No More Learning

Of the Salt of Speech. —No one has ever
explained why the Greek writers, having at com-
mand such an unparalleled wealth and power of
language, made so sparing a use of their resources
that every post-classical Greek book appears by
comparison crude, over-coloured, and extravagant.
It is said that towards the North Polar ice and
in the hottest countries salt is becoming less and
less used, whereas on the other hand the dwellers
on the plains and by the coast in the more temper-
ate zones use salt in great abundance. Is it possible
that the Greeks from a twofold reason—because
their intellect was colder and clearer but their fun-
damental passionate nature far more tropical than
ours—did not need salt and spice to the same extent
that we do?
"3-
The Freest Writer. —In a book for free spirits
one cannot avoid mention of Laurence Sterne, the
man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of
his century. May he be satisfied with the honour of
being called the freest writer of all times, in com-
parison with whom all others appear stiff, square-
toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case
we should not speak of the clear and rounded but
of "the endless melody"—if by this phrase we arrive
at a name for an artistic style in which the definite
form is continually broken, thrust aside and trans-
ferred to the realm of the indefinite, so that it
signifies one and the other at the same time. Sterne
is the great master of double entendre, this phrase


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6l
being naturally used in a far wider sense than is
commonly done when one applies it to sexual
relations. We may give up for lost the reader
who always wants to know exactly what Sterne
thinks about a matter, and whether he be making
a serious or a smiling face (for he can do both
with one wrinkling of his features; he can be and
even wishes to be right and wrong at the same
moment, to interweave profundity and farce). His
digressions are at once continuations and further
developments of the story, his maxims contain a
satire on all that is sententious, his dislike of
seriousness is bound up with a disposition to take no
matter merely externally and on the surface. So in
the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty
whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a feeling
most closely akin to that of floating in the air. He,
the most versatile of writers, communicates some-
thing of this versatility to his reader. Yes, Sterne
unexpectedly changes the parts, and is often as much
reader as author, his book being like a play within a
play, a theatre audience before another theatre audi-
ence. We must surrender at discretion to the mood
of Sterne, although we can always expect it to be
gracious. It is strangely instructive to see how so
great a writer as Diderot has affected this double
entendre of Sterne's — to be equally ambiguous
throughout is just the Sternian super-humour. Did
Diderot imitate, admire, ridicule, or parody Sterne
in his Jacques le Fataliste} One cannot be exactly
certain, and this uncertainty was perhaps intended
by the author. This very doubt makes the French
unjust to the work of one of their first masters, one


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62 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
who need not be ashamed of comparison with any
of the ancients or moderns. For humour (and
especially for this humorous attitude towards
humour itself) the French are too serious. Is it
necessary to add that of all great authors Sterne is
the worst model, in fact the inimitable author, and
that even Diderot had to pay for his daring? What
the worthy Frenchmen and before them some
Greeks and Romans aimed at and attained in prose
is the very opposite of what Sterne aims at and
attains. He raises himself as a masterly exception
above all that artists in writing demand of them-
selves—propriety, reserve, character, steadfastness
of purpose, comprehensiveness, perspicuity, good
deportment in gait and feature. Unfortunately
Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely
related to Sterne the writer. His squirrel-soul
sprang with insatiable unrest from branch to
branch; he knew what lies between sublimity and
rascality; he had sat on every seat, always with un-
abashed watery eyes and mobile play of feature.
He was—if language does not revolt from such a
combination—of a hard-hearted kindness, and in
the midst of the joys of a grotesque and even cor-
rupt imagination he showed the bashful grace of
innocence. Such a carnal and spiritual hermaphro-
ditism, such untrammelled wit penetrating into
every vein and muscle, was perhaps never possessed
by any other man.
114.
A CHOICE Reality. —Just as the good prose
writer only takes words that belong to the language
of daily intercourse, though not by a long way all


