No More Learning

I will show in them why instruction that
does not "quicken," knowledge that slackens the
rein of activity, why in fact history, in Goethe's
phrase, must be seriously "hated," as a costly and
superfluous luxury of the understanding: for we
are still in want of the necessaries of life, and the
superfluous is an enemy to the necessary. We do
need history, but quite differently from the jaded
idlers in the garden of knowledge, however grandly
they may look down on our rude and unpictur-
esque requirements. In other words, we need it
for life and action, not as a convenient way to
avoid life and action, or to excuse a selfish life and
a cowardly or base action. We would serve history
only so far as it serves life; but to value its study
beyond a certain point mutilates and degrades life:
and this is a fact that certain marked symptoms of
our time make it as necessary as it may be painful
to bring to the test of experience.
I have tried to describe a feeling that has often


## p. 4 (#20) ###############################################

4 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
troubled me: I revenge myself on it by giving it
publicity. This may lead some one to explain to
me that he has also had the feeling, but that I
do not feel it purely and elementally enough, and
cannot express it with the ripe certainty of experi-
ence. A few may say so; but most people will
tell me that it is a perverted, unnatural, horrible, •
and altogether unlawful feeling to have, and that I
show myself unworthy of the great historical move-
ment which is especially strong among the German
people for the last two generations.
I am at all costs going to venture on a descrip-
tion of my feelings; which will be decidedly in
the interests of propriety, as I shall give plenty
of opportunity for paying compliments to such a
"movement. " And I gain an advantage for my-
self that is more valuable to me than propriety—
the attainment of a correct point of view, through
my critics, with regard to our age.
These thoughts are "out of season," because I
am trying to represent something of which the age
is rightly proud—its historical culture—as a fault
and a defect in our time, believing as I do that we
are all suffering from a malignant historical fever
and should at least recognise the fact. But even if
it be a virtue, Goethe may be right in asserting
that we cannot help developing our faults at the
same time as our virtues; and an excess of virtue
can obviously bring a nation to ruin, as well as an
excess of vice. In any case I may be allowed my
say. But I will first relieve my mind by the con-
fession that the experiences which produced those
disturbing feelings were mostly drawn from myself,
"


## p. 5 (#21) ###############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 5
—and from other sources only for the sake of
comparison; and that I have only reached such
"unseasonable" experience, so far as I am the
nursling of older ages like the Greek, and less a
child of this age. I must admit so much in virtue
of my profession as a classical scholar: for I do
not know what meaning classical scholarship may
have for our time except in its being " unseason-
able,"—that is, contrary to our time, and yet with
an influence on it for the benefit, it may be hoped,
of a future time.


## p. 6 (#22) ###############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF
HISTORY.
CONSIDER the herds that are feeding yonder: they
know not the meaning of yesterday or to-day;
they graze and ruminate, move or rest, from
morning to night, from day to day, taken up with
their little loves and hates, at the mercy of the
moment, feeling neither melancholy nor satiety.
Man cannot see them without regret, for even in
the pride of his humanity he looks enviously on
the beast's happiness. He wishes simply to live
without satiety or pain, like the beast; yet it is all
in vain, for he will not change places with it. He
may ask the beast—" Why do you look at me and
not speak to me of your happiness? " The beast
wants to answer—" Because I always forget what I
wished to say": but he forgets this answer too, and
is silent; and the man is left to wonder.
He wonders also about himself, that he cannot
learn to forget, but hangs on the past: however far
or fast he run, that chain runs with him. It is


## p. 7 (#23) ###############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 7
matter for wonder: the moment, that is here and
gone, that was nothing before and nothing after,
returns like a spectre to trouble the quiet of a later
moment. A leaf is continually dropping out of the
volume of time and fluttering away—and suddenly
it flutters back into the man's lap. Then he says,
"I remember . . . ," and envies the beast, that
forgets at once, and sees every moment really die,
sink into night and mist, extinguished for ever.
The beast lives unhistorically; for it" goes into " the
present, like a number, without leaving any curious
remainder. It cannot dissimulate, it conceals
nothing; at every moment it seems what it actually
is, and thus can be nothing that is not honest.
But man is always resisting the great and con-
tinually increasing weight of the past; it presses
him down, and bows his shoulders; he travels with
a dark invisible burden that he can plausibly
disown, and is only too glad to disown in converse
with his fellows—in order to excite their envy.
And so it hurts him, like the thought of a lost
Paradise, to see a herd grazing, or, nearer still, a
child, that has nothing yet of the past to disown,
and plays in a happy blindness between the walls
of the past and the future. And yet its play must
be disturbed, and only too soon will it be
summoned from its little kingdom of oblivion.
Then it learns to understand the words "once
upon a time," the "open sesame" that lets in
battle, suffering and weariness on mankind, and
reminds them what their existence really is, an
imperfect tense that never becomes a present.
And when death brings at last the desired forget-


## p. 8 (#24) ###############################################

8 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
fulness, it abolishes life and being together, and
sets the seal on the knowledge that "being" is
merely a continual "has been," a thing that lives
by denying and destroying and contradicting itself.
If happiness and the chase for new happiness
keep alive in any sense the will to live, no
philosophy has perhaps more truth than the
cynic's: for the beast's happiness, like that of
the perfect cynic, is the visible proof of the truth
of cynicism. The smallest pleasure, if it be only
continuous and make one happy, is incomparably
a greater happiness than the more intense pleasure
that comes as an episode, a wild freak, a mad
interval between ennui, desire, and privation. But
in the smallest and greatest happiness there is
always one thing that makes it happiness: the
power of forgetting, or, in more learned phrase,
the capacity of feeling "unhistorically" throughout
its duration. One who cannot leave himself behind
on the threshold of the moment and forget the past,
who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess
of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never
know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never
do anything to make others happy. The extreme
case would be the man without any power to
forget, who is condemned to see "becoming"
everywhere. Such a man believes no more in
himself or his own existence, he sees everything
fly past in an eternal succession, and loses himself
in the stream of becoming. At last, like the logical
disciple of Heraclitus, he will hardly dare to raise
his finger. Forgetfulness is a property of all action;
just as not only light but darkness is bound up


