the learned that the world of phenomena is quite other than the world
of true reality, and that even our own existence is not our real
existence, but only the visible manifestation of a mysterious, unknown
substance (substantia)--philosophy has been stuck in a new rut, and
cannot move a single millimetre out of the track laid out by the
great Königsbergian. Backward or forward it can go, but necessarily
in the Kantian rut. For how can you get out of the counterposing
of the phenomenon against the thing-in-itself? This proposition,
this counterposing seems inalterable, so there is nothing left but
to stick your head in the heavy draught-collar of the theory of
knowledge. Which most philosophers do, even with a glad smile, which
inevitably rouses a suspicion that they have got what they wanted,
and their "metaphysical need" was nothing more than a need for a
harness. Otherwise they would have kicked at the sight of the collar.
Surely the contraposition between the world of phenomena and the
thing-in-itself is an invention of the reasoning mind, as is the
theory of knowledge deduced from this contraposing. Therefore the
freedom-loving spirit could reject it in the very beginning--and
_basta!_ With the devil one must be very cautious. We know quite well
that if he only gets hold of the tip of your ear he will carry off
your whole body. So it is with Reason. Grant it one single assumption,
admit but one proposition--and _finita la commedia_. You are in the
toils. Metaphysics cannot exist side-by-side with reason. Everything
metaphysical is absurd, everything reasonable is--positive. So we come
upon a dilemma. The fundamental predicate of metaphysics is absurdity:
and yet surely many positive assertions can lay legitimate claim to
that self-same, highly-respectable predicate. What then? Is there means
of distinguishing a metaphysical absurdity from a perfectly ordinary
one? May one have recourse to criteria? Will not the very criterion
prove a pitfall wherein cunning reason will catch the poor man who was
rushing out to freedom? There can be no two answers to this question.
All services rendered by reason must be paid for sooner or later at
the exorbitant price of self-renunciation. Whether you accept the
assistance in the noble form of the theory of knowledge, or merely as
a humble criterion, at last you will be driven forth into the streets
of positivism. This happens all the time to young, inexperienced minds.
They break the bridle and dash forward into space, to find themselves
rushing into the same old Rome, whither, as we know, all roads lead:
or, to use more lofty language, rushing into the stable whither also
all roads lead. The only way to guard against positivism--granting,
of course, that positivism no longer attracts your sympathies--is to
cease to fear any absurdities, whether rational or metaphysical, and
systematically to reject all the services of reason. Such behaviour has
been known in philosophy; and I make bold to recommend it. _Credo, quia
absurdum_ comes from the Middle Ages. Modern instances are Nietzsche
and Schopenhauer. Both present noble examples of indifference to logic
and common-sense: particularly Schopenhauer, who, a Kantian, even in
the name of Kant made such daring sallies against reason, driving her
into confusion and shame. That astounding Kantian even went so far, in
the master's name still, as to attempt the overthrow of the space and
time notions. He admitted clairvoyance--and to this day the learned are
bothered whether to class that admission among the metaphysical or the
ordinary absurdities. Really, I can't advise them. A very clever man
insists on an enormous absurdity, so I am satisfied. Schopenhauer's
whole campaign against intellect is very comforting. It is evident
that, though he set out from the Kantian stable, he soon got sick
of hauling along down the cart-ruts, and having broken the shafts,
he trotted jauntily into a jungle of irreconcilable contradictions,
without reflecting in the least where he was making for. The primate
of will over reason; and music as the expression of our deepest
essence; are not these assertions sufficient to show us how dexterously
he wriggled out from the harness of synthetic judgments _a priori_
which Kant had placed upon every thinker. There is indeed much more
music than logic in the philosophy of Schopenhauer; Not for nothing
is he excluded from the universities. But of course one may speak of
him in the open; not of his ideas, naturally, but of his music. The
European market is glutted with ideas. How neat and nicely-finished and
logically well-turned-out those ideas are. Schopenhauer had no such
goods. But what lively and splendid contradictions he boldly spreads
on his stall, often even without suspicion that he ought to hide them
from the police. Schopenhauer cries and laughs and gets furious or
glad, without ever realising that this is forbidden to a philosopher.
"Do not speak, but sing," said Zarathustra, and Schopenhauer ready
fulfilled the command in great measure. Philosophy may be music--though
it doesn't follow that music may be called philosophy. When a man
has done his work, and gives himself up to looking and listening and
pleasantly accepting everything, hiding nothing from himself, then he
begins to "philosophise." What good are abstract formulae to him? Why
should he ask himself, before he begins to think: "What can I think
about, what are the limits of thought?" He will think, and those who
like can do the summing up and the building of theories of knowledge.
