No More Learning

Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to


## p. 141 (#218) ############################################

140 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul : his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect



## p. 141 (#219) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity-arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to


## p. 141 (#220) ############################################

140 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
-which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect



## p. 141 (#221) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity-arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to


## p. 141 (#222) ############################################

140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect



## p. 141 (#223) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity-arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to


## p. 142 (#224) ############################################

142 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Wilhelm Meister: "You are bitter and ill-tempered
—which is quite an excellent thing: if you could
once become really angry, it would be still better. "
To speak plainly, it is necessary to become really
angry in order that things may be better. The
picture of Schopenhauer's man can help us here.
Schopenhauer's man voluntarily takes upon himself
the pain of telling tlie truth: this pain serves to
quench his individual will and make him ready for
the complete transformation of his being, which it
is the inner meaning of life to realise. This open-
ness in him appears to other men to be an effect
of malice, for they think the preservation of their
shifts and pretences to be the first duty of humanity,
and any one who destroys their playthings to be
merely malicious. They are tempted to cry out to
such a man, in Faust's words to Mephistopheles:—
"So to the active and eternal
Creative force, in cold disdain
You now oppose the fist infernal"—
and he who would live according to Schopenhauer
would seem to be more like a Mephistopheles than
a Faust—that is, to our weak modern eyes, which
always discover signs of malice in any negation.
But there is a kind of denial and destruction that
is the effect of that strong aspiration after holiness
and deliverance, which Schopenhauer was the first
philosopher to teach our profane and worldly genera-
tion. Everything that can be denied, deserves to
be denied; and real sincerity means the belief in
a state of things which cannot be denied, or in
which there is no lie. The sincere man feels that


## p. 143 (#225) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 143
his activity has a metaphysical meaning. It can
only be explained by the laws of a different and
a higher life; it is in the deepest sense an affirma-
tion: even if everything that he does seem utterly
opposed to the laws of our present life. It must
lead therefore to constant suffering; but he knows,
as Meister Eckhard did, that "the quickest beast
that will carry you to perfection is suffering. "
Every one, I should think, who has such an ideal
before him, must feel a wider sympathy; and he
will have a burning desire to become a " Schopen-
hauer man " ;—pure and wonderfully patient, on
his intellectual side full of a devouring fire, and
far removed from the cold and contemptuous
"neutrality" of the so-called scientific man; so
high above any warped and morose outlook on
life as to offer himself as the first victim of the
truth he has won, with a deep consciousness of the
sufferings that must spring from his sincerity.
His courage will destroy his happiness on earth,
he must be an enemy to the men he loves and
the institutions in which he grew up, he must spare
neither person nor thing, however it may hurt him,
he will be misunderstood and thought an ally of
forces that he abhors, in his search for righteous-
ness he will seem unrighteous by human standards:
but he must comfort himself with the words that
his teacher Schopenhauer once used: "A, happy
life is impossible, the highest thing that man can
aspire to is a heroic life; such as a man lives, who
is always fighting against unequal odds for the
good of others; and wins in the end without any
thanks. After the battle is over, he stands like


## p. 144 (#226) ############################################

144 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the Prince in the re corvo of Gozzi, with dignity
and nobility in his eyes, but turned to stone. His
memory remains, and will be reverenced as a
hero's; his will, that has been mortified all his life
by toiling and struggling, by evil payment and
ingratitude, is absorbed into Nirvana. " Such a
heroic life, with its full "mortification"—corre-
sponds very little to the paltry ideas of the people
who talk most about it, and make festivals in
memory of great men, in the belief that a great
man is great in the sense that they are small,
either through exercise of his gifts to please himself
or by a blind mechanical obedience to this inner
force; so that the man who does not possess the
gift or feel the compulsion has the same right to
be small as the other to be great But " gift" and
"compulsion " are contemptible words, mere means
of escape from an inner voice, a slander on him
who has listened to the voice—the great man; he
least of all will allow himself to be given or com-
pelled to anything: for he knows as well as any
smaller man how easily life can be taken and how
soft the bed whereon he might lie if he went the
pleasant and conventional way with himself and
his fellow-creatures: all the regulations of mankind
are turned to the end that the intense feeling of
life may be lost in continual distractions. Now
why will he so strongly choose the opposite, and
try to feel life, which is the same as to suffer from
life? Because he sees that men will tempt him to
betray himself, and that there is a kind of agree-
ment to draw him from his den. He will prick
up his ears and gather himself together, and say,


## p. 145 (#227) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 145
"I will remain mine own. " He gradually comes
to understand what a fearful decision it is. For
he must go down into the depths of being, with a
string of curious questions on his lips—" Why am
I alive? what lesson have I to learn from life?
how have I become what I am, and why do I
suffer in this existence? " He is troubled, and
sees that no one is troubled in the same way; but
rather that the hands of his fellow-men are passion-
ately stretched out towards the fantastic drama of
the political theatre, or they themselves are tread-
ing the boards under many disguises, youths, men
and graybeards, fathers, citizens, priests, merchants
and officials,—busy with the comedy they are all
playing, and never thinking of their own selves.
To the question "To what end dost thou live? "
they would all immediately answer, with pride,
"To become a good citizen or professor or states-
man,"—and yet they are something which can
never be changed: and why are they just—this?
Ah, and why nothing better? The man who only
regards his life as a moment in the evolution of a
race or a state or a science, and will belong merely
to a history of "becoming," has not understood
the lesson of existence, and must learn it over
again. This eternal "becoming something" is a
lying puppet-show, in which man has forgot him-
self; it is the force that scatters individuality to
the four winds, the eternal childish game that the
big baby time is playing in front of us—and with
us. The heroism of sincerity lies in ceasing to be
the plaything of time. Everything in the process
of " becoming" is a hollow sham, contemptible and
VOL. II. K


