When the traveller, who had seen many countries and nations and
continents, was asked what common attribute he had found everywhere
existing among men, he answered, "They have a tendency to sloth."
Many may think that the fuller truth would have been, "They are all
timid." They hide themselves behind "manners" and "opinions." At
bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only
once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a
marvellously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever
be put together a second time. He knows this, but hides it like an
evil conscience;--and why? From fear of his neighbour, who looks for
the latest conventionalities in him, and is wrapped up in them
himself. But what is it that forces the man to fear his neighbour, to
think and act with his herd, and not seek his own joy? Shyness
perhaps, in a few rare cases, but in the majority it is idleness, the
"taking things easily," in a word the "tendency to sloth," of which
the traveller spoke. He was right; men are more slothful than timid,
and their greatest fear is of the burdens that an uncompromising
honesty and nakedness of speech and action would lay on them. It is
only the artists who hate this lazy wandering in borrowed manners and
ill-fitting opinions, and discover the secret of the evil conscience,
the truth that each human being is a unique marvel. They show us, how
in every little movement of his muscles the man is an individual
self, and further--as an analytical deduction from his individuality--
a beautiful and interesting object, a new and incredible phenomenon
(as is every work of nature), that can never become tedious. If the
great thinker despise mankind, it is for their laziness; they seem
mere indifferent bits of pottery, not worth any commerce or
improvement. The man who will not belong to the general mass, has
only to stop "taking himself easily"; to follow his conscience, which
cries out to him, "Be thyself! all that thou doest and thinkest and
desirest, is not--thyself!"
Every youthful soul hears this cry day and night, and quivers to hear
it: for she divines the sum of happiness that has been from eternity
destined for her, if she think of her true deliverance; and towards
this happiness she can in no wise be helped, so long as she lies in
the chains of Opinion and of Fear. And how comfortless and unmeaning
may life become without this deliverance! There is no more desolate
or Ishmaelitish creature in nature than the man who has broken away
from his true genius, and does nothing but peer aimlessly about him.
There is no reason to attack such a man at all, for he is a mere husk
without a kernel, a painted cloth, tattered and sagging, a scarecrow
ghost, that can rouse no fear, and certainly no pity. And though one
be right in saying of a sluggard that he is "killing time," yet in
respect of an age that rests its salvation on public opinion,--that
is, on private laziness,--one must be quite determined that such a
time shall be "killed," once and for all: I mean that it shall be
blotted from life's true History of Liberty. Later generations will
be greatly disgusted, when they come to treat the movements of a
period in which no living men ruled, but shadow-men on the screen of
public opinion; and to some far posterity our age may well be the
darkest chapter of history, the most unknown because the least human.
I have walked through the new streets of our cities, and thought how
of all the dreadful houses that these gentlemen with their public
opinion have built for themselves, not a stone will remain in a
hundred years, and that the opinions of these busy masons may well
have fallen with them. But how full of hope should they all be who
feel that they are no citizens of this age! If they were, they would
have to help on the work of "killing their time," and of perishing
with it,--when they wish rather to quicken the time to life, and in
that life themselves to _live_.
But even if the future leave us nothing to hope for, the wonderful
fact of our existing at this present moment of time gives us the
greatest encouragement to live after our own rule and measure; so
inexplicable is it, that we should be living just to-day, though
there have been an infinity of time wherein we might have arisen;
that we own nothing but a span's length of it, this "to-day," and
must show in it wherefore and whereunto we have arisen. We have to
answer for our existence to ourselves; and will therefore be our own
true pilots, and not admit that our being resembles a blind fortuity.
One must take a rather impudent and reckless way with the riddle;
especially as the key is apt to be lost, however things turn out. Why
cling to your bit of earth, or your little business, or listen to
what your neighbour says? It is so provincial to bind oneself to
views which are no longer binding a couple of hundred miles away.
East and West are signs that somebody chalks up in front of us to
fool such cowards as we are. "I will make the attempt to gain
freedom," says the youthful soul; and will be hindered, just because
two nations happen to hate each other and go to war, or because there
is a sea between two parts of the earth, or a religion is taught in
the vicinity, which did not exist two thousand years ago. "And this
is not--thyself," the soul says. "No one can build thee the bridge,
over which thou must cross the river of life, save thyself alone.
There are paths and bridges and demi-gods without number, that will
gladly carry thee over, but only at the price of thine own self: thy
self wouldst thou have to give in pawn, and then lose it. There is in
the world one road whereon none may go, except thou: ask not whither
it lead, but go forward. Who was it that spake that true word--'A man
has never risen higher than when he knoweth not whither his road may
yet lead him'?"
But how can we "find ourselves" again, and how can man "know
himself"? He is a thing obscure and veiled: if the hare have seven
skins, man can cast from him seventy times seven, and yet will not be
able to say "Here art thou in very truth; this is outer shell no
more." Also this digging into one's self, this straight, violent
descent into the pit of one's being, is a troublesome and dangerous
business to start. A man may easily take such hurt, that no physician
can heal him. And again, what were the use, since everything bears
witness to our essence,--our friendships and enmities, our looks and
greetings, our memories and forgetfulnesses, our books and our
writing! This is the most effective way:--to let the youthful soul
look back on life with the question, "What hast thou up to now truly
loved, what has drawn thy soul upward, mastered it and blessed it
too?" Set up these things that thou hast honoured before thee, and,
maybe, they will show thee, in their being and their order, a law
which is the fundamental law of thine own self. Compare these
objects, consider how one completes and broadens and transcends and
explains another, how they form a ladder on which thou hast all the
time been climbing to thy self: for thy true being lies not deeply
hidden in thee, but an infinite height above thee, or at least above
that which thou dost commonly take to be thyself. The true educators
and moulders reveal to thee the real groundwork and import of thy
being, something that in itself cannot be moulded or educated, but is
anyhow difficult of approach, bound and crippled: thy educators can
be nothing but thy deliverers. And that is the secret of all culture:
it does not give artificial limbs, wax noses, or spectacles for the
eyes--a thing that could buy such gifts is but the base coin of
education. But it is rather a liberation, a removal of all the
weeds and rubbish and vermin that attack the delicate shoots, the
streaming forth of light and warmth, the tender dropping of the night
rain; it is the following and the adoring of Nature when she is
pitifully-minded as a mother;--her completion, when it bends before
her fierce and ruthless blasts and turns them to good, and draws
a veil over all expression of her tragic unreason--for she is a
step-mother too, sometimes.
There are other means of "finding ourselves," of coming to ourselves
out of the confusion wherein we all wander as in a dreary cloud; but
I know none better than to think on our educators. So I will to-day
take as my theme the hard teacher Arthur Schopenhauer, and speak of
others later.