Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao PauloCambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UKPublished in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New Yorkwww.cambridge.orgInformation on this tide: www.cambridge.org/9780521584586© Cambridge University Press 1997This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.First published 1997Eleventh printing 2007Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, CambridgeA catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library6Library of Congress Cataloguing in PublicatifJn dataNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900.[Unzeitgemiisse, Betrachtungen. English]Untimely meditations / Friedrich Nietzsche: edited byDaniel Breazeale: translated by R.J. Hollingdale.p. cm. - (Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy)Includes index.ISBN 0 521 58458 2 (hardback). - ISBN 0 521 58584 8 (paperback)1. Strauss, David Freidrich, 1808-1874. 2. History- Study and teaching.3. Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1788-1860. 4. Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883.I. Hollingdale, R. J. II. Tide. III. Series.B3313 .U52E5 1997193 - dc21 96-37028 CIPISBN-13 978-0-521-58458-6 hardbackISBN-13 978-0-521-58584-2 paperback. Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLsfor external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does notguarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

ContentsIntroductionChronologyFurther readingNote on the textviixxxvxlxlivUntimely MeditationsDavid Strauss, the Confessor and the WriterOn the Uses and Disadvantages of History for LifeSchopenhauer as EducatorRichard Wagner in BayreuthGlossary of namesNotesIndex157125195255259266

IIntroductionin particular had a special role to play in the increasingly urgenttask of cultural renewal - a conception of the academic callingwhich he believed he shared with his distinguished colleague atBasel, Jacob Burckhardt, author of The Civilization of theRenaissance in Italy (1860).Even during his student days at Leipzig, Nietzsche had toyedwith the idea of switching from classical philology to philosophy, 2and the idea seems to have reoccurred to him at Basel, for duringhis fourth semester there he unsuccessfully petitioned to beappointed to a recently vacated chair of philosophy and to havehis own chair filled by his friend Erwin Rohde. Even if his burninginterest in cultural and philosophical issues could not be adequatelyreflected in his classes and lectures (with the exception,perhaps, of his lectures on pre-Platonic philosophy), he was determinedthat these interests should receive prominent expression inhis first book. Encouraged by the Wagners at every step of theway, he transformed· his manuscripts on 'The DionysianWorldview' and 'The Origin of Tragic Thought' into the stunningBirth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, the second half of which wasdevoted largely to Wagner's 'art of the future' and to theprospects for a rebirth of tragic culture in late-nineteenth centuryGermany.Mter being rejected by one publisher, The Birth of Tragedy wasfinally published at the beginning of 1872 by Wagner's publisher,E. W. Fritsch.3 At this time, Nietzsche was at the height of his popularityas a professor in Basel and was just beginning a series offive, well-attended public lectures 'On the Future of OurEducational Institutions', in which he sharpened and amplifiedhis critique of the 'disinterested pursuit of pure science' andcalled for nothing less than a complete reform of higher educationand a total cultural revolution. As if in response to this call,Wagner's ambitious plans for establishing a permanent 'festivaltheatre' at Bayreuth were gathering momentum, and Nietzschewas intimately and enthusiastically involved in this planningprocess from the start, at one point even offering to resi hisprofessorship so that he could become a full-time lecturer andfund-raiser on behalf of the festival theatre project. Only a fewmonths later, in April 1872, the Wagners relocated to Bayreuth,thus bringing to a rather abrupt end what were unquestionablythe happiest three years of Nietzsche's life.Barely a month later, another event occurred that had equallyix

Introductionconception of the 'plastic' or creative power of human beings andsocieties to overcome and to transform themselves. As in his earlieruse of Strauss as a rhetorical means for introducing his ownthoughts on the differences between genuine and spurious culture,however, Nietzsche's highly original discussion of the relationshipbetween history (and the study of history) and humanlife is not really dependent upon his choice of this particularpair of contemporary thinkers to illustrate certain points in hisdiscussion.Though the second Untimely Meditation is sometimes read as ablanket rejection of 'historicism', this is far from the truth. WhatNietzsche rejects in neo-Hegelian philosophies of history (such asHartmann's) is not the basic thesis that every aspect and expressionof human life is unavoidably conditioned by history, butrather, the progressive or whiggish consequences that are typicallyalbeit,in Nietzsche's view, quite illicitly - drawn from this thesis. Itis not historicism per se to which he objects in this Meditation, butrather the unexamined teleology that usually accompanies it.'History', of course, can mean either the past itself or the studyor knowledge of the past, and the second Meditation is concernedwith the 'use and disadvantages for life' of history in bothsenses of the term, though, admittedly, Nietzsche does not alwaysbother to make this distinction clear to his readers. Despite thefact that the attention of commentators has generally beenfocused upon his discussion of various approaches to the study ofthe past (and, more narrowly, upon his influential distinctionbetween 'monumental', 'antiquarian' and 'critical' approaches to'history') , a perhaps more important feature of the secondMeditation is precisely the way in which its author seeks simultaneouslyto concede the inescapable historicity of human existenceand to affirm the creative capacity of human beings to overcomethemselves and their past. One of the things that Nietzscheattempts to do in this brief text is thus to begin constructing anew account of our relationship to time in general and to the pastin particular - a project that, by the time of Thus Spoke Zarathustra(1883-5), will come to occupy the very centre of his attention. Inthe language of On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, theproject is to show how human life requires us to adopt both a'historical' and an 'ahistorical' perspective upon ourselves.This recognition of our complex relationship to history and totime clearly has direct and important implications for Nietzsche'sxv

IntroductionHuman, that by the time he wrote Schopenhauer he himself 'nolonger believed in Schopenhauer'. And there is· plenty of documentaryevidence from Nietzsche's own correspondence andunpublished papers, as well as from the testimony of friends suchas Paul Deussen, to show that he began to have serious reservationsabout the most central doctrines of Schopenhauer's philosophyonly a few short years after his dramatic 'conversion' toSchopenhauerianism as a student in Leipzig during Fall 1865.13By 1871 at the latest, he had privately rejected not onlySchopenhauer's 'world-negating' pessimism, but also his fundamental dualism of 'appearance' (,representations') and 'reality'(the 'will' qua 'thing in itself') . Even if one remains suspicious ofNietzsche's later claim that 'I distrusted Schopenhauer's systemfrom the start', 14 there still can be no doubt that by the time hewrote the third Meditation he had long since jettisoned any allegiancehe may once have had to the two most distinctive featuresof Schopenhauer's philosophical system.Why then does Nietzsche, writing in 1874, still considerSchopenhauer to be the very exemplar of a philosophical educator?The answer to this question lies in the radically new conceptionsof both 'education' and 'philosophy' that are propoundedin this text - though neither will seem all that new to readersacquainted with Nietzsche's unpublished notes from the immediatelypreceding years, for much of the content of Schopenhauer isdirectly anticipated in 'The Philosopher as Cultural Physician'and other posthumously published notes and manuscripts originallyintended for use in the 'philosophers' book' project.As described in the third Meditation, the philosophers' task is'to be lawgivers as to the measure, stamp and weight of things'(p. 144) and to provide their contemporaries with a new 'pictureof life' (p. 141); and it is precisely by establishing these new valuesand by erecting this 'new image of man' (p. 150) that a philosopher'educates' others. He does not, however, accomplish thesethings primarily by what he writes in his books or by the doctrineshe propounds in his system, but rather by the example of his own life.This is precisely how Nietzsche had interpreted the task andaccomplishment of the pre-Platonic philosophers in 'Philosophyin the Tragic Age of the Greeks', and it is also how he interpretsSchopenhauer's accomplishment as a philosophical educator inthis essay. Nietzsche thus feels free to ignore Schopenhauer'sphilosophical doctrines in a book entitled Schopenhauer as Educatorxvii

Introductionbecause he contends that the real achievement of any philosopher -Schopenhauer included - lies precisely in the example he providesto others of 'the courageous visibility of the philosophical life'(p. 137).To be 'educated' by a philosopher, therefore, has nothing to dowith subscribing to his favourite theories or philosophical doctrines:one is educated by Schopenhauer if one's own manner ofliving has been decisively affected by his 'example'. The word'example' is here placed within quotation marks for the simplereason that the 'example' provided to Nietzsche by Schopenhauerwas not really that of his actual life, though Nietzsche certainlydid admire him for his rejection of all academic and institutionalties in favour of a more independent mode of living. Though afew anecdotes are sprinkled throughout the third Meditation,Nietzsche is clearly not interested in relating Schopenhauer'sbiography. What he holds up to his readers instead is somethingaltogether different, a mere 'image' of human life: not an idealizedversion of the actual person, Arthur t;chopenhauer; still less,an ideal embodiment of the world-denying philosophy expoundedin The World as Will and Representation; but rather, 'the'Schopenhauerian image of man' (pp. 152-5) .What directly inspired - and thus educated - the youngNietzsche was a certain notion of human possibility, an image of a ,particular way of living and of a particular kind of person, animage that he apparently constructed for himself as he continuedto read and to reflect upon Schopenhauer throughout the late1860s and early 1870s. Nietzsche's image of the 'Schopenhauerianman', whom he describes as 'voluntarily taking upon himself thesuffering involved in being truthful' (p. 152) and as a 'destroyinggenius',15 resembles neither Arthur Schopenhauer himself norSchopenhauer's ideal of the world-denying 'saint', but is instead aproduct of Nietzsche's own philosophical imagination. He associatedthis image with Schopenhauer primarily out of simple gratitudefor the fact that he had arrived at this 'image of human life'through years of sustained, critical reflection upon Schopenhauer'sarguments and assumptions - as well, no doubt, as throughreflection upon the well-documented contradiction betweenSchopenhauer's life and his philosophy.1 6That Nietzsche drew from his personal encounter withSchopenhauer's philosophy conclusions radically at odds withthose drawn by Schopenhauer himself does not imply that there isxviii

Introductionanything disingenuous about his description, in 1874, ofSchopenhauer as his most important 'educator'. On the contrary,he was grateful for precisely this reason, as is apparent from thefollowing note, written four years later: 'The Schopenhauerianman drove me to skepticism against everything I had previouslydefended and held worthy of high esteem including the Greeks,Schopenhauer, and Wagner - against the genius, the saint - thepessimism of knowledge. By means of this detour I arrived at theheights with the fresh wind' . 17 The thesis of the third Meditation isthat true education involves the liberation of the self from everythingforeign to it, including those elements of oneself that onejudges to be incompatible with one's true (future) self.Schopenhauer 'educated' Nietzsche by provoking and inspiringhim to 'become himself', even if this should involve - as it certainlydid - a decisive rejection of Schopenhauer's philosophy.Schopenhauer as Educator remains one of Nietzsche's most personaland stimulating bOOKS, valuable not merely as an essential documentfor understanding his own spiritual development, but also asan early and eloquent exploration of some of his most characteristic themes and ideas. Particularly noteworthy is the discussion,which begins on the very first page, of the deeply problematic conceptionof the 'true self'. Here one finds Nietzsche already strivingto defend a novel conception of genuine selfhood as a never-to-becompletedprocess of self-development and self-overcoming, aphilosophical project that recognizes the elements of truth containedin both essentialist and existentialist theories of the self,while committing itself fully to neither. The 'true' self, accordingto the author of Schopenhauer as Educator, is neither an externallygiven and unchangeable 'essence' (such as Schopenhauer's 'intelligiblecharacter') nor an arbitrary and freely-willed 'construct'.My true' self is something I have to 'become', but it is also what Ialready 'am' . The implications of this new conception of the selfare by no means fully apparent in the third Meditation, nor are thedifficulties it raises fully explored. For this, one will have to waitanother decade or more. But the basic idea of the 'Nietzscheanself' - as well as the fundamental problems raised by such an idea -is already present in Schopenhauer as Educator.The substantial riches of the third Untimely Meditation werelargely lost on Nietzsche's contemporaries and have been only rarelyrecognized by subsequent generations of readers and interpreters.Despite the vigorous promotional efforts of Nietzsche's newXIX

IntroductionIi1A new coolness nevertheless seems detectable in Nietzsche'srelationship with the Wagners, beginning perhaps during his visitto Bayreuth in August 1874, when he and Wagner quarrelledopenly over Nietzsche's admiration for Wagner's great rival,Brahms, and over other musical matters. Nietzsche subsequentlyturned down repeated invitations from the Wagners to spend theChristmas holidays 1874 with them and to attend the rehearsalsscheduled for summer 1875. (Wagner's plan called for a summerof rehearsals a year prior to the actual first performance of theRing cycle.) It was under these circumstances that he began towrite Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. Though he had mentioned aMeditation with this title more than a year earlier (in a letter toGersdorff of 11 February 1874), it is difficult not to see his decisionto revive this project as an effort to demonstrate his fealty tothe maestro who was irritated by his absence from Bayreuth thatsummer.Whatever Nietzsche's· actual reasons for beginning this newessay may have been, he soon began to have serious reservationsabout continuing the series of Untimely Meditations, and, in a letterof 7 October 1875, he confided to Rohde that he was abandoningthe Meditation on Wagner on the grounds that 'it is of value onlyfor me, as a way of orienting myself with respect to the most difficultpoints of our recent experience'. It was around this sametime that a young musician named Heinrich Koselitz, who, atNietzsche's suggestion, adopted the stage name 'Peter Gast',entered his orbit and began to serve as his assistant; and it islargely due to Gast's intervention that the fourth UntimelyMeditation was ever published at all. Gast read the unfinished manuscriptof Wagner in Bayreuth in Spring 1876 and insisted that itshould be completed and published. Once again Nietzsche maintainedthat the piece> was too 'personal' for publication, thoughhe agreed to allow Gast to make a fair copy for presentation toWagner on his birthday (22 May) . Eventually, however, he decidedinstead to add some additional material to this manuscript and,as he had intended, have it published as the fourth UntimelyMeditation. Printing was completed over the summer, andNietzsche was able to present Wagner with a copy in August, duringthe first Bayreuth festival.Richard Wagner in Bayreuth remains to this day one ofNietzsche's least popular and least read works, and it is not difficultto see why. It wholly lacks the stylistic unity of the other threexxi

IntroductionUntimely Meditations, in part, perhaps, because it contains so many(usually unidentified) quotations from and paraphrases ofWagner's overwrought prose. Even for the specialist, it is a difficultand sometimes painful work to read, and one suspects that itmust have been an equally difficult and painful book forNietzsche to write. There is certainly something forced and deeplyambivalent about the overall tone of this essay, and again one suspectsthat this is an all-too-accurate reflection of the author's ownprofound ambivalence about his subject.Just as Schopenhauer as Educator was written some years afterNietzsche had ceased to be an adherent of Schopenhauer's philosophy,so was Wa gner in Bayreuth written at a point in his lifewhen he had already formulated (albeit only privately) the basicelements of the devastating critique of Wagner as a 'histrionicromantic' that he would make public only many years later.Schopenhauer, however, was dead, whereas Wagner was not onlyvery much alive, but was also extremely sensitive to any appearanceof criticism or disloyalty on the par of his friends and allies.Hence Nietzsche's dilemma: he did admire Wagner and was cer-,tainly grateful to him (as to Schopenhauer) for the inspiration ofhis example and for his assistance in helping Nietzsche 'becomehimself'; on the other hand, he harboured increasingly seriousreservations about Wagner's art and personality, not to mention,his even stronger reservations about Bayreuth and the'Wagnerians'. The problem was how to write a book, intended forthe public, in which he could express his admiration without violating his intellectual integrity. Though it cannot be said thatNietzsche succeeded fully in resolving this problem, his strategyseems clear: to use Wagner's own words against Wagner himself.By quoting copiously from his writings, Nietzsche would erect acertain (Wagnerian) ideal of art and of culture, an ideal to whichhe himself once subscribed whole-heartedly and to which hecould still subscribe at least in part. It would then be left up to thereaders to determine for themselves - assisted, perhaps, by a fewdiscreet suggestions from the author - how far short Wagner'sactual achievement was from this ideal.Despite the difficulties of 'reading' the fourth Meditation - orperhaps because of them - Wa gner in Bayreuth remains a key documentfor anyone interested in Nietzsche's biography and intellectualdevelopment. Its interest, however, is not merely psychobiographical;it too contains its share of stimulating and originalxxii

Introductionideas concerning such topics as the relationship between art andscience, the origin of language and (returning to the theme ofthe first Meditation) the origin and task of culture.The completion of Wagner in Bayreuth coincided with yet anothercrisis in Nietzsche's health, one which forced him to cancel hisclasses several weeks prior to the end of the summer semester of1876 and to apply (successfully) for a sabbatical leave for the followingacademic year. First, however, he had to attend theBayreuth festival, which he dutifully did. Though he managed toattend the first performances of the Ring, the festival proved to besuch a torment to him and the sight of the assembled Wagnerianswas so repugnant that he soon sought refuge in the nearby villageof Klingenbrunn. Just a few months later he was a thousand milesaway, living in Sorrento with Paul Ree and working on an entirelynew literary project.The project in question, to which Nietzsche had given the tentativetitle 'The Free Spirit', had originally been intended as thenext instalment in the series of Untimely Meditations. Some timeduring the year in Italy, however, Nietzsche underwent what helater described in a letter of 19 February 1888 to Georg Brandesas 'a crisis and shedding of the skin' and reconceived the structureand form of his next literary work accordingly. The title toowas altered: it now became Human, All Too Human a book as differentin tone and in content from Richard Wagner in Bayreuth asthe landscape and climate of Sorrento is from that of Bayreuth,and the first book by Nietzsche to be published with no indicationof the author's academic degree and institutional affiliation.2oCoinciding as it did with the first Bayreuth festival, Wagner inBayreuth naturally received a bit more partisan attention from thepublic and the press than the previous two instalments in theseries, though it too fell far short of the publisher's and author'sexpectations.21 In reply to an inquiry from Schmeitzner aboutthe possibility of continuing the series, Nietzsche replied on2 February 1878, 'shouldn't we consider the Untimely Meditationsfinished?' Seven years later he briefly considered reviving themand adding one to three new 'Untimely Ones'.22 Nothing came ofthis, however, though a distant echo of it may still be detected inthe name that Nietzsche gave to the longest section of one of hislast works (Twilight of the Idols): 'Streifziige eines Unzeitgemassen'or 'Skirmishes of an Untimely Person'.XXlll

IntroductionIn 1886, after he had at last obtained the publication rights toall of his earlier writings, Nietzsche immediately began preparingnew, expanded editions and adding new prefaces and other newmaterial. The only exceptions were the Untimely Meditations andParts I-III of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which were reissued in theiroriginal forms (though Zarathustra I-III were bound in a singlevolume.) The 'new editions' of the four Untimely Meditations thatwere issued in late 1886 are therefore identical to the first editions.Though some commentators have interpreted Nietzsche's failureto provide the Meditations with new prefaces as a sign of hisrelatively low regard for them, the opposite would seem to be thecase. These four short works were (along with Zarathustra I-III)alone given the honour of being judged to stand in no need ofadditional introduction, defence or explanation. This is whyNietzsche could instruct his publisher, in a letter of 29 August1886, that 'the four Untimely Meditations are the only ones that Iwish to leave as they are'.tGiven the relative neglect of these four texts by commentatorsand interpreters, one might be surprised not only at the numberof references to them one finds in Nietzsche's later correspondenceand note books, but also at the profound personal significancehe evidently attached to his 'Unzeitgemiissen' or 'UntimelyOnes' (which is how he customarily referred to them). Not onlydid he repeatedly recommend them as essential documents forunderstanding the development of his thought, but he alsodescribed them as - and, indeed, claimed that he had explicitlyintended them to serve as - 'lures' or 'fish hooks' for attractingand capturing the attention of the readers he was so desperatelytrying to reach.23 Admittedly, Nietzsche viewed virtually all of hiswritings as, in this sense, 'bait'; but some bait is better than others,and of all of his writings none, in his view, was better-suited forthis important function than the Untimely Meditations, especiallythe third one. As he declared to Brandes, in a letter of 10 April1888: 'This short work serves as my sign of recognition: the personwho does not find himself addressed personally by this workwill probably have nothing more to do with me.'As mentioned, Nietzsche believed that the Untimely Meditationswere also especially useful for providing his readers (once'hooked', like Brandes) with essential insight into the developmentof his philosophy and with an understanding of what he wasxxiv

Introductiontrying to accomplish in his later writings. His letter to Brandesthus continues: 'The Untimely Meditations, youthful writings in acertain sense, merit the closest attention for [understanding] mydevelopment. 'In addition, they always retained a profound and essentially privatemeaning for their author. The deeply personal significance ofthese texts is alluded to, albeit elliptically, in a fragment fromSpring or Summer 1877: 'Heart first poured out in UntimelyMeditations' Five years later, in mid-December 1882, Nietzscheseemed to reaffirm this sentiment when he presented Lou Salomewith a copy of Schopenhauer as Educator, accompanied by thecomment, 'this book contains my deepest and most fundamentalfeelings'.Among the 'fundamental feelings' that 'pour from Nietzsche'sheart' in the Untimely Meditations, perhaps the most obvious is hisangry and sometimes bitter rejection of so many of the most distinctivefeatures of the " cultural, political and intellectual landscapeof late nineteenth-century European (and especiallyGerman) civilization, with a special animus reserved for the professionto which he himself devoted more than a decade of hislife. Rejection, however, is by no means the only 'deep' feelingexpressed in these works, which also bear convincing witnessto their author's candid and enthusiastic veneration for certainpowerful ideals and for particular individuals (above all,Schopenhauer and Wagner) whom he treats as personal embodimentsof them. Still more importantly, the Meditations testifypoignantly to their author's growing awareness of his own unique taskand individual vocation as a thinker. Let us consider each of these'basic sentiments' in turn.The negative pathos that pervades all four of the Meditations isimpossible to miss and was uppermost in Nietzsche's mind when,in a letter to Hans Bulow of 2 January 1875, he reported his decisionto set aside the next five years 'for working out the remainingten Untimely Meditations and thus for clearing my soul as much aspossible of this polemical-passionate garbage'. The UntimelyMeditations provided the young Nietzsche with an effective andbadly needed vehicle for 'externalizing' and 'getting rid of whathe characterized as 'everything negative and rebellious that is hiddenwithin me' .25It was in the Untimely Meditations that Nietzsche first found thecourage to 'say No' to his age and to his fellow scholars, andxxv

Introductionhence to significant parts of his own self; and this alone wouldhave been a sufficient reason for him to accord these texts a specialplace in his heart. Saying No to oneself, however, is not withoutits costs, as few have appreciated better than Nietzsche, thefuture exponent of amor fati. And indeed, the Meditations sometimesthreaten to become unbalanced by their author's polemicalzeal and to be overwhelmed by a seething spirit of resentment.Thus it is perhaps fortunate that the original series was nevercompleted. This, at any rate, seems to have been Nietzsche's lateropinion, when, in the previously cited letter to Brandes, he notesthat there were originally supposed to be thirteen essays and thenadds: 'fortunately, my health said No!'The Untimely Meditations are, however, just as important for whatthey praise as for what they reject, even though, as we have now hadseveral occasions to note, much of this same praise was also ameans for distancing - and thereby separating - the author ofthese paeans from certain powerful influences and stimuli. This isespecially true of the last two, which, f r all their overt praise of'Schopenhauer' and 'Wagner', are demonstrably products of a,mind that has already largely freed itself from the direct influenceof either of these two heavily idealized figures.The personal significance for Nietzsche of these works thus hadnothing to do with the alleged accuracy of his portraits of the subjects.What mattered to him instead were the new ideals of cultureand of humanity that he was able to project under the inspiration -,or, to use a term he himself employed in this context in EcceHomo, under the 'signs' - of 'Schopenhauer' and 'Wagner' .26 Evenif there is a certain amount of wishful thinking contained inNietzsche's later claim that his earlier praise of them was nothingbut a device for freeing himself of their influence, and even if thepraise and veneration expressed for them in the UntimelyMeditations was to a certain degree sincere and heartfelt: even thisis something toward which Nietzsche later expressed his personalgratitude, as, for instance, in the following passage from anunpublished draft, written in August or September 1885, for apreface to a collected edition of the Meditations:What I, in my 'younger years', once wrote about Schopenhauerand Richard Wagner - or rather, what I painted about them, andperhaps in an all too audacious, overly-confident and overlyyouthful'fresco' style - is something I certainly have no desireto examine in detail today as 'true' or 'false'. But suppose that Ixxvi

Introductionwas wrong in what I wrote: at least my error dishonored neitherthem nor me. It is something to err in such a way! It is also somethingfor precisely me to be led astray by such errors. At thattime, moreover, when I had resolved to paint portraits of 'thephilosopher' and 'the artist' - to render, as it were, my own 'categoricalimperative': at such a time it was also an inestimablebenefit for me not to have to apply my own colors to an emptycanvas containing nothing real, but rather to be able to paint, soto speak, upon shapes that were already sketched out inadvance. Without realizing it, I was speaking only for myselfindeed, at bottom, only of myself.27l,JThis passage points directly to what was unquestionably forNietzsche himself the most poignant and significant feature of theUntimely Meditations: namely, the many specific ways in which thesetexts so clearly anticipate and foreshadow the future direction of histhinking. In the view of their author, these youthful works constituteda series of public pledges and solemn promises concerning hisown future tasks and projects. The note just cited, for example, concludeswith the observation that, 'Anyone who reads these textswith a young and fiery soul will perhaps guess the solemn vowwith which I then bound myself to my life - with which I resolvedto live my own life. 'Nowhere is the extraordinary personal significance of theUn timely Meditations for Nietzsche himself more clearly expressedthan in the draft of a letter from this same period (August 1885)to an unidentified correspondent, to whom Nietzsche confides,'For me, my "Untimely Ones" signify promises. What they are forothers, I do not know. Believe me, I would have ceased living along time ago if I had turned aside even a single step from thesepromises! Perhaps someone will yet discover that from Human, AllToo Human on I have done nothing but fulfill my promises.' Thisclaim, which is publicly repeated in Nietzsche's discussion of theMeditations in Ecce Homo, occurs over and over again in the correspondence6f his final years, where he reiterates. his description ofthe Untimely Meditations as 'personal confessions', 'public pledges'and 'solemn promises to myself . 28What exactly was it that Nietzsche believed he had 'promised'himself and his readers in these early works? What did he thinkhe had 'publicly pledged' to do? A partial answer to this questionmay be inferred from a remark contained in a letter he sent toxxvii

IntroductionPeter Gast at the very moment when he believed he had finallyfulfilled his earlier promise, that is, immediately after the completionof Part I of Zarathustra: 'It is curious: I wrote the commentaryprior to the text! Everything was already promised in Schopenhauer aseducator. But there was still a long way to go from "Human, All TooHuman" to the "Superhuman".'29 This and many other similarpassages strongly suggest that Nietzsche believed that inSchopenhauer and the other 'Untimely Ones' he had not onlypledged himself publicly to pursue a certain set of questions ('mytask'), but had also provided unmistakable public hints about howthese same questions were to be answered and how he intended toaccomplish his task.In fact, it is not difficult for a reader familiar with Nietzsche'slater works to find in the Untimely Meditations clear anticipations ofmany characteristically Nietzschean themes and theses, including,but by no means limited to: a global critique of various forms ofdualism (including that of the 'outer' and 'inner' selves, as well asthe metaphysical dualism of the 'real' abd 'apparent' worlds); adefinition of the 'genuine philosopher' (in contradistinction to 'the mere 'scholar' or 'academic labourer') as a creator of valuesand critic of both science and art; the presupposition of a hyperbolicKantian scepticism with respect to the limits of knowledge,coupled with an endorsement of an instrumental 'perspectivism'with respect to actual knowledge claims; an insistence that neitherscience nor morality is self-grounding and an appeal to 'life'itself as the highest standard or criterion of judgment; a recognitionof the need for various sorts of 'illusion' (uneasily coupledwith an insistence that intellectual integrity requires us to identifythese illusions as such); and a definition of 'culture' as 'unity ofstyle'.Some distinctively 'Zarathustrian' doctrines are also anticipatedin the Untimely Meditations, including: a critique of complacent'omnisatisfaction' (whether of the 'cultural philistine' or of the'last man'); an insistence that 'being oneself ' requires 'overcomingoneself'; an emphasis upon the personal and cultural importanceof positing an ideal of a 'higher' form of humanity; a recognitionof the creative and productive power of negation anddestruction; a clear awareness of the inescapably temporal and'this-worldly' character of the human condition; and even (espe-. cially in the second Meditation) some oblique play with the idea of'eternal recurrence' .xxviii

IntroductionIt is also in the Untimely Meditations that Nietzsche first begins toperfect what is perhaps the most original feature of his own philosophicalpractice: namely, the method of 'genealogical' analysis,which is employed in these early texts to illuminate the origin ofsuch problematic phenomena as 'the pure will to truth', 'the selflessman of science' and conventional morality. One even finds inthe Meditations unmistakable anticipations of what is arguably themost important achievement of Nietzsche's final years: his analysisof the inevitability of nihilism, a topic that is distantly foreshadowedin his critique of the failure of secular humanists such asStrauss to recognize the intimate connection between their ownprogressive liberalism and those religious standards they reject, aswell as their failure to anticipate the dire and inexorable consequencesof their withdrawal of faith in the latter.In addition to any purely doctrinal continuity between theUntimely Meditations and Nietzsche's later writings, there is alsoanother sense in which he believed that his distinctive 'task' and'promise' were first made public in them - a sense that has less todo with his later writings than with his radically altered mode of lifein the years following their publication. One of the central thesesof the Meditations is that every genuine and original thinkerrequires a degree of radical personal independence that is simplyincompatible with any sort of institutional affiliation or sponsorship.It is the very independence of the true philosopher's modeof living that confirms his or her right to be taken seriously as aphilosophical educator.There is a familiar and frequently reproduced photograph ofNietzsche, taken at Basel around 1874, which bears the inscription,'Friedrich the Untimely One'. Nothing testifies morepoignantly to his rapidly growing awareness of his own, distinctive'task' than this presumptuous inscription; for when he wrotethese books and signed this photograph Nietzsche was still an'academic labourer', a Professor of Classical Philology. One of theimplicit promises made by the man who signed himself so is,therefore, that he will not put himself forward as a philosopher inhis own right until .he has first establi.shed his right to do so - notthrough any process of academic certification, but by successfullyestablishing his own independent mode of living, that is, throughthe 'courageous visibility' of his own 'philosophical life' . All reasonsof health aside, this is why Nietzsche simply had to leavexxix

IntroductionBasel and the academy for an independent career as a free-lanceauthor of books 'for everyone and no one' .30Nietzsche's pride in having actually followed the path he laidout for himself in the third Meditation is evident in a letter writtenjust after he reread the Untimely Meditations in 1884: 'I have lived inthe very manner that I sketched out for myself in advance,' hereports with transparent delight, and then adds: 'In case youshould find the time to look at Zarathustra, take Schopenhauer aseducator along with you as well, simply for the sake of comparison.(The error of the latter is that it is not really about Schopenhauer,but almost solely about me - but I myself did not realize this as Iwas writing it.) '31This last point was elaborated publicly four years later, in EcceHomo, where Nietzsche insisted that the real subject of the third andfourth Meditations was Nietzsche himself: 'Richard Wagner in Bayreuthis a vision of my future, and, in contrast, Schopenhauer as Educatorrecords my innermost history, my becoming - and, above all, mypromise! '32 A controversial claim, to be s re, and one which everyreader of the Untimely Meditations must decide for himself or herself. ,1 See Nietzsche's letters to Richard Wagner, 21 May 1870 and to Erwin Rohde, 9December 1868. Nietzsche's letters are here cited by recipient and date. Translationsfrom his correspondence are my own and are based upon the critical edition edited byGiorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Nietzsche BrieJwechsel. Kritische Gesamtausgabe(Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter, 1975ff.) . For a recent study of Nietzsche'scomplex relationship to Wagner during the Basel period, see Carl PIetsch, YoungNietzsche: Becoming a Genius (New York, Free Press, 1991).2 Nietzsche's intention to switch from philology to philosophy during his later years atLeipzig is documented in his letters to Paul Deussen, end of April/beginning of May1868 and to Rohde, 3 April and 3 or 4 May 1868. He even went so far as to make extensivenotes for a projected dissertation on the topic 'Teleology since Kant' (see Nietzsche,Friihe Schriften, Band 3, ed. Hans Joachim Mette and Karl Schlechta [Miinchen, Beck,1994], pp. 371-95; trans. Claudia Crawford in The Beginnings of Nietzsche's Theory ofLanguage [Berlin and New York, Walter de Guyter, 1988], pp. 238-53).3 See William H. Schaberg, The Nietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography(Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 19-26.4 Ulrich WilamowitzMollendorf, Zukunfstphilologie! eine Erwiderung auf FriedrichNietzsches Geburt der Tragifdie, conveniently available in Der Streit um Nietzsches 'Geburt derTragiidie'. Die Schriften von E. Rohde, R. Wagner, U. v. Wilamowitz-M5llendorj, ed. KarlfriedGrunder (Hildesheim, Olms, 1969) , pp. 27-55. For a succinct but detailed summary ofWilamowitz-Mollendorfs case against Die Geburt der Tragifdie, see J. H. Groth,'Willamowitz-Mollendorf on Nietzsche', Journal of the History of Ideas, 11 (1950) , 179-90.5 See Richard Frank Krummel, Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist. Ausbreitung und Wirkungdes Nietzschean Werkes im deutschen sprachraum his zum Todesjahr des philosophen (Berlin andNew Yo rk, Walter de Gruyter, 1974), p. 14.xxx

Introduction6 Regarding this project and the manuscripts associated with it, see Nietzsche's lettersto Rohde, 21 November 1872, 7 December 1872, and 22 March 1873, as well as the editor'sintroduction to Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early1870's, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Atlantic Highlands, Nj, Humanities Press,1979) .7 16[10.] , 1876, rv/2: 385. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Nietzsche'spublished and unpublished writings are cited from Nietzsches Werke. KritischeGesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin and New Yo rk, Walterde Gruyter, 1967ff.) Passages from his unpublished notes (Nachlass) are identified by'fragment' number (e.g., '16[10.] " date, and volume and page number (e.g., 'IV/2:385'). Unless otherwise identified, all translations are my own.8 See 19[330.] , Summer 1872-beginning of 1873, III/4: 10.6; 29[163-4] , Summer-Fall1873, III/4: 30.7-8; 30.[38] , Fall 1873-Winter 1873/4, m/4: 354-5; 32 [4] , beginning of1874-Spring 1874, III/4: 368-9; and 16[11], 1876, rv/2: 385. Regarding Nietzsche's various(and ever-changing) plans for a series of 'Untimely Meditations', see his letter toMalwida von Meysenbug, 25 October 1874, in which he states that the series will consistof thirteen 'Meditations' and that he hopes to finish the series in the next five years, andhis letter to Hans von Bulow, 2 January 1875 'I have put aside the next five years forworking out the remaining ten "Untimely Meditations".' Many different lists of the projectedseries of Unzeitgemiisse Betrachtungen are to be found in Nietzsche's Nachlass fromthis period. In English, see Breazeale, Philosophy and Truth, pp. 162-3 and Nietzsche,Unmodern Observations, trans. William Arrowsmith (New Haven and London, YaleUniversity Press, 1990.), pp. 321-2.9 See Nietzsche's claim in Ecce Homo, 'Why I Write Such Good Books', 'The 'UntimelyOnes', 2. In fact, as Walter Kaufmann points out in his translation of Ecce Homo, thisterm had been used earlier by Gustav Teichmul1er. See Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (with Onthe Genealogy of Morals) , trans. Walter Kaufmann (New Yo rk, Random House, 1967),p. 277.10. See Schaberg, Nietzsche Canon, pp. 32-5, and Krummel, Nietzsche und der deutscheGeist, pp. 17-23.11 For Wagner's private reaction to the second 'Meditation', see Cosima Wagner,Diaries, ed. Martin Gregor-Dillon and Dietrich Mack, trans. Geoffrey Skelton (New Yo rk,Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), vol. 1, p. 735.12 See Krummel, Nietzsche und der deutsche Geist, pp. 24-5 and Schaberg, Nietzsche Canon,pp. 37-4Q.13 Paul Deussen, Errinerungen an Friedrich Nietzsche (Leipzig, Brockhaus, 190.1), p: 38.For evidence from Nietzsche's own hand, see the manuscript 'Zu Schopenhauer', writtenin early Spring 1868, that is, just a few years after his first encounter withSchopenhauer's writings. In this early, unpublished text Nietzsche severely criticizesSchopenhauer's separation of the (unitary) will from its manifold appearances (representations)and challenges his interpretation of the latter as the transcendent ground ofthe former (see Friihe Schriften, Band 3, pp. 352-61; trans. in Crawford, Beginnings ofNietzsche's Theory of Language, pp. 226-38) . This same criticism recurs in later notebookentries from the Basel period, including: 7[161-72] , end of 187o.-April 1871, m/3:20.9-14; 5[77-81], September 187o.-January 1871, m/3: 114-19; and 12[1], Spring1871, 111/3: 380.-1. See too Nietzsche's letter to Deussen, October/November 1867, inwhich he declines to spell out his objections to Schopenhauer's philosophy on thegrounds that 'Weltanschauungen are neither created nor destroyed by means of logic.'For a detailed discussion of Nietzsche's early criticism of Schopenhauer, see SandroBarbera, 'Ein Sinn und unzahlige Hieroglyphen: Einige Motive von NietzschesAuseinandersetzung mit Schopenhauer in der Basler Zeit', in 'Centauren-Geburten ':xxxi

Introduction25 Letter to Malwinda von Meysenbug, 25 October 1874.26Basically, what I was trying to do in these works was something altogether differentfrom psychology: an incomparable problem of education, a new conceptof self-discipline, self-defence to the point of hardness, a way toward greatness and world-historical tasks was seeking to find its first expression. Broadlyspeaking, I made use of two famous and even now altogether unspecifiedtypes, as one takes advantage of an opportunity, in order to communicatesomething, in order to avail oneself of a few more formulas, signs, and linguisticdevices.(Ecce Homo, 'Why I Write Such Good Books', 'The UntimelyOnes', 3).27 41 [2], August-September 1885, VI1/3: 404-5.28 See Nietzsche's letters to Georg Brandes, 19 February and 10 April 1888.29 Letter to Peter Gast, 21 April 1883.30 On the tide page of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the tide is followed by the words 'a bookfor everyone and no one'.31 Letter to Franz Overbeck, August 1884.32 Ecce Homo, 'Why I Write Such Good Books', 'The Untimely Ones', 3.xxxiii

Chronology15 October 1844July 1849October 1858October 1864October 18658 November 1868Spring 1869April 1870May 1870.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche born, inthe village of Rocken, in the Prussianprovince of Saxony, near LeipzigDeath of his father, a Lutheran pastorEnters the famous boarding-school atPfortaFollowing his graduation, enrolls inthe University of Bonn as a student oftheologyTransfers to the University of Leipzigas a student of classical philology; byaccident discovers Schopenhauer'sWorld as Will and Representation, whichaffects him profoundlyMeets Richard Wagner (aged 55) at aprivate party in Leipzig. They discussSchopenhauer, and Wagner invitesNietzsche to visit him at Tribschen, hishome in SwitzerlandAppointed Assistant Professor of ClassicalPhilology at the University of BaselPromoted to Full Professor of ClassicalPhilology at BaselShort pamphlet, A Contribution Towardsthe Study and Critique of the Sources ofDiogenes Laertius, is privately printedand distributed in honour of acolleague'S retirementxxxv

Chronology18 January 1871Mid:June 18712January 1872January-March 187218-23 May 1872Late May 1872June 187217 January 1873April 18738 August 1873Fall 1873The second German Reich is establishedby the defeat of France and thecoronation (at Versailles) of the Kingof Prussia as Kaiser Wilhelm ISocrates and Greek Tragedy, an extractfrom his manuscript 'Music and Drama',with a 'Foreword to Richard Wagner',privately printed and distributedPublication of The Birth of Tragedy fromthe Spirit of MusicDelivers a series of five public lectures'On the Future of Our EducationalInstitutions'First trip to Bayreuth, where Nietzscheattends the ceremonial laying of thefoundations for the festival theatre;becomes acquainted with Malwida vonMeysenbug, e a wealthy patron ofWagnerClassical philologist Ulrich vonWilamowitz-Moellerndorfpublisheshis pamphlet Zunkunftsphilologie!, adevastating attack upon The Birth ofTragedy and upon Nietzsche's professionalcompetenceWagner publishes an 'open letter'defending The Birth of TragedyIn defence of Wagner, publishes a 'ANew Ye ar's Word to the Editor of theWeekly Paper The New Reich'Completes a fair copy of 'Philosophyin the Tragic Age of the Greeks' and,during his second visit to Bayreuth,reads from it; Wagner's response isunenthusiastic. Immediately thereafterNietzsche begins work on DavidStrauss, the Confessor and the WriterPublication of David Strauss, theConfessor and the WriterPrepares a public 'Exhortation to theGermans' on behalf of the Bayreuthxxxvi

Chronology22 February 187415 October 1874November 1874Summer 1875Early November 1874Summer 187610July 1876Fall-Winter 18777 May 1878August 18784 September 187820 March 18792 May 1879fund-raising drive; though someadvance copies are printed, it is rejectedPublication of On the Uses and Disadvantagesof History for LifePublication of Schopenhauer as EducatorWagner completes the score of TheRing of the Niebelungen and invitesNietzsche to spend summer 1875 inBayreuth, attending rehearsals for the1876 premiere of The RingInstead of attending rehearsals,Nietzsche takes a cure at Steinabad inthe Black Forest, and begins work onRichard Wagner in Bayreuth, but discontinuesit during the fallMeets Henrich Koselitz (,Peter Gast') ,who attends his lecturesHaving obtained a one-year sabbatical(for reasons of health) from theUniversity of Basel, begins work on aprojected fifth 'Untimely Meditation'to be titled 'The Plowshare'; much ofthis will eventually be incorporatedinto Human, All Too HumanPublication of Richard Wagner inBayreuthResumes his university lectures, but isgranted an indefinite extension of hisleave from the Piidagogium; works onHuman, All Too Human, assisted by GastPublication of Human, All Too HumanWagner publicly attacks Nietzsche inthe Bayreuther BlatterPublication of 2nd, slightly revised,edition of The Birth of Tragedy (preparedand printed in 1874)Publication of Mixed Opinions andMaximsCiting reasons of health, resigns fromhis position at Basel and is granted apension by the universityxxxvii

Chronology18 December 1879LateJuly 1881Early June 1882Late August 1882January 188313 February 1883Late August 1883Late 1883/ early 188410 April 1884May 18854 August 188631 October 1886End 188624 June 188720 October 188716 November1887September 1888Publication of The Wanderer and HisShadowPublication of Daybreak: Thoughts on thePrejudices of Morality'Idylls of Messina' published in theInternationale MonatschriftPublication of The Gay ScienceComposes Thus Spoke Zarathustra I in10 daysWagner diesPublication of Zarathustra IPublication of Zarathustra IIPublication of Zarathustra IIIDistribution of 7 privately printedcopies of Zarathustra IVPublication of Beyond Good and Evithe back cover of which includes anannouncemeht of a forthcoming workentitled 'The Will to Power: .AnAttempt at a Revaluation of All Values.In Four Books'Publication of new, expanded editionsof The Birth of Tragedy and Human, AllToo Human, Vols. I and IIPublication of unrevised 'second editions'of the Untimely Meditations,issued as four separate volumes, andof an unrevised, single-volume editionof Zarathustra I- IIIPublication of new, expanded editionsof Dawn and The Gay SciencePublication of Hy mn to Life,Nietzsche's musical setting of a poemby Lou SalomePublication of On the Genealogy ofMorals, most of which was written atSils Maria during Summer 1887In Turin, completes the first draft ofThe Antichrist, which is described asthe 'First Book' of 'The Revaluation ofAll Values'xxxviii

Chronology22 September 1888October-November 18893 January 188924January 1889Mid-February 1889May 1890March 1892Late November 1894July 189725 August 1900December 1901December 1904August 1908Publication of The Case of WagnerWrites Ecce Homo and revises TheAntichrist, which Nietzsche now beginsto describe as consttuting the wholeof 'The Revaluation of All Values'Collapses in the streets of Turin; afterbeing brought to Basel by Overbeck,he is committed to an insane asyluminJenaPublication of The Twilight of the IdolsPublication of Nietzsche contra WagnerReleased to the care of his mother inNaumburgPublication of Dionysian DithyrambsPublication of The Antichrist, in Vol. 8of the first collected edition of WorksFollowing the death of their mother,his sister Elizabeth moves him toWeimar and installs him in her'Nietzsche Archives'Dies, in WeimarPublication, in Vol. 15 of Works, of TheWill to Power, an unscrupulously editedcollection of notes and fragments ofhis literary remains from the 1880sPublication of a greatly expanded'definitive edition' of Will to PowerPublication of Ecce Homoxxxix

Further readingThe standard German edition of Nietzsche's writings is theKritische Gesamtausgabe of his Werke and Briefwechsel, ed. GiorgioColli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin and New York, Walter deGruyter, 1967ff.). For the earlier BaseJ period, see The Birth ofTragedy, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New Yo rk, Vintage, 1967) .Nietzsche's unpublished manuscript Philosophy in the Tragic Age ofthe Greeks is available in a translation by Marianne Cowan (SouthBend, IN, Gateway, 1962) . The unpublished and unfinished'Untimely Meditation', 'We Philologists', is translated by WilliamArrowsmith in his edition of Unmodern Observations (New Havenand London, Yale University Press, 1990). Material for Nietzsche'sunfinished 'Philosopher's Book', including the important essay'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', is included inPhilosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche 's Notebooks of the Early1870s (ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, Atlantic Highlands, Nj ,Humanities Press, 1979) . Other unpublished texts, including 'Onthe Future of Our Educational Institutions' and material from the'Five Prefaces for Five Unwritten (and not to be Written) Books',trans. by J. M. Kennedy and A. Miigge, are included in Vols. 2 and 3of the otherwise obsolete Oscar Levy edition of The Complete Worksof Friedrich Nietzsche (Edinburgh and London, T. N. Foulis,1909-13). An early study for The Birth of Tragedy, 'The Birth ofTragic Thought' , is also available in English, trans. Ursula Bernis,Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, 9 (1983) , 3-15. Some ofNietzsche's manuscripts and lecture notes on language and Greekliterature are translated in Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, ed.and trans. Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair and David J. Parent(Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1989) .xl

Further readingAdditional early, unpublished material on Schopenhauer, teleology,the origin of language and problems of perception is translatedby Claudia Crawford in the appendix to The Beginnings ofNietzsche's Theory of Language (Berlin and New York, de Gruyter,1988). For his letters, see Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. andtrans. Christopher Middleton (Chicago, University of ChicagoPress, 1969) .The standard biography is Carl Paul Janz's three-volumeFriedrich Nietzsche Biographie (Munich, Hanser, 1979) . In English,see R. J. Hollingdale' s Nietzsche: The Man and his Philosophy (BatonRouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1965) and RonaldHayman, Nietzsche: A Critical Life (Oxford and New York, OxfordUniversity Press, 1980). Also valuable is William H. Schaberg's TheNietzsche Canon: A Publication History and Bibliography (Chicago andLondon, University of Chicago Press, 1995), a detailed account ofthe origin, publication and contemporary reception of each ofNietzsche's published wrItings.The critical and interpretative literature about Nietzsche is vast,varied and intractable. A good place to start is The CambridgeCompanion to Nietzsche, ed. Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M.Higgins (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996). WalterKaufmann's classic Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, and Antichrist(4th edn., Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1974) remainsessential. Valuable too are R. J. Hollingdale's Nietzsche (New Yorkand London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973) and ArthurDanto's Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York, Macmillan, 1965).In comparison with the literature devoted to his later writings,the secondary literature on the writings of the Basel period ingeneral and on the Untimely Meditations in particular is relativelylimited. Though David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer attractedmore public comment from his contemporaries than any of theother Meditations, it has been almost completely neglected bymodern commentators. An exception is Robert John Ackermann,who, in the second chapter of his Nietzsche: A Frenzied Look(Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), begins hisanalysis of Nietzsche's 'style' with a discussion of Strauss.Nietzsche's view of history and his treatment of it in the secondUntimely Meditation has been explored by many authors. For someexamples of recent scholarship in this area, see Catherine Zuckertin 'Nature, History and the Self: Friedrich Nietzsche's "UntimelyConsiderations''', Nietzsche-Studien, 5 (1976), 55- 82. See ch. 1 ofxli

Further readingPeter Berkowitz, Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist (Cambridge,Harvard University Press, 1995). For Nietzsche's reception ofEduard von Hartmann, see the work cited above by Crawford.Concerning the influence of his reading of Franz Grillparzer onthe first two Meditations, see Jorg Salaquarda, '''Er is fast immereiner der Unserigen. " Nietzsche und Grillparzd , in 'Centauren­Geburten ': Wissenschajt, Kunst und Philosophie beim jungen Nietzsche,ed. Tilman Borsche, Federico Gerratana and Aldo Venturelli(Berlin and New York, de Gruyter, 1994), pp. 234-56.The Nietzsche/Schopenhauer relationship has also received itsshare of attention by philosophical commentators, especiallythose concerned with the third Untimely Meditation, such asRichard Schacht in 'Nietzsche's First Manifesto: On Schopenhaueras Educator' , in Making Sense of Nietzsche: Reflections Timely andUntimely, (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1995),pp. 153-6 and Zuckert in 'Nature, History, and the Self'. Tworecent and much more speculative interpretations of the thirdMeditation, both focusing upon the thedte of love, may be foundin Tracy B. Strong, 'Learning to Love: Nietzsche on Love,Education, and Morality' and Robert B. Pippin, 'Morality asPsychology: Psychology as Morality. Nietzsche, Eros, and ClumsyLovers', both in Love and Knowledge, ed. Nathan Tarcov (Chicago,University of Chicago Press, 1998). Ye t another interesting perspectiveon Schopenhauer as Educator is contained in Stanley Cavell's'Aversive Thinking: Emersonian Representations in Heideggerand Nietzsche', in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: TheConstitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (Chicago and London,University of Chicago Press, 1990).Much has been written about the complex relationship betweenNietzsche and Wagner and its influence upon Nietzsche. For anintroduction to this difficult subject see Frederick C. Love, TheYoung Nietzsche and the Wagnerian Experience (Chapel Hill,University of North Carolina Press, 1963) and Roger Hollinrake,Nietzsche, Wagner and the Philosophy of Pessimism (London, GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1982). Insightful 'musical' perspectives on theWagner INietzsche relationship are provided by Dietrich Fischer­Dieskau's Wagner and Nietzsche, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (NewYork, Seabury, 1976) and Gerald Abraham, 'Nietzsche's AttitudeToward Wagner: A Fresh View', ch. 26 of Slavonic and RomanticMusic: Essays and Studies (New York, St Martin's, 1968).Very much worth consulting is William Arrowsmith's general Jxlii

Further readingintroduction to Unmodern Observations, as well as the lengthy individualintroductions, provided by the translators, to each of thefive texts translated in this edition. Valuable too is Richard T.Gray's scholarly 'Mterword' to his translation of the UnzeitgemiisseBetrachtrungen, in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed.Ernst Behler, vol. 2, Unfashionable Observations (Stanford, StanfordUniversity Press, 1995).The most remarkable and insightful reading of the UntimelyMeditations remains, however, that of the author, as contained inhis 'autobiography', Ecce Homo. How One Becomes What One Is,trans. Walter Kaufmann (with On the Genealogy of Morals; NewYork, Doubleday, 1967). Concerning the latter, see Sara Kofman,'Accessories (Ecce Homo, ''Why I Write Such Good Books", 'TheUntimelies", 3)', trans. Duncan Large, in Nietzsche: A CriticalReader, ed. Peter R. Sedgwick (Oxford, Blackwell, 1995).xliii

Note on the textR. J. Hollingdale's translation of Nietzsche's four UntimelyMeditations (1873-6) was first published by Cambridge UniversityPress in 1983 and is here reproduced, with a few minor corrections.The introduction by Daniel Breazeale has been preparedspecifically for this new edition, as hav the note on Nietzsche'stitle, chronology, the further reading and the notes. Persons mentionedby Nietzsche are identified in the glossary of names.Nietzsche's title'Die 'Zeit' is a noun meaning both 'time' and 'the time' (as in 'thetimes', 'the age' or 'the era' ); 'gemiiss' is either an adjective that. means 'appropriate' or 'fitting', or a preposition that means 'inaccordance with' or 'in compliance with'. Accordingly, somethingis 'zeitgemass' when it is 'timely', not in the sense of being 'punctual'or 'opportune', but rather in the sense of being 'appropriate tothe time' or, more figuratively, 'up to date', 'in fashion' or 'modern'.'Betrachten' is a verb that means 'to look at', 'to observe', 'to scrutinize','to contemplate', or 'to consider'. 'Betrachtung is a noun thatdesignates the act of 'observation', 'reflection' or 'contemplation',as well as as the product of the same. Betrachtungen is simply theplural of Betrachtung and thus designates a series of such acts ofreflection or observation.The translation of Unzeitgemiisse Betrachtungen as UntimelyMeditations, which was championed by Walter Kaufmann and hasbeen adopted by Hollingdale, thus seems appropriate enough,even though some have objected to what they consider the misleadingly'Cartesian' and 'introspective' connotations of the termxliv

Note on the text'Meditations'. Other proposed English renderings include'Thoughts Out of Season' (A. M. Ludovoci and Adrian Collins),'Untimely Considerations' (Werner J. Dannhauer and CatherineZuckert), 'Unmodern Observations' (William Arrowsmith),'Unfashionable Observations' (Richard T. Gray) , 'UnconventionalObservations' (William H. Schaberg) and - last but not least -'''Inopportune Speculations", or more clearly "Essays in Sham­Smashing'" (H. L. Mencken). Though there is something to besaid in favour of as well as against - each of these, none seemsclearly superior to Untimely Meditations, which is also the name bywhich these texts are most widely known among anglophonereaders.In order to understand what this title meant to Nietzsche himself,the best course is simply to take note of how he employed it.His first recorded use of the term unzeitgemiisse occurs in a letterto Rohde of 17 August, 1869, where he uses it to 'explain'Wagner's failure to achieve widespread public recognition. Incontrast to those artists who obtain immediate popularity with thepublic, Wagner is described by Nietzsche in this letter as 'standingfirmly rooted in his own power, with his gaze always fixed beyondall that is ephemeral - "untimely" in the best sense of the word' . Asecond clue is provided by the title of one of the books Nietzschechecked out of the University of Basel library in January 1872,that is, just a few months prior to beginning work on the firstUntimely Meditation, and then borrowed again in April, after hehad already started work on Strauss. The book, which he apparentlyconsulted in preparation for his lectures 'On the Futureof Our Educational Institution', was a work by August Bergerentitled Die Idee des Realgymnasium for Freunde und Befdrder h6hererund zeitgemiisser Jugendbildung dargestellt (1845), that is, 'The Ideaof a Practical/Technical High School [there is no real Englishequivalent for the German term Realgymnasium] , Expounded forFriends and Supporters of Higher and Up-To-Date [zeitgemiisser]Secondary Education'. It seems quite likely that Nietzsche's use ofUnzeitgemiisse in his series was intended at least in part ironically, asa parody of the quite common use of the term zeitgemiiss that hehad most recently encountered in Berger's title. Here, Nietzsche'stitle announces, one will encounter an author with the courage tothumb his nose at what is 'in fashion' among 'up-to-date' people.Any doubt about how Nietzsche understood the term 'untimely'is removed by a careful reading of Strauss, which is very largely anxlv