## p. 146 (#228) ############################################

146 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
shallow: man can only find the solution of his
riddle in " being" something definite and unchange-
able. He begins to test how deep both " becoming"
and "being" are rooted in him—and a fearful task
is before his soul; to destroy the first, and bring
all the falsity of things to the light. He wishes to
know everything, not to feed a delicate taste, like
Goethe's man, to take delight, from a safe place,
in the multiplicity of existence: but he himself is
the first sacrifice that he brings. The heroic man
does not think of his happiness or misery, his
virtues or his vices, Or of his being the measure of
things; he has no further hopes of himself and
will accept the utter consequences of his hopeless-
ness. His strength lies in his self-forgetfulness:
if he have a thought for himself, it is only to
measure the vast distance between himself and his
aim, and to view what he has left behind him as
so much dross. The old philosophers sought for
happiness and truth, with all their strength: and
there is an evil principle in nature that not one
shall find that which he cannot help seeking. But
the man who looks for a lie in everything, and
becomes a willing friend to unhappiness, shall have
a marvellous disillusioning: there hovers near him
something unutterable, of which truth and happiness
are but idolatrous images born of the night; the
earth loses her dragging weight, the events and
powers of earth become as a dream, and a gradual
clearness widens round him like a summer evening.
It is as though the beholder of these things began
to wake, and it had only been the clouds of a
passing dream that had been weaving about him.


## p. 147 (#229) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 147
They will at some time disappear: and then will
it be day.
V.
But I have promised to speak of Schopenhauer,
as far as my experience goes, as an educator, and
it is far from being sufficient to paint the ideal
humanity which is the " Platonic idea " in Schopen-
hauer; especially as my representation is an im-
perfect one. The most difficult task remains;—to
say how a new circle of duties may spring from
this ideal, and how one can reconcile such a tran-
scendent aim with ordinary action; to prove, in
short, that the ideal is educative. One might other-
wise think it to be merely the blissful or intoxicating
vision of a few rare moments, that leaves us after-
wards the prey of a deeper disappointment. It is
certain that the ideal begins to affect us in this
way when we come suddenly to distinguish light
and darkness, bliss and abhorrence; this is an
experience that is as old as ideals themselves. But
we ought not to stand in the doorway for long; we
should soon leave the first stages, and ask the
question, seriously and definitely, " Is it possible to
bring that incredibly high aim so near us, that it
should educate us, or ' lead us out,' as well as lead
us upward ? "—in order that the great words of
Goethe be not fulfilled in our case—" Man is born
to a state of limitation : he can understand ends
that are simple, present and definite, and is ac-
customed to make use of means that are near to
his hand; but as soon as he comes into the open,


## p. 147 (#230) ############################################

146
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
shallow: man can only find the solution of his
riddle in “ being” something definite and unchange-
able. He begins to test how deep both “becoming”
and “being " are rooted in him—and a fearful task
is before his soul; to destroy the first, and bring
all the falsity of things to the light. He wishes to
know everything, not to feed a delicate taste, like
Goethe's man, to take delight, from a safe place,
in the multiplicity of existence: but he himself is
the first sacrifice that he brings. The heroic man
does not think of his happiness or misery, his
virtues or his vices, or of his being the measure of
things; he has no further hopes of himself and
will accept the utter consequences of his hopeless-
ness. His strength lies in his self-forgetfulness :
if he have a thought for himself, it is only to
measure the vast distance between himself and his
aim, and to view what he has left behind him as
so much dross. The old philosophers sought for
happiness and truth, with all their strength: and
there is an evil principle in nature that not one
shall find that which he cannot help seeking. But
the man who looks for a lie in everything, and
becomes a willing friend to unhappiness, shall have
a marvellous disillusioning: there hovers near him
something unutterable, of which truth and happiness
are but idolatrous images born of the night; the
earth loses her dragging weight, the events and
powers of earth become as a dream, and a gradual
clearness widens round him like a summer evening.
It is as though the beholder of these things began
to wake, and it had only been the clouds of a
ast dishat he "hiloso
passing dream that had been weaving about him.


## p. 147 (#231) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
147
They will at some time disappear: and then will
it be day.
But I have promised to speak of Schopenhauer,
as far as my experience goes, as an educator, and
it is far from being sufficient to paint the ideal
humanity which is the “ Platonic idea "in Schopen-
hauer; especially as my representation is an im-
perfect one. The most difficult task remains ;-to
say how a new circle of duties may spring from
this ideal, and how one can reconcile such a tran-
scendent aim with ordinary action; to prove, in
short, that the ideal is educative. One might other-
wise think it to be merely the blissful or intoxicating
vision of a few rare moments, that leaves us after-
wards the prey of a deeper disappointment. It is
certain that the ideal begins to affect us in this
way when we come suddenly to distinguish light
and darkness, bliss and abhorrence; this is an
experience that is as old as ideals themselves. But
we ought not to stand in the doorway for long; we
should soon leave the first stages, and ask the
question, seriously and definitely, “Is it possible to
bring that incredibly high aim so near us, that it
should educate us, or 'lead us out,' as well as lead
us upward ? ”-in order that the great words of
Goethe be not fulfilled in our case—“Man is born
to a state of limitation : he can understand ends
that are simple, present and definite, and is ac-
customed to make use of means that are near to
his hand; but as soon as he comes into the open,


