—It is
possible
that the production of genius is
reserved to a limited period of mankind's history.
reserved to a limited period of mankind's history.
Nietzsche - v06 - Human All-Too-Human - a
—It is not without deep
pain that we acknowledge the fact that in their
loftiest soarings, artists of all ages have exalted
and divinely transfigured precisely those ideas
which we now recognise as false; they are the
glorifiers of humanity's religious and philosophical
errors, and they could not have been this without
belief in the absolute truth of these errors. But
if the belief in such truth diminishes at all, if the
rainbow colours at the farthest ends of human
knowledge and imagination fade, then this kind
of art can never re-flourish, for, like the Divina
Commedia, Raphael's paintings, Michelangelo's
frescoes, and Gothic cathedrals, they indicate not
only a cosmic but also a metaphysical meaning in
the work of art. Out of all this will grow a
touching legend that such an art and such an
artistic faith once existed.
221.
Revolution in Poetry. —The strict limit
which the French dramatists marked out with
regard to unity of action, time and place, con-
struction of style, verse and sentence, selection
of words and ideas, was a school as important as
that of counterpoint and fugue in the development
of modern music or that of the Gorgianic figures
in Greek oratory. Such a restriction may appear
## p. 200 (#270) ############################################
200 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
absurd; nevertheless there is no means of getting
out of naturalism except by confining ourselves
at first to the strongest (perhaps most arbitrary)
means. Thus we gradually learn to walk grace-
fully on the narrow paths that bridge giddy
abysses, and acquire great suppleness of movement
as a result, as the history of music proves to our
living eyes. Here we see how, step by step, the
fetters get looser, until at last they may appear
to be altogether thrown off; this appearance is the
highest achievement of a necessary development
in art. In the art of modern poetry there existed
no such fortunate, gradual emerging from self-
imposed fetters. Lessing held up to scorn in
Germany the French form, the only modern form
of art, and pointed to Shakespeare; and thus the
steadiness of that unfettering was lost and a spring
was made into naturalism—that is, back into the
beginnings of art. From this Goethe endeavoured
to save himself, by always trying to limit himself
anew in different ways; but even the most gifted
only succeeds by continuously experimenting, if
the thread of development has once been broken.
It is to the unconsciously revered, if also
repudiated, model of French tragedy that Schiller
owes his comparative sureness of form, and he
! remained fairly independent of Lessing (whose
n \ dramatic attempts he is well known to have
rejected). But after Voltaire the French them-
selves suddenly lacked the great talents which
would have led the development of tragedy out of
constraint to that apparent freedom; later on they
followed the German example and made a spring
j! »
## p. 201 (#271) ############################################
THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. 201
into a sort of Rousseau-like state of nature and
experiments. It is only necessary to read
Voltaire's " Mahomet" from time to time in order
to perceive clearly what European culture has lost
through that breaking down of tradition. Once
for all, Voltaire was the last of the great dramatists
who with Greek proportion controlled his manifold
soul, equal even to the greatest storms of tragedy,
—he was able to do what no German could,because
the French nature is much nearer akin to the
Greek than is the German; he was also the last
great writer who in the wielding of prose possessed
the Greek ear, Greek artistic conscientiousness,
and Greek simplicity and grace; he was, also, one
of the last men able to combine in himself the
greatest freedom of mind and an absolutely
unrevolutionary way of thinking without being
inconsistent and cowardly. Since that time the
modern spirit, with its restlessness and its hatred
of moderation and restrictions, has obtained the
mastery on all sides, let loose at first by the fever
of revolution, and then once more putting a bridle
on itself when it became filled with fear and horror
at itself,—but it was the bridle of rigid logic, no
longer that of artistic moderation. It is true that
through that unfettering for a time we are able to
enjoy the poetry of all nations, everything that
has sprung up in hidden places, original, wild,
wonderfully beautiful and gigantically irregular,
from folk-songs up to the "great barbarian"
Shakespeare; we taste the joys of local colour
and costume, hitherto unknown to all artistic
nations; we make liberal use of the "barbaric
## p. 202 (#272) ############################################
. . im—M. ' n
202 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
advantages " of our time, which Goethe accentuated
against Schiller in order to place the formlessness
of his Faust in the most favourable light. But
for how much longer? The encroaching flood of
poetry of all styles and all nations must gradually
sweep away that magic garden upon which a quiet
and hidden growth would still have been possible;
all poets must become experimenting imitators, dar-
ing copyists, however great their primary strength
may be. Eventually, the public, which has lost
the habit of seeing the actual artistic fact in the
controlling of depicting power, in the organising
mastery over all art-means, must come ever more
and more to value power for power's sake, colour
for colour's sake, idea for idea's sake, inspiration
for inspiration's sake; accordingly it will not enjoy
the elements and conditions of the work of art,
unless isolated, and finally will make the very
natural demand that the artist must deliver it to
them isolated. True, the "senseless" fetters of
Franco-Greek art have been thrown off, but un-
consciously we have grown accustomed to consider
all fetters, all restrictions as senseless;—and so
art moves towards its liberation, but, in so doing,
it touches—which is certainly highly edifying—
upon all the phases of its beginning, its childhood,
its incompleteness, its sometime boldness and
excesses,—in perishing it interprets its origin and
growth. One of the great ones, whose instinct
may be relied on and whose theory lacked nothing
but thirty years more of practice, Lord Byron,
once said: that with regard to poetry in general,
the more he thought about it the more convinced
~
## p. 203 (#273) ############################################
THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. 203
he was that one and all we are entirely on a wrong
track, that we are following an inwardly false
revolutionary system, and that either our own
generation or the next will yet arrive at this same
conviction. It is the same Lord Byron who said
that he "looked upon Shakespeare as the very
worst model, although the most extraordinary poet. "
And does not Goethe's mature artistic insight in
the second half of his life say practically the same
thing ? —that insight by means of which he made
such a bound in advance of whole generations that,
generally speaking, it may be said that Goethe's
influence has not yet begun, that his time has still
to come. Just because his nature held him fast
for a long time in the path of the poetical
revolution, just because he drank to the dregs of
whatsoever new sources, views and expedients had
been indirectly discovered through that breaking
down of tradition, of all that had been unearthed
from under the ruins of art, his later transformation
and conversion carries so much weight; it shows
that he felt the deepest longing to win back the
traditions of art, and to give in fancy the ancient
perfection and completeness to the abandoned ruins
and colonnades of the temple, with the imagination
of the eye at least, should the strength of the arm
be found too weak to build where such tremendous
powers were needed even to destroy. Thus he
lived in art as in the remembrance of the true
art, his poetry had become an aid to remembrance,
to the understanding of old and long-departed
ages of art. With respect to the strength of the
new age, his demands could not be satisfied; but
r
## p. 204 (#274) ############################################
204 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
the pain this occasioned was amply balanced by
the joy that they have been satisfied once, and that
we ourselves can still participate in this satis-
faction. Not individuals, but more or less ideal
masks; no reality, but an allegorical generality;
topical characters, local colours toned down and
rendered mythical almost to the point of in-
visibility; contemporary feeling and the problems
of contemporary society reduced to the simplest
forms, stripped of their attractive, interesting
pathological qualities, made ineffective in every
"other but the artistic sense; no new materials and
characters, but the old, long-accustomed ones in
constant new animation and transformation; that
is art, as Goethe understood it later, as the Greeks
and even the French practised it.
222.
What Remains of Art. —It is true that art
has a much greater value in the case of certain
metaphysical hypotheses, for instance when the
belief obtains that the character is unchangeable
and that the essence of the world manifests itself
continually in all character and action; thus the
artist's work becomes the symbol of the eternally
constant, while according to our views the artist
can only endow his picture with temporary value,
because man on the whole has developed and is
mutable, and even the individual man has nothing
fixed and constant. The same thing holds good
with another metaphysical hypothesis: assuming
that our visible world were only a delusion, as
metaphysicians declare, then art would come very
## p. 204 (#275) ############################################
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2O4 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
nea
the pain this occasioned was amply balanced b
the joy that they have been satisfied once, and tha
we ourselves can still participate in this satis
faction. Not individuals, but more or less idea
masks; no reality, but an allegorical generality
topical characters, local colours toned down an
rendered mythical almost to the point of in
visibility; contemporary feeling and the problem
of contemporary society reduced to the simples
forms, stripped of their attractive, interesting
pathological qualities, made ineffective in every
Tother but the artistic sense; no new materials and
characters, but the old, long-accustomed ones it
constant new animation and transformation ; that
is art, as Goethe understood it later, as the Greeks
and even the French practised it.
222.
WHAT REMAINS OF ART. -It is true that art
has a much greater value in the case of certain
metaphysical hypotheses, for instance when the
belief obtains that the character is unchangeable
and that the essence of the world manifests itself
continually in all character and action; thus the
artist's work becomes the symbol of the eternally
constant, while according to our views the artist
can only endow his picture with temporary value,
because man on the whole has developed and is
mutable, and even the individual man has nothing
fixed and constant. The same thing holds good
with another metaphysical hypothesis: assuming
that our visible world were only a delusion, as
metaphysicians declare, then art would come very
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## p. 205 (#277) ############################################
THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. 205
near to the real world, for there would then be far
too much similarity between the world of appear-
ance and the dream-world of the artist; and the
remaining difference would place the meaning of
art higher even than the meaning of nature,
because art would represent the same forms, the
types and models of nature. But those supposi-
tions are false; and what position does art retain
after this acknowledgment? Above all, for
centuries it has taught us to look upon life in
every shape with interest and pleasure and to
carry our feelings so far that at last we exclaim,
"Whatever it may be, life is good. " This teaching
of art, to take pleasure in existence and to regard
human life as a piece of nature, without too
vigorous movement, as an object of regular
development,—this teaching has grown into us;
it reappears as an all-powerful need of knowledge.
We could renounce art, but we should not there-
with forfeit the ability it has taught us,—just as
we have given up religion, but not the exalting
and intensifying of temperament acquired through
religion. As the plastic arts and music are the
standards of that wealth of feeling really acquired
and obtained through religion, so also, after a dis-
appearance of art, the intensity and multiplicity of
the joys of life which it had implanted in us would
still demand satisfaction. The scientific man is
the further development of the artistic man.
223.
The After-glow of Art. —Just as in old
age we remember our youth and celebrate festi-
/
## p. 206 (#278) ############################################
206 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
vals of memory, so in a short time mankind will
stand towards art: its relation will be that of a
touching memory of the joys of youth. Never,
perhaps, in former ages was art dealt with so
seriously and thoughtfully as now when it appears
to be surrounded by the magic influence of death.
We call to mind that Greek city in southern
Italy, which once a year still celebrates its Greek
feasts, amidst tears and mourning, that foreign
barbarism triumphs ever more and more over the
customs its people brought with them into the
land; and never has Hellenism been so much
appreciated, nowhere has this golden nectar been
drunk with so great delight, as amongst these fast
disappearing Hellenes. The artist will soon come
to be regarded as a splendid relic, and to him,
as to a wonderful stranger on whose power and
beauty depended the happiness of former ages,
there will be paid such honour as is not often
enjoyed by one of our race. The best in us is
perhaps inherited from the sentiments of former
times, to which it is hardly possible for us now
to return by direct ways; the sun has already
disappeared, but the heavens of our life are still
glowing and illumined by it, although we can
behold it no longer.
