No More Learning

Freedom in Fetters—a Princely Freedom.
—Chopin, the last of the modern musicians, who
gazed at and worshipped beauty, like Leopardi;
Chopin, the Pole, the inimitable (none that came
before or after him has a right to this name)—
Chopin had the same princely punctilio in conven-
tion that Raphael shows in the use of the simplest
traditional colours. The only difference is that
Chopin applies them not to colour but to melodic
and rhythmic traditions. He admitted the validity
of these traditions because he was born under the
sway of etiquette. But in these fetters he plays and
dances as the freest and daintiest of spirits, and, be
it observed, he does not spurn the chain.
160.
Chopin's Barcarolle. —Almost all states and
modes of life have a moment of rapture, and good
artists know how to discover that moment. Such
a moment there is even in life by the seashore—that
dreary, sordid, unhealthy existence, dragged out in
the neighbourhood of a noisy and covetous rabble.
This moment of rapture Chopin in his Barcarolle
expressed in sound so supremely that Gods them-
selves, when they heard it, might yearn to lie long
summer evenings in a boat.
161.
Robert Schumann. —"The Stripling," as the
romantic songsters of Germany and France of the


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272 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
first three decades of this century imagined him—
this stripling was completely translated into song
and melody by Robert Schumann, the eternal
youth, so long as he felt himself in full possession
of his powers. There are indeed moments when
his music reminds one of the eternal " old maid. "
162.
Dramatic Singers. —"Why does this beggar
sing? " "Probably he does not know how to wail. "
"Then he does right. " But our dramatic singers,
who wail because they do not know how to sing
—are they also in the right?
163.
Dramatic Music. —For him who does not see
what is happening on the stage, dramatic music is
a monstrosity, just as the running commentary to
a lost text is a monstrosity. Such music requires
us to have ears where our eyes are. This, however,
is doing violence to Euterpe, who, poor Muse, wants
to have her eyes and ears where the other Muses
have theirs.
164.
Victory and Reasonableness. — Unfortu-
nately in the aesthetic wars, which artists provoke
by their works and apologias for their works, just as
is the case in real war, it is might and not reason that
decides. All the world now assumes as a historical
fact that, in his dispute with Piccini, Gluck was in the
right. At any rate, he was victorious, and had might
on his side.


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 273
165.
Of the Principle of Musical Execution. —
Do the modern musical performers really believe
that the supreme law of their art is to give every
piece as much high-relief as is possible, and to make
it speak at all costs a dramatic language? Is not
this principle, when applied for example to Mozart,
a veritable sin against the spirit—the gay, sunny,
airy, delicate spirit—of Mozart, whose seriousness
was of a kindly and not awe-inspiring order, whose
pictures do not try to leap from the wall and drive
away the beholder in panic? Or do you think that
all Mozart's music is identical with the statue-music
in Don Juan? And not only Mozart's, but all
music? —You reply that the advantage of your
principle lies in its greater effect. You would be
right if there did not remain the counter-question,
"On whom has the effect operated, and on whom
should an artist of the first rank desire to produce
his effect? " Never on the populace! Never on
the immature! Never on the morbidly sensitive!
Never on the diseased! And above all—never on
the blase" \
166.
The Music of To-Day. —This ultra-modern
music, with its strong lungs and weak nerves, is
frightened above all things of itself.
167.
Where Music is at Home. —Music reaches its
high-water mark only among men who have not the
vol. 11. s


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274 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
ability or the right to argue. Accordingly, its chief
promoters are princes, whose aim is that there should
be not much criticism nor even much thought in
their neighbourhood. Next come societies which,
under some pressure or other (political or religious),
are forced to become habituated to silence, and
so feel all the greater need of spells to charm away
emotional ennui—these spells beinggenerally eternal
love-making and eternal music. Thirdly, we must
reckon whole nations in which there is no " society,"
but all the greater number of individuals with a
bent towards solitude, mystical thinking, and a re-
verence for all that is inexpressible ; these are the
genuine "musical souls. " The Greeks, as a nation
delighting in talking and argument, accordingly put
up with music only as an hors (fceuvre to those arts
which really admit of discussion and dispute. About
music one can hardly even think clearly. The Py-
thagoreans, who in so many respects were exceptional
Greeks, are said to have been great musicians. This
was the school that invented a five-years' silence,*
but did not invent a dialectic.
168.
Sentimentality in Music. —We may be ever
so much in sympathy with serious and profound
music, yet nevertheless, or perhaps all the more for
that reason, we shall at occasional moments be over-
powered, entranced, and almost melted away by its
* In the sixth century B. C. Pythagoras founded at Croton a
"school" somewhat resembling a monastic order. Among the
ordeals for novitiates was enforced silence for five years. —Tr.


