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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. He must be young to understand
this protest; and considering the premature gray-
ness of our present youth, he can scarcely be young
enough if he would understand its reason as well.
An example will help me. In Germany, not more
than a century ago, a natural instinct for what is
called " poetry " was awakened in some young men.
Are we to think that the generations who had lived
before that time had not spoken of the art, however
really strange and unnatural it may have been
to them? We know the contrary; that they had
thought, written, and quarrelled about it with all
their might—in "words, words, words. " Giving
life to such words did not prove the death of the
word-makers; in a certain sense they are living
still. For if, as Gibbon says, nothing but time—
though a long time—is needed for a world to
perish, so nothing but time—though still more
time—is needed for a false idea to be destroyed in
Germany, the "Land of Little-by-little. " In any
event, there are perhaps a hundred men more now
than there were a century ago who know what
poetry is: perhaps in another century there will be
a hundred more who have learned in the meantime
what culture is, and that the Germans have had
as yet no culture, however proudly they may talk
about it. The general satisfaction of the Germans
at their culture will seem as foolish and incredible
to such men as the once lauded classicism of
Gottsched, or the reputation of Ramler as the
German Pindar, seemed to us. They will perhaps
think this "culture" to be merely a kind of know-


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 91
ledge about culture, and a false and superficial
knowledge at that. False and superficial, because
the Germans endured the contradiction between
life and knowledge, and did not see what was
characteristic in the culture of really educated
peoples, that it can only rise and bloom from life.
But by the Germans it is worn like a paper flower,
or spread over like the icing on a cake; and so
must remain a useless lie for ever.
The education of youth in Germany starts from
this false and unfruitful idea of culture. Its aim,
when faced squarely, is not to form the liberally
educated man, but the professor, the man of science,
who wants to be able to make use of his science
as soon as possible, and stands on one side in order
to see life clearly. The result, even from a ruth-
lessly practical point of view, is the historically and
aesthetically trained Philistine, the babbler of old
saws and new wisdom on Church, State and Art,
the sensorium that receives a thousand impressions,
the insatiable belly that yet knows not what true
hunger and thirst is. An education with such an
aim and result is against nature. But only he who
is not quite drowned in it can feel that; only youth
can feel it, because it still has the instinct of nature,
that is the first to be broken by that education.
But he who will break through that education in
his turn, must come to the help of youth when
called upon; must let the clear light of under-
standing shine on its unconscious striving, and
bring it to a full, vocal consciousness. How is he
to attain such a strange end?
Principally by destroying the superstition that


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92 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
this kind of education is necessary. People think
nothing but this troublesome reality of ours is
possible. Look through the literature of higher
education in school and college for the last ten
years, and you will be astonished—and pained—
to find how much alike all the proposals of reform
have been; in spite of all the hesitations and violent
controversies surrounding them. You will see how
blindly they have all adopted the old idea of the
"educated man" (in our sense) being the necessary
and reasonable basis of the system. The mono-
tonous canon runs thus: the young man must
begin with a knowledge of culture, not even with a
knowledge of life, still less with life and the living
of it. This knowledge of culture is forced into the
young mind in the form of historical knowledge;
which means that his head is filled with an enormous
mass of ideas, taken second-hand from past times
and peoples, not from immediate contact with life.
He desires to experience something for himself, and
feel a close-knit, living system of experiences grow-
ing within himself. But his desire is drowned and
dizzied in the sea of shams, as if it were possible to
sum up in a few years the highest and notablest
experiences of ancient times, and the greatest times
too. It is the same mad method that carries our
young artists off to picture-galleries, instead of the
studio of a master, and above all the one studio
of the only master, Nature.
As if one could dis-
cover by a hasty rush through history the ideas and
technique of past times, and their individual outlook
on life! For life itself is a kind of handicraft that
must be learned thoroughly and industriously, and


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THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 93
diligently practised, if we are not to have mere
botchers and babblers as the issue of it all!
Plato thought it necessary for the first generation
of his new society (in the perfect state) to be brought
up with the help of a "mighty lie. " The children
were to be taught to believe that they had all lain
dreaming for a long time under the earth, where
they had been moulded and formed by the master-
hand of Nature. It was impossible to go against
the past, and work against the work of gods! And
so it had to be an unbreakable law of nature, that
he who is born to be a philosopher has gold in his
body, the fighter has only silver, and the workman
iron and bronze. As it is not possible to blend
these metals, according to Plato, so there could
never be any confusion between the classes: the
belief in the (sterna Veritas of this arrangement was
the basis of the new education and the new state.
So the modern German believes also in the ceterna
Veritas of his education, of his kind of culture:
and yet this belief will fail—as the Platonic state
would have failed—if the mighty German lie be
ever opposed by the truth, that the German has no
culture because he cannot build one on the basis of
his education. He wishes for the flower without
the root or the stalk; and so he wishes in vain.
That is the simple truth, a rude and unpleasant
truth, but yet a mighty one.
But our first generation must be brought up in
this " mighty truth," and must suffer from it too;
for it must educate itself through it, even against
its own nature, to attain a new nature and manner
of life, which shall yet proceed from the old. So


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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 (#127) #############################################

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 (#128) #############################################

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 (#129) #############################################

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 (#130) #############################################

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 (#131) #############################################

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 (#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.