No More Learning

* The wife of the Stoic Thrasea Paetus, when their com-
plicity in the great conspiracy of 65 a. d. against Nero was
discovered, is reported to have said as she committed suicide,
"It doesn't hurt, Paetus. "—Tr.


## p. 237 (#277) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 237
77-
Which is more Transitory, the Body or
THE Spirit ? —In legal, moral, and religious institu-
tions the external and concrete elements—in other
words, rites, gestures, and ceremonies—are the most
permanent. They are the body to which a new
spirit is constantly being superadded. The cult,
like an unchangeable text, is ever interpreted anew.
Concepts and emotions are fluid, customs are solid.
78.
The Belief in Disease qua Disease. —
Christianity first painted the devil on the wall of
the world. Christianity first brought the idea of sin
into the world. The belief in the remedies, which
is offered as an antidote, has gradually been shaken
to its very foundations. But the belief in the
disease, which Christianity has taught and propa-
gated, still exists.
79-
Speech and Writings of Religious Men. —
If the priest's style and general expression, both in
speaking and writing, do not clearly betray the
religious man, we need no longer take his views
upon religion and his pleading for religion seriously.
These opinions have become powerless for him if,
judging by his style, he has at command irony,
arrogance, malice, hatred, and all the changing
eddies of mood, just like the most irreligious of
men—how far more powerless will they be for his


## p. 238 (#278) ############################################

238 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
hearers and readers! In short, he will serve to
make the latter still more irreligious.
So.
The Danger in Personality. — The more
God has been regarded as a personality in himself,
the less loyal have we been to him. Men are far
more attached to their thought-images than to their
best beloved. That is why they sacrifice themselves
for State, Church, and even for God—so far as he
remains their creation, their thought, and is not too
much looked upon as a personality. In the latter
case they almost always quarrel with him. After
all, it was the most pious of men who let slip that
bitter cry: " My God, why hast thou forsaken me? "
81.
Worldly Justice. —It is possible to unhinge
worldly justice with the doctrine |of the complete
non - responsibility and innocence of every man.
An attempt has been made in the same direction
on the basis of the opposite doctrine of the full
responsibility and guilt of every man. It was the
founder of Christianity who wished to abolish
worldly justice and banish judgment and punish-
ment from the world. For he understood all guilt
as "sin "—that is, an outrage against God and not
against the world. On the other hand, he con-
sidered every man in a broad sense, and almost
in every sense, a sinner. The guilty, however, are
not to be the judges of their peers—so his rules


## p. 239 (#279) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 239
of equity decided. Thus all dispensers of worldly
justice were in his eyes as culpable as those they
condemned, and their air of guiltlessness appeared
to him hypocritical and pharisaical. Moreover, he
looked to the motives and not to the results of
actions, and thought that only one was keen-sighted
enough to give a verdict on motives—himself or, as
he expressed it, God.
82.
An Affectation in Parting. —He who wishes
to sever his connection with a party or a creed thinks
it necessary for him to refute it. This is a most
arrogant notion. The only thing necessary is that
he should clearly see what tentacles hitherto held
him to this party or creed and no longer hold him,
what views impelled him to it and now impel him
in some other directions. We have not joined the
party or creed on strict grounds of knowledge. We
should not affect this attitude on parting from it
either.
83.
Saviour and Physician. —In his knowledge of
the human soul the founder of Christianity was, as
is natural, not without many great deficiencies and
prejudices, and, as physician of the soul, was ad-
dicted to that disreputable, laical belief in a universal
medicine. In his methods he sometimes resembles
that dentist who wishes to heal all pain by extract-
ing the tooth. Thus, for example, he assails sensu-
ality with the advice: "If thine eye offend thee,
pluck it out. "—Yet there still remains the distinction


