No More Learning

this would be the general environment, the back-
ground on which the delicate differences of the em-
bodied ideals would make the real picture, that of
ever-growing human majesty. Many roads to this
poetry of the future start from Goethe, but the quest
needs good pathfinders and above all a far greater
strength than is possessed by modern poets, who
unscrupulously represent the half-animal and the
immaturity and intemperance that are mistaken
by them for power and naturalness.
ioo.
/ The Muse as Penthesilea*—"Better to rot
than to be a woman without charm. " When once
the Muse thinks thus, the end of her art is again
at hand. But it can be a tragic and also a comic
finale.
IOI.
The Circuitous Path to the Beautiful. —
If the beautiful is to be identified with that which
gives pleasure—and thus sang the Muses once—
the useful is often the necessary circuitous path
to the beautiful, and has a perfect right to spurn
the short-sighted censure of men who live for the
moment, who will not wait, and who think that
they can reach all good things without ever taking
a circuitous path.
102.
An Excuse for many a Transgression. —The
ceaseless desire to create, the eternal looking out-
* Queen of the Amazons, slain by Achilles in the Trojan
War. —Tr.


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. $7
ward of the artist, hinders him from becoming better
and more beautiful as a personality: unless his crav-
ing for glory be great enough to compel him to
exhibit in his relations with other men a growth
corresponding to the growing beauty and greatness
of his works. In any case he has but a limited
measure of strength, and how could the proportion
of strength that he spends on himself be of any
benefit to his work—or vice versa?
103.
Satisfying the Best People. —If we have sat-
isfied the best people of our time with our art, it is
a sign that we shall not satisfy the best people of
the succeeding period. We have indeed "lived for
all time," and the applause of the best people ensures
our fame. *
104.
Of One Substance. —If we are of one substance
with a book or a work of art, we think in our heart
of hearts that it must be excellent, and are offended
if others find it ugly, over-spiced, or pretentious.
105.
Speech and Emotion. —That speech is not given
to us to communicate our emotions may be seen
from the fact that all simple men are ashamed to
seek for words to express their deeper feelings. These
* From Schiller, Wallensteiris Lager: "Wer den Besten
seiner Zeit genug gethan, der hat gelebt fur alle Zeiten"
(" He that has satisfied the best men of his time has lived for
all time").


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58 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
feelings are expressed only in actions, and even here
such men blush if others seem to divine their motives.
After all, among poets, to whom God generally
denies this shame, the more noble are more mono-
syllabic in the language of emotion, and evince a
certain constraint: whereas the real poets of emotion
are for the most part shameless in practical life.
106.
A Mistake about a Privation. —He that has
not for a long time been completely weaned from an
art, and is still always at home in it, has no idea how
small a privation it is to live without that art.
107.
Three-quarter Strength. —A work that is
meant to give an impression of health should be
produced with three-quarters, at the most, of the
strength of its creator. If he has gone to his farthest
limit, the work excites the observer and disconcerts
him by its tension. All good things have some-
thing lazy about them and lie like cows in the
meadow.
108.
Refusing to have Hunger as a Guest. —As
refined fare serves a hungry man as well as and no
better than coarser food, the more pretentious artist
will not dream of inviting the hungry man to his
meal.
109.
Living without Art and Wine. —It is with
works of art as with wine—it is better if one can do


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 59
without both and keep to water, and if from the
inner fire and inner sweetness of the soul the water
spontaneously changes again into wine.
no.
The Pirate-Genius. —The pirate-genius in art,
who even knows how to deceive subtle minds, arises
when some one unscrupulously and from youth up-
wards regards all good things, that are not protected
by law, as the property of a particular person, as his
legitimate spoil. Now all the good things of past
ages and masters lie free around us, hedged about
and protected by the reverential awe of the few who
know them. To these few our robber-genius, by
the force of his impudence, bids defiance and ac-
cumulates for himself a wealth that once more calls
forth homage and awe.
in.
To the Poets of Great Towns. —In the gar-
dens of modern poetry it will clearly be observed
that the sewers of great towns are too near. With
the fragrance of flowers is mingled something that
betrays abomination and putrescence. With pain I
ask: "Must you poets always request wit and dirt
to stand godfather, when an innocent and beautiful
sensation has to be christened by you? Are you
obliged to dress your noble goddess in a hood of
devilry and caricature? But whence this necessity,
this obligation? " The reason is—because you live
too near the sewers.


