Translated by Helen
Zimmern, with Introduction by J.
Zimmern, with Introduction by J.
Nietzsche - v03 - Future of Our Educational Institutions
Was the person created
out of a conception, or the conception out of a person?
This is the real " Homeric question," the central
problem of the personality.
The difficulty of answering this question, how-
ever, is increased when we seek a reply in another
direction, from the standpoint of the poems them-
selves which have come down to us. As it is
difficult for us at the present day, and necessitates
## p. 156 (#176) ############################################
156 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
a serious effort on our part, to understand the law
of gravitation clearly—that the earth alters its
form of motion when another heavenly body
changes its position in space, although no material
connection unites one to the other—it likewise
costs us some trouble to obtain a clear impression
of that wonderful problem which, like a coin long
passed from hand to hand, has lost its original
and highly conspicuous stamp. Poetical works,
which cause the hearts of even the greatest geniuses
to fail when they endeavour to vie with them,
and in which unsurpassable images are held up
for the admiration of posterity—and yet the poet
who wrote them with only a hollow, shaky name,
whenever we do lay hold on him; nowhere the
solid kernel of a powerful personality. "For who
would wage war with the gods: who, even with
the one god? " asks Goethe even, who, though a
genius, strove in vain to solve that mysterious
problem of the Homeric inaccessibility.
The conception of popular poetry seemed to
lead like a bridge over this problem—a deeper
and more original power than that of every single
creative individual was said to have become active;
the happiest people, in the happiest period of its
existence, in the highest activity of fantasy and
formative power, was said to have created those
immeasurable poems. In this universality there
is something almost intoxicating in the thought of
a popular poem: we feel, with artistic pleasure,
the broad, overpowering liberation of a popular
gift, and we delight in this natural phenomenon
as we do in an uncontrollable cataract. But as
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 157
soon as we examine this thought at close quarters,
we involuntarily put a poetic mass of people in the
place of the poetising soul of the people: a long
row of popular poets in whom individuality has
no meaning, and in whom the tumultuous move-
ment of a people's soul, the intuitive strength of a
people's eye, and the unabated profusion of a
people's fantasy, were once powerful: a row of
original geniuses, attached to a time, to a poetic
genus, to a subject-matter.
Such a conception justly made people suspicious.
Could it be possible that that same Nature who so
sparingly distributed her rarest and most precious
production—genius—should suddenly take the
notion of lavishing her gifts in one sole direction?
And here the thorny question again made its
appearance: Could we not get along with one
genius only, and explain the present existence of
that unattainable excellence? And now eyes
were keenly on the lookout for whatever that
excellence and singularity might consist of. Im-
possible for it to be in the construction of the
complete works, said one party, for this is far from
faultless; but doubtless to be found in single songs:
in the single pieces above all; not in the whole.
A second party, on the other hand, sheltered them-
selves beneath the authority of Aristotle, who
especially admired Homer's "divine" nature in
the choice of his entire subject, and the manner
in which he planned and carried it out. If, how-
ever, this construction was not clearly seen, this
fault was due to the way the poems were handed
down to posterity and not to the poet himself—
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
IS8 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
it was the result of retouchings and interpolations,
owing to which the original setting of the work
gradually became obscured. The more the first
school looked for inequalities, contradictions,
perplexities, the more energetically did the other
school brush aside what in their opinion obscured
the original plan, in order, if possible, that nothing
might be left remaining but the actual words of
the original epic itself. The second school of
thought of course held fast by the conception of
an epoch-making genius as the composer of the
great works. The first school, on the other hand,
wavered between the supposition of one genius
plus a number of minor poets, and another
hypothesis which assumed only a number of
superior and even mediocre individual bards, but
also postulated a mysterious discharging, a deep,
national, artistic impulse, which shows itself in
individual minstrels as an almost indifferent
medium. It is to this latter school that we must
attribute the representation of the Homeric poems
as the expression of that mysterious impulse.
All these schools of thought start from the
assumption that the problem of the present form
of these epics can be solved from the standpoint
of an aesthetic judgment—but we must await the
decision as to the authorised line of demarcation
between the man of genius and the poetical soul
of the people. Are there characteristic differences
between the utterances of the man of genius and
the poetical soul of the people t
This whole contrast, however, is unjust and
misleading. There is no more dangerous
## p. 159 (#179) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 159
assumption in modern aesthetics than that of
popular poetry and individual poetry, or, as it is
usually called, artistic poetry. This is the re-
action, or, if you will, the superstition, which
followed upon the most momentous discovery of
historico-philological science, the discovery and
appreciation of the soul of the people. For this
discovery prepared the way for a coming scientific
view of history, which was until then, and in many
respects is even now, a mere collection of materials,
with the prospect that new materials would con-
tinue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing
pile would never be systematically arranged. The
people now understood for the first time that the
long-felt power of greater individualities and wills
was larger than the pitifully small will of an in-
dividual man; * they now saw that everything truly
great in the kingdom of the will could not have
its deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral
individual will; and, finally, they now discovered
the powerful instincts of the masses, and diagnosed
those unconscious impulses to be the foundations
and supports of the so-called universal history. But
the newly-lighted flame also cast its shadow: and
this shadow was none other than that superstition
already referred to, which popular poetry set up
in opposition to individual poetry, and thus en-
larged the comprehension of the people's soul to
that of the people's mind. By the misapplication
of a tempting analogical inference, people had
* Of course Nietzsche saw afterwards that this was not so.
—TR.
