An excess of history seems to be an enemy to
the life of a time, and dangerous in five ways.
the life of a time, and dangerous in five ways.
Nietzsche - v05 - Untimely Meditations - b
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. " He has the substance, he says,
and only wants the form; but this is quite an
unreal opposition in a living thing. Our modern
culture is for that reason not a living one, because
it cannot be understood without that opposition.
In other words, it is not a real culture but a kind
of knowledge about culture, a complex of various
thoughts and feelings about it, from which no
\ decision as to its direction can come. Its real
/ motive force that issues in visible action is often
/ no more than a mere convention, a wretched
imitation, or even a shameless caricature. The
man probably feels like the snake that has
swallowed a rabbit whole and lies still in the sun,
avoiding all movement not absolutely necessary.
The "inner life" is now the only thing that
matters to education, and all who see it hope that
the education may not fail by being too indigest-
ible. Imagine a Greek meeting it; he would
observe that for modern men "education" and
"historical education" seem to mean the same
thing, with the difference that the one phrase is
longer. And if he spoke of his own theory, that
a man can be very well educated without any
history at all, people would shake their heads and
I; think they had not heard aright. The Greeks,
## p. 33 (#57) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 33
the famous people of. a past still near to us, had
the " unhistorical sense" strongly developed in the
period of their greatest power. If a typical child
of his age were transported to that world by some
enchantment, he would probably find the Greeks
very "uneducated. " And that discovery would
betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture
to the laughter of the world. For we moderns
have nothing of our own. We only become worth
notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with
foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and
sciences: we are wandering encyclopaedias, as an
ancient Greek who had strayed into our time
would probably call us. But the only value of
an encyclopaedia lies in the inside, in the contents, 1
not in what is written outside, in the binding or
the wrapper. Aad_so the whole of modern culture
is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints
something like this on the cover: "Manual of
internal culture for external barbarians. " The
opposition of inner and outer makes the outer
side still more barbarous, as it would naturally
be, when the outward growth of a rude people
merely developed its primitive inner needs. For
what means has nature of repressing too great
a luxuriance from without? Only one,—to be
affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside
and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And
so we have the custom of no longer taking real
things seriously, we get the feeble personality on
which the real and the permanent make so little
impression. Men become at last more careless
and accommodating in external matters, and the
VOL. II. C
## p. 34 (#58) ##############################################
34 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
considerable cleft between substance and form is
widened; until they have no longer any feeling for
barbarism, if only their memories be kept con-
tinually titillated, and there flow a constant stream
of new things to be known, that can be neatly
packed up in the cupboards of their memory.
The culture of a people as against this barbarism,
can be, I think, described with justice as the
"unity of artistic style in every outward expres-
sion of the people's life. " This must not be mis-
understood, as though it were merely a question
of the opposition between barbarism and "fine
style. " The people that can be called cultured,
must be in a real sense a living unity, and not be
miserably cleft asunder into form and substance.
If one wish to promote a people's culture, let him
try to promote this higher unity first, and work
for the destruction of the modern educative system
for the sake of a true education. Let him dare to
consider how the health of a people that has been
destroyed by history may be restored, and how it
may recover its instincts with its honour.
I am only speaking, directly, about the Germans
of the present day, who have had to suffer more
than other people from the feebleness of personality
and the opposition of substance and form. "Form"
generally implies for us some convention, disguise
or hypocrisy, and if not hated, is at any rate not
loved. We have an extraordinary fear of both the
word convention and the thing. This fear drove
the German from the French school; for he wished
to become more natural, and therefore more German.
But he seems to have come to a false conclusion
## p. 35 (#59) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 35
with his "therefore. " First he ran away from his
school of convention, and went by any road he
liked: he has come ultimately to imitate voluntarily
in a slovenly fashion, what he imitated painfully
and often successfully before. So now the lazy
fellow lives under French conventions that are
actually incorrect: his manner of walking shows it,
his conversation and dress, his general way of life.
In the belief that he was returning to Nature, he
merely followed caprice and comfort, with the
smallest possible amount of self-control. Go
through any German town; you will see conven-
tions that are nothing but the negative aspect of
the national characteristics of foreign states. Every-
thing is colourless, worn out, shoddy and ill-copied.
Every one acts at his own sweet will—which is not
a strong or serious will—on laws dictated by the
universal rush and the general desire for comfort.
A dress that made no head ache in its inventing
and wasted no time in the making, borrowed from
foreign models and imperfectly copied, is regarded
as an important contribution to German fashion.
