HUMAN
ALL-TOO-HUMAN
_A BOOK FOR FREE SPIRITS_
PART I
By
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
TRANSLATED BY
HELEN ZIMMERN
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
J. M. KENNEDY
The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche
The First Complete and Authorised English Translation
Edited by Dr Oscar Levy
Volume Six
T.N. FOULIS
13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET
EDINBURGH: AND LONDON
1909
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
FIRST DIVISION: FIRST AND LAST THINGS
SECOND DIVISION: THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL
SENTIMENT
THIRD DIVISION: THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
FOURTH DIVISION: CONCERNING THE SOUL OF
ARTISTS AND AUTHORS
FIFTH DIVISION: THE SIGNS OF HIGHER AND
LOWER CULTURE
SIXTH DIVISION: MAN IN SOCIETY
SEVENTH DIVISION: WIFE AND CHILD
EIGHTH DIVISION: A GLANCE AT THE STATE
AN EPODE--AMONG FRIENDS
INTRODUCTION.
Nietzsche's essay, _Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,_ appeared in 1876,
and his next publication was his present work, which was issued in
1878. A comparison of the books will show that the two years of
meditation intervening had brought about a great change in Nietzsche's
views, his style of expressing them, and the form in which they
were cast. The Dionysian, overflowing with life, gives way to an
Apollonian thinker with a touch of pessimism. The long essay form is
abandoned, and instead we have a series of aphorisms, some tinged with
melancholy, others with satire, several, especially towards the end,
with Nietzschian wit at its best, and a few at the beginning so very
abstruse as to require careful study.
Since the Bayreuth festivals of 1876, Nietzsche had gradually come to
see Wagner as he really was. The ideal musician that Nietzsche had
pictured in his own mind turned out to be nothing more than a rather
dilettante philosopher, an opportunistic decadent with a suspicious
tendency towards Christianity. The young philosopher thereupon
proceeded to shake off the influence which the musician had exercised
upon him. He was successful in doing so, but not without a struggle,
just as he had formerly shaken off the influence of Schopenhauer.
Hence he writes in his autobiography:[1] "_Human, all-too-Human,_ is
the monument of a crisis. It is entitled: 'A book for _free_ spirits,'
and almost every line in it represents a victory--in its pages I freed
myself from everything foreign to my real nature. Idealism is foreign
to me: the title says, 'Where _you_ see ideal things, I see things
which are only--human alas! all-too-human!' I know man _better_--the
term 'free spirit' must here be understood in no other sense than this:
a _freed_ man, who has once more taken possession of himself."
The form of this book will be better understood when it is remembered
that at this period Nietzsche was beginning to suffer from stomach
trouble and headaches. As a cure for his complaints, he spent his time
in travel when he could get a few weeks' respite from his duties at
Basel University; and it was in the course of his solitary walks and
hill-climbing tours that the majority of these thoughts occurred to
him and were jotted down there and then. A few of them, however, date
further back, as he tells us in the preface to the second part of this
work. Many of them, he says, occupied his mind even before he published
his first book, _The Birth of Tragedy_ and several others, as we learn
from his notebooks and posthumous writings, date from the period of the
_Thoughts out of Season._
It must be clearly understood, however, that Nietzsche's disease must
not be looked upon in the same way as that of an ordinary man. People
are inclined to regard a sick man as rancorous; but any one who rights
with and conquers his disease, and even exploits it, as Nietzsche did,
benefits thereby to an extraordinary degree. In the first place, he has
passed through several stages of human psychology with which a healthy
man is entirely unacquainted; _e.g._ he has learnt by introspection
the spiteful and revengeful spirit of the sick man and his religion.
Secondly, in his moments of freedom from pain and gloom his thoughts
will be all the more brilliant.
In support of this last statement, one instance may be selected out of
hundreds that could be adduced. Heinrich Heine spent the greater part
of his life in exile from his native country, tortured by headaches,
and finally dying in a foreign land as the result of a spinal disease.
His splendid works were composed in his moments of respite from
illness, and during the last years of his life, when his health was
at its worst, he gave to the world his famous _Romancero._ We would
likewise do well to recollect Goethe's saying:
Zart Gedicht, wie Regenbogen,
Wird nur auf dunkelm Grund gezogen.[2]
Thus neither the form of this book--so startling at first to those who
have been brought up in the traditions of our own school--nor the
treat all men as equals, and proclaim the establishment of equal rights:
so far a socialistic mode of thought which is based on
_justice_ is possible; but, as has been said, only within
the ranks of the governing classes, which in this case
_practises_ justice with sacrifices and abnegations. On
the other hand, to _demand_ equality of rights, as do the
Socialists of the subject caste, is by no means the outcome
of justice, but of covetousness. If you expose bloody pieces
of flesh to a beast, and then withdraw them again until
it finally begins to roar, do you think that the roaring
implies justice?
