No More Learning

Is it not premature death, or at least
mutilation, for anything whose living influence is
not yet exhausted, when men turn their curious
eyes to the little minutiae of life and art, and look
for problems of knowledge where one ought to
learn to live, and forget problems? Set a couple
of these modern biographers to consider the origins
of Christianity or the Lutheran reformation: their
sober, practical investigations would be quite
sufficient to make all spiritual "action at a dis-
tance" impossible: just as the smallest animal
can prevent the growth of the mightiest oak by
simply eating up the acorn. All living things need
an atmosphere, a mysterious mist, around them.
If that veil be taken away and a religion, an art,
or a genius condemned to revolve like astar with-
out an atmosphere, we must not be surprised if it
becomes hard and unfruitful, and soon withers. It
is so with all great things "that never prosper
without some illusion," as Hans Sachs says in the
Meistersinger.
Every people, every man even, who would
become ripe, needs such a veil of illusion, such a
protecting cloud. But now men hate to become
ripe, for they honour history above life. They cry
in triumph that "science is now beginning to rule
life. " Possibly it might; but a life thus ruled is


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 61
not of much value. It is not such true life, and
promises much less for the future than the life that
used to be guided not by science, but by instincts
and powerful illusions. But this is not to be the
age of ripe, alert and harmonious personalities, but
of work that may be of most use to the common-
wealth. Men are to be fashioned to the needs of
the time, that they may soon take their place in
the machine. They must work in the factory of
the "common good " before they are ripe, or rather
to prevent them becoming ripe; for this would
be a luxury that would draw away a deal of power
from the " labour market. " Some birds are blinded
that they may sing better; I do not think men
sing to-day better than their grandfathers, though
•I am sure they are blinded early. But light, too
clear, too sudden and dazzling, is the infamous
means used to blind them. The young man is
kicked through all the centuries: boys who know
nothing of war, diplomacy, or commerce are con-
sidered fit to be introduced to political history.
We moderns also run through art galleries and
hear concerts in the same way as the young man
runs through history. We can feel that one thing
sounds differently from another, and pronounce on
the different" effects. " And the power of gradually
losing all feelings of strangeness or astonishment,
and finally being pleased at anything, is called the
historical sense, or historical culture. The crowd
of influences streaming on the young soul is so
great, the clods of barbarism and violence flung at
him so strange and overwhelming, that an assumed
stupidity is his only refuge. Where there is a


## p. 62 (#92) ##############################################

62 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
subtler and stronger self-consciousness we find
another emotion too—disgust. The young man
has become homeless: he doubts all ideas, all
moralities. He knows "it was different in every
age, and what you are does not matter. " In a
heavy apathy he lets opinion on opinion pass by
him, and understands the meaning of Holderlin's
words when he read the work of Diogenes Laertius
on the lives and doctrines of the Greek philo-
sophers: "I have seen here too what has often
occurred to me, that the change and waste in
men's thoughts and systems is far more tragic
than the fates that overtake what men are accus-
tomed to call the only realities. " No, such study
of history bewilders and overwhelms. It is not
necessary for youth, as the ancients show, but even
in the highest degree dangerous, as the moderns
show. Consider the historical student, the heir of
ennui, that appears even in his boyhood. He has
the "methods" for original work, the "correct
ideas" and the airs of the master at his fingers'
ends. A little isolated period of the past is marked
out for sacrifice. He cleverly applies his method,
and produces something, or rather, in prouder
phrase, "creates" something. He becomes a
"servant of truth" and a ruler in the great domain
of history. If he was what they call ripe as a
boy, he is now over-ripe. You only need shake
him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap;
but the wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its
worm. Believe me, if men work in the factory of
science and have to make themselves useful before
they are really ripe, science is ruined as much as


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
63
the slaves who have been employed too soon. I
am sorry to use the common jargon about slave-
owners and taskmasters in respect of such con-
ditions, that might be thought free from any
economic taint: but the words "factory, labour-
market, auction-sale, practical use," and all the
auxiliaries of egoism, come involuntarily to the lips
in describing the younger generation of savants.
Successful mediocrity tends to become still more
mediocre, science still more “useful. ” Our modern
savants are only wise on one subject, in all the
rest they are, to say the least, different from those
of the old stamp. In spite of that they demand
honour and profit for themselves, as if the state
and public opinion were bound to take the new
coinage for the same value as the old. The carters
have made a trade-compact among themselves,
and settled that genius is superfluous, for every
carrier is being re-stamped as one. And probably
a later age will see that their edifices are only
carted together and not built. To those who have
ever on their lips the modern cry of battle and
sacrifice—“Division of labour! fall into line ! ” we
may say roundly: "If you try to further the
progress of science as quickly as possible, you will
end by destroying it as quickly as possible; just
as the hen is worn out which you force to lay too
many eggs. ” The progress of science has been
amazingly rapid in the last decade; but consider
the savants, those exhausted hens. They are
certainly not “harmonious” natures: they can
merely cackle more than before, because they lay
eggs oftener : but the eggs are always smaller,