The sense of form is ironically disclaimed by the
people—for they have the "sense of substance":
theyare famous for their cult of "inwardness:"
"But there is also a famous danger in their " in-
wardness": the internal substance cannot be
seen from the outside, and so may one day take
the opportunity of vanishing, and no one notice its
absence, any more than its presence before. One
may think the German people to be very far from
this danger: yet the foreigner will have some
warrant for his reproach that our inward life is too
## p. 36 (#60) ##############################################
36
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
-vr
weak and ill-organised to provide a form and
external expression for itself. It may in rare cases
show itself finely receptive, earnest and powerful,
richer perhaps than the inward life of other peoples:
but, taken as a whole, it remains weak, as all its
fine threads are not tied together in one strong
knot. The visible action is not the self-manifes-
tation of the inward life, but only a weak and crude
attempt of a single thread to make a show of
representing the whole. And thus the German is
not to be judged on any one action, for the indi-
vidual may be as completely obscure after it as
before. He must obviously be measured by his
thoughts and feelings, which are now expressed in
his books; if only the books did not, more than
ever, raise the doubt whether the famous inward
life is still really sitting in its inaccessible shrine.
It might one day vanish and leave behind it only
the external life,—with its vulgar pride and vain
servility,—to mark the German. Fearful thought!
—as fearful as if the inward life still sat there,
painted and rouged and disguised, become a play-
actress or something worse; as his theatrical
experience seems to have taught the quiet observer
Grillparzer, standing aside as he did from the
j main press. "We feel by theory," he says. "We
ihardly know any more how our contemporaries
give expression to their feelings: we make them use
gestures that are impossible nowadays. Shake-
soeare has spoilt us moderns. "
This is a single example, its general application
perhaps too hastily assumed. But how terrible it
would be were that generalisation justified before
## p. 37 (#61) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 37
our eyes! There would be then a note of despair in
the phrase, "We Germans feel by theory, we are
all spoilt by history;"—a phrase that would cut
at the roots of any hope for a future national
culture. For every hope of that kind grows from
the belief in the genuineness and immediacy of
German feeling, from the belief in an untarnished
inward life. Where is our hope or belief, when its
spring is muddied, and the inward quality has
learned gestures and dances and the use of cosmetics,
has learned to express itself "with due reflection in
abstract terms," and gradually to lose itself? And
how should a great productive spirit exist among
a nation that is not sure of its inward unity and is
divided into educated men whose inner life has
been drawn from the true path of education, and
uneducated men whose inner life cannot be ap-
proached at all? How should it exist, I say, when
the people has lost its own unity of feeling, and knows
that the feeling of the part calling itself the educated
part and claiming the right of controlling the
artistic spirit of the nation, is false and hypocritical?
Here and there the judgment and taste of indi-
viduals may be higher and finer than the rest, but
that is no compensation: it tortures a man to have
to speak only to one section and be no longer in
sympathy with his people. He would rather bury
his treasure now, in disgust at the vulgar patronage
of a class, though his heart be filled with tenderness
for all. The instinct of the people can no longer
meet him half-way; it is useless for them to stretch
their arms out to him in yearning. What remains
but to turn his quickened hatred against the ban,
## p. 38 (#62) ##############################################
38 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
strike at the barrier raised by the so-called culture,
and condemn as judge what blasted and degraded
him as a living man and a source of life? He takes
a profound insight into fate in exchange for the
godlike desire of creation and help, and ends his
days as a lonely philosopher, with the wisdom of
disillusion. It is the painfullest comedy: he who
sees it will feel a sacred obligation on him, and say
to himself,—" Help must come: the higher unity in
the nature and soul of a people must be brought
back, the cleft between inner and outer must again
disappear under the hammer of necessity. " But
to what means can he look? What remains to him
now but his knowledge? He hopes to plant the
feeling of a need, by speaking from the breadth of
that knowledge, giving it freely with both hands.
From the strong need the strong action may one
day arise. And to leave no doubt of the instance
I am taking of the need and the knowledge, my
testimony shall stand, that it is German unity in
its highest sense which is the goal of our endeavour,
far more than political union: it is the unity of the
German spirit and life after the annihilation of the
antagonism between form and substance, inward
life and convention.
V.
An excess of history seems to be an enemy to
the life of a time, and dangerous in five ways.
Firstly, the contrast of inner and outer is empha-
sised and personality weakened. Secondly, the
time comes to imagine that it possesses the rarest
## p. 39 (#63) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 39
of virtues, justice, to a higher degree than any
other time. Thirdly, the instincts of a nation are
thwarted, the maturity of the individual arrested
no less than that of the whole. Fourthly, we get
the belief in the old age of mankind, the belief, at
all times harmful, that we are late survivals, mere
Epigoni. Lastly, an age reaches a dangerous con-
dition of irony with regard to itself, and the still
more dangerous state of cynicism, when a cunning
egoistic theory of action is matured that maims and
at last destroys the vital strength.