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6$
its words—whence arises a choice style—so the
good poet of the future will only represent the real
and turn his eyes away from all fantastic, supersti-
tious, half-voiced, forgotten stories, to which earlier
poets devoted their powers. Only reality, though
by a long way not every reality—but a choice
reality.
115.
Degenerate Species of Art. —Side by side
with the genuine species of art, those of great repose
and great movement, there are degenerate species
—weary, blase" art and excited art. Both would
have their weakness taken for strength and wish to
be confounded with the genuine species.
116.
A Hero Impossible from Lack of Colour. —
The typical poets and artists of our age like to
compose their pictures upon a background of shim-
mering red, green, grey, and gold, on the back-
ground of nervous sensuality—a condition well
understood by the children of this century. The
drawback comes when we do not look at these pic-
tures with the eyes of our century. Then we see that
the great figures painted by these artists have some-
thing flickering, tremulous, and dizzy about them,
and accordingly we do not ascribe to them heroic
deeds, but at best mock-heroic, swaggering misdeeds.
117.
Overladen Style. —The overladen style is a
consequence of the impoverishment of the organis-


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64 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
ing force together with a lavish stock of expedients
and intentions. At the beginnings of art the very
reverse conditions sometimes appear.
118.
PULCHRUM EST PAUCORUM HOMINUM. —History
and experience tell us that the significant grotesque-
ness that mysteriously excites the imagination and
carries one beyond everyday reality, is older and
grows more luxuriantly than the beautiful and re-
verence for the beautiful in art: and that it begins
to flourish exceedingly when the sense for beauty
is on the wane. For the vast majority of mankind
this grotesque seems to be a higher need than the
beautiful, presumably because it contains a coarser
narcotic.
119.
Origins of Taste in Works of Art. —If we
consider the primary germs of the artistic sense, and
ask ourselves what are the various kinds of joy
produced by the firstlings of art—as, for example,
among savage tribes—we find first of all the joy
of understanding what another means. Art in this
case is a sort of conundrum, which causes its solver
pleasure in his own quick and keen perceptions. —
Then the roughest works of art remind us of the
pleasant things we have actually experienced, and
so give joy—as, for example, when the artist alludes
to a chase, a victory, a wedding. —Again, the repre-
sentation may cause us to feel excited, touched, in-
flamed, as for instance in the glorification of revenge


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6$
and danger. Here the enjoyment lies in the ex-
citement itself, in the victory over tedium. —The
memory, too, of unpleasant things, so far as they
have been overcome or make us appear interesting
to the listener as subjects for art (as when the
singer describes the mishaps of a daring seaman),
can inspire great joy, the credit for which is given
to art. —A more subtle variety is the joy that
arises at the sight of all that is regular and sym-
metrical in lines, points, and rhythms. For by a
certain analogy is awakened the feeling for all that
is orderly and regular in life, which one has to thank
alone for all well-being. So in the cult of symmetry
we unconsciously do homage to rule and proportion
as the source of our previous happiness, and the joy
in this case is a kind of hymn of thanksgiving.
Only when a certain satiety of the last-mentioned
joy arises does a more subtle feeling step in, that
enjoyment might even lie in a violation of the
symmetrical and regular. This feeling, for example,
impels us -to seek reason in apparent unreason, and
the sort of aesthetic riddle-guessing that results is in
a way the higher species of the first-named artistic
joy. —He who pursues this speculation still further
will know what kind of hypotheses for the ex-
planation of aesthetic phenomena are hereby funda-
mentally rejected.
120.
Not too Near. —It is a disadvantage for good
thoughts when they follow too closely on one
another, for they hide the view from each other.
vol. 11. E


## p. 66 (#86) ##############################################

66 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
That is why great artists and writers have made an
abundant use of the mediocre.
121.
Roughness and Weakness. —Artists of all
periods have made the discovery that in roughness
lies a certain strength, and that not every one can be
rough who wants to be: also that many varieties of
weakness have a powerful effect on the emotions.
From this source are derived many artistic substi-
tutes, which not even the greatest and most con-
scientious artists can abstain from using.
122.
Good Memory. —Many a man fails to become
a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too
good.
123.
Arousing instead of Appeasing Hunger. —
Great artists fancy that they have taken full pos-
session of a soul. In reality, and often to their
painful disappointment, that soul has only been
made more capacious and insatiable, so that a dozen
greater artists could plunge into its depths without
filling it up.
124.
Artists' Anxiety. —The anxiety lest people
may not believe that their figures are alive can mis-
lead many artists of declining taste to portray these
figures so that they appear as if mad. From the


