No More Learning

V.
An excess of history seems to be an enemy to
the life of a time, and dangerous in five ways.
Firstly, the contrast of inner and outer is empha-
sised and personality weakened. Secondly, the
time comes to imagine that it possesses the rarest


## p. 39 (#63) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 39
of virtues, justice, to a higher degree than any
other time. Thirdly, the instincts of a nation are
thwarted, the maturity of the individual arrested
no less than that of the whole. Fourthly, we get
the belief in the old age of mankind, the belief, at
all times harmful, that we are late survivals, mere
Epigoni. Lastly, an age reaches a dangerous con-
dition of irony with regard to itself, and the still
more dangerous state of cynicism, when a cunning
egoistic theory of action is matured that maims and
at last destroys the vital strength.
To return to the first point: the modern man
suffers from a weakened personality. The Roman
of the Empire ceased to be a Roman through the
contemplation of the world that lay at his feet; he
lost himself in the crowd of foreigners that streamed
into Rome, and degenerated amid the cosmopolitan
carnival of arts, worships and moralities. It is the
same with the modern man, who is continually
having a world-panorama unrolled before his eyes
by his historical artists. He is turned into a
restless, dilettante spectator, and arrives at a con-
dition when even great wars and revolutions cannot
affect him beyond the moment. The war is hardly
at an end, and it is already converted into thousands
of copies of pointed matter, and will be soon served
up as the latest means of tickling the jaded palates
of the historical gourmets. It seems impossible for
a strong full chord to be prolonged, however
powerfully the strings are swept: it dies away
again the next moment in the soft and strength-
less echo of history. In ethical language, one never
succeeds in staying on a height; your deeds are


## p. 40 (#64) ##############################################

4-0 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sudden crashes, and not a long roll of thunder.
One may bring the greatest and most marvellous
thing to perfection; it must yet go down to Orcus
unhonoured and unsung. For art flies away when
you are roofing your deeds with the historical awn-
ing. The man who wishes to understand everything
in a moment, when he ought to grasp the unintel-
ligible as the sublime by a long struggle, can be
called intelligent only in the sense of Schiller's
epigram on the "reason of reasonable men. "
There is something the child sees that he does
not see; something the child hears that he does
not hear; and this something is the most important
thing of all. Because he does not understand it,
his understanding is more childish than the child's
and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of
/J*1* the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face,
and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling
the knots. He has lost or destroyed his instinct;
he can no longer trust the "divine animal" and
let the reins hang loose, when his understanding
fails him and his way lies through the desert.
His individuality is shaken, and left without any
sure belief in itself; it sinks into its own inner
being, which only means here the disordered chaos
of what it has learned, which will never express
itself externally, being mere dogma that cannot
turn to life. Looking further, we see how the
banishment of instinct by history has turned men
to shades and abstractions: no one ventures to
show a personality, but masks himself as a man
of culture, a savant, poet or politician.
If one take hold of these masks, believing he


## p. 41 (#65) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 41
has to do with a serious thing and not a mere
puppet-show—for they all have an appearance of
seriousness—he will find nothing but rags and
coloured streamers in his hands. He must
deceive himself no more, but cry aloud, "Off with
your jackets, or be what you seem! " A man of
the royal stock of seriousness must no longer be
a Don Quixote, for he has better things to do
than to tilt at such pretended realities. But he
must always keep a sharp look about him, call
his " Halt! who goes there? " to all the shrouded
figures, and tear the masks from their faces. And
see the result! One might have thought that
history encouraged men above all to be honest,
even if it were only to be honest fools: this used
to be its effect, but is so no longer. Historical
education and the uniform frock-coat of the citizen
are both dominant at the same time. While there
has never been such a full-throated chatter about
"free personality," personalities can be seen no
more (to say nothing of free ones); but merely
men in uniform, with their coats anxiously pulled
over their ears. Individuality has withdrawn itself
to its recesses; it is seen no more from the outside,
which makes one doubt if it be possible to have
causes without effects. Or will a race of eunuchs
prove to be necessary to guard the historical harem
of the world? We can understand the reason for
their aloofness very well. Does it not seem as
if their task were to watch over history to see
that nothing comes out except other histories,
but no deed that might be historical; to prevent
personalities becoming "free," that is, sincere


