No More Learning

* Gustav Freytag : at one time a famous German novelist.
—TR.
+ A well-known anti-Wagnerian musical critic of Vienna.
—TR.


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I 50 WE PHILOLOGISTS
83
I observe in philologists:
1. Want of respect for antiquity.
2. Tenderness and flowery oratory; even an
apologetic tone.
3. Simplicity in their historical comments.
4. Self-conceit.
5. Under-estimation of the talented philologists.
84
Philologists appear to me to be a secret society
who wish to train our youth by means of the cul-
ture of antiquity: I could well understand this
society and their views being criticised from all
sides. A great deal would depend upon knowing
what these philologists understood by the term
“culture of antiquity. ”—If I saw, for example, that
they were training their pupils against German philo-
sophy and German music, I should either set about
combating them or combating the culture of anti-
quity, perhaps the former, by showing that these
philologists had not understood the culture of anti-
quity. Now I observe:
1. A great indecision in the valuation of the
culture of antiquity on the part of philologists.
2. Something very non-ancient in themselves;
something non-free.
3. Want of clearness in regard to the particular
type of ancient culture they mean.
4. Want of judgment in their methods of instruc-
tion, e. g. , scholarship.
5. Classical education is served out mixed up with
Christianity.


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WE PHILOLOGISTS I5 I
85
It is now no longer a matter of surprise to me
that, with such teachers, the education of our time
should be worthless. I can never avoid depicting
this want of education in its true colours, especially
in regard to those things which ought to be learnt
from antiquity if possible, for example, writing,
speaking, and so on.
86
The transmission of the emotions is hereditary:
let that be recollected when we observe the effect
of the Greeks upon philologists.
87
Even in the best of cases, philologists seek for no
more than mere “rationalism" and Alexandrian
culture—not Hellenism.
88
Very little can be gained by mere diligence, if
the head is dull. Philologist after philologist has
swooped down on Homer in the mistaken belief
that something of him can be obtained by force.
Antiquity speaks to us when it feels a desire to do
so ; not when we do.
89
The inherited characteristic of our present-day
philologists: a certain sterility of insight has re-
sulted; for they promote the science, but not the
philologist,


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I 52 WE PHILOLOGISTS
90
The following is one way of carrying on classical
studies, and a frequent one: a man throws himself
thoughtlessly, or is thrown, into some special branch
or other, whence he looks to the right and left and
sees a great deal that is good and new. Then, in
some unguarded moment, he asks himself: “But
what the devil has all this to do with me? ” In the
meantime he has grown old and has become accus-
tomed to it all; and therefore he continues in his
rut—just as in the case of marriage.
9I
In connection with the training of the modern
philologist the influence of the science of linguistics
should be mentioned and judged; a philologist
should rather turn aside from it: the question of
the early beginnings of the Greeks and Romans
should be nothing to him : how can they spoil their
own subject in such a way?
92
A morbid passion often makes its appearance
from time to time in connection with the oppressive
uncertainty of divination, a passion for believing and
feeling sure at all costs: for example, when dealing
with Aristotle, or in the discovery of magic numbers,
which, in Lachmann's case, is almost an illness.
93
The consistency which is prized in a savant is
pedantry if applied to the Greeks,


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WE PHILOLOGISTS
I53
94
(THE GREEKS AND THE PHILOLOGISTS. )
THE GREEKS:
renderhomage to beauty,
develop the body,
speak clearly,
arereligious transfigurers
of everyday occur-
rences,
are listeners and ob-
servers,
have an aptitude for the
symbolical,
are in full possession of
their freedom as men,
can look innocently out
into the world,
are the pessimists of
THE PHILOLOGISTS are:
babblers and triflers,
ugly-looking creatures,
stammerers,
filthy pedants,
quibblers and scarecrows,
unfitted for the symboli-
cal,
ardent
State,
Christians in disguise,
slaves of the
philistines.
thought.
* 95
Bergk's “History of Literature”: Not a spark of
Greek fire or Greek sense.
J 96
People really do compare our own age with that
of Pericles, and congratulate themselves on the re-
awakening of the feeling of patriotism: I remember
a parody on the funeral oration of Pericles by G.
Freytag,” in which this prim and strait-laced
“poet” depicted the happiness now experienced by
sixty-year-old men. —All pure and simple carica-
* See note on p. 149. -TR,