## p. 240 (#280) ############################################

240 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that the dentist at least attains his object—painless-
ness for the patient—although in so clumsy a fashion
that he becomes ridiculous; whereas the Christian
who follows that advice and thinks he has killed
his sensuality, is wrong, for his sensuality still lives
in an uncanny, vampire form, and torments him in
hideous disguises.
84.
PRISONERS. —One morning the prisoners entered
the yard for work, but the warder was not there.
Some, as their manner was, set to work at once;
others stood idle and gazed defiantly around.
Then one of them strode forward and cried," Work
as much as you will or do nothing, it all comes to
the same. Your secret machinations have come to
light; the warder has been keeping his eye on you
of late, and will cause a terrible judgment to be
passed upon you in a few days' time. You know
him—he is of a cruel and resentful disposition.
But now, listen: you have mistaken me hitherto.
I am not what I seem, but far more—I am the son
of the warder, and can get anything I like out of
him. I can save you—nay, I will save you. But
remember this: I will only save those of you who
believe that I am the son of the prison warder.
The rest may reap the fruits of their unbelief. "
"Well," said an old prisoner after an interval of
silence, "what can it matter to you whether we
believe you or not? If you are really the son, and
can do what you say, then put in a good word for
us all. That would be a real kindness on your
part. But have done with all talk of belief and


## p. 241 (#281) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 241
unbelief! " "What is more," cried a younger man,
"I don't believe him: he has only got a bee in his
bonnet. I'll wager that in a week's time we shall
find ourselves in the same place as we are to-day,
and the warder will know nothing. " "And if the
warder ever knew anything, he knows it no longer,"
said the last of the prisoners, coming down into
the yard at that moment, "for he has just died
suddenly. " "Ah ha! " cried several in confusion,
"ah ha! Sir Son, Sir Son, how stands it now with
your title? Are we by any chance your prisoners
now? " "I told you," answered the man gently,
■' I will set free all who believe in me, as surely as
my father still lives. "—The prisoners did not laugh,
but shrugged their shoulders and left him to himself.
85-
The Persecutors of God. —Paul conceived
and Calvin followed up the idea that countless
creatures have been predestined to damnation from
time immemorial, and that this fair world was
made in order that the glory of God might be
manifested therein. So heaven and hell and man-
kind merely exist to satisfy the vanity of God!
What acruel, insatiable vanity must have smouldered
in the soul of the first or second thinker of such a
thought! —Paul, then, after all, remained Saul—the
persecutor of God.
86.
Socrates. —If all goes well, the time will come
when, in order to advance themselves on the path


## p. 242 (#282) ############################################

242 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
of moral reason, men will rather take up the
Memorabilia of Socrates than the Bible, and when
Montaigne and Horace will be used as pioneers and
guides for the understanding of Socrates, the simplest
and most enduring of interpretative sages. In him
converge the roads of the most different philo-
sophic modes of life, which are in truth the modes of
the different temperaments, crystallised by reason
and habit and all ultimately directed towards the
delight in life and in self. The apparent conclu-
sion is that the most peculiar thing about Socrates
was his share in all the temperaments. Socrates
excels the founder of Christianity by virtue of his
merry style of seriousness and by that wisdom of
sheer roguish pranks which constitutes the best state
of soul in a man. Moreover, he had a superior in-
telligence.
87.
Learning to Write Well. —The age of good
speaking is over, because the age of city-state culture
is over. The limit allowed by Aristotle to the
great city—in which the town-crier must be able
to make himself heard by the whole assembled
community—troubles us as little as do any city-
communities, us who even wish to be understood
beyond the boundaries of nations. Therefore
every one who is of a good European turn of mind
must learn to write well, and to write better and
better. He cannot help himself, he must learn
that: even if he was born in Germany, where bad
writing is looked upon as a national privilege.
Better writing means better thinking; always to


## p. 243 (#283) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 243
discover matter more worthy of communication; to
be able to communicate it properly; to be translate-
able into the tongues of neighbouring nations; to
make oneself comprehensible to foreigners who
learn our language; to work with the view of
making all that is good common property, and of
giving free access everywhere to the free; finally,
to pave the way for that still remote state of things,
when the great task shall come for good Europeans—
guidance and guardianship of the universal world-
culture. —Whoever preaches the opposite doctrine
of not troubling about good writing and good
reading (both virtues grow together and decline
together) is really showing the peoples a way of
becoming more and more national. He is intensi-
fying the malady of this century, and is a foe to
good Europeans, a foe to free spirits.
88.
The Theory of the Best Style. —The theory
of the best style may at one time be the theory of
finding the expression by which we transfer every
mood of ours to the reader and the listener. At
another, it may be the theory of finding expressions
for the more desirable human moods, the communi-
cation and transference of which one desires most
—for the mood of a man moved from the depth of
his heart, intellectually cheerful, bright, and sincere,
who has conquered his passions. This will be the
theory of the best style, a theory that corresponds
to the good man.