## p. 63 (#94) ##############################################

62
THOUGIITS OUT OF SEASON.
subtler and stronger self-consciousness we find
another emotion too-disgust. The young man
has become homeless: he doubts all ideas, all
moralities. He knows “it was different in every
age, and what you are does not matter. ” In a
heavy apathy he lets opinion on opinion pass by
him, and understands the meaning of Hölderlin's
words when he read the work of Diogenes Laertius
on the lives and doctrines of the Greek philo-
sophers: “I have seen here too what has often
occurred to me, that the change and waste in
men's thoughts and systems is far more tragic
than the fates that overtake what men are accus-
tomed to call the only realities. ” No, such study
of history bewilders and overwhelms. It is not
necessary for youth, as the ancients show, but even
in the highest degree dangerous, as the moderns
show. Consider the historical student, the heir of
ennui, that appears even in his boyhood. He has
the “methods” for original work, the “correct
ideas” and the airs of the master at his fingers'
ends. A little isolated period of the past is marked
out for sacrifice. He cleverly applies his method,
and produces something, or rather, in prouder
phrase, “creates” something. He becomes a
“servant of truth” and a ruler in the great domain
of history. If he was what they call ripe as a
boy, he is now over-ripe. You only need shake
him and wisdom will rattle down into your lap;
but the wisdom is rotten, and every apple has its
worm. Believe me, if men work in the factory of
science and have to make themselves useful before
they are really ripe, science is ruined as much as


## p. 63 (#95) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 63
the slaves who have been employed too soon. I
am sorry to use the common jargon about slave-
owners and taskmasters in respect of such con-
ditions, that might be thought free from any
economic taint: but the words "factory, labour-
market, auction-sale, practical use," and all the
auxiliaries of egoism, come involuntarily to the lips
in describing the younger generation of savants.
Successful mediocrity tends to become still more
mediocre, science still more "useful. " Our modern
savants are only wise on one subject, in all the
rest they are, to say the least, different from those
of the old stamp. In spite of that they demand
honour and profit for themselves, as if the state
and public opinion were bound to take the new
coinage for the same value as the old. The carters
have made a trade-compact among themselves,
and settled that genius is superfluous, for every
carrier is being re-stamped as one. And probably
a later age will see that their edifices are only
carted together and not built. To those who have
ever on their lips the modern cry of battle and
sacrifice—" Division of labour! fall into line! " we
may say roundly: "If you try to further the
progress of science as quickly as possible, you will
end by destroying it as quickly as possible; just
as the hen is worn out which you force to lay too
many eggs. " The progress of science has been
amazingly rapid in the last decade; but consider
the savants, those exhausted hens. They are
certainly not "harmonious" natures: they can
merely cackle more than before, because they lay
eggs oftener: but the eggs are always smaller,


## p. 64 (#96) ##############################################

64 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
though their books are bigger. The natural result
of it all is the favourite "popularising" of science
(or rather its feminising and infantising), the
villainous habit of cutting the cloth of science to
fit the figure of the "general public. " Goethe saw
the abuse in this, and demanded that science
should only influence the outer world by way of
a nobler ideal of action. The older generation
of savants had good reason for thinking this abuse
an oppressive burden: the modern savants have an
equally good reason for welcoming it, because,
leaving their little corner of knowledge out of
account, they are part of the "general public"
themselves, and its needs are theirs. They only
require to take themselves less seriously to be able
to open their little kingdom successfully to popular
curiosity. This easy-going behaviour is called " the
modest condescension of the savant to the people ";
whereas in reality he has only "descended" to
himself, so far as he is not a savant but a plebeian.
Rise to the conception of a people, you learned
men; you can never have one noble or high
enough. If you thought much of the people, you
would have compassion towards them, and shrink
from offering your historical aquafortis as a refresh-
ing drink. But you really think very little of them,
for you dare not take any reasonable pains for their
future; and you act like practical pessimists, men
who feel the coming catastrophe and become in-
different and careless of their own and others'
existence. "If only the earth last for us: and if
it do not last, it is no matter. " Thus they come
,-k. to live an ironical existence.


## p. 65 (#97) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 6$
VIII.
It may seem a paradox, though it is none, that I
should attribute a kind of "ironical self-conscious-
ness" to an age that is generally so honestly, and
clamorously, vain of its historical training; and
should see a suspicion hovering near it that there
is really nothing to be proud of, and a fear lest
the time for rejoicing at historical knowledge
may soon have gone by. Goethe has shown a
similar riddle in man's nature, in his remarkable
study of Newton: he finds a "troubled feeling of
his own error" at the base—or rather on the height
—of his being, just as if he was conscious at times
of having a deeper insight into things, that vanished
the moment after. This gave him a certain ironical
view of his own nature. And one finds that the
greater and more developed "historical men" are
conscious of all the superstition and absurdity in
the belief that a people's education need-] be so
extremely historical as it is; the mightiest nations,
mightiest in action and influence, have lived other-
wise, and their youth has been trained otherwise.
The knowledge gives a sceptical turn to their
minds. "The absurdity and superstition," these
sceptics say, "suit men like ourselves, who come
as the latest withered shoots of a gladder and
mightier stock, and fulfil Hesiod's prophecy, that
men will one day be born gray-headed, and that
Zeus will destroy that generation as soon as the
sign be visible. " Historical culture is really a kind
of inherited grayness, and those who have borne
VOL. II. E


