(_Delivered on the 23rd of March 1872._)
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--If you have lent a sympathetic ear to what I
have told you about the heated argument of our philosopher in the
stillness of that memorable night, you must have felt as disappointed
as we did when he announced his peevish intention. You will remember
that he had suddenly told us he wished to go; for, having been left in
the lurch by his friend in the first place, and, in the second, having
been bored rather than animated by the remarks addressed to him by his
companion and ourselves when walking backwards and forwards on the
hillside, he now apparently wanted to put an end to what appeared to
him to be a useless discussion. It must have seemed to him that his
day had been lost, and he would have liked to blot it out of his
memory, together with the recollection of ever having made our
acquaintance. And we were thus rather unwillingly preparing to depart
when something else suddenly brought him to a standstill, and the foot
he had just raised sank hesitatingly to the ground again.
A coloured flame, making a crackling noise for a few seconds,
attracted our attention from the direction of the Rhine; and
immediately following upon this we heard a slow, harmonious call,
quite in tune, although plainly the cry of numerous youthful voices.
"That's his signal," exclaimed the philosopher, "so my friend is
really coming, and I haven't waited for nothing, after all. It will be
a midnight meeting indeed--but how am I to let him know that I am
still here? Come! Your pistols; let us see your talent once again! Did
you hear the severe rhythm of that melody saluting us? Mark it well,
and answer it in the same rhythm by a series of shots."
This was a task well suited to our tastes and abilities; so we loaded
up as quickly as we could and pointed our weapons at the brilliant
stars in the heavens, whilst the echo of that piercing cry died away
in the distance. The reports of the first, second, and third shots
sounded sharply in the stillness; and then the philosopher cried
"False time!" as our rhythm was suddenly interrupted: for, like a
lightning flash, a shooting star tore its way across the clouds after
the third report, and almost involuntarily our fourth and fifth shots
were sent after it in the direction it had taken.
"False time!" said the philosopher again, "who told you to shoot
stars! They can fall well enough without you! People should know what
they want before they begin to handle weapons."
And then we once more heard that loud melody from the waters of the
Rhine, intoned by numerous and strong voices. "They understand us,"
said the philosopher, laughing, "and who indeed could resist when
such a dazzling phantom comes within range?" "Hush!" interrupted his
friend, "what sort of a company can it be that returns the signal to
us in such a way? I should say they were between twenty and forty
strong, manly voices in that crowd--and where would such a number come
from to greet us? They don't appear to have left the opposite bank of
the Rhine yet; but at any rate we must have a look at them from our
own side of the river. Come along, quickly!"
We were then standing near the top of the hill, you may remember, and
our view of the river was interrupted by a dark, thick wood. On the
other hand, as I have told you, from the quiet little spot which we
had left we could have a better view than from the little plateau on
the hillside; and the Rhine, with the island of Nonnenwörth in the
middle, was just visible to the beholder who peered over the
tree-tops. We therefore set off hastily towards this little spot,
taking care, however, not to go too quickly for the philosopher's
comfort. The night was pitch dark, and we seemed to find our way by
instinct rather than by clearly distinguishing the path, as we walked
down with the philosopher in the middle.
We had scarcely reached our side of the river when a broad and fiery,
yet dull and uncertain light shot up, which plainly came from the
opposite side of the Rhine. "Those are torches," I cried, "there is
nothing surer than that my comrades from Bonn are over yonder, and
that your friend must be with them. It is they who sang that peculiar
song, and they have doubtless accompanied your friend here. See!
Listen! They are putting off in little boats. The whole torchlight
procession will have arrived here in less than half an hour."
The philosopher jumped back. "What do you say?" he ejaculated, "your
comrades from Bonn--students--can my friend have come here with
_students_?"
This question, uttered almost wrathfully, provoked us. "What's your
objection to students?" we demanded; but there was no answer. It was
only after a pause that the philosopher slowly began to speak, not
addressing us directly, as it were, but rather some one in the
distance: "So, my friend, even at midnight, even on the top of a
lonely mountain, we shall not be alone; and you yourself are bringing
a pack of mischief-making students along with you, although you well
know that I am only too glad to get out of the way of _hoc genus
omne_. I don't quite understand you, my friend: it must mean something
when we arrange to meet after a long separation at such an
out-of-the-way place and at such an unusual hour. Why should we want a
crowd of witnesses--and such witnesses! What calls us together to-day
is least of all a sentimental, soft-hearted necessity; for both of us
learnt early in life to live alone in dignified isolation. It was not
for our own sakes, not to show our tender feelings towards each other,
or to perform an unrehearsed act of friendship, that we decided to
meet here; but that here, where I once came suddenly upon you as you
sat in majestic solitude, we might earnestly deliberate with each
other like knights of a new order. Let them listen to us who can
understand us; but why should you bring with you a throng of people
who don't understand us! I don't know what you mean by such a thing,
my friend!"
