No More Learning

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


## p. 72 (#92) ##############################################

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.


## p. 74 (#94) ##############################################

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.


## p. 75 (#95) ##############################################

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-


## p. 76 (#96) ##############################################

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


## p. 77 (#97) ##############################################

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.


## p. 78 (#98) ##############################################

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-


## p. 80 (#100) #############################################

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


## p. 82 (#102) #############################################

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


## p. 83 (#103) #############################################

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. —The sensible author writes for
no other posterity than his own—that is, for his
age—so as to be able even then to take pleasure
in himself.
168.
Praise of the Aphorism. —A good aphorism
is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn
away by all the centuries, although it serves as food
for every epoch. Hence it is the greatest paradox
in literature, the imperishable in the midst of
change, the nourishment which always remains
highly valued, as salt does, and never becomes
stupid like salt.
169.
The Art-Need of the Second Order. —The
people may have something of what can be called
art-need, but it is small, and can be cheaply satis-
fied. On the whole, the remnant of art (it must
be honestly confessed) suffices for this need. Let
us consider, for example, the kind of melodies and
songs in which the most vigorous, unspoiled, and
true-hearted classes of the population find genuine
delight; let us live among shepherds, cowherds,
peasants, huntsmen, soldiers, and sailors, and give
ourselves the answer. And in the country town, just
in the houses that are the homes of inherited civic
virtue, is it not the worst music at present produced


## p. 84 (#104) #############################################

84 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
that is loved and,one might say,cherished? He who
speaks of deeper needs and unsatisfied yearnings
for art among the people, as it is, is a crank or an im-
postor. Be honest! Only in exceptional men is there
now an art-need in the highest sense—because art
is once more on the down-grade, and human powers
and hopes are for the time being directed to other
matters. —Apart from this, outside the populace,
there exists indeed, in the higher and highest strata
of society, a broader and more comprehensive art-
need, but of the second order. Here there is a sort
of artistic commune, which possibly means to be
sincere. But let us look at the elements! They
are in general the more refined malcontents, who
attain no genuine pleasure in themselves; the cul-
tured, who have not become free enough to dispense
with the consolations of religion, and yet do not
find its incense sufficiently fragrant; the half-aristo-
cratic, who are too weak to combat by a heroic
conversion or renunciation the one fundamental
error of their lives or the pernicious bent of their
characters; the highly gifted, who think themselves
too dignified to be of service by modest activity,
and are too lazy for real, self-sacrificing work; girls
who cannot create for themselves a satisfactory
sphere of duties; women who have tied themselves
by a light-hearted or nefarious marriage, and know
that they are not tied securely enough; scholars,
physicians, merchants, officials who specialised too
early and never gave their lives a free enough scope
—who do their work efficiently, it is true, but with a
worm gnawing at their hearts; finally, all imperfect
artists—these are nowadays the true needers of art!


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 85
What do they really desire from art? Art is to drive
away hours and moments of discomfort, boredom,
half-bad conscience, and, if possible, transform the
faults of their lives and characters into faults of
world-destiny. Very different were the Greeks, who
realised in their art the outflow and overflow of their
own sense of well-being and health, and loved to
see their perfection once more from a standpoint
outside themselves. They were led to art by delight
in themselves; our contemporaries—by disgust of
themselves.
170.
The Germans in the Theatre. —The real
theatrical talent of the Germans was Kotzebue. He
and his Germans, those of higher as well as those
of middle-class society, were necessarily associated,
and his contemporaries should have said of him in all
seriousness, "in him we live and move and have our
being. " Here was nothing—no constraint, pretence,
or half-enjoyment: what he could and would do was
understood. Yes, until now the honest theatrical
success on the German stage has been in the hands
of the shamefaced or unashamed heirs of Kotzebue's
methods and influence—that is, as far as comedy
still flourishes at all. The result is that much of the
Germanism of that age, sometimes far off from the
great towns, still survives. Good-natured; incon-
tinent in small pleasures; always ready for tears;
with the desire, in the theatre at any rate, to be
able to get rid of their innate sobriety and strict
attention to duty and exercise; a smiling, nay, a
laughing indulgence; confusing goodness and sym-