## p. 154 (#190) ############################################

I54 WE PHILOLOGISTS
ture! So this is the result! And sorrow and irony
and seclusion are all that remain for him who has
seen more of antiquity than this.
97
If we change a single word of Lord Bacon's we
may say: infimarum Graecorum virtutum apud philo-
logos laus est, mediarum admiratio, supremarum
sensus nullus.
98
How can anyone glorify and venerate a whole
people! It is the individuals that count, even in
the case of the Greeks.
99
There is a great deal of caricature even about the
Greeks: for example, the careful attention devoted
by the Cynics to their own happiness.
IOO
The only thing that interests me is the relation-
ship of the people considered as a whole to the
training of the single individuals: and in the case
of the Greeks there are some factors which are very
favourable to the development of the individual.
They do not, however, arise from the goodwill of
the people, but from the struggle between the evil
instincts.
By means of happy inventions and discoveries,
we can train the individual differently and more
highly than has yet been done by mere chance and
accident. There are still hopes: the breeding of
superior men,


## p. 155 (#191) ############################################

WE PHILOLOGISTS I 55
IOI
The Greeks are interesting and quite dispro-
portionately important because they had such a
host of great individuals. How was that possible?
This point must be studied.
IO2
The history of Greece has hitherto always been
written optimistically.
IO3
Selected points from antiquity: the power, fire,
and swing of the feeling the ancients had for music
(through the first Pythian Ode), purity in their his-
torical sense, gratitude for the blessings of culture,
the fire and corn feasts.
The ennoblement of jealousy: the Greeks the
most jealous nation.
Suicide, hatred of old age, of penury. Empe-
docles on sexual love.
IO4
Nimble and healthy bodies, a clear and deep
sense for the observation of everyday matters, manly
freedom, belief in good racial descent and good
upbringing, warlike virtues, jealousy in the dpurrečew,
delight in the arts, respect for leisure, a sense for
free individuality, for the symbolical.
IO5
The spiritual culture of Greece an aberration of
the amazing political impulse towards āpurrečev.
The tróAts utterly opposed to new education; culture
nevertheless existed,


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156 WE PHILOLOGISTS
IO6
When I say that, all things considered, the Greeks
were more moral than modern men: what do I mean
by that? From what we can perceive of the activi-
ties of their soul, it is clear that they had no shame,
they had no bad conscience. They were more sin-
cere, open-hearted, and passionate, as artists are ;
they exhibited a kind of child-like maiveté. It thus
came about that even in all their evil actions they had
a dash of purity about them, something approaching
the holy. A remarkable number of individualities:
might there not have been a higher morality in that?
When we recollect that character develops slowly,
what can it be that, in the long run, breeds indi-
viduality? Perhaps vanity, emulation ? Possibly.
Little inclination for conventional things.
Io?
The Greeks as the geniuses among the nations.
Their childlike nature, credulousness.
Passionate. Quite unconsciously they lived in such
a way as to procreate genius. Enemies of shyness
and dulness. Pain. Injudicious actions. The nature
of their intuitive insight into misery, despite their
bright and genial temperament. Profoundness in
their apprehension and glorifying of everyday things
(fire, agriculture). Mendacious, unhistorical. The
significance of the tróAts in culture instinctively re-
cognised; favourable as a centre and periphery for
great men (the facility of surveying a community,
and also the possibility of addressing it as a whole).
Individuality raised to the highest power through
the TóAts. Envy, jealousy, as among gifted people.
–


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WE PHILOLOGISTS I 57
IO8
The Greeks were lacking in sobriety and caution.
Over-sensibility; abnormally active condition of the
brain and the nerves; impetuosity and fervour of
the will.
IO9
“Invariably to see the general in the particular is
the distinguishing characteristic of genius,” says
Schopenhauer. Think of Pindar, &c. —“Xopporávn,”
according to Schopenhauer, has its roots in the clear-
ness with which the Greeks saw into themselves and
into the world at large, and thence became conscious
of themselves.
The “wide separation of will and intellect” indi-
cates the genius, and is seen in the Greeks.
“The melancholy associated with genius is due to
the fact that the will to live, the more clearly it is
illuminated by the contemplating intellect, appre-
ciates all the more clearly the misery of its condi-
tion,” says Schopenhauer. Cf. the Greeks.
I IO
The moderation of the Greeks in their sensual
luxury, eating, and drinking, and their pleasure
therein; the Olympic plays and their worship: that
shows what they were.
In the case of the genius, “the intellect will point
out the faults which are seldom absent in an instru-
ment that is put to a use for which it was not
intended. ”
“The will is often left in the lurch at an awkward
moment: hence genius, where real life is concerned,
|
|