We did not think it proper to interrupt the dissatisfied old grumbler;
and as he came to a melancholy close we did not dare to tell him how
greatly this distrustful repudiation of students vexed us.
At last the philosopher's companion turned to him and said: "I am
reminded of the fact that even you at one time, before I made your
acquaintance, occupied posts in several universities, and that reports
concerning your intercourse with the students and your methods of
instruction at the time are still in circulation. From the tone of
resignation in which you have just referred to students many would be
inclined to think that you had some peculiar experiences which were
not at all to your liking; but personally I rather believe that you
saw and experienced in such places just what every one else saw and
experienced in them, but that you judged what you saw and felt more
justly and severely than any one else. For, during the time I have
known you, I have learnt that the most noteworthy, instructive, and
decisive experiences and events in one's life are those which are of
daily occurrence; that the greatest riddle, displayed in full view of
all, is seen by the fewest to be the greatest riddle, and that these
problems are spread about in every direction, under the very feet of
the passers-by, for the few real philosophers to lift up carefully,
thenceforth to shine as diamonds of wisdom. Perhaps, in the short time
now left us before the arrival of your friend, you will be good enough
to tell us something of your experiences of university life, so as to
close the circle of observations, to which we were involuntarily
urged, respecting our educational institutions. We may also be allowed
to remind you that you, at an earlier stage of your remarks, gave me
the promise that you would do so. Starting with the public school, you
claimed for it an extraordinary importance: all other institutions
must be judged by its standard, according as its aim has been
proposed; and, if its aim happens to be wrong, all the others have to
suffer. Such an importance cannot now be adopted by the universities
as a standard; for, by their present system of grouping, they would be
nothing more than institutions where public school students might go
through finishing courses. You promised me that you would explain this
in greater detail later on: perhaps our student friends can bear
witness to that, if they chanced to overhear that part of our
conversation."
"We can testify to that," I put in. The philosopher then turned to us
and said: "Well, if you really did listen attentively, perhaps you can
now tell me what you understand by the expression 'the present aim of
our public schools.' Besides, you are still near enough to this sphere
to judge my opinions by the standard of your own impressions and
experiences."
My friend instantly answered, quickly and smartly, as was his habit,
in the following words: "Until now we had always thought that the sole
object of the public school was to prepare students for the
universities. This preparation, however, should tend to make us
independent enough for the extraordinarily free position of a
university student;[9] for it seems to me that a student, to a greater
extent than any other individual, has more to decide and settle for
himself. He must guide himself on a wide, utterly unknown path for
many years, so the public school must do its best to render him
independent."
I continued the argument where my friend left off. "It even seems to
me," I said, "that everything for which you have justly blamed the
public school is only a necessary means employed to imbue the youthful
student with some kind of independence, or at all events with the
belief that there is such a thing. The teaching of German composition
must be at the service of this independence: the individual must enjoy
his opinions and carry out his designs early, so that he may be able
to travel alone and without crutches. In this way he will soon be
encouraged to produce original work, and still sooner to take up
criticism and analysis. If Latin and Greek studies prove insufficient
to make a student an enthusiastic admirer of antiquity, the methods
with which such studies are pursued are at all events sufficient to
awaken the scientific sense, the desire for a more strict causality of
knowledge, the passion for finding out and inventing. Only think how
many young men may be lured away for ever to the attractions of
science by a new reading of some sort which they have snatched up with
youthful hands at the public school! The public school boy must learn
and collect a great deal of varied information: hence an impulse will
gradually be created, accompanied with which he will continue to learn
and collect independently at the university. We believe, in short,
that the aim of the public school is to prepare and accustom the
student always to live and learn independently afterwards, just as
beforehand he must live and learn dependently at the public school."
The philosopher laughed, not altogether good-naturedly, and said: "You
have just given me a fine example of that independence. And it is this
very independence that shocks me so much, and makes any place in the
neighbourhood of present-day students so disagreeable to me. Yes, my
good friends, you are perfect, you are mature; nature has cast you and
broken up the moulds, and your teachers must surely gloat over you.
