No More Learning

Our destiny exercises
its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature:
it is our future that lays down the law to our to-day. Granted, that it
is the problem of classification[2] of which we free spirits may say,
this is _our_ problem, yet it is only now, in the midday of our life,
that we fully appreciate what preparations, shifts, trials, ordeals,
stages, were essential to that problem before it could emerge to our
view, and why we had to go through the various and contradictory
longings and satisfactions of body and soul, as circumnavigators and
adventurers of that inner world called "man"; as surveyors of that
"higher" and of that "progression"[3] that is also called
"man"--crowding in everywhere, almost without fear, disdaining nothing,
missing nothing, testing everything, sifting everything and eliminating
the chance impurities--until at last we could say, we free spirits:
"Here--a _new_ problem! Here, a long ladder on the rungs of which we
ourselves have rested and risen, which we have actually been at times.
Here is a something higher, a something deeper, a something below us, a
vastly extensive order, (Ordnung) a comparative classification
(Rangordnung), that we perceive: here--_our_ problem! "

[2] Rangordnung: the meaning is "the problem of grasping the relative
importance of things. "

[3] Uebereinander: one over another.


8

To what stage in the development just outlined the present book belongs
(or is assigned) is something that will be hidden from no augur or
psychologist for an instant. But where are there psychologists to-day?
In France, certainly; in Russia, perhaps; certainly not in Germany.
Grounds are not wanting, to be sure, upon which the Germans of to-day
may adduce this fact to their credit: unhappily for one who in this
matter is fashioned and mentored in an un-German school! This _German_
book, which has found its readers in a wide circle of lands and
peoples--it has been some ten years on its rounds--and which must make
its way by means of any musical art and tune that will captivate the
foreign ear as well as the native--this book has been read most
indifferently in Germany itself and little heeded there: to what is that
due? "It requires too much," I have been told, "it addresses itself to
men free from the press of petty obligations, it demands fine and
trained perceptions, it requires a surplus, a surplus of time, of the
lightness of heaven and of the heart, of otium in the most unrestricted
sense: mere good things that we Germans of to-day have not got and
therefore cannot give. " After so graceful a retort, my philosophy bids
me be silent and ask no more questions: at times, as the proverb says,
one remains a philosopher only because one says--nothing!

Nice, Spring, 1886.




OF THE FIRST AND LAST THINGS.


1

=Chemistry of the Notions and the Feelings. =--Philosophical problems, in
almost all their aspects, present themselves in the same interrogative
formula now that they did two thousand years ago: how can a thing
develop out of its antithesis? for example, the reasonable from the
non-reasonable, the animate from the inanimate, the logical from the
illogical, altruism from egoism, disinterestedness from greed, truth
from error? The metaphysical philosophy formerly steered itself clear of
this difficulty to such extent as to repudiate the evolution of one
thing from another and to assign a miraculous origin to what it deemed
highest and best, due to the very nature and being of the
"thing-in-itself. " The historical philosophy, on the other hand, which
can no longer be viewed apart from physical science, the youngest of all
philosophical methods, discovered experimentally (and its results will
probably always be the same) that there is no antithesis whatever,
except in the usual exaggerations of popular or metaphysical
comprehension, and that an error of the reason is at the bottom of such
contradiction. According to its explanation, there is, strictly
speaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of
view. Both are simply sublimations in which the basic element seems
almost evaporated and betrays its presence only to the keenest
observation. All that we need and that could possibly be given us in the
present state of development of the sciences, is a chemistry of the
moral, religious, aesthetic conceptions and feeling, as well as of those
emotions which we experience in the affairs, great and small, of society
and civilization, and which we are sensible of even in solitude. But
what if this chemistry established the fact that, even in _its_ domain,
the most magnificent results were attained with the basest and most
despised ingredients? Would many feel disposed to continue such
investigations? Mankind loves to put by the questions of its origin and
beginning: must one not be almost inhuman in order to follow the
opposite course?


2

=The Traditional Error of Philosophers. =--All philosophers make the
common mistake of taking contemporary man as their starting point and of
trying, through an analysis of him, to reach a conclusion. "Man"
involuntarily presents himself to them as an aeterna veritas as a
passive element in every hurly-burly, as a fixed standard of things. Yet
everything uttered by the philosopher on the subject of man is, in the
last resort, nothing more than a piece of testimony concerning man
during a very limited period of time. Lack of the historical sense is
the traditional defect in all philosophers. Many innocently take man in
his most childish state as fashioned through the influence of certain
religious and even of certain political developments, as the permanent
form under which man must be viewed. They will not learn that man has
evolved,[4] that the intellectual faculty itself is an evolution,
whereas some philosophers make the whole cosmos out of this intellectual
faculty. But everything essential in human evolution took place aeons
ago, long before the four thousand years or so of which we know
anything: during these man may not have changed very much. However, the
philosopher ascribes "instinct" to contemporary man and assumes that
this is one of the unalterable facts regarding man himself, and hence
affords a clue to the understanding of the universe in general. The
whole teleology is so planned that man during the last four thousand
years shall be spoken of as a being existing from all eternity, and
with reference to whom everything in the cosmos from its very inception
is naturally ordered. Yet everything evolved: there are no eternal facts
as there are no absolute truths. Accordingly, historical philosophising
is henceforth indispensable, and with it honesty of judgment.

[4] geworden.


3

=Appreciation of Simple Truths. =--It is the characteristic of an
advanced civilization to set a higher value upon little, simple truths,
ascertained by scientific method, than upon the pleasing and magnificent
errors originating in metaphysical and aesthetical epochs and peoples. To
begin with, the former are spoken of with contempt as if there could be
no question of comparison respecting them, so rigid, homely, prosaic and
even discouraging is the aspect of the first, while so beautiful,
decorative, intoxicating and perhaps beatific appear the last named.
Nevertheless, the hardwon, the certain, the lasting and, therefore, the
fertile in new knowledge, is the higher; to hold fast to it is manly and
evinces courage, directness, endurance. And not only individual men but
all mankind will by degrees be uplifted to this manliness when they are
finally habituated to the proper appreciation of tenable, enduring
knowledge and have lost all faith in inspiration and in the miraculous
revelation of truth. The reverers of forms, indeed, with their standards
of beauty and taste, may have good reason to laugh when the appreciation
of little truths and the scientific spirit begin to prevail, but that
will be only because their eyes are not yet opened to the charm of the
utmost simplicity of form or because men though reared in the rightly
appreciative spirit, will still not be fully permeated by it, so that
they continue unwittingly imitating ancient forms (and that ill enough,
as anybody does who no longer feels any interest in a thing). Formerly
the mind was not brought into play through the medium of exact thought.
Its serious business lay in the working out of forms and symbols. That
has now changed. Any seriousness in symbolism is at present the
indication of a deficient education. As our very acts become more
intellectual, our tendencies more rational, and our judgment, for
example, as to what seems reasonable, is very different from what it was
a hundred years ago: so the forms of our lives grow ever more
intellectual and, to the old fashioned eye, perhaps, uglier, but only
because it cannot see that the richness of inner, rational beauty always
spreads and deepens, and that the inner, rational aspect of all things
should now be of more consequence to us than the most beautiful
externality and the most exquisite limning.


