Part 15

MANNERS.--Good manners disappear in proportion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly observed from decade to decade by those who have an eye for public behaviour, which grows visibly more vulgar. No one any longer knows how to court and flatter intelligently; hence arises the ludicrous fact that in cases where we _must_ render actual homage (to a great statesman or artist, for instance), the words of deepest feeling, of simple, peasant-like honesty, have to be borrowed, owing to the embarrassment resulting from the lack of grace and wit. Thus the public ceremonious meeting of men appears ever more clumsy, but more full of feeling and honesty without really being so. But must there always be a decline in manners? It appears to me, rather, that manners take a deep curve and that we are approaching their lowest point. When society has become sure of its intentions and principles, so that they have a moulding effect (the manners we have learnt from former moulding conditions are now inherited and always more weakly learnt), there will then be company manners, gestures and social expressions, which must appear as necessary and simply natural because they are intentions and principles. The better division of time and work, the gymnastic exercise transformed into the accompaniment of all beautiful leisure, increased and severer meditation, which brings wisdom and suppleness even to the body, will bring all this in its train. Here, indeed, we might think with a smile of our scholars, and consider whether, as a matter of fact, they who wish to be regarded as the forerunners of that new culture are distinguished by their better manners? This is hardly the case; although their spirit may be willing enough their flesh is weak. The past of culture is still too powerful in their muscles, they still stand in a fettered position, and are half worldly priests and half dependent educators of the upper classes, and besides this they have been rendered crippled and lifeless by the pedantry of science and by antiquated, spiritless methods. In any case, therefore, they are physically, and often three-fourths mentally, still the courtiers of an old, even antiquated culture, and as such are themselves antiquated; the new spirit that occasionally inhabits these old dwellings often serves only to make them more uncertain and frightened. In them there dwell the ghosts of the past as well as the ghosts of the future; what wonder if they do not wear the best expression or show the most pleasing behaviour?

251.

THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE.--To him who works and seeks in her, Science gives much pleasure,--to him who _learns_ her facts, very little. But as all important truths of science must gradually become commonplace and everyday matters, even this small amount of pleasure ceases, just as we have long ceased to take pleasure in learning the admirable multiplication table. Now if Science goes on giving less pleasure in herself, and always takes more pleasure in throwing suspicion on the consolations of metaphysics, religion and art, that greatest of all sources of pleasure, to which mankind owes almost its whole humanity, becomes impoverished. Therefore a higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain-chambers, so to speak, one to feel science and the other to feel non-science, which can lie side by side, without confusion, divisible, exclusive; this is a necessity of health. In one

## part lies the source of strength, in the other lies the regulator;

it must be heated with illusions, onesidednesses, passions; and the malicious and dangerous consequences of over-heating must be averted by the help of conscious Science. If this necessity of the higher culture is not satisfied, the further course of human development can almost certainly be foretold: the interest in what is true ceases as it guarantees less pleasure; illusion, error, and imagination reconquer step by step the ancient territory, because they are united to pleasure; the ruin of science: the relapse into barbarism is the next result; mankind must begin to weave its web afresh after having, like Penelope, destroyed it during the night. But who will assure us that it will always find the necessary strength for this?

252.

THE PLEASURE IN DISCERNMENT.--Why is discernment, that essence of the searcher and the philosopher, connected with pleasure? Firstly, and above all, because thereby we become conscious of our strength, for the same reason that gymnastic exercises, even without spectators, are enjoyable. Secondly, because in the course of knowledge we surpass older ideas and their representatives, and become, or believe ourselves to be, conquerors. Thirdly, because even a very little new knowledge exalts us above _every one,_ and makes us feel we are the only ones who know the subject aright. These are the three most important reasons of the pleasure, but there are many others, according to the nature of the discerner. A not inconsiderable index of such is given, where no one would look for it, in a passage of my parenetic work on Schopenhauer,[2] with the arrangement of which every experienced servant of knowledge may be satisfied, even though he might wish to dispense with the ironical touch that seems to pervade those pages. For if it be true that for the making of a scholar "a number of very human impulses and desires must be thrown together," that the scholar is indeed a very noble but not a pure metal, and "consists of a confused blending of very different impulses and attractions," the same thing may be said equally of the making and nature of the artist, the philosopher and the moral genius--and whatever glorified great names there may be in that list. _Everything_ human deserves ironical consideration with respect to its _origin,_--therefore irony is so _superfluous_ in the world.

253.