## p. 66 (#98) ##############################################

66
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
,v
>
. •
)«
*-*'
V
its mark from childhood must believe instinctively
in the old age of mankind. To old age belongs
the old man's business of looking back and casting
up his accounts, of seeking consolation in the
memories of the past,—in historical culture. But
the human race is tough and persistent, and will
not admit that the lapse of a thousand years, or
a hundred thousand, entitles any one to sum up its
progress from the past to the future; that is, it
will not be observed as a whole at all by that
infinitesimal atom, the individual man. What is
there in a couple of thousand years—the period of
thirty-four consecutive human lives of sixty years
each—to make us speak of youth at the beginning,
and " the old age of mankind " at the end of them?
Does not this paralysing belief in a fast-fading
humanity cover the misunderstanding of a theo-
logical idea, inherited from the Middle Ages, that
the end of the world is approaching and we are
waiting anxiously for the judgment? Does not
the increasing demand for historical judgment give
us that idea in a new dress? as if our time were
the latest possible time, and commanded to hold
that universal judgment of the past, which the
Christian never expected from a man, but from
"the Son of Man. " The memento mori, spoken
to humanity as well as the individual, was a sting
that never ceased to pain, the crown of mediaeval
knowledge and consciousness.
The opposite message of a later time, memento
vivere, is spoken rather timidly, without the full
power of the lungs; and there is something almost
dishonest about it. For mankind still keeps to


## p. 67 (#99) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 6j
its memento mori, and shows it by the universal
need for history; science may flap its wings as it
will, it has never been able to gain the free air.
A deep feeling of hopelessness has remained, and
taken the historical colouring that has now darkened
and depressed all higher education. A religion
that, of all the hours of man's life, thinks the last
the most important, that has prophesied the end
of earthly life and condemned all creatures to live
in the fifth act of a tragedy, may call forth the
subtlest and noblest powers of man, but it is an
enemy to all new planting, to all bold attempts or
free aspirations. It opposes all flight into the
unknown, because it has no life or hope there
itself. It only lets the new bud press forth on
sufferance, to blight it in its own good time: "it
might lead life astray and give it a false value. "
What the Florentines did under the influence of
Savonarola's exhortations, when they made the
famous holocaust of pictures, manuscripts, masks
and mirrors, Christianity would like to do with
every culture that allured to further effort and
bore that memento vivere on its standard. And
if it cannot take the direct way—the way of main
force—it gains its end all the same by allying
itself with historical culture, though generally
without its connivance; and speaking through its
mouth, turns away every fresh birth with a shrug
of its shoulders, and makes us feel all the more
that we are late-comers and Epigoni, that we are,
in a word, born with gray hair. The deep and
serious contemplation of the unworthiness of all
v
past action, of the world ripe for judgment, has


## p. 68 (#100) #############################################

68 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
been whittled down to the sceptical consciousness
that it is anyhow a good thing to know all that has
happened, as it is too late to do anything better.
The historical sense makes its servants passive
and retrospective. Only in moments of forgetful-
ness, when that sense is dormant, does the man
who is sick of the historical fever ever act; though
he only analyses his deed again after it is over
(which prevents it from having any further con-
sequences), and finally puts it on the dissecting
table for the purposes of history. In this sense
we are still living in the Middle Ages, and history
is still a disguised theology; just as the reverence
with which the unlearned layman looks on the
learned class is inherited through the clergy.
What men gave formerly to the Church they give
now, though in smaller measure, to science. But
the fact of giving at all is the work of the Church,
[ not of the modern spirit, which among its other
i good qualities has something of the miser in it,
and is a bad hand at the excellent virtue of
liberality.
These words may not be very acceptable, any
more than my derivation of the excess of history
from the mediaeval memento mori and the
hopelessness that Christianity bears in its heart
towards all future ages of earthly existence. But
you should always try to replace my hesitating
explanations by a better one. For the origin of
historical culture, and of its absolutely radical
antagonism to the spirit of a new time and a
"modern consciousness," must itself be known
by a historical process. History must solve the


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 69
problem of history, science must turn its sting
against itself This threefold "must" is the im-
perative of the "new spirit," if it is really to con-
tain something new, powerful, vital and original.
Or is it true that we Germans—to leave the
Romance nations out of account—must always be
mere "followers" in all the higher reaches of
culture, because that is all we can be? The words
of Wilhelm Wackernagel are well worth pondering:
"We Germans are a nation of' followers,' and with
all our higher science and even our faith, are
merely the successors of the ancient world. Even
those who are opposed to it are continually
breathing the immortal spirit of classical culture
with that of Christianity: and if any one could
separate these two elements from the living air
surrounding the soul of man, there would not be
much remaining for a spiritual life to exist on. "
Even if we would rest content with our vocation to
follow antiquity, even if we decided to take it in an
earnest and strenuous spirit and to show our high
prerogative in our earnestness,—we should yet be
compelled to ask whether it were our eternal
destiny to be pupils of a fading antiquity. We
might be allowed at some time to put our aim
higher and further above us. And after con-
gratulating ourselves on having brought that
secondary spirit of Alexandrian culture in us to
such marvellous productiveness — through our
"universal history"—we might go on to place
before us, as our noblest prize, the still higher task
of striving beyond and above this Alexandrian
world; and bravely find our prototypes in the