Note on the textattack upon the sovereignty of 'public opinion' as an arbiter oftaste, values and truth itself. (Ours, he reminds us in section 2 ofSchopenhauer as Educator, is 'the age of public opinion'.) Whereasthe slave of public opinion strives always to be 'timely', a declaredcritic of the same will instead flaunt his deliberate 'untimeliness'.As Nietzsche explains in section 8 of Strauss, public opinionprides itself on speaking with a single voice, thereby forcing anyonewho disagrees to adopt a posture of conscious opposition. IfStrauss's The Old and the New Faith can be described (as it isdescribed by Nietzsche) as 'timely', then Nietzsche's attack uponit has to be described as 'untimely'.There are also two other senses, both expounded upon byNietzsche in the foreword to the second Meditation, in whichthese texts might be considered 'untimely', and both are relatedto the perspective from which their author claims to conduct hiscritique of 'timely' ideas and institutions. In the first instance,Nietzsche writes as an 'untimely' author in the sense that hewrites as one who is well-acquainted and'1mbued with the spirit ofGreek antiquity. He even maintains that it is one of the chiefvirtues of his own discipline of classical philology that it can - orat least should - provide one with a much needed, 'classical' perspectiveon the present day. Observations made possible by sucha perspective are perforce 'untimely', because, as Nietzscheremarks in section 2 of Schopenhauer as Educator, modern menmust always appear wretched in comparison with the ancients.Second, his perspective on the present is 'untimely' preciselybecause of his urgent concern with the fu ture. Anyone as preoccupiedas Nietzsche with the possibility of a new cultural rebirth hasno choice but to be a 'fighter' not only against the past, but alsoagainst the present. (A similar point is made in the fourthMeditation in praise of Wagner's 'art of the future'.) Nietzsche'sown Meditations are therefore 'untimely' because in them he presumesto evaluate the present from the standpoints of both thepast and the future. But there is also, as already noted, a constantnote of transparent irony in this use of the term 'untimely', sincethe author believes that nothing is more needed by our own age -and thus nothing is more 'timely' than precisely the kind of'untimeliness' represented by these very texts, a point that isaffirmed in the concluding paragraph of Strauss.Finally, Nietzsche thought of himself as 'untimely' in another,more personal sense, the same sense in which every originalxlvi

Note on the textthinker and indeed every authentically eXIstIng human beingmust be 'untimely'. As noted in section 3 of the third Meditation,an original thinker such as Empedocles or Schopenhauer isalways 'untimely', inasmuch as this is a necessary consequence ofstriving to become who one is. If one is to strive to overcome oneself,then one must also strive to overcome all those merely, 'timely'elements that one discovers to have been falsely grafted on toone's own 'untimeliness'.xlvii

Untimely Meditations

-1David Strauss,the Confessor and the Writer

1Public opinion in Germany seems almost to forbid discussion of theevil and perilous consequences of a war, and especially of one thathas ended victoriously: there is thus all the more ready an ear forthose writers who know no weightier authority than this publicopinion and who therefore vie with one another in lauding a war andin seeking out the mighty influence it has exerted on morality, cultureand art. This notwithstanding, it has to be said that a great victoryis a great danger. Human nature finds it harder to endure avictory than a defeat; indeed, it seems to be easier to achieve a victorythan to endure it in such a way that it does not in fact turn into adefeat. Of all the evil consequences, however, which have followedthe recent war with France* perhaps the worst is a widespread,indeed universal, error: the error, committed by public opinion andby all who express their opinions publicly, that German culture toowas victorious in that struggle and must therefore now be loadedwith garlands appropriate to such an extraordinary achievement.This delusion is in the highest degree destructive: not because it is adelusion - for there exist very salutary and productive errors butbecause it is capable of turning our victory into a defeat: into the defeat,if not the extirpation, of the German spirit for the benefit of the (GermanReich'.Even supposing that a war of this kind were in fact a war betweentwo cultures, the value of the victor would still be a very relative oneand could certainly not justify choruses of victory or acts of selfglorification.For one would have to know what the defeated culturehad been worth: perhaps it was worth very little: in which case thevictory of the victorious culture, even if attended by the mostmagnificent success in arms, would constitute no invitation toecstatic triumphs. On the other hand, in the present case there canbe no question of a victory of German culture, for the simple reasonthat French culture continues to exist as heretofore, and we aredependent upon it as heretofore. Our culture played no part even inour success in arms. Stern discipline, natural bravery and endurance,superior generalship, unity and obedience in the ranks, in*The 'recem war wilh France' is [he Franco-Prussian War of 1870- 1. (This and all subsequelHnotes arc by rhe translaror.)3

:1 1Untimely Meditationsshort, elements that have nothing to do with culture, procured for usthe victory over opponents in whom the most important of these elementswere lacking: the wonder is that that which at present callsitself'culture' in Germany proved so small an obstacle to the militarydemands which had to be met for the achievement of a great success- perhaps it was only because that which calls itself culture foresaw agreater advantage in subordinating itself this time. But if it is nowallowed to grow and luxuriate, if it is pampered with the flatteringdelusion that the victory belonged to it, then it will, as I have said,have the power to extirpate the German spirit - and who knowswhether the German body remaining will be of any use whatever!If it were possible to take that calm and tenacious bravery whichthe German demonstrated against the emotional and shordivedimpetuosity of the French and turn it against the enemy within,against that highly ambiguous and in any case alien 'cultivatedness'which is nowadays dangerously misunderstood to constitute culture,then all hope for the creation of a genuine German culture, theantithesis of this cultivatedness, would nCjt be lost: for the Germanshave never lacked clear-sighted and courageous leaders andgenerals - though these have frequendy lacked Germans. Butwhether it is in fact possible to redirect German bravery in this wayseems to me more and more doubtful and, after the late war, dailymore improbable; for I see how everyone is convinced that struggleand bravery are no longer required, but that, on the contrary, mostthings are regulated in the finest possible way and that in any caseeverything that needed doing has long since been done - in short,. that the finest seeds of culture have everywhere been sown and are inplaces bursting into leaf and even into luxuriant blossom. In thisrealm it is not mere complacency, but joy and jubilation whichreign. I sense this joy and jubilation in the incomparable selfassuranceof our German journalists and manufacturers of novels,tragedies, songs and histories: for these types patendy belongtogether in a single guild which seems to have entered into a conspiracyto take charge of the leisure and ruminative hours of modernman - that is to say, his 'cultural moments' - and in these to stun himwith printed paper. Since the war, all is happiness, dignity and selfawarenessin this guild: after such 'successes of German culture' itfeels itself not merely confirmed and sanctioned, but almost sacrosanct;and it therefore speaks more solemnly, takes pleasure inaddressing itself to the German people, publishes collected editionsin the manner of the classics, and goes so far as to employ those4

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerinternational journals which stand at its service to proclaim certainindividuals from its midst as the new German classics and modelwriters. One might perhaps have expected that the more thoughtfuland learned among cultivated Germans would have recognized thedangers inherent in such a misuse of success, or at least have felt thisspectacle as painful: for what could be more painful than the sight ofa deformed man pluming himself before the mirror like a cockereland exchanging admiring glances with his reflection? But thelearned classes are happy to let happen what is happening, and havein any case quite enough to do in maintaining themselves withoutthe additional burden of looking after the welfare of the Germanspirit. Its members are, moreover, supremely convinced that theirown culture is the ripest and fairest fruit of the age, indeed of all theages, and cannot comprehend why anyone should need to look afterthe welfare of German culture in general, since they themselves andcountless numbers like them have already gone far, far beyond allsuch considerations. The more cautious observer, however, especiallyif he is a foreigner, cannot help noticing that what the Germanscholar now calls his culture and that jubilant culture of the newGerman classics differ from one another only in the extent of theirknowledge: wherever the question is one not of knowledge andinformation, but of art and ability - wherever, that is to say, life bearswitness to the culture - there is now only one German culture: and isit this that is supposed to have triumphed over France?Such an assertion seems completely incomprehensible: all impartialjudges, and finally the French themselves, have seenGermany's decisive advantage to have lain in the more extensiveknowledge possessed by its officers, in the superior training of itstroops, and in the greater science of its conduct of the war. In whatsense, then, can German culture be said to have triumphed, if onethinks to deduct from it German erudition? In no sense: fo r themoral qualities of stricter discipline and readier obedience havenothing to do with culture - though they distinguished the Macedoniansoldiery from the Greek, for example, the latter were incomparablymore cultured. It can only be the result of confusion if onespeaks of the victory of German culture, a confusion originating inthe fact that in Germany there no longer exists any clear conceptionof what culture is.Culture is, above all, unity of artistic style in all the expressionsof the life of a people. Much knowledge and learning is neitheran essential means to culture nor a sign of it, and if needs be can5

Untimely Meditationsget along very well with the opposite of culture, barbarism, whichis lack of style or a chaotic jumble of all styles.It is in such a chaotic jumble of styles that the German of our daydwells: and one seriously wonders how, with all his erudition, he canpossibly fail to notice it, but, on the contrary, rejoices from the veryheart at the 'culture' he at present possesses. For everything ought toinstruct him: every glance he casts at his clothes, his room, his home,every walk he takes through the streets of his town, every visit he paysto a fashionable shop; in his social life he ought to be aware of theorigin of his manners and deportment, in the world of our artisticinstitutions, of our concerts, theatres and museums, he ought tonotice the grotesque juxtaposition and confusion of different styles.The German amasses around him the fo rms and colours, productionsand curiosities of every age and every clime, and producesthat modem fairground motley which his learned colleagues arethen obliged to observe and classify as the 'modern as such', while hehimself remains seated calmly in the midst of the tumult. But withthis kind of' culture' , which is in fact only a phlegmatic lack of all feelingfor culture, one cannot overcome enemies, least of all those who,like the French, actually possess a real and productive culture,regardless of what its value may be, and from whom we havehitherto copied everything, though usually with little skill.If we had in fact ceased to copy it we would not thereby havetriumphed over it, but only have liberated ourselves from it: only ifwe had imposed upon the French an original German culture couldthere be any question of a victory of German culture. In the meantime,we should not forget that we are still dependent on Paris in allmatters of form, just as beforeand that we have to go on beingdependent, fo r up to now there has been no original Germanculture.We all ought to have been aware of this from our own knowledge:in addition to which, one of the few who had a right to speak to theGermans of it in a tone of reproach has publicly revealed it. 'WeGermans are of yesterday', Goethe once said to Eckermann; 'it istrue that we have been soundly cultivating ourselves for a century,but another couple of centuries may have to pass before sufficientspirit and higher culture has penetrated our countrymen andbecome general for it to be possible to say of them: it is a long timesince they were barbarians.' **Goethe to Eckermann, on 3 May 1827.6

David Strauss) the confessor and the writer2If, however, our public and private life so manifesdy does not bearthe stamp of a productive and stylistically secure culture, if our greatartists, moreover, have admitted and continue to admit this dreadfuland, for a gifted people, profoundly humiliating fact, how is it possiblethat the greatest self-satisfaction nonetheless continues to reignamong educated Germans: a self-satisfaction which since the recentwar has shown itself ready to burst out in cries of jubilation andtriumph? In any event, there exists a steadfast belief that we are inpossession of a genuine culture: the enormous incongruity betweenthis complacent, indeed exultant belief and an in fact notoriouscultural deficiency seems to be apparent only to the select few. Forall those whose views coincide with public opinion have coveredtheir eyes and stopped their ears the incongruity must not beadmitted to exist. How is this possible? What force is so powerful asto dictate such a 'must not' ? What species of man must have come todominate in Germany that such strong and simple feelings can beprohibited and expression of them obstructed? I shall call thispower, this species of man, by its name - it is the · culturalphilistine.The word 'philistine', as is well known, belongs to the studentvocabulary, and signifies, in its wider, popular sense, the antithesisof a son of the muses, of the artist, of the man of genuine culture. Thecultural philistine, however - the study of whom, and the hearing ofwhose confessions when he makes them, has now become a disagreeableduty distinguishes himself from the general idea of thespecies 'philistine' through a superstition: he fancies that he is himselfa son of the muses and man of culture; an incomprehensibledelusion which reveals that he does not even know what a philistine,and the antithesis of a philistine, is: so we shall not be surprised tofind that usually he solemnly denies he is a philistine. With this lackof all self-knowledge, he feels firmly convinced that his 'culture' isthe complete expression of true German culture: , and since heeverywhere discovers cultivated people of his own kind, and finds allpublic institutions, schools and cultural and artistic bodies organizedin accordance with his kind of cultivation and in the service of hisrequirements, he also bears with him everywhere the triumphantfeeling of being the worthy representative of contemporary Germanculture and frames his demands and pretcn'Jions accordingly. If,however, true culture must in any event presuppose unity of style,7

Untimely Meditationsand even an inferior and degenerate culture cannot b thought of asfailing to exhibit a stylistic unity within which the manifoldphenomena which characterize it are harmonized, this confusionreigning in the deluded mind of the cultural philistine may wellorginate in i:he fact that, discovering everywhere identical reproductionsof himself, he infers from this identity of all 'cultivated'people the existence of a unity of style and thus the existence of aGerman culture. He perceives around him nothing but needs identicalwith and views similar to his own; wherever he goes he is at onceembraced by a bond of tacit conventions in regard to many things,especially in the realms of religion and art: this impressivehomogeneity, this tutti unisono* which no one commands but whichis always ready to break fo rth, seduces him to the belief that a culturehere holds sway. But systematic and oppressive philistinism doesnot constitute a culture, even an inferior culture, merely because itpossesses system: it must always be the antithesis of a culture,namely a permanendy estahlished barbarity. For that uniformitywhich is so striking in the cultivated pe0ple of Germany today is aunity only through the conscious or unconscious exclusion andnegation of every artistically productive form and the demand of atrue style. An unhappy contortion must have taken place in the brainof the cultural philistine: he regards as culture precisely that whichnegates culture, and since he is accustomed to proceed with consistencyhe finally acquires a coherent collection of such negations, asystem of un-culture, to which one might even concede a certain'unity of style' if it made any sense to speak of a barbarism with style.Ifhe is allowed to choose between a stylistically agreeable action andone of the opposite kind, he invariably elects the latter, and becausehe always does so all his actions bear the same negative stamp. It isprecisely this negative stamp which enables him to recognize thenature of the 'German culture' he has patented: whatever does notcorrespond to it he adjudges hostile and inimical to him. In this casethe cultural philistine does no more than defend himself: he denies,secretes, stops his ears, averts his eyes, he is a negative being even inhis hatred and hostility. The person he hates most of all, however, ishim who treats him as a philistine and tells him what he is: a hindranceto the strong and creative, a labyrinth for al i who doubt andgo astray, a swamp to the feet of the weary, a fetter to all who wouldpursue lofty goals, a poisonous mist to new buds, a parching desert"tutti unisono: everybody, together8

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerto the German spirit seeking and thirsting for new life. For it seeks,this German spirit! and you hate it because it seeks and refuses tobelieve you when you say you have already found what it is seeking.How is it possible that a type such as the cultural philistine couldhave come into existence and, once extant, could a(;quire · theauthority of supreme arbiter over all the problems of German culture;how is this possible, after there has filed past us a whole line ofgreat heroic figures whose every movement, every feature, whosequestioning voice, whose burning eye, betrayed but one thing: thatthey were seekers, and that what they were seeking with such perseverencewas precisely that which the cultural philistine fancied healready possessed: a genuine, original German culture. Is there aground, they seemed to ask, so pure, so untouched, of such virginalholiness, that the German spirit may raise its house upon thisground and upon no other? Questioning thus, they made their waythrough the wilderness and thorns of wretched and meagre ages,and as seekers they passed from our sight: so that one of them,speaking for all, could say in his old age; 'I have toiled fo r half a centuryand allowed myself no rest, but have continually striven andsought and worked as well and as hard as I could.'*But what view does our philistine culture take of these seekers? Itassumes them to be finders, not seekers, and seems to forget that itwas as seekers that they regarded themselves. 'We have our culture,do we not?' they say, 'for we have our classics, do we not? Not onlyhave the foundations been laid, but the building itself stands alreadyupon them -we ourselves are this building.' And the philistine raiseshis hand to his own brow.Thus to misjudge our classics, however, and in thinking to honourthem thus to damn them, it is necessary not to know them: and this isindeed the universal fact. For ctherwise it would be known that thereis only one way of honouring them, and that is to go on seeking intheir spirit and with their courage, and not to grow weary of doingso. On the other hand, to affix to them the suspect word 'classic' andfrom time to time to 'edify' oneself with their works is to resign oneselfto those feeble and egoistic sensations promised by our concerthalls and theatres to anyone who can pay for them; the same appliesto the erection of statues of them and the naming of festivals andsocieties after them - all these things are merely cash payments bymeans of which the cultural philistine settles accounts with them so"'Goethe to Eckennann, 14 March 1830.9

Untimely Meditationsas not to have to follow after them and to go on seeking. For 'All seekingis at an end' is the motto of the philistines.There was a time when this motto was to some extent sensible: thetime when, during the first decade of the present century, so muchconfused seeking, experimenting, wrecking, promising, surmising,hoping was going on in Germany that the spiritual middle class wasright to fear for its own safety. At that time it was right to reject with ashrug of the shoulders the brew of fantastic and language-twistingphilosophies and tendentious historiographies, a carnival of all thegods and myths, which the Romantics had mixed together, and torej ect too the current poetic fashions and follies dreamed up in astate of intoxication - right, that is, because the philistine does nothave the right even to a debauch. With the craftiness pertaining tobaser natures, however, he took the opportunity thus afforded tocast suspicion on seeking as such and to promote a comfortable consciousnessof having already found. His eyes were opened to the joysof philistinism: he saved himself from all the wild experimentationgoing on by a flight into the idyllic, and to the resdessly creative driveof the artist he opposed a certain easy complacency, a selfcontentmentin one's own limitations, one's own placidity, even inone's own narrow-mindedness. His attenuated finger pointed,without any false modesty, to the hidden and secret corners of hislife, to the many moving and naive pleasures which sprang up likeblushing flowers in the most wretched depths of the uncultivatedexistence and as it were mire of the philistine world.There were a number of representational talents who, with agende brush, depicted the happiness, the cosiness, the prosaicness,the bucolic health, the ease and contentment to be found in the nursery,the scholar's study and the farmhouse. With such picturebooksof reality in their hands, these self-satisfied people thensought to come to terms once and fo r all with the classics they foundso unsetding and with the demand for further seeking which proceededfrom them; they devised the concept of the epigone-age withthe object of obtaining peace and quiet and so as to meet everyuncomfortable innovation with the condemnatory verdict 'epigonework'. It was these same self-contented people who, with the sameend in view of guaranteeing their own peace, took charge of historyand sought to transform every science which might be expected todisturb their complacency into an historical discipline, especially soin the case of philosophy and classical philology. Through historicalawareness they saved themselves from enthusiasm for history was10

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerno longer supposed to engender enthusiasm, even though Goethemight th i nk it did: stupefaction is now the goal of these unphilosophicaladmirers of nil admirari* when they seek to understandeverything historically. While professing to hate fanaticism andintolerance in any form, what they really hated was the donlinatinggenius and the tyranny of the real demands of culture; and that iswhy they employed all their powers in paralyzing, stupefying or disruptingall those quarters where fresh and powerful movementsmight be expected to appear. A philosophy which chastely concealedbehind arabesque flourishes the philistine confession of itsauthor invented in addition a formula for the apotheosis of the commonplace:it spoke of the rationality of the real, and thus ingratiateditself with the cultural philistine, who also loves arabesque flourishesbut above all conceives himself alone to be real and treats his realityas the standard of reason in the world. He now permitted everyone,himself included, to reflect, to research, to aestheticize, above all tocompose poetry and music, to paint pictures, even to create entirephilosophies: the sole proviso was that everything must remain as itwas before, that nothing should at any price undermine the'rational' and the 'ral', that is to say, the philistine. The latter, to besure, is very partial to abandoning himself from time to time to thepleasant and daring extravagances of art and sceptical historiographyand knows how to appreciate the charm of such formsof entertainment and distraction; but he sternly segregates the'serious things of life' - that is to say profession, business, wife andchild - from its pleasures: and to the latter belongs more or lesseverything that has anything to do with culture. Therefore woe to anart that starts to take itself seriously and makes demands that touchupon his livelihood, his business and his habits, in short, his philistine'serious things of life' he averts his eyes from such an art asthough from something indecent, and with the air of a duenna hewarns every defenceless virtue not to look.Being so fo nd of dissuading, he is grateful to the artist who paysheed to him and lets himself be dissuaded; he gives him to understandthat henceforth no sublime masterpieces are to be demandedof him, but only two much easier things: either imitation of actualityto the point of mimicry in idylls or gently humorous satires, or freecopies of the most familiar and famous of the classics, though incorporatingtimid concessions to the taste of the time. For when he"'nil admirari: to wonder at nothing11

Untimely Meditationsvalues only the imitations of an epigone or the icon-like portraitureof the present, he knows that the latter will glorify him and augmentgeneral contentment with 'actuality', while the fo rmer, as well asbeing quite harmless, will even enhance his reputation as a judge ofclassical taste - for he has, as aforesaid, come to terms once and forall with the classics themselves. Finally, he invents for his habits,modes of thinking, likes and dislikes, the general formula 'healthiness',and dismisses every uncomfortable disturber of the peace asbeing sick and neurotic. Thus David Strauss, a true satisfait with thestate of our culture and a typical philistine, once spoke characteristicallyof 'Arthur Schopenhauer's ingenious but in many waysunhealthy and unprofitable philosophizing'. For it is a cruel fact that'the spirit' is accustomed most often to descend upon the 'unhealthyand unprofitable', and on those occasions when he is honest withhimself even the philistine is aware that the philosophies his kindproduce and bring to market are in many ways spiritless, thoughthey are of course extremely healthy and profitable.For now and then the philistines, whel) they are alone by themselves,take wine together and recall, in honest, naive and loquaciousfashion, the great deeds of the war; on these occasions many thingscome to light that are otherwise anxiously concealed, and sometimesone of them even lets out the fundamental secrets of the entirebrotherhood. Such a thing occurred very recently in the case of acelebrated aesthetician of the Hegelian school of reasoning. Theprovocation was, to be sure, sufficiently unusual: a circle of philistineswas celebrating the memory of a true and genuine nonphilistine,and one moreover who in the strictest sense of the wordperished by the philistines: the memory of the glorious HOlderlin;and the well-known aesthetician thus had a right on this occasion tospeak of tragic souls which perish through contact with 'reality' - theword reality here understood in the sense, already alluded to, ofphilistine rationality. But 'reality' is now something different fromwhat it was in Holderlin's day, and it may well be asked whether hewould have been able to find his way in the present great age. 'I donot know', said Friedrich Vischer, 'whether his gentle soul couldhave endured all the harshness involved in any war or all the rottennesswe have seen advancing since the war in every sphere of life.Perhaps he would again have sunk back into despair. He was one ofthe unarmed souls, he was the Werther of Greece, a lover withouthope; his was a life full of gentleness and desire, but there was alsostrength and substance in his will, and greatness, richness and life in12

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerhis style, which now and then reminds us of Aeschylus. Only hisspirit had too little of hardness in it; he lacked the weapon ofhumour; he could not admit that one can be a philistine without being a barbarian.'It is this last confession, and not the sugary condolences ofthe after-dinner speaker, that concerns us. Yes, one admits to being aphilistine - but a barbarian! Not at any price. Poor H6lderlin was,alas, incapable of drawing such fine distinctions. If, to be sure, oneunderstands by the word barbarian the opposite of civilization, oreven equates it with such things as piracy and cannibalism, then thedistinction is justified; but what the aesthetician is plainly trying tosay is that one can be a philistine and at the same time a man of culture- this is the joke that poor H6lderlin had not the humour to seeand the lack of which destroyed him.On this occasion a second admission escaped the speaker: 'It isnot always strength of will, but weakn ss, which enables us to transcendthat longing fo r the beautiful experienced so profoundly 'bytragic souls' - that, or something like it, was the confession, deposedin the name of the assembled 'we', that is to say the 'transcenders',the 'transcenders through weakness'! Let us be content with theseadmissions! For we now know two things, and from the mouth of aninitiate: first, that this 'we' has really got free of the desire for beauty,has indeed actually transcended it; and, secondly, that this wasaccomplished through weakness! In less indiscrete moments thisweakness had been called by a fairer name: it was the celebrated'healthiness' of the cultural philistines. After this latest information,however, it might be advisable henceforth to refer to them, not as the'healthy', but as the weaklings or, more strongly, as the weak. If onlythese weak were not in possession of the power! What can it matter tothem what they are called! For they are the masters, and he is nogenuine master who cannot endure a mocking nickname. Indeed,provided one possesses the power, one is even free to mock at oneself.It does not really matter then whether one exposes oneself toattack: for what does the purple, the mantle of triumph, not protect!The strength of the cultural philistine comes to light when he admitshis weakness: and the more often and more cynically he admits it,the more clearly he betrays his feelings of self-importance andsuperiority. This is the age of cynical philistine confessions. As FriedrichVischer made aural confession, so David Strauss has confessed witha book: that aural confession was cynical, and so is this book ofconfessions.13

Untimely Meditations3David Strauss makes a twofold confession regarding philistine culture:confession by word and confession by deed - the word of the confessorand the deed of the writer. His book entitled The Old Faith and theNew is, with regard to its content and with regard to its quality as abook and the production of a writer, an uninterrupted confession;and that he should permit himself to make public confession as tohis beliefs at all already constitutes a confession. * - It may be thateveryone over forty has the right to compile an autobiography, foreven the humblest of us may have experienced and seen from closerquarters things which the thinker may find worth noticing. But todepose a confession of one's beliefs must be considered incomparablymore presumptuous, since it presupposes that the writeraccords value, not merely to what he has experienced or discoveredor seen during his life, but even to what he has believed. Now, thelast thing the real thinker will wish to know is what kind of beliefs areagreeable to such natures as Strauss o r; what it is they 'have halfdreamily cobbled together' (p. 10) in regard to things of which onlyhe who knows them at first hand has a right to speak. Who couldneed the confessions of belief of a Ranke or a Mommsen, eventhough they are scholars and historians of an order quite differentfrom David Strauss? As soon as they sought to interest us in theirbeliefs rather than in their knowledge they would be oversteppingtheir bounds in a very annoying fashion. But this is what Straussdoes when he tells us of his beliefs. No one wishes to know anythingabout them, except perhaps certain narrow-minded opponents ofthe Straussian dogmas who feel that there must lie behind them asystem of truly diabolical principles and would no doubt wantStrauss to compromise his learned utterances by betraying thisdiabolical background. Perhaps these uncouth fellows have evenbenefited from Strauss's latest book; the rest of us, however, whohave had no reason to suspect the existence of such a diabolicalbackground, have done no such thing - we would, indeed, havebeen grateful if we had found a little diabolism in these pages. For thevoice of Strauss speaking of his new faith is certainly not the voice ofan evil spirit: it is not the voice of a spirit at all, let alone that of anactual genius.It is the voice of those people whom Straussintroduces to us as his 'we' - they are, he says, 'scholars and artists,* Strauss's Der alte und neue Glaube was published in 1872. Nietzsche's page referencesare to the original edition. An English translation by Mathilde Blind appeared in1873.14

David Strauss, the confessor and the writeroffice workers and soldiers, tradesman and landed proprietors, intheir thousands and by no means the worst in the land' - and who,when they tell us of their beliefs, bore us even more than when theytell us of their dreams. When they choose to break their silence andnoise their confessions, the volume of their unisono must not beallowed to deceive us as to the poverty and vulgarity of the tune theysing. How can the knowledge that a belief is shared by many make usmore favourably disposed towards it when we also know that if anyone of the many ventured to tell us of it we should not let him finishbut interrupt him with a yawn? If you have such a belief, we shouldhave to tell him, for God's sake keep quiet about it. It may be that inearlier years a few simple people sought a thinker in David Strauss:now they have discovered him to be a believer and are disappointed.If he had stayed silent* he would have remained a philosopher, atleast so far as these people are concerned: now he is a philosopher tono one. But he no longer desires the honour of being a thinker; hewants only to be a new believer, and is proud of his 'new faith'. Confessingit in writing, he thinks he is inscribing the catechism 'of modernideas' and constructing the broad 'universal highway of thefuture' . In fact, our philistine no longer hesitates to say anything, buthas grown self-assured to the point of cynicism. There was a time- avery distant time, to be sure - when the philistine was tolerated assomething that said nothing and of which nothing was said: therewas another time when one flattered his oddities, found him amusingand talked about him. This attention gradually turned him into acoxcomb and he began to take an inordinate pride in his odditiesand ingenuous queer-headedness: now he himself talks, often in themanner of Riehl's music for the home. 'But what is this I see! Is itphantom or reality? How long and broad my poodle grows!'t Fornow he is already trundling like a hippopotamus along the 'universalhighway of the future' and his growling and barking has changedinto the proud accents of the founder of a religion. Are you perhapsthinking, Master, of founding the religion of the future? 'It seems tome that the time has not yet come. It does not even occur to me towant to destroy any existing church' (p. 8). - But why not, Master? Allthat matters is that one is able to. Besides, to speak frankly, you yourselfbelieve you are able to: you have only to look at the last page ofyour book. There you say that your new highway 'is the sole uni-'''if he had stayed silent': Nietzsche's German version of the Latin 'si tacuisses,philosophus mansisses'tFrom Goethe's Fa ust, Part I Scene 3.15

Untimely Meditationsversal highway of the future, which needs only to be gradually completedand above all more travelled along for it to become pleasantand comfortable'. Therefore deny it no longer: the founder of areligion has been unmasked, the new, pleasant and comfortableroad to the Straussian paradise has been constructed. All you are notyet content with, you modest man, is the carriage in which you wishto drive us; you tell us in your closing words: 'that the carriage towhich my valued readers have had to entrust themselves with memeets every requirement I would not venture to assert' (p. 367): 'wehave been much buffeted about'. Ah hal you are fishing for compliments,you coquettish religion-founder! We, however, would preferto tell you the truth. If your reader prescribes himself the 368 pagesof your religious catechism at the rate of one page every day of theyear if, that is to say, he takes it in the mallest possible doses - webelieve that at the end of it he will feel unwell: out of vexation that ithas failed to produce any effect. Gulped down in mouthfuls,however, as much as possible at once according to the prescriptionfor all timely books, the draught can do ItO harm: far from feelingvexed and unwell, the drinker will be in a merry and happy mood,just as though nothing has happened, no religion had been destroyed,no universal highway constructed, no confession made -and that is what I call an effect! Physician and medicaments andsickness all forgotten! And the joyful laughter! The continual incitementto laughter! You are to be envied, dear sir, for you have foundedthe most agreeable religion in the world: a religion whose founder iscontinually honoured by being laughed at.4The philistine as the founder of the religion of the future - that is thenew faith in its most impressive shape; the philistine become avisionary - that is the unheard-of phenomenon that distinguishesGermany today. Let us, however, preserve for the moment a degreeof caution in regard to this visionary enthusiasm: has David Strausshimself not urged such caution upon us, in the following passage (p.80), in which, to be sure, we are supposed to recognize in the firstinstance not Strauss but the founder of Christianity: 'We know therehave been noble, gifted visionaries, a visionary can arouse and exaltus, and can produce a very lasting effect historically; but let us notchoose him as our life-guide. He will lead us astray if we do not subjecthis influence to the control of reason.' We know even more,16

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerindeed: there have also been ungifted visionaries, visionaries who donot arouse and fire us and yet intend to produce a very lasting effecthistorically as life-guides and to dominate the future: how muchmore is it incumbent upon us to subject their visionary enthusiasmto the control of reason. Lichtenberg even says: 'There are enthusiasticvisionaries devoid of ability, and these are truly dangerouspeople.' For the present, and in aid of this control by reason, wewould like an honest answer to three questions. First: how does thenew believer imagine his Heaven? Secondly: how far does thecourage bestowed on him by the new faith extend? And thirdly: howdoes he write his books? Strauss the confessor shall answer the firstand second questions for us, Strauss the writer the third.The Heaven of the new believer will naturally have to be a Heavenon earth: for the Christian 'prospect of an immortal Heavenly life'has, together with the other consolations of Christianity, 'irrevocablyfallen away' for him who has 'even one foot' in the Straussian camp(p. 364). There is some significance in how a religion elects to depictits Heaven: and if it be true that Christianity knows no otherHeavenly occupation than music-making and singing, then theStrauss ian philistine cannot very well be expected to look forward toit. The confessional book does, however, contain one paradisialpage, page 294: unroll this parchment first of all, most fo rtunatephilistine! All Heaven.will there climb down to you. 'We shall giveonly an indication', Strauss says, 'of what we do, of what we havedone these many years. Besides our profession - for we belong to themost varied professions, we are by no means only scholars or artistsbut also office workers and soldiers, tradesmen and landed proprietors,and, to say it again, there are not a few of us but many thousandsand not the worst in any country besides our profession, Isay, we try to keep our minds as open as possible to all the higherinterests of mankind: during recent years we have participated in theliveliest way in the great national war and the construction of theGerman state, and we feel ourselves profoundly uplifted by thisturn, as glorious as it was unexpected, in the history of our muchtriednation. We assist our understanding of these things throughhistorical studies, which have now been made easy even for theunlearned by a series of attractive and popularly written historicalworks; at the same time, we seek to broaden our knowledge ofnature, for which there is likewise no lack of aids accessible to thecommon understanding; and lastly, we find in the writings of ourgreat poets, in performances of the works of our great composers, a17

Untimely Meditationsstimulus for the spirit and the heart, for the imagination and thesense of humour, that leaves nothing to be desired. Thus we live andgo our way rejoicing.'This is our man, cries the philistine who reads this: for that is howwe live, how we live every day! * And what a nice turn of phrase hehas to describe things! When, for example, he refers to historicalstudies by means of which we assist our understanding of the politicalsituation, what can he be referring to but newspaper-reading,and when he speaks of our lively participation in the construction ofthe German state, what can he mean but our daily visits to the publichouse? and is a stroll through the zoo not what is meant by 'aidsaccessible to the common understanding' through which webroaden our knowledge of nature? And finallythe theatres andconcerts from which we take home 'stimuli for the imagination andsense of humour' which 'leave nothing to be desired' - how wittily hedignifies these dubious activities! This is our man: fo r his Heaven isour Heaven!Thus the philistine cries and rejoices: and if we are not as contentedas he is, the reason is that we wanted to know more. Scaligerasked: 'What is it to us whether Montaigne drank red wine or white!'But in this more important case how much we should treasure suchdetailed information! If only we could know how many pipes thephilistine must smoke each day according to the dictates of the newfaith, and whether he prefers the Spener or the National-Zeitungwhen he is drinking his coffee. Our thirst for knowledge is not satisfied!On only one point do we receive something of what we desire,but this, happily, concerns the philistine's Heaven of Heavens: theprivate little aesthetic closets consecrated to the great poets and composersin which the philistine not merely 'edifies' himself but inwhich, according to his confession, 'all his blemishes are effaced andwashed away' (p. 363); so that we appear to have to envisage theseclosets as kinds of little bathrooms. 'But that is only fo r fleetingmoments, it happens only in the realm of the imagination and isvalid only therein; as soon as we return to rude reality and the dailyround, the old cares descend upon us again from all sides' - thussighs our teacher, Strauss. Yet if we employ the fleeting moments fo rwhich we are allowed to linger in those little closets, there will be justenough time to view from all sides a picture of the ideal philistine,that is to say the philistine from whom all blemishes have been washed awayand who is now the philistine type in all its purity. What here pre-*This phrase is from a German students' song.18

David Strauss, the confessor and the writersents itself is, in all seriousness, instructive: let no one who has fallenvictim to the confessional book let it go without having read theexcursus 'on our great poets' or that 'on our great composers'. Herethere extends the rainbow of the new guild, and he who cannot takejoy in it 'is beyond all help', is, as Strauss says on another occasionbut could also say here, 'not yet ripe for our viewpoint'. For we are,remember, in the Heaven of Heavens. The enthusiastic peripateticsets about leading us around, and apologizes if, carried away by thepleasure he takes in all these wonderful things, he talks a little toomuch. 'If I perchance grow more loquacious than is thoughtappropriate to the occasion', he tells us, 'I ask the reader'sindulgence: out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh. Lethim be assured, however, that what he is now going to read is notdrawn from earlier writings and inserted here, but written for thepresent purpose and the present place' (p. 296). This confessionmomentarily staggers us. of what interest can it be to us whether ornot these charming little chapters are newly written! If only it were amatter of writing! Between ourselves, I wish they had been written 25years ago: fo r then I would know why the ideas in them seem to meso pallid and why the odour of mouldering antiques adheres tothem. But that something written in 1872 should smell mouldy in1872 arouses my suspicions. Suppose someone fell asleep whilereading these chapters and imbibing their odour- what would he belikely to dream about? A friend of mine gave me the answer, for ithappened to him. He dreamed of a waxworks show: the classicauthors stood there, delicately imitated in wax and gems. Theymoved their arms and eyes and a screw inside them squeaked as theydid so. He then saw something uncanny, a formless figure draped inribbons and gilt paper with a label hanging from its mouth and'Lessing' written on it; my friend said he stepped closer and learnedthe worst: it was the Homeric chimera, Strauss in front, Gervinusbehind, in the middle chimera - in summa, Lessing. This discoverywrung from him a scream of fear, he awoke and read no further.Why, Master, did you ever write such mouldy little chapters!We do, to be sure, learn a few novelties from them: for example,that Gervinus has taught us how and why Goethe possessed no talentfor the drama, that in the second part of Faust he has produced only aschematic allegory; that Wallenstein is a Macbeth who is at the sametime Hamlet;* that the Straussian reader plucks out the stories fromthe Wanderjahre in the way illbred children pluck the almonds andnil:: 1 I: :1*111 Schiller's three-pan drama H'(/l1l'11sll'ill.19

Untimely Meditations1.1raisins out of a tough cake;' that without thrills and extreme situationsnothing on the stage can make any real effect; and that Schilleremerged from Kant as from a hydropathic establishment. All this iscertainly new and striking, even if it does not strike us very pleas andy;and, as surely as it is new, just as surely it will never grow old, for itwas never young: it came into the world already old. What ideas thenew-style blessed come across in their aesthetic Heaven! And whyhave they not forgotten at any rate some of them, especially whenthey are as unaesthetic and earthly-ephemeral and bear the stamp ofstupidity as visibly as, for example, some of the opinions ofGervinus! But it almost seems as though the modest greatness of aStrauss and the immodest minimality of a Gervinus can get ontogether only too well: and so hail to all these blessed ones, and hailto us unblessed ones as well, if this undoubted judge of art goes onteaching his acquired enthusiasm and his coach-horse gallop, ofwhich honest Grillparzer has spoken with all due clarity, and allHeaven resounds with the hoofbeats'of this galloping enthusiasm!Things would at least be a bit livelier than tihey are at present, whenthe creeping carpet-slippered enthusiasm of our heavenly leaderand the lukewarm eloquence of his mouth in the long run onlyweary and disgust us. I would like to know how a Hallelujah wouldsound in the mouth of Strauss: I imagine one would have to listenvery closely or it would sound like a polite apology or a whisperedcompliment. I can relate an instructive and appalling example ofthis. Strauss took grave exception to references by one of his opponentsto his bowing and scraping before Lessing- the unfortunateman had misunderstood him -; Strauss, to be sure, asserted that theman must be a numbskull not to recognize that the simple words hehad used of Lessing in section got had come straight from thewarmth of his heart. Now, I have no doubt at all as to the existence ofthis warmth; on the contrary, I have always felt that this warmth ofapproval of Lessing on the part of Strauss had something suspectabout it; I find the same suspect approval of Lessing raised to steamheatin Gervinus; indeed, none of the great German writers is ingeneral so popular with the litde German writers as Lessing is; andyet they deserve no thanks for it: for what is it in Lessing that reallywins their approval? First, his universality: he is a critic and a poet,an archaeologist and a philosopher, a theorist of drama and a*Goethe's novel Wilhelm Mei.sters Wa ruleryahre (182 1-9), which contains inset stories.t'section 90' refers to The Old Faith and the New.20

David Strauss; the confessor and the writertheologian. Then, 'this unity of the writer and the man, of the headand the heart'. The latter quality distinguishes every great writer, andsometimes even the little writer, for a narrow mind gets onfabulously well with a narrow heart. And the former quality, universality,is in itself no distinction at all, especially as in Lessing's case itwas a mere necessity. What is, rather, to be marvelled at in theseLessing enthusiasts is precisely that they fail to notice this consumingnecessity which pursued Lessing throughout his life and forcedupon him his 'universality'; that they fail to realize that such a man isconsumed too quickly, like a flame, and are not indignant that thistender, ardent being was darkened, tormented and suffocated by thevulgar narrowness and poverty of his whole environment, andespecially that of his learned contemporaries; that they fail tounderstand, indeed, that this admired universality is something thatought to evoke, not admiration, but a profound feeling of pity.'Commiserate with the extraordinary man', Goethe cries to us, 'thathe lived in so miserable' an age he had constantly to exert himselfpolemically.'* How, my dear philistines, can you think of Lessingwithout a feeling of shame: he who perished of your stupidity, inconflict with your ludicrous totems and idols, through the wretchedstate of your theatres, your scholars, your theologians, without evenonce being able to venture that eternal flight for which he had comeinto the world. And what do you feel when you rememberWinckelmann, who, to free his sight of your grotesque absurdities,went begging for help to the Jesuits and whose shameful conversiondishonours not him but you? Do you even dare to speak the name ofSchiller and not blush? Look at this picture! The flashing eyes thatgaze contemptuously out over your heads, the deathly flushedcheeks - do these say nothing to you? Here was a glorious, divine toywhich you broke. And if this curtailed and mortally harassed life hadbeen deprived of Goethe's friendship it would have been your partto extinguish it even sooner! None of your great geniuses has everreceived any assistance from you, and do you now want to make it adogma that none ever shall receive any? To each of them you werethat 'resistance of the obtuse world' which Goethe names in hisepilogue to Schiller's Glocke; to each of them you showed annoyanceand lack of understanding, or envious narrow-mindedness, ormalice and egoism: it was in spite of you they created their works,against you they directed their attacks, and it was thanks to you they"'Goethe to Eckermann, 7 February 1827.21

pUntimely Meditationssank down too soon, their work unfinished, broken or d eadened bythe struggle. And are you now to be permitted, tamquam re bene gesta, *to praise such men! and to do so in words which reveal unmistakablywhom it is you have in mind when you utter such praise, which then'gushes so warmly from the heart' that one would have to be blindnot to see towards whom your obeisances are really directed. Even inhis day, Goethe felt impelled to exclaim: 'Truly, we are in need of aLessing!' and woe to all vain teachers and to the whole aestheticheavenly kingdom if the young tiger, his restless energy visible inswelling muscles and the glance of his eye, should ever set out insearch of prey!5How wise my friend was that, enlightened by this chimerical figureas to the nature of the Straussian Lessing and of Strauss himself, heforbore to read further. We read further, however, and went on tobeg entry into the musical sanctum of new faith. The Masteropened the door, attended at our side, explained, named names - atlast we stopped mistrustfully and looked at him: were we notexperiencing the .same thing as happened to our poor friend in hisdream? So long as he was speaking of them, the composers of whomStrauss spoke seemed to us to be wrongly named, and we felt hemust be referring to someone else, if not to mere teasing phantoms.When, for example, he takes, with the same warmth as had made ussuspicious when he praised Lessing, the name of Haydn into hismouth and gives himself out for an epopt and priest of a Haydnesquemystery cult, while at the same time (p. 362) comparing Haydn with'honest soup' and Beethoven with 'confectionary' (in reference to thequartets, of all things), we are certain of only one thing: hisco nfectio nary-Beethoven is not our Beethoven, and his soup-Haydnis not our Haydn. The Master finds, moreover, that our orchestrasare too good to perform his Haydn and believes that this music issuited only to the most modestly competent dilettanti - again a proofthat he is referring to a different artist and to different works of art(perhaps to Riehl's music for the home).Butwho could this Straussian confectio nary-Beethoven be? He issupposed to have written nine symphonies, of which the 'Pastoral' is'the least inspired'; we discover that at every third of them he is*tamquam re bene gesta: as if things had turned out well22

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerimpelled 'to kick over the traces and go off on an adventure', whichalmost suggests to us a cross-bred creature, half horse, half knighterrant. In regard to a certain 'Eroica' it is seriously stated of this centaurthat he has failed to make it clear 'whether what is going on is aconflict on the batdefield or in the depths of the human heart'. hi the'Pastoral' there is an 'excellent storm' which is, however, far too goodto interrupt a mere peasants' dance; and it is through this 'capriciouscontinual association' of the music with its 'trivial underlying occasion',as Strauss so neady and correctly calls it, that this symphonyis 'the least inspired' - an even harsher word seems to have hoveredin the mind of our classical Master but, as he tells us, he preferred toexpress himself here 'with befitting modesty'. But no, here he is foronce in the wrong, here he really is too modest. For who else is toinstruct us about the confectionary-Beethoven if not Strauss himself,the only one who seems to know him? There immediately follows,moreover, the enunciation of a firm and befittingly immodest judgment,this time on the Ninth Symphony: this work, it seems, may beloved only by those to whom 'the baroque counts as a mark of geniusand the formless as the sublime' (p. 359) . It is true that so stern acritic as Gervinus gave it a welcome, namely as a confirmation of oneof his own dogmas: he, Strauss, is however very far from seeking themerits of his Beethoven in such 'problematic productions'. 'It is apity', sighs our Master sadly, 'that our enjoyment of Beethoven andthe admiration we gladly accord him must be diminished by reservationsof this kind.' For our Master is a favourite of the muses, andthey have told him that they went only a stretch of the way withBeethoven and that he thereafter again lost sight of them. 'This is adefect' , he cries, 'but can one believe that it also appears as a merit?''He who trundles along the musical idea with toil and out of breathwill appear to be the stronger and to move what is heavier' (pp. 355-6). This is a confession, and in regard not only to Beethoven but tothe 'classic prose-writer' himself: the muses never let go of him, thecelebrated author: from the lightest play of wit - Straussian wit, thatis - to the heights of seriousness - Straussian seriousness, that is -they stay imperturbably at his side. He, the classic artist in writing,carries his burden with playful ease, while Beethoven trundles hisalong out of breath. He seems to dally with his load: there is a merit;but can one believe that it might appear as a defect? - But at the mostonly to those to whom the baroque counts as a mark of genius andthe formless as the sublime - is that not so, you dallying favourite ofthe muses?23

Untimely MeditationsWe begrudge no one the edification he acquires for himself in thesilence of his room or in the new heavenly kingdom arranged for thepurpose; but of all possible forms of edification the Straussian is oneof the strangest; for he edifies himself at a little sacrificial fire intowhich he casually casts the sublimest works of the German nation inorder to perfume his idols with the smoke they produce. Let usimagine for a moment that the 'Eroica', the 'Pastoral' and the Ninthhad chanced to get into the hands of our priest of the muses and thatit had then depended upon him to keep Beethoven's image spotlessthrough the removal of such 'problematical productions' who candoubt that he would have burned them? And that is how theStrausses of our day in fact proceed: they want to know of an artistonly that by which he is suited for their domestic service, and can seeno alternative but using him as perfume or burning him. This, ofcourse, they should be at liberty to do: the only strange thing about itis that public opinion in aesthetic matters is so insipid, uncertain andeasily misled that it beholds such an exhibition of the sorriest philistinismwithout protest, that it lacks, indeediJ any feeling for the comicalityof a scene in which an unaesthetic magistrate sits in judgmenton Beethoven. And as for Mozart, there ought truly to apply to himwhat Aristotle said of Plato: 'the bad man is not permitted even topraise him'. Here, however, all shame has been lost, on the part ofthe public as much as on that of the Master; not only is he permittedto cross himself before the greatest and purest products of the Germangenius as though he had beheld something godless and indecent,but his candid confessions of sins are received with delight,especially as he confesses not sins he himself has committed, butthose supposedly committed by our great spirits. 'Ah, if only ourMaster really was always right!' his admiring readers sometimesthink in an access of doubt; he himself, however, stands there, smilingand certain, perorating, damning and blessing, doffing his hat tohimself, and capable at any moment of saying what the duchessDelafone said to Madame de Stael: 'I have to admit, my dear friend,that 1 know of nobody who is always right except me.'6To the worm a corpse is a pleasant thought, and to everything livinga worm is a dreadful one. The worm's idea of Heaven is a fat carcass,the philosophy professor's is grubbing about in the entrails ofSchopenhauer, and as long as there are rats there will also be a rat24

David Straussj the confessor and the writerHeaven. This provides the answer to our first question: how does thenew believer imagine his Heaven? The Straussian philistine lodgesin the works of our great poets and composers like a worm whichlives by destroying, admires by consuming, reveres by digesting.Now we come to our second question: how far does -the couragebestowed on him by the new faith extend? This too would alreadyhave been answered if courage were identical with immodesty: for inthat case Strauss would possess the courage of a Mameluke - for thatbefitting modesty of which he speaks in the passage on Beethovenjust alluded to is only a stylistic device, not a moral position. Strausshas sufficient of that impudence to which every victorious hero feelshimself entitled; every flower that blooms belongs to him, the victor,alone, and he lauds the sun for illuminating his window. Even theancient, venerable universe does not remain untouched by his commendations,as though they alone could consecrate it and it must .henceforth revolve only about the central monad, Strauss. Theuniverse, he informs us; is a machine with iron wheels and cogs andheavy pistons and rams, 'but merciless cogs are not all that movewithin it, there also flows a soothing oil' (p. 365). The universe willnot be precisely grateful to our image-mad Master that he can findno better metaphor with which to commend it, if indeed it takes anypleasure at all in being commended by Strauss. What is this oil calledwhich trickles down on to the pistons and rams? And of what consolationcould it be to the worker within this machine to know thatthis oil is being poured on to him while the machine continues tohold him in its grip? Let us say simply that the metaphor is an unfortunateone and turn our attention to another procedure throughwhich Strauss seeks to convey how he really feels towards theuniverse and in the course of which there hovers upon his lips thequestion Gretchen kept asking: 'He loves me - he loves me not - heloves me?'* If while he is doing this Strauss does not pluck the petalsfrom a flower or count the buttons on a coat, what he does do is noless harmless, though it perhaps requires a little more courage.Strauss wants to see whether or not his feeling for the 'cosmos' hasbecome paralysed and dead, and he jabs himself: for he knows thatone can jab one's arm with a needle quite painlessly so long as thearm is paralysed and dead. In reality, to be sure, he does not jab himself,he chooses an even more violent procedure, which he describesthus: 'We open Schopenhauer, who loses no opportunity of striking>lOIn Goethe's Faust, Part I Scene 12.25

Untimely Meditationsour idea in the face' (p. 143). But since it is not an id a, even thefairest Straussian idea of the universe, that has a face, but he who hasthe idea, the procedure here described consists of the followingindividual acts: Strauss opens Schopenhauer, whereuponSchopenhauer takes the opportunity to strike Strauss in the face.Strauss now 'reacts', and does so 'religiously', that is to say he strikesback at Schopenhauer, berates him, speaks of absurdities, blasphemies,infamies, even asserts that Schopenhauer was out of hismind. The outcome of this cudgelling: 'we demand for our universethe same piety as the devout of the old stamp do for their God' -more briefly: 'he loves me!' He makes things hard for himself, ourfavourite of the muses, but he is as brave as a Mameluke and fearsneither the Devil nor Schopenhauer. How much 'soothing oil'would he not use up if he indulged in such procedures veryoften!On the other hand, we realize the debt Strauss actually owes to thetitillating, jabbing and cudgelling Schopenhauer; and the followingexpress act of kindness towds him therei>re fails to occasion in usany further surprise. 'It is necessary only to leaf through ArthurSchopenhauer's writings, though one would also do well, not merelyto leaf through them, but to study them' etc. (p. 141). To whom is thechieftain of the philistines really addressing these words? - he ofwhom it can be proved that he has never studied Schopenhauer, heof whom Schopenhauer himself would have to have said: 'this is anauthor who does not deselVe to be leafed through, let alone studied'.It is obvious that he swallowed Schopenhauer the wrong way: bycoughing and spluttering he is trying to get rid of him. But so that themeasure of naive commendation shall be full, Strauss permits himselfto recommend old Kant: he calls Kant's Allgemeine Geschichte undTheone des Himmels of 1 755 'a work which has always seemed to me noless significant than his later critique of reason. If in the latter whatone must admire is profundity of insight, in the former it is extensivenessof oudook; if in the latter we see the aged philosopherengaged in securing a domain of knowledge, even if a limited one, inthe former we encounter a man filled with all the courage of thespiritual discoverer and conqueror.' This judgment of Kant on thepart of Strauss has always seemed to me no more modest than hisjudgment of Schopenhauer: if in the latter we see the chieftainengaged above all in securing the expression of a judgment, albeit avery limited one, in the former we encounter the celebrated prosewriterwho, with all the courage of ignorance, empties his vial of26

David Strauss, the confessor and the writercommendation even upon Kant. The quite incredible fact thatStrauss has no notion how to derive from Kant's critique of reasonsupport for his testament of modern ideas, and that everywhere heflatters nothing but the crudest kind of realism, is among the moststriking characteristics of this new gospel, which presents .itselfmoreover only as the arduously attained outcome of continuous historicaland scientific research and therewith denies any involvementwith philosophy at all. For the philistine chieftain and his 'we' thereis no such thing as the Kantian philosophy. He has no notion of thefundamental antinomies of idealism or of the extreme relativity ofall science and reason. Or: it is precisely reason that ought to tell himhow little of the in-itself of things can be determined by reason. But itis true that people of a certain age find it impossible to understandKant, especially if in their youth they have, like Strauss, understood,or thought they understood, the 'gigantic spirit' Hegel, and have alsohad to occupy themselves with Schleiermacher, 'who', as Strausssays, 'possessed almost too much acuteness'. It will sound strange toStrauss when I tell him that even now he is in a state of 'absolutedependence' on Hegel and Schleiermacher, and that his doctrine ofthe universe, his way of regarding things sub specie bienni, * his grovellingbefore the realities of present-day Germany, above all his shamelessphilistine optimism, are to be elucidated by reference to certainearly youthful impressions, habits and pathological phenomena. Hewho has once contracted Hegelism and Schleiermacherism is neverquite cured of them.There is one passage in the confessional book in which this incurableoptimism goes strolling along with a downright holiday airof complacency (pp. 142-3). 'If the world is a thing that it were betterdid not exist', says Strauss, 'well then, the thought of the philosopher,which constitutes a piece of this world, is a thought that it were betterwas not thought. The pessimistic philosopher does not see that hedeclares his own thought bad when his thought declares the worldbad; but if a thought which declares the world bad is itself bad thinking,then the world is, on the contrary, good. Optimism may as a rulemake things too easy for itself, and here Schopenhauer's insistenceon the role which pain and evil play in the world is quite in order; butevery true philosophy is necessarily optimistic, since otherwise itdenies its own right to exist.' If this refutation of Schopenhauer is not"sub specie bienni: literally, 'under the aspect of two years' - Nietzsche's ironic adaptationof the well-known phrase 'sub specie aeternitatis'.27