## p. 148 (#232) ############################################

148 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
he knows neither what he wishes nor what he ought
to do, and it is all one whether he be confused by
the multitude of objects or set beside himself by
their greatness and importance. It is always his
misfortune to be led to strive after something which
he cannot attain by any ordinary activity of his
own. " The objection can be made with apparent
reason against Schopenhauer's man, that his great-
ness and dignity can only turn our heads, and put
us beyond all community with the active men of
the world: the common round of duties, the noise-
less tenor of life has disappeared. One man may
possibly get accustomed to living in a reluctant
dualism, that is, in a contradiction with himself;—
becoming unstable, daily weaker and less pro-
ductive :—while another will renounce all action
on principle, and scarcely endure to see others
active. The danger is always great when a man
is too heavy-laden, and cannot really accomplish
any duties. Stronger natures may be broken by
it; the weaker, which are the majority, sink into
a speculative laziness, and at last, from their lazi-
ness, lose even the power of speculation.
With regard to such objections, I will admit that
our work has hardly begun, and so far as I know,
I only see one thing clearly and definitely—that it
is possible for that ideal picture to provide you and
me with a chain of duties that may be accom-
plished; and some of us already feel its pressure.
In order, however, to be able to speak in plain
language of the formula under which I may gather
the new circle of duties, I must begin with the
-
following considerations.


## p. 149 (#233) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 149
The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for
animals, because they suffer from life and have
not the power to turn the sting of the suffering
against themselves, and understand their being
metaphysically. The sight of blind suffering is
the spring of the deepest emotion. And in many
quarters of the earth men have supposed that the
souls of the guilty have entered into beasts, and
that the blind suffering which at first sight calls
for such pity has a clear meaning and purpose to
the divine justice,—of punishment and atonement:
and a heavy punishment it is, to be condemned to
live in hunger and need, in the shape of a beast,
and to reach no consciousness of one's self in this
life. I can think of no harder lot than the wild
beast's; he is driven to the forest by the fierce
pang of hunger, that seldom leaves him at peace;
and peace is itself a torment, the surfeit after horrid
food, won, maybe, by a deadly fight with other
animals. To cling to life, blindly and madly, with
no other aim, to be ignorant of the reason, or even
the fact, of one's punishment, nay, to thirst after
it as if it were a pleasure, with all the perverted
desire of a fool—this is what it means to be an
animal. If universal nature leads up to man, it is
to show us that he is necessary to redeem her from
the curse of the beast's life, and that in him exist-
ence can find a mirror of itself wherein life appears,
no longer blind, but in its real metaphysical signifi-
cance. But we should consider where the beast
ends and the man begins—the man, the one concern
of Nature. As long as any one desires life as a
pleasure in itself, he has not raised his eyes above


## p. 149 (#234) ############################################

148
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
he knows neither what he wishes nor what he ought
to do, and it is all one whether he be confused by
the multitude of objects or set beside himself by
their greatness and importance. It is always his
misfortune to be led to strive after something which
he cannot attain by any ordinary activity of his
own. " The objection can be made with apparent
reason against Schopenhauer's man, that his great-
ness and dignity can only turn our heads, and put
us beyond all community with the active men of
the world : the common round of duties, the noise-
less tenor of life has disappeared. One man may
possibly get accustomed to living in a reluctant
dualism, that is, in a contradiction with himself;
becoming unstable, daily weaker and less pro-
ductive :while another will renounce all action
on principle, and scarcely endure to see others
active. The danger is always great when a man
is too heavy-laden, and cannot really accomplish
any duties. Stronger natures may be broken by
it; the weaker, which are the majority, sink into
a speculative laziness, and at last, from their lazi-
ness, lose even the power of speculation.
With regard to such objections, I will admit that
our work has hardly begun, and so far as I know,
I only see one thing clearly and definitely—that it
is possible for that ideal picture to provide you and
me with a chain of duties that may be accom-
plished; and some of us already feel its pressure.
In order, however, to be able to speak in plain
language of the formula under which I may gather
the new circle of duties, I must begin with the
following considerations.



## p. 149 (#235) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
149
The deeper minds of all ages have had pity for
animals, because they suffer from life and have
not the power to turn the sting of the suffering
against themselves, and understand their being
metaphysically. The sight of blind suffering is
the spring of the deepest emotion. And in many
quarters of the earth men have supposed that the
souls of the guilty have entered into beasts, and
that the blind suffering which at first sight calls
for such pity has a clear meaning and purpose to
the divine justice,-of punishment and atonement:
and a heavy punishment it is, to be condemned to
live in hunger and need, in the shape of a beast,
and to reach no consciousness of one's self in this
life. I can think of no harder lot than the wild
beast's; he is driven to the forest by the fierce
pang of hunger, that seldom leaves him at peace;
and peace is itself a torment, the surfeit after horrid
food, won, maybe, by a deadly fight with other
animals. To cling to life, blindly and madly, with
no other aim, to be ignorant of the reason, or even
the fact, of one's punishment, nay, to thirst after
it as if it were a pleasure, with all the perverted
desire of a fool—this is what it means to be an
animal. If universal nature leads up to man, it is
to show us that he is necessary to redeem her from
the curse of the beast's life, and that in him exist-
ence can find a mirror of itself wherein life appears,
no longer blind, but in its real metaphysical signifi-
cance. But we should consider where the beast
ends and the man begins—the man, the one concern
of Nature. As long as any one desires life as a
pleasure in itself, he has not raised his eyes above