Theologians on the other hand, as may be expected, will find no such
ready help in their difficulties from Nietzsche. They must, on the
contrary, be on their guard against so alert an adversary--a duty
which they are apparently not going to shirk; for theologians are
amongst the most ardent students of Nietzsche in this country. Their
attention may therefore be drawn to aphorism 630 of this book, dealing
with convictions and their origin, which will no doubt be successfully
refuted by the defenders of the true faith. In fact, there is not a
single paragraph in the book that does not deserve careful study by all
serious thinkers.
On the whole, however, this is a calm book, and those who are
accustomed to Nietzsche the out-spoken Immoralist, may be somewhat
astonished at the calm tone of the present volume. The explanation is
that Nietzsche was now just beginning to walk on his own philosophical
path. His life-long aim, the uplifting of the type man, was still in
view, but the way leading towards it was once more uncertain. Hence the
peculiarly calm, even melancholic, and what Nietzsche himself would
call Apollonian, tinge of many of these aphorisms, so different from
the style of his earlier and later writings. For this very reason,
however, the book may appeal all the more to English readers, who are
of course more Apollonian than Dionysian. Nietzsche is feeling his way,
and these aphorisms represent his first steps. As such--besides having
a high intrinsic value of themselves--they are enormous aids to the
study of his character and temperament.
J. M. KENNEDY.
[Footnote 1: _Ecce Homo,_ p. 75.]
[Footnote 2: "Tender poetry, like rainbows, can appear only on a dark
and sombre background."--J.M.K.]
PREFACE
1.
I have been told frequently, and always with great surprise, that there
is something common and distinctive in all my writings, from the _Birth
of Tragedy_ to the latest published _Prelude to a Philosophy of the
Future._ They all contain, I have been told, snares and nets for unwary
birds, and an almost perpetual unconscious demand for the inversion
of customary valuations and valued customs. What? _Everything_
only--human-all-too-human? People lay down my writings with this sigh,
not without a certain dread and distrust of morality itself, indeed
almost tempted and encouraged to become advocates of the _worst_
things: as being perhaps only the _best_ disparaged? My writings have
been called a school of suspicion and especially of disdain, more
happily, also, a school of courage and even of audacity. Indeed, I
myself do not think that any one has ever looked at the world with such
a profound suspicion; and not only as occasional Devil's Advocate, but
equally also, to speak theologically, as enemy and impeacher of God;
and he who realises something of the consequences involved, in every
profound suspicion, something of the chills and anxieties of loneliness
to which every uncompromising _difference of outlook_ condemns him
who is affected therewith, will also understand how often I sought
shelter in some kind of reverence or hostility, or scientificality
or levity or stupidity, in order to recover from myself, and, as it
were, to obtain temporary self-forgetfulness; also why, when I did not
find what I _needed,_ I was obliged to manufacture it, to counterfeit
and to imagine it in a suitable manner (and what else have poets ever
done? And for what purpose has all the art in the world existed?).
What I always required most, however, for my cure and self-recovery,
was the belief that I was _not_ isolated in such circumstances, that I
did not _see_ in an isolated manner--a magic suspicion of relationship
and similarity to others in outlook and desire, a repose in the
confidence of friendship, a blindness in both parties without suspicion
or note of interrogation, an enjoyment of foregrounds, and surfaces
of the near and the nearest, of all that has colour, epidermis, and
outside appearance. Perhaps I might be reproached in this respect
for much "art" and fine false coinage; for instance, for voluntarily
and knowingly shutting my eyes to Schopenhauer's blind will to
morality at a time when I had become sufficiently clear-sighted about
morality; also for deceiving myself about Richard Wagner's incurable
romanticism, as if it were a beginning and not an end; also about
the Greeks, also about the Germans and their future--and there would
still probably be quite a long list of such alsos? Supposing however,
that this were all true and that I were reproached with good reason,
what do _you_ know, what _could_ you know as to how much artifice of
self-preservation, how much rationality and higher protection there is
in such self-deception,--and how much falseness I still _require_ in
order to allow myself again and again the luxury of _my_ sincerity?
... In short, I still live; and life, in spite of ourselves, is not
devised by morality; it _demands_ illusion, it _lives_ by illusion
... but----There! I am already beginning again and doing what I have
always done, old immoralist and bird-catcher that I am,--I am talking
un-morally, ultra-morally, "beyond good and evil"?...
2.
Thus then, when I found it necessary, I _invented_ once on a time the
"free spirits," to whom this discouragingly encouraging book with
the title _Human, all-too-Human,_ is dedicated. There are no such
"free spirits" nor have there been such, but, as already said, I then
required them for company to keep me cheerful in the midst of evils
(sickness, loneliness, foreignness,--_acedia,_ inactivity) as brave
companions and ghosts with whom I could laugh and gossip when so
inclined and send to the devil when they became bores,--as compensation
for the lack of friends. That such free spirits _will be possible_ some
day, that our Europe _will_ have such bold and cheerful wights amongst
her sons of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow, as the shadows of
a hermit's phantasmagoria--_I_ should be the last to doubt thereof.