## p. 86 (#106) #############################################

86 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
pathy and welding them into one, as is the essential
characteristic of German sentimentality; exceed-
ingly happy at a noble, magnanimous action; for
the rest, submissive towards superiors, envious of
each other, and yet in their heart of hearts thor-
oughly self-satisfied—such were they and such was
he. —The second dramatic talent was Schiller. He
discovered a class of hearers which had hitherto
never been taken into consideration: among the
callow German youth of both sexes. His poetry
responded to their higher, nobler, more violent if
more confused emotions, their delight in the jingle
of moral words (a delight that begins to disappear
when we reach the thirties). Thus he won for him-
self, by virtue of the passionateness and partisanship
of the young, a success which gradually reacted with
advantage upon those of riper years. Generally
speaking, Schiller rejuvenated the Germans. Goethe
stood and still stands above the Germans in every
respect. To them he will never belong. How could
a nation in well-being and well-wishing come up to
the intellectuality of Goethe? Beethoven composed
and Schopenhauer philosophised above the heads
of the Germans, and it was above their heads, in
the same way, that Goethe wrote his Tasso, his
Iphigenie. He was followed by a small company
of highly cultured persons, who were educated by
antiquity, life, and travel, and had grown out of
German ways of thought. He himself did not
wish it to be otherwise. —When the Romantics set
up their well-conceived Goethe cult; when their
amazing skill in appreciation was passed on to the
disciples of Hegel, the real educators of the Germans


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 87
of this century; when the awakening national am-
bition turned out advantageous to the fame of the
German poets; when the real standard of the nation,
as to whether it could honestly find enjoyment in
anything, became inexorably subordinated to the
judgment of individuals and to that national am-
bition,—that is, when people began to enjoy by
compulsion,—then arose that false, spurious German
culture which was ashamed of Kotzebue; which
brought Sophocles, Calderon, and even the Second
Part of Goethe's Faust on the stage; and which,
on account of its foul tongue and congested stomach,
no longer knows now what it likes and what it finds
tedious. —Happy are those who have taste, even if
it be a bad taste! Only by this characteristic can
one be wise as well as happy. Hence the Greeks,
who were very refined in such matters, designated
the sage by a word that means "man of taste," and
called wisdom, artistic as well as scientific, " taste"
{sophia).
171.
Music as a Late-Comer in every Culture.
—Among all the arts that are accustomed to grow
on a definite culture-soil and under definite social
and political conditions, music is the last plant to
come up, arising in the autumn and fading-season
of the culture to which it belongs. At the same
time, the first signs and harbingers of a new spring
are usually already noticeable, and sometimes music,
like the language of a forgotten age, rings out into
a new, astonished world, and comes too late. In the
art of the Dutch and Flemish musicians the soul


## p. 88 (#108) #############################################

88 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
r
of the Christian middle ages at last found its fullest
tone: their sound-architecture is the posthumous
but legitimate and equal sister of Gothic. Not until
Handel's music was heard the note of the best in
the soul of Luther and his kin, the great Judaeo-
heroical impulse that created the whole Reforma-
tion movement. Mozart first expressed in golden
melody the age of Louis XIV. and the art of Racine
and Claude Lorrain. The eighteenth century—that
century of rhapsody, of broken ideals and transitory
happiness—only sang itself out in the music of Bee-
thoven and Rossini. A lover of sentimental similes
might say that all really important music was a
swan-song. —Music is, in fact, not a universal language
for all time, as is so often said in its praise, but re-
sponds exactly to a particular period and warmth
of emotion which involves a quite definite, individual
culture, determined by time and place, as its inner
law. The music of Palestrina would be quite un-
intelligible to a Greek; and again, what would the
music of Rossini convey to Palestrina ? —It may be
that our most modern German music, with all its pre-
eminence and desire of pre-eminence, will soon be
no longer understood. For this music sprang from
a culture that is undergoing a rapid decay, from the
soil of that epoch of reaction and restoration in
which a certain Catholicism of feeling, as well as a
delight in all indigenous, national, primitive man-
ners, burst into bloom and scattered a blended per-
fume over Europe. These two emotional tendencies,
adopted in their greatest strength and carried to
their farthest limits, found final expression in the
music of Wagner. Wagner's predilection for the old