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60 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
112.
Of the Salt of Speech. —No one has ever
explained why the Greek writers, having at com-
mand such an unparalleled wealth and power of
language, made so sparing a use of their resources
that every post-classical Greek book appears by
comparison crude, over-coloured, and extravagant.
It is said that towards the North Polar ice and
in the hottest countries salt is becoming less and
less used, whereas on the other hand the dwellers
on the plains and by the coast in the more temper-
ate zones use salt in great abundance. Is it possible
that the Greeks from a twofold reason—because
their intellect was colder and clearer but their fun-
damental passionate nature far more tropical than
ours—did not need salt and spice to the same extent
that we do?
"3-
The Freest Writer. —In a book for free spirits
one cannot avoid mention of Laurence Sterne, the
man whom Goethe honoured as the freest spirit of
his century. May he be satisfied with the honour of
being called the freest writer of all times, in com-
parison with whom all others appear stiff, square-
toed, intolerant, and downright boorish! In his case
we should not speak of the clear and rounded but
of "the endless melody"—if by this phrase we arrive
at a name for an artistic style in which the definite
form is continually broken, thrust aside and trans-
ferred to the realm of the indefinite, so that it
signifies one and the other at the same time. Sterne
is the great master of double entendre, this phrase


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6l
being naturally used in a far wider sense than is
commonly done when one applies it to sexual
relations. We may give up for lost the reader
who always wants to know exactly what Sterne
thinks about a matter, and whether he be making
a serious or a smiling face (for he can do both
with one wrinkling of his features; he can be and
even wishes to be right and wrong at the same
moment, to interweave profundity and farce). His
digressions are at once continuations and further
developments of the story, his maxims contain a
satire on all that is sententious, his dislike of
seriousness is bound up with a disposition to take no
matter merely externally and on the surface. So in
the proper reader he arouses a feeling of uncertainty
whether he be walking, lying, or standing, a feeling
most closely akin to that of floating in the air. He,
the most versatile of writers, communicates some-
thing of this versatility to his reader. Yes, Sterne
unexpectedly changes the parts, and is often as much
reader as author, his book being like a play within a
play, a theatre audience before another theatre audi-
ence. We must surrender at discretion to the mood
of Sterne, although we can always expect it to be
gracious. It is strangely instructive to see how so
great a writer as Diderot has affected this double
entendre of Sterne's — to be equally ambiguous
throughout is just the Sternian super-humour. Did
Diderot imitate, admire, ridicule, or parody Sterne
in his Jacques le Fataliste} One cannot be exactly
certain, and this uncertainty was perhaps intended
by the author. This very doubt makes the French
unjust to the work of one of their first masters, one


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62 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
who need not be ashamed of comparison with any
of the ancients or moderns. For humour (and
especially for this humorous attitude towards
humour itself) the French are too serious. Is it
necessary to add that of all great authors Sterne is
the worst model, in fact the inimitable author, and
that even Diderot had to pay for his daring? What
the worthy Frenchmen and before them some
Greeks and Romans aimed at and attained in prose
is the very opposite of what Sterne aims at and
attains. He raises himself as a masterly exception
above all that artists in writing demand of them-
selves—propriety, reserve, character, steadfastness
of purpose, comprehensiveness, perspicuity, good
deportment in gait and feature. Unfortunately
Sterne the man seems to have been only too closely
related to Sterne the writer. His squirrel-soul
sprang with insatiable unrest from branch to
branch; he knew what lies between sublimity and
rascality; he had sat on every seat, always with un-
abashed watery eyes and mobile play of feature.
He was—if language does not revolt from such a
combination—of a hard-hearted kindness, and in
the midst of the joys of a grotesque and even cor-
rupt imagination he showed the bashful grace of
innocence. Such a carnal and spiritual hermaphro-
ditism, such untrammelled wit penetrating into
every vein and muscle, was perhaps never possessed
by any other man.
114.
A CHOICE Reality. —Just as the good prose
writer only takes words that belong to the language
of daily intercourse, though not by a long way all


