VIII.

These are a few of the conditions under which the philosophical

genius can at least come to light in our time, in spite of all

thwarting influences;--a virility of character, an early knowledge of

mankind, an absence of learned education and narrow patriotism, of

compulsion to earn his livelihood or depend on the state,--freedom in

fact, and again freedom; the same marvellous and dangerous element in

which the Greek philosophers grew up. The man who will reproach him,

as Niebuhr did Plato, with being a bad citizen, may do so, and be

himself a good one; so he and Plato will be right together! Another

may call this great freedom presumption; he is also right, as he

could not himself use the freedom properly if he desired it, and

would certainly presume too far with it. This freedom is really a

grave burden of guilt; and can only be expiated by great actions.

Every ordinary son of earth has the right of looking askance on such

endowments; and may Providence keep him from being so endowed--

burdened, that is, with such terrible duties! His freedom and his

loneliness would be his ruin, and ennui would turn him into a fool,

and a mischievous fool at that.

A father may possibly learn something from this that he may use for

his son's private education, though one must not expect fathers to

have only philosophers for their sons. It is possible that they will

always oppose their sons becoming philosophers, and call it mere

perversity; Socrates was sacrificed to the fathers' anger, for

"corrupting the youth," and Plato even thought a new ideal state

necessary to prevent the philosophers' growth from being dependent on

the fathers' folly. It looks at present as though Plato had really

accomplished something; for the modern state counts the encouragement

of philosophy as one of its duties and tries to secure for a number

of men at a time the sort of freedom that conditions the philosopher.

But, historically, Plato has been very unlucky; as soon as a

structure has risen corresponding actually to his proposals, it has

always turned, on a closer view, into a goblin-child, a monstrous

changeling; compare the ecclesiastical state of the Middle Ages with

the government of the "God-born king" of which Plato dreamed! The

modern state is furthest removed from the idea of the Philosopher-king

(Thank Heaven for that! the Christian will say); but we must

think whether it takes that very "encouragement of philosophy" in a

Platonic sense, I mean as seriously and honestly as if its highest

object were to produce more Platos. If the philosopher seem, as

usual, an accident of his time, does the state make it its conscious

business to turn the accidental into the necessary and help Nature

here also?

Experience teaches us a better way--or a worse: it says that nothing

so stands in the way of the birth and growth of Nature's philosopher

as the bad philosophers made "by order." A poor obstacle, isn't it?

and the same that Schopenhauer pointed out in his famous essay on

University philosophy. I return to this point, as men must be forced

to take it seriously, to be driven to activity by it; and I think all

writing is useless that does not contain such a stimulus to activity.

And anyhow it is a good thing to apply Schopenhauer's eternal

theories once more to our own contemporaries, as some kindly soul

might think that everything has changed for the better in Germany

since his fierce diatribes. Unfortunately his work is incomplete on

this side as well, unimportant as the side may be.

The "freedom" that the state, as I said, bestows on certain men for

the sake of philosophy is, properly speaking, no freedom at all, but

an office that maintains its holder. The "encouragement of

philosophy" means that there are to-day a number of men whom the

state enables to make their living out of philosophy; whereas the old

sages of Greece were not paid by the state, but at best were

presented, as Zeno was, with a golden crown and a monument in the

Ceramicus. I cannot say generally whether truth is served by showing

the way to live by her, since everything depends on the character of

the individual who shows the way. I can imagine a degree of pride in

a man saying to his fellow-men, "take care of me, as I have something

better to do--namely to take care of you." We should not be angry at

such a heightened mode of expression in Plato and Schopenhauer; and

so they might properly have been University philosophers,--as Plato,

for example, was a court philosopher for a while without lowering the

dignity of philosophy. But in Kant we have the usual submissive

professor, without any nobility in his relations with the state; and

thus he could not justify the University philosophy when it was once

assailed. If there be natures like Schopenhauer's and Plato's, which

can justify it, I fear they will never have the chance, as the state

would never venture to give such men these positions, for the simple

reason that every state fears them, and will only favour philosophers

it does not fear. The state obviously has a special fear of

philosophy, and will try to attract more philosophers, to create the

impression that it has philosophy on its side,--because it has those

men on its side who have the title without the power. But if there

should come one who really proposes to cut everything to the quick,

the state included, with the knife of truth, the state, that affirms

its own existence above all, is justified in banishing him as an

enemy, just as it bans a religion that exalts itself to be its judge.