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 67
same anxiety, on the other hand, Greek artists of
the earliest ages gave even dead and sorely wounded
men that smile which they knew as the most vivid
sign of life—careless of the actual forms bestowed
by nature on life at its last gasp.
125.
The Circle must be Completed. —He who
follows a philosophy or a genre of art to the end of
its career and beyond, understands from inner ex-
perience why the masters and disciples who come
after have so often turned, with a depreciatory ges-
ture, into a new groove. The circle must be de-
scribed—but the individual, even the greatest, sits
firm on his point of the circumference, with an in-
exorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle ought
never to be completed.
126.
The Older Art and the Soul of the
PRESENt. —Since every art becomes more and more
adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the
more lively, delicate, energetic, and passionate states,
the later masters, spoilt by these means of expres-
sion, do not feel at their ease in the presence of the
old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients
had merely been lacking in the means of making
their souls speak clearly, also perhaps in some neces-
sary technical preliminaries. They think that they
must render some assistance in this quarter, for
they believe in the similarity or even unity of all
souls. In truth, however, measure, symmetry, a


## p. 68 (#88) ##############################################

68 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
contempt for graciousness and charm, an uncon-
scious severity and morning chilliness, an evasion
• of passion, as if passion meant the death of art—
such are the constituents of sentiment and morality
in all old masters, who selected and arranged their
means of expression not at random but in a neces-
sary connection with their morality. Knowing this,
are we to deny those that come after the right to
animate the older works with their soul? No, for
these works can only survive through our giving
them our soul, and our blood alone enables them
to speak to us. The real "historic" discourse would
talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the great
artists less by that barren timidity that allows every
word, every note to remain intact than by energetic
endeavours to aid them continually to a new life. —
True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life
and hear one of his works performed with that
modern animation and nervous refinement that bring
glory to our masters of execution, he would probably
be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should
raise his hand to curse or to bless, but perhaps say
at last: "Well, well! That is neither I nor not-I, but
a third thing—it seems to me, too, something right,
if not just bright thing. But you must know your-
selves what to do, as in any case it is you who have
to listen. As our Schiller says, 'the living man is
right. ' So have it your own way, and let me go
down again. "
127.
fr> t*^- Against the Disparagers of Brevity. —A
brief dictum may be the fruit and harvest of long


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6g
reflection. The reader, however, who is a novice
in this field and has never considered the case in
point, sees something embryonic in all brief dicta,
not without a reproachful hint to the author, request-
ing him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared
food.
128.
Against the Short-Sighted. —Do you think
it is piece-work because it is (and must be) offered
you in pieces?
129.
Readers of Aphorisms. —The worst readers of
aphorisms are the friends of the author, if they make
a point of referring the general to the particular
instance to which the aphorism owes its origin.
This namby-pamby attitude brings all the author's
trouble to naught, and instead of a philosophic lesson
and a philosophic frame of mind, they deservedly
gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curi-
osity.
130.
Readers' Insults. —The reader offers a two-
fold insult to the author by praising his second book
at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and by ex-
pecting the author to be grateful to him on that
account.
131-
The Exciting Element in the History of
Art. —We fall into a state of terrible tension when
we follow the history of an art—as, for example, that


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yo HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
of Greek oratory—and, passing from master to master,
observe their increasing precautions to obey the old
and the new laws and all these self-imposed limita-
tions. We see that the bow must snap, and that the
so-called "loose" composition, with the wonderful
means of expression smothered and concealed (in
this particular case the florid style of Asianism), was
once necessary and almost beneficial.
132.
To the Great in Art. —That enthusiasm for
some object which you, O great man, introduce into
this world causes the intelligence of the many to be
stunted. The knowledge of this fact spells humilia-
tion. But the enthusiast wears his hump with pride
and pleasure, and you have the consolation of feeling
that you have increased the world's happiness.
133-
Conscienceless . /Esthetes— The real fanatics
of an artistic school are perhaps those utterly in-
artistic natures that are not even grounded in the
elements of artistic study and creation, but are im-
pressed with the strongest of all the elementary
influences of an art. For them there is no aesthetic
conscience—hence nothing to hold them back from
fanaticism.
134.
How the Soul should be Moved by the
New MUSIC. —The artistic purpose followed by the
new music, in what is now forcibly but none too


