culture. As far as women are concerned, Pericles expresses everything
in the funeral speech: "They are best when they are as little spoken
of as possible amongst men." The erotic relation of men to youths
was the necessary and sole preparation, to a degree unattainable to
our comprehension, of all manly education (pretty much as for a long
time all higher education of women was only attainable through love
and marriage). All idealism of the strength of the Greek nature threw
itself into that relation, and it is probable that never since have
young men been treated so attentively, so lovingly, so entirely with
a view to their welfare (_virtus_) as in the fifth and sixth centuries
B.C.--according to the beautiful saying of Hölderlin: "_denn liebend
giebt der Sterbliche vom Besten."_[3] The higher the light in which
this relation was regarded, the lower sank intercourse with woman;
nothing else was taken into consideration than the production of
children and lust; there was no intellectual intercourse, not even real
love-making. If it be further remembered that women were even excluded
from contests and spectacles of every description, there only remain
the religious cults as their sole higher occupation. For although in
the tragedies Electra and Antigone were represented, this was only
_tolerated_ in art, but not liked in real life,--just as now we cannot
endure anything pathetic in _life_ but like it in art. The women had no
other mission than to produce beautiful, strong bodies, in which the
father's character lived on as unbrokenly as possible, and therewith
to counteract the increasing nerve-tension of such a highly developed
culture. This kept the Greek culture young for a relatively long time;
for in the Greek mothers the Greek genius always returned to nature.
260.
THE PREJUDICE IN FAVOUR OF GREATNESS.--It is clear that men overvalue
everything great and prominent. This arises from the conscious or
unconscious idea that they deem it very useful when one person throws
all his strength into one thing and makes himself into a monstrous
organ. Assuredly, an _equal_ development of all his powers is more
useful and happier for man; for every talent is a vampire which sucks
blood and strength from other powers, and an exaggerated production can
drive the most gifted almost to madness. Within the circle of the arts,
too, extreme natures excite far too much attention; but a much lower
culture is necessary to be captivated by them. Men submit from habit to
everything that seeks power.
261.
THE TYRANTS OF THE MIND.--It is only where the ray of myth falls that
the life of the Greeks shines; otherwise it is gloomy. The Greek
philosophers are now robbing themselves of this myth; is it not as if
they wished to quit the sunshine for shadow and gloom? Yet no plant
avoids the light; and, as a matter of fact, those philosophers were
only seeking a _brighter_ sun; the myth--was not pure enough, not
shining enough for them. They found this light in their knowledge,
in that which each of them called his "truth." But in those times
knowledge shone with a greater glory; it was still young and knew but
little of all the difficulties and dangers of its path; it could still
hope to reach in one single bound the central point of all being,
and from thence to solve the riddle of the world. These philosophers
had a firm belief in themselves and their "truth," and with it they
overthrew all their neighbours and predecessors; each one was a
warlike, violent _tyrant._ The happiness in believing themselves the
possessors of truth was perhaps never greater in the world, but neither
were the hardness, the arrogance, and the tyranny and evil of such a
belief. They were tyrants, they were that, therefore, which every Greek
wanted to be, and which every one was if he _was able._ Perhaps Solon
alone is an exception; he tells in his poems how he disdained personal
tyranny. But he did it for love of his works, of his law-giving;
and to be a law-giver is a sublimated form of tyranny. Parmenides
also made laws. Pythagoras and Empedocles probably did the same;
Anaximander founded a city. Plato was the incarnate wish to become
the greatest philosophic law-giver and founder of States; he appears
to have suffered terribly over the non-fulfilment of his nature, and
towards his end his soul was filled with the bitterest gall. The more
the Greek philosophers lost in power the more they suffered inwardly
from this bitterness and malice; when the various sects fought for
their truths in the street, then first were the souls of these wooers
of truth completely clogged through envy and spleen; the tyrannical
element then raged like poison within their bodies. These many petty
tyrants would have liked to devour each other; there survived not a
single spark of love and very little joy in their own knowledge. The
saying that tyrants are generally murdered and that their descendants
are short-lived, is true also of the tyrants of the mind. Their history
is short and violent, and their after-effects break off suddenly. It
may be said of almost all great Hellenes that they appear to have come
too late: it was thus with Æschylus, with Pindar, with Demosthenes,
with Thucydides: one generation--and then it is passed for ever. That
is the stormy and dismal element in Greek history. We now, it is true,
admire the gospel of the tortoises. To think historically is almost the
same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to the
theory "The smallest possible amount in the longest possible time!" Oh!
how quickly Greek history runs on! Since then life has never been so
extravagant--so unbounded. I cannot persuade myself that the history of
the Greeks followed that natural course for which it is so celebrated.