The man who consents to be a state philosopher, must also consent to

be regarded as renouncing the search for truth in all its secret

retreats. At any rate, so long as he enjoys his position, he must

recognise something higher than truth--the state. And not only the

state, but everything required by it for existence--a definite form

of religion, a social system, a standing army; a _noli me tangere_ is

written above all these things. Can a University philosopher ever

keep clearly before him the whole round of these duties and

limitations? I do not know. The man who has done so and remains a

state-official, is a false friend to truth; if he has not,--I think

he is no friend to truth either.

But general considerations like these are always the weakest in their

influence on mankind. Most people will find it enough to shrug their

shoulders and say, "As if anything great and pure has ever been able

to maintain itself on this earth without some concession to human

vulgarity! Would you rather the state persecuted philosophers than

paid them for official services?" Without answering this last

question, I will merely say that these "concessions" of philosophy to

the state go rather far at present. In the first place, the state

chooses its own philosophical servants, as many as its institutions

require; it therefore pretends to be able to distinguish the good and

the bad philosophers, and even assumes there must be a sufficient

supply of good ones to fill all the chairs. The state is the

authority not only for their goodness but their numbers. Secondly, it

confines those it has chosen to a definite place and a definite

activity among particular men; they must instruct every undergraduate

who wants instruction, daily, at stated hours. The question is

whether a philosopher can bind himself, with a good conscience, to

have something to teach every day, to any one who wishes to listen.

Must he not appear to know more than he does, and speak, before an

unknown audience, of things that he could mention without risk only

to his most intimate friends? And above all, does he not surrender

the precious freedom of following his genius when and wherever it

call him, by the mere fact of being bound to think at stated times on

a fixed subject? And before young men, too! Is not such thinking in

its nature emasculate? And suppose he felt some day that he had no

ideas just then--and yet must be in his place and appear to be

thinking! What then?

"But," one will say, "he is not a thinker but mainly a depository of

thought, a man of great learning in all previous philosophies. Of

these he can always say something that his scholars do not know."

This is actually the third, and the most dangerous, concession made

by philosophy to the state, when it is compelled to appear in the

form of erudition, as the knowledge (more specifically) of the

history of philosophy. The genius looks purely and lovingly on

existence, like a poet, and cannot dive too deep into it;--and

nothing is more abhorrent to him than to burrow among the innumerable

strange and wrong-headed opinions. The learned history of the past

was never a true philosopher's business, in India or Greece; and a

professor of philosophy who busies himself with such matters must be,

at best, content to hear it said of him, "He is an able scholar,

antiquary, philologist, historian,"--but never, "He is a

philosopher." I said, "at best": for a scholar feels that most of the

learned works written by University philosophers are badly done,

without any real scientific power, and generally are dreadfully

tedious. Who will blow aside, for example, the Lethean vapour with

which the history of Greek philosophy has been enveloped by the dull

though not very scientific works of Ritter, Brandis and Zeller? I, at

any rate, would rather read Diogenes Laertius than Zeller, because at

least the spirit of the old philosophers lives in Diogenes, but

neither that nor any other spirit in Zeller. And, after all, what

does the history of philosophy matter to our young men? Are they to

be discouraged by the welter of opinions from having any of their

own; or taught to join the chorus that approves the vastness of our

progress? Are they to learn to hate or perhaps despise philosophy?

One might expect the last, knowing the torture the students endure

for their philosophical examinations, in having to get into their

unfortunate heads the maddest efforts of the human mind as well as

the greatest and profoundest. The only method of criticising a

philosophy that is possible and proves anything at all--namely to see

whether one can live by it--has never been taught at the

universities; only the criticism of words, and again words, is taught

there. Imagine a young head, without much experience of life, being

stuffed with fifty systems (in the form of words) and fifty

criticisms of them, all mixed up together,--what an overgrown

wilderness he will come to be, what contempt he will feel for a

philosophical education! It is, of course, not an education in

philosophy at all, but in the art of passing a philosophical

examination: the usual result being the pious ejaculation of the

wearied examinee, "Thank God I am no philosopher, but a Christian and

a good citizen!"

