of will are then the same thing with them.
There is in fine a graduation of rank in psychical states, to which
the graduation of rank in the problems corresponds. And the highest problems repel ruthlessly
everyone who ventures too near them without being predestined for their solution by the loftiness
and power of his spirituality. Of what use is it for nimble everyday intellects,
or clumsy honest mechanics and empiricists to press, in their Plebeian ambition close
to such problems, and, as it were, into this holy of holies,
as so often happens nowadays. But coarse feet must never tread upon such
carpets. This is provided for in the primary law of things, the doors
remain closed to those intruders, though they may dash and break their heads.
Thereon, people have always to be borne to a high station, or more
definitely, they have to be bred for it. A person has only a
right to philosophy, taking the word in its higher significance, in virtue of
his descent. The ancestors the blood decide here Also, many generations must have
prepared the way for the coming of the philosopher. Each of his virtues must
have been separately acquired, nurtured, transmitted, and embodied. Not only the
bold, easy, delicate course and current of his thoughts, but above all,
the readiness for great responsibilities, the majesty of ruling, glance and contemning
look, the feeling of separation from the multitude with their duties and virtues.
The kindly patronage and defense of whatever is misunderstood and calumniated, be it God
or devil. The delight and practice of supreme justice, the art of commanding,
the amplitude of will, The lingering eye, which rarely admires, rarely
looks up, rarely loves. End of Chapter six