FIDELITY AS A PROOF OF VALIDITY.--It is a perfect sign of a sound theory if during _forty years_ its originator does not mistrust it; but I maintain that there has never yet been a philosopher who has not eventually deprecated the philosophy of his youth. Perhaps, however, he has not spoken publicly of this change of opinion, for reasons of ambition, or, what is more probable in noble natures, out of delicate consideration for his adherents.

254.

THE INCREASE OF WHAT IS INTERESTING.--In the course of higher education everything becomes interesting to man, he knows how to find the instructive side of a thing quickly and to put his finger on the place where it can fill up a gap in his ideas, or where it may verify a thought. Through this boredom disappears more and more, and so does excessive excitability of temperament. Finally he moves among men like a botanist among plants, and looks upon himself as a phenomenon, which only greatly excites his discerning instinct.

255.

THE SUPERSTITION OF THE SIMULTANEOUS.--Simultaneous things hold together, it is said. A relative dies far away, and at the same time we dream about him,--Consequently! But countless relatives die and we do not dream about them. It is like shipwrecked people who make vows; afterwards, in the temples, we do not see the votive tablets of those who perished. A man dies, an owl hoots, a clock stops, all at one hour of the night,--must there not be some connection? Such an intimacy with nature as this supposition implies is flattering to mankind. This species of superstition is found again in a refined form in historians and delineators of culture, who usually have a kind of hydrophobic horror of all that senseless mixture, in which individual and national life is so rich.

256.

## ACTION AND NOT KNOWLEDGE EXERCISED BY SCIENCE.--The value of strictly

pursuing science for a time does not lie precisely in its results, for these, in proportion to the ocean of what is worth knowing, are but an infinitesimally small drop. But it gives an additional energy, decisiveness, and toughness of endurance; it teaches how to attain an _aim suitably._ In so far it is very valuable, with a view to all that is done later on, to have once been a scientific man.

257.

THE YOUTHFUL CHARM OF SCIENCE.--The search for truth still retains the charm of being in strong contrast to gray and now tiresome error; but this charm is gradually disappearing. It is true we still live in the youthful age of science and are accustomed to follow truth as a lovely girl; but how will it be when one day she becomes an elderly, ill-tempered looking woman? In almost all sciences the fundamental knowledge is either found in earliest times or is still being sought; what a different attraction this exerts compared to that time when everything essential has been found and there only remains for the seeker a scanty gleaning (which sensation may be learnt in several historical disciplines).

258.

THE STATUE OF HUMANITY.--The genius of culture fares as did Cellini when his statue of Perseus was being cast; the molten mass threatened to run short, but it _had_ to suffice, so he flung in his plates and dishes, and whatever else his hands fell upon. In the same way genius flings in errors, vices, hopes, ravings, and other things of baser as well as of nobler metal, for the statue of humanity must emerge and be finished; what does it matter if commoner material is used here and there?

259.

A MALE CULTURE.--The Greek culture of the classic age is a male culture. As far as women are concerned, Pericles expresses everything in the funeral speech: "They are best when they are as little spoken of as possible amongst men." The erotic relation of men to youths was the necessary and sole preparation, to a degree unattainable to our comprehension, of all manly education (pretty much as for a long time all higher education of women was only attainable through love and marriage). All idealism of the strength of the Greek nature threw itself into that relation, and it is probable that never since have young men been treated so attentively, so lovingly, so entirely with a view to their welfare (_virtus_) as in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.--according to the beautiful saying of Hölderlin: "_denn liebend giebt der Sterbliche vom Besten."_[3] The higher the light in which this relation was regarded, the lower sank intercourse with woman; nothing else was taken into consideration than the production of children and lust; there was no intellectual intercourse, not even real love-making. If it be further remembered that women were even excluded from contests and spectacles of every description, there only remain the religious cults as their sole higher occupation. For although in the tragedies Electra and Antigone were represented, this was only _tolerated_ in art, but not liked in real life,--just as now we cannot endure anything pathetic in _life_ but like it in art. The women had no other mission than to produce beautiful, strong bodies, in which the father's character lived on as unbrokenly as possible, and therewith to counteract the increasing nerve-tension of such a highly developed culture. This kept the Greek culture young for a relatively long time; for in the Greek mothers the Greek genius always returned to nature.

260.

THE PREJUDICE IN FAVOUR OF GREATNESS.--It is clear that men overvalue everything great and prominent. This arises from the conscious or unconscious idea that they deem it very useful when one person throws all his strength into one thing and makes himself into a monstrous organ. Assuredly, an _equal_ development of all his powers is more useful and happier for man; for every talent is a vampire which sucks blood and strength from other powers, and an exaggerated production can drive the most gifted almost to madness. Within the circle of the arts, too, extreme natures excite far too much attention; but a much lower culture is necessary to be captivated by them. Men submit from habit to everything that seeks power.

