No More Learning

It knows the magic herbs and simples for the
malady of history, and the excess of it. And
what are they called ?
It is no marvel that they bear the names of
poisons :-the antidotes to history are the “un-
historical” and the “super-historical. ” With these
names we return to the beginning of our inquiry
and draw near to its final close.
By the word “unhistorical” I mean the power,
the art of forgetting, and of drawing a limited
horizon round one's self. I call the power “super-
historical” which turns the eyes from the process
of becoming to that which gives existence an
eternal and stable character, to art and religion.
Science-for it is science that makes us speak of
“poisons”-sees in these powers contrary powers :
for it considers only that view of things to be true
and right, and therefore scientific, which regards


## p. 95 (#132) #############################################

94
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
it might say to itself, in the old Spanish phrase,
“Defienda me Dios de my," God keep me from
myself, from the character, that is, which has been
put into me. It must taste that truth drop by drop,
like a bitter, powerful medicine. And every man
in this generation must subdue himself to pass the
judgment on his own nature, which he might pass
more easily on his whole time:-“We are without
instruction, nay, we are too corrupt to live, to see
and hear truly and simply, to understand what is
near and natural to us. We have not yet laid even
the foundations of culture, for we are not ourselves
convinced that we have a sincere life in us. " We
crumble and fall asunder, our whole being is divided,
half mechanically, into an inner and outer side;
we are sown with ideas as with dragon's teeth, and
bring forth a new dragon-brood of them; we suffer
from the malady of words, and have no trust in any
feeling that is not stamped with its special word.
And being such a dead fabric of words and ideas,
that yet has an uncanny movement in it, I have
still perhaps the right to say cogito ergo sum,
though not vivo ergo cogito. I am permitted the
empty esse, not the full green vivere. A primary
feeling tells me that I am a thinking being but not
a living one, that I am no “animal,” but at most a
“cogital. ” “Give me life, and I will soon make
you a culture out of it ”—will be the cry of every
man in this new generation, and they will all know
each other by this cry. But who will give them
this life?
No god and no man will give it-only their own
youth. Set this free, and you will set life free as


## p. 95 (#133) #############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY,
95
well. For it only lay concealed, in a prison; it is
not yet withered or dead-ask your own selves!
But it is sick, this life that is set free, and must
be healed. It suffers from many diseases, and not
only from the memory of its chains. It suffers
from the malady which I have spoken of, the
malady of history. Excess of history has attacked
the plastic power of life, that no more understands
how to use the past as a means of strength and
nourishment. It is a fearful disease, and yet, if
youth had not a natural gift for clear vision, no
one would see that it is a disease, and that a
paradise of health has been lost. But the same
youth, with that same natural instinct of health,
has guessed how the paradise can be regained.
It knows the magic herbs and simples for the
malady of history, and the excess of it. And
what are they called ?
It is no marvel that they bear the names of
poisons :—the antidotes to history are the “un-
historical ” and the "super-historical. " With these
names we return to the beginning of our inquiry
and draw near to its final close.
By the word “unhistorical” I mean the power,
the art of forgetting, and of drawing a limited
horizon round one's self. I call the power "super-
historical ” which turns the eyes from the process
of becoming to that which gives existence an
eternal and stable character, to art and religion.
Science—for it is science that makes us speak of
“poisons”_sees in these powers contrary powers :
for it considers only that view of things to be true
and right, and therefore scientific, which regards


## p. 95 (#134) #############################################

94
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
it might say to itself, in the old Spanish phrase,
“Defienda me Dios de my,” God keep me from
myself, from the character, that is, which has been
put into me. It must taste that truth drop by drop,
like a bitter, powerful medicine. And every man
in this generation must subdue himself to pass the
judgment on his own nature, which he might pass
more easily on his whole time :-“We are without
instruction, nay, we are too corrupt to live, to see
and hear truly and simply, to understand what is
near and natural to us. We have not yet laid even
the foundations of culture, for we are not ourselves
convinced that we have a sincere life in us. ” We
crumble and fall asunder, our whole being is divided,
half mechanically, into an inner and outer side ;
we are sown with ideas as with dragon's teeth, and
bring forth a new dragon-brood of them; we suffer
from the malady of words, and have no trust in any
feeling that is not stamped with its special word.
And being such a dead fabric of words and ideas,
that yet has an uncanny movement in it, I have
still perhaps the right to say cogito ergo sum,
though not vivo ergo cogito. I am permitted the
empty esse, not the full green vivere. A primary
feeling tells me that I am a thinking being but not
a living one, that I am no “animal,” but at most a
“cogital. ” “Give me life, and I will soon make
you a culture out of it”—will be the cry of every
man in this new generation, and they will all know
each other by this cry. But who will give them
this life?
No god and no man will give it-only their own
youth. Set this free, and you will set life free as


## p. 95 (#135) #############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY,
95
well. For it only lay concealed, in a prison ; it is
not yet withered or dead-ask your own selves!
But it is sick, this life that is set free, and must
be healed. It suffers from many diseases, and not
only from the memory of its chains. It suffers
from the malady which I have spoken of, the
malady of history. Excess of history has attacked
the plastic power of life, that no more understands
how to use the past as a means of strength and
nourishment. It is a fearful disease, and yet, if
youth had not a natural gift for clear vision, no
one would see that it is a disease, and that a
paradise of health has been lost. But the same
youth, with that same natural instinct of health,
has guessed how the paradise can be regained.
It knows the magic herbs and simples for the
malady of history, and the excess of it. And
what are they called ?
It is no marvel that they bear the names of
poisons :—the antidotes to history are the “un-
historical ” and the “super-historical. ” With these
names we return to the beginning of our inquiry
and draw near to its final close.
By the word “unhistorical” I mean the power, !
the art of forgetting, and of drawing a limited
horizon round one's self. I call the power "super-
historical ” which turns the eyes from the process
of becoming to that which gives existence an
eternal and stable character, to art and religion.
Science-for it is science that makes us speak of
“poisons”_sees in these powers contrary powers :
for it considers only that view of things to be true
and right, and therefore scientific, which regards