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 71
lucidly termed " endless melody," can be understood
by going into the sea, gradually losing one's firm
tread on the bottom, and finally surrendering uncon-
ditionally to the fluid element. One has to swim.
In the previous, older music one was forced, with
delicate or stately or impassioned movement, to
dance. The measure necessary for dancing, the ob-
servance of a distinct balance of time and force
in the soul of the hearer, imposed a continual self-
control. Through the counteraction of the cooler
draught of air which came from this caution and the
warmer breath of musical enthusiasm, that music
exercised its spell. —Richard Wagner aimed at a yjj
different excitation of the soul, allied, as above said,
to swimming and floating. This is perhaps the most
essential of his innovations. His famous method,
originating from this aim and adapted to it—the
"endless melody "—strives to break and sometimes
even to despise all mathematical equilibrium of time
and force. He is only too rich in the invention of
such effects, which sound to the old school like
rhythmic paradoxes and blasphemies. He dreads
petrifaction, crystallisation, the development of
music into the architectural. He accordingly sets
up a three-time rhythm in opposition to the double-
time, not infrequently introduces five-time and seven-
time, immediately repeats a phrase, but with a pro-
lation, so that its time is again doubled and trebled.
From an easy-going imitation of such art may arise
a great danger to music, for by the side of the super-
abundance of rhythmic emotion demoralisation and
decadence lurk in ambush. The danger will become
very great if such music comes to associate itself


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72 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
more and more closely with a quite naturalistic
art of acting and pantomime, trained and dominated
by no higher plastic models; an art that knows no
measure in itself and can impart no measure to the
kindred element, the all-too-womanish nature of
music.
135-
Poet and Reality. —The Muse of the poet who
is not in love with reality will not be reality, and
will bear him children with hollow eyes and all too
tender bones.
136.
Means and End. —In art the end does not justify
the means, but holy means can justify the end.
137.
The Worst Readers. —The worst readers are
those who act like plundering soldiers. They take
out some things that they might use, cover the rest
with filth and confusion, and blaspheme about the
whole.
138.
Signs of a Good Writer. —Good writers have
two things in common: they prefer being understood
to being admired, and they do not write for the
critical and over-shrewd reader.
139.
The Mixed Species. —The mixed species in art
bear witness to their authors' distrust of their own


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 73
strength. They seek auxiliary powers, advocates,
hiding-places-such is the case with the poet who
calls in philosophy, the musician who calls in the
drama, and the thinker who calls in rhetoric to his aid.
140.
SHUTTING ONE'S MOUTH. - When his book.
opens its mouth, the author must shut his.
141.
BADGES OF RANK. --All poets and men of letters
who are in love with the superlative want to do more
than they can.
142.
COLD BOOKS. —The deep thinker reckons on
readers who feel with him the happiness that lies
in deep thinking. Hence a book that looks cold
and sober, if seen in the right light, may seem bathed
in the sunshine of spiritual cheerfulness and become
a genuine soul-comforter.
143.
A KNACK OF THE SLOW-WITTED. —The slow-
witted thinker generally allies himself with loqua-
city and ceremoniousness. By the former he thinks
he is gaining mobility and fluency, by the latter he
gives his peculiarity the appearance of being a result
of free will and artistic purpose, with a view to
dignity, which needs slow movement.


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74 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
144-
Le Style Baroque*—He who as thinker and
writeris not born or trained to dialectic and the conse-
cutive arrangement of ideas, will unconsciously turn
to the rhetoric and dramatic forms. For, after all, his
object is to make himself understood and to carry the
day by force, and he is indifferent whether, as shep-
herd, he honestly guides to himself the hearts of his
fellow-men, or, as robber, he captures them by sur-
prise. This is true of the plastic arts as of music:
where the feeling of insufficient dialectic or a de-
ficiency in expression or narration, together with an
urgent, over-powerful impulse to form, gives birth
to that species of style known as " baroque. " Only
the ill-educated and the arrogant will at once find a
depreciatory force in this word. The baroque style
always arises at the time of decay of a great art,
when the demands of art in classical expression
have become too great. It is a natural phenomenon
which will be observed with melancholy—for it is a
forerunner of the night—but at the same time with
admiration for its peculiar compensatory arts of ex-
pression and narration. To this style belongs already
a choice of material and subjects of the highest
dramatic tension, at which the heart trembles even
when there is no art, because heaven and hell are
all too near the emotions: then, the oratory of strong
passion and gestures, of ugly sublimity, of great
* In German Barockstil, i. e. the degenerate post-Renais-
sance style in art and literature, which spread from Italy
in the seventeenth century. —Tr.