1
<
J
## p. 207 (#279) ############################################
FIFTH DIVISION.
THE SIGNS OF HIGHER AND
LOWER CULTURE.
224.
Ennoblement through Degeneration. —
History teaches that a race of people is best
preserved where the greater number hold one
common spirit in consequence of the similarity
of their accustomed and indisputable principles:
in consequence, therefore, of their common faith.
Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough
customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the
individual, and strenuousness of character becomes
a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit.
The danger to these communities founded on
individuals of strong and similar character is
that gradually increasing stupidity through trans-
mission, which follows all stability like its shadow.
It is on the more unrestricted, more uncertain
and morally weaker individuals that depends the
intellectual progress of such communities, it is they
who attempt all that is new and manifold.
Numbers of these perish on account of their
weakness, without having achieved any specially
visible effect; but generally, particularly when
they have descendants, they flare up and from
## p. 208 (#280) ############################################
208 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
time to time inflict a wound on the stable element
of the community. Precisely in this sore and
weakened place the community is inoculated with
something new; but its general strength must
be great enough to absorb and assimilate this
new thing into its blood. Deviating natures are
of the utmost importance wherever there is to
be progress. Every wholesale progress must be
preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest
natures retain the type, the weaker ones help it
to develop. Something similar happens in the
case of individuals; a deterioration, a mutilation,
even a vice and, above all, a physical or moral
loss is seldom without its advantage. For
instance, a sickly man in the midst of a warlike
and restless race will perhaps have more chance
of being alone and thereby growing quieter and
wiser, the one-eyed man will possess a stronger
eye, the blind man will have a deeper inward
sight and will certainly have a keener sense of
. hearing. In so far it appears to me that the
famous Struggle for Existence is not the only
point of view from which an explanation can be
given of the progress or strengthening of an
individual or a race. Rather must two different
things converge: firstly, the multiplying of stable
strength through mental binding in faith and
common feeling; secondly, the possibility of
attaining to higher aims, through the fact that
there are deviating natures and, in consequence,
partial weakening and wounding of the stable
strength; it is precisely the weaker nature, as
the more delicate and free, that makes all progress
## p. 209 (#281) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 200
at all possible. A people that is crumbling and
weak in any one part, but as a whole still strong
and healthy, is able to absorb the infection of
what is new and incorporate it to its advantage.
The task of education in a single individual is
this: to plant him so firmly and surely that, as
a whole, he can no longer be diverted from his
path. Then, however, the educator must wound
him, or else make use of the wounds which fate
inflicts, and when pain and need have thus arisen,
something new and noble can be inoculated into
the wounded places. With regard to the State,
Machiavelli says that, " the form of Government
is of very small importance, although half-
educated people think otherwise. The great aim
of State-craft should be duration, which out-
weighs all else, inasmuch as it is more valuable
than liberty. " It is only with securely founded
and guaranteed duration that continual develop-
ment and ennobling inoculation are at all possible.
As a rule, however, authority, the dangerous com-
panion of all duration, will rise in opposition to
this.
225.
Free-Thinker a Relative Term. — We
call that man a free-thinker who thinks otherwise
than is expected of him in consideration of his
origin, surroundings, position, and office, or by
reason of the prevailing contemporary views.
He is the exception, fettered minds are the rule;
these latter reproach him, saying that his free
principles either have their origin in a desire
vol. 1. O
## p. 210 (#282) ############################################
2IO HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
i
<.
to be remarkable or else cause free actions to be
inferred,—that is to say, actions which are not
compatible with fettered morality. Sometimes it
is also said that the cause of such and such free
principles may be traced to mental perversity
and extravagance; but only malice speaks thus,
nor does it believe what it says, but wishes
thereby to do an injury, for the free-thinker
usually bears the proof of his greater goodness
and keenness of intellect written in his face so
plainly that the fettered spirits understand it well
enough. But the two other derivations of free-
thought are honestly intended; as a matter of
fact, many free-thinkers are created in one or
other of these ways. For this reason, however,
the tenets to which they attain in this manner
might be truer and more reliable than those of
the fettered spirits. In the knowledge of truth,
what really matters is the possession of it, not
the impulse under which it was sought, the way
in which it was found. If the free-thinkers are
right then the fettered spirits are wrong, and it is
a matter of indifference whether the former have
reached truth through immorality or the latter
hitherto retained hold of untruths through
morality. Moreover, it is not essential to the
free-thinker that he should hold more correct
views, but that he should have liberated himself
from what was customary, be it successfully or
disastrously. As a rule, however, he will have
truth, or at least the spirit of truth-investigation, f|
on his side; he demands reasons, the others
demand faith.
':.
i
1
## p. 211 (#283) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 211
226.
The Origin of Faith. —The fettered spirit
does not take up his position from conviction,
but from habit; he is a Christian, for instance,
not because he had a comprehension of different
creeds and could take his choice; he is an
Englishman, not because he decided for England,
but he found Christianity and England ready-
made and accepted them without any reason,
just as one who is born in a wine-country
becomes a wine-drinker. Later on, perhaps, as
he was a Christian and an Englishman, he dis-
covered a few reasons in favour of his habit;
these reasons may be upset, but he is not
therefore upset in his whole position. For
instance, let a fettered spirit be obliged to bring
forward his reasons against bigamy and then it
will be seen whether his holy zeal in favour of
monogamy is based upon reason or upon custom.
The adoption of guiding principles without reasons
is called faith.
227.
Conclusions drawn from the Conse-
quences AND TRACED BACK TO REASON AND
UN-REASON. —All states and orders of society,
professions, matrimony, education, law: all these
find strength and duration only in the faith which
the fettered spirits repose in them,—that is, in
the absence of reasons, or at least in the averting
of inquiries as to reasons. The restricted spirits
do not willingly acknowledge this, and feel that
## p. 212 (#284) ############################################
212 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
it is a pudendum. Christianity, however, which
was very simple in its intellectual ideas, remarked
nothing of this pudendum, required faith and
nothing but faith, and passionately repulsed the
demand for reasons; it pointed to the success
of faith: "You will soon feel the advantages
of faith," it suggested, "and through faith shall
ye be saved. " As an actual fact, the State
pursues the same course, and every father brings
up his son in the same way: "Only believe
this," he says, " and you will soon feel the good
it does. " This implies, however, that the truth
of an opinion is proved by its personal usefulness;
the wholesomeness of a doctrine must be a
guarantee for its intellectual surety and solidity.
It is exactly as if an accused person in a court
of law were to say, "My counsel speaks the
whole truth, for only see what is the result of
his speech: I shall be acquitted. " Because the
fettered spirits retain their principles on account
of their usefulness, they suppose that the free
spirit also seeks his own advantage in his views
and only holds that to be true which is profitable
to him. But as he appears to find profitable
just the contrary of that which his compatriots
or equals find profitable, these latter assume that
his principles are dangerous to them; they say
or feel, " He must not be right, for he is injurious
to us. "
228.
The Strong, Good Character. — The
restriction of views, which habit has made instinct,
## p. 213 (#285) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 213
> leads to what is called strength of character.
? When any one acts from few but always from
the same motives, his actions acquire great
energy; if these actions accord with the principles
of the fettered spirits they are recognised, and
i they produce, moreover, in those who perform
them the sensation of a good conscience. Few
♦ motives, energetic action, and a good conscience
compose what is called strength of character.
The man of strong character lacks a knowledge
-, of the many possibilities and directions of action;
his intellect is fettered and restricted, because
in a given case it shows him, perhaps, only two
* possibilities; between these two he must now
of necessity choose, in accordance with his whole
nature, and he does this easily and quickly
. because he has not to choose between fifty
possibilities. The educating surroundings aim
at fettering every individual, by always placing
. » before him the smallest number of possibilities.
The individual is always treated by his educators
as if he were, indeed, something new, but should
become a duplicate. If he makes his first appear-
ance as something unknown, unprecedented, he
must be turned into something known and
,* precedented. In a child, the familiar manifesta-
. tion of restriction is called a good character;
in placing itself on the side of the fettered
spirits the child first discloses its awakening
common feeling; with this foundation of common
sentiment, he will eventually become useful to
\* his State or rank.
## p. 214 (#286) ############################################
214 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
229.
The Standards and Values of the
Fettered Spirits. —There are four species of
things concerning which the restricted spirits say
they are in the right. Firstly: all things that last
are right; secondly: all things that are not burdens
to us are right; thirdly: all things that are advan-
tageous for us are right; fourthly: all things for
which we have made sacrifices are right. The last
sentence, for instance, explains why a war that
was begun in opposition to popular feeling is
carried on with enthusiasm directly a sacrifice
has been made for it. The free spirits, who
bring their case before the forum of the fettered
spirits, must prove that free spirits always existed,
that free-spiritism is therefore enduring, that it
will not become a burden, and, finally, that on
the whole they are an advantage to the fettered
spirits. It is because they cannot convince the
restricted spirits on this last point that they
profit nothing by having proved the first and
second propositions.
230.
Esprit Fort. —Compared with him who has
tradition on his side and requires no reasons
for his actions, the free spirit is always weak,
especially in action; for he is acquainted with
too many motives and points of view, and has,
therefore, an uncertain and unpractised hand.
What means exist of making him strong in spite
## p. 215 (#287) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 215
of this, so that he will, at least, manage to
survive, and will not perish ineffectually?
What is the source of the strong spirit {esprit
forf)? This is especially the question as to the
production of genius. Whence comes the energy,
the unbending strength, the endurance with which
the one, in opposition to accepted ideas,
endeavours to obtain an entirely individual
knowledge of the world?
231.
The Rise of Genius. —The ingenuity with
which a prisoner seeks the means of freedom,
the most cold-blooded and patient employment
of every smallest advantage, can teach us of
what tools Nature sometimes makes use in order
to produce Genius,—a word which I beg will be
understood without any mythological and religious
flavour; she, Nature, begins it in a dungeon and
excites to the utmost its desire to free itself.
Or to give another picture: some one who has
completely lost his way in a wood, but who
with unusual energy strives to reach the open
in one direction or another, will sometimes dis-
cover a new path which nobody knew previously,
—thus arise geniuses, who are credited with
originality. It has already been said that mutila-
tion, crippling, or the loss of some important
organ, is frequently the cause of the unusual
development of another organ, because this one
has to fulfil its own and also another function.
This explains the source of many a brilliant
## p. 216 (#288) ############################################
2l6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
talent. These general remarks on the origin of
genius may be applied to the special case, the |
origin of the perfect free spirit.
232.