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 275
opposite—I mean, by those simple Italian operatic
airs which, in spite of all their monotony of rhythm
and childishness of harmony, seem at times to sing
to us like the very soul of music. Admit this or not
as you please, you Pharisees of good taste, it is so,
and it is my present task to propound the riddle
that it is so, and to nibble a little myself at the
solution. —In childhood's days we tasted the honey
of many things for the first time. Never was honey
so good as then; it seduced us to life, into abundant
life, in the guise of the first spring, the first flower,
the first butterfly, the first friendship. Then—per-
haps in our ninth year or so—we heard our first
music, and this was the first that we understood;
thus the simplest and most childish tunes, that were
not much more than a sequel to the nurse's lullaby
and the strolling fiddler's tune, were our first experi-
ence. (For even the most trifling " revelations " of
art need preparation and study; there is no " im-
mediate" effect of art, whatever charming fables
the philosophers may tell. ) Our sensation on hear-
ing these Italian airs is associated with those first
musical raptures, the strongest of our lives. The
bliss of childhood and its flight, the feeling that our
most precious possession can never be brought back,
all this moves the chords of the soul more strongly
than the most serious and profound music can move
them. —This minglingof aesthetic pleasure with moral
pain, which nowadays it is customary to call (rather
too haughtily, I think) "sentimentality "—it is the
mood of Faust at the end of the first scene—this
"sentimentality " of the listener is all to the advan-
tage of Italian music. It is a feeling which the ex-


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276 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
periencedconnoisseursin art,thepure "aesthetes," like
to ignore. —Moreover, almost all music has a magical
effect only when we hear it speak the language of
our own j>ast. Accordingly, it seems to the layman
that all the old music is continually growing better,
and that all the latest is of little value. For the latter
arouses no "sentimentality," that most essential
element of happiness, as aforesaid, for every man
who cannot approach this art with pure aesthetic
enjoyment.
169.
As Friends of Music. —Ultimately we are and
remain good friends with music, as we are with the
light of the moon. Neither, after all, tries to sup-
plant the sun: they only want to illumine our nights
to the best of their powers. Yet we may jest and
laugh at them, may we not? Just a little, at least,
and from time to time? At the man in the moon,
at the woman in the music?
170.
ART in an Age OF WORK. —We have the con-
science of an industrious epoch. This debars us
from devoting our best hours and the best part
of our days to art, even though that art be the
greatest and worthiest. Art is for us a matter of
leisure, of recreation, and we consecrate to it the
residue of our time and strength. This is the car-
dinal fact that has altered the relation of art to life.
When art makes its great demands of time and
strength upon its recipients, it has to battle against
the conscience of the industrious and efficient, it is


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 277
relegated to the idle and conscienceless, who, by
their very nature, are not exactly suited to great
art, and consider its claims arrogant. It might,
therefore, be all over with art, since it lacks air and
the power to breathe. But perhaps the great art
attempts, by a sort of coarsening and disguising, to
make itself at home in that other atmosphere, or at
least to put up with it—an atmosphere which is really
a natural element only for petty art, the art of re-
creation, of pleasant distraction. This happens now-
adays almost everywhere. Even the exponents of
great art promise recreation and distraction; even
they address themselves to the exhausted; even they
demand from him the evening hours of his working-
day—just like the artists of the entertaining school,
who are content to smooth the furrowed brow and
brighten the lack-lustre eye. What, then, are the
devices of their mightier brethren? These have in
their medicine-chests the most powerful excitants,
which might give a shock even to a man half-dead:
they can deafen you, intoxicate you, make you
shudder, or bring tears to your eyes. By this
means they overpower the exhausted man and
stimulate him for one night to an over-lively con-
dition, to an ecstasy of terror and delight. This
great art, as it now lives in opera, tragedy, and music
—have we a right to be angry with it, because of
its perilous fascination, as we should be angry with
a cunning courtesan? Certainly not. It would far
rather live in the pure element of morning calm, and
would far rather make its appeal to the fresh, ex-
pectant, vigorous morning-soul of the beholder or
listener. Let us be thankful that it prefers living