## p. 160 (#180) ############################################
l6o HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
reached the point of applying in the domain of
the intellect and artistic ideas that principle of
greater individuality which is truly applicable only
in the domain of the will. The masses have never
experienced more flattering treatment than in thus
having the laurel of genius set upon their empty
heads. It was imagined that new shells were
forming round a small kernel, so to speak, and
that those pieces of popular poetry originated like
avalanches, in the drift and flow of tradition. They
were, however, ready to consider that kernel as
being of the smallest possible dimensions, so that
they might occasionally get rid of it altogether with-
out losing anything of the mass of the avalanche.
According to this view, the text itself and the
stories built round it are one and the same thing.
Now, however, such a contrast between popular
poetry and individual poetry does not exist at all;
on the contrary, all poetry, and of course popular
poetry also, requires an intermediary individuality.
This much-abused contrast, therefore, is necessary
only when the term individual poem is understood
to mean a poem which has not grown out of the
soil of popular feeling. but which has been composed
by a non-popular poet in a non-popular atmos-
phere—something which has come to maturity in
the study of a learned man, for example.
With the superstition which presupposes poet-
ising masses is connected another: that popular
poetry is limited to one particular period of a
people's history and afterwards dies out—which
indeed follows as a consequence of the first super-.
stition I have mentioned. According to this
## p. 161 (#181) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. l6l
school, in the place of the gradually decaying
popular poetry we have artistic poetry, the work of
individual minds, not of masses of people. But the
same powers which were once active are still so j
and the form in which they act has remained
exactly the same. The great poet of a literary
period is still a popular poet in no narrower sense
than the popular poet of an illiterate age. The
difference between them is not in the way they
originate, but it is their diffusion and propagation,
in short, tradition. This tradition is exposed to
eternal danger without the help of handwriting,
and runs the risk of including in the poems the
remains of those individualities through whose oral
tradition they were handed down.
If we apply all these principles to the Homeric
poems, it follows that we gain nothing with our
theory of the poetising soul of the people, and
that we are always referred back to the poetical
individual. We are thus confronted with the task
of distinguishing that which can have originated
only in a single poetical mind from that which
is, so to speak, swept up by the tide of oral
tradition, and which is a highly important
constituent part of the Homeric poems.
Since literary history first ceased to be a mere
collection of names, people have attempted to
grasp and formulate the individualities of the
poets. A certain mechanism forms part of the
method: it must be explained—i. e. , it must be
deduced from principles—why this or that in-
dividuality appears in this way and not in that.
People now study biographical details, environ-
L
## p. 162 (#182) ############################################
162 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
merit, acquaintances, contemporary events, and
believe that by mixing all these ingredients
together they will be able to manufacture the
wished-for individuality. But they forget that
the punctum saliens, the indefinable individual
characteristics, can never be obtained from a com-
pound of this nature. The less there is known
about the life and times of the poet, the less
applicable is this mechanism. When, however,
we have merely the works and the name of the
writer, it is almost impossible to detect the in-
dividuality, at all events, for those who put their
faith in the mechanism in question; and particu-
larly when the works are perfect, when they are
pieces of popular poetry. For the best way for
these mechanicians to grasp individual character-
istics is by perceiving deviations from the genius
of the people; the aberrations and hidden allusions:
and the fewer discrepancies to be found in a poem
the fainter will be the traces of the individual poet
who composed it.
All those deviations, everything dull and below
the ordinary standard which scholars think they
perceive in the Homeric poems, were attributed
to tradition, which thus became the scapegoat.
What was left of Homer's own individual work?
Nothing but a series of beautiful and prominent
passages chosen in accordance with subjective
taste. The sum total of aesthetic singularity
which every individual scholar perceived with his
own artistic gifts, he now called Homer.
This is the central point of the Homeric errors.
The name of Homer, from the very beginning, has
## p. 163 (#183) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 163
no connection either with the conception of aesthetic
perfection or yet with the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Homer as the composer of the Iliad and the
Odyssey is not a historical tradition, but an
cesthetic judgment.
The only path which leads back beyond the
time of Pisistratus and helps us to elucidate the
meaning of the name Homer, takes its way on the
one hand through the reports which have reached
us concerning Homer's birthplace: from which we
see that, although his name is always associated
with heroic epic poems, he is on the other hand no
more referred to as the composer of the Iliad and
the Odyssey than as the author of the Thebais or
any other cyclical epic. On the other hand, again,
an old tradition tells of the contest between Homer
and Hesiod, which proves that when these two
names were mentioned people instinctively thought
of two epic tendencies, the heroic and the didactic;
and that the signification of the name " Homer"
was included in the material category and not in
the formal. This imaginary contest with Hesiod
did not even yet show the faintest presentiment
of individuality. From the time of Pisistratus
onwards, however, with the surprisingly rapid
development of the Greek feeling for beauty, the
differences in the aesthetic value of those epics
continued to be felt more and more: the Iliad and
the Odyssey arose from the depths of the flood
and have remained on the surface ever since.
With this process of aesthetic separation, the
conception of Homer gradually became narrower:
the old material meaning of the name " Homer"
## p. 164 (#184) ############################################
164 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
as the father of the heroic epic poem, was changed
into the aesthetic meaning of Homer, the father of
poetry in general, and likewise its original proto-
type. This transformation was contemporary
with the rationalistic criticism which made Homer
the magician out to be a possible poet, which
vindicated the material and formal traditions of
those numerous epics as against the unity of the
poet, and gradually removed that heavy load of
cyclical epics from Homer's shoulders.