## p. 9 (#25) ###############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 9
with the life of every organism. One who wished
to feel everything historically, would be like a man
forcing himself to refrain from sleep, or a beast
who had to live by chewing a continual cud. Thus
even a happy life is possible without remembrance,
as the beast shows: but life in any true sense is
absolutely impossible without forgetfulness. Or,
to put my conclusion better, there is a degree of
sleeplessness, of rumination, of "historical sense,"
that injures and finally destroys the living thing,
be it a man or a people or a system of culture.
To fix this degree and the limits to the memory
of the past, if it is not to become the gravedigger
of the present, we must see clearly how great is
the "plastic power" of a man or a community or
a culture; I mean the power of specifically growing
out of one's self, of making the past and the strange
one body with the near and the present, of healing
wounds, replacing what is lost, repairing broken
moulds. There are men who have this power so
slightly that a single sharp experience, a single
pain, often a little injustice, will lacerate their
souls like the scratch of a poisoned knife. There
are others, who are so little injured by the worst
misfortunes, and even by their own spiteful actions,
as to feel tolerably comfortable, with a fairly quiet
conscience, in the midst of them,—or at any rate
shortly afterwards. The deeper the roots of a
man's inner nature, the better will he take the
past into himself; and the greatest and most
powerful nature would be known by the absence
of limits for the historical sense to overgrow and
t»V «• / H. . +~+\ «A^
Mr
work harm. It would assimilate and digest the


## p. 10 (#26) ##############################################

10 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
past, however foreign, and turn it to sap. Such
a nature can forget what it cannot subdue; there
is no break in the horizon, and nothing to remind
it that there are still men, passions, theories and
aims on the other side. This is a universal law;
a living thing can only be healthy, strong and
productive within a certain horizon: if it be in-
capable of drawing one round itself, or too selfish
to lose its own view in another's, it will come to
an untimely end. Cheerfulness, a good conscience,
belief in the future, the joyful deed, all depend,
in the individual as well as the nation, on there
being a line that divides the visible and clear from
the vague and shadowy: we must know the right
time to forget as well as the right time tojre-
member; and instinctively see when it is necessary
to feel historically, and when unhistorically. This
is the point that the reader is asked to consider;
that the unhistorical and the historical are equally
necessary to the health of an individual, a com-
munity, and a system of culture.
Every one has noticed that a man's historical
knowledge and range of feeling may be very
limited, his horizon as narrow as that of an Alpine
valley, his judgments incorrect and his experience
falsely supposed original, and yet in spite of all the
incorrectness and falsity he may stand forth in
unconquerable health and vigour, to the joy of
all who see him; whereas another man with far
more judgment and learning will fail in comparison,
because the lines of his horizon are continually
changing and shifting, and he cannot shake himself
free from the delicate network of his truth and


## p. 11 (#27) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
II
righteousness for a downright act of will or desire.
We saw that the beast, absolutely "unhistorical,”
with the narrowest of horizons, has yet a certain
happiness, and lives at least without hypocrisy or
ennui; and so we may hold the capacity of feeling
(to a certain extent) unhistorically, to be the more
important and elemental, as providing the founda-
tion of every sound and real growth, everything
that is truly great and human. The unhistorical
whatroul
is like the surrounding atmosphere that can alone VS.
create life, and in whose annihilation life itself historiene
disappears. It is true that man can only become
man by first suppressing this unhistorical element wenscom
in his thoughts, comparisons, distinctions, and con I us
clusions, letting a clear sudden light break through
eons Cuensa
these misty clouds by his power of turning the
past to the uses of the present. But an excess of
myin
history makes him flag again, while without the
veil of the unhistorical he would never have the
courage to begin. What deeds could man ever
have done if he had not been enveloped in the
dust-cloud of the unhistorical? Or, to leave
metaphors and take a concrete example, imagine
a man swayed and driven by a strong passion,
whether for a woman or a theory. His world is
quite altered. He is blind to everything behind
him, new sounds are muffled and meaningless;
though his perceptions were never so intimately
felt in all their colour, light and music, and he
seems to grasp them with his five senses together.
All his judgments of value are changed for the
worse; there is much he can no longer value, as
he can scarcely feel it: he wonders that he has so


## p. 12 (#28) ##############################################

12 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
long been the sport of strange words and opinions,
that his recollections have run round in one un-
wearying circle and are yet too weak and weary
to make a single step away from it. His whole
case is most indefensible; it is narrow, ungrateful
to the past, blind to danger, deaf to warnings, a
small living eddy in a dead sea of night and
forgetfulness. And yet this condition, unhistorical
and antihistorical throughout, is the cradle not
only of unjust action, but of every just and
justifiable action in the world. No artist will
paint his picture, no general win his victory, no
nation gain its freedom, without having striven
and yearned for it under those very " unhistorical"
conditions. If the man of action, in Goethe's
phrase, is without conscience, he is also without
knowledge: he forgets most things in order to
do one, he is unjust to what is behind him, and
only recognises one law, the law of that which
is to be. So he loves his work infinitely more
than it deserves to be loved; and the best works
are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they
must always be unworthy of it, however great
their worth otherwise.
Should any one be able to dissolve the un-
historical atmosphere in which every great event
happens, and breathe afterwards, he might be
capable of rising to the "super-historical" stand-
, £oint of consciousness, that Niebuhr has de-
scribed as the possible result of historical
research. "History," he says, "is useful for one
purpose, if studied in detail: that men may know,
as the greatest and best spirits of our generation