Already I see them _coming,_ slowly, slowly; and perhaps I am doing
something to hasten their coming when I describe in advance under what
auspices I _see_ them originate, and upon what paths I _see_ them come.
3.
One may suppose that a spirit in which the type "free spirit" is to
become fully mature and sweet, has had its decisive event in a _great
emancipation,_ and that it was all the more fettered previously and
apparently bound for ever to its corner and pillar. What is it that
binds most strongly? What cords are almost unrendable? In men of a
lofty and select type it will be their duties; the reverence which is
suitable to youth, respect and tenderness for all that is time-honoured
and worthy, gratitude to the land which bore them, to the hand which
led them, to the sanctuary where they learnt to adore,--their most
exalted moments themselves will bind them most effectively, will lay
upon them the most enduring obligations. For those who are thus bound
the great emancipation comes suddenly, like an earthquake; the young
soul is all at once convulsed, unloosened and extricated--it does not
itself know what is happening. An impulsion and-compulsion sway and
over-master it like a command; a will and a wish awaken, to go forth
on their course, anywhere, at any cost; a violent, dangerous curiosity
about an undiscovered world flames and flares in every sense. "Better
to die than live _here_"--says the imperious voice and seduction, and
this "here," this "at home" is all that the soul has hitherto loved! A
sudden fear and suspicion of that which it loved, a flash of disdain
for what was called its "duty," a rebellious, arbitrary, volcanically
throbbing longing for travel, foreignness, estrangement, coldness,
disenchantment, glaciation, a hatred of love, perhaps a sacrilegious
clutch and look _backwards,_ to where it hitherto adored and loved,
perhaps a glow of shame at what it was just doing, and at the same
time a rejoicing _that_ it was doing it, an intoxicated, internal,
exulting thrill which betrays a triumph--a triumph? Over what? Over
whom? An enigmatical, questionable, doubtful triumph, but the _first_
triumph nevertheless;--such evil and painful incidents belong to the
history of the great emancipation. It is, at the same time, a disease
which may destroy the man, this first outbreak of power and will to
self-decision, self-valuation, this will to _free_ will; and how much
disease is manifested in the wild attempts and eccentricities by which
the liberated and emancipated one now seeks to demonstrate his mastery
over things! He roves about raging with unsatisfied longing; whatever
he captures has to suffer for the dangerous tension of his pride;
he tears to pieces whatever attracts him. With a malicious laugh he
twirls round whatever he finds veiled or guarded by a sense of shame;
he tries how these things look when turned upside down. It is a matter
of arbitrariness with him, and pleasure in arbitrariness, if he now
perhaps bestow his favour on what had hitherto a bad repute,--if he
inquisitively and temptingly haunt what is specially forbidden. In the
background of his activities and wanderings --for he is restless and
aimless in his course as in a desert--stands the note of interrogation
of an increasingly dangerous curiosity. "Cannot _all_ valuations be
reversed? And is good perhaps evil? And God only an invention and
artifice of the devil? Is everything, perhaps, radically false? And
if we are the deceived, are we not thereby also deceivers? _Must_ we
not also be deceivers?"--Such thoughts lead and mislead him more and
more, onward and away. Solitude encircles and engirdles him, always
more threatening, more throttling, more heart-oppressing, that terrible
goddess and _mater sæva cupidinum_--but who knows nowadays what
_solitude_ is?...
4.
From this morbid solitariness, from the desert of such years of
experiment, it is still a long way to the copious, overflowing safety
and soundness which does not care to dispense with disease itself as
an instrument and angling-hook of knowledge;--to that _mature_ freedom
of spirit which is equally self-control and discipline of the heart,
and gives access to many and opposed modes of thought;--to that inward
comprehensiveness and daintiness of superabundance, which excludes any
danger of the spirit's becoming enamoured and lost in its own paths,
and lying intoxicated in some corner or other; to that excess of
plastic, healing, formative, and restorative powers, which is exactly
the sign of _splendid_ health, that excess which gives the free spirit
the dangerous prerogative of being entitled to live by _experiments_
and offer itself to adventure; the free spirit's prerogative of
mastership! Long years of convalescence may lie in between, years full
of many-coloured, painfully-enchanting magical transformations, curbed
and led by a tough _will to health,_ which often dares to dress and
disguise itself as actual health. There is a middle condition therein,
which a man of such a fate never calls to mind later on without
emotion; a pale, delicate light and a sunshine-happiness are peculiar
to him, a feeling of bird-like freedom, prospect, and haughtiness, a
_tertium quid_ in which curiosity and gentle disdain are combined. A
"free spirit"--this cool expression does good in every condition, it
almost warms. One no longer lives, in the fetters of love and hatred,
without Yea, without Nay, voluntarily near, voluntarily distant,
preferring to escape, to turn aside, to flutter forth, to fly up and
away; one is fastidious like every one who has once seen an immense
variety _beneath_ him,--and one has become the opposite of those who
trouble themselves about things which do not concern them. In fact, it
is nothing but things which now concern the free spirit,--and how many
things!--which no longer _trouble_ him!