What if this cry were the ultimate object of the state, and the

"education" or leading to philosophy were merely a leading _from_

philosophy? We may well ask.--But if so, there is one thing to

fear--that the youth may some day find out to what end philosophy is

thus mis-handled. "Is the highest thing of all, the production of the

philosophical genius, nothing but a pretext, and the main object

perhaps to hinder his production? And is Reason turned to

Unreason?"--Then woe to the whole machinery of political and

professorial trickery!

Will it soon become notorious? I do not know; but anyhow university

philosophy has fallen into a general state of doubting and despair.

The cause lies partly in the feebleness of those who hold the chairs

at present: and if Schopenhauer had to write his treatise on

university philosophy to-day, he would find the club no longer

necessary, but could conquer with a bulrush. They are the heirs and

successors of those slip-shod thinkers whose crazy heads Schopenhauer

struck at: their childish natures and dwarfish frames remind one of

the Indian proverb: "men are born according to their deeds, deaf,

dumb, misshapen." Those fathers deserved such sons, "according to

their deeds," as the proverb says. Hence the students will, no doubt,

soon get on without the philosophy taught at their university, just

as those who are not university men manage to do without it already.

This can be tested from one's own experience: in my student-days, for

example, I found the university philosophers very ordinary men

indeed, who had collected together a few conclusions from the other

sciences, and in their leisure hours read the newspapers and went to

concerts; they were treated by their academic colleagues with

politely veiled contempt. They had the reputation of knowing very

little, but of never being at a loss for obscure expressions to

conceal their ignorance. They had a preference for those obscure

regions where a man could not walk long with clear vision. One said

of the natural sciences,--"Not one of them can fully explain to me

the origin of matter; then what do I care about them all?"--Another

said of history, "It tells nothing new to the man with ideas": in

fact, they always found reasons for its being more philosophical to

know nothing than to learn anything. If they let themselves be drawn

to learn, a secret instinct made them fly from the actual sciences

and found a dim kingdom amid their gaps and uncertainties. They "led

the way" in the sciences in the sense that the quarry "leads the way"

for the hunters who are behind him. Recently they have amused

themselves with asserting they are merely the watchers on the

frontier of the sciences. The Kantian doctrine is of use to them

here, and they industriously build up an empty scepticism on it, of

which in a short time nobody will take any more notice. Here and

there one will rise to a little metaphysic of his own, with the

general accompaniment of headaches and giddiness and bleeding at the

nose. After the usual ill-success of their voyages into the clouds

and the mist, some hard-headed young student of the real sciences

will pluck them down by the skirts, and their faces will assume the

expression now habitual to them, of offended dignity at being found

out. They have lost their happy confidence, and not one of them will

venture a step further for the sake of his philosophy. Some used to

believe they could find out new religions or reinstate old ones by

their systems. They have given up such pretensions now, and have

become mostly mild, muddled folk, with no Lucretian boldness, but

merely some spiteful complaints of the "dead weight that lies on the

intellects of mankind"! No one can even learn logic from them now,

and their obvious knowledge of their own powers has made them

discontinue the dialectical disputations common in the old days.

There is much more care and modesty, logic and inventiveness, in a

word, more philosophical method in the work of the special sciences

than in the so-called "philosophy," and every one will agree with the

temperate words of Bagehot[2] on the present system builders:

"Unproved abstract principles without number have been eagerly caught

up by sanguine men, and then carefully spun out into books and

theories, which were to explain the whole world. But the world goes

clear against these abstractions, and it must do so, as they require

it to go in antagonistic directions. The mass of a system attracts

the young and impresses the unwary; but cultivated people are very

dubious about it. They are ready to receive hints and suggestions,

and the smallest real truth is ever welcome. But a large book of

deductive philosophy is much to be suspected. Who is not almost sure

beforehand that the premises will contain a strange mixture of truth

and error, and therefore that it will not be worth while to spend

life in reasoning over their consequences?" The philosophers,

especially in Germany, used to sink into such a state of abstraction

that they were in continual danger of running their heads against a

beam; but there is a whole herd of Laputan flappers about them to

give them in time a gentle stroke on their eyes or anywhere else.