## p. 13 (#29) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 13
do not know, the accidental nature of the forms
in,. which they see and insist on others seeing,—
insist, I say, because their consciousness of them
is exceptionally intense. Any one who has not
grasped this idea in its different applications will
fall under the spell of a more powerful spirit who
reads a deeper emotion into the given form. " Such
a standpoint might be called "super-historical,"
as one who took it could feel no impulse from
history to any further life or work, for he would
have recognised the blindness and injustice in the
soul of the doer as a condition of every deed: he
would be cured henceforth of taking history too
seriously, and have learnt to answer the question
how and why life should be lived,—for all men
and all circumstances, Greeks or Turks, the first
century or the nineteenth. Whoever asks his
friends whether they would live the last ten or
twenty years over again, will easily see which of
them is born for the "super-historical standpoint":
they will all answer no, but will give different
reasons for their answer. Some will say they
have the consolation that the next twenty will
be better: they are the men referred to satirically
by David Hume:—
"And from the dregs of life hope to receive,
What the first sprightly running could not give. "
We will call them the "historical men. " Their
vision of the past turns them towards the future,
encourages them to persevere with life, and kindles
the hope that justice will yet come and happiness
is behind the mountain they are climbing. They


## p. 14 (#30) ##############################################

14 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
believe that the meaning of existence will become
ever clearer in the course of its evolution, they
only look backward at the process to understand
the present and stimulate their longing for the
future. They do not know how unhistorical their
thoughts and actions are in spite of all their history,
and how their preoccupation with it is for the sake
of life rather than mere science.
But that question to which we have heard the
first answer, is capable of another; also a "no,"
but on different grounds. It is the "no" of the
"super-historical" man who sees no salvation in
evolution, for whom the world is complete and
fulfils its aim in every single moment. How could
the next ten years teach what the past ten were
not able to teach?
Whether the aim of the teaching be happiness or
resignation, virtue or penance, these super-historical
men are not agreed; but as against all merely
historical ways of viewing the past, they are unani-
mous in the theory that the past and the present
are one and the same, typically alike in all their
diversity, and forming together a picture of eternally
present imperishable types of unchangeable value
and significance. Just as the hundreds of different
languages correspond to the same constant and
elemental needs of mankind, and one who under-
stood,the needs could learn nothing new from the
languages; so the "super-historical" philosopher
sees all the history of nations and individuals from
within. He has a divine insight into the original
meaning of the hieroglyphs, and comes even to be
weary of the letters that are continually unrolled


## p. 15 (#31) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 15
before him. How should the endless rush of events
not bring satiety, surfeit, loathing? So the boldest
of us is ready perhaps at last to say from his heart
with Giacomo Leopardi: "Nothing lives that were
worth thy pains, and the earth deserves not a sigh.
Our being is pain and weariness, and the world is
mud—nothing else. Be calm. "
But we will leave the super-historical men to
their loathings and their wisdom: we wish rather
to-day to be joyful in our unwisdom and have a
pleasant life as active men who go forward, and
respect the course of the world. The value we put
on the historical may be merely a Western preju-
dice: let us at least go forward within this pre-
judice and not stand still. If we could only learn
better to study history as a means to life! We
would gladly grant the super-historical people their
superior wisdom, so long as we are sure of having
more life than they: for in that case our unwisdom
would have a greater future before it than their
wisdom. To make my opposition between life and
wisdom clear, I will take the usual road of the short
summary.
A historical phenomenon, completely understood
and reduced to an item of knowledge, is, in relation
to the man who knows it, dead: for he has found
out its madness, its injustice, its blind passion, and
especially(the earthly and darkened horizon that
was the source of its power for history. This power
has now become, for him who has recognised it,
powerless; not yet, perhaps, for him who is alive.
History regarded as pure knowledge and allowed
to sway the intellect would mean for men the final


## p. 16 (#32) ##############################################

16
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
A
balancing of the ledger of life. Historical study
is only fruitful for the future if it follow a powerful
life-giving influence, for example, a new system of
culture; only, therefore, if it be guided and domin-
ated by a higher force, and do not itself guide and
dominate.
History, so far as it serves life, serves an un-
historical power, and thus will never become a pure
science like mathematics. The question how far
life needs such a service is one of the most serious
questions affecting the well-being of a man, a people
and a culture. For by excess of history life becomes
maimed and degenerate, and is followed by the
degeneration of history as well.
II.
The fact that life does need the service of history
must be as clearly grasped as that an excess of
history hurts it; this will be proved later. History
is necessary to the living man in three ways: in
relation to his action and struggle, his conservatism
and reverence, his suffering and his desire for de-
liverance. These three relations answer to the three
kinds of history—so far as they can be distinguished
—the monumental, the antiquarian, and the critical.
History is necessary above all to the man of
action and power who fights a great fight and needs
examples, teachers and comforters; he cannot find
them among his contemporaries. It was necessary
in this sense to Schiller; for our time is so evil,
Goethe says, that the poet meets no nature that


## p. 17 (#33) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 17
will profit him, among living men. Polybius is
thinking of the active man when he calls political
history the true preparation for governing a state;
it is the great teacher, that shows us how to bear
steadfastly the reverses of fortune, by reminding us
of what others have suffered. Whoever has learned
to recognise this meaning in history must hate to
see curious tourists and laborious beetle-hunters
climbing up the great pyramids of antiquity. He \
does not wish to meet the idler who is rushing -flbn*^**'
through the picture-galleries of the past for a new
distraction or sensation, where he himself is looking
for example and encouragement. To avoid being
troubled by the weak and hopeless idlers, and those
whose apparent activity is merely neurotic, he looks
behind him and stays his course towards the goal
in order to breathe. His goal is happiness, not
perhaps his own, but often the nation's,or humanity's
at large: he avoids quietism, and uses history as a
weapon against it. For the most part he has no
hope of reward except fame, which means the ex-
pectation of a niche in the temple of history, where
he in his turn may be the consoler and counsellor
of posterity. For his orders are that what has once
been able to extend the conception " man " and give •
it a fairer content, must ever exist for the same
office. The great moments in the individual battle"-\ •
form a chain, a high road for humanity through
the ages, and the highest points of those vanished /
moments are yet great and living for men; and /
this is the fundamental idea of the belief in humanity, j
that finds a voice in the demand for a " monumental"
history. ^
"Vol. 11. b