So Homer, the poet of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, is an aesthetic judgment. It is, however,
by no means affirmed against the poet of these
epics that he was merely the imaginary being of
an aesthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion
of only very few philologists indeed. The majority
contend that a single individual was responsible
for the general design of a poem such as the
Iliad, and further that this individual was Homer.
The first part of this contention may be admitted;
but, in accordance with what I have said, the
latter part must be denied. And I very much
doubt whether the majority of those who adopt
the first part of the contention have taken the
following considerations into account.
The design of an epic such as the Iliad is not
an entire whole, not an organism; but a number
of pieces strung together, a collection of reflections
arranged in accordance with aesthetic rules. It is
certainly the standard of an artist's greatness to
note what he can take in with a single glance and
set out in rhythmical form. The infinite profusion
of images and incidents in the Homeric epic must
## p. 165 (#185) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 165
force us to admit that such a wide range of vision
is next to impossible. Where, however, a poet is
unable to observe artistically with a single glance,
he usually piles conception on conception, and
endeavours to adjust his characters according to a
comprehensive scheme.
He will succeed in this all the better the more
he is familiar with the fundamental principles of
aesthetics: he will even make some believe that he
made himself master of the entire subject by a
single powerful glance.
The Iliad is not a garland, but a bunch of
flowers. As many pictures as possible are crowded
on one canvas; but the man who placed them
there was indifferent as to whether the grouping
of the collected pictures was invariably suitable
and rhythmically beautiful. He well knew that
no one would ever consider the collection as a
whole; but would merely look at the individual
parts. But that stringing together of some pieces
as the manifestations of a grasp of art which was
not yet highly developed, still less thoroughly
comprehended and generally esteemed, cannot
have been the real Homeric deed, the real Homeric
epoch-making event. On the contrary, this design
is a later product, far later than Homer's celebrity.
Those, therefore, who look for the "original and
perfect design" are looking for a mere phantom;
for the dangerous path of oral tradition had reached
its end just as the systematic arrangement appeared
on the scene; the disfigurements which were
caused on the way could not have affected
the design, for this did not form part of the
## p. 166 (#186) ############################################
166 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
material handed down from generation to
generation.
The relative imperfection of the design must
not, however, prevent us from seeing in the
designer a different personality from the real
poet. It is not only probable that everything
which was created in those times with conscious
aesthetic insight, was infinitely inferior to the
songs that sprang up naturally in the poet's mind
and were written down with instinctive power:
we can even take a step further. If we include
the so-called cyclic poems in this comparison,
there remains for the designer of the Iliad and the
Odyssey the indisputable merit of having done
something relatively great in this conscious
technical composing: a merit which we might
have been prepared to recognise from the begin-
ning, and which is in my opinion of the very first
order in the domain of instinctive creation. We
may even be ready to pronounce this synthetisa-
tion of great importance. All those dull passages
and discrepancies—deemed of such importance,
but really only subjective, which we usually look
upon as the petrified remains of the period of
tradition—are not these perhaps merely the almost
necessary evils which must fall to the lot of the
poet of genius who undertakes a composition
virtually without a parallel, and, further, one
which proves to be of incalculable difficulty?
Let it be noted that the insight into the most
diverse operations of the instinctive and the
conscious changes the position of the Homeric
problem; and in my opinion throws light upon it.
## p. 167 (#187) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. \6j
We believe in a great poet as the author of the
Iliad and the Odyssey—but not that Homer was
this poet.
The decision on this point has already been
given. The generation that invented those
numerous Homeric fables, that poetised the myth
of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, and
looked upon all the poems of the epic cycle as
Homeric, did not feel an aesthetic but a material
singularity when it pronounced the name " Homer. "
This period regards Homer as belonging to the
ranks of artists like Orpheus, Eumolpus, Daedalus,
and Olympus, the mythical discoverers of a new
branch of art, to whom, therefore, all the later
fruits which grew from the new branch were
thankfully dedicated.
And that wonderful genius to whom we owe
the Iliad and the Odyssey belongs to this thank-
ful posterity: he, too, sacrificed his name on the
altar of the primeval father of the Homeric epic,
Homeros.
Up to this point, gentlemen, I think I have
been able to put before you the fundamental
philosophical and aesthetic characteristics of the
problem of the personality of Homer, keeping all
minor details rigorously at a distance, on the
supposition that the primary form of this wide-
spread and honeycombed mountain known as the
Homeric question can be most clearly observed
by looking down at it from a far-off height. But
I have also, I imagine, recalled two facts to those
friends of antiquity who take such delight in
accusing us philologists of lack of piety for great
## p. 168 (#188) ############################################
168 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
conceptions and an unproductive zeal for destruc-
tion. In the first place, those " great" conceptions
—such, for example, as that of the indivisible and
inviolable poetic genius, Homer—were during the
pre-Wolfian period only too great, and hence in-
wardly altogether empty and elusive when we
now try to grasp them. If classical philology
goes back again to the same conceptions, and
once more tries to pour new wine into old bottles,
it is only on the surface that the conceptions are
the same: everything has really become new;
bottle and mind, wine and word. We everywhere
find traces of the fact that philology has lived in
company with poets, thinkers, and artists for the
last hundred years: whence it has now come
about that the heap of ashes formerly pointed to
as classical philology is now turned into fruitful
and even rich soil. *
And there is a second fact which I should like
to recall to the memory of those friends of antiquity
who turn their dissatisfied backs on classical
philology. You honour the immortal masterpieces
of the Hellenic mind in poetry and sculpture, and
think yourselves so much more fortunate than
preceding generations, which had to do without
them; but you must not forget that this whole
fairyland once lay buried under mountains of
prejudice, and that the blood and sweat and
arduous labour of innumerable followers of our
science were all necessary to lift up that world
* Nietzsche perceived later on that this statement was,
unfortunately, not justified. —Tr.