## p. 278 (#318) ############################################

278 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
thus to vanishing altogether. But let us also con-
fess that an era that once more introduces free and
complete high-days and holidays into life will have
no use for our great art.
171.
The Employees of Science and the Others.
—Really efHcientand successful men of science might
be collectively called " The Employees. " If in youth
their acumen is sufficiently practised, their memory is
full, and hand and eye have acquired sureness, they
are appointed by an older fellow-craftsman to a
scientific position where their qualities may prove
useful. Later on, when they have themselves gained
an eye for the gaps and defects in their science, they
place themselvesinwhateverposition they areneeded.
These persons all exist for the sake of science. But
there are rarer spirits, spirits that seldom succeed
or fully mature—"for whose sake science exists"
—at least, in their view. They are often unpleasant,
conceited, or cross-grained men, but almost always
prodigies to a certain extent. They are neither
employees nor employers; they make use of what
those others have worked out and established,
with a certain princely carelessness and with little
and rare praise—just as if the others belonged
to a lower order of beings. Yet they possess
the same qualities as their fellow-workers, and
that sometimes in a less developed form. More-
over, they have a peculiar limitation, from which
the others are free; this makes it impossible to
put them into a place and to see in them useful
tools. They can only live in their own air and on


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 279
their own soil. This limitation suggests to them
what elements of a science "are theirs "—in other
words, what they can carry home into their house
and atmosphere: they think that they are always
collecting their scattered "property. " If they are
prevented from building at their own nest, they
perish like shelterless birds. The loss of freedom
causes them to wilt away. If they show, like their
colleagues, a fondness for certain regions of science,
it is always only regions where the fruits and seeds
necessary to them can thrive. What do they care
whether science, taken as a whole, has untilled or
badly tilled regions? They lack all impersonal
interest in a scientific problem. As they are them-
selves personal through and through, all their know-
ledge and ideas are remoulded into a person, into
a living complexity, with its parts interdependent,
overlapping, jointly nurtured, and with a peculiar
atmosphere and scent as a whole. —Such natures,
with their system of personal knowledge, produce
the illusion that a science (or even the whole of
philosophy) is finished and has reached its goal.
The life in their system works this magic, which at
times has been fatal to science and deceptive to the
really efficient workers above described, and at other
times, when drought and exhaustion prevailed, has
acted as a kind of restorative, as if it were the air
of a cool, refreshing resting-place. —These men are
usually called philosophers.
172.
Recognition of Talent. —As I went through
the village of S. , a boy began to crack his whip with


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278
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
thus to vanishing altogether. But let us also con-
fess that an era that once more introduces free and
complete high-days and holidays into life will have
no use for our great art.
171.
THE EMPLOYEES OF SCIENCE AND THE OTHERS.
--Really efficientand successfulmen of science might
be collectively called “The Employees. ” If in youth
their acumen is sufficiently practised, their memory is
full, and hand and eye have acquired sureness, they
are appointed by an older fellow-craftsman to a
scientific position where their qualities may prove
useful. Later on, when they have themselves gained
an eye for the gaps and defects in their science, they
place themselvesin whatever position they are needed.
These persons all exist for the sake of science. But
there are rarer spirits, spirits that seldom succeed
or fully mature—“for whose sake science exists "
—at least, in their view. They are often unpleasant,
conceited, or cross-grained men, but almost always
prodigies to a certain extent. They are neither
employees nor employers; they make use of what
those others have worked out and established,
with a certain princely carelessness and with little
and rare praise-just as if the others belonged
to a lower order of beings. Yet they possess
the same qualities as their fellow-workers, and
that sometimes in a less developed form. More-
over, they have a peculiar limitation, from which
the others are free; this makes it impossible to
put them into a place and to see in them useful
tools. They can only live in their own air and on