To return to the first point: the modern man
suffers from a weakened personality. The Roman
of the Empire ceased to be a Roman through the
contemplation of the world that lay at his feet; he
lost himself in the crowd of foreigners that streamed
into Rome, and degenerated amid the cosmopolitan
carnival of arts, worships and moralities. It is the
same with the modern man, who is continually
having a world-panorama unrolled before his eyes
by his historical artists. He is turned into a
restless, dilettante spectator, and arrives at a con-
dition when even great wars and revolutions cannot
affect him beyond the moment. The war is hardly
at an end, and it is already converted into thousands
of copies of pointed matter, and will be soon served
up as the latest means of tickling the jaded palates
of the historical gourmets. It seems impossible for
a strong full chord to be prolonged, however
powerfully the strings are swept: it dies away
again the next moment in the soft and strength-
less echo of history. In ethical language, one never
succeeds in staying on a height; your deeds are
## p. 40 (#64) ##############################################
4-0 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sudden crashes, and not a long roll of thunder.
One may bring the greatest and most marvellous
thing to perfection; it must yet go down to Orcus
unhonoured and unsung. For art flies away when
you are roofing your deeds with the historical awn-
ing. The man who wishes to understand everything
in a moment, when he ought to grasp the unintel-
ligible as the sublime by a long struggle, can be
called intelligent only in the sense of Schiller's
epigram on the "reason of reasonable men. "
There is something the child sees that he does
not see; something the child hears that he does
not hear; and this something is the most important
thing of all. Because he does not understand it,
his understanding is more childish than the child's
and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of
/J*1* the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face,
and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling
the knots. He has lost or destroyed his instinct;
he can no longer trust the "divine animal" and
let the reins hang loose, when his understanding
fails him and his way lies through the desert.
His individuality is shaken, and left without any
sure belief in itself; it sinks into its own inner
being, which only means here the disordered chaos
of what it has learned, which will never express
itself externally, being mere dogma that cannot
turn to life. Looking further, we see how the
banishment of instinct by history has turned men
to shades and abstractions: no one ventures to
show a personality, but masks himself as a man
of culture, a savant, poet or politician.
If one take hold of these masks, believing he
## p. 41 (#65) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 41
has to do with a serious thing and not a mere
puppet-show—for they all have an appearance of
seriousness—he will find nothing but rags and
coloured streamers in his hands. He must
deceive himself no more, but cry aloud, "Off with
your jackets, or be what you seem! " A man of
the royal stock of seriousness must no longer be
a Don Quixote, for he has better things to do
than to tilt at such pretended realities. But he
must always keep a sharp look about him, call
his " Halt! who goes there? " to all the shrouded
figures, and tear the masks from their faces. And
see the result! One might have thought that
history encouraged men above all to be honest,
even if it were only to be honest fools: this used
to be its effect, but is so no longer. Historical
education and the uniform frock-coat of the citizen
are both dominant at the same time. While there
has never been such a full-throated chatter about
"free personality," personalities can be seen no
more (to say nothing of free ones); but merely
men in uniform, with their coats anxiously pulled
over their ears. Individuality has withdrawn itself
to its recesses; it is seen no more from the outside,
which makes one doubt if it be possible to have
causes without effects. Or will a race of eunuchs
prove to be necessary to guard the historical harem
of the world? We can understand the reason for
their aloofness very well. Does it not seem as
if their task were to watch over history to see
that nothing comes out except other histories,
but no deed that might be historical; to prevent
personalities becoming "free," that is, sincere
## p. 42 (#66) ##############################################
42 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present" liberal education " teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its "liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices: it lives by sighing "if
only . . . " and by knowing that " it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
^
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#67) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in "life. " Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
"Are these human beings," one might ask, " or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking? "
,—Goethe says of Shakespeare: "No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. "
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods," but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 43 (#68) ##############################################
42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present“liberal education” teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education,” how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing “if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#69) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“Are these human beings," one might ask, “or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. ”
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans ? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not “beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 43 (#70) ##############################################
42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present" liberal education "teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing “if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#71) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“Are these human beings,” one might ask,“ or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. ”
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans ? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 43 (#72) ##############################################
42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present“liberal education "teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing "if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#73) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“ Are these human beings,” one might ask, “or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. "
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 44 (#74) ##############################################
44 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sidered: "only strong personalities can endure
history, the weak are extinguished by it. " History
unsettles the feelings when they are not powerful
enough to measure the past by themselves. The
man who dare no longer trust himself, but asks
history against his will for advice "how he ought
to feel now," is insensibly turned by his timidity
into a play-actor, and plays a part, or generally
many parts,—very badly therefore and superficially.
Gradually all connection ceases between the man
and his historical subjects. We see noisy little
fellows measuring themselves with the Romans
as though they were like them: they burrow in
the remains of the Greek poets, as if these
were corpora for their dissection — and as villa
as their own well - educated corpora might be.