## p. 42 (#66) ##############################################

42 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present" liberal education " teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its "liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices: it lives by sighing "if
only . . . " and by knowing that " it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
^
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no


## p. 43 (#67) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in "life. " Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
"Are these human beings," one might ask, " or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking? "
,—Goethe says of Shakespeare: "No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. "
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods," but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-


## p. 43 (#68) ##############################################

42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present“liberal education” teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education,” how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing “if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no



## p. 43 (#69) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“Are these human beings," one might ask, “or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. ”
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans ? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not “beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-


## p. 43 (#70) ##############################################

42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present" liberal education "teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing “if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no



## p. 43 (#71) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“Are these human beings,” one might ask,“ or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. ”
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans ? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-


## p. 43 (#72) ##############################################

42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present“liberal education "teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing "if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no



## p. 43 (#73) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“ Are these human beings,” one might ask, “or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. "
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-


## p. 44 (#74) ##############################################

44 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sidered: "only strong personalities can endure
history, the weak are extinguished by it. " History
unsettles the feelings when they are not powerful
enough to measure the past by themselves. The
man who dare no longer trust himself, but asks
history against his will for advice "how he ought
to feel now," is insensibly turned by his timidity
into a play-actor, and plays a part, or generally
many parts,—very badly therefore and superficially.
Gradually all connection ceases between the man
and his historical subjects. We see noisy little
fellows measuring themselves with the Romans
as though they were like them: they burrow in
the remains of the Greek poets, as if these
were corpora for their dissection — and as villa
as their own well - educated corpora might be.
Suppose a man is working at Democritus. The
question is always on my tongue, why precisely
Democritus? Why not Heraclitus, or Philo, or
Bacon, or Descartes? And then, why a philo-
sopher? Why not a poet or orator? And why
especially a Greek? Why not an Englishman
or a Turk? Is not the past large enough to let
you find some place where you may disport your-
self without becoming ridiculous? But, as I said,
they are a race of eunuchs: and to the eunuch one
woman is the same as another, merely a woman,
"woman in herself," the Ever - unapproachable.
And it is indifferent what they study, if history
itself always remain beautifully "objective" to
them, as men, in fact, who could never make history
themselves. And since the Eternal Feminine
could never "draw you upward," you draw it down
-,
v


## p. 45 (#75) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 45
to you, and being neuter yourselves, regard history
as neuter also. But in order that no one may take
my comparison of history and the Eternal Feminine
too seriously, I will say at once that I hold it, on
the contrary, to be the Eternal Masculine: I only
add that for those who are " historically trained"
throughout, it must be quite indifferent which it is;
for they are themselves neither man nor woman,
nor even hermaphrodite, but mere neuters, or, in
more philosophic language, the Eternal Objective.
If the personality be once emptied of its sub-
jectivity, and come to what men call an " objective"
condition, nothing can have any more effect on
it Something good and true may be done, in
action, poetry or music: but the hollow culture of
the day will look beyond the work and ask the
history of the author. If the author have already
created something, our historian will set out clearly
the past and the probable future course of his
development, he will put him with others and
compare them, and separate by analysis the choice
of his material and his treatment; he will wisely
sum the author up and give him general advice for
his future path. The most astonishing works may
be created; the swarm of historical neuters will
always be in their place, ready to consider the
author through their long telescopes. The echo is
heard at once: but always in the form of "criti-
cism," though the critic never dreamed of the work's
possibility a moment before. It never comes to
have an influence, but only a criticism: and the
criticism itself has no influence, but only breeds
another criticism. And so we come to consider


## p. 46 (#76) ##############################################

46 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the fact of many critics as a mark of influence, that
of few or none as a mark of failure. Actually
everything remains in the old condition, even in
the presence of such " influence ": men talk a little
while of a new thing, and then of some other new
thing, 'and in the meantime they do what they
have always done. The historical training of our
^critics prevents their having an influence in the
true sense, an influence on life and action. They
/put their blotting paper on the blackest writing,
and their thick brushes over the gracefullest de-
signs; these they call "corrections ";—and that is
, all. Their critical pens never cease to fly, for they
have lost power over them; they are driven by
their pens instead of driving them. The weakness
of modern personality comes out well in the
measureless overflow of criticism, in the want of
self-mastery, and in what the Romans called
impotentia.
VI.
But leaving these weaklings, let us turn rather to
a point of strength for which the modern man is
famous. Let us ask the painful question whether
he has the right in virtue of his historical
"objectivity" to call himself strong and just in a
higher degree than the man of another age. Is
it true that this objectivity has its source in a
heightened sense of the need for justice? Or, being
really an effect of quite other causes, does it only
have the appearance of coming from justice, and
really lead to an unhealthy prejudice in favour