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158 WE PHILOLOGISTS
is more or less unpractical—its behaviour often re-
minds us of madness. ”
III
We contrast the Romans, with their matter-of-
fact earnestness, with the genial Greeks' Scho-
penhauer: “The stern, practical, earnest mode of
life which the Romans called gravitas presupposes
that the intellect does not forsake the service of
the will in order to roam far off among things that
have no connection with the will. ”
II2
It would have been much better if the Greeks
had been conquered by the Persians instead of by
the Romans.
II 3
The characteristics of the gifted man who is
| lacking in genius are to be found in the average
. Hellene—all the dangerous characteristics of such
a disposition and character.
II4
Genius makes tributaries of all partly-talented
people: hence the Persians themselves sent their
ambassadors to the Greek oracles.
II5
The happiest lot that can fall to the genius is to
exchange doing and acting for leisure; and this was
something the Greeks knew how to value. The
blessings of labour ! Wugari was the Roman name
for all the exertions and aspirations of the Greeks.
.


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WE PHILOLOGISTS I 59
No happy course of life is open to the genius; he
stands in contradiction to his age and must perforce
struggle with it. Thus the Greeks: they instinctively
made the utmost exertions to secure a safe refuge
for themselves (in the polis). Finally, everything
went to pieces in politics. They were compelled to
take up a stand against their enemies: this became
ever more and more difficult, and at last impossible.
II6
Greek culture is based on the lordship of a small
class over four to nine times their number of slaves.
Judged by mere numbers, Greece was a country in-
habited by barbarians. How can the ancients be
thought to be humane? There was a great contrast
between the genius and the breadwinner, the half-
beast of burden. The Greeks believed in a racial
distinction. Schopenhauer wonders why Nature
did not take it into her head to invent two entirely
separate species of men.
The Greeks bear the same relation to the bar-
barians “as free-moving or winged animals do to
the barnacles which cling tightly to the rocks and
must await what fate chooses to send them *-
Schopenhauer's simile.
I 17
The Greeks as the only people of genius in the
history of the world. Such they are even when
considered as learners; for they understand this
best of all, and can do more than merely trim and
adorn themselves with what they have borrowed, as
did the Romans.



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I6O WE PHILOLOGISTS
|
|
The constitution of the polis is a Phoenician in-
vention: even this has been imitated by the Hellenes.
For a long time they dabbled in everything, like joy-
ful dilettanti. Aphrodite is likewise Phoenician.
Neither do they disavow what has come to them
through immigration and does not originally belong
to their own country. -*
II. 8
The happy and comfortable constitution of the
politico-social position must not be sought among
the Greeks: that is a goal which dazzles the eyes
of our dreamers of the future | It was, on the con-
trary, dreadful ; for this is a matter that must be
judged according to the following standard: the
more spirit, the more suffering (as the Greeks them-
selves prove). Whence it follows: the more stupidity,
, the more comfort. The philistine of culture is the
most comfortable creature the sun has ever shone
upon : and he is doubtless also in possession of the
corresponding stupidity.
II9 -
The Greek polis and the aiev dowrreóew grew up
out of mutual enmity. Hellenic and philanthropic
are contrary adjectives, although the ancients flat-
tered themselves sufficiently.
Homer is, in the world of the Hellenic discord,
the pan-Hellenic Greek. The “dyāv" of the Greeks
is also manifested in the Symposium in the shape of
witty conversation.
I2O
Wanton, mutual annihilation inevitable: so long
as a single polis wished to exist—its envy for every-


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WE PIHILOLOGISTS I61
thing superior to itself, its cupidity, the disorder of
its customs, the enslavement of the women, lack
of conscience in the keeping of oaths, in murder,
and in cases of violent death.
Tremendous power of self-control: for example
in a man like Socrates, who was capable of every-
thing evil.
I2 I
Its noble sense of order and systematic arrange-
ment had rendered the Athenian state immortal. —
The ten strategists in Athens! Foolish ' Too big
a sacrifice on the altar of jealousy.
I22
The recreations of the Spartans consisted of feast-
ing, hunting, and making war: their every-day life
was too hard. On the whole, however, their state is
merely a caricature of the polis; a corruption of
Hellas. The breeding of the complete Spartan–
but what was there great about him that his breed-
ing should have required such a brutal state
I23
The political defeatof Greece is the greatest failure
of culture; for it has given rise to the atrocious
theory that culture cannot be pursued unless one is
at the same time armed to the teeth. The rise of
Christianity was the second greatest failure: brute
force on the one hand, and a dull intellect on the
other, won a complete victory over the aristocratic
genius among the nations. To be a Philhellenist
now means to be a foe of brute force and stupid
intellects. Sparta was the ruin of Athens in so far

