Oppressed
and half crushed to death by
the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth,
spoilt by priests and bad education, a laughing-
stock even to himself, man cries in his need on
"holy mother Nature," and feels suddenly that she
is as far from him as any god of the Epicureans.
the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth,
spoilt by priests and bad education, a laughing-
stock even to himself, man cries in his need on
"holy mother Nature," and feels suddenly that she
is as far from him as any god of the Epicureans.
Nietzsche - v05 - Untimely Meditations - b
The present is too much with us; it
directs the vision even against the philosopher's
will: and it will inevitably be reckoned too high
in the final sum. And so he must put a low figure
on his own time as against others, and suppress
the present in his picture of life, as well as in
himself; must put it into the background or paint
it over; a difficult, and almost impossible task.
The judgment of the ancient Greek philosophers
on the value of existence means so much more
than our own, because they had the full bloom of
life itself before them, and their vision was un-
troubled by any felt dualism between their wish
## p. 131 (#181) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 131
for freedom and beauty on the grand scale, and
their search after truth, with its single question
"What is the real worth of life? " Empedocles lived
when Greek culture was full to overflowing with
the joy of life, and all ages may take profit from
his words; especially as no other great philosopher
of that great time ventured to contradict them.
Empedocles is only the clearest voice among them
—they all say the same thing, if a man will but
open his ears. A modern thinker is always in the
throes of an unfulfilled desire; he is looking for
life,—warm, red life,—that he may pass judgment
on it: at any rate he will think it necessary to be
a living man himself, before he can believe in his
power of judging. And this is the title of the
modern philosophers to sit among the great aiders
of Life (or rather of the will to live), and the reason
why they can look from their own out-wearied
time and aspire to a truer culture, and a clearer
explanation. Their yearning is, however, their
danger; the reformer in them struggles with the
critical philosopher. And whichever way the
victory incline, it also implies a defeat. How was
Schopenhauer to escape this danger?
We like to consider the great man as the noble
child of his age, who feels its defects more strongly
and intimately than the smaller men: and therefore
the struggle of the great man against his age is
apparently nothing but a mad fight to the death
with himself. Only apparently, however: he only
fights the elements in his time that hinder his own
greatness, in other words his own freedom and
sincerity. And so, at bottom, he is only an enemy
## p. 132 (#182) ############################################
132 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
to that element which is not truly himself, the
irreconcilable antagonism of the temporal and
eternal in him. The supposed " child of his age"
proves to be but a step-child. From boyhood
Schopenhauer strove with his time, a false and
unworthy mother to him, and as soon as he had
banished her, he could bring back his being to its
native health and purity. For this very reason we
can use his writings as mirrors of his time; it is no
fault of the mirror if everything contemporary
appear in it stricken by a ravaging disease, pale
and thin, with tired looks and hollow eyes,—the
step-child's sorrow made visible. The yearning
for natural strength, for a healthy and simple
humanity, was a yearning for himself: and as soon
as he had conquered his time within him, he was
face to face with his own genius. The secret of
nature's being and his own lay open, the step-
mother's plot to conceal his genius from him was
foiled. And now he could turn a fearless eye
towards the question, "What is the real worth of
life? " without having any more to weigh a blood-
less and chaotic age of doubt and hypocrisy. He
knew that there was something higher and purer
to be won on this earth than the life of his time,
and a man does bitter wrong to existence who
only knows it and criticises it in this hateful form.
Genius, itself the highest product of life, is now
summoned to justify life, if it can: the noble
creative soul must answer the question :—" Dost
thou in thy heart say ' Yea! ' unto this existence?
Is it enough for thee? Wilt thou be its advocate
and its redeemer? One true 'Yea' from thy lips,
## p. 133 (#183) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 133
and the sorely accused life shall go free. " How
shall he answer? In the words of Empedocles.
IV.
The last hint may well remain obscure for a
time: I have something more easy to explain,
namely how Schopenhauer can help us to educate
ourselves in opposition to our age, since we have
the advantage of really knowing our age, through
him ;—if it be an advantage! It may be no longer
possible in a couple of hundred years. I some-
times amuse myself with the idea that men may
soon grow tired of books and their authors, and
the savant of to-morrow come to leave directions
in his will that his body be burned in the midst of
his books, including of course his own writings.