4

=Astrology and the Like. =--It is presumable that the objects of the
religious, moral, aesthetic and logical notions pertain simply to the
superficialities of things, although man flatters himself with the
thought that here at least he is getting to the heart of the cosmos. He
deceives himself because these things have power to make him so happy
and so wretched, and so he evinces, in this respect, the same conceit
that characterises astrology. Astrology presupposes that the heavenly
bodies are regulated in their movements in harmony with the destiny of
mortals: the moral man presupposes that that which concerns himself most
nearly must also be the heart and soul of things.


5

=Misconception of Dreams. =--In the dream, mankind, in epochs of crude
primitive civilization, thought they were introduced to a second,
substantial world: here we have the source of all metaphysic. Without
the dream, men would never have been incited to an analysis of the
world. Even the distinction between soul and body is wholly due to the
primitive conception of the dream, as also the hypothesis of the
embodied soul, whence the development of all superstition, and also,
probably, the belief in god. "The dead still live: for they appear to
the living in dreams. " So reasoned mankind at one time, and through many
thousands of years.


6

=The Scientific Spirit Prevails only Partially, not Wholly. =--The
specialized, minutest departments of science are dealt with purely
objectively. But the general universal sciences, considered as a great,
basic unity, posit the question--truly a very living question--: to what
purpose? what is the use? Because of this reference to utility they are,
as a whole, less impersonal than when looked at in their specialized
aspects. Now in the case of philosophy, as forming the apex of the
scientific pyramid, this question of the utility of knowledge is
necessarily brought very conspicuously forward, so that every philosophy
has, unconsciously, the air of ascribing the highest utility to itself.
It is for this reason that all philosophies contain such a great amount
of high flying metaphysic, and such a shrinking from the seeming
insignificance of the deliverances of physical science: for the
significance of knowledge in relation to life must be made to appear as
great as possible. This constitutes the antagonism between the
specialties of science and philosophy. The latter aims, as art aims, at
imparting to life and conduct the utmost depth and significance: in the
former mere knowledge is sought and nothing else--whatever else be
incidentally obtained. Heretofore there has never been a philosophical
system in which philosophy itself was not made the apologist of
knowledge [in the abstract]. On this point, at least, each is optimistic
and insists that to knowledge the highest utility must be ascribed. They
are all under the tyranny of logic, which is, from its very nature,
optimism.


7

=The Discordant Element in Science. =--Philosophy severed itself from
science when it put the question: what is that knowledge of the world
and of life through which mankind may be made happiest? This happened
when the Socratic school arose: with the standpoint of _happiness_ the
arteries of investigating science were compressed too tightly to permit
of any circulation of the blood--and are so compressed to-day.


8

=Pneumatic Explanation of Nature. =[5]--Metaphysic reads the message of
nature as if it were written purely pneumatically, as the church and its
learned ones formerly did where the bible was concerned. It requires a
great deal of expertness to apply to nature the same strict science of
interpretation that the philologists have devised for all literature,
and to apply it for the purpose of a simple, direct interpretation of
the message, and at the same time, not bring out a double meaning. But,
as in the case of books and literature, errors of exposition are far
from being completely eliminated, and vestiges of allegorical and
mystical interpretations are still to be met with in the most cultivated
circles, so where nature is concerned the case is--actually much worse.

[5] Pneumatic is here used in the sense of spiritual. Pneuma being the
Greek word in the New Testament for the Holy Spirit. --Ed.


9

=Metaphysical World. =--It is true, there may be a metaphysical world;
the absolute possibility of it can scarcely be disputed. We see all
things through the medium of the human head and we cannot well cut off
this head: although there remains the question what part of the world
would be left after it had been cut off. But that is a purely abstract
scientific problem and one not much calculated to give men uneasiness:
yet everything that has heretofore made metaphysical assumptions
valuable, fearful or delightful to men, all that gave rise to them is
passion, error and self deception: the worst systems of knowledge, not
the best, pin their tenets of belief thereto. When such methods are once
brought to view as the basis of all existing religions and metaphysics,
they are already discredited. There always remains, however, the
possibility already conceded: but nothing at all can be made out of
that, to say not a word about letting happiness, salvation and life hang
upon the threads spun from such a possibility. Accordingly, nothing
could be predicated of the metaphysical world beyond the fact that it is
an elsewhere,[6] another sphere, inaccessible and incomprehensible to
us: it would become a thing of negative properties. Even were the
existence of such a world absolutely established, it would nevertheless
remain incontrovertible that of all kinds of knowledge, knowledge of
such a world would be of least consequence--of even less consequence
than knowledge of the chemical analysis of water would be to a storm
tossed mariner.

[6] Anderssein.


10

=The Harmlessness of Metaphysic in the Future. =--As soon as religion,
art and ethics are so understood that a full comprehension of them can
be gained without taking refuge in the postulates of metaphysical
claptrap at any point in the line of reasoning, there will be a complete
cessation of interest in the purely theoretical problem of the "thing in
itself" and the "phenomenon. " For here, too, the same truth applies: in
religion, art and ethics we are not concerned with the "essence of the
cosmos". [7] We are in the sphere of pure conception. No presentiment [or
intuition] can carry us any further. With perfect tranquility the
question of how our conception of the world could differ so sharply from
the actual world as it is manifest to us, will be relegated to the
physiological sciences and to the history of the evolution of ideas and
organisms.

[7] "Wesen der Welt an sich. "


11

=Language as a Presumptive Science. =--The importance of language in the
development of civilization consists in the fact that by means of it
man placed one world, his own, alongside another, a place of leverage
that he thought so firm as to admit of his turning the rest of the
cosmos on a pivot that he might master it. In so far as man for ages
looked upon mere ideas and names of things as upon aeternae veritates,
he evinced the very pride with which he raised himself above the brute.
He really supposed that in language he possessed a knowledge of the
cosmos. The language builder was not so modest as to believe that he was
only giving names to things. On the contrary he thought he embodied the
highest wisdom concerning things in [mere] words; and, in truth,
language is the first movement in all strivings for wisdom. Here, too,
it is _faith in ascertained truth_[8] from which the mightiest fountains
of strength have flowed. Very tardily--only now--it dawns upon men that
they have propagated a monstrous error in their belief in language.
Fortunately, it is too late now to arrest and turn back the evolutionary
process of the reason, which had its inception in this belief. Logic
itself rests upon assumptions to which nothing in the world of reality
corresponds. For example, the correspondence of certain things to one
another and the identity of those things at different periods of time
are assumptions pure and simple, but the science of logic originated in
the positive belief that they were not assumptions at all but
established facts. It is the same with the science of mathematics which
certainly would never have come into existence if mankind had known from
the beginning that in all nature there is no perfectly straight line, no
true circle, no standard of measurement.