Untimely Meditationsthe same as that which in another place Strauss calls a 'refutation tothe loud rejoicing of the higher spheres', then I do not understandthis theatrical expression, which he once employed against an opponent.Optimism has here for once deliberately made things tooeasy for itself. But the trick of the thing was precisely to make it lookas though refuting Schopenhauer was no bother at all and to castone's burden off with such playful ease that the three muses wouldtake continual delight in the dallying optimist. This is to be achievedby showing that there is no need whatever to take a pessimistseriously: the vainest sophistries will do for dealing with so'unhealthy and unprofitable' a philosophy as Schopenhauer's, uponwhich one needs to expend, not reasons, but at the most jokes andphrases. In the light of such passages as this, one comprehendsSchopenhauer's solemn assertion that, where it is not the thoughtlesschatter of those beneath whose flat cranium there are nothoughts but only words, optimism seems to him not merely anabsurd but also a truly infamous mode of thinking, a bitter mockery of thenameless sufferings of mankind. When the philistine reduces it to asystem, as Strauss does, he also reduces it to an infamous mode ofthinking, that is to say to an inordinately stupid ease-andcontentmentdoctrine for the benefit of the 'ego', or of his 'we', andhe arouses indignation.Who, for example, could read the fo llowing psychologicalelucidation without feeling indignation, since it can quite clearlyhave sprung only from the stem of this infamous ease-andcontentmenttheory: 'Beethoven said he would never have been ableto compose such a text as Figaro or Don Giovanni. Life had not smiledupon him to the extent that he could have adopted so cheerful a view of it as totake the weaknesses of mankind so lightly' (p. 361). But the worst exampleof this infamous vulgarity of mind is supplied in the fact that Straussknows no other way of explaining to himself the whole dreadfullyserious drive to self-abnegation and to salvation in asceticismevidenced in the first centuries of Christianity than by supposing itto have originated in a preceding surfeit of sexual indulgence of allkinds and the disgust and nausea that resulted:'The Persians call it bidamag buden,The Gennans say Katz.enjammer.' *Strauss himself quotes these lines and is not ashamed. We, however,turn aside for a moment to overcome our disgust.« Katzenjammer: a hangover; remorse for the previous night's debauch. The coupletis from Goethe's West-iistlicher Divan.28

David Strauss, the confessor and the writer7Our philistine chieftain is indeed brave with words to the point ofrashness whenever he believes he will give delight to his noble 'we'through such bravery. Thus, the asceticism and self-abnegation ofthe saints and hermits of old may count as a form of Kalzenjarnmer,Jesus may be described as a visionary who would in our day hardlyescape the madhouse, the story of the resurrection may be called a'piece of world-historical humbug' - let us for once let all this pass,so that we may study the singular courage of which Strauss, our'classic philistine', is capable.Let us first hear his confession: 'To tell the world what it leastwants to hear is, to be sure, a displeasing and thankless office. It likesto live unstintingly, like a great lord, it receives and pays out for aslong as it has anything to pay with: but when someone comes alongto reckon up the items and hands it the bill, it regards him as amischief- maker. And precisely that is what my head and heart havealways impelled me to do.' Such a head and heart may well be calledcourageous, yet it remains doubtful whether this courage is naturaland original, or whether it is not rather acquired and artificial;perhaps Strauss accustomed himself to being a mischief-maker byprofession only gradually, until he had acquired from this professionthe courage for it. That would accord very well with naturalcowardice, such as is proper to the philistine: it reveals itselfespecially in the inconsequentiaiity of those assertions which it takescourage to make; there is the sound of thunder, but there follows noclearing of the air. He cannot manage an aggressive act, onlyaggressive words, but he chooses the most offensive words he canfind and exhausts all his force and energy in uncouth and blusteringexpressions: when his words have died away he is more cowardlythan he who has never spoken. Even the phantom form of actions,ethics, reveals that he is a hero only of words, and that he avoidsevery occasion on which it is necessary to proceed from words togrim earnest. He announces with admirable frankness that he is nolonger a Christian, but he does not wish to disturb anyone's peace ofmind; it seems to him contradictory to found an association in orderto overthrow an association - which is in fact not so very contradictory.With a cenain rude contentment he covers himselfin the hairycloak of our ape-genealogists and praises Darwin as one of thegreatest benefactors of mankind - but it confuses us to see that hisethics are constructed entirely independently of the question: 'Whatis our conception of the world?' Here was an opportunity to exhibit29

Untimely Meditationsnative courage: for here he ought to have turned his back on his 'we'and boldly derived a moral code for life out of the bellum omnium contraomnes * and the privileges of the strong - though such a code would,to be sure, have to originate in an intrepid mind such as that of Hobbes,and in a grand love of truth quite different from that which explodesonly in angry outbursts against priests, miracles and the 'worldhistoricalhumbug' of the resurrection. For with a genuine Darwinianethic, seriously and consistently carried through, he would have hadagainst him the philistine whom with such outbursts he attracts tohis side.'All moral behaviour' says Strauss, 'is a self-determination of theindividual according to the idea of the species.' Translated into comprehensiblelanguage, all this means is: Live as a man and not as anape or a seal! Unfortunately this imperative is altogether withoutforce and useless, because the concept of man yokes together themost diverse and manifold things, for example the Patagonian andMaster Strauss, and because no one will venture to demand: 'Live asa Patagonian!' and at the same time 'LivCi as Master Strauss!' If,however, anyone should go so far as to demand of himself: 'Live as agenius', that is to say as the ideal expression of the species man, buthappened to be either a Patagonian or Master Strauss, how we wouldthen have to suffer from the importunities of natural fools thirstingfor genius Lichtenberg in his day already had to complain of theirmushroom-like growth in Germany - and demanding of us withwild cries that we listen to their latest confessions of faith. Strauss hasnot yet even learned that no idea can ever make men better or moremoral, and that preaching morals is as easy as finding grounds forthem is difficult; his task was much rather to take the phenomena ofhuman goodness, compassion, love and self-abnegation, which doin fact exist, and derive and explain them from his Darwinist presuppositions:while he preferred by a leap into the imperative to fleefrom the task of explanation. In making this leap he is even able toelude, with an easy and frivolous hop, Darwin's fundamental proposition.'Do not ever forget', says Struass, 'that you are a man and nota mere creature of nature: do not ever forget that all others arelikewise men, that is to say, with all their individual differences thesame as you, with the same needs and demands as you that is theepitome of all morality.' But whence sounds this imperative? Howcan man possess it in himself, since, according to DaIWin, he is pre-"bellum omnium contra omnes: war of all against all30

David Strauss, the confessor and the writercisely a creature of nature and nothing else, and has evolved to theheight of being man by quite other laws: precisely, in fact, by alwaysforgetting that other creatures similar to him possessed equivalentrights, precisely by feeling himself the stronger and graduallyeliminating the other, weaker examples of his species? While Straussis obliged to assume that no two creatures have been exactly similar,and that the entire evolution of man from the level of the animals upto the heights of the cultural philistine depends upon the law of differencesbetween individuals, he finds no difficulty in enunciatingthe opposite: 'behave as though there were no differences betweenindividuals!' Where has the moral teaching of Strauss-Darwin nowgone, where has any courage whatever gone!We are at once given a fresh demonstration of the point at whichcourage is transposed into its opposite. For Strauss continues: 'Donot ever forget that you and all that you are aware of within andaround you is no disconnected fragment, no wild chaos of atomsand accidents, but that 'everything proceeds according to eternallaws out of the one primeval source of all life, all reason and all goodnessthat is the epitome of religion.' Out of this 'one primevalsource' however, there at the same time flows all destruction, allunreason, all evil, and Strauss calls this source the universe. But how,given it possesses so contradictory and self-annulling a character,should this be worthy of religious veneration and be addressed bythe name 'God', as Strauss himself addresses it (p. 365): 'our Goddoes not take us into his arms from outside' - here one expects as anantithesis a certainly very strange 'taking us into his arms fromwithin'! - 'he opens to us sources of consolation within us. He showsus that, while chance would be an irrational master of the world,necessity, i.e. the chain of causes in the world, is reason itself' (apiece of surreptitiousness which only the 'we' can fail to recognize assuch because they were raised in this Hegelian worship of the real asthe rational, that is to say in thedeiflCationofsuccess). 'He teaches us to seethat to desire an exception to the fulfilment of a single law of naturewould be to desire the destruction of the cosmos.' On the contrary,Master: an honest natural scientist believes that the world conformsunconditionally to laws, without however asserting anything as tothe ethical or intellectual value of these laws: he would regard anysuch assertions as the extreme anthropomorphism of a reason thathas overstepped the bounds of the permitted. But it is at precisely thepoint at which the honest natural scientist resigns that Strauss 'reacts'- in order to plume us with his feathers - 'religiously', and goes on to31

Untimely Meditationspursue a consciously dishonest kind of natural science; ' he assumeswithout question that all events possess the highest intellectual valueand are thus absolutely rational and purposeful, and then that theycontain a revelation of eternal goodness itself. He is thus in need of acomplete cosmodicy and at a disadvantage compared with thosewho are concerned only with a theodicy, who conceive the entireexistence of man as, for example, a punishment or a process ofpurification. At this point, and thus embarrassed, Strauss goes so faras to venture for once a metaphysical hypothesis - the driest andmost palsied there has ever been and at bottom no more than anunconscious parody of a saying of Lessing's. 'That other saying ofLessing's', he says on page 219, 'that, if God held all truth in his righthand and in his left the never-sleeping quest for truth with the conditionof continually erring in this quest, and then offered him achoice between them, he would humbly fall upon God's left handand beg for the contents of it - this saying has always been regardedas among the finest he left to us. There has been found in it anexpression of his restless desire for actiQll and investigation. Thissaying has always made so powerful an impression upon me becausebehind its subjective significance I have heard resounding an objectiveone of immense range. For does it not contain the best reply toSchopenhauer's crude conception of an ill-advised God who knowsof nothing better to do than to enter into so wretched a world as thisis? May it not be that the Creator himself shares Lessing's opinionand prefers continual striving to peaceful possession?' A God, that isto say, who reserves to himself continual error and at the same time astriving for truth, and who perhaps humbly falls upon Strauss's lefthand and says to him: all truth is for you. If ever a God or a man wereill-advised it is this Straussian God, with his partiality for error andfailure, and the Straussian man, who has to pay for this partialityhere indeed one can 'hear resounding a significance of immenserange', here there flows Strauss's universal soothing oil, here onesenses something of the rationality of all evolution and natural law!Does one really? Or would our world not be, rather, as Lichtenbergonce called it, the work of a subordinate being who as yet lacked afu ll understanding of his task, and thus an experiment? a novice'stest-piece which was still being worked on? So that Strauss himselfwould have to concede that our world is an arena, not of rationality,but of error, and that its laws and purposefulness are no source ofconsolation, since they proceed from a God who is not merely inerror but takes pleasure in being in error. It is a truly delicious spec-32

David Strauss, the confessor and the writertacle to behold Strauss as a metaphysical architect building up intothe clouds. But for whom is this spectacle mounted? For the nobleand contented 'we', so as to preserve their contentment: perhapsthey were overcome by fear in the midst of those merciless wheels ofthe universal machine and tremblingly begged their leader for help.Whereupon Strauss started the 'soothing oil' flowing, led on a Godwho errs out of a passion for error, and assumed for once the whollyuncongenial role of a metaphysical architect. He does all thisbecause his 'we' are afraid and he himself is afraid - and here we discoverthe limits of his courage, even with respect to his 'we'. For hedoes not dare to tell them honestly: I have liberated you from ahelpful and merciful God, the universe is only a rigid machine,take care you are not mangled in its wheels! This he dares not do:so he has to call in the sorceress, that is to say metaphysics. To thephilistine, however, even a Straussian metaphysic is preferable tothe Christian, and the idea of an erring God more attractive thanthat of a miracle-working one. For he himself, the philistine, commitserrors, but has never yet performed a miracle.It is for this very reason that the philistine hates the genius: for thegenius has the justified reputation of performing miracles; and thatis why it is in the highest degree instructive to see why, in one solitarypassage, Strauss for once presents himself as the daring defender ofthe genius and of the aristocratic natures of the spirit. Why does hedo it? From fear, this time fear of the social democrats. He refersthem to Bismarck, Moltke, 'whose greatness can be the less denied asthey advance into the realm of palpable action. Now even the moststiff-necked and surly of these fellows must be constrained to lookupwards a little, so as to get a sight of these exalted figures, even ifonly to the knee.' Do you perhaps desire, Master, to give the socialdemocrats instruction in how to get kicked? The will to deliver suchkicks is to be found everywhere, after all, and that those who are toget kicked can see only 'to the knee' of these exalted figures seems toensure that the kicks will be successfully delivered. 'In the domain ofart and science too', Strauss goes on, 'there will never be a lack ofkings who build and who give work to a host of carters.' Good - butsuppose the carters themselves start to build? It does happen,metaphysical Master, you know that - then the kings will have to grinand bear it.This union of audacity and weakness, of rash words and cowardlyacquiescence, this subtle assessment of how and with what expressionsone can now impress the philistine, now flatter him, this33

Untimely MeditationsIIIlack of character and strength masquerading as strength and character,this defectiveness in wisdom with the affectation of superiorityand mature experience - all this, in fact, is what I hate in this book. IfI thought that young men could endure such a book, even treasureit, I would sadly renounce all hope for their future. This confessionof a pitiful, hopeless and truly contemptible philistinism presentsitself as an expression of the views of those many thousands of'we'sof whom Strauss speaks, and these 'we's are in turn the fathers of thecoming generation! These are gruesome presuppositions for anyonewho wants to assist the coming generation to that which the presentdoes not possess - to a truly German culture. To such a one theground seems strewn with ashes and all the stars appear obscured;every dead tree, every desolate field cries to him: Unfruitful! Lost!Here there will be no more spring! He has to feel as the youthfulGoethe felt when he looked into the sad atheistical twilight of the Systemede fa nature: the book seemed to him so Cimmerian, so stagnant, sodead, that it cost him an effort to endure its proximity, and heshuddered in its presence as in the presence of a ghost. ::

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerand that it holds up to them the reflection of a life such as they themselveslive. For this is the trick of the thing: the Master affects to beoudining the ideal of a new philosophy of life, and now he hearshimself praised on every side, since everyone is in a position to thinkthat this is precisely how he thinks and that Strauss would see alreadyfulfilled in him that which he has demanded only of the future. Thisis part of the explanation of the extraordinary success of this book:'as is here written so do we live and go our way rejoicing!' the scholarcries to him, and is glad when he finds that others feel the same.Whether he happens to differ from the Master on individual points ­over DaIWin, for example, or capital punishment - is to him of litdemoment, since he is on the whole so certain of breathing his own airand hearing the echo of his voice and his needs. The painfulness ofthis unanimity for any true friend of German culture must not deterhim from acknowledging it to himself or from making the factpublic.We all know how our age is typified by its pursuit of science; weknow it because it is part of our life: and that precisely is the reasonalmost no one asks himself what the consequences of such aninvolvement with the sciences could be for culture, even supposingthat the will and the capacity to promote culture were everywhere tohand. For the nature of scientific man (quite apart from the form heassumes at present) contains a real paradox: he behaves like theproudest idler of fortune, as though existence were not a dreadfuland questionable thing but a firm possession guaranteed to last forever. He seems to be permitted to squander his life on questionswhose answer could at bottom be of consequence only to someoneassured of an eternity. The heir of but a few hours, he is ringedaround with frightful abysses, and every step he takes ought to makehim ask: Whither? Whence? To what end? But his soul is warmedwith the task of counting the stamens of a flower or breaking up thestones of the pathway, and all the interest,joy, strength and desire hepossesses is absorbed in this work. Now, this paradox, the scientificman, has in recent years got into a frantic hurry in Germany, asthough science were a factory and every minute's slacking incurredpunishment. Nowadays he works as hard as the fourth estate, theslaves; his study is no longer an occupation but a necessity, he looksneither to right nor left and goes through all the business of life, andits more questionable aspects, with the half-consciousness or therepellent need for entertainment characteristic of the exhaustedworker.35

Untimely MeditationsNow this is his attitude towards culture too. He behaves as though lifewere to him only otium but sine dignitate:' and even in his dreams hedoes not throw off his yoke, like a slave who even when freed stilldreams of servitude and beatings. Our scholars are hardly to be distinguished- and then not to their advantage - from farmers whowant to increase the tiny property they have inherited and areassiduously employed all day and far into the night in tilling thefield, leading the plough and encouraging the oxen. Now, Pascalbelieves quite generally that men pursue their business and theirsciences so eagerly only so as to elude the most important questionswhich would press upon them in a state of solitude or if they weretruly idle, that is to say precisely those questions as to Whither,Whence and Why. Amazingly, the most obvious question fails tooccur to our scholars: what is their work, their hurry, their painfulfrenzy supposed to be for? To earn bread or acquire positions ofhonour, perhaps? Not at all. Yet you exert yourselves like those inneed of food, indeed you tear it from the table of science as greedilyand as utterly un selectively as though yO}:l were on the point of starvation.But if you, as men of science, treat science in the way a workertreats the tasks that are to furnish his means oflife, what will becomeof a culture condemned to await the hour of its birth and redemptionin the midst of such excitement and breathless confusion? Noone has time for it - and yet what is science for at all if it has no timefor culture? At least reply to this question: what is the Whence,Whither, To what end of science ifit is not to lead to culture? To ledto barbarism, perhaps? That our learned class has already gonefrighteningly far in this direction is evident when we think that suchsuperficial books as Strauss's are sufficient to meet the demands oftheir present cultural level. For it is precisely in such books that wefind that repellent need for entertainment and that casual, only-halflisteningaccommodation with philosophy and culture and with theserious things oflife in general. One is reminded of the social worldof the learned classes, where too, when the shop talk is exhausted,there is evidence only of weariness, of a desire for diversion at anyprice, of a tattered memory and incoherent personal experience.When we hear Strauss speak of the problems of life - whether it bethe problem of marriage or of war or of capital punishment - we areappalled at his lack of real experience, of any native insight into thenature of man: all his judgments are so uniformly bookish, indeed at"'otium sine dignitate: idleness without dignity36

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerbottom merely of the sort found in the newspapers; literary reminiscencestake the place of genuine ideas and insights, an affectedmoderation and knowingness is supposed to compensate us for thelack of real wisdom and maturity of thought. How exactly this correspondsto the spirit which informs the noisily advertised high seatsoflearning in the cities of Germany! How congenial this spirit mustfind the spirit of Strauss: for it is in precisely those places that cultureis most completely lacking, it is precisely there that the germinationof a new culture is totally thwarted; noisy preparation for the sciencesthere pursued goes with a herdlike stampede for the disciplines mostin favour at the cost of deserting those of most consequence. Withwhat kind oflantern would one have to search here for men capableof inward contemplation and an undivided devotion to the geniusand possessing the strength and courage to conjure up demonswhich have deserted our age! Viewed externally, these places displayall the pomp of culture, with their imposing apparatus they resemblean arsenal choked with cannon and other weapons of war:we behold such preparations and industrious activity as thoughHeaven itself were to be stormed and truth fetched up out of thedeepest well, and yet in warfare it is often the biggest pieces ofapparatus that are worst deployed. Genuine culture likewise avoidsthese places as it conducts its campaigns, feeling instinctively that ithas nothing to hope for and much to fear in them. For the only formof culture with which the inflamed eye and the blunted brain of thelearned working class want to occupy themselves is precisely thatphilistine culture whose gospel has been proclaimed by Strauss.If we consider for a moment the principal grounds of that congenialitywhich links the learned working class and philistine culturewe shall also discover the path that leads us to our final main theme:consideration of Strauss as a writer recognized as a classic.In the first place, this culture wears an expression of complacencyand will have nothing essential changed in the present condition ofGerman education; it is above all seriously convinced of thesuperiority of all German educational institutions, especially thegrammar schools and universities, never ceases to recommend themto foreigners as models, and does not doubt for a moment that theyhave made the German people into the most educated and judiciousnation in the world. Philistine culture believes in itself and thereforein the means and methods available to it. In the second place,however, it lays the final arbitration as to all questions' of taste andculture in the hands of the scholar and regards itself as an ever-37

Untimely Meditationsgrowing compendium of learned opinions on art, literature andphilosophy; it is concerned to constrain the scholar to express hisopinions and then to administer them to the German people,admixed, diluted or systematized, as a medicinal draught. Whatevermay develop outside this circle is listened to with doubt and inattentively,or not listened to at all, until at length a single voice, no matterwhose it may be so long as it bears the firm stamp of the scholarlyspecies, is heard from within those sacred halls where the traditionalinfallibility in matters of taste is supposed to dwell: and from then onpublic opinion possesses one opinion more and repeats this singlevoice with a hundredfold echo. In reality, however, this supposedaesthetic infallibility is very questionable, so questionable indeedthat one may assume that a scholar in fact lacks taste, ideas andaesthetic judgment until he has demonstrated the opposite. Andonly a few will be able to do so. For, after the panting and harassmentof the daily race which the world of the sciences is today, how manyof them will be able to maintain that courageous and steady glancethat characterizes the champion of cttlture even if they everpossessed it - that glance which condemns this daily race itself as asource of barbarism? That is why these few must, moreover, live in astate of opposition: what can they achieve against the uniform beliefof countless thousands who have one and all made of public opiniontheir patron saint and who sustain and support one another in thisbelief? Of what good is it for an individual to declare himself againstStrauss when the many have decided in his favour and the massesthey lead have learned to thirst for repeated draughts of the Master'sphilistine sleeping-potion?If we have herewith assumed without funher ado that the Straussianconfessional book has scored a victory with public opinion and hasbeen welcomed as a victor, its author may perhaps draw our attentionto the fact that the diverse judgments on his book in the publicprints are by no means unanimous and certainly not uniformlyfavourable, and that he himself has had to protest in a postscriptagainst the sometimes extremely hostile tone and impudent andchallenging manner of some of these newspaper warriors. How canthere be one public opinion about my book, he will expostulate,when every journalist regards me as fair game, an outlaw to be mishandledat will! This contradiction is easily resolved as soon as wedistinguish between two aspects of the Strauss ian book, the theologicaland the literary: it is only in the latter aspect that the bookimpinges on German culture. Through its theological colouring it38

David Strauss the confessor and the writerstands. outside our German culture and awakens the antipathy of thevarious theological parties, indeed of every individual Germaninsofar as he is a theological sectarian by nature and invents his ownstrange private theology so as to be able to dissent fro every other.But just hear all these theological sectarians as soon as Strauss isspoken of as a writer; at once the theological dissonances die awayand we hear in the purest unison as though from the mouth of onecommunity: nonetheless he is a classic writer! Now everyone, even themost sullenly orthodox, flatters Strauss to his face as a writer, thoughit may be no more than a word in commendation of his almostLessing-like dialectics or the freedom, beauty and validity of hisaesthetic views. As a book, it seems, the Straussian production correspondsexacdy to the ideal of a book. His theological opponents,though they spoke loudest, are in this case only a small fragment ofthe great public: and even in relation to them Strauss is right when hesays: 'Compared with my thousands of readers, my couple of dozendetractors are a vanishing minority, and it will be hard for them toprove that they are faithful interpreters of the former. If, in such amatter as this is, those who disagree have spoken up, while thosewho agree have contented themselves with silent approval, that liesin the nature of the cas.' Apart from the scandal which Strauss mayhere and there have provoked among the theological confessions, asto Strauss the writer there thus reigns unanimity even among hisfanatical opponents to whom his voice is like the voice of the beastfrom the abyss. And the treatment Strauss has received at the handsof the literary day-labourers of the theological parties therefore provesnothing against our proposition that in this book philistine culture.has celebrated a triumph.It must be admitted that the educated philistine is on average adegree less candid than Strauss, or at least is more reserved when hespeaks publicly: but candour in another is therefore all the moreedifying for him; at home and among his own kind he loudlyapplauds it, and it is only in writing that he declines to confess howmuch all that Strauss says is after his own heart. For, as we alreadyknow, our culture philistine is somewhat cowardly, even when he isstrongly moved: and it is precisely the fact that Strauss is a degree lesscowardly that makes him a leader, while on the other hand there arevery definite limits to his courage. If he were to overstep these limits,as Schopenhauer for instance does with almost every sentence, hewould no longer lead on the philistines as their chieftain but wouldbe deserted as precipitately as he is now followed. If anyone thought39

Untimely Meditationsto call this moderation and mediocritas in courage, whic h if not wise isat any rate prudent, an Aristotelean virtue he would be in error: fo rthis species of courage is the mean, not between two faults, but betweena fault and a virtue and it is within this mean between virtueand fault that all the qualities of the philistine lie.'But nonetheless he is a classic writer!' We shall now see.9It might perhaps be in order to go on to speak of Strauss the stylistand artist in language, but let us first of all consider whether as awriter he is capable of constructing his house, whether he reallyunderstands the architecture of a book. This will determine whetherhe is a genuine, thoughtful and practised maker of books; and if wehave to answer in the negative, his fame can always take refuge in hisclaim to be a 'classic writer of prose'. The latter capacity without theformer would, to .be sure, not suffice to raise him to the rank of aclassic author, but at best to that of the clsic improvisers or virtuosiof style who, with all their skill in expression, reveal in the actualerection of the building the clumsy hand and ignorant eye of thebungler. We shall therefore ask whether Strauss possesses the artisticpower to construct a whole, totum ponere. *As a rule the first written draft suffices to show whether the authorhas envisaged his work as a whole and found the general teII!po andcorrect proportions appropriate to what he has envisaged. If thismost vital of tasks has been achieved and the building itself erected. with proper scale and balance, there nonetheless remains a greatdeal still to do: how many minor errors must be corrected, howmany holes stopped, here and there a provisional partition or a falsefloor must be replaced, dust and rubble lie everywhere, andwherever you look you can see signs of the labour that has beengoing on; the house as a whole is still uninhabitable and uncomfortable:all the walls are bare and the wind whistles through the openwindows. Whether Strauss has done the great and wearisome worknow needed will not concern us very long when we ask if he has producedthe building itself in fair proportions and visualized it as awhole. The opposite of this, to put a book together out of bits andpieces, is well known to be the way of scholars. They trust that thesebits and pieces will cohere of themselves and thereby confuse logical*totum ponere: to construct a whole (repeating previous phrase)40

David Strauss, the confessor and the writercohesion with artistic. In any event, the relation between the fourmain questions which designate the divisions of Strauss's book is notlogical: 'Are we still Christians? Do we still possess religion? How dowe conceive the world? How do we order our life?', and their relationis not logical because the third question has nothingto do withthe second, the fourth nothing to do with the third, and all threehave nothing to do with the first. The natural scientist, for example,who poses the third question, demonstrates the immaculateness ofhis sense for truth precisely in that he passes by the second in silence;and that the themes of the fourth section - marriage, society, capitalpunishment would only be confused and darkened by theintroduction of Darwinist theories from the third section seems to begrasped by Strauss himself, for he in fact pays no further regard tothese theories. But the question 'are we still Christians?' at onceprejudices freedom of philosophical reflection and gives it anunpleasant theological colouring; in addition to which he has quiteforgotten that even today the greater part of mankind is stillBuddhist and not Christian. Why should we without more ado thinkat the words 'old faith' of Christianity alone! If Strauss herewithreveals that he has never ceased to be a Christian theologian and hasthus never learned to become a philosopher, he further surprises usby his inability to distinguish between faith and knowledge and bycontinually naming his so-called 'new faith' and the contemporarysciences in the same breath. Or should we regard the new faith asonly an ironical accommodation to linguistic usage? It almost seemsso when we see that here and there he innocently lets new faith andcontemporary science deputize fo r one another, for example onpage 11, where he asks on which side, that of the old faith or that ofcontemporary science, 'there are to be found more of the obscuritiesand inadequacies unavoidable in human affairs'. According to hisintroduction, moreover, he intends to present the evidence uponwhich the modern philosophy of life depends: all this evidence heborrows from science and here too he adopts wholly the posture of aman of knowledge, not that of a believer.At bottom, then, the new religion is not a new faith but preciselyon a par with modern science and thus not religion at all. If Straussnevertheless asserts that he does have a religion, the reasons for it lieoutside the domain of contemporary science. Only a minute portionof Strauss's book, amounting to no more than a few scattered pages,treats of that which Strauss could have a right to call a faith: namelythat feeling for the cosmos for which he demands the same piety asIIIII '41

Untimely Meditationsthe believer of the old stamp feels towards his God. In these pages atleast the scientific spirit is certainly not in evidence: but we couldwish for a little more strength and naturalness of faith! For what is soextremely striking is the artificiality of the procedures our author hasto adopt in order to convince himself he still possesses a faith and areligion at all: as we have seen, he has to resort to jabbing -andcudgelling. It creeps weakly along, this stimulated faith: we freeze atthe sight of it.Strauss promises in his introduction to test whether this new faithis capable of doing for the new believer what the old faith does forthe believer of the old stamp, but in the end he himself comes tothink he has promised too much. For when he deals with the subjecthe does so in a quite offhand, indeed almost embarrassed manner,in a couple of pages (pp. 366f.), even resorting to the desperate ploy:'whoever cannot help himself here is beyond help and is not yet ripefor our point of view' (p. 366) . Consider with what weight of convictionthe Stoic of antiquity believed in the cosmos and in therationality of the cosmos, and contrst with it even the claim tooriginality which Strauss makes for his faith! But, as we have said,whether it is new or old, original or imitated, would be a matter ofindifference if only it exhibited naturalness, health and strength.Strauss himself leaves this distilled emergency faith in the lurchwhenever the claims of knowledge constrain him to do so and inorder to present his newly acquired scientific perception to his 'we'with a quieter conscience. The timidity with which he speaks of hisfaith is matched by his loud orotundity whenever he cites thegreatest benefactor of most recent mankind, Darwin: here hedemands faith, not merely in the new Messiah, but in himself, thenew apostle, too; for example when, dealing with the most intricatetheme of natural science, he pronounces with a truly antique pride:'I shall be told I am speaking of things I do not understand. Good;but others will come who understand them and who have alsounderstood me.' From this it seems almost as though the celebrated'we' are to be obligated to a faith, not only in the cosmos, but inStrauss the natural scientist too; in that case all we would ask is thatthe latter faith should not require for its realization such cruel andpainful procedures as the former did. Or can it be that in thisinstance the 'religious reaction' which is the mark of the 'new faith'will be produced in the believer by the jabbing and cudgelling, notof the believer himself, but of the object of the belief? If so, how weshould profit from the religiosity of these 'we'!42

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerFor otheIWise it is almost to be feared that modern men will beable to get along without bothering overmuch with the ingredientsof Strauss's religious faith, just as they have in fact hitherto got alongwithout the principle of the rationality of the cosmos. Modernnatural science and study of history have nothing whatever to dowith the Straussian faith in the cosmos, and that the modern philistinedoes not need it either is shown by the description of his lifewhich Strauss himself gives in the section 'How do we order ourlife?' He is therefore right to doubt whether the 'carriage' to whichhis 'valued readers have had to entrust themselves meets everyrequirement' . It certainly does not meet them: fo r modern mantravels a lot faster if he is not sitting in this Straussian carriage - ormore correctly: he was travelling a lot faster long before this Straussiancarriage existed. So ifit be true that the celebrated 'minority that cannotbe ignored' of which and in whose name Strauss speaks really'sets great store by consistency', then they must be just as dissatisfiedwith Strauss the carriage-builder as we are with Strauss thelogician.But let us forget about the logician: perhaps the book really is wellfo rmed artistically, and conforms to the laws of beauty even ifit doesnot possess a well-thought-out logical plan. And it is only now, afterdetermining that he has not borne himself as a scientific, orderlyminded and systematizing scholar, that we arrive at the questionwhether Strauss is a good writer.Perhaps he conceived it as his task, not so much to frighten peopleaway from the 'old faith', as to lure them to the new philosophy oflife by depicting it in cheerful and lively colours. If he thought ofscholars and the educated as his first readers, he must have realizedfrom his own experience that, while they can be laid low with theheavy artillery of scientific proof, they can never by this means bebrought to surrender, though they fall prey all the more readily tolightly clad arts of seductions. 'Lightly clad', and that 'intentionally',is however what Strauss himself calls his book; his public panegyristsalso find it and describe it as 'lightly clad', as for example this onedoes in the following terms: 'The discourse moves fO IWard in apleasing rhythm and handles the art of demonstration with playfulease when it is engaged critically against what is old, as it does no lesswhen it seductively prepares and presents to both undemanding andexperienced palates the new things it brings. The arrangement ofsuch manifold and dissimilar material, where everything is to betouched on but nothing pursued at length, is well thought out; the43

Untimely Meditationstransitions from one subject to another are especial i y skilful, andeven more admirable, perhaps, is the dexterity with which uncomfortablethings are pushed aside or buried in silence.' The senses ofsuch panegyrists are, as is apparent here too, alert not so much towhat an author can do as to what he wants to do. What Strauss wantsto do, however, is betrayed most clearly in his emphatic arid notwholly innocent recommendation of a Voltairean gracefulness in theservice of which he could have learned those 'lightly clad' arts ofwhich his panegyrist speaks - supposing, that is, that virtue can betaught and a pedant can ever become a dancer.Who cannot harbour reservations when for example he readsthese words of Strauss's on Voltaire (p. 219): 'as a philosopherVoltaire is not original, it is true, but in the main an elaborator ofEnglish researches: yet he proves to be altogether a master of hismaterial, which with incomparable dexterity he illuminates from allsides and thereby, without being strictly methodical, satisfies thedemands of thoroughness'. All the negative traits are in keeping: noone will maintain that as a philosopher itrauss is original or strictlymethodical; the question is whether we will also acknowledge that heis a 'master of his material' or concede to him 'incomparable dexterity'.The confession that the work is 'intentionally lightly clad'allows us to guess that incomparable dexterity was at any rateintended.Not to build a temple or a dwelling, but to set down a ummerhousesurrounded with horticulture - that was our architect'sdream. It almost seems, indeed, that even that mysterious feeling forthe cosmos was intended mainly as a means of aesthetic effect, like aview of an irrational element, the sea for instance, from within anelegant and rational terrace. The walk through the first section - thatis to say, through the theological catacombs with their obscurity andtheir convoluted and baroque ornamentation - was again only anaesthetic means of emphasizing by contrast the purity, brightnessand rationality of the section entitled 'What is our conception of theworld?': for immediately after that walk in the gloom and glimpse ofdistant irrational windings, we enter a hall with a fanlight; it receivesus with cheerful sobriety, there are celestial charts and mathematicalfigures on the walls and it is filled with scientific apparatus and cupboardslined with skeletons, stuffed monkeys and anatomicalspecimens. But we do not wholly recover our good humour until wepass through this hall and enter the full domestic ease and comfortof the occupants of our summer-house; we discover them with their44

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerwomen and children engaged with their newspapers and commonplacechatter about politics, we listen for a time as they discussmarriage and universal suffrage, capital punishment and workers'strikes, and it seems to us impossible that the rosary of publicopinion could be told more quickly. Finally we are also to be convincedof the classical taste of those who dwell here: a brief visit to thelibrary and the music-room discloses, as expected, that the bestbooks lie on the shelves and the most celebrated pieces of music onthe music-stands; they even play us something, and if it was supposedto be Haydn's music at least Haydn was not to blame if itsounded like Riehl's music fo r the home. In the meantime, the masterof the house has had occasion to state that he is in entire agreementwith Lessing, also with Goethe, though excluding the second part ofFaust. Finally the summer-house owner commends himself, andexpresses the view that those he disagrees with are beyond help andnot yet ripe fo r his point of view; whereupon he offers us his carriage,with the polite reservation that he cannot guarantee it will answer toall our requirements; the stones on his carriageways are, moreover,newly scattered and we might be much buffeted about. OurEpicurean garden god then takes his leave of us with the incomparabledexterity he had recognized and commended in Voltaire.Who could now doubt this incomparable dexterity? We recognizethe master of his material, the lightly clad horticulturalist is unmasked;and still we hear the voice of the classic author: 'As a writer Irefu se to be a philistine, I refuse! I refuse! I want to be Voltaire, theGerman Voltaire! and best of all the French Lessing too!'We have betrayed a secret: our Master does not always know whohe would prefer to be, Voltaire or Lessing, but wants at no price to bea philistine; if possible, he would like to be both, Lessing and Voltaire- that it might be fulfilled which was written: 'he had no characterwhatever: whenever he wanted a character he always had toassume one'.10If we have understood Strauss the confessor correctly, he himself is atrue philistine with a narrow, dried-up soul and with sober andscholarly requirements : and yet no one would be angrier at beingcalled a philistine than David Strauss the writer. Hewould approve ifone called him headstrong, rash, malicious, foolhardy; but he wouldbe most pleased of all to be compared with Lessing or Voltaire, since45

Untimely Meditationsthey were certainly not philistines. In his search to procure thispleasure he is often undecided whether he ought to imitate the bolddialectical impetuosity of Lessing or whether it might not be betterto comport himself as a satyr-like free-spirited elder in the manner ofVoltaire. Whenever he sits down to write he always composes his featuresas though he were about to have his portrait painted: sometimeshe makes his face resemble Lessing's, sometimes Voltaire's.When we read his praise of the Voltairean style (p. 217), he seems tobe expressly admonishing the present for not having long sincerecognized what it possesses in the modern Voltaire: 'the merits ofhis style', Strauss says, 'are everywhere the same: simple naturalness,transparent clarity, lively flexibility, pleasing charm. Warmth andemphasis are not wanting where they are needed; hatred of pomposityand affectation came from Voltaire's innermost nature; just aswhen, on the other hand, passion and impetuosity lowered the toneof his discourse, the fault lay not with the stylist but with the humanbeing in him.' To judge from this, Strauss is well aware of thesignificance of simplicity of style: it has always been the mark of genius,which also possesses the privilege of expressing itself simply,naturally and with naivety. It therefore betrays no common ambitionwhen an author chooses a simple style: for, although manywill see what such an author would like to be taken for, there arenonetheless many who are so obliging as to take him for it. But if anauthor possesses genius he betrays it in more than siplicity andprecision of expression: his abundant power plays with his materialeven when it is difficult and dangerous. Stiff and timid steps will getno one along unfamiliar paths littered with a thousand abysses: thegenius, however, runs nimbly along such paths with daring orelegant strides and disdains cautiously to measure his steps.That the problems Strauss passes in review are serious and dreadfulones, and have been treated as such by the wise of every age, isknown to Strauss himself, and yet he calls his book lightly clad. Of allthe dread and gloomy seriousness of reflection into which one isplunged perforce when faced with the questions of the value of existenceand the duties of man there is not the slightest suspicion as ourgifted Master goes fluttering past us, 'lightly clad and intentionallyso' more lightly clad, indeed, than is his Rousseau, who, heinforms us, denuded his lower half and draped his upper, whileGoethe, he says, draped his lower half and denuded his upper.Wholly naive geniuses, it seems, do not drape themselves at all, soperhaps the expression 'lightly clad' is only a euphemism for naked.46

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerOf the goddess truth, the few who have seen her affirm that she hasbeen naked: and perhaps in the eyes of those who have not seen herbut accept the word of those few who have, nakedness or lightlycladnessis in itself a proof of truth, even if only cin::umstantial proof.Merely to suspect that this is the case works to the advantage of anauthor's ambition: someone sees something naked - 'suppose itshould be the truth!' he says to himself, and assumes a more solemnexpression than the one he usually wears. But an author has alreadyattained much if he has constrained his reader to regard him moresolemnly than he does some other, more heavily clad author. It isthe way to one day becoming a 'classic': and Strauss himself tells usthat he has 'been accorded the unsought honour of being regardedas a kind of classic prose-writer', that he has thus arrived at the goalof his journey. Strauss the genius runs about the streets as a 'classic'disguised as a lightly clad goddess, and Strauss the philistine is, toemploy an original locution of this genius, at all costs to be 'decreedout of fa shion' or 'thrown out never to return' .Alas, the philistine does return, again and again, despite all suchdecrees and throwings-out! Alas, the face, twisted into a semblanceof Voltaire or Lessing, from time to time snaps back into its old, honest,original shape! Alas, the mask of genius all too often falls off, and theMaster never wears a more vexed expression, his gestures are neverstiffer, than when he has just attempted to imitate the stride of geniusand to make his eyes flash with the fire of genius. Ours is a coldclime, and ir is precisely because he goes around so lightly clad thathe runs the risk of catching cold more often and more gravely thanothers; that the others then notice all this may be acutely painful, butif he is ever to be cured he will have to submit to the following publicdiagnosis: There was once a Strauss, a brave, rigorous and austerelyclad scholar-, whom we found as congenial as anyone who in Germanyserves truth seriously and with vigour and knows how to stay withinhis own limitations; he who is now celebrated by public opinion asDavid Strauss has become someone else: it may be the fault of thetheologians that he has become this someone else; enough, we findthe game he now plays with the mask of genius as repellent or ludicrousas we found his fo rmer seriousness evocative of seriousnessand sympathy. When he now informs us: 'it would also be an act ofingratitude towards my genius if I did not rejoice that, beside the giftof unsparing destructive criticism, I have also been granted the innocentpleasure of artistic creativity' , it may surprise him to know thatdespite this self-testimonial there are people who maintain the47

Untimely Meditationsopposite: firstly, that he has never possessed th gift of artisticcreativity, and then that the pleasure he calls 'innocent' is anythingbut innocent, inasmuch as it gradually undermined a fu ndamentallyvigorous and deep-seated scholarly and critical nature - that is to say,the genius Strauss actually did possess - and in the end destroyed it. In anaccess of unrestrained candour, Strauss himself concedes that.he hasalways 'had his own Merck within him, who cried to him: you mustno longer produce such trash, others can do that!' This was the voiceof the genuine Straussian genius: and it even tells him how much orhow little his latest, innocently lightly clad testament of the modernphilistine is worth. Others can do that too! And many could do it better!And those who could do it best, more gifted and richer spirits thanStrauss, would, when they had done it, never have produced anythingother than - trash.I believe I have made it clear how I regard Strauss the writer: as anactor who plays at being a genius and classic. Lichtenberg once said:'The simple style is to be recommended first of all because no honestman subjects what he has to say to artifiCial elaboration', but that certainlydoes not mean that the simple manner is a proof of authorialintegrity. I could wish that Strauss the writer were more honest, fo rthen he would write better and be less celebrated. Or - if heabsolutely must be an actor - I could wish he were a good actor andknew better how to imitate the style of naive genius and the classic.For it remains to be said that Strauss is in fact a bad actor and utterlyworthless as a stylist.11The reproach that one is not a good writer is softened, to be sure, bythe fact that in Germany it is very difficult to become even amediocre and tolerable writer, and quite astonishingly improbablethat one will become a good one. A natural basis is lacking, an artisticevaluation, treatment and cultivation of oral speech. As the expressions'salon conversation', 'sermon', 'parliamentary oratory',indicate, public speech has in Germany not yet attained to a nationalstyle or even to the desire for a style; language has not yet emergedfrom the stage of naive experimentation; so that there is no unifiednorm by which the writer may be guided and he thus has a certainright to handle language on his own responsibility: and this mustresult in that limitless dilapidation of the German language whichconstitutes the 'language of the present' and which has been des-48

David Strauss, the confessor and the writercribed most forcefully by Schopenhauer. 'If this goes on', he oncesaid, 'in the year 1900 the German classics will no longer be comprehensible,since the only language understood will be the shabbyjargon of our noble "present" the basic character of which isimpotence.' Already, indeed, German linguistic arbiters and grammarianswriting in the most recent journals give the impression thatour classics can no longer be valid to us as stylistic models becausethey employ a large number of words, locutions and syntacticalfigures which we have lost: for which reason it might seem appropriateto collect together the masterpieces of our present literarycelebrities fo r the purpose of imitating their vocabulary andphraseology, as has in fact been done by Sander in his concise pocketdictionary of infamous language. Here the repellent stylistic monsterGutzkow appears as a classic: and it seems that we have ingeneral to accustom ourselves to a whole new and surprising host of'classics', among whom the first, or one of the first, is David Strauss ­whom we cannot describe in any way other than we have alreadydescribed him: as a worthless stylist.Now, it is extremely characteristic of the pseudo-culture of thecultural philistine that he should even appropriate the concept of theclassic and the model writer he who exhibits his strength only inwarding off a real, artistically vigorous cultural style and throughsteadfastness in warding off arrives at a homogeneity of expressionwhich almost resembles a unity of style. How is it possible that, giventhe limitless experimentation with language everyone is permittedto indulge in, certain individual authors nonetheless discover auniversally agreeable tone of voice? What is it really that is here souniversally agreeable? Above all a negative quality: the absence ofanything offensive - but anything truly productive is offensive. - For thegreater part of what the German of today reads undoubtedly comprisesthe newspapers and the magazines that go with them: thelanguage here employed, a ceaseless drip of the same locutions andthe same words, imprints itself on his ear, and since he usually readsthis literature at times when his wearied mind is in any case littlecapable of resistance, his ear for language gradually comes to feel athome in this everyday German and is pained when it notices itsabsence. The manufacturers of these newspapers, however, are, aswould be expected from their whole way of life, the most accustomedto the slime of this newspaper language: they have in the strictestsense of the word lost all taste, and the most their tongue can stillsavour with any ki nd of pleasure is the totally corrupt and ca-49

Untimely Meditationspricious. This explains the tutti unisono which, notwithstanding thegeneral debility and sickness, greets every newly invented solecism:such impudent corruptions are an act of revenge on the language forthe unbelievable boredom it inflicts upon its day-labourers. I recallhaving read an appeal 'to the German people' by Berthold Auerbachin which every locution was an un-German distortion and falsificationof the language, and which as·a whole resembled a soullessmosaic of words stuck together with an international syntax; not tospeak of the shamelessly slovenly German with which Eduard Devrientcelebrated the memory of Mendelssohn. Thus the solecism - this isthe remarkable thing- is felt by our philistines, not as objectionable,but as a stimulating refreshment in the arid and treeless desert ofeveryday German. But the truly productive he does find objectionable.The most modern model author is not merely forgiven his distorted,extravagant or threadbare syntax and his ludicrous neologisms, theyare reckoned a merit in him which gives his work piquancy: but woeto the stylist with character who avoids these everyday locutions asseriously and persistently as he does 'tie monsters of present-dayscribbling hatched out last night', as Schopenhauer puts it. Whenplatitudes, commonplaces and hackneyed and feeble language arethe rule, and badness and corruption received as stimulating exceptions,then the forceful, uncommon and beautiful falls into disfavour:so that in Germany there is constantly being repeated thestory of the traveller who came to the land of the hunchbacks andwas shamefully insulted by its inhabitants because of his supposedlydefective physique, until at last a priest had mercy on him and said tothe people: 'Rather pity this poor stranger and sacrifice to the gods ingratitude for having adorned you with this stately hump.'If anyone should compose a grammar of current everyday Germanand trace the rules which, as an unwritten and unspoken yet compellingimperative, govern everyone's writing-desk, he wouldencounter some strange notions of style and rhetoric, taken perhapsfrom recollections of school and enforced Latin exercises, perhapsfrom reading French writers at whose astonishing crudeness anyproperly educated Frenchman would have a right to scoff. It seemsthat, though reputed thorough, the Germans have never yet reflectedon these strange notions, under the rule of which more or less everyGerman lives and writes.Then we have the demand that from time to time a simile or ametaphor should appear, and that the metaphor must be a new one:but to the poor writer's brain new and modern are the same thing,50

David Strauss, the corifessor and the writerand it now torments itself to draw metaphors from the railway, thetelegraph, the steam-engine, the stock exchange, and feels proud ofthe fact that these similes must be new because they are modern. InStrauss's confessional book we find ample tribute paid to the modemmetaphor: he dismisses us with a page-and-a-halflong simile drawnfrom road improvement works, a few pages earlier he compares theworld to a machine with its wheels, pistons, hammers and 'soothingoil'. - A meal which starts with champagne (p. 362) . Kant as a hydropathicestablishment (p. 325). 'The Swiss constitution compares withthe English as a watermill compares with a steam-engine, a waltz or asong with a fugue or a symphony' (p. 265). 'In the case of everyappeal, the correct succession of tribunals must be adhered to. Theintermediate tribunal between the individual and mankind, however,is the nation' (p. 258). 'If we wish to discover whether life in fact existsin an organism that seems to us dead, we usually test it by administeringa strong, often painful stimulus, a jab for instance' (p. 141).'The religious domain in the human soul is like the domain of theRedskin in America' (p. 138). 'To set down the sum total of all thepreceding in round numbers at the bottom of the bill' (p. 90). 'TheDarwinian theory is like a railway track that has just been marked out... where the banners flutter gaily in the wind' (p. 176). It is in thisway, namely the most modern way, that Strauss has complied withthe philistine demand that from time to time a new metaphor mustmake an appearance.Also very widespread is a fu rther demand that didactic statementsmust be composed in long sentences employing abstractions, whilethose intended to persuade should preferably be in short little sentenceswith contrasting forms of expression hopping one after theother. Strauss provides on page 132 a model sentence of the didacticand scholarly kind: inflated to truly Schleiermacherish proportions,it creeps along at the pace of a tortoise: 'That at the earlier stages ofreligion, instead of a single such Whence there appear many, insteadof one God there appears a multiplicity of gods, is, according to thisderivation of religion, due to the fact that the various natural fo rcesor conditions of life which arouse in man the feeling of absolutedependence still act upon him in the beginning in all their multifariousness,he has not yet become aware how in regard to hisabsolute dependence upon them there is no distinction betweenthem, consequently the Whence of this dependence or the Being towhich in the last instance they are to be traced back can be only one.'An example of the opposite kind of thing, of the short little sentences51

2Untimely Meditationsand affected vivacity which have so excited some readers they cannow mention Strauss only in concert with Lessing, can be found onpage 8: 'I am well aware that what 1 propose to discuss in the followingpages is known just as well by countless other people and by some itis known better. Some of them have already spoken out. Should 1therefore keep silent? 1 do not believe so. For we all supplement oneanother. If another knows many things better than I, perhaps 1 knowa few things better than he; and 1 have a viewpoint on many thingsdifferent from the viewpoint of others. So out with it, let me displaymy colours, that it may be seen whether or not they are genuine.' Tobe sure, Strauss's style usually maintains a mean between this freeand-easyquick-march and the fu nereal crawl of the first example:but between two vices there does not always dwell virtue; all toooften what dwells there is weakness, lameness and impotence. 1 wasvery disappointed, in fact, when 1 looked through Strauss's book insearch of more subtle and wittier traits and expressions; since 1 hadfound nothing praiseworthy in the confessor 1 actually established aheading under which to list such passages,eso that 1 might at least beable to say something in praise of Strauss the writer. 1 searched andsearched but could list nothing. On the other hand, a second listwith the heading 'Solecisms, confused similes, obscure abbreviations,tastelessness and affectation' became so full 1 can venture toreproduce here only a modest selection of the examples 1assembled. Perhaps it will reveal precisely what it is that evokes in thecontemporary German his belief that Strauss is a great stylist: forhere we find curiosities of expression which in the arid dust anddesert of the book as a whole offer if not pleasant at any rate painfullystimulating surprises: on encountering such passages we notice, toemploy a Straussian metaphor, that at least we are not yet dead bythe way we react to these jabs. For the rest of the book displays a totallack of anything whatever offensive, that is to say productive, such aswould now be reckoned a positive quality in the classic prose-writer.Extreme sobriety and aridity, a truly starving sobriety, nowadaysawakens in the educated masses the unnatural feeling that preciselythese are the signs of flourishing health, so that here there apply thewords of the author of the Dialogus de Oratibus: 'illam ipsam quam iactantsanitatem non firmitate sed ieiunio consequuntur' . * With instinctiveunanimity, they hate allfirmitas because it bears witness to a healthinessquite different from theirs, and seek to throw suspicion on*illam ipsam quam iactant sanitatem non firmitate sed ieiunio consequuntur: even theirhealth, which they parade, they obtain not through strength but through fasting(Tacitus)

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerfirmitas,. on conciseness, on fiery energy of movement, on abundantand delicate play of the muscles. They have agreed together to invertthe nature and names of things and henceforth to speak of healthwhere we see weakness, of sickness and tension where we encountertrue health. That is how David Strauss comes to be accounted a'classic'.If only this sobriety were at least a stricdy logical sobriety: but simplicityand rigour in thinking is precisely what these weaklings lack,and in their hands language itself becomes a logical tangle. Just trytranslating this Straussian style into Latin - which can be done evenwith Kant, and with Schopenhauer is pleasurable and easy. Thereason Strauss's German is altogether unamenable to it is probablynot that his German is more German than Kant's or Schopenhauers,but that his German is confused and illogical while theirs isinformed with grandeur and simplicity. He who knows the effort theancients expended on learning to speak and write, and how themoderns make no such effort, feels, as Schopenhauer once said, areal sense of relief when, having been compelled to wade through aGerman book like this one, he turns to those other ancient yet evernew languages: 'for with these', he says, 'I have before me a languagewith fixed rules and a firmly established and faithfully observedgrammar and orthography and can devote myself wholly to thethought expressed in it; while with German I am continually distractedby the impudence of the writer seeking to obtrude his owngrammatical and orthographical whims and eccentricities: a piece ofswaggering folly I find repellent. It is truly an agony to see a fair andancient language possessing a classical literature mishandled byignoramuses and asses.'Thus Schopenhauer's holy wrath cries out to you, so you cannotsay you were not warned. But he who absolutely refuses to heed thiswarning, and insists on continuing in his belief that Strauss is aclassic, should, as a final word of advice, be recommended to imitatehim. If you do try this, though, it will be at your peril: you will have topay for it, in your style and, eventually, in your head, that the dictumof Indian wisdom may be fulfilled in you too: 'To gnaw at the horn ofa cow is useless and shortens life: you grind down your teeth and yetyou get no nourishment.'12In conclusion we shall now place before our classic prose-writer thepromised collection of examples of his style; perhaps Schopenhauer