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6$
its words—whence arises a choice style—so the
good poet of the future will only represent the real
and turn his eyes away from all fantastic, supersti-
tious, half-voiced, forgotten stories, to which earlier
poets devoted their powers. Only reality, though
by a long way not every reality—but a choice
reality.
115.
Degenerate Species of Art. —Side by side
with the genuine species of art, those of great repose
and great movement, there are degenerate species
—weary, blase" art and excited art. Both would
have their weakness taken for strength and wish to
be confounded with the genuine species.
116.
A Hero Impossible from Lack of Colour. —
The typical poets and artists of our age like to
compose their pictures upon a background of shim-
mering red, green, grey, and gold, on the back-
ground of nervous sensuality—a condition well
understood by the children of this century. The
drawback comes when we do not look at these pic-
tures with the eyes of our century. Then we see that
the great figures painted by these artists have some-
thing flickering, tremulous, and dizzy about them,
and accordingly we do not ascribe to them heroic
deeds, but at best mock-heroic, swaggering misdeeds.
117.
Overladen Style. —The overladen style is a
consequence of the impoverishment of the organis-


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64 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
ing force together with a lavish stock of expedients
and intentions. At the beginnings of art the very
reverse conditions sometimes appear.
118.
PULCHRUM EST PAUCORUM HOMINUM. —History
and experience tell us that the significant grotesque-
ness that mysteriously excites the imagination and
carries one beyond everyday reality, is older and
grows more luxuriantly than the beautiful and re-
verence for the beautiful in art: and that it begins
to flourish exceedingly when the sense for beauty
is on the wane. For the vast majority of mankind
this grotesque seems to be a higher need than the
beautiful, presumably because it contains a coarser
narcotic.
119.
Origins of Taste in Works of Art. —If we
consider the primary germs of the artistic sense, and
ask ourselves what are the various kinds of joy
produced by the firstlings of art—as, for example,
among savage tribes—we find first of all the joy
of understanding what another means. Art in this
case is a sort of conundrum, which causes its solver
pleasure in his own quick and keen perceptions. —
Then the roughest works of art remind us of the
pleasant things we have actually experienced, and
so give joy—as, for example, when the artist alludes
to a chase, a victory, a wedding. —Again, the repre-
sentation may cause us to feel excited, touched, in-
flamed, as for instance in the glorification of revenge


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6$
and danger. Here the enjoyment lies in the ex-
citement itself, in the victory over tedium. —The
memory, too, of unpleasant things, so far as they
have been overcome or make us appear interesting
to the listener as subjects for art (as when the
singer describes the mishaps of a daring seaman),
can inspire great joy, the credit for which is given
to art. —A more subtle variety is the joy that
arises at the sight of all that is regular and sym-
metrical in lines, points, and rhythms. For by a
certain analogy is awakened the feeling for all that
is orderly and regular in life, which one has to thank
alone for all well-being. So in the cult of symmetry
we unconsciously do homage to rule and proportion
as the source of our previous happiness, and the joy
in this case is a kind of hymn of thanksgiving.
Only when a certain satiety of the last-mentioned
joy arises does a more subtle feeling step in, that
enjoyment might even lie in a violation of the
symmetrical and regular. This feeling, for example,
impels us -to seek reason in apparent unreason, and
the sort of aesthetic riddle-guessing that results is in
a way the higher species of the first-named artistic
joy. —He who pursues this speculation still further
will know what kind of hypotheses for the ex-
planation of aesthetic phenomena are hereby funda-
mentally rejected.
120.
Not too Near. —It is a disadvantage for good
thoughts when they follow too closely on one
another, for they hide the view from each other.
vol. 11. E