5.
A step further towards recovery, and the free spirit again draws
near to life; slowly, it is true, and almost stubbornly, almost
distrustfully. Again it grows warmer around him, and, as it were,
yellower; feeling and sympathy gain depth,. thawing winds of every
kind pass lightly over him. He almost feels as if his eyes were now
first opened to what is _near._ He marvels and is still; where has
he been? The near and nearest things, how changed they appear to
him! What a bloom and magic they have acquired meanwhile! He looks
back gratefully,--grateful to his wandering, his austerity and
self-estrangement, his far-sightedness and his bird-like flights
in cold heights. What a good thing that he did not always stay "at
home," "by himself," like a sensitive, stupid tenderling. He has been
_beside himself,_ there is no doubt. He now sees himself for the first
time,--and what surprises he feels thereby! What thrills unexperienced
hitherto! What joy even in the weariness, in the old illness, in the
relapses of the convalescent! How he likes to sit still and suffer, to
practise patience, to lie in the sun! Who is as familiar as he with the
joy of winter, with the patch of sunshine upon the wall! They are the
most grateful animals in the world, and also the most unassuming, these
lizards of convalescents with their faces half-turned towards life once
more:--there are those amongst them who never let a day pass without
hanging a little hymn of praise on its trailing fringe. And, speaking
seriously, it is a radical _cure_ for all pessimism (the well-known
disease of old idealists and falsehood-mongers) to become ill after
the manner of these free spirits, to remain ill a good while, and then
grow well (I mean "better") for a still longer period. It is wisdom,
practical wisdom, to prescribe even health for one's self for a long
time only in small doses.
6.
About this time it may at last happen, under the sudden illuminations
of still disturbed and changing health, that the enigma of that great
emancipation begins to reveal itself to the free, and ever freer,
spirit,--that enigma which had hitherto lain obscure, questionable,
and almost intangible, in his memory. If for a long time he scarcely
dared to ask himself, "Why so apart? So alone? denying everything that
I revered? denying reverence itself? Why this hatred, this suspicion,
this severity towards my own virtues?"--he now dares and asks the
questions aloud, and already hears something like an answer to them--
"Thou shouldst become master over thyself and master also of thine own
virtues. Formerly _they_ were thy masters; but they are only entitled
to be thy tools amongst other tools. Thou shouldst obtain power over
thy pro and contra, and learn how to put them forth and withdraw them
again in accordance with thy higher purpose. Thou shouldst learn how
to take the proper perspective of every valuation--the shifting,
distortion, and apparent teleology of the horizons and everything that
belongs to perspective; also the amount of stupidity which opposite
values involve, and all the intellectual loss with which every pro
and every contra has to be paid for. Thou shouldst learn how much
_necessary_ injustice there is in every for and against, injustice
as inseparable from life, and life itself as _conditioned_ by the
perspective and its injustice. Above all thou shouldst see clearly
where the injustice is always greatest:--namely, where life has
developed most punily, restrictedly, necessitously, and incipiently,
and yet cannot help regarding _itself_ as the purpose and standard of
things, and for the sake of self-preservation, secretly, basely, and
continuously wasting away and calling in question the higher, greater,
and richer,--thou shouldst see clearly the problem of gradation of
rank, and how power and right and amplitude of perspective grow up
together. Thou shouldst----" But enough; the free spirit _knows_
henceforth which "thou shalt" he has obeyed, and also what he _can_ now
_do,_ what he only now--_may do_....
7.
Thus doth the free spirit answer himself with regard to the riddle of
emancipation, and ends therewith, while he generalises his case, in
order thus to decide with regard to his experience. "As it has happened
to _me_," he says to himself, "so must it happen to every one in whom
a _mission_ seeks to embody itself and to 'come into the world.'" The
secret power and necessity of this mission will operate in and upon
the destined individuals like an unconscious pregnancy,--long before
they have had the mission itself in view and have known its name. Our
destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is
the future that makes laws for our to-day. Granted that it is _the
problem of the gradations of rank,_ of which we may say that it is
_our_ problem, we free spirits; now only in the midday of our life do
we first understand what preparations, detours, tests, experiments,
and disguises the problem needed, before it _was permitted_ to rise
before us, and how we had first to experience the most manifold and
opposing conditions of distress and happiness in soul and body, as
adventurers and circumnavigators of the inner world called "man," as
surveyors of all the "higher" and the "one-above-another," also called
"man"--penetrating everywhere, almost without fear, rejecting nothing,
losing nothing, tasting everything, cleansing everything from all that
is accidental, and, as it were, sifting it out--until at last we could
say, we free spirits, "Here--a _new_ problem! Here a long ladder,
the rungs of which we ourselves have sat upon and mounted,--which we
ourselves at some time have _been_! Here a higher place, a lower place,
an under-us, an immeasurably long order, a hierarchy which we _see;_
here--_our_ problem!"