Conjecture as to the Origin of Free-
Spiritism. —Just as the glaciers increase when in
equatorial regions the sun shines upon the seas
with greater force than hitherto, so may a very
strong and spreading free-spiritism be a proof
that somewhere or other the force of feeling has v. ,
grown extraordinarily. . ,
233-
The Voice of History. —In general, history
appears to teach the following about the production
of genius: it ill-treats and torments mankind— -J
calls to the passions of envy, hatred, and rivalry—-
drives them to desperation, people against people,
throughout whole centuries! Then, perhaps, like
a stray spark from the terrible energy thereby
aroused, there flames up suddenly the light of
genius; the will, like a horse maddened by the «3
rider's spur, thereupon breaks out and leaps over
into another domain. He who could attain to a
comprehension of the production of genius, and
desires to carry out practically the manner in
which Nature usually goes to work, would have
to be just as evil and regardless as Nature itself. <]
But perhaps we have not heard rightly.
'
## p. 217 (#289) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 217
234-
The Value of the Middle of the Road.
—It is possible that the production of genius is
reserved to a limited period of mankind's history.
For we must not expect from the future every-
thing that very defined conditions were able to
produce; for instance, not the astounding effects
of religious feeling. This has had its day, and
much that is very good can never grow again,
because it could grow out of that alone. There
will never again be a horizon of life and culture
that is bounded by religion. Perhaps even the
type of the saint is only possible with that certain
narrowness of intellect, which apparently has com-
pletely disappeared. And thus the greatest height
of intelligence has perhaps been reserved for a
single age; it appeared—and appears, for we are
still in that age—when an extraordinary, long-
accumulated energy of will concentrates itself, as
an exceptional case, upon intellectual aims. That
height will no longer exist when this wildness and
energy cease to be cultivated. Mankind probably
approaches nearer to its actual aim in the middle
of its road, in the middle time of its existence
than at the end. It may be that powers with
which, for instance, art is a condition, die out
altogether; the pleasure in lying, in the undefined,
the symbolical, in intoxication, in ecstasy might fall
into disrepute. For certainly, when life is ordered
in the perfect State, the present will provide no
more motive for poetry, and it would only be those
persons who had remained behind who would ask
## p. 218 (#290) ############################################
218 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
for poetical unreality. These, then, would as-
suredly look longingly backwards to the times of
the imperfect State, of half-barbaric society, to our
times.
235-
Genius and the Ideal State in Conflict.
—The Socialists demand a comfortable life for the
greatest possible number. If the lasting house of
this life of comfort, the perfect State, had really
been attained, then this life of comfort would have
destroyed the ground out of which grow the great
intellect and the mighty individual generally, I
mean powerful energy. Were this State reached,
mankind would have grown too weary to be still
(. . capable of producing genius. Must we not hence
wish that life should retain its forcible character,
and that wild forces and energies should continue
to be called forth afresh? But warm and sympa-
thetic hearts desire precisely the removal of that
wild and forcible character, and the warmest hearts
we can imagine desire it the most passionately of
all, whilst all the time its passion derived its fire, its
warmth, its very existence precisely from that wild
and forcible character; the warmest heart, therefore,
desires the removal of its own foundation, the des-
truction of itself,—that is, it desires something
illogical, it is not intelligent. The highest intelli-
gence and the warmest heart cannot exist together
in one person, and the wise man who passes
judgment upon life looks beyond goodness and
only regards it as something which is not without
value in the general summing-up of life. The
## p. 219 (#291) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 219
wise man must oppose those digressive wishes of
unintelligent goodness, because he has an interest
in the continuance of his type and in the eventual
appearance of the highest intellect; at least, he
will not advance the founding of the "perfect
State," inasmuch as there is only room in it for
wearied individuals. Christ, on the contrary, he
whom we may consider to have had the warmest
heart, advanced the process of making man stupid,
placed himself on the side of the intellectually
poor, and retarded the production of the greatest
intellect, and this was consistent. His opposite,
the man of perfect wisdom,—this may be safely
prophesied—will just as necessarily hinder the pro-
duction of a Christ. The State is a wise arrange-
ment for the protection of one individual against
another; if its ennobling is exaggerated the indi-
vidual will at last be weakened by it, even effaced,
—thus the original purpose of the State will be
most completely frustrated.
236.
The Zones OF Culture. —It may be figura-
tively said that the ages of culture correspond to
the zones of the various climates, only that they
lie one behind another and not beside each other
like the geographical zones. In comparison with
the temperate zone of culture, which it is our
object to enter, the past, speaking generally, gives
the impression of a tropical climate. Violent con-
trasts, sudden changes between day and night,
heat and colour-splendour, the reverence of all
## p. 220 (#292) ############################################
220 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that was sudden, mysterious, terrible, the rapidity
with which storms broke: everywhere that lavish
abundance of the provisions of nature ; and opposed
to this, in our culture, a clear but by no means
bright sky, pure but fairly unchanging air, sharp-
ness, even cold at times; thus the two zones are
contrasts to each other. When we see how in
that former zone the most raging passions are
suppressed and broken down with mysterious force
by metaphysical representations, we feel as if wild
tigers were being crushed before our very eyes in
the coils of mighty serpents; our mental climate
lacks such episodes, our imagination is temperate,
even in dreams there does not happen to us what
former peoples saw waking. But should we not
rejoice at this change, even granted that artists
are essentially spoiled by the disappearance of the
tropical culture and find us non-artists a little too
timid? In so far artists are certainly right to deny
"progress," for indeed it is doubtful whether the
last three thousand years show an advance in the
arts. In the same way, a metaphysical philosopher
like Schopenhauer would have no cause to acknow-
ledge progress with a regard to metaphysical philo-
sophy and religion if he glanced back over the last
four thousand years. For us, however, the existence
even of the temperate zones of culture is progress.
237-
Renaissance and Reformation. — The
Italian Renaissance contained within itself all the
positive forces to which we owe modern culture.
## p. 221 (#293) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 221
Such were the liberation of thought, the disregard
of authorities, the triumph of education over the
darkness of tradition, enthusiasm for science and
the scientific past of mankind, the unfettering of
the Individual, an ardour for truthfulness and a
dislike of delusion and mere effect (which ardour
blazed forth in an entire company of artistic charac-
ters, who with the greatest moral purity required
from themselves perfection in their works, and
nothing but perfection); yes, the Renaissance
had positive forces, which have, as yet, never
become so mighty again in our modern culture.
It was the Golden Age of the last thousand years,
in spite of all its blemishes and vices. On the
other hand, the German Reformation stands out as
an energetic protest of antiquated spirits, who were
by no means tired of mediaeval views of life, and
who received the signs of its dissolution, the extra-
ordinary flatness and alienation of the religious
life, with deep dejection instead of with the
rejoicing that would have been seemly. With
their northern strength and stiff-neckedness they
threw mankind back again, brought about the
counter-reformation, that is, a Catholic Christianity
of self-defence, with all the violences of a state of
siege, and delayed for two or three centuries the
complete awakening and mastery of the sciences;
just as they probably made for ever impossible
the complete inter-growth of the antique and the
modern spirit. The great task of the Renaissance
could not be brought to a termination, this was
prevented by the protest of the contemporary
backward German spirit (which, for its salvation,
## p. 222 (#294) ############################################
222 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
had had sufficient sense in the Middle Ages to
cross the Alps again and again). It was the
chance of an extraordinary constellation of politics
that Luther was preserved, and that his protest
gained strength, for the Emperor protected him in
order to employ him as a weapon against the Pope,
and in the same way he was secretly favoured
by the Pope in order to use the Protestant princes
as a counter-weight against the Emperor. With-
out this curious counter-play of intentions, Luther
would have been burnt like Huss,—and the
morning sun of enlightenment would probably
have risen somewhat earlier, and with a splendour
more beauteous than we can now imagine.
238.
Justice against the Becoming God. —
When the entire history of culture unfolds itself to
our gaze, as a confusion of evil and noble, of true
and false ideas, and we feel almost seasick at the
sight of these tumultuous waves, we then under-
stand what comfort resides in the conception of a
becoming God. This Deity is unveiled ever more
and more throughout the changes and fortunes of
mankind; it is not all blind mechanism, a senseless
and aimless confusion of forces. The deification
of the process of being is a metaphysical outlook,
seen as from a lighthouse overlooking the sea of
history, in which a far-too historical generation of
scholars found their comfort. This must not
arouse anger, however erroneous the view may be.
Only those who, like Schopenhauer, deny develop-
## p. 223 (#295) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 223
ment also feel none of the misery of this historical
wave, and therefore, because they know nothing
of that becoming God and the need of His supposi-
tion, they should in justice withhold their scorn.
239-
The Fruits According to their Seasons.
—Every better future that is desired for mankind
is necessarily in many respects also a worse
future, for it is foolishness to suppose that a
new, higher grade of humanity will combine in
itself all the good points of former grades, and
must produce, for instance, the highest form
of art. Rather has every season its own
advantages and charms, which exclude those of
the other seasons. That which has grown out
of religion and in its neighbourhood cannot grow
again if this has been destroyed; at the most,
straggling and belated off-shoots may lead to
deception on that point, like the occasional out-
breaks of remembrance of the old art, a condition
that probably betrays the feeling of loss and
deprivation, but which is no proof of the power
from which a new art might be born.
240.
The Increasing Severity of the World.
—The higher culture an individual attains, the
less field there is left for mockery and scorn.
Voltaire thanked Heaven from his heart for the
invention of marriage and the Church, by which
## p. 224 (#296) ############################################
224 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
it had so well provided for our cheer. But he
and his time, and before him the sixteenth
century, had exhausted their ridicule on this
theme; everything that is now made fun of on
this theme is out of date, and above all too cheap
to tempt a purchaser. Causes are now inquired
after; ours is an age of seriousness. Who cares
now to discern, laughingly, the difference between
reality and pretentious sham, between that which
man is and that which he wishes to represent;
the feeling of this contrast has quite a different
effect if we seek reasons. The more thoroughly
any one understands life, the less he will mock,
though finally, perhaps, he will mock at the
"thoroughness of his understanding. "
241.
The Genius of Culture. —If any one wished
to imagine a genius of culture, what would it
be like? It handles as its tools falsehood, force,
and thoughtless selfishness so surely that it
could only be called an evil, demoniacal being;
but its aims, which are occasionally transparent,
are great and good. It is a centaur, half-beast,
half-man, and, in addition, has angel's wings
upon its head.
242.
The Miracle-Education. —Interest in Edu-
cation will acquire great strength only from
the moment when belief in a God and His care
is renounced, just as the art of healing could
## p. 225 (#297) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 225
only flourish when the belief in miracle-cures
ceased. So far, however, there is universal belief
in the miracle-education; out of the greatest
disorder and confusion of aims and unfavourable-
ness of conditions, the most fertile and mighty
men have been seen to grow; could this happen
naturally? Soon these cases will be more closely
looked into, more carefully examined; but
miracles will never be discovered. In similar
circumstances countless persons perish constantly;
the few saved have, therefore, usually grown
stronger, because they endured these bad con-
ditions by virtue of an inexhaustible inborn
strength, and this strength they had also exercised
and increased by fighting against these circum-
stances; thus the miracle is explained. An
education that no longer believes in miracles
must pay attention to three things: first, how
much energy is inherited? secondly, by what
means can new energy be aroused? thirdly, how
can the individual be adapted to so many and
manifold claims of culture without being dis-
quieted and destroying his personality,—in
short, how can the individual be initiated into the
counterpoint of private and public culture, how
can he lead the melody and at the same time
accompany it?