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66 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
That is why great artists and writers have made an
abundant use of the mediocre.
121.
Roughness and Weakness. —Artists of all
periods have made the discovery that in roughness
lies a certain strength, and that not every one can be
rough who wants to be: also that many varieties of
weakness have a powerful effect on the emotions.
From this source are derived many artistic substi-
tutes, which not even the greatest and most con-
scientious artists can abstain from using.
122.
Good Memory. —Many a man fails to become
a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too
good.
123.
Arousing instead of Appeasing Hunger. —
Great artists fancy that they have taken full pos-
session of a soul. In reality, and often to their
painful disappointment, that soul has only been
made more capacious and insatiable, so that a dozen
greater artists could plunge into its depths without
filling it up.
124.
Artists' Anxiety. —The anxiety lest people
may not believe that their figures are alive can mis-
lead many artists of declining taste to portray these
figures so that they appear as if mad. From the


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 67
same anxiety, on the other hand, Greek artists of
the earliest ages gave even dead and sorely wounded
men that smile which they knew as the most vivid
sign of life—careless of the actual forms bestowed
by nature on life at its last gasp.
125.
The Circle must be Completed. —He who
follows a philosophy or a genre of art to the end of
its career and beyond, understands from inner ex-
perience why the masters and disciples who come
after have so often turned, with a depreciatory ges-
ture, into a new groove. The circle must be de-
scribed—but the individual, even the greatest, sits
firm on his point of the circumference, with an in-
exorable look of obstinacy, as if the circle ought
never to be completed.
126.
The Older Art and the Soul of the
PRESENt. —Since every art becomes more and more
adapted to the expression of spiritual states, of the
more lively, delicate, energetic, and passionate states,
the later masters, spoilt by these means of expres-
sion, do not feel at their ease in the presence of the
old-time works of art. They feel as if the ancients
had merely been lacking in the means of making
their souls speak clearly, also perhaps in some neces-
sary technical preliminaries. They think that they
must render some assistance in this quarter, for
they believe in the similarity or even unity of all
souls. In truth, however, measure, symmetry, a


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68 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
contempt for graciousness and charm, an uncon-
scious severity and morning chilliness, an evasion
• of passion, as if passion meant the death of art—
such are the constituents of sentiment and morality
in all old masters, who selected and arranged their
means of expression not at random but in a neces-
sary connection with their morality. Knowing this,
are we to deny those that come after the right to
animate the older works with their soul? No, for
these works can only survive through our giving
them our soul, and our blood alone enables them
to speak to us. The real "historic" discourse would
talk ghostly speech to ghosts. We honour the great
artists less by that barren timidity that allows every
word, every note to remain intact than by energetic
endeavours to aid them continually to a new life. —
True, if Beethoven were suddenly to come to life
and hear one of his works performed with that
modern animation and nervous refinement that bring
glory to our masters of execution, he would probably
be silent for a long while, uncertain whether he should
raise his hand to curse or to bless, but perhaps say
at last: "Well, well! That is neither I nor not-I, but
a third thing—it seems to me, too, something right,
if not just bright thing. But you must know your-
selves what to do, as in any case it is you who have
to listen. As our Schiller says, 'the living man is
right. ' So have it your own way, and let me go
down again. "
127.
fr> t*^- Against the Disparagers of Brevity. —A
brief dictum may be the fruit and harvest of long