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ISO THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the horizon of the beast; he only desires more
consciously what the beast seeks by a blind impulse.
It is so with us all, for the greater part of our lives.
We do not shake off the beast, but are beasts our-
selves, suffering we know not what.
But there are moments when we do know; and
then the clouds break, and we see how, with the
rest of nature, we are straining towards the man,
as to something that stands high above us. We
look round and behind us, and fear the sudden
rush of light; the beasts are transfigured, and our-
selves with them. The enormous migrations of
mankind in the wildernesses of the world, the cities
they found and the wars they wage, their ceaseless
gatherings and dispersions and fusions, the doctrines
they blindly follow, their mutual frauds and deceits,
the cry of distress, the shriek of victory—are all a
continuation of the beast in us: as if the education
of man has been intentionally set back, and his
promise of self-consciousness frustrated; as if, in
fact, after yearning for man so long, and at last
reaching him by her labour, Nature should now
recoil from him and wish to return to a state
of unconscious instinct. Ah! she has need of
knowledge, and shrinks before the very knowledge
she needs: the flame flickers unsteadily and fears
its own brightness, and takes hold of a thousand
things before the one thing for which knowledge
is necessary. There are moments when we all
know that our most elaborate arrangements are
only designed to give us refuge from our real
task in life; we wish to hide our heads somewhere,
as if our Argus-eyed conscience could not find us


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 151
out; we are quick to send our hearts on state-
service, or money-making, or social duties, or
scientific work, in order to possess them no longer
ourselves; we are more willing and instinctive
slaves of the hard day's work than mere living
requires, because it seems to us more necessary not
to be in a position to think. The hurry is universal,
because every one is fleeing before himself; its con-
cealment is just as universal, as we wish to seem
contented and hide our wretchedness from the
keener eyes; and so there is a common need for
a new carillon of words to hang in the temple of
life, and peal for its noisy festival. We all know
the curious way in which unpleasant memories
suddenly throng on us, and how we do our best
by loud talk and violent gestures to put them out
of our minds; but the gestures and the talk of our
ordinary life make one think we are all in this
condition, frightened of any memory or any inward
gaze. What is it that is always troubling us? what
is the gnat that will not let us sleep? There are
spirits all about us, each moment of life has some-
thing to say to us, but we will not listen to the
spirit-voices. When we are quiet and alone, we
fear that something will be whispered in our ears,
and so we hate the quiet, and dull our senses in
society.
We understand this sometimes, as I say, and
stand amazed at the whirl and the rush and the
anxiety and all the dream that we call our life; we
seem to fear the awakening, and our dreams too
become vivid and restless, as the awakening draws
near. But we feel as well that we are too weak to


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152 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
endure long those intimate moments, and that we
are not the men to whom universal nature looks as
her redeemers. It is something to be able to raise
our heads but for a moment and see the stream in
which we are sunk so deep. We cannot gain even
this transitory moment of awakening by our own
strength; we must be lifted up—and who are they
that will uplift us?
The sincere men who have cast out the beast,
the philosophers, artists and saints. Nature—
qua nunquam facit saltutn—has made her one
leap in creating them; a leap of joy, as she feels
herself for the first time at her goal, where she
begins to see that she must learn not to have goals
above her, and that she has played the game of
transition too long. The knowledge transfigures
her, and there rests on her face the gentle weariness
of evening that men call "beauty. " Her words
after this transfiguration are as a great light shed
over existence: and the highest wish that mortals
can reach is to listen continually to her voice with
ears that hear. If a man think of all that Schopen-
hauer, for example, must have heard in his life,
he may well say to himself—" The deaf ears, the
feeble understanding and shrunken heart, every-
thing that I call mine,—how I despise them! Not
to be able to fly but only to flutter one's wings!
To look above one's self and have no power to
rise! To know the road that leads to the wide
vision of the philosopher, and to reel back after
a few steps! Were there but one day when the
great wish might be fulfilled, how gladly would
we pay for it with the rest of life! To rise as high


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 153
as any thinker yet into the pure icy air of the
mountain, where there are no mists and veils, and
the inner constitution of things is shown in a
stark and piercing clarity! Even by thinking of
this the soul becomes infinitely alone; but were
its wish fulfilled, did its glance once fall straight as
a ray of light on the things below, were shame and
anxiety and desire gone for ever—one could find
no words for its state then, for the mystic and
tranquil emotion with which, like the soul of
Schopenhauer, it would look down on the
monstrous hieroglyphics of existence and the
petrified doctrines of "becoming"; not as the
brooding night, but as the red and glowing day
that streams over the earth. And what a destiny
it is only to know enough of the fixity and
happiness of the philosopher to feel the complete
unfixity and unhappiness of the false philosopher,
'who without hope lives in desire': to know one's
self to be the fruit of a tree that is too much in the
shade ever to ripen, and to see a world of sunshine
in front, where one may not go! "
There were sorrow enough here, if ever, to make
such a man envious and spiteful: but he will turn
aside, that he may not destroy his soul by a vain
aspiration; and will discover a new circle of duties.
I can now give an answer to the question whether
it be possible to approach the great ideal of Schopen-
hauer's man "by any ordinary activity of our own. "
In the first place, the new duties are certainly not
those of a hermit; they imply rather a vast com-
munity, held together not by external forms but
by a fundamental idea, namely that of culture;


