see in them that humble feeling that we, when compared with such a
world as it was, have no right to exist at all: how coolly and
fearlessly, as compared with us, did that young brood build its
miserable nests in the midst of the magnificent temples! A powerful
voice from every nook and cranny should ring in the ears of those who,
from the day they begin their connection with the university, roam at
will with such self-complacency and shamelessness among the
awe-inspiring relics of that noble civilisation: 'Hence, ye
uninitiated, who will never be initiated; fly away in silence and
shame from these sacred chambers!' But this voice speaks in vain; for
one must to some extent be a Greek to understand a Greek curse of
excommunication. But these people I am speaking of are so barbaric
that they dispose of these relics to suit themselves: all their modern
conveniences and fancies are brought with them and concealed among
those ancient pillars and tombstones, and it gives rise to great
rejoicing when somebody finds, among the dust and cobwebs of
antiquity, something that he himself had slyly hidden there not so
very long before. One of them makes verses and takes care to consult
Hesychius' Lexicon. Something there immediately assures him that he is
destined to be an imitator of Æschylus, and leads him to believe,
indeed, that he 'has something in common with' Æschylus: the miserable
poetaster! Yet another peers with the suspicious eye of a policeman
into every contradiction, even into the shadow of every
contradiction, of which Homer was guilty: he fritters away his life in
tearing Homeric rags to tatters and sewing them together again, rags
that he himself was the first to filch from the poet's kingly robe. A
third feels ill at ease when examining all the mysterious and
orgiastic sides of antiquity: he makes up his mind once and for all to
let the enlightened Apollo alone pass without dispute, and to see in
the Athenian a gay and intelligent but nevertheless somewhat immoral
Apollonian. What a deep breath he draws when he succeeds in raising
yet another dark corner of antiquity to the level of his own
intelligence!--when, for example, he discovers in Pythagoras a
colleague who is as enthusiastic as himself in arguing about politics.
Another racks his brains as to why OEdipus was condemned by fate to
perform such abominable deeds--killing his father, marrying his
mother. Where lies the blame! Where the poetic justice! Suddenly it
occurs to him: OEdipus was a passionate fellow, lacking all Christian
gentleness--he even fell into an unbecoming rage when Tiresias called
him a monster and the curse of the whole country. Be humble and meek!
was what Sophocles tried to teach, otherwise you will have to marry
your mothers and kill your fathers! Others, again, pass their lives in
counting the number of verses written by Greek and Roman poets, and
are delighted with the proportions 7:13 = 14:26. Finally, one of them
brings forward his solution of a question, such as the Homeric poems
considered from the standpoint of prepositions, and thinks he has
drawn the truth from the bottom of the well with +ana+ and +kata+. All
of them, however, with the most widely separated aims in view, dig and
burrow in Greek soil with a restlessness and a blundering awkwardness
that must surely be painful to a true friend of antiquity: and thus it
comes to pass that I should like to take by the hand every talented or
talentless man who feels a certain professional inclination urging him
on to the study of antiquity, and harangue him as follows: 'Young sir,
do you know what perils threaten you, with your little stock of school
learning, before you become a man in the full sense of the word? Have
you heard that, according to Aristotle, it is by no means a tragic
death to be slain by a statue? Does that surprise you? Know, then,
that for centuries philologists have been trying, with ever-failing
strength, to re-erect the fallen statue of Greek antiquity, but
without success; for it is a colossus around which single individual
men crawl like pygmies. The leverage of the united representatives of
modern culture is utilised for the purpose; but it invariably happens
that the huge column is scarcely more than lifted from the ground when
it falls down again, crushing beneath its weight the luckless wights
under it. That, however, may be tolerated, for every being must perish
by some means or other; but who is there to guarantee that during all
these attempts the statue itself will not break in pieces! The
philologists are being crushed by the Greeks--perhaps we can put up
with this--but antiquity itself threatens to be crushed by these
philologists! Think that over, you easy-going young man; and turn
back, lest you too should not be an iconoclast!'"