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 6g
reflection. The reader, however, who is a novice
in this field and has never considered the case in
point, sees something embryonic in all brief dicta,
not without a reproachful hint to the author, request-
ing him not to serve up such raw and ill-prepared
food.
128.
Against the Short-Sighted. —Do you think
it is piece-work because it is (and must be) offered
you in pieces?
129.
Readers of Aphorisms. —The worst readers of
aphorisms are the friends of the author, if they make
a point of referring the general to the particular
instance to which the aphorism owes its origin.
This namby-pamby attitude brings all the author's
trouble to naught, and instead of a philosophic lesson
and a philosophic frame of mind, they deservedly
gain nothing but the satisfaction of a vulgar curi-
osity.
130.
Readers' Insults. —The reader offers a two-
fold insult to the author by praising his second book
at the expense of his first (or vice versa) and by ex-
pecting the author to be grateful to him on that
account.
131-
The Exciting Element in the History of
Art. —We fall into a state of terrible tension when
we follow the history of an art—as, for example, that


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yo HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
of Greek oratory—and, passing from master to master,
observe their increasing precautions to obey the old
and the new laws and all these self-imposed limita-
tions. We see that the bow must snap, and that the
so-called "loose" composition, with the wonderful
means of expression smothered and concealed (in
this particular case the florid style of Asianism), was
once necessary and almost beneficial.
132.
To the Great in Art. —That enthusiasm for
some object which you, O great man, introduce into
this world causes the intelligence of the many to be
stunted. The knowledge of this fact spells humilia-
tion. But the enthusiast wears his hump with pride
and pleasure, and you have the consolation of feeling
that you have increased the world's happiness.
133-
Conscienceless . /Esthetes— The real fanatics
of an artistic school are perhaps those utterly in-
artistic natures that are not even grounded in the
elements of artistic study and creation, but are im-
pressed with the strongest of all the elementary
influences of an art. For them there is no aesthetic
conscience—hence nothing to hold them back from
fanaticism.
134.
How the Soul should be Moved by the
New MUSIC. —The artistic purpose followed by the
new music, in what is now forcibly but none too


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 71
lucidly termed " endless melody," can be understood
by going into the sea, gradually losing one's firm
tread on the bottom, and finally surrendering uncon-
ditionally to the fluid element. One has to swim.
In the previous, older music one was forced, with
delicate or stately or impassioned movement, to
dance. The measure necessary for dancing, the ob-
servance of a distinct balance of time and force
in the soul of the hearer, imposed a continual self-
control. Through the counteraction of the cooler
draught of air which came from this caution and the
warmer breath of musical enthusiasm, that music
exercised its spell. —Richard Wagner aimed at a yjj
different excitation of the soul, allied, as above said,
to swimming and floating. This is perhaps the most
essential of his innovations. His famous method,
originating from this aim and adapted to it—the
"endless melody "—strives to break and sometimes
even to despise all mathematical equilibrium of time
and force. He is only too rich in the invention of
such effects, which sound to the old school like
rhythmic paradoxes and blasphemies. He dreads
petrifaction, crystallisation, the development of
music into the architectural. He accordingly sets
up a three-time rhythm in opposition to the double-
time, not infrequently introduces five-time and seven-
time, immediately repeats a phrase, but with a pro-
lation, so that its time is again doubled and trebled.
From an easy-going imitation of such art may arise
a great danger to music, for by the side of the super-
abundance of rhythmic emotion demoralisation and
decadence lurk in ambush. The danger will become
very great if such music comes to associate itself


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72 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
more and more closely with a quite naturalistic
art of acting and pantomime, trained and dominated
by no higher plastic models; an art that knows no
measure in itself and can impart no measure to the
kindred element, the all-too-womanish nature of
music.
135-
Poet and Reality. —The Muse of the poet who
is not in love with reality will not be reality, and
will bear him children with hollow eyes and all too
tender bones.
136.
Means and End. —In art the end does not justify
the means, but holy means can justify the end.
137.
The Worst Readers. —The worst readers are
those who act like plundering soldiers. They take
out some things that they might use, cover the rest
with filth and confusion, and blaspheme about the
whole.
138.
Signs of a Good Writer. —Good writers have
two things in common: they prefer being understood
to being admired, and they do not write for the
critical and over-shrewd reader.
139.
The Mixed Species. —The mixed species in art
bear witness to their authors' distrust of their own


