When one sees the number and variety of institutions which exist
for the purposes of education, and the vast throng of scholars and
masters, one might fancy the human race to be very much concerned
about truth and wisdom. But here, too, appearances are deceptive. The
masters teach in order to gain money, and strive, not after wisdom,
but the outward show and reputation of it; and the scholars learn, not
for the sake of knowledge and insight, but to be able to chatter and
give themselves airs. Every thirty years a new race comes into the
world--a youngster that knows nothing about anything, and after
summarily devouring in all haste the results of human knowledge as
they have been accumulated for thousands of years, aspires to be
thought cleverer than the whole of the past. For this purpose he goes
to the University, and takes to reading books--new books, as being of
his own age and standing. Everything he reads must be briefly put,
must be new! he is new himself. Then he falls to and criticises. And
here I am not taking the slightest account of studies pursued for the
sole object of making a living.
Students, and learned persons of all sorts and every age, aim as
a rule at acquiring _information_ rather than insight. They pique
themselves upon knowing about everything--stones, plants, battles,
experiments, and all the books in existence. It never occurs to them
that information is only a means of insight, and in itself of little
or no value; that it is his way of _thinking_ that makes a man a
philosopher. When I hear of these portents of learning and their
imposing erudition, I sometimes say to myself: Ah, how little they
must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much!
And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was
continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in
his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man
was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have
alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a
consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive. And neither
his undiscerning credulity nor his inexpressibly repulsive and barely
intelligible style--which seems like of a man taking notes, and very
economical of paper--is of a kind to give me a high opinion of his
power of independent thought.
We have seen that much reading and learning is prejudicial to thinking
for oneself; and, in the same way, through much writing and teaching,
a man loses the habit of being quite clear, and therefore thorough, in
regard to the things he knows and understands; simply because he has
left himself no time to acquire clearness or thoroughness. And so,
when clear knowledge fails him in his utterances, he is forced to fill
out the gaps with words and phrases. It is this, and not the dryness
of the subject-matter, that makes most books such tedious reading.
There is a saying that a good cook can make a palatable dish even
out of an old shoe; and a good writer can make the dryest things
interesting.
With by far the largest number of learned men, knowledge is a means,
not an end. That is why they will never achieve any great work;
because, to do that, he who pursues knowledge must pursue it as an
end, and treat everything else, even existence itself, as only a
means. For everything which a man fails to pursue for its own sake is
but half-pursued; and true excellence, no matter in what sphere, can
be attained only where the work has been produced for its own sake
alone, and not as a means to further ends.
And so, too, no one will ever succeed in doing anything really great
and original in the way of thought, who does not seek to acquire
knowledge for himself, and, making this the immediate object of his
studies, decline to trouble himself about the knowledge of others. But
the average man of learning studies for the purpose of being able to
teach and write. His head is like a stomach and intestines which let
the food pass through them undigested. That is just why his teaching
and writing is of so little use. For it is not upon undigested refuse
that people can be nourished, but solely upon the milk which secretes
from the very blood itself.
The wig is the appropriate symbol of the man of learning, pure and
simple. It adorns the head with a copious quantity of false hair, in
lack of one's own: just as erudition means endowing it with a great
mass of alien thought. This, to be sure, does not clothe the head so
well and naturally, nor is it so generally useful, nor so suited for
all purposes, nor so firmly rooted; nor when alien thought is used up,
can it be immediately replaced by more from the same source, as is
the case with that which springs from soil of one's own. So we find
Sterne, in his _Tristram Shandy_, boldly asserting that _an ounce of a
man's own wit is worth a ton of other people's_.
And in fact the most profound erudition is no more akin to genius than
a collection of dried plants in like Nature, with its constant flow
of new life, ever fresh, ever young, ever changing. There are no two
things more opposed than the childish naïveté of an ancient author and
the learning of his commentator.
_Dilettanti, dilettanti!_ This is the slighting way in which those who
pursue any branch of art or learning for the love and enjoyment of the
thing,--_per il loro diletto_, are spoken of by those who have taken
it up for the sake of gain, attracted solely by the prospect of money.