243-
The Future of the Physician. —There
is now no profession which would admit of such
an enhancement as that of the physician; that
is, after the spiritual physicians the so-called
VOL. 1. P
## p. 226 (#298) ############################################
226 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
pastors, are no longer allowed to practise their
conjuring tricks to public applause, and a
cultured person gets out of their way. The
highest mental development of a physician has
7" not yet been reached, even if he understands
the best and newest methods, is practised in
them, and knows how to draw those rapid
conclusions from effects to causes for which
the diagnostics are celebrated; besides this, he
must possess a gift of eloquence that adapts
itself to every individual and draws his heart out
\ of his body; a manliness, the sight of which alone
! drives away all despondency (the canker of all
sick people), the tact and suppleness of a
diplomatist in negotiations between such as have
need of joy for their recovery and such as, for
reasons of health, must (and can) give joy; the
acuteness of a detective and an attorney to
divine the secrets of a soul without betraying
them,—in short, a good physician now has need
of all the artifices and artistic privileges of every
other professional class. Thus equipped, he is
then ready to be a benefactor to the whole of
society, by increasing good works, mental joys
and fertility, by preventing evil thoughts, projects
and villainies (the evil source of which is so
often the belly), by the restoration of a mental
and physical aristocracy (as a maker and hinderer
of marriages), by judiciously checking all so-
called soul-torments and pricks of conscience.
Thus from a "medicine man" he becomes a
saviour, and yet need work no miracle, neither
v is he obliged to let himself be crucified.
## p. 227 (#299) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 227
»
244.
In the Neighbourhood of Insanity. —
* The sum of sensations, knowledge and ex-
periences, the whole burden of culture, therefore,
has become so great that an overstraining of
nerves and powers of thought is a common
» danger, indeed the cultivated classes of European
countries are throughout neurotic, and almost
* every one of their great families is on the verge
of insanity in one of their branches. True, health
is now sought in every possible way; but in
the main a diminution of that tension of feeling,
'^1 of that oppressive burden of culture, is needful,
. which, even though it might be bought at a
heavy sacrifice, would at least give us room for
the great hope of a new Renaissance. To
Christianity, to the philosophers, poets, and
musicians we owe an abundance of deeply
*; emotional sensations; in order that these may
not get beyond our control we must invoke the
spirit of science, which on the whole makes us
V somewhat colder and more sceptical, and in
particular cools the faith in final and absolute
truths; it is chiefly through Christianity that
>! it has grown so wild.
j
245.
The Bell-founding of Culture. —Culture
has been made like a bell, within a covering of
coarser, commoner material, falsehood, violence,
the boundless extension of every individual "I,"
\
## p. 228 (#300) ############################################
T
™
228 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
of every separate people—this was the covering.
Is it time to take it off? Has the liquid set,
have the good and useful impulses, the habits
of the nobler nature become so certain and so 1
general that they no longer require to lean on j
metaphysics and the errors of religion, no longer
have need of hardnesses and violence as powerful
bonds between man and man, people and people?
No sign from any God can any longer help us
to answer this question; our own insight must
decide. The earthly rule of man must be taken
in hand by man himself, his "omniscience" must
watch over the further fate of culture with a1 .
iti'
sharp eye.
246.
The Cyclopes of Culture. —Whoever has
seen those furrowed basins which once contained
glaciers, will hardly deem it possible that a time
will come when the same spot will be a valley
of woods and meadows and streams. It is the
same in the history of mankind; the wildest
forces break the way, destructively at first,
but their activity was nevertheless necessary in
order that later on a milder civilisation might
build up its house These terrible energies—
that which is called Evil—are the cyclopic archi-
tects and road-makers of humanity.
24;.
The Circulation of Humanity. —It is
possible that all humanity is only a phase of
## p. 229 (#301) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 229
development of a certain species of animal of
limited duration. Man may have grown out
of the ape and will return to the ape again,*
without anybody taking an interest in the ending
of this curious comedy. Just as with the decline
of Roman civilisation and its most important
cause, the spread of Christianity, there was a
general uglification of man within the Roman
Empire, so, through the eventual decline of general
culture, there might result a far greater uglification
and finally an animalising of man till he reached
the ape. But just because we are able to face
'"'this prospect, we shall perhaps be able to avert
such an end.
248.
The Consoling Speech of a Desperate
Advance. —Our age gives the impression of an
intermediate condition; the old ways of regarding
the world, the old cultures still partially exist,
the new are not yet sure and customary and
hence are without decision and consistency. It
appears as if everything would become chaotic,
as if the old were being lost, the new worthless
and ever becoming weaker. But this is what the
soldier feels who is learning to march; for a time
I he is more uncertain and awkward, because his
muscles are moved sometimes according to the
r old system and sometimes according to the new,
and neither gains a decisive victory. We waver,
* This may remind one of Gobineau's more jocular
saying: "Nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y
allons. "—]. M. K.
i
## p. 230 (#302) ############################################
230 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
but it is necessary not to lose courage and give
up what we have newly gained. Moreover, we
cannot go back to the old, we have burnt our
boats; there remains nothing but to be brave
whatever happen. — March ahead, only get
forward! Perhaps our behaviour looks like
progress; but if not, then the words of Frederick
the Great may also be applied to us, and indeed
as a consolation: "Ah, mon cher Sulzer, vous ne
connaissez pas assez cette race maudite, a laquelle
nous appartenons. "
249.
Suffering from Past Culture. —Whoever
has solved the problem of culture suffers from a
feeling similar to that of one who has inherited
unjustly-gotten riches, or of a prince who reigns
thanks to the violence of his ancestors. He
thinks of their origin with grief and is often
ashamed, often irritable. The whole sum of
strength, joy, vigour, which he devotes to his
possessions, is often balanced by a deep weariness,
he cannot forget their origin. He looks despond-
ingly at the future; he knows well that his
successors will suffer from the past as he does.
250.
MANNERS. —Good manners disappear in pro-
portion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive
aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly
observed from decade to decade by those who have
an eye for public behaviour, which grows visibly
## p. 231 (#303) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 231
. *•
more vulgar. No one any longer knows how to
court and flatter intelligently; hence arises the
ludicrous fact that in cases where we must render
actual homage (to a great statesman or artist, for
instance), the words of deepest feeling, of »simple,
peasant-like honesty, have to be borrowed, owing
to the embarrassment resulting from the lack
of grace and wit. Thus the public ceremonious
meeting of men appears ever more clumsy, but
more full of feeling and honesty without really
being so. But must there always be a decline in
manners? It appears to me, rather, that manners
take a deep curve and that we are approaching
their lowest point. When society has become sure
of its intentions and principles, so that they have
a moulding effect (the manners we have learnt
from former moulding conditions are now inherited
and always more weakly learnt), there will then
be company manners, gestures and social ex-
pressions, which must appear as necessary and
simply natural because they are intentions and
principles. The better division of time and work,
the gymnastic exercise transformed into the ac-
companiment of all beautiful leisure, increased and
severer meditation, which brings wisdom and
suppleness even to the body, will bring all this
in its train. Here, indeed, we might think with a
smile of our scholars, and consider whether, as a
matter of fact, they who wish to be regarded as the
forerunners of that new culture are distinguished
by their better manners? This is hardly the
case; although their spirit may be willing enough
their flesh is weak. The past of culture is still too
## p. 231 (#304) ############################################
230 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
but it is necessary not to lose courage and give
up what we have newly gained. Moreover, we
cannot go back to the old, we Jiave burnt our'
boats; there remains nothing but to be brave
whatever happen. — March ahead, only get
forward! Perhaps our behaviour looks like
progress; but if not, then the words of Frederick
the Great may also be applied to us, and indeed
as a consolation: "Ah, mon cher Sulzer, vous ne
connaissez pas assez cette race maudite, a laquelle
nous appartenons'. '
249.
Suffering from Past Culture. —Whoever
has solved the problem of culture suffers from a
feeling similar to that of one who has inherited
unjustly-gotten riches, or of a prince who reigns
thanks to the violence of his ancestors. He
thinks of their origin with grief and is often
ashamed, often irritable. The whole sum of'
strength, joy, vigour, which he devotes to his
possessions, is often balanced by a deep weariness,
he cannot forget their origin. He looks despond-
ingly at the future; he knows well that his
successors will suffer from the past as he does.
•
1
1
250.
MANNERS. —Good manners disappear in pro-
portion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive
aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly
observed from decade to decade by those who have
an eye for public behaviour, which grows visibly
## p. 231 (#305) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 231
more vulgar. No one any longer knows how to
court and flatter intelligently; hence arises the
ludicrous fact that in cases where we must render
actual homage (to a great statesman or artist, for
instance), the words of deepest feeling, of'simple,
peasant-like honesty, have to be borrowed, owing
to the embarrassment resulting from the lack
of grace and wit. Thus the public ceremonious
meeting of men appears ever more clumsy, but
more full of feeling and honesty without really
being so. But must there always be a decline in
manners? It appears to me, rather, that manners
take a deep curve and that we are approaching
their lowest point. When society has become sure
of its intentions and principles, so that they have
a moulding effect (the manners we have learnt
from former moulding conditions are now inherited
and always more weakly learnt), there will then
be company manners, gestures and social ex-
pressions, which must appear as necessary and
simply natural because they are intentions and
principles. The better division of time and work,
the gymnastic exercise transformed into the ac-
companiment of all beautiful leisure, increased and
severer meditation, which brings wisdom and
suppleness even to the body, will bring all this
in its train. Here, indeed, we might think with a
smile of our scholars, and consider whether, as a
matter of fact, they who wish to be regarded as the
forerunners of that new culture are distinguished
by their better manners? This is hardly the
case; although their spirit may be willing enough
their flesh is weak. The past of culture is still too
## p. 231 (#306) ############################################
23O HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
but it is necessary not to lose courage and give
up what we have newly gained. Moreover, we
cannot go back to the old, we have burnt our
boats; there remains nothing but to be brave
whatever happen. — March ahead, only get
forward! Perhaps our behaviour looks like
progress; but if not, then the words of Frederick
the Great may also be applied to us, and indeed
as a consolation: "Ah, mon cher Sulzer, vous ne
connaissez pas assez cette race maudite, a laquelle
nous appartenons''
249.