## p. 169 (#189) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 169
from the chasm into which it had sunk. We grant
that philology is not the creator of this world,
not the composer of that immortal music; but
is it not a merit, and a great merit, to be a mere
virtuoso, and let the world for the first time hear
that music which lay so long in obscurity, despised
and undecipherable? Who was Homer previously
to Wolfs brilliant investigations? A good old
man, known at best as a " natural genius," at all
events the child of a barbaric age, replete with
faults against good taste and good morals. Let
us hear how a learned man of the first rank writes
about Homer even so late as 1783: "Where does
the good man live? Why did he remain so long
incognito? Apropos, can't you get me a
silhouette of him? "
We demand thanks—not in our own name, for
we are but atoms—but in the name of philology
itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace,
but a messenger of the gods: and just as the
Muses descended upon the dull and tormented
Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a
world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of
the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks
to men comfortingly of the beautiful and
godlike figure of a distant, rosy, and happy
fairyland.
It is time to close; yet before I do so a
few words of a personal character must be
added, justified, I hope, by the occasion of this
lecture.
It is but right that a philologist should describe
his end and the means to it in the short formula
## p. 170 (#190) ############################################
170 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
of a confession of faith; and let this be done in
the saying of Seneca which I thus reverse—
"Philosophia facta est quae philologia fuit. "
By this I wish to signify that all philological
activities should be enclosed and surrounded by a
philosophical view of things, in which everything
individual and isolated is evaporated as something
detestable, and in which great homogeneous views
alone remain. Now, therefore, that I have enunci-
ated my philological creed, I trust you will give
me cause to hope that I shall no longer be a
stranger among you: give me the assurance that
in working with you towards this end I am worthily
fulfilling the confidence with which the highest
authorities of this community have honoured me.
A
## p. (#191) ################################################
THE WORKS OF
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The Case of Wagner; Nietzsche contra Wagner;
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Ecce Homo. (The celebrated Autobiography. )
T. N. FOULIS, 15 Frederick Street, Edinburgh; and
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## p. (#192) ################################################
OTHER NIETZSCHE AN LITERATURE
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Scientific thought is put upon a new basis more in conformity
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"A vigorously written bit of work, packed full of shrewd
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'' The volume contains many obiter dicta of great shrewdness,
and of particular value to our own race. "—Globe.
## p. (#193) ################################################
OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
WHO IS TO BE MASTER OF
THE WORLD?
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In this book the author has made a plain and lucid
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## p. (#194) ################################################
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are given from all Nietzsche's writings, no work of the
philosopher being left unmentioned. For the chapters
dealing with Nietzsche's life, studies, travels, etc. , ample
use has been made of the new'/ issued autobiography,
"Ecce Homo," from which several quotations are given.
The volume is tastefully illustrated, and is further pro-
vided with a short bibliography and a full index.
NIETZSCHE IN OUTLINE AND APHORISM. By
A. R. Orage, Editor of The New Age. 176 pages. Fcap. 8vo,
as. 6d. net. (T. N. Founs. )
"Mr. Orage has made his selection with care and judgment. His book gives
an excellent summary of Nietzsche's teaching, which many will be glad to
possess. "—Nation.
NIETZSCHE, The Dionysian Spirit of the Age. By A. R.
Orage. With Portrait. 83 pages. Crown 8vo, boards,,is. net. (T. N.
Foulis. )
"This little book on Nietzsche is badly wanted in England . . . very inter-
esting and readable. "—Fabian News.
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out of a conception, or the conception out of a person?
This is the real " Homeric question," the central
problem of the personality.
The difficulty of answering this question, how-
ever, is increased when we seek a reply in another
direction, from the standpoint of the poems them-
selves which have come down to us. As it is
difficult for us at the present day, and necessitates
## p. 156 (#176) ############################################
156 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
a serious effort on our part, to understand the law
of gravitation clearly—that the earth alters its
form of motion when another heavenly body
changes its position in space, although no material
connection unites one to the other—it likewise
costs us some trouble to obtain a clear impression
of that wonderful problem which, like a coin long
passed from hand to hand, has lost its original
and highly conspicuous stamp. Poetical works,
which cause the hearts of even the greatest geniuses
to fail when they endeavour to vie with them,
and in which unsurpassable images are held up
for the admiration of posterity—and yet the poet
who wrote them with only a hollow, shaky name,
whenever we do lay hold on him; nowhere the
solid kernel of a powerful personality. "For who
would wage war with the gods: who, even with
the one god? " asks Goethe even, who, though a
genius, strove in vain to solve that mysterious
problem of the Homeric inaccessibility.
The conception of popular poetry seemed to
lead like a bridge over this problem—a deeper
and more original power than that of every single
creative individual was said to have become active;
the happiest people, in the happiest period of its
existence, in the highest activity of fantasy and
formative power, was said to have created those
immeasurable poems. In this universality there
is something almost intoxicating in the thought of
a popular poem: we feel, with artistic pleasure,
the broad, overpowering liberation of a popular
gift, and we delight in this natural phenomenon
as we do in an uncontrollable cataract. But as
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 157
soon as we examine this thought at close quarters,
we involuntarily put a poetic mass of people in the
place of the poetising soul of the people: a long
row of popular poets in whom individuality has
no meaning, and in whom the tumultuous move-
ment of a people's soul, the intuitive strength of a
people's eye, and the unabated profusion of a
people's fantasy, were once powerful: a row of
original geniuses, attached to a time, to a poetic
genus, to a subject-matter.