## p. 70 (#102) #############################################

70 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
ancient Greek world, where all was great, natural
and human. But it is just there that we find the
reality of a true unhistorical culture—and in spite
of that, or perhaps because of it, an unspeakably
rich and vital culture. Were we Germans nothing
but followers, we could not be anything greater or
prouder than the lineal inheritors and followers of
such a culture.
This however must be added. The thought of
being Epigoni, that is often a torture, can yet
create a spring of hope for the future, to the indi-
vidual as well as the people: so far, that is, as we
can regard ourselves as the heirs and followers of
the marvellous classical power, and see therein both
our honour and our spur. But not as the late and
bitter fruit of a powerful stock, giving that stock a
further spell of cold life, as antiquaries and grave-
diggers. Such late-comers live truly an ironical
existence. Annihilation follows their halting walk
on tiptoe through life. They shudder before it in
the midst of their rejoicing over the past. They
are living memories, and their own memories have
no meaning; for there are none to inherit them.
And thus they are wrapped in the melancholy
thought that their life is an injustice, which no
future life can set right again.
Suppose that these antiquaries, these late
arrivals, were to change their painful ironic
modesty for a certain shamelessness. Suppose we
heard them saying, aloud," The race is at its zenith,
for it has manifested itself consciously for the first
time. " We should have a comedy, in which the
dark meaning of a certain very celebrated


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
71
philosophy would unroll itself for the benefit of
German culture. I believe there has been no
dangerous turning-point in the progress of German
culture in this century that has not been made
more dangerous by the enormous and still living
influence of this Hegelian philosophy. The belief
that one is a late-comer in the world is, anyhow,
harmful and degrading: but it must appear
frightful and devastating when it raises our late-
comer to godhead, by a neat turn of the wheel, as'
the true meaning and object of all past creation,
and his conscious misery is set up as the perfection
of the world's history. Such a point of view has
accustomed the Germans to talk of a "world-
process," and justify their own time as its necessary
result. And it has put history in the place of the
other spiritual powers, art and religion, as the one
sovereign; inasmuch as it is the "Idea realising
itself," the " Dialectic of the spirit of the nations,"
and the "tribunal of the world. "
History understood in this Hegelian way has
been cgntemptuously called Qod! s_,sojourn upon
earth,—though the God was first created by the
history. He, at any rate, became transparent and
intelligible inside Hegelian skulls, and has risen
through all the dialectically possible steps in his
being up to the manifestation of the Self: so that
for Hegel the highest and final stage of the world-
process came together in his own Berlin existence.
He ought to have said that everything after him
was merely to be regarded as the musical coda of
the great historical rondo,—or rather, as simply
(x IcFilHtt)
superfluous. He has not said it; and thus he has


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72 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
implanted in a generation leavened throughout by
him the worship of the "power of history," that
practically turns every moment into a sheer gaping
at success, into an idolatry of the actual: for which
we have now discovered the characteristic phrase
"to adapt ourselves to circumstances. " But the
man who has once learnt to crook the knee and
bow the head before the power of history, nods
"yes" at last, like a Chinese doll, to every power,
whether it be a government or a public opinion or
a numerical majority; and his limbs move correctly
as the power pulls the string. If each success
have come by a "rational necessity," and every
event show the victory of logic or the "Idea,"
then—down on your knees quickly, and let every
step in the ladder of success have its reverence!
There are no more living mythologies, you say?
Religions are at their last gasp? Look at the
religion of the power_jpfJu§tory, and the priesis_of
the mythology of Ideas, with their scarred knees!
Do not all the virtues follow in the train of the new
faith? And shall we riot call it unselfishness,
-^ when the historical man lets himself be turned into
V W»«Ui, an "objective" mirror of all that is? Is it not
magnanimity to renounce all power in heaven and
earth in order to adore the mere fact of power?
Is it not justice, always to hold the balance of forces
in your hands and observe which is the stronger
and heavier? And what a school of politeness is
such a contemplation of the past! To take every-
thing objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love
nothing, to understand everything—makes one

gentle and pliable. Even if a man brought up in


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 73
this school will show himself openly offended, one
is just as pleased, knowing it is only meant in the
artistic sense of ira et studium, though it is really
sine ira et studio.
What old-fashioned thoughts I have on such a
combination of virtue and mythology! But they
must out, however one may laugh at them. I
would even say that history always teaches—"it
was once," and morality—" it ought not to be, or
have been. " So history becomes a compendium of
actual immorality. But how wrong would one be
to regard history as the judge of this actual im-
morality! Morality is offended by the fact that
a Raphael had to die at thirty-six; such a being
ought not to die. If you came to the help of
history, as the apologists of the actual, you would
say: "he had spoken everything that was in him
to speak, a longer life would only have enabled
him to create a similar beauty, and not a new
beauty," and so on. Thus you become an advo-
cates diaboli by setting up the success, the fact,
as your idol: whereas the fact is always dull, at all
times more like a calf than a god. Your apologies
for history are helped by ignorance: for it is only
because you do not know what a natura naturans
like Raphael is, that you are not on fire when
you think it existed once and can never exist
again. Some one has lately tried to tell us that
Goethe had out-lived himself with his eighty-two
years: and yet I would gladly take two of Goethe's
"outlived " years in exchange for whole cartloads
of fresh modern lifetimes, to have another set of
such conversations as those with Eckermann, and