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW.
279
their own soil. This limitation suggests to them
what elements of a science "are theirs ”-in other
words, what they can carry home into their house
and atmosphere: they think that they are always
collecting their scattered "property. ” If they are
prevented from building at their own nest, they
perish like shelterless birds. The loss of freedom
causes them to wilt away. If they show, like their
colleagues, a fondness for certain regions of science,
it is always only regions where the fruits and seeds
necessary to them can thrive. What do they care
whether science, taken as a whole, has untilled or
badly tilled regions? They lack all impersonal
interest in a scientific problem. As they are them-
selves personal through and through, all their know-
ledge and ideas are remoulded into a person, into
a living complexity, with its parts interdependent,
overlapping, jointly nurtured, and with a peculiar
atmosphere and scent as a whole. -Such natures,
with their system of personal knowledge, produce
the illusion that a science (or even the whole of
philosophy) is finished and has reached its goal.
The life in their system works this magic, which at
times has been fatal to science and deceptive to the
really efficient workers above described, and at other
times, when drought and exhaustion prevailed, has
acted as a kind of restorative, as if it were the air
of a cool, refreshing resting-place. These men are
usually called philosophers.
172.
RECOGNITION OF TALENT. —As I went through
the village of S. , a boy began to crack his whip with


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280 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
all his might—he had made great progress in this art,
and he knew it. I threw him a look of recognition
—in reality it hurt me cruelly. We do the same in
our recognition of many of the talents. We do good
to them when they hurt us.
173-
Laughing and Smiling. —The more joyful and
assured the mind becomes, the more man loses the
habit of loud laughter. In compensation, there is
an intellectual smile continually bubbling up in him,
a sign of his astonishment at the innumerable con-
cealed delights of a good existence.
174.
The Talk of Invalids. —Just as in spiritual
grief we tear our hair, strike our foreheads, lacerate
our cheeks or even (like CEdipus) gouge our eyes
out, so against violent physical pain we call to our
aid a bitter, violent emotion, through the recollec-
tion of slanderous and malignant people, through
the denigration of our future, through the sword-
pricks and acts of malice which we mentally direct
against the absent. And at times it is true that
one devil drives out another—but then we have the
other. —Hence a different sort of talk, tending to
alleviate pain, should be recommended invalids:
reflections upon the kindnesses and courtesies that
can be performed towards friend and foe.
175-
j Mediocrity as a Mask. —Mediocrity is the
happiest mask which the superior mind can wear,


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 28l
because it does not lead the great majority—that
is, the mediocre—to think that there is any disguise.
Yet the superior mind assumes the mask just for
their sake—so as not to irritate them, nay, often
from a feeling of pity and kindness.
176.
The Patient. —The pine tree seems to listen,
the fir tree to wait, and both without impatience.
They do not give a thought to the petty human
being below who is consumed by his impatience
and his curiosity.
177.
The Best Joker.
—My favourite joke is the one
that takes the place of a heavy and rather hesitat-
ing idea, and that at once beckons with its finger
and winks its eye.
178.
The Accessaries of all Reverence. —Wher-
ever the past is revered, the over-cleanly and over-
tidy people should not be admitted. Piety does not
feel content without a little dust, dirt, and dross.
179.
The Great Danger of Savants. —It is just
the most thorough and profound savants who are
in peril of seeing their life's goal set ever lower
and lower, and, with a feeling of this in their minds,
to become ever more discouraged and more unen-
durable in the latter half of their lives. At first they
plunge into their science with spacious hopes and
set themselves daring tasks, the ends of which are