## p. 17 (#34) ##############################################

16
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
balancing of the ledger of life. Historical study
is only fruitful for the future if it follow a powerful
life-giving influence, for example, a new system of
culture; only, therefore, if it be guided and domin-
ated by a higher force, and do not itself guide and
dominate.
History, so far as it serves life, serves an un-
historical power, and thus will never become a pure
science like mathematics. The question how far
life needs such a service is one of the most serious
questions affecting the well-being of a man, a people
and a culture. For by excess of history life becomes
maimed and degenerate, and is followed by the
degeneration of history as well.
II.
The fact that life does need the service of history
must be as clearly grasped as that an excess of
history hurts it; this will be proved later. History
is necessary to the living man in three ways: in
relation to his action and struggle, his conservatism
and reverence, his suffering and his desire for de-
liverance. These three relations answer to the three
kinds of history—so far as they can be distinguished
—the monumental, the antiquarian, and the critical.
History is necessary above all to the man of
action and power who fights a great fight and needs
examples, teachers and comforters; he cannot find
them among his contemporaries. It was necessary
in this sense to Schiller; for our time is so evil,
Goethe says, that the poet meets no nature that



## p. 17 (#35) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 17
will profit him, among living men. Polybius is
thinking of the active man when he calls political
history the true preparation for governing a state;
it is the great teacher, that shows us how to bear
steadfastly the reverses of fortune, by reminding us
of what others have suffered. Whoever has learned
to recognise this meaning in history must hate to
see curious tourists and laborious beetle-hunters
climbing up the great pyramids of antiquity. He r
does not wish to meet the idler who is rushing -*/*»»*-***-
through the picture-galleries of the past for a new
distraction or sensation, where he himself is looking
for example and encouragement. To avoid being
troubled by the weak and hopeless idlers, and those
whose apparent activity is merely neurotic, he looks
behind him and stays his course towards the goal
in order to breathe. His goal is happiness, not
perhaps his own, but often the nation's,or humanity's
at large: he avoids quietism, and uses history as a
weapon against it. For the most part he has no
hope of reward except fame, which means the ex-
pectation of a niche in the temple of history, where
he in his turn may be the consoler and counsellor
of posterity. For his orders are that what has once
been able to extend the conception " man " and give \ ■
it a fairer content, must ever exist for the same
office. The great moments in the individual battle~"-\
form a chain, a high road for humanity through
the ages, and the highest points of those vanished I
moments are yet great and living for men; and /
this is the fundamental idea of the belief in humanity, 1
that finds a voice in the demand for a " monumental" 1
history. v^
"Vol. 11. b


## p. 18 (#36) ##############################################

18 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
But the fiercest battle is fought round the demand
for greatness to be eternal. Every other living thing
cries no. "Away with the monuments," is the watch-
word. Dull custom fills all the chambers of the
world with its meanness, and rises in thick vapour
round anything that is great, barring its way to
immortality, blinding and stifling it. And the way
passes through mortal brains! Through the brains
of sick and short-lived beasts that ever rise to the
surface to breathe, and painfully keep off annihila-
tion for a little space. For they wish but one thing:
to live at any cost. Who would ever dream of
any "monumental history" among them, the hard
torch-race that alone gives life to greatness? And
yet there are always men awakening, who are
strengthened and made happy by gazing on past
greatness, as though man's life were a lordly thing,
and the fairest fruit of this bitter tree were the
knowledge that there was once a man who walked
sternly and proudly through this world, another
who had pity and loving-kindness, another who
lived in contemplation,—but all leaving one truth
behind them, that his life is the fairest who thinks
least about life. The common man snatches greedily
at this little span, with tragic earnestness, but they,
on their way to monumental history and im-
mortality, knew how to greet it with Olympic
laughter, or at least with a lofty scorn; and they
went down to their graves in irony—for what had
they to bury? Only what they had always treated
as dross, refuse, and vanity, and which now falls
into its true home of oblivion, after being so long
the sport of their contempt. One thing will live,


## p. 19 (#37) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 19
the sign-manual of their inmost being, the rare
flash of light, the deed, the creation; because
posterity cannot do without it. In this spiritualised
form fame is something more than the sweetest
morsel for our egoism, in Schopenhauer's phrase:
it is the belief in the oneness and continuity of the
great in every age, and a protest against the change
and decay of generations.
What is the use to the modern man of this
"monumental" contemplation of the past, this pre-
occupation with the rare and classic? It is the
knowledge that the great thing existed and was
therefore possible, and so may be possible again.
He is heartened on his way; for his doubt in weaker
moments, whether his desire be not for the impos-
sible, is struck aside. Suppose one believe that no
more than a hundred men, brought up in the new
spirit, efficient and productive, were needed to give
the deathblow to the present fashion of education
in Germany; he will gather strength from the
remembrance that the culture of the Renaissance
was raised on the shoulders of such another band
of a hundred men.
And yet if we really wish to learn something
from an example, how vague and elusive do we
find the comparison! If it is to give us strength,
many of the differences must Be neglected, the in-
dividuality of the past forced into a general formula
and all the sharp angles broken off for the sake of
correspondence. Ultimately, of course, what was
once possible can only become possible a second
time on the Pythagorean theory, that when the
heavenly bodies are in the same position again, the I