Sometimes the blows are too hard; and then these scorners of earth

forget themselves and strike back, but the victim always escapes

them. "Fool, you do not see the beam," says the flapper; and often

the philosopher does see the beam, and calms down. These flappers are

the natural sciences and history; little by little they have so

overawed the German dream-craft which has long taken the place of

philosophy, that the dreamer would be only too glad to give up the

attempt to run alone: but when they unexpectedly fall into the

others' arms, or try to put leading-strings on them that they may be

led themselves, those others flap as terribly as they can, as if they

would say, "This is all that is wanting,--that a philosophaster like

this should lay his impure hands on us, the natural sciences and

history! Away with him!" Then they start back, knowing not where to

turn or to ask the way. They wanted to have a little physical

knowledge at their back, possibly in the form of empirical psychology

(like the Herbartians), or perhaps a little history; and then they

could at least make a public show of behaving scientifically,

although in their hearts they may wish all philosophy and all science

at the devil.

[2] _Physics and Politics_, chap. v. Nietzsche has altered the

order of the sentences without any apparent benefit to his own

argument, and to the disadvantage of Bagehot's. I have restored

the original order.--TR.

But granted that this herd of bad philosophers is ridiculous--and who

will deny it?--how far are they also harmful? They are harmful just

because they make philosophy ridiculous. As long as this

imitation-thinking continues to be recognised by the state, the

lasting effect of a true philosophy will be destroyed, or at any rate

circumscribed; nothing does this so well as the curse of ridicule

that the representatives of the great cause have drawn on them, for

it attacks that cause itself. And so I think it will encourage

culture to deprive philosophy of its political and academic standing,

and relieve state and university of the task, impossible for them, of

deciding between true and false philosophy. Let the philosophers run

wild, forbid them any thoughts of office or civic position, hold them

out no more bribes,--nay, rather persecute them and treat them

ill,--you will see a wonderful result. They will flee in terror and

seek a roof where they can, these poor phantasms; one will become a

parson, another a schoolmaster, another will creep into an

editorship, another write school-books for young ladies' colleges,

the wisest of them will plough the fields, the vainest go to court.

Everything will be left suddenly empty, the birds flown: for it is

easy to get rid of bad philosophers,--one only has to cease paying

them. And that is a better plan than the open patronage of any

philosophy, whatever it be, for state reasons.

The state has never any concern with truth, but only with the truth

useful to it, or rather, with anything that is useful to it, be it

truth, half-truth, or error. A coalition between state and philosophy

has only meaning when the latter can promise to be unconditionally

useful to the state, to put its well-being higher than truth. It

would certainly be a noble thing for the state to have truth as a

paid servant; but it knows well enough that it is the essence of

truth to be paid nothing and serve nothing. So the state's servant

turns out to be merely "false truth," a masked actor who cannot

perform the office required from the real truth--the affirmation of

the state's worth and sanctity. When a mediæval prince wished to be

crowned by the Pope, but could not get him to consent, he appointed

an antipope to do the business for him. This may serve up to a

certain point; but not when the modern state appoints an

"anti-philosophy" to legitimise it; for it has true philosophy

against it just as much as before, or even more so. I believe in all

seriousness that it is to the state's advantage to have nothing

further to do with philosophy, to demand nothing from it, and let it

go its own way as much as possible. Without this indifferent

attitude, philosophy may become dangerous and oppressive, and will

have to be persecuted.--The only interest the state can have in the

university lies in the training of obedient and useful citizens; and

it should hesitate to put this obedience and usefulness in doubt by

demanding an examination in philosophy from the young men. To make a

bogey of philosophy may be an excellent way to frighten the idle and

incompetent from its study; but this advantage is not enough to

counterbalance the danger that this kind of compulsion may arouse

from the side of the more reckless and turbulent spirits. They learn

to know about forbidden books, begin to criticise their teachers, and

finally come to understand the object of university philosophy and

its examinations; not to speak of the doubts that may be fostered in

the minds of young theologians, as a consequence of which they are

beginning to be extinct in Germany, like the ibexes in the Tyrol.

I know the objections that the state could bring against all this, as

long as the lovely Hegel-corn was yellowing in all the fields; but

now that hail has destroyed the crop and all men's hopes of it, now

that nothing has been fulfilled and all the barns are empty,--there

are no more objections to be made, but rather rejections of

philosophy itself. The state has now the power of rejection; in

Hegel's time it only wished to have it--and that makes a great

difference. The state needs no more the sanction of philosophy, and

philosophy has thus become superfluous to it. It will find advantage

in ceasing to maintain its professors, or (as I think will soon

happen) in merely pretending to maintain them; but it is of still

greater importance that the university should see the benefit of this

as well. At least I believe the real sciences must see that their

interest lies in freeing themselves from all contact with sham

science. And further, the reputation of the universities hangs too

much in the balance for them not to welcome a severance from methods

that are thought little of even in academic circles. The outer world

has good reason for its widespread contempt of universities; they are

reproached with being cowardly, the small fearing the great, and the

great fearing public opinion; it is said that they do not lead the

higher thought of the age but hobble slowly behind it, and cleave no

longer to the fundamental ideas of the recognised sciences. Grammar,

for example, is studied more diligently than ever without any one

seeing the necessity of a rigorous training in speech and writing.