And in the gradual clearing of the forests, might
not our libraries be very reasonably used for straw
and brushwood? Most books are born from the
smoke and vapour of the brain: and to vapour and
smoke may they well return. For having no fire
within themselves, they shall be visited with fire.
And possibly to a later century our own may count
as the " Dark age," because our productions heated
the furnace hotter and more continuously than
ever before. We are anyhow happy that we can
learn to know our time; and if there be any sense
in busying ourselves with our time at all, we may
as well do it as thoroughly as we can, so that no
one may have any doubt about it. The possibility
of this we owe to Schopenhauer.
## p. 134 (#184) ############################################
134 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Our happiness would of course be infinitely
greater, if our inquiry showed that nothing so
hopeful and splendid as our present epoch had
ever existed. There are simple people in some
corner of the earth to-day—perhaps in Germany—
who are disposed to believe in all seriousness that
the world was put right two years ago * and that
all stern and gloomy views of life are now con-
tradicted by "facts. " The foundation of the New
German Empire is, to them, the decisive blow that
annihilates all the "pessimistic" philosophisers,—
no doubt of it. To judge the philosopher's signifi-
cance in our time, as an educator, we must oppose
a widespread view like this, especially common in
our universities. We must say, it is a shameful
thing that such abominable flattery of the Time-
Fetish should be uttered by a herd of so-called
reflective and honourable men; it is a proof that
we no longer see how far the seriousness of
philosophy is removed from that of a newspaper.
Such men have lost the last remnant of feeling, not
only for philosophy, but also for religion, and have
put in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as
of journalism, the evil spirit that broods over the
day—and the daily paper. Every philosophy that
believes the problem of existence to be shelved,
or even solved, by a political event, is a sham
philosophy. There have been innumerable states
founded since the beginning of the world; that is
an old story. How should a political innovation
manage once and for all to make a contented race
* This was written in 1873. —Tr.
## p. 135 (#185) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 135
of the dwellers on this earth? If any one believe
in his heart that this is possible, he should report
himself to our authorities: he really deserves to be
Professor of Philosophy in a German university,
like Harms in Berlin, Jiirgen Meyer in Bonn, and
Carriere in Munich.
We are feeling the consequences of the doctrine,
preached lately from all the housetops, that the
state is the highest end of man and there is no
higher duty than to serve it: I regard this not a
relapse into paganism, but into stupidity. A man
who thinks state-service to be his highest duty,
very possibly knows no higher one; yet there are
both men and duties in a region beyond,—and one
of these duties, that seems to me at least of higher
value than state-service, is to destroy stupidity in
all its forms—and this particular stupidity among
them. And I have to do with a class of men
whose teleological conceptions extend further than
the well-being of a state, I mean with philosophers
—and only with them in their relation to the world
of culture, which is again almost independent of the
"good of the state. " Of the many links that make
up the twisted chain of humanity, some are of gold
and others of pewter.
How does the philosopher of our time regard
culture? Quite differently, I assure you, from the
professors who are so content with their new state.
He seems to see the symptoms of an absolute
uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and
hurry of life, and the decay of all reflection and
simplicity. The waters of religion are ebbing, and
leaving swamps or stagnant pools: the nations are
## p. 136 (#186) ############################################
136 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhauser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed! " For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#187) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediaeval times
## p. 137 (#188) ############################################
136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so .
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#189) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times
## p. 137 (#190) ############################################
136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#191) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times
## p. 137 (#192) ############################################
136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, “What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#193) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times
## p. 138 (#194) ############################################
138 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
by the Church, and in some measure assimilated
by the strong pressure which she exerted. When
the common tie broke and the pressure relaxed,
they rose once more against each other. The
Reformation taught that many things were
"adiaphora"—departments that needed no guid-
ance from religion: this was the price paid for its
own existence. Christianity paid a similar one to
guard itself against the far more religious antiquity:
and laid the seeds of discord at once. Everything
nowadays is directed by the fools and the knaves,
the selfishness of the money-makers and the brute
forces of militarism. The state in their hands
makes a good show of reorganising everything,
and of becoming the bond that unites the warring
elements; in other words, it wishes for the same
idolatry from mankind as they showed to the
Church.