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282 HUMAN-. jEk-TOO-HUMAN
T
d<m tt
already anticipated 'B their imaginations. Then
there are moments as in the lives of the great
maritime discoverers—knowledge, presentiment, and
power raise each other higher and higher, until a new
shore first dawns upon the eye in the far distance.
But now the stern man recognises more and more
how important it is that the individual task of the
inquirer should be limited as far as possible, so
that it may be entirely accomplished and the in-
tolerable waste of force from which earlier periods
of science suffered may be avoided. In those days
everything was done ten times over, and then the
eleventh always had the last and best word. Yet
the more the savant learns and practises this art of
solving riddles in their entirety, the more pleasure
he finds in so doing. But at the same time his de-
mands upon what is here called "entirety" grow
more exacting. He sets aside everything that must
remain in this sense incomplete, he acquires a dis-
gust and an acute scent for the half-soluble—for
all that can only give a kind of certainty in a
general and indefinite form. His youthful plans
crumble away before his eyes. There remains
scarcely anything but a few little knots, in unty-
ing which the master now takes his pleasure and
shows his strength. Then, in the midst of all this
useful, restless activity, he, now grown old, is sud-
denly then often overcome by a deep misgiving, a
sort of torment of conscience. He looks upon
himself as one changed, as if he were diminished,
humbled, transformed into a dexterous dwarf; he
grows anxious as to whether mastery in small
matters be not a convenience, an escape from the


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 283
summons to greatness in life and form. But he can-
not pass beyond any longer—the time for that has
gone by.
180.
Teachers in the Age of Books. —Now that
self-education and mutual education are becoming
more widespread, the teacher in his usual form must
become almost unnecessary. Friends eager to learn,
who wish to master some branch of knowledge to-
gether, find in our age of books a shorter and more
natural way than "school" and "teachers. "
181.
Vanity as the Greatest Utility. —Origin-
ally the strong individual uses not only Nature but
even societies and weaker individuals as objects of
rapine. He exploits them, so far as he can, and
then passes on. As he lives from hand to mouth,
alternating between hunger and superfluity, he kills
more animals than he can eat, and robs and mal-
treats men more than is necessary. His manifesta-
tion of power is at the same time one of revenge
against his cramped and worried existence. Further-
more, he wishes to be held more powerful than he
is, and thus misuses opportunities; the accretion of
fear that he begets being an accretion of power. He
soon observes that he stands or falls not by what
he is but by what he is thought to be. Herein lies
the origin of vanity. The man of power seeks by
every means to increase others' faith in his power. —
The thralls who tremble before him and serve him
know, for their part, that they are worth just so


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284 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
much as they appear to him to be worth, and so
they work with an eye to this valuation rather than
to their own self-satisfaction. We know vanity only
in its most weakened forms, in its idealisations and
its small doses, because we live in a late and very
emasculated state of society. Originally vanity is the
great utility, the strongest means of preservation.
And indeed vanity will be greater, the cleverer the
individual, because an increase in the belief in power
is easier than an increase in the power itself, but
only for him who has intellect or (as must be the
case under primitive conditions) who is cunning and
crafty.
182.
Weather-Signs of Culture. —There are so
few decisive weather-signs of culture that we must
be glad to have at least one unfailing sign at hand
for use in house and garden. To test whether a
man belongs to us (I mean to the free spirits) or
not, we must test his sentiments regarding Christi-
anity. If he looks upon Christianity with other than
a critical eye, we turn our backs to him, for he brings
us impure air and bad weather. —It is no longer our
task to teach such men what a sirocco wind is. They
have Moses and the prophets of weather and of
enlightenment. * If they will not listen to these,
then
183.
There is a Proper Time for Wrath and
PUNISHMENT. —Wrath and punishment are our in-
* In the German Aufkl'drung there is a play on the sense
"clearing up " (of weather) and "enlightenment. "—Tr.