What liberty, certitude, and independence of judgment; what novelty
and freshness of insight! You sit in judgment--and the cultures of all
ages run away. The scientific sense is kindled, and rises out of you
like a flame--let people be careful, lest you set them alight! If I go
further into the question and look at your professors, I again find
the same independence in a greater and even more charming degree:
never was there a time so full of the most sublime independent folk,
never was slavery more detested, the slavery of education and culture
included.
"Permit me, however, to measure this independence of yours by the
standard of this culture, and to consider your university as an
educational institution and nothing else. If a foreigner desires to
know something of the methods of our universities, he asks first of
all with emphasis: 'How is the student connected with the university?'
We answer: 'By the ear, as a hearer.' The foreigner is astonished.
'Only by the ear?' he repeats. 'Only by the ear,' we again reply. The
student hears. When he speaks, when he sees, when he is in the company
of his companions when he takes up some branch of art: in short, when
he _lives_ he is independent, _i.e._ not dependent upon the
educational institution. The student very often writes down something
while he hears; and it is only at these rare moments that he hangs to
the umbilical cord of his alma mater. He himself may choose what he is
to listen to; he is not bound to believe what is said; he may close
his ears if he does not care to hear. This is the 'acroamatic' method
of teaching.
"The teacher, however, speaks to these listening students. Whatever
else he may think and do is cut off from the student's perception by
an immense gap. The professor often reads when he is speaking. As a
rule he wishes to have as many hearers as possible; he is not content
to have a few, and he is never satisfied with one only. One speaking
mouth, with many ears, and half as many writing hands--there you have
to all appearances, the external academical apparatus; the university
engine of culture set in motion. Moreover, the proprietor of this one
mouth is severed from and independent of the owners of the many ears;
and this double independence is enthusiastically designated as
'academical freedom.' And again, that this freedom may be broadened
still more, the one may speak what he likes and the other may hear
what he likes; except that, behind both of them, at a modest distance,
stands the State, with all the intentness of a supervisor, to remind
the professors and students from time to time that _it_ is the aim,
the goal, the be-all and end-all, of this curious speaking and hearing
procedure.
"We, who must be permitted to regard this phenomenon merely as an
educational institution, will then inform the inquiring foreigner that
what is called 'culture' in our universities merely proceeds from the
mouth to the ear, and that every kind of training for culture is, as I
said before, merely 'acroamatic.' Since, however, not only the
hearing, but also the choice of what to hear is left to the
independent decision of the liberal-minded and unprejudiced student,
and since, again, he can withhold all belief and authority from what
he hears, all training for culture, in the true sense of the term,
reverts to himself; and the independence it was thought desirable to
aim at in the public school now presents itself with the highest
possible pride as 'academical self-training for culture,' and struts
about in its brilliant plumage.
"Happy times, when youths are clever and cultured enough to teach
themselves how to walk! Unsurpassable public schools, which succeed in
implanting independence in the place of the dependence, discipline,
subordination, and obedience implanted by former generations that
thought it their duty to drive away all the bumptiousness of
independence! Do you clearly see, my good friends, why I, from the
standpoint of culture, regard the present type of university as a mere
appendage to the public school? The culture instilled by the public
school passes through the gates of the university as something ready
and entire, and with its own particular claims: _it_ demands, it gives
laws, it sits in judgment. Do not, then, let yourselves be deceived in
regard to the cultured student; for he, in so far as he thinks he has
absorbed the blessings of education, is merely the public school boy
as moulded by the hands of his teacher: one who, since his academical
isolation, and after he has left the public school, has therefore been
deprived of all further guidance to culture, that from now on he may
begin to live by himself and be free.
"Free! Examine this freedom, ye observers of human nature! Erected
upon the sandy, crumbling foundation of our present public school
culture, its building slants to one side, trembling before the
whirlwind's blast. Look at the free student, the herald of
self-culture: guess what his instincts are; explain him from his
needs! How does his culture appear to you when you measure it by three
graduated scales: first, by his need for philosophy; second, by his
instinct for art; and third, by Greek and Roman antiquity as the
incarnate categorical imperative of all culture?
