The last hint may well remain obscure for a time: I have something
more easy to explain, namely how Schopenhauer can help us to educate
ourselves _in opposition_ to our age, since we have the advantage of
really knowing our age, through him;--if it be an advantage! It may
be no longer possible in a couple of hundred years. I sometimes amuse
myself with the idea that men may soon grow tired of books and their
authors, and the savant of to-morrow come to leave directions in his
will that his body be burned in the midst of his books, including of
course his own writings. And in the gradual clearing of the forests,
might not our libraries be very reasonably used for straw and
brushwood? Most books are born from the smoke and vapour of the
brain: and to vapour and smoke may they well return. For having no
fire within themselves, they shall be visited with fire. And possibly
to a later century our own may count as the "Dark age," because our
productions heated the furnace hotter and more continuously than ever
before. We are anyhow happy that we can learn to know our time; and
if there be any sense in busying ourselves with our time at all, we
may as well do it as thoroughly as we can, so that no one may have
any doubt about it. The possibility of this we owe to Schopenhauer.
Our happiness would of course be infinitely greater, if our inquiry
showed that nothing so hopeful and splendid as our present epoch had
ever existed. There are simple people in some corner of the earth
to-day--perhaps in Germany--who are disposed to believe in all
seriousness that the world was put right two years ago,[1] and that
all stern and gloomy views of life are now contradicted by "facts."
The foundation of the New German Empire is, to them, the decisive
blow that annihilates all the "pessimistic" philosophisers,--no doubt
of it. To judge the philosopher's significance in our time, as an
educator, we must oppose a widespread view like this, especially
common in our universities. We must say, it is a shameful thing that
such abominable flattery of the Time-Fetish should be uttered by a
herd of so-called reflective and honourable men; it is a proof that
we no longer see how far the seriousness of philosophy is removed
from that of a newspaper. Such men have lost the last remnant of
feeling, not only for philosophy, but also for religion, and have put
in its place a spirit not so much of optimism as of journalism, the
evil spirit that broods over the day--and the daily paper. Every
philosophy that believes the problem of existence to be shelved, or
even solved, by a political event, is a sham philosophy. There have
been innumerable states founded since the beginning of the world;
that is an old story. How should a political innovation manage once
and for all to make a contented race of the dwellers on this earth?
If any one believe in his heart that this is possible, he should
report himself to our authorities: he really deserves to be Professor
of Philosophy in a German university, like Harms in Berlin, Jurgen
Meyer in Bonn, and Carrière in Munich.
[1] This was written in 1873.--TR.
We are feeling the consequences of the doctrine, preached lately from
all the housetops, that the state is the highest end of man and there
is no higher duty than to serve it: I regard this not a relapse into
paganism, but into stupidity. A man who thinks state-service to be
his highest duty, very possibly knows no higher one; yet there are
both men and duties in a region beyond,--and one of these duties,
that seems to me at least of higher value than state-service, is to
destroy stupidity in all its forms--and this particular stupidity
among them. And I have to do with a class of men whose teleological
conceptions extend further than the well-being of a state, I mean
with philosophers--and only with them in their relation to the world
of culture, which is again almost independent of the "good of the
state." Of the many links that make up the twisted chain of humanity,
some are of gold and others of pewter.
How does the philosopher of our time regard culture? Quite
differently, I assure you, from the professors who are so content
with their new state. He seems to see the symptoms of an absolute
uprooting of culture in the increasing rush and hurry of life, and
the decay of all reflection and simplicity. The waters of religion
are ebbing, and leaving swamps or stagnant pools: the nations are
drawing away in enmity again, and long to tear each other in pieces.
The sciences, blindly driving along, on a _laisser faire_ system,
without a common standard, are splitting up, and losing hold of every
firm principle. The educated classes are being swept along in the
contemptible struggle for wealth. Never was the world more worldly,
never poorer in goodness and love. Men of learning are no longer
beacons or sanctuaries in the midst of this turmoil of worldliness;
they themselves are daily becoming more restless, thoughtless,
loveless. Everything bows before the coming barbarism, art and
science included. The educated men have degenerated into the greatest
foes of education, for they will deny the universal sickness and
hinder the physician. They become peevish, these poor nerveless
creatures, if one speak of their weakness and combat the shameful
spirit of lies in them. They would gladly make one believe that they
have outstripped all the centuries, and they walk with a pretence of
happiness which has something pathetic about it, because their
happiness is so inconceivable. One would not even ask them, as
Tannhäuser did Biterolf, "What hast thou, poor wretch, enjoyed!" For,
alas! we know far better ourselves, in another way. There is a wintry
sky over us, and we dwell on a high mountain, in danger and in need.