And we shall yet feel the consequences. We
are even now on the ice-floes in the stream of the
Middle Ages: they are thawing fast, and their
movement is ominous: the banks are flooded, and
giving way. The revolution, the atomistic revolu-
tion, is inevitable: but what are those smallest
indivisible elements of human society?
There is surely far more danger to mankind in
transitional periods like these than in the actual
time of revolution and chaos; they are tortured
by waiting, and snatch greedily at every moment;
and this breeds all kinds of cowardice and selfish-
ness in them: whereas the true feeling of a great
and universal need ever inspires men, and makes
them better. In the midst of such dangers, who
y,
## p. 139 (#195) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 139
will provide the guardians and champions for
Humanity, for the holy and inviolate treasure that
has been laid up in the temples, little by little, by
countless generations? Who will set up again
the Image of Man, when men in their selfishness
and terror see nothing but the trail of the serpent
or the cur in them, and have fallen from their high
estate to that of the brute or the automaton?
There are three Images of Man fashioned by our
modern time, which for a long while yet will urge
mortal men to transfigure their own lives; they
are the men of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schopen-
hauer. The first has the greatest fire, and is most
calculated to impress the people: the second is
only for the few, for those contemplative natures
"in the grand style" who are misunderstood by
the crowd. The third demands the highest activity
in those who will follow it: only such men will
look on that image without harm, for it breaks
the spirit of that merely contemplative man, and
the rabble shudder at it. From the first has come
forth a strength that led and still leads to fearful
revolution: for in all socialistic upheavals it is ever
Rousseau's man who is the Typhoeus under the
Etna.
Oppressed and half crushed to death by
the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth,
spoilt by priests and bad education, a laughing-
stock even to himself, man cries in his need on
"holy mother Nature," and feels suddenly that she
is as far from him as any god of the Epicureans.
His prayers do not reach her; so deeply sunk is
he in the Chaos of the unnatural. He contemptu-
ously throws aside all the finery that seemed his
## p. 140 (#196) ############################################
140 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,—he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, "Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the "gospel of kindly Nature" with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and daemonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
daemonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#197) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action: and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil—heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are"
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#198) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#199) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#200) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion ; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
- which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#201) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#202) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,—he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#203) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#204) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature" with all
the ardour of his soul : his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#205) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#206) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature" with all
the ardour of his soul : his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#207) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil_heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#208) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,—he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#209) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#210) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#211) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#212) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#213) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#214) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
--which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers.
directs the vision even against the philosopher's
will: and it will inevitably be reckoned too high
in the final sum. And so he must put a low figure
on his own time as against others, and suppress
the present in his picture of life, as well as in
himself; must put it into the background or paint
it over; a difficult, and almost impossible task.
The judgment of the ancient Greek philosophers
on the value of existence means so much more
than our own, because they had the full bloom of
life itself before them, and their vision was un-
troubled by any felt dualism between their wish
## p. 131 (#181) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 131
for freedom and beauty on the grand scale, and
their search after truth, with its single question
"What is the real worth of life? " Empedocles lived
when Greek culture was full to overflowing with
the joy of life, and all ages may take profit from
his words; especially as no other great philosopher
of that great time ventured to contradict them.
Empedocles is only the clearest voice among them
—they all say the same thing, if a man will but
open his ears. A modern thinker is always in the
throes of an unfulfilled desire; he is looking for
life,—warm, red life,—that he may pass judgment
on it: at any rate he will think it necessary to be
a living man himself, before he can believe in his
power of judging. And this is the title of the
modern philosophers to sit among the great aiders
of Life (or rather of the will to live), and the reason
why they can look from their own out-wearied
time and aspire to a truer culture, and a clearer
explanation. Their yearning is, however, their
danger; the reformer in them struggles with the
critical philosopher. And whichever way the
victory incline, it also implies a defeat. How was
Schopenhauer to escape this danger?