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154 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
though only so far as it can put a single task
before each of us—to bring the philosopher, the
artist and the saint, within and without us, to the
light, and to strive thereby for the completion of
Nature. For Nature needs the artist, as she needs
the philosopher, for a metaphysical end, the
explanation of herself, whereby she may have a
clear and sharp picture of what she only saw
dimly in the troubled period of transition,—and
so may reach self-consciousness. Goethe, in an
arrogant yet profound phrase, showed how all
Nature's attempts only have value in so far as the
artist interprets her stammering words, meets her
half-way, and speaks aloud what she really means.
"I have often said, and will often repeat," he
exclaims in one place, "the causa finalis of natural
and human activity is dramatic poetry. Other-
wise the stuff is of no use at all. "
Finally, Nature needs the saint. In him the
ego has melted away, and the suffering of his life
is, practically, no longer felt as individual, but as
the spring of the deepest sympathy and intimacy
with all living creatures: he sees the wonderful
transformation scene that the comedy of " becom-
ing" never reaches, the attainment, at length, of
the high state of man after which all nature is
striving, that she may be delivered from herself.
Without doubt, we all stand in close relation to
him, as well as to the philosopher and the artist:
there are moments, sparks from the clear fire of
love, in whose light we understand the word " I"
no longer; there is something beyond our being
that comes, for those moments, to the hither side


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 155
of it: and this is why we long in our hearts for a
bridge from here to there. In our ordinary state
we can do nothing towards the production of the
new redeemer, and so we hate ourselves in this
state with a hatred that is the root of the pessimism
which Schopenhauer had to teach again to our age,
though it is as old as the aspiration after culture.
—Its root, not its flower; the foundation, not the
summit; the beginning of the road, not the end:
for we have to learn at some time to hate some-
thing else, more universal than our own personality
with its wretched limitation, its change and its
unrest—and this will be when we shall learn to love
something else than we can love now. When we
are ourselves received into that high order of philo-
sophers, artists and saints, in this life or a reincarna-
tion of it, a new object for our love and hate will
also rise before us. As it is, we have our task and
our circle of duties, our hates and our loves. For
we know that culture requires us to make ready
for the coming of the Schopenhauer man ;—and
this is the " use" we are to make of him;—we must
know what obstacles there are and strike them
from our path—in fact, wage unceasing war against
everything that hindered our fulfilment, and pre-
vented us from becoming Schopenhauer's men
ourselves.
VI.
It is sometimes harder to agree to a thing than
to understand it; many will feel this when they
consider the proposition—"Mankind must toil


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156 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
unceasingly to bring forth individual great men:
this and nothing else is its task. " One would like
to apply to society and its ends a fact that holds
universally in the animal and vegetable world;
where progress depends only on the higher in-
dividual types, which are rarer, yet more per-
sistent, complex and productive. But traditional
notions of what the end of society is, absolutely
bar the way. We can easily understand how in
the natural world, where one species passes at
some point into a higher one, the aim of their
evolution cannot be held to lie in the high level
attained by the mass, or in the latest types
developed;—but rather in what seem accidental
beings produced here and there by favourable
circumstances. It should be just as easy to
understand that it is the duty of mankind to
provide the circumstances favourable to the birth
of the new redeemer, simply because men can
have a consciousness of their object. But there
is always something to prevent them. They find
their ultimate aim in the happiness of all, or the
greatest number, or in the expansion of a great
commonwealth. A man will very readily decide
to sacrifice his life for the state; he will be much
slower to respond if an individual, and not a state,
ask for the sacrifice. It seems to be out of reason
that one man should exist for the sake of another:
"Let it be rather for the sake of every other, or,
at any rate, of as many as possible! " O upright
judge! As if it were more in reason to let the
majority decide a question of value and signifi-
cance! For the problem is—" In what way may


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 157
your life, the individual life, retain the highest
value and the deepest significance? and how may
it least be squandered? " Only by your living for
the good of the rarest and most valuable types,
not for that of the majority,—who are the most
worthless types, taken as individuals. This way
of thinking should be implanted and fostered in
every young man's mind: he should regard himself
both as a failure of Nature's handiwork and a
testimony to her larger ideas. "She has succeeded
badly," he should say; "but I will do honour to
her great idea by being a means to its better
success. "
With these thoughts he will enter the circle
of culture, which is the child of every man's self-
knowledge and dissatisfaction. He will approach
and say aloud: "I see something above me, higher
and more human than I: let all help me to reach
it, as I will help all who know and suffer as I do,
that the man may arise at last who feels his
knowledge and love, vision and power, to be
complete and boundless, who in his universality
is one with nature, the critic and judge of exist-
ence. " It is difficult to give any one this courageous
self-consciousness, because it is impossible to teach
love; from love alone the soul gains, not only the
clear vision that leads to self-contempt, but also
the desire to look to a higher self which is yet
hidden, and strive upward to it with all its strength.
And so he who rests his hope on a future great
man, receives his first "initiation into culture. "
The sign of this is shame or vexation at one's self,
a hatred of one's own narrowness, a sympathy with