## p. 96 (#136) #############################################

96 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
something as finished and historical, not as con-
tinuing and eternal. Thus it lives in a deep
antagonism towards the powers that make for
eternity—art and religion,—for it hates the forget-
fulness that is the death of knowledge, and tries
to remove all limitation of horizon and cast men
into an infinite boundless sea, whose waves are
bright with the clear knowledge—of becoming!
If they could only live therein! Just as towns
are shaken by an avalanche and become desolate,
and man builds his house there in fear and for a
season only; so life is broken in sunder and
becomes weak and spiritless, if the avalanche of
ideas started by science take from man the founda-
tion of his rest and security, the belief in what is
stable and eternal. Must life dominate knowledge,
or knowledge life? Which of the two is the
higher, and decisive power? There is no room
for doubt: life is the higher, and the dominating
power, for the knowledge that annihilated life
would be itself annihilated too. Knowledge pre-
supposes life, and has the same interest in main-
taining it that every creature has in its own pre-
servation. Science needs very careful watching:
there is a hygiene of life near the volumes of
science, and one of its sentences runs thus:—The
unhistorical and the super-historical are the natural
antidotes against the overpowering of life by
history; they are the cures for the historical
disease. We who are sick of the disease may
suffer a little from the antidote. But this is no
proof that the treatment we have chosen is wrong.
And here I see the mission of the youth that


## p. 97 (#137) #############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 97
forms the first generation of fighters and dragon-
slayers: it will bring a more beautiful and blessed
humanity and culture, but will have itself no more
than a glimpse of the promised land of happiness
and wondrous beauty. This youth will suffer both
from the malady and its antidotes: and yet it
believes in strength and health and boasts a nature
closer to the great Nature than its forebears, the
cultured men and graybeards of the present. But
its mission is to shake to their foundations the
present conceptions of " health" and " culture," and
erect hatred and scorn in the place of this rococo
mass of ideas. And the clearest sign of its own
strength and health is just the fact that it can
use no idea, no party-cry from the present-day
mint of words and ideas to symbolise its own
existence: but only claims conviction from the
power in it that acts and fights, breaks up and
destroys; and from an ever heightened feeling of
life when the hour strikes. You may deny this
youth any culture—but how would youth count
that a reproach? You may speak of its rawness
and intemperateness—but it is not yet old and wise
enough to be acquiescent. It need not pretend to
a ready-made culture at all; but enjoys all the
rights—and the consolations—of youth, especially
the right of brave unthinking honesty and the con-
solation of arrinspiring hope.
I know that such hopeful beings understand all
these truisms from within, and can translate them
into a doctrine for their own use, through their
personal experience. To the others there will
appear, in the meantime, nothing but a row of
VOL. II. G


## p. 98 (#138) #############################################

98 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
covered dishes, that may perhaps seem empty:
until they see one day with astonished eyes that
the dishes are full, and that all ideas and impulses
and passions are massed together in these truisms
that cannot lie covered for long. I leave those
doubting ones to time, that brings all things «to
light; and turn at last to that great company of
hope, to tell them the way and the course of their
salvation, their rescue from the disease of history,
and their own history as well, in a parable; where-
by they may again become healthy enough to study
history anew, and under the guidance of life make
use of the past in that threefold way—monumental,
antiquarian, or critical. At first they will be more
ignorant than the "educated men" of the present:
for they will have unlearnt much and have lost any
desire even to discover what those educated men
especially wish to know: in fact, their chief mark
from the educated point of view will be just their
want of science; their indifference and inaccessi-
bility to all the good and famous things. But at
the end of the cure, they are men again and have
ceased to be mere shadows of humanity. That
is something; there is yet hope, and do not ye
who hope laugh in your hearts?
How can we reach that end? you will ask. The
Delphian god cries his oracle to you at the begin-
ning of your wanderings, "Know thyself. " It is a
hard saying: for that god "tells nothing and con-
ceals nothing but merely points the way," as
Heraclitus said. But whither does he point?
In certain epochs the Greeks were in a similar
danger of being overwhelmed by what was past


## p. 99 (#139) #############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. QQ
and foreign, and perishing on the rock of " history. "
They never lived proud and untouched. Their
"culture" was for a long time a chaos of foreign
forms and ideas,—Semitic, Babylonian, Lydian and
Egyptian,—and their religion a battle of all the
gods of the East; just as German culture and
religion is at present a death-struggle of all foreign
nations and bygone times. And yet, Hellenic
culture was no mere mechanical unity, thanks to
that Delphic oracle. The Greeks gradually learned
to organise the chaos, by taking Apollo's advice
and thinking back to themselves, to their own true
necessities, and letting all the sham necessities
go. Thus they again came into possession of
themselves, and did not remain long the Epigoni
of the whole East, burdened with their inheritance.
After that hard fight, they increased and enriched
the treasure they had inherited by their obedience
to the oracle, and they became the ancestors and
models for all the cultured nations of the future. /
This is a parable for each one of us: he must
organise the chaos in himself by " thinking himself
back" to his true needs. He will want all his
honesty, all the sturdiness and sincerity in his
character to help him to revolt against second-
hand thought, second-hand learning, second-hand
action. And he will begin then to understand
that culture can be something more than a
"decoration of life "—a concealment and disfigur-
ing of it, in other words; for all adornment hides
what is adorned. And thus the Greek idea, as
against the Roman, will be discovered to him, the
idea of culture as a new and finer nature, without


## p. 100 (#140) ############################################

IOO THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
distinction of inner and outer, without convention
or disguise, as a unity of thought and will, life
and appearance. He will learn too, from his own
experience, that it was by a greater force of moral
character that the Greeks were victorious, and that
everything which makes for sincerity is a further
step towards true culture, however this sincerity
may harm the ideals of education that are rever-
enced at the time, or even have power to shatter
a whole system of merely decorative culture.