Short-lived is all our joy, and the sun's rays strike palely on our
white mountains. Music is heard; an old man grinds an organ, and the
dancers whirl round, and the heart of the wanderer is shaken within
him to see it: everything is so disordered, so drab, so hopeless.
Even now there is a sound of joy, of clear thoughtless joy! but soon
the mist of evening closes round, the note dies away, and the
wanderer's footsteps are heard on the gravel; as far as his eye can
reach there is nothing but the grim and desolate face of nature.
It may be one-sided, to insist only on the blurred lines and the dull
colours in the picture of modern life: yet the other side is no more
encouraging, it is only more disturbing. There is certainly strength
there, enormous strength; but it is wild, primitive and merciless.
One looks on with a chill expectancy, as though into the caldron of a
witch's kitchen; every moment there may arise sparks and vapour, to
herald some fearful apparition. For a century we have been ready for
a world-shaking convulsion; and though we have lately been trying to
set the conservative strength of the so-called national state against
the great modern tendency to volcanic destructiveness, it will only
be, for a long time yet, an aggravation of the universal unrest that
hangs over us. We need not be deceived by individuals behaving as if
they knew nothing of all this anxiety: their own restlessness shows
how well they know it. They think more exclusively of themselves than
men ever thought before; they plant and build for their little day,
and the chase for happiness is never greater than when the quarry
must be caught to-day or to-morrow: the next day perhaps there is no
more hunting. We live in the Atomic Age, or rather in the Atomic
Chaos. The opposing forces were practically held together in mediæval
times by the Church, and in some measure assimilated by the strong
pressure which she exerted. When the common tie broke and the
pressure relaxed, they rose once more against each other. The
Reformation taught that many things were "adiaphora"--departments
that needed no guidance from religion: this was the price paid for
its own existence. Christianity paid a similar one to guard itself
against the far more religious antiquity: and laid the seeds of
discord at once. Everything nowadays is directed by the fools and the
knaves, the selfishness of the money-makers and the brute forces of
militarism. The state in their hands makes a good show of
reorganising everything, and of becoming the bond that unites the
warring elements; in other words, it wishes for the same idolatry
from mankind as they showed to the Church.
And we shall yet feel the consequences. We are even now on the
ice-floes in the stream of the Middle Ages: they are thawing fast,
and their movement is ominous: the banks are flooded, and giving way.
The revolution, the atomistic revolution, is inevitable: but what
_are_ those smallest indivisible elements of human society?
There is surely far more danger to mankind in transitional periods
like these than in the actual time of revolution and chaos; they are
tortured by waiting, and snatch greedily at every moment; and this
breeds all kinds of cowardice and selfishness in them: whereas the
true feeling of a great and universal need ever inspires men, and
makes them better. In the midst of such dangers, who will provide the
guardians and champions for _Humanity_, for the holy and inviolate
treasure that has been laid up in the temples, little by little, by
countless generations? Who will set up again the _Image of Man_, when
men in their selfishness and terror see nothing but the trail of the
serpent or the cur in them, and have fallen from their high estate to
that of the brute or the automaton?
There are three Images of Man fashioned by our modern time, which for
a long while yet will urge mortal men to transfigure their own lives;
they are the men of Rousseau, Goethe, and Schopenhauer. The first has
the greatest fire, and is most calculated to impress the people: the
second is only for the few, for those contemplative natures "in the
grand style" who are misunderstood by the crowd. The third demands
the highest activity in those who will follow it: only such men will
look on that image without harm, for it breaks the spirit of that
merely contemplative man, and the rabble shudder at it. From the
first has come forth a strength that led and still leads to fearful
revolution: for in all socialistic upheavals it is ever Rousseau's
man who is the Typhoeus under the Etna. Oppressed and half crushed to
death by the pride of caste and the pitilessness of wealth, spoilt by
priests and bad education, a laughing-stock even to himself, man
cries in his need on "holy mother Nature," and feels suddenly that
she is as far from him as any god of the Epicureans. His prayers do
not reach her; so deeply sunk is he in the Chaos of the unnatural. He
contemptuously throws aside all the finery that seemed his truest
humanity a little while ago--all his arts and sciences, all the
refinements of his life,--he beats with his fists against the walls,
in whose shadow he has degenerated, and goes forth to seek the light
and the sun, the forest and the crag. And crying out, "Nature alone
is good, the natural man alone is human," he despises himself and
aspires beyond himself: a state wherein the soul is ready for a
fearful resolve, but calls the noble and the rare as well from their
utter depths.