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 73
strength. They seek auxiliary powers, advocates,
hiding-places-such is the case with the poet who
calls in philosophy, the musician who calls in the
drama, and the thinker who calls in rhetoric to his aid.
140.
SHUTTING ONE'S MOUTH. - When his book.
opens its mouth, the author must shut his.
141.
BADGES OF RANK. --All poets and men of letters
who are in love with the superlative want to do more
than they can.
142.
COLD BOOKS. —The deep thinker reckons on
readers who feel with him the happiness that lies
in deep thinking. Hence a book that looks cold
and sober, if seen in the right light, may seem bathed
in the sunshine of spiritual cheerfulness and become
a genuine soul-comforter.
143.
A KNACK OF THE SLOW-WITTED. —The slow-
witted thinker generally allies himself with loqua-
city and ceremoniousness. By the former he thinks
he is gaining mobility and fluency, by the latter he
gives his peculiarity the appearance of being a result
of free will and artistic purpose, with a view to
dignity, which needs slow movement.


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74 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
144-
Le Style Baroque*—He who as thinker and
writeris not born or trained to dialectic and the conse-
cutive arrangement of ideas, will unconsciously turn
to the rhetoric and dramatic forms. For, after all, his
object is to make himself understood and to carry the
day by force, and he is indifferent whether, as shep-
herd, he honestly guides to himself the hearts of his
fellow-men, or, as robber, he captures them by sur-
prise. This is true of the plastic arts as of music:
where the feeling of insufficient dialectic or a de-
ficiency in expression or narration, together with an
urgent, over-powerful impulse to form, gives birth
to that species of style known as " baroque. " Only
the ill-educated and the arrogant will at once find a
depreciatory force in this word. The baroque style
always arises at the time of decay of a great art,
when the demands of art in classical expression
have become too great. It is a natural phenomenon
which will be observed with melancholy—for it is a
forerunner of the night—but at the same time with
admiration for its peculiar compensatory arts of ex-
pression and narration. To this style belongs already
a choice of material and subjects of the highest
dramatic tension, at which the heart trembles even
when there is no art, because heaven and hell are
all too near the emotions: then, the oratory of strong
passion and gestures, of ugly sublimity, of great
* In German Barockstil, i. e. the degenerate post-Renais-
sance style in art and literature, which spread from Italy
in the seventeenth century. —Tr.


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 75
masses, in fact of absolute quantity per se (as is
shown in Michael Angelo, the father or grandfather
of the Italian baroque stylists): the lights of dusk,
illumination and conflagration playing upon those
strongly moulded forms: ever-new ventures in means
and aims, strongly underscored by artists for artists,
while the layman must fancy he sees an unconscious
overflowing of all the horns of plenty of an original
nature-art: all these characteristics that constitute
the greatness of that style are neither possible nor
permitted in the earlier ante-classical and classical
periods of a branch of art. Such luxuries hang long
on the tree like forbidden fruit. Just now, when
music is passing into this last phase, we may learn to
know the phenomenon of the baroque style in peculiar
splendour, and, by comparison, find much that is
instructive for earlier ages. For from Greek times
onward there has often been a baroque style, in
poetry, oratory, prose writing, sculpture, and, as is
well known, in architecture. This style, though
wanting in the highest nobility,—the nobility of an
innocent, unconscious, triumphant perfection,—has
nevertheless given pleasure to many of the best and
most serious minds of their time. Hence, as afore-
said, it is presumptuous to depreciate it without re-
serve, however happy we may feel because our taste
for it has not made us insensible to the purer and
greater style.
145.
The Value of Honest Books. —Honest books
make the reader honest, at least by exciting his
hatred and aversion, which otherwise cunning clever-