## p. 101 (#141) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS
EDUCATOR.


## p. 102 (#142) ############################################



## p. 103 (#143) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS
EDUCATOR.
i.
When the traveller, who had seen many countries
and nations and continents, was asked what common
attribute he had found everywhere existing among
men, he answered, " They have a tendency to sloth. "
Many may think that the fuller truth would have
been, " They are all timid. " They hide themselves
behind "manners" and "opinions. " At bottom
every man knows well enough that he is a unique
being, only once on this earth; and by no extra-
ordinary chance will such a marvellously picturesque
piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put to-
gether a second time. He knows this, but hides
it like an evil conscience;—and why? From fear
of his neighbour, who looks for the latest conven-
tionalities in him, and is wrapped up in them
himself. But what is it that forces the man to
fear his neighbour, to think and act with his herd,
and not seek his own joy? Shyness perhaps, in
a few rare cases, but in the majority it is idleness,
/*


## p. 104 (#144) ############################################

104 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the " taking things easily," in a word the "tendency
to sloth," of which the traveller spoke. He was
right; men are more slothful than timid, and their
greatest fear is of the burdens that an uncom-
promising honesty and nakedness of speech and
action would lay on them. It is only the artists
who hate this lazy wandering in borrowed manners
and ill-fitting opinions, and discover the secret of
the evil conscience, the truth that each human
being is a unique marvel. They show us, how in
every little movement of his muscles the man is
an individual self, and further—as an analytical
deduction from his individuality—a beautiful and
interesting object, a new and incredible phenomenon
(as is every work of nature), that can never become
tedious. If the great thinker despise mankind, it
is for their laziness; they seem mere indifferent
bits of pottery, not worth any commerce or im-
provement. The man who will not belong to the
general mass, has only to stop "taking himself
easily"; to follow his conscience, which cries out
to him, "Be thyself! all that thou doest and
thinkest and desirest, is not—thyself! "
Every youthful soul hears this cry day and night,
and quivers to hear it; for she divines the sum
of happiness that has been from eternity destined
for her, if she think of her true deliverance; and
towards this happiness she can in no wise be
helped, so long as she lies in the chains of Opinion
and of Fear. And how comfortless and unmeaning
may life become without this deliverance! There
is no more desolate or Ishmaelitish creature in nature
than the man who has broken away from his true


## p. 105 (#145) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. I05
genius, and does nothing but peer aimlessly about
him. There is no reason to attack such a man at
all, for he is a mere husk without a kernel, a
painted , cloth, tattered and sagging, a scarecrow
ghost, that can rouse no fear, and certainly no pity.
And though one be right in saying of a sluggard
that he is " killing time," yet in respect of an age
that rests its salvation on public opinion,—that is,
on private laziness,—one must be quite determined
that such a time shall be " killed," once and for all:
I mean that it shall be blotted from life's true
History of Liberty. Later generations will be
greatly disgusted, when they come to treat the move-
ments of a period in which no living men ruled,
but shadow-men on the screen of public opinion;
and to some far posterity our age may well be
the darkest chapter of history, the most unknown
because the least human. I have walked through
the new streets of our cities, and thought how of
all the dreadful houses that these gentlemen with
their public opinion have built for themselves, not
a stone will remain in a hundred years, and that
the opinions of these busy masons may well have
fallen with them. But how full of hope should
they all be who feel that they are no citizens of
this age! If they were, they would have to help
on the work of " killing their time," and of perish-
ing with it,—when they wish rather to quicken the
time to life, and in that life themselves to live.
But even if the future leave us nothing to hope
for, the wonderful fact of our existing at this
present moment of time gives us the greatest en-
couragement to live after our own rule and measure;


## p. 106 (#146) ############################################

106 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
so inexplicable is it, that we should be living just
to-day, though there have been an infinity of time
wherein we might have arisen; that we own
nothing but a span's length of it, this "to-day,"
and must show in it wherefore and whereunto we
have arisen. We have to answer for our existence
to ourselves; and will therefore be our own true
pilots, and not admit that our being resembles a
blind fortuity. One must take a rather impudent
and reckless way with the riddle; especially as the
key is apt to be lost, however things turn out. Why
cling to your bit of earth, or your little business,
or listen to what your neighbour says? It is so
provincial to bind oneself to views which are no
longer binding a couple of hundred miles away.
East and West are signs that somebody chalks up
in front of us to fool such cowards as we are. "I
will make the attempt to gain freedom," says the
youthful soul; and will be hindered, just because
two nations happen to hate each other and go to
war, or because there is a sea between two parts
of the earth, or a religion is taught in the vicinity,
which did not exist two thousand years ago. "And
this is not—thyself," the soul says. "No one can
build thee the bridge, over which thou must cross
the river of life, save thyself alone. There are paths
and bridges and demi-gods without number, that
will gladly carry thee over, but only at the price
of thine own self: thy self wouldst thou have to
give in pawn, and then lose it. There is in the
world one road whereon none may go, except thou:
ask not whither it lead, but go forward. Who was
it that spake that true word—' A man has never


## p. 107 (#147) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 107
risen higher than when he knoweth not whither his
road may yet lead him'? "
But how can we " find ourselves" again, and how
can man "know himself"? He is a thing obscure
and veiled: if the hare have seven skins, man can
cast from him seventy times seven, and yet will
not be able to say " Here art thou in very truth;
this is outer shell no more. " Also this digging
into one's self, this straight, violent descent into the
pit of one's being, is a troublesome and dangerous
business to start. A man may easily take such
hurt, that no physician can heal him. And again,
what were the use, since everything bears witness
to our essence,—our friendships and enmities, our
looks and greetings, our memories and forgetful-
nesses, our books and our writing! This is the
most effective way:—to let the youthful soul look
back on life with the question, " What hast thou
up to now truly loved, what has drawn thy soul
upward, mastered it and blessed it too? " Set up
these things that thou hast honoured before thee,
and, maybe, they will show thee, in their being
and their order, a law which is the fundamental
law of thine own self. Compare these objects,
consider how one completes and broadens and
transcends and explains another, how they form
a ladder on which thou hast all the time been
climbing to thy self: for thy true being lies not
deeply hidden in thee, but an infinite height above
thee, or at least above that which thou dost
commonly take to be thyself. The true educators
and moulders reveal to thee the real groundwork
and import of thy being, something that in itself