Such a conception justly made people suspicious.
Could it be possible that that same Nature who so
sparingly distributed her rarest and most precious
production—genius—should suddenly take the
notion of lavishing her gifts in one sole direction?
And here the thorny question again made its
appearance: Could we not get along with one
genius only, and explain the present existence of
that unattainable excellence? And now eyes
were keenly on the lookout for whatever that
excellence and singularity might consist of. Im-
possible for it to be in the construction of the
complete works, said one party, for this is far from
faultless; but doubtless to be found in single songs:
in the single pieces above all; not in the whole.
A second party, on the other hand, sheltered them-
selves beneath the authority of Aristotle, who
especially admired Homer's "divine" nature in
the choice of his entire subject, and the manner
in which he planned and carried it out. If, how-
ever, this construction was not clearly seen, this
fault was due to the way the poems were handed
down to posterity and not to the poet himself—
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
IS8 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
it was the result of retouchings and interpolations,
owing to which the original setting of the work
gradually became obscured. The more the first
school looked for inequalities, contradictions,
perplexities, the more energetically did the other
school brush aside what in their opinion obscured
the original plan, in order, if possible, that nothing
might be left remaining but the actual words of
the original epic itself. The second school of
thought of course held fast by the conception of
an epoch-making genius as the composer of the
great works. The first school, on the other hand,
wavered between the supposition of one genius
plus a number of minor poets, and another
hypothesis which assumed only a number of
superior and even mediocre individual bards, but
also postulated a mysterious discharging, a deep,
national, artistic impulse, which shows itself in
individual minstrels as an almost indifferent
medium. It is to this latter school that we must
attribute the representation of the Homeric poems
as the expression of that mysterious impulse.
All these schools of thought start from the
assumption that the problem of the present form
of these epics can be solved from the standpoint
of an aesthetic judgment—but we must await the
decision as to the authorised line of demarcation
between the man of genius and the poetical soul
of the people. Are there characteristic differences
between the utterances of the man of genius and
the poetical soul of the people t
This whole contrast, however, is unjust and
misleading. There is no more dangerous
## p. 159 (#179) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 159
assumption in modern aesthetics than that of
popular poetry and individual poetry, or, as it is
usually called, artistic poetry. This is the re-
action, or, if you will, the superstition, which
followed upon the most momentous discovery of
historico-philological science, the discovery and
appreciation of the soul of the people. For this
discovery prepared the way for a coming scientific
view of history, which was until then, and in many
respects is even now, a mere collection of materials,
with the prospect that new materials would con-
tinue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing
pile would never be systematically arranged. The
people now understood for the first time that the
long-felt power of greater individualities and wills
was larger than the pitifully small will of an in-
dividual man; * they now saw that everything truly
great in the kingdom of the will could not have
its deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral
individual will; and, finally, they now discovered
the powerful instincts of the masses, and diagnosed
those unconscious impulses to be the foundations
and supports of the so-called universal history. But
the newly-lighted flame also cast its shadow: and
this shadow was none other than that superstition
already referred to, which popular poetry set up
in opposition to individual poetry, and thus en-
larged the comprehension of the people's soul to
that of the people's mind. By the misapplication
of a tempting analogical inference, people had
* Of course Nietzsche saw afterwards that this was not so.
—TR.
## p. 160 (#180) ############################################
l6o HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
reached the point of applying in the domain of
the intellect and artistic ideas that principle of
greater individuality which is truly applicable only
in the domain of the will. The masses have never
experienced more flattering treatment than in thus
having the laurel of genius set upon their empty
heads. It was imagined that new shells were
forming round a small kernel, so to speak, and
that those pieces of popular poetry originated like
avalanches, in the drift and flow of tradition. They
were, however, ready to consider that kernel as
being of the smallest possible dimensions, so that
they might occasionally get rid of it altogether with-
out losing anything of the mass of the avalanche.
According to this view, the text itself and the
stories built round it are one and the same thing.
Now, however, such a contrast between popular
poetry and individual poetry does not exist at all;
on the contrary, all poetry, and of course popular
poetry also, requires an intermediary individuality.
This much-abused contrast, therefore, is necessary
only when the term individual poem is understood
to mean a poem which has not grown out of the
soil of popular feeling. but which has been composed
by a non-popular poet in a non-popular atmos-
phere—something which has come to maturity in
the study of a learned man, for example.
With the superstition which presupposes poet-
ising masses is connected another: that popular
poetry is limited to one particular period of a
people's history and afterwards dies out—which
indeed follows as a consequence of the first super-.
stition I have mentioned. According to this
## p. 161 (#181) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. l6l
school, in the place of the gradually decaying
popular poetry we have artistic poetry, the work of
individual minds, not of masses of people. But the
same powers which were once active are still so j
and the form in which they act has remained
exactly the same. The great poet of a literary
period is still a popular poet in no narrower sense
than the popular poet of an illiterate age. The
difference between them is not in the way they
originate, but it is their diffusion and propagation,
in short, tradition. This tradition is exposed to
eternal danger without the help of handwriting,
and runs the risk of including in the poems the
remains of those individualities through whose oral
tradition they were handed down.
If we apply all these principles to the Homeric
poems, it follows that we gain nothing with our
theory of the poetising soul of the people, and
that we are always referred back to the poetical
individual. We are thus confronted with the task
of distinguishing that which can have originated
only in a single poetical mind from that which
is, so to speak, swept up by the tide of oral
tradition, and which is a highly important
constituent part of the Homeric poems.