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 89
native sagas, his free idealisation of their unfamiliar
gods and heroes,—who are really sovereign beasts
of prey with occasional fits of thoughtfulness, mag-
nanimity, and boredom,—his re-animation of those
figures, to which he gave in addition the mediaeval
Christian thirst for ecstatic sensuality and spiritual-
isation—all this Wagnerian give-and-take with re-
gard to materials, souls, figures, and words—would
clearly express the spirit of his music, if it could not,
like all music, speak quite unambiguously of itself.
This spirit wages the last campaign of reaction
against the spirit of illumination which passed into
this century from the last, and also against the super-
national ideas of French revolutionary romanticism
and of English and American insipidity in the
reconstruction of state and society. —But is it not
evident that the spheres of thought and emotion
apparently suppressed by Wagner and his school
have long since acquired fresh strength, and that
his late musical protest against them generally rings
into ears that prefer to hear different and opposite
notes; so that one day that high and wonderful
art will suddenly become unintelligible and will be
covered by the spider's web of oblivion ? —In con-
sidering this state of affairs we must not let our-
selves be led astray by those transitory fluctuations
which arise like a reaction within a reaction, as a
temporary sinking of the mountainous wave in the
midst of the general upheaval. Thus, this decade of
national war, ultramontane martyrdom, and social-
istic unrest may, in its remoter after-effect, even aid
the Wagnerian art to acquire a sudden halo, with-
out guaranteeing that it " has a future" or that it


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go HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
has the future. It is in the very nature of music
that the fruits of its great culture-vintage should
lose their taste and wither earlier than the fruits of
the plastic arts or those that grow on the tree of
knowledge. Among all the products of the human
artistic sense ideas are the most solid and lasting.
172.
The Poet no longer a Teacher. —Strange
as it may sound to our time, there were once poets
and artists whose soul was above the passions with
their delights and convulsions, and who therefore
took their pleasure in purer materials, worthier men,
more delicate complications and denouements. If
the artists of our day for the most part unfetter the
will, and so are under certain circumstances for that
very reason emancipators of life, those were tamers of
the will, enchanters of animals, creators of men. In
fact, they moulded, re-moulded, and new-moulded
life, whereas the fame of poets of our day lies in
unharnessing, unchaining, and shattering. —The an-
cient Greeks demanded of the poet that he should
be the teacher of grown men. How ashamed the
poet would be now if this demand were made of
him! He is not even a good student of himself,
and so never himself becomes a good poem or a fine
picture. Under the most favourable circumstances
he remains the shy, attractive ruin of a temple, but
at the same time a cavern of cravings, overgrown
like a ruin with flowers, nettles, and poisonous weeds,
inhabited and haunted by snakes, worms, spiders,
and birds; an object for sad reflection as to why the
noblest and most precious must grow up at once


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 91
like a ruin, without the past and future of perfec-
tion.
173-
Looking Forward and Backward. —An art
like that which streams out of Homer, Sophocles,
Theocritus, Calderon, Racine, Goethe, as the super-
abundance of a wise and harmonious conduct of life
—that is the true art, at which we grasp when we
have ourselves become wiser and more harmonious.
It is not that barbaric, if ever so delightful, outpour-
ing of hot and highly coloured things from an un-
disciplined, chaotic soul, which is what we under-
stood by "art" in our youth. It is obvious from
the nature of the case that for certain periods of
life an art of overstrain, excitement, antipathy to
the orderly, monotonous, simple, logical, is an in-
evitable need, to which artists must respond, lest
the soul of such periods should unburden itself in
other ways, through all kinds of disorder and im-
propriety. Hence youths as they generally are, full,
fermenting, tortured above all things by boredom,
and women who lack work that fully occupies their
soul, require that art of delightful disorder. All
the more violently on that account are they in-
flamed with a desire for satisfaction without change,
happiness without stupor and intoxication.
174.
Against the Art of Works of Art. —Art is
above all and first of all meant to embellish life, to
make us ourselves endurable and if possible agree-
able in the eyes of others. With this task in view,


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92 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
art moderates us and holds us in restraint, creates
forms of intercourse, binds over the uneducated to
laws of decency, cleanliness, politeness, well-timed
speech and silence. Hence art must conceal or
transfigure everything that is ugly—the painful,
terrible, and disgusting elements which in spite of
every effort will always break out afresh in accord-
ance with the very origin of human nature. Art
has to perform this duty especially in regard to the
passions and spiritual agonies and anxieties, and to
cause the significant factor to shine through unavoid-
able or unconquerable ugliness. To this great, super-
great task the so-called art proper, that of works of
art, is a mere accessary. A man who feels within
himself a surplus of such powers of embellishment,
concealment, and transfiguration will finally seek
to unburden iumself of this surplus in works of art.
The same holds good, under special circumstances,
of a whole nation. —But as a rule we nowadays begin
art at the end, hang on to its tail, and think that
works of art constitute art proper, and that life
should be improved and transformed by this means
—fools that we are! If we begin a dinner with
dessert, and try sweet after sweet, small wonder that
we ruin our digestions and even our appetites for
the good, hearty, nourishing meal to which art in-
vites us!
175-
Continued Existence of Art. —Why, really,
does a creative art nowadays continue to exist? Be-
cause the majority who have hours of leisure (and
such an art is for them only) think that they cannot