## p. 108 (#148) ############################################

108 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
cannot be moulded or educated, but is anyhow
difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy
educators can be nothing but thy deliverers. And
that is the secret of all culture: it does not give
artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the
eyes—a thing that could buy such gifts is but
the base coin of education. But it is rather a libera-
tion, a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and
vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the stream-
ing forth of light and warmth, the tender dropping
of the night rain; it is the following and the
adoring of Nature when she is pitifully-minded as
a mother;—her completion, when it bends before
her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to
good, and draws a veil over all expression of her
tragic unreason—for she is a step-mother too,
sometimes.
There are other means of "finding ourselves," of
coming to ourselves out of the confusion wherein
we all wander as in a dreary cloud; but I know
none better than to think on our educators. So
I will to-day take as my theme the hard teacher
Arthur Schopenhauer, and speak of others later.
II.
In order to describe properly what an event my
first look into Schopenhauer's writings was for me, I
must dwell for a minute on an idea, that recurred
more constantly in my youth, and touched me more
nearly, than any other. I wandered then as I
pleased in a world of wishes, and thought that


## p. 109 (#149) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 109
destiny would relieve me of the dreadful and
wearisome duty of educating myself: some philo-
sopher would come at the right moment to do it
for me,—some true philosopher, who could be
obeyed without further question, as he would be
trusted more than one's self. Then I said within
me: "What would be the principles, on which he
might teach thee? " And I pondered in my mind
what he would say to the two maxims of education
that hold the field in our time. The first demands
that the teacher should find out at once the strong
point in his pupil, and then direct all his skill and
will, all the moisture and all the sunshine, to bring
the fruit of that single virtue to maturity. The
second requires him to raise to a higher power all
the qualities that already exist, cherish them and
bring them into a harmonious relation. But, we
may ask, should one who has a decided talent for
working in gold be made for that reason to learn
music? And can we admit that Benvenuto
Cellini's father was right in continually forcing
him back to the "dear little horn "—the "cursed
piping," as his son called it? We cannot think so
in the case of such a strong and clearly marked
talent as his, and it may well be that this maxim
of harmonious development applies only to weaker
natures, in which there is a whole swarm of desires
and inclinations, though they may not amount to
very much, singly or together. On the other hand,
where do we find such a blending of harmoni-
ous voices—nay, the soul of harmony itself—as we
see in natures like Cellini's, where everything—
knowledge, desire, love and hate—tends towards a


## p. 109 (#150) ############################################

108
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
cannot be moulded or educated, but is anyhow
difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy
educators can be nothing but thy deliverers. And
that is the secret of all culture: it does not give
artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the
eyes—a thing that could buy such gifts is but
the base coin of education. But it is rather a libera-
tion, a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and
vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the stream-
ing forth of light and warmth, the tender dropping
of the night rain; it is the following and the
adoring of Nature when she is pitifully-minded as
a mother ;-her completion, when it bends before
her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to
good, and draws a veil over all expression of her
tragic unreason—for she is a step-mother too,
sometimes.
There are other means of “finding ourselves,” of
coming to ourselves out of the confusion wherein
we all wander as in a dreary cloud; but I know
none better than to think on our educators. So
I will to-day take as my theme the hard teacher
Arthur Schopenhauer, and speak of others later.
II.
In order to describe properly what an event my
first look into Schopenhauer's writings was for me, I
must dwell for a minute on an idea, that recurred
more constantly in my youth, and touched me more
nearly, than any other. I wandered then as I
pleased in a world of wishes, and thought that


## p. 109 (#151) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
destiny would relieve me of the dreadful and
wearisome duty of educating myself: some philo-
sopher would come at the right moment to do it
for me,-some true philosopher, who could be
obeyed without further question, as he would be
trusted more than one's self. Then I said within
me: “What would be the principles, on which he
might teach thee? ” And I pondered in my mind
what he would say to the two maxims of education
that hold the field in our time. The first demands
that the teacher should find out at once the strong
point in his pupil, and then direct all his skill and
will, all the moisture and all the sunshine, to bring
the fruit of that single virtue to maturity. The
second requires him to raise to a higher power all
the qualities that already exist, cherish them and
bring them into a harmonious relation. But, we
may ask, should one who has a decided talent for
working in gold be made for that reason to learn
music? And can we admit that Benvenuto
Cellini's father was right in continually forcing
him back to the “dear little horn”-the "cursed
piping," as his son called it? We cannot think so
in the case of such a strong and clearly marked
talent as his, and it may well be that this maxim
of harmonious development applies only to weaker
natures, in which there is a whole swarm of desires
and inclinations, though they may not amount to
very much, singly or together. On the other hand,
where do we find such a blending of harmoni-
ous voices—nay, the soul of harmony itself—as we
see in natures like Cellini's, where everything-
knowledge, desire, love and hate-tends towards a