8.
No psychologist or augur will be in doubt for a moment as to what stage
of the development just described the following book belongs (or is
assigned to). But where are these psychologists nowadays? In France,
certainly; perhaps in Russia; assuredly not in Germany. Reasons are
not lacking why the present-day Germans could still even count this
as an honour to them--bad enough, surely, for one who in this respect
is un-German in disposition and constitution! This _German_ book,
which has been able to find readers in a wide circle of countries
and nations--it has been about ten years going its rounds--and must
understand some sort of music and piping art, by means of which
even coy foreign ears are seduced into listening,--it is precisely
in Germany that this book has been most negligently read, and worst
_listened to;_ what is the reason?" It demands too much, "I have been
told," it appeals to men free from the pressure of coarse duties, it
wants refined and fastidious senses, it needs superfluity--superfluity
of time, of clearness of sky and heart, of _otium_ in the boldest
sense of the term:--purely good things, which we Germans of to-day do
not possess and therefore cannot give." After such a polite answer
my philosophy advises me to be silent and not to question further;
besides, in certain cases, as the proverb points out, one only
_remains_ a philosopher by being--silent.[1]
NICE, _Spring_ 1886.
[Footnote 1: An allusion to the mediæval Latin distich:
O si tacuisses,
Philosophus mansisses.--J.M.K.
]
HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
FIRST DIVISION.
FIRST AND LAST THINGS.
1.
CHEMISTRY OF IDEAS AND SENSATIONS.--Philosophical problems adopt in
almost all matters the same form of question as they did two thousand
years ago; how can anything spring from its opposite? for instance,
reason out of unreason, the sentient out of the dead, logic out of
unlogic, disinterested contemplation out of covetous willing, life for
others out of egoism, truth out of error? Metaphysical philosophy has
helped itself over those difficulties hitherto by denying the origin of
one thing in another, and assuming a miraculous origin for more highly
valued things, immediately out of the kernel and essence of the "thing
in itself." Historical philosophy, on the contrary, which is no longer
to be thought of as separate from physical science, the youngest of all
philosophical methods, has ascertained in single cases (and presumably
this will happen in everything) that there are no opposites except in
the usual exaggeration of the popular or metaphysical point of view,
and that an error of reason lies at the bottom of the opposition:
according to this explanation, strictly understood, there is neither
an unegoistical action nor an entirely disinterested point of view,
they are both only sublimations in which the fundamental element
appears almost evaporated, and is only to be discovered by the closest
observation. All that we require, and which can only be given us by the
present advance of the single sciences, is a _chemistry_ of the moral,
religious, æsthetic ideas and sentiments, as also of those emotions
which we experience in ourselves both in the great and in the small
phases of social and intellectual intercourse, and even in solitude;
but what if this chemistry should result in the fact that also in this
case the most beautiful colours have been obtained from base, even
despised materials? Would many be inclined to pursue such examinations?
Humanity likes to put all questions as to origin and beginning out
of its mind; must one not be almost dehumanised to feel a contrary
tendency in one's self?
2.
INHERITED FAULTS OF PHILOSOPHERS.--All philosophers have the common
fault that they start from man in his present state and hope to attain
their end by an analysis of him. Unconsciously they look upon "man"
as an _cetema Veritas,_ as a thing unchangeable in all commotion, as
a sure standard of things. But everything that the philosopher says
about man is really nothing more than testimony about the man of a
_very limited_ space of time. A lack of the historical sense is the
hereditary fault of all philosophers; many, indeed, unconsciously
mistake the very latest variety of man, such as has arisen under the
influence of certain religions, certain political events, for the
permanent form from which one must set out. They will not learn that
man has developed, that his faculty of knowledge has developed also;
whilst for some of them the entire world is spun out of this faculty
of knowledge. Now everything _essential_ in human development happened
in pre-historic times, long before those four thousand years which we
know something of; man may not have changed much during this time. But
the philosopher sees "instincts" in the present man and takes it for
granted that this is one of the unalterable facts of mankind, and,
consequently, can furnish a key to the understanding of the world; the
entire teleology is so constructed that man of the last four thousand
years is spoken of as an _eternal_ being, towards which all things in
the world have from the beginning a natural direction. But everything
has evolved; there are _no eternal facts,_ as there are likewise no
absolute truths. Therefore, _historical philosophising_ is henceforth
necessary, and with it the virtue of diffidence.
3.