Suffering from Past Culture. —Whoever
has solved the problem of culture suffers from a
feeling similar to that of one who has inherited
unjustly-gotten riches, or of a prince who reigns
thanks to the violence of his ancestors.
pain that we acknowledge the fact that in their
loftiest soarings, artists of all ages have exalted
and divinely transfigured precisely those ideas
which we now recognise as false; they are the
glorifiers of humanity's religious and philosophical
errors, and they could not have been this without
belief in the absolute truth of these errors. But
if the belief in such truth diminishes at all, if the
rainbow colours at the farthest ends of human
knowledge and imagination fade, then this kind
of art can never re-flourish, for, like the Divina
Commedia, Raphael's paintings, Michelangelo's
frescoes, and Gothic cathedrals, they indicate not
only a cosmic but also a metaphysical meaning in
the work of art. Out of all this will grow a
touching legend that such an art and such an
artistic faith once existed.
221.
Revolution in Poetry. —The strict limit
which the French dramatists marked out with
regard to unity of action, time and place, con-
struction of style, verse and sentence, selection
of words and ideas, was a school as important as
that of counterpoint and fugue in the development
of modern music or that of the Gorgianic figures
in Greek oratory. Such a restriction may appear
## p. 200 (#270) ############################################
200 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
absurd; nevertheless there is no means of getting
out of naturalism except by confining ourselves
at first to the strongest (perhaps most arbitrary)
means. Thus we gradually learn to walk grace-
fully on the narrow paths that bridge giddy
abysses, and acquire great suppleness of movement
as a result, as the history of music proves to our
living eyes. Here we see how, step by step, the
fetters get looser, until at last they may appear
to be altogether thrown off; this appearance is the
highest achievement of a necessary development
in art. In the art of modern poetry there existed
no such fortunate, gradual emerging from self-
imposed fetters. Lessing held up to scorn in
Germany the French form, the only modern form
of art, and pointed to Shakespeare; and thus the
steadiness of that unfettering was lost and a spring
was made into naturalism—that is, back into the
beginnings of art. From this Goethe endeavoured
to save himself, by always trying to limit himself
anew in different ways; but even the most gifted
only succeeds by continuously experimenting, if
the thread of development has once been broken.
It is to the unconsciously revered, if also
repudiated, model of French tragedy that Schiller
owes his comparative sureness of form, and he
! remained fairly independent of Lessing (whose
n \ dramatic attempts he is well known to have
rejected). But after Voltaire the French them-
selves suddenly lacked the great talents which
would have led the development of tragedy out of
constraint to that apparent freedom; later on they
followed the German example and made a spring
j! »
## p. 201 (#271) ############################################
THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. 201
into a sort of Rousseau-like state of nature and
experiments. It is only necessary to read
Voltaire's " Mahomet" from time to time in order
to perceive clearly what European culture has lost
through that breaking down of tradition. Once
for all, Voltaire was the last of the great dramatists
who with Greek proportion controlled his manifold
soul, equal even to the greatest storms of tragedy,
—he was able to do what no German could,because
the French nature is much nearer akin to the
Greek than is the German; he was also the last
great writer who in the wielding of prose possessed
the Greek ear, Greek artistic conscientiousness,
and Greek simplicity and grace; he was, also, one
of the last men able to combine in himself the
greatest freedom of mind and an absolutely
unrevolutionary way of thinking without being
inconsistent and cowardly. Since that time the
modern spirit, with its restlessness and its hatred
of moderation and restrictions, has obtained the
mastery on all sides, let loose at first by the fever
of revolution, and then once more putting a bridle
on itself when it became filled with fear and horror
at itself,—but it was the bridle of rigid logic, no
longer that of artistic moderation. It is true that
through that unfettering for a time we are able to
enjoy the poetry of all nations, everything that
has sprung up in hidden places, original, wild,
wonderfully beautiful and gigantically irregular,
from folk-songs up to the "great barbarian"
Shakespeare; we taste the joys of local colour
and costume, hitherto unknown to all artistic
nations; we make liberal use of the "barbaric
## p. 202 (#272) ############################################
. . im—M. ' n
202 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
advantages " of our time, which Goethe accentuated
against Schiller in order to place the formlessness
of his Faust in the most favourable light. But
for how much longer? The encroaching flood of
poetry of all styles and all nations must gradually
sweep away that magic garden upon which a quiet
and hidden growth would still have been possible;
all poets must become experimenting imitators, dar-
ing copyists, however great their primary strength
may be. Eventually, the public, which has lost
the habit of seeing the actual artistic fact in the
controlling of depicting power, in the organising
mastery over all art-means, must come ever more
and more to value power for power's sake, colour
for colour's sake, idea for idea's sake, inspiration
for inspiration's sake; accordingly it will not enjoy
the elements and conditions of the work of art,
unless isolated, and finally will make the very
natural demand that the artist must deliver it to
them isolated. True, the "senseless" fetters of
Franco-Greek art have been thrown off, but un-
consciously we have grown accustomed to consider
all fetters, all restrictions as senseless;—and so
art moves towards its liberation, but, in so doing,
it touches—which is certainly highly edifying—
upon all the phases of its beginning, its childhood,
its incompleteness, its sometime boldness and
excesses,—in perishing it interprets its origin and
growth. One of the great ones, whose instinct
may be relied on and whose theory lacked nothing
but thirty years more of practice, Lord Byron,
once said: that with regard to poetry in general,
the more he thought about it the more convinced
~
## p. 203 (#273) ############################################
THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. 203
he was that one and all we are entirely on a wrong
track, that we are following an inwardly false
revolutionary system, and that either our own
generation or the next will yet arrive at this same
conviction. It is the same Lord Byron who said
that he "looked upon Shakespeare as the very
worst model, although the most extraordinary poet. "
And does not Goethe's mature artistic insight in
the second half of his life say practically the same
thing ? —that insight by means of which he made
such a bound in advance of whole generations that,
generally speaking, it may be said that Goethe's
influence has not yet begun, that his time has still
to come. Just because his nature held him fast
for a long time in the path of the poetical
revolution, just because he drank to the dregs of
whatsoever new sources, views and expedients had
been indirectly discovered through that breaking
down of tradition, of all that had been unearthed
from under the ruins of art, his later transformation
and conversion carries so much weight; it shows
that he felt the deepest longing to win back the
traditions of art, and to give in fancy the ancient
perfection and completeness to the abandoned ruins
and colonnades of the temple, with the imagination
of the eye at least, should the strength of the arm
be found too weak to build where such tremendous
powers were needed even to destroy. Thus he
lived in art as in the remembrance of the true
art, his poetry had become an aid to remembrance,
to the understanding of old and long-departed
ages of art. With respect to the strength of the
new age, his demands could not be satisfied; but
r
## p. 204 (#274) ############################################
204 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
the pain this occasioned was amply balanced by
the joy that they have been satisfied once, and that
we ourselves can still participate in this satis-
faction. Not individuals, but more or less ideal
masks; no reality, but an allegorical generality;
topical characters, local colours toned down and
rendered mythical almost to the point of in-
visibility; contemporary feeling and the problems
of contemporary society reduced to the simplest
forms, stripped of their attractive, interesting
pathological qualities, made ineffective in every
"other but the artistic sense; no new materials and
characters, but the old, long-accustomed ones in
constant new animation and transformation; that
is art, as Goethe understood it later, as the Greeks
and even the French practised it.
222.
What Remains of Art. —It is true that art
has a much greater value in the case of certain
metaphysical hypotheses, for instance when the
belief obtains that the character is unchangeable
and that the essence of the world manifests itself
continually in all character and action; thus the
artist's work becomes the symbol of the eternally
constant, while according to our views the artist
can only endow his picture with temporary value,
because man on the whole has developed and is
mutable, and even the individual man has nothing
fixed and constant. The same thing holds good
with another metaphysical hypothesis: assuming
that our visible world were only a delusion, as
metaphysicians declare, then art would come very
## p. 204 (#275) ############################################
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2O4 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
nea
the pain this occasioned was amply balanced b
the joy that they have been satisfied once, and tha
we ourselves can still participate in this satis
faction. Not individuals, but more or less idea
masks; no reality, but an allegorical generality
topical characters, local colours toned down an
rendered mythical almost to the point of in
visibility; contemporary feeling and the problem
of contemporary society reduced to the simples
forms, stripped of their attractive, interesting
pathological qualities, made ineffective in every
Tother but the artistic sense; no new materials and
characters, but the old, long-accustomed ones it
constant new animation and transformation ; that
is art, as Goethe understood it later, as the Greeks
and even the French practised it.
222.
WHAT REMAINS OF ART. -It is true that art
has a much greater value in the case of certain
metaphysical hypotheses, for instance when the
belief obtains that the character is unchangeable
and that the essence of the world manifests itself
continually in all character and action; thus the
artist's work becomes the symbol of the eternally
constant, while according to our views the artist
can only endow his picture with temporary value,
because man on the whole has developed and is
mutable, and even the individual man has nothing
fixed and constant. The same thing holds good
with another metaphysical hypothesis: assuming
that our visible world were only a delusion, as
metaphysicians declare, then art would come very
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## p. 205 (#277) ############################################
THE SOUL OF ARTISTS AND AUTHORS. 205
near to the real world, for there would then be far
too much similarity between the world of appear-
ance and the dream-world of the artist; and the
remaining difference would place the meaning of
art higher even than the meaning of nature,
because art would represent the same forms, the
types and models of nature. But those supposi-
tions are false; and what position does art retain
after this acknowledgment? Above all, for
centuries it has taught us to look upon life in
every shape with interest and pleasure and to
carry our feelings so far that at last we exclaim,
"Whatever it may be, life is good. " This teaching
of art, to take pleasure in existence and to regard
human life as a piece of nature, without too
vigorous movement, as an object of regular
development,—this teaching has grown into us;
it reappears as an all-powerful need of knowledge.
We could renounce art, but we should not there-
with forfeit the ability it has taught us,—just as
we have given up religion, but not the exalting
and intensifying of temperament acquired through
religion. As the plastic arts and music are the
standards of that wealth of feeling really acquired
and obtained through religion, so also, after a dis-
appearance of art, the intensity and multiplicity of
the joys of life which it had implanted in us would
still demand satisfaction. The scientific man is
the further development of the artistic man.
223.
The After-glow of Art. —Just as in old
age we remember our youth and celebrate festi-
/
## p. 206 (#278) ############################################
206 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
vals of memory, so in a short time mankind will
stand towards art: its relation will be that of a
touching memory of the joys of youth. Never,
perhaps, in former ages was art dealt with so
seriously and thoughtfully as now when it appears
to be surrounded by the magic influence of death.
We call to mind that Greek city in southern
Italy, which once a year still celebrates its Greek
feasts, amidst tears and mourning, that foreign
barbarism triumphs ever more and more over the
customs its people brought with them into the
land; and never has Hellenism been so much
appreciated, nowhere has this golden nectar been
drunk with so great delight, as amongst these fast
disappearing Hellenes. The artist will soon come
to be regarded as a splendid relic, and to him,
as to a wonderful stranger on whose power and
beauty depended the happiness of former ages,
there will be paid such honour as is not often
enjoyed by one of our race. The best in us is
perhaps inherited from the sentiments of former
times, to which it is hardly possible for us now
to return by direct ways; the sun has already
disappeared, but the heavens of our life are still
glowing and illumined by it, although we can
behold it no longer.