[8] Glaube an die gefundene Wahrheit, as distinguished from faith in
what is taken on trust as truth.


12

=Dream and Civilization. =--The function of the brain which is most
encroached upon in slumber is the memory; not that it is wholly
suspended, but it is reduced to a state of imperfection as, in primitive
ages of mankind, was probably the case with everyone, whether waking or
sleeping. Uncontrolled and entangled as it is, it perpetually confuses
things as a result of the most trifling similarities, yet in the same
mental confusion and lack of control the nations invented their
mythologies, while nowadays travelers habitually observe how prone the
savage is to forgetfulness, how his mind, after the least exertion of
memory, begins to wander and lose itself until finally he utters
falsehood and nonsense from sheer exhaustion. Yet, in dreams, we all
resemble this savage. Inadequacy of distinction and error of comparison
are the basis of the preposterous things we do and say in dreams, so
that when we clearly recall a dream we are startled that so much idiocy
lurks within us. The absolute distinctness of all dream-images, due to
implicit faith in their substantial reality, recalls the conditions in
which earlier mankind were placed, for whom hallucinations had
extraordinary vividness, entire communities and even entire nations
laboring simultaneously under them. Therefore: in sleep and in dream we
make the pilgrimage of early mankind over again.


13

=Logic of the Dream. =--During sleep the nervous system, through various
inner provocatives, is in constant agitation. Almost all the organs act
independently and vigorously. The blood circulates rapidly. The posture
of the sleeper compresses some portions of the body. The coverlets
influence the sensations in different ways. The stomach carries on the
digestive process and acts upon other organs thereby. The intestines are
in motion. The position of the head induces unaccustomed action. The
feet, shoeless, no longer pressing the ground, are the occasion of other
sensations of novelty, as is, indeed, the changed garb of the entire
body. All these things, following the bustle and change of the day,
result, through their novelty, in a movement throughout the entire
system that extends even to the brain functions. Thus there are a
hundred circumstances to induce perplexity in the mind, a questioning as
to the cause of this excitation. Now, the dream is a _seeking and
presenting of reasons_ for these excitations of feeling, of the supposed
reasons, that is to say. Thus, for example, whoever has his feet bound
with two threads will probably dream that a pair of serpents are coiled
about his feet. This is at first a hypothesis, then a belief with an
accompanying imaginative picture and the argument: "these snakes must be
the _causa_ of those sensations which I, the sleeper, now have. " So
reasons the mind of the sleeper. The conditions precedent, as thus
conjectured, become, owing to the excitation of the fancy, present
realities. Everyone knows from experience how a dreamer will transform
one piercing sound, for example, that of a bell, into another of quite a
different nature, say, the report of cannon. In his dream he becomes
aware first of the effects, which he explains by a subsequent hypothesis
and becomes persuaded of the purely conjectural nature of the sound. But
how comes it that the mind of the dreamer goes so far astray when the
same mind, awake, is habitually cautious, careful, and so conservative
in its dealings with hypotheses? why does the first plausible
hypothesis of the cause of a sensation gain credit in the dreaming
state? (For in a dream we look upon that dream as reality, that is, we
accept our hypotheses as fully established). I have no doubt that as men
argue in their dreams to-day, mankind argued, even in their waking
moments, for thousands of years: the first _causa_, that occurred to the
mind with reference to anything that stood in need of explanation, was
accepted as the true explanation and served as such. (Savages show the
same tendency in operation, as the reports of travelers agree). In the
dream this atavistic relic of humanity manifests its existence within
us, for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational faculty
developed itself and still develops itself in every individual. Dreams
carry us back to the earlier stages of human culture and afford us a
means of understanding it more clearly. Dream thought comes so easily to
us now because we are so thoroughly trained to it through the
interminable stages of evolution during which this fanciful and facile
form of theorising has prevailed. To a certain extent the dream is a
restorative for the brain, which, during the day, is called upon to meet
the many demands for trained thought made upon it by the conditions of a
higher civilization. --We may, if we please, become sensible, even in our
waking moments, of a condition that is as a door and vestibule to
dreaming. If we close our eyes the brain immediately conjures up a
medley of impressions of light and color, apparently a sort of imitation
and echo of the impressions forced in upon the brain during its waking
moments. And now the mind, in co-operation with the imagination,
transforms this formless play of light and color into definite figures,
moving groups, landscapes. What really takes place is a sort of
reasoning from effect back to cause. As the brain inquires: whence these
impressions of light and color? it posits as the inducing causes of such
lights and colors, those shapes and figures. They serve the brain as the
occasions of those lights and colors because the brain, when the eyes
are open and the senses awake, is accustomed to perceiving the cause of
every impression of light and color made upon it. Here again the
imagination is continually interposing its images inasmuch as it
participates in the production of the impressions made through the
senses day by day: and the dream-fancy does exactly the same thing--that
is, the presumed cause is determined from the effect and _after_ the
effect: all this, too, with extraordinary rapidity, so that in this
matter, as in a matter of jugglery or sleight-of-hand, a confusion of
the mind is produced and an after effect is made to appear a
simultaneous action, an inverted succession of events, even. --From
these considerations we can see how _late_ strict, logical thought, the
true notion of cause and effect must have been in developing, since our
intellectual and rational faculties to this very day revert to these
primitive processes of deduction, while practically half our lifetime is
spent in the super-inducing conditions. --Even the poet, the artist,
ascribes to his sentimental and emotional states causes which are not
the true ones. To that extent he is a reminder of early mankind and can
aid us in its comprehension.


14

=Association. =[9]--All strong feelings are associated with a variety of
allied sentiments and emotions. They stir up the memory at the same
time. When we are under their influence we are reminded of similar
states and we feel a renewal of them within us. Thus are formed habitual
successions of feelings and notions, which, at last, when they follow
one another with lightning rapidity are no longer felt as complexities
but as unities. In this sense we hear of moral feelings, of religious
feelings, as if they were absolute unities. In reality they are streams
with a hundred sources and tributaries. Here again, the unity of the
word speaks nothing for the unity of the thing.

[9] Miterklingen: to sound simultaneously with.


15

=No Within and Without in the World. =[10]--As Democritus transferred the
notions above and below to limitless space, where they are destitute of
meaning, so the philosophers do generally with the idea "within and
without," as regards the form and substance (Wesen und Erscheinung) of
the world. What they claim is that through the medium of profound
feelings one can penetrate deep into the soul of things (Innre), draw
close to the heart of nature. But these feelings are deep only in so far
as with them are simultaneously aroused, although almost imperceptibly,
certain complicated groups of thoughts (Gedankengruppen) which we call
deep: a feeling is deep because we deem the thoughts accompanying it
deep. But deep thought can nevertheless be very widely sundered from
truth, as for instance every metaphysical thought. Take from deep
feeling the element of thought blended with it and all that remains is
_strength_ of feeling which is no voucher for the validity of
knowledge, as intense faith is evidence only of its own intensity and
not of the truth of that in which the faith is felt.