II


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I62 WE PHILOLOGISTS
as she compelled Athens to turn her entire attention
to politics and to act as a federal combination.
I24
There are domains of thought where the ratio
will only give rise to disorder; and the philologist,
who possesses nothing more, is lost through it and
is unable to see the truth: e. g. , in the consideration
of Greek mythology. A merely fantastic person, of
course, has no claim either: one must possess Greek
imagination and also a certain amount of Greek
piety. Even the poet does not require to be too
consistent, and consistency is the last thing Greeks
would understand.
125
Almost all the Greek divinities are accumulations
of divinities: we find one layer over another, soon to
be hidden and smoothed down by yet a third, and
so on. It scarcely seems to me to be possible to
pick these various divinities to pieces in a scientific
manner; for no good method of doing so can be
recommended: even the poor conclusion by analogy
is in this instance a very good conclusion.
I26
At what a distance must one be from the Greeks
to ascribe to them such a stupidly narrow autoch-
thony as does Ottfried Müller " How Christian it
is to assume, with Welcker,t that the Greeks were
* Karl Ottfried Müller (1797-1840), classical archaeologist,
who devoted special attention to Greece. —TR.
t Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (1784-1868), noted for his
ultra-profound comments on Greek poetry. —TR.


## p. 163 (#199) ############################################

WE PHILOLOGISTS 163
originally monotheistic | How philologists torment
themselves by investigating the question whether
Homer actually wrote, without being able to grasp
the far higher tenet that Greek art long exhibited
an inward enmity against writing, and did not wish
to be read at all.
127
In the religious cultus an earlier degree of culture
comes to light: a remnant of former times. The ages
that celebrate it are not those which invent it; the
contrary is often the case. There are many con-
trasts to be found here. The Greek cultus takes us
back to a pre-Homeric disposition and culture. It
is almost the oldest that we know of the Greeks—
older than their mythology, which their poets have
considerably remoulded, so far as we know it—Can
this cult really be called Greek P I doubt it: they
are finishers, not inventors. They preserve by means
of this beautiful completion and adornment.
I28
It is exceedingly doubtful whether we should
draw any conclusion in regard to nationality and
relationship with other nations from languages. A
victorious language is nothing but a frequent (and
not always regular) indication of a successful cam-
paign. Where could there have been autochthonous
peoples It shows a very hazy conception of things
to talk about Greeks who never lived in Greece.
That which is really Greek is much less the result
of natural aptitude than of adapted institutions, and
also of an acquired language.


## p. 164 (#200) ############################################

164 WE PHILOLOGISTS
I29
To live on mountains, to travel a great deal, and
to move quickly from one place to another: in these
ways we can now begin to compare ourselves with
the Greek gods. We know the past, too, and we
| almost know the future. What would a Greek say,
if only he could see us!
I 30
The gods make men still more evil; this is the
nature of man. If we do not like a man, we wish
that he may become worse than he is, and then we
are glad. This forms part of the obscure philosophy
of hate—a philosophy which has never yet been
written, because it is everywhere the pudendum that
every one feels.
I31
The pan-Hellenic Homer finds his delight in the
frivolity of the gods; but it is astounding how he
can also give them dignity again. This amazing
ability to raise one's self again, however, is Greek.
I32
What, then, is the origin of the envy of the gods?
people did not believe in a calm, quiet happiness,
but only in an exuberant one. This must have
caused some displeasure to the Greeks; for their
soul was only too easily wounded: it embittered
them to see a happy man. That is Greek. If a
man of distinguished talent appeared, the flock of
envious people must have become astonishingly
large. If any one met with a misfortune, they


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WE PHILOLOGISTS 165
would say of him: “Ah! no wonder he was too
frivolous and too well off. ” And every one of them
would have behaved exuberantly if he had possessed
the requisite talent, and would willingly have played
the rôle of the god who sent the unhappiness to men.
I33
The Greek gods did not demand any complete
changes of character, and were, generally speaking,
by no means burdensome or importunate: it was
thus possible to take them seriously and to believe
in them. At the time of Homer, indeed, the nature
of the Greek was formed: flippancy of images and
imagination was necessary to lighten the weight of
its passionate disposition and to set it free.
I34
Every religion has for its highest images an analo-
gon in the spiritual condition of those who profess
it. The God of Mohammed : the solitariness of the
desert, the distant roar of the lion, the vision of a
formidable warrior. The God of the Christians:
everything that men and women think of when they
hear the word “love. ” The God of the Greeks: a
beautiful apparition in a dream.
I 35
A great deal of intelligence must have gone to
the making up of a Greek polytheism: the expendi-
ture of intelligence is much less lavish when people
have only one God.
136
Greek morality is not based on religion, but on
the polis.