Since literary history first ceased to be a mere
collection of names, people have attempted to
grasp and formulate the individualities of the
poets. A certain mechanism forms part of the
method: it must be explained—i. e. , it must be
deduced from principles—why this or that in-
dividuality appears in this way and not in that.
People now study biographical details, environ-
L
## p. 162 (#182) ############################################
162 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
merit, acquaintances, contemporary events, and
believe that by mixing all these ingredients
together they will be able to manufacture the
wished-for individuality. But they forget that
the punctum saliens, the indefinable individual
characteristics, can never be obtained from a com-
pound of this nature. The less there is known
about the life and times of the poet, the less
applicable is this mechanism. When, however,
we have merely the works and the name of the
writer, it is almost impossible to detect the in-
dividuality, at all events, for those who put their
faith in the mechanism in question; and particu-
larly when the works are perfect, when they are
pieces of popular poetry. For the best way for
these mechanicians to grasp individual character-
istics is by perceiving deviations from the genius
of the people; the aberrations and hidden allusions:
and the fewer discrepancies to be found in a poem
the fainter will be the traces of the individual poet
who composed it.
All those deviations, everything dull and below
the ordinary standard which scholars think they
perceive in the Homeric poems, were attributed
to tradition, which thus became the scapegoat.
What was left of Homer's own individual work?
Nothing but a series of beautiful and prominent
passages chosen in accordance with subjective
taste. The sum total of aesthetic singularity
which every individual scholar perceived with his
own artistic gifts, he now called Homer.
This is the central point of the Homeric errors.
The name of Homer, from the very beginning, has
## p. 163 (#183) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 163
no connection either with the conception of aesthetic
perfection or yet with the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Homer as the composer of the Iliad and the
Odyssey is not a historical tradition, but an
cesthetic judgment.
The only path which leads back beyond the
time of Pisistratus and helps us to elucidate the
meaning of the name Homer, takes its way on the
one hand through the reports which have reached
us concerning Homer's birthplace: from which we
see that, although his name is always associated
with heroic epic poems, he is on the other hand no
more referred to as the composer of the Iliad and
the Odyssey than as the author of the Thebais or
any other cyclical epic. On the other hand, again,
an old tradition tells of the contest between Homer
and Hesiod, which proves that when these two
names were mentioned people instinctively thought
of two epic tendencies, the heroic and the didactic;
and that the signification of the name " Homer"
was included in the material category and not in
the formal. This imaginary contest with Hesiod
did not even yet show the faintest presentiment
of individuality. From the time of Pisistratus
onwards, however, with the surprisingly rapid
development of the Greek feeling for beauty, the
differences in the aesthetic value of those epics
continued to be felt more and more: the Iliad and
the Odyssey arose from the depths of the flood
and have remained on the surface ever since.
With this process of aesthetic separation, the
conception of Homer gradually became narrower:
the old material meaning of the name " Homer"
## p. 164 (#184) ############################################
164 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
as the father of the heroic epic poem, was changed
into the aesthetic meaning of Homer, the father of
poetry in general, and likewise its original proto-
type. This transformation was contemporary
with the rationalistic criticism which made Homer
the magician out to be a possible poet, which
vindicated the material and formal traditions of
those numerous epics as against the unity of the
poet, and gradually removed that heavy load of
cyclical epics from Homer's shoulders.
So Homer, the poet of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, is an aesthetic judgment. It is, however,
by no means affirmed against the poet of these
epics that he was merely the imaginary being of
an aesthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion
of only very few philologists indeed. The majority
contend that a single individual was responsible
for the general design of a poem such as the
Iliad, and further that this individual was Homer.
The first part of this contention may be admitted;
but, in accordance with what I have said, the
latter part must be denied. And I very much
doubt whether the majority of those who adopt
the first part of the contention have taken the
following considerations into account.
The design of an epic such as the Iliad is not
an entire whole, not an organism; but a number
of pieces strung together, a collection of reflections
arranged in accordance with aesthetic rules. It is
certainly the standard of an artist's greatness to
note what he can take in with a single glance and
set out in rhythmical form. The infinite profusion
of images and incidents in the Homeric epic must
## p. 165 (#185) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 165
force us to admit that such a wide range of vision
is next to impossible. Where, however, a poet is
unable to observe artistically with a single glance,
he usually piles conception on conception, and
endeavours to adjust his characters according to a
comprehensive scheme.
He will succeed in this all the better the more
he is familiar with the fundamental principles of
aesthetics: he will even make some believe that he
made himself master of the entire subject by a
single powerful glance.
The Iliad is not a garland, but a bunch of
flowers. As many pictures as possible are crowded
on one canvas; but the man who placed them
there was indifferent as to whether the grouping
of the collected pictures was invariably suitable
and rhythmically beautiful. He well knew that
no one would ever consider the collection as a
whole; but would merely look at the individual
parts. But that stringing together of some pieces
as the manifestations of a grasp of art which was
not yet highly developed, still less thoroughly
comprehended and generally esteemed, cannot
have been the real Homeric deed, the real Homeric
epoch-making event. On the contrary, this design
is a later product, far later than Homer's celebrity.
Those, therefore, who look for the "original and
perfect design" are looking for a mere phantom;
for the dangerous path of oral tradition had reached
its end just as the systematic arrangement appeared
on the scene; the disfigurements which were
caused on the way could not have affected
the design, for this did not form part of the
## p. 166 (#186) ############################################
166 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
material handed down from generation to
generation.