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158 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the genius that ever raises its head again from our
misty wastes, a feeling for all that is struggling
into life, the conviction that Nature must be helped
in her hour of need to press forward to the man,
however ill she seem to prosper, whatever success
may attend her marvellous forms and projects:
so that the men with whom we live are like the
debris of some precious sculptures, which cry out—
"Come and help us! Put us together, for we long
to become complete. "
I called this inward condition the "first initia-
tion into culture. " I have now to describe the
effects of the "second initiation," a task of greater
difficulty. It is the passage from the inner life to
the criticism of the outer life. The eye must be
turned to find in the great world of movement the
desire for culture that is known from the immediate
experience of the individual; who must use his
own strivings and aspirations as the alphabet to
interpret those of humanity. He cannot rest here
either, but must go higher. Culture demands from
him not only that inner experience, not only the
criticism of the outer world surrounding him, but
action too to crown them all, the fight for culture
against the influences and conventions and insti-
tutions where he cannot find his own aim,—the
production of genius.
Any one who can reach the second step, will
see how extremely rare and imperceptible the
knowledge of that end is, though all men busy
themselves with culture and expend vast labour
in her service. He asks himself in amazement—
"Is not such knowledge, after all, absolutely


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 159
necessary? Can Nature be said to attain her
end, if men have a false idea of the aim of their
own labour? " And any one who thinks a great
deal of Nature's unconscious adaptation of means
to ends, will probably answer at once: "Yes, men
may think and speak what they like about their
ultimate end, their blind instinct will tell them the
right road. " It requires some experience of life
to be able to contradict this: but let a man be
convinced of the real aim of culture—the pro-
duction of the true man and nothing else;—let
him consider that amid all the pageantry and
ostentation of culture at the present time the
conditions for his production are nothing but a
continual "battle of the beasts ": and he will see
that there is great need for a conscious will to take
the place of that blind instinct. There is another
reason also;—to prevent the possibility of turning
this obscure impulse to quite different ends, in a
direction where our highest aim can no longer be
attained. For we must beware of a certain kind
of misapplied and parasitical culture; the powers
at present most active in its propagation have
other casts of thought that prevent their relation
to culture from being pure and disinterested.
The first of these is the self-interest of the
business men. This needs the help of culture,
and helps her in return, though at the price of
prescribing her ends and limits. And their favourite
sorites is: "We must have as much knowledge
and education as possible; this implies as great
a need as possible for it, this again as much pro-
duction, this again as much material wealth and


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160 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
happiness as possible. "—This is the seductive
formula. Its preachers would define education as
the insight that makes man through and through
a "child of his age" in his desires and their
satisfaction, and gives him command over the
best means of making money. Its aim would
be to make "current" men, in the same sense as
one speaks of the "currency" in money; and in
their view, the more "current" men there are,
the happier the people. The object of modern
educational systems is therefore to make each
man as "current" as his nature will allow him,
and to give him the opportunity for the greatest
amount of success and happiness that can be got
from his particular stock of knowledge. He is
required to have just so much idea of his own
value (through his liberal education) as to know
what he can ask of life; and he is assured that
a natural and necessary connection between
"intelligence and property" not only exists, but
is also a moral necessity. All education is de-
tested that makes for loneliness, and has an aim
above money-making, and requires a long time:
men look askance on such serious education, as
mere "refined egoism" or "immoral Epicurean-
ism. " The converse of course holds, according
to the ordinary morality, that education must be
soon over to allow the pursuit of money to be
soon begun, and should be just thorough enough
to allow of much money being made. The amount of
education is determined by commercial interests. In
short, " man has a necessary claim to worldly happi-
ness; only for that reason is education necessary. "


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. l6l
There is, secondly, the self-interest of the state,
which requires the greatest possible breadth and
universality of culture, and has the most effective
weapons to carry out its wishes. If it be firmly
enough established not only to initiate but control
education and bear its whole weight, such breadth
will merely profit the competition of the state with
other states. A "highly civilised state" generally
implies, at the present time, the task of setting
free the spiritual forces of a generation just so far as
they may be of use to the existing institutions,—
as a mountain stream is split up by embankments
and channels, and its diminished power made to
drive mill-wheels, its full strength being more
dangerous than useful to the mills. And thus
"setting free" comes to mean rather "chaining
up. " Compare, for example, what the self-interest
of the state has done for Christianity. Christianity
is one of the purest manifestations of the impulse
towards culture and the production of the saint:
but being used in countless ways to turn the mills
of the state authorities, it gradually became sick
at heart, hypocritical and degenerate, and in
antagonism with its original aim. Its last phase,
the German Reformation, would have been nothing
but a sudden flickering of its dying flame, had it
not taken new strength and light from the clash
and conflagration of states.
In the third place, culture will be favoured by
all those people who know their own character to
be offensive or tiresome, and wish to draw a veil
of so-called "good form" over them. Words,
gestures, dress, etiquette, and such external things,
VOL. II. L