## p. 166 (#202) ############################################

|
I66 we PHILOLOGISTs
There were only priests of the individual gods;
not representatives of the whole religion: i. e. , no
guild of priests. Likewise no Holy Writ.
I37
The “lighthearted" gods: this is the highest
adornment which has ever been bestowed upon the
world—with the feeling, How difficult it is to live!
138
If the Greeks let their “reason” speak, their life
seems to them bitter and terrible. They are not
deceived. But they play round life with lies:
Simonides advises them to treat life as they would
a play; earnestness was only too well known to
them in the form of pain. The misery of men is
a pleasure to the gods when they hear the poets
singing of it. Well did the Greeks know that only
through art could even misery itself become a source
of pleasure; vide tragaediam.
I39
It is quite untrue to say that the Greeks only took
this life into their consideration—they suffered also
from thoughts of death and Hell. But no “repent-
ance” or contrition.
I4O
The incarnate appearance of gods, as in Sappho's
invocation to Aphrodite, must not be taken as poetic
licence: they are frequently hallucinations. Wecon-
ceive of a great many things, including the will to
die, too superficially as rhetorical.


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WE PHILOLOGISTS 167
I4 I
The “martyr” is Hellenic: Prometheus, Hercules.
The hero-myth became pan-Hellenic: a poet must
have had a hand in that
I42
How realistic the Greeks were even in the domain
of pure inventions ! They poetised reality, not
yearning to lift themselves out of it. The raising
of the present into the colossal and eternal, e. g. , by
Pindar. -
I43
What condition do the Greeks premise as the
model of their life in Hades? Anaemic, dreamlike,
weak: it is the continuous accentuation of old age,
when the memory gradually becomes weaker and
weaker, and the body still more so. The senility
of senility: this would be our state of life in the
eyes of the Hellenes.
I44
The naïve character of the Greeks observed by
the Egyptians.
I45
The truly scientific people, the literary people, )
were the Egyptians and not the Greeks. That which
has the appearance of science among the Greeks,
originated among the Egyptians and later on re-
turned to them to mingle again with the old current.
Alexandrian culture is an amalgamation of Hellenic
and Egyptian ; and when our world again founds
its culture upon the Alexandrian culture, then . . . *
* “We shall once again be shipwrecked. ” The omission
is in the original—TR, -


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I68 WE PHILOLOGISTS
|
146
The Egyptians are far more of a literary people
than the Greeks. I maintain this against Wolf.
The first grain in Eleusis, the first vine in Thebes,
the first olive-tree and fig-tree. The Egyptians
had lost a great part of their mythology.
I47
The unmathematical undulation of the column in
Paestum is analogous to the modification of the
tempo: animation in place of a mechanical move-
ment.
I48
The desire to find something certain and fixed
in aesthetic led to the worship of Aristotle: I think,
however, that we may gradually come to see from
his works that he understood nothing about art; and
that it is merely the intellectual conversations of the
Athenians, echoing in his pages, which we admire.
I49
In Socrates we have as it were lying open before
us a specimen of the consciousness out of which,
later on, the instincts of the theoretic man originated:
that one would rather die than grow old and weak
in mind.
I 50
At the twilight of antiquity there were still wholly
unchristian figures, which were more beautiful, har-
monious, and pure than those of any Christians: e. g. ,
+ Proclus. His mysticism and syncretism were things
that precisely Christianity cannot reproach him with.
In any case, it would be my desire to live together


## p. 169 (#205) ############################################

WE PHILOLOGISTS 169
with such people. In comparison with them Chris-
tianity looks like some crude brutalisation, organ-
ised for the benefit of the mob and the criminal
classes.
Proclus, who solemnly invokes the rising moon.
I5 I
With the advent of Christianity a religion attained
the mastery which corresponded to a pre-Greek con-
dition of mankind: belief in witchcraft in connection
with all and everything, bloody sacrifices, supersti-
tious fear of demoniacal punishments, despair in
one's self, ecstatic brooding and hallucination; man's
self become the arena of good and evil spirits and
their struggles.
I52
All branches of history have experimented with
antiquity: critical consideration alone remains. By
this term I do not mean conjectural and literary-
historical criticism.
I 53
Antiquity has been treated by all kinds of his-
torians and their methods. We have now had
enough experience, however, to turn the history of
antiquity to account without being shipwrecked on
antiquity itself.
I54
We can now look back over a fairly long period
of human existence: what will the humanity be
like which is able to look back at us from an equally
long distance? which finds us lying intoxicated
among the débris of old culture which finds its
only consolation in “being good” and in holding |