Suppose a man is working at Democritus. The
question is always on my tongue, why precisely
Democritus? Why not Heraclitus, or Philo, or
Bacon, or Descartes? And then, why a philo-
sopher? Why not a poet or orator? And why
especially a Greek? Why not an Englishman
or a Turk? Is not the past large enough to let
you find some place where you may disport your-
self without becoming ridiculous? But, as I said,
they are a race of eunuchs: and to the eunuch one
woman is the same as another, merely a woman,
"woman in herself," the Ever - unapproachable.
And it is indifferent what they study, if history
itself always remain beautifully "objective" to
them, as men, in fact, who could never make history
themselves. And since the Eternal Feminine
could never "draw you upward," you draw it down
-,
v
## p. 45 (#75) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 45
to you, and being neuter yourselves, regard history
as neuter also. But in order that no one may take
my comparison of history and the Eternal Feminine
too seriously, I will say at once that I hold it, on
the contrary, to be the Eternal Masculine: I only
add that for those who are " historically trained"
throughout, it must be quite indifferent which it is;
for they are themselves neither man nor woman,
nor even hermaphrodite, but mere neuters, or, in
more philosophic language, the Eternal Objective.
If the personality be once emptied of its sub-
jectivity, and come to what men call an " objective"
condition, nothing can have any more effect on
it Something good and true may be done, in
action, poetry or music: but the hollow culture of
the day will look beyond the work and ask the
history of the author. If the author have already
created something, our historian will set out clearly
the past and the probable future course of his
development, he will put him with others and
compare them, and separate by analysis the choice
of his material and his treatment; he will wisely
sum the author up and give him general advice for
his future path. The most astonishing works may
be created; the swarm of historical neuters will
always be in their place, ready to consider the
author through their long telescopes. The echo is
heard at once: but always in the form of "criti-
cism," though the critic never dreamed of the work's
possibility a moment before. It never comes to
have an influence, but only a criticism: and the
criticism itself has no influence, but only breeds
another criticism. And so we come to consider
## p. 46 (#76) ##############################################
46 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the fact of many critics as a mark of influence, that
of few or none as a mark of failure. Actually
everything remains in the old condition, even in
the presence of such " influence ": men talk a little
while of a new thing, and then of some other new
thing, 'and in the meantime they do what they
have always done. The historical training of our
^critics prevents their having an influence in the
true sense, an influence on life and action. They
/put their blotting paper on the blackest writing,
and their thick brushes over the gracefullest de-
signs; these they call "corrections ";—and that is
, all. Their critical pens never cease to fly, for they
have lost power over them; they are driven by
their pens instead of driving them. The weakness
of modern personality comes out well in the
measureless overflow of criticism, in the want of
self-mastery, and in what the Romans called
impotentia.
VI.
But leaving these weaklings, let us turn rather to
a point of strength for which the modern man is
famous. Let us ask the painful question whether
he has the right in virtue of his historical
"objectivity" to call himself strong and just in a
higher degree than the man of another age. Is
it true that this objectivity has its source in a
heightened sense of the need for justice? Or, being
really an effect of quite other causes, does it only
have the appearance of coming from justice, and
really lead to an unhealthy prejudice in favour
## p. 47 (#77) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 47
of the modern man? Socrates thought it near
madness to imagine one possessed a virtue with-
out really possessing it. Such imagination has
certainly more danger in it than the contrary
madness of a positive vice. For of this there is
still a cure; but the other makes a man or a time
daily worse, and therefore more unjust.
No one has a higher claim to our reverence than
the man with the feeling and the strength for
justice.
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. " He has the substance, he says,
and only wants the form; but this is quite an
unreal opposition in a living thing. Our modern
culture is for that reason not a living one, because
it cannot be understood without that opposition.
In other words, it is not a real culture but a kind
of knowledge about culture, a complex of various
thoughts and feelings about it, from which no
\ decision as to its direction can come. Its real
/ motive force that issues in visible action is often
/ no more than a mere convention, a wretched
imitation, or even a shameless caricature. The
man probably feels like the snake that has
swallowed a rabbit whole and lies still in the sun,
avoiding all movement not absolutely necessary.