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j6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
ness knows so well how to conceal. Against a book,
however, we let ourselves go, however restrained we
may be in our relations with men.
146.
How Art makes Partisans. —Individual fine
passages, an exciting general tenor, a moving and
absorbing finale—so much of a work of art is ac-
cessible even to most laymen. In an art period
when it is desired to win over the great majority of
the laymen to the side of the artists and to make a
party perhaps for the very preservation of art, the
creative artist will do well to offer nothing more than
the above. Then he will not be a squanderer of his
strength, in spheres where no one is grateful to him.
For to perform the remaining functions, the imi-
tation of Nature in her organic development and
growth, would in that case be like sowing seeds in
water.
147.
Becoming Great to the Detriment of
HISTORy. —Every later master who leads the taste
of art-lovers into his channel unconsciously gives rise
to a selection and revaluation of the older masters
and their works. Whatever in them is conformable
and akin to him, and anticipates and foreshadows
him, appears henceforth as the only important ele-
ment in them and their works—a fruit in which a
great error usually lies hidden like a worm.
148.
How an Epoch becomes Lured to Art. —If
we teach people by all the enchantments of artists


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. JJ
and thinkers to feel reverence for their defects, their
intellectual poverty, their absurd infatuations and
passions (as it is quite possible to do); if we show
them only the lofty side of crime and folly, only
the touching and appealing element in weakness and
flabbiness and blind devotion (that too has often
enough been done):—we have employed the means
for inspiring even an unphilosophical and inartistic
age with an ecstatic love of philosophy and art
(especially of thinkers and artists as personalities)
and, in the worst case, perhaps with the only means
of defending the existence of such tender and fragile
beings.
149.
Criticism and Joy. —Criticism, one-sided and
unjust as well as intelligent criticism, gives so much
pleasure to him who exercises it that the world is
indebted to every work and every action that in-
spires much criticism and many critics. For criti-.
cism draws after it a glittering train of joyousness,
wit, self-admiration, pride, instruction, designs of im-
provement. —The God of joy created the bad and
the mediocre for the same reason that he created the
good.
150.
Beyond his Limits. —When an artist wants to
be more than an artist—for example, the moral
awakener of his people—he at last falls in love, as a
punishment, with a monster of moral substance.
The Muse laughs, for, though a kind-hearted God-
dess, she can also be malignant from jealousy.
Milton and Klopstock are cases in point.


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78 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
151.
A GLASS Eye. —The tendency of a talent towards
moral subjects, characters, motives, towards the
"beautiful soul" of the work of art, is often only a
glass eye put on by the artist who lacks a beautiful
soul. It may result, though rarely, that his eye
finally becomes living Nature, if indeed it be Nature
with a somewhat troubled look. But the ordinary
result is that the whole world thinks it sees Nature
where there is only cold glass.
152.
Writing and Desire for Victory. —Writing
should always indicate a victory, indeed a conquest
of oneself which must be communicated to others
for their behoof. There are, however, dyspeptic
authors who only write when they cannot digest
something, or when something has remained stuck
in their teeth. Through their anger they try un-
consciously to disgust the reader too, and to exercise
violence upon him—that is, they desire victory, but
victory over others.
153-
A Good Book Needs Time. —Every good book
tastes bitter when it first comes out, for it has the
defect of newness. Moreover, it suffers damage
from its living author, if he is well known and much
talked about. For all the world is accustomed to
confuse the author with his work. Whatever of
profundity, sweetness, and brilliance the work may
contain must be developed as the years go by,