261.

THE TYRANTS OF THE MIND.--It is only where the ray of myth falls that the life of the Greeks shines; otherwise it is gloomy. The Greek philosophers are now robbing themselves of this myth; is it not as if they wished to quit the sunshine for shadow and gloom? Yet no plant avoids the light; and, as a matter of fact, those philosophers were only seeking a _brighter_ sun; the myth--was not pure enough, not shining enough for them. They found this light in their knowledge, in that which each of them called his "truth." But in those times knowledge shone with a greater glory; it was still young and knew but little of all the difficulties and dangers of its path; it could still hope to reach in one single bound the central point of all being, and from thence to solve the riddle of the world. These philosophers had a firm belief in themselves and their "truth," and with it they overthrew all their neighbours and predecessors; each one was a warlike, violent _tyrant._ The happiness in believing themselves the possessors of truth was perhaps never greater in the world, but neither were the hardness, the arrogance, and the tyranny and evil of such a belief. They were tyrants, they were that, therefore, which every Greek wanted to be, and which every one was if he _was able._ Perhaps Solon alone is an exception; he tells in his poems how he disdained personal tyranny. But he did it for love of his works, of his law-giving; and to be a law-giver is a sublimated form of tyranny. Parmenides also made laws. Pythagoras and Empedocles probably did the same; Anaximander founded a city. Plato was the incarnate wish to become the greatest philosophic law-giver and founder of States; he appears to have suffered terribly over the non-fulfilment of his nature, and towards his end his soul was filled with the bitterest gall. The more the Greek philosophers lost in power the more they suffered inwardly from this bitterness and malice; when the various sects fought for their truths in the street, then first were the souls of these wooers of truth completely clogged through envy and spleen; the tyrannical element then raged like poison within their bodies. These many petty tyrants would have liked to devour each other; there survived not a single spark of love and very little joy in their own knowledge. The saying that tyrants are generally murdered and that their descendants are short-lived, is true also of the tyrants of the mind. Their history is short and violent, and their after-effects break off suddenly. It may be said of almost all great Hellenes that they appear to have come too late: it was thus with Æschylus, with Pindar, with Demosthenes, with Thucydides: one generation--and then it is passed for ever. That is the stormy and dismal element in Greek history. We now, it is true, admire the gospel of the tortoises. To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to the theory "The smallest possible amount in the longest possible time!" Oh! how quickly Greek history runs on! Since then life has never been so extravagant--so unbounded. I cannot persuade myself that the history of the Greeks followed that natural course for which it is so celebrated. They were much too variously gifted to be _gradual_ the orderly manner of the tortoise when running a race with Achilles, and that is called natural development. The Geeks went rapidly forward, but equally rapidly downwards; the movement of the whole machine is so intensified that a single stone thrown amid its wheels was sufficient to break it. Such a stone, for instance, was Socrates; the hitherto so wonderfully regular, although certainly too rapid, development of the philosophical science was destroyed in one night. It is no idle question whether Plato, had he remained free from the Socratic charm, would not have discovered a still higher type of the philosophic man, which type is for ever lost to us. We look into the ages before him as into a sculptor's workshop of such types. The fifth and sixth centuries B.C. seemed to promise something more and higher even than they produced; they stopped short at promising and announcing. And yet there is hardly a greater loss than the loss of a type, of a new, hitherto undiscovered highest _possibility of the philosophic life:_--Even of the older type the greater number are badly transmitted; it seems to me that all philosophers, from Thales to Democritus, are remarkably difficult to recognise, but whoever succeeds in imitating these figures walks amongst specimens of the mightiest and purest type. This ability is certainly rare, it was even absent in those later Greeks, who occupied themselves with the knowledge of the older philosophy; Aristotle, especially, hardly seems to have had eyes in his head when he stands before these great ones. And thus it appears as if these splendid philosophers had lived in vain, or as if they had only been intended to prepare the quarrelsome and talkative followers of the Socratic schools. As I have said, here is a gap, a break in development; some great misfortune must have happened, and the only statue which might have revealed the meaning and purpose of that great artistic training was either broken or unsuccessful; what actually happened has remained for ever a secret of the workshop.