"Man is so much encompassed about by the most serious and difficult
problems that, when they are brought to his attention in the right
way, he is impelled betimes towards a lasting kind of philosophical
wonder, from which alone, as a fruitful soil, a deep and noble culture
can grow forth. His own experiences lead him most frequently to the
consideration of these problems; and it is especially in the
tempestuous period of youth that every personal event shines with a
double gleam, both as the exemplification of a triviality and, at the
same time, of an eternally surprising problem, deserving of
explanation. At this age, which, as it were, sees his experiences
encircled with metaphysical rainbows, man is, in the highest degree,
in need of a guiding hand, because he has suddenly and almost
instinctively convinced himself of the ambiguity of existence, and has
lost the firm support of the beliefs he has hitherto held.
"This natural state of great need must of course be looked upon as the
worst enemy of that beloved independence for which the cultured youth
of the present day should be trained. All these sons of the present,
who have raised the banner of the 'self-understood,' are therefore
straining every nerve to crush down these feelings of youth, to
cripple them, to mislead them, or to stop their growth altogether;
and the favourite means employed is to paralyse that natural
philosophic impulse by the so-called "historical culture." A still
recent system,[10] which has won for itself a world-wide scandalous
reputation, has discovered the formula for this self-destruction of
philosophy; and now, wherever the historical view of things is found,
we can see such a naive recklessness in bringing the irrational to
'rationality' and 'reason' and making black look like white, that one
is even inclined to parody Hegel's phrase and ask: 'Is all this
irrationality real?' Ah, it is only the irrational that now seems to
be 'real,' _i.e._ really doing something; and to bring this kind of
reality forward for the elucidation of history is reckoned as true
'historical culture.' It is into this that the philosophical impulse
of our time has pupated itself; and the peculiar philosophers of our
universities seem to have conspired to fortify and confirm the young
academicians in it.
"It has thus come to pass that, in place of a profound interpretation
of the eternally recurring problems, a historical--yea, even
philological--balancing and questioning has entered into the
educational arena: what this or that philosopher has or has not
thought; whether this or that essay or dialogue is to be ascribed to
him or not; or even whether this particular reading of a classical
text is to be preferred to that. It is to neutral preoccupations with
philosophy like these that our students in philosophical seminaries
are stimulated; whence I have long accustomed myself to regard such
science as a mere ramification of philology, and to value its
representatives in proportion as they are good or bad philologists. So
it has come about that _philosophy itself_ is banished from the
universities: wherewith our first question as to the value of our
universities from the standpoint of culture is answered.
"In what relationship these universities stand to _art_ cannot be
acknowledged without shame: in none at all. Of artistic thinking,
learning, striving, and comparison, we do not find in them a single
trace; and no one would seriously think that the voice of the
universities would ever be raised to help the advancement of the
higher national schemes of art. Whether an individual teacher feels
himself to be personally qualified for art, or whether a professorial
chair has been established for the training of æstheticising literary
historians, does not enter into the question at all: the fact remains
that the university is not in a position to control the young
academician by severe artistic discipline, and that it must let happen
what happens, willy-nilly--and this is the cutting answer to the
immodest pretensions of the universities to represent themselves as
the highest educational institutions.
"We find our academical 'independents' growing up without philosophy
and without art; and how can they then have any need to 'go in for'
the Greeks and Romans?--for we need now no longer pretend, like our
forefathers, to have any great regard for Greece and Rome, which,
besides, sit enthroned in almost inaccessible loneliness and majestic
alienation. The universities of the present time consequently give no
heed to almost extinct educational predilections like these, and found
their philological chairs for the training of new and exclusive
generations of philologists, who on their part give similar
philological preparation in the public schools--a vicious circle which
is useful neither to philologists nor to public schools, but which
above all accuses the university for the third time of not being what
it so pompously proclaims itself to be--a training ground for culture.
Take away the Greeks, together with philosophy and art, and what
ladder have you still remaining by which to ascend to culture? For, if
you attempt to clamber up the ladder without these helps, you must
permit me to inform you that all your learning will lie like a heavy
burden on your shoulders rather than furnishing you with wings and
bearing you aloft.
"If you honest thinkers have honourably remained in these three stages
of intelligence, and have perceived that, in comparison with the
Greeks, the modern student is unsuited to and unprepared for
philosophy, that he has no truly artistic instincts, and is merely a
barbarian believing himself to be free, you will not on this account
turn away from him in disgust, although you will, of course, avoid
coming into too close proximity with him. For, as he now is, _he is
not to blame_: as you have perceived him he is the dumb but terrible
accuser of those who are to blame.