Untimely Meditationswould give it the title: 'New documents of the shabby jargon oftoday'; for, if it is any comfort to him, David Strauss may be comforted to be told that nowadays all the world writes as he does, andsome people write even worse than he, and that in the country of theblind the one-eyed man is king. Indeed, we concede to him a greatdeal when we concede to him one eye; we do so, however, because atleast Strauss does not write like the most infamous of all corruptersof German, the Hegelians and their deformed offspring. At least hewants to get back out of this swamp and he has partly succeeded,though he is as yet very far from being on firm land; it is still noticeablethat in his youth he stuttered Hegelian: something in himbecame dislocated at that time, some muscle got stretched; his earbecame dulled, like the ear of a boy brought up amid the beating ofdrums, so that thereafter he became deaf to the subtle and mightylaws of sound under whose rule every writer lives who has been strictlytrained to fo llow good models. He therewith lost as a stylist his bestpossessions and, if he is not to slip back into the Hegelian mud, iscondemned to live out his life on the I»arren and perilous quicksandsof newspaper style. Nonetheless he has succeeded in becomingfam ous fo r a couple of hours in our time, and perhaps there will be acouple of hours more when it will be remembered that he was oncefamous; but then night will come and he will be fo rgotten: andalready at this moment, as we inscribe his stylistic sins in the blackbook, twilight begins to fall on his fame. For he who has sinnedagainst the German language has profaned the mystery of all that isGerman: through all the confusion and changes of nations and customs,it alone has, as by a metaphysical magic, preserved itself andtherewith the German spirit. It alone also guarantees thefuture ofthis spirit, provided it does not itself perish at the hands of the present.'But Di meliora!* Away, pachyderms, away! This is the Gennanlanguage, in which men have spoken, in which great poets have sungand great thinkers written. Keep your paws off!' -[Nietzsche now gives some 70 examples of the kind of language in which Deralte und neue Glau be is written and subjects them to a scathing commentary.The fa ults exposed include grammatical errors of various kinds, offences againstgood usage, jumbled metaphors, impossible imagery and meaninglessness; andthe critique substantiates the charge that Strauss has lost all feelingfor Germanand any clear awareness of the meaning of the words he uses. To attempt totranslate Strauss's fa ulty sentences into English equivalents would be an enjoy-"Di meliora !: 0 ye good gods!54

David Strauss, the confessor and the writerable but otherwise senseless exercise in ingenuity; and for the reader who cannotread these sentences in the original German Nietz.sche's comments must losemost of their relevence and force. The sensible course would therefore seem to be toomit this passage. ]Herewith I have completed my confession of faith. It is the confessionof an individual; and what can such an individual do againstall the world, even if his voice is audible everywhere! His judgmentwould - to leave you with one last genuine feather from the 5traussianplumage - be only 'of as much subjective truth as without any objective powerof proof':- is that not so, my dear friends? So continue to be of goodcheer! For the time being at least let it rest with your 'of as much . .. aswithout'. For the time being? That is to say, for as long as that forwhich it is always time, and which the present time has more need ofthan ever, continues to count as untimely - I mean: telling thetruth.55

2On the Uses and Disadvantagesof History for Life

Foreword'In any case, I hate everything that merely instructs me withoutaugmenting or directly invigorating my activity.' These words arefrom Goethe, and they may stand as a sincere ceterum censeo* at thebeginning of our meditation on the value of history. For its intentionis to show why instruction without invigoration, why knowledge notattended by action, why history as a costly superfluity and luxury,must, to use Goethe's word, be seriously hated by us - hated becausewe still lack even the things we need and the superfluous is theenemy of the necessary. We need history, certainly, but we need it forreasons different from those for which the idler in the garden ofknowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on ourrough and charmless needs and requirements. We need it, that is tosay, for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably awayfrom life and action, let alone for the purpose of extenuating the selfseekinglife and the base and cowardly action. We want to serve historyonly to the extent that history serves life: for it is possible to value thestudy of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted anddegenerate - a phenomenon we are now forced to acknowledge,painful though this may be, in the face of certain striking symptomsof our age.I have striven to depict a feeling by which I am constantly tormented;I revenge myself upon it by handing it over to the public.Perhaps this depiction will inspire someone or other to tell me thathe too knows this feeling but that I have not felt it in its pure andelemental state and have certainly not expressed it with theassurance that comes from mature experience. Someone, I say, mayperhaps do so: most people, however, will tell me that this feeling isaltogether perverse, unnatural, detestable and wholly impermissible,and that by feeling it I have shown myself unworthy of themighty historical movement which, as is well known, has been inevidence among the Germans particularly for the past two generations.Whatever the case, however, that I should venture a descriptionof my feeling will promote rather than injure general decorum,'1 ceterum censeo: but I'm of the opinion59

60Untimely Meditationssince it will offer to many the opportunity of paying compliments tothe said movement. And for myself I shall gain something that isworth more to me even than decorum - that is, to be publiclyinstructed and put right about the character of our own time.This meditation too is untimely, because I am here attempting tolook afresh at something of which our time is rightly proud - itscultivation of historyas being injurious to it, a defect anddeficiency in it; because I believe, indeed, that we are all sufferingfrom a consuming fever of history and ought at least to recognizethat we are suffering from it. But if Goethe was right to assert thatwhen we cultivate our virtues we at the same time cultivate our faults,and if, as everyone knows, a hypertrophied virtuesuch as the historicalsense of our age appears to be - can ruin a nation just as effectivelyas a hypertrophied vice: then there can be no harm inindulging me for this once. And it may partly exonerate me when Igive an assurance that the experiences which evoked those tormentingfeelings were mostly my own and that I have drawn on the experiencesof others only fo r purposes of comparis(JJl; and further, that it is onlyto the extent that I am a pupil of earlier times, especially theHellenic, that though a child of the present time I was able to acquiresuch untimely experiences. That much, however, I must concede tomyself on account of my profession as a classicist: for I do not knowwhat meaning classical studies could have for our time if they werenot untimely - that is to say, acting counter to our time and therebyacting on our time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a time tocome.Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by: they do not knowwhat is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest,leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day,fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thusneither melancholy nor bored. This is a hard sight for man to see;for, though he thinks himself better than the animals because he ishuman, he cannot help envying them their happiness - what theyhave, a life neither bored nor painful, is precisely what he wants, yethe cannot have it because he refuses to be like an animal. A humanbeing may well ask an animal: 'Why do you not speak to me of yourhappiness but only stand and gaze at me?' The animal would like toanswer, and say: 'The reason is I always forget what I was going to

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifesay' - but then he forgot this answer too, and stayed silent: so that thehuman being was left wondering.But he also wonders at himself, that he cannot learn to fo rget butclings relentlessly to the past: however far and fast he may run, thischain runs with him. And it is a matter for wonder: a moment, nowhere and then gone, nothing befo re it came, again nothing after ithas gone, nonetheless returns as a ghost and disturbs the peace of alater moment. A leafflutters from the scroll of time, floats away - andsuddenly floats back again and falls into the man's lap. Then the mansays 'I remember' and envies the animal, who at once fo rgets and fo rwhom every moment really dies, sinks back into night and fo g and isextinguished fo r ever. Thus the animal lives unhistorically: for it iscontained in the present, like a number without any awkward fractionleft over; it does not know how to dissimulate, it conceals nothingand at every instant appears wholly as what it is; it can thereforenever be anything but honest. Man, on the other hand, braces himselfagainst the great and ever greater pressure of what is past: itpushes him down or bends him sideways, it encumbers his steps as a,dark, invisible burden which he can sometimes appear to disownand which in traffic with his fellow men he is only too glad to disown,so as to excite their envy. That is why it affects him like a vision ofa lost paradise to see the herds grazing or, in closer proximity tohim, a child which, having as yet nothing of the past to shake off,plays in blissful blindness between the hedges of past and future.Ye t its play must be disturbed; all too soon it will be called out ofits state of fo rgetfulness. Then it will learn to understand thephrase 'it was ': that password which gives conflict, suffering andsatiety access to man so as to remind him what his existence fundamentallyis - an imperfect tense that can never become a perfectone. If death at last brings the desired forgetting, by that act itat the same time extinguishes the present and all existence andtherewith sets the seal on the knowledge that existence is only anuninterrupted has-been, a thing that lives by negating, consumingand contradicting itself.If happiness, if reaching out fo r new happiness, is in any sensewhat fetters living creatures to life and makes them go on living, thenperhaps no philosopher is more justified than the Cynic: fo r thehappiness of the ariimal, as the perfect Cynic, is the living proof ofthe rightness of Cynicism. The smallest happiness, if only it is presentuninterruptedly and makes happy, is incomparably more happinessthan the greatest happiness that comes only as an episode, as it werea piece of waywardness or fo lly, in a continuum of joylessness, desire61

Untimely Meditationsand privation. In the case of the smallest or of the greatest happiness,however, it is always the same thing that makes happiness happiness:the ability to forget or, expressed in more scholarly fashion, thecapacity to feel unhistorically during its duration. He who cannot sinkdown on the threshold of the moment. and fo rget all the past, whocannot stand balanced like a goddess of victory without growingdizzy and afraid, will never know what happiness is worse, he willnever do anything to make others happy. Imagine the extremestpossible example of a man who did not possess the power of fo rgettingat all and who was thus condemned to see everywhere a state ofbecoming: such a man would no longer believe in his own being,would no longer believe in himself, would see everything flowingasunder in moving points and would lose himself in this stream ofbecoming: like a true pupil of Heraclitus, he would in the end hardlydare to raise his finger. Forgetting is essential to action of any kind,just as not only light but darkness too is essential for the life ofeverything organic. A man who wanted to feel historically throughand through would be like one forcibly deprived of sleep, or ananimal that had to live only by rumination and ever repeatedrumination. Thus: it is possible to live almost without memory, andto live happily moreover, as the animal demonstrates; but it isaltogether impossible to live at all without forge.tting. Or, to expressmy theme even more simply: there is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination,of the historical sense, which is harmful and ultimately fatal to the livingthin whether this living thing be a man or a people or a culture.To determine this degree, and therewith the boundary at whichthe past has to be fo rgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger ofthe present, one would have to know exactly how great the plasticpower of a man, a people, a culture is: I mean by plastic power thecapacity to develop out of oneself in one's own way, to transform andincorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, toreplace what has been lost, to recreate broken moulds. There arepeople who possess so little of this power that they can perish from asingle experience, from a single painful event, often and especiallyfrom a single subtle piece of injustice, like a man bleeding to deathfrom a scratch; on the other hand, there are those who are so littleaffected by the worst and most dreadful disasters, and even by theirown wicked acts, that they are able to feel tolerably well and be inpossession of a kind of clear conscience even in the midst of them orat any rate very soon afterwards. The stronger the innermost roots ofa man's nature, the more readily will he be able to assimilate and62

On the uses and disadvantages of history Jor lifeappropriate the things of the past; and the most powerful andtremendous nature would be characterized by the fact that it wouldknow no boundary at all at which the historical sense began tooverwhelm it; it would draw to itself and incorporate into itself all thepast, its own and that most foreign to it, and as it were transform itinto blood. That which such a nature cannot subdue it knows how toforget; it no longer exists, the horizon is rounded and closed, andthere is nothing left to suggest there are people, passions, teachings,goals lying beyond it. And this is a universal law: a living thing can behealthy, strong and fru itful only when bounded by a horizon; if it isincapable of drawing a horizon around itself, and at the same timetoo self-centred to enclose its own view within that of another, it willpine away slowly or hasten to its timely end. Cheerfulness, the goodconscience, the joyful deed, confidence in the fu ture - all of themdepend, in the case of the individual as of a nation, on the existenceof a line dividing the bright and discernible from the unilluminableand dark; on one's being just as able to fo rget at the right time as toremember at the right time; on the possession of a powerful instinctfor sensing when it is necessary to feel historically and when unhistorically.This, precisely, is the proposition the reader is invited tomeditate upon: the unhistorical and the historical are necessary in equalmeasure Jor the health of an individual, of a people and oJ a culture.First of all, there is an observation that everyone must have made:a man's historical sense and knowledge can be very limited, hishorizon as narrow as that of a dweller in the Alps, all his judgmentsmay involve injustice and he may falsely suppose that all hisexperiences are original to him - yet in spite of this injustice anderror he will nonetheless stand there in superlative health andvigour, a joy to all who see him; while close beside him a man farmore just and instructed than he sickens and collapses because thelines of his horizon are always restlessly changing, because he can nolonger extricate himself from the delicate net of his judiciousnessand truth for a simple act of will and desire. On the other hand wehave observed the animal, which is quite unhistorical, and dwellswithin a horizon reduced almost to a point, and yet lives in a certaindegree of happiness, or at least without boredom and dissimulation;we shall thus have to account the capacity to feel to a certain degreeunhistorically as being more vital and more fu ndamental, inasmuchas it constitutes the foundation upon which alone anything sound,healthy and great, anything truly human, can grow. The unhistoricalis like an atmosphere within which alone life can germinate and with63

Untimely Meditationsthe destruction of which it must vanish. It is true that only by imposinglimits on this unhistorical element by thinking, reflecting, comparing,distinguishing, drawing conclusions, only through theappearance within that encompassing cloud of a vivid flash oflightthusonly through the power of employing the past for the purposesoflife and of again introducing into history that which has been doneand is gone - did man become man: but with an excess of historyman again ceases to exist, and without that envelope of the unhistoricalhe would never have begun or dared to begin. What deedwould man be capable of if he had not first entered into thatvaporous region of the unhistorical? Or, to desert this imagery andillustrate by example: imagine a man seized by a vehement passion,for a woman or for a great idea: how different the world has becometo him! Looking behind him he seems to himself as though blind,listening around him he hears only a dull, meaningless noise;whatever he does perceive, however, he perceives as he has neverperceived before - all is so palpable, close, highly coloured,resounding, as though he apprehended if with all his senses at once.All his valuations are altered and disvalued; there are so many thingshe is no longer capable of evaluating at all because he can hardly feelthem any more: he asks himself why he was fo r so long the fo ol of thephrases and opinions of others; he is amazed that his memoryrevolves unwearyingly in a circle and yet is too weak and weary totake even a single leap out of this circle. It is the condition in whichone is the least capable of being just; narrow-minded, ungrateful tothe past, blind to dangers, deaf to warnings, one is a little vortex oflife in a dead sea of darkness and oblivion: and yet this condition ­unhistorical, anti-historical through and through is the womb notonly of the unjust but of every just deed too; and no painter will painthis picture, no general achieve his victory, no people attain itsfreedom without having first desired and striven for it in an unhistoricalcondition such as that described. As he who acts is, inGoethe's words, always without a conscience, so is he also alwayswithout knowledge; he forgets most things so as to do one thing, heis unjust towards what lies behind him, and he recognizes the rightsonly of that which is now to come into being and no other rightswhatever. Thus he who acts loves his deed infinitely more than itdeserves to be loved: and the finest deeds take place in such asuperabundance oflove that, even if their worth were incalculable inother respects, they must still be unworthy of this love.If, in a sufficient number of cases, one could scent out and retro-64

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifespectively breathe th is unhistorical atmosphere within which everygreat historical event has taken place, he might, as a percipientbeing, raise himself to asuprahistoncal vantage point such as Niebuhronce described as the possible outcome of historical reflection. 'History,grasped clearly and in detail', he says, 'is useful in one way atleast: it enables us to recognize how unaware even the greatest andhighest spirits of our human race have been of the chance nature ofthe form assumed by the eyes through which they see and throughwhich they compel everyone to see - compel, that is, because theintensity of their consciousness is exceptionally great. He who hasnot gras ped this quite definitely and in many instances will be subjugatedby the appearance of a powerful spirit who brings to a givenform the most impassioned commitment.' We may use the word'suprahistorical' because the viewer from this vantage point couldno longer fe el any temptation to go on living or to take part in history;he would have recognized the essential condition of all happenings- this blindness and injustice in the soul of him who acts; hewould, indeed, be cured for ever of taking history too seriously, forhe would have learned from all men and all experiences, whetheramong Greeks or Turks, from a single hour of the first or of thenineteenth century, to answer his own question as to how or to whatend life is lived. If you ask your acquaintances if they would like torelive the past ten or twenty years, you will easily discover which- ofthem is prepared fo r this suprahistorical standpoint: they will allanswer No, to be sure, but they will have different reasons fo ranswering No. Some may perhaps be consoling themselves: 'but thenext twenty will be better'; they are those of whom David Humesays mockingly:And from the dregs of life hope to receiveWhat the first sprightly running could not give.Let us call them historical men; looking to the past impels themtowards the fu ture and fires their courage to go on living and theirhope that what they want will still happen, that happiness lies behindthe hill they are advancing towards. These historical men believethat the meaning of existence will come more and more to light inthe course of its process, and they glance behind them only so that,from the process so far, they can learn to understand the present andto desire the future more vehemently; they have no idea that, despitetheir preoccupation with history, they in fact think and act unhistorically, or that their occupation with history stands in the service,not of pure knowledge, but of life.65

Untimely MeditationsBut our question can also be answered differently. ' Again with aNo - but with a No for a different reason: with the No of the suprahistoricalman, who sees no salvation in the process and for whom,rather, the world is complete and reaches its finality at each andevery moment. What could ten more years teach that the past tenwere unable to teach!Whether the sense of this teaching is happiness or resignation orvirtue or atonement, suprahistorical men have never been able toagree; but, in opposition to all historical modes of regarding thepast, they are unanimous in the proposition: the past and the presentare one, that is to say, with all their diversity identical in all that istypical and, as the omnipresence ofimperishable types, a motionlessstructure of a value that cannot alter and a significance that is alwaysthe same. Just as the hundreds of different languages correspond tothe same typically unchanging needs of man, so that he whounderstood these needs would be unable to learn anything newfrom any of these languages, so the suprahistorical thinker beholdsthe history of nations and of individualfrom within, clairvoyantlydivining the original meaning of the various hieroglyphics andgradually even coming wearily to avoid the endless stream of newsigns: for how should the unending superfluity of events not reducehim to satiety, over-satiety and finally to nausea! So that perhaps theboldest of them is at last ready to say to his heart, with GiacomoLeopardi:Nothing lives that is wonhyThy agitation, and the earth deserves not a sigh.Our being is pain and boredom and the world is din - nothing more.Be calm.But let us leave the suprahistorical men to their nausea and theirwisdom: today let us rejoice for once in our unwisdom and, asbelievers in deeds and progress and as honourers of the process, giveourselves a holiday. Our valuation of the historical may be only anoccidental prejudice: but let us at least make progress within thisprejudice and not stand still! Let us at least learn better how toemploy history for the purpose of life! Then we will gladly acknowledgethat the suprahistorical outlook possesses more wisdom thanwe do, provided we can only be sure that we possess more life: forthen our unwisdom will at any rate have more future than their wisdomwill. And in order to leave no doubt as to the meaning of thisantithesis of life and wisdom, I shall employ an ancient, tried-andtestedprocedure and straightway propound a number of theses.66

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeA historical phenomenon, known clearly and completely andresolved into a phenomenon of knowledge, is, fo r him who has perceivedit, dead: fo r he has recognized in it the delusion, the injustice,the blind passion, and in general the whole earthly and darkeninghorizon of this phenomenon, and has thereby also understood itspower in history. This power has now lost its hold over him insofaras he is a man of knowledge: but perhaps irhas not done so insofar a.she is a man involved in life.History become pure, sovereign science would be fo r mankind asort of conclusion of life and a settling of accounts with it. The studyof history is something salutary and fr. uitful fo r the fu ture only as theattendant of a mighty new current of life, of an evolving culture fo rexample, that is to say only when it is dominated and directed by ahigher fo rce and does not itself dominate and direct.Insofar as it stands in the service of life, history stands in the serviceof an un historical power, and, thus subordinate, it can and shouldnever become a pure science such as, fo r instance; mathematics is.The question of the degree to which life requires the service of historyat all, however, is one of the supreme questions and concerns inregard to the health of a man, a people or a culture. For when itattains a certain degree of excess, life crumbles and degenerates, andthrough th is degeneration history itself finally degenerates too .2That life is in need of the services of history, however, must be graspedas firmly as must the proposition, which is to be demonstrated later,that an excess of history is harmful to the living man. History pertainsto the living man in three respects: it pertains to him as a beingwho acts an d strives, as a being who preserves and reveres, as a beingwho suffe rs and seeks deliverance. This threefold relationship correspondsto three species of history - insofar as it is permissible todistinguish between a monumental, an antiquarian and a critical speciesof history.History belongs above all to the man of deeds and power, to himwho fights a great fight, 'who needs models, teachers, comforters an dcan not find them among his contemporaries. It belonged thus toSchiller: fo r our time is so bad, Goethe said, that the poet no longerencounters in the human life that surrounds him a nature he canemploy. It is the man of deeds Polybius has in mind when he callspolitical history the proper preparation fo r governing a state an d the67

iUntimely Meditationsbest teacher who, by recalling to us the misfortunes of others,instructs us in how we may steadfastly endure our own changes offortune. He who has learned to recogni:ze in this the meaning of historyis vexed at the sight of inquisitive tourists or pedantic micrologistsclambering about on the pyramids of the great eras of the past;where he finds inspiration to imitate or to do better, he does not wishto encounter the idler who, hungry for distraction or excitement,prowls around as though among pictures in a gallery. Among thesefeeble and hopeless idlers, among those around him who seemactive but are in fact merely agitated and bustling, the man of actionavoids despair and disgust by turning his gaze backwards and pausingfor breath in his march towards the goal. His goal, however, ishappiness, perhaps not his own but often that of a nation or of mankindas a whole; he flees from resignation and needs history as aspecific against it. Mostly there is no reward beckoning him on,unless it be fame, that is, the expectation of a place of honour in thetemple of history, where he in tum can be a teacher, comforter andadmonisher to those who come after hiIJl. For the commandmentwhich rules over him is: that which in the past was able to expand theconcept 'man' and make it more beautiful must exist everlastingly,so as to be able to accomplish this everlastingly. That the greatmoments in the struggle of the human individual constitute a chain,that this chain unites mankind across the millennia like a range ofhuman mountain peaks, that the summit of such a long-agomoment shall be for me still living, bright and great - that is thefu ndamental idea of the faith in humanity which finds expression inthe demand for a monumental history. But it is precisely this demandthat greatness shall be everlasting that sparks off the most fearful ofstruggles. For everything else that lives ries No. The monumentalshall not come into existence - that is the counter-word. Apathetichabit, all that is base and petty, filling every corner of the earth andbillowing up around all that is great like a heavy breath of the earth,casts itself across the path that greatness has to tread on its way toimmortality and retards, deceives, suffocates and stifles it. This path,however, leads through human brains! Through the brains oftimorous and shortlived animals which emerge again and again tothe same needs and distresses and fend off destruction only witheffort and then only for a short time. For they want first of all but onething: to live, at any cost. Who would associate them with that hardrelay-race of monumental history through which alone greatnessgoes on living! And yet again and again there awaken some who,68

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifegaining strength through reflecting on past greatness, are inspiredwith the fe eling that the life of man is a glorious thing, and even thatthe fairest fruit of this bitter plant is the knowledge that in earliertimes someone passed through this existence infused with pride andstrength, someone else sunk in profound thoughtfulness, a thirdexhibiting mercy and helpfulness - all of them, however, leavingbehind them a single teaching: that he lives best who has no respectfo r existence. If the common man takes this little span of time withsuch gloomy earnestness and clings to it so desperately, those few wehave just spoken of have known, on their way to immortality and tomonumental history, how to regard it with Olympian laughter or atleast with sublime mockery; often they descended to their grave withan ironic smile - for what was there left of them to bury! Only thedross, refuse, vanity, animality that had always weighed them downand that was now consigned to oblivion after having f or long beenthe object of their contempt. But one thing will live, the monogramof their most essential being, a work, an act, a piece of rare enlightenment,a creation: it will live because posterity cannot do without it. Inthis transfigured form, fame is something more than the tastiestmorsel of our egoism, as Schopenhauer called it: it is the belief in thesolidarity and continuity of the greatness of all ages and a protestagainst the passing away of generations and the transitoriness ofthings.Of what use, then, is the monumentalistic conception of the past,.engagement with the classic and rare of earlier times, to the man ofthe present? He learns from it that the greatness that once existedwas in any event once possible and may thus be possible again; he goeshis way with more cheerful step, for the doubt which assailed him inweaker moments, whether he was not perhaps desiring the impossible,has now been banished. Supposing someone believed that it wouldrequire no more than a hundred men educated and actively workingin a new spirit to do away with the bogus form of culture which hasjust now become the fas hion in Germany, how greatly it wouldstrengthen him to realize that the culture of the Renaissance wasraised on the shoulders of just such a band of a hundred men.And yet - to learn something new straightaway from this examplehow inexact, fluid and provisional that comparison would be!How much of the past would have to be overlooked if it was to producethat mighty effect, how violently what is individual in it wouldhave to be forced into a universal mould and all its sharp corners andhard outlines broken up in the interest of conformity! At bottom,69

Untimely Meditationsindeed, that which was once possible could present ' itself as apossibility for a second time only if the Pythagoreans were right inbelieving that when the constellation of the heavenly bodies isrepeated the same things, down to the smallest event, must also berepeated on earth: so that whenever the stars stand in a certain relationto one another a Stoic again joins with an Epicurean to murderCaesar, and when they stand in another relation Columbus willagain discover America. Only if, when the fifth act of the earth'sdrama ended, the whole play every time began again from the beginning,if it was certain that the same complex of motives, the samedeus ex machina, the same catastrophe were repeated at definite intervals,could the man of power venture to desire monumental history in fullicon-like veracity, that is to say with every individual peculiaritydepicted in precise detail: but that will no doubt happen only whenthe astronomers have again become a trologers. Until that time,monumental history will have no use for that absolute veracity: it willalways have to deal in approximations and generalities, in makingwhat is dissimilar look similar; it will alwaysmave to diminish the differencesof motives and instigations so as to exhibit the effectusmonumentally, that is to say as something exemplary and worthy ofimitation, at the expense of the causae: so that, since- it as far as possibleignores causes, one might with only slight exaggeration call it acollection of ' effects in themselves', of events which will produce aneffect upon all future ages. That which is celebrated at popular festivals,at religious or military anniversaries, is really such an 'effect initself': it is this which will not let the ambitious sleep, which thebrave wear over their heans like an amulet, but it is not the truly historicalconnexus of cause and effect - which, fully understood, wouldonly demonstrate that the dice-game of chance and the future couldnever again produce anything exactly similar to what it produced inthe past.As long as the soul of historiography lies in the great stimuli that aman of power derives from it, as long as the past has to be describedas worthy of imitation, as imitable and possible fo r a second time, itof course incurs the danger of becoming somewhat distorted,beautified and coming close to free poetic invention; there havebeen ages, indeed, which were quite incapable of distinguishing betweena monumentalized past and a mythical fiction, because preciselythe same stimuli can be derived from the one world as fromthe other. If, therefore, the monumental mode of regarding historyrules over the other modes - I mean over the antiquarian and critical70

On the uses and disadvantages of history for life- the past itself suffers harm: whole segments of it are forgotten, despised,and flow away in an uninterrupted colourless flood, and onlyindividual embellished facts rise out of it like islands: the few personalitieswho are visible at all have something strange andunnatural about them, like the golden hip which the pupils ofPythagoras supposed they saw on their master. Monument31 historydeceives by analogies: with seductive similarities it inspires thecourageous to foolhardiness and the inspired to fanaticism; andwhen we go on to think of this kind of history in the hands and headsof gifted egoists and visionary scoundrels, then we see empires destroyed,princes murdered, wars and revolutions launched and thenumber of historical 'effects in themselves', that is to say, effectswithout sufficient cause, again augmented. So much as a reminderof the harm that monumental history can do among men of powerand achievement, whether they be good men or evil: what, however,is it likely to do when the impotent and indolent take possession ofitand employ it!Let us take the simplest and most frequent example. Imagine theinartistic natures, and those only weakly endowed, armoured andarmed by a monumentalist history of the artists: against whom willthey now tum their weapons? Against their arch..:enemies, the strongartistic spirits, that is to say against those who alone are capable oflearning from that history in a true, that is to say life-enhancing sense,and of transforming what they have learned into a more elevatedpractice. Their path will be barred, their · air darkened, if a halfunderstoodmonument to some great era of the past is erected as anidol and zealously danced around, as though to say: 'Behold, this istrue art: pay no heed to those who are evolving and want somethingnew!' This dancing mob appears to possess even the privilege ofdetermining what is 'good taste': for the creative man has alwaysbeen at a disadvantage compared with those who have only lookedon and taken no part themselves; just as the public house politicianhas at all times been cleverer, more judicious and more prudentthan the statesman who actually rules. But if one goes so far as toemploy the popular referendum and the numerical majority in thedomain of art, and as it were compels the artist to defend himselfbefore the forum of the aesthetically inactive, then you can take youroath on it in advance that he will be condemned: not in spite of thefact that his judges have solemnly proclaimed the canon of mohumentalart (that is to say, the art which, according to the given definition,has at all times 'produced an effect'), but precisely because they71

Untimely Meditationshave: while any art which, because contemporary, is not yet monumental,seems to them unnecessary, unattractive and lacking in theauthority conferred by history. On the other hand, their instincts tellthem that art can be slain by art: the monumental is never to berepeated, and to make sure it is not they invoke the authority whichthe monumental derives from the past. They are connoisseurs of artbecause they would like to do away with art altogether; they pose asphysicians, while their basic intent is to mix poisons; they developtheir taste and tongue as they do so as to employ this spoiled taste asan explanation of why they so resolutely reject all the nourishingartistic food that is offered them. For they do not desire to see newgreatness emerge: their means of preventing it is to say 'Behold,greatness already exists!' In reality, they are as little concerned aboutthis greatness that already exists as they are about that which isemerging: their lives are evidence of this. Monumental history is themasquerade costume in which their hatred of the great and powerfulof their own age is disguised as satiated admiration for the great andpowerful of past ages, and muffled in which they invert the realmeaning of that mode of regarding history into its opposite; whetherthey are aware of it or not, they act as though their motto were: let thedead bury the living.Each of the three species of history which exist belongs to a certainsoil and a certain climate and only to that: in any other it grows into adevastating weed. If the man who wants to do something great hasneed of the past at all, he appropriates it by means of monumentalhistory; "he, on the other hand, who likes to persist in the fam iliar and" the revered of old, tends the past as an antiquarian historian; andonly he who is oppressed by a present need, and who wants to throwoff this burden at any cost, has need of critical history, that is to say ahistory that judges and condemns. Much mischiefis caused throughthe thoughtless transplantation of these plants: the critic withoutneed, the antiquary without piety, the man who recognizes greatnessbut cannot himself do great things, are such plants, estranged fromtheir mother soil and degenerated into weeds.3History thus belongs in the second place to him who preserves andreveres - to him who looks back to whence he has come, to where hecame into being, with love and loyalty; with this piety he as it weregives thanks for his existence. By tending with care that which has72

On the uses and disadvantages of history for liftexisted from of old, he wants to preserve fo r those who shall comeinto existence after him the conditions under which he himself cameinto existence - and thus he serves life. The possession of ancestralgoods changes its meaning in such a soul: they rather possess it. Thetrivial, circumscribed, decaying and obsolete acquire ·their owndignity and inviolability through the fact that the preserving andrevering soul of the antiquarian man has emigrated into them andthere made its home. The history of his city becomes for him the historyof himself; he reads its walls, its towered gate, its rules andregulations, its holidays, like an illuminated diary of his youth and inall this he finds again himself, his fo rce, his industry, his joy, hisjudgment, his folly and vices. Here we lived, he says to himself, fo rhere we are living; and here we shall live, fo r we are tough and not tobe ruined overnight. Thus with the aid of this 'we' he looks beyondhis own individual transitory existence and feels himself to be thespirit of his house, his race, his city. Sometimes he even greets thesoul of his nation across the long dark centuries of confusion as hisown soul; an ability to feel his way back and sense how things were,to detect traces almost extinguished, to read the past quickly andcorrectly no matter how intricate its palimpsest may be these arehis talents and virtues. Endowed with these talents and virtuesGoethe stood before Erwin von Steinbach's monumental work; inthe storm of his feelings the historical clouds which veiled the timebetween them were rent apart: it was his recognition, at first sight, ofthe German work of art 'exerting its power through a strong, roughGerman soul'. It was the same tendency which directed the Italiansof the Renaissance and reawoke in their poets the genius of ancientItaly to a 'wonderfu l new resounding of the primeval strings', asJakob Burckhardt puts it. But this antiquarian sense of veneration ofthe past is of the greatest value when it spreads a simple feeling ofpleasure and contentment over the modest; rude, even wretchedconditions in which a man or a nation lives; Niebuhr, for example,admits with honourable candour that on moor and heathland,among free peasants who possess a history, he can live contented andnever feel the want of art. How could history serve life better thanwhen it makes the less favoured generations and peoples contentedwith their own homeland and its customs, and restrains them fromroving abroad in search of something they think more worth havingand engaging in battles for it? Sometimes this clinging to one's ownenvironment and companions, one's own toilsome customs, one'sown bare mountainside, looks like obstinacy and ignorance - yet it is73

Untimely Meditationsa very salutary ignorance and one most calculated to further theinterests of the community: a fact of which anyone must be awarewho knows the dreadful consequences of the desire for expeditionsand adventures, especially when it seizes whole hordes of nations,and who has seen from close up the condition a nation gets intowhen it has ceased to be faithful to its own origins and is given over toa restless, cosmopolitan hunting after new and ever newer things.The feeling antithetical to this, the contentment of the tree in itsroots, the happiness of knowing that one is not wholly accidental andarbitrary but grown out of a past as its heir, flower and fruit, and thatone's existence is thus excused and, indeed, justified - it is this whichis today usually designated as the real sense of history.This notwithstanding, such a condition is certainly not one inwhich a man would be most capable of resolving the past into pureknowledge; so that here too, as in the case of monumental history,we perceive that, as long as the study of history serves life and isdirected by the vital drives, the past itself suffers. To employ a somewhatfree metaphor: the tree is aware of i roots to a greater degreethan it is able to see them; but this awareness judges how big they arefrom the size and strength of its' visible branches. If, however, thetree is in error as to this, how greatly it will be in error regarding allthe rest of the forest around it! - for it knows of the fo rest only that init which obstructs or favours it and nothing beside. The antiquariansense of a man, a community, a whole people, always possesses anextremely restricted field of vision; most of what exists it does notperceive at all, and the little it does see it sees much too close up andisolated; it cannot relate what it sees to anything else and it thereforeaccords everything it sees equal importance and therefore to eachindividual thing too 'great imponance. There is a lack of that discriminationof value and that sense of proponion which would distinguishbetween the things of the past in a way that would do truejustice to them; their measure and proportion is always that accordedthem by the backward glance of the antiquarian nation orindividual.This always produces one very imminent danger: everything oldand past that enters one's field of vision at all is in the end blandlytaken to be equally worthy of reverence, while everything that doesnot approach this antiquity with reverence, that is to say everythingnew and evolving, is rejected and persecuted. Thus even the Greekstolerated the hieratic style in their plastic ans beside the free andgreat; later, indeed, they did not merely tolerate the elevated nose74

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeand the frosty smile but even made a cult of it. When the senses of apeople harden in this fashion, when the study of history selVes thelife of the past in such a way that it undermines continuing andespecially higher life, when the historical sense no longer conselVeslife but mummifies it, then the tree gradually dies unnaturally fromthe top downwards to the roots - and in the end the roots themselvesusually perish too. Antiquarian history itself degenerates from themoment it is no longer animated and inspired by the fresh life of thepresent. Its piety withers away, the habit of scholarliness continueswithout it and rotates in egoistic self-satisfaction around its own axis.Then there appears the repulsive spectacle of a blind rage for collecting,a restless raking together of everything that has ever existed. Man isencased in the stench of must and mould; through the antiquarianapproach he succeeds in reducing even a more creative disposition,a nobler desire, to an insatiable thirst for novelty, or rather for antiquityand for all and everything; often he sinks so low that in theend he is content to gobble down any fo od whatever, even the dust ofbibliographical minutiae.But even when this degeneration does not take place, when antiquarianhistory does not lose the fo undation in which alone it mustbe rooted if it is to benefit life, sufficient dangers remain should itgrow too mighty and overpower the other modes of regarding thepast. For it knows only how to preserve life, not how to engender it; italways undeIValues that which is becoming because it has no instinctfor divining it as monumental history, for example, has. Thus ithint.rs any firm resolve to attempt something new, thus it paralyses theman of action who, as one who acts, will and must offend some piety orother. The fact that something has grown old now gives rise to thedemand that it be made immortal; for when one considers all thatsuch an antiquity - an ancient custom of the ancestors, a religiousbelief, an inherited political privilege - has experienced during thecourse of its existence, how great a sum of piety and reverence on thepart of individuals and generations, then it must seem arrogant oreven wicked to replace such an antiquity with a novelty and to setagainst such a numerical accumulation of acts of piety and reverencethe single unit of that which is evolving and has just arrived.Here it becomes clear how necessary it is to mankind to have,beside the monumental and antiquarian modes of regarding thepast, a third mode, the critical: and this, too, in the seIVice oflife. Ifheis to live, man must possess and from time to time employ thestrength to break up and dissolve a part of the past: he does this by75

Untimely Meditationsbringing it befo re the tribunal, scrupulously examining i' t and finallycondemning it; every past, however, is worthy to be condemned ­for that is the nature of human things: human violence and weaknesshave always played a mighty role in them. It is not justice which heresits in judgment; it is even less mercy which pronounces the verdict:it is life alone, that dark, driving power that insatiably thirsts fo ritself. Its sentence is always unmerciful, always unjust, because it hasnever proceeded out of a pure well of knowledge; but in most casesthe sentence would be the same even ifitwere pronounced by justiceitself. 'For all that exists is worthy of perishing. So it would be better ifnothing existed.' It requires a great deal of strength to be able to liveand to forget the extent to which to live and to be unjust is one andthe same thing. Luther himself once opined that the world existedonly through a piece of forgetful negligence on God's part: for if Godhad fo reseen 'heavy artillery' he would not have created the world.Sometimes, however, this same life that requires forgetting demandsa temporary suspension of this forgetfulness; it wants to be clear as tohow unjust the existence of any thing- a privilege, a caste, a dynasty,for example - is, and how greatly this thing deserves to perish. Thenits past is regarded critically, then one takes the knife to its roots thenone cruelly tramples over every kind of piety. It is always adangerous process, especially so for life itself: and men and ageswhich serve life by judging and destroying a past are alwaysdangerous and endangered men and ages. For since we are the outcomeof earlier generations, we are also the outcome of their aberrations,passions and errors, and indeed of their crimes; it is notpossible wholly to free oneself from this chain. If we condemn theseaberrations and regard ourselves as free of them, this does not alterthe fact that we originate in them. The best we can do is to confrontour inherited and hereditary nature with our knowledge, andthrough a new, stern discipline combat our inborn heritage andinplant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, sothat our first nature withers away. It is an attempt to give oneself, as itwere a posteriori, a past in which one would like to originate in oppositionto that in which one did originate: - always a dangerousattempt because it is so hard to know the limit to denial of the pastand because second natures are usually weaker than first. What happensall too often is that we know the good but do not do it, becausewe also know the better but cannot do it. But here and there a victoryis nonetheless achieved, and for the combatants, fo r those who76

On the uses and disadvantages of history Jor lifeemploy critical history fo r th e sake of life, there is even a noteworthyconsolation: that of knowing that this first nature was once a secondnature and that every victorious second nature will become afirst.4These are the services history is capable of performing fo r life; everyman and every nation requires, in accordance with its goals, energiesand needs, a certain kind of knowledge of the past, now in the formof monumental, now of antiquarian, now of critical history: but itdoes not require it as a host of pure thinkers who only look on at life,of knowledge-thirsty individuals whom knowledge alone will satisfyand to whom the accumulation of knowledge is itself the goal, butalways and only fo r the ends of life and thus also under the dominationand supreme direction of these ends. That this is the naturalrelationship of an age, a culture, a nation with its history - evoked byhunger, regulated by the extent of its need, held in bounds by itsinherent plastic powers - that knowledge of the past has at all timesbeen desired only in the service of the fu ture and the present and notfor the weakening of the present or for depriving a vigorous fu ture ofits roots: all this is simple, as the truth is simple, and will at once beobvious even to him who has not had it demonstrated byhistorical proof.And' now let us quickly take a look at our own time! We are startled,we shy away: where has all the clarity, all the naturalness and purityof this relationship between life and history gone? in what restlessand exaggerated confusion does this problem now swell before oureyes! Does the fault lie with us, who observe it? Or has the constellationof life and history really altered through the interpositionof a mighty, hostile star between them? Let others show that we haveseen falsely: fo r our part we shall say what we th ink we see. And whatwe see is certainly a star, a gleaming and glorious star interposingitself, the constellation really has been altered - by science, by thedemand that history should be a science. Now the demands oflife alone nolonger reign and exercise co nstraint on knowledge of the past: nowall the frontiers have been torn down and all that has ever beenrushes upon mankind. All perspectives have been shifted back to thebeginning of all becoming, back into infinity. Such an immensespectacle as the science of universal becoming, history, now displays77

Untimely Meditationshas never before been seen by any generation; though it displays it,to be sure, with the perilous daring of its motto: fiat veritas, 'pereatvita. ':'Let us now picture the spiritual occurrence introduced into thesoul of modern man by that which we have just described. Historicalknowledge streams in unceasingly from inexhaustible wells, thestrange and incoherent forces its way forward, memory opens all itsgates and yet is not open wide enough, nature travails in an effort toreceive, arrange and honour these strange guests, but they themselvesare in conflict with one another and it seems necessary to constrainand control them if one is not oneself to perish in theirconflict. Habituation to such a disorderly, stormly and conflictriddenhousehold gradually becomes a second nature, though thissecond nature is beyond question much weaker, much more restless,and thoroughly less sound than the first. In the end, modernman drags around with him a huge quantity of indigestible stones ofknowledge, which then, as in the fairy tale, can sometimes be heardrumbling about inside him. And in this r}fmbling there is betrayedthe most characteristic quality of modern man: the remarkableantithesis between an interior which fails to correspond to anyexterior and an exterior which fails to correspond to any interior - anantithesis unknown to the peoples of earlier times. Knowledge, consumedfo r the greater part without hunger for it and even counter toone's needs, now no longer acts as an agent for transforming the outsideworld but remains concealed within a chaotic inner worldwhich modern man describes with a curious pride as his uniquelycharacteristic inwardness. It is then said that one possesses contentand only form is lacking; but such an antithesis is quite improperwhen applied to living things. This precisely is why our modern cultureis not a living thing: it is incomprehensible without recourse tothat antithesis; it is not a real culture at all but only a kind ofknowledge of culture; it has an idea of and feeling fo r culture but notrue cultural achievement emerges from them. What actuallyinspires it and then appears as a visible act, on the other hand, oftensignifies not much more than an indifferent convention, a pitifulimitation or even a crude caricature. Cultural sensibility then liesquietly within, like a snake that has swallowed rabbits whole andnow lies in the sun and avoids all unnecessary movement. The innerprocess is now the thing itself, is what actually constitutes 'culture'."'fiat veritas, pereat vita: let truth prevail though life perish78

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifoAnyone observing this has only one wish, that such a culture shouldnot perish of indigestion. Imagine, for example, a Greek observingsuch a culture: he would perceive that for modern man 'educated'and 'historically educated' seem so to belong together as to meanone and the same thing and to differ only verbally. If h€ then saidthat one can be very educated and yet at the same time altogetheruneducated historically, modern men would think they had failed tohear him aright and would shake their heads. That celebrated littlenation of a not so distant past - I mean these same Greeks duringthe period of their greatest strength kept a tenacious hold on theirunhistorical sense; if a present-day man were magically transportedback to that world he would probably consider the Greeks very'uncultured' - whereby, to be sure, the secret of modern culture, soscrupulously hidden, would be exposed to public ridicule: for wemoderns have nothing whatever of our own; only by replenishingand cramming ourselves with the ages, customs, arts, philosophies,religions, discoveries of others do we become anything worthy ofnotice, that is to say, walking encyclopaedias, which is what anancient Greek transported into our own time would perhaps take usfor. With encyclopaedias, however, all the value lies in what is containedwithin, in the content, not in what stands without, the bindingand cover; so it is that the whole of modern culture is essentiallyinward: on the outside the bookbinder has printed some such thingas 'Handbook of inward culture for outward barbarians' . Thisantithesis of inner and outer, indeed, makes the exterior even morebarbaric than it would be if a rude nation were only to develop out ofitself in accordance with its own uncouth needs. For what means areavailable to nature for overcoming that which presses upon it in toogreat abundance? One alone: to embrace it as lightly as possible soas quickly to expel it again and have done with it. From this comes ahabit of no longer taking real things seriously, from this arises the'weak personality' by virtue of which the real and existent makesonly a slight impression; one becomes ever more negligent of one'souter appearance and, provided the memory is continuallystimulated by a stream of new things worth knowing which can bestored tidily away in its coffers, one finally widens the dubious gulfbetween content and form to the point of complete insensibility tobarbarism. The culture of a people as the antithesis to this barbarismwas once, and as I think with a certain justice, defined as unity ofartistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people; this definitionshould not be misunderstood in the sense of implying an79

Untimely Meditationsl.11}!lI·,:":,\ 'i!: ;antithesis between barbarism and fine style; what is' meant is that apeople to whom one attributes a culture has to be in all reality asingle living unity and not fall wretchedly apart into inner and outer,content and form. He who wants to strive fo r and promote the cultureof a people should strive for and promote this higher unity andjoin in the destruction of modern bogus cultivated ness fo r the sakeof a true culture; he should venture to reflect how the health of a peopleundermined by the study of history may be again restored, how itmay rediscover its instincts and therewith its honesty.I may as well speak directly of ourselves, we Germans of the presentday who are more afflicted than other nations by that weakness ofpersonality and that contradiction between form and content. Formgenerally counts with us as a convention, as a vestment and disguise,and it is therefore, if not exactly hated, at any rate not loved; it wouldbe even more correct to say that we have an extraordinary fear of theword 'convention' and, no doubt, also of the thing. It was this fearwhich led the German to desert the school of France: he wanted tobecome more natural and thereby mOJie German. But this 'thereby'seems to have been a miscalculation: escaped from the school ofconvention, he then let himself go in whatever manner his fancyhappened to suggest to him, and at bottom did no more than imitatein a slovenly and half-forgetful way what he had formerly imitatedwith scrupulous care and often with success. So it is that, comparedwith past ages, we dwell even today in a carelessly inaccurate copy ofFrench convention: a fact to which all our comings and goings, conversations,clothing and habitations bear witness. We thought wewere retreating into naturalness, but what we were really doing wasletting ourselves go and electing fo r ease and comfort and thesmallest possible degree of self-discipline. Take a stroll through aGerman city - compared with the distinct national qualities displayedin fo reign cities, all the conventions here are negative ones,everything is colourless, worn out, badly copied, negligent,everyone does as he likes but what he likes is never fo rceful and wellconsidered but follows the rules laid down first by universal haste,then by the universal rage for ease and comfort. A garment whichcosts no intelligence to design and no time to put on, that is to say agarment borrowed from abroad and imitated in the most easygoingway possible, at once counts with the Germans as a contribution toGerman national dress. The sense of form is rejected without theslightest misgiving - for we possess the sense of the content: for the80

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeGermans are, after all, celebrated for their profound inwardness.But this inwardness also carries with it a celebrated danger: thecontent itself, of which it is assumed that it cannot be seen fromwithout, may occasionally evaporate; from without, however,neither its former presence nor its disappearance will be apparent atall. But however far from this danger we may imagine the Germanpeople to be, the foreigner will still be to some extent justified inmaintaining that our interior is too feeble and disorganized toproduce an outward effect and endow itself with a form. The interiorof the Germans can be receptive to an exceptional degree:serious, powerful, profound, and perhaps even richer than that ofother nations; but as a whole it remains weak because all thesebeautiful threads are not wound together into a powerful knot: sothat the visible act is not the act and self-revelation of the totalityof this interior but only a feeble or crude attempt on the part ofone or other of these threads to pose as being the whole. That iswhy the German cannot be judged by his actions and why as anindividual he is still completely hidden even after he has acted. Asis well known, he has to be assessed according to his thoughts andfeelings, and these he nowadays expresses in his books. If only itwere not precisely these books which, now more than ever before,lead us to doubt whether that celebrated inwardness really doesstill reside in its inaccessible little temple; it is a dreadful thoughtthat one day they might disappear and all that would be left to signalize"the German would be his arrogantly clumsy and meeklyslovenly exterior: almost as dreadful as if that hidden inwardnesswere sitting in there falsified and painted over and had becomean actor if not something worse. This, at any rate, is whatGrillparzer, as an independent observer, seems to have gatheredfrom his experience in the theatre. 'We feel in abstractions', hesays, 'we hardly know any longer how feeling really expresses itselfwith our contemporaries; we show them performing actions suchas they no longer perform nowadays. Shakespeare has ruined allof us moderns.'This is a single case and perhaps it has been generalized too hastily:but how fearful it would be if such a generalization were justified, if ahost of individual cases should crowd in upon the observer; howdesolating it would be to have to say: we Germans feel in abstractions,we have all been ruined by history - a proposition whichwould destroy at its roots all hope of a future national culture: for81

Untimely Meditationsany such hope grows out of the belief in the genuineness andimmediacy of German feeling, out of the belief in a sound and wholeinwardness. What is there left to hope for or believe in if the sourceof hope and belief is muddied, if inwardness has learned to makeleaps, to dance, to paint itself, to express itself in abstractions andwith calculation and gradually to lose itself1 And how should thegreat productive spirit continue to endure among a people nolonger secure in a unified inwardness and which falls asunder intothe cultivated with a miseducated and misled inwardness on theone hand and the uncultivated with an inaccessible inwardness onthe other! How should that spirit endure if unity of feeling amongthe people has been lost, and if, moreover, it knows that this fe elingis falsified and retouched precisely among that part of the peoplewhich calls itself the cultured part and lays claim to possession of thenational artistic conscience? Even if here and there an individual'staste and judgment has grown more subtle and sublimated, that is noadvantage to him: he is racked by the knowledge that he has to speakas it were to a sect and is no longer neede in the body of his nation.Perhaps he now prefers to bury his treasure rather than suffer thedisgust of being presumptuously patronized by a sect while his heartis full of pity for all. The instinct of the nation no longer comes out tomeet him; it is useless fo r him to stretch out his arms towards themin longing. What is there now left to this spirit but to turn his inspiredhatred against that constraint, against the barriers erected in the socalledculture of his nation, so as to condemn what to him, as a livingbeing and one productive oflife, is destructive and degrading: thushe exchanges a profound insight into his destiny fo r the divine joysof creation and construction, and ends as a solitary man ofknowledge and satiated sage. It is the most painful of spectacles: hewho beholds it will know a sacred compulsion: here, he says to himself,I must render aid, that higher unity in the nature and soul of apeople must agai n be created, that breach between inner and outermust again vanish under the hammer-blows of necessiry. But whatweapons can he employ? What does he have but, again, his profoundinsight: propagating it and sowing it with full hands he hopesto implant a need: and out of a vigorous need there will one day arisea vigorous deed. And so as to leave no doubt of the source of myexample of that need, that necessity, that perception , let me sayexpressly that it is for German unity in that highest sense that we strive,and strive more ardently than we do for political reunification, theunity of German 'spirit and life after the abolition of the antithesis of form andcontent, of inwardness and convention. -

On the uses and disadvantages of history for life5The oversaturation of an age with history seems to me to be hostileand dangerous to life in five respects: such an excess creates that contrastbetween inner and outer which we have just discussed, andthereby weakens the personality; it leads an age to imagine that itpossesses the rarest of virtues, justice, to a greater degree than anyother age; it disrupts the instincts of a people, and hinders theindividual no less than the whole in the attainment of maturity; itimplants the belief, harmful at any time, in the old age of mankind,the belief that one is a latecomer and epigone; it leads an age into adangerous mood of irony in regard to itself and subsequently intothe even more dangerous mood of cynicism: in this mood, however,it develops more and more a prudent practical egoism throughwhich the forces of life are paralyzed and at last destroyed.And now back to our first proposition: modern man'suffers from aweakened personality. As the Roman of the imperial era became un­Roman in relation to the world which stood at his service, as he losthimself in the flood of fo reigners which came streaming in anddegenerated in the midst of the cosmopolitan carnival of go ds, artsand customs, so the same mut happen to modern man who allowshis artists in history to go on 'preparing a world exhibition fo r him;he has become a strolling spectator and has arrived at a co ndition inwhich .even great wars and revolutions are able to influence him fo rhardly more than a moment. The war is not even over before it istransformed into a hundred thousand printed pages and set beforethe tired palates of the history-hungry as the latest delicacy. It seemsthat the instrument is almost incapable of producing a strong andfu ll note, no matter how vigorously it is played: its tones at once dieaway and in a moment have faded to a tender historical echo.Expressed morally: you are no longer capable of holding on to thesublime, your deeds are shortlived explosions, not rolling thunder.Though the greatest and most miraculous event should occur itmust nonetheless descend, silent and unsung, into Hades. For artflees away if you immediately conceal your deeds under the aw ningof history. He who wants to understand, grasp and assess in amoment that before wh ich he ought to stand long in awe as before anincomprehensible sublimity may be called reasonable, but only inthe sense in which Schiller speaks of the rationality of the reasonableman: there are things he does nOL see which even a child sees, thereare th ings he does not hear which even a child hears, and these

Untimely Meditationsthings are precisely the most important things: because he does notunderstand these things, his understanding is more childish thanthe child and more simple than simplicity - and this in spite of themany cunning fo lds of his parchment scroll and the virtuosity of hisfingers in unravelling the entangled. The reason is that he has lostand destroyed his instincts and, having lost his trust in the 'divineanimal', he can no longer let go the reins when his reason falters andhis path leads him through deserts. Thus the individual growsfainthearted and unsure and dares no longer believe in himself: hesinks into his own interior depths, which here means into theaccumulated lumber of what he has learned but which has no outwardeffect, of instruction which does not become life. If onewatches him from outside, one sees how the expulsion of theinstincts by history has transformed man almost into mere abstractisand shadows: no one dares to appear as he is, but masks himself as acultivated man, as a scholar, as a poet, as a politician. If, believing allthis to be in earnest and not a mere puppet-play - for they all affectearnestness - one takes hold of these rtlaks, one suddenly has nothingbut rags and tatters in one's hands. That is why one should no longerlet oneself be deceived, that is why one should order them: 'Off withyour coats or be what you seem!' It can no longer be borne thateveryone of a noble seriousness should become a Don Qu ixote:since he has better things to do than to buffe t about with such fal serealities. But he must nonetheless keep a sharp lookout, whenever heencounters a mask cry his 'Halt! Who goes there?' and tear the.maskfrom its face. Strange! One would think that history wouldencourage men to be honest - even if only honest fools; and hithertothis has indeed been its effect, only now it is no longer! Historicaleducation and the identical bourgeois coat rule at the same time.While the 'free personality' has never before been commended sovolubly, there are no personalities to be seen, let alone free personalitiesnothing but anxiously muffled up identical people.Individuality has withdrawn within: from without it has becomeinvisible; a fact which leads one to ask whether indeed there could becauses without effects. Or is a race of eunuchs needed to watch overthe great historical world-harem? Pure objectivity would certainlycharacterize such a race. For it almost seems that the task is to standguard over history to see that nothing comes out of it except morehistory, and certainly no real events! - to take care that history doesnot make any personality 'free', that is to say truthful towards itself,truthful towards others, in both word and deed. It is only through84