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 285
heritance from the animals. Man does not become
of age until he has restored to the animals this gift
of the cradle. —Herein lies buried one of the mightiest
ideas that men can have, the idea of a progress of
all progresses. —Let us go forward together a few
millenniums, my friends! There is still reserved for
mankind a great deal of joy, the very scent of which
has not yet been wafted to the men of our day!
Indeed, we may promise ourselves this joy, nay
summon and conjure it up as a necessary thing, so
long as the development of human reason does not
stand still. Some day we shall no longer be recon-
ciled to the logical sin that lurks in all wrath and
punishment, whether exercised by the individual or
by society—some day, when head and heart have "~|
learnt to live as near together as they now are far
apart. That they no longer stand so far apart as
they did originally is fairly palpable from a glance
at the whole course of humanity. The individual
who can review a life of introspective work will be-
come conscious of the rapprochement arrived at, with
a proud delight at the distance he has bridged, in
order that he may thereupon venture upon more
ample hopes.
184.
Origin of Pessimists. —A snack of good food
often decides whether we are to look to the future
with hollow eye or in hopeful mood. The same
influence extends to the very highest and most
intellectual states. Discontent and reviling of the
world are for the present generation an inheritance
from starveling ancestors. Even, in our artists and
r*^


## p. 286 (#328) ############################################

286 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
poets we often notice that, however exuberant their
life, they are not of good birth, and have often, from
oppressed and ill-nourished ancestors, inherited in
their blood and brain much that comes out as the
subject and even the conscious colouring of their
work. The culture of the Greeks is a culture of men
of wealth,in fact, inherited wealth Forafewcenturies
they lived better than we do (better in every sense,
in particular far more simply in food and drink).
Then the brain finally became so well-stored and
subtle, and the blood flowed so quickly, like a joyous,
clear wine, that the best in them came to light no
longer as gloomy, distorted, and violent, but full of
beauty and sunshine.
185.
Of Reasonable Death. —Which is more reason-
able, to stop the machine when the works have done
the task demanded of them, or to let it run on until
it stands still of its own accord—in other words, is
destroyed? Is not the latter a waste of the cost of
upkeep, a misuse of the strength and care of those
who serve? Are men not here throwing away that
which would be sorely needed elsewhere? Is not a
kind of contempt of the machines propagated, in that
many of them are so uselessly tended and kept up? —
I am speaking of involuntary (natural) and voluntary
(reasonable) death. Natural death is independent
of all reason and is really an irrational death, in
which the pitiable substance of the shell determines
how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which,
accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull-witted


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 287
jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which
his distinguished prisoner shall die. Natural death
is the suicide of nature—in other words, the annihi-
lation of the most rational being through the most
irrational element that is attached thereto. Only
through religious illumination can the reverse ap-
pear; for then, as is equitable, the higher reason
(God) issues its orders, which the lower reason has
to obey. Outside religious thought natural death
is not worth glorifying. The wise dispensation and
disposal of death belongs to that now quite incom-
prehensible and immoral-sounding morality of the
future, the dawn of which it will be an ineffable de-
light to behold.
186.
Retrograde Influences. —All criminals force
society back to earlier stages of culture than that
in which they are placed for the time being. Their
influence is retrograde. Let us consider the tools
that society must forge and maintain for its defence:
the cunning detectives, the jailers, the hangmen.
Nor should we forget the public counsel for pro-
secution and defence. Finally we may ask our-
selves whether the judge himself and punishment
and the whole legal procedure are not oppressive
rather than elevating in their reaction upon all who
are not law-breakers. For we shall never succeed
in arraying self-defence and revenge in the garb of
innocence, and so long as men are used and sacri-
ficed as a means to the end, of society, all loftier
humanity will deplore this necessity.


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288 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I87.
J WAR AS A Remedy. —For nations that are grow-
ing weak and contemptible war may be prescribed
as a remedy, if indeed they really want to go on
living. National consumption as well as individual
admits of a brutal cure. The eternal will to live
and inability to die is, however, in itself already a
sign of senility of emotion. The more fully and
thoroughly we live, the more ready we are to sacri-
fice life for a single pleasurable emotion. A people
that lives and feels in this wise has no need of war.
188.
Intellectual and Physical Transplanta-
tion as Remedies. —The different cultures are so
many intellectual climates, every one of which is
peculiarly harmful or beneficial to this or that
organism. History as a whole, as the knowledge
of different cultures, is the science of remedies, but
not the science of the healing art itself. We still
need a physician who can make use of these
remedies, in order to send every one—temporarily
or permanently—to the climate that just suits
him. To live in the present, within the limits of a
single culture, is insufficient as a universal remedy:
too many highly useful kinds of men, who cannot
breathe freely in this atmosphere, would perish.
With the aid of history we must give them air and
try to preserve them: even men of lower cultures
have their value. —Add to this cure of intellects that
humanity, on considerations of bodily health, must
strive to discover by means of a medical geography