The "inner life" is now the only thing that
matters to education, and all who see it hope that
the education may not fail by being too indigest-
ible. Imagine a Greek meeting it; he would
observe that for modern men "education" and
"historical education" seem to mean the same
thing, with the difference that the one phrase is
longer. And if he spoke of his own theory, that
a man can be very well educated without any
history at all, people would shake their heads and
I; think they had not heard aright. The Greeks,
## p. 33 (#57) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 33
the famous people of. a past still near to us, had
the " unhistorical sense" strongly developed in the
period of their greatest power. If a typical child
of his age were transported to that world by some
enchantment, he would probably find the Greeks
very "uneducated. " And that discovery would
betray the closely guarded secret of modern culture
to the laughter of the world. For we moderns
have nothing of our own. We only become worth
notice by filling ourselves to overflowing with
foreign customs, arts, philosophies, religions and
sciences: we are wandering encyclopaedias, as an
ancient Greek who had strayed into our time
would probably call us. But the only value of
an encyclopaedia lies in the inside, in the contents, 1
not in what is written outside, in the binding or
the wrapper. Aad_so the whole of modern culture
is essentially internal; the bookbinder prints
something like this on the cover: "Manual of
internal culture for external barbarians. " The
opposition of inner and outer makes the outer
side still more barbarous, as it would naturally
be, when the outward growth of a rude people
merely developed its primitive inner needs. For
what means has nature of repressing too great
a luxuriance from without? Only one,—to be
affected by it as little as possible, to set it aside
and stamp it out at the first opportunity. And
so we have the custom of no longer taking real
things seriously, we get the feeble personality on
which the real and the permanent make so little
impression. Men become at last more careless
and accommodating in external matters, and the
VOL. II. C
## p. 34 (#58) ##############################################
34 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
considerable cleft between substance and form is
widened; until they have no longer any feeling for
barbarism, if only their memories be kept con-
tinually titillated, and there flow a constant stream
of new things to be known, that can be neatly
packed up in the cupboards of their memory.
The culture of a people as against this barbarism,
can be, I think, described with justice as the
"unity of artistic style in every outward expres-
sion of the people's life. " This must not be mis-
understood, as though it were merely a question
of the opposition between barbarism and "fine
style. " The people that can be called cultured,
must be in a real sense a living unity, and not be
miserably cleft asunder into form and substance.
If one wish to promote a people's culture, let him
try to promote this higher unity first, and work
for the destruction of the modern educative system
for the sake of a true education. Let him dare to
consider how the health of a people that has been
destroyed by history may be restored, and how it
may recover its instincts with its honour.
I am only speaking, directly, about the Germans
of the present day, who have had to suffer more
than other people from the feebleness of personality
and the opposition of substance and form. "Form"
generally implies for us some convention, disguise
or hypocrisy, and if not hated, is at any rate not
loved. We have an extraordinary fear of both the
word convention and the thing. This fear drove
the German from the French school; for he wished
to become more natural, and therefore more German.
But he seems to have come to a false conclusion
## p. 35 (#59) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 35
with his "therefore. " First he ran away from his
school of convention, and went by any road he
liked: he has come ultimately to imitate voluntarily
in a slovenly fashion, what he imitated painfully
and often successfully before. So now the lazy
fellow lives under French conventions that are
actually incorrect: his manner of walking shows it,
his conversation and dress, his general way of life.
In the belief that he was returning to Nature, he
merely followed caprice and comfort, with the
smallest possible amount of self-control. Go
through any German town; you will see conven-
tions that are nothing but the negative aspect of
the national characteristics of foreign states. Every-
thing is colourless, worn out, shoddy and ill-copied.
Every one acts at his own sweet will—which is not
a strong or serious will—on laws dictated by the
universal rush and the general desire for comfort.
A dress that made no head ache in its inventing
and wasted no time in the making, borrowed from
foreign models and imperfectly copied, is regarded
as an important contribution to German fashion.
The sense of form is ironically disclaimed by the
people—for they have the "sense of substance":
theyare famous for their cult of "inwardness:"
"But there is also a famous danger in their " in-
wardness": the internal substance cannot be
seen from the outside, and so may one day take
the opportunity of vanishing, and no one notice its
absence, any more than its presence before. One
may think the German people to be very far from
this danger: yet the foreigner will have some
warrant for his reproach that our inward life is too
## p. 36 (#60) ##############################################
36
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
-vr
weak and ill-organised to provide a form and
external expression for itself. It may in rare cases
show itself finely receptive, earnest and powerful,
richer perhaps than the inward life of other peoples:
but, taken as a whole, it remains weak, as all its
fine threads are not tied together in one strong
knot. The visible action is not the self-manifes-
tation of the inward life, but only a weak and crude
attempt of a single thread to make a show of
representing the whole. And thus the German is
not to be judged on any one action, for the indi-
vidual may be as completely obscure after it as
before. He must obviously be measured by his
thoughts and feelings, which are now expressed in
his books; if only the books did not, more than
ever, raise the doubt whether the famous inward
life is still really sitting in its inaccessible shrine.
It might one day vanish and leave behind it only
the external life,—with its vulgar pride and vain
servility,—to mark the German. Fearful thought!