"Indeed," said the philosopher, laughing, "there are many philologists
who have turned back as you so much desire, and I notice a great
contrast with my own youthful experience. Consciously or
unconsciously, large numbers of them have concluded that it is
hopeless and useless for them to come into direct contact with
classical antiquity, hence they are inclined to look upon this study
as barren, superseded, out-of-date. This herd has turned with much
greater zest to the science of language: here in this wide expanse of
virgin soil, where even the most mediocre gifts can be turned to
account, and where a kind of insipidity and dullness is even looked
upon as decided talent, with the novelty and uncertainty of methods
and the constant danger of making fantastic mistakes--here, where dull
regimental routine and discipline are desiderata--here the newcomer is
no longer frightened by the majestic and warning voice that rises from
the ruins of antiquity: here every one is welcomed with open arms,
including even him who never arrived at any uncommon impression or
noteworthy thought after a perusal of Sophocles and Aristophanes, with
the result that they end in an etymological tangle, or are seduced
into collecting the fragments of out-of-the-way dialects--and their
time is spent in associating and dissociating, collecting and
scattering, and running hither and thither consulting books. And such
a usefully employed philologist would now fain be a teacher! He now
undertakes to teach the youth of the public schools something about
the ancient writers, although he himself has read them without any
particular impression, much less with insight! What a dilemma!
Antiquity has said nothing to him, consequently he has nothing to say
about antiquity. A sudden thought strikes him: why is he a skilled
philologist at all! Why did these authors write Latin and Greek! And
with a light heart he immediately begins to etymologise with Homer,
calling Lithuanian or Ecclesiastical Slavonic, or, above all, the
sacred Sanskrit, to his assistance: as if Greek lessons were merely
the excuse for a general introduction to the study of languages, and
as if Homer were lacking in only one respect, namely, not being
written in pre-Indogermanic. Whoever is acquainted with our present
public schools well knows what a wide gulf separates their teachers
from classicism, and how, from a feeling of this want, comparative
philology and allied professions have increased their numbers to such
an unheard-of degree."
"What I mean is," said the other, "it would depend upon whether a
teacher of classical culture did _not_ confuse his Greeks and Romans
with the other peoples, the barbarians, whether he could _never_ put
Greek and Latin _on a level with_ other languages: so far as his
classicalism is concerned, it is a matter of indifference whether the
framework of these languages concurs with or is in any way related to
the other languages: such a concurrence does not interest him at all;
his real concern is with _what is not common to both_, with what shows
him that those two peoples were not barbarians as compared with the
others--in so far, of course, as he is a true teacher of culture and
models himself after the majestic patterns of the classics."
"I may be wrong," said the philosopher, "but I suspect that, owing to
the way in which Latin and Greek are now taught in schools, the
accurate grasp of these languages, the ability to speak and write them
with ease, is lost, and that is something in which my own generation
distinguished itself--a generation, indeed, whose few survivers have
by this time grown old; whilst, on the other hand, the present
teachers seem to impress their pupils with the genetic and historical
importance of the subject to such an extent that, at best, their
scholars ultimately turn into little Sanskritists, etymological
spitfires, or reckless conjecturers; but not one of them can read his
Plato or Tacitus with pleasure, as we old folk can. The public schools
may still be seats of learning: not, however of _the_ learning which,
as it were, is only the natural and involuntary auxiliary of a culture
that is directed towards the noblest ends; but rather of that culture
which might be compared to the hypertrophical swelling of an unhealthy
body. The public schools are certainly the seats of this obesity, if,
indeed, they have not degenerated into the abodes of that elegant
barbarism which is boasted of as being 'German culture of the
present!'"
"But," asked the other, "what is to become of that large body of
teachers who have not been endowed with a true gift for culture, and
who set up as teachers merely to gain a livelihood from the
profession, because there is a demand for them, because a superfluity
of schools brings with it a superfluity of teachers? Where shall they
go when antiquity peremptorily orders them to withdraw? Must they not
be sacrificed to those powers of the present who, day after day, call
out to them from the never-ending columns of the press 'We are
culture! We are education! We are at the zenith! We are the apexes of
the pyramids! We are the aims of universal history!'--when they hear
the seductive promises, when the shameful signs of non-culture, the
plebeian publicity of the so-called 'interests of culture' are
extolled for their benefit in magazines and newspapers as an entirely
new and the best possible, full-grown form of culture! Whither shall
the poor fellows fly when they feel the presentiment that these
promises are not true--where but to the most obtuse, sterile
scientificality, that here the shriek of culture may no longer be
audible to them? Pursued in this way, must they not end, like the
ostrich, by burying their heads in the sand? Is it not a real
happiness for them, buried as they are among dialects, etymologies,
and conjectures, to lead a life like that of the ants, even though
they are miles removed from true culture, if only they can close their
ears tightly and be deaf to the voice of the 'elegant' culture of the
time."