They were much too variously gifted to be _gradual_ the orderly manner
of the tortoise when running a race with Achilles, and that is called
natural development. The Geeks went rapidly forward, but equally
rapidly downwards; the movement of the whole machine is so intensified
that a single stone thrown amid its wheels was sufficient to break it.
Such a stone, for instance, was Socrates; the hitherto so wonderfully
regular, although certainly too rapid, development of the philosophical
science was destroyed in one night. It is no idle question whether
Plato, had he remained free from the Socratic charm, would not have
discovered a still higher type of the philosophic man, which type
is for ever lost to us. We look into the ages before him as into a
sculptor's workshop of such types. The fifth and sixth centuries B.C.
seemed to promise something more and higher even than they produced;
they stopped short at promising and announcing. And yet there is hardly
a greater loss than the loss of a type, of a new, hitherto undiscovered
highest _possibility of the philosophic life:_--Even of the older
type the greater number are badly transmitted; it seems to me that
all philosophers, from Thales to Democritus, are remarkably difficult
to recognise, but whoever succeeds in imitating these figures walks
amongst specimens of the mightiest and purest type. This ability is
certainly rare, it was even absent in those later Greeks, who occupied
themselves with the knowledge of the older philosophy; Aristotle,
especially, hardly seems to have had eyes in his head when he stands
before these great ones. And thus it appears as if these splendid
philosophers had lived in vain, or as if they had only been intended
to prepare the quarrelsome and talkative followers of the Socratic
schools. As I have said, here is a gap, a break in development; some
great misfortune must have happened, and the only statue which might
have revealed the meaning and purpose of that great artistic training
was either broken or unsuccessful; what actually happened has remained
for ever a secret of the workshop.
That which happened amongst the Greeks--namely, that every great
thinker who believed himself to be in possession of the absolute truth
became a tyrant, so that even the mental history of the Greeks acquired
that violent, hasty and dangerous character shown by their political
history,--this type of event was not therewith exhausted, much that is
similar has happened even in more modern times, although gradually
becoming rarer and now but seldom showing the pure, naïve conscience
of the Greek philosophers. For on the whole, opposition doctrines and
scepticism now speak too powerfully, too loudly. The period of mental
tyranny is past. It is true that in the spheres of higher culture there
must always be a supremacy, but henceforth this supremacy lies in the
hands of the _oligarchs of the mind._ In spite of local and political
separation they form a cohesive society, whose members _recognise and
acknowledge_ each other, whatever public opinion and the verdicts of
review and newspaper writers who influence the masses may circulate in
favour of or against them. Mental superiority, which formerly divided
and embittered, nowadays generally _unites;_ how could the separate
individuals assert themselves and swim through life on their own
course, against all currents, if they did not see others like them
living here and there under similar conditions, and grasped their hands
in the struggle as much against the ochlocratic character of the half
mind and half culture as against the occasional attempts to establish
a tyranny with the help of the masses? Oligarchs are necessary to each
other, they are each other's best joy, they understand their signs, but
each is nevertheless free, he fights and conquers in _his_ place and
perishes rather than submit.
262.
HOMER.--The greatest fact in Greek culture remains this, that Homer
became so early Pan-Hellenic. All mental and human freedom to which
the Greeks attained is traceable to this fact. At the same time
it has actually been fatal to Greek culture, for Homer levelled,
inasmuch as he centralised, and dissolved the more serious instincts
of independence. From time to time there arose from the depths of
Hellenism an opposition to Homer: but he always remained victorious.