The relative imperfection of the design must
not, however, prevent us from seeing in the
designer a different personality from the real
poet. It is not only probable that everything
which was created in those times with conscious
aesthetic insight, was infinitely inferior to the
songs that sprang up naturally in the poet's mind
and were written down with instinctive power:
we can even take a step further. If we include
the so-called cyclic poems in this comparison,
there remains for the designer of the Iliad and the
Odyssey the indisputable merit of having done
something relatively great in this conscious
technical composing: a merit which we might
have been prepared to recognise from the begin-
ning, and which is in my opinion of the very first
order in the domain of instinctive creation. We
may even be ready to pronounce this synthetisa-
tion of great importance. All those dull passages
and discrepancies—deemed of such importance,
but really only subjective, which we usually look
upon as the petrified remains of the period of
tradition—are not these perhaps merely the almost
necessary evils which must fall to the lot of the
poet of genius who undertakes a composition
virtually without a parallel, and, further, one
which proves to be of incalculable difficulty?
Let it be noted that the insight into the most
diverse operations of the instinctive and the
conscious changes the position of the Homeric
problem; and in my opinion throws light upon it.
## p. 167 (#187) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. \6j
We believe in a great poet as the author of the
Iliad and the Odyssey—but not that Homer was
this poet.
The decision on this point has already been
given. The generation that invented those
numerous Homeric fables, that poetised the myth
of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, and
looked upon all the poems of the epic cycle as
Homeric, did not feel an aesthetic but a material
singularity when it pronounced the name " Homer. "
This period regards Homer as belonging to the
ranks of artists like Orpheus, Eumolpus, Daedalus,
and Olympus, the mythical discoverers of a new
branch of art, to whom, therefore, all the later
fruits which grew from the new branch were
thankfully dedicated.
And that wonderful genius to whom we owe
the Iliad and the Odyssey belongs to this thank-
ful posterity: he, too, sacrificed his name on the
altar of the primeval father of the Homeric epic,
Homeros.
Up to this point, gentlemen, I think I have
been able to put before you the fundamental
philosophical and aesthetic characteristics of the
problem of the personality of Homer, keeping all
minor details rigorously at a distance, on the
supposition that the primary form of this wide-
spread and honeycombed mountain known as the
Homeric question can be most clearly observed
by looking down at it from a far-off height. But
I have also, I imagine, recalled two facts to those
friends of antiquity who take such delight in
accusing us philologists of lack of piety for great
## p. 168 (#188) ############################################
168 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
conceptions and an unproductive zeal for destruc-
tion. In the first place, those " great" conceptions
—such, for example, as that of the indivisible and
inviolable poetic genius, Homer—were during the
pre-Wolfian period only too great, and hence in-
wardly altogether empty and elusive when we
now try to grasp them. If classical philology
goes back again to the same conceptions, and
once more tries to pour new wine into old bottles,
it is only on the surface that the conceptions are
the same: everything has really become new;
bottle and mind, wine and word. We everywhere
find traces of the fact that philology has lived in
company with poets, thinkers, and artists for the
last hundred years: whence it has now come
about that the heap of ashes formerly pointed to
as classical philology is now turned into fruitful
and even rich soil. *
And there is a second fact which I should like
to recall to the memory of those friends of antiquity
who turn their dissatisfied backs on classical
philology. You honour the immortal masterpieces
of the Hellenic mind in poetry and sculpture, and
think yourselves so much more fortunate than
preceding generations, which had to do without
them; but you must not forget that this whole
fairyland once lay buried under mountains of
prejudice, and that the blood and sweat and
arduous labour of innumerable followers of our
science were all necessary to lift up that world
* Nietzsche perceived later on that this statement was,
unfortunately, not justified. —Tr.
## p. 169 (#189) ############################################
HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 169
from the chasm into which it had sunk. We grant
that philology is not the creator of this world,
not the composer of that immortal music; but
is it not a merit, and a great merit, to be a mere
virtuoso, and let the world for the first time hear
that music which lay so long in obscurity, despised
and undecipherable? Who was Homer previously
to Wolfs brilliant investigations? A good old
man, known at best as a " natural genius," at all
events the child of a barbaric age, replete with
faults against good taste and good morals. Let
us hear how a learned man of the first rank writes
about Homer even so late as 1783: "Where does
the good man live? Why did he remain so long
incognito? Apropos, can't you get me a
silhouette of him? "
We demand thanks—not in our own name, for
we are but atoms—but in the name of philology
itself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor a Grace,
but a messenger of the gods: and just as the
Muses descended upon the dull and tormented
Boeotian peasants, so Philology comes into a
world full of gloomy colours and pictures, full of
the deepest, most incurable woes; and speaks
to men comfortingly of the beautiful and
godlike figure of a distant, rosy, and happy
fairyland.
It is time to close; yet before I do so a
few words of a personal character must be
added, justified, I hope, by the occasion of this
lecture.
It is but right that a philologist should describe
his end and the means to it in the short formula
## p. 170 (#190) ############################################
170 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
of a confession of faith; and let this be done in
the saying of Seneca which I thus reverse—
"Philosophia facta est quae philologia fuit. "
By this I wish to signify that all philological
activities should be enclosed and surrounded by a
philosophical view of things, in which everything
individual and isolated is evaporated as something
detestable, and in which great homogeneous views
alone remain. Now, therefore, that I have enunci-
ated my philological creed, I trust you will give
me cause to hope that I shall no longer be a
stranger among you: give me the assurance that
in working with you towards this end I am worthily
fulfilling the confidence with which the highest
authorities of this community have honoured me.