## p. 47 (#77) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 47
of the modern man? Socrates thought it near
madness to imagine one possessed a virtue with-
out really possessing it. Such imagination has
certainly more danger in it than the contrary
madness of a positive vice.
For of this there is
still a cure; but the other makes a man or a time
daily worse, and therefore more unjust.
No one has a higher claim to our reverence than
the man with the feeling and the strength for
justice. For the highest and rarest virtues unite
and are lost in it, as an unfathomable sea absorbs
the streams that flow from every side. The hand
of the just man, who is called to sit in judgment,
trembles no more when it holds the scales: he
piles the weights inexorably against his own side,
his eyes areThot dimmed as the balance rises and
falls, and" his voice is neither hard nor broken when
he pronounces the sentence. Were he a cold
demon of knowledge, he would cast round him the
icy atmosphere of an awful, superhuman majesty,
that we should fear, not reverence. But he is a
man, and has tried to rise from a careless doubt to
a strong certainty, from a gentle tolerance to the
imperative "thou must"; from the rare virtue of
magnanimity to the rarest, of justice. He has
come to be like that demon without being more
than a poor mortal at the outset; above all, he has
to atone to himself for his humanity and tragically
shatter his own nature on the rock of an impossible
virtue. —All this places him on a lonely height as
the most reverend example of the human race.
For truth is his aim, not in the form of cold
ineffectual knowledge, but the truth of the judge


## p. 48 (#78) ##############################################

48 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
who punishes according to law; not as the selfish
possession of an individual, but the sacred authority
that removes the boundary stones from all selfish
possessions; truth, In a word, as the tribunal of
the world, and- not as the chance prey of a single
hunter" "The search for truth is often thoughtlessly
praised: but it only has anything great in it if
the seeker have the sincere unconditional will for
justice. Its roots are in justice alone: but a whole
crowd of different motives may combine in the
search for it, that have nothing to do with truth at
all; curiosity, for example, or dread of ennui, envy,
vanity, or amusement. Thus the world seems to
be full of men who "serve truth": and yet the
virtue of justice is seldom present, more seldom
known, and almost always mortally hated. On
the other hand a throng of sham virtues has
entered in at all times with pomp and honour.
Few in truth serve truth, as only few have the
pure will for justice; and very few even of these
have the strength to be just. The will alone is not
enough: the impulse to justice without the power
of judgment has been the cause of the greatest
suffering to men. And thus the common good could
require nothing better than for the seed of this
power to be strewn as widely as possible, that the
fanatic may be distinguished from the true judge,
and the blind desire from the conscious power.
But there are no means of planting a power of
judgment: and so when one speaks to men of
truth and justice, they will be ever troubled by the
doubt whether it be the fanatic or the judge who is
speaking to them. And they must be pardoned


## p. 49 (#79) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 49
for always treating the "servants of truth" with
special kindness, who possess neither the will nor
the power to judge and have set before them the
task of finding " pure knowledge without reference
to consequences," knowledge, in plain terms, that
comes to nothing. There are very many truths
which are unimportant; problems that require no
struggle to solve, to say nothing of sacrifice. And
in this safe realm of indifference a man may very
successfully become a " cold demon of knowledge. "
And yet—if we find whole regiments of learned
inquirers being turned to such demons in some age
specially favourable to them, it is always unfortun-
ately possible that the age is lacking in a great
and strong sense of justice, the noblest spring of
the so-called impulse to truth.
Consider the historical virtuoso of the present
time: is he the justest man of his age? True, he
has developed in himself such a delicacy and sensi-
tiveness that "nothing human is alien to him. "
Times and persons most widely separated come
together in the concords of his lyre. He has
become a passive instrument, whose tones find an
echo in similar instruments: until the whole atmo-
sphere of a time is filled with such echoes, all
buzzing in one soft chord. Yet I think one only
hears the overtones of the original historical note:
its rough powerful quality can be no longer guessed
from these thin and shrill vibrations. The original
note sang of action, need, and terror; the overtone
lulls us into a soft dilettante sleep. It is as though
the heroic symphony had been arranged for two
flutes for the use of dreaming opium-smokers. We
VOL. II. D