What is the earthly use of talking about beauty? Beautiful things must
be created. Not one single aesthetic theory has so far been able to
guess what direction the artists' mind will next take, or what are the
limits to his creative activity. The same with the theory of knowledge.
It may arrest the work of a man of learning, if he be himself afraid
that he is going too far, but it is powerless to pre-determine human
thought. Even Kant's counterposing of things-in-themselves to the world
of phenomena cannot finally clip the wings of human curiosity. There
will come a time when this unshakeable foundation of positivism will
be shaken. All gnosiological disputes as to what thought can or cannot
achieve will seem to our posterity just as amusing as the disputes
of the schoolmen seem to us. "Why did they argue about the nature of
truth, when they might have gone out and looked for truth itself?" the
future historians will ask. Let us have an answer ready for them. Our
contemporaries do not want to go out and seek, so they make a great
deal of talk about a theory of knowledge.
"Trust not thyself, young dreamer."--However sincerely you may long
for truth, whatever sufferings and horrors you may have surpassed, do
not believe your own self, young dreamer. What you are looking for,
you won't find. At the utmost, if you have a gift for writing you will
bring out a nice original book. Even--do not be offended--you may
be satisfied with such a result. In Nietzsche's letters relating to
the year 1888, the year when Brandes discovered him, you will find a
sad confirmation of the above. Had not Nietzsche struggled, sought,
suffered?--and behold, towards the end of his life, when it would
have seemed that all mundane rewards had become trivial to him, he
threw himself with rapture on the tidings of first fame, and rushed
to share his joy with all his friends, far and near. He does not tire
of telling in dozens of letters and in varying forms the story of how
Brandes first began his lectures on him, Nietzsche, how the audience
consisted of three hundred people, and he even quotes Brandes' placard
announcement in the original Danish. Fame just threw him a smile,
and forgotten are all the horrible experiences of former days. The
loneliness, the desertedness, the cave in the mountain, the man into
whose mouth the serpent climbed--all forgotten, every thought turned to
the ordinary, easily-comprehensible good. Such is man.
_Mit gier'ger Hand nach Schätzen gräbt_
_Und froh ist wenn er Regenwürmer findet_.
19
When a man is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered
a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn
mankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths:
and then he writes to convince himself. A few more years go by, and
he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince
himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for
any other work, and to be accounted a "superfluous" man is so horrible.
20
A very original man is often a banal writer, and vice versa. We tend
so often to write not about what is going on in us, but of our _pia
desideria_. Thus restless, sleepless men sing the glory of sleep
and rest, which have long been sung to death. And those who sleep
ten hours on end and are always up to the mark must perforce dream
about adventures and storms and dangers, and even extol everything
problematical.
21
When one reads the books of long-dead men, a strange sensation comes
over one. These men who lived two hundred, three hundred, three
thousand years ago are so far off now from this writing which they have
left on earth. Yet we look for eternal truths in their works.
22
The truth which I have the right to announce so solemnly to-day, even
to the first among men, will probably be a stale old lie on my lips
to-morrow. So I will deprive myself of the right of calling such a
truth my own. Probably I shall deprive no one but myself: others will
go on loving and praising the self-same truth, living with it.
23
A writer who cannot lie with inspiration--and that is a great art,
which few may accomplish--loves to make an exhibition of honesty and
frankness. Nothing else is left him to do.
24
_The source of originality_.--A man who has lost all hope of rooting
out of himself a certain radical defect of character, or even of hiding
the flaw from others, turns round and tries to find in his defect a
pertain merit. If he succeeds in convincing his acquaintances, he
achieves a double gain: first, he quiets his conscience, and then he
acquires a reputation for being original.
25
Men begin to strive towards great ends when they feel they cannot cope
with the little tasks of life. They often have their measure of success.
26
A belch interrupts the loftiest meditation. You may draw a conclusion
if you like: if you don't like, you needn't.