All great mental powers have an oppressing effect as well as a
liberating one; but it certainly makes a difference whether it is Homer
or the Bible or Science that tyrannises over mankind.
263.
TALENTS.--In such a highly developed humanity as the present, each
individual naturally has access to many talents. Each has an _inborn
talent,_ but only in a few is that degree of toughness, endurance, and
energy born and trained that he really becomes a talent, _becomes_ what
he _is,_ that is, that he discharges it in works and actions.
264.
THE WITTY PERSON EITHER OVERVALUED OR UNDERVALUED.--Unscientific but
talented people value every mark of intelligence, whether it be on
a true or a false track; above all, they want the person with whom
they have intercourse to entertain them with his wit, to spur them
on, to inflame them, to carry them away in seriousness and play, and
in any case to be a powerful amulet to protect them against boredom.
Scientific natures, on the other hand, know that the gift of possessing
all manner of notions should be strictly controlled by the scientific
spirit: it is not that which shines, deludes and excites, but the often
insignificant truth that is the fruit which he knows how to shake down
from the tree of knowledge. Like Aristotle, he is not permitted to make
any distinction between the "bores" and the "wits," his _dæmon_ leads
him through the desert as well as through tropical vegetation, in order
that he may only take pleasure in the really actual, tangible, true. In
insignificant scholars this produces a general disdain and suspicion of
cleverness, and, on the other hand, clever people frequently have an
aversion to science, as have, for instance, almost all artists.
265.
SENSE IN SCHOOL.--School has no task more important than to teach
strict thought, cautious judgment, and logical conclusions, hence
it must pay no attention to what hinders these operations, such as
religion, for instance. It can count on the fact that human vagueness,
custom, and need will later on unstring the bow of all-too-severe
thought. But so long as its influence lasts it should enforce that
which is the essential and distinguishing point in man: "Sense and
Science, the _very highest_ power of man"--as Goethe judges. The great
natural philosopher, Von Baer, thinks that the superiority of all
Europeans, when compared to Asiatics, lies in the trained capability
of giving reasons for that which they believe, of which the latter are
utterly incapable. Europe went to the school of logical and critical
thought, Asia still fails to know how to distinguish between truth
and fiction, and is not Conscious whether its convictions spring from
individual observation and systematic thought or from imagination.
Sense in the school has made Europe what it is; in the Middle Ages
it was on the road to become once more a part and dependent of
Asia,--forfeiting, therefore, the scientific mind which it owed to the
Greeks.
266.
THE UNDERVALUED EFFECT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHING.--The value of a
public school is seldom sought in those things which are really learnt
there and are carried away never to be lost, but in those things which
are learnt and which the pupil only acquires against his will, in order
to get rid of them again as soon as possible. Every educated person
acknowledges that the reading of the classics, as now practised, is
monstrous proceeding carried on before you people are ripe enough for
it by teachers who with every word, often by their appearance alone,
throw a mildew on a good author. But therein lies the value, generally
unrecognised, of these teachers who speak _the abstract language of the
higher culture,_ which, though dry and difficult to understand, is yet
a sort of higher gymnastics of the brain; and there is value in the
constant recurrence in their language of ideas, artistic expressions,
methods and allusions which the young people hardly ever hear in the
conversations of their relatives and in the street. Even if the pupils
only _hear,_ their intellect is involuntarily trained to a scientific
mode of regarding things. It is not possible to emerge from this
discipline entirely untouched by its abstract character, and to remain
a simple child of nature.
267.
LEARNING MANY LANGUAGES.--The learning of many languages fills the
memory with words instead of with facts and thoughts, and this is a
vessel which, with every person, can only contain a certain limited
amount of contents. Therefore the learning of many languages is
injurious, inasmuch as it arouses a belief in possessing dexterity and,
as a matter of fact, it lends a kind of delusive importance to social
intercourse. It is also indirectly injurious in that it opposes the
acquirement of solid knowledge and the intention to win the respect of
men in an honest way. Finally, it is the axe which is laid to the root
of a delicate sense of language in our mother-tongue, which thereby
is incurably injured and destroyed. The two nations which produced
the greatest stylists, the Greeks and the French, learned no foreign
languages. But as human intercourse must always grow more cosmopolitan,
and as, for instance, a good merchant in London must now be able to
read and write eight languages, the learning of many tongues has
certainly become a necessary evil; but which, when finally carried to
an extreme, will compel mankind to find a remedy, and in some far-off
future there will be a new language, used at first as a language of
commerce, then as a language of intellectual intercourse generally,
then for all, as surely as some time or other there will be aviation.