## p. 109 (#152) ############################################

108
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
cannot be moulded or educated, but is anyhow
difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy
educators can be nothing but thy deliverers. And
that is the secret of all culture: it does not give
artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the
eyes—a thing that could buy such gifts is but
the base coin of education. But it is rather a libera-
tion, a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and
vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the stream-
ing forth of light and warmth, the tender dropping
of the night rain; it is the following and the
adoring of Nature when she is pitifully-minded as
a mother ;-her completion, when it bends before
her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to
good, and draws a veil over all expression of her
tragic unreason—for she is a step-mother too,
sometimes.
There are other means of "finding ourselves," of
coming to ourselves out of the confusion wherein
we all wander as in a dreary cloud; but I know
none better than to think on our educators. So
I will to-day take as my theme the hard teacher
Arthur Schopenhauer, and speak of others later.
II.
In order to describe properly what an event my
first look into Schopenhauer's writings was for me, I
must dwell for a minute on an idea, that recurred
more constantly in my youth, and touched me more
nearly, than any other. I wandered then as I
pleased in a world of wishes, and thought that


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
109
destiny would relieve me of the dreadful and
wearisome duty of educating myself: some philo-
sopher would come at the right moment to do it
for me,—some true philosopher, who could be
obeyed without further question, as he would be
trusted more than one's self. Then I said within
me: “What would be the principles, on which he
might teach thee? ” And I pondered in my mind
what he would say to the two maxims of education
that hold the field in our time. The first demands
that the teacher should find out at once the strong
point in his pupil, and then direct all his skill and
will, all the moisture and all the sunshine, to bring
the fruit of that single virtue to maturity. The
second requires him to raise to a higher power all
the qualities that already exist, cherish them and
bring them into a harmonious relation. But, we
may ask, should one who has a decided talent for
working in gold be made for that reason to learn
music? And can we admit that Benvenuto
Cellini's father was right in continually forcing
him back to the “dear little horn"—the “cursed
piping," as his son called it? We cannot think so
in the case of such a strong and clearly marked
talent as his, and it may well be that this maxim
of harmonious development applies only to weaker
natures, in which there is a whole swarm of desires
and inclinations, though they may not amount to
very much, singly or together. On the other hand,
where do we find such a blending of harmoni-
ous voices—nay, the soul of harmony itself—as we
see in natures like Cellini's, where everything-
knowledge, desire, love and hate—tends towards a


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108
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
cannot be moulded or educated, but is anyhow
difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy
educators can be nothing but thy deliverers. And
that is the secret of all culture: it does not give
artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the
eyes—a thing that could buy such gifts is but
the base coin of education. But it is rather a libera-
tion, a removal of all the weeds and rubbish and
vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the stream-
ing forth of light and warmth, the tender dropping
of the night rain; it is the following and the
adoring of Nature when she is pitifully-minded as
a mother ;-her completion, when it bends before
her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to
good, and draws a veil over all expression of her
tragic unreason—for she is a step-mother too,
sometimes.
There are other means of “finding ourselves," of
coming to ourselves out of the confusion wherein
we all wander as in a dreary cloud; but I know
none better than to think on our educators. So
I will to-day take as my theme the hard teacher
Arthur Schopenhauer, and speak of others later.
11.
In order to describe properly what an event my
first look into Schopenhauer's writings was for me, I
must dwell for a minute on an idea, that recurred
more constantly in my youth, and touched me more
nearly, than any other. I wandered then as I
pleased in a world of wishes, and thought that


## p. 109 (#155) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 109
destiny would relieve me of the dreadful and
wearisome duty of educating myself: some philo-
sopher would come at the right moment to do it
for me,—some true philosopher, who could be
obeyed without further question, as he would be
trusted more than one's self. Then I said within
me: "What would be the principles, on which he
might teach thee? " And I pondered in my mind
what he would say to the two maxims of education
that hold the field in our time. The first demands
that the teacher should find out at once the strong
point in his pupil, and then direct all his skill and
will, all the moisture and all the sunshine, to bring
the fruit of that single virtue to maturity. The
second requires him to raise to a higher power all
the qualities that already exist, cherish them and
bring them into a harmonious relation. But, we
may ask, should one who has a decided talent for
working in gold be made for that reason to learn
music? And can we admit that Benvenuto
Cellini's father was right in continually forcing
him back to the "dear little horn "—the "cursed
piping," as his son called it? We cannot think so
in the case of such a strong and clearly marked
talent as his, and it may well be that this maxim
of harmonious development applies only to weaker
natures, in which there is a whole swarm of desires
and inclinations, though they may not amount to
very much, singly or together. On the other hand,
where do we find such a blending of harmoni-
ous voices—nay, the soul of harmony itself—as we
see in natures like Cellini's, where everything—
knowledge, desire, love and hate—tends towards a


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110 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
single point, the root of all, and a harmonious
system, the resultant of the various forces, is built
up through the irresistible domination of this vital
centre? And so perhaps the two maxims are not
contrary at all: the one merely saying that man
must have a centre, the other, a circumference as
well. The philosophic teacher of my dream would
not only discover the central force, but would know
how to prevent its being destructive of the other
powers: his task, I thought, would be the welding
of the whole man into a solar system with life and
movement, and the discovery of its paraphysical
laws.
In the meantime I could not find my philosopher,
however I tried; I saw how badly we moderns
compare with the Greeks and Romans, even in the
serious study of educational problems. You can
go through all Germany, and especially all the
universities, with this need in your heart, and will
not find what you seek; many humbler wishes
than that are still unfulfilled there. For example,
if a German seriously wish to make himself an
orator, or to enter a "school for authors," he will
find neither master nor school: no one yet seems
to have thought that speaking and writing are arts
which cannot be learnt without the most careful
method and untiring application. But, to their
shame, nothing shows more clearly the insolent
self-satisfaction of our people than the lack of
demand for educators; it comes partly from mean-
ness, partly from want of thought. Anything will
do as a so-called "family tutor," even among our
most eminent and cultured people: and what a