## p. 50 (#80) ##############################################

50 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
can now judge how these virtuosi stand towards the
claim of the modern man to a higher and purer con-
ception of justice. This virtue has never a pleasing
quality; it never charms; it is harsh and strident.
Generosity stands very low on the ladder of the
virtues in comparison; and generosity is the mark
of a few rare historians! Most of them only get as
far as tolerance, in other words they leave what
cannot be explained away, they correct it and
touch it up condescendingly, on the tacit assump-
tion that the novice will count it as justice if the
past be narrated without harshness or open ex-
pressions of hatred. But only superior strength can
really judge; weakness must tolerate, if it do not
pretend to be strength and turn justice to a play-
actress. There is still a dreadful class of historians
remaining—clever, stern and honest, but narrow-
minded: who have the " good will" to be just with
a pathetic belief in their actual judgments, which
are all false; for the same reason, almost, as the
verdicts of the usual juries are false. How difficult
it is to find a real historical talent, if we exclude
all the disguised egoists, and the partisans who
pretend to take up an impartial attitude for the
sake of their own unholy game! And we also
exclude the thoughtless folk who write history in
the naive faith that justice resides in the popular
view of their time, and that to write in the spirit of
the time is to be just; a faith that is found in all
religions, and which, in religion, serves very well.
The measurement of the opinions and deeds of the
past by the universal opinions of the present is
called "objectivity" by these simple people: they


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. S1
find the canon of all truth here: their work is to
adapt the past to the present triviality. And they
call all historical writing "subjective " that does not
regard these popular opinions as canonical.
Might not an illusion lurk in the highest inter-
pretation of the word objectivity? We understand
by it a certain standpoint in the historian, who sees
the procession of motive and consequence too clearly
for it to have an effect on his own personality. We
think of the aesthetic phenomenon of the detach-
ment from all personal concern with which the
painter sees the picture and forgets himself, in a
stormy landscape, amid thunder and lightning, or
on a rough sea: and we require the same artistic
vision and absorption in his object from the historian.
But it is only a superstition to say that the picture
given to such a man by the object really shows the
truth of things. Unless it be that objects are
expected in such moments to paint or photograph
themselves by their own activity on a purely passive
medium!
But this would be a myth, and a bad one at that.
One forgets that this moment is actually the power-
ful and spontaneous moment of creation in the
artist, of "composition" in its highest form, of
which the result will be an artistically, but not an
historically, true picture. To think objectively, in
this sense, of history is the work of the dramatist:
to think one thing with another, and weave the
elements into a single whole; with the presumption
that the unity of plan must be put into the objects
if it be not already there. So man veils and sub-
s
dues the past, and expresses his impulse to art—


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52 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
but not his impulse to truth or justice. Objectivity
and justice have nothing to do with each other.
There could be a kind of historical writing that
had no drop of common fact in it and yet could
claim to be called in the highest degree objective.
Grillparzer goes so far as to say that "history is
nothing but the manner in which the spirit of man
apprehends facts that are obscure to him, links
things together whose connection heaven only
knows, replaces the unintelligible by something
intelligible, puts his own ideas of causation into
the external world, which can perhaps be explained
only from within: and assumes the existence of
chance, where thousands of small causes may be
really at work. Each man has his own individual
needs, and so millions of tendencies are running
together, straight or crooked, parallel or across,
forward or backward, helping or hindering each
other. They have all the appearance of chance,
and make it impossible, quite apart from all natural
influences, to establish any universal lines on which
past events must have run. " But as a result of this
so-called " objective " way of looking at things, such
a "must" ought to be made clear. It is a pre-
sumption that takes a curious form if adopted
by the historian as a dogma. Schiller is quite
clear about its truly subjective nature when he
says of the historian, "one event after the other
begins to draw away from blind chance and lawless
freedom, and take its place as the member of an
harmonious whole—which is of course only apparent
in its presentation! ' But what is one to think of the
innocent statement, wavering between tautology and