Goethe's man is no such threatening force; in a certain sense he is a
corrective and a sedative to those dangerous agitations of which
Rousseau's man is a prey. Goethe himself in his youth followed the
"gospel of kindly Nature" with all the ardour of his soul: his Faust
was the highest and boldest picture of Rousseau's man, so far at any
rate as his hunger for life, his discontent and yearning, his
intercourse with the demons of the heart could be represented. But
what comes from these congregated storm-clouds? Not a single
lightning flash! And here begins the new Image of man--the man
according to Goethe. One might have thought that Faust would have
lived a continual life of suffering, as a revolutionary and a
deliverer, as the negative force that proceeds from goodness, as the
genius of ruin, alike religious and dæmonic, in opposition to his
utterly undæmonic companion; though of course he could not be free of
this companion, and had at once to use and despise his evil and
destructive scepticism--which is the tragic destiny of all
revolutionary deliverers. One is wrong, however, to expect anything
of the sort: Goethe's man here parts company with Rousseau's; for he
hates all violence, all sudden transition--that is, all action: and
the universal deliverer becomes merely the universal traveller. All
the riches of life and nature, all antiquity--arts, mythologies and
sciences--pass before his eager eyes, his deepest desires are aroused
and satisfied, Helen herself can hold him no more--and the moment
must come for which his mocking companion is waiting. At a fair spot
on the earth, his flight comes to an end: his pinions drop, and
Mephistopheles is at his side. When the German ceases to be Faust,
there is no danger greater than of becoming a Philistine and falling
into the hands of the devil--heavenly powers alone can save him.
Goethe's man is, as I said, the contemplative man in the grand style,
who is only kept from dying of ennui by feeding on all the great and
memorable things that have ever existed, and by living from desire to
desire. He is not the active man; and when he does take a place among
active men, as things are, you may be sure that no good will come of
it (think, for example, of the zeal with which Goethe wrote for the
stage!); and further, you may be sure that "things as they are" will
suffer no change. Goethe's man is a conciliatory and conservative
spirit, though in danger of degenerating into a Philistine, just as
Rousseau's man may easily become a Catiline. All his virtues would be
the better by the addition of a little brute force and elemental
passion. Goethe appears to have seen where the weakness and danger of
his creation lay, as is clear from Jarno's word to Wilhelm Meister:
"You are bitter and ill-tempered--which is quite an excellent thing:
if you could once become really angry, it would be still better."
To speak plainly, it is necessary to become really angry in order
that things may be better. The picture of Schopenhauer's man can help
us here. _Schopenhauer's man voluntarily takes upon himself the pain
of telling the truth:_ this pain serves to quench his individual will
and make him ready for the complete transformation of his being,
which it is the inner meaning of life to realise. This openness in
him appears to other men to be an effect of malice, for they think
the preservation of their shifts and pretences to be the first duty
of humanity, and any one who destroys their playthings to be merely
malicious. They are tempted to cry out to such a man, in Faust's
words to Mephistopheles:--
"So to the active and eternal
Creative force, in cold disdain
You now oppose the fist infernal"--
and he who would live according to Schopenhauer would seem to be more
like a Mephistopheles than a Faust--that is, to our weak modern eyes,
which always discover signs of malice in any negation. But there is a
kind of denial and destruction that is the effect of that strong
aspiration after holiness and deliverance, which Schopenhauer was the
first philosopher to teach our profane and worldly generation.