—as fearful as if the inward life still sat there,
painted and rouged and disguised, become a play-
actress or something worse; as his theatrical
experience seems to have taught the quiet observer
Grillparzer, standing aside as he did from the
j main press. "We feel by theory," he says. "We
ihardly know any more how our contemporaries
give expression to their feelings: we make them use
gestures that are impossible nowadays. Shake-
soeare has spoilt us moderns. "
This is a single example, its general application
perhaps too hastily assumed. But how terrible it
would be were that generalisation justified before
## p. 37 (#61) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 37
our eyes! There would be then a note of despair in
the phrase, "We Germans feel by theory, we are
all spoilt by history;"—a phrase that would cut
at the roots of any hope for a future national
culture. For every hope of that kind grows from
the belief in the genuineness and immediacy of
German feeling, from the belief in an untarnished
inward life. Where is our hope or belief, when its
spring is muddied, and the inward quality has
learned gestures and dances and the use of cosmetics,
has learned to express itself "with due reflection in
abstract terms," and gradually to lose itself? And
how should a great productive spirit exist among
a nation that is not sure of its inward unity and is
divided into educated men whose inner life has
been drawn from the true path of education, and
uneducated men whose inner life cannot be ap-
proached at all? How should it exist, I say, when
the people has lost its own unity of feeling, and knows
that the feeling of the part calling itself the educated
part and claiming the right of controlling the
artistic spirit of the nation, is false and hypocritical?
Here and there the judgment and taste of indi-
viduals may be higher and finer than the rest, but
that is no compensation: it tortures a man to have
to speak only to one section and be no longer in
sympathy with his people. He would rather bury
his treasure now, in disgust at the vulgar patronage
of a class, though his heart be filled with tenderness
for all. The instinct of the people can no longer
meet him half-way; it is useless for them to stretch
their arms out to him in yearning. What remains
but to turn his quickened hatred against the ban,
## p. 38 (#62) ##############################################
38 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
strike at the barrier raised by the so-called culture,
and condemn as judge what blasted and degraded
him as a living man and a source of life? He takes
a profound insight into fate in exchange for the
godlike desire of creation and help, and ends his
days as a lonely philosopher, with the wisdom of
disillusion. It is the painfullest comedy: he who
sees it will feel a sacred obligation on him, and say
to himself,—" Help must come: the higher unity in
the nature and soul of a people must be brought
back, the cleft between inner and outer must again
disappear under the hammer of necessity. " But
to what means can he look? What remains to him
now but his knowledge? He hopes to plant the
feeling of a need, by speaking from the breadth of
that knowledge, giving it freely with both hands.
From the strong need the strong action may one
day arise. And to leave no doubt of the instance
I am taking of the need and the knowledge, my
testimony shall stand, that it is German unity in
its highest sense which is the goal of our endeavour,
far more than political union: it is the unity of the
German spirit and life after the annihilation of the
antagonism between form and substance, inward
life and convention.
V.
An excess of history seems to be an enemy to
the life of a time, and dangerous in five ways.
Firstly, the contrast of inner and outer is empha-
sised and personality weakened. Secondly, the
time comes to imagine that it possesses the rarest
## p. 39 (#63) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 39
of virtues, justice, to a higher degree than any
other time. Thirdly, the instincts of a nation are
thwarted, the maturity of the individual arrested
no less than that of the whole. Fourthly, we get
the belief in the old age of mankind, the belief, at
all times harmful, that we are late survivals, mere
Epigoni. Lastly, an age reaches a dangerous con-
dition of irony with regard to itself, and the still
more dangerous state of cynicism, when a cunning
egoistic theory of action is matured that maims and
at last destroys the vital strength.
To return to the first point: the modern man
suffers from a weakened personality. The Roman
of the Empire ceased to be a Roman through the
contemplation of the world that lay at his feet; he
lost himself in the crowd of foreigners that streamed
into Rome, and degenerated amid the cosmopolitan
carnival of arts, worships and moralities. It is the
same with the modern man, who is continually
having a world-panorama unrolled before his eyes
by his historical artists. He is turned into a
restless, dilettante spectator, and arrives at a con-
dition when even great wars and revolutions cannot
affect him beyond the moment. The war is hardly
at an end, and it is already converted into thousands
of copies of pointed matter, and will be soon served
up as the latest means of tickling the jaded palates
of the historical gourmets. It seems impossible for
a strong full chord to be prolonged, however
powerfully the strings are swept: it dies away
again the next moment in the soft and strength-
less echo of history. In ethical language, one never
succeeds in staying on a height; your deeds are
## p. 40 (#64) ##############################################
4-0 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sudden crashes, and not a long roll of thunder.
One may bring the greatest and most marvellous
thing to perfection; it must yet go down to Orcus
unhonoured and unsung. For art flies away when
you are roofing your deeds with the historical awn-
ing. The man who wishes to understand everything
in a moment, when he ought to grasp the unintel-
ligible as the sublime by a long struggle, can be
called intelligent only in the sense of Schiller's
epigram on the "reason of reasonable men. "
There is something the child sees that he does
not see; something the child hears that he does
not hear; and this something is the most important
thing of all. Because he does not understand it,
his understanding is more childish than the child's
and more simple than simplicity itself; in spite of
/J*1* the many clever wrinkles on his parchment face,
and the masterly play of his fingers in unravelling
the knots. He has lost or destroyed his instinct;
he can no longer trust the "divine animal" and
let the reins hang loose, when his understanding
fails him and his way lies through the desert.