APPRECIATION OF UNPRETENTIOUS TRUTHS.--It is a mark of a higher
culture to value the little unpretentious truths, which have been
found by means of strict method, more highly than the joy-diffusing
and dazzling errors which spring from metaphysical and artistic times
and peoples. First of all one has scorn on the lips for the former,
as if here nothing could have equal privileges with anything else,
so unassuming, simple, bashful, apparently discouraging are they,
so beautiful, stately, intoxicating, perhaps even animating, are
the others. But the hardly attained, the certain, the lasting, and
therefore of great consequence for all wider knowledge, is still
the higher; to keep one's self to that is manly and shows bravery,
simplicity, and forbearance. Gradually not only single individuals
but the whole of mankind will be raised to this manliness, when
it has at last accustomed itself to the higher appreciation of
durable, lasting knowledge, and has lost all belief in inspiration
and the miraculous communication of truths. Respecters of _forms,_
certainly, with their standard of the beautiful and noble, will first
of all have good reasons for mockery, as soon as the appreciation of
unpretentious truths, and the scientific spirit, begin to obtain the
mastery; but only because their eye has either not yet recognised the
charm of the _simplest_ form, or because men educated in that spirit
are not yet completely and inwardly saturated by it, so that they
still thoughtlessly imitate old forms (and badly enough, as one does
who no longer cares much about the matter). Formerly the spirit was
not occupied with strict thought, its earnestness then lay in the
spinning out of symbols and forms. This is changed; that earnestness
in the symbolical has become the mark of a lower culture. As our arts
themselves grow evermore intellectual, our senses more spiritual, and
as, for instance, people now judge concerning what sounds well to the
senses quite differently from how they did a hundred years ago, so the
forms of our life grow ever more _spiritual,_ to the eye of older ages
perhaps _uglier,_ but only because it is incapable of perceiving how
the kingdom of the inward, spiritual beauty constantly grows deeper
and wider, and to what extent the inner intellectual look may be of
more importance to us all than the most beautiful bodily frame and the
noblest architectural structure.
4.
ASTROLOGY AND THE LIKE.--It is probable that the objects of religious,
moral, æsthetic and logical sentiment likewise belong only to the
surface of things, while man willingly believes that here, at least,
he has touched the heart of the world; he deceives himself, because
those things enrapture him so profoundly, and make him so profoundly
unhappy, and he therefore shows the same pride here as in astrology.
For astrology believes that the firmament moves round the destiny of
man; the moral man, however, takes it for granted that what he has
essentially at heart must also be the essence and heart of things.
5.
MISUNDERSTANDING OF DREAMS.--In the ages of a rude and primitive
civilisation man believed that in dreams he became acquainted with
a _second actual world_; herein lies the origin of all metaphysics.
Without dreams there could have been found no reason for a division of
the world. The distinction, too, between soul and body is connected
with the most ancient comprehension of dreams, also the supposition of
an imaginary soul-body, therefore the origin of all belief in spirits,
and probably also the belief in gods. "The dead continues to live,
_for_ he appears to the living in a dream": thus men reasoned of old
for thousands and thousands of years.
6.
THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT PARTIALLY BUT NOT WHOLLY POWERFUL.--The
_smallest_ subdivisions of science taken separately are dealt with
purely in relation to themselves,--the general, great sciences, on the
contrary, regarded as a whole, call up the question--certainly a very
non-objective one--"Wherefore? To what end?" It is this utilitarian
consideration which causes them to be dealt with less impersonally
when taken as a whole than when considered in their various parts.
In philosophy, above all, as the apex of the entire, pyramid of
science, the question as to the utility of knowledge is involuntarily
brought forward, and every philosophy has the unconscious intention of
ascribing to it the _greatest_ usefulness. For this reason there is so
much high-flying metaphysics in all philosophies and such a shyness of
the apparently unimportant solutions of physics; for the importance
of knowledge for life _must_ appear as great as possible. Here is the
antagonism between the separate provinces of science and philosophy.
The latter desires, what art does, to give the greatest possible depth
and meaning to life and actions; in the former one seeks knowledge and
nothing further, whatever may emerge thereby. So far there has been no
philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology
for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that
the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all
tyrannised over by logic, and this is optimism--in its essence.
7.
THE KILL-JOY IN SCIENCE.--Philosophy separated from science when it
asked the question, "Which is the knowledge of the world and of life
which enables man to live most happily?" This happened in the Socratic
schools; the veins of scientific investigation were bound up by the
point of view of _happiness,_--and are so still.
8.
PNEUMATIC EXPLANATION OF NATURE.--Metaphysics explains the writing of
Nature, so to speak, _pneumatically,_ as the Church and her learned men
formerly did with the Bible. A great deal of understanding is required
to apply to Nature the same method of strict interpretation as the
philologists have now established for all books with the intention
of clearly understanding what the text means, but not suspecting a
_double_ sense or even taking it for granted. Just, however, as with
regard to books, the bad art of interpretation is by no means overcome,
and in the most cultivated society one still constantly comes across
the remains of allegorical and mystic interpretation, so it is also
with regard to Nature, indeed it is even much worse.