## p. 244 (#284) ############################################

244 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
89.
Paving Attention to Movement. — The
movement of the sentences shows whether the
author be tired. Individual expressions may never-
theless be still strong and good, because they were
invented earlier and for their own sake, when the
thought first flashed across the author's mind. This
is frequently the case with Goethe, who too often
dictated when he was tired.
90.
"Already" and "Still. "—A. German prose
is still very young. Goethe declares that Wieland
is its father.
B. So young and already so ugly!
C. But, so far as I am aware, Bishop Ulfilas al-
ready wrote German prose, which must therefore
be fifteen hundred years old.
B. So old and still so ugly!
91.
Original German. —German prose, which is
really not fashioned on any pattern and must be
considered an original creation of German taste,
should give the eager advocate of a future original
German culture an indication of how real German
dress, German society, German furniture, German
meals would look without the imitation of models.
—Some one who had long reflected on these vistas
finally cried in great horror, " But, Heaven help us,
perhaps we already have that original culture—
only we don't like to talk about it! "


## p. 245 (#285) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 245
92.
Forbidden Books. —One should never read
anything written by those arrogant wiseacres and
puzzle-brains who have the detestable vice of
logical paradox. They apply logical formulae just
where everything is really improvised at random
and built in the air. ("Therefore" with them
means, "You idiot of a reader, this 'therefore'
does not exist for you, but only for me. " The
answer to this is: "You idiot of a writer, then why
do you write ? ")
93-
Displaying One's Wit. —Every one who wishes
to display his wit thereby proclaims that he has
also a plentiful lack of wit. That vice which clever
Frenchmen have of adding a touch olde'dain to their
best ideas arises from a desire to be considered
richer than they really are. They wish to be care-
lessly generous, as if weary of continual spending
from overfull treasuries.
94-
French and German Literature. —The mis-
fortune of the French and German literature of the
last hundred years is that the Germans ran away too
early from the French school, and the French, later
on, went too early to the German school.
95-
Our Prose. —None of the present-day cultured
nations has so bad a prose as the German. When


## p. 246 (#286) ############################################

246 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
clever, blast Frenchmen say, "There is no German
prose," we ought really not to be angry, for this
criticism is more polite than we deserve. If we look
for reasons, we come at last to the strange pheno-
menon that the German knows only improvised
prose and has no conception of any other. He
simply cannot understand the Italian, who says that
prose is as much harder than poetry as the repre-
sentation of naked beauty is harder to the sculptor
than that of draped beauty. Verse, images, rhythm,
and rhyme need honest effort—that even the German
realises, and he is not inclined to set a very high
value on extempore poetry. But the notion of work-
ing at a page of prose as at a statue sounds to him
like a tale from fairyland.
96.
The Grand Style. —The grand style comes into
being when the beautiful wins a victory over the
monstrous.
97-
DODgINg. —We do not realise, in the case of dis-
tinguished minds, wherein lies the excellence of their
expression, their turn of phrase, until we can say
what Word every mediocre writer would inevitably
have hit upon in expressing the same idea. All great
artists, in steering their car, show themselves prone
to dodge and leave the track, but never to fall over.
98.
Something like Bread. —Bread neutralises
and takes out the taste of other food, and is there-