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. Ill
menagerie of crazy heads and mouldy devices
mostly go to make up the belauded Gymnasium!
And consider what we are satisfied with in our
finishing schools,—our universities. Look at our
professors and their institutions! And compare
the difficulty of the task of educating a man to be
a man! Above all, the wonderful way in which
the German savants fall to their dish of knowledge,
shows that they are thinking more of Science than
mankind; and they are trained to lead a forlorn
hope in her service, in order to encourage ever
new generations to the same sacrifice. If their
traffic with knowledge be not limited and controlled
by any more general principles of education, but
allowed to run on indefinitely,—"the more the
better,"—it is as harmful to learning as the
economic theory of laisser faire to common
morality. No one recognises now that the educa-
tion of the professors is an exceedingly difficult
problem, if their humanity is not to be sacrificed
or shrivelled up:—this difficulty can be actually
seen in countless examples of natures warped and
twisted by their reckless and premature devotion to
science. There is a still more important testimony
to the complete absence of higher education,
pointing to a greater and more universal danger.
It is clear at once why an orator or writer cannot
now be educated,—because there are no teachers;
and why a savant must be a distorted and perverted
thing,—because he will have been trained by the
inhuman abstraction, science. This being so, let a
man ask himself: "Where are now the types of
moral excellence and fame for all our generation—


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112 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
learned and unlearned, high and low—the visible
abstract of constructive ethics for this age? Where
has vanished all the reflection on moral questions
that has occupied every great developed society at
all epochs? " There is no fame for that now, and
there are none to reflect: we are really drawing on
the inherited moral capital which our predecessors
accumulated for us, and which we do not know
how to increase, but only to squander. Such things
are either not mentioned in our society, or, if at all,
with a naYve want of personal experience that
makes one disgusted. It comes to this, that our
schools and professors simply turn aside from any
moral instruction or content themselves with
formulae; virtue is a word and nothing more, on
both sides, an old-fashioned word that they laugh
at—and it is worse when they do not laugh, for
then they are hypocrites.
An explanation of this faint-heartedness and
ebbing of all moral strength would be difficult and
complex: but whoever is considering the influence
of Christianity in its hour of victory on the
morality of the mediaeval world, must not forget
that it reacts also in its defeat, which is apparently
its position to-day. By its lofty ideal, Christianity
has outbidden the ancient Systems of Ethics and
their invariable naturalism, with which men came
to feel a dull disgust: and afterwards when they
did reach the knowledge of what was better and
higher, they found they had no longer the power,
for all their desire, to return to its embodiment in
the antique virtues. And so the life of the modern
man is passed in see-sawing between Christianity


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 113
and Paganism, between a furtive or hypocritical
approach to Christian morality, and an equally shy
and spiritless dallying with the antique: and he
does not thrive under it. His inherited fear of
naturalism, and its more recent attraction for him,
his desire to come to rest somewhere, while in the
impotence of his intellect he swings backwards and
forwards between the "good" and the "better"
course—all this argues an instability in the modern
mind that condemns it to be without joy or fruit.
Never were moral teachers more necessary and never
were they more unlikely to be found: physicians
are most in danger themselves in times when they
are most needed and many men are sick. For
where are our modern physicians who are strong
and sure-footed enough to hold up another or lead
him by the hand? There lies a certain heavy
gloom on the best men of our time, an eternal
loathing for the battle that is fought in their hearts
between honesty and lies, a wavering of trust in
themselves, which makes them quite incapable of
showing to others the way they must go.
So I was right in speaking of my " wandering in
a world of wishes" when I dreamt of finding a
true philosopher who could lift me from the slough
of insufficiency, and teach me again simply and
honestly to be in my thoughts and life, in the
deepest sense of the word, "out of season"; simply
and honestly—for men have now become such
complicated machines that they must be dishonest,
if they speak at all, or wish to act on their words.
With such needs and desires within me did I
come to know Schopenhauer.
VOL. II. H


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114 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
I belong to those readers of Schopenhauer who
know perfectly well, after they have turned the
first page, that they will read all the others, and
listen to every word that he has spoken. My trust
in him sprang to life at once, and has been the same
for nine years. I understood him as though he
had written for me (this is the most intelligible,
though a rather foolish and conceited way of
expressing it). Hence I never found a paradox
in him, though occasionally some small errors:
for paradoxes are only assertions that carry no
conviction, because the author has made them
himself without any conviction, wishing to appear
brilliant, or to mislead, or, above all, to pose.
Schopenhauer never poses: he writes for himself,
and no one likes to be deceived—least of all a
philosopher who has set this up as his law:
"deceive nobody, not even thyself," neither with
the "white lies" of all social intercourse, which
writers almost unconsciously imitate, still less
with the more conscious deceits of the platform,
and the artificial methods of rhetoric. Schopen-
hauer's speeches are to himself alone; or if you
like to imagine an auditor, let it be a son whom
the father is instructing. It is a rough, honest,
good-humoured talk to one who "hears and loves. "
Such writers are rare. His strength and sanity
surround us at the first sound of his voice: it is
like entering the heights of the forest, where we
\x breathe deep and are well again. We feel a
for bracing air everywhere, a certain candour and
the ;aturalness of his own, that belongs to men who
man il at home with themselves, and masters of a


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 115
very rich home indeed: he is quite different from
the writers who are surprised at themselves if they
have said something intelligent, and whose pro-
nouncements for that reason have something
nervous and unnatural about them. We are just
as little reminded in Schopenhauer of the pro-
fessor with his stiff joints worse for want of
exercise, his narrow chest and scraggy figure, his
slinking or strutting gait. And again his rough
and rather grim soul leads us not so much to
miss as to despise the suppleness and courtly
grace of the excellent Frenchmen; and no one
will find in him the gilded imitations of pseudo-
gallicism that our German writers prize so highly.
His style in places reminds me a little of Goethe,
but is not otherwise on any German model. For
he knows how to be profound with simplicity,
striking without rhetoric, and severely logical
without pedantry: and of what German could he
have learnt that? He also keeps free from the
hair-splitting, jerky and (with all respect) rather
un-German manner of Lessing: no small merit
in him, for Lessing is the most tempting of all
models for prose style. The highest praise I can
give his manner of presentation is to apply his
own phrase to himself:—"A philosopher must be
very honest to avail himself of no aid from poetry
or rhetoric. " That honesty is something, and even
a virtue, is one of those private opinions which are
forbidden in this age of public opinion; and so I
shall not be praising Schopenhauer, but only giving
him a distinguishing mark, when I repeat that he
is honest, even as a writer: so few of them are,