## p. 170 (#206) ############################################

17o WE PHILOLOGISTS
out the “helping hand,” and turns away from all
other consolations ! —Does beauty, too, grow out of
the ancient culture? I think that our ugliness
arises from our metaphysical remnants: our con-
fused morals, the worthlessness of our marriages,
and so on, are the cause. The beautiful man, the
healthy, moderate, and enterprising man, moulds
the objects around him into beautiful shapes after
his own image.
I 55
Up to the present time all history has been
written from the standpoint of success, and, indeed,
with the assumption of a certain reason in this
success. This remark applies also to Greek his-
tory: so far we do not possess any. It is the same
all round, however: where are the historians who
can survey things and events without being hum-
bugged by stupid theories P I know of only one,
Burckhardt. Everywhere the widest possible opti-
---"
mism prevails in science. The question: “What
would have been the consequence if so and so had
not happened? ” is almost unanimously thrust aside,
and yet it is the cardinal question. Thus every-
thing becomes ironical. Let us only consider our
own lives. If we examine history in accordance
with a preconceived plan, let this plan be sought
in the purposes of a great man, or perhaps in those
of a sex, or of a party. Everything else is a chaos.
—Even in natural science we find this deification of
the necessary.
Germany has become the breeding-place of this
historical optimism ; Hegel is perhaps to blame
for this. Nothing, however, is more responsible for


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WE PHILOLOGISTS 171
the fatal influence of German culture. Everything
that has been kept down by success gradually rears
itself up : history as the scorn of the conqueror; a
servile sentiment and a kneeling down before
the actual fact—“a sense for the State,” they now
call it, as if that had still to be propagated He
who does not understand how brutal and unintelli-
gent history is will never understand the stimulus
to make it intelligent. Just think how rare it is to
find a man with as great an intelligent knowledge
of his own life as Goethe had : what amount of
rationality can we expect to find arising out of these
other veiled and blind existences as they work chao-
tically with and in opposition to each other ?
And it is especially naïve when Hellwald, the
author of a history of culture, warns us away from
all “ideals,” simply because history has killed them
off one after the other.
I56.
To bring to light without reserve the stupidity
and the want of reason in human things: that is |
the aim of our brethren and colleagues. People
will then have to distinguish what is essential in
them, what is incorrigible, and what is still suscep-
tible of further improvement. But “Providence”
must be kept out of the question, for it is a concep-
tion that enables people to take things too easily.
I wish to breathe the breath of this purpose into
science. Let us advance our knowledge of man-
kind | The good and rational in man is accidental
or apparent, or the contrary of something very irra-
tional. There will come a time when training will
be the only thought.


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I64 WE PHILOLOGISTS
I29
To live on mountains, to travel a great deal, and
to move quickly from one place to another: in these
ways we can now begin to compare ourselves with
the Greek gods. We know the past, too, and we
almost know the future. What would a Greek say,
if only he could see us!
I 30
The gods make men still more evil; this is the
nature of man. If we do not like a man, we wish
! that he may become worse than he is, and then we
are glad. This forms part of the obscure philosophy
of hate—a philosophy which has never yet been
written, because it is everywhere the pudendum that
every one feels.
I31
The pan-Hellenic Homer finds his delight in the
frivolity of the gods; but it is astounding how he
can also give them dignity again. This amazing
ability to raise one's self again, however, is Greek.
I 32
What, then, is the origin of the envy of the gods?
people did not believe in a calm, quiet happiness,
but only in an exuberant one. This must have
caused some displeasure to the Greeks; for their
soul was only too easily wounded: it embittered
them to see a happy man. That is Greek. If a
man of distinguished talent appeared, the flock of
envious people must have become astonishingly
large. If any one met with a misfortune, they


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WE PHILOLOGISTS 165
would say of him: “Ah! no wonder he was too
frivolous and too well off. ” And every one of them
would have behaved exuberantly if he had possessed
the requisite talent, and would willingly have played
the rôle of the god who sent the unhappiness to men.
I33
The Greek gods did not demand any complete
changes of character, and were, generally speaking,
by no means burdensome or importunate: it was
thus possible to take them seriously and to believe
in them. At the time of Homer, indeed, the nature
of the Greek was formed : flippancy of images and
imagination was necessary to lighten the weight of
its passionate disposition and to set it free.
I34
Every religion has for its highest images an analo-
gon in the spiritual condition of those who profess
it. The God of Mohammed : the solitariness of the
desert, the distant roar of the lion, the vision of a
formidable warrior. The God of the Christians:
everything that men and women think of when they
hear the word “love. ” The God of the Greeks: a
beautiful apparition in a dream.
I35
A great deal of intelligence must have gone to
the making up of a Greek polytheism: the expendi-
ture of intelligence is much less lavish when people
have only one God.
136
Greek morality is not based on religion, but on
the polis.