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 79
under the care of growing, then old, and lastly
traditional reverence. Many hours must pass, many
a spider must have woven its web about the book.
A book is made better by good readers and clearer
by good opponents.
154.
Extravagance as an Artistic Means. —
Artists well understand the idea of using extrava-
gance as an artistic means in order to convey an
impression of wealth. This is one of those innocent
wiles of soul-seduction that the artist must know,
for in his world, which has only appearance in view,
the means to appearance need not necessarily be
genuine.
155-
The Hidden Barrel-Organ. —Genius, by
virtue of its more ample drapery, knows better than
talent how to hide its barrel-organ. Yet after all
it too can only play its seven old pieces over and
over again.
156.
The Name on the Title-Page. —It is now a
matter of custom and almost of duty for the
author's name to appear on the book, and this is a
main cause of the fact that books have so little
influence. If they are good, they are worth more
than the personalities of their authors, of which
they are the quintessences. But as soon as the
author makes himself known on the title-page, the
quintessence, from the reader's point of view, be-


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80 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
comes diluted with the personal, the most personal
element, and the aim of the book is frustrated. It
is the ambition of the intellect no longer to appear
individual.
157-
The Most Cutting Criticism. —We make the
most cutting criticism of a man or a book when we
indicate his or its ideal.
158.
Little or no Love. —Every good book is written
for a particular reader and men of his stamp, and
for that very reason is looked upon unfavourably
by all other readers, by the vast majority. Its re-
putation accordingly rests on a narrow basis and
must be built up by degrees. —The mediocre and
bad book is mediocre and bad because it seeks to
please, and does please, a great number.
159-
Music and Disease. —The danger of the new
music lies in the fact that it puts the cup of rapture
and exaltation to the lips so invitingly, and with
such a show of moral ecstasy, that even the noble
and temperate man always drinks a drop too much.
This minimum of intemperance, constantlyrepeated,
can in the end bring about a deeper convulsion and
destruction of mental health than any coarse excess
could do. Hence nothing remains but some day
to fly from the grotto of the nymph, and through
perils and billowy seas to forge one's way to the


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 8l
smoke of Ithaca and the embraces of a simpler and
more human spouse.
160.
Advantage for Opponents. —A book full of
intellect communicates something thereof even to
its opponents.
161.
Youth and Criticism. —To criticise a book
means, for the young, not to let oneself be touched
by a single productive thought therefrom, and to
protect one's skin with hands and feet. The
youngster lives in opposition to all novelty that
he cannot love in the lump, in a position of self-
defence, and in this connection he commits, as often
as he can, a superfluous sin.
162.
Effect of Quantity. —The greatest paradox
in the history of poetic art lies in this: that in all
that constitutes the greatness of the old poets a
man may be a barbarian, faulty and deformed from
top to toe, and still remain the greatest of poets.
This is the case with Shakespeare, who, as com-
pared with Sophocles, is like a mine of immeasur-
able wealth in gold, lead, and rubble, whereas
Sophocles is not merely gold, but gold in its noblest
form, one that almost makes us forget the money-
value of the metal. But quantity in its highest in-
tensity has the same effect as quality. That is a
good thing for Shakespeare.
VOl. II. F


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82 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I63.
All Beginning is Dangerous. —The Poet can
choose whether to raise emotion from one grade to
another, and so finally to exalt it to a great height
—or to try a surprise attack, and from the start
to pull the bell-rope with might and main. Both
processes have their danger—in the first case his
hearer may run away from him through boredom,
in the second through terror.
164.
In Favour OF Critics. —Insects sting, not from
malice, but because they too want to live. It is the
same with our critics—they desire our blood, not our
pain.
165.
Success of Aphorisms. —The inexperienced,
when an aphorism at once illuminates their minds
with its naked truth, always think that it is old and
well known. They look askance at the author, as if
he had wanted to steal the common property of all,
whereas they enjoy highly spiced half-truths, and
give the author to understand as much. He knows
how to appreciate the hint, and easily guesses there-
by where he has succeeded and failed.
166.
The Desire for Victory. — An artist who
exceeds the limit of his strength in all that he
undertakes will end by carrying the multitude
along with him through the spectacle of violent


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 83
wrestling that he affords. Success is not always
the accompaniment only of victory, but also of the
desire for victory.
167.
Sibi Scribere.