Everything that can be denied, deserves to be denied; and real
sincerity means the belief in a state of things which cannot be
denied, or in which there is no lie. The sincere man feels that his
activity has a metaphysical meaning. It can only be explained by the
laws of a different and a higher life; it is in the deepest sense an
affirmation: even if everything that he does seem utterly opposed to
the laws of our present life. It must lead therefore to constant
suffering; but he knows, as Meister Eckhard did, that "the quickest
beast that will carry you to perfection is suffering." Every one, I
should think, who has such an ideal before him, must feel a wider
sympathy; and he will have a burning desire to become a "Schopenhauer
man";--pure and wonderfully patient, on his intellectual side full of
a devouring fire, and far removed from the cold and contemptuous
"neutrality" of the so-called scientific man; so high above any
warped and morose outlook on life as to offer himself as the first
victim of the truth he has won, with a deep consciousness of the
sufferings that must spring from his sincerity. His courage will
destroy his happiness on earth, he must be an enemy to the men he
loves and the institutions in which he grew up, he must spare neither
person nor thing, however it may hurt him, he will be misunderstood
and thought an ally of forces that he abhors, in his search for
righteousness he will seem unrighteous by human standards: but he
must comfort himself with the words that his teacher Schopenhauer
once used: "A happy life is impossible, the highest thing that man
can aspire to is a _heroic_ life; such as a man lives, who is always
fighting against unequal odds for the good of others; and wins in the
end without any thanks. After the battle is over, he stands like the
Prince in the _re corvo_ of Gozzi, with dignity and nobility in his
eyes, but turned to stone. His memory remains, and will be reverenced
as a hero's; his will, that has been mortified all his life by
toiling and struggling, by evil payment and ingratitude, is absorbed
into Nirvana." Such a heroic life, with its full "mortification"--
corresponds very little to the paltry ideas of the people who talk
most about it, and make festivals in memory of great men, in the
belief that a great man is great in the sense that they are small,
either through exercise of his gifts to please himself or by a blind
mechanical obedience to this inner force; so that the man who does
not possess the gift or feel the compulsion has the same right to be
small as the other to be great. But "gift" and "compulsion" are
contemptible words, mere means of escape from an inner voice, a
slander on him who has listened to the voice--the great man; he least
of all will allow himself to be given or compelled to anything: for
he knows as well as any smaller man how easily life can be taken and
how soft the bed whereon he might lie if he went the pleasant and
conventional way with himself and his fellow-creatures: all the
regulations of mankind are turned to the end that the intense feeling
of life may be lost in continual distractions. Now why will he so
strongly choose the opposite, and try to feel life, which is the same
as to suffer from life? Because he sees that men will tempt him to
betray himself, and that there is a kind of agreement to draw him
from his den. He will prick up his ears and gather himself together,
and say, "I will remain mine own." He gradually comes to understand
what a fearful decision it is. For he must go down into the depths of
being, with a string of curious questions on his lips--"Why am I
alive? what lesson have I to learn from life? how have I become what
I am, and why do I suffer in this existence?" He is troubled, and
sees that no one is troubled in the same way; but rather that the
hands of his fellow-men are passionately stretched out towards the
fantastic drama of the political theatre, or they themselves are
treading the boards under many disguises, youths, men and graybeards,
fathers, citizens, priests, merchants and officials,--busy with the
comedy they are all playing, and never thinking of their own selves.
To the question "To what end dost thou live?" they would all
immediately answer, with pride, "To _become_ a good citizen or
professor or statesman,"--and yet they _are_ something which can
never be changed: and why are they just--this? Ah, and why nothing
better? The man who only regards his life as a moment in the
evolution of a race or a state or a science, and will belong merely
to a history of "becoming," has not understood the lesson of
existence, and must learn it over again. This eternal "becoming
something" is a lying puppet-show, in which man has forgot himself;
it is the force that scatters individuality to the four winds, the
eternal childish game that the big baby time is playing in front of
us--and with us. The heroism of sincerity lies in ceasing to be the
plaything of time. Everything in the process of "becoming" is a
hollow sham, contemptible and shallow: man can only find the solution
of his riddle in "being" something definite and unchangeable. He
begins to test how deep both "becoming" and "being" are rooted in
him--and a fearful task is before his soul; to destroy the first, and
bring all the falsity of things to the light. He wishes to know
everything, not to feed a delicate taste, like Goethe's man, to take
delight, from a safe place in the multiplicity of existence: but he
himself is the first sacrifice that he brings. The heroic man does
not think of his happiness or misery, his virtues or his vices, or of
his being the measure of things; he has no further hopes of himself
and will accept the utter consequences of his hopelessness. His
strength lies in his self-forgetfulness: if he have a thought for
himself, it is only to measure the vast distance between himself and
his aim, and to view what he has left behind him as so much dross.
The old philosophers sought for happiness and truth, with all their
strength: and there is an evil principle in nature that not one shall
find that which he cannot help seeking. But the man who looks for a
lie in everything, and becomes a willing friend to unhappiness, shall
have a marvellous disillusioning: there hovers near him something
unutterable, of which truth and happiness are but idolatrous images
born of the night; the earth loses her dragging weight, the events
and powers of earth become as a dream, and a gradual clearness widens
round him like a summer evening. It is as though the beholder of
these things began to wake, and it had only been the clouds of a
passing dream that had been weaving about him. They will at some time
disappear: and then will it be day.