This contempt of theirs comes from the base belief that no man will
seriously devote himself to a subject, unless he is spurred on to it
by want, hunger, or else some form of greed. The public is of the same
way of thinking; and hence its general respect for professionals and
its distrust of _dilettanti_. But the truth is that the _dilettante_
treats his subject as an end, whereas the professional, pure and
simple, treats it merely as a means. He alone will be really in
earnest about a matter, who has a direct interest therein, takes to it
because he likes it, and pursues it _con amore_. It is these, and not
hirelings, that have always done the greatest work.
In the republic of letters it is as in other republics; favor is shown
to the plain man--he who goes his way in silence and does not set up
to be cleverer than others. But the abnormal man is looked upon as
threatening danger; people band together against him, and have, oh!
such a majority on their side.
The condition of this republic is much like that of a small State in
America, where every man is intent only upon his own advantage, and
seeks reputation and power for himself, quite heedless of the general
weal, which then goes to ruin. So it is in the republic of letters;
it is himself, and himself alone, that a man puts forward, because he
wants to gain fame. The only thing in which all agree is in trying to
keep down a really eminent man, if he should chance to show himself,
as one who would be a common peril. From this it is easy to see how it
fares with knowledge as a whole.
Between professors and independent men of learning there has always
been from of old a certain antagonism, which may perhaps be likened
to that existing been dogs and wolves. In virtue of their position,
professors enjoy great facilities for becoming known to their
contemporaries. Contrarily, independent men of learning enjoy, by
their position, great facilities for becoming known to posterity; to
which it is necessary that, amongst other and much rarer gifts, a man
should have a certain leisure and freedom. As mankind takes a long
time in finding out on whom to bestow its attention, they may both
work together side by side.
He who holds a professorship may be said to receive his food in the
stall; and this is the best way with ruminant animals. But he who
finds his food for himself at the hands of Nature is better off in the
open field.
Of human knowledge as a whole and in every branch of it, by far the
largest part exists nowhere but on paper,--I mean, in books, that
paper memory of mankind. Only a small part of it is at any given
period really active in the minds of particular persons. This is due,
in the main, to the brevity and uncertainty of life; but it also comes
from the fact that men are lazy and bent on pleasure. Every generation
attains, on its hasty passage through existence, just so much of human
knowledge as it needs, and then soon disappears. Most men of learning
are very superficial. Then follows a new generation, full of hope, but
ignorant, and with everything to learn from the beginning. It seizes,
in its turn, just so much as it can grasp or find useful on its brief
journey and then too goes its way. How badly it would fare with human
knowledge if it were not for the art of writing and printing! This it
is that makes libraries the only sure and lasting memory of the human
race, for its individual members have all of them but a very limited
and imperfect one. Hence most men of learning as are loth to have
their knowledge examined as merchants to lay bare their books.
Human knowledge extends on all sides farther than the eye can reach;
and of that which would be generally worth knowing, no one man can
possess even the thousandth part.
All branches of learning have thus been so much enlarged that he
who would "do something" has to pursue no more than one subject and
disregard all others. In his own subject he will then, it is true, be
superior to the vulgar; but in all else he will belong to it. If we
add to this that neglect of the ancient languages, which is now-a-days
on the increase and is doing away with all general education in the
humanities--for a mere smattering of Latin and Greek is of no use--we
shall come to have men of learning who outside their own subject
display an ignorance truly bovine.
An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par with a workman in
a factory, whose whole life is spent in making one particular kind of
screw, or catch, or handle, for some particular instrument or machine,
in which, indeed, he attains incredible dexterity. The specialist may
also be likened to a man who lives in his own house and never leaves
it. There he is perfectly familiar with everything, every little step,
corner, or board; much as Quasimodo in Victor Hugo's _Nôtre Dame_
knows the cathedral; but outside it, all is strange and unknown.
For true culture in the humanities it is absolutely necessary that
a man should be many-sided and take large views; and for a man of
learning in the higher sense of the word, an extensive acquaintance
with history is needful. He, however, who wishes to be a complete
philosopher, must gather into his head the remotest ends of human
knowledge: for where else could they ever come together?
It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be
specialists. For their very nature is to make the whole of existence
their problem; and this is a subject upon which they will every one of
them in some form provide mankind with a new revelation. For he alone
can deserve the name of genius who takes the All, the Essential, the
Universal, for the theme of his achievements; not he who spends his
life in explaining some special relation of things one to another.