## p. 20 (#38) ##############################################

20 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
. J events on earth are reproduced to the smallest detail;
so when the stars have a certain relation, a Stoic
and an Epicurean will form a conspiracy to murder
Caesar, and a different conjunction will show
another Columbus discovering America.
Only if
the earth always began its drama again after the
fifth act, and it were certain that the same inter-
action of motives, the same deus ex mackina, the
same catastrophe would occur at particular intervals,
could the man of action venture to look for the
whole archetypic truth in monumental history, to
see each fact fully set out in its uniqueness: it
would not probably be before the astronomers
became astrologers again. Till then monumental
history will never be able to have complete truth;
it will always bring together things that are in-
compatible and generalise them into compatibility,
will always weaken the differences of motive and
occasion. Its object is to depict effects at the
expense of the causes—" monumentally," that is, as
examples for imitation: it turns aside, as far as it
may, from reasons, and might be called with far less
exaggeration a collection of " effects in themselves,"
than of events that will have an effect on all ages.
The events of war or religion cherished in our
popular celebrations are such "effects in them-
selves "; it is these that will not let ambition sleep,
and lie like amulets on the bolder hearts—not the
real historical nexus of cause and effect, which,
rightly understood, would only prove that nothing
quite similar could ever be cast again from the
dice-boxes of fate and the future.
As long as the soul of history is found in the


## p. 21 (#39) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 21
great impulse that it gives to a powerful spirit, as
long as the past is principally used as a model for
imitation, it is always in danger of being a little
altered and touched up, and brought nearer to -
fiction. Sometimes there is no possible distinction
between a "monumental" past and a mythical - 'V
romance, as the same motives for action can be
gathered from the one world as the other. If this
monumental method of surveying the past domin-
ate the others,—the antiquarian and the critical,—
the past itself suffers wrong. Whole tracts of it
are forgotten and despised; they flow away like a
dark unbroken river, with only a few gaily coloured
islands of fact rising above it There is something
beyond nature in the rare figures that become
visible, like the golden hips that his disciples attri-
buted to Pythagoras. Monumental history lives ]
by false analogy; it entices the brave to rashness,
and the enthusiastic to fanaticism by its tempting
comparisons. Imagine this history in the hands—
anci the head—of a gifted egoist or an inspired
scoundrel; kingdoms will be overthrown, princes
murdered, war and revolution let loose, and the
number of "effects in themselves"—in other words,
effects without sufficient cause — increased. So
much for the harm done by monumental history
to the powerful men of action, be they good or
bad; but what if the weak and the inactive take it
as their servant—or their master!
Consider the simplest and commonest example,
the inartistic or half artistic natures whom a monu-
mental history provides with sword and buckler.
They will use the weapons against their hereditary


## p. 22 (#40) ##############################################

22 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
enemies, the great artistic spirits, who alone can
learn from that history the one real lesson, how to
live, and embody what they have learnt in noble
action. Their way is obstructed, their free air
darkened by the idolatrous — and conscientious
—dance round the half understood monument of
a great past. "See, that is the true and real art,"
we seem to hear: "of what use are these aspiring
little people of to-day? " The dancing crowd has
apparently the monopoly of "good taste ": for the
creator is always at a disadvantage compared with
the mere looker-on, who never put a hand to the
work; just as the arm-chair politician has ever had
more wisdom and foresight than the actual states-
man. But if the custom of democratic suffrage
and numerical majorities be transferred to the
realm of art, and the artist put on his defence
before the court of aesthetic dilettanti, you may take
your oath on his condemnation; although, or rather
because, his judges had proclaimed solemnly the
canon of "monumental art," the art that has
"had an effect on all ages," according to the
official definition. In their eyes no need nor inclina-
tion nor historical authority is in favour of the
art which is not yet "monumental" because it is
contemporary. Their instinct tells them that art
can be slain by art: the monumental will never be
reproduced, and the weight of its authority is invoked
from the past to make it sure. They are connois-
seurs of art, primarily because they wish to kill art;
they pretend to be physicians, when their real idea is
to dabble in poisons. They develop their tastes to
a point of perversion, that they may be able to show


## p. 23 (#41) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 23
a reason for continually rejecting all the nourish-
ing artistic fare that is offered them. For they do
not want greatness, to arise: their method is to say,
"See, the great thing is already here! " In reality
they care as little about the great thing that is
already here, as that which is about to arise: their
lives are evidence of that. Monumental history is
the cloak under which their hatred of present power
and greatness masquerades as an extreme admira-
tion of the past: the real meaning of this way of
viewing history is disguised as its opposite; whether
they wish it or no, they are acting as though their
motto were, "let the dead bury the—living. "
Each of the three kinds of history will only
flourish in one ground and climate: otherwise it
grows to a noxious weed. If the man who will
produce something great, have need of the past,
he makes himself its master by means of monu-
mental history: the man who can rest content with
the traditional and venerable, uses the past as an
"antiquarian historian ": and only he whose heart
is oppressed by an instant need, and who will cast
the burden off at any price, feels the want of
"critical history," the history that judges and
condemns. There is much harm wrought by
wrong and thoughtless planting: the critic without
the need, the antiquary without piety, the knower
of the great deed who cannot be the doer of it, are
plants that have grown to weeds, they are torn
from their native soil and therefore degenerate.
*


## p. 24 (#42) ##############################################

24 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
III.
Secondly, history is necessary to the man of
conservative and reverent nature, who looks back
to the origins of his existence with love and trust;
through it, he gives thanks for life. He is careful
to preserve what survives from ancient days, and
will reproduce the conditions of his own upbringing
for those who come after him; thus he does life a
service. The possession of his ancestors' furniture
changes its meaning in his soul: for his soul is
rather possessed by it. All that is small and
limited, mouldy and obsolete, gains a worth and
inviolability of its own from the conservative and
reverent soul of the antiquary migrating into it,
and building a secret nest there. The history of
his town becomes the history of himself; he looks
on the walls, the turreted gate, the town council,
the fair, as an illustrated diary of his youth, and
sees himself in it all—his strength, industry, desire,
reason, faults and follies. "Here one could live,"
he says, " as one can live here now—and will go
on living; for we are tough folk, and will not be
uprooted in the night. " And so, with his "we," he
surveys the marvellous individual life of the past
and identifies himself with the spirit of the house,
the family and the city. He greets the soul of his
people from afar as his own, across the dim and
troubled centuries: his gifts and his virtues lie in
such power of feeling and divination, his scent of
a half-vanished trail, his instinctive correctness in
reading the scribbled past, and understanding at