We like to consider the great man as the noble
child of his age, who feels its defects more strongly
and intimately than the smaller men: and therefore
the struggle of the great man against his age is
apparently nothing but a mad fight to the death
with himself. Only apparently, however: he only
fights the elements in his time that hinder his own
greatness, in other words his own freedom and
sincerity. And so, at bottom, he is only an enemy
## p. 132 (#182) ############################################
132 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
to that element which is not truly himself, the
irreconcilable antagonism of the temporal and
eternal in him. The supposed " child of his age"
proves to be but a step-child. From boyhood
Schopenhauer strove with his time, a false and
unworthy mother to him, and as soon as he had
banished her, he could bring back his being to its
native health and purity. For this very reason we
can use his writings as mirrors of his time; it is no
fault of the mirror if everything contemporary
appear in it stricken by a ravaging disease, pale
and thin, with tired looks and hollow eyes,—the
step-child's sorrow made visible. The yearning
for natural strength, for a healthy and simple
humanity, was a yearning for himself: and as soon
as he had conquered his time within him, he was
face to face with his own genius. The secret of
nature's being and his own lay open, the step-
mother's plot to conceal his genius from him was
foiled. And now he could turn a fearless eye
towards the question, "What is the real worth of
life? " without having any more to weigh a blood-
less and chaotic age of doubt and hypocrisy. He
knew that there was something higher and purer
to be won on this earth than the life of his time,
and a man does bitter wrong to existence who
only knows it and criticises it in this hateful form.
Genius, itself the highest product of life, is now
summoned to justify life, if it can: the noble
creative soul must answer the question :—" Dost
thou in thy heart say ' Yea! ' unto this existence?
Is it enough for thee? Wilt thou be its advocate
and its redeemer? One true 'Yea' from thy lips,
## p. 133 (#183) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 133
and the sorely accused life shall go free. " How
shall he answer? In the words of Empedocles.
IV.
The last hint may well remain obscure for a
time: I have something more easy to explain,
namely how Schopenhauer can help us to educate
ourselves in opposition to our age, since we have
the advantage of really knowing our age, through
him ;—if it be an advantage! It may be no longer
possible in a couple of hundred years. I some-
times amuse myself with the idea that men may
soon grow tired of books and their authors, and
the savant of to-morrow come to leave directions
in his will that his body be burned in the midst of
his books, including of course his own writings.
And in the gradual clearing of the forests, might
not our libraries be very reasonably used for straw
and brushwood? Most books are born from the
smoke and vapour of the brain: and to vapour and
smoke may they well return. For having no fire
within themselves, they shall be visited with fire.
And possibly to a later century our own may count
as the " Dark age," because our productions heated
the furnace hotter and more continuously than
ever before. We are anyhow happy that we can
learn to know our time; and if there be any sense
in busying ourselves with our time at all, we may
as well do it as thoroughly as we can, so that no
one may have any doubt about it. The possibility
of this we owe to Schopenhauer.
## p. 134 (#184) ############################################
134 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Our happiness would of course be infinitely
greater, if our inquiry showed that nothing so
hopeful and splendid as our present epoch had
ever existed. There are simple people in some
corner of the earth to-day—perhaps in Germany—
who are disposed to believe in all seriousness that
the world was put right two years ago * and that
all stern and gloomy views of life are now con-
tradicted by "facts. " The foundation of the New
German Empire is, to them, the decisive blow that
annihilates all the "pessimistic" philosophisers,—
no doubt of it. To judge the philosopher's signifi-
cance in our time, as an educator, we must oppose
a widespread view like this, especially common in
our universities. We must say, it is a shameful
thing that such abominable flattery of the Time-
Fetish should be uttered by a herd of so-called
reflective and honourable men; it is a proof that
we no longer see how far the seriousness of
philosophy is removed from that of a newspaper.
Such men have lost the last remnant of feeling, not
only for philosophy, but also for religion, and have
put in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as
of journalism, the evil spirit that broods over the
day—and the daily paper. Every philosophy that
believes the problem of existence to be shelved,
or even solved, by a political event, is a sham
philosophy. There have been innumerable states
founded since the beginning of the world; that is
an old story. How should a political innovation
manage once and for all to make a contented race
* This was written in 1873. —Tr.
## p. 135 (#185) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 135
of the dwellers on this earth? If any one believe
in his heart that this is possible, he should report
himself to our authorities: he really deserves to be
Professor of Philosophy in a German university,
like Harms in Berlin, Jiirgen Meyer in Bonn, and
Carriere in Munich.