-IOn the uses and disadvantages of history for lifesuch truthfulness that the distress, the inner misery, of modern manwill come to light, and that, in place of that anxious concealmentthrough convention and masquerade, art and religion, trueancillariest will be able to combine to implant a culture which correspondsto real needs and does not, as present-day universal educationteaches it to do, deceive itself as to these needs and therebybecome a walking lie.In an age which suffers from this universal education, to what anunnatural, artificial and in any case unworthy state must the mosttruthful of all sciences, the honest naked goddess philosophy, bereduced! In such a world of compelled external uniformity it mustremain the learned monologue of the solitary walker, the individual'schance capture, the hidden secret of the chamber, or the harmlesschatter of academic old men and children. No one dares venture tofulfil the philosophical law in himself, no one lives philosophicallywith that simple loyalty that constrained a man of antiquity to bearhimself as a Stoic wherever he was, whatever he did, once he hadaffirmed his loyalty to the Stoa. All modern philosophizing is politicaland official, limited by governments, churches, academies, customsand the cowardice of men to the appearance of scholarship; it sighs'if only' or knows 'there once was' and .does nothing else. Within ahistorical culture philosophy possesses no rights if it wants to bemore than a self-restrained knowing which leads to no action; ifmodern man had any courage or resolution at all, if he were notmerely a subjective creature even in his enmities, he would banishphilosophy; as it is, he contents himself with mod.estly concealing itsnudity. One may think, write, print, speak, teach philosophy - tothat point more or less everything is permitted; only in the realm ofaction, of so-called life, is it otherwise: there only one thing is everpermitted and everything else simply impossible: thus will historicalculture have it. Are there still human beings, one then asks oneself,or perhaps only thinking-, writing- and speaking-machines?Goethe once said of Shakespeare: 'No one despised outward costumemore than he; he knew very well the inner human costume,and here all are alike. They say he hit off the Romans admirably; butI don't find it so, they are all nothing but flesh-and-bloodEnglishmen, but they are certainly human beings, human fromhead to foot, and the Roman toga sits on them perfectly well.' N ow Iask whether it would be possible to represent our contemporarymen of letters, popular figures, officials or politicians as Romans; itsimply would not work, because they are not human beings but only85

Untimely MeditationsI:flesh-and-blood compendia and as it were abstractions made concrete.If they possess a character of their own it is buried so deep itcannot get out into the light of day: if they are human beings they areso only to him 'who explores the depths'. To anyone else they aresomething different, not men, not gods, not animals, but creationsof historical culture, wholly structure, image, form withoutdemonstrable content and, unhappily, ill-designed form and, whatis more, uniform. And so let my proposition be understood andpondered: history can be borne only by strong personalities, weak ones areutterly extinguished by it. The reason is that history confuses the feelingsand sensibility when these are not strong enough to assess the pastby themselves. He who no longer dares to trust himself but involuntarilyasks of history 'How ought I to feel about this?' finds that histimidity gradually turns him into an actor and that he is playing arole, usually indeed many roles and therefore playing them badlyand superficially. Gradually all congruity between the man and hishistorical domain is lost; we behold pert little fellows associatingwith the Romans as though they were thefr equals: and they root andburrow in the remains of the Greek poets as though these too werecorpora for their dissection and were as vilia as their own literary corporamay be. * Suppose one of them is engaged with Democritus, I always 'feel like asking: why not Heraclitus? Or Philo? Or Bacon? OrDescartes?or anyone else. And then: why does it have to be aphilosopher? Why not a poet or an orator? And: why a Greek at all,why not an Englishman or a Turk? Is the past not big enough for youto be able to find nothing except things in comparison with whichyou cut so ludicrous a figure? But, as I have said, this is a race ofeunuchs, and to a eunuch one woman is like another, simply awoman, woman in herself, the eternally unapproachableand it isthus a matter of indifference what they do so long as history itself iskept nice and 'objective', bearing in mind that those who want tokeep it so are for ever incapable of making history themselves. Andsince the eternally womanly will never draw you upward, you draw itdown to you and, being neuters, take history too for a neuter. t Butso that it shall not be thought that I am seriously comparing history*vilia corpora : vile bodiest Alludes to the closing lines of Goethe's Faust II: 'Das Ewig-Weibliche/Zieht unshinan'. Nietzsche often alludes to the phrase, always in an ironic-humorous tone: hefait('d, I think, to discover any meaning in it.86

On the uses and disadvantages oj history for lifewith the eternally womanly, I should like to make it clear that, on thecontrary, I regard it rather as the eternally manly: though, to be sure,for those who are 'historically educated' through and through itmust be a matter of some indifference whether it is the one or theother: for they themselves are neither man nor woman, nor evenhermaphrodite, but always and only neuters or, to speak morecultivatedly, the eternally objective.If the personality is emptied in the manner described and hasbecome eternally subjectless or, as it is usually put, objective, nothingcan affect it any longer; good and right things may be done, as deeds,poetry, music: the hollowed-out cultivated man at once looksbeyond the work and asks about the history of its author. If he hasalready several other works behind him, he is at once obliged to haveexplained to him the previous and possible future progress of hisdevelopment, he is at once compared with other artists, criticized asto his choice of subject and his treatment of it, dissected, carefullyput together again, and in general admonished and set on the rightpath. The most astonishing thing may come to pass the host of thehistorically neutral is always there ready to supervise the author of iteven while he is still far off. The echo is heard immediately: butalways as a 'critique', though the moment before the critic did not somuch as dream of the possibility of what has been done. The worknever produces an effect but only another 'critique'; and the critiqueitself produces no effect either, but again only a further critique.There thus arises a general agreement to regard the acquisition ofmany critiques as a sign of success, of few or none as a sign of failure.At bottom, however, even given this kind of 'effect' everythingremains as it was: people have some new thing to chatter about fo r awhile, and then something newer still, and in the meantime go ondoing what they have always done. The historical culture of ourcritics will no longer permit any effect at all in the proper sense, thatis an effect on life and action: their blotting-paper at once goes downeven on the blackest writing, and across the most graceful designthey smear their thick brush-strokes which are supposed to be regardedas corrections: and once again that is the end of that. But their criticalpens never cease to flow, for they have lost control of them andinstead of directing them are directed by them. It is precisely in thisimmoderation of its critical outpourings, in its lack of self-control, inthat which the Romans call impotentia, that the modern personalitybetrays its weakness.87

Untimely Meditations6But let us leave this weakness behind; and let us turn to a muchcelebrated strength of modern man with the question, a painful oneto be sure, as to whether on account of his well-known historical'objectivity' he has a right to call himself strong, that is to say just, andjust in a higher degree than men of other ages. Is it true that thisobjectivity originates in an enhanced need and demand for justice?Or is it an effect of quite different causes and only appears tooriginate in a desire for justice? Does it perhaps seduce one to aharmful, because all too flattering, prejudice as to the virtues ofmodern man? Socrates considered that to delude oneself that onepossesses a virtue one does not possess is an illness bordering onmadness: and such a delusion is certainly more dangerous than theopposite illusion of being the viaim of a fault or a vice. For in the lattercase it is at any rate possible one will become better; the former delusion,however, makes a man or an age daily worse - which in thepresent instance means more unjust.In truth, no one has a greater claim t our veneration than he whopossesses the drive to and strength for justice. For the highest andrarest virtues are united and concealed in justice as in an unfathomableocean that receives streams and rivers from all sides and takesthem into itself. The hand of the just man who is empowered tojudge no longer trembles when it holds the scales; he sets weightupon weight with inexorable disregard of himself, his eye isunclouded as it sees the scales rise and fall, and his voice is neitherharsh nor tearful when he pronounces the verdict. If he were a colddemon of knowledge, he would spread about him the icyatmosphere of a dreadful suprahuman majesty which we wouldhave to fear, not revere: but that he is a human being and yet nonethelesstries to ascend from indulgent doubt to stern certainty, fromtolerant mildness to the imperative 'you must', from the rare virtueof magnanimity to the rarest of all virtues, justice; that he resemblesthat demon but is from the start only a poor human being; andabove all that he has every moment to atone for his humanity and istragically consumed by an impossible virtue - all this sets him on asolitary height as the most venerable exemplar of the species man; fo rhe desires truth, not as cold, ineffectual knowledge, but as a regulatingand punishing judge; truth, not as the egoistic possession of theindividual, but as the sacred right to overturn all the boundarystonesof egoistic possessions; in a word, truth as the LastJudgment and not, for instance, as the prey joyfully seized by theindividual huntsman. Only insofar as the truthful man possesses the

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeunconditional will to justice is there anything great in that strivingfor truth which is everywhere so thoughtlessly glorified: whereasin the eyes of less clear-sighted men a whole host of the most variousdrives - curiosity, flight from boredo:rn, envy, vanity, the desirefor amusement, fo r example - can be involved in the striving fortruth, though in reality they have nothing whatever to do withtruth, which has its roots in justice. Thus the world seems to befull of those who 'serve truth', yet the virtue of justice is rarelypresent, even more rarely recognized and almost always mortallyhated: while on the other hand the horde of those who onlyappear virtuous is at all times received with pomp and honour.The truth is that few serve truth because few possess the pure willto justice, and of these few only a few also possess the strengthactually to be just. To possess only the will is absolutely notenough: and the most terrible sufferings sustained by mankindhave proceeded precisely from those possessing he drive to justicebut lacking the power of judgment; which is why nothing wouldpromote the general wellbeing more mightily than to sow theseeds of correct judgment as widely as possible, so that the fanaticwould be distinguished from the judge and the blind desire to bea judge from the conscious ability to judge. But where could ameans of implanting the power of judgment be fo und! - man willalways remain in doubt and trepidation whether, when truth andjustice are spoken of, it is a fanatic or a judge who is speaking tothem. That is why they must be forgiven if they have alwaysextended an especially cordial welcome to those 'servants oftruth ' who possess neither the will nor the power to judge and setthemselves the task of seeking 'pure, self-subsistent' knowledge or,more clearly, truth that eventuates in nothing. There are verymany truths that are a matter of complete indifference; there areproblems whose just solution does not demand even an effort, letalone a sacrifice. In this region of indifference and absence ofdanger a man may well succeed in becoming a cold demon ofknowledge: and nonetheless, even if in favourable times wholecohorts of scholars and inquirers are transformed into suchdemons - it will always fortunately be possible that such an agewill suffer from a lack of a stern and great sense of justice, that is,of the noblest centre of the so-called drive to truth.Now picture to yourself the historical virtuoso of the present day:is he the justest man of his time? It is true he has developed in himselfsuch a tenderness and susceptibility of feeling that nothinghuman is alien to him; the most various ages and persons continue

Untimely Meditationsto sound in kindred notes on the strings of his lyre: h e has become apassive sounding-board whose reflected tones act upon othersimilar sounding-boards: until at last the whole air of an age is filledwith the confused humming of these tender and kindred echoes. Yetit seems to me as though only the harmonics of the original historicalnote are audible: the solidity and power of the original can no longerbe divined in the shrill and bubble-thin vibrations of these strings.The original note recalled actions, distress, terrors; this note lulls usand makes of us tame spectators; it is as though the 'Eroica'Symphony had been arranged for two flutes for the entertainment ofdrowsy opium-smokers. Through this we are already in a position toassess how these virtuosi will stand in regard to modern man's supremeclaim to a higher and purer sense of justice; this virtue neverhas anything pleasing about it, knows no delicious tremors, is harshand dread-inspiring. In comparison, how low even magnanimitystands in the scale of the virtues, and magnanimity is itself possessedby only a few rare historians! Many more of them attain only totolerance, to allowing validity to what tj1ey cannot deny happened,to explaining away and extenuating, on the correct assumption thatthe inexperienced will interpret the mere absence of abrasivenessand harsh condemnation of the past as evidence of a just disposition.But only superior strength can judge, weakness is obliged to tolerateif it is not to make a hypocritical pretence of strength and turn justicesitting in judgment into an actor. There still remains a dreadfulspecies of historian, efficient, severe and honest of character butnarrow of mind; the will to be just is there, as is the pathos attendingthe office of judge: but all their verdicts are false, for approximatelythe same reason as the verdicts of ordinary court juries are false.How improbable it thus is that there should be an abundance oftalent for history! Qu ite apart from the disguised egoists and partymenwho employ an air of objectivity in furtherance of their crookedgame. And quite apart also from those wholly thoughtless peoplewho when they write history do so in the naive belief that all thepopular views of precisely their own age are the right and just viewsand that to write in accord with the views of their age is the samething as being just; a belief in which every religion dwells and aboutwhich in the case of religions no further comment is needed. Thesenaive historians call the assessment of the opinions and deeds of thepast according to the everyday standards of the present moment'objectivity': it is here they discover the canon of all truth; their task isto adapt the past to contemporary triviality. On the other hand, they90

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifecall all historiography 'subjective' that does not accept these popularstandards as canonical.And may an illusion not creep into the word objectivity even in itshighest interpretation? According to this interpretation, the wordmeans a condition in the historian which permits him to observe an"event in all its motivations and consequences so purely that it has noeffect at all on his own subjectivity: it is analogous to that aestheticphenomenon of detachment from personal interest with which apainter sees in a stormy landscape with thunder and lightning, or arolling sea, only the picture of them within him, the phenomenon ofcomplete absorption in the things themselves: it is a superstition,however, that the picture which these things evoke in a man possessingsuch a disposition is a true reproduction of the empirical nature ofthe things themselves. Or is it supposed that at this moment thethings as it were engrave, counterfeit, photograph themselves bytheir own action on a purely passive medium?This would be mythology, and bad mythology at that: and it isforgotten, moreover, that that moment is precisely the strongest andmost spontaneous moment of creation in the depths of the artist, amoment of composition of the highest sort, the outcome of whichmay be an artistically true painting but cannot be an historically trueone. To think of history objectively in this fashion is the silent workof the dramatist; that is to say, to think of all things in relation to allothers and to weave the isolated event into the whole: always with thepresupposition that if a unity of plan does not already reside inthings it must be implanted into them. Thus man spins his web overthe past and subdues it, thus he gives expression to his artistic drivebutnot to his drive towards truth or justice. Objectivity and justicehave nothing to do with one another. A historiography could beimagined which had in it not a drop of common empirical truth andyet could lay claim to the highest degree of objectivity. Indeed,Grillparzer ventures to declare: 'What is history but the way in whichthe spirit of man apprehends events impenetrable to him; unites thingswhen God alone knows whether they belong together; substitutessomething comprehensible for what is incomprehensible; imposeshis concept of purpose from without upon a whole which, if itpossesses a purpose, does so only inherently; and assumes theoperation of chance where a thousand little causes have been atwork. All human beings have at the same time their own individualnecessity, so that millions of courses run parallel beside one anotherin straight or crooked lines, fru strate or advance one another, strive91

Untimely MeditationsfOIwards or backwards, and thus assume fo r one anoth r the characterof chance, and so, quite apart from the influence of the occurrencesof nature, make it impossible to establish any all-embracingnecessity prevailing throughout all events.' But it is exactly this kindof necessity that is supposed to be brought to light as the result ofthat 'objective' view of things! This is a presupposition which, ifenunciated by an historian as an article of faith, would assume a verystrange shape; Schiller is quite clear as to the purely subjectivenature of this assumption when he says of the historian: 'onephenomenon after another begins to fo rsake the realm of blindchance and limitless freedom and to take its place as a fitting memberwhich whole is, of course, present only in hisof a harmonious whole -imagination', But what is one to make of this assertion, hovering as itdoes between tautology and nonsense, by one celebrated historicalvirtuoso: 'the fact of the matter is that all human actions are subjectto the mighty and irresistible direction of the course of things,though it may often not be apparent'? Such a proposition is not, as itmight perhaps seem, enigmatic wisdom in the ' shape of plainfoolishness, as when Goethe's court gardener says 'Nature may letitself be forced but it cannot be compelled', or in the fairgroundplacard reported by Swift: 'Here can be seen the biggest elephant inthe world except itself.' For how are human actions and the course ofthings to be distinguished from one another? It seems to me ingeneral that historians such as the one we have just quoted cease toinstruct as soon as they begin to generalize and then reveal the weaknessthey feel in the dark obscurities they employ, In other sciencesthe generalizations are the most important thing, inasmuch as theycontain the laws: but if such propositions as that quoted are intendedto count as laws, then one must object that in that case the work ofthe historiographer is wasted; for whatever truth remains in suchpropositions after the obscurities referred to have been removed issomething completely fa miliar and even trivial; for it will be obviousto everyone through every kind of experience down to the verysmallest. To incommode whole nations and expend years ofwearisome toil on it, however, is merely to pile experiment uponexperiment long after the law intended to be extracted from themhas been amply demonstrated: a senseless excess of experimentationwhich has in fact plagued the natural sciences since the time ofZollner. If the value of a drama lay solely in its conclusion, the dramaitself would be merely the most wearisome and indirect way possibleof reaching this goal; and so I hope that the significance of history92

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifewill not be thought to lie in its general propositions, as if these werethe flower and fruit of the whole endeavour, but that its value will beseen to consist in its taking a familiar, perhaps commonplace theme,an everyday melody, and composing inspired variations on it,enhancing it, elevating it to a comprehensive symbol; and thus disclosing in the original theme a whole world of profundity, powerand beauty.For this, however, there is required above all great artistic facility,creative vision, loving absorption in the empirical data, the capacityto imagine the further development of a given type - in any event,objectivity is required, but as a positive quality. So often objectivity isonly a phrase. Instead of the outwardly tranquil but inwardly flashingeye of the artist there is the affectation of tranquillity; just as a lack offeeling and moral strength is accustomed to disguise itself as incisivecoldness and detachment. In certain cases banality of ideas, theeveryday wisdom which seems calm and tranquil only because it istedious, ventures to pose as that artistic condition in which the subjectbecomes silent and wholly imperceptible. What is then preferred isthat which produces no emotion at all and the driest phrase is theright phrase. One goes so far, indeed, as to believe that he to whom amoment of the past means nothing at all is the proper man to describeit. This is frequently the relationship between classicists and theGreeks they study: . they mean nothing to one another - a state ofaffairs called 'objectivity'! It is precisely where the highest and rarestis to be represented that this ostentatious indifference becomes mostinfuriating - fo r it is the vanity of the historian which is responsiblefo r it. Such authors incline one to agree with the proposition that aman possesses vanity to the degree that he lacks understanding. No,at any rate be honest! Do not seek the appearance of justice if you arenot called to the dreadful vocation of the just man. As though it werethe task of every age to have to be just towards everything that hasever existed! It could even be said that ages and generations never dohave the · right to judge previous ages and generations: such anuncomfortable mission falls only to individuals, and these of therarest kind. Who compels you to judge? And, moreover test yourselfto see whether you could be just if you wanted to be! As judge,you must stand higher than he who is to be judged; whereas all youare is subsequent to him. The guests who come last to table have tobe content with the last places: and do you want the first? Then atleast perform some high and great deed; perhaps then they reallywill make room for you, even if you do come last.93

Untimely MeditationsIf you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so o ly out of the fullestexertion of the vigour of the present: only when you put forth your noblestqualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowingand preserving in the past. Like to like! Otherwise you will draw thepast down to you. Do not believe historiography that does not springfrom the head of the rarest minds; and you will know the quality of amind when it is obliged to express something universal or to repeatsomething universally known: the genuine historian must possessthe power to remint the universally known into something neverheard of before, and to express the universal so simply and profoundlythat the simplicity is lost in the profundity and the profundity in thesimplicity. No one can be a great historian, an artist and a shallowpateat the same time: on the other hand, one should not underratethe workmen who sift and carry merely because they can certainlynever become great historians; but even less should one confusethem with them, but regard them rather as the necessary apprenticesand handymen in the service of the master: much as the Frenchused, with greater naivety than is posiible to a German, to speak ofthe historiens de M. Thiers . These workmen are gradually to becomegreat scholars, but cannot for that reason ever be masters. A greatscholar and a great shallowpateone hat.these two go rather better underTo sum up: history is written by the experienced and superiorman. He who has not experienced greater and more exalted thingsthan others will not know how to interpret the great and exaltedthings of the past. When the past speaks it always speaks as an oracle:only if you are an architect of the future and know the present willyou understand it. The extraordinary degree and extent of theinfluence exercised by Delphi is nowadays explained principally bythe fact that the Delphic priests had an exact knowledge of the past;now it would be right to say that only he who constructs the fu turehas a righ t to judge the past. If you look ahead and set yourself a greatgoal, you at the same time restrain that rank analytical impulsewhich makes the present into a desert and all tranquillity, all peacefulgrowth and maturing almost impossible. Draw about yourself thefence of a great and comprehensive hope, of a hope-filled striving.Form within yourself an image to which the fu ture shall correspond,and forget the superstition that you are epigones. You will haveenough to ponder and to invent when you reflect on the life of thefuture; but do not ask of history that it should show you the How?and the Wherewith? to this life. If, on the other hand, you acquire a94

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeliving knowledge of the history of great men, you will learn from it asupreme commandment: to become mature and to flee from thatparalyzing upbringing of the present age which sees its advantage inpreventing your growth so as to rule and exploit you to the full whileyou are still immature. And if you want biographies, do hot desirethose which bear the legend ' Herr So-and-So and his age' , but thoseupon whose title-page there would stand 'a fighter against his age'.Satiate your soul with Plutarch and when you believe in his heroesdare at the same time to believe in yourself. With a hundred suchmen - raised in this unmodern way, that is to say become matureand accustomed to the heroic - the whole noisy sham-culture of ourage could now be silenced fo r ever. -7When the historical sense reigns without restraint, and all its consequencesare realized, it uproots the future because it destroys illusionsand robs the things that exist of the atmosphere in which alonethey can live. Historical justice, even when it is genuine and practisedwith the purest of intentions, is therefore a dreadful virtue because italways undermines the living thing and brings it down: its judgmentis always annihilating. If the historical drive does not also contain adrive to construct, if the purpose of destroying and,clearing is not toallow a future already alive in anticipation to raise its house on theground thus liberated, if justice alone prevails, then the instinct fo rcreation will be enfeebled and discouraged. A religion, for example,which is intended to be transformed into historical knowledgeunder the hegemony of pure historical justice, a religion which isintended to be understood through and through as an object ofscience and learning, will when this process is at an end also befo und to have been destroyed. The reason is that historical verificationalways brings to light so much that is false, crude, inhuman,absurd, violent that the mood of pious illusion in which alone anythingthat wants to live can live necessarily crumbles away: fo r it isonly in love, only when shaded by the illusion produced by love, thatis to say in the unconditional faith in right and perfection, that man iscreative. Anything that constrains a man to love less than unconditionallyhas severed the roots of his strength: he will wither away,that is to say become dishonest. In producing this effect, history isthe antithesis of art: and only if history can endure to be transformedinto a work of art will it perhaps be able to preserve instincts or even95

Untimely Meditationsevoke them. Such a historiography would, however, b e altogethercontrary to the analytical and inartistic tendencies of our time, whichwould indeed declare it false. But a history which, lacking the directionof an inner drive to construct, does nothing but destroy, in the longrun denaturizes its instruments: for such men destroy illusions and'he who destroys the illusions in himself and others is punished bynature, the cruellest tyrant'. For a good length of time, it is true, onecan occupy oneself with history in a perfectly innocent and harmlessway, as though it were merely an occupation like any other; recenttheology especially seems to have entered into partnership with historyout of pure innocence, and even now it almost refuses to seethat, probably much against its will, it has thereby placed itself in theservice of the Voltairean ecrasez. * No one should suppose that thisdevelopment conceals a powerful new constructive instinct- unless,that is, one is to regard the so-called Protestant Uriiont as the work ofa new religion, and perhaps the jurist Holtzendorf (the editor andprefacer of the even more problematical Protestant Bible) as Johnthe Baptist at the river Jordan. For som,e time yet the Hegelianphilosophy still smouldering in older heads may assist in propagatingthis innocence, perhaps by teaching one how to distinguish the ' ideaof Christianity' from its manifold imperfect 'phenomenal forms'and even to convince oneself that it is the 'preferred tendency of theidea' to reveal itself in ever purer forms, and at last in its purest, mosttransparent, indeed hardly visible form, in the brains of the contemporarytheologus liberalis vulgaris. But when he hears these purestof-the-pureChristians speaking of earlier impure Christians theimpartial auditor often has the impression that what is being spokenof is not Christianity at all but - well, what are we to think? When wefind the greatest theologian of the century':!: characterizing Christianityas the religion which can 'discover itself in all existing and inseveral other barely possible religions', and when the 'true church' issupposed to be that which 'becomes a flowing mass, where there areno contours, where every part is now here, now there, and everythingblends peacefully together' - again, what are we to think?What one can learn in the case of Christianitythat under theinfluence of a historical treatment it has become denaturized, until a'*'Voltairean ecrasez.': alludes to Voltaire's motto 'ecrasez l'i nfame!' - destroy theinfamous thing (i.e. the Church).tProtestant Union: the military alliance formed between 1608 and 1621 by theProtestant princes of Germany.:j:'greatest theologian of the century': Schleiermacher (see glossary).96

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifecompletely historical, that is to say just treatment resolves it intopure knowledge about Christianity and thereby destroys it - can bestudied in everything else that possesses life : that it ceases to livewhen it is dissected completely, and lives a painful and morbid lifewhen one begins to practise historical dissection upon it. There arepeople who believe that German music could have a transformingand reforming effect on th e Germans: they are angered, and considerit an injustice against the most vigorous part of our culture,when they see such men as Mozart and Beethoven already engulfedby all the learned dust of biography and compelled by the tortureinstrumentsof historical criticism to answer a thousand impertinentquestions. Does it not mean its premature dea t h, or at least paralysis,when that, the living effects of which are not yet exhausted, is subjectedto curious investigation of the countless minutiae of its life andworks, and when problems of knowledge are sought where oneought to learn to live and fo rget all problems? Imagine a couple ofthese modern biographers transported to the birthplace of Christianityor of the Lutheran Reformation; their sober, pragmaticcuriosity would have exactly sufficed to render any actio in distansimpossible: just as the most wretched little animal can prevent themightiest oak-tree from coming into existence by eating the acorn.All living things require an atmosphere around them, a mysteriousmisty vapour; if they are deprived of this envelope, if a religion, anart, a genius is condemned to revolve as a star without atmosphere,we should no longer be surprised if they quickly wither and growhard and unfruitfuL It is the same with all great things, 'which neversucceed without some illusion',Meistersinger .as Hans Sachs says in theBut every nation, too, indeed every human being that wants tobecome mature requires a similar enveloping illusion, a similar protectiveand veiling cloud; nowadays, however, maturity as such ishated because history is held in greater honour than life. There is,indeed, rejoicing that now 'science is beginning to dominate life':that condition may, possibly, be attained; but life thus dominated isnot of much value because it is far less living and guarantees far lesslife for the fu ture than did a former life dominated not by knowledgebut by instinct and powerfu l illusions. But the present age is, asaforesaid, supposed to be an age, not of whole, mature and harmoniouspersonalities, but of labour of the greatest possible commonutility. That means, however, that men have to be adjusted to thepurposes of the age so as to be ready fo r employment as soon as97

Untimely Meditationspossible: they must labour in the factories of the gener3.J. good beforethey are mature, indeed so that they shall not become mature fo rthis would be a luxury which would deprive the 'labour market' of agreaLdeal of its workforce. Some birds are blinded so that they maysing more beautifully; I do not think the men of today sing morebeautifully than their grandfathers, but I know they have been blinded.The means, the infamous means used to blind them, however, is toobright, too sudden, too varying light. The young man is swept alongthrough all the millennia: youths who understand nothing of war,diplomatic action, commercial policy are thought fit to beintroduced to political history. But as the youth races through history,so do we modern men race through art galleries and listen toconcerts. We feel that one thing sounds different from another, thatone thi,!g produces a different effect from another: increasingly tolose this sense of strangeness, no longer to be very much surprised atanything, finally to be pleased with everything - that is then nodoubt called the historical sense, historical culture. To speak withouteuphemism: the mass of the influx is so,great, the strange, barbaricand violent things that press upon the youthful soul do so with suchoverwhelming power that its only refuge is in an intentionalstupidity. Where there has been a stronger and more subtle awareness,another emotion has no doubt also appeared: disgust. Theyoung man has become so homeless and doubts all concepts and allcustoms. He now knows: every age is different, it does not matterwhat you are like. In melancholy indifference he lets opinion afteropinion pass him by and he understands how HOlderlin felt when heread Diogenes Laertius on the lives and teachings of the Greekphilosophers: 'I have again found here what I have often before discovered,that the transitoriness and changeableness of humanthoughts and systems strike me as being almost more tragic than thedestinies which alone are usually called real.' No, to be sooverwhelmed and bewildered by history is, as the ancientsdemonstrate, not at all necessary for youth, but in the highest degreedangerous to it, as the moderns demonstrate. But now notice theactual student of history, the heir of an enfeeblement already visiblealmost before he has ceased to be a boy. He has acquired the'methods' for doing work of his own, the right technique and thenoble bearing of the master; a wholly isolated little chapter of thepast has fallen victim to his astuteness and the methods he haslearned; he has already produced, indeed to use a prouder word, hehas 'created' something, he has now become an active servant of98

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifetruth and a lord in the universal empire of history. If already as a boyhe was 'ripe', now he is over-ripe: one needs only to shake him andwisdom comes clattering down into one's lap; but the wisdom is rottenand there is a worm in every apple. Believe me: if men are to labourand be useful in the factory of science before they are mature,science will soon be ruined just as effectively as the slaves th usemployed too early. I regret the need to make use of the jargon of theslave-owner and employer of labour to describe things which inthemselves ought to be thought of as free of utility and raised abovethe necessities oflife; but the words 'factory' , 'labour market', 'supply','making profitable', and whatever auxiliary verbs egoism nowemploys, come unbidden to the lips when one wishes to describe themost recent generation of men of learning. Sterling mediocritygrows even more mediocre, science ever more profitable in theeconomic sense. Actually our most recent men of learning are wiseon one point, and on that they are, I admit, wiser than anyone hasever been, but on all other points they are infinitely different - to usea cautious expression - from any man of learning of the old stamp.Th is notwithstanding, they demand honours and advantages fo rthemselves, as though the state and public opinion were duty boundto accept the new coins as being of equal value to the old. The cartershave made a contract with one another and by restamping themselvesas geniuses have decreed that genius is superfluous; probablya later age will see that their buildings are carted together, not constructed.Those who unwearyingly repeat the modern call to battleand sacrifice 'Division of labour! Fall in!' must for once be told inround and plain terms: if you want to push science forward as quicklyas possible you will succeed in destroying it as quickly as possible;just as a hen perishes ifit is compelled to lay eggs too quickly. Sciencehas certainly been pushed fo rward at an astonishing speed over thepast decades: but just look at the men of learning, the exhaustedhens. They are in truth not ' harmonious' natures; they can only cacklemore than ever because they lay eggs more often: though the eggs, tobe sure, have got smaller and smaller (though the books have gotthicker and thicker) . As the final and most natural outcome we havethe universally admired 'popularization' (together with 'feminization'and 'infantization') of science, that is to say the infamous trimmingof the coat of science to fit the body of the 'general public' - toemploy a cutting expression for an activity suited to tailors. Goethesaw this as a misuse of science and demanded that the sciencesshould affect the outside world only through enhanced practical99

Untimely Meditationsapplication. The older generation of men of learning, m oreover, had-good grounds for regarding such a misuse as difficult and burdensome:it is on equally good grounds that the younger generationfinds it easy, for, except in the case of a tiny corner of knowledge,they themselves are very much 'general public' and share its needs.They have only to sit at their ease for once and they are able to opento the curiosity of this general populace even the little realm of theirown special study. This relaxation is afterwards called 'the man oflearning modestly condescending to his people': while in reality theman oflearning has, to the extent that he is not a man oflearning butone of the mob, descended only to his own level. Create for yourselvesthe concept of a 'people': it could never be too exalted or toonoble a concept. If you thought well of the people you would showthem compassion and would guard against offering them your historicalaqua fortis as a refreshing draught of life. But in your heartsyou despise them, for you cannot bring yourself seriously to careabout their future, and your behaviour is that of practical pessimists,by which I mean men directed by a prejentiment of coming disasterand therefore sluggishly indifferent to the wellbeing of others and toyour own as well. If only the ground will go on bearing us! And if itceases to bear us, that too is very well: - that is their feeling and thusthey live an ironic existence.8It may seem strange, though it ought not to seem self-contradictory,when I ascribe a kind of ironic self-awareness to an age accustomed tobreak into such loud and innocent rejoicing at its historical culture,and say that it is infused with a presentiment that there is really nothingto rejoice about and a fear that all the merriment of historicalknowledge will soon be over and done with. Goethe presented to usa comparable enigma in regard to the individual personality in hisnoteworthy account of Newton: he discovers at the foundation (or,more correctly, at the highest point) of his being 'a troubledpresentiment that he is in error', the momentary expression, as itwere, of a superior consciousness that has attained to a certain ironicaloverview of his inherent nature. So it is that we find in precisely thegreatest and more highly developed historical men a suppressedconsciousness, often amounting to a general scepticism, of howgreat an absurdity and superstition it is to believe that the educationof a nation has to be as preponderantly historical as it is now; for pre-100

On the uses and disadvantages of history for liftcisely the most vigorous nations, vigorous in deeds and works, liveddifferently from this and raised their children differently. But thatabsurdity and superstition is suited to us - so runs the scepticalobjection - to us, the latecomers, the last pale offspring of mightierand happier races, to us who are the fulfilment of Hesiod's prophesythat men would one day be born already grey-haired an4 that assoon as he saw that sign Zeus would eradicate this race. Historicalculture is indeed a kind of inborn grey-hairedness, and those whobear its mark from childhood must instinctively believe in the old ageof mankind: to age, however, there pertains an appropriate senileoccupation, that of looking back, of reckoning up, of closingaccounts, of seeking consolation through remembering what hasbeen, in short historical culture. But the human race is a tough andpersistent thing and will not permit its progress - fOIwards or backwards- to be viewed in terms of millennia, or indeed hardly in termsof hundreds of millennia; that is to say, it will not be viewed as awhole at all by thar infinitesimal atom, the individual man. What isthere in a couple of thousand years (or in other words the space of 34consecutive generations of 60 years each) which permits us to speakof the 'youth' of mankind at the beginning and the 'old age' of mankindat the end? Is there not concealed in this paralysing belief thathumanity is already declining a misunderstanding of a Christiantheological idea inherited from the Middle Ages, the idea that theend of the world is coming, that we are fearfully awaiting the LastJudgment? Is the increasing need for historical judgment not thatsame idea in a new dress, as though our age, being the ultimate age,were empowered to exercise over all the past that universal judgmentwhich Christian belief never supposed would be pronouncedby men but by 'the Son of Man'? In earlier times this 'memento mori'addressed to mankind as a whole as well as to individual men was anever-painful goad and as it were the high point of medieval learningand conscience. Its modern antithesis, 'memento vivere', is, to speakfrankly, still a somewhat modest little sound rather than a fullthroatedone, and has something almost dishonest about it. Formankind continues to treasure its memento mori and reveals the factthrough its universal need for history: knowledge, its mightiest wingbeatsnotwithstanding, has not been able to soar aloft, a profoundsense of hopelessness remains and has assumed that historicalcolouring with which all higher education and culture is now saddenedand darkened. A religion which of all the hours of a man's lifeholds the last to be the most important, which prophesies an end to101

Untimely Meditationsall life on earth and condemns all who live to live in the fifth act of atragedy, may well call forth the profoundest and noblest powers, butit is inimical to all new planting, bold experimentation, free aspiration;it resists all flight into the unknown because it loves and hopesfo r nothing there: it allows what is becoming to force its way up onlywith reluctance, and then when the time is ripe it sacrifices it or sets itaside as a seducer to existence, as a liar as to the value of existence.What the Florentines did when, under the influence of Savonarola'spreaching, they made that celebrated holocaust of paintings,manuscripts, mirrors and masks, Christianity would like to do toevery culture which stimulates continued striving and bears thatmemento vivere as its motto; and if it proves impossible to do this in ablunt and direct manner, that is to say by force, it nonethelessachieves its aim by allying itself with historical culture, usuallywithout the latter'S knowledge moreover, and speaking henceforththrough its mouth rejects with a shrug everything still coming intobeing and smothers it in the awareness of being a latecomer andepigone, in short of being born grey- haire 8 . Austere and profoundlyserious reflection on the worthlessness of all that has occurred, onthe ripeness of the world for judgment, is dissipated into the sceptical .attitude that it is at any rate as well to know about all that hasoccurred, since it is too late to do anything better. Thus the historicalsense makes its servants passive and retrospective; and almost theonly time the sufferer from the fever of history becomes active iswhen this sense is in abeyance through momentary forgetfulness -. though even then, as soon as the act is finished he at once dissects it,prevents it from producing any fu rther effects by analysing it, andfinally skins it for the purpose of 'historical study'. In this sense weare still living in the Middle Ages and history is still disguised theology:Ijust as the reverence with which the unlearned laity treat the learned \class is inherited from the reverence with which it treated the clergy.What one formerly gave to the church one now gives, though moresparingly, to learning: but that one gives at all is an effect of thechurch's former influence - the modern spirit, as is well known, issomewhat niggardly and unskilled in the noble virtue of generosity.Perhaps this observation will not be very acceptable, perhaps asunacceptable as my derivation of our excess of history from themedieval memento mori and the hopelessness in regard to all comingages of human existence which Christianity bears in its heart. If so,you might try to replace this explanation, which I offer only withsome hesitation, with a better one; fo r the origin of historical culture102

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lift- its quite radical conflict with the spirit of any 'new age', any 'modemawareness' - this origin must itself be known historically, historymustitself resolve the problem of history, knowledge must turn its stingagainst itself - this threefold must is the imperative of the 'new age',supposing this age really does contain anything new, powerful,original and promising more life. Or is it actually the case that weGermansto leave the Romance nations out of account - mustalways be no more than 'heirs' in all the higher affairs of culture,because that is all we can ever be; a proposition once memorablyexpressed by Wilhelm Wackernagel: 'We Germans are a nation ofheirs, with all our higher knowledge, even with our beliefs, no morethan heirs of the world of antiquity; even those hostile to it continuallybreathe the immortal spirit of classical culture beside thespirit of Christianity, and if anyone succeeded in excluding these twoelements from the atmosphere which surrounds the inner world ofman there would not be much left to prolong a life of the spirit.' Andeven if we Germans were really no more than heirs - to be able tolook upon such a culture as that as our rightful inheritance wouldmake the appellation 'heirs' the greatest and proudest possible: yetwe would nonetheless be obliged to ask whether it really was oureternal destiny to be pupils of declining antiquity: at some time or otherwe might be permitted gradually to set our goal higher and more distant,some time or other we ought to be allowed to claim credit forhaving developed the spirit of Alexandrian-Roman culture so noblyand fruitfully among other means through our universal history ­that we might now as a reward be permitted to set ourselves the evenmightier task of striving to get behind and beyond this Alexandrianworld and boldly to seek our models in the original ancient Greekworld of greatness, naturalness and humanity. But there we also discoverthe reality of an essentially unhistorical culture and one which is nonetheless,or rather on that account, an inexpressibly richer and more vital culture.Even if we Germans were in fact nothing but successorswe couldnot be anything greater or prouder than successors if we hadappropriated such a culture and were the heirs and successors ofthat.What I mean by this and it is all I mean is that the thought ofbeing epigones, which can often be a painful thought, is also capableof evoking great effects and grand hopes for the future in both anindividual and in a nation, provided we regard ourselves as the heirsand successors of the astonishing powers of antiquity and see in thisour honour and our spur. What I do not mean, therefore, is that we103

Untimely Meditationsshould live as pale and stunted late descendants " of strong racescoldly prolonging their life as antiquarians and gravediggers. Latedescendants of that sort do indeed live an ironic existence: annihilationfo llows at the heels of the limping gait of their life; they shudderat it when they rejoice in the past, fo r they are embodied memory yettheir remembrance is meaningless if they have no heirs. Thus theyare seized by the troubled presentiment that their life is an injustice,since there will be no fu ture life to justify it.But suppose we imagine these antiquarian latecomers suddenlyexchanging this painfully ironic modesty for a state of shamelessness;suppose we imagine them announcing in shrill tones: the raceis now at its zenith, fo r only now does it possess knowledge of itself,only now has it revealed itself to itself - we should then behold aspectacle through which, as in a parable, the enigmatic significancefor German culture of a certain very celebrated philosophy would beunriddled. I believe there has been no dangerous vacillation or crisisof German culture this century that has not been rendered moredangerous by the enormous and stillocontinuing influence of thisphilosophy, the Hegelian. The belief that one is a latecomer of theages is, in any case, paralysing and depressing: but it must appeardreadful and devastating when such a belief one day by a bold inversionraises this latecomer to godhood as the true meaning andgoal of all previous events, when his miserable condition is equatedwith a completion of world-history. Such a point of view has accustomedthe Germans to talk of a 'world-process' and to justify theirown age as the necessary result of this world-process; such a point ofview has set history, insofar as history is 'the concept that realizesitself', 'the dialectics of the spirit of the peoples' and the · 'worldtribunal',in place of the other spiritual powers, art and religion, asthe sole sovereign power.History understood in this Hegelian fashion has been mockinglycalled God's sojourn on earth, though the god referred to hasbeen created only by history. This god, however, became transparentand comprehensible to himself within the Hegelian craniumsand has already ascended all the dialectically possible steps of hisevolution up to this self-revelation: so that for Hegel the climaxand terminus of the world-process coincided with his own existencein Berlin. Indeed, he ought to have said that everything thatcame after him was properly to be considered merely as a musicalcoda to the world-historical rondo or, even more properly, as superfluous.He did not say it: instead he implanted into the gener-104

On the uses and disadvantages of history fo r lifeation thoroughly leavened by him that admiration for the 'power ofhistory' which in practice transforms every moment into a nakedadmiration fo r success and leads to an idolatry of the factual: whichidolatry is now generally described by the very mythological yetquite idiomatic expression 'to accommodate oneself to the facts'.But he who has once learned to bend his back and bow his headbefore the 'power of history' at last nods 'Yes' like a Chinesemechanical doll to every power, whether it be a government orpublic opinion or a numerical majority, and moves his limbs to theprecise rhythm at which any 'power' whatever pulls the strings. Ifevery success is a rational necessity, ifevery event is a victory of thelogical or the 'idea' - then down on your knees quickly and doreverence to the whole stepladder of 'success'! What, are there nolonger any living mythologies? What, the religions are dying out?Just behold th e religion of the power of history, regard the priests ofthe mythology of the idea and their battered knees! Is it too much tosay that all th e virtues now attend on this new faith ? Or is 'it notselflessness when the historical man lets himself be emptied until heis no more than an objective sheet of plate glass? Is it notmagnanimity when, by worshipping in every fo rce the force itself,one renounces all fo rce of one's own in Heaven and upon earth? Is itnot justice always to hold the scales of the powers in one's hands andto watch carefully to see which tends to be the stronger and heavier?And what a school of decorum is such a way of contemplating history!To take everything objectively, to grow angry at nothing, to lovenothing, to understand everything, how soft and pliable that makesone; and even if someone raised in this school should for once getpublicly angry, that is still cause for rejoicing, for one realizes it isintended only for artistic effe ct, it is ira and studium and yet altogethersine ira et studio.:';How obsolete and old-fashioned my objections to this complex ofmythology and virtue are! But I must out with them, even thoughthey excite laughter. I would say therefore: history always inculcates:'there was once', morality: 'you ought not to' or 'you ought not tohave' . Thus history amounts to a compendium of factual immorality.How far astray he would go who regarded history as being at thesame time the judge of this factual immorality! Morality is offended,for example, by the fact that a Raphael had to die at thirty-six: such abeing ought not to die. If, in the face of this, you wanted to come to"Tacitus described his own manner of writing history as 'sina ira et studio' ('withoutanger and without partisan zeal'). Studium means 'course of study'.105

Untimely Meditationsthe aid of history as apologists of the factual, you would say: he hadexpressed everything that was in him, had he lived longer he wouldhave produced only a repetition of the beauty he had createdalready, and so forth. In that way you become Devil's advocates: you ·make success, the factual, into your idol, while in reality the factual isalways stupid and has at all times resembled a calf rather than a god.As apologists of history you have, moreover, ignorance as a prompter:for it is only because you do not know what such a natura naturans* asRaphael is that you are not incensed to know that it once was but willnever be again. We have recently been informed that, with hiseighty-two years, Goethe outlived himself: yet I would gladlyexchange a couple of Goethe's 'outlived' years fo r whole cartloads offresh modern lifetimes, so as to participate in such conversations asGoethe conducted with Eckermann and thus be preserved from alland any up-to-date instruction from the legionaries of the moment.In relation to such dead men, how few of the living have a right tolive at all! That the many are alive and those few live no longer isnothing but a brute truth, that is to saan incorrigible stupidity, ablunt 'thus it is' in opposition to morality's 'it ought not to be thus'.Yes, in opposition to morality! For speak of any virtue you will, ofjustice, magnanimity, bravery, of the wisdom and sympathy of man- in every case it becomes a virtue through rising against that blindpower of the factual and tyranny of the actual and by submitting tolaws that are not the laws of the fluctuations of history. It alwaysswims against the tide of history, whether by combating its passionsas the most immediate stupid fact of its existence or by dedicatingitself to truthfulness as falsehood spins its glittering web around it. Ifhistory in general were nothing more than 'the world-system of passionand error', mankind would have to read it as Goethe advised hisreaders to read Werther: as if it called to them 'be a man and do notfollow after me!' Fortunately, however, it also preserves the memoryof the great fighters against history, that is to say against the blindpower of the actual, and puts itself in the pillory by exalting preciselythese men as the real historical natures who bothered little with the'thus it is' so as to follow 'thus it shall be' with a more cheerful pride.Not to bear their race to the grave, but to fo und a new generation ofthis race - that is what impels them ceaselessly forward: and even ifthey themselves are late-born - there is a way of living which will*natura naturans: Spinoza's term fo r God under the aspect of creating nature, asopposed to created nature - as the cause of all things.106

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifemake them fo rget it - coming generations will know them only asfirst-born.9Is our age perhaps such a first-born? - The vehemence of its historicalsense is so great and is expressed in so universal and altogetherunrestrained a manner, that fu ture ages will in fact count it a firstbornat any rate in this respect - assuming, that is, that there will beany future ages in the cultural sense. But it is precisely this fact whichevokes in us a grave doubt. Close beside the pride of modern manthere stands his ironic view of himself, his awareness that he has tolive in an historicizing, as it were a twilight mood, his fe ar that hisyouthful hopes and energy will not survive into the fu ture. Here andthere one goes fu rther, into cynicism, and justifies the course of history,indeed the entire evolution of the world, in a manner especiallyadapted to the use of modern man, according to the cynical canon:as things are they had to be, as men now are they were bound tobecome, none may resist this inevitability. The pleasant feeling producedby this kind of cynicism is the refuge of him who cannotendure the ironical state; and the last decade has, moreover, madehim a present of one of its fairest inventions, a fu ll and roundedphrase to describe this cynicism: it calls his way of living in thefashion of the age and wholly without reflection 'the total surrenderof the personality to the world-process'. The personality and theworld-process! The world-process and the personality of the flea! Ifonly one were not compelled everlastingly to hear the hyperbole ofhyperboles, the word 'world, world, world' - when one ought morehonestly to speak of 'man, man, man'! Heirs of the Greeks andRomans? of Christianity? To these cynics that seems nothing; butheirs of the world-process! Summit and target of the world-process!Meaning and solution of all the riddles of evolution come to light inmodern man, the ripest fruit of the tree of knowledge! - that I call anecstatic feeling of pride; it is by this sign that one can recognize thefirst-born of all ages, even though they may have also come last.Contemplation of history has never flown so far, not even in dreams;fo r now the history of mankind is only the continuation of the historyof animals and plants; even in the profoundest depths of the sea theuniversal historian still finds traces of himself as living slime; gazingin amazement, as at a miracle, at the tremendous course mankindhas already run, his gaze trembles at that even more astonishingmiracle, modern man himself, who is capable of surveying this107

Untimely Meditationscourse. He stands high and proud upon the pyramid f the worldprocess;as he lays the keystone of his knowledge at the top of it heseems to call out to nature all around him: 'We have reached thegoal, we are the goal, we are nature perfected.'Overproud European of the nineteenth century, you are raving!Your knowledge does not perfect nature, it only destroys your ownnature. Compare for once the heights of your capacity forknowledge with the depths of your incapacity fo r action. It is trueyou climb upon the sunbeams of knowledge up to Heaven, but youalso climb down to chaos. Your manner of moving, that of climbingupon knowledge, is your fatality; the ground sinks away from youinto the unknown; there is no longer any support fo r your life, onlyspider's threads which every new grasp of knowledge tears apart. -But enough of this seriousness, since it is also possible to view thematter' more cheerfully.The madly thoughtless shattering and dismantling of all foundations,their dissolution into a continual evolving that flowsceaselessly away, the tireless unspinning and historicizing of allthere has ever been by modern man, the great cross-spider at thenode of the cosmic web - all this may concern and dismay moralists,artists, the pious, even statesmen; we shall fo r once let it cheer us bylooking at it in the glittering magic mirror of a philosophical parodist inwhose head the age has come to an ironical awareness of itself, andhas done so with a clarity which (to speak Goethean) 'amounts toinfamy' . Hegel once taught us: 'when the spirit changes direction, wephilosophers too are there': our age changed direction, to self-irony,and behold! E. von Hartmann too was there and indited his celebratedphilosophy of the unconscious, or - to speak more clearly -his philosophy of unconscious irony. We have seldom read amerrier invention or a more philosophical piece of roguery thanthis of Hartmann; whoever is not enlightened by it as to the natureof becoming, whoever is not inwardly cleared out and set in order,indeed,. in regard to that matter, is truly ripe and ready for becominga has-been. The beginning and goal of the world-process,from the first stab of consciousness to its being hurled back intonothingness, together with an exact description of the task of ourgeneration within this world-process, all presented direct fromthat cleverly discovered well of inspiration, the unconscious, andgleaming with apocalyptic light, all so deceptively mimickingstraight-faced earnestness as though it were a genuine serious philosophyand not only ajoke philosophy such a production marks108

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeits creator as one of the first philosophical parodists of all time; letus therefore sacrifice on his altar, let us sacrifice to him, the discovererof a true universal medicine, a lock of hair - to steal oneof Schleiermacher's terms for expressing admiration. For whatmedicine could be more efficacious against excess of historicalculture than Hartmann's parody of world-history?Expressed without the rhetoric, what Hartmann proclaims to usfrom the smokey tripod of unconscious irony amounts to this: hetells us it would be quite sufficient, fo r our time to be exactly as it is,to bring about, eventually, a condition in which people would findthis existence intolerable: which we truly believe. This dreadfulossification of our age, this restless rattling of the bones - such asDavid Strauss has naively described to us as the fai rest factuality - isjustified by Hartmann, not only from behind, ex causis efficientibus,but even from in front, ex causa finali; the rogue illumines our agewith the light of the Last Day, and it turns out that our age is a veryfine one, especially for him who wants to suffer as acutely as possiblefrom the indigestibility of life and for whom therefore that Last Daycannot come quickly enough. It is true that Hartmann calls the timeof life mankind is now approaching its 'years of manhood': but bythis he means the happy condition in wh ich all that is left is 'solidmediocrity', art is that which 'perhaps offers entertainment to theBerlin businessman of an evening', in which 'the age no longerrequires genius, because it would mean casting pearls before swineor because the age has advanced beyond the stage appropriate togeniuses to a more important one' - to a stage of social evolution,that is to say, at which every worker, 'having a workday which leaveshim adequate leisure fo r intellectual training, leads a comfortableexistence'. Rogue of rogues, you give voice to the longings of contemporarymankind: but you likewise know the spectre that willstand at the end of these years of manhood as an outcome of thatintellectual training in solid mediocrity - disgust. Things are alreadyin a visibly sorry state, but they will get very much sorrier, 'the Anti­Christ is visibly extending his influence wi der and wider' - but that ishow it must be, that is what it must come to, for the road we have takencan lead only to disgust with all existence. 'Let us therefore press theworld-process vigorously fo rward as workers in the vineyard of theLord, fo r it is the process alone that can lead to redemption!'The vineyard of the Lord! The process! Redemption! Who cannotsee and hear in this how historical culture, which knows only theword 'becoming', is here deliberately disguising itself as a parodistic109

110Untimely Meditationsdeformity, how from behind a grotesque mask it utters the mostmischievous nonsense about itself? For what does this last roguishsummons to the workers in the vineyard really demand of them?What work are they to press vigorously forward? Or, to put the questiondifferently: what does the historically cultivated man, the modernfanatic of the process swimming and drowning in the stream ofbecoming, have left to do if he is one day to harvest that disgust wehave spoken of, the most exquisite grape of the vineyard? - He has todo nothing but go on living as he has lived hitherto, go on lovingwhat he has loved hitherto, go on hating what he has hated hitherto,and go on reading the newspapers he has read hitherto; for himthere is only one sin - to live differently from the way in which he hashitherto lived. How he has hitherto lived, however, is recorded forus in giant monumental characters on that celebrated page whichhas sent the whole contemporary cultured rabble into ecstasiesbecause they see in them their own justification blazing forth inapocalyptic light. For what the unconscious parodist demands ofeach individual is 'the total surrender othe personality to the worldprocessfor the sake of its goal, world-redemption'; or even moreclearly: 'affirmation of the will to live is proclaimed as for the presentthe only right course; for only in a total surrender to life and itssorrows, and not in a cowardly renunciation and withdrawal, is anythingto be achieved for the world-process', 'the striving fo r denial ofthe individual will is as foolish and useless as, indeed even morefoolish than, suicide'. 'The thinking reader will understand withoutfurther elucidation what shape a practical philosophy erected onthese principles would assume, and that such a philosophy canembody, not a sundering from life, but only the fullest reconciliationwith it.'The thoughtful reader will understand - as if anyone could misunderstandHartmann! And how unspeakably amusing it is that heshould be misunderstoodl Are the contemporary Germans a veryrefined people? A worthy Englishman finds them lacking in 'delicacyof perception', and ventures indeed to say: 'in the German mindthere does seem to be something splay, something blunt-edged,unhandy and infelicitous' - would the great German parodist contradictthis? It is true that, according to him, we are approaching'that ideal condition in which the human race creates its historywith full conscious awareness': but we are patently still far fromthat perhaps even more ideal condition in which mankind canread Hartmann's book with full conscious awareness. If theyever do so, no man will ever again utter the words 'world-process'

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifewithout smiling; for they will call to mind the time whenHartmann's parodistic gospel was listened to, absorbed, attacked,revered, propagated and canonized with all the simple honestyof the 'German mind', indeed with 'the wry earnestness of theowl', as Goethe puts it. But the world must get on, that idealcondition will not be created by dreaming, it must be fo ught andstruggled for, and the path to redemption from that owlish earnestnesslies only through cheerfulness. The time will come when onewill prudently refrain from all constructions of the world-process oreven of the history of man; a time when one will regard not themasses but individuals, who form a kind of bridge across the turbulentstream of becoming. These individuals do not carry forwardany kind of process but live contemporaneously with one another;thanks to history, which permits such a collaboration, they live asthat republic of genius of which Schopenhauer once spoke; onegiant calls to another across the desert intervals of time and, undisturbedby the excited chattering dwarfs who creep about beneaththem, the exalted spirit-dialogue goes on. It is the task of history tobe the mediator between them and thus again and again to inspireand lend the strength for the production of the great man. No,the goal of humanity cannot lie in its end but only in its highestexemplars.Our comedian has, of course, a different point of view, and withthat admirable dialectic which is as genuine as its admirers areadmirable he tells us: 'The concept of evolution is not compatiblewith ascribing to the world-process an infinite duration in the past,since then every conceivable evolution must have already been runthrough, which is not the case (oh rogue!); so likewise we cannot concedeto the process an infinite duration in the fu ture; both wouldannul the concept of evolution towards a goal (rogue again!) andwould make the world-process resemble the Danaides' water-jugs.The complete victory of the logical over the illogical (oh rogue ofrogues!) must, however, coincide with the temporal end of theworld-process, the Last Day.' No, you alert and mocking spirit, aslong as the illogical reigns as it does today, as long, fo r example, asone can speak of the 'world-process' as you speak of it and gainuniversal applause, the Last Day is still far off: fo r it is still too cheerfulon this earth, many illusions still flourish, fo r example the illusionyour contemporaries harbour about you, we are not yet ready to behurled back into your nothingness: for we believe that it will be evenmerrier here once people have begun to understand you, you misunderstoodreader of the unconscious. If, however, disgust should

112Untimely Meditationsnonetheless come with power, as you have prophesied to yourreaders, if your account of your present and future should turn outto be right and no one has despised them with such disgust as youhave - then I am quite willing to vote with the majority, in the fo rmproposed by you, that next Saturday night punctually at twelveo'clock the world shall perish; and our decree shall conclude: fromtomorrow there shall be no more time and the newspapers shallappear no more. But perhaps our decree will have no effect: in thatevent, though, we shall at least have time to perfonn a fine experiment.We shall take a pair of scales and place Hartmann's unconscious onone of them and Hartmann's world-process on the other. There arepeople who believe they will weigh exactly the same: for in each ofthem there would lie an equally bad expression and an equally goodjoke. Once Hartmann's joke has been understood, Hartmann'sexpression 'world-process' will be of no use except as a joke. It has,in fact, for long been high time that the excesses of the historical sense,the immoderate revelling in the process at the expense of being andlife, the senseless displacement of all perq:>ectives, were assaulted byall the militia satirical malice can summon; and it shall always be saidin praise of the philosopher of the unconscious that he was the firstto feel how ludicrous the idea of the 'world-process' is and to makeothers feel it even more strongly by the singular earnestness of hispresentation of it. To what end the 'world' exists, to what end 'mankind'exists, ought not to concern us at all fo r the moment except asobjects of humour: for the presumptuousness of the little humanworm is the funniest thing at present on the world's stage; on theother hand, do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if youcan get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning ofyour existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourselfan aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to thisend'. Perish in pursuit of this and only this - I know of no betteraim of life than that of perishing, animae magnae prodigus, * in pursuitof the great and the impossible. If, on the other hand, thedoctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all concepts,types and species, of the lack of any cardinal distinction betweenman and animal - doctrines which I consider true but deadly -are thrust upon the people for another generation with the ragefor instruction that has by now become normal, no one shouldbe surprised if the people perishes of petty egoism, ossification0:. 'prodigal of a great soul' (Horace, Odes I.xII.38), here employed in the sense'careless of life'.