A
## p. (#191) ################################################
THE WORKS OF
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
First Complete and Authorised English Translation, in 18 Volumes.
Edited by Dr. OSCAR LEVY.
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THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON, Vol. I. Translated by
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BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL. Translated by Helen
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Ready Autumn 1910.
The Case of Wagner; Nietzsche contra Wagner;
Poems, etc.
The Antichrist, etc.
We Philologists, etc.
Various Essays and Fragments.
Ecce Homo. (The celebrated Autobiography. )
T. N. FOULIS, 15 Frederick Street, Edinburgh; and
21 Paternoster Square, London, E. C.
## p. (#192) ################################################
OTHER NIETZSCHE AN LITERATURE
ON THE TRACKS OF LIFE:
THE IMMORALITY OF MORALITY.
Translated from the Italian of Leo G. Sera by
J. M. Kennedy.
With an Introduction by Dr. Oscar Levy.
7*. 6d. net.
(John Lane. )
Dr. Sera is a physician who has deeply studied literature
and historical science, and the object of his book is, in the
opening words of the preface: "To establish our conception
of social life on its original basis. " The author adduces
many new and startling theories in regard to the questions he
treats of in support of his views. He holds that the diffusion
of democratic principles is vulgarising science and art, and
that present social conditions, especially work and Christian
teaching, are leading to the intellectual and moral degen-
eration of the race. Stimulating chapters on Stendhal,
Nietzsche, Goethe, The Origin of Society, Work, and the
Aristocratic Ideal, show current opinions of Genius, Aristo-
cracy, Democracy, Sport, and Sexuality in a new light.
Scientific thought is put upon a new basis more in conformity
with modern Continental views. The audacity of Dr.
Sera's theories has evoked much discussion in England and
on the Continent; and his work is certain to appeal to all
serious thinkers, and to students of modern moral problems.
"There are a host of points which Dr. Sera makes which it would
be well if our social conventionalists would consider. For one
thing, his philosophy is based on what men really do and think, as
apart from their professions. "—Sunday Times.
"Written with a vigour and freshness rarely met with in works of
this character, few readers could peruse the volume without intel-
lectual quickening and expansion. —Western Morning News.
"A vigorously written bit of work, packed full of shrewd
thinking. ' —Birmingham Post.
'' The volume contains many obiter dicta of great shrewdness,
and of particular value to our own race. "—Globe.
## p. (#193) ################################################
OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
WHO IS TO BE MASTER OF
THE WORLD?
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche,
By A. M. LUDOVICI.
With a Preface by Dr. Oscar Levy.
Crown 8vo, 216 pages, 2s. 6d. net.
(T. N. Foulis. )
In this book the author has made a plain and lucid
statement of Nietzsche's views. The work embodies the
Three Lectures recently given at University College,
London, and other matter besides—together with copious
references to the numerous philosophers, historians, and
scientists who may be said to have led up to Friedrich
Nietzsche's position.
"The lectures are well worth reading, as showing what Nietzsche-
anism really means. "—Glasgow Herald.
"If this little book does not impel some young and gallant spirits
to the works of the philosopher, I shall be surprised. . . . Mr.
Ludovici shows such clearness, method, constructive art, as belong
to a master of exposition. "— Westminster Gazette.
THE REVIVAL OF ARISTOCRACY.
By Dr. OSCAR LEVY.
$s. 6d. net.
(Probsthain. )
A fierce indictment of the philosophy of the nineteenth
century, and of the events which led to it. Special chapters
are devoted to Napoleon, Stendhal, Goethe, and Nietzsche.
"The ablest exposition of Nietzscheanism that has yet appeared. "
—Manchester Guardian.
"Here we see the philosophy of Nietzsche put into a concentrated
form, and set forth by a clever and biting pen. "—Glasgow Herald.
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OTHER NIETZSCHEAN LITERATURE
THE QUINTESSENCE OF
NIETZSCHE.
By J. M. KENNEDY.
37° PP-i 6*- net-
(T. Werner Laurie. )
This book is valuable as giving not only the first full
account in English of Nietzsche's complete works, includ-
ing the recently published writings and fragments, but
also as the first application of the German philosopher's
principles to English politics, the Church of England,
Socialism, Democracy, and to British Institutions in
general. The publication of the fragmentary works and
letters has thrown new light on Nietzsche's opinions
concerning love, woman, and marriage, all of which are
referred to or cited in the course of the work. Quotations
are given from all Nietzsche's writings, no work of the
philosopher being left unmentioned. For the chapters
dealing with Nietzsche's life, studies, travels, etc. , ample
use has been made of the new'/ issued autobiography,
"Ecce Homo," from which several quotations are given.
The volume is tastefully illustrated, and is further pro-
vided with a short bibliography and a full index.
NIETZSCHE IN OUTLINE AND APHORISM. By
A. R. Orage, Editor of The New Age. 176 pages. Fcap. 8vo,
as. 6d. net. (T. N. Founs. )
"Mr. Orage has made his selection with care and judgment. His book gives
an excellent summary of Nietzsche's teaching, which many will be glad to
possess. "—Nation.
NIETZSCHE, The Dionysian Spirit of the Age. By A. R.
Orage. With Portrait. 83 pages. Crown 8vo, boards,,is. net. (T. N.
Foulis. )
"This little book on Nietzsche is badly wanted in England . . . very inter-
esting and readable. "—Fabian News.
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