## p. 162 (#248) ############################################

162 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
are meant to produce a false impression, the inner
side to be judged from the outer. I sometimes
think that modern men are eternally bored with
each other and look to the arts to make them
interesting. They let their artists make savoury
and inviting dishes of them; they steep themselves
in the spices of the East and West, and have a
very interesting aroma after it all. They are ready
to suit all palates: and every one will be served,
whether he want something with a good or bad
taste, something sublime or coarse, Greek or
Chinese, tragedy or gutter - drama. The most
celebrated chefs among the moderns who wish to
interest and be interested at any price, are the
French; the worst are the Germans. This is
really more comforting for the latter, and we have
no reason to mind the French despising us for our
want of interest, elegance and politeness, and being
reminded of the Indian who longs for a ring
through his nose, and then proceeds to tattoo
himself.
Here I must digress a little. Many things in
Germany have evidently been altered since the
late war with France, and new requirements for
German culture brought over. The war was for
many their first venture into the more elegant half
of the world: and what an admirable simplicity
the conqueror shows in not scorning to learn some-
thing of culture from the conquered! The applied
arts especially will be reformed to emulate our more
refined neighbours, the German house furnished
like the French, a "sound taste" applied to the
German language by means of an Academy on the


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 163
French model, to shake off the doubtful influence
of Goethe—this is the judgment of our new Berlin
Academician, Dubois-Raymond. Our theatres
have been gradually moving, in a dignified way,
towards the same goal, even the elegant German
savant is now discovered — and we must now
expect everything that does not conform to this
law of elegance, our music, tragedy and philosophy,
to be thrust aside as un-German. But there were
no need to raise a finger for German culture, did
German culture (which the Germans have yet to
find) mean nothing but the little amenities that
make life more decorative—including the arts of
the dancing-master and the upholsterer;—or were
they merely interested in academic rules of
language and a general atmosphere of politeness.
The late war and the self-comparison with the
French do not seem to have aroused any further
desires, and I suspect that the German has a strong
wish for the moment to be free of the old obliga-
tions laid on him by his wonderful gifts of serious-
ness and profundity. He would much rather play
the buffoon and the monkey, and learn the arts
that make life amusing. But the German spirit
cannot be more dishonoured than by being treated
as wax for any elegant mould.
And if, unfortunately, a good many Germans will
allow themselves to be thus moulded, one must
continually say to them, till at last they listen:—
"The old German way is no longer yours: it was
hard, rough, and full of resistance; but it is still
the most valuable material—one which only the
greatest modellers can work with, for they alone


## p. 163 (#250) ############################################

162
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
are meant to produce a false impression, the inner
side to be judged from the outer. I sometimes
think that modern men are eternally bored with
each other and look to the arts to make them
interesting. They let their artists make savoury
and inviting dishes of them; they steep themselves
in the spices of the East and West, and have a
very interesting aroma after it all. They are ready
to suit all palates: and every one will be served,
whether he want something with a good or bad
taste, something sublime or coarse, Greek or
Chinese, tragedy or gutter - drama. The most
celebrated chefs among the moderns who wish to
interest and be interested at any price, are the
French; the worst are the Germans. This is
really more comforting for the latter, and we have
no reason to mind the French despising us for our
want of interest, elegance and politeness, and being
reminded of the Indian who longs for a ring
through his nose, and then proceeds to tattoo
himself.
Here I must digress a little. Many things in
Germany have evidently been altered since the
late war with France, and new requirements for
German culture brought over. The war was for
many their first venture into the more elegant half
of the world: and what an admirable simplicity
the conqueror shows in not scorning to learn some-
thing of culture from the conquered! The applied
arts especially will be reformed to emulate our more
refined neighbours, the German house furnished
like the French, a “sound taste" applied to the
German language by means of an Academy on the


## p. 163 (#251) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 163
French model, to shake off the doubtful influence
of Goethe—this is the judgment of our new Berlin
Academician, Dubois-Raymond. Our theatres
have been gradually moving, in a dignified way,
towards the same goal, even the elegant German
savant is now discovered — and we must now
expect everything that does not conform to this
law of elegance, our music, tragedy and philosophy,
to be thrust aside as un-German. But there were
no need to raise a finger for German culture, did
German culture (which the Germans have yet to
find) mean nothing but the little amenities that
make life more decorative—including the arts of
the dancing-master and the upholsterer;—or were
they merely interested in academic rules of
language and a general atmosphere of politeness.
The late war and the self-comparison with the
French do not seem to have aroused any further
desires, and I suspect that the German has a strong
wish for the moment to be free of the old obliga-
tions laid on him by his wonderful gifts of serious-
ness and profundity. He would much rather play
the buffoon and the monkey, and learn the arts
that make life amusing. But the German spirit
cannot be more dishonoured than by being treated
as wax for any elegant mould.
And if, unfortunately, a good many Germans will
allow themselves to be thus moulded, one must
continually say to them, till at last they listen :—
"The old German way is no longer yours: it was
hard, rough, and full of resistance; but it is still
the most valuable material—one which only the
greatest modellers can work with, for they alone


## p. 164 (#252) ############################################

164 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
are worthy to use it. What you have in you now
is a soft pulpy stuff: make what you will out of
it,—elegant dolls and interesting idols—Richard
Wagner's phrase will still hold good,' The German
is awkward and ungainly when he wishes to be
polite; he is high above all others, when he begins
to take fire. '" All the elegant people have reason to
beware of this German fire; it may one day devour
them with all their wax dolls and idols. —The
prevailing love of " good form" in Germany may
have a deeper cause in the breathless seizing at
what the moment can give, the haste that plucks
the fruit too green, the race and the struggle that
cut the furrows in men's brows and stamp the same
mark on all their actions. As if there were a
poison in them that would not let them breathe,
they rush about in disorder, anxious slaves of the
"three m's," the moment, the mode and the mob:
they see too well their want of dignity and fitness,
and need a false elegance to hide their galloping
consumption. The fashionable desire of "good
form" is bound up with a loathing of man's inner
nature: the one is to conceal, the other to be con-
cealed. Education means now the concealment
of man's misery and wickedness, his wild-beast
quarrels, his eternal greed, his shamelessness in
fruition. In pointing out the absence of a German
culture, I have often had the reproach flung at me:
"This absence is quite natural, for the Germans
have been too poor and modest up to now. Once
rich and conscious of themselves, our people will
have a culture too. " Faith may often produce
happiness, yet this particular faith makes me un-