[10] Kein Innen und Aussen in der Welt: the above translation may seem
too literal but some dispute has arisen concerning the precise idea the
author means to convey.


16

=Phenomenon and Thing-in-Itself. =--The philosophers are in the habit of
placing themselves in front of life and experience--that which they call
the world of phenomena--as if they were standing before a picture that
is unrolled before them in its final completeness. This panorama, they
think, must be studied in every detail in order to reach some conclusion
regarding the object represented by the picture. From effect,
accordingly is deduced cause and from cause is deduced the
unconditioned. This process is generally looked upon as affording the
all sufficient explanation of the world of phenomena. On the other hand
one must, (while putting the conception of the metaphysical distinctly
forward as that of the unconditioned, and consequently of the
unconditioning) absolutely deny any connection between the unconditioned
(of the metaphysical world) and the world known to us: so that
throughout phenomena there is no manifestation of the thing-in-itself,
and getting from one to the other is out of the question. Thus is left
quite ignored the circumstance that the picture--that which we now call
life and experience--is a gradual evolution, is, indeed, still in
process of evolution and for that reason should not be regarded as an
enduring whole from which any conclusion as to its author (the
all-sufficient reason) could be arrived at, or even pronounced out of
the question. It is because we have for thousands of years looked into
the world with moral, aesthetic, religious predispositions, with blind
prejudice, passion or fear, and surfeited ourselves with indulgence in
the follies of illogical thought, that the world has gradually become so
wondrously motley, frightful, significant, soulful: it has taken on
tints, but we have been the colorists: the human intellect, upon the
foundation of human needs, of human passions, has reared all these
"phenomena" and injected its own erroneous fundamental conceptions into
things. Late, very late, the human intellect checks itself: and now the
world of experience and the thing-in-itself seem to it so severed and so
antithetical that it denies the possibility of one's hinging upon the
other--or else summons us to surrender our intellect, our personal will,
to the secret and the awe-inspiring in order that thereby we may attain
certainty of certainty hereafter. Again, there are those who have
combined all the characteristic features of our world of
phenomena--that is, the conception of the world which has been formed
and inherited through a series of intellectual vagaries--and instead of
holding the intellect responsible for it all, have pronounced the very
nature of things accountable for the present very sinister aspect of the
world, and preached annihilation of existence. Through all these views
and opinions the toilsome, steady process of science (which now for the
first time begins to celebrate its greatest triumph in the genesis of
thought) will definitely work itself out, the result, being, perhaps, to
the following effect: That which we now call the world is the result of
a crowd of errors and fancies which gradually developed in the general
evolution of organic nature, have grown together and been transmitted to
us as the accumulated treasure of all the past--as the _treasure_, for
whatever is worth anything in our humanity rests upon it. From this
world of conception it is in the power of science to release us only to
a slight extent--and this is all that could be wished--inasmuch as it
cannot eradicate the influence of hereditary habits of feeling, but it
can light up by degrees the stages of the development of that world of
conception, and lift us, at least for a time, above the whole spectacle.
Perhaps we may then perceive that the thing-in-itself is a meet subject
for Homeric laughter: that it seemed so much, everything, indeed, and
is really a void--void, that is to say, of meaning.


17

=Metaphysical Explanation. =--Man, when he is young, prizes metaphysical
explanations, because they make him see matters of the highest import in
things he found disagreeable or contemptible: and if he is not satisfied
with himself, this feeling of dissatisfaction is soothed when he sees
the most hidden world-problem or world-pain in that which he finds so
displeasing in himself. To feel himself more unresponsible and at the
same time to find things (Dinge) more interesting--that is to him the
double benefit he owes to metaphysics. Later, indeed, he acquires
distrust of the whole metaphysical method of explaining things: he then
perceives, perhaps, that those effects could have been attained just as
well and more scientifically by another method: that physical and
historical explanations would, at least, have given that feeling of
freedom from personal responsibility just as well, while interest in
life and its problems would be stimulated, perhaps, even more.


18

=The Fundamental Problems of Metaphysics. =--If a history of the
development of thought is ever written, the following proposition,
advanced by a distinguished logician, will be illuminated with a new
light: "The universal, primordial law of the apprehending subject
consists in the inner necessity of cognizing every object by itself, as
in its essence a thing unto itself, therefore as self-existing and
unchanging, in short, as a substance. " Even this law, which is here
called "primordial," is an evolution: it has yet to be shown how
gradually this evolution takes place in lower organizations: how the
dim, mole eyes of such organizations see, at first, nothing but a blank
sameness: how later, when the various excitations of desire and aversion
manifest themselves, various substances are gradually distinguished, but
each with an attribute, that is, a special relationship to such an
organization. The first step towards the logical is judgment, the
essence of which, according to the best logicians, is belief. At the
foundation of all beliefs lie sensations of pleasure or pain in relation
to the apprehending subject. A third feeling, as the result of two
prior, single, separate feelings, is judgment in its crudest form. We
organic beings are primordially interested by nothing whatever in any
thing (Ding) except its relation to ourselves with reference to pleasure
and pain. Between the moments in which we are conscious of this
relation, (the states of feeling) lie the moments of rest, of
not-feeling: then the world and every thing (Ding) have no interest for
us: we observe no change in them (as at present a person absorbed in
something does not notice anyone passing by). To plants all things are,
as a rule, at rest, eternal, every object like itself. From the period
of lower organisms has been handed down to man the belief that there are
like things (gleiche Dinge): only the trained experience attained
through the most advanced science contradicts this postulate.
The
primordial belief of all organisms is, perhaps, that all the rest of the
world is one thing and motionless. --Furthest away from this first step
towards the logical is the notion of causation: even to-day we think
that all our feelings and doings are, at bottom, acts of the free will;
when the sentient individual contemplates himself he deems every
feeling, every change, a something isolated, disconnected, that is to
say, unqualified by any thing; it comes suddenly to the surface,
independent of anything that went before or came after. We are hungry,
but originally we do not know that the organism must be nourished: on
the contrary that feeling seems to manifest itself without reason or
purpose; it stands out by itself and seems quite independent. Therefore:
the belief in the freedom of the will is a primordial error of
everything organic as old as the very earliest inward prompting of the
logical faculty; belief in unconditioned substances and in like things
(gleiche Dinge) is also a primordial and equally ancient error of
everything organic. Inasmuch as all metaphysic has concerned itself
particularly with substance and with freedom of the will, it should be
designated as the science that deals with the fundamental errors of
mankind as if they were fundamental truths.