On the uses and disadvantages . of history fo r lifeand greed, falls apart and ceases to be a people; in its place systemsof individualist egoism, brotherhoods for the rapaciousexploitation of the non-brothers, and similar creations of utilitarianvulgarity may perhaps appear in the arena of the fu ture. To preparethe way fo r these creations all one has to do is to go on writing historyfr om the standpoint of the masses and seeking to derive the lawswhich govern it from the needs of these masses, that is to say fr omthe'laws which move the lowest mud- and clay-strata of society. Themasses seem to me to deserve notice in three respects only: first asfaded copies of great men produced on poor paper with worn-outplates, then as a force of resistance to great men, finally as instrumentsin the hands of great men; for the rest, let the Devil and statistics takethem! What, can statistics prove that there are laws in history? Laws?They certainly prove how vulgar and nauseatingly uniform the massesare: but are the effects of inertia, stupidity, mimicry, love and hungerto be called laws? Well, let us suppose they are: that, however, onlygoes to confirm the proposition that so far as there are ls in historythe laws are worthless and the history is also worthless. But the kindof history at present universally prized is precisely the kind that takesthe great mass-drives for the chief and weightiest facts of history andregards great men as being no more than their clearest expression,as it were bubbles visible on the surface of the flood. Greatness is,under this supposition, the product of the masses, which is to sayorder is the product of chaos; and it is only natural that in the end thehymn of praise is sung to the masses that produce it. That which hasmoved these masses fo r any length of time and has become what iscalled 'a power in history' is then accorded the name 'great' . But isthat not a quite deliberate confusion of quantity with quality? Whenthe rude masses have found some idea or other, a religious idea fo rinstance, to their liking, strenuously defended it and dragged italong with them for centuries, then and only then is the inventor andfounder of this idea to be called great. But why! The noblest andmost exalted things make no effect whatever on the masses; the historicalsuccess of Christianity, its power in history, its tenacity anddurability, happily proves nothing with respect to the greatness of itsfo under, for if it did it would be evidence against him: between himand that historical success there lies a very dark and earthy stratum ofpassion, error, thirst for power and honour, of the continuingstrength of the imperium romanum, a stratum from which Christianityacquired the earthly residue and taste which made possible its continuancein this world and bestowed upon it as it were its tenability.Greatness ought not to depend on success: Demosthenes possessed

Untimely Meditationsgreatness though he had no success. The purest and truest adherentsof Christianity have always hindered and called into question itsworldly success and so-called 'power in history' rather than promotedthem; for they were accustomed to place themselves outsidethe 'world' and had no regard for the 'process of the Christian idea';for which reason they have as a rule remained wholly unknown andanonymous to history. Expressed in Christian terms: the Devil is theregent of this world and the lord of success and progress: in all thepowers in history he is the actual power, and that is essentially how itwill always remain - even though the fact may be painful to the earsof an age accustomed to the idolization of success and power in history.For it is an age that is practised in bestowing new names on thingsand has even rebaptized the Devil. I t is indeed the hour of a greatperil: mankind seems near to discovering that the egoism ofindividuals, groups or the masses has at all times been the lever ofthe movements of history; at the same time, however, this discoveryhas caused no perturbation of any kind, but on the contrary it hasnow been decreed: egoism shall be our iod. In this new faith one isnow setting to work with the clearest deliberation to erect the historyof the future on the foundation of egoism: only it is to be a more prudentegoism than heretofore, an egoism which imposes certain re'"straints upon itself so as to ensure its endurance, an egoism whichstudies history precisely so as to become acquainted with that earlierimprudent egoism. In the course of this study it has been learnedthat a quite special role in the founding of the world-system ofegoism devolves upon the state: it has to be the patron of all the prudentego isms so as to protect them with its military and police forcesagainst the terrifying outbreaks to which imprudent egoism is liable.I t is to the same end that history - the evolutionary history of animaland man - is carefully inculcated into the dangerous, becauseimprudent, masses and working classes: one knows that a grain ofhistorical culture is capable of breaking down dull and rude instinctsand desires or of leading them into the path of a refined egoism. Insumma: mankind is now, in the words of E. von Hartmann, 'with athoughtful eye to the future taking into consideration a practicaldomestic establishment in the earthly homeland'. The same writercalls this period the 'manhood of mankind', and thereby mocks atthat which is now called 'man' as though what is understood by thisword were simply the sober self-seeker; just as he likewise prophesiesan old-age to follow this period of manhood, though again heclearly means only to mock at our contemporary grey-beards: for he114

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifespeaks of the mature contemplativeness with which they 'review allthe dissolute sufferings of their life's course and grasp how vain werethe goals fo r which they had hitherto supposed they were striving' .No, a manhood of cunning and historically cultivated egoism isfollowed by an old-age which clings to life with repulsive greed andlack of dignity, and then by a final act in which theLast scene of all,That ends this strange, eventful history,Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing. *Whether our lives and culture are threatened by these dissolute,toothless and tasteless greybeards or by Hartmann's so-called 'men',let us in the face of both of them hold on with our teeth to the rightsof our youth and never weary in our youth of defending the fu tureagainst these iconoclasts who would wreck it. In this struggle,however, we shall have to discover a particularly unpleasant fact: thatthe excesses of the historical sense from which the present day suffers aredeliberately furthered, encouraged and - employed.They are employed, however, against youth, so as to train themup to that mature manhood which is striven for everywhere; theyare employed to combat the natural aversion of youth to suchmanly-unmanly egoism by transfiguring the latter in the magiclight of science. We know, indeed, what history can do when itgains a certain ascendancy, we know it only too well: it can cutoff the strongest instincts of youth, its fire, defiance, unselfishnessand love, at the roots, damp down the heat of its sense ofjustice, suppress or regress its desire to mature slowly with thecounter-desire to be ready, useful, fruitful as quickly as possible,cast morbid doubt on its honesty and boldness of fe eling; indeed,it can even deprive youth of its fairest privilege, of its power toimplant in itself the belief in a great idea and then let it grow toan even greater one. A certain excess of history can do all this, w.ehave seen it do it: and it does it by continually shifting horizonsand removing a protective atmosphere and thus preventing manfrom feeling and acting unhistarically. From an infinite horizon hethen returns to himself, to the smallest egoistic enclosure, andthere he must grow withered and dry: probably he attains tocleverness, never to wisdom. He 'listens to reason', calculatesand accommodates himself to the facts, keeps calm, blinks and*From As You Like It, Act II Scene vii.115

Untimely Meditationsknows how to seek his own or his party' s advantage in the advantageand disadvantage of others; he unlearns unnecessary modesty andthus step by step becomes the Hartmannesque 'man' and then'greybeard'. But that is what he is supposed to become, precisely that isthe sense of the cynical demand for the 'total surrender of the personalityto the world-process' for the sake of its goal, worldredemption,as that rogue, E. von Hartmann, assures us. Well, thewill and goal of these Hartmannesque 'men' and 'greybeards' canhardly be precisely world-redemption: though the world would certainlybe more redeemed if it were redeemed from these men andgreybeards. For then there would come the empire of youth.10. Mindful of this situation in which youth finds itself! cry Land! Land!Enough and more than enough of the wild and erring voyage overstrange dark seas! At last a coast appears in sight: we must land on itwhatever it may be like, and the worst ofha-Mlours is better than to goreeling back into a hopeless infinity of scepticism. Let us only makeland; later on we shall find good harbours right enough, and makethe landfall easier for those who come after us.This voyage was perilous and exciting. How far we still are fromthe quiet contemplativeness with which we first watched our shipput out. In pursuit of the perils of history we have found ourselvesmost acutely exposed to them; we ourselves bear visibly the traces ofthose sufferings which afflict contemporary mankind as a result ofan excess of history, and I have no wish to conceal from myself that,in the immoderation ofits criticism, in the immaturity of its humanity,in its frequent transitions from irony to cynicism, from pride to scepticism,the present treatise itself reveals its modern character, acharacter marked by weakness of personality. And yet I trust in theinspirational force which, in the absence of genius, powers myvessel, I trust that youth has led me aright when it now compels me to protestat the historical education of modern man and when I demand thatman should above all learn to live and should employ history only inthe seroice of the life he has learned to live. One has to be young to understandthis protest; indeed, in view of the premature greybeardednessof our present-day youth one can hardly be young enough if one is tograsp what is here really being protested against. An example willhelp to make clear what I mean. It is hardly more than a century ago. that there awoke in some young people in Germany a natural116

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeinstinct for what we call poetry. Is it supposed that the generationsbefore them and contemporary with them had failed even to mentionthat art, even though it was strange to them? The opposite is, of course,the case: they reflected, wrote and argued about 'poetry' with greatvigour, producing words about words about words as they did so.This awakening to life of a word did not imply the death of those whoawoke it; in a certain sense they are still living, for if, as Gibbon says,it requires only time, though a great deal of time, for a world toperish, so it requires only time, though in Germany, the 'land ofgradualness', it requires very much more time, for a false idea toperish. Nonetheless, there are now perhaps a hundred more peoplethan there were a hundred years ago who know what poetry is;perhaps a hundred years hence there will be a fu rther hundred whoby then will also have learned what culture is and that the Germanshave up to now possessed no culture, however much they may talkand puff themselves up about it. To these people the Germans'universal contentment with their 'culture' will appear as incredibleand silly as the once acclaimed classicism of Gottsched or Ramler'sreputation as the German Pindar appear to us. They will perhapsthink that this culture has been only a kind of knowledge about culture,and false and superficial knowledge at that. False and superficial,that is, because one endured the contradiction between lifeand knowledge and completely failed to see what characterized theculture of genuinely cultured peoples: that culture can grow andflourish only out of life; while among the Germans it was stuck onlike a paper flower or poured over like icing-sugar, and was thus condemnedto remain forever deceitful and unfruitful. The education ofGerman youth, however, proceeds from precisely this false andunfruitful conception of culture: its goal, viewed in its essence, is notat all the free cultivated man but the scholar, the man of science, andindeed the most speedily employable man of science, who standsaside from life so as to know it unobstructedly; its result, observedempirically, is the historical-aesthetic cultural philistine, the precociousand up-to-the-minute babbler about state, church and art,the man who appreciates everything, the insatiable stomach whichnonetheless does not know what honest hunger and thirst are. Thatan education with this goal and this result is an anti-natural one isapprehensible only to one who has not yet been fully processed by it;>it is apprehensible only to the instinct of youth, fo r youth stillpossesses that instinct of nature which remains intact until artificiallyand forcibly shattered by this education. He who wants, on the con-117

Untimely Meditationstrary, to shatter this education has to help youth to speak out, he hasto light the path their unconscious resistance has hitherto taken withthe radiance of concepts and transform it to a conscious and loudlyvocal awareness. But how can he achieve so strange a goal?Above all by destroying a superstition: the belief in the necessity ofthis educational operation. The usual view is that our present highlydisagreeable reality is the only one in any way possible. Examinewith this in mind the literature of our higher school and educationalsystem over the past decades: one will see with angry astonishmentthat, all the varying proposals and vehement contentions notwithstanding,the actual objective of education is everywherethought of as being the same; that the outcome of education hitherto,the production of the 'educated man' as he is at present understood,is unhesitatingly assumed to be the necessary and rational foundationof all future education. The uniform canon is that the youngman has to start with a knowledge of culture, not even with aknowledge of life and even less with life and experience itself. Andthis knowledge of culture is instilled into the,¥outh in the form of historicalknowledge; that is to say, his head is crammed with a tremendousnumber of ideas derived from a highly indirect knowledge ofpast ages and peoples, not from direct observation oflife. His desireto experience something himself and to feel evolving within him acoherent living complex of experiences of his own such a desire isconfused and as it were made drunk by the illusory promise that it ispossible to sum up in oneself the highest and most noteworthyexperiences offormer ages, and precisely the greatest offormer ages,in a few years. It is exactly the same crazy method as that which leadsour young painters into picture-galleries instead of into theworkshop of a master and before all into the unique workshop of theunique master, nature. As though one could appropriate the artsand sciences of past times, the actual yield of their life's experience,by taking a fleeting stroll through the gallery of history! As thoughlife itself were not a craft which must be learned from the ground upand practised remorselessly if it is not to eventuate in mere babblersand bunglers! -Plato considered it necessary that the first generation of his newsociety (in the perfect state) should be educated with the aid of amighty necessary lie: the children were to be taught to believe that theyhad all formerly dwelt asleep under the earth, where they had beenkneaded into shape by nature's workman. Impossible to rebel118

On the uses and disadvantages of history for lifeagainst a past of this sort! Impossible to go against the work of thegods! It was to count as an inviolable law of nature: he who is born aphilosopher has gold in his body, he who is born a soldier has onlysilver, he who is born a worker has iron and bronze. As it is impossibleto blend these metals together, Plato explained; so it shouldbe impossible ever to mingle or confound the order of castes; beliefin theaeterna veritas of this order is the foundation of the new educationand therewith of the new state. - Now, this is how the modern Germanbelieves in theaeterna veritas of his system of education, of his kind ofculture: and yet this belief would crumble away, as the Platonic statewould have crumbled away, if the necessary lie were for once counteredwith a necessary troth: the truth that the German possesses noculture because his education provides no basis for one. He wantsthe flower without the root and the stem: consequently he wants it invain. That is the simple truth, a coarse and unpleasant truth, truly anecessary truth.It is in this necessary truth, however, that our first generation must beeducated; they will certainly suffer the most from it, for through itthey will have to educate themselves, and in opposition to themselvesmoreover, to a new custom and nature and out of an old andfirst nature and custom: so that they could say to themselves in oldSpanish: Defienda me Dios de my, God guard me from myself, that is tosay from the nature already educated into me. It must taste this truthdrop by drop, like a fierce and bitter medicine, and each one of thisgeneration must overcome himself to the extent of being able to sayof himself what he would find it easier to endure if it were said of anentire age: we are without culture, more, we are ruined for living, fo rright and simple seeing and hearing, for happily seizing what isnearest and most natural to us, and do not yet possess even the basisof a culture, because we are not even convinced we have genuine lifein us. Fragmented ' and in pieces, dissociated almost mechanicallyinto an inner and an outer, sown with concepts as with dragon'steeth, bringing fo rth conceptual dragons, suffering from the maladyof words and mistrusting any feeling of our own which has not yetbeen stamped with words: being such an unliving and yet uncannilyactive concept- and word-factory, perhaps I still have the right to sayof myself cogUoJ ergo sum, but not vivo, ergo cogito. Empty 'being' is grantedme, but not full and green 'life' ; the feeling that tells me I existwarrants to me only that I am a thinking creature, not that I am a livingone, not that I am an animal but at most a cogital. Only give me life,119

Untimely Meditations;: :IIII,then I will create a culture fo r you out of it! - Thus cries eachindividual of this generation and all those individuals will recognizeone another from this cry. Who is to give them this life?No god and no man: only their own youth: unchain this and youwill therewith have liberated life. For life was only lying hidden, inprison, it has not yet withered away and died ask yourselves ifit has!But it is sick, this unchained life, and needs to be cured. It is sickwith many illnesses and not only with the memory of its chains -what chiefly concerns us here is that it is suffering from the malady ofhistory. Excess of history has attacked life's plastic powers, it no longerknows how to employ the past as a nourishing food. The evil isdreadful, and yet! if youth did not possess nature's clairvoyant gift noone would know it is an evil or that a paradise of health has been lost.This same youth, however, also divines with the curative instinct ofthis same nature how this paradise is to be regained; it knows themedicine and balsam against the malady of history, against excess ofhistory: but what is this medicine called?Now, one must not be surprised to find that it is called by thenames of poisons: the antidote to the historical is called -the unhistoricaland the suprahistorical. And with these names we return to the beginningof our reflections and to its meditative calm.With the word 'the unhistorical' I designate the art and power offorgetting and of enclosing oneself within a bounded horizon; I call'suprahistorical' the powers which lead the eye away from becomingtowards that which bestows upon existence the character of the eternaland stable, towards art and religion. Science - for it is science whichwould here speak of poisons - sees in these two fo rces hostile forces:for science considers the only right and true way of regarding things,that is to say the only scientific way, as being that which seeseverywhere things that have been, things historical, and nowherethings that are, things eternal; it likewise lives in a profoundantagonism towards the eternalizing powers of art and religion, for ithates forgetting, which is the death of knowledge, and seeks toabolish all limitations of horizon and launch mankind upon aninfinite and unbounded sea of light whose light is knowledge ofall becoming.If only man could live in it! As cities collapse and grow desolatewhen there is an earthquake and man erects his house on volcanicland only in fear and trembling and only briefly, so life itself caves inand grows weak and fearful when the concept-quake caused by science120

On the uses and disadvantages of history for liferobs man of the foundation of all his rest and security, his belief inthe enduring and eternal. Is life to dominate knowledge and science,or is knowledge to dominate life? Which of these two forces is thehigher and more decisive? There can be no doubt: life is the higher,the dominating fo rce, for knowledge which annihilated life wouldhave annihilated itself with it. Knowledge presupposes life and thushas in the preservation oflife the same interest as any creature has inits own continued existence. Thus science requires superintendenceand supervision; a hygiene of life belongs close beside science and oneof the clauses of this hygiene would read: the unhistorical and thesuprahistorical are the natural antidotes to the stifling of life by thehistorical, by the malady of history. It is probable that we who suffe rfrom the malady of history will also have to suffer from the antidotes.But that we suffer from them is no evidence against the correctnessof the chosen treatment.And here I recognize the mission of that youth I have spoken of,that first generation of fighters and dragon-slayers which will precedea happier and fairer culture and humanity without itself havingmore than a presentiment of this fu ture happiness and beauty. Thisyouth will suffer from both the sickness and the antidotes: and nonethelessit will believe itself entitled to boast of a more robust healthand in general a more natural nature than its predecessors, thecultivated 'man' and 'greybeard' of the present. Its mission,however, is to undermine the concepts this present has of 'health'and 'culture' and to excite mockery and hatred against these hybridmonsters of concepts; and the sign that guarantees the superiorrobustness of its own health shall be that this youth can itself discoverno concept or slogan in the contemporary currency of wordsand concepts to describe its own nature, but is only aware of theexistence within it of an active power that fights, excludes anddivides and of an ever more intense feeling of life. One may assenthat this youth does not yet possess culture but for what youthwould this constitute a reproach? One may point to its coarsenessand immoderation - but it is not yet old or wise enough to moderateits claims; above all, it does not need hypocritically to defend afinished culture and it enjoys all the consolations and privileges thatgo with youth, especially the privilege of courageous, unreflectinghonesty and the inspiring consolation of hope.Of these hopeful young people I know that they understand allthese generalities from close personal experience and will translatethem into a teaching intended for themselves; the others may for the121

Untimely Meditationsmoment perceive only covered dishes that might well be empty:until one day they behold with surprise that the dishes are full andthat attacks, demands, life-drives, passions have lain mingled andpressed together in these generalities and that they could not lie thusconcealed for very long. Leaving these doubters to time, whichbrings all things to light, I turn in conclusion to that company of thehopeful to tell them in a parable of the course and progress of theircure, their delivery from the malady of history, and therewith theirown history, up to the point at which they will be sufficiently healthyagain to study history and, to the ends oflife, to employ the past in itsthree senses, namely monumental or antiquarian or critical. At thatpoint they will be more ignorant than the 'cultivated' people of thispresent, for they will have unlearned many things and even have lostall desire so much as to glance at that which these cultivated peoplewant to know most of all; from the point of view of these cultivatedpeople, their distinguishing marks are precisely their 'un culture' ,their indifference and reserve towards much that is of high repute,even towards much that is good. Hut atihis end-point of their curethey will have become human again and have ceased to be merelyaggregates of humanlike qualities - that is something! That is somethingto hope for! Do your hearts not laugh when you hope, youhopeful young people?And how can we attain that goal? you will ask. At the beginning ofa journey towards that goal, the god of Delphi cries to you his oracle:'Know yourself.' It is a hard saying: for that god 'conceals nothingand says nothing, but only indicates, as Heraclitus has said. Whatdoes he indicate to you?There were centuries during which the Greeks found themselvesfaced by a danger similar to that which faces us: the danger of beingoverwhelmed by what was past and foreign, of perishing through'history'. They never lived in proud inviolability: their 'culture' was,rather, fo r a long time a chaos of foreign, Semitic, Babylonian,Lydian, Egyptian forms and ideas, and their religion truly a battle ofall the gods of the East: somewhat as 'German culture' and religion isnow a struggling chaos of all the West and of all past ages. And yet,thanks to that Apollonian oracle, Hellenic culture was no mereaggregate. The Greeks gradually learned to organize the chaos byfollowing the Delphic teaching and thinking back to themselves, thatis, to their real needs, and letting their pseudo-needs die out. Thusthey again took possession of themselves; they did not long remainthe overburdened heirs and epigones of the entire Orient; after hard122

On the uses and disadvantages of history Jor lifestruggle with themselves and through protracted application of thatoracle, they even became the happiest enrichers and augmenters ofthe treasure they had inherited and the first-born and models of allfuture cultured nations.This is a parable for each one of us: he must organize the chaoswithin him by thinking back to his real needs. His honesty, thestrength and truthfulness of his character, must at some time orother rebel against a state of things in which he only repeats what hehas heard, learns what is already known, imitates what already exists;he will then begin to grasp that culture can be something other thana decoration of life , that is to say at bottom no more than dissimulationand disguise; for all adornment conceals that which is adorned.Thus the Greek conception of culture will be unveiled to him inantithesis to the Roman - the conception of culture as a new andimprovedphysis, without inner and outer, without dissimulation andconvention, culture as a unanimity oflife, thought, appearance andwill. Thus he will learn from his own experience that it was throughthe higher force of their moral nature that the Greeks achieved victoryover all other cultures, and that every increase in truthfulness mustalso assist to promote true culture: even though this truthfulness maysometimes seriously damage precisely the kind of cultivatednessnow held in esteem, even though it may even be able to procure thedow I"i. fall of an entire merely decorative culture.123

3Schopenhaueras Educator

IIIIIiit,., ;

1A traveller who had seen many lands and peoples and several of theearth's continents was asked what quality in men he had discoveredeverywhere he had gone. He replied: 'They have a tendency to laziness.'To many it will seem that he ought rather to have said: 'Theyare all timid. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions.'In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he willbe in the world only once and that no imaginable chance will for asecond time gather together into a unity so strangely variegated anassortment as he is: he knows it but he hides it like a bad consciencewhy?From fear of his neighbour, who demands conventionality andcloaks himself with it. But what is it that constrains the individual tofear his neighbour, to think and act like a member of a herd, and tohave no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. Withthe great majority it is indolence, inertia, in short that tendency tolaziness of which the traveller spoke. He is right: men are even lazierthan they are timid, and fear most of all the inconveniences withwhich unconditional honesty and nakedness would burden them.Artists alone hate this sluggish promenading in borrowed fashionsand. appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone's secret badconscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle; they dare toshow us man as he is, uniquely himself to every last movement of hismuscles, more, that in being thus stricdy consistent in uniqueness heis beautiful, and worth regarding, and in no way tedious. When thegreat thinker despises mankind, he despises its laziness: for it is onaccount of their laziness that men seem like factory products, thingsof no consequence and unworthy to be associated with or instructed.The man who does not wish to belong to the mass needs only tocease taking himself easily; let him follow his conscience, which callsto him: 'Be your self! All you are now doing, thinking, desiring, isnot you yourself.'Every youthful soul hears this call day and night and trembleswhen he hears it; for the idea ofits liberation gives it a presentimentof the measure of happiness allotted it from all eternity - a happinessto which it can by no means attain so long as it lies fettered by thechains offear and convention. And how dismal and senseless life can127

Untimely Meditationsbe without this liberation! There exists no more repu l sive and desolatecreature in the world than the man who has evaded his geniusand who now looks furtively to left and right, behind him and allabout him. In the end such a man becomes impossible to get holdof, since he is wholly exterior, without kernel, a tattered, painted bagof clothes, a decked-out ghost that cannot inspire even fear and certainlynot pity. And if it is true to say of the lazy that they kill time,the n it is greatly to be feared that an era which sees its salvation inpublic opinion, that is to say private laziness, is a time that really willbe killed: I mean that it will be struck out of the history of the trueliberation oflife. How reluctant later generations will be to have anythingto do with the relics of an era ruled, not by living men, but bypseudo-men dominated by public opinion; fo r which reason ourage may be to some distant posterity the darkest and least known,because least human, portion of human history. I go along the newstreets of our cities and think how, of all these gruesome houseswhich the generation of public opinion has built fo r itself, not onewill be standing in a hundred years' ti, and how the opinions ofthese house-builders will no doubt by then likewise have collapsed.On the other hand, how right it is for those who do not feel themselvesto be citizens of this time to harbour great hopes; for if theywere citizens of this time they too would be helping to kill their timeand so perish with it - while their desire is rather to awaken their timeto life and so live on themselves in this awakened life.But even if the fu ture gave us no cause for hope the fact of ourexisting at all in this here-and-now must be the strongest incentive tous to live according to our own laws and standards: the inexplicablefact that we live precisely today, when we had all infinite time inwhich to come in to existence, that we possess only a shordived todayin which to demonstrate why and to what end we came into existencenow and at no other time. We are responsible to ourselves for ourown existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman ofthis existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindlessact of chance. One has to take a somewhat bold and dangeroufiline with this existence: especially as, whatever happens, we arebound to lose it. Why go on clinging to this clod of earth, this way oflife, why pay heed to what your neighbour says? It is so parochial tobind oneself to views which are no longer binding even a couple ofhundred miles away. Orient and Occident are chalk-lines drawnbefore us to fool our timidity. I will make an attempt to attainfreedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered inthis by the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one

Schopenhauer as educatoranother, or that two continents are separated by an ocean, or that allarond it a religion is taught which did not yet exist a couple of thousandyears ago. All that is not you, it says to itself. No one can constructfor you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross thestream of life, no one but you yourself alone. There are, to be sure,countless paths and bridges and demi-gods which would bear youthrough this stream; but only at the cost of yourself: you would putyourself in pawn and lose yourself. There exists in the world a singlepath along which no one can go except you: whither does it lead? Donot ask, go along it. Who was it who said: 'a man never rises higherthan when he does not know whither his path can still lead him'?*But how can we find ourselves again? How can man know himself?He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins,man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say:'this is really you, this is no longer outer shell'. Moreover, it is a painfuland dangerous undertaking thus to tunnel into oneself and tofo rce one's way down into the shaft of one's being by the nearestpath. A man who does it can easily so hurt himself that no physiciancan cure him. And, moreover again, what need should there be fo rit, since everything bears witness to what we are, our friendships andenmities, our glance and the clasp of our hand, our memory and thatwhich we do not remember, our books and our handwriting. This,however, is the means by which an inquiry into the most importantaspect can be initiated. Let the youthful soul look back on life withthe question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has drawnyour soul aloft, what has mastered it and at the same time blessed it?Set up these revered objects before you and perhaps their nature andtheir sequence will give you a law, the fundamental law of your owntrue self. Compare these objects one with another, see how one completes,expands, surpasses, transfigures another, how they constitutea stepladder upon which you have clambered up to yourself as youare now; for your true nature lies, not concealed deep within you,but immeasurably high above you, or at least above that which youusually take yourself to be. Yo ur true educators and formativeteachers reveal to you that the true, original meaning and basicstuff of your nature is something completely incapable of beingeducated or formed and is in any case something difficult of access,bound and paralysed; your educators can be only your liberators."Oliver Cromwell, as quoted in Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay 'Circles'.Nietzsche read Emerson's Essays in G. Fabricus's German translation (1858) , acopy of which he owned and studied with great care.

Untimely MeditationsAnd that is the secret of all culture: it does not provide artificiallimbs, wax noses or spectacles - that which can provide these thingsis, rather, only sham education. Culture is liberation, the removal ofall the weeds, rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender budsof the plant, an outstreaming oflight and warmth, the gentle rustlingof nocturnal rain, it is imitation and worship of nature where natureis in her motherly and merciful mood, it is the perfecting of naturewhen it deflects her cruel and merciless assaults and turns them togood, and when it draws a veil over the expressions of nature's stepmotherlymood and her sad lack of understanding.Certainly there may be other means of finding oneself, of comingto oneself out of the bewilderment in which one usually wandersas in a dark cloud, but I know of none better than to think onone's true educators and cultivators. And so today I shall rememberone of the teachers and taskmasters of whom I can boast,Arthu'f Schopenhauer- and later on I shall recall others.2IJIf I am to describe what an event my first glance at Schopenhauer'swritings was for me, I must dwell for a moment on an idea whichused to come to me in my youth more pressingly, and more frequently,than perhaps any other. When in those days I roved as I pleasedthrough wishes of all kinds, I always believed that at some time fatewould take from me the terrible effort and duty of educating myself:I believed that, when the time came, I would discover a philosopherto educate me, a true philosopher whom one could follow withoutany misgiving because one would have more faith in him than onehad in oneself. Then I asked myself: what would be the principles bywhich he would educate you? - and I reflected on what he might sayabout the two educational maxims which are being hatched in ourtime. One of them demands that the educator should quicklyrecognize the real strength of his pupil and then direct all his effortsand energy and heat at them so as to help that one virtue to attaintrue maturity and fruitfulness. The other maxim, on the contrary,requires that the educator should draw forth and nourish all the forceswhich exist in his pupil and bring them to a harmoniosrelationship with one another. But should he who has a deidedinclination to be a goldsmith for that reason be forcibly compelled tostudy music? Is one to agree that Benvenuto Cellini's father was rightcontinually to force him to play the 'dear little horn' - 'that accursed130

Schopenhauer as educatorpiping', as his son called it? In the case of such strong and definitetalents one would not agree: so could it perhaps be that that maximadvocating a harmonious development should be applied only tomore mediocre natures in which, though there may reside a congeriesof needs and inclinations, none of them amounts to verymuch taken individually? But where do we discover a harmoniouswhole at all, a simultaneous sounding of many voices in one nature,if not in such men as Cellini, men in whom everything, knowledge,desire, love, hate, strives towards a central point, a root force, andwhere a harmonious system is constructed through the compellingdomination of this living centre? And so perhaps these two maximsare not opposites at all? Perhaps the one simply says that man shouldhave a centre and the other that he should also have a periphery?That educating philosopher of whom I dreamed would, I came tothink, not only discover the central force, he would -also know how toprevent its acting destructively on the other forces: his educationaltask would, it seemed to me, be to mould the whole man into a livingsolar and planetary system and to understand its higher laws ofmotion.In the meantime I still lacked this philosopher, and I tried this oneand that one; I discovered how wretched we modern men appearwhen compared with the Greeks and Romans even merely in thematter of a serious understanding of the tasks of education. With theneed for this in one's heart one can run through all Germany,especially its universities, and fail to find what one is seeking; formany far simpler and more basic desires are still unfulfilled there.Anyone who seriously wanted to train in Germany as an orator, forexample, or intended to enter a school for writers, would find thatschool nowhere; it seems not to have been realized that speakingand writing are arts which cannot be acquired without the most carefulinstruction and arduous apprenticeship. Nothing, however, displaysthe arrogant self-satisfaction of our contemporaries moreclearly or shamefully than their half niggardly, half thoughtlessundemandingness in regard to teachers and educators. What willnot suffice, even among our noblest and best-instructed families,under the name of family tutor; what a collection of antiques andeccentrics is designated a grammar school and not found wanting;what are we not content with for a university - what leaders, whatinstitutions, in comparison with the difficulty of the task of educatinga man to be a man! Even the much admired way in which our Germanmen of learning set about their scientific pursuits reveals above all131

Untimely MeditationsIithat they are thinking more of science than they. are of mankind, thatthey have been trained to sacrifice themselves to it like a legion of thelost, so as in turn to draw new generations on to the same sacrifice. Ifit is not directed and kept within bounds by a higher m a xim ofeducation, but on the contrary allowed to run wilder and wilder onthe principle 'the more the better', traffic with science is certainly asharmful to men oflearning as the economic principle of laissezfaire isto the morality of whole.nations. Who is there that still remembersthat the education of the scholar is an extremely difficult problem, ifhis humanity is not to be sacrificed in the process - and yet this difficultyis plainly obvious when one regards the numerous examplesof those who through an unthinking and premature devotion toscience have become crookbacked and humped. But there is an evenweightier witness to the absence of all higher education, weightierand more perilous and above all much more common. If it is at onceobvious why an orator or a writer cannot now be educated in thesearts - because there are no educators fo r them -; if it is almost asobvious why a scholar must now becoe distorted and contorted -because he is supposed to be educated by science, that is to say by aninhuman abstraction - then one finally asks oneself: where are we,scholars and unscholarly, high placed and low, to find the moralexemplars and models among our contemporaries, the visibleepitome of morality for our time? What has become of any reflectionon questions of morality - questions that have at all times engagedevery more highly civilized society? There is no longer any model orany reflection of any kind; what we are in fact doing is consuming themoral capital we have inherited from our forefathers, which we areincapable of increasing but know only how to squander; in oursociety one either remains silent about such things or speaks of themin a way that reveals an utter lack of acquaintance with or experienceof them and that can only excite revulsion. Thus it has come aboutthat our schools and teachers simply abstain from an education inmorality or make do with mere fo rmalities: and virtue is a word thatno longer means anything to our teachers or pupils, an oldfashionedword that makes one smile - and it is worse if one does notsmile, fo r then one is being a hypocrite.The explanation of this spiriclessness and of why all moral energyis at such a low ebb is difficult and involved; but no one who considersthe influence victorious Christianity had on the morality ofour ancient world can overlook the reaction of declining Christianityupon our own time. Through the exalted ness of its ideal, Chris-132

Schopenhauer as educatortianity excelled the moral systems of antiquity and the naturalismthat resided in them to such a degree that this naturalism came toexcite apathy and disgust; but later on, when these better and higherideals, though now known, proved unattaina,ble, it was no longerpossible to return to what was good and high in antique virtue,however much one might want to. It is in this oscillation betweenChristianity and antiquity, between an imitated or hypocriticalChristianity of morals and an equally despondent and timid revivalof antiquity, that modern man lives, and does not live very happily;the fear of what is natural he has inherited and the renewed attractionof this naturalness, the desire for a firm footing somewhere,the impotence of his knowledge that reels back and forth betweenthe good and the better, all this engenders a restlessness, a disorderin the modern soul which condemns it to a joyless unfruitfulness.Never have moral educators been more needed, and never has itseemed less likely they would be found; in the times when physiciansare required the most, in times of great plagues, they are also most inperil. For where are the physicians for modern mankind who themselvesstand so firmly and soundly on their feet that they are able tosupport others and lead them by the hand? A certain gloominessand torpor lies upon even the finest personalities of our time, a feelingof ill-humour at the everlasting struggle between dissimulation andhonesty which is being fought out within them, a lack of steady confidencein themselves - whereby they become quite incapable ofbeing signposts and at the same time taskmasters for others.It was thus truly roving through wishes to imagine I might discovera true philosopher as ,an educator who could raise me abovemy insufficiencies insofar as these originated in the age and teach meagain to be simple and honest in thought and life, that is to say to beuntimely, that word understood in the profoundest sense; for menhave now become so complex and many-sided they are bound tobecome dishonest whenever they speak at all, make assertions andtry to act in accordance with them.It was in this condition of need, distress and desire that I came toknow Schopenhauer.I am one of those readers of Schopenhauer who when they haveread one page of him know for certain they will go on to read all thepages and will pay heed to every word he ever said. I trusted him atonce and my trust is the same now as it was nine years ago. Thoughthis is a foolish and immodest way of putting it, I understand him asthough it were for me he had written. Thus it is that I have never dis-133

Untimely Meditationscovered any paradox in him, though here and there a Ilttle error; forwhat are paradoxes but assertions which carry no convictionbecause their author himself is not really convinced of them andmakes them only so as to glitter and seduce and in general cut afigure. Schopenhauer never wants to cut a figure: fo r he writes forhimself and no one wants to be deceived, least of all a philosopherwho has made it a rule for himself: deceive no one, not even yoursel flNot even with the pleasant sociable deception which almost everyconversation entails and which writers imitate almost unconsciously;even less with the conscious deception of the orator and by the artificialmeans of rhetoric. Schopenhauer, on the contrary, speaks withhimself: or, if one feels obliged to imagine an auditor, one shouldthink of a son being instructed by his father. It is an honest, calm,good natured discourse before an auditor who listens to it with love.We are lacking such writers. The speaker's powerful sense of well..:.being embraces us immediately he begins to speak; we fe el as we doon entering the high forest, we take a deep breath and acquire thatsense of wellbeing ourselves. We feel thatjlere we shall always find abracing air; here there is a certain inimitable unaffectedness andnaturalness such as is possessed by men who are within themselvesmasters of their own house, and a very rich house at that: in contrastto those writers who surprise themselves most when they for oncesay something sensible and whose style therefore acquires somethingrestless and unnatural. Schopenhauer's- voice reminds us justas little of the scholar whose limbs are naturally stiff and whose chestis narrow and who therefore goes about with awkward embarrass-. ment or a strutting gait; while on the other hand Schopenhauer'srough and somewhat bear-like soul teaches us not so much to feelthe absence of the suppleness and courtly charm of good Frenchwriters as to disdain it, and no one will discover in him that imitated,as it were silver-plated pseudo- Frenchness in which German writersso much indulge. Schopenhauer's way of expressing himselfreminds me here and there a little of Goethe, but otherwise he recallsno German model at all. For he understands how to express the profound with simplicity, the moving without rhetoric, the strictlyscientific without pedantry: and from what German could he havelearned this? He is also free of the over-subtle, over-supple and - if Imay be allowed to say so - not very German style that characterizesLessing: which is a great merit in him, for Lessing is the most seductiveof all German writers of prose. And, to say without more ado thehighest thing I can say in regard to his style, I cannot do better than134

Sclwpenhauer as educatorquote a sentence of his own: 'a philosopher must be very honest notto call poetry or rhetoric to his aid'. That there is something calledhonesty and that it is even a virtue belongs, I know, in the age ofpublic opinion to the private opinions that are forbidden; and thus Ishall not be praising Schopenhauer but only characterizing him if Irepeat: he is honest even as a writer; and so few writers are honestthat one ought really to mistrust anyone who writes. I know of onlyone writer whom I would compare with Schopenhauer, indeed setabove him, in respect of honesty: Montaigne. That such a man wrotehas truly augmented the joy ofliving on this earth. Since getting toknow this freest an mightiest of souls, I at least have come to feelwhat he felt about Plutarch: 'as soon as I glance at him I grow a leg ora wing.' * If I were set the task, I could endeavour to make myselfat home in the world with him.Schopenhauer has a second quality in common with Montaigne,as well as honesty: a cheerfulness that really cheers. Aliis laetus, sibisapiens. t For there are two very different kinds of cheerfulness. Thetrue thinker always cheers and refreshes, whether he is being seriousor humorous, expressing his human insight or his divine forbearance;without peevish gesturing, trembling hands, tearfilledeyes, but with certainty and simplicity, courage and .strength,perhaps a little harshly and valiantly but in any case as a victor: andthis it iscombatedto behold the victorious god with all the monsters he hasthat cheers one most profoundly. The cheerfulness onesometimes encounters in mediocre writers and bluff and abruptthinkers, on the other hand, makes us feel miserable when we readit: the effect produced upon me, for example, by David Strauss'scheerfulness. One feels downright ashamed to have such cheerfulcontemporaries, because they compromise our time and the peoplein it before posterity. This kind of cheerful thinker simply does notsee the sufferings and the monsters he purports to see and combat;and his cheerfulness is vexing because he is deceiving us: he wants tomake us believe that a viaory has been fought and won. For at bottomthere is cheerfulness only where there is a victory; and this applies tothe works of true thinkers just as much as it does to any work of art.Let its content be as dreadful and as serious as the problem of lifeitself: the work will produce a depressing and painful effect only if"" A misunderstandingofMontaigne's assertion: 'Je ne Ie puis si peu accointer que jen'en tire cuisse ou aisle', which Florio translates as: 'He can no sooner come in mysight bur I pull some leg or wing from him.'tAliis [actus, sibi sapiens: cheerful for others, wise fo r himself135

Untimely Meditationsthe semi-thinker and semi-artist has exhaled over it t h e vapour of hisinadequacy; while nothing better or happier can befall a man than tobe in the proximity of one of those victors who, precisely becausethey have thought most deeply, must love what is most living and, assages, incline in the end to the beautiful. They speak truly, they donot stammer, and do not chatter about what they have heard; theyare active and live truly and not the uncanny masquerade men areaccustomed to live: which is why in their proximity we for once feelhuman and natural and might exclaim with Goethe: 'How gloriousand precious a living thing is! how well adapted to the conditions itlives in, how true, how full of being!'*I am describing nothing but the first, as it were physiological,impression Schopenhauer produced upon me, that magical outpouringof the inner strength of one natural creature on to anotherthat follows the first and most fleeting encounter; and when I subsequentlyanalyse that impression I discover it to be compounded ofthree elements, the elements of his honesty, his cheerfulness and hissteadfastness. He is honest because he .6peaks and writes to himselfand for himself, cheerful because he has conquered the hardest taskby thinking, and steadfast because he has to be. His strength risesstraight and calmly upwards like a flame when there is no wind,imperturbably, without restless wavering. He finds his way everytime before we have so much as noticed that he has been seeking it;as though compelled by a law of gravity he runs on ahead, so firmand agile, so inevitably. And whoever has felt what it means to discoveramong our tragelaphine ment of today a whole, complete,self-moving, unconstrained and unhampered natural being willunderstand my joy and amazement when I discovered Schopenhauer:I sensed that in him I had discovered that educator and philosopherI had sought for so long. But I had discovered him only in the formof a book, and that was a great deficiency. So I strove all the harder tosee through the book and to imagine the living man whose great testamentI had to read and who promised to make his heirs only thosewho would and could be more than merely his readers: namely hissons and pupils.3I profit from a philosopher only insofar as he can be an example.That he is capable of drawing whole nations after him through thisClFrom the Italienische Reise, 9 October 1786.t'Tragelaphen-Menschheit'. A 'tragelaph' is a 'goat-stag', i.e. a 'horned beast'.136

Schopenhauer as educatorexample is beyond doubt; the history of India, which is almost thehistory of Indian philosophy, proves it. But this example must besupplied by his outward life and not merely in his books - in the way,that is, in which the philosophers of Greece taught, through theirbearing, what they wore and ate, and their morals, tather than bywhat they said, let alone by what they wrote. How completely thiscourageous visibility of the philosophical life is lacking in Germany!where the body is only just beginning to liberate itself long afterthe spirit seems to have been liberated; and yet it is only an illusionthat a spirit can be free and independent if this achievedunlimitedness - which is at bottom creative self-limitation - is notdemonstrated anew from morn till night through every glanceand every gesture. Kant clung to his university, submitted himselfto its regulations, retained the appearance of religious belief,endured to live among colleagues and students: so it is naturalthat his example has produced above all university professors andprofessorial philosophy. Schopenhauer had little patience withthe scholarly castes, separated himself from them, strove to beindependent of state and society - this is his example, the modelhe provides - to begin with the most superficial things. But manystages in the liberation of the philosophical life are still unknownamong the Germans, though they will not always be able toremain unknown. Our artists are living more boldly and morehonestly; and the mightiest example we have before us, that ofRichard Wagner, shows how the genius must not fear to enter intothe most hostile relationship with the existing forms and order ifhe wants to bring to light the higher order and truth that dwellswithin him. 'Truth', however, of which our professors speak somuch, seems to be a more modest being from which no disorderand nothing extraordinary is to be feared: a self-contented andhappy creature which is continually assuring all the powers thatbe that no one needs to be the least concerned on its account; forit is, after all, only 'pure science'. Thus what I was trying to say isthat the philosopher in Germany has more and more to unlearnhow to be 'pure science': and it is to precisely that end thatSchopenhauer as a human being can serve as an example.It is, however, . nothing less than a miracle that he was able tobecome this human example: for he was pressed upon, from withinand without, by the most tremendous dangers which would havecrushed or shattered any weaker being. It seems to me there was astrong probability that Schopenhauer the human being would137

Untimely Meditationsperish and at best leave behind 'pure science ': but'this too only atbest; most probably neither human being nor science would remain.An Englishman recently described the most general danger facinguncommon men who live in a society tied to convention: 'Such aliencharacters at first become submissive, then melancholic, then ill andfinally they die. A Shelley would not have been able to live inEngland, and a race of Shelleys would have been impossible.'* OurHOlderlin and Kleist, and who knows who else besides, were ruinedby their uncommonness and could not endure the climate of socalledGerman culture; and only natures of iron, such as Beethoven,Goethe, Schopenhauer and Wagner are able to stand firm. But thesetoo exhibit many of the effects of the wearying struggle they have hadto engage in: they breathe heavily and their voice can easily becometoo loud. A practised diplomat who had seen and spoken withGoethe only now and then told his friends: 'Voila un homme, qui aeu de grands chagrins!' - which Goethe translated as: 'There isanother one who has had a hard time of it!' and added: 'If the tracesof the sufferings we have endured an

Schopenhauer as educatoragitation; not a single adherent of any note appeared. It makes us sadto see him hunting fo r the slightest sign that he was not utterlyunknown; and his loud, too loud, triumphing when he did finallyacquire readers ( , legor et legar')* ha something painfully moving in it.All the traits he exhibits that are riot those of the great philosopherare those of the suffering human being fearful for the safety of hisnoblest possessions; thus he is tonnented by fear of losing his modestincome and then perhaps being unable still to maintain his pure andtruly antique attitude towards philosophy; thus he often failed in hismany attempts to establish firm and sympathetic friendships andwas repeatedly obliged to return with a downcast eye to his faithfuldog. He was a total solitary; he had not a single companion truly ofhis own kind to console him - and between one and none there lies,as always between something and nothing, an infinity. No one whopossesses true friends knows what true solitude is, even though hehave the whole world around him for his enemies. - Ah, I wellunderstand that you do not know what solitude is. Where there havebeen powerful societies, governments, religions, public opinions, inshort wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopherhas been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into whichno tyranny can force its way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of theheart: and that annoys the tyrants. There the solitaries conceal themselves:but there too lurks their greatest danger. These people whohave fled inward for their freedom also have to live outwardly,become visible, let themselves be seen; they are united with mankindthrough countless ties of blood, residence, education,fatherland, chance, the importunity of others; they are likewise presupposedto harbour countless opinions simply because these arethe ruling opinions of the time; every gesture which is not clearly adenial counts as agreement; every motion of the hand that does notdestroy is interpreted as approval. They know, these solitaries, freein spirit, that they continually seem other than what they think: whilethey desire nothing but truth and honesty, they are encompassed bya net of misunderstandings; and however vehemently they maydesire, they cannot prevent a cloud of false opinions, approximations,half-admissions, indulgent silence, erroneous interpretationfrom gathering about their actions. Because of this a cloud ofmelancholy gathers on their brows; for such as these it is more hateful than death itself to be forced to present a semblance to the world;""legor el Legar: I am read, I shall be read139

Untimely Meditationsand their perpetual bitter resentment of this constraiilt fills themwith volcanic menace. From time to time they revenge themselvesfo r their enforced concealment and compelled restraint. Theyemerge from their cave wearing a terrifying aspect; their words anddeeds are then explosions and it is possible for them to perish .bytheir own hand. This was the dangerous way in which Schopenhauerlived. It is precisely such natures as he who want love, who needcompanions before whom they can venture to be as simple and openas they are before themselves and in whose presence they can ceaseto suffer the torment of silence and dissimulation. If you removethese companions you create an increasingly dangerous condition;Heinrich von Kleist perished of not being loved, and the most terribleantidote to uncommon men is to drive them so deep into themselvesthat when they re-emerge it is always as a volcanic eruption. Yet therewill always be demi-gods who can endure to live, and live victoriously,under such terrible conditions; and if you want to hear their lonelysong, listen to the music of Beethoven.This was the first danger in whose shadCIA' Schopenhauer grew up:isolation. The second was despair of the truth. This danger attendsevery thinker who sets out from the Kantian philosophy, providedhe is a vigorous and whole man in suffering and desire and not amere clattering thought- an:d calculating-machine. Now we all knowvery well the shameful implications of this presupposition; it seemsto me, indeed, that Kant has had a living and life-transforminginfluence on only a very few men. One can read everywhere, I know,that since this quiet scholar produced his work a revolution has. taken place in every domain of the spirit; but I cannot believe it. For Icannot see it in those men who would themselves have to berevolutionized before a revolution could take place in any wholedomain whatever. If Kant ever should begin to exercise any wideinfluence we shall be aware of it in the form of a gnawing and disintegratingscepticism and relativism; and only in the most activeand noble spirits who have never been able to exist in a state of doubtwould there appear instead that undermining and despair of alltruth such as Heinrich von Kleist for example experience as theeffect of the Kantian philosophy. 'Not long ago', he writes in hismoving way, 'I became acquainted with the Kantian philosophyand I now have to tell you of a thought I derived from it, which I feelfree to do because I have no reason to fear it will shatter you so profoundlyand painfully as it has me. - We are unable to decidewhether that which we call truth really is truth, or whether it only140

Schopenhauer as educatorappears to us to be. If the lattert then the truth we assemble here isnothing' after our death, and all endeavour to acquire a possessionwhich will follow us to the grave is in vain. - If the point of thisthought does not penetrate your heart, do not smile at one who feelswounded by it in the deepest and most sacred part of his being. Myone great aim has failed me and I have no other.'* When, indeed,will men again feel iIi this natural Kleistian fashion, when will theyagain learn to assess the meaning of a philosophy in the 'most sacredpart' of their being? And yet this must be done if we are to understandwhat, after Kant, Schopenhauer can be to us - namely theleader who leads us from the depths of sceptical gloom or criticizingrenunciation up to the heights of tragic contemplation, to the nocturnalsky and its stars extended endlessly above us, and who washimself the first to take his path. His greatness lies in having set upbefore him a picture of life as a whole, in order to interpret it as awhole; while even the most astute heads cannot be dissuaded fromthe error that one can achieve a more perfect interpretation if oneminutely investigates the paint with which this picture is producedand the material upon which it is painted; perhaps with the resultthat one concludes that it is a quite intricately woven canvas withpaint upon it which is chemically inexplicable. To understand thepicture one must divine the painter - that Schopenhatier knew.Nowadays, however, the whole guild of the sciences is occupied inunderstanding the canvas and the paint but not the picture; one cansay, "indeed, that only he who has a clear view of the picture of lifeand existence as a whole can employ the individual sciences withoutharm to himself, for without such a regulatory total picture they arethreads that nowhere come to an end and only render our life moreconfused and labyrinthine. Schopenhauer is, as I said, great in thathe pursues this picture as Hamlet pursues the ghost, without lettinghimself be led aside, as scholars are, or becoming enmeshed inabstract scholasticism, as is the fate of rabid dialecticians. The studyof quarter-philosophers is enticing only so as to recognize that theymake at once for the places in the edifices of great philosophieswhere scholarly for and against, where brooding, doubting, contradictingare permitted, and that they thereby elude the challengeof every great philosophy, which as a whole always says only: this isthe picture of all life, and learn from it the meaning of your own life.And the reverse: only read your own life and comprehend from it°Letter to Wilhelmine von Zenge, 22 March 1801.141