## p. 247 (#287) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW.
247
fore necessary to every long meal. In all works of
art there must be something like bread, in order that
they may produce divers effects. If these effects
followed one another without occasional pauses and
intervals, they would soon make us weary and pro-
voke disgust—in fact, a long meal of art would then
be impossible.
99.
JEAN PAUL. — Jean Paul knew a great deal, but
had no science; understood all manner of tricks of
art, but had no art; found almost everything enjoy-
able, but had no taste; possessed feeling and serious-
ness, but in dispensing them poured over them a
nauseous sauce of tears; had even wit, but, unfor-
tunately for his ardent desire for it, far too little-
whence he drives the reader to despair by his very
lack of wit. In short, he was the bright, rank-
smelling weed that shot up overnight in the fair
pleasaunces of Schiller and Goethe. He was a good,
comfortable man, and yet a destiny, a destiny in a
dressing-gown. "
100.
PALATE FOR OPPOSITES. —In order to enjoy a
work of the past as its contemporaries enjoyed it,
one must have a palate for the prevailing taste of
the age which it attacked.
* It is interesting to compare this judgment with Carlyle's
praise of Jean Paul. The dressing-gown is an allusion to
Jean Paul's favourite costume. -TR.


## p. 248 (#288) ############################################

248 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
IOI.
Spirits-OF-Wine Authors. —Many writers are
neither spirit nor wine, but spirits of wine. They
can flare up, and then they give warmth.
102.
The Interpretative Sense. —The sense of
taste, as the true interpretative sense, often talks the
other senses over to its point of view and imposes
upon them its laws and customs. At table one can
receive disclosures about the most subtle secrets of
the arts; it suffices to observe what tastes good and
when and after what and how long it tastes good.
103.
Lessing. —Lessing had a genuine French talent,
and, as writer, went most assiduously to the French
school. He knows well how to arrange and display
his wares in his shop-window. Without this true
art his thoughts, like the objects of them, would have
remained rather in the dark, nor would the general
loss be great. His art, however, has taught many
(especially the last generation of German scholars)
and has given enjoyment to a countless number.
It is true his disciples had no need to learn from
him, as they often did, his unpleasant tone with its
mingling of petulance and candour.
—Opinion is now
unanimous on Lessing as " lyric poet," and will some
day be unanimous on Lessing as "dramatic poet. "
104.
Undesirable Readers. —How an author is
vexed by those stolid, awkward readers who always


## p. 249 (#289) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 249
fall at every place where they stumble, and always
hurt themselves when they fall!
105.
Poets' Thoughts. —Real thoughts of real poets
always go about with a veil on, like Egyptian women;
only the deep eye of thought looks out freely through
the veil. —Poets' thoughts are as a rule not of such
value as is supposed. We have to pay for the veil
and for our own curiosity into the bargain.
106.
Write Simply and Usefully. —Transitions,
details, colour in depicting the passions—we make
a present of all these to the author because we bring
them with us and set them down to the credit of his
book, provided he makes us some compensation.
107.
WlELAND. —Wieland wrote German better than
any one else, and had the genuine adequacies and
inadequacies of the master. His translations of
the letters of Cicero and Lucian are the best in
the language. His ideas, however, add nothing to
our store of thought. We can endure his cheerful
moralities as little as his cheerful immoralities, for
both are very closely connected. The men who en-
joyed them were at bottom better men than we are,
but also a good deal heavier. They needed'an author
of this sort. The Germans did not need Goethe, and
therefore cannot make proper use of him. We have


## p. 250 (#290) ############################################

250 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAX.
only to consider the best of our statesmen and
artists in this light . None of them had or could
have had Goethe as their teacher.
108.
Rare Festivals. —Pithyconciseness, repose, and
maturity—where you find these qualities in an
author, cry halt and celebrate a great festival in the
desert . It will be long before you have such a treat
again.
109.
The Treasure of German Prose. —Apart
from Goethe's writings and especially Goethe's con-
versations with Eckermann (the best German book
in existence), what German prose literature remains
that is worth reading over and over again? Lichten-
berg's Aphorisms, the first book of Jung-Stilling's
Story of My Life, Adalbert Stifter's St. Martin's
Summer and Gottfried Keller's People of Seldwyla
—and there, for the time being, it comes to an end.
no.
Literary and Colloquial Style. —The art
of writing demands, first and foremost, substitutions
for the means of expression which speech alone
possesses—in other words, for gestures, accent, in-
tonation, and look. Hence literary style is quite
different from colloquial style, and far more difficult,
because it has to make itself as intelligible as the
latter with fewer accessaries. Demosthenes delivered
his speeches differently from what we read; he