19

=Number. =--The invention of the laws of number has as its basis the
primordial and prior-prevailing delusion that many like things exist
(although in point of fact there is no such thing is a duplicate), or
that, at least, there are things (but there is no "thing"). The
assumption of plurality always presupposes that _something_ exists which
manifests itself repeatedly, but just here is where the delusion
prevails; in this very matter we feign realities, unities, that have no
existence. Our feelings, notions, of space and time are false for they
lead, when duly tested, to logical contradictions. In all scientific
demonstrations we always unavoidably base our calculation upon some
false standards [of duration or measurement] but as these standards are
at least _constant_, as, for example, our notions of time and space, the
results arrived at by science possess absolute accuracy and certainty in
their relationship to one another: one can keep on building upon
them--until is reached that final limit at which the erroneous
fundamental conceptions, (the invariable breakdown) come into conflict
with the results established--as, for example, in the case of the atomic
theory. Here we always find ourselves obliged to give credence to a
"thing" or material "substratum" that is set in motion, although, at the
same time, the whole scientific programme has had as its aim the
resolving of everything material into motions [themselves]: here again
we distinguish with our feeling [that which does the] moving and [that
which is] moved,[11] and we never get out of this circle, because the
belief in things[12] has been from time immemorial rooted in our
nature. --When Kant says "the intellect does not derive its laws from
nature, but dictates them to her" he states the full truth as regards
the _idea of nature_ which we form (nature = world, as notion, that is,
as error) but which is merely the synthesis of a host of errors of the
intellect. To a world not [the outcome of] our conception, the laws of
number are wholly inapplicable: such laws are valid only in the world of
mankind.

[11] Wir scheiden auch hier noch mit unserer Empfindung Bewegendes und
Bewegtes.

[12] Glaube an Dinge.


20

=Some Backward Steps. =--One very forward step in education is taken when
man emerges from his superstitious and religious ideas and fears and,
for instance, no longer believes in the dear little angels or in
original sin, and has stopped talking about the salvation of the soul:
when he has taken this step to freedom he has, nevertheless, through the
utmost exertion of his mental power, to overcome metaphysics. Then a
backward movement is necessary: he must appreciate the historical
justification, and to an equal extent the psychological considerations,
in such a movement. He must understand that the greatest advances made
by mankind have resulted from such a course and that without this very
backward movement the highest achievements of man hitherto would have
been impossible. --With regard to philosophical metaphysics I see ever
more and more who have arrived at the negative goal (that all positive
metaphysic is a delusion) but as yet very few who go a few steps
backward: one should look out over the last rungs of the ladder, but not
try to stand on them, that is to say. The most advanced as yet go only
far enough to free themselves from metaphysic and look back at it with
an air of superiority: whereas here, no less than in the hippodrome, it
is necessary to turn around in order to reach the end of the course.


21

=Presumable [Nature of the] Victory of Doubt. =--Let us assume for a
moment the validity of the skeptical standpoint: granted that there is
no metaphysical world, and that all the metaphysical explanations of the
only world we know are useless to us, how would we then contemplate men
and things? [Menschen und Dinge]. This can be thought out and it is
worth while doing so, even if the question whether anything metaphysical
has ever been demonstrated by or through Kant and Schopenhauer, be put
altogether aside. For it is, to all appearances, highly probable that
men, on this point, will be, in the mass, skeptical. The question thus
becomes: what sort of a notion will human society, under the influence
of such a state of mind, form of itself? Perhaps the _scientific
demonstration_ of any metaphysical world is now so difficult that
mankind will never be free from a distrust of it. And when there is
formed a feeling of distrust of metaphysics, the results are, in the
mass, the same as if metaphysics were refuted altogether and _could_ no
longer be believed. In both cases the historical question, with regard
to an unmetaphysical disposition in mankind, remains the same.


22

=Disbelief in the "monumentum aere perennius". =[13]--A decided
disadvantage, attending the termination of metaphysical modes of
thought, is that the individual fixes his mind too attentively upon his
own brief lifetime and feels no strong inducement to aid in the
foundation of institutions capable of enduring for centuries: he wishes
himself to gather the fruit from the tree that he plants and
consequently he no longer plants those trees which require centuries of
constant cultivation and are destined to afford shade to generation
after generation in the future. For metaphysical views inspire the
belief that in them is afforded the final sure foundation upon which
henceforth the whole future of mankind may rest and be built up: the
individual promotes his own salvation; when, for example, he builds a
church or a monastery he is of opinion that he is doing something for
the salvation of his immortal soul:--Can science, as well, inspire such
faith in the efficacy of her results? In actual fact, science requires
doubt and distrust as her surest auxiliaries; nevertheless, the sum of
the irresistible (that is all the onslaughts of skepticism, all the
disintegrating effects of surviving truths) can easily become so great
(as, for instance, in the case of hygienic science) as to inspire the
determination to build "eternal" works upon it. At present the contrast
between our excitated ephemeral existence and the tranquil repose of
metaphysical epochs is too great because both are as yet in too close
juxtaposition. The individual man himself now goes through too many
stages of inner and outer evolution for him to venture to make a plan
even for his life time alone. A perfectly modern man, indeed, who wants
to build himself a house feels as if he were walling himself up alive in
a mausoleum.

[13] Monument more enduring than brass: Horace, Odes III:XXX.


23

=Age of Comparison. =--The less men are bound by tradition, the greater
is the inner activity of motives, the greater, correspondingly, the
outer restlessness, the promiscuous flow of humanity, the polyphony of
strivings. Who now feels any great impulse to establish himself and his
posterity in a particular place? For whom, moreover, does there exist,
at present, any strong tie? As all the methods of the arts were copied
from one another, so were all the methods and advancements of moral
codes, of manners, of civilizations. --Such an age derives its
significance from the fact that in it the various ideas, codes, manners
and civilizations can be compared and experienced side by side; which
was impossible at an earlier period in view of the localised nature of
the rule of every civilization, corresponding to the limitation of all
artistic effects by time and place. To-day the growth of the aesthetic
feeling is decided, owing to the great number of [artistic] forms which
offer themselves for comparison. The majority--those that are condemned
by the method of comparison--will be allowed to die out. In the same way
there is to-day taking place a selection of the forms and customs of the
higher morality which can result only in the extinction of the vulgar
moralities. This is the age of comparison! That is its glory--but also
its pain. Let us not, however shrink from this pain. Rather would we
comprehend the nature of the task imposed upon us by our age as
adequately as we can: posterity will bless us for doing so--a posterity
that knows itself to be [developed] through and above the narrow, early
race-civilizations as well as the culture-civilization of comparison,
but yet looks gratefully back upon both as venerable monuments of
antiquity.