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 289
what kinds of degeneration and disease are caused
by each region of the earth, and conversely, what
ingredients of health the earth affords: and then,
gradually, nations, families, and individuals must be
transplanted long and permanently enough for them
to become masters of their inherited physical in-
firmities. The whole world will finally be a series
of sanatoria.
189.
Reason and the Tree of Mankind. —What
you all fear in your senile short-sightedness, regard-
ing the over-population of the world, gives the more
hopeful a mighty task. Man is some day to become
a tree overshadowing the whole earth, with millions
upon millions of buds that shall all grow to fruits
side by side, and the earth itself shall be prepared
for the nourishment of this tree. That the shoot,
tiny as yet, may increase in sap and strength ; that
the sap may flow in countless channels for the
nutrition of the whole and the parts—from these
and similar tasks we must derive our standard for
measuring whether a man of to-day is useful or
worthless. The task is unspeakably great and ad-
venturous: let us all contribute our share to pre-
vent the tree from rotting before its time! The
historically trained mind will no doubt succeed in
calling up the human activities of all the ages before
its eyes, as the community of ants with its cunningly
wrought mounds stands before our eyes. Super-
ficially judged, mankind as a whole, like ant-kind,
might admit of our speaking of "instinct. " On a
closer examination we observe how whole nations,
vol. ii, T


## p. 290 (#332) ############################################

200 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
nay whole centuries, take pains to discover and test
new means of benefiting the great mass of humanity,
and thus finally the great common fruit-tree of
the world. Whatever injury the individual nations
or periods may suffer in this testing process, they
have each become wise through this injury, and
from them the tide of wisdom slowly pours over
the principles of whole races and whole epochs.
Ants too go astray and make blunders. Through
the folly of its remedies, mankind may well go to
rack and ruin before the proper time. There is no
sure guiding instinct for the former or the latter.
Rather must we boldly face the great task of pre-
paring the earth for a plant of the most ample and
joyous fruitfulness—a task set by reason to reason!
190.
The Praise of Disinterestedness and its
Origin. — Between two neighbouring chieftains
there was a long-standing quarrel: they laid waste
each other's territories, stole cattle, and burnt down
houses, with an indecisive result on the whole, be-
cause their power was fairly equal. A third, who
from the distant situation of his property was able
to keep aloof from these feuds, yet had reason to
dread the day when one of the two neighbours
should gain a decisive preponderance, at last inter-
vened between the combatants with ceremonial
goodwill. Secretly he lent a heavy weight to
his peace proposal by giving either to understand
that he would henceforth join forces with the other
against the one who strove to break the peace.


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 2QI
They met in his presence, they hesitatingly placed
into his hand the hands that had hitherto been the
tools and only too often the causes of hatred—and
then they really and seriously tried to keep the
peace. Either saw with astonishment how suddenly
his prosperity and his comfort increased; how he
now had as neighbour a dealer ready to buy and
sell instead of a treacherous or openly scornful
evil-doer; how even, in unforeseen troubles, they
could reciprocally save each other from distress,
instead of, as before, making capital out of this dis-
tress of his neighbour and enhancing it to the highest
degree. It even seemed as if the human type had
improved in both countries, for the eyes had become
brighter, the forehead had lost its wrinkles; all now
felt confidence in the future—and nothing is more
advantageous for the souls and bodies of men than
this confidence. They saw each other every year
on the anniversary of the alliance, the chieftains as
well as their retinue, and indeed before the eyes of
the mediator, whose mode of action they admired
and revered more and more, the greater the profit
that they owed to him became. Then his mode of
action was called disinterested. They had looked
far too fixedly at the profit they had reaped them-
selves hitherto to see anything more of their neigh-
bour's method of dealing than that his condition in
consequence of this had not altered so much as their
own ; he had rather remained the same: and thus it
appeared that the former had not had his profit in
view. For the first time people said to themsel-
ves that disinterestedness was a virtue. It is true
that in minor private matters similar circumstances