27
_A woman of conviction_.--We forgive a man his "convictions," however
unwillingly. It goes without saying that we balk at any individual who
believes in his own infallibility, but one must reconcile oneself
with necessity. It is ugly and preposterous to have corns on one's
hands, but still, they can't be avoided in this unparadisal earth of
sweat and labour. But why see an ideal in callosities? In practical
life, particularly in the social political life to which we are
doomed, convictions are a necessity. Unity is strength, and unity is
possible only among people who think alike. Again, a deep conviction
is in itself a strong force, far more powerful than the most logical
argumentation. Sometimes one has only to pronounce in a full, round,
vibrating chest voice, such as is peculiar to people of conviction,
some trifling sentence, and an audience hitherto unconvinced is carried
away. Truth is often dumb, particularly a new truth, which is most
shy of people, and which has a feeble, hoarse voice. But in certain
situations that which will influence the crowd is more important than
that which is genuine truth. Convictions are necessary to a public
man; but he who is too clever to believe in himself entirely, and is
not enough of an actor to look as if he believed, he had best give up
public work altogether. At the same time he will realise that lack
of convictions is not profitable, and will look with more indulgence
on such as are bound to keep themselves well supplied. Yet all the
more will he dislike those men who without any necessity disfigure
themselves with the coarse tattoo marks. And particularly he will
object to such women. What can be more intolerable than a woman of
conviction. She lives in a family, without having to grind for her
daily bread--why disfigure herself? Why wilfully rub her hands into
corns, when she might keep them clean and pretty! Women, moreover,
usually pick up their convictions ready-made from the man who interests
them most at the moment. And never do they do this so vigorously as
when the man himself seems incapable of paving the way to his ideas!
They are full of feeling for him; they rush to the last extremities
of resource. Will not their feeble little fists help him? It may be
touching, but in the end it is intolerable. So it is much pleasanter
to meet a woman who believes in her husband and does not consider it
necessary to help him. She can then dispense with convictions.
28
_Emancipation of women_.--The one and only way of mastering an enemy
is to learn the use of his weapons. Starting from this, modern woman,
weary of being the slave of man, tries to learn all his tricks. Hard
is slavery, wonderful is freedom! Slavery at last is so unendurable
that a human being will sacrifice, everything for freedom. Of what use
are his virtues to a prisoner languishing in prison? He has one aim,
one object--to get out of prison, and he values only such qualities
in himself as will assist his escape. If it is necessary to break
an iron grating by physical force, then strong muscles will seem to
the prisoner the most desirable of all things. If cunning will help
him, cunning is the finest thing on earth. Something the same happens
with woman. She became convinced that man owed his priority chiefly
to education and a trained mind, so she threw herself on books and
universities. Learning that promises freedom is light, everything else
darkness. Of course, it is a delusion, but you could never convince her
of it, for that would mean the collapse of her best hopes of freedom.
So that in the end woman will be as well-informed as man, she will
furnish herself with broad views and unshakeable convictions, with a
philosophy also--and in the end she may even learn to think logically.
Then, probably, the many misunderstandings between the sexes will
cease. But heavens, how tedious it will be! Men will argue, women will
argue, children will probably be born fully instructed, understanding
everything. With what pain will the men of the future view our women,
capricious, frivolous, uninformed creatures, understanding nothing and
desiring to understand nothing. A whole half of the human race neither
would nor could have any understanding! But the hope lies there. Maybe
we can do without understanding. Perhaps a logical mind is not an
attribute, but a curse. In the struggle for existence, however, and the
survival of the fittest, not a few of the best human qualities have
perished. Obviously woman's illogicality is also destined to disappear.
It is a thousand pities.
29
All kinds of literature are good, except the tedious, said Voltaire.
We may enlarge the idea. All men and all activities are good, except
the tedious. Whatever your failings and your vices, if you are only
amusing or interesting all is forgiven you. Accordingly, frankness and
naturalness are quite rightly considered doubtful virtues. If people
say that frankness and naturalness are virtues, always take it _cum
grano salis_. Sometimes it is permissible and even opportune to fire
off truth of all sorts. Sometimes one may stretch oneself like a log
across the road. But God forbid that such sincere practices should be
raised into a principle. To out with the truth at all times, always to
reveal oneself entirely, besides being impossible to accomplish, never
having been accomplished even in the confessions of the greatest men,
is moreover a far more risky business than it seems. I can confidently
assert that if any man tried to tell the whole truth about himself, not
metaphorically, for every metaphor is a covering ornament, but in plain
bare words, that man would ruin himself for ever, for he would lose
all interest in the eyes of his neighbours, and even in his own eyes.
Each of us bears in his soul a heavy wound, and knows it, yet carries
himself, _must_ carry himself as if he were aware of nothing, while all
around keep up the pretence. Remember Lermontov:
_Look! around you, playfully_
_The crowd moves on the usual road_.
_Scarce a mark of trouble on the festive faces_,
_Not one indecent tear_!
_And yet is barely one amongst them_
_But is crushed by heavy torture_,
_Or has gathered the wrinkles of young age_
_Save from crime or loss_.