24

=Possibility of Progress. =--When a master of the old civilization (den
alten Cultur) vows to hold no more discussion with men who believe in
progress, he is quite right. For the old civilization[14] has its
greatness and its advantages behind it, and historic training forces one
to acknowledge that it can never again acquire vigor: only intolerable
stupidity or equally intolerable fanaticism could fail to perceive this
fact. But men may consciously determine to evolve to a new civilization
where formerly they evolved unconsciously and accidentally. They can now
devise better conditions for the advancement of mankind, for their
nourishment, training and education, they can administer the earth as an
economic power, and, particularly, compare the capacities of men and
select them accordingly. This new, conscious civilization is killing the
other which, on the whole, has led but an unreflective animal and plant
life: it is also destroying the doubt of progress itself--progress is
possible. I mean: it is hasty and almost unreflective to assume that
progress must _necessarily_ take place: but how can it be doubted that
progress is possible? On the other hand, progress in the sense and along
the lines of the old civilization is not even conceivable. If romantic
fantasy employs the word progress in connection with certain aims and
ends identical with those of the circumscribed primitive national
civilizations, the picture presented of progress is always borrowed from
the past. The idea and the image of progress thus formed are quite
without originality.

[14] Cultur, culture, civilisation etc. , but there is no exact English
equivalent.


25

=Private Ethics and World Ethics. =--Since the extinction of the belief
that a god guides the general destiny of the world and, notwithstanding
all the contortions and windings of the path of mankind, leads it
gloriously forward, men must shape oecumenical, world-embracing ends for
themselves. The older ethics, namely Kant's, required of the individual
such a course of conduct as he wishes all men to follow. This evinces
much simplicity--as if any individual could determine off hand what
course of conduct would conduce to the welfare of humanity, and what
course of conduct is preeminently desirable! This is a theory like that
of freedom of competition, which takes it for granted that the general
harmony [of things] _must_ prevail of itself in accordance with some
inherent law of betterment or amelioration. It may be that a later
contemplation of the needs of mankind will reveal that it is by no means
desirable that all men should regulate their conduct according to the
same principle; it may be best, from the standpoint of certain ends yet
to be attained, that men, during long periods should regulate their
conduct with reference to special, and even, in certain circumstances,
evil, objects. At any rate, if mankind is not to be led astray by such a
universal rule of conduct, it behooves it to attain a _knowledge of the
condition of culture_ that will serve as a scientific standard of
comparison in connection with cosmical ends. Herein is comprised the
tremendous mission of the great spirits of the next century.


26

=Reaction as Progress. =--Occasionally harsh, powerful, impetuous, yet
nevertheless backward spirits, appear, who try to conjure back some past
era in the history of mankind: they serve as evidence that the new
tendencies which they oppose, are not yet potent enough, that there is
something lacking in them: otherwise they [the tendencies] would better
withstand the effects of this conjuring back process. Thus Luther's
reformation shows that in his century all the impulses to freedom of the
spirit were still uncertain, lacking in vigor, and immature. Science
could not yet rear her head. Indeed the whole Renaissance appears but as
an early spring smothered in snow. But even in the present century
Schopenhauer's metaphysic shows that the scientific spirit is not yet
powerful enough: for the whole mediaeval Christian world-standpoint
(Weltbetrachtung) and conception of man (Mensch-Empfindung)[15] once
again, notwithstanding the slowly wrought destruction of all Christian
dogma, celebrated a resurrection in Schopenhauer's doctrine. There is
much science in his teaching although the science does not dominate,
but, instead of it, the old, trite "metaphysical necessity. " It is one
of the greatest and most priceless advantages of Schopenhauer's teaching
that by it our feelings are temporarily forced back to those old human
and cosmical standpoints to which no other path could conduct us so
easily. The gain for history and justice is very great. I believe that
without Schopenhauer's aid it would be no easy matter for anyone now to
do justice to Christianity and its Asiatic relatives--a thing impossible
as regards the christianity that still survives. After according this
great triumph to justice, after we have corrected in so essential a
respect the historical point of view which the age of learning brought
with it, we may begin to bear still farther onward the banner of
enlightenment--a banner bearing the three names: Petrarch, Erasmus,
Voltaire. We have taken a forward step out of reaction.

[15] Literally man-feeling or human outlook.


27

=A Substitute for Religion. =--It is supposed to be a recommendation for
philosophy to say of it that it provides the people with a substitute
for religion. And in fact, the training of the intellect does
necessitate the convenient laying out of the track of thought, since the
transition from religion by way of science entails a powerful, perilous
leap,--something that should be advised against. With this
qualification, the recommendation referred to is a just one. At the same
time, it should be further explained that the needs which religion
satisfies and which science must now satisfy, are not immutable. Even
they can be diminished and uprooted. Think, for instance, of the
christian soul-need, the sighs over one's inner corruption, the anxiety
regarding salvation--all notions that arise simply out of errors of the
reason and require no satisfaction at all, but annihilation. A
philosophy can either so affect these needs as to appease them or else
put them aside altogether, for they are acquired, circumscribed needs,
based upon hypotheses which those of science explode. Here, for the
purpose of affording the means of transition, for the sake of lightening
the spirit overburdened with feeling, art can be employed to far better
purpose, as these hypotheses receive far less support from art than from
a metaphysical philosophy. Then from art it is easier to go over to a
really emancipating philosophical science.


28

=Discredited Words. =--Away with the disgustingly over-used words
optimism and pessimism! For the occasion for using them grows daily
less; only drivelers now find them indispensably necessary. What earthly
reason could anyone have for being an optimist unless he had a god to
defend who _must_ have created the best of all possible worlds, since he
is himself all goodness and perfection? --but what thinking man has now
any need for the hypothesis that there is a god? --There is also no
occasion whatever for a pessimistic confession of faith, unless one has
a personal interest in denouncing the advocate of god, the theologian or
the theological philosopher, and maintaining the counter proposition
that evil reigns, that wretchedness is more potent than joy, that the
world is a piece of botch work, that phenomenon (Erscheinung) is but the
manifestation of some evil spirit. But who bothers his head about the
theologians any more--except the theologians themselves? Apart from all
theology and its antagonism, it is manifest that the world is neither
good nor bad, (to say nothing about its being the best or the worst) and
that these ideas of "good" and "bad" have significance only in relation
to men, indeed, are without significance at all, in view of the sense in
which they are usually employed. The contemptuous and the eulogistic
point of view must, in every case, be repudiated.


29

=Intoxicated by the Perfume of Flowers. =--The ship of humanity, it is
thought, acquires an ever deeper draught the more it is laden. It is
believed that the more profoundly man thinks, the more exquisitely he
feels, the higher the standard he sets for himself, the greater his
distance from the other animals--the more he appears as a genius
(Genie) among animals--the nearer he gets to the true nature of the
world and to comprehension thereof: this, indeed, he really does through
science, but he thinks he does it far more adequately through his
religions and arts. These are, certainly, a blossoming of the world, but
not, therefore, _nearer the roots of the world_ than is the stalk. One
cannot learn best from it the nature of the world, although nearly
everyone thinks so. _Error_ has made men so deep, sensitive and
imaginative in order to bring forth such flowers as religions and arts.
Pure apprehension would be unable to do that. Whoever should disclose to
us the essence of the world would be undeceiving us most cruelly. Not
the world as thing-in-itself but the world as idea[16] (as error) is
rich in portent, deep, wonderful, carrying happiness and unhappiness in
its womb. This result leads to a philosophy of world negation: which, at
any rate, can be as well combined with a practical world affirmation as
with its opposite.