We are feeling the consequences of the doctrine,
preached lately from all the housetops, that the
state is the highest end of man and there is no
higher duty than to serve it: I regard this not a
relapse into paganism, but into stupidity. A man
who thinks state-service to be his highest duty,
very possibly knows no higher one; yet there are
both men and duties in a region beyond,—and one
of these duties, that seems to me at least of higher
value than state-service, is to destroy stupidity in
all its forms—and this particular stupidity among
them. And I have to do with a class of men
whose teleological conceptions extend further than
the well-being of a state, I mean with philosophers
—and only with them in their relation to the world
of culture, which is again almost independent of the
"good of the state. " Of the many links that make
up the twisted chain of humanity, some are of gold
and others of pewter.
How does the philosopher of our time regard
culture? Quite differently, I assure you, from the
professors who are so content with their new state.
He seems to see the symptoms of an absolute
uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and
hurry of life, and the decay of all reflection and
simplicity. The waters of religion are ebbing, and
leaving swamps or stagnant pools: the nations are
## p. 136 (#186) ############################################
136 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhauser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed! " For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#187) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediaeval times
## p. 137 (#188) ############################################
136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so .
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#189) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times
## p. 137 (#190) ############################################
136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#191) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times
## p. 137 (#192) ############################################
136
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear
each other in pieces. The sciences, blindly driv-
ing along, on a laisser faire system, without a
common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold
of every firm principle. The educated classes are
being swept along in the contemptible struggle for
wealth. Never was the world more worldly, never
poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are
no longer beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of
this turmoil of worldliness; they themselves are
daily becoming more restless, thoughtless, loveless.
Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art
and science included. The educated men have
degenerated into the greatest foes of education, for
they will deny the universal sickness and hinder
the physician. They become peevish, these poor
nerveless creatures, if one speak of their weakness
and combat the shameful spirit of lies in them.
They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk
with a pretence of happiness which has something
pathetic about it, because their happiness is so
inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, “What hast thou, poor
wretch, enjoyed ! ” For, alas! we know far better
ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry sky
over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in
danger and in need. Short-lived is all our joy,
and the sun's rays strike palely on our white
mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds
an organ, and the dancers whirl round, and the
heart of the wanderer is shaken within him to see
it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hope-
## p. 137 (#193) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
137
less. Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear
thoughtless joy! but soon the mist of evening
closes round, the note dies away, and the wanderer's
footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his
eye can reach there is nothing but the grim and
desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred
lines and the dull colours in the picture of modern
life: yet the other side is no more encouraging,
it is only more disturbing. There is certainly
strength there, enormous strength; but it is wild,
primitive and merciless. One looks on with a
chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise
sparks and vapour, to herald some fearful appari-
tion. For a century we have been ready for a
world-shaking convulsion; and though we have
lately been trying to set the conservative strength
of the so-called national state against the great
modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it
will only be, for a long time yet, an aggravation
of the universal unrest that hangs over us. We
need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own
restlessness shows how well they know it. They
think more exclusively of themselves than men
ever thought before; they plant and build for their
little day, and the chase for happiness is never
greater than when the quarry must be caught to-
day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is
no more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or
rather in the Atomic Chaos. The opposing forces
were practically held together in mediæval times
## p. 138 (#194) ############################################
138 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
by the Church, and in some measure assimilated
by the strong pressure which she exerted. When
the common tie broke and the pressure relaxed,
they rose once more against each other. The
Reformation taught that many things were
"adiaphora"—departments that needed no guid-
ance from religion: this was the price paid for its
own existence. Christianity paid a similar one to
guard itself against the far more religious antiquity:
and laid the seeds of discord at once. Everything
nowadays is directed by the fools and the knaves,
the selfishness of the money-makers and the brute
forces of militarism. The state in their hands
makes a good show of reorganising everything,
and of becoming the bond that unites the warring
elements; in other words, it wishes for the same
idolatry from mankind as they showed to the
Church.
And we shall yet feel the consequences. We
are even now on the ice-floes in the stream of the
Middle Ages: they are thawing fast, and their
movement is ominous: the banks are flooded, and
giving way. The revolution, the atomistic revolu-
tion, is inevitable: but what are those smallest
indivisible elements of human society?