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74 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
be preserved from all the "modern" talk of these
esquires of the moment. How few living men
have a right to live, as against those mighty dead!
That the many live and those few live no longer,
is simply a brutal truth, that is, a piece of unalter-
able folly, a blank wall of " it was once so " against
the moral judgment "it ought not to have been.
"
Yes, against the moral judgment! For you may
speak of what virtue you will, of justice, courage,
magnanimity, of wisdom and human compassion,
—you will find the virtuous man will always rise
against the blind force of facts, the tyranny of the
actual, and submit himself to laws that are not the
fickle laws of history. He ever swims against the
waves of history, either by fighting his passions, as
the nearest brute facts of his existence, or by
training himself to honesty amid the glittering
nets spun round him by falsehood. Were history
nothing more than the "all-embracing system of
passion and error," man would have to read it as
Goethe wished Werther to be read;—just as if it
called to him, "Be a man and follow me not! "
But fortunately history also keeps alive for us the
memory of the great "fighters against history,"
that is, against the blind power of the actual; it
puts itself in the pillory just by glorifying the true
historical nature in men who troubled themselves
very little about the " thus it is," in order that they
might follow a "thus it must be" with greater joy
and greater pride. Not to drag their generation to
the grave, but to found a new one—that is the
motive that ever drives them onward; and even if
they are born late, there is a way of living by


## p. 75 (#107) #############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 75
which they can forget it—and future generations
will know them only as the first-comers.
IX.
Is perhaps our time such a " first-comer "? Its
historical sense is so strong, and has such universal
and boundless expression, that future times will
commend it, if only for this, as a first-comer—
if there be any future time, in the sense of future
culture. But here comes a grave doubt. CloseJto_
the modern man's pride there stands his irony
about himself, his consciousness that he must live
in a historical, or twilit, atmosphere, the fear that
he can retain none of his youthful hopes and powers.
Here and there one goes further into cynicism, and
justifies the course of history, nay, the whole
evolution of the world, as simply leading up to the
modern man, according to the cynical canon:—
"what you see now had to come, man had to be
thus and not otherwise, no one can stand against
this necessity. " He who cannot rest in a state of
irony flies for refuge to the cynicism. The last
decade makes him a present of one of its most
beautiful inventions, a full and well-rounded phrase
for this cynicism: he calls his way of living thought-
lessly and after the fashion of his time," the full
surrender of his personality to the world-process. "
The personality and the world-process! The world-
process and the personality of the earthworm! If
only one did not eternally hear the word "world,
world, world," that hyperbole of all hyperboles *'~


## p. 76 (#108) #############################################

76 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
when we should only speak, in a decent manner,
of "man, man, man "! Heirs of the Greeks and
Romans, of Christianity? All that seems nothing
to the cynics. But "heirs of the world-process ";
the final target of the world-process; the meaning
and solution of all riddles of the universe, the ripest
fruit on the tree of knowledge ! —that is what I call
a right noble thought: by this token are the first-
lings of every time to be known, although they
may have arrived last. The historical imagination
has never flown so far, even in a dream; for now
the history of man is merely the continuation of
that of animals and plants: the universal historian
finds traces of himself even in the utter depths of
the sea, in the living slime. He stands astounded
in face of the enormous way that man has run,
and his gaze quivers before the mightier wonder,
the modern man who can see all this way! He
stands proudly on the pyramid of the world-process:
and while he lays the final stone of his knowledge,
he seems to cry aloud to listening Nature: "We
are at the top, we are the top, we are the comple-
tion of Nature! "
O thou too proud European of the nineteenth
century, art thou not mad? Thy knowledge does
not complete Nature, it only kills thine own nature!
Measure the height of what thou knowest by the
depths of thy power to do. Thou climbest the
sunbeams of knowledge up towards heaven—but
also down to Chaos. Thy manner of going is
fatal to thee; the ground slips from under thy feet
into the unknown; thy life has no other stay, but
inly spider's webs that every new stroke of thy


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. yj
knowledge tears asunder. —But not another serious
word about this, for there is a lighter side to it all.
The moralist, the artist, the saint and the states-
man, may well be troubled, when they see that all
foundations are breaking up in mad unconscious
ruin, and resolving themselves into the ever flowing
stream of becoming; that all creation is being
tirelessly spun into webs of history by the modern
man, the great spider in the mesh of the world-net.
We ourselves may be glad for once in a way that
we see it all in the shining magic mirror of a
philosophical parodist, in whose brain the time has
come to an ironical consciousness of itself, to a point
even of wickedness, in Goethe's phrase. Hegel
once said, "when the spirit makes a fresh start,
we philosophers are at hand. " Our time did make
a fresh start—into irony, and lo! Edward von
Hartmann was at hand, with his famous Philosophy
of the Unconscious—or, more plainly, his philo-
sophy of unconscious irony. We have seldom read
a more jovial production, a greater philosophical
joke than Hartmann's book. Any one whom it does
not fully enlighten about "becoming," who is not
swept and garnished throughout by it, is ready
to become a monument of the past himself. The
beginning and end of the world-process, from the
first throb of consciousness to its final leap into
nothingness, with the task of our generation settled
for it;—all drawn from that clever fount of inspira-
tion, the Unconscious, and glittering in Apocalyptic
light, imitating an honest seriousness to the life,
as if it were a serious philosophy and not a huge
joke,—such a system shows its creator to be one