His individuality is shaken, and left without any
sure belief in itself; it sinks into its own inner
being, which only means here the disordered chaos
of what it has learned, which will never express
itself externally, being mere dogma that cannot
turn to life. Looking further, we see how the
banishment of instinct by history has turned men
to shades and abstractions: no one ventures to
show a personality, but masks himself as a man
of culture, a savant, poet or politician.
If one take hold of these masks, believing he
## p. 41 (#65) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 41
has to do with a serious thing and not a mere
puppet-show—for they all have an appearance of
seriousness—he will find nothing but rags and
coloured streamers in his hands. He must
deceive himself no more, but cry aloud, "Off with
your jackets, or be what you seem! " A man of
the royal stock of seriousness must no longer be
a Don Quixote, for he has better things to do
than to tilt at such pretended realities. But he
must always keep a sharp look about him, call
his " Halt! who goes there? " to all the shrouded
figures, and tear the masks from their faces. And
see the result! One might have thought that
history encouraged men above all to be honest,
even if it were only to be honest fools: this used
to be its effect, but is so no longer. Historical
education and the uniform frock-coat of the citizen
are both dominant at the same time. While there
has never been such a full-throated chatter about
"free personality," personalities can be seen no
more (to say nothing of free ones); but merely
men in uniform, with their coats anxiously pulled
over their ears. Individuality has withdrawn itself
to its recesses; it is seen no more from the outside,
which makes one doubt if it be possible to have
causes without effects. Or will a race of eunuchs
prove to be necessary to guard the historical harem
of the world? We can understand the reason for
their aloofness very well. Does it not seem as
if their task were to watch over history to see
that nothing comes out except other histories,
but no deed that might be historical; to prevent
personalities becoming "free," that is, sincere
## p. 42 (#66) ##############################################
42 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present" liberal education " teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its "liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices: it lives by sighing "if
only . . . " and by knowing that " it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
^
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#67) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in "life. " Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
"Are these human beings," one might ask, " or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking? "
,—Goethe says of Shakespeare: "No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. "
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods," but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 43 (#68) ##############################################
42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present“liberal education” teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education,” how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing “if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#69) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“Are these human beings," one might ask, “or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. ”
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans ? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not “beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 43 (#70) ##############################################
42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present" liberal education "teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing “if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#71) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“Are these human beings,” one might ask,“ or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. ”
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans ? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 43 (#72) ##############################################
42
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
towards themselves and others, both in word and
deed? Only through this sincerity will the inner
need and misery of the modern man be brought
to the light, and art and religion come as true
helpers in the place of that sad hypocrisy of con-
vention and masquerade, to plant a common
culture which will answer to real necessities, and
not teach, as the present“liberal education "teaches,
to tell lies about these needs, and thus become a
walking lie one's self.
In such an age, that suffers from its “liberal
education," how unnatural, artificial and unworthy
will be the conditions under which the sincerest of
all sciences, the holy naked goddess Philosophy,
must exist! She remains, in such a world of
compulsion and outward conformity, the subject
of the deep monologue of the lonely wanderer or
the chance prey of any hunter, the dark secret of
the chamber or the daily talk of the old men and
children at the university. No one dare fulfil the
law of philosophy in himself; no one lives philo-
sophically, with that single-hearted virile faith that
forced one of the olden time to bear himself as a
Stoic, wherever he was and whatever he did, if
he had once sworn allegiance to the Stoa. All
modern philosophising is political or official, bound
down to be a mere phantasmagoria of learning by
our modern governments, churches, universities,
moralities and cowardices : it lives by sighing "if
only . . . " and by knowing that “it happened once
upon a time. . . . " Philosophy has no place in
historical education, if it will be more than the
knowledge that lives indoors, and can have no
## p. 43 (#73) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY.
43
expression in action. Were the modern man once
courageous and determined, and not merely such
an indoor being even in his hatreds, he would
banish philosophy. At present he is satisfied
with modestly covering her nakedness. Yes, men
think, write, print, speak and teach philosophic-
ally: so much is permitted them. It is only
otherwise in action, in “life. ” Only one thing is
permitted there, and everything else quite impos-
sible: such are the orders of historical education.
“ Are these human beings,” one might ask, “or only
machines for thinking, writing and speaking ? ”
Goethe says of Shakespeare: “No one has more
despised correctness of costume than he: he knows
too well the inner costume that all men wear alike.