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 75
masses, in fact of absolute quantity per se (as is
shown in Michael Angelo, the father or grandfather
of the Italian baroque stylists): the lights of dusk,
illumination and conflagration playing upon those
strongly moulded forms: ever-new ventures in means
and aims, strongly underscored by artists for artists,
while the layman must fancy he sees an unconscious
overflowing of all the horns of plenty of an original
nature-art: all these characteristics that constitute
the greatness of that style are neither possible nor
permitted in the earlier ante-classical and classical
periods of a branch of art. Such luxuries hang long
on the tree like forbidden fruit. Just now, when
music is passing into this last phase, we may learn to
know the phenomenon of the baroque style in peculiar
splendour, and, by comparison, find much that is
instructive for earlier ages. For from Greek times
onward there has often been a baroque style, in
poetry, oratory, prose writing, sculpture, and, as is
well known, in architecture. This style, though
wanting in the highest nobility,—the nobility of an
innocent, unconscious, triumphant perfection,—has
nevertheless given pleasure to many of the best and
most serious minds of their time. Hence, as afore-
said, it is presumptuous to depreciate it without re-
serve, however happy we may feel because our taste
for it has not made us insensible to the purer and
greater style.
145.
The Value of Honest Books. —Honest books
make the reader honest, at least by exciting his
hatred and aversion, which otherwise cunning clever-


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j6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
ness knows so well how to conceal. Against a book,
however, we let ourselves go, however restrained we
may be in our relations with men.
146.
How Art makes Partisans. —Individual fine
passages, an exciting general tenor, a moving and
absorbing finale—so much of a work of art is ac-
cessible even to most laymen. In an art period
when it is desired to win over the great majority of
the laymen to the side of the artists and to make a
party perhaps for the very preservation of art, the
creative artist will do well to offer nothing more than
the above. Then he will not be a squanderer of his
strength, in spheres where no one is grateful to him.
For to perform the remaining functions, the imi-
tation of Nature in her organic development and
growth, would in that case be like sowing seeds in
water.
147.
Becoming Great to the Detriment of
HISTORy. —Every later master who leads the taste
of art-lovers into his channel unconsciously gives rise
to a selection and revaluation of the older masters
and their works. Whatever in them is conformable
and akin to him, and anticipates and foreshadows
him, appears henceforth as the only important ele-
ment in them and their works—a fruit in which a
great error usually lies hidden like a worm.
148.
How an Epoch becomes Lured to Art. —If
we teach people by all the enchantments of artists


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. JJ
and thinkers to feel reverence for their defects, their
intellectual poverty, their absurd infatuations and
passions (as it is quite possible to do); if we show
them only the lofty side of crime and folly, only
the touching and appealing element in weakness and
flabbiness and blind devotion (that too has often
enough been done):—we have employed the means
for inspiring even an unphilosophical and inartistic
age with an ecstatic love of philosophy and art
(especially of thinkers and artists as personalities)
and, in the worst case, perhaps with the only means
of defending the existence of such tender and fragile
beings.
149.
Criticism and Joy. —Criticism, one-sided and
unjust as well as intelligent criticism, gives so much
pleasure to him who exercises it that the world is
indebted to every work and every action that in-
spires much criticism and many critics. For criti-.
cism draws after it a glittering train of joyousness,
wit, self-admiration, pride, instruction, designs of im-
provement. —The God of joy created the bad and
the mediocre for the same reason that he created the
good.
150.
Beyond his Limits. —When an artist wants to
be more than an artist—for example, the moral
awakener of his people—he at last falls in love, as a
punishment, with a monster of moral substance.
The Muse laughs, for, though a kind-hearted God-
dess, she can also be malignant from jealousy.
Milton and Klopstock are cases in point.