[16] Vorstellung: this word sometimes corresponds to the English word
"idea", at others to "conception" or "notion. "


30

=Evil Habits in Reaching Conclusions. =--The most usual erroneous
conclusions of men are these: a thing[17] exists, therefore it is right:
Here from capacity to live is deduced fitness, from fitness, is deduced
justification. So also: an opinion gives happiness, therefore it is the
true one, its effect is good, therefore it is itself good and true. Here
is predicated of the effect that it gives happiness, that it is good in
the sense of utility, and there is likewise predicated of the cause that
it is good, but good in the sense of logical validity. Conversely, the
proposition would run: a thing[17] cannot attain success, cannot
maintain itself, therefore it is evil: a belief troubles [the believer],
occasions pain, therefore it is false. The free spirit, who is sensible
of the defect in this method of reaching conclusions and has had to
suffer its consequences, often succumbs to the temptation to come to the
very opposite conclusions (which, in general, are, of course, equally
erroneous): a thing cannot maintain itself: therefore it is good; a
belief is troublesome, therefore it is true.

[17] Sache, thing but not in the sense of Ding. Sache is of very
indefinite application (res).


31

=The Illogical is Necessary. =--Among the things which can bring a
thinker to distraction is the knowledge that the illogical is necessary
to mankind and that from the illogical springs much that is good. The
illogical is so imbedded in the passions, in language, in art, in
religion and, above all, in everything that imparts value to life that
it cannot be taken away without irreparably injuring those beautiful
things. Only men of the utmost simplicity can believe that the nature
man knows can be changed into a purely logical nature. Yet were there
steps affording approach to this goal, how utterly everything would be
lost on the way! Even the most rational man needs nature again, from
time to time, that is, his illogical fundamental relation
(Grundstellung) to all things.


32

=Being Unjust is Essential. =--All judgments of the value of life are
illogically developed and therefore unjust. The vice of the judgment
consists, first, in the way in which the subject matter comes under
observation, that is, very incompletely; secondly in the way in which
the total is summed up; and, thirdly, in the fact that each single item
in the totality of the subject matter is itself the result of defective
perception, and this from absolute necessity. No practical knowledge of
a man, for example, stood he never so near to us, can be complete--so
that we could have a logical right to form a total estimate of him; all
estimates are summary and must be so. Then the standard by which we
measure, (our being) is not an immutable quantity; we have moods and
variations, and yet we should know ourselves as an invariable standard
before we undertake to establish the nature of the relation of any thing
(Sache) to ourselves. Perhaps it will follow from all this that one
should form no judgments whatever; if one could but merely _live_
without having to form estimates, without aversion and without
partiality! --for everything most abhorred is closely connected with an
estimate, as well as every strongest partiality. An inclination towards
a thing, or from a thing, without an accompanying feeling that the
beneficial is desired and the pernicious contemned, an inclination
without a sort of experiential estimation of the desirability of an end,
does not exist in man. We are primordially illogical and hence unjust
beings _and can recognise this fact_: this is one of the greatest and
most baffling discords of existence.


33

=Error Respecting Living for the Sake of Living Essential. =--Every
belief in the value and worthiness of life rests upon defective
thinking; it is for this reason alone possible that sympathy with the
general life and suffering of mankind is so imperfectly developed in the
individual. Even exceptional men, who can think beyond their own
personalities, do not have this general life in view, but isolated
portions of it. If one is capable of fixing his observation upon
exceptional cases, I mean upon highly endowed individuals and pure
souled beings, if their development is taken as the true end of
world-evolution and if joy be felt in their existence, then it is
possible to believe in the value of life, because in that case the rest
of humanity is overlooked: hence we have here defective thinking. So,
too, it is even if all mankind be taken into consideration, and one
species only of impulses (the less egoistic) brought under review and
those, in consideration of the other impulses, exalted: then something
could still be hoped of mankind in the mass and to that extent there
could exist belief in the value of life: here, again, as a result of
defective thinking. Whatever attitude, thus, one may assume, one is, as
a result of this attitude, an exception among mankind. Now, the great
majority of mankind endure life without any great protest, and believe,
to this extent, in the value of existence, but that is because each
individual decides and determines alone, and never comes out of his own
personality like these exceptions: everything outside of the personal
has no existence for them or at the utmost is observed as but a faint
shadow. Consequently the value of life for the generality of mankind
consists simply in the fact that the individual attaches more importance
to himself than he does to the world. The great lack of imagination from
which he suffers is responsible for his inability to enter into the
feelings of beings other than himself, and hence his sympathy with their
fate and suffering is of the slightest possible description. On the
other hand, whosoever really _could_ sympathise, necessarily doubts the
value of life; were it possible for him to sum up and to feel in himself
the total consciousness of mankind, he would collapse with a malediction
against existence,--for mankind is, in the mass, without a goal, and
hence man cannot find, in the contemplation of his whole course,
anything to serve him as a mainstay and a comfort, but rather a reason
to despair. If he looks beyond the things that immediately engage him to
the final aimlessness of humanity, his own conduct assumes in his eyes
the character of a frittering away. To feel oneself, however, as
humanity (not alone as an individual) frittered away exactly as we see
the stray leaves frittered away by nature, is a feeling transcending all
feeling. But who is capable of it? Only a poet, certainly: and poets
always know how to console themselves.


34

=For Tranquility. =--But will not our philosophy become thus a tragedy?
Will not truth prove the enemy of life, of betterment? A question seems
to weigh upon our tongue and yet will not put itself into words: whether
one _can_ knowingly remain in the domain of the untruthful? or, if one
_must_, whether, then, death would not be preferable? For there is no
longer any ought (Sollen), morality; so far as it is involved "ought,"
is, through our point of view, as utterly annihilated as religion. Our
knowledge can permit only pleasure and pain, benefit and injury, to
subsist as motives. But how can these motives be distinguished from the
desire for truth? Even they rest upon error (in so far, as already
stated, partiality and dislike and their very inaccurate estimates
palpably modify our pleasure and our pain). The whole of human life is
deeply involved in _untruth_. The individual cannot extricate it from
this pit without thereby fundamentally clashing with his whole past,
without finding his present motives of conduct, (as that of honor)
illegitimate, and without opposing scorn and contempt to the ambitions
which prompt one to have regard for the future and for one's happiness
in the future. Is it true, does there, then, remain but one way of
thinking, which, as a personal consequence brings in its train despair,
and as a theoretical [consequence brings in its train] a philosophy of
decay, disintegration, self annihilation? I believe the deciding
influence, as regards the after-effect of knowledge, will be the
_temperament_ of a man; I can, in addition to this after-effect just
mentioned, suppose another, by means of which a much simpler life, and
one freer from disturbances than the present, could be lived; so that at
first the old motives of vehement passion might still have strength,
owing to hereditary habit, but they would gradually grow weaker under
the influence of purifying knowledge. A man would live, at last, both
among men and unto himself, as in the natural state, without praise,
reproach, competition, feasting one's eyes, as if it were a play, upon
much that formerly inspired dread. One would be rid of the strenuous
element, and would no longer feel the goad of the reflection that man is
not even [as much as] nature, nor more than nature. To be sure, this
requires, as already stated, a good temperament, a fortified, gentle and
naturally cheerful soul, a disposition that has no need to be on its
guard against its own eccentricities and sudden outbreaks and that in
its utterances manifests neither sullenness nor a snarling tone--those
familiar, disagreeable characteristics of old dogs and old men that have
been a long time chained up. Rather must a man, from whom the ordinary
bondages of life have fallen away to so great an extent, so do that he
only lives on in order to grow continually in knowledge, and to learn to
resign, without envy and without disappointment, much, yes nearly
everything, that has value in the eyes of men. He must be content with
such a free, fearless soaring above men, manners, laws and traditional
estimates of things, as the most desirable of all situations. He will
freely share the joy of being in such a situation, and he has, perhaps,
nothing else to share--in which renunciation and self-denial really most
consist. But if more is asked of him, he will, with a benevolent shake
of the head, refer to his brother, the free man of fact, and will,
perhaps, not dissemble a little contempt: for, as regards his "freedom,"
thereby hangs a tale. [18]