Why else should philology have studied the laws of languages for a
whole century, and have estimated the necessary, the valuable, and the
successful portion of each separate language?
268.
THE WAR HISTORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.--In a single human life that
passes through many styles of culture we find that struggle condense
which would otherwise have been played out between two generations,
between father and son; the closeness of the relationship _sharpens_
this struggle, because each party ruthlessly drags in the familiar
inward nature of the other party; and thus this struggle in the single
individual becomes most _embittered \_ here every new phase disregards
the earlier ones with cruel injustice and misunderstanding of their
means and aims.
269.
A QUARTER OF AN HOUR EARLIER.--A mark is found occasionally whose views
are beyond his time, but only to such an extent that he anticipates the
common views of the next decade. He possesses public opinion before it
is public; that is, he has fallen into the arms of a view that deserves
to be trivial a quarter of an hour sooner than other people. But his
fame is usually far noisier than the fame of those who are really great
and prominent.
270.
THE ART OF READING.--Every strong tendency is one-sided; it approaches
the aim of the straight line and, like this, is exclusive, that is,
it does not touch many other aims, as do weak parties and natures
in their wave-like rolling to-and-fro; it must also be forgiven to
philologists that they are one-sided. The restoration and keeping pure
of texts, besides their explanation, carried on in common for hundreds
of years, has finally enabled the right methods to be found; the whole
of the Middle Ages was absolutely incapable of a strictly philological
explanation, that is, of the simple desire to comprehend what an
author says--it _was_ an achievement, finding these methods, let it
not be undervalued! Through this all science first acquired continuity
and steadiness, so that the art of reading rightly, which is called
philology, attained its summit.
271.
THE ART OF REASONING.--The greatest advance that men have made lies
in their acquisition of the art to _reason rightly._ It is not so
very natural, as Schopenhauer supposes when he says, "All are capable
of reasoning but few of judging," it is learnt late and has not yet
attained supremacy. False conclusion are the rule in older ages; and
the mythologies of all peoples, their magic and their superstition,
their religious cult and their law are the inexhaustible sources of
proof of this theory.
272.
PHASES OF INDIVIDUAL CULTURE.--Th strength and weakness of mental
productiveness depend far less on inherited talents than on the
accompanying amount of _elasticity._ Most educated young people of
thirty turn round at this solstice of their lives and are afterwards
disinclined for new mental turnings. Therefore, for the salvation
of a constantly increasing culture, a new generation is immediately
necessary, which will not do very much either, for in order to come up
with the father's culture the son must exhaust almost all the inherited
energy which the father himself possessed at that stage of life when
his son was born; with the little addition he gets further on (for as
here the road is being traversed for the second time progress is--a
little quicker; in order to learn that which the father knew, the son
does not consume quite so much strength). Men of great elasticity, like
Goethe, for instance, get through almost more than four generations in
succession would be capable of; but then they advance too quickly, so
that the rest of mankind only comes up with them in the next century,
and even then perhaps not completely, because the exclusiveness of
culture and the consecutiveness of development have been weakened by
the frequent interruptions. Men catch up more quickly with the ordinary
phases of intellectual culture which has been acquired in the course
of history. Nowadays they begin to acquire culture as religiously
inclined children, and perhaps about their tenth year these sentiments
attain to their highest point, and are then changed into weakened forms
(pantheism), whilst they draw near to science; they entirely pass
by God, immortality, and such-like things, but are overcome by the
witchcraft of a metaphysical philosophy. Eventually they find even this
unworthy of belief; art, on the contrary, seems to vouchsafe more and
more, so that for a time metaphysics is metamorphosed and continues to
exist either as a transition to art or as an artistically transfiguring
temperament. But the scientific sense grows more imperious and conducts
man to natural sciences and history, and particularly to the severest
methods of knowledge, whilst art has always a milder and less exacting
meaning. All this usually happens within the first thirty years of a
man's life. It is the recapitulation of a _pensum,_ for which humanity
had laboured perhaps thirty thousand years.