"You should understand the secret language spoken by this guilty
innocent, and then you, too, would learn to understand the inward
state of that independence which is paraded outwardly with so much
ostentation. Not one of these noble, well-qualified youths has
remained a stranger to that restless, tiring, perplexing, and
debilitating need of culture: during his university term, when he is
apparently the only free man in a crowd of servants and officials, he
atones for this huge illusion of freedom by ever-growing inner doubts
and convictions. He feels that he can neither lead nor help himself;
and then he plunges hopelessly into the workaday world and endeavours
to ward off such feelings by study. The most trivial bustle fastens
itself upon him; he sinks under his heavy burden. Then he suddenly
pulls himself together; he still feels some of that power within him
which would have enabled him to keep his head above water. Pride and
noble resolutions assert themselves and grow in him. He is afraid of
sinking at this early stage into the limits of a narrow profession;
and now he grasps at pillars and railings alongside the stream that he
may not be swept away by the current. In vain! for these supports give
way, and he finds he has clutched at broken reeds. In low and
despondent spirits he sees his plans vanish away in smoke. His
condition is undignified, even dreadful: he keeps between the two
extremes of work at high pressure and a state of melancholy
enervation. Then he becomes tired, lazy, afraid of work, fearful of
everything great; and hating himself. He looks into his own breast,
analyses his faculties, and finds he is only peering into hollow and
chaotic vacuity. And then he once more falls from the heights of his
eagerly-desired self-knowledge into an ironical scepticism. He divests
his struggles of their real importance, and feels himself ready to
undertake any class of useful work, however degrading. He now seeks
consolation in hasty and incessant action so as to hide himself from
himself. And thus his helplessness and the want of a leader towards
culture drive him from one form of life into another: but doubt,
elevation, worry, hope, despair--everything flings him hither and
thither as a proof that all the stars above him by which he could have
guided his ship have set.
"There you have the picture of this glorious independence of yours, of
that academical freedom, reflected in the highest minds--those which
are truly in need of culture, compared with whom that other crowd of
indifferent natures does not count at all, natures that delight in
their freedom in a purely barbaric sense. For these latter show by
their base smugness and their narrow professional limitations that
this is the right element for them: against which there is nothing to
be said. Their comfort, however, does not counter-balance the
suffering of one single young man who has an inclination for culture
and feels the need of a guiding hand, and who at last, in a moment of
discontent, throws down the reins and begins to despise himself. This
is the guiltless innocent; for who has saddled him with the
unbearable burden of standing alone? Who has urged him on to
independence at an age when one of the most natural and peremptory
needs of youth is, so to speak, a self-surrendering to great leaders
and an enthusiastic following in the footsteps of the masters?
"It is repulsive to consider the effects to which the violent
suppression of such noble natures may lead. He who surveys the
greatest supporters and friends of that pseudo-culture of the present
time, which I so greatly detest, will only too frequently find among
them such degenerate and shipwrecked men of culture, driven by inward
despair to violent enmity against culture, when, in a moment of
desperation, there was no one at hand to show them how to attain it.
It is not the worst and most insignificant people whom we afterwards
find acting as journalists and writers for the press in the
metamorphosis of despair: the spirit of some well-known men of letters
might even be described, and justly, as degenerate studentdom. How
else, for example, can we reconcile that once well-known 'young
Germany' with its present degenerate successors? Here we discover a
need of culture which, so to speak, has grown mutinous, and which
finally breaks out into the passionate cry: I am culture! There,
before the gates of the public schools and universities, we can see
the culture which has been driven like a fugitive away from these
institutions. True, this culture is without the erudition of those
establishments, but assumes nevertheless the mien of a sovereign; so
that, for example, Gutzkow the novelist might be pointed to as the
best example of a modern public school boy turned æsthete. Such a
degenerate man of culture is a serious matter, and it is a horrifying
spectacle for us to see that all our scholarly and journalistic
publicity bears the stigma of this degeneracy upon it. How else can we
do justice to our learned men, who pay untiring attention to, and even
co-operate in the journalistic corruption of the people, how else than
by the acknowledgment that their learning must fill a want of their
own similar to that filled by novel-writing in the case of others:
_i.e._ a flight from one's self, an ascetic extirpation of their
cultural impulses, a desperate attempt to annihilate their own
individuality. From our degenerate literary art, as also from that
itch for scribbling of our learned men which has now reached such
alarming proportions, wells forth the same sigh: Oh that we could
forget ourselves! The attempt fails: memory, not yet suffocated by the
mountains of printed paper under which it is buried, keeps on
repeating from time to time: 'A degenerate man of culture! Born for
culture and brought up to non-culture! Helpless barbarian, slave of
the day, chained to the present moment, and thirsting for
something--ever thirsting!'