"You are right, my friend," said the philosopher, "but whence comes the
urgent necessity for a surplus of schools for culture, which further
gives rise to the necessity for a surplus of teachers?--when we so
clearly see that the demand for a surplus springs from a sphere which is
hostile to culture, and that the consequences of this surplus only lead
to non-culture. Indeed, we can discuss this dire necessity only in so
far as the modern State is willing to discuss these things with us, and
is prepared to follow up its demands by force: which phenomenon
certainly makes the same impression upon most people as if they were
addressed by the eternal law of things. For the rest, a 'Culture-State,'
to use the current expression, which makes such demands, is rather a
novelty, and has only come to a 'self-understanding' within the last
half century, _i.e._ in a period when (to use the favourite popular
word) so many 'self-understood' things came into being, but which are in
themselves not 'self-understood' at all. This right to higher education
has been taken so seriously by the most powerful of modern
States--Prussia--that the objectionable principle it has adopted, taken
in connection with the well-known daring and hardihood of this State, is
seen to have a menacing and dangerous consequence for the true German
spirit; for we see endeavours being made in this quarter to raise the
public school, formally systematised, up to the so-called 'level of the
time.' Here is to be found all that mechanism by means of which as many
scholars as possible are urged on to take up courses of public school
training: here, indeed, the State has its most powerful inducement--the
concession of certain privileges respecting military service, with the
natural consequence that, according to the unprejudiced evidence of
statistical officials, by this, and by this only, can we explain the
universal congestion of all Prussian public schools, and the urgent and
continual need for new ones. What more can the State do for a surplus of
educational institutions than bring all the higher and the majority of
the lower civil service appointments, the right of entry to the
universities, and even the most influential military posts into close
connection with the public school: and all this in a country where both
universal military service and the highest offices of the State
unconsciously attract all gifted natures to them. The public school is
here looked upon as an honourable aim, and every one who feels himself
urged on to the sphere of government will be found on his way to it.
This is a new and quite original occurrence: the State assumes the
attitude of a mystogogue of culture, and, whilst it promotes its own
ends, it obliges every one of its servants not to appear in its presence
without the torch of universal State education in their hands, by the
flickering light of which they may again recognise the State as the
highest goal, as the reward of all their strivings after education.
"Now this last phenomenon should indeed surprise them; it should
remind them of that allied, slowly understood tendency of a philosophy
which was formerly promoted for reasons of State, namely, the
tendency of the Hegelian philosophy: yea, it would perhaps be no
exaggeration to say that, in the subordination of all strivings after
education to reasons of State, Prussia has appropriated, with success,
the principle and the useful heirloom of the Hegelian philosophy,
whose apotheosis of the State in _this_ subordination certainly
reaches its height."
"But," said the philosopher's companion, "what purposes can the State
have in view with such a strange aim? For that it has some State
objects in view is seen in the manner in which the conditions of
Prussian schools are admired by, meditated upon, and occasionally
imitated by other States. These other States obviously presuppose
something here that, if adopted, would tend towards the maintenance
and power of the State, like our well-known and popular conscription.
Where everyone proudly wears his soldier's uniform at regular
intervals, where almost every one has absorbed a uniform type of
national culture through the public schools, enthusiastic hyperboles
may well be uttered concerning the systems employed in former times,
and a form of State omnipotence which was attained only in antiquity,
and which almost every young man, by both instinct and training,
thinks it is the crowning glory and highest aim of human beings to
reach."
"Such a comparison," said the philosopher, "would be quite
hyperbolical, and would not hobble along on one leg only. For, indeed,
the ancient State emphatically did not share the utilitarian point of
view of recognising as culture only what was directly useful to the
State itself, and was far from wishing to destroy those impulses which
did not seem to be immediately applicable. For this very reason the
profound Greek had for the State that strong feeling of admiration and
thankfulness which is so distasteful to modern men; because he clearly
recognised not only that without such State protection the germs of
his culture could not develop, but also that all his inimitable and
perennial culture had flourished so luxuriantly under the wise and
careful guardianship of the protection afforded by the State. The
State was for his culture not a supervisor, regulator, and watchman,
but a vigorous and muscular companion and friend, ready for war, who
accompanied his noble, admired, and, as it were, ethereal friend
through disagreeable reality, earning his thanks therefor. This,
however, does not happen when a modern State lays claim to such hearty
gratitude because it renders such chivalrous service to German culture
and art: for in this regard its past is as ignominious as its present,
as a proof of which we have but to think of the manner in which the
memory of our great poets and artists is celebrated in German cities,
and how the highest objects of these German masters are supported on
the part of the State.