Untimely Meditationsthe hieroglyphics of universal life. And this is how ' Schopenhauer'sphilosophy should also always be interpreted at first: individually,by the individual only for himself, so as to gain insight into his OWl)want and misery, into his own limitedness, so as then to learn thenature of his antidotes and consolations: namely, sacrifice of the ego,submission to the noblest ends, above all to those of justice andcompassion. He teaches us to distinguish between those things thatreally promote human happiness and those that only appear to doso: how neither riches nor honours nor erudition can lift theindividual out of the profound depression he feels at the valuelessnessof his existence, and how the striving after these valued thingsacquires meaning only through an exalted and transfiguring overallgoal: to acquire power so as to aid the evolution of the physis and to befor a while the corrector of its follies and ineptitudes. At first only fo ryourself, to be sure; but through yourself in the end for everyone. Itis true that this is a striving which by its nature leads towards resignation:for what and how much is amenable to any kind ofimprovementat all, in the individual or in t generality!If we apply these words to Schopenhauer, we touch on the thirdand most characteristic danger in which he lived and which lay concealedin the whole structure and skeleton of his being. Every humanbeing is accustomed to discovering in himself some limitation, of histalent or of his moral will, which fills him with melancholy and longing;and just as his feeling of sinfulness makes him long for the saint inhim, so as an intellectual being he harbours a profound desire fo rthe genius in him. This is the root of all true culture; and if I understandby this the longing of man to be reborn as saint and genius, Iknow that one does not have to be a Buddhist to understand thismyth. Where we discover talent devoid of that longing, in the worldof scholars or that of the so-called cultivated, we are repelled and disgustedby it; for we sense that, with all their intellect, such people donot promote an evolving culture and the procreation of genius -which is the goal of all culture but hinder it. It is a state of petrifaction,equivalent in value to that routine, cold and self-laudatoryvirtuousness which is also farthest, and keeps itself far, from truesaintliness. Now, Schopenhauer' s nature contained a strange andextremely dangerous dualism. Few thinkers have felt with a comparableintensity and certainty that genius moved within them; andhis genius promised him the highest - that there would be no deeperfurrow than that which his ploughshare was digging in the ground ofmodern mankind. Thus he knew half his nature to be satisfied, its142

Sclwpenhauer as educatordesires stilled, sure of its strength; thus he victoriously fulfilled hiscalling with greatness and dignity. In the other half there dwelt aburning longing; we comprehend it when we hear that he turnedaway with a pained expression from the picture of the great fo underorla Trappe, * Rance, with the words: 'That is a matter of.grace.' Forthe genius longs more deeply for sainthood because from hiswatchtower he has seen farther and more clearly than other men,down into the reconciliation of knowledge with being, over into thedomain of peace and denial of the will, across to the other coast ofwhich the Indians speak. But precisely here is the miracle: howinconceivably whole and unbreakable must Schopenhauer's naturehave been if it could not be destroyed even by this longing and yetwas not petrified by it! What that means, each will understandaccording to what and how much he is: and none of us will ever fullyunderstand it.The more one reflects on the three dangers just described, themore surprising it becomes that Schopenhauer should have defendedhimself against them with such vigour and emerged from the battlein such good shape. He bore many scars and open wounds, it is true;and he had acquired a disposition that may perhaps seem a little tooastringent and sometimes also too pugnacious. But even the greatestof men cannot attain to his own ideal. That Schopenhauer can offe rus a model is certain, all these scars and blemishes notwithstanding.One might say, indeed, that that in his nature which was imperfectand all too human brings us closer to him in a human sense, fo r itlets us see him as a fellow sufferer and not only in the remote heightsof a genius.Those three constitutional dangers that threatened Schopenhauerthreaten us all. Each of us bears a productive uniqueness within himas the core of his being; and when he becomes aware of it, thereappears around him a strange penumbra which is the mark of hissingularity. Most find this something unendurable, because theyare, as aforesaid, lazy, and because a chain of toil and burdens is suspendedfrom this uniqueness. There can be no doubt that, for thesingular man who encumbers himself with this chain, life witholdsalmost everything - cheerfulness, security, ease, honour - that hedesired of it in his youth; solitude is the gift his fellow men present tohim; let him live where he will, he will always find there the desertand the cave. Let him see to it that he does not become subjugated,*la Trappe: monastery from which the Trappist order takes its name.143

Untimely Meditationsthat he does not become depressed and melancholic. And to thatend let him surround himself with pictures of good and bravefighters, such as Schopenhauer was. But the second danger whichthreatened Schopenhauer is not altogether rare, either. Here andthere a man is equipped by nature with mental acuteness, histhoughts like to do the dialectical double-step; how easy it is, if hecarelessly lets go the reins of his talent, for him to perish as a humanbeing and to lead a ghostly life in almost nothing but 'purescience'; or, grown accustomed to seeking the for and against inall things, for him to lose sight of truth altogether and then beobliged to live without courage or trust, in denial and doubt,agitated and discontented, half hopeful, expecting to be disappointed:'No dog would go on living like this!" The third danger is that ofpetrifaction, in the moral or the intellectual sphere; a man severs thebonds that tied him to his ideal; he ceases to be fruitful, to propagatehimself, in this or that domain; in a cul'tural sense he becomes feebleor useless. The uniqueness of his being has become an indivisible,uncommunicating atom, an icy rock. nd thus one can be reducedto ruin by this uniqueness just as well as by the fear of it, by oneself aswell as by surrender of oneself, by longing as well as by petrifaction:and to live at all means to live in danger.Besides these constitutional dangers to which Schopenhauerwould have been exposed in whatever century he had lived, thereare also dangers which arose from his age; and this distinction betweenconstitutional dangers and those proceeding from the age helived in is essential for an understanding of what is exemplary andeducative in Schopenhauer's nature. Let us think of the philosopher'seye resting upon existence: he wants to determine its value anew. Forit has been the proper task of all great thinkers to be lawgivers as tothe measure, stamp and weight of things. How it must obstruct himif the mankind most immediate to him is a feeble and worm-eatenfruit! How much allowance he has to make for the valuelessness ofhis time if he is to be just to existence as a whole! If occupation withthe history of past or foreign nations is of any value, it is of most valueto the philosopher who wants to arrive at a just verdict on the wholefate of man - not, that is, only on the average fate but above all on thehighest fate that can befall individual men or entire nations. Buteverything contemporary is importunate; it affects and directs theeye even when the philosopher does not want it to; and in the total# Qu oted from Goethe's Faust, Part I Scene 1.144

Schopenhauer as educatoraccounting it will involuntarily be appraised too high. That is why,when he compares his own age with other ages, the philosophermust deliberately under-assess it and, by overcoming the present inhimself, also overcome it in the picture he gives of life, that is to sayrender it unremarkable and as it were paint it over. This is a difficult,indeed hardly achievable task. The verdict of the philosophers ofancient Greece on the value of existence says so much more than amodern verdict does because they had life itself before and aroundthem in luxuriant perfection and because, unlike us, their mindswere not confused by the discord between the desire for freedom,beauty, abundance of life on the one hand and on the other the driveto truth, which asks only: what is existence worth as such? It willalways be worth knowing what Empedocles, living as he did in themidst of the most vigorous and exuberant vitality of Greek culture,had to say about existence; his verdict possesses great weight,especially as it is not contradicted by a counter-verdict from anyother great philosopher of the same great era. He speaks the mostdearly, but essentially - that is if we listen carefully - they are all sayiflgthe same thing. A modern thinker will, to repeat, always suffer froman unfulfilled desire: he will want first to be shown life again, true,red-blooded, healthy life, so that he may then pronounce his judgmenton it. To himself at least he will regard it as necessary that heshould be a living human being if he is to believe he can be a justjudge. This is the reason it is precisely the more modernphilosophers who are among the mightiest promoters of life, of thewill to live, and why from out of their own exhausted age they longfor a culture, for a transfigured physis. But this longing also constitutestheir danger: there is a struggle within them between thereformer of life and the philosopher, that is to say the judge of life.Wherever the victory may indine, it is a victory that will involve aloss. And how, then, did Schopenhauer elude this danger too?If it is commonly accepted that the great man is the genuine childof his age, if he in any event suffers from the deficiencies of his agemore acutely than do smaller men, then a struggle by such a greatman against his age seems to be only a senseless and destructiveattack on himself. But only seems so; for he is contending againstthose aspects of his age that prevent him from being great, whichmeans, in his case, being free and entirely himself. From which itfollows that his hostility is at bottom directed against that which,though he finds it in himself, is not truly himself: against the indecentcompounding and confusing of things eternally incompat-145

Untimely Meditationsible, against the soldering of time-bound things on to his ownuntimeliness; and in the end the supposed child of his time proves tobe only its stepchild. Thus Schopenhauer strove from his early youthagainst that false, idle and unworthy mother, his age, and by as itwere expelling her from him, he healed and purified his being andrediscovered himself in the health and purity native to him. That iswhy Schopenhauer's writings can be used as a mirror of his age; andit is certainly not due to a fault in the mirror if everything timeboundin his age appears as a disfiguring illness, as thin and pale, asenervated and hollow eyed, as the recognizable sufferings of hisstepchildhood. The longing for a stronger nature, for a healthier andsimpler humanity, was in his case a longing for himself; and when hehad conquered his age in himselfhe beheld with astonished eyes thegenius in himself. The secret of his being was now revealed to him,the intention of his stepmother age to conceal his genius fro m himwas frustrated, the realm of transfigured physis was disclosed. Whenhe now turned his fearless eye upon the question: 'What is life worthas such?' - it was no longer a confused aoo pallid age and its hypocritical,uncertain life upon which he had to pass judgment. He knewwell that there is something higher and purer to be found andattained on this earth than the life of his own time, and that he whoknows existence only in this ugly shape, and assesses it accordingly,does it a grave injustice. No, genius itself is now summoned, so thatone may hear whether genius, the highest fruit of life, can perhapsjustify life as such; the glorious, creative human being is now toanswer the question: 'Do you affirm this existel1ce in the depths ofyour heart? Is it sufficient fo r you? Would you be its advocate, itsredeemer? For you have only to pronounce a single heartfelt Yes!and life, though it faces such heavy accusations, shall go free.' - Whatanswer will he give? - The answer of Empedocles.4This last remark may be allowed to remain incomprehensible fo r themoment: for I have now to deal with something extremely comprehensible,namely to explain how through Schopenhauer we areall able to educate ourselves against our age- because through him wepossess the advantage of really knowing this age. Supposing, that is,that it is an advantage! In any event, it may no longer be possible acouple of centuries hence. I find it amusing to reflect on the idea thatmankind may sometime soon grow tired of reading and that writers146

Schopenhauer as educatorwill do so too, that the scholar will one day direct in his last will andtestament that his corpse shall be buried surrounded by his booksand especially by his own writings. And ifit is true that the fo rests aregoing to get thinner and thinner, may the time not come one daywhen the libraries should be used for timber, straw and brushwood?Since most books are born out of smoke and vapour of the brain,they ought to return to smoke and vapour. And if they have no fire oftheir own in them, fire should punish them for it. It is thus possiblethat a later century will regard our era as a saeculum obscurum, *because its productions have been used most abundantly for heatingthe stoves. How fo rtunate we are, therefo re, that we are still able toknow this age. For if concerning oneself with one's own age makesany sense at all, then it is a good thing to concern oneself with it asthoroughly as possible, so as to leave absolutely no doubt as to itsnature: and it is precisely this that Schopenhauer enables us todo.Of course, it would be a hundred times better if this investigationshould reveal that nothing so proud and full of hope as our own agehas ever before existed. And there are indeed at this moment naivepeople in this and that corner of the earth, in Germany for instance,who are prepared to believe such a thing, and even go so far as toassert in all seriousness that the world was put to rights a couple ofyears agot and thatthose who persist in harbouring dark misgivingsabout the nature of existence are refuted by the 'facts'. The chief factis that the fo unding of the new German Reich is a decisive andannihilating blow to all 'pessimistic' philosophizing that is supposedto be firm and certain. - Whoever is seeking to answer thequestion of what the philosopher as educator can mean in our timehas to contest this view, which is very widespread and is propagatedespecially in our universities; he must declare: it is a downright scandalthat such nauseating, idolatrous flattery can be rendered to our timeby supposedly thinking and honourable men - a proof that one nolonger has the slightest notion how different the seriousness ofphilosophy is from the seriousness of a newspaper. Such men havelost the last remnant not only of a philosophical but also of areligious mode of thinking, and in their place have acquired noteven optimism but journalism, the spirit and spiritlessness of ourday and our daily papers. Every philosophy which believes that theproblem of existence is touched on, not to say solved, by a political"" Saeculum obscurum :. dark age ti.e. with the founding of the Reich in 187 1.147

Untimely Meditationsevent is a joke- and pseudo-philosophy. Many states have beenfounded since the world began; that is an old story. How should apolitical innovation suffice to turn men once and for all into contentedinhabitants of the earth? But if anyone really does believe inthis possibility he ought to come fo rward, for he truly deserves tobecome a professor of philosophy at a German university, likeHarms in Berlin Jiirgen Meyer in Bonn and Carriere in Munich.Here, however, we are experiencing the consequences of the doctrine,lately preached from all the rooftops, that the state is thehighest goal of mankind and that a man has no higher duty than toserve the state: in which doctrine I recognize a relapse not intopaganism but into stupidity. It may be that a man who sees hishighest duty in serving the state really knows no higher duties; butthere are men and duties existing beyond this - and one of the dutiesthat seems, at least to me, to be higher than serving the statedemands that one destroys stupidity in every form, and therefore inthis fo rm too. That is why I am concerned here with a species of manwhose teleology extends somewhat beyond the welfare of a state,with philosophers, and with these only in relation to a world which isagain fairly independent of the welfare of a state, that of culture. Ofthe many rings which, interlocked together, make up the humancommunity, some are of gold and others of pinchbeck.N ow, how does the philosopher view the culture of our time? Verydifferently, to be sure, from how it is viewed by those professors ofphilosophy who are so well contented with their new state. When hethinks of the haste and hurry now universal, of the increasing. velocity oflife, of the cessation of all contemplativeness and simplicity,he almost thinks that what he is seeing are the symptoms of a totalextermination and uprooting of culture. The waters of religion areebbing away and leaving behind swamps or stagnant pools; thenations are again drawing away from one another in the most hostilefashion and long to tear one another to pieces. The sciences, pursuedwithout any restraint and in a spirit of the blindest laissez. ta iTe,are shattering and dissolving all firmly held belief; the educatedclasses and states are being swept along by a hugely contemptiblemoney economy. The world has never been more worldly, neverpoorer in love and goodness. The educated classes are no longerlighthouses or refuges in the midst of this turmoil of secularization;they themselves grow daily more restless, thoughtless and loveless.Everything, contemporary art and science included, serves the coming. barbarism. The cultured man has degenerated to the greatest enemy148

Schopenhauer as educatorof culture, for he wants lyingly to deny the existence of the universalsickness and thus obstructs the physicians. They become incensed,these poor wretches, whenever one speaks of their weakness andresists their pernicious lying spirit. They would dearly like to makeus believe that of all the centuries theirs has borne the prize away,and they shake with artificial merriment. Their way of hypocriticallysimulating happiness sometimes has something touching about it,because their happiness is something so completely incomprehensible.One does not even feel like asking them what Tannhauserasked Biterolf: 'What then, poor man, have you enjoyed?'* For ah !we ourselves know better and know otherwise. A winter's day liesupon us, and we dwell in high mountains, dangerously and inpoverty. Every joy is brief, and every ray of sunlight is pale thatcreeps down to us on our white mountain. Music sounds, an oldman turns a barrel-organ, the dancers revolve - the wanderer isdeeply moved when he sees it: all is so wild, so taciturn, so colourless,so hopeless, and now there sounds within it a note of joy, ofsheer, unreflecting joy! But already the mists of early evening arecreeping in, the note dies away, the wanderer's step grates on theground; for as far as he can still see, he sees nothing but the cruel anddesolate face of nature.If it may be one-sided to emphasize only the weakness of theoutlines and the dullness of the colours in the picture of modern life,the other side of the picture is in no way more gratifying but oniymote disturbing. There are certainly fo rces there, tremendous forces,but savage, primal and wholly merciless. One gazes upon them witha fearful expectation, as though gazing into the cauldron of a witch'skitchen: at any moment sparks and flashes may herald dreadfulapparitions. For a century we have been preparing for absolutelyfu ndamental convulsions; and if there have recently been attemptsto oppose this deepest of modern inclinations, to collapse or toexplode, with the constitutive power of the so-called nation state, thelatter too will for a long time serve only to augment the universalinsecurity and atmosphere of menace. That individuals behave asthough they knew nothing of all these anxieties does not mislead us:their restlessness reveals how well they know of them; they think witha precipitancy and with an exclusive preoccupation with themselvesnever before encountered in man, they build and plant fo r their ownday alone, and the pursuit of happiness is never greater than when it*In Wagner's Ta nnhiiuser, Act II.149

Untimely Meditationshas to be caught today or tomorrow: because perh a ps by the dayafter tomorrow there will be no more hunting at all. We live in theage of atoms, of atomistic chaos. In the Middle Ages the hostile forceswere held together by the church and, through the strong pressure itexerted, to some extent assimilated with one another. When thebond broke, the pressure relaxed, they rebelled against one another.The Reformation declared many things to be adiaphora, domainswhere religion was not to hold sway; this was the price at which itpurchased its existence: just as Christianity had already had to pay asimilar price in face of the much more religiously inclined world ofantiquity. From there on the division spread wider and wider.Nowadays the crudest and most evil forces, the egoism of themoney-makers and the military despots, hold sway over almosteverything on earth. In the hands of these despots and moneymakers,the state certainly makes an attempt to organize everythinganew out ofitself and to bind and constrain all those mutually hostileforces: that is to say, it wants men to render it the same idolatry theyformerly rendered the church. With wlj.at success? We have still tolearn; we are, in any case, even now still in the ice-filled stream of theMiddle Ages; it has thawed and is rushing on with devastatingpower. Ice-floe piles on ice-floe, all the banks have been inundatedand are in danger of collapse. The revolution is absolutely unavoidable,and it will be the atomistic revolution: but what are the smallestindivisible basic constituents of human society?It is incontestable that the spirit of humanity is almost in greaterdanger during the approach of such eras than it is when they and thechaotic turmoil they bring with them have actually arrived: theanxiety of waiting and the greedy exploitation of every minutebrings fo rth all the cowardice and the self-seeking drives of the soul,while the actual emergency, and especially a great universalemergency, usually improves men and makes them more warmhearted.Who is there then, amid these dangers of our era, to guardand champion humanity, the inviolable sacred treasure graduallyaccumulated by the most various races? Who will set up the image ofman when all men feel in themselves only the self-seeking wormand currish fear and have thus declined from that image to thelevel of the animals or even of automata?There are three images of man which our modern age has set upone after the other and which will no doubt long inspire mortals to atransfiguration of their own lives: they are the man of Rousseau, theman of Goethe and finally the man of Schopenhauer. Of these, the150

Schopenhauer as educatorfirst image possesses the greatest fire and is sure of producing thegreatest popular effect; the second is intended only for the few, fo rcontemplative natures in the grand style, and is misunderstood bythe crowd. The third demands contemplation only by the mostactive men; only they can regard it without harm to themselves, for itdebilitates the contemplative and frightens away the crowd. Fromthe first there has proceeded a force which has promoted violentrevolutions and continues to do so; fo r in every socialist earthquakeand upheaval it has always been the man of Rousseau who, likeTyphon under Etna, is the cause of the commotion. Oppressed andhalf crushed by arrogant upper classes and merciless wealth, ruinedby priests and bad education and rendered contemptible to himselfby ludicrous customs, man cries in his distress to 'holy nature' andsuddenly feels that it is as distant from him as any Epicurean god.His prayers do not reach it, so deeply is he sunk in the chaos ofunnaturalness. Scornfully he throws from him all the gaudy finerywhich only a short time before had seemed to him to constitute hisessential humanity, his arts and sciences, the advantages of a refinedlife; he beats with his fists against the walls in whose shadow he has sodegenerated, and demands light, sun, forest and mountain. Andwhen he cries: 'Only nature is good, only the natural is human,' hedespises himself and longs to go beyond himself: a mood in whichthe soul is ready for fearful decisions but which also calls up from itsdepths what is noblest and rarest in it.The man of Goethe is no such threatening power, indeed in a certainsense he is the corrective and sedative for precisely those dangerousexcitations of which the man of Rousseau is the victim. In his youthGoethe was himself a devotee of the gospel of nature with his wholeloving heart; his Faust was the highest and boldest reproduction ofthe man of Rousseau, at any rate so far as concerns his ravenoushunger for life, his discontent and longing, his traffic with thedemons of the heart. But then see what eventuates from this greatbank of clouds - certainly not lightning! And it is in precisely this thatthere is revealed the new image of man, Goethean man. One wouldthink that Faust would be led through a life everywhere afflicted andoppressed as an insatiable rebel and liberator, as the power thatdenies out of goodness, as the actual religious and demonic geniusof subversion, in contrast to his altogether undemonic companion,though he cannot get rid of this companion and has to employ and atthe same time despise his sceptical malice and denial- as is the tragicfate of every rebel and liberator. But one is mistaken if one expects151

Untimely Meditationsanything of that kind; the man of Goethe here turns away from theman of Rousseau; for he hates all violence, all sudden transitionbut that means: all action; and thus the world-liberator becomes as itwere only a world-traveller. All the realms of life and nature, all thepast, all the arts, mythologies and sciences, see the insatiable spectatorfly past them, the deepest desires are aroused and satisfied,even Helen does not detain him fo r very long- and then there mustcome the moment for which his mocking companion is lying in wait.At some suitable spot on earth his flight comes to an end, his wingsfall off, Mephistopheles is at hand. When the German ceases to beFaust there is no greater danger than that he will become a philistineand go to the Devil - heavenly powers alone can save him from it.The man of Goethe is, as I have said, the contemplative man in thegrand style, who can avoid languishing away on earth only by bringingtogether fo r his nourishment everything great and memorable thathas ever existed or still exists and thus lives, even though his life maybe a living from one desire to the next; he is not the man of action: onthe contrary, if he does ever become i member of any part of theexisting order established by the men of action one can be sure thatno good will come of it - Goethe's own enthusiastic participation inthe world of the theatre is a case in point - and, above all, that no'order' will be overthrown. The Goethean man is a preservative andconciliatory power - but with the danger, already mentioned, that hemay degenerate to a philistine, just as the man of Rousseau can easilybecome a Catilinist. If the former had a little more muscle-powerand natural wildness, all his virtues would be greater. Goethe seemsto have realized where the danger and weakness of his type of manlay, and he indicates it in the words of Jarno to Wilhelm Meister:'You are vexed and bitter, that is very good; if only you would getreally angry for once it would be even better.'*Thus, to speak frankly: it is necessary for us to get really angry fo ronce in order that things shall get better. And to encourage us to thatwe have the Schopenhauerean image of man. The Schopenhauereanman voluntarily takes upon himself the suffering involved in being truthful, andthis suffering serves to destroy his own wilfulness and to prepare thatcomplete overturning and conversion of his being, which it is thereal meaning of life to lead up to. This utterance of truth seems toother men a discharge of malice, for they regard the conservation oftheir inadequacies and humbug as a human duty and think that any-*In Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-6), Book 8.152

Schopenhauer as educatorone who disrupts their child's play in this way must be wicked. Theyare tempted to cry to such a man what Faust said to Mephistopheles:'So to the eternal active and creative power you oppose the cold handof the Devil'; ' and he who would live according to Schopenhauerwould probably seem more like a Mephistopheles than · a Faust -s,eem, that is, to purblind modern eyes, which always see in denialthe mark of evil. But there is a kind of denying and destroying that isthe discharge of that mighty longing fo r sanctification and salvationand as the first philosophical teacher of which Schopenhauer cameamong us desanctified and truly secularized men. All that exists thatcan be denied deserves to be denied; and being truthful means: tobelieve in an existence that can in no way be denied and which isitself true and without fal sehood. That is why the truthful man feelsthat the meaning of his activity is metaphysical, explicable throughthe laws of another and higher life, and in the profoundest senseaffirmative: however much all that he does may appear to be destructiveof the laws of this life and a crime against them. So it is thatall his acts must become an uninterrupted suffering; but he knowswhat Meister Eckhart also knows: 'The beast that bears you fastest toperfection is suffering.' I would think that anyone who st such alife's course before his soul must feel his heart open and a fiercedesire arise within him to be such a Schopenhauerean man: that is tosay, strangely composed about himself and his own welfare, in hisknowledge full of blazing, consuming fire and far removed from thecold and contemptible neutrality of the so-called scientific man,exalted high above all sullen and ill-humoured reflection, alwaysoffering himself as the first sacrifice to perceived truth and permeatedwith the awareness of what sufferings must spring from histruthfulness. He will, to be sure, destroy his earthly happinessthrough his courage; he will have to be an enemy to those he lovesand to the institutions which have produced him; he may not sparemen or things, even though he suffers when they suffer; he will bemisunderstood and for long thought an ally of powers he abhors;however much he may strive after justice he is bound, according tothe human limitations of his insight, to be unjust: but he may consolehimself with the words once employed by his great teacher,Schopenhauer: 'A happy life is impossible: the highest that man canattain to is a heroic one. He leads it who, in whatever shape or form,struggles against great diffi culties for something that is to the benefitC ln Fa ust, Part I Scene 3.153

Untimely Meditationsof all and in the end is victorious, but who is ill-rewarded ' for it or notrewarded at all. Then, when he has done, he is turned to stone, likethe prince in Gozzi's Re coroo, but stands in a noble posture and withgenerous gestures. He is remembered and is celebrated as a hero;his will, mortified a whole life long by effort and labour, ill successand the world's ingratitude, is extinguished in Nirvana.'* Such aheroic life, to be sure, together with the mortification accomplishedin it, corresponds least of all to the paltry conception of those whomake the most noise about it, celebrate festivals to the memory ofgreat men, and believe that great men are great in the same way asthey are little, as it were through a gift and for their own satisfactionor by a mechanical operation and in blind obedience to this innercompulsion: so that he who has not received this gift, or does not feelthis compulsion, has the same right to be little as the other has to begreat. But being gifted or being compelled are contemptible wordsdesigned to enable one to ignore an inner admonition, slanders onhim who has paid heed to this admonition, that is to say on the greatman; he least of all lets himself be given gijts or be compelled heknows as well as any little man how to take life easily and how soft thebed is on which he could lie down ifhis attitude towards himself andhis fellow men were that of the majority: for the objective of allhuman arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to ceaseto be aware oflife. Why does he desire the oppositeto be aware preciselyoflife, that is to say to suffer from life - so strongly? Because herealizes that he is in danger of being cheated out of himself, and thata kind of agreement exists to kidnap him out of his own cave. Thenhe bestirs himself, pricks up his ears, and resolves: '1 will remain myown!' It is a dreadful resolve; only gradually does he grasp that fact.For now he will have to descend into the depths of existence with astring of curious questions on his lips: why do I live? what lesson haveI to learn from life? how have I become what I am and why do I sufferfrom being what I am? He torments himself, and sees how noone else does as he does, but how the hands of his fellow men are,rather, passionately stretched out to the fantastic events portrayed inthe theatre of politics, or how they strut about in a hundred masquerades,as youths, men, greybeards, fathers, citizens, priests, officials,merchants, mindful solely of their collective comedy and*From Schopenhauer's Parerga und Paralipomena: 'Nachtrage zur Lehre von derBt:iahung und Verneinung des Willens zum Leben'.154

Schopenhauer as educatornot at all of themselves. To the question: 'To what end do you live?'they would all quickly reply with pride: 'To become a good citizen, orscholar, or statesman' - and yet they are something that can neverbecome something else, and why are they precisely this? And not,alas, something better? He who regards his life as no ore than apoint in the evolution of a race or of a state or of a science; and thusregards himself as belonging wholly to the history of becoming,has not understood the lesson set him by existence and will have tolearn it over again . This eternal becoming is a lying puppet-playin beholding which man forgets himself, the actual distraction whichdisperses the individual to the four winds, the endless stupid gamewhich the great child, time, plays before us and with us. That heroismof truthfulness consists in one day ceasing to be the toy it plays with.In becoming, everything is hollow, deceptive, shallow and worthy ofour contempt; the enigma which man is to resolve he can resolveonly in being, in being thus and not othelWise, in the imperishable.Now he starts to test how deeply he is entwined with becoming, howdeeply with being - a tremendous task rises before his soul: to destroyall that is becoming, to bring to light all that is false in things.He too wants to know everything, but not, in the way the Goetheanman does, for the sake of a noble pliability, to preserve himself andto take delight in the multiplicity of things; he himself is his first sacrificeto himself. The heroic human being despises his happinessand his unhappiness, his virtues and vices, and in general themeasuring of things by the standard of himself; he hopes for nothingmore from himself and in all things he wants to see down to thisdepth of hopelessness. His strength lies in forgetting himself; and ifhe does think of himself he measures the distance between himselfand his lofty goal and seems to see behind and beneath him only aninsignificant heap of dross. The thinkers of old sought happinessand truth with all their might - and what has to be sought shall neverbe found, says nature's evil principle. But for him who seeks untruthin everything and voluntarily allies himself with unhappiness a miracleof disappointment of a different sort has perhaps been prepared:something inexpressible of which happiness and truth are onlyidolatrous counterfeits approaches him, the earth loses its gravity,the events and powers of the earth become dreamlike, transfigurationspreads itself about him as on summer evenings. To him hosees these things it is as though he were just beginning to awaken andwhat is playing about him is only the clouds of a vanishing dream.These too will at some time be wafted away: then it will be day. -155

Untimely Meditations5But I have undertaken to exhibit my experience ofSchopenhauer asan educator , and it is thus not nearly sufficient for me to paint, and topaint imperfectly, that ideal man who, as his Platonic ideal as it were,holds sway in and around him. The hardest task still remains: to sayhow a new circle of duties may be derived from this ideal and howone can proceed towards so extravagant a goal through a practicalactivity - in short, to demonstrate that this ideal educates. One mightotherwise think it nothing but an intoxicating vision granted us onlyfor moments at a time, and then leaving us all the more painfully inthe lurch and prey to an even deeper dissatisfaction. It is also indisputablethat that is how we begin our association with this ideal - witha sudden contrast of light and darkness, intoxication and nausea -and that this is a repetition of an experience which is as old as idealsthemselves. But we ought not to stand long in the doorway , we oughtsoon to get through the beginning. And so we have seriously to askthe definite question: is it possible to bringOthat incredibly lofty goalso close to us that it educates us while it draws us aloft? - thatGoethe's mighty words may not be fulfilled in us: 'Man is born to alimited situation; he is able to understand simple, accessible,definite goals, and he accustoms himself to employing the meansthat happen to lie close at hand; but as soon as he oversteps his limitshe knows neither what he wants nor what he ought to do, and it is allone whether he is distracted by the multiplicity of the things heencounters or whether his head is turned by their loftiness anddignity. It is always a misfortune when he is induced to strive aftersomething which he cannot proceed towards through self-initiatedand regulated activity. '* The Schopenhauerean man appearsto be singularly open to this objection: his dignity and loftinesscan only turn our heads and thereby exclude us from any participationin the world of action; coherent duties, the even flow oflife are gone. One man perhaps at last accustoms himself to livingdiscontentedly according to two different rules of conduct, that isto say in conflict with himself, uncertain of how to act and thereforedaily more feeble and unfruitful : while another may evenrenounce all action on principle and almost cease to pay anyattention to the actions of others. The dangers are always greatwhen things are made too difficult for a man and when he is in-From Wilhelm. Meisters Leltrjahre, Book 6, 'Confession of a Beautiful Soul'.156

Sclwpenhauer as educatorcapable of fu lfilling any duties at all; stronger natures can bedestroyed by it, the weaker, more numerous natures decline into areflective laziness and in the end forfeit through laziness eventheir ability to reflect.N ow, in face of such objections I am willing to concede that in preciselythis respect our ork has hardly begun and that from my ownexperience I am sure of only one thing: that from that ideal image itis possible to fasten upon ourselves a chain of fulfillable duties, andthat some of us already feel the weight of this chain. But before I canconscientiously reduce this new circle of duties to a formula I mustoffer the following preliminary observations.More profoundly feeling people have at all times felt sympathy forthe animals because they suffer from life and yet do not possess thepower to turn the thorn of suffering against itself and to understandtheir existence metaphysically; one is, indeed, profoundlyindignant at the sight of senseless suffering. That is why there hasarisen in more than one part of the earth the supposition that thebodies of animals contain the guilt-laden souls of men, so that thissuffering which at first sight arouses indignation on account of itssenselessness acquires meaning and significance as punishment andatonement before the seat of eternal justice. And it is, truly, a harshpunishment thus to live as an animal, beset by hunger and desire yetincapable of any kind of reflection on the nature of this life; and noharder fate can be thought of than that of the beast of prey pursuedthrough the wilderness by the most gnawing torment" rarely satisfiedand even then in such a way that satisfaction is purchased only withthe pain of lascerating combat with other animals or through inordinategreed and nauseating satiety. To hang on to life madly andblindly, with no higher aim than to hang on to it; not to know that orwhy one is being so heavily punished but, with the stupidity of a fearfuldesire, to thirst after precisely this punishment as though afterhappiness - that is what it means to be an animal; and if all naturepresses towards man, it thereby intimates that man is necessary forthe redemption of nature from the curse of the life of the animal, andthat in him existence at last holds up before itself a mirror in whichlife appears no longer senseless but in its metaphysical significance.Yet let us reflect: where does the animal cease, where does manbegin? - man, who is nature's sole concern! As long as anyonedesires life as he desires happiness he has not yet raised his eyesabove the horizon of the animal, for he only desires more consciouslywhat the animal seeks through blind impulse. But that is157

Untimely Meditationswhat we all do fo r the greater part of our lives: usually we fail toemerge out of animality, we ourselves are the animals whose sufferingseems to be senseless.But there are moments when we realize this : then the clouds are rentasunder, and we see that, in common with all nature, we are pressingtowards man as toward s something that stands high above us. In thissudden illumination we gaze around us and behind us with a shudder:we behold the more subtle beasts of prey and there we are in themidst of them. The tremendous coming and going of men on thegreat wilderness of the earth. their fo unding of cities and states, theirwars, their restless assembling and scattering again, their confusedmingling, mutual imitation, mutual outwitting and down treading,their wailing in distress, their howls of joy in victory - all this is a continuationof animality: as though man was to be deliberately retrogressedand defrauded of his metaphysical disposition, indeed asthough nature, after having desired and worked at man fo r so long,now drew back from him in fear and preferred to return to theunconsciousness of instinct. Nature i eeds knowledge and it isterrified of the knowledge it has need of; and so the flame flickersrestlessly back and forth as though afraid of itself and seizes upon athousand things before it seizes upon that on account of whichnature needs knowledge at all. In individual moments we all knowhow the most elaborate arrangements of our life are made only so asto flee from the tasks we actually ought to be performing, how wewould like to hide our head somewhere as though our hundredeyedconscience could not find us out there, how we hasten to giveour heart to the state, to money-making, to sociability or sciencemerely so as no longer to possess it ourselves, how we labour at ourdaily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessar;y to sustainour life because to us it is even more necessary not to haveleisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is inflight from himself; universal too is the shy concealment of this hastebecause everyone wants to seem content and would" like to deceivemore sharp-eyed observers as to the wretchedness he feels; and alsouniversal is the need for new tinkling word-bells to hang upon lifeand so bestow upon it an air of noisy festivity. Everyone is familiarwith the strange condition in which unpleasant memories suddenlyassert themselves and we then make great efforts, through vehementnoise and gestures, to banish them from our minds: but the noiseand gestures which are going on everywhere reveal that we are all insuch a condition all the time, that we live in fear of memory and of158

Sdwpenhauer as educatorturning inward. But what is it that assails us so frequently, what is thegnat that will not let us sleep? There are spirits all around us, everymoment of our life wants to say something to us, but we refuse to listento these spirit-voices. We are afraid that when we are alone and quietsomething will be whispered into our ear, and so we-hate quietnessand deafen ourselves with sociability.Now and again, as already said, we realize all this, and are amazedat all this vertiginous fear and haste and at the whole dreamlike conditionin which we live, which seems to have a horror of awakeningand dreams the more vividly and restlessly the closer it is to thisawakening. But we fe el at the same time that we are too weak toendure those moments of profoundest contemplation for very longand that we are not the mankind towards which all nature presses forits redemption: it is already much that we should raise our headabove the water at all, even if only a little, and observe what stream itis in which we are so deeply immersed. And even this momentaryemerging and awakening is not achieved through our own power,we have to be lifted up - and who are they who lift us?They are those true men, those who are no longer animal, the philosophers,artists and saints; nature, which never makes a leap, has made its oneleap in creating them, and a leap of joy moreover, for nature thenfeels that for the first time it has reached its goal - where it realizes ithas to unlearn having goals and that it has played the game of lifeand becoming with too high stakes. This knowledge transfiguresnature, and a gentle evening-weariness, that which men call 'beauty',reposes upon its face. That which it now utters with this transfiguredcountenance is the great enlightenment as to the character of existence;and the supreme wish that mortals can wish is lastingly and withopen ears to participate in this enlightenment. If we think of howmuch Schopenhauer for instance must have heard during the courseof his life, then we might well say to ourselves afterwards: 'Alas, yourdeaf ears, your dull head, your flickering understanding, yourshrivelled heart, all that I call mine, how I despise you! Not to be ableto fly, only to flutter! To see what is above you but not to be able toreach it! To know the way that leads to the immeasurable open prospectof the philosopher, and almost to set fo ot on it, but after a fewsteps to stagger back! And if that greatest of all wishes were fu lfilledfo r only a day, how gladly one would exchange for it all the rest oflife! To climb as high into the pure icy Alpine air as a philosopherever climbed, up to where all the mist and obscurity cease and wherethe fundamental constitution of things speaks in a voice rough and159

1'[...Untimely Meditationsrigid but ineluctably comprehensible! Merely to thin k of this makesthe soul infinitely solitary; if its wish were fulfilled, however, if itsglance once fell upon things straight and bright as a beam oflight, ifshame, fear and desire died awaywhat word could then describethe condition it would be in, that new and enigmatic animationwithout agitation with which it would, like the soul ofSchopenhauer,lie extended over the tremendous hieroglyphics of existence, overthe petrified doctrine of becoming, not as the darkness of night butas the glowing light of dawn streaming out over all the world. Andwhat a fate, on the other hand, to sense sufficient of the certainty andhappiness of the philosopher to be able to fe el the whole uncertaintyand unhappiness of the non-philosopher, of him who desireswithout hope! To know oneself a fruit on the tree which can neverbecome ripe because one;s too much in the shadow, and at the sametime to see close at hand the sunshine that one lacks!'There is enough torment here to make a man who is mis-talentedin such a way malicious and envious, if he is capable of malice andenvy at all; probably, however, he will atAast turn his soul in anotherdirection so that it shall not consume itself in vain longing - and nowhe will discover a new circle of duties.Here 1 have arrived at an answer to the question whether it is possibleto pursue the great ideal of the Schopenhauerean man by meansof a practical activity. One thing above all is certain: these new dutiesare not the duties of a solitary; on the contrary, they set one in themidst of a mighty community held together, not by external fo rmsand regulations, but by a fu ndamental idea. It is the fu ndamentalidea of culture, insofar as it sets for each one of us but one task: to promotethe production of the philosophe0 the artist and the saint within us and withoutus and thereby to work at the perfecting of nature. For, as nature needs thephilosopher, so does it need the artist, for the achievement of ametaphysical goal, that of its own self-enlightenment, so that it mayat last behold as a clear and finished picture that which it could seeonly obscurely in the agitation of its evolutionfo r the end, that is tosay, of self-knowledge. It was Goethe who declared, in an arrogantbut profound assertion, that nature's experiments are of value onlywhen the artist finally comes to comprehend its stammerings, goesout to meet it halfway, and gives expression to what all these experimentsare really about. 'I have often said', he once exclaimed, 'and 1shall often repeat, that the causa finalis of the activities of men and theworld is dramatic poetry. For the stuff is of absolutely no other use.'And so nature at last needs the saint, in whom the ego is completely160

Sclwpenhauer as educatormelted away and whose life of suffering is no longer felt as his ownlife - or is hardly so fe lt - but as a profound feeling of oneness andidentity with all living things: the saint in whom there appears thatmiracle of transformation which the game of becoming never hitsupon, that final and supreme becoming-human after which allnature presses and urges for its redemption from itself. It is incontestablethat we are all related and allied to the saint, just as we arerelated to the philosopher and artist; there are moments and as itwere bright sparks of the fire of love in whose light we cease tounderstand the word 'I', there lies something beyond our beingwhich at these moments moves across into it, and we are thuspossessed of a heartfelt longing for bridges between here and there.I t is true that, as we usually are, we can contribute nothing to the productionof the man of redemption: that is why we hate ourselves as weusually are, and it is this hatred which is the root of that pessimismwhich Schopenhauer had again to teach our age, though it has existedfor as long as the longing for culture has existed. Its root, not itsflower; its bottom floor, so to speak, not its roof; the commencementof its course, not its goal: for at some time or other we shall have tolearn to hate something else, something more universal, and ceaseto hate our own individuality and its wretched limitations,changeableness and restlessness: it will be in that elevated conditionin which we shall also love something else, something we are nowunable to love. Only when, in our present or in some future incarnation,we ourselves have been taken into that exalted - order ofphilosophers, artists and saints, shall we also be given a new goal forour love and hate - in the meantime we have our task and our circleof duties, our hate and our love. For we know what culture is.Applied to the Schopenhauerean man, it demands that we prepareand promote his repeated production by getting to know what isinimical to it and removing it - in short, that we unwearyingly combatthat which would deprive us of the supreme fulfilment of ourexistence by preventing us from becoming such Schopenhauereanmen ourselves. -6Sometimes it is harder to accede to a thing than it is to see its truth;and that is how most people may feel when they reflect on the proposition:'Mankind must work continually at the production ofindividual great men that and nothing else is its task.' How much161

Schopenhauer as educatorception and power, and who in his completeness is at one withnature, the judge and evaluator of things.' It is hard to create in anyonethis condition of intrepid self-knowledge because it is impossibleto teach love; for it is love alone that can bestow on the soul,not only a clear, discriminating and self-contemptuous view of itself,but also the desire to look beyond itself and to seek with all its mightfor a higher self as yet still concealed from it. Thus only he who hasattached his heart to some great man receives thereby the fi1'St consecrationto cultu're; the sign of that consecration is that one isashamed of oneself without any accompanying feeling of distress,that one comes to hate one's own narrowness and shrivellednature, that one has a feeling of sympathy for the genius whoagain and again drags himself up out of our dryness and apathyand the same fe eling in anticipation for all those who are stillstruggling and evolving, with the profoundest conviction thatalmost everywhere we encounter nature pressing towards manand again and again failing to achieve him, yet everywhere succeedingin producing the most marvellous beginnings, individualtraits and forms: so that the men we live among resemble a fieldover which is scattered the most precious fragments of sculpturewhere everything calls to us: come, assist, complete, bring togetherwhat belongs together, we have an immeasurable longingto become whole.This sum of inner states is, I said, the first consecration toculture; I now have to describe the effects of the second consecration,and I realize that here my task is more difficult. For now wehave to make the transition from the inward event to an assessmentof the outward event; the eye has to be directed outwards soas to rediscover in the great world of action that desire_ for cultureit recognized in the experiences of the first stage just described;the individual has to employ his own wrestling and longing asthe alphabet by means of which he can now read off the aspirationsof mankind as a whole. But he may not halt even here;from this stage he has to climb up to a yet higher one; culturedemands of him, not only inward experience, not only an assessmentof the outward world that streams all around him, but finallyand above all . an act, that is to say a struggle on behalf ofculture and hostility towards those influences, habits, laws, institutionsin which he fails to recognize his goal: which is the productionof the genius.He who is capable of raising himself to this second stage is snuckfirst of all by how extraordinarily sjlane and -rare knowledge of this goal is,

Untimely Meditationshow universal, by contrast, cultural endeavour is and what anunspeakable amount of energy is expended in its service. One asksoneself in amazement: is such knowledge perhaps completelyunnecessary? Does nature attain its goal even when the m·ajoritymisunderstand the objective of their endeavours? He who hasaccustomed himself to thinking highly of the unconscious purposefulnessof nature will perhaps experience no difficulty in replying:'Yes, that is how it is! Men may reflect and argue about their ultimategoal as much as they like, in the obscure impulse in the depths ofthem they are well aware of the rightful path.' To be able to contradictthis, one must have experienced certain things; but he whoreally is convinced that the goal of culture is to promote the productionof true human beings and nothing else, and then sees howeven now, with all our expenditure and pomp of culture, the productionof such human beings is hardly to be distinguished fromcruelty to animals protracted into the human world, will think it verynecessary finally to replace that 'obscure impulse' with a consciouswilling. And he will think so especiall)t for a second reason: that itshall cease to be possible for that drive which does not know its goal,that celebrated obscure impulse, to be employed for quite differentobjectives and directed on to paths which can never lead to the supremegoal, the production of the genius. For there exists a speciesof misemployed and appropriated culture you have only to look aroundyou! And precisely those forces at present most actively engaged inpromoting culture do so for reasons they reserve to themselves andnot out of pure disinterestedness.Among these forces is, first of all, the greed of the money-makers, whichrequires the assistance of culture and by way of thanks assists culturein return, but at the same time, of course, would like to dictate itsstandards and objectives. It is from this quarter that there comes thatfavourite proposition and chain of conclusions which goes somethinglike this: as much knowledge and education as possible,therefore as much demand as possible, therefore as much productionas possible, therefore as much happiness and profit as possible- thatis the seductive formula. Education would be defined by itsadherents as the insight by means of which, through demand and its.satisfaction, one becomes time-bound through and through but atthe same time best acquires all the ways and means of makingmoney as easily as possible. The goal would then be to create asmany current human beings as possible, in the sense in which onespeaks of a coin as being current; and, according to this conception,164

Schopenhauer as educatorthe more of these current human beings it possesses the happier anation will be. Thus the sole intention behind our moderneducational institutions should be to assist everyone to becomecurrent to the extent that lies in his nature, to educate everyone insuch a way that they can employ the degree of knowledge and learningof which they are capable for the accumulation of the greatest possibleamount of happiness and profit. What is demanded here is that theindividual must be able, with the aid of this general education, exactlyto assess himself with regard to what he has a right to demand oflife;and it is asserted, finally, that there exists a natural and necessaryconnection between 'intelligence and property', between 'wealthand culture', more, that this connection is a moral necessity. Herethere is a hatred of any kind of education that makes one a solitary,that proposes goals that transcend money and money-making, thattakes a long time; such more serious forms of education are usuallydisparaged as 'refined egoism' and as 'immoral cultural Epicureanism'.Precisely the opposite of this is, of course, held in esteem by themorality that here counts as valid: namely, a speedy education sothat one may quickly become a money-earning being, yet at thesame time an education sufficiently thorough to enable one to earn avery great deal of money. A man is allowed only as much culture as itis in the interest of general money-making and world commerce heshould possess, but this amount is likewise demanded of him. Inshort: 'Man has a claim to earthly happiness and for that reason heneeds education, but only for that reason!'Secondly, there is the greed of the state, which likewise desires thegreatest possible dissemination and universalization of culture andhas in its hands the most effective instruments for satisfying thisdesire. Presupposing it knows itself sufficiently strong to be able, notonly to unchain energies, but at the right time also to yoke them, presupposingits foundations are sufficiently broad and secure to sustainthe whole educational structure, then the dissemination ofeducation among its citizens can only be to its advantage in its competitionwith other states. Whenever one now speaks of the 'culturalstate', one sees it as facing the task of releasing the spiritual energiesof a generation to the extent that will serve the interests of existinginstitutions: but only to this extent; as a forest river is partially divertedwith dams and breakwaters so as to operate a mill with thediminished driving-power thus produced - while the river's fulldriving-power would rather endanger the mill than operate it. Thisreleasing of energies is at the same time, and much more, an165

Untimely MeditationsI:L11enchaining of them. One has only to recall what Christianity hasgradually become through the greed of the state. Christianity is certainlyone of the purest revelations of the impulse to culture andespecially of the impulse to the ever-renewed production of thesaint; but since it has been employed in a hundred ways to propel themills of state power it has gradually become sick to the very marrow,hypocritical and untruthful, and degenerated into a contradiction ofits original goal. Even the most recent event in its history, the GermanReformation, would have been no more than a sudden and quicklyextinguished flare-up if it had not stolen fresh fuel from the fires ofconflict between the states.Thirdly, culture is promoted by all those who are conscious ofpossessing an ugly or boring content and want to conceal the fact withso-called 'beautifu1fonn' . Under the presupposition that what is insideis usually judged by what is outside, the observer is to be constrainedto a false assessment of the content through externalities, throughwords, gestures, decoration, display, ceremoniousness. It sometimesseems to me that modern men b.l)re one another to a boundlessextent and that they finally feel the need to make themselvesinteresting with the aid of all the arts. They have themselves servedup by their artists as sharp and pungent repasts; they soak themselvesin all the spices of the Orient and the Occident, and to be sure!they now smell very interesting, smelling as they do of all the Orientand the Occident. Now they are suitably prepared for satisfyingevery taste; and everyone shall have something, whether his inclinationbe for the fresh-smelling or foul-smelling, for the sublimatedor for peasant coarseness, for the Greek or the Chinese, for tragediesor fo r dramatized lewdness. The most celebrated chefs for thesemodern men who want to be interesting and interested at any costare, as is well known, to be found among the French, the worstamong the Germans. At bottom this fact is more consoling to the latterthan to the former, and let us not hold it against the French in theleast if they mock at us precisely because we are uninteresting andlack elegance and if, when individual Germans desire to be suaveand elegant, it reminds them of the Indian who wanted a ringthrough his nose and demanded to be tattoQed.- And here I shall make a digression. Since the late war withFrance there have been many changes in Germany and it is clear thatthe return to peace has also brought with it certain new demands inregard to German culture. The war was for many their first visit tothe more elegant half of the world; how unprejudiced the victor now166

---, ISclwpenhauer as educatorappears when he does not disdain to acquire a little culture from thevanquished! Handicrafts especially are repeatedly invited to competewith the more cultivated neighbour, the fitting-out of the Gennanhouse is to be made similar to that of the French, even the' Gennanlanguage is, through the foundation of an academy after the Frenchmodel, to acquire 'sound taste' and rid itself of the questionableinfluence supposedly exerted upon it by Goethea view expressedquite recently by the Berlin academician Dubois-Reymond. Ourtheatres have for long been quietly and with due decorum aspiringtowards the same goal, even the elegant Gennan scholar has alreadybeen invented: so that we can expect that everything that has up tonow refused to conform to the law of elegance - German music,tragedy and philosophy - will henceforth be set aside as un-Gennan.- But truly, Gennan culture would not be worth lifting a finger for ifthe Gennan understood by the culture he still lacks and is to aspireto, nothing but arts and artifices for prettifying life, including all theingenuities of the dancing-master and the wallpaper-hanger, ifin thematter of language too he was concerned only with academicallyapproved rules and a certain general polish. The late war and selfcomparisonwith the French seem, however, hardly to have evokedany higher pretentions than these; on the contrary, I am oftenassailed by the suspicion that the Gennan now wants violently to castoff those ancient obligations which his wonderful talentedness andthe profound seriousness of his nature imposed upon him. He prefersto play monkey-tricks and to learn the arts and manners thatmake life entertaining. But there can be no more grievous slanderagainst the German spirit than to treat it as though it were wax to bemoulded in any way one pleases and thus also into a semblance ofelegance. And if it is unfortunately true that a good proportion of theGerman nation is only too willing to be-moulded and kneaded intoshape in this fashion, then one has to reiterate until the words areheeded: it no longer dwells in you, that ancient German naturewhich, though hard, austere and full of resistance, is so as the mostprecious of materials, upon which only the greatest of sculptors arepennitted to work because they alone are worthy of it. What youhave in you, on the contrary, is soft, pulpy matter; make with it whatyou will, form it into elegant dolls and interesting idols - here too thewords of Richard Wagner will hold true: 'The German is angular andclumsy when he affects polish and politeness; but he is sublime andsuperior to everyone when he catches fire.' And the elegant haveevery reason to beware of this German fire, or one day it may con-167

Untimely Meditationssume them together with all their dolls and idols of wax. - Onecould, to be sure, derive that inclination for 'beautiful form' now gettingthe upper hand in Germany from other and deeper sources:from the prevailing haste, from the breathless grasping at everymoment, from the precipitation that plucks all things from thebough too soon, from the race and pursuit that nowadays carvesfurrows in men's faces and as it were covers all they do with tattoos.As though a potion that prevents them from catching their breathwere working within them, they storm ahead with indecent anxietyas the harassed slaves of the moment, opinion and fashion: so thatthe lack of dignity and decorum is indeed all too painfully evidentand a deceitful elegance required to mask the 'sickness of thisundignified haste. For that is how the fashionable greed for beautifulform is connected with the ugly content of contemporary man: theformer is intended to conceal, the latter to be concealed. To becultivated means: to hide from oneself how wretched and base oneis, how rapacious in going for what one wants, hw insatiable inheaping it up, how shameless and selfislt in enjoying it. When I havein the past pointed out to someone that a German culture does notexist, more than once I have received the reply: 'But that is quitenatural, for hitherto the Germans have been too poor and modest.Just let our compatriots become rich and self-confident, and thenthey will possess a culture too!' Though belief may make blessed, thiskind of belief has the opposite effect on me, because I feel that theGerman culture which is here believed to possess a future - a cultureof wealth, polish and feigned gentility - is the most hostile antithesisof the German culture in which I believe. Certainly, he who has tolive among Germans suffers greatly from the notorious greyness oftheir life and thought, from their formlessness, their stupidity anddull-mindedness, their coarseness in more delicate affairs, evenmore from their envy and a certain secretiveness and uncleanlinessin their character; he is pained and offended by their rooted joy inwhat is false and ungenuine, in bad imitations, in the translation ofgood foreign things into bad native ones: now, however, that one hasin addition, and as the most painful experience of all, their feverishrestlessness, their search for success and profit, their overestimationof the moment, one is limitlessly indignant to think that all thesemaladies and weaknesses are on principle never to be cured but onlypainted over - with a 'culture of interesting form'! And this in thecase of a nation which produced Schopenhauer and Wagner! And oughtto do so often again! Or are we desperately deceiving ourselves? Do168