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78 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
of the first philosophical parodists of all time.
Let us then sacrifice on his altar, and offer the
inventor of a true universal medicine a lock of
hair, in Schleiermacher's phrase. For what
medicine would be more salutary to combat the
excess of historical culture than Hartmann's
parody of the world's history?
If we wished to express in the fewest words
what Hartmann really has to tell us from his
mephitic tripod of unconscious irony, it would be
something like this: our time could only remain
as it is, if men should become thoroughly sick of
this existence. And I fervently believe he is right.
The frightful petrifaction of the time, the restless
rattle of the ghostly bones, held naively up to us
by David Strauss as the most beautiful fact of all—
is justified by Hartmann not only from the past,
ex causis efficientibus, but also from the future,
ex causa finali. The rogue let light stream over
our time from the last day, and saw that it
was very good,—for him, that is, who wishes
to feel the indigestibility of life at its full
strength, and for whom the last day cannot
come quickly enough. True, Hartmann calls the
old age of life that mankind is approaching the
"old age of man ": but that is the blessed state,
according to him, where there is only a successful
mediocrity; where art is the "evening's amuse-
ment of the Berlin financier," and "the time has
no more need for geniuses, either because it would
be casting pearls before swine, or because the time
has advanced beyond the stage where the geniuses
are found, to one more important," to that stage


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 79
of social evolution, in fact, in which every worker
"leads a comfortable existence, with hours of work
that leave him sufficient leisure to cultivate his
intellect. " Rogue of rogues, you say well what is
the aspiration of present-day mankind: but you
know too what a spectre of disgust will arise at the
end of this old age of mankind, as the result of the
intellectual culture of stolid mediocrity. It is very
pitiful to see, but it will be still more pitiful yet.
"Antichrist is visibly extending his arms :" yet it
must be so, for after all we are on the right road—
of disgust at all existence. "Forward then, boldly,
with the world-process, as workers in the vineyard
of the Lord, for it is the process alone that can
lead to redemption! "
The vineyard of the Lord! The process! To
redemption! Who does not see and hear in this
how historical culture, that only knows the word
"becoming," parodies itself on purpose and says
the most irresponsible things about itself through
its grotesque mask? For what does the rogue
mean by this cry to the workers in the vineyard?
By what "work" are they to strive boldly forward?
Or, to ask another question:—what further has the
historically educated fanatic of the world-process
to do,—swimming and drowning as he is in the
sea of becoming,—that he may at last gather in
that vintage of disgust, the precious grape of the
vineyard? He has nothing to do but to live on
as he has lived, love what he has loved, hate what
he has hated, and read the newspapers he has
always read. The only sin is for him to live other-
■
wise than he has lived. We are told how he has


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80 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
lived, with monumental clearness, by that famous
page with its large typed sentences, on which the
whole rabble of our modern cultured folk have
thrown themselves in blind ecstasy, because they
believe they read their own justification there,
haloed with an Apocalyptic light. For the uncon-
scious parodist has demanded of every one of them,
"the full surrender of his personality to the world-
process, for the sake of his end, the redemption of
the world ": or still more clearly,—" the assertion of
the will to live is proclaimed to be the first step on
the right road: for it is only in the full surrender
to life and its sorrow, and not in the cowardice of
personal renunciation and retreat, that anything
can be done for the world-process. . . . The striving
for the denial of the individual will is as foolish as it
is useless, more foolish even than suicide. . . .
The thoughtful reader will understand without
further explanation how a practical philosophy can
be erected on these principles, and that such a
philosophy cannot endure any disunion, but only
the fullest reconciliation with life. "
The thoughtful reader will understand! Then
one really could misunderstand Hartmann! And
what a splendid joke it is, that he should be mis-
understood! Why should the Germans of to-day be
particularly subtle? A valiant Englishman looks
in vain for "delicacy of perception" and dares to
say that " in the German mind there does seem to
be something splay, something blunt-edged, un-
handy and infelicitous. " Could the great German
parodist contradict this? According to him, we are
approaching "that ideal condition in which the


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 81
human race makes its history with full conscious-
ness ": but we are obviously far from the perhaps
more ideal condition, in which mankind can read
Hartmann's book with full consciousness. If we
once reach it, the word "world-process" will never
pass any man's lips again without a smile. For he
will remember the time when people listened to the
mock gospel of Hartmann, sucked it in, attacked it,
reverenced it, extended it and canonised it with all
the honesty of that "German mind," with "the un-
canny seriousness of an owl," as Goethe has it. But
the world must go forward, the ideal condition
cannot be won by dreaming, it must be fought and
wrestled for, and the way to redemption lies only
through joyousness, the way to redemption from
that dull, owlish seriousness. The time will come
when we shall wisely keep away from all construc-
tions of the world-process, or even of the history of
man; a time when we shall no more look at masses
but at individuals, who form a sort of bridge over
the wan stream of becoming. They may not per-
haps continue a process, but they live out of time,
as contemporaries: and thanks to history that per-
mits such a company, they live as the Republic of
geniuses of which Schopenhauer speaks. One giant
calls to the other across the waste spaces of time,
and the high spirit-talk goes on, undisturbed by
the wanton noisy dwarfs who creep among them.
The task of history is to be the mediator between
these, and even to give the motive and power to
produce the great man. The aim of mankind can
lie ultimately only in its highest examples.
Our low comedian has his word on this too, with
VOL. II. F