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172 WE PHILOLOGISTS
I 57
Surrender to necessity is exactly what I do not
teach—for one must first know this necessity to be
necessary. There may perhaps be many necessi-
ties; but in general this inclination is simply a bed
of idleness.
158
To know history now means: to recognise how
all those who believed in a Providence took things
too easily. There is no such thing. If human
affairs are seen to go forward in a loose and dis-
ordered way, do not think that a god has any pur-
pose in view by letting them do so or that he is
neglecting them. We can now see in a general
way that the history of Christianity on earth has
been one of the most dreadful chapters in history,
and that a stop must be put to it. True, the
influence of antiquity has been observed in Chris-
tianity even in our own time; and, as it diminishes,
so will our knowledge of antiquity diminish also to
an even greater extent. Now is the best time to
recognise it: we are no longer prejudiced in favour
of Christianity, but we still understand it, and also
the antiquity that forms part of it, so far as this anti-
quity stands in line with Christianity.
I59
Philosophic heads must occupy themselves one
day with the collective account of antiquity and
make up its balance-sheet. If we have this, anti-
quity will be overcome. All the shortcomings which
now vex us have their roots in antiquity, so that
we cannot continue to treat this account with


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WE PHILOLOGISTS 173
the mildness which has been customary up to the
present. The atrocious crime of mankind which
rendered Christianity possible, as it actually became |
possible, is the guilt of antiquity. With Christianity
antiquity will also be cleared away. —At the present
time it is not so very far behind us, and it is certainly
not possible to do justice to it. It has been availed
of in the most dreadful fashion for purposes of re-
pression, and has acted as a support for religious
oppression by disguising itself as “culture. ” It was
common to hear the saying, “Antiquity has been
conquered by Christianity. ”
This was a historical fact, and it was thus thought
that no harm could come of any dealings with
antiquity. Yes; it is so plausible to say that we
find Christian ethics “deeper” than Socrates 1 Plato
was easier to compete with ! We are at the present
time, so to speak, merely chewing the cud of the
very battle which was fought in the first centuries
of the Christian era—with the exception of the fact
that now, instead of the clearly perceptible antiquity
which then existed, we have merely its pale ghost;
and,indeed, even Christianity itself has become rather
ghostlike. It is a battle fought after the decisive
battle, a post-vibration. In the end, all the forces
of which antiquity consisted have reappeared in
Christianity in the crudest possible form: it is
nothing new, only quantitatively extraordinary.
I6O
What severs us for ever from the culture of anti-
quity is the fact that its foundations have become
too shaky for us. A criticism of the Greeks is at


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I74 WE PHILOLOGISTS
!
the same time a criticism of Christianity; for the
bases of the spirit of belief, the religious cult, and
witchcraft, are the same in both. -There are many
rudimentary stages still remaining; but they are by
this time almost ready to collapse.
This would be a task: to characterise Greek
antiquityas irretrievably lost, and with it Christianity
also and the foundations upon which, up to the
present time, our society and politics have been
based.
I6 I
Christianity has conquered antiquity—yes; that
is easily said. In the first place, it is itself a piece
of antiquity; in the second place, it has preserved
antiquity; in the third place, it has never been in
combat with the pure ages of antiquity. Or rather:
in order that Christianity itself might remain, it had
to let itself be overcome by the spirit of antiquity—
for example, the idea of empire, the community, and
so forth. We are suffering from the uncommon
want of clearness and uncleanliness of human things;
from the ingenious mendacity which Christianity has
brought among men.
I62
It is almost laughable to see how nearly all the
sciences and arts of modern times grow from the
scattered seeds which have been wafted towards us
from antiquity, and how Christianity seems to us
here to be merely the evil chill of a long night, a
night during which one is almost inclined to believe
that all is over with reason and honesty among men.
The battle waged against the natural man has given
rise to the unnatural man.