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2«)2 HUMAN', ALL-TOO-OTTMAX.
had arisen, but men only had eyes for this virtue
when it was depicted on the walls in a large script
that was legible to the whole community. Moral
qualities are not recognised as virtues, endowed
with names, held in esteem, and recommended as
worthy of acquisition until the moment when they
have visibly decided the happiness and destiny of
whole societies. For then the loftiness of senti-
ment and the excitation of the inner creative forces
is in many so great, that offerings are brought to
this quality, offerings from the best of what each
possesses. At its feet the serious man lays his
seriousness, the dignified man his dignity, women
their gentleness, the young all the wealth of hope
and futurity that in them lies; the poet lends it
words and names, sets it marching in the procession
of similar beings, gives it a pedigree, and finally, as
is the way of artists, adores the picture of his fancy
as a new godhead—he even teaches others to adore.
Thus in the end, with the co-operation of universal
love and gratitude, a virtue becomes, like a statue,
a repository of all that is good and honourable, a
sort of temple and divine personage combined. It
appears thenceforward as an individual virtue, as
an absolute entity, which it was not before, and
exercises the power and privileges of a sanctified
super-humanity. —In the later days of Greece the
cities were full of such deified human abstractions
(if one may so call them). The nation, in its own
fashion, had set up a Platonic " Heaven of Ideas"
on earth, and I do not think that its inhabitants
were felt to be less alive than any of the old
Homeric divinities.


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 293
191.
Days of Darkness. —" Days of Darkness" is
the name given in Norway to the period when the
sun remains below the horizon the whole day long.
The temperature then falls slowly but continually. —
A fine simile for all thinkers for whom the sun of
the human future is temporarily eclipsed.
192.
The Philosophy of Luxury. —A garden, figs,
a little cheese, and three or four good friends—that
was the luxury of Epicurus.
193-
The Epochs of Life. —The real epochs of life
are those brief periods of cessation midway between
the rise and decline of a dominating idea or emotion.
Here once again there is satisfaction: all the rest is
hunger and thirst—or satiety.
194.
DREAMS. —Our dreams, if for once in a way they
succeed and are complete—generally a dream is a
bungled piece of work—are symbolic concatenations
of scenes and images in place of a narrative poeti-
cal language. They paraphrase our experiences or
expectations or relations with poetic boldness and
definiteness, so that in the morning we are always
astonished at ourselves when we remember the
nature of our dream. In dreams we use up too
much artistry—and hence are often too poor in
artistry in the daytime.


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294 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
195-
Nature and Science. — As in nature, so in
science the worse and less fertile soils are first
cultivated—because the means that science in its
early stages has at command are fairly sufficient for
this purpose. The working of the most fertile soils
requires an enormous, carefully developed, perse-
vering method, tangible individual results, and an
organised body of well-trained workers. All these
are found together only at a late stage. —Impa-
tience and ambition often grasp too early at these
most fertile soils, but the results are then from the
first null and void. In nature such losses would
usually be avenged by the starvation of the settlers.
196.
The Simple Life. —A simple mode of life is
nowadays difficult, requiring as it does farmore re-
flection and gift for invention than even very clever
people possess. The most honourable will perhaps
still say, "I have not the time for such lengthy
reflection. The simple life is for me too lofty a goal:
I will wait till those wiser than I have discovered
it. "
197.
Peaks andNeedle-Points. —The poor fertility,
the frequent celibacy, and in general the sexual
coldness of the highest and most cultivated spirits,
as that of the classes to which they belong, is
essential in human economy. Intelligence recog-
nises and makes use of the fact that at an acme of


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THE WANDERER AND HIS SHADOW. 295
intellectual development the danger of a neurotic
offspring is very great. Such men are the peaks of
mankind — they ought no longer to run out into
needle-points.
198.
Natura nonfacitsaltum. —However strongly
man may develop upwards and seem to leap from
one contradiction to another, a close observation
will reveal the dovetails where the new building
grows out of the old. This is the biographer's task:
he must reflect upon his subject on the principle
that nature takes no jumps.