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 53
nonsense, of a famous historical virtuoso? "It seems
that all human actions and impulses are subordinate
to the process of the material world, that works un-
noticed, powerfully and irresistibly. " In such a
sentence one no longer finds obscure wisdom in the
form of obvious folly; as in the saying of Goethe's
gardener, "Nature may be forced but not com-
pelled," or in the notice on the side-show at a fair,
in Swift: "The largest elephant in the world, except
himself, to be seen here. " For what opposition is
there between human action and the process of the
world? It seems to me that such historians cease
to be instructive as soon as they begin to generalise;
their weakness is shown by their obscurity. In other
sciences the generalisations are the most important
things, as they contain the laws. But if such
generalisations as these are to stand as laws, the
historian's labour is lost; for the residue of truth,
after the obscure and insoluble part is removed,
is nothing but the commonest knowledge. The
smallest range of experience will teach it. But
to worry whole peoples for the purpose, and spend
many hard years of work on it, is like crowding one
scientific experiment on another long after the law
can be deduced from the results already obtained:
and this absurd excess of experiment has been the
bane of all natural science since Zollner. If the
value of a drama lay merely in its final scene, the
drama itself would be a very long, crooked and
laborious road to the goal: and I hope history will
not find its whole significance in general proposi-
tions, and regard them as its blossom and fruit.
On the contrary, its real value lies in inventing


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54 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
ingenious variations on a probably commonplace
theme, in raising the popular melody to a universal
symbol and showing what a world of depth, power
and beauty exists in it.
But this requires above all a great artistic faculty,
a creative vision from a height, the loving study of
the data of experience, the free elaborating of a
given type,—objectivity in fact, though this time as
a positive quality. Objectivity is so often merely
a phrase. Instead of the quiet gaze of the artist
that is lit by an inward flame, we have an affecta-
tion of tranquillity; just as a cold detachment may
mask a lack of moral feeling. In some cases a
triviality of thought, the everyday wisdom that is
too dull not to seem calm and disinterested, comes
to represent the artistic condition in which the sub-
jective side has quite sunk out of sight. Everything
is favoured that does not rouse emotion, and the
driest phrase is the correct one. They go so far
as to accept a man who is not affected at all by
some particular moment in the past as the right
man to describe it. This is the usual relation of
the Greeks and the classical scholars. They have
nothing to do with each other—and this is called
"objectivity "! The intentional air of detachment
that is assumed for effect, the sober art of the super-
ficial motive-hunter is most exasperating when the
highest and rarest things are in question; and it
is the vanity of the historian that drives him to
this attitude of indifference. He goes to justify the
axiom that a man's vanity corresponds to his lack
of wit. No, be honest at any rate! Do not pretend
to the artist's strength, that is the real objectivity;


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 55
do not try to be just, if you are not born to that
dread vocation. As if it were the task of every
time to be just to everything before it! Ages and
generations have never the right to be the judges
of all previous ages and generations: only to the
rarest men in them can that difficult mission fall.
Who compels you to judge? If it is your wish—
you must prove first that you are capable of justice.
As judges, you must stand higher than that which
is to be judged: as it is, you have only come later.
The guests that come last to the table should rightly
take the last places: and will you take the first?
Then do some great and mighty deed: the place
may be prepared for you then, even though you do
come last.
You can only explain the past by what is highest
in the present. Only by straining the noblest
qualities you have to their highest power will you
find out what is greatest in the past, most worth
knowing and preserving. Like by like! otherwise
you will draw the past to your own level. Do not
believe any history that does not spring from the
mind of a rare spirit. You will know the quality
of the spirit, by its being forced to say something
universal, or to repeat something that is known
already; the fine historian must have the power
of coining the known into a thing never heard
before and proclaiming the universal so simply and
profoundly that the simple is lost in the profound,
and the profound in the simple. No one can be a
great historian and artist, and a shallowpate at the
same time. But one must not despise the workers
who sift and cast together the material because they