## p. 25 (#43) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 2$
once its palimpsests—nay, its(polypsests. Goethe?
stood with such thoughts before the monument of >
Erwin von Steinbach: the storm of his feeling rent
the historical cloud-veil that hung between them,
and he saw the German work for the first time
"coming from the stern, rough, German soul. "
This was the road that the Italians of the Renais-
sance travelled, the spirit that reawakened the
ancient Italic genius in their poets to " a wondrous
echo of the immemorial lyre," as Jacob Burckhardt
says. But the greatest value of this antiquarian
spirit of reverence lies in the simple emotions of
pleasure and content that it lends to the drab,
rough, even painful circumstances of a nation's or
individual's life: Niebuhr confesses that he could
live happily on a moor among free peasants with
a history, and would never feel the want of art.
How could history serve life better than by
anchoring the less gifted races and peoples to the
homes and customs of their ancestors, and keeping
them from ranging far afield in search of better,
to find only struggle and competition? The
influence that ties men down to the same com-
panions and circumstances, to the daily round of
toil, to their bare mountain-side,—seems to be
selfish and unreasonable: but it is a healthy
unreason and of profit to the community; as
every one knows who has clearly realised the
terrible consequences of mere desire for migration
and adventure,—perhaps in whole peoples,—or who
watches the destiny of a nation that has lost con-
fidence in its earlier days, and is given up to a
restless cosmopolitanism and an unceasing desire


## p. 26 (#44) ##############################################

26 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
for novelty. The feeling of the tree that clings to
its roots, the happiness of knowing one's growth to
be not merely arbitrary and fortuitous, but the in-
heritance, the fruit and blossom of a past, that does
not merely justify but crown the present—this is
what we nowadays prefer to call the real historical
sense.
These are not the conditions most favourable to
reducing the past to pure science: and we see here
too, as we saw in the case of monumental history,
that the past itself suffers when history serves life
and is directed by its end. To vary the metaphor,
the tree feels its roots better than it can see rhem:
the greatness of the feeling is measured by the
greatness and strength of the visible branches.
The tree may be wrong here; how far more wrong
will it be in regard to the whole forest, which it
only knows and feels so far as it is hindered or
helped by it, and not otherwise! The antiquarian
sense of a man, a city or a nation has always a
very limited field. Many things are not noticed
at all; the others are seen in isolation, as through a
microscope. There is no measure: equal import-
ance is given to everything, and therefore too much
to anything. For the things of the past are never
viewed in their true perspective or receive their
just value; but value and perspective change with
the individual or the nation that is looking back
on its past. . , . .
There is always the danger here, that everything
ancient will be regardecTas equally venerable, and
everything without this respect for antiquity, like
a new spirit, rejected as an enemy. The Greeks


## p. 27 (#45) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 27
themselves admitted the archaic style of plastic art
by the side of the freer and greater style; and later,
did not merely tolerate the pointed nose and the
cold mouth, but made them even a canon of taste.
If the judgment of a people harden in this way, and
history's service to the past life be to undermine a
further and higher life; if ihejiistorical sense no
longer preserve life, but mummify it: then the
tree dies, unnaturally, from the top downwards,
and at last the roots themselves wither. Anti-
quarian history degenerates from the moment that
it "ho longer gives a soul and inspiration to the
fresh life of the present. The spring of piety is
dried up, but the learned habit persists without it
and revolves complaisantly round its own centre.
The horrid spectacle is seen of the mad collector
raking over all the dust-heaps of the past. He
breathes a mouldy air; the antiquarian habit may
degrade a considerable talent, a real spiritual
need in him, to a mere insatiable curiosity for
everything old: he often sinks so low as to be
satisfied with any food, and greedily devour all the
scraps that fall from the bibliographical table.
Even if this degeneration do not take place, and
the foundation be not withered on which anti-
quarian history can alone take root with profit to
life: yet there are dangers enough, if it become too
powerful and invade the territories of the other
methods. It only understands how to preserve life,
not to create it; and thus always undervalues the
present growth, having, unlike monumental history,
no certain instinct for it. Thus it hinders the"
L
mighty impulse to a new deed and paralyses the


## p. 27 (#46) ##############################################

26
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
for novelty. The feeling of the tree that clings to
its roots, the happiness of knowing one's growth to
be not merely arbitrary and fortuitous, but the in-
heritance, the fruit and blossom of a past, that does
not merely justify but crown the present—this is
what we nowadays prefer to call the real historical
sense.
These are not the conditions most favourable to
reducing the past to pure science: and we see here
too, as we saw in the case of monumental history,
that the past itself suffers when history serves life
and is directed by its end. To vary the metaphor,
the tree feels its roots better than it can see them :
the greatness of the feeling is measured by the
greatness and strength of the visible branches.
The tree may be wrong here; how far more wrong
will it be in regard to the whole forest, which it
only knows and feels so far as it is hindered or
helped by it, and not otherwise! The antiquarian
sense of a man, a city or a nation has always a
very limited field. Many things are not noticed
at all; the others are seen in isolation, as through a
microscope. There is no measure: equal import-
ance is given to everything, and therefore too much
to anything. For the things of the past are never
viewed in their true perspective or receive their
just value ; but value and perspective change with
the individual or the nation that is looking back
on its past.
There is always the danger here, that everything
ancient will be regarded as equally venerable, and
everything without this respect for antiquity, like
a new spirit, rejected as an enemy. The Greeks