273.
RETROGRADED, NOT LEFT BEHIND.--Whoever, in the present day, still
derives his development from religious sentiments, and perhaps lives
for some length of time afterwards in metaphysics and art, has
assuredly gone back a considerable distance and begins his race with
other modern men under unfavourable conditions; he apparently loses
time and space. But because he stays in those domains where ardour and
energy are liberated and force flows continuously as a volcanic stream
out of an inexhaustible source, he goes forward all the more quickly as
soon as he has freed himself at the right moment from those dominators;
his feet are winged, his breast has learned quieter, longer, and more
enduring breathing. He has only retreated in order to have sufficient
room to leap; thus something terrible and threatening may lie in this
retrograde movement.
274.
A PORTION OF OUR EGO AS AN ARTISTIC OBJECT.--It is a sign of
superior culture consciously to retain and present a true picture of
certain phases of development which commoner men live through almost
thoughtlessly and then efface from the tablets of their souls: this is
a higher species of the painter's art which only the few understand.
For this it is necessary to isolate those phases artificially.
Historical studies form the qualification for this painting, for they
constantly incite us in regard to a portion of history, a people,
or a human life, to imagine for ourselves a quite distinct horizon
of thoughts, a certain strength of feelings, the prominence of this
or the obscurity of that. Herein consists the historic sense, that
out of given instances we can quickly reconstruct such systems of
thoughts and feelings, just as we can mentally reconstruct a temple
out of a few pillars and remains of walls accidentally left standing.
The next result is that we understand our fellow-men as belonging to
distinct systems and representatives of different cultures--that is, as
necessary, but as changeable; and, again, that we can separate portions
of our own development and put them down independently.
275.
CYNICS AND EPICUREANS.--The cynic recognises the connection between
the multiplied and stronger pains of the more highly cultivated man
and the abundance of requirements; he comprehends, therefore, that
the multitude of opinions about what is beautiful, suitable, seemly
and pleasing, must also produce very rich sources of enjoyment, but
also of displeasure. In accordance with this view he educates himself
backwards, by giving up many of these opinions and withdrawing from
certain demands of culture; he thereby gains a feeling of freedom
and strength; and gradually, when habit has made his manner of life
endurable, his sensations of displeasure are, as a matter of fact,
rarer and weaker than those of cultivated people, and approach those of
the domestic animal; moreover, he experiences everything with the charm
of contrast, and--he can also scold to his heart's content; so that
thereby he again rises high above the sensation-range of the animal.
The Epicurean has the same point of view as the cynic; there is usually
only a difference of temperament between them. Then the Epicurean makes
use of his higher culture to render himself independent of prevailing
opinions, he raises himself above them, whilst the cynic only remains
negative. He walks, as it were, in wind-protected, well-sheltered,
half-dark paths, whilst over him, in the wind, the tops of the trees
rustle and show him how violently agitated is the world out there. The
cynic, on the contrary, goes, as it were, naked into the rushing of the
wind and hardens himself to the point of insensibility.
276.
MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM OF CULTURE.--The best discoveries about
culture man makes within himself when he finds two heterogeneous powers
ruling therein. Supposing some one were living as much in love for
the plastic arts or for music as he was carried away by the spirit of
science, and that he were to regard it as impossible for him to end
this contradiction by the destruction of one and complete liberation of
the other power, there would therefore remain nothing for him to do
but to erect around himself such a large edifice of culture that those
two powers might both dwell within it, although at different ends,
whilst between them there dwelt reconciling, intermediary powers, with
predominant strength to quell, in case of need, the rising conflict.
But such an edifice of culture in the single individual will bear a
great resemblance to the culture of entire periods, and will afford
consecutive analogical teaching concerning it. For wherever the great
architecture of culture manifested itself it was its mission to compel
opposing powers to agree, by means of an overwhelming accumulation of
other less unbearable powers, without thereby oppressing and fettering
them.
277.