"There must therefore be peculiar circumstances surrounding both this
purpose towards which the State is tending, and which always promotes
what is here called 'education'; and surrounding likewise the culture
thus promoted, which subordinates itself to this purpose of the State.
With the real German spirit and the education derived therefrom, such
as I have slowly outlined for you, this purpose of the State is at
war, hiddenly or openly: _the_ spirit of education, which is welcomed
and encouraged with such interest by the State, and owing to which the
schools of this country are so much admired abroad, must accordingly
originate in a sphere that never comes into contact with this true
German spirit: with that spirit which speaks to us so wondrously from
the inner heart of the German Reformation, German music, and German
philosophy, and which, like a noble exile, is regarded with such
indifference and scorn by the luxurious education afforded by the
State. This spirit is a stranger: it passes by in solitary sadness,
and far away from it the censer of pseudo-culture is swung backwards
and forwards, which, amidst the acclamations of 'educated' teachers
and journalists, arrogates to itself its name and privileges, and
metes out insulting treatment to the word 'German.' Why does the State
require that surplus of educational institutions, of teachers? Why
this education of the masses on such an extended scale? Because the
true German spirit is hated, because the aristocratic nature of true
culture is feared, because the people endeavour in this way to drive
single great individuals into self-exile, so that the claims of the
masses to education may be, so to speak, planted down and carefully
tended, in order that the many may in this way endeavour to escape the
rigid and strict discipline of the few great leaders, so that the
masses may be persuaded that they can easily find the path for
themselves--following the guiding star of the State!
"A new phenomenon! The State as the guiding star of culture! In the
meantime one thing consoles me: this German spirit, which people are
combating so much, and for which they have substituted a gaudily
attired _locum tenens_, this spirit is brave: it will fight and redeem
itself into a purer age; noble, as it is now, and victorious, as it
one day will be, it will always preserve in its mind a certain pitiful
toleration of the State, if the latter, hard-pressed in the hour of
extremity, secures such a pseudo-culture as its associate. For what,
after all, do we know about the difficult task of governing men,
_i.e._ to keep law, order, quietness, and peace among millions of
boundlessly egoistical, unjust, unreasonable, dishonourable, envious,
malignant, and hence very narrow-minded and perverse human beings; and
thus to protect the few things that the State has conquered for itself
against covetous neighbours and jealous robbers? Such a hard-pressed
State holds out its arms to any associate, grasps at any straw; and
when such an associate does introduce himself with flowery eloquence,
when he adjudges the State, as Hegel did, to be an 'absolutely
complete ethical organism,' the be-all and end-all of every one's
education, and goes on to indicate how he himself can best promote the
interests of the State--who will be surprised if, without further
parley, the State falls upon his neck and cries aloud in a barbaric
voice of full conviction: 'Yes! Thou art education! Thou art indeed
culture!'"
FOURTH LECTURE.
(_Delivered on the 5th of March 1872._)
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--Now that you have followed my tale up to this
point, and that we have made ourselves joint masters of the solitary,
remote, and at times abusive duologue of the philosopher and his
companion, I sincerely hope that you, like strong swimmers, are ready
to proceed on the second half of our journey, especially as I can
promise you that a few other marionettes will appear in the
puppet-play of my adventure, and that if up to the present you have
only been able to do little more than endure what I have been telling
you, the waves of my story will now bear you more quickly and easily
towards the end. In other words we have now come to a turning, and it
would be advisable for us to take a short glance backwards to see what
we think we have gained from such a varied conversation.