## p. 27 (#47) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
27
themselves admitted the archaic style of plastic art
by the side of the freer and greater style; and later,
did not merely tolerate the pointed nose and the
cold mouth, but made them even a canon of taste.
If the judgment of a people harden in this way, and
history's service to the past life be to undermine a
further and higher life ; if the historical sense no
longer preserve life, but mummify it: then the
tree dies, unnaturally, from the top downwards,
and at last the roots themselves wither. Anti-
quarian history degenerates from the moment that
it no longer gives a soul and inspiration to the
fresh life of the present. The spring of piety is
dried up, but the learned habit persists without it
and revolves complaisantly round its own centre.
The horrid spectacle is seen of the mad collector
raking over all the dust-heaps of the past. He
breathes a mouldy air ; the antiquarian habit may
degrade a considerable talent, a real spiritual
need in him, to a mere insatiable curiosity for
everything old: he often sinks so low as to be
satisfied with any food, and greedily devour all the
scraps that fall from the bibliographical table.
Even if this degeneration do not take place, and
the foundation be not withered on which anti-
quarian history can alone take root with profit to
life: yet there are dangers enough, if it become too
powerful and invade the territories of the other
methods. It only understands how to preserve life,
not to create it; and thus always undervalues the
present growth, having, unlike monumental history,
no certain instinct for it. Thus it hinders the
mighty impulse to a new deed and paralyses the


## p. 27 (#48) ##############################################

26
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
for novelty. The feeling of the tree that clings to
its roots, the happiness of knowing one's growth to
be not merely arbitrary and fortuitous, but the in-
heritance, the fruit and blossom of a past, that does
not merely justify but crown the present-this is
what we nowadays prefer to call the real historical
sense.
These are not the conditions most favourable to
reducing the past to pure science: and we see here
too, as we saw in the case of monumental history,
that the past itself suffers when history serves life
and is directed by its end. To vary the metaphor,
the tree feels its roots better than it can see them :
the greatness of the feeling is measured by the
greatness and strength of the visible branches.
The tree may be wrong here; how far more wrong
will it be in regard to the whole forest, which it
only knows and feels so far as it is hindered or
helped by it, and not otherwise ! The antiquarian
sense of a man, a city or a nation has always a
very limited field. Many things are not noticed
at all; the others are seen in isolation, as through a
microscope. There is no measure: equal import-
ance is given to everything, and therefore too much
to anything. For the things of the past are never
viewed in their true perspective or receive their
just value; but value and perspective change with
the individual or the nation that is looking back
on its past.
- There is always the danger here, that everything
ancient will be regarded as equally venerable, and
everything without this respect for antiquity, like
a new spirit, rejected as an enemy. The Greeks


## p. 27 (#49) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
27
themselves admitted the archaic style of plastic art
by the side of the freer and greater style; and later,
did not merely tolerate the pointed nose and the
cold mouth, but made them even a canon of taste.
If the judgment of a people harden in this way, and
history's service to the past life be to undermine a
further and higher life ; if the historical sense no
longer preserve life, but mummify it: then the
tree dies, unnaturally, from the top downwards,
and at last the roots themselves wither. Anti-
quarian history degenerates from the moment that
it no longer gives a soul and inspiration to the
fresh life of the present. The spring of piety is
dried up, but the learned habit persists without it
and revolves complaisantly round its own centre.
The horrid spectacle is seen of the mad collector
raking over all the dust-heaps of the past. He
breathes a mouldy air ; the antiquarian habit may
degrade a considerable talent, a real spiritual
need in him, to a mere insatiable curiosity for
everything old: he often sinks so low as to be
satisfied with any food, and greedily devour all the
scraps that fall from the bibliographical table.
Even if this degeneration do not take place, and
the foundation be not withered on which anti-
quarian history can alone take root with profit to
life: yet there are dangers enough, if it become too
powerful and invade the territories of the other
methods. It only understands how to preserve life,
not to create it; and thus always undervalues the
present growth, having, unlike monumental history,
no certain instinct for it. Thus it hinders the
mighty impulse to a new deed and paralyses the


## p. 27 (#50) ##############################################

26
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
for novelty. The feeling of the tree that clings to
its roots, the happiness of knowing one's growth to
be not merely arbitrary and fortuitous, but the in-
heritance, the fruit and blossom of a past, that does
not merely justify but crown the present-this is
what we nowadays prefer to call the real historical
sense.
These are not the conditions most favourable to
reducing the past to pure science: and we see here
too, as we saw in the case of monumental history,
that the past itself suffers when history serves life
and is directed by its end. To vary the metaphor,
the tree feels its roots better than it can see them :
the greatness of the feeling is measured by the
greatness and strength of the visible branches.
The tree may be wrong here; how far more wrong
will it be in regard to the whole forest, which it
only knows and feels so far as it is hindered or
helped by it, and not otherwise! The antiquarian
sense of a man, a city or a nation has always a
very limited field. Many things are not noticed
at all; the others are seen in isolation, as through a
microscope. There is no measure: equal import-
ance is given to everything, and therefore too much
to anything. For the things of the past are never
viewed in their true perspective or receive their
just value ; but value and perspective change with
the individual or the nation that is looking back
on its past.
**There is always the danger here, that everything
ancient will be regarded as equally venerable, and
everything without this respect for antiquity, like
a new spirit, rejected as an enemy. The Greeks


## p. 27 (#51) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
27
themselves admitted the archaic style of plastic art
by the side of the freer and greater style; and later,
did not merely tolerate the pointed nose and the
cold mouth, but made them even a canon of taste.
If the judgment of a people harden in this way, and
history's service to the past life be to undermine a
further and higher life ; if the historical sense no
longer preserve life, but mummify it: then the
tree dies, unnaturally, from the top downwards,
and at last the roots themselves wither. Anti-
quarian history degenerates from the moment that
it no longer gives a soul and inspiration to the
fresh life of the present. The spring of piety is
dried up, but the learned habit persists without it
and revolves complaisantly round its own centre.
The horrid spectacle is seen of the mad collector
raking over all the dust-heaps of the past. He
breathes a mouldy air ; the antiquarian habit may
degrade a considerable talent, a real spiritual
need in him, to a mere insatiable curiosity for
everything old: he often sinks so low as to be
satisfied with any food, and greedily devour all the
scraps that fall from the bibliographical table.
Even if this degeneration do not take place, and
the foundation be not withered on which anti-
quarian history can alone take root with profit to
life: yet there are dangers enough, if it become too
powerful and invade the territories of the other
methods. It only understands how to preserve life,
not to create it; and thus always undervalues the
present growth, having, unlike monumental history,
no certain instinct for it. Thus it hinders the
mighty impulse to a new deed and paralyses the