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78 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
151.
A GLASS Eye. —The tendency of a talent towards
moral subjects, characters, motives, towards the
"beautiful soul" of the work of art, is often only a
glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful
soul. It may result, though rarely, that his eye
finally becomes living Nature, if indeed it be Nature
with a somewhat troubled look. But the ordinary
result is that the whole world thinks it sees Nature
where there is only cold glass.
152.
Writing and Desire for Victory. —Writing
should always indicate a victory, indeed a conquest
of oneself which must be communicated to others
for their behoof. There are, however, dyspeptic
authors who only write when they cannot digest
something, or when something has remained stuck
in their teeth. Through their anger they try un-
consciously to disgust the reader too, and to exercise
violence upon him—that is, they desire victory, but
victory over others.
153-
A Good Book Needs Time. —Every good book
tastes bitter when it first comes out, for it has the
defect of newness. Moreover, it suffers damage
from its living author, if he is well known and much
talked about. For all the world is accustomed to
confuse the author with his work. Whatever of
profundity, sweetness, and brilliance the work may
contain must be developed as the years go by,


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 79
under the care of growing, then old, and lastly
traditional reverence. Many hours must pass, many
a spider must have woven its web about the book.
A book is made better by good readers and clearer
by good opponents.
154.
Extravagance as an Artistic Means. —
Artists well understand the idea of using extrava-
gance as an artistic means in order to convey an
impression of wealth. This is one of those innocent
wiles of soul-seduction that the artist must know,
for in his world, which has only appearance in view,
the means to appearance need not necessarily be
genuine.
155-
The Hidden Barrel-Organ. —Genius, by
virtue of its more ample drapery, knows better than
talent how to hide its barrel-organ. Yet after all
it too can only play its seven old pieces over and
over again.
156.
The Name on the Title-Page. —It is now a
matter of custom and almost of duty for the
author's name to appear on the book, and this is a
main cause of the fact that books have so little
influence. If they are good, they are worth more
than the personalities of their authors, of which
they are the quintessences. But as soon as the
author makes himself known on the title-page, the
quintessence, from the reader's point of view, be-


## p. 80 (#100) #############################################

80 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
comes diluted with the personal, the most personal
element, and the aim of the book is frustrated. It
is the ambition of the intellect no longer to appear
individual.
157-
The Most Cutting Criticism. —We make the
most cutting criticism of a man or a book when we
indicate his or its ideal.
158.
Little or no Love. —Every good book is written
for a particular reader and men of his stamp, and
for that very reason is looked upon unfavourably
by all other readers, by the vast majority. Its re-
putation accordingly rests on a narrow basis and
must be built up by degrees. —The mediocre and
bad book is mediocre and bad because it seeks to
please, and does please, a great number.
159-
Music and Disease. —The danger of the new
music lies in the fact that it puts the cup of rapture
and exaltation to the lips so invitingly, and with
such a show of moral ecstasy, that even the noble
and temperate man always drinks a drop too much.
This minimum of intemperance, constantlyrepeated,
can in the end bring about a deeper convulsion and
destruction of mental health than any coarse excess
could do. Hence nothing remains but some day
to fly from the grotto of the nymph, and through
perils and billowy seas to forge one's way to the


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 8l
smoke of Ithaca and the embraces of a simpler and
more human spouse.
160.
Advantage for Opponents. —A book full of
intellect communicates something thereof even to
its opponents.
161.
Youth and Criticism. —To criticise a book
means, for the young, not to let oneself be touched
by a single productive thought therefrom, and to
protect one's skin with hands and feet. The
youngster lives in opposition to all novelty that
he cannot love in the lump, in a position of self-
defence, and in this connection he commits, as often
as he can, a superfluous sin.
162.
Effect of Quantity. —The greatest paradox
in the history of poetic art lies in this: that in all
that constitutes the greatness of the old poets a
man may be a barbarian, faulty and deformed from
top to toe, and still remain the greatest of poets.
This is the case with Shakespeare, who, as com-
pared with Sophocles, is like a mine of immeasur-
able wealth in gold, lead, and rubble, whereas
Sophocles is not merely gold, but gold in its noblest
form, one that almost makes us forget the money-
value of the metal. But quantity in its highest in-
tensity has the same effect as quality. That is a
good thing for Shakespeare.
VOl. II. F