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Il6 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
that we are apt to mistrust every one who writes
at all. I only know a single author that I can
rank with Schopenhauer, or even above him, in
the matter of honesty; and that is Montaigne.
The joy of living on this earth is increased by the
existence of such a man. The effect on myself,
at any rate, since my first acquaintance with that
strong and masterful spirit, has been, that I can
say of him as he of Plutarch—" As soon as I open
him, I seem to grow a pair of wings. " If I had
the task of making myself at home on the earth,
I would choose him as my companion.
Schopenhauer has a second characteristic in
common with Montaigne, besides honesty; a joy
that really makes others joyful. "Aliis laetus,
sibi sapiens. " There are two very different kinds
of joyfulness. The true thinker always communi-
cates joy and life, whether he is showing his serious
or comic side, his human insight or his godlike
forbearance: without surly looks or trembling
hands or watery eyes, but simply and truly, with
fearlessness and strength, a little cavalierly perhaps,
and sternly, but always as a conqueror: and it is
this that brings the deepest and intensest joy, to
see the conquering god with all the monsters that
he has fought. But the joyfulness one finds here
and there in the mediocre writers and limited
thinkers makes some of us miserable; I felt this,
for example, with the "joyfulness " of David Strauss.
We are generally ashamed of such a quality in our
contemporaries, because they show the nakedness
of our time, and of the men in it, to posterity.
Such fils de joie do not see the sufferings and


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 117
the monsters, that they pretend, as philosophers,
to see and fight; and so their joy deceives us, and
we hate it; it tempts to the false belief that they
have gained some victory. At bottom there is
only joy where there is victory: and this applies
to true philosophy as much as to any work of art.
The contents may be forbidding and serious, as
the problem of existence always is; the work will
only prove tiresome and oppressive, if the slipshod
thinker and the dilettante have spread the mist of
their insufficiency over it: while nothing happier
or better can come to man's lot than to be near
one of those conquering spirits whose profound
thought has made them love what is most vital,
and whose wisdom has found its goal in beauty.
They really speak: they are no stammerers or
babblers; they live and move, and have no part
in the danse macabre of the rest of humanity.
And so in their company one feels a natural man
again, and could cry out with Goethe—" What a
wondrous and priceless thing is a living creature!
How fitted to his surroundings, how true, and
real! "
I have been describing nothing but the first,
almost physiological, impression made upon me
by Schopenhauer, the magical emanation of inner
force from one plant of Nature to another, that
follows the slightest contact Analysing it, I find
that this influence of Schopenhauer has three
elements, his honesty, his joy, and his consistency.
He is honest, as speaking and writing for himself
alone; joyful, because his thought has conquered
the greatest difficulties; consistent, because he


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Il8 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
cannot help being so. His strength rises like a
flame in the calm air, straight up, without a
tremor or deviation. He finds his way, without
our noticing that he has been seeking it: so surely
and cleverly and inevitably does he run his course,
as if by some law of gravitation. If any one have
felt what it means to find, in our present world of
Centaurs and Chimaeras, a single-hearted and un-
affected child of nature who moves unconstrained
on his own road, he will understand my joy and
surprise in discovering Schopenhauer: I knew in
him the educator and philosopher I had so long
desired. Only, however, in his writings: which
was a great loss. All the more did I exert myself
to see behind the book the living man whose
testament it was, and who promised his inheritance
to such as could, and would, be more than his
readers—his pupils and his sons.
III.
I get profit from a philosopher, just so far as he
can be an example to me. There is no doubt that
a man can draw whole nations after him by his
example; as is shown by Indian history, which is
practically the history of Indian philosophy. But
this example must exist in his outward life, not
merely in his books; it must follow the way of the
Grecian philosophers, whose doctrine was in their
dress and bearing and general manner of life rather
than in their speech or writing. We have nothing
yet of this " breathing testimony " in German philo-


## p. 119 (#165) ############################################

SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. Iig
sophical life; the spirit has, apparently, long com-
pleted its emancipation, while the flesh has hardly
begun; yet it is foolish to think that the spirit can
be really free and independent when this victory
over limitation—which is ultimately a formative
limiting of one's self—is not embodied anew in
every look and movement. Kant held to his
university, submitted to its regulations, and be-
longed, as his colleagues and students thought, to
a definite religious faith: and naturally his example
has produced, above all, University professors of
philosophy. Schopenhauer makes small account
of the learned tribe, keeps himself exclusive, and
cultivates an independence from state and society
as his ideal, to escape the chains of circumstance
here: that is his value to us. Many steps in the
enfranchisement of the philosopher are unknown
in Germany; they cannot always remain so. Our
artists live more bravely and honourably than our
philosophers; and Richard Wagner, the best
example of all, shows how genius need not fear a
fight to the death with the established forms and
ordinances, if we wish to bring the higher truth
and order, that lives in him, to the light. The
"truth," however, of which we hear so much from
our professors, seems to be a far more modest
being, and no kind of disturbance is to be feared
from her; she is an easy-going and pleasant
creature, who is continually assuring the powers
that be that no one need fear any trouble from
her quarter: for man is only "pure reason. " And
therefore I will say, that philosophy in Germany
has more and more to learn not to be "pure