9.
THE METAPHYSICAL WORLD.--It is true that there _might_ be a
metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be
disputed. We look at everything through the human head and cannot cut
this head off; while the question remains, What would be left of the
world if it had been cut off? This is a purely scientific problem,
and one not very likely to trouble mankind; but everything which
has hitherto made metaphysical suppositions _valuable, terrible,
delightful_ for man, what has produced them, is passion, error, and
self-deception; the very worst methods of knowledge, not the best,
have taught belief therein. When these methods have been discovered as
the foundation of all existing religions and metaphysics, they have
been refuted. Then there still always remains that possibility; but
there is nothing to be done with it, much less is it possible to let
happiness, salvation, and life depend on the spider-thread of such a
possibility. For nothing could be said of the metaphysical world but
that it would be a different condition, a condition inaccessible and
incomprehensible to us; it would be a thing of negative qualities.
Were the existence of such a world ever so well proved, the fact would
nevertheless remain that it would be precisely the most irrelevant
of all forms of knowledge: more irrelevant than the knowledge of the
chemical analysis of water to the sailor in danger in a storm.
10.
THE HARMLESSNESS OF METAPHYSICS IN THE FUTURE.--Directly the origins
of religion, art, and morals have been so described that one can
perfectly explain them without having recourse to metaphysical concepts
at the beginning and in the course of the path, the strongest interest
in the purely theoretical problem of the "thing-in-itself" and the
"phenomenon" ceases. For however it may be here, with religion, art,
and morals we do not touch the "essence of the world in itself"; we are
in the domain of representation, no "intuition" can carry us further.
With the greatest calmness we shall leave the question as to how our
own conception of the world can differ so widely from the revealed
essence of the world, to physiology and the history of the evolution of
organisms and ideas.
11.
LANGUAGE AS A PRESUMPTIVE SCIENCE.--The importance of language for
the development of culture lies in the fact that in language man has
placed a world of his own beside the other, a position which he deemed
so fixed that he might therefrom lift the rest of the world off its
hinges, and make himself master of it. Inasmuch as man has believed in
the ideas and names of things as _æternæ veritates_ for a great length
of time, he has acquired that pride by which he has raised himself
above the animal; he really thought that in language he possessed
the knowledge of the world. The maker of language was not modest
enough to think that he only gave designations to things, he believed
rather that with his words he expressed the widest knowledge of the
things; in reality language is the first step in the endeavour after
science. Here also it is belief in ascertained truth, from which the
mightiest sources of strength have flowed. Much later--only now--it
is dawning upon men that they have propagated a tremendous error in
their belief in language. Fortunately it is now too late to reverse
the development of reason, which is founded upon that belief. _Logic,_
also, is founded upon suppositions to which nothing in the actual
world corresponds,--for instance, on the supposition of the equality
of things, and the identity of the same thing at different points of
time,--but that particular science arose out of the contrary belief
(that such things really existed in the actual world). It is the same
with mathematics, which would certainly not have arisen if it had been
known from the beginning that in Nature there are no exactly straight
lines, no real circle, no absolute standard of size.
12.
DREAM AND CULTURE.--The function of the brain which is most influenced
by sleep is the memory; not that it entirely ceases; but it is brought
back to a condition of imperfection, such as everyone may have
experienced in pre-historic times, whether asleep or awake. Arbitrary
and confused as it is, it constantly confounds things on the ground
of the most fleeting resemblances; but with the same arbitrariness
and confusion the ancients invented their mythologies, and even at
the present day travellers are accustomed to remark how prone the
savage is to forgetfulness, how, after a short tension of memory, his
mind begins to sway here and there from sheer weariness and gives
forth lies and nonsense. But in dreams we all resemble the savage;
bad recognition and erroneous comparisons are the reasons of the
bad conclusions, of which we are guilty in dreams: so that, when we
clearly recollect what we have dreamt, we are alarmed at ourselves at
harbouring so much foolishness within us. The perfect distinctness of
all dream-representations, which pre-suppose absolute faith in their
reality, recall the conditions that appertain, to primitive man,
in whom hallucination was extraordinarily frequent, and sometimes
simultaneously seized entire communities, entire nations. Therefore, in
sleep and in dreams we once more carry out the task of early humanity.
13.