These words are horribly true--and the really horrible should be
concealed, it frightens one off. I admit, Byron and Lermontov could
make it alluring. But all that is alluring depends on vagueness,
remoteness. Any monster may be beautiful in the distance. And no
man can be interesting unless he keep a certain distance between
himself and people. Women do not understand this. If they like a
man, they try to come utterly near to him, and are surprised that he
does not meet their frankness with frankness, and admit them to his
holy of holies. But in the innermost sanctuary the only beauty is
inaccessibility. As a rule it is not a sanctuary but a lair where the
wounded beast in man has run to lick his wounds. And shall this be
done in public? People generally, and women particularly, ought to be
given something positive. In books one may still sing the praise of
wounds, hopelessness, and despair--whatever you like, for books are
still literature, a conventionality. But to strip one's anguish in the
open market, to confess an incurable disease to others, this is to
kill one's soul, not to relieve it. All, even the best men, have some
aversion for you. Perhaps in the interest of order and decorum they
will grant you a not-too-important place in their philosophy of life.
For in a philosophy of life, as in a cemetery, a place is prepared for
each and all, and everyone is welcome. There also are enclosures where
rubbish is dumped to rot. But for those who have as yet no desire to
be fitted into a world-philosophy, I would advise them to keep their
tongue between their teeth, or like Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, take to
literature. To a writer, in books and only in books, all is permitted
provided he has talent. But in actual living even a writer must not
let loose too much, lest people should guess that in his books he is
telling the truth.
30
Poushkin asserts that the poet himself can and must be the judge of
his own work. "Are you content, exacting artist? Content, then let
the mob revile." It is needless to argue against this, for how could
you prove that the supreme verdict belongs not to the poet himself,
but to public opinion? Nor, for that matter, can we prove Poushkin
right. We must agree or disagree, as we like. But we cannot reject the
evidence. Whether you like it or not, Poushkin was evidently satisfied
with his own work, and did not need his reader's sanction. Happy man!
And it seems to me he owed his happiness exclusively to his inability
to pass beyond certain limits. I doubt-if all poets would agree to
repeat Poushkin's verse quoted above. I decidedly refuse to believe
that Shakespeare, for instance, after finishing _Hamlet_ or _King
Lear_ could have said to himself: "I, who judge my work more strictly
than any other can judge, am satisfied." I do not think he can even
have thought for a moment of the merits of his works, _Hamlet_ or
_King Lear_. To Shakespeare, after Hamlet, the word "satisfied" must
have lost all its meaning, and if he used it, it was only by force of
habit, as we sometimes call to a dead person. His own works must have
seemed to him imperfect, mean, pitiful, like the sob of a child or the
moaning of a sick man. He gave them to the theatre, and most probably
was surprised that they had any success. Perhaps he was glad that his
tears were of some use, if only for amusing and instructing people. And
probably in this sense the verdict of the crowd was dearer to him than
his own verdict. He could not help accusing his own offspring--thank
heaven, other people acquitted it. True, they acquitted it because
they did not understand, or understood imperfectly, but this did not
matter. "Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape a
whipping?" asked Hamlet. Shakespeare knew that a strict tribunal would
reject his works: for they contain so many terrible questions, and not
one perfect answer. Could anyone be "satisfied" at that rate? Perhaps
with _Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night_, or even _Richard III_.--but
after _Hamlet_ a man may find rest only in his grave. To speak the
whole truth, I doubt if Poushkin himself maintained the view we have
quoted till the end of his days, or even if he spoke all he felt when
he wrote the poem in 1830. Possibly he felt how little a poet can be
satisfied with his work, but pride prevented his admitting it, and he
tried to console himself with his superiority over the crowd. Which
is undeniably a right thing to do. Insults--and Poushkin had to endure
many--are answered with contempt; and woe to the poor wretch who feels
impelled to justify his contempt by his own merits, according to the
stern voice of conscience. Such niceness is dangerous and unnecessary.
If a man would preserve his strength and his confidence he must give
up magnanimity, he must learn to despise people, and even if he cannot
despise them he must have the air of one who would not give a pin's
head for anybody. He must appear always content. ... Poushkin was a
clever man and a deep nature.
31
_Metaphysics against their will_.--It often occurs to us that evil is
not altogether so, unnecessary, after all. Diseases, humiliations,
miseries, deformity, failure, and all the rest of those plants which
flourish with such truly tropical luxuriance on our planet, are
probably essential to man. Poets sing plentifully of sorrow.