## p. 120 (#166) ############################################

120 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
reason": and it may well take as its model
"Schopenhauer the man. "
It is no less than a marvel that he should have
come to be this human kind of example: for he
was beset, within and without, by the most frightful
dangers, that would have crushed and broken a
weaker nature. I think there was a strong likeli-
hood of Schopenhauer the man going under, and
leaving at best a residue of "pure reason": and
only "at best"—it was more probable that neither
man nor reason would survive.
A modern Englishman sketches the most usual
danger to extraordinary men who live in a society
that worships the ordinary, in this manner:—" Such
uncommon characters are first cowed, then become
sick and melancholy, and then die. A Shelley
could never have lived in England: a race of
Shelleys would have been impossible. " Our
Holderins and Kleists were undone by their un-
conventionality, and were not strong enough for
the climate of the so-called German culture; and
only iron natures like Beethoven, Goethe, Schopen-
hauer and Wagner could hold out against it. Even
in them the effect of this weary toiling and moil-
ing is seen in many lines and wrinkles; their
breathing is harder and their voice is forced. The
old diplomatist who had only just seen and spoken
to Goethe, said to a friend—" Voila un homme qui
a eu de grands chagrins ! " which Goethe translated
to mean "That is a man who has taken great pains
in his life. " And he adds, "If the trace of the
sorrow and activity we have gone through cannot
be wiped from our features, it is no wonder that


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 121
all that survives of us and our struggles should
bear the same impress. " And thie is the Goethe
to whom our cultured Philistines point as the
happiest of Germans, that they may prove their
thesis, that it must be possible to be happy among
them—with the unexpressed corollary that no one
can be pardoned for feeling unhappy and lonely
among them. Hence they push their doctrine, in
practice, to its merciless conclusion, that there is
always a secret guilt in isolation. Poor Schopen-
hauer had this secret guilt too in his heart, the
guilt of cherishing his philosophy more than his
fellow-men; and he was so unhappy as to have
learnt from Goethe that he must defend his philo-
sophy at all costs from the neglect of his contem-
poraries, to save its very existence: for there is a
kind of Grand Inquisitor's Censure in which the
Germans, according to Goethe, are great adepts:
it is called—inviolable silence. This much at least
was accomplished by it;—the greater part of the
first edition of Schopenhauer's masterpiece had to
be turned into waste paper. The imminent risk that
his great work would be undone, merely by neglect,
bred in him a state of unrest—perilous and uncon-
trollable;—for no single adherent of any note
presented himself. It is tragic to watch his search
for any evidence of recognition: and his piercing
cry of triumph at last, that he would now really be
read {legor et legar), touches us with a thrill of
pain. All the traits in which we do not see the
great philosopher show us the suffering man,
anxious for his noblest possessions; he was tortured
by the fear of losing his little property, and perhaps


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122 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
of no longer being able to maintain in its purity
his truly antique attitude towards philosophy. He
often chose falsely in his desire to find real trust
and compassion in men, only to return with a heavy
heart to his faithful dog again. He was absolutely
alone, with no single friend of his own kind to
comfort him; and between one and none there lies
an infinity—as ever between something and noth-
ing. No one who has true friends knows what
real loneliness means, though he may have the
whole world in antagonism round him. Ah, I see
well ye do not know what isolation is! Whenever
there are great societies with governments and
religions and public opinions—where there is a
tyranny, in short, there will the lonely philosopher
be hated: for philosophy offers an asylum to man-
kind where no tyranny can penetrate, the inner
sanctuary, the centre of the heart's labyrinth: and
the tyrants are galled at it. Here do the lonely
men lie hid: but here too lurks their greatest
danger. These men who have saved their inner
freedom, must also live and be seen in the outer
world: they stand in countless human relations by
their birth, position, education and country, their
own circumstances and the importunity of others:
and so they are presumed to hold an immense
number of opinions, simply because these happen
to prevail: every look that is not a denial counts
as an assent, every motion of the hand that does
not destroy is regarded as an aid. These free and
lonely men know that they perpetually seem other
than they are. While they wish for nothing but
>
truth and honesty, they are in a net of misunder-


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SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 123
standing; and that ardent desire cannot prevent
a mist of false opinions, of adaptations and wrong
conclusions, of partial misapprehension and in-
tentional reticence, from gathering round their
actions. And there settles a cloud of melancholy
on their brows: for such natures hate the necessity
of pretence worse than death: and the continual
bitterness gives them a threatening and volcanic
character. They take revenge from time to time
for their forced concealment and self-restraint:
they issue from their dens with lowering looks:
their words and deeds are explosive, and may lead
to their own destruction. Schopenhauer lived
amid dangers of this sort. Such lonely men need
love, and friends, to whom they can be as open and
sincere as to themselves, and in whose presence the
deadening silence and hypocrisy may cease. Take
their friends away, and there is left an increasing
peril; Heinrich von Kleist was broken by the lack
of love, and the most terrible weapon against
unusual men is to drive them into themselves;
and then their issuing forth again is a volcanic
eruption. Yet there are always some demi-gods
who can bear life under these fearful conditions
and can be their conquerors: and if you would hear
their lonely chant, listen to the music of Beet-
hoven.
So the first danger in whose shadow Schopen-
hauer lived was—isolation. The second is called
—doubting of the truth. To this every thinker is
liable who sets out from the philosophy of Kant,
provided he be strong and sincere in his sorrows
and his desires, and not a mere tinkling thought-


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122 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
of no longer being able to maintain in its purity
his truly antique attitude towards philosophy. He
often chose falsely in his desire to find real trust
and compassion in men, only to return with a heavy
heart to his faithful dog again. He was absolutely
alone, with no single friend of his own kind to
comfort him; and between one and none there lies
an infinity—as ever between something and noth-
ing. No one who has true friends knows what
real loneliness means, though he may have the
whole world in antagonism round him. Ah, I see
well ye do not know what isolation is! Whenever
there are great societies with governments and
religions and public opinions—where there is a
tyranny, in short, there will the lonely philosopher
be hated: for philosophy offers an asylum to man-
kind where no tyranny can penetrate, the inner
sanctuary, the centre of the heart's labyrinth: and
the tyrants are galled at it.