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82 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
his wonderful dialectic, which is just as genuine
as its admirers are admirable. "The idea of
evolution cannot stand with our giving the
world-process an endless duration in the past,
for thus every conceivable evolution must have
taken place, which is not the case (O rogue! ); and
so we cannot allow the process an endless duration
in the future. Both would raise the conception of
evolution to a mere ideal (And again rogue! ), and
would make the world-process like the sieve of the
Danaides. The complete victory of the logical over
the illogical (O thou complete rogue! ) must coin-
cide with the last day, the end in time of the world-
process. " No, thou clear, scornful spirit, so long as
the illogical rules as it does to-day,—so long, for
example, as the world-process can be spoken of as
thou speakest of it, amid such deep-throated assent,
—the last day is yet far off. For it is still too joy-
ful on this earth, many an illusion still blooms here
—like the illusion of thy contemporaries about thee.
We are not yet ripe to be hurled into thy nothing-
ness: for we believe that we shall have a still more
splendid time, when men once begin to understand
thee, thou misunderstood, unconscious one! But
if, in spite of that, disgust shall come throned in
power, as thou hast prophesied to thy readers; if
thy portrayal of the present and the future shall
prove to be right,—and no one has despised them
with such loathing as thou,—I am ready then to cry
with the majority in the form prescribed by thee,
that next Saturday evening, punctually at twelve
o'clock, thy world shall fall to pieces. And our
decree shall conclude thus—from to-morrow time


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 83
shall not exist, and the Times shall no more be
published. Perhaps it will be in vain, and our
decree of no avail: at any rate we have still time
for a fine experiment. Take a balance and put
Hartmann's " Unconscious " in one of the scales, and
his " World-process " in the other. There are some
who believe they weigh equally; for in each scale
there is an evil word—and a good joke.
When they are once understood, no one will take
Hartmann's words on the world-process as any-
thing but a joke. It is, as a fact, high time to move
forward with the whole battalion of satire and
malice against the excesses of the "historical
sense," the wanton love of the world-process at
the expense of life and existence, the blind con-
fusion of all perspective. And it will be to the
credit of the philosopher of the Unconscious that
he has been the first to see the humour of the
world-process, and to succeed in making others
see it still more strongly by the extraordinary
seriousness of his presentation. The existence of
the " world " and "humanity" need not trouble us
for some time, except to provide us with a good
joke: for the presumption of the small earthworm
is the most uproariously comic thing on the face of
the earth. Ask thyself to what end thou art here,
as an individual; and if no one can tell thee, try
then to justify the meaning of thy existence a
posteriori, by putting before thyself a high and
noble end. Perish on that rock! I know no better
aim for life than to be broken on something great
and impossible, animce magna prodigus. But
if we have the doctrines of the finality of "be-


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84 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
«V'
coming," of the flux of all ideas, types, and species,
of the lack of all radical difference between man
and beast (a true but fatal idea as I think),—if we
have these thrust on the people in the usual mad
way for another generation, no one need be surprised
if that people drown on its little miserable shoals
of egoism, and petrify in its self-seeking. At first it
will fall asunder and cease to be a people. In its
place perhaps individualist systems, secret societies
for the extermination of non-members, and similar
utilitarian creations, will appear on the theatre of
the future. Are we to continue to work for these
creations and write history from the standpoint of
'the masses; to look for laws in it, to be deduced
'from the needs of the masses, the laws of motion
t *j of the lowest loam and clay strata of society? The
j masses seem to be worth notice in three aspects
only: first as the copies of great men, printed on
bad paper from worn-out plates, next as a contrast
to the great men, and lastly as their tools: for the
rest, let the devil and statistics fly away with them!
How could statistics prove that there are laws in
history? Laws? Yes, they may prove how
common and abominably uniform the masses are:
and should we call the effects of leaden folly, imita-
tion, love and hunger—laws? We may admit it:
but we are sure of this too—that so far as there are
laws in history, the laws are of no value and the
history of no value either. And least valuable
of all is that kind of history which takes the great
popular movements as the most important events
of the past, and regards the great men only as their
clearest expression. the visible bubbles on the stream.


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 85
■
Thus the masses have to produce the great man,
chaos to bring forth order; and finally all the hymns
are naturally sung to. the teeming chaos. Every-
thing is called "great" that has moved the masses
for some long time, and becomes, as they say, a
"historical power. " But is not this really an in- j
tentional confusion of quantity and quality? When /
the brutish mob have found some idea, a religious""
idea for example, which satisfies them, when they
have defended it through thick and thin for cen-
turies; then, and then only, will they discover its
inventor to have been a great man. The highest
and noblest does not affect the masses at all. The
historical consequences of Christianity, its "historical
power," toughness and persistence prove nothing,
fortunately, as to its founder's greatness. They
would have been a witness against him. For be- ^ N
tween him and the historical success of Christianity \ ^"^
lies a dark heavy weight of passion and error, lust
of power and honour, and the crushing force of the /
Roman Empire. From this, Christianity had its /
earthly taste, and its earthly foundations too, that |
made its continuance in this world possible. Great-
ness should not depend on success; Demosthenes
is great without it. The purest and noblest ad-
herents of Christianity have always doubted and
hindered, rather than helped, its effect in the world,
its so-called "historical power "; for they were ac-
customed to stand outside the "world," and cared
little for the " process of the Christian Idea. " Hence
they have generally remained unknown to history,
and their very names are lost. In Christian terms,
<r
the devil is the prince of the world, and the lord of