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56 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
can never become great historians. They must,
still less, be confounded with them, for they are the
necessary bricklayers and apprentices in the service
of the master: just as the French used to speak, more
naively than a German would, of the "historiens
de M. Thiers. " These workmen should gradually
become extremely learned, but never, for that
reason, turn to be masters. Great learning and great
shallowness go together very well under one hat
Thus, history is to be written by the man of
experience and character. He who has not lived
through something greater and nobler than others,
will not be able to explain anything great and
noble in the past. The language of the past is
always oracular: you will only understand it as
builders of the future who know the present. We
can only explain the extraordinarily wide influence
of Delphi by the fact that the Delphic priests had
an exact knowledge of the past: and, similarly,
only he who is building up the future has a right
to judge the past. If you set a great aim before
your eyes, you control at the same time the itch
for analysis that makes the present into a desert
for you, and all rest, all peaceful growth and ripen-
ing, impossible. Hedge yourselves with a great,
all-embracing hope, and strive on. Make of your-
selves a mirror where the future may see itself, and
forget the superstition that you are Epigoni. You
have enough to ponder and find out, in pondering
the life of the future: but do not ask history to
show you the means and the instrument to it. If
you live yourselves back into the history of great
men, you will find in it the high command to come
\
\


## p. 57 (#87) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 57
to maturity and leave that blighting system of
cultivation offered by your time: which sees its
own profit in not allowing you to become ripe, that
it may use and dominate you while you are yet
unripe. And if you want biographies, do not look
for those with the legend "Mr. So-and-so and his
times," but for one whose title-page might be in-
scribed "a fighter against his time. " Feast your
souls on Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves
when you believe in his heroes. A hundred such
men—educated against the fashion of to-day,
made familiar with the heroic, and come to
maturity—are enough to give an eternal quietus
to the noisy sham education of this time.
VII.
The unrestrained historical sense, pushed to its
logical extreme, uproots the future, because it
destroys illusions and robs existing things of the
only atmosphere in which they can live. Historical
justice, even if practised conscientiously, with a
pure heart, is therefore a dreadful virtue, because
it always undermines and ruins the living thing:
its judgment always means annihilation. If there
be no constructive impulse behind the historical
one, if the clearance of rubbish be not merely to
leave the ground free for the hopeful living future
to build its house, if justice alone be supreme, the
creative instinct is sapped and discouraged. A
religion, for example, that has to be turned into
a matter of historical knowledge by the power of j
-"


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58 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
pure justice, and to be scientifically studied
throughout, is destroyed at the end of it all. For
the historical audit brings so much to light which
is false and absurd, violent and inhuman, that the
condition of pious illusion falls to pieces. And a
'' «^ »' thing can only live through a piousHlusion. For
man is creative only through love and in the
shadow of love's illusions, only through the uncon-
ditional belief in perfection and righteousness.
Everything that forces a man to be no longer un-
conditioned in his love, cuts at the root of his
strength: he must wither, and be dishonoured.
Art . has the opposite effect to history: and only
perhaps if history suffer transformation into a pure
work of art, can it preserve instincts or arouse
them. Such history would be quite against the
analytical and inartistic tendencies of our time, and
even be considered false. But the history that
merely destroys without any impulse to construct,
will in the long-run make its instruments tired of
life; for such men destroy illusions, and "he who
destroys illusions in himself and others is punished
by the ultimate tyrant, Nature. " For a time a man
can take up history like any other study, and it
will be perfectly harmless. Recent theology seems
to have entered quite innocently into partnership
with history, and scarcely sees even now that it has
unwittingly bound itself to the Voltairean icrasez!
No one need expect from that any new and power-
ful constructive impulse: they might as well have
let the so-called Protestant Union serve as the
cradle of a new religion, and the jurist Holtzendorf,
the editor of the far more dubiously named Pro-
^


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 59
testant Bible, be its John the Baptist. This state
of innocence may be continued for some time by
the Hegelian philosophy,—still seething in some
of the older heads,—by which men can distinguish
the "idea of Christianity" from its various imperfect
"manifestations "; and persuade themselves that it
is the "self-movement of the Idea" that is ever
particularising itself in purer and purer forms, and
at last becomes the purest, most transparent, in
fact scarcely visible form in the brain of the present
theologus liberalis vulgaris. But to listen to this
pure Christianity speaking its mind about the
earlier impure Christianity, the uninitiated hearer
would often get the impression that the talk was
not of Christianity at all but of . . . —what are we
to think? if we find Christianity described by the
"greatest theologians of the century" as the re-
ligion that claims to " find itself in all real religions
and some other barely possible religions," and
if the "true church" is to be a thing "which
may become a liquid mass with no fixed outline,
with no fixed place for its different parts, but every-
thing to be peacefully welded together"—what, I
ask again, are we to think?
Christianity has been denaturalised by historical
treatment—which in its most complete form means
"just" treatment—until it has been resolved into
pure knowledge and destroyed in the process.
This can be studied in everything that has life.
For it ceases to have life if it be perfectly dissected,
and lives in pain and anguish as soon as the
historical dissection begins. There are some who
believe in the saving power of German music to