1
<
J
## p. 207 (#279) ############################################
FIFTH DIVISION.
THE SIGNS OF HIGHER AND
LOWER CULTURE.
224.
Ennoblement through Degeneration. —
History teaches that a race of people is best
preserved where the greater number hold one
common spirit in consequence of the similarity
of their accustomed and indisputable principles:
in consequence, therefore, of their common faith.
Thus strength is afforded by good and thorough
customs, thus is learnt the subjection of the
individual, and strenuousness of character becomes
a birth gift and afterwards is fostered as a habit.
The danger to these communities founded on
individuals of strong and similar character is
that gradually increasing stupidity through trans-
mission, which follows all stability like its shadow.
It is on the more unrestricted, more uncertain
and morally weaker individuals that depends the
intellectual progress of such communities, it is they
who attempt all that is new and manifold.
Numbers of these perish on account of their
weakness, without having achieved any specially
visible effect; but generally, particularly when
they have descendants, they flare up and from
## p. 208 (#280) ############################################
208 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
time to time inflict a wound on the stable element
of the community. Precisely in this sore and
weakened place the community is inoculated with
something new; but its general strength must
be great enough to absorb and assimilate this
new thing into its blood. Deviating natures are
of the utmost importance wherever there is to
be progress. Every wholesale progress must be
preceded by a partial weakening. The strongest
natures retain the type, the weaker ones help it
to develop. Something similar happens in the
case of individuals; a deterioration, a mutilation,
even a vice and, above all, a physical or moral
loss is seldom without its advantage. For
instance, a sickly man in the midst of a warlike
and restless race will perhaps have more chance
of being alone and thereby growing quieter and
wiser, the one-eyed man will possess a stronger
eye, the blind man will have a deeper inward
sight and will certainly have a keener sense of
. hearing. In so far it appears to me that the
famous Struggle for Existence is not the only
point of view from which an explanation can be
given of the progress or strengthening of an
individual or a race. Rather must two different
things converge: firstly, the multiplying of stable
strength through mental binding in faith and
common feeling; secondly, the possibility of
attaining to higher aims, through the fact that
there are deviating natures and, in consequence,
partial weakening and wounding of the stable
strength; it is precisely the weaker nature, as
the more delicate and free, that makes all progress
## p. 209 (#281) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 200
at all possible. A people that is crumbling and
weak in any one part, but as a whole still strong
and healthy, is able to absorb the infection of
what is new and incorporate it to its advantage.
The task of education in a single individual is
this: to plant him so firmly and surely that, as
a whole, he can no longer be diverted from his
path. Then, however, the educator must wound
him, or else make use of the wounds which fate
inflicts, and when pain and need have thus arisen,
something new and noble can be inoculated into
the wounded places. With regard to the State,
Machiavelli says that, " the form of Government
is of very small importance, although half-
educated people think otherwise. The great aim
of State-craft should be duration, which out-
weighs all else, inasmuch as it is more valuable
than liberty. " It is only with securely founded
and guaranteed duration that continual develop-
ment and ennobling inoculation are at all possible.
As a rule, however, authority, the dangerous com-
panion of all duration, will rise in opposition to
this.
225.
Free-Thinker a Relative Term. — We
call that man a free-thinker who thinks otherwise
than is expected of him in consideration of his
origin, surroundings, position, and office, or by
reason of the prevailing contemporary views.
He is the exception, fettered minds are the rule;
these latter reproach him, saying that his free
principles either have their origin in a desire
vol. 1. O
## p. 210 (#282) ############################################
2IO HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
i
<.
to be remarkable or else cause free actions to be
inferred,—that is to say, actions which are not
compatible with fettered morality. Sometimes it
is also said that the cause of such and such free
principles may be traced to mental perversity
and extravagance; but only malice speaks thus,
nor does it believe what it says, but wishes
thereby to do an injury, for the free-thinker
usually bears the proof of his greater goodness
and keenness of intellect written in his face so
plainly that the fettered spirits understand it well
enough. But the two other derivations of free-
thought are honestly intended; as a matter of
fact, many free-thinkers are created in one or
other of these ways. For this reason, however,
the tenets to which they attain in this manner
might be truer and more reliable than those of
the fettered spirits. In the knowledge of truth,
what really matters is the possession of it, not
the impulse under which it was sought, the way
in which it was found. If the free-thinkers are
right then the fettered spirits are wrong, and it is
a matter of indifference whether the former have
reached truth through immorality or the latter
hitherto retained hold of untruths through
morality. Moreover, it is not essential to the
free-thinker that he should hold more correct
views, but that he should have liberated himself
from what was customary, be it successfully or
disastrously. As a rule, however, he will have
truth, or at least the spirit of truth-investigation, f|
on his side; he demands reasons, the others
demand faith.
':.
i
1
## p. 211 (#283) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 211
226.
The Origin of Faith. —The fettered spirit
does not take up his position from conviction,
but from habit; he is a Christian, for instance,
not because he had a comprehension of different
creeds and could take his choice; he is an
Englishman, not because he decided for England,
but he found Christianity and England ready-
made and accepted them without any reason,
just as one who is born in a wine-country
becomes a wine-drinker. Later on, perhaps, as
he was a Christian and an Englishman, he dis-
covered a few reasons in favour of his habit;
these reasons may be upset, but he is not
therefore upset in his whole position. For
instance, let a fettered spirit be obliged to bring
forward his reasons against bigamy and then it
will be seen whether his holy zeal in favour of
monogamy is based upon reason or upon custom.
The adoption of guiding principles without reasons
is called faith.
227.
Conclusions drawn from the Conse-
quences AND TRACED BACK TO REASON AND
UN-REASON. —All states and orders of society,
professions, matrimony, education, law: all these
find strength and duration only in the faith which
the fettered spirits repose in them,—that is, in
the absence of reasons, or at least in the averting
of inquiries as to reasons. The restricted spirits
do not willingly acknowledge this, and feel that
## p. 212 (#284) ############################################
212 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
it is a pudendum. Christianity, however, which
was very simple in its intellectual ideas, remarked
nothing of this pudendum, required faith and
nothing but faith, and passionately repulsed the
demand for reasons; it pointed to the success
of faith: "You will soon feel the advantages
of faith," it suggested, "and through faith shall
ye be saved. " As an actual fact, the State
pursues the same course, and every father brings
up his son in the same way: "Only believe
this," he says, " and you will soon feel the good
it does. " This implies, however, that the truth
of an opinion is proved by its personal usefulness;
the wholesomeness of a doctrine must be a
guarantee for its intellectual surety and solidity.
It is exactly as if an accused person in a court
of law were to say, "My counsel speaks the
whole truth, for only see what is the result of
his speech: I shall be acquitted. " Because the
fettered spirits retain their principles on account
of their usefulness, they suppose that the free
spirit also seeks his own advantage in his views
and only holds that to be true which is profitable
to him. But as he appears to find profitable
just the contrary of that which his compatriots
or equals find profitable, these latter assume that
his principles are dangerous to them; they say
or feel, " He must not be right, for he is injurious
to us. "
228.
The Strong, Good Character. — The
restriction of views, which habit has made instinct,
## p. 213 (#285) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 213
> leads to what is called strength of character.
? When any one acts from few but always from
the same motives, his actions acquire great
energy; if these actions accord with the principles
of the fettered spirits they are recognised, and
i they produce, moreover, in those who perform
them the sensation of a good conscience. Few
♦ motives, energetic action, and a good conscience
compose what is called strength of character.
The man of strong character lacks a knowledge
-, of the many possibilities and directions of action;
his intellect is fettered and restricted, because
in a given case it shows him, perhaps, only two
* possibilities; between these two he must now
of necessity choose, in accordance with his whole
nature, and he does this easily and quickly
. because he has not to choose between fifty
possibilities. The educating surroundings aim
at fettering every individual, by always placing
. » before him the smallest number of possibilities.
The individual is always treated by his educators
as if he were, indeed, something new, but should
become a duplicate. If he makes his first appear-
ance as something unknown, unprecedented, he
must be turned into something known and
,* precedented. In a child, the familiar manifesta-
. tion of restriction is called a good character;
in placing itself on the side of the fettered
spirits the child first discloses its awakening
common feeling; with this foundation of common
sentiment, he will eventually become useful to
\* his State or rank.
## p. 214 (#286) ############################################
214 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
229.
The Standards and Values of the
Fettered Spirits. —There are four species of
things concerning which the restricted spirits say
they are in the right. Firstly: all things that last
are right; secondly: all things that are not burdens
to us are right; thirdly: all things that are advan-
tageous for us are right; fourthly: all things for
which we have made sacrifices are right. The last
sentence, for instance, explains why a war that
was begun in opposition to popular feeling is
carried on with enthusiasm directly a sacrifice
has been made for it. The free spirits, who
bring their case before the forum of the fettered
spirits, must prove that free spirits always existed,
that free-spiritism is therefore enduring, that it
will not become a burden, and, finally, that on
the whole they are an advantage to the fettered
spirits. It is because they cannot convince the
restricted spirits on this last point that they
profit nothing by having proved the first and
second propositions.
230.
Esprit Fort. —Compared with him who has
tradition on his side and requires no reasons
for his actions, the free spirit is always weak,
especially in action; for he is acquainted with
too many motives and points of view, and has,
therefore, an uncertain and unpractised hand.
What means exist of making him strong in spite
## p. 215 (#287) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 215
of this, so that he will, at least, manage to
survive, and will not perish ineffectually?
What is the source of the strong spirit {esprit
forf)? This is especially the question as to the
production of genius. Whence comes the energy,
the unbending strength, the endurance with which
the one, in opposition to accepted ideas,
endeavours to obtain an entirely individual
knowledge of the world?
231.
The Rise of Genius. —The ingenuity with
which a prisoner seeks the means of freedom,
the most cold-blooded and patient employment
of every smallest advantage, can teach us of
what tools Nature sometimes makes use in order
to produce Genius,—a word which I beg will be
understood without any mythological and religious
flavour; she, Nature, begins it in a dungeon and
excites to the utmost its desire to free itself.
Or to give another picture: some one who has
completely lost his way in a wood, but who
with unusual energy strives to reach the open
in one direction or another, will sometimes dis-
cover a new path which nobody knew previously,
—thus arise geniuses, who are credited with
originality. It has already been said that mutila-
tion, crippling, or the loss of some important
organ, is frequently the cause of the unusual
development of another organ, because this one
has to fulfil its own and also another function.
This explains the source of many a brilliant
## p. 216 (#288) ############################################
2l6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
talent. These general remarks on the origin of
genius may be applied to the special case, the |
origin of the perfect free spirit.
232.