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86 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
progress and consequence: he is the power behind
all " historical power," and so will it remain, how-
ever ill it may sound to-day in ears that are ac-
customed to canonise such power and consequence.
The world has become skilled at giving new names
to things and even baptizing the devil. It is truly
an hour of great danger. Men seem to be near the
discovery that the egoism of individuals, groups
or masses has been at all times the lever of the
"historical movements ": and yet they are in no
way disturbed by the discovery, but proclaim that
"egoism shall be our god. " With this new faith
in their hearts, they begin quite intentionally to
build future history on egoism: though it must be
a clever egoism, one that allows of some limitation,
that it may stand firmer; one that studies history
for the purpose of recognising the foolish kind of
egoism. Their study has taught them that the
state has a special mission in all future egoistic
systems: it will be the patron of all the clever
egoisms, to protect them with all the power of its
military and police against the dangerous outbreaks
of the other kind. There is the same idea in intro-
ducing history—natural as well as human history—
among the labouring classes, whose folly makes
them dangerous. For men know well that a grain of
historical culture is able to break down the rough,
blind instincts and desires, or to turn them to the
service of a clever egoism. In fact they are be-
ginning to think, with Edward von Hartmann, of
"fixing themselves with an eye to the future in
their earthly home, and making themselves comfort-
able there. " Hartmann calls this life the "man-


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 87
hood of humanity" with an ironical reference to
what is now called "manhood ";—as if only our
sober models of selfishness were embraced by it;
just as he prophesies an age of graybeards following
on this stage,—obviously another ironical glance at
our ancient time-servers. For he speaks of the ripe
discretion with which "they view all the stormy
passions of their past life and understand the vanity
of the ends they seem to have striven for. " No, a
manhood of crafty and historically cultured egoism
corresponds to an old age that hangs to life with
no dignity but a horrible tenacity, where the
"last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. "
Whether the dangers of our life and culture come
from these dreary, toothless old men, or from the
so-called "men" of Hartmann, we have the right
to defend our youth with tooth and claw against
both of them, and never tire of saving the future
from these false prophets. But in this battle we
shall discover an unpleasant truth—that men in-
tentionally help, and encourage, and use, the worst
aberrations of the historical sense from which the
present time suffers.
They use it, however, against youth, in order to
transform it into that ripe "egoism of manhood"
they so long for: they use it to overcome the natural
reluctance of the young by its magical splendour,
which unmans while it enlightens them. Yes, we
know only too well the kind of ascendency history


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88 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
can gain; how it can uproot the strongest instincts
of youth, passion, courage, unselfishness and love;
can cool its feeling for justice, can crush or repress
its desire for a slow ripening by the contrary desire
to be soon productive, ready and useful; and cast
a sick doubt over all honesty and downrightness
of feeling. It can even cozen youth of its fairest
privilege, the power of planting a great thought
with the fullest confidence, and letting it grow of
itself to a still greater thought. An excess of
history can do all that, as we have seen, by no
longer allowing a man to feel and act unhistorically:
for history is continually shifting his horizon and
removing the atmosphere surrounding him. From
an infinite horizon he withdraws into himself, back
into the small egoistic circle, where he must become
dry and withered: he may possibly attain to clever-
ness, but never to wisdom. He lets himself be
talked over, is always calculating and parleying
with facts. He is never enthusiastic, but blinks
his eyes, and understands how to look for his own
profit or his party's in the profit or loss of some-
body else. He unlearns all his useless modesty,
and turns little by little into the "man" or the
"graybeard" of Hartmann. And that is what
they want him to be: that is the meaning of the
present cynical demand for the "full surrender of
the personality to the world-process"—for the
sake of his end, the redemption of the world, as
the rogue E. von Hartmann tells us. Though
redemption can scarcely be the conscious aim
of these people: the world were better redeemed
by being redeemed from these "men" and


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 89
"graybeards. " For then would come the reign
of youth.
And in this kingdom of youth I can cry Land!
Land! Enough, and more than enough, of the
wild voyage over dark strange seas, of eternal
search and eternal disappointment! The coast is
at last in sight. Whatever it be, we must land
there, and the worst haven is better than tossing
again in the hopeless waves of an infinite scepticism.
Let us hold fast by the land: we shall find the
good harbours later and make the voyage easier
for those who come after us.
The voyage was dangerous and exciting. How
far are we even now from that quiet state of
contemplation with which we first saw our ship
launched! In tracking out the dangers of history,
we have found ourselves especially exposed to them.
We carry on us the marks of that sorrow which an
excess of history brings in its train to the men of
the modern time. And this present treatise, as I
will not attempt to deny, shows the modern note"
of a weak personality in the intemperateness of its
criticism, the unripeness of its humanity, in the too
frequent transitions from irony to cynicism, from
arrogance to scepticism. And yet I trust in the
inspiring power that directs my vessel instead of
genius; I trust in youth, that has brought me on I
the right road in forcing from me a protest against
the modern historical education, and a demand that
the man must learn to live, above all, and only


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90 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
use history in the service of the life that he has
learned to live.