## p. 165 (#253) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. l6j
happy, for I feel that the culture whose future
raises such hopes—the culture of riches, politeness,
and elegant concealments—is the bitterest foe of
that German culture in which I believe. Every
one who has to live among Germans suffers from
the dreadful grayness and apathy of their lives,
their formlessness, torpor and clumsiness, still
more their envy, secretiveness and impurity: he is
troubled by their innate love of the false and the
ignoble, their wretched mimicry and translation of
a good foreign thing into a bad German one. But
now that the feverish unrest, the quest of gain and
success, the intense prizing of the moment, is added
to it all, it makes one furious to think that all this
sickness can never be cured, but only painted over,
by such a "cult of the interesting. " And this
among a people that has produced a Schopenhauer
and a Wagner! and will produce others, unless we
are blindly deceiving ourselves; for should not
their very existence be a guarantee that such forces
are even now potential in the German spirit? Or
will they be exceptions, the last inheritors of the
qualities that were once called German? I can
see nothing to help me here, and return* to my
main argument again, from which my doubts and
anxieties have made me digress. I have not yet
enumerated all the forces that help culture without
recognising its end, the production of genius.
Three have been named; the self-interest of
business, of the state, and of those who draw the
cloak of "good form" over them. There is
fourthly the self-interest of science, and the
peculiar nature of her servants—the learned.


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166 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Science has the same relation to wisdom as
current morality to holiness: she is cold and dry,
loveless, and ignorant of any deep feeling of dis-
satisfaction and yearning. She injures her servants
in helping herself, for she impresses her own
character on them and dries up their humanity.
As long as we actually mean by culture the
progress of science, she will pass by the great
suffering man and harden her heart, for science
only sees the problems of knowledge, and suffering
is something alien and unintelligible to her world
—though no less a problem for that!
If one accustom himself to put down every
experience in a dialectical form of question and
answer, and translate it into the language of " pure
reason," he will soon wither up and rattle his bones
like a skeleton. We all know it: and why is it
that the young do not shudder at these skeletons
of men, but give themselves blindly to science
without motive or measure? It cannot be the
so-called " impulse to truth ": for how could there
be an impulse towards a pure, cold and objectless
knowledge? The unprejudiced eye can see the
real driving forces only too plainly. The vivisection
of the professor has much to recommend it, as he
himself is accustomed to finger and analyse all
things—even the worthiest! To speak honestly,
the savant is a complex of very various impulses
and attractive forces—he is a base metal through-
out.
Take first a strong and increasing desire for
intellectual adventure, the attraction of the new
and rare as against the old and tedious. Add


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 167
to that a certain joy in nosing the trail of dialectic,
and beating the cover where the old fox, Thought,
lies hid; the desire is not so much for truth as the
chase of truth, and the chief pleasure is in surround-
ing and artistically killing it. Add thirdly a love
of contradiction whereby the personality is able to
assert itself against all others: the battle's the
thing, and the personal victory its aim,—truth only
its pretext. The impulse to discover "particular
truths " plays a great part in the professor, coming
from his submission to definite ruling persons,
classes, opinions, churches, governments, for he
feels it a profit to himself to bring truth to their
side.
The following characteristics of the savant are
less common, but still found. —Firstly, downright-
ness and a feeling for simplicity, very valuable if
more than a mere awkwardness and inability to
deceive, deception requiring some mother-wit. —
(Actually, we may be on our guard against too
obvious cleverness and resource, and doubt the
man's sincerity. ) — Otherwise this downrightness
is generally of little value, and rarely of any use
to knowledge, as it follows tradition and speaks
the truth only in "adiaphora "; it being lazier to
speak the truth here than ignore it. Everything
new means something to be unlearnt, and your
downright man will respect the ancient dogmas
and accuse the new evangelist of failing in the
sensus recti. There was a similar opposition, with
probability and custom on its side, to the theory
of Copernicus. The professor's frequent hatred of
philosophy is principally a hatred of the long


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168 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
trains of reasoning and artificiality of the proofs.
Ultimately the savants of every age have a fixed
limit; beyond which ingenuity is not allowed, and
everything suspected as a conspirator against
honesty.
Secondly, a clear vision of near objects, com-
bined with great shortsightedness for the distant and
universal. The professor's range is generally very
small, and his eye must be kept close to the object.
To pass from a point already considered to another,
he has to move his whole optical apparatus. He
cuts a picture into small sections, like a man using
an opera-glass in the theatre, and sees now a head,
now a bit of the dress, but nothing as a whole.
The single sections are never combined for him,
he only infers their connection, and consequently
has no strong general impression. He judges a
literary work, for example, by certain paragraphs
or sentences or errors, as he can do nothing more;
he will be driven to see in an oil painting nothing
but a mass of daubs.
Thirdly, a sober conventionality in his likes and
dislikes.