"_Nous sommes les apprentis, la douleur est notre maître_," said
de Musset. On this subject everybody can bring forth a quotation,
not only from the philosophers, who are a cold, heartless tribe,
but from tender, gentle, or sentimental poets. Doubtless one knows
many instances where suffering has profited a man. True also, one
knows many cases of the direct opposite. And these are all cases of
profound, earnest, outrageous, incredibly outrageous suffering. Look
at Tchekhov's men and women--plainly drawn from life, or at any rate,
exceedingly life-' like. Uncle Vanya, an old man of fifty, cries beside
himself all over the stage, "My life is done for, my life is done for,"
and senselessly shoots at a harmless professor. The hero in _A Tedious
Story_ was a quiet, happy man engaged in work of real importance, when
suddenly a horrible disease stole upon him, not killing him, but taking
him between its loathsome jaws. But what for? Then Tchekhov's girls and
women! They are mostly young, innocent, fascinating. And always there
lies in wait for them round every corner a meaningless, rude, ugly
misery which murders even the most modest hopes. They sob bitterly, but
fate takes no notice. How explain such horrors? Tchekhov is silent.
He does not weep himself--he left off long ago, and besides it is a
humiliating thing for a grown-up person to do. Setting one's teeth, it
is necessary either to keep silent or--to explain. Well, metaphysics
under takes the explanation. Where common sense stops, metaphysics must
take another stride. "We have seen," it says, "many instances where
at first glance suffering seemed absurd and needless, but where later
on a profound significance was revealed. Thus it may be that what we
cannot explain may find its explanation in time. 'Life is lost,' cries
Uncle Vanya, 'Life is done for,' repeat the voices of girls innocently
perishing--yet nothing is lost. The very horror which a drowning man
experiences goes to show that the drowning is nothing final. It is
only the beginning of greater events. The less a man has fulfilled in
experience, the more in him remains of unsatisfied passion and desire,
the greater are the grounds for thinking that his essence cannot be
destroyed, but must manifest itself somehow or other in the universe.
Voluntary asceticism and self-denial, such common human phenomena,
help to solve the riddle. Nobody compels a man, he imposes suffering
and abstinence on himself. It is an incomprehensible instinct, but
still an instinct which, rooted in the depths of our nature, prompts
us to a decision repugnant to reason: renounce life, save yourself. The
majority of men do not hear or do not heed the prompting. And then
nature, which cannot rely on our sensibility, has recourse to violence.
She shows glimpses of Paradise to us in our youth, awakens hopes and
impossible desires, and at the moment of our supreme expectation she
shows us the hollowness of our hope. Nearly every life can be summed
up in a few words: man was shown heaven--and thrown into the mud. We
are all ascetics--voluntary or involuntary. Here on earth dreams and
hopes are only awakened, not fulfilled. And he who has endured most
suffering, most privation, will awaken in the afterwards most keenly
alive." Such long speeches metaphysics whispers to us. And we repeat
them, often leaving out the "it may be." Sometimes we believe them,
and forge our philosophies from them. Even we go so far as to assert
that had we the power we would change nothing, absolutely nothing in
the world. And yet, if by some miracle such power came into our hands,
how triumphantly we would send to the devil all philosophies and lofty
world-conceptions, all ideals and metaphysics, and plainly and simply,
without reflection, abolish sufferings, deformities, failures, all
those things to which we attach such a high educational value, abolish
them from the face of the earth. We are fed up, oh, how fed up we are
with carrying on our studies. But it can't be helped. _Faute de mieux,_
let us keep on inventing systems, thinking them out. But let us agree
not to be cross with those who don't want to have anything to do with
our systems. Really, they have a perfect right.
32
Old age must be respected--so all say, even the old. And the young
willingly meet the demand. But in such spontaneous, even often emphatic
respect, is there not something insulting to old age. Every young man,
by his voluntary deference, seems to say: "And still the rising star
shines brighter than the setting." And the old, accepting the respect,
are well aware that they can count on nothing more. The young are
attentive and respectful to the old only upon the express condition
that the latter shall behave like old people, and stand aside from
life. Let a real man try to follow Faust's example, and what a shindy
there will be! The old, being as a rule helpless, are compelled to
bow to public opinion and behave as if their only interests were
the interests of righteousness, good name, and such-like Platonic
attributes. Only a few go against the convention, and these are
monsters and degenerates. We do not wish old men to have desires, so
that life is arranged as if old men desired nothing. This, of course,
is no great matter: even the young are compelled to be satisfied
with less than nothing, in our system. We are not out to meddle with
human rights. Our point is that science and philosophy take enforced
appearances for reality. Grey hair is supposed to be a sure sign of
victory over the passions. Hence, seeing that we must all come to
grey hairs, therefore the ultimate business of man is to overcome the
passions.... On this granite foundation whole systems of philosophy are
built. It is not worth while quarrelling with a custom--let us continue
to pay respect to old age. But let us look in other directions for
philosophic bases. It is time to open a free road to the passions even
in the province of metaphysics.
33