You hear that he describes Romans wonderfully;
I do not think so: they are flesh - and - blood
Englishmen; but at any rate they are men from
top to toe, and the Roman toga sits well on them. "
Would it be possible, I wonder, to represent our
present literary and national heroes, officials and
politicians as Romans? I am sure it would not,
as they are no men, but incarnate compendia,
abstractions made concrete. If they have a char-
acter of their own, it is so deeply sunk that it can
never rise to the light of day: if they are men,
they are only men to a physiologist. To all others
they are something else, not men, not "beasts or
gods,” but historical pictures of the march of
civilisation, and nothing but pictures and civilisa-
tion, form without any ascertainable substance, bad
form unfortunately, and uniform at that. And in
this way my thesis is to be understood and con-
## p. 44 (#74) ##############################################
44 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sidered: "only strong personalities can endure
history, the weak are extinguished by it. " History
unsettles the feelings when they are not powerful
enough to measure the past by themselves. The
man who dare no longer trust himself, but asks
history against his will for advice "how he ought
to feel now," is insensibly turned by his timidity
into a play-actor, and plays a part, or generally
many parts,—very badly therefore and superficially.
Gradually all connection ceases between the man
and his historical subjects. We see noisy little
fellows measuring themselves with the Romans
as though they were like them: they burrow in
the remains of the Greek poets, as if these
were corpora for their dissection — and as villa
as their own well - educated corpora might be.
Suppose a man is working at Democritus. The
question is always on my tongue, why precisely
Democritus? Why not Heraclitus, or Philo, or
Bacon, or Descartes? And then, why a philo-
sopher? Why not a poet or orator? And why
especially a Greek? Why not an Englishman
or a Turk? Is not the past large enough to let
you find some place where you may disport your-
self without becoming ridiculous? But, as I said,
they are a race of eunuchs: and to the eunuch one
woman is the same as another, merely a woman,
"woman in herself," the Ever - unapproachable.
And it is indifferent what they study, if history
itself always remain beautifully "objective" to
them, as men, in fact, who could never make history
themselves. And since the Eternal Feminine
could never "draw you upward," you draw it down
-,
v
## p. 45 (#75) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 45
to you, and being neuter yourselves, regard history
as neuter also. But in order that no one may take
my comparison of history and the Eternal Feminine
too seriously, I will say at once that I hold it, on
the contrary, to be the Eternal Masculine: I only
add that for those who are " historically trained"
throughout, it must be quite indifferent which it is;
for they are themselves neither man nor woman,
nor even hermaphrodite, but mere neuters, or, in
more philosophic language, the Eternal Objective.
If the personality be once emptied of its sub-
jectivity, and come to what men call an " objective"
condition, nothing can have any more effect on
it Something good and true may be done, in
action, poetry or music: but the hollow culture of
the day will look beyond the work and ask the
history of the author. If the author have already
created something, our historian will set out clearly
the past and the probable future course of his
development, he will put him with others and
compare them, and separate by analysis the choice
of his material and his treatment; he will wisely
sum the author up and give him general advice for
his future path. The most astonishing works may
be created; the swarm of historical neuters will
always be in their place, ready to consider the
author through their long telescopes. The echo is
heard at once: but always in the form of "criti-
cism," though the critic never dreamed of the work's
possibility a moment before. It never comes to
have an influence, but only a criticism: and the
criticism itself has no influence, but only breeds
another criticism. And so we come to consider
## p. 46 (#76) ##############################################
46 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the fact of many critics as a mark of influence, that
of few or none as a mark of failure. Actually
everything remains in the old condition, even in
the presence of such " influence ": men talk a little
while of a new thing, and then of some other new
thing, 'and in the meantime they do what they
have always done. The historical training of our
^critics prevents their having an influence in the
true sense, an influence on life and action. They
/put their blotting paper on the blackest writing,
and their thick brushes over the gracefullest de-
signs; these they call "corrections ";—and that is
, all. Their critical pens never cease to fly, for they
have lost power over them; they are driven by
their pens instead of driving them. The weakness
of modern personality comes out well in the
measureless overflow of criticism, in the want of
self-mastery, and in what the Romans called
impotentia.
VI.
But leaving these weaklings, let us turn rather to
a point of strength for which the modern man is
famous. Let us ask the painful question whether
he has the right in virtue of his historical
"objectivity" to call himself strong and just in a
higher degree than the man of another age. Is
it true that this objectivity has its source in a
heightened sense of the need for justice? Or, being
really an effect of quite other causes, does it only
have the appearance of coming from justice, and
really lead to an unhealthy prejudice in favour
## p. 47 (#77) ##############################################
THE USE AND ABUSE OF HISTORY. 47
of the modern man? Socrates thought it near
madness to imagine one possessed a virtue with-
out really possessing it. Such imagination has
certainly more danger in it than the contrary
madness of a positive vice. For of this there is
still a cure; but the other makes a man or a time
daily worse, and therefore more unjust.
No one has a higher claim to our reverence than
the man with the feeling and the strength for
justice.