The gates of Indian antiquity are being opened, and the scholars have

no more idea of the most imperishable works of the Indians--their

philosophies--than a beast has of playing the harp; though

Schopenhauer thinks that the acquaintance with Indian philosophy is

one of the greatest advantages possessed by our century. Classical

antiquity is the favourite playground nowadays, and its effect is no

longer classical and formative; as is shown by the students, who are

certainly no models for imitation. Where is now the spirit of

Friedrich August Wolf to be found, of whom Franz Passow could say

that he seemed a loyal and humanistic spirit with force enough to set

half the world aflame? Instead of that a journalistic spirit is

arising in the university, often under the name of philosophy; the

smooth delivery--the very cosmetics of speech--with Faust and Nathan

the Wise for ever on the lips, the accent and the outlook of our

worst literary magazines and, more recently, much chatter about our

holy German music, and the demand for lectures on Schiller and

Goethe,--all this is a sign that the university spirit is beginning

to be confused with the Spirit of the Age. Thus the establishment of

a higher tribunal, outside the universities, to protect and criticise

them with regard to culture, would seem a most valuable thing, and as

soon as philosophy can sever itself from the universities and be

purified from every unworthy motive or hypocrisy, it will be able to

become such a tribunal. It will do its work without state help in

money or honours, free from the spirit of the age as well as from any

fear of it; being in fact the judge, as Schopenhauer was, of the

so-called culture surrounding it. And in this way the philosopher can

also be useful to the university, by refusing to be a part of it, but

criticising it from afar. Distance will lend dignity.

But, after all, what does the life of a state or the progress of

universities matter in comparison with the life of philosophy on

earth! For, to say quite frankly what I mean, it is infinitely more

important that a philosopher should arise on the earth than that a

state or a university should continue. The dignity of philosophy may

rise in proportion as the submission to public opinion and the danger

to liberty increase; it was at its highest during the convulsions

marking the fall of the Roman Republic, and in the time of the

Empire, when the names of both philosophy and history became _ingrata

principibus nomina_. Brutus shows its dignity better than Plato; his

was a time when ethics cease to have commonplaces. Philosophy is not

much regarded now, and we may well ask why no great soldier or

statesman has taken it up; and the answer is that a thin phantom has

met him under the name of philosophy, the cautious wisdom of the

learned professor; and philosophy has soon come to seem ridiculous to

him. It ought to have seemed terrible; and men who are called to

authority should know the heroic power that has its source there. An

American may tell them what a centre of mighty forces a great thinker

can prove on this earth. "Beware when the great God lets loose a

thinker on this planet," says Emerson.[3] "Then all things are at

risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city,

and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a

piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow; there is not

any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame,

that may not be revised and condemned.... The things which are dear

to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged

on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of things

as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantly

revolutionise the entire system of human pursuits." If such thinkers

are dangerous, it is clear why our university thinkers are not

dangerous; for their thoughts bloom as peacefully in the shade of

tradition "as ever tree bore its apples." They do not frighten; they

carry away no gates of Gaza; and to all their little contemplations

one can make the answer of Diogenes when a certain philosopher was

praised: "What great result has he to show, who has so long practised

philosophy and yet has _hurt_ nobody?" Yes, the university philosophy

should have on its monument, "It has hurt nobody." But this is rather

the praise one gives to an old woman than to a goddess of truth; and

it is not surprising that those who know the goddess only as an old

woman are the less men for that, and are naturally neglected by the

real men of power.

[3] Essay on "Circles."

If this be the case in our time, the dignity of philosophy is trodden

in the mire; and she seems herself to have become ridiculous or

insignificant. All her true friends are bound to bear witness against

this transformation, at least to show that it is merely her false

servants in philosopher's clothing who are so. Or better, they must

prove by their own deed that the love of truth has itself awe and

power.

Schopenhauer proved this and will continue to prove it, more and

more.