"Remain in your present position," the philosopher seemed to say to
his companion, "for you may cherish hopes. It is more and more clearly
evident that we have no educational institutions at all; but that we
ought to have them. Our public schools--established, it would seem,
for this high object--have either become the nurseries of a
reprehensible culture which repels the true culture with profound
hatred--_i.e._ a true, aristocratic culture, founded upon a few
carefully chosen minds; or they foster a micrological and sterile
learning which, while it is far removed from culture, has at least
this merit, that it avoids that reprehensible culture as well as the
true culture." The philosopher had particularly drawn his companion's
attention to the strange corruption which must have entered into the
heart of culture when the State thought itself capable of tyrannising
over it and of attaining its ends through it; and further when the
State, in conjunction with this culture, struggled against other
hostile forces as well as against _the_ spirit which the philosopher
ventured to call the "true German spirit." This spirit, linked to the
Greeks by the noblest ties, and shown by its past history to have been
steadfast and courageous, pure and lofty in its aims, its faculties
qualifying it for the high task of freeing modern man from the curse
of modernity--this spirit is condemned to live apart, banished from
its inheritance. But when its slow, painful tones of woe resound
through the desert of the present, then the overladen and gaily-decked
caravan of culture is pulled up short, horror-stricken. We must not
only astonish, but terrify--such was the philosopher's opinion: not to
fly shamefully away, but to take the offensive, was his advice; but he
especially counselled his companion not to ponder too anxiously over
the individual from whom, through a higher instinct, this aversion for
the present barbarism proceeded, "Let it perish: the Pythian god had
no difficulty in finding a new tripod, a second Pythia, so long, at
least, as the mystic cold vapours rose from the earth."
The philosopher once more began to speak: "Be careful to remember, my
friend," said he, "there are two things you must not confuse. A man
must learn a great deal that he may live and take part in the struggle
for existence; but everything that he as an individual learns and does
with this end in view has nothing whatever to do with culture. This
latter only takes its beginning in a sphere that lies far above the
world of necessity, indigence, and struggle for existence. The
question now is to what extent a man values his ego in comparison with
other egos, how much of his strength he uses up in the endeavour to
earn his living. Many a one, by stoically confining his needs within a
narrow compass, will shortly and easily reach the sphere in which he
may forget, and, as it were, shake off his ego, so that he can enjoy
perpetual youth in a solar system of timeless and impersonal things.
Another widens the scope and needs of his ego as much as possible, and
builds the mausoleum of this ego in vast proportions, as if he were
prepared to fight and conquer that terrible adversary, Time. In this
instinct also we may see a longing for immortality: wealth and power,
wisdom, presence of mind, eloquence, a flourishing outward aspect, a
renowned name--all these are merely turned into the means by which an
insatiable, personal will to live craves for new life, with which,
again, it hankers after an eternity that is at last seen to be
illusory.
"But even in this highest form of the ego, in the enhanced needs of
such a distended and, as it were, collective individual, true culture
is never touched upon; and if, for example, art is sought after, only
its disseminating and stimulating actions come into prominence, _i.e._
those which least give rise to pure and noble art, and most of all to
low and degraded forms of it. For in all his efforts, however great
and exceptional they seem to the onlooker, he never succeeds in
freeing himself from his own hankering and restless personality: that
illuminated, ethereal sphere where one may contemplate without the
obstruction of one's own personality continually recedes from him--and
thus, let him learn, travel, and collect as he may, he must always
live an exiled life at a remote distance from a higher life and from
true culture. For true culture would scorn to contaminate itself with
the needy and covetous individual; it well knows how to give the slip
to the man who would fain employ it as a means of attaining to
egoistic ends; and if any one cherishes the belief that he has firmly
secured it as a means of livelihood, and that he can procure the
necessities of life by its sedulous cultivation, then it suddenly
steals away with noiseless steps and an air of derisive mockery.[6]
"I will thus ask you, my friend, not to confound this culture, this
sensitive, fastidious, ethereal goddess, with that useful
maid-of-all-work which is also called 'culture,' but which is only
the intellectual servant and counsellor of one's practical
necessities, wants, and means of livelihood Every kind of training,
however, which holds out the prospect of bread-winning as its end and
aim, is not a training for culture as we understand the word; but
merely a collection of precepts and directions to show how, in the
struggle for existence, a man may preserve and protect his own person.
It may be freely admitted that for the great majority of men such a
course of instruction is of the highest importance; and the more
arduous the struggle is the more intensely must the young man strain
every nerve to utilise his strength to the best advantage.
"But--let no one think for a moment that the schools which urge him on
to this struggle and prepare him for it are in any way seriously to be
considered as establishments of culture. They are institutions which
teach one how to take part in the battle of life; whether they promise
to turn out civil servants, or merchants, or officers, or wholesale
dealers, or farmers, or physicians, or men with a technical training.
The regulations and standards prevailing at such institutions differ
from those in a true educational institution; and what in the latter
is permitted, and even freely held out as often as possible, ought to
be considered as a criminal offence in the former.