## p. 251 (#291) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 251
worked them up for reading purposes. —Cicero's
speeches ought to be "demosthenised" with the
same object, for at present they contain more of the
Roman Forum than we can endure.
in.
Caution in Quotation. —Young authors do
not know that a good expression or idea only looks
well among its peers; that an excellent quotation
may spoil whole pages, nay the whole book; for it
seems to cry warningly to the reader, " Mark you, I
am the precious stone, and round about me is lead
—pale, worthless lead! " Every word, every idea
only desires to live in its own company—that is the
moral of a choice style.
112.
How should Errors be Enunciated? —We
may dispute whether it be more injurious for errors
to be enunciated badly or as well as the best truths.
It is certain that in the former case they are doubly
harmful to the brain and are less easily removed
from it. But, on the other hand, they are not so
certain of effect as in the latter case. They are, in
fact, less contagious.
"3-
Limiting and Widening. —Homer limited and
diminished the horizon of his subject, but allowed
individual scenes to expand and blossom out.
Later, the tragedians are constantly renewing this
process. Each takes his material in ever smaller
and smaller fragments than his predecessor did, but


## p. 252 (#292) ############################################

252 HUMAN', ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
each attains a greater wealth of blooms within the
narrow hedges of these sequestered garden en-
closures.
114.
Literature and Morality Mutually Ex-
planatory. —We can show from Greek literature
by what forces the Greek spirit developed, how it
entered upon different channels, and where it be-
came enfeebled. All this also depicts to us how
Greek morality proceeded, and how all morality will
proceed: how it was at first a constraint and dis-
played cruelty, then became gradually milder; how
a pleasure in certain actions, in certain forms and
conventions arose, and from this again a propensity
for solitary exercise, for solitary possession; how the
track becomes crowded and overcrowded with com-
petitors ; how satiety enters in, newobjects of struggle
and ambition are sought, and forgotten aims are
awakened to life; how the drama is repeated, and the
spectators become altogether weary of looking on,
because the whole gamut seems to have been run
through—and then comes a stoppage, an expira-
tion, and the rivulets are lost in the sand. The end,
or at any rate an end, has come.
115.
What Landscapes give Permanent De-
light. —Such and such a landscape has features
eminently suited for painting, but I cannot find the
formula for it; it remains beyond my grasp as a
whole. I notice that all landscapes which please
me permanently have a simple geometrical scheme


## p. 253 (#293) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 253
of lines underneath all their complexity. Without
such a mathematical substratum no scenery be-
comes artistically pleasing. Perhaps this rule may
be applied symbolically to human beings.
116.
Reading Aloud. — The ability to read aloud
involves of necessity the ability to declaim. Every-
where we must apply pale tints, but we must deter-
mine the degree of pallor in close relation to the
richly and deeply coloured background, that always
hovers before our eyes and acts as our guide—in
other words, in accordance with the way in which
we should declaim, the same passages. That is why
we must be able to declaim.
117.
The Dramatic Sense. —He who has not the
four subtler senses of art tries to understand every-
thing with the fifth sense, which is the coarsest of all
—the dramatic sense.
118.
Herder. —Herder fails to be all that he made
people think he was and himself wished to think he
was. He was no great thinker or discoverer, no
newly fertile soil with the unexhausted strength of a
virgin forest. But he possessed in the highest degree
the power of scenting the future, he saw and picked
the first-fruits of the seasons earlier than all others,
and they then believed that he had made them
grow. Between darkness and light, youth and age,