THE LOGIC OF DREAMS.--In sleep our nervous system is perpetually
excited by numerous inner occurrences; nearly all the organs are
disjointed and in a state of activity, the blood runs its turbulent
course, the position of the sleeper causes pressure on certain limbs,
his coverings influence his sensations in various ways, the stomach
digests and by its movements it disturbs other organs, the intestines
writhe, the position of the head occasions unaccustomed play of
muscles, the feet, unshod, not pressing upon the floor with the soles,
occasion the feeling of the unaccustomed just as does the different
clothing of the whole body: all this, according to its daily change
and extent, excites by its extraordinariness the entire system to the
very functions of the brain, and thus there are a hundred occasions
for the spirit to be surprised and to seek for the _reasons_ of this
excitation;--the dream, however, is _the seeking and representing of
the causes_ of those excited sensations,--that is, of the supposed
causes. A person who, for instance, binds his feet with two straps
will perhaps dream that two serpents are coiling round his feet; this
is first hypothesis, then a belief, with an accompanying _mental_
picture and interpretation--" These serpents must be the _causa_ of
those sensations which I, the sleeper, experience,"--so decides the
mind of the sleeper. The immediate past, so disclosed, becomes to him
the present through his excited imagination. Thus every one knows
from experience how quickly the dreamer weaves into his dream a
loud sound that he hears, such as the ringing of bells or the firing
of cannon, that is to say, explains it from _afterwards_ so that he
first _thinks_ he experiences the producing circumstances and then
that sound. But how does it happen that the mind of the dreamer is
always so mistaken, while the same mind when awake is accustomed to be
so temperate, careful, and sceptical with regard to its hypotheses?
so that the first random hypothesis for the explanation of a feeling
suffices for him to believe immediately in its truth? (For in dreaming
we believe in the dream as if it were a reality, _i.e._ we think our
hypothesis completely proved.) I hold, that as man now still reasons in
dreams, so men reasoned also _when awake_ through thousands of years;
the first _causa_ which occurred to the mind to explain anything that
required an explanation, was sufficient and stood for truth. (Thus,
according to travellers' tales, savages still do to this very day.)
This ancient element in human nature still manifests itself in our
dreams, for it is the foundation upon which the higher reason has
developed and still develops in every individual; the dream carries
us back into remote conditions of human culture, and provides a ready
means of understanding them better. Dream-thinking is now so easy to
us because during immense periods of human development we have been
so well drilled in this form of fantastic and cheap explanation,
by means of the first agreeable notions. In so far, dreaming is a
recreation for the brain, which by day has to satisfy the stern
demands of thought, as they are laid down by the higher culture. We
can at once discern an allied process even in our awakened state, as
the door and ante-room of the dream. If we shut our eyes, the brain
produces a number of impressions of light and colour, probably as a
kind of after-play and echo of all those effects of light which crowd
in upon it by day. Now, however, the understanding, together with
the imagination, instantly works up this play of colour, shapeless
in itself, into definite figures, forms, landscapes, and animated
groups. The actual accompanying process thereby is again a kind of
conclusion from the effect to the cause: since the mind asks, "Whence
come these impressions of light and colour?" it supposes those figures
and forms as causes; it takes them for the origin of those colours and
lights, because in the daytime, with open eyes, it is accustomed to
find a producing cause for every colour, every effect of light. Here,
therefore, the imagination constantly places pictures before the mind,
since it supports itself on the visual impressions of the day in their
production, and the dream-imagination does just the same thing,--that
is, the supposed cause is deduced from the effect and represented after
the effect; all this happens with extraordinary rapidity, so that here,
as with the conjuror, a confusion of judgment may arise and a sequence
may look like something simultaneous, or even like a reversed sequence.
From these circumstances we may gather _how lately_ the more acute
logical thinking, the strict discrimination of cause and effect has
been developed, when our reasoning and understanding faculties _still_
involuntarily hark back to those primitive forms of deduction, and
when we pass about half our life in this condition. The poet, too, and
the artist assign causes for their moods and conditions which are by
no means the true ones; in this they recall an older humanity and can
assist us to the understanding of it.
14.
CO-ECHOING.--All _stronger_ moods bring with them a co-echoing of
kindred sensations and moods, they grub up the memory, so to speak.
Along with them something within us remembers and becomes conscious
of similar conditions and their origin. Thus there are formed quick
habitual connections of feelings and thoughts, which eventually, when
they follow each other with lightning speed, are no longer felt as
complexes but as _unities._ In this sense one speaks of the moral
feeling, of the religious feeling, as if they were absolute unities: in
reality they are streams with a hundred sources and tributaries. Here
also, as so often happens, the unity of the word is no security for the
unity of the thing.
15.
NO INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL IN THE WORLD.--As Democritus transferred the
concepts "above" and "below" to endless space where they have no sense,
so philosophers in general have transferred the concepts "Internal"
and "External" to the essence and appearance of the world; they think
that with deep feelings one can penetrate deeply into the internal and
approach the heart of Nature. But these feelings are only deep in so
far as along with them, barely noticeable, certain complicated groups
of thoughts, which we call deep, are regularly excited; a feeling
is deep because we think that the accompanying thought is deep. But
the "deep" thought can nevertheless be very far from the truth, as,
for instance, every metaphysical one; if one take away from the deep
feeling the commingled elements of thought, then the _strong_ feeling
remains, and this guarantees nothing for knowledge but itself, just
as strong faith proves only its strength and not the truth of what is
believed in.
16.