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WE PHILOLOGISTS I75
- 163
With the dissolution of Christianity a great part
of antiquity has become incomprehensible to us, for
instance, the entire religious basis of life. On this
account an imitation of antiquity is a false tendency:
the betrayers or the betrayed are the philologists
who still think of such a thing. We live in a period
when many different conceptions of life are to be
found: hence the present age is instructive to an
unusual degree; and hence also the reason why it
is so ill, since it suffers from the evils of all its ten-
dencies at once. The man of the future: the
European man.
I64
The German Reformation widened the gap be-
tween us and antiquity: was it necessary for it to
do so? It once again introduced the old contrast
of “Paganism” and “Christianity”; and it was at
the same time a protest against the decorative culture
of the Renaissance—it was a victory gained over the
same culture as had formerly been conquered by
early Christianity.
In regard to “worldly things,” Christianity pre-
served the grosser views of the ancients. All the
nobler elements in marriage, slavery, and the State
are unchristian. It required the distorting character-
istics of worldliness to prove itself.
I65
The connection between humanism and religious
rationalism was emphasised as a Saxonian trait by
Köchly: the type of this philologist is Gottfried
Hermann. ”
* Johann Gottfried Jakob Hermann (1772-1848), noted for
his works on metre and Greek grammar. —TR.


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176 WE PHILOLOGISTS
I66
I understand religions as narcotics: but when they
are given to such nations as the Germans, I think
they are simply rank poison.
167
All religions are, in the end, based upon certain
physical assumptions, which are already in existence
and adapt the religions to their needs: for example,
in Christianity, the contrast between body and soul,
the unlimited importance of the earth as the “world,”
the marvellous occurrences in nature. If once the
opposite views gain the mastery—for instance, a
strict law of nature, the helplessness and superfluous-
ness of all gods, the strict conception of the soul
as a bodily process—all is over. But all Greek
culture is based upon such views.
I68
When we look from the character and culture of
the Catholic Middle Ages back to the Greeks, we
see them resplendent indeed in the rays of higher
humanity; for, if we have anything to reproach these
Greeks with, we must reproach the Middle Ages
with it also to a much greater extent. The worship
of the ancients at the time of the Renaissance was
therefore quite honest and proper. We have carried
matters further in one particular point, precisely in
connection with that dawning ray of light. We
have outstripped the Greeks in the clarifying of the
world by our studies of nature and men. Our know-
ledge is much greater, and our judgments are more
moderate and just.


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WE PHILOLOGISTS 177
In addition to this, a more gentle spirit has be-
come widespread,thanks to the period of illumination
which has weakened mankind—but this weakness,
when turned into morality, leads to good results and
honours us. Man has now a great deal of freedom:
it is his own fault if he does not make more use of
it than he does; the fanaticism of opinions has,
become much milder. Finally, that we would much |
rather live in the present age than in any other is
due to science; and certainly no other race in the
history of mankind has had such a wide choice of
noble enjoyments as ours—even if our race has not
the palate and stomach to experience a great deal
i
|
|
s
of joy. But one can live comfortably amid all this |
“freedom” only when one merely understands it and
does not wish to participate in it—that is the
modern crux. The participants appear to be less
attractive than ever: how stupid they must bel
Thus the danger arises that knowledge may
avenge itself on us, just as ignorance avenged itself
on us during the Middle Ages. It is all over with
those religions which place their trust in gods, Pro-
vidences, rational orders of the universe, miracles,
and sacraments; as is also the case with certain
types of holy lives, such as ascetics; for we only too
easily conclude that such people are the effects of
sickness and an aberrant brain. There is no doubt
that the contrast between a pure, incorporeal soul
and a body has been almost set aside. Who now
believes in the immortality of the soul! Everything
connected with blessedness or damnation, which
was based upon certain erroneous physiological
assumptions, falls to the ground as soon as these
|
l
!
I 2


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178 WE PHILOLOGISTS
assumptions are recognised to be errors. Our
scientific assumptions admit just as much of an
interpretation and utilisation in favour of a besot-
ting philistinism—yea, in favour of bestiality—as
also in favour of “blessedness” and soul-inspiration.
As compared with all previous ages, we are now
standing on a new foundation, so that something
may still be expected from the human race.
As regards culture, we have hitherto been acquain-
ted with only one complete form of it, i. e. , the city-
culture of the Greeks, based as it was on their
mythical and social foundations; and one incom-
plete form, the Roman, which acted as an adornment
of life, derived from the Greek. Now all these bases,
the mythical and the politico-social, have changed;
our alleged culture has no stability, because it has
been erected upon insecure conditions and opinions
which are even now almost ready to collapse. —
When we thoroughly grasp Greek culture, then, we
see that it is all over with it. The philologist is thus
a great sceptic in the present conditions of our culture
and training: that is his mission. Happy is he if,
like Wagner and Schopenhauer, he has a dim pre-
sentiment of those auspicious powers amid which a
new culture is stirring.
169
Those who say: “But antiquity nevertheless re-
mains as a subject of consideration for pure science,
even though all its educational purposes may be
disowned,” must be answered by the words, What is
pure science here !