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 93
fill up their time without music, theatres and picture-
galleries, novels and poetry. Granted that one
could keep them from this indulgence, either they
would strive less eagerly for leisure, and the in-
vidious sight of the rich would be less common (a
great gain for the stability of society), or they would
have leisure, but would learn to reflect on what can
be learnt and unlearnt: on their work, for instance,
their associations, the pleasure they could bestow.
All the world, with the exception of the artist, would
in both cases reap the advantage. —Certainly, there
are many vigorous, sensible readers who could take
objection to this. Still, it must be said on behalf of
the coarse and malignant that the author himself is
concerned with this protest, and that there is in his
book much to be read that is not actually written
down therein.
176.
The Mouthpiece of the Gods. —The poet
expresses the universal higher opinions of the
nation, he is its mouthpiece and flute; but by
virtue of metre and all other artistic means he so
expresses them that the nation regards them as
something quite new and wonderful, and believes
in all seriousness that he is the mouthpiece of the
Gods. Yes, under the clouds of creation the poet
himself forgets whence he derives all his intellectual
wisdom—from father and mother, from teachers and
books of all kinds, from the street and particularly
from the priest. He is deceived by his own art,
and really believes, in a naive period, that a God
is speaking through him, that he is creating in a


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94 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
state of religious inspiration. As a matter of fact,
he is only saying what he has learnt, a medley of
popular wisdom and popular foolishness. Hence,
so far as a poet is really vox populi he is held to be
vox del.
177.
What all Art wants to Do and Cannot. —
The last and hardest task of the artist is the pre-
sentment of what remains the same, reposes in
itself, is lofty and simple and free from the bizarre.
Hence the noblest forms of moral perfection are
rejected as inartistic by weaker artists, because the
sight of these fruits is too painful for their ambition.
The fruit gleams at them from the topmost branches
of art, but they lack the ladder, the courage, the
grip to venture so high. In himself a Phidias is
quite possible as a poet, but, if modern strength be
taken into consideration, almost solely in the sense
that to God nothing is impossible. The desire for
a poetical Claude Lorrain is already an immodesty
at present, however earnestly one man's heart may
yearn for such a consummation. —The presentment
of the highest man, the most simple and at the same
time the most complete, has hitherto been beyond
the scope of all artists. Perhaps, however, the
Greeks, in the ideal of Athene, saw farther than
any men did before or after their time.
178.
Art and Restoration. —The retrograde move-
ments in history, the so-called periods of restora-
tion, which try to revive intellectual and social


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MISCELLANEOUS MAXIMS AND OPINIONS. 95
conditions that existed before those immediately
preceding,—and seem really to succeed in giving
them a brief resurrection, — have the charm of
sentimental recollection, ardent longing for what is
almost lost, hasty embracing of a transitory happi-
ness. It is on account of this strange trend towards
seriousness that in such transient and almost dreamy
periods art and poetry find a natural soil, just as the
tenderest and rarest plants grow on mountain-slopes
of steep declivity. —Thus many a good artist is un-
wittingly impelled to a "restoration" way of thinking
in politics and society, for which, on his own account,
he prepares a quiet little corner and garden. Here
he collects about himself the human remains of the
historical epoch that appeals to him, and plays his lyre
to many who are dead, half-dead, and weary to death,
perhaps with the above-mentioned result of a brief
resurrection.
179-
Happiness of the Age. —In two respects our
age is to be accounted happy. With respect to the
past, we enjoy all cultures and their productions, and
nurture ourselves on the noblest blood of all periods.
We stand sufficiently near to the magic of the
forces from whose womb these periods are born to
be able in passing to submit to their spell with
pleasure and terror; whereas earlier cultures could
only enjoy themselves, and never looked beyond
themselves, but were rather overarched by a bell of
broader or narrower dome, through which indeed
light streamed down to them, but which their gaze
could not pierce. With respect to the future,


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g6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
there opens out to us for the first time a mighty,
comprehensive vista of human and economic pur-
poses engirdling the whole inhabited globe. At
the same time, we feel conscious of a power our-
selves to take this new task in hand without presump-
tion, without requiring supernatural aids. Yes,
whatever the result of our enterprise, however much
we may have overestimated our strength, at any
rate we need render account to no one but our-
selves, and mankind can henceforth begin to do
with itself what it will.