## p. 254 (#294) ############################################

254 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
his mind was like a hunter on the watch, looking
everywhere for transitions, depressions, convulsions,
the outward and visible signs of internal growth.
The unrest of spring drove him to and fro, but he
was himself not the spring. —At times, indeed, he
had some inkling of this, and yet would fain not
have believed it — he, the ambitious priest, who
would have so gladly been the intellectual pope of
his epoch! This is his despair. He seems to have
lived long as a pretender to several kingdoms or
even to a universal monarchy. He had his follow-
ing which believed in him, among others the young
Goethe. But whenever crowns were really distri-
buted, he was passed over. Kant, Goethe, and then
the first true German historians and scholars robbed
him of what he thought he had reserved for himself
(although in silence and secret he often thought the
reverse). Just when he doubted in himself, he
gladly clothed himself in dignity and enthusiasm:
these were often in him mere garments, which had
to hide a great deal and also to deceive and comfort
him. He really had fire and enthusiasm, but his
ambition was far greater! It blew impatiently at
the fire, which flickered, crackled, and smoked—his
style flickers, crackles, and smokes—but he yearned
for the great flame which never broke out. He did
not sit at the table of the genuine creators, and his
ambition did not admit of his sitting modestly
among those who simply enjoy. Thus he was a
restless spirit, the taster of all intellectual dishes,
which were collected by the Germans from every
quarter and every age in the course of half a century.
Never really happy and satisfied, Herder was also


## p. 255 (#295) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 255
too often ill, and then at times envy sat by his bed,
and hypocrisy paid her visit as well. He always
had an air of being scarred and crippled, and he
lacked simple, stalwart manliness more completely
than any of the so-called "classical writers. "
119.
SCENT OF WORDS. —Every word has its scent;
there is a harmony and discord of scents, and so
too of words.
120.
The Far-Fetched Style. —The natural style
is an offence to the lover of the far-fetched style.
121.
A Vow. —I will never again read an author of
whom one can suspect that he wanted to make a
book, but only those writers whose thoughts un-
expectedly became a book.
122.
The Artistic Convention'. —Three-fourths of
Homer is convention, and the same is the case with
all the Greek artists, who had no reason for falling
into the modern craze for originality. They had no
fear of convention, for after all convention was a
link between them and their public. Conventions
are the artistic means acquired for the understand-
ing of the hearer; the common speech, learnt with
much toil, whereby the artist can really communi-
cate his ideas. All the more when he wishes, like


## p. 256 (#296) ############################################

256 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
the Greek poets and musicians, to conquer at once
with each of his works (since he is accustomed to
compete publicly with one or two rivals), the first
condition is that he must be understood at once,
and this is only possible by means of convention.
What the artist devises beyond convention he offers
of his own free will and takes a risk, his success at
best resulting in the setting-up of a new conven-
tion. As a rule originality is marvelled at, some-
times even worshipped, but seldom understood. A
stubborn avoidance of convention means a desire
not to be understood. What, then, is the object of
the modern craze for originality?
123.
Artists' Affectation of Scientific Me-
thod. —Schiller, like other German artists, fancied
that if a man had intellect he was entitled to impro-
vise even with the pen on all difficult subjects. So
there we see his prose essays—in every way a model
of how not to attack scientific questions of aesthetics
and ethics, and a danger for young readers who, in
their admiration for Schiller the poet, have not the
courage to think meanly of Schiller the thinker and
author. —The temptation to traverse for once the
forbidden paths, and to have his say in science as
well, is easy and pardonable in the artist. For
even the ablest artist from time to time finds his
handicraft and his workshop unendurable. This
temptation is so strong that it makes the artist show
all the world what no one wishes to see, that his little
chamber of thought is cramped and untidy. Why


## p. 257 (#297) ############################################

THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 257
not, indeed? He does not live there. He proceeds
to show that the storeroom of his knowledge is
partly empty, partly filled with lumber. Why not,
indeed? This condition does not really become
the artist-child badly. In particular, the artist
shows that for the very easiest exercises of scientific
method, which are accessible even to beginners, his
joints are too stiff and untrained. Even of that he
need not really be ashamed! On the other hand,
he often develops no mean art in imitating all the
mistakes, vices, and base pedantries that are prac-
tised in the scientific community, in the belief that
these belong to the appearance of the thing, if not to
the thing itself. This is the very point that is so
amusing in artists' writing, that the artist involun-
tarily acts as his vocation demands: he parodies
the scientific and inartistic natures. Towards science
he should show no attitude but that of parody, in
so far as he is an artist and only an artist.
124.
The Faust-Idea. — A little sempstress is se-
duced and plunged into despair: a great scholar of
all the four Faculties is the evil-doer. That cannot
have happened in the ordinary course, surely? No,
certainly not! Without the aid of the devil incar-
nate, the great scholar would never have achieved
the deed. —Is this really destined to be the greatest
German "tragic idea," as one hears it said among
Germans ? —But for Goethe even this idea was too
terrible. His kind heart could not avoid placing
the little sempstress, "the good soul that forgot
vol. n. R