That which happened amongst the Greeks--namely, that every great thinker who believed himself to be in possession of the absolute truth became a tyrant, so that even the mental history of the Greeks acquired that violent, hasty and dangerous character shown by their political history,--this type of event was not therewith exhausted, much that is similar has happened even in more modern times, although gradually becoming rarer and now but seldom showing the pure, naïve conscience of the Greek philosophers. For on the whole, opposition doctrines and scepticism now speak too powerfully, too loudly. The period of mental tyranny is past. It is true that in the spheres of higher culture there must always be a supremacy, but henceforth this supremacy lies in the hands of the _oligarchs of the mind._ In spite of local and political separation they form a cohesive society, whose members _recognise and acknowledge_ each other, whatever public opinion and the verdicts of review and newspaper writers who influence the masses may circulate in favour of or against them. Mental superiority, which formerly divided and embittered, nowadays generally _unites;_ how could the separate individuals assert themselves and swim through life on their own course, against all currents, if they did not see others like them living here and there under similar conditions, and grasped their hands in the struggle as much against the ochlocratic character of the half mind and half culture as against the occasional attempts to establish a tyranny with the help of the masses? Oligarchs are necessary to each other, they are each other's best joy, they understand their signs, but each is nevertheless free, he fights and conquers in _his_ place and perishes rather than submit.

262.

HOMER.--The greatest fact in Greek culture remains this, that Homer became so early Pan-Hellenic. All mental and human freedom to which the Greeks attained is traceable to this fact. At the same time it has actually been fatal to Greek culture, for Homer levelled, inasmuch as he centralised, and dissolved the more serious instincts of independence. From time to time there arose from the depths of Hellenism an opposition to Homer: but he always remained victorious. All great mental powers have an oppressing effect as well as a liberating one; but it certainly makes a difference whether it is Homer or the Bible or Science that tyrannises over mankind.

263.

TALENTS.--In such a highly developed humanity as the present, each individual naturally has access to many talents. Each has an _inborn talent,_ but only in a few is that degree of toughness, endurance, and energy born and trained that he really becomes a talent, _becomes_ what he _is,_ that is, that he discharges it in works and actions.

264.

THE WITTY PERSON EITHER OVERVALUED OR UNDERVALUED.--Unscientific but talented people value every mark of intelligence, whether it be on a true or a false track; above all, they want the person with whom they have intercourse to entertain them with his wit, to spur them on, to inflame them, to carry them away in seriousness and play, and in any case to be a powerful amulet to protect them against boredom. Scientific natures, on the other hand, know that the gift of possessing all manner of notions should be strictly controlled by the scientific spirit: it is not that which shines, deludes and excites, but the often insignificant truth that is the fruit which he knows how to shake down from the tree of knowledge. Like Aristotle, he is not permitted to make any distinction between the "bores" and the "wits," his _dæmon_ leads him through the desert as well as through tropical vegetation, in order that he may only take pleasure in the really actual, tangible, true. In insignificant scholars this produces a general disdain and suspicion of cleverness, and, on the other hand, clever people frequently have an aversion to science, as have, for instance, almost all artists.

265.

SENSE IN SCHOOL.--School has no task more important than to teach strict thought, cautious judgment, and logical conclusions, hence it must pay no attention to what hinders these operations, such as religion, for instance. It can count on the fact that human vagueness, custom, and need will later on unstring the bow of all-too-severe thought. But so long as its influence lasts it should enforce that which is the essential and distinguishing point in man: "Sense and Science, the _very highest_ power of man"--as Goethe judges. The great natural philosopher, Von Baer, thinks that the superiority of all Europeans, when compared to Asiatics, lies in the trained capability of giving reasons for that which they believe, of which the latter are utterly incapable. Europe went to the school of logical and critical thought, Asia still fails to know how to distinguish between truth and fiction, and is not Conscious whether its convictions spring from individual observation and systematic thought or from imagination. Sense in the school has made Europe what it is; in the Middle Ages it was on the road to become once more a part and dependent of Asia,--forfeiting, therefore, the scientific mind which it owed to the Greeks.

266.

THE UNDERVALUED EFFECT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHING.--The value of a public school is seldom sought in those things which are really learnt there and are carried away never to be lost, but in those things which are learnt and which the pupil only acquires against his will, in order to get rid of them again as soon as possible. Every educated person acknowledges that the reading of the classics, as now practised, is monstrous proceeding carried on before you people are ripe enough for it by teachers who with every word, often by their appearance alone, throw a mildew on a good author. But therein lies the value, generally unrecognised, of these teachers who speak _the abstract language of the higher culture,_ which, though dry and difficult to understand, is yet a sort of higher gymnastics of the brain; and there is value in the constant recurrence in their language of ideas, artistic expressions, methods and allusions which the young people hardly ever hear in the conversations of their relatives and in the street. Even if the pupils only _hear,_ their intellect is involuntarily trained to a scientific mode of regarding things. It is not possible to emerge from this discipline entirely untouched by its abstract character, and to remain a simple child of nature.

267.