Conjecture as to the Origin of Free-
Spiritism. —Just as the glaciers increase when in
equatorial regions the sun shines upon the seas
with greater force than hitherto, so may a very
strong and spreading free-spiritism be a proof
that somewhere or other the force of feeling has v. ,
grown extraordinarily. . ,
233-
The Voice of History. —In general, history
appears to teach the following about the production
of genius: it ill-treats and torments mankind— -J
calls to the passions of envy, hatred, and rivalry—-
drives them to desperation, people against people,
throughout whole centuries! Then, perhaps, like
a stray spark from the terrible energy thereby
aroused, there flames up suddenly the light of
genius; the will, like a horse maddened by the «3
rider's spur, thereupon breaks out and leaps over
into another domain. He who could attain to a
comprehension of the production of genius, and
desires to carry out practically the manner in
which Nature usually goes to work, would have
to be just as evil and regardless as Nature itself. <]
But perhaps we have not heard rightly.
'
## p. 217 (#289) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 217
234-
The Value of the Middle of the Road.
—It is possible that the production of genius is
reserved to a limited period of mankind's history.
For we must not expect from the future every-
thing that very defined conditions were able to
produce; for instance, not the astounding effects
of religious feeling. This has had its day, and
much that is very good can never grow again,
because it could grow out of that alone. There
will never again be a horizon of life and culture
that is bounded by religion. Perhaps even the
type of the saint is only possible with that certain
narrowness of intellect, which apparently has com-
pletely disappeared. And thus the greatest height
of intelligence has perhaps been reserved for a
single age; it appeared—and appears, for we are
still in that age—when an extraordinary, long-
accumulated energy of will concentrates itself, as
an exceptional case, upon intellectual aims. That
height will no longer exist when this wildness and
energy cease to be cultivated. Mankind probably
approaches nearer to its actual aim in the middle
of its road, in the middle time of its existence
than at the end. It may be that powers with
which, for instance, art is a condition, die out
altogether; the pleasure in lying, in the undefined,
the symbolical, in intoxication, in ecstasy might fall
into disrepute. For certainly, when life is ordered
in the perfect State, the present will provide no
more motive for poetry, and it would only be those
persons who had remained behind who would ask
## p. 218 (#290) ############################################
218 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
for poetical unreality. These, then, would as-
suredly look longingly backwards to the times of
the imperfect State, of half-barbaric society, to our
times.
235-
Genius and the Ideal State in Conflict.
—The Socialists demand a comfortable life for the
greatest possible number. If the lasting house of
this life of comfort, the perfect State, had really
been attained, then this life of comfort would have
destroyed the ground out of which grow the great
intellect and the mighty individual generally, I
mean powerful energy. Were this State reached,
mankind would have grown too weary to be still
(. . capable of producing genius. Must we not hence
wish that life should retain its forcible character,
and that wild forces and energies should continue
to be called forth afresh? But warm and sympa-
thetic hearts desire precisely the removal of that
wild and forcible character, and the warmest hearts
we can imagine desire it the most passionately of
all, whilst all the time its passion derived its fire, its
warmth, its very existence precisely from that wild
and forcible character; the warmest heart, therefore,
desires the removal of its own foundation, the des-
truction of itself,—that is, it desires something
illogical, it is not intelligent. The highest intelli-
gence and the warmest heart cannot exist together
in one person, and the wise man who passes
judgment upon life looks beyond goodness and
only regards it as something which is not without
value in the general summing-up of life. The
## p. 219 (#291) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 219
wise man must oppose those digressive wishes of
unintelligent goodness, because he has an interest
in the continuance of his type and in the eventual
appearance of the highest intellect; at least, he
will not advance the founding of the "perfect
State," inasmuch as there is only room in it for
wearied individuals. Christ, on the contrary, he
whom we may consider to have had the warmest
heart, advanced the process of making man stupid,
placed himself on the side of the intellectually
poor, and retarded the production of the greatest
intellect, and this was consistent. His opposite,
the man of perfect wisdom,—this may be safely
prophesied—will just as necessarily hinder the pro-
duction of a Christ. The State is a wise arrange-
ment for the protection of one individual against
another; if its ennobling is exaggerated the indi-
vidual will at last be weakened by it, even effaced,
—thus the original purpose of the State will be
most completely frustrated.
236.
The Zones OF Culture. —It may be figura-
tively said that the ages of culture correspond to
the zones of the various climates, only that they
lie one behind another and not beside each other
like the geographical zones. In comparison with
the temperate zone of culture, which it is our
object to enter, the past, speaking generally, gives
the impression of a tropical climate. Violent con-
trasts, sudden changes between day and night,
heat and colour-splendour, the reverence of all
## p. 220 (#292) ############################################
220 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that was sudden, mysterious, terrible, the rapidity
with which storms broke: everywhere that lavish
abundance of the provisions of nature ; and opposed
to this, in our culture, a clear but by no means
bright sky, pure but fairly unchanging air, sharp-
ness, even cold at times; thus the two zones are
contrasts to each other. When we see how in
that former zone the most raging passions are
suppressed and broken down with mysterious force
by metaphysical representations, we feel as if wild
tigers were being crushed before our very eyes in
the coils of mighty serpents; our mental climate
lacks such episodes, our imagination is temperate,
even in dreams there does not happen to us what
former peoples saw waking. But should we not
rejoice at this change, even granted that artists
are essentially spoiled by the disappearance of the
tropical culture and find us non-artists a little too
timid? In so far artists are certainly right to deny
"progress," for indeed it is doubtful whether the
last three thousand years show an advance in the
arts. In the same way, a metaphysical philosopher
like Schopenhauer would have no cause to acknow-
ledge progress with a regard to metaphysical philo-
sophy and religion if he glanced back over the last
four thousand years. For us, however, the existence
even of the temperate zones of culture is progress.
237-
Renaissance and Reformation. — The
Italian Renaissance contained within itself all the
positive forces to which we owe modern culture.
## p. 221 (#293) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 221
Such were the liberation of thought, the disregard
of authorities, the triumph of education over the
darkness of tradition, enthusiasm for science and
the scientific past of mankind, the unfettering of
the Individual, an ardour for truthfulness and a
dislike of delusion and mere effect (which ardour
blazed forth in an entire company of artistic charac-
ters, who with the greatest moral purity required
from themselves perfection in their works, and
nothing but perfection); yes, the Renaissance
had positive forces, which have, as yet, never
become so mighty again in our modern culture.
It was the Golden Age of the last thousand years,
in spite of all its blemishes and vices. On the
other hand, the German Reformation stands out as
an energetic protest of antiquated spirits, who were
by no means tired of mediaeval views of life, and
who received the signs of its dissolution, the extra-
ordinary flatness and alienation of the religious
life, with deep dejection instead of with the
rejoicing that would have been seemly. With
their northern strength and stiff-neckedness they
threw mankind back again, brought about the
counter-reformation, that is, a Catholic Christianity
of self-defence, with all the violences of a state of
siege, and delayed for two or three centuries the
complete awakening and mastery of the sciences;
just as they probably made for ever impossible
the complete inter-growth of the antique and the
modern spirit. The great task of the Renaissance
could not be brought to a termination, this was
prevented by the protest of the contemporary
backward German spirit (which, for its salvation,
## p. 222 (#294) ############################################
222 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
had had sufficient sense in the Middle Ages to
cross the Alps again and again). It was the
chance of an extraordinary constellation of politics
that Luther was preserved, and that his protest
gained strength, for the Emperor protected him in
order to employ him as a weapon against the Pope,
and in the same way he was secretly favoured
by the Pope in order to use the Protestant princes
as a counter-weight against the Emperor. With-
out this curious counter-play of intentions, Luther
would have been burnt like Huss,—and the
morning sun of enlightenment would probably
have risen somewhat earlier, and with a splendour
more beauteous than we can now imagine.
238.
Justice against the Becoming God. —
When the entire history of culture unfolds itself to
our gaze, as a confusion of evil and noble, of true
and false ideas, and we feel almost seasick at the
sight of these tumultuous waves, we then under-
stand what comfort resides in the conception of a
becoming God. This Deity is unveiled ever more
and more throughout the changes and fortunes of
mankind; it is not all blind mechanism, a senseless
and aimless confusion of forces. The deification
of the process of being is a metaphysical outlook,
seen as from a lighthouse overlooking the sea of
history, in which a far-too historical generation of
scholars found their comfort. This must not
arouse anger, however erroneous the view may be.
Only those who, like Schopenhauer, deny develop-
## p. 223 (#295) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 223
ment also feel none of the misery of this historical
wave, and therefore, because they know nothing
of that becoming God and the need of His supposi-
tion, they should in justice withhold their scorn.
239-
The Fruits According to their Seasons.
—Every better future that is desired for mankind
is necessarily in many respects also a worse
future, for it is foolishness to suppose that a
new, higher grade of humanity will combine in
itself all the good points of former grades, and
must produce, for instance, the highest form
of art. Rather has every season its own
advantages and charms, which exclude those of
the other seasons. That which has grown out
of religion and in its neighbourhood cannot grow
again if this has been destroyed; at the most,
straggling and belated off-shoots may lead to
deception on that point, like the occasional out-
breaks of remembrance of the old art, a condition
that probably betrays the feeling of loss and
deprivation, but which is no proof of the power
from which a new art might be born.
240.
The Increasing Severity of the World.
—The higher culture an individual attains, the
less field there is left for mockery and scorn.
Voltaire thanked Heaven from his heart for the
invention of marriage and the Church, by which
## p. 224 (#296) ############################################
224 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
it had so well provided for our cheer. But he
and his time, and before him the sixteenth
century, had exhausted their ridicule on this
theme; everything that is now made fun of on
this theme is out of date, and above all too cheap
to tempt a purchaser. Causes are now inquired
after; ours is an age of seriousness. Who cares
now to discern, laughingly, the difference between
reality and pretentious sham, between that which
man is and that which he wishes to represent;
the feeling of this contrast has quite a different
effect if we seek reasons. The more thoroughly
any one understands life, the less he will mock,
though finally, perhaps, he will mock at the
"thoroughness of his understanding. "
241.
The Genius of Culture. —If any one wished
to imagine a genius of culture, what would it
be like? It handles as its tools falsehood, force,
and thoughtless selfishness so surely that it
could only be called an evil, demoniacal being;
but its aims, which are occasionally transparent,
are great and good. It is a centaur, half-beast,
half-man, and, in addition, has angel's wings
upon its head.
242.
The Miracle-Education. —Interest in Edu-
cation will acquire great strength only from
the moment when belief in a God and His care
is renounced, just as the art of healing could
## p. 225 (#297) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 225
only flourish when the belief in miracle-cures
ceased. So far, however, there is universal belief
in the miracle-education; out of the greatest
disorder and confusion of aims and unfavourable-
ness of conditions, the most fertile and mighty
men have been seen to grow; could this happen
naturally? Soon these cases will be more closely
looked into, more carefully examined; but
miracles will never be discovered. In similar
circumstances countless persons perish constantly;
the few saved have, therefore, usually grown
stronger, because they endured these bad con-
ditions by virtue of an inexhaustible inborn
strength, and this strength they had also exercised
and increased by fighting against these circum-
stances; thus the miracle is explained. An
education that no longer believes in miracles
must pay attention to three things: first, how
much energy is inherited? secondly, by what
means can new energy be aroused? thirdly, how
can the individual be adapted to so many and
manifold claims of culture without being dis-
quieted and destroying his personality,—in
short, how can the individual be initiated into the
counterpoint of private and public culture, how
can he lead the melody and at the same time
accompany it?