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258 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
itself but once," near to the saints, after her involun-
tary death. Even the great scholar, "the good
man" with "the dark impulse," is brought into
heaven in the nick of time, by a trick which is
played upon the devil at the decisive moment. - In
heaven the lovers find themselves again. Goethe
once said that his nature was too conciliatory for
really tragic subjects.
125.
Are there "German Classics"? —Sainte-
Beuve observes somewhere that the word "classic"
does not suit the genius of certain literatures. For
instance, nobody could talk seriously of " German
classics. "—What do our German publishers, who
are about to add fifty more to the fifty German
classics we are told to accept, say to that? Does
it not almost seem as if one need only have been
dead for the last thirty years, and lie a lawful prey
to the public * in order to hear suddenly and unex-
pectedly the trumpet of resurrection as a " Classic "?
And this in an age and a nation where at least five
out of the six great fathers of its literature are un-
doubtedly antiquated orbecomingantiquated—with-
out there being any need for the age or the nation to
be ashamed of this. For those writers have given
way before the strength of our time—let that be con-
sidered in all fairness! —Goethe, as I have indicated,
I do not include. He belongs to a higher species
than "national literatures": hence life, revival,
* The German copyright expires thirty years after publica-
tion. — Tr.


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 259
and decay do not enter into the reckoning in his
relations with his countrymen. He lived and now
lives but for the few; for the majority he is nothing
but a flourish of vanity which is trumpeted from
time to time across the border into foreign ears.
Goethe, not merely a great and good man, but a
culture, is in German history an interlude without a
sequel. Who, for instance, would be able to point
to any trace of Goethe's influence in German politics
of the last seventy years (whereas the influence,
certainly of Schiller, and perhaps of Lessing, can be
traced in the political world)? But what of those
five others? Klopstock, in a most honourable way,
became out of date even in his own lifetime, and so
completely that the meditative book of his later
years, The Republic of Learning, has never been
taken seriously from that day to this. Herder's
misfortune was that his writings were always either
new or antiquated. Thus for stronger and more
subtle minds (like Lichtenberg) even Herder's
masterpiece, his Ideas for the History of Mankind,
was in a way antiquated at the very moment of its
appearance. Wieland, who lived to the full and
made others live likewise, was clever enough to
anticipate by death the waning of his influence.
Lessing, perhaps, still lives to-day—but among a
young and ever younger band of scholars. Schiller
has fallen from the hands of young men into those
of boys, of all German boys. It is a well-known
sign of obsolescence when a book descends to
people of less and less mature age. —Well, what is
it that has thrust these five into the background,
so that well-educated men of affairs no longer read


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200 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
them? A better taste, a riper knowledge, a higher
reverence for the real and the true: in other words,
the very virtues which these five (and ten or twenty
others of lesser repute) first re-planted in Germany,
and which now, like a mighty forest, cast over their
graves not only the shadow of awe, but something
of the shadow of oblivion. — But classical writers
are not planters of intellectual and literary virtues.
They bring those virtues to perfection and are their
highest luminous peaks, and being brighter, freer,
and purer than all that surrounds them, they remain
shining above the nations when the nations them-
selves perish. There may come an elevated stage
of humanity, in which the Europe of the peoples
is a dark, forgotten thing, but Europe lives on in
thirty books, very old but never antiquated—in the
classics.
126.
Interesting, but not Beautiful. — This
countryside conceals its meaning, but it has one
that we should like to guess. Everywhere that I
look, I read words and hints of words, but I do not
know where begins the sentence that solves the
riddle of all these hints. So I get a stiff neck in
trying to discover whether I should start reading
from this or that point.
127.
Against Innovators in Language. —The use
of neologisms or archaisms, the preference for the
rare and the bizarre, the attempt to enrich rather
than to limit the vocabulary, are always signs either


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