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82 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I63.
All Beginning is Dangerous. —The Poet can
choose whether to raise emotion from one grade to
another, and so finally to exalt it to a great height
—or to try a surprise attack, and from the start
to pull the bell-rope with might and main. Both
processes have their danger—in the first case his
hearer may run away from him through boredom,
in the second through terror.
164.
In Favour OF Critics. —Insects sting, not from
malice, but because they too want to live. It is the
same with our critics—they desire our blood, not our
pain.
165.
Success of Aphorisms. —The inexperienced,
when an aphorism at once illuminates their minds
with its naked truth, always think that it is old and
well known. They look askance at the author, as if
he had wanted to steal the common property of all,
whereas they enjoy highly spiced half-truths, and
give the author to understand as much. He knows
how to appreciate the hint, and easily guesses there-
by where he has succeeded and failed.
166.
The Desire for Victory. — An artist who
exceeds the limit of his strength in all that he
undertakes will end by carrying the multitude
along with him through the spectacle of violent


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 83
wrestling that he affords. Success is not always
the accompaniment only of victory, but also of the
desire for victory.
167.
Sibi Scribere. —The sensible author writes for
no other posterity than his own—that is, for his
age—so as to be able even then to take pleasure
in himself.
168.
Praise of the Aphorism. —A good aphorism
is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn
away by all the centuries, although it serves as food
for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox
in literature, the imperishable in the midst of
change, the nourishment which always remains
highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes
stupid like salt.
169.
The Art-Need of the Second Order. —The
people may have something of what can be called
art-need, but it is small, and can be cheaply satis-
fied. On the whole, the remnant of art (it must
be honestly confessed) suffices for this need. Let
us consider, for example, the kind of melodies and
songs in which the most vigorous, unspoiled, and
true-hearted classes of the population find genuine
delight; let us live among shepherds, cowherds,
peasants, huntsmen, soldiers, and sailors, and give
ourselves the answer. And in the country town, just
in the houses that are the homes of inherited civic
virtue, is it not the worst music at present produced


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84 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that is loved and,one might say,cherished? He who
speaks of deeper needs and unsatisfied yearnings
for art among the people, as it is, is a crank or an im-
postor. Be honest! Only in exceptional men is there
now an art-need in the highest sense—because art
is once more on the down-grade, and human powers
and hopes are for the time being directed to other
matters. —Apart from this, outside the populace,
there exists indeed, in the higher and highest strata
of society, a broader and more comprehensive art-
need, but of the second order. Here there is a sort
of artistic commune, which possibly means to be
sincere. But let us look at the elements! They
are in general the more refined malcontents, who
attain no genuine pleasure in themselves; the cul-
tured, who have not become free enough to dispense
with the consolations of religion, and yet do not
find its incense sufficiently fragrant; the half-aristo-
cratic, who are too weak to combat by a heroic
conversion or renunciation the one fundamental
error of their lives or the pernicious bent of their
characters; the highly gifted, who think themselves
too dignified to be of service by modest activity,
and are too lazy for real, self-sacrificing work; girls
who cannot create for themselves a satisfactory
sphere of duties; women who have tied themselves
by a light-hearted or nefarious marriage, and know
that they are not tied securely enough; scholars,
physicians, merchants, officials who specialised too
early and never gave their lives a free enough scope
—who do their work efficiently, it is true, but with a
worm gnawing at their hearts; finally, all imperfect
artists—these are nowadays the true needers of art!