[18] den mit dessen "Freiheit" hat es eine eigene Bewandtniss.




HISTORY OF THE MORAL FEELINGS.


35

=Advantages of Psychological Observation. =--That reflection regarding
the human, all-too-human--or as the learned jargon is: psychological
observation--is among the means whereby the burden of life can be made
lighter, that practice in this art affords presence of mind in difficult
situations and entertainment amid a wearisome environment, aye, that
maxims may be culled in the thorniest and least pleasing paths of life
and invigoration thereby obtained: this much was believed, was known--in
former centuries. Why was this forgotten in our own century, during
which, at least in Germany, yes in Europe, poverty as regards
psychological observation would have been manifest in many ways had
there been anyone to whom this poverty could have manifested itself. Not
only in the novel, in the romance, in philosophical standpoints--these
are the works of exceptional men; still more in the state of opinion
regarding public events and personages; above all in general society,
which says much about men but nothing whatever about man, there is
totally lacking the art of psychological analysis and synthesis. But why
is the richest and most harmless source of entertainment thus allowed to
run to waste? Why is the greatest master of the psychological maxim no
longer read? --for, with no exaggeration whatever be it said: the
educated person in Europe who has read La Rochefoucauld and his
intellectual and artistic affinities is very hard to find; still harder,
the person who knows them and does not disparage them. Apparently, too,
this unusual reader takes far less pleasure in them than the form
adopted by these artists should afford him: for the subtlest mind cannot
adequately appreciate the art of maxim-making unless it has had training
in it, unless it has competed in it. Without such practical
acquaintance, one is apt to look upon this making and forming as a much
easier thing than it really is; one is not keenly enough alive to the
felicity and the charm of success. Hence present day readers of maxims
have but a moderate, tempered pleasure in them, scarcely, indeed, a true
perception of their merit, so that their experiences are about the same
as those of the average beholder of cameos: people who praise because
they cannot appreciate, and are very ready to admire and still readier
to turn away.


36

=Objection. =--Or is there a counter-proposition to the dictum that
psychological observation is one of the means of consoling, lightening,
charming existence? Have enough of the unpleasant effects of this art
been experienced to justify the person striving for culture in turning
his regard away from it? In all truth, a certain blind faith in the
goodness of human nature, an implanted distaste for any disparagement of
human concerns, a sort of shamefacedness at the nakedness of the soul,
may be far more desirable things in the general happiness of a man, than
this only occasionally advantageous quality of psychological
sharpsightedness; and perhaps belief in the good, in virtuous men and
actions, in a plenitude of disinterested benevolence has been more
productive of good in the world of men in so far as it has made men less
distrustful. If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically imitated and a
reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of
their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is
promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard
to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more
promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La
Rochefoucauld in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims"
has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a
phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in
order to do whatever we please with impunity. " La Rochefoucauld and
those other French masters of soul-searching (to the number of whom has
lately been added a German, the author of "Psychological Observations")
are like expert marksmen who again and again hit the black spot--but it
is the black spot in human nature. Their art inspires amazement, but
finally some spectator, inspired, not by the scientific spirit but by a
humanitarian feeling, execrates an art that seems to implant in the soul
a taste for belittling and impeaching mankind.


37

=Nevertheless. =--The matter therefore, as regards pro and con, stands
thus: in the present state of philosophy an awakening of the moral
observation is essential. The repulsive aspect of psychological
dissection, with the knife and tweezers entailed by the process, can no
longer be spared humanity. Such is the imperative duty of any science
that investigates the origin and history of the so-called moral feelings
and which, in its progress, is called upon to posit and to solve
advanced social problems:--The older philosophy does not recognize the
newer at all and, through paltry evasions, has always gone astray in the
investigation of the origin and history of human estimates
(Werthschatzungen). With what results may now be very clearly perceived,
since it has been shown by many examples, how the errors of the greatest
philosophers have their origin in a false explanation of certain human
actions and feelings; how upon the foundation of an erroneous analysis
(for example, of the so called disinterested actions), a false ethic is
reared, to support which religion and like mythological monstrosities
are called in, until finally the shades of these troubled spirits
collapse in physics and in the comprehensive world point of view. But if
it be established that superficiality of psychological observation has
heretofore set the most dangerous snares for human judgment and
deduction, and will continue to do so, all the greater need is there of
that steady continuance of labor that never wearies putting stone upon
stone, little stone upon little stone; all the greater need is there of
a courage that is not ashamed of such humble labor and that will oppose
persistence, to all contempt. It is, finally, also true that countless
single observations concerning the human, all-too-human, have been
first made and uttered in circles accustomed, not to furnish matter for
scientific knowledge, but for intellectual pleasure-seeking; and the
original home atmosphere--a very seductive atmosphere--of the moral
maxim has almost inextricably interpenetrated the entire species, so
that the scientific man involuntarily manifests a sort of mistrust of
this species and of its seriousness. But it is sufficient to point to
the consequences: for already it is becoming evident that events of the
most portentous nature are developing in the domain of psychological
observation. What is the leading conclusion arrived at by one of the
subtlest and calmest of thinkers, the author of the work "Concerning the
Origin of the Moral Feelings", as a result of his thorough and incisive
analysis of human conduct? "The moral man," he says, "stands no nearer
the knowable (metaphysical) world than the physical man. "[19] This
dictum, grown hard and cutting beneath the hammer-blow of historical
knowledge, can some day, perhaps, in some future or other, serve as the
axe that will be laid to the root of the "metaphysical necessities" of
men--whether more to the blessing than to the banning of universal well
being who can say?