243-
The Future of the Physician. —There
is now no profession which would admit of such
an enhancement as that of the physician; that
is, after the spiritual physicians the so-called
VOL. 1. P
## p. 226 (#298) ############################################
226 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
pastors, are no longer allowed to practise their
conjuring tricks to public applause, and a
cultured person gets out of their way. The
highest mental development of a physician has
7" not yet been reached, even if he understands
the best and newest methods, is practised in
them, and knows how to draw those rapid
conclusions from effects to causes for which
the diagnostics are celebrated; besides this, he
must possess a gift of eloquence that adapts
itself to every individual and draws his heart out
\ of his body; a manliness, the sight of which alone
! drives away all despondency (the canker of all
sick people), the tact and suppleness of a
diplomatist in negotiations between such as have
need of joy for their recovery and such as, for
reasons of health, must (and can) give joy; the
acuteness of a detective and an attorney to
divine the secrets of a soul without betraying
them,—in short, a good physician now has need
of all the artifices and artistic privileges of every
other professional class. Thus equipped, he is
then ready to be a benefactor to the whole of
society, by increasing good works, mental joys
and fertility, by preventing evil thoughts, projects
and villainies (the evil source of which is so
often the belly), by the restoration of a mental
and physical aristocracy (as a maker and hinderer
of marriages), by judiciously checking all so-
called soul-torments and pricks of conscience.
Thus from a "medicine man" he becomes a
saviour, and yet need work no miracle, neither
v is he obliged to let himself be crucified.
## p. 227 (#299) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 227
»
244.
In the Neighbourhood of Insanity. —
* The sum of sensations, knowledge and ex-
periences, the whole burden of culture, therefore,
has become so great that an overstraining of
nerves and powers of thought is a common
» danger, indeed the cultivated classes of European
countries are throughout neurotic, and almost
* every one of their great families is on the verge
of insanity in one of their branches. True, health
is now sought in every possible way; but in
the main a diminution of that tension of feeling,
'^1 of that oppressive burden of culture, is needful,
. which, even though it might be bought at a
heavy sacrifice, would at least give us room for
the great hope of a new Renaissance. To
Christianity, to the philosophers, poets, and
musicians we owe an abundance of deeply
*; emotional sensations; in order that these may
not get beyond our control we must invoke the
spirit of science, which on the whole makes us
V somewhat colder and more sceptical, and in
particular cools the faith in final and absolute
truths; it is chiefly through Christianity that
>! it has grown so wild.
j
245.
The Bell-founding of Culture. —Culture
has been made like a bell, within a covering of
coarser, commoner material, falsehood, violence,
the boundless extension of every individual "I,"
\
## p. 228 (#300) ############################################
T
™
228 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
of every separate people—this was the covering.
Is it time to take it off? Has the liquid set,
have the good and useful impulses, the habits
of the nobler nature become so certain and so 1
general that they no longer require to lean on j
metaphysics and the errors of religion, no longer
have need of hardnesses and violence as powerful
bonds between man and man, people and people?
No sign from any God can any longer help us
to answer this question; our own insight must
decide. The earthly rule of man must be taken
in hand by man himself, his "omniscience" must
watch over the further fate of culture with a1 .
iti'
sharp eye.
246.
The Cyclopes of Culture. —Whoever has
seen those furrowed basins which once contained
glaciers, will hardly deem it possible that a time
will come when the same spot will be a valley
of woods and meadows and streams. It is the
same in the history of mankind; the wildest
forces break the way, destructively at first,
but their activity was nevertheless necessary in
order that later on a milder civilisation might
build up its house These terrible energies—
that which is called Evil—are the cyclopic archi-
tects and road-makers of humanity.
24;.
The Circulation of Humanity. —It is
possible that all humanity is only a phase of
## p. 229 (#301) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 229
development of a certain species of animal of
limited duration. Man may have grown out
of the ape and will return to the ape again,*
without anybody taking an interest in the ending
of this curious comedy. Just as with the decline
of Roman civilisation and its most important
cause, the spread of Christianity, there was a
general uglification of man within the Roman
Empire, so, through the eventual decline of general
culture, there might result a far greater uglification
and finally an animalising of man till he reached
the ape. But just because we are able to face
'"'this prospect, we shall perhaps be able to avert
such an end.
248.
The Consoling Speech of a Desperate
Advance. —Our age gives the impression of an
intermediate condition; the old ways of regarding
the world, the old cultures still partially exist,
the new are not yet sure and customary and
hence are without decision and consistency. It
appears as if everything would become chaotic,
as if the old were being lost, the new worthless
and ever becoming weaker. But this is what the
soldier feels who is learning to march; for a time
I he is more uncertain and awkward, because his
muscles are moved sometimes according to the
r old system and sometimes according to the new,
and neither gains a decisive victory. We waver,
* This may remind one of Gobineau's more jocular
saying: "Nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y
allons. "—]. M. K.
i
## p. 230 (#302) ############################################
230 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
but it is necessary not to lose courage and give
up what we have newly gained. Moreover, we
cannot go back to the old, we have burnt our
boats; there remains nothing but to be brave
whatever happen. — March ahead, only get
forward! Perhaps our behaviour looks like
progress; but if not, then the words of Frederick
the Great may also be applied to us, and indeed
as a consolation: "Ah, mon cher Sulzer, vous ne
connaissez pas assez cette race maudite, a laquelle
nous appartenons. "
249.
Suffering from Past Culture. —Whoever
has solved the problem of culture suffers from a
feeling similar to that of one who has inherited
unjustly-gotten riches, or of a prince who reigns
thanks to the violence of his ancestors. He
thinks of their origin with grief and is often
ashamed, often irritable. The whole sum of
strength, joy, vigour, which he devotes to his
possessions, is often balanced by a deep weariness,
he cannot forget their origin. He looks despond-
ingly at the future; he knows well that his
successors will suffer from the past as he does.
250.
MANNERS. —Good manners disappear in pro-
portion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive
aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly
observed from decade to decade by those who have
an eye for public behaviour, which grows visibly
## p. 231 (#303) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 231
. *•
more vulgar. No one any longer knows how to
court and flatter intelligently; hence arises the
ludicrous fact that in cases where we must render
actual homage (to a great statesman or artist, for
instance), the words of deepest feeling, of »simple,
peasant-like honesty, have to be borrowed, owing
to the embarrassment resulting from the lack
of grace and wit. Thus the public ceremonious
meeting of men appears ever more clumsy, but
more full of feeling and honesty without really
being so. But must there always be a decline in
manners? It appears to me, rather, that manners
take a deep curve and that we are approaching
their lowest point. When society has become sure
of its intentions and principles, so that they have
a moulding effect (the manners we have learnt
from former moulding conditions are now inherited
and always more weakly learnt), there will then
be company manners, gestures and social ex-
pressions, which must appear as necessary and
simply natural because they are intentions and
principles. The better division of time and work,
the gymnastic exercise transformed into the ac-
companiment of all beautiful leisure, increased and
severer meditation, which brings wisdom and
suppleness even to the body, will bring all this
in its train. Here, indeed, we might think with a
smile of our scholars, and consider whether, as a
matter of fact, they who wish to be regarded as the
forerunners of that new culture are distinguished
by their better manners? This is hardly the
case; although their spirit may be willing enough
their flesh is weak. The past of culture is still too
## p. 231 (#304) ############################################
230 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
but it is necessary not to lose courage and give
up what we have newly gained. Moreover, we
cannot go back to the old, we Jiave burnt our'
boats; there remains nothing but to be brave
whatever happen. — March ahead, only get
forward! Perhaps our behaviour looks like
progress; but if not, then the words of Frederick
the Great may also be applied to us, and indeed
as a consolation: "Ah, mon cher Sulzer, vous ne
connaissez pas assez cette race maudite, a laquelle
nous appartenons'. '
249.
Suffering from Past Culture. —Whoever
has solved the problem of culture suffers from a
feeling similar to that of one who has inherited
unjustly-gotten riches, or of a prince who reigns
thanks to the violence of his ancestors. He
thinks of their origin with grief and is often
ashamed, often irritable. The whole sum of'
strength, joy, vigour, which he devotes to his
possessions, is often balanced by a deep weariness,
he cannot forget their origin. He looks despond-
ingly at the future; he knows well that his
successors will suffer from the past as he does.
•
1
1
250.
MANNERS. —Good manners disappear in pro-
portion as the influence of a Court and an exclusive
aristocracy lessens; this decrease can be plainly
observed from decade to decade by those who have
an eye for public behaviour, which grows visibly
## p. 231 (#305) ############################################
SIGNS OF HIGHER AND LOWER CULTURE. 231
more vulgar. No one any longer knows how to
court and flatter intelligently; hence arises the
ludicrous fact that in cases where we must render
actual homage (to a great statesman or artist, for
instance), the words of deepest feeling, of'simple,
peasant-like honesty, have to be borrowed, owing
to the embarrassment resulting from the lack
of grace and wit. Thus the public ceremonious
meeting of men appears ever more clumsy, but
more full of feeling and honesty without really
being so. But must there always be a decline in
manners? It appears to me, rather, that manners
take a deep curve and that we are approaching
their lowest point. When society has become sure
of its intentions and principles, so that they have
a moulding effect (the manners we have learnt
from former moulding conditions are now inherited
and always more weakly learnt), there will then
be company manners, gestures and social ex-
pressions, which must appear as necessary and
simply natural because they are intentions and
principles. The better division of time and work,
the gymnastic exercise transformed into the ac-
companiment of all beautiful leisure, increased and
severer meditation, which brings wisdom and
suppleness even to the body, will bring all this
in its train. Here, indeed, we might think with a
smile of our scholars, and consider whether, as a
matter of fact, they who wish to be regarded as the
forerunners of that new culture are distinguished
by their better manners? This is hardly the
case; although their spirit may be willing enough
their flesh is weak. The past of culture is still too
## p. 231 (#306) ############################################
23O HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
but it is necessary not to lose courage and give
up what we have newly gained. Moreover, we
cannot go back to the old, we have burnt our
boats; there remains nothing but to be brave
whatever happen. — March ahead, only get
forward! Perhaps our behaviour looks like
progress; but if not, then the words of Frederick
the Great may also be applied to us, and indeed
as a consolation: "Ah, mon cher Sulzer, vous ne
connaissez pas assez cette race maudite, a laquelle
nous appartenons''
249.
Suffering from Past Culture. —Whoever
has solved the problem of culture suffers from a
feeling similar to that of one who has inherited
unjustly-gotten riches, or of a prince who reigns
thanks to the violence of his ancestors.