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 85
What do they really desire from art? Art is to drive
away hours and moments of discomfort, boredom,
half-bad conscience, and, if possible, transform the
faults of their lives and characters into faults of
world-destiny. Very different were the Greeks, who
realised in their art the outflow and overflow of their
own sense of well-being and health, and loved to
see their perfection once more from a standpoint
outside themselves. They were led to art by delight
in themselves; our contemporaries—by disgust of
themselves.
170.
The Germans in the Theatre. —The real
theatrical talent of the Germans was Kotzebue. He
and his Germans, those of higher as well as those
of middle-class society, were necessarily associated,
and his contemporaries should have said of him in all
seriousness, "in him we live and move and have our
being. " Here was nothing—no constraint, pretence,
or half-enjoyment: what he could and would do was
understood. Yes, until now the honest theatrical
success on the German stage has been in the hands
of the shamefaced or unashamed heirs of Kotzebue's
methods and influence—that is, as far as comedy
still flourishes at all. The result is that much of the
Germanism of that age, sometimes far off from the
great towns, still survives. Good-natured; incon-
tinent in small pleasures; always ready for tears;
with the desire, in the theatre at any rate, to be
able to get rid of their innate sobriety and strict
attention to duty and exercise; a smiling, nay, a
laughing indulgence; confusing goodness and sym-


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86 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
pathy and welding them into one, as is the essential
characteristic of German sentimentality; exceed-
ingly happy at a noble, magnanimous action; for
the rest, submissive towards superiors, envious of
each other, and yet in their heart of hearts thor-
oughly self-satisfied—such were they and such was
he. —The second dramatic talent was Schiller. He
discovered a class of hearers which had hitherto
never been taken into consideration: among the
callow German youth of both sexes. His poetry
responded to their higher, nobler, more violent if
more confused emotions, their delight in the jingle
of moral words (a delight that begins to disappear
when we reach the thirties). Thus he won for him-
self, by virtue of the passionateness and partisanship
of the young, a success which gradually reacted with
advantage upon those of riper years. Generally
speaking, Schiller rejuvenated the Germans. Goethe
stood and still stands above the Germans in every
respect. To them he will never belong. How could
a nation in well-being and well-wishing come up to
the intellectuality of Goethe? Beethoven composed
and Schopenhauer philosophised above the heads
of the Germans, and it was above their heads, in
the same way, that Goethe wrote his Tasso, his
Iphigenie. He was followed by a small company
of highly cultured persons, who were educated by
antiquity, life, and travel, and had grown out of
German ways of thought. He himself did not
wish it to be otherwise. —When the Romantics set
up their well-conceived Goethe cult; when their
amazing skill in appreciation was passed on to the
disciples of Hegel, the real educators of the Germans


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 87
of this century; when the awakening national am-
bition turned out advantageous to the fame of the
German poets; when the real standard of the nation,
as to whether it could honestly find enjoyment in
anything, became inexorably subordinated to the
judgment of individuals and to that national am-
bition,—that is, when people began to enjoy by
compulsion,—then arose that false, spurious German
culture which was ashamed of Kotzebue; which
brought Sophocles, Calderon, and even the Second
Part of Goethe's Faust on the stage; and which,
on account of its foul tongue and congested stomach,
no longer knows now what it likes and what it finds
tedious. —Happy are those who have taste, even if
it be a bad taste! Only by this characteristic can
one be wise as well as happy. Hence the Greeks,
who were very refined in such matters, designated
the sage by a word that means "man of taste," and
called wisdom, artistic as well as scientific, " taste"
{sophia).
171.
Music as a Late-Comer in every Culture.
—Among all the arts that are accustomed to grow
on a definite culture-soil and under definite social
and political conditions, music is the last plant to
come up, arising in the autumn and fading-season
of the culture to which it belongs. At the same
time, the first signs and harbingers of a new spring
are usually already noticeable, and sometimes music,
like the language of a forgotten age, rings out into
a new, astonished world, and comes too late. In the
art of the Dutch and Flemish musicians the soul


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88 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
r
of the Christian middle ages at last found its fullest
tone: their sound-architecture is the posthumous
but legitimate and equal sister of Gothic. Not until
Handel's music was heard the note of the best in
the soul of Luther and his kin, the great Judaeo-
heroical impulse that created the whole Reforma-
tion movement. Mozart first expressed in golden
melody the age of Louis XIV. and the art of Racine
and Claude Lorrain. The eighteenth century—that
century of rhapsody, of broken ideals and transitory
happiness—only sang itself out in the music of Bee-
thoven and Rossini.