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60 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
j
revolutionise the German nature. They angrily
exclaim against the special injustice done to our
culture, when such men as Mozart and Beethoven
are beginning to be spattered with the learned mud
of the biographers and forced to answer a thousand
searching questions on the rack of historical
criticism. Is it not premature death, or at least
mutilation, for anything whose living influence is
not yet exhausted, when men turn their curious
eyes to the little minutiae of life and art, and look
for problems of knowledge where one ought to
learn to live, and forget problems? Set a couple
of these modern biographers to consider the origins
of Christianity or the Lutheran reformation: their
sober, practical investigations would be quite
sufficient to make all spiritual "action at a dis-
tance" impossible: just as the smallest animal
can prevent the growth of the mightiest oak by
simply eating up the acorn. All living things need
an atmosphere, a mysterious mist, around them.
If that veil be taken away and a religion, an art,
or a genius condemned to revolve like astar with-
out an atmosphere, we must not be surprised if it
becomes hard and unfruitful, and soon withers. It
is so with all great things "that never prosper
without some illusion," as Hans Sachs says in the
Meistersinger.
Every people, every man even, who would
become ripe, needs such a veil of illusion, such a
protecting cloud. But now men hate to become
ripe, for they honour history above life. They cry
in triumph that "science is now beginning to rule
life. " Possibly it might; but a life thus ruled is


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 61
not of much value. It is not such true life, and
promises much less for the future than the life that
used to be guided not by science, but by instincts
and powerful illusions. But this is not to be the
age of ripe, alert and harmonious personalities, but
of work that may be of most use to the common-
wealth. Men are to be fashioned to the needs of
the time, that they may soon take their place in
the machine. They must work in the factory of
the "common good " before they are ripe, or rather
to prevent them becoming ripe; for this would
be a luxury that would draw away a deal of power
from the " labour market. " Some birds are blinded
that they may sing better; I do not think men
sing to-day better than their grandfathers, though
•I am sure they are blinded early. But light, too
clear, too sudden and dazzling, is the infamous
means used to blind them. The young man is
kicked through all the centuries: boys who know
nothing of war, diplomacy, or commerce are con-
sidered fit to be introduced to political history.
We moderns also run through art galleries and
hear concerts in the same way as the young man
runs through history. We can feel that one thing
sounds differently from another, and pronounce on
the different" effects. " And the power of gradually
losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment,
and finally being pleased at anything, is called the
historical sense, or historical culture. The crowd
of influences streaming on the young soul is so
great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at
him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed
stupidity is his only refuge. Where there is a


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62 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
subtler and stronger self-consciousness we find
another emotion too—disgust. The young man
has become homeless: he doubts all ideas, all
moralities. He knows "it was different in every
age, and what you are does not matter. " In a
heavy apathy he lets opinion on opinion pass by
him, and understands the meaning of Holderlin's
words when he read the work of Diogenes Laertius
on the lives and doctrines of the Greek philo-
sophers: "I have seen here too what has often
occurred to me, that the change and waste in
men's thoughts and systems is far more tragic
than the fates that overtake what men are accus-
tomed to call the only realities. " No, such study
of history bewilders and overwhelms. It is not
necessary for youth, as the ancients show, but even
in the highest degree dangerous, as the moderns
show. Consider the historical student, the heir of
ennui, that appears even in his boyhood. He has
the "methods" for original work, the "correct
ideas" and the airs of the master at his fingers'
ends. A little isolated period of the past is marked
out for sacrifice. He cleverly applies his method,
and produces something, or rather, in prouder
phrase, "creates" something. He becomes a
"servant of truth" and a ruler in the great domain
of history. If he was what they call ripe as a
boy, he is now over-ripe. You only need shake
him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap;
but the wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its
worm. Believe me, if men work in the factory of
science and have to make themselves useful before
they are really ripe, science is ruined as much as


## p.