"Oh, the miserable guilty innocents! For they lack something, a need
that every one of them must have felt: a real educational institution,
which could give them goals, masters, methods, companions; and from
the midst of which the invigorating and uplifting breath of the true
German spirit would inspire them. Thus they perish in the wilderness;
thus they degenerate into enemies of that spirit which is at bottom
closely allied to their own; thus they pile fault upon fault higher
than any former generation ever did, soiling the clean, desecrating
the holy, canonising the false and spurious. It is by them that you
can judge the educational strength of our universities, asking
yourselves, in all seriousness, the question: What cause did you
promote through them? The German power of invention, the noble German
desire for knowledge, the qualifying of the German for diligence and
self-sacrifice--splendid and beautiful things, which other nations
envy you; yea, the finest and most magnificent things in the world, if
only that true German spirit overspread them like a dark thundercloud,
pregnant with the blessing of forthcoming rain. But you are afraid of
this spirit, and it has therefore come to pass that a cloud of another
sort has thrown a heavy and oppressive atmosphere around your
universities, in which your noble-minded scholars breathe wearily and
with difficulty.
"A tragic, earnest, and instructive attempt was made in the present
century to destroy the cloud I have last referred to, and also to turn
the people's looks in the direction of the high welkin of the German
spirit. In all the annals of our universities we cannot find any trace
of a second attempt, and he who would impressively demonstrate what is
now necessary for us will never find a better example. I refer to the
old, primitive _Burschenschaft_.[11]
"When the war of liberation was over, the young student brought back
home the unlooked-for and worthiest trophy of battle--the freedom of
his fatherland. Crowned with this laurel he thought of something still
nobler. On returning to the university, and finding that he was
breathing heavily, he became conscious of that oppressive and
contaminated air which overhung the culture of the university. He
suddenly saw, with horror-struck, wide-open eyes, the non-German
barbarism, hiding itself in the guise of all kinds of scholasticism;
he suddenly discovered that his own leaderless comrades were abandoned
to a repulsive kind of youthful intoxication. And he was exasperated.
He rose with the same aspect of proud indignation as Schiller may have
had when reciting the _Robbers_ to his companions: and if he had
prefaced his drama with the picture of a lion, and the motto, 'in
tyrannos,' his follower himself was that very lion preparing to
spring; and every 'tyrant' began to tremble. Yes, if these indignant
youths were looked at superficially and timorously, they would seem to
be little else than Schiller's robbers: their talk sounded so wild to
the anxious listener that Rome and Sparta seemed mere nunneries
compared with these new spirits. The consternation raised by these
young men was indeed far more general than had ever been caused by
those other 'robbers' in court circles, of which a German prince,
according to Goethe, is said to have expressed the opinion: 'If he had
been God, and had foreseen the appearance of the _Robbers_, he would
not have created the world.'
"Whence came the incomprehensible intensity of this alarm? For those
young men were the bravest, purest, and most talented of the band both
in dress and habits: they were distinguished by a magnanimous
recklessness and a noble simplicity. A divine command bound them
together to seek harder and more pious superiority: what could be
feared from them? To what extent this fear was merely deceptive or
simulated or really true is something that will probably never be
exactly known; but a strong instinct spoke out of this fear and out of
its disgraceful and senseless persecution. This instinct hated the
Burschenschaft with an intense hatred for two reasons: first of all on
account of its organisation, as being the first attempt to construct a
true educational institution, and, secondly, on account of the spirit
of this institution, that earnest, manly, stern, and daring German
spirit; that spirit of the miner's son, Luther, which has come down to
us unbroken from the time of the Reformation.
"Think of the _fate_ of the Burschenschaft when I ask you, Did the
German university then understand that spirit, as even the German
princes in their hatred appear to have understood it? Did the alma
mater boldly and resolutely throw her protecting arms round her noble
sons and say: 'You must kill me first, before you touch my children?'
I hear your answer--by it you may judge whether the German university
is an educational institution or not.