## p. 28 (#52) ##############################################

28 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
doer, who must always, as doer, be grazing some
piety or other. The fact that has grown old
carries with it a demand for its own immortality.
For when one considers the life-history of such an
ancient fact, the amount of reverence paid to it
for generations—whether it be a custom, a religious
creed, or a political principle,—it seems presump-
tuous, even impious, to replace it by a new fact,
and the ancient congregation of pieties by a new
piety.
Here we see clearly how necessary a third way
of looking at the past is to man, beside the other
^k. ,i i* two. This is the " critical" way; which is also in
the service of life. Man must have the strength
to break up the past; and apply it too, in order to
live. He must bring the past to the bar of
judgment, interrogate it remorselessly, and finally
condemn it. Every past is worth condemning:
this is the rule in mortal affairs, which always
contain a large measure of human power and
human weakness. It is not justice that sits in
judgment here; nor mercy that proclaims the
verdict; but only life, the dim, driving force that
insatiably desires—itself. Its sentence is always
unmerciful, always unjust, as it never flows from a
pure fountain of knowledge: though it would
generally turn out the same, if Justice herself
delivered it. "For everything that is born is
worthy of being destroyed: better were it then
that nothing should be born. " It requires great
strength to be able to live and forget how far
life and injustice are one. Luther himself once
said that the world only arose by an oversight of
'


## p. 29 (#53) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 29
God; if he had ever dreamed of heavy ordnance,
he would never have created it. The same life
that needs forgetfulness, needs sometimes its
destruction; for should the injustice of some-
thing ever become obvious—a monopoly, a caste,
a dynasty for example—the thing deserves to
fall. Its past is critically examined, the knife
put to its roots, and all the "pieties" are grimly
trodden under foot. The process is always
dangerous, even for life; and the men or the
times that serve life in this way, by judging and
annihilating the past, are always dangerous to
themselves and others. For as we are merely the
resultant of previous generations, we are also the
resultant of their errors, passions, and crimes: it
is impossible to shake off this chain. Though we
condemn the errors and think we have escaped
them, we cannot escape the fact that we spring
from them. At best, it comes to a conflict between
our innate, inherited nature and our knowledge,
between a stern, new discipline and an ancient
tradition; and we plant a new way of life, a new
instinct, a second nature, that withers the first. It
is an attempt to gain a past a posteriori from
which we might spring, as against that from which
we do spring; always a dangerous attempt, as it
is difficult to find a limit to the denial of the past,
and the second natures are generally weaker than
the first. We stop too often at knowing the good
without doing it, because we also know the better
but cannot do it. Here and there the victory is
won, which gives a strange consolation to the
fighters, to those who use critical history for the


## p. 30 (#54) ##############################################

30 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sake of life. The consolation is the knowledge
that this "first nature" was once a second, and
that every conquering "second nature" becomes
a first.
IV.
This is how history can serve life. Every man
and nation needs a certain knowledge of the past,
whether it be through monumental, antiquarian,
or critical history, according to his objects, powers,
and necessities. The need is not that of the mere
thinkers who only look on at life, or the few who
desire knowledge and can only be satisfied with
knowledge; but it has always a reference to the
end of life, and is under its absolute rule and
direction. This is the natural relation of an age,
a culture and a people to history; hunger is its
source, necessity its norm, the inner plastic power
assigns its limits. The knowledge of the past is
only desired for the service of the future and the
present, not to weaken the present or undermine a
living future. All this is as simple as truth itself,
and quite convincing to any one who is not in the
toils of " historical deduction. "
And now to take a quick glance at our time!
We fly back in astonishment. The clearness,
naturalness, and purity of the connection between
life and history has vanished; and in what a maze
of exaggeration and contradiction do we now see
the problem! Is the guilt ours who see it, or have
life and history really altered their conjunction
and an inauspicious star risen between them?


## p. 31 (#55) ##############################################

THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 31
Others may prove we have seen falsely; I am
merely saying what we believe we see. There is
such a star, a bright and lordly star, and the con-
junction is really altered—by science, and the
demand for history to be a science. Life is no
more dominant, and knowledge of the past no
longer its thrall: boundary marks are overthrown
and everything bursts its limits. The perspective
of events is blurred, and the blur extends through
their whole immeasurable course. No generation
has seen such a panoramic comedy as is shown by
the " science of universal evolution," history; that
shows it with the dangerous audacity of its motto—
"Fiat Veritas, pereat vita. "
Let me give a picture of the spiritual events in
the soul of the modern man. Historical knowledge
streams on him from sources that are inexhaustible,
strange incoherencies come together, memory opens
all its gates and yet is never open wide enough,
nature busies herself to receive all the foreign
guests, to honour them and put them in their
places. But they are at war with each other:
violent measures seem necessary, in order to escape
destruction one's self. It becomes second nature
to grow gradually accustomed to this irregular
and stormy home-life, though this second nature
is unquestionably weaker, more restless, more
radically unsound than the first. The modern
man carries inside him an enormous heap of
indigestible knowledge-stones that occasionally
rattle together in his body, as the fairy-tale has it.
And the rattle reveals the most striking charac-
teristic of these modern men, the opposition of


## p. 32 (#56) ##############################################

32 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
something inside them to which nothing external
corresponds; and the reverse. The ancient nations
knew nothing of this. Knowledge, taken in excess
". ■ without hunger, even contrary to desire, has no
more the effect of transforming the external life;
and remains hidden in a chaotic inner world that
the modern man has a curious pride in calling his
"real personality.