There is surely far more danger to mankind in
transitional periods like these than in the actual
time of revolution and chaos; they are tortured
by waiting, and snatch greedily at every moment;
and this breeds all kinds of cowardice and selfish-
ness in them: whereas the true feeling of a great
and universal need ever inspires men, and makes
them better. In the midst of such dangers, who
y,
## p. 139 (#195) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 139
will provide the guardians and champions for
Humanity, for the holy and inviolate treasure that
has been laid up in the temples, little by little, by
countless generations? Who will set up again
the Image of Man, when men in their selfishness
and terror see nothing but the trail of the serpent
or the cur in them, and have fallen from their high
estate to that of the brute or the automaton?
There are three Images of Man fashioned by our
modern time, which for a long while yet will urge
mortal men to transfigure their own lives; they
are the men of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schopen-
hauer. The first has the greatest fire, and is most
calculated to impress the people: the second is
only for the few, for those contemplative natures
"in the grand style" who are misunderstood by
the crowd. The third demands the highest activity
in those who will follow it: only such men will
look on that image without harm, for it breaks
the spirit of that merely contemplative man, and
the rabble shudder at it. From the first has come
forth a strength that led and still leads to fearful
revolution: for in all socialistic upheavals it is ever
Rousseau's man who is the Typhoeus under the
Etna.
Oppressed and half crushed to death by
the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth,
spoilt by priests and bad education, a laughing-
stock even to himself, man cries in his need on
"holy mother Nature," and feels suddenly that she
is as far from him as any god of the Epicureans.
His prayers do not reach her; so deeply sunk is
he in the Chaos of the unnatural. He contemptu-
ously throws aside all the finery that seemed his
## p. 140 (#196) ############################################
140 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,—he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, "Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the "gospel of kindly Nature" with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and daemonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
daemonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#197) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR. 141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action: and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil—heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are"
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#198) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#199) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#200) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion ; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
- which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#201) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#202) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,—he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#203) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#204) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature" with all
the ardour of his soul : his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#205) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#206) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,-he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature" with all
the ardour of his soul : his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#207) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil_heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#208) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life,—he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#209) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#210) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#211) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that "things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#212) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
—which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect
## p. 141 (#213) ############################################
SCHOPENHAUER AS EDUCATOR.
141
anything of the sort: Goethe's man here parts
company with Rousseau's; for he hates all violence,
all sudden transition—that is, all action : and the
universal deliverer becomes merely the universal
traveller. All the riches of life and nature, all
antiquity—arts, mythologies and sciences—pass
before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are
aroused and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him
no more—and the moment must come for which
his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions
drop, and Mephistopheles is at his side. When
the German ceases to be Faust, there is no danger
greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil-heavenly powers alone
can save him. Goethe's man is, as I said, the con-
templative man in the grand style, who is only
kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the
great and memorable things that have ever existed,
and by living from desire to desire. He is not the
active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no
good will come of it (think, for example, of the zeal
with which Goethe wrote for the stage ! ); and
further, you may be sure that “things as they are”
will suffer no change. Goethe's man is a con-
ciliatory and conservative spirit, though in danger
of degenerating into a Philistine, just as Rousseau's
man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues
would be the better by the addition of a little brute
force and elemental passion. Goethe appears to
have seen where the weakness and danger of his
creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to
## p. 141 (#214) ############################################
140
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
truest humanity a little while ago—all his arts
and sciences, all the refinements of his life, he
beats with his fists against the walls, in whose
shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek
the light and the sun, the forest and the crag.
And crying out, “Nature alone is good, the natural
man alone is human,” he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul
is ready for a fearful resolve, but calls the noble
and the rare as well from their utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in
a certain sense he is a corrective and a sedative to
those dangerous agitations of which Rousseau's
man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth
followed the “gospel of kindly Nature” with all
the ardour of his soul: his Faust was the highest
and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at
any rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and
yearning, his intercourse with the demons of the
heart could be represented. But what comes from
these congregated storm-clouds ? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image
of man—the man according to Goethe. One
might have thought that Faust would have lived
a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and
a deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds
from goodness, as the genius of ruin, alike religious
and dæmonic, in opposition to his utterly un-
dæmonic companion; though of course he could
not be free of this companion, and had at once to
use and despise his evil and destructive scepticism
--which is the tragic destiny of all revolutionary
deliverers.