"The student knew at that time at what depth a true educational
institution must take root, namely, in an inward renovation and
inspiration of the purest moral faculties. And this must always be
repeated to the student's credit. He may have learnt on the field of
battle what he could learn least of all in the sphere of 'academical
freedom': that great leaders are necessary, and that all culture begins
with obedience. And in the midst of victory, with his thoughts turned to
his liberated fatherland, he made the vow that he would remain German.
German! Now he learnt to understand his Tacitus; now he grasped the
signification of Kant's categorical imperative; now he was enraptured by
Weber's "Lyre and Sword" songs.[12] The gates of philosophy, of art,
yea, even of antiquity, opened unto him; and in one of the most
memorable of bloody acts, the murder of Kotzebue, he revenged--with
penetrating insight and enthusiastic short-sightedness--his one and only
Schiller, prematurely consumed by the opposition of the stupid world:
Schiller, who could have been his leader, master, and organiser, and
whose loss he now bewailed with such heartfelt resentment.
"For that was the doom of those promising students: they did not find
the leaders they wanted. They gradually became uncertain,
discontented, and at variance among themselves; unlucky indiscretions
showed only too soon that the one indispensability of powerful minds
was lacking in the midst of them: and, while that mysterious murder
gave evidence of astonishing strength, it gave no less evidence of the
grave danger arising from the want of a leader. They were
leaderless--therefore they perished.
"For I repeat it, my friends! All culture begins with the very
opposite of that which is now so highly esteemed as 'academical
freedom': with obedience, with subordination, with discipline, with
subjection. And as leaders must have followers so also must the
followers have a leader--here a certain reciprocal predisposition
prevails in the hierarchy of spirits: yea, a kind of pre-established
harmony. This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things naturally
tend, is always threatened by that pseudo-culture which now sits on
the throne of the present. It endeavours either to bring the leaders
down to the level of its own servitude or else to cast them out
altogether. It seduces the followers when they are seeking their
predestined leader, and overcomes them by the fumes of its narcotics.
When, however, in spite of all this, leader and followers have at last
met, wounded and sore, there is an impassioned feeling of rapture,
like the echo of an ever-sounding lyre, a feeling which I can let you
divine only by means of a simile.
"Have you ever, at a musical rehearsal, looked at the strange,
shrivelled-up, good-natured species of men who usually form the German
orchestra? What changes and fluctuations we see in that capricious
goddess 'form'! What noses and ears, what clumsy, _danse macabre_
movements! Just imagine for a moment that you were deaf, and had never
dreamed of the existence of sound or music, and that you were looking
upon the orchestra as a company of actors, and trying to enjoy their
performance as a drama and nothing more. Undisturbed by the idealising
effect of the sound, you could never see enough of the stern,
medieval, wood-cutting movement of this comical spectacle, this
harmonious parody on the _homo sapiens_.
"Now, on the other hand, assume that your musical sense has returned,
and that your ears are opened. Look at the honest conductor at the
head of the orchestra performing his duties in a dull, spiritless
fashion: you no longer think of the comical aspect of the whole scene,
you listen--but it seems to you that the spirit of tediousness spreads
out from the honest conductor over all his companions. Now you see
only torpidity and flabbiness, you hear only the trivial, the
rhythmically inaccurate, and the melodiously trite. You see the
orchestra only as an indifferent, ill-humoured, and even wearisome
crowd of players.
"But set a genius--a real genius--in the midst of this crowd; and you
instantly perceive something almost incredible. It is as if this
genius, in his lightning transmigration, had entered into these
mechanical, lifeless bodies, and as if only one demoniacal eye gleamed
forth out of them all. Now look and listen--you can never listen
enough! When you again observe the orchestra, now loftily storming,
now fervently wailing, when you notice the quick tightening of every
muscle and the rhythmical necessity of every gesture, then you too
will feel what a pre-established harmony there is between leader and
followers, and how in the hierarchy of spirits everything impels us
towards the establishment of a like organisation. You can divine from
my simile what I would understand by a true educational institution,
and why I am very far from recognising one in the present type of
university."
[From a few MS. notes written down by Nietzsche in the spring
and autumn of 1872, and still preserved in the Nietzsche
Archives at Weimar, it is evident that he at one time
intended to add a sixth and seventh lecture to the five just
given. These notes, although included in the latest edition
of Nietzsche's works, are utterly lacking in interest and
continuity, being merely headings and sub-headings of
sections in the proposed lectures. They do not, indeed,
occupy more than two printed pages, and were deemed too
fragmentary for translation in this edition.]