Schopenhauer as educatorthose named perhaps no longer offer any guarantee whatever thatsuch energies as theirs still exist in the German mind and spirit? Arethey themselves exceptions, as it were the last tendrils of qualitiesfo rmerly regarded as German? I admit I am here nonplussed, andthus I return to the path of more general reflection from which myanxious doubts often seek to divert me. I have not yet numbered allthose powers which, though they demand culture, do so withoutrecognizing the goal of culture, the production of the genius; threehave been named: the greed of the money-makers, the greed of thestate, and the greed of all those who have reason to disguise themselvesbehind form. I name fourthly the greed of the sciences and thecharacteristic qualities of their servants, the men of learning.Science is related to wisdom as virtuousness is related to holiness;it is cold and dry, it has not love and knows nothing of a deep feelingof inadequacy and longing. It is as useful to itself as it is hannfulto its servants, insofar as it transfers its own character to them andthereby ossifies their humanity. As long as what is meant by cultureis essentially the promotion of science, culture will pass thegreat suffering human being by with pitiless coldness, because sciencesees everywhere only problems of knowledge and becausewithin the world of the sciences suffering is really something improperand incomprehensible, thus at best only one more problem.But if one accustoms oneself to translating every experience into adialectical question-and-answer game and into an affair purely ofthe head, it is astonishing in how short a time such an occupationwill wither a man up, how soon he becomes almost nothing butbones. Everyone knows and perceives this fact: so how is it nonethelesspossible for young men not to start back at the sight of suchskeletons, but on the contrary again and again blindly to give themselvesover to the sciences without restraint or selectivity? It can hardlyoriginate in any supposed 'desire fo r truth': for how could there existany desire at all for cold, pure, inconsequential knowledge! What itreally is that impels the servants of science is only too obvious to theunprejudiced eye: and it is very advisable to examine and dissect themen of learning themselves for once, since they for their part arequite accustomed to laying bold hands on everything in the world,even the most venerable things, and taking them to pieces. If I am tospeak out, I would say this: the man of learning consists of a confusednetwork of very various impulses and stimuli, he is analtogether impure metal. First of all there is a strong and ever moreintense curiosity, the search for adventures in the domain of169

Untimely Meditationsknowledge, the constant stimulation exercised by the new and rarein contrast to the old and tedious. Then there is a certain drive todialectical investigation, the huntsman's joy in following the sly fox'spath in the realm of thought, so that it is not really truth that issought but the seeking itself, and the main pleasure consists in thecunning tracking, encircling, and correct killing. Now add to this theimpulse to contradiction, the personality wanting to be aware ofitself and to make itself felt in opposition to all others; the strugglebecomes a pleasure and the goal is personal victory, the struggle fortruth being only a pretext. Then, the man of learning is to a greatextent also motivated to the discovery of certain 'truths', motivatedthat is by his subjection to certain ruling persons, castes, opinions,churches, governments: he feels it is to his advantage to bring 'truth'over to their side. The following qualities are also prominently displayedin the man of learning, less regularly than the previous onesyet frequently enough. Firstly, probity and a sense for simplicity,very worthy things provided they are something more than clumsinessand lack of practice in dissimulatien, for which, after all, a certainamount of wit is needed. Indeed, wherever wit and dexterity arestrikingly in evidence, one should be a little on one's guard andreserve one's judgment as to the uprightness of character of the personpossessing them. On the other hand, this probity is for the most partoflittle worth and seldom fruitful even in the cause of science, sinceit is wholly tied to convention and usually tell$ the truth only in simplethings or in adiaphoris; for in these cases laziness finds it easier to tellthe truth than to keep silent about it. And because everything newmakes it necessary to relearn, this probity will always, in case of need,revere the old opinion and reproach the innovator with a lack of sensusrecti. * It certainly resisted the teachings of Copernicus because in thiscase it had appearance and convention on its side. The hatred ofphilosophy not at all uncommon among men oflearning is above allhatred of the long chains of conclusions and the artificiality of theproofs. At bottom, indeed, every generation of men of learning hasan unconscious canon of permitted sagacity; whatever goes beyond itis called into question and all but employed to cast suspicion on theprobity of its propounder.Secondly, sharpsightedness fo r thingsclose up, combined with great myopia for distant things and forwhat is universal. His field of vision is usually very small and he hasto hold his eyes close to the object. If the man oflearning wants to go*sensus recti: sense of what is right170

--:Sclwpenhauer as educatorfrom one point he has just subjected to scrutiny to another, he has tomove his whole seeing-apparatus to this new point. He dissects a pictureinto little patches, like one who employs opera-glasses to viewthe stage and then has a sight now of a head, now of a piece of clothing,but never of anything whole. He never gets to see- these patchesjoined together, his perception of how they are connected is only theresult of a conclusion, and thus he has no very strong conception ofanything universal. Because he is incapable of viewing a piece ofwriting as a whole, for example, he judges it by a few passages or sentencesor errors; he would be tempted to assert that an oil-painting isa disorderly heap of blots. - Thirdly, the sobriety and conventionalityof his nature in its likes and dislikes. This quality leads himto take an especial pleasure in history, insofar as he can trace themotives of men of the past in accordance with the motives he himselfknows of. A mole-tunnel is the right place for a mole. He is secureagainst any artificial or extravagant hypotheses; if he sticks at it, hewill dig out all the commonplace motives that inform the past,because he feels himself to be of the same commonplace species. Forprecisely that reason, of course, he is usually incapable ofunderstanding or appreciating what is rare, great and uncommon,that is to say what is essential and vital, in the past. - Founhly,poverty of feeling and aridity. It makes him capable even of vivisection.He has no inkling of the suffering which knowledge oftenbrings with it, and therefore has no fear of venturing into regionswhere the hearts of others fail them. He is cold and may thereforeeasily seem cruel. He is also considered daring, but he is no moredaring than the mule, which is immune from vertigo. - Fifthly, lowself-esteem, amounting to modesty. Though confined to a wretchedlittle corner, they feel no sense of being sacrificed or wasted, theyoften seem to realize in the depths of them that they are not flyingbut creeping creatures. There is even something touching about thisquality. - Sixth, loyalty towards their teachers and leaders. They sincerelywant to help them, and they are well aware that they can besthelp them through discovery of truth. For their feeling towards themis one of gratitude, for it is only through them that they have gainedentry to the worthy halls of science, which they would never havebeen able to do on their own. He who nowadays knows how to openup a new field within which even the weakest heads can labour withsome degree of success becomes famous in a very shon time: sogreat is the crowd that at once presses in. Every one of these loyal andgrateful people is at the same time a misfortune for the master, to be171

Untimely Meditationssure, since they all imitate him and his defects then seem disproportionatelygreat and exaggerated because they appear in such tinyindividuals, while it is the opposite with his virtues, which are proportionatelydiminished when these same individuals display them.- Seventh, routine continuation along the path on to which thescholar has been pushed, a conception of truth determined byunthinking subjection to an acquired habit. Such natures are collectors,explainers, compilers of indices and herbariums; they studyand prowl around a single domain simply because it never occurs tothem that other domains exist. Their industriousness possessessomething of the tremendous stupidity of the force of gravity: whichis why they often achieve a great deal. - Eighth, flight from boredom.While the genuine thinker longs for nothing more than he longs forleisure, the ordinary scholar flees from it because he does not knowwhat to do with it. His consolation lies in books: that is to say, he listensto what someone else thinks, and in this way he lets himself be entertainedthroughout the long day. He chooses especially books whichin some way or other excite his persojal sympathies, which permithim, through the arousal oflike or dislike, to feel some emotion: thatis to say, books in which he himself, or his class, his political oraesthetic or even merely grammatical dogmas, are the subject of discussion;and if there is a field of study in which he specializes henever lacks means of entertainment or fly-swatters against boredom.Ninth, the motive of breadwinning, that is to say at bottom thecelebrated 'borborygm of an empty stomach'. Truth is served whenit is in a position directly to procure salaries and advancement, or atleast to win the favour of those who have bread and honours to distribute.But it is only this truth which is served: which is why a frontiercan be drawn between the profitable truths served by many and theunprofitable truths: only a very fewprinciple ingenii largitor venter*those who do not act on theare devotees of the latter. - Tenth,recognition by fellow scholars, fear of lacking their recognition; ararer and higher motive than the previous one, yet still very common.All the members of the guild keep a very jealous watch on oneanother, so that the truth upon which so much - bread, office, honours- depends shall be baptized with the name ofits real discoverer. Onegives punctual recognition to the discoverer of a truth, so that onecan demand it in return if one should happen to discover a truthoneself. Untruth, error, is resoundingly exploded, so that the number"ingenii largitor venter: "the stomach is the squanderer of talent", from the prologueto the Satires of Persius.172

Untimely Meditationsunfruitful - a consequence of how he comes into exi'stence! - and thathe harbours · a certain natural hatred for the fruitful man; which iswhy geniuses and scholars have at all times been at odds with oneanother. For the latter want to kill, dissect and understand nature,while the former want to augment nature with new living nature; andso there exists a conflict of activities and intentions. Wholly fortunateages did not need the scholar and did not know him, wholly morbidand listless ages have valued him as the highest and most venerableof men and accorded him the highest rank.How it stands with our own age in regard to health and sickness ­who is sufficient of a physician to know that! Certainly the scholar isin very many ways still too highly valued, which has a harmful effectespecially in all that concerns the evolving genius. The scholar hasno heart for the latter's distress; he speaks past him in a sharp, coldvoice, and all too soon he shrugs his shoulders as though over somethingqueer and strange for which he has neither time nor inclination.Knowledge of the goal of culture cannot be found in himeither. -tBut what have we gained at all from these reflections? Theknowledge that where today culture seems to be most vigorouslypursued nothing is known of this goal. However loudly the state mayproclaim its service to culture, it furthers culture in order to furtheritself and cannot conceive of a goal higher than its own welfare andcontinued existence. What the money-makers really want when theyceaselessly demand instruction and education is in the last resortprecisely money. When those who require form ascribe to themselvesthe actual labour on behalf of culture and opine, for instance, that allart belongs to them and must stand in the service of their requirements,what is quite clear is that by affirming culture they are merelyaffirming themselves: that they too are therefore still involved in amisunderstanding. Enough has been said of the scholarly man oflearning. And so we see that, however zealous all four powers .together may be in promoting their own interests with the aid of cul..lture, they are dull and without inspiration when these interests arenot involved. And that is why the conditions for the production ofthe genius have not improved in modern times, and why antipathy fororiginal men has increased to such an extent that Socrates could nothave lived among us and would in any event not have attainedseventy.N ow I recall the theme I developed in the third section: that ourwhole modern world has so little the appearance of permanence and174

Schopenhauer as educatorsolidity that one cannot prophesy an eternity even for its conceptionof culture. One has even to consider it probable that the next thousandyears will hit on a couple of new ideas which might make thehair of our contemporaries stand on end. The belief in a metaphysicalsignificance of culture would in the end not be as alarming as all that:but perhaps some of the inferences one might draw from it in respectof education and schooling might be.It demands, to be sure, a quite exceptional reflective capacity to beable to see beyond the educational institutions of the present tothose altogether strange and different institutions which mayperhaps be required only two or three generations hence. For whilethe efforts of our present-day higher educators serve to produceeither the scholar or the civil servant or the money-maker or thecultural philistine or, finally and more usually, a compound of themall, those institutions still to be invented would have a more difficulttask - though not one more difficult as such, since it would be in anyevent a more natural and to that extent also easier task; and can anythingbe more difficult than, for example, to train a young man to bea scholar, a thing contrary to nature by the methods at presentemployed? The difficulty, however, lies for mankind in relearningand envisaging a new goal; and it will cost an unspeakable amount ofeffort to exchange the fundamental idea behind our present systemof education, which has its roots in the Middle Ages and the ideal ofwhich is actually the production of the medieval scholar, for a newfundamental idea. It is already time we took a clear view of theseantitheses, for some generation has to commence the struggle ifanother is to win it. The individual who has grasped this new fundamentalidea of culture already finds himself at the crossroads; ifhetakes one path he will be welcome to his own age, it will not fail tooffer him laurels and rewards, powerful parties will bear him along,behind him there will be as many likeminded men as there will bebefore him, and when the man in the front line gives the word ofcommand it will re-echo through all the ranks. Here the first duty is'to fight in rank and file', the second to treat as enemies all whorefuse to fall in. The other path will offer him companions moreseldom, it will be more difficult, more tortuous, steeper; those whohave taken the first path will mock at him because his path is morewearisome and more often dangerous, and will try to entice himover to themselves. If the two paths happen to cross he will be mishandled,thrown aside or isolated by being cautiously walkedaround. Now, what does a cultural institution mean to these dis-175

Untimely Meditationssimilar wanderers on differing paths? The tremendous crowd thatpresses towards its goal along the first path understands by it therules and arrangements by means of which it itself is brought toorder and marches forward and through which all the solitary andrecalcitrant, all who are looking fo r higher and more remote goals,are excommunicated. For the smaller band on the other path aninstitution would have a quite different purpose to fulfil; it wants theprotection of a firm organization so as to prevent itself from beingwashed away and dispersed by that tremendous crowd, and so thatthe individuals that comprise it shall not die from prematureexhaustion or even become alienated from their great task. Theseindividuals have to complete their work - that is the sense of theirstaying together; and all who participate in the institution have,through continual purification and mutual support, to help to preparewithin themselves and around them for the birth of the geniusand the ripening of his work. Not a few, including some from theranks of the second- and third-rate talents, are destined for the taskof rendering this assistance and only tn subjection to such a destinydo they come to feel they have a duty and that their lives possesssignificance and a goal. Nowadays, however, it is precisely thesetalents who are diverted from their path and estranged from theirinstincts by the seductive voices of that modish 'culture'; the temptationis directed at their self-seeking impulses, at their weaknessesana vanities; it is to them precisely that the Zeitgeist whispersinsinuatingly: 'Follow me and do not go there! For there you are onlyservants, assistants, instruments, outshone by higher natures, neverhappy in being what you really are, pulled along in bonds, laid inchains, as slaves, indeed as automata; here with me you shall, as masters,enjoy your free personality, your talents may glitter by theirown light, you yourselves shall stand in the foremost rank, a tremendousfollowing will throng around you, and the public acclamationwill surely please you better than a noble assent bestowed from thecold ethereal heights of genius.' Even the best can succumb to suchenticements: and what is decisive here is hardly the rarity andstrength ofthe talent but rather the influence of a certain heroic basicdisposition and the degree of profound kinship and involvementwith the genius. For there do exist men who feel it as their own distresswhen they see the genius involved in toilsome struggle, or in dangerof destroying himself, or when the shortsighted greed of the state,the superficiality of the money-makers, the arid self-satisfaction ofthe scholars treat his work with indifference: and so I also hope there176

Schopenhauer as educatorare some who understand what I am trying to say with this exhibitioriof Schopenhauer's destiny and to what end, according to mynotion, Schopenhauer as educator is actually to educate. -7But leaving aside all thoughts of the distant future and a possiblerevolution in education: what would one have to desire and, ifnecessary, procure for an evolving philosopher at present to enablehim to enjoy any leisure at all and, in the most favourable case,achieve the kind of existence demonstrated by Schopenhauer - notan easy one, to be sure, but certainly possible? What would havealso to be devised to make it more probable that he would producesome effect on his contemporaries? And what obstacles would haveto be removed so that above all his example should produce its fulleffect, so that the philosopher should again educate philosophers?Here our reflections turn to practicalities and hard realities.Nature wants always to be of universal utility, but it does not knowhow to find the best and most suitable means and instruments fo rthis end: that is what it suffers from most, that is why nature ismelancholy. That nature has wanted to make existence explicableand significant to man through the production of the philosopherand the artist is, given nature's own desire fo r redemption, certain;yet how uncertain, how dull and feeble is the effect it generallyachieves with the philosophers and artists! How rarely does itachieve any effect at all! In the case of the philosopher especially itexperiences great difficulty in employing him in a universally usefulway; the means it employs seem to be only probing experiments andideas it has chanced upon, so that countless times it fails to achieveits objective and most philosophers fail to become universally useful.Nature seems to be bent on squandering; but it is squandering,not through a wanton luxuriousness, but through inexperience; itcan be assumed that if nature were human it would never cease to beannoyed at itself and its ineptitude. Nature propels the philosopherinto mankind like an arrow; it takes no aim but hopes the arrow willstick somewhere. But countless times it misses and is depressed atthe fact. Nature is just as extravagant in the domain of culture as it isin that of planting and sowing. It achieves its aims in a broad andponderous manner: and in doing so it sacrifices much too muchenergy. The artist is related to the lovers of his art as a heavy cannonis to a flock of sparrows. It is an act of simplicity to start an avalanche177

Untimely Meditationsso as to sweep away a little snow, to strike a man dead so as to kill a flyon his nose. The artist and the philosopher are evidence against thepurposiveness of nature as regards the means it employs, thoughthey are also first-rate evidence as to the wisdom of its purpose. Theystrike home at only a few, while they ought to strike home ateverybody and even these few are not struck with the force withwhich philosopher and artist launch their shot. It is sad to have toarrive at an assessment of art as cause so different from our assessmentof art as effect: how tremendous it is as cause, how paralysedand hollow as effect! The artist creates his work according to the willof nature for the good of other men: that is indisputable; nonethelesshe knows that none of these other men will ever love and understandhis work as he loves and understands it. Thus this greater degree oflove and understanding is, given the ineptitude of nature, requiredfor the production of a smaller degree; the greater and nobler isemployed as a means of producing the lesser and ignoble. Nature isa bad economist: its expenditure is much larger than the income itprocures; all its wealth notwithstandiljg, it is bound sooner or laterto ruin itself. It would have ordered its affairs more rationally if itshouse-rule were: small expenses and hundredfold profit; if, fo rexample, there were only a few artists, and these of weaker powers,but on the other hand numerous recipients of art of a stronger andmore mighty species than the species of the artist: so that the effect ofthe work of art in relation to its cause would be a hundredfoldmagnification. Or ought one not at least to expect that cause andeffect would be of equal force? but how little nature comes up tothis expectation! It often seems as though an artist and especially aphilosopher only chances to exist in his age, as a hermit or a wandererwho has lost his way and been left behind. Just think of the truegreatness of Schopenhauer - and then of how absurdly small hiseffect has been! No honourable man of our age can fail to feelashamed when he sees how Schopenhauer seems to belong to it onlyby accident and what fo rces and impotencies are to blame for thefact that his influence has been so minimal. First, fo r a long time, andto the everlasting shame of our era of literature, he had against himhis lack of readers; then, when he acquired them, he had against himthe inadequacy of his earliest advocates: even more, it seems to me,he had against him the obtuseness on the part of all modern menwith regard to books, which they are altogether unwilling to takeseriously; a new danger has gradually appeared in addition, derivingfrom the manifold attempts that have been made to adapt178

Sdwpenhauer as educatorSchopenhauer to this feeble age or even to employ him as an exoticand stimulating spice, as it were a kind of metaphysical pepper. So itis that, though he has gradually become famous and his name is, Ithink, already known to more people than Hegel's, he is nonethelessstill a hermit and has still produced no effect! The -honour of thisachievement belongs least of all to his actual literary opponents anddenigrators, firstly because there are few who can endure to readthem, secondly because they lead those who can endure to do sodirectly to Schopenhauer; for who would let a donkey-driver dissuadehim from mounting a handsome horse, no matter howextravagantly he extolled his donkey at the horse's expense?He who has recognized the unreason in the nature of this age,then, will have to thinkof means of rendering it a little assistance; histask, however, will be to make the free spirits and those who sufferprofoundly from our age acquainted with Schopenhauer, assemblethem together and through them to engender a current capable ofovercoming the ineptitude with which nature employs the philosopher.Such men will come to realize that the forces which luntthe effect of a great philosophy are the same as those which stand inthe way of the production of a philosopher; which is why they areentitled to regard it as their goal to prepare the way for the reproductionof Schopenhauer, that is to say of the philosophicalgenius. That which opposed the effect and propagation of his teachingfrom the first, however, that which in the end wants to vitiate anyrebirth of the philosopher with every means in its power, is, to speakbluntly, the perversity of contemporary human nature: which is whyall great human beings have to squander an incredible amount ofenergy in the course of their development merely to fight their waythrough this perversity in themselves. The world they now enter isshrouded in humbug; it does not have to be religious dogma, it canalso be such bogus concepts as 'progress', 'universal education','national', 'modern state', 'cultural struggle'; one can say, indeed,that all generalizing words now wear artificial and unnatural finery,so that a more enlightened posterity will reproach our age with beingto an unheard-of degree distorted and degenerate, however muchwe may boast of our 'health'. The beauty of antique vessels, saysSchopenhauer, arises from the fact that they express in so naive away what they are intended to be and to perform; and the sameapplies to all the other articles of the ancients: on beholding themone feels that, if nature produced vases, amphorae, lamps, tables,chairs, helmets, shields, armour and so forth, this is how they would179

Untimely Meditationslook. Conversely: whoever observes general modern ttitudes to art,state, religion, education - not to speak, fo r good reasons, of our'vessels' discovers in mankind a certain barbaric capriciousnessand intemperance of expression, and the genius is hampered mostof all in his development by the prevalence in his time of suchstrange concepts and fanciful requirements: these are the leadenpressures which, invisible and inexplicable, so often weigh down hishand when he sets it to the plough - so that, because even his supremeworks have had to fo rce their way up violently, they too tosome extent bear the traces of this violence.IfI now seek out the conditions with the assistance of which a bornphilosopher can in the most favourable case at least avoid beingcrushed by the perversity of our times just described, I notice somethingsingular: they are in part precisely the conditions under whichSchopenhauer himself on the whole grew up. There is no lack ofcontrary conditions, to be sure: the perversity of the age came fearfullyclose to him, for example, in the person of his vain andculturally pretentious mother. But dre proud, free, republicancharacter of his father as it were saved him from his mother and bestowedupon him the first thing a philosopher needs: inflexible andrugged manliness. This father of his was neither an official nor ascholar: he travelled a great deal with the boy in foreign countries -all of these things so many encouragements for one who was to studynot books but men, and revere not governments but truth. Helearned in good time to be indifferent to national narrownesses orextremely critical of them; he lived in England, France and Italy ashe did in his own country and felt not a little affinity with the spirit ofSpain. On the whole he did not regard it as an honour to have beenborn among Germans; and I do not know that he would have felt differentlyunder the new political dispensation. As is well known, heconsidered the purpose of the state to be to provide protectionagainst forces from without, protection against forces from within,and protection against the protectors, and that if any purpose wasinvented fo r it other than the provision of protection its true purposecould easily be imperilled -: that is why, to the horror of all so-calledliberals, he left his property to the survivors among the Prussiantroops whose comrades had fallen fighting for the preservation oforder in 1848. It will probably be increasingly the sign of spiritualsuperiority from now on if a man takes the state and his duties180

Schopenhauer as educatortowards it lightly; fo r he who has the furor philosophicus * within himwill already no longer have time fo r the furor politicust and will wiselyrefrain from reading the newspapers every day, let alone working fora political party: though he will not hesitate for a moment to be at hisplace when his fatherland experiences a real emergency. Every statein which anyone other than the statesman has to concern himselfwith politics is ill organized and deserves to perish by all thesepoliticians.Another great advantage Schopenhauer enj oyed was the fact thathe was not brought up destined from the first to be a scholar, butactually worked for a time, if with reluctance, in a merchant's officeand in any event breathed throughout his entire youth the freer air ofa great mercantile house. A scholar can never become a philosopher;fo r even Kant was unable to do so but, the inborn pressure of hisgenius notwithstanding, remained to the end as it were in a chrysalisstage. Hewho thinks that in saying this I am doing Kant an injusticedoes not know what a philosopher is, namely not merely a great thinkerbut also a real human being; and when did a schoar ever become areal human being? He who lets concepts, opinions, past events,books, step between himself and things - he, that is to say, who is inthe broadest sense born for history - will never have an immediateperception of things and will never be an immediately perceivedthing himself; but both these conditions belong together in thephilosopher, because most of the instruction he receives he has toacquire out of himself and because he serves himself as a reflectionand brief abstract of the whole world. If a man perceives himself bymeans of the opinions of others, it is no wonder ifhe sees in himselfnothing but the opinions of others! And that is how scholars are, liveand see. Schopenhauer, on the other hand, had the indescribablegood fortune to be able to see genius from close up not only in himself,but also outside himself in Goethe: through this twofold reflectionhe was aware of and wise to all scholarly goals and cultures fromthe ground up. By virtue of this experience he knew what the strongand free human being for which every artistic culture longs must belike; given this insight, how could he have had much desire left toinvolve himself with so-called 'art' in the scholarly or hypocritical*furor philosophicus: philosophical passiont furor politicus: political passion181

Untimely Meditationsmanner of modern man? For he had seen something higher: adreadful scene in a supraterrestrial court in which all life, even thehighest and most perfect, had been weighed and found wanting: hehad seen the saint as judge of existence. We cannot determine at allclosely how early in his life Schopenhauer must have perceived thispicture of life in all its details and as he sought to reproduce it in allhis subsequent writings; we can · demonstrate that he saw thistremendous vision as a young man, and can well believe he hadalready seen it as a child. Everything he subsequently appropriatedto himself from life and books, from the whole wealth of the sciences,was to him hardly more than colouring and means of expression; heemployed even the Kantian philosophy above all as an extraordinaryrhetorical instrument through which he believed he couldspeak of that picture more clearly: just as he occasionally made useof Buddhist and Christian mythology to the same end. For him therewas only one task and a hundred-thousand means of encompassingit: one meaning and countless hieroglyphics with which toexpress it.IAmong the most glorious conditions of his existence was the factthat he was able, in accordance with his motto vitam impendere vero, *really to live fo r such a task and that he was oppressed by none of thepetty necessities of life: - how generously he attributed this circumstanceto the efforts of his father is well known; whereas in Germanythe theoretical man usually pursues his scholarly destiny at theexpense of the purity of his character, as a 'thinking ragamuffin',greedy for posts and honours, cautious and pliable, ingratiatingtowards those with influence and position. Of all the offenceSchopenhauer has given to numerous scholars, nothing has offendedthem more than the unfortunate fact that he does not resemblethem.8These, then, are some of the conditions under which the philosophicalgenius can at any rate come into existence in our time despite theforces working against it: free manliness of character, earlyknowledge of mankind, no scholarly education, no narrow patriotism,no necessity for bread-winning, no ties with the state - inshort, freedom and again freedom: that wonderful and perilous elementin which the Greek philosophers were able to grow up."vitam impendere vero: devote one's life to the truth182

Sclwpenhauer as educatorWhoever wants to reproach him, as Niebuhr reproached Plato, withbeing a bad citizen, let him do so and be a good citizen himself: thushe will be in the right and so will Plato. Another will see this greatfreedom as a piece of presumption: he too is ,right, fo r he himselfwould do nothing with it and it would be very presumptuous in himto claim it for himself. That freedom is in fact a heavy debt which canbe discharged only by means of great deeds. In truth, every ordinaryson of earth has the right to regard with resentment a man favouredin this way: only may some god guard him from being thus favouredhimself, that is from becoming so fearfully indebted. For he would atonce perish of his freedom and solitude, and become a fool, and amalicious fo ol at that, out of boredom.From what we have discussed perhaps some father or other maybe able to learn something and apply it in some way to the privateeducation of his son; though it is truly not to be expected that fatherswill want only philosophers for sons. It is probable that fathers inevery age have put up the most determined resistance to their sons'being philosophers, as though it were extremely perverse; as is wellknown, Socrates fell victim to the wrath of the fathers over his 'seductionof youth', and Plato for that reason considered it necessaryto institute a whole new state if the existence of the philosopher wasnot to be imperilled by the unreason of the fathers. It almost looksnow as though Plato really did achieve something. For the modernstate regard s the promotion of philosophy as among its tasks andseeks at all times to bless a number of men with that 'freedom' whichwe understand as the most essential condition fo r the genesis of thephilosopher. But historically speaking Plato has been singularlyunfortunate: as soon as a structure has appeared which has essentiallycorresponded to his proposals, it has always turned out onclose examination to be a changeling, an ugly elf-child; such as themedieval priestly state was by comparison with the rule of the 'sonsof god' he had dreamed of. The last thing the modern state wants todo, of course, is to install philosophers as rulers' God be praised!every Christian will add -: but even promotion of philosophy as thestate understands it will one day have to be inspected to see whetherthe state understands it Platonically, which is to say as seriously andhonestly as though its highest objective were to produce new Platos.If the philosopher as a rule appears in his age by chance - does thestate now really set itself the task of consciously translating this fortuitousnessinto necessity and here too rendering assistance tonature?183

Untimely MeditationsExperience unfortunately teaches us better - or rather, worse: ittells us that nothing stands so much in the way of the production andpropagation of the great philosopher by nature as does the badphilosopher who works for the state. A painful fact, is it not?recognizably the same as that to which Schopenhauer first directedattention in his celebrated treatise on university philosophy. I shallreturn to it later: for one has to compel men to take it seriously, thatis to say to let it inspire them to action, and I consider every wordbehind which there does not stand such a challenge to action to havebeen written in vain; and it is in any event a good thing again todemonstrate the truth of Schopenhauer's always valid propositions,and to do so by direct reference to our closest contemporaries, sincea well-disposed man might think that since he launched his accusationseverything has taken a turn for the better in Germany. Evenon this point, minor though it is, his work is not yet done.Considered more closely, that 'freedom' with which, as I havesaid, the state now blesses some men fo r the good of philosophy isno freedom at all but an office of. profit. The promotion ofphilosophy nowadays consists, it seems, only in the state's enabling anumber of men to live from their philosophy by making of it a meansof livelihood: whereas the sages of ancient Greece were not paid bythe state hut at most were, like Zeno, honoured with a gold crownand a monument in the Ceramicus. Whether truth is served whenone is shown a way of living off it I cannot say in general, becausehere it all depends on t h e quality of the individual who is shown it. Icould well envisage a degree of pride and self-esteem which wouldlead a man to say to his fellow-men: look after me, for I have somethingbetter to do, namely to look after you. I n the case of Plato orSchopenhauer, such grandeur of disposition and expression wouldnot alienate one; which is why precisely they could even be universityphilosophers, as Plato was fo r a time a court philosopher,without demeaning the dignity of philosophy. But even Kant was, aswe scholars are accustomed to be, cautious, subservient and, in hisattitude towards the state, without greatness: so that, if universityphilosophy should ever be called to account, he at any rate could notjustify it. And if there are natures capable of justifying it - suchnatures as those of Schopenhauer and Plato - I fear they will neverhave occasion for doing so, since no state would ever dare to favoursuch men and install them in university posts. Why is that so?Because every state fears them and will favour only philosophers itdoes not fear. For it does happen that the state is afraid of philosophy184

Schopenhauer as educatoras such, and when this is the case it will try all the more to draw to itphilosophers who will give it the appearance of having philosophyon its side - because it has on its side those men who bear the nameof philosopher and yet are patently nothing to inspire fear. If,however, a man should arise who really gave the impression ofintending to apply the seal pel of truth to all things, including thebody of the state, then the state would, since it affirms its own existencebefore all else, be justified in expelling such a man and treatinghim as an enemy: just as it expels and treats as an enemy a religionwhich sets itself above the state and desires to be its judge. So if anyoneis to tolerate being a philosopher in the employ of the state, hewilf also have to tolerate being regarded as having abandoned anyattempt to pursue truth into all its hideouts. At the very least he isobliged, so long as he is the recipient of favours and offices, torecognize something as being higher than truth, namely the state.And not merely the state but at the same time everything the stateconsiders necessary for its wellbeing: a certain form of religion, forexample, or of social order, or of army regulations - a noli me tangere *is inscribed upon everything of this sort.Can a universityphilosopher ever have realized to the full the whole gamut of dutiesand limitations imposed upon him? I do not know; if he has done soand has nonetheless remained an official of the state he has been abad friend of truth; if he has never done so - well, I would say hewould still be no friend of truth.This is the most general objection: to people as they are now,however, it is of course the weakest objection and the one to whichthey are most indifferent. Most will be content to shrug theirshoulders and say: 'as though anything great and pure has ever beenable to maintain itself on this earth without making concessions tohuman baseness! Would you prefer it if the state persecuted thephilosopher rather than paid him and took him into service?'Without immediately replying to this-question, I shall only observethat these concessions to the state on the part of philosophy go veryfar at the present time. Firstly: it is the state which selects itsphilosophical servants, and which selects just the number it needs tosupply its institutions; it therefore takes on the appearance of beingable to distinguish between good philosophers and bad ones and,even worse, it presupposes that there must always be a sufficiency ofgood philosophers to fill all its academic chairs. It is now the authority,not only with regard to the quality of philosophers, but also in"noli me tangere: do not touch me185

IIUntimely Meditationsregard to how many good philosophers are needed. Secondly: itcompels those it has chosen to reside in a certain place, to live amongcertain people, to undertake a certain activity; they are obliged toinstruct every academic youth who desires instruction, and to do sodaily at certain fixed hours. Qu estion: can a philosopher reallyundertake with a good conscience to have something to teach everyday? And to teach it to anyone who cares to listen? Will he not beobliged to give the impression of knowing more than he does know?Will he not be obliged to speak before an audience of strangers ofthings which he can safely speak of only among his nearest friends?And speaking generally: is he not robbing himself of his freedom tofollow his genius whenever and wherever it calls him? - throughbeing obligated to think in public about predetermined subjects atpredetermined hours? And to do so before youths! Is such thinkingnot as it were emasculated from the first! Supposing one day he saidto himself: I can't think of anything today, at least not of anythingworthwhile - he would still have to present himself and pretendto think!bBut, you will object, he is not supposed to be a thinker at all, but atmost a learned presenter of what others have thought: and as to that,he will always have something to say his pupils do not already know.- But precisely this - to undertake to appear first and foremost asscholarliness - is the third perilous concession which philosophymakes to the state. Above all when it appears as knowledge of the historyof philosophy: for to the genius, who gazes upon things as apoet does, with pure and loving eyes, and cannot immerse himselftoo deeply in them, grubbing around in countless strange and perverseopinions is the most repugnant and inappropriate occupationimaginable. The learned history of the past has never been the businessof a true philosopher, neither in India nor in Greece; and if aprofessor of philosophy involves himself in such work he must atbest be content to have it said of him: he is a fine classical scholar,antiquary, linguist, historian - but never: he is a philosopher. Andthat, as remarked, is only at best: for most of the learned work doneby university philosophers seems to a classicist to be done badly,without scientific rigour and mostly with a detestable tediousness.Who, for example, can clear the history of the Greek philosophers ofthe soporific miasma spread over it by the learned, though not particularlyscientific and unfortunately all too tedious, labours of Ritter,Brandis and Zeller? I for one prefer reading Laertius Diogenes toZeller, because the former at least breathes the spirit of the186

Sclwpenhauer as educatorphilosophers of antiquity, while the latter breathes neither that norany other spirit. And finally, what in the world have our young mento do with the history of philosophy? Is the confusion of opinionssupposed to discourage them from having opinions of their own?Are they supposed to learn how to join in the rejoicing at.how wonderfullyfar we ourselves have come? Are they supposed even tolearn to hate philosophy or to despise it? One might almost think sowhen one knows how students have to torment themselves fo r thesake of their philosophical examinations so as to cram into theirpoor brain the maddest and most caustic notions of the human spirittogether with the greatest and hardest to grasp. The only critique of aphilosophy that is possible and that proves something, namely tryingt'o see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never beentaught at universities: all that has ever been taught is a critique ofwords by means of other words. And now imagine a youthful head,not very experienced in living, in which fifty systems in the fo rm ofwords and fifty critiques of them are preserved side-by-side andintermingled - what a desert, what a return to barbarism, what amockery of an education in philosophy! But of course it is admittedlyno such thing; it is a training in passing philosophical examinations,the usual outcome of which is well known to be that the youthto be tested - tested all too severely, alas! - admits to himself with asigh of relief: 'Thank God I am no philosopher, but a Christian and acitizen of my country!'What if this sigh of relief were the state's actual objective and'education in philosophy' only a means of deterring from philosophy?Let one ask oneself this question. - If it really is so, however, there isonly one thing to be feared: that youth may one day finally come torealize to what end philosophy is here being misused. The supremeobjective, the production of the philosophical genius, nothing but apretext? The goal perhaps the prevention of his production? Themeaning of it all reversed into its opposite? In that case - woe to thewhole complex of state and professorial policy! -And is something of the sort not supposed to have transpiredalready? I do not know; but I do know that university philosophy isnow the object of universal disrespect and scepticism. This is in partdue to the fact that a fe ebler race now holds sway over the lectureroom;and if Schopenhauer had to write his treatise on universityphilosophy now, he would no longer have need of the club butwould conquer with a reed. They are the heirs and progeny of thosepseudo-thinkers whose much-turned heads he battered: their187

Untimely Meditationsappearance is sufficiently infantile and dwarfish for us t'o be remindedof the Indian saying: 'Men are born, in accordance with their deeds,stupid, dumb, deaf, misshapen.' Their fathers deserved such aprogeny by virtue of their 'deeds', as the saying has it. That is why it isquite indisputable that academic youth will very soon be able tomanage without the philosophy taught: at their universities, and thatunacademic men are already able to manage without it. One hasonly to recall one's own student days; in my case, fo r example,academic philosophers were men towards whom I was perfectlyindifferent: I counted them as people who raked together somethingfo r themselves out of the results of the other sciences and employedtheir leisure time in reading newspapers and going to concerts, andfor the rest were treated by their own academic comrades with apolitely masked contempt. They were credited with knowing littleand with never being at a loss for some obscure expression withwhich to conceal this lack of knowledge. They thus preferred todwell in gloomy places where the clear-eyed cannot endure to be forlong. One of them urged it against thj natural sciences: none ofthem can completely explain to me the simplest process of becoming,so what have any of them to do with me? Another said of history: tohim who has ideas it has nothing new to say - in short, they alwaysdiscovered reasons why it was more philosophical to know nothingthan to learn something. If they did engage in learning, their secretmotive in doing so was to elude science and to found a dark domainin one or other of its lacunae. Thus they went on ahead of the sciencesonly in the sense that the deer is ahead of the huntsmen who are afterit. Lately they have been content to assert that they are really no morethan the frontier guards and spies of the sciences; to which end theyare especially served by the teachings of Kant, out of which they areintent upon fashioning an idle scepticism that will soon be of nointerest to anybody. Only now and then does one of them still hoisthimself up to a little system of metaphysics, with the consequencesthat usually follow, namely dizziness, headache and nosebleed.After having so often enjoyed no success on this trip into the mistand clouqs, after some rude, hard-headed disciple of the real scienceshas again and again seized them by the pigtail and pulled them backdown, their face habitually assumes an expression of primness andof having been found out. They have lost their confidence, so thatnone of them lives even a moment for the sake of his philosophy.Formerly some of them believed themselves capable of inventingnew religions or of replacing old ones with their philosophical sys-188

Schopenhauer as educatorterns; nowadays they have lost all this old arrogance and are as a rulepious, timid and uncertain fo lk, never brave like Lucretius or wrathfulat human oppression. Neither can one any longer learn fromthem how to think logically and, with a correct estimation of theirpowers, they have ceased the formal disputations they used to practise.It is indisputable that the individual sciences are now pursuedmore logically, cautiously, modestly, inventively, in short morephilosophically, than is the case with so-called philosophers: so thateveryone will agree with the impartial Englishman Bagehot when hesays of our contemporary system-builders: 'Who is not almost surebeforehand that they will contain a strange mixture of truth anderror, and therefore that it will not be worthwhile to spend life inreasoning over their consequences? The mass of a system attracts theyoung and impresses the unwary; but cultivated people are verydubious about it. They are ready to receive hints and suggestionsand the smallest real truth is ever welcome. But a large book ofdeductive philosophy is much to be suspected. Unproved abstractprinciples without number have been eagerly caught up by sanguinemen and then carefully spun out into books and theories which wereto explain the whole world. The world goes totally against theseabstractions, and it must do so since they require it to go inantagonistic directions." If formerly philosophers, especially inGermany, used to be sunk in such profound reflection that they werein constant danger of hitting their head on a beam, they are now suppliedwith a whole regiment of flappers, such as Swift describes in theVoyage to Laputa, to give them a gentle blow now and then on theeyes or elsewhere. Sometimes these blows may be a little too heavy,on which occasions the enraptured thinker can easily forget himselfand hit back - something that always results in his discomfiture.Can't you see the beam, you sleepy-head! the flapper then says - andoften the philosopher really does see the beam and becomes tractableagain. These flappers are history and the natural sciences; theyhave gradually come so to overawe the German dream-andthought-business which was for long confused with philosophy thatthese thought-mongers would be only too glad to abandon anyattempt at an independent existence; ifhowever they should happento impede the former or try to fas ten leading-strings on to them, theflappers at once start to flap as violently as they can - as though they*Quoted from Bagehot's Physics and Politics . The order of the sentences in theoriginal passage is inverted in Nietzsche's quotation of it, but this appears not to affectthe meaning.189

Untimely Meditationswanted to say: 'For a thought-monger like this to profane our historyor natural sciences would be the last straw! Away with him!' Thenthey totter back into their own uncertainty and perplexity: they reallydo want to get a little natural science into their possession, perhapslike the Herbartians in the shape of empirical psychology, they reallydo want a little history as well - then they can act, at least in public, asthough they were engaged in scientific undertakings, even though inprivate they would like to consign all philosophy and science tothe devil.But granted that this troop of bad philosophers is ludicrous - andwho will not grant it? - to what extent are they also harmful? Theanswer, in brief, is: to the extent that they make philosophy itselfludicrous. Aslong as this officially recognized guild of pseudo-thinkers continuesto exist, any effectiveness of a true philosophy will be brought tonaught or at least obstructed, and it will suffer this fate through nothingother than the curse of the ludicrous which the representativesof that philosophy have called down upon themselves but which alsostrikes at philosophy itself. That is why I say it is a demand of culturethat philosophy should be deprived of any kind of official oracademic recognition and that state and academy be relieved of thetask, which they cannot encompass, of distinguishing between realand apparent philosophy. Let the philosophers grow untended,deny them all prospect of place and position within the bourgeoisprofessions, cease to entice them with salaries, more, persecutethem, show them disfavouryou will behold miracles! The poorseeming philosophers will flee apart and seek a roof wherever theycan find it; one will become a parson, another a schoolmaster, athird will creep into the shelter of an editorial jo b on a newspaper, afourth will write instruction manuals fo r girls' high schools, the mostsensible of them will take up the plough and the vainest will go tocourt. Suddenly it will all be empty, everyone will have flown thenest: for it is easy to get rid of bad philosophers, one only has to ceaserewarding them. And that is in any event more advisable than for thestate publicly to patronize any philosophy, whichever it may be.The state never has any use for truth as such, but only fo r truthwhich is useful to it, more precisely for anything whatever useful to itwhether it be truth, half-truth or error. A union of state andphilosophy can therefore make sense only if philosophy can promiseto be unconditionally useful to the state, that is to say, to set usefulnessto the state higher than truth. It would of course be splendid fo rthe state if it also had truth in its pay and service; but the state itself190

Schopenhauer as educatorwell knows that it is part of the essence of truth that it never accepts payor stands in anyone's service. Thus what the state has is only false'truth', a person in a mask; and unfortunately this cannot do for itwhat it so much desires genuine truth to do: validate and sanctify it.It is true that if a medieval prince wanted to be crowned by the Popebut the Pope refused to do it, he nominated an anti-Pope who thenperfonned for him this service. This might have worked then tosome extent; but for a modern state to nominate an anti-philosophyto legitimatize it will not work: for it will still have philosophy againstit as before, and now more than before. I believe in all seriousnessthat it is more useful to the state to have nothing at all to do withphilosophy, to desire nothing from it and for as long as possible toregard it as something to which it is completely indifferent. If thiscondition of indifference does not endure, if it becomes dangerousand hostile to the state, then let the state persecute it. - Since the statecan have no interest in the university other than seeing it raise usefuland devoted citizens of the state, it should hesitate to place thisusefulness and devotion in jeopardy by demanding that these youngmen should sit an examination in philosophy: it could well be, ofcourse, that the dull and incompetent would be frightened offuniversity study altogether by this spectre of a philosophy examination;but this gain could not compensate for the harm done to rashand restless youth by this enforced drudgery; they get to know booksforbidden them, begin to criticize their teachers and finally evenbecome aware of the objective of university philosophy and itsexaminations - not to speak of the misgivings which this circumstancecan excite in young theologians and as a result of whichthey are beginning to die out in Germany, as the ibex is in the TyroLI understand well enough the objections the state could haveraised against this whole way of looking at things so long as the fairgreen shoots of Hegelianism were sprouting up in every field: butnow that this harvest has come to nothing, all the expectations builtupon it have proved vain and all the barns remained empty - oneprefers no longer to raise objections but to tum away fromphilosophy altogether. One now possesses power: formerly, inHegel's time, one wanted to possess it - that is a vast distinction.Philosophy has become superfluous to the state because the state nolonger needs its sanction. If the state no longer maintains its professorsor, as I foresee in the near future, appears to maintain thembut in fact neglects them, it derives advantage from doing so - yet itappears to me of more importance that the universities should see191

Untimely MeditationsI. !that it is to their benefit too. At least I would think that an institutionfor the real sciences must see it is good for it no longer to have tokeep company with a semi-science. The universities enjoy so littleregard, moreover, they must on principle desire the exclusion ofdisciplines which academics themselves hold in low esteem. Fornon-academics have good reason for a certain general disrespect foruniversities; they reproach them with being cowardly, since thesmall ones fear the big ones and the big ones fear public opinion;with failing to take the lead in questions of higher culture but limpingslowly and tardily in the rear, with ceasing to maintain the respectedsciences on their true course. Linguistic studies, for example, arepursued more zealously than ever, but no one considers it necessaryto educate himself in correct writing and speaking. Indian antiquityis opening its gates, yet the relationship of those who study it to theimperishable works of the Indians, to their philosophies, hardly differsfrom that of an animal to a lyre: even though Schopenhauer consideredits acquaintance with Indian philosophy the greatestadvantage our century possessed overjill others. Classical antiquityhas become a take-it-or-Ieave-it antiquity and has ceased to producea classic and exemplary effect; a fact demonstrated by its disciples,who are truly not exemplary. Whither has the spirit of FriedrichAugust Wolf departed, of which Franz Passow could say it appeareda genuinely patriotic, genuinely human spirit which, if it needed to,possessed the force to set a continent on fire and in ferment - wherehas this spirit gone? On the other hand, the spirit of the journalist ispenetrating the universities more and more, and not seldom underthe name of philosophy; a smooth, highly coloured mode ofaddress, Faust and Nathan the Wise constantly invoked, thelanguage and views of our nauseating literary journals, lately evenchattering about our sacred German music and the demand forchairs fo r the study of Goethe and Schiller - all signs that the spirit ofthe university is beginning to confuse itself with the Zeitgeist. It thusseems to me of the first importance that there should be created outsidethe universities a higher tribunal whose fu nction would be tosupervise and judge these institutions in regard to the educationthey are promoting; and as soon as philosophy departs from theuniversities, and therewith purifies itself of all unworthy considerationsand prejudices, it must constitute precisely such a tribunal:devoid of official authority, without salaries or honours, it will knowhow to perform its duty free of the Zeitgeist and free from fear of it- inshort, as Schopenhauer lived, as the judge of the so-called culture192

Schopenhauer as educatoraround him. I n this way the philosopher, if instead of amalgamatingwith it he supervises it from a dignified distance, is able to be of useto the university.Finally, however - of what concern to us is the existence of thestate, the promotion of universities, when what matters above all isthe existence of philosophy on earth! or - to leave absolutely nodoubt as to what I think - if it is so unspeakably more vital that aphilosopher should appear on earth than that a state or a university'should continue to exist. ,The dignity of philosophy can increase inthe measure that servitude to public opinion and the danger tofreedom increases; it was at its greatest during the earthquakeattending the fall of the Roman republic and during the imperialera, when its name and that of history became ingrata principibusnomina. * Brutus demonstrates more for its dignity than does Plato;he belonged to an age in which ethics ceased to be platitudinous. Ifphilosophy is little regarded at present, one ought only to ask why itis that no great general or statesman at present has anything to dowith it - the answer is simply that at the time he sought it he encountereda feeble phantom bearing the name of philosophy, a scholarlylecture-hall wisdom and lecture-hall cautiousness; in short, it isbecause in his early years philosophy became to him somethingludicrous. What it ought to be to him, however, is something fearsome,and men called to the search fo r power ought to know what asource of the heroic wells within it. Let an American tell them what agreat thinker who arrives on this earth signifies as a new centre oftremendous forces. 'Beware', says Emerson, 'when the great Godlets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. It is aswhen a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no manknows what is safe, or where it will end. There is not a piece of sciencebut its flank may be turned tom.orrow; there is not any literaryreputation, not the so-called eternal names of fame, that may not berevised and condemned; the things which are dear to men at thishour are so on account of the ideas which have emerged on theirmental horizon, and which cause the present order of things, as atree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would instantly revolutionizethe entire system of human pursuits.'t Now, if such thinkers aredangerous, it is of course clear why our academic thinkers are notdangerous; for their thoughts grow as peacefully out of tradition as*ingrata principibus nomina: names displeasing to princestQ.uoted from Emerson's essay entitled 'Circles'.193

Untimely Meditationsany tree ever bore its apples: they cause no alarm, they remove nothingfrom its hinges; and of all their art and aims there could be saidwhat Diogenes said when someone praised a philosopher in hispresence: 'How can he be considered great, since he has been aphilosopher for so long and has never yet disturbed anybody?' That,indeed, ought to be the epitaph of university philosophy: 'it disturbednobody'. But this, of course, is praise of an old woman ratherthan of the goddess of truth, and it is not to be wondered at if thosewho know that goddess only as an old woman are themselves veryunmanly and thus, as might be expected, completely ignored by themen of power.But if this is how things stand in our time, then the dignity ofphilosophy is trampled into the dust; it has even become somethingludicrous, it would seem, or a matter of complete indifference toanyone: so that it is the duty of all its true friends to bear witnessagainst this confusion, and at the least to show that it is only its falseand unworthy servants who are ludicrous or a matter of indifference.It would be better still if they demonstrad by their deeds that loveof truth is something fearsome and mighty.Schopenhauer demonstrated both these things - and willdemonstrate them more and more as day succeeds day.194

4Richard Wagnerin Bayreuth

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Richard Wagner in Bayreuthart: as a result of which, as it seems, there has been discovered notonly a new art but an itself. All the arts of modern times have, asisolated and stunted or as luxury arts, been almost disvalued; andthe uncertain, ill coordinated recollections of a true art which wemoderns have derived from the Greeks may now also rest in peace,except insofar as they are now able to shine of themselves in the lightof a new understanding. For many things the time has come to dieout; this new art is a prophet which sees the end approaching fo rother things than the arts. Its admonishing hand must make a verydisquieting impression upon our entire contemporary culture assoon as the laughter provoked by parodies of it has subsided: let themerriment go on for a little while yet!We, on the other hand, we disciples of an resurrected, will havethe time and the will for profound, serious reflection! The noise andchatter which has hitherto gone on about an we are bound to findshamelessly imponunate from now on; everything imposes upon ussilence, the five-year silence of the Pythagoreans. Who of us has notdirtied his hands and heart in the service of the idols of modern culture?Who is not in need of the water of purification, who does nothear the voice that admonished him: be silent and be cleansed! besilent and be cleansed! Only as those who listen to this voice are wealso granted the mighty insight with which we have to view the event atBayreuth, and only in this insight does there lie the mighty future ofthat event.When on that day in the May of 1872 the foundation stone was laidon the hill at Bayreuth amid pouring rain and under a darkened sky,Wagner drove with some of us back to the town; he was silent and heseemed to be gazing into himself with a look not to be described inwords. It was the first day of his sixtieth year: everything that hadgone before was a preparation for this moment. We know that attimes of exceptional danger, or in general at any decisive turningpointof their lives, men compress together all they have experiencedin an infinitely accelerated inner panorama, and behold distantevents as sharply as they do the most recent ones. What may Alexanderthe Great not have seen in the moment he caused Asia and Europe tobe drunk out of the same cup? What Wagner beheld within him onthat day, however - how he became what he is and what he will be ­we who are closest to him can to a certain extent also see: and it isonly from this Wagnerian inner view that we shall be able to understandhis great deed itself - and with this understanding guarantee itsfruitfulness.199

Untimely Meditations2It would be strange if that which a man can do best and most likes todo failed to become a visible presence within the total fo rmation ofhis life; and in the case of men of exceptional abilities their life mustbecome not only a reflection of their character, as is the case witheveryone, but first and foremost a reflection of their intellect and ofthe capacities most personal to them. The life of the epic poet willhave something of the epic about it as is the case with Goethe, bythe way, whom the Germans insist, quite wrongly, in seeing as principallya lyric poet - and the life of the dramatist will take adramatic course.The dramatic element in Wagner's development is quite unmistakablefrom the moment when his ruling passion became aware ofitself and took his whole nature in its charge: from that time on therewas an end to fu mbling, straying, to the proliferation of secondaryshoots, and within the most convoluted courses and often daringtrajectories assumed by his artistic plans there rules a single innerlaw, a will, by which they can be expfained, however strange thisexplanation will often sound. But there was also a pre-dramatic erain Wagner's life, that of his childhood and YQuth, and one cannotpass this era in review without encountering riddles. He himself doesnot yet seem to be present at all and that which, with hindsight, onemight perhaps interpret as a sign of his presence appears at first asthe simultaneous existence of qualities which must excite misgivingsrather than hopeful anticipation: a spirit of restlessness, of irritability,a nervous hastiness in seizing hold upon a hundred different things,a passionate delight in experiencing moods of almost pathologicalintensity, an abrupt transition from the most soulful quietude tonoise and violence. He was held in check by no traditional familyinvolvement in any particular art: he might as easily have adoptedpainting, poetry, acting, music as academic scholarship or anacademic fu ture; and a superficial view of him might suggest that hewas a born dilettante. The little world under whose spell he grew upwas not such as one could have congratulated an artist on having fo ra homeland. He was very close to enjoying the perilous pleasure inthe superficial tasting of one thing after another in the intellectualrealm, as he was to the self-conceit engendered by much superficialknowledge which is commonplace in cities of scholars; his sensibilitieswere easily aroused and as easily satisfied; wherever the eyesof the boy rested he saw himself surrounded by a strangely pre-200

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthcocious . yet animated existence to which the gaudy world of thetheatre stood in a ludicrous, and the soul-compelling sound ofmusic in an incomprehensible, contrast. Now, it is in generalremarkable that, when a modern man is gifted with a great talent, heseldom possesses in his youth and childhood the quality of naivety,of simply being himself; and that when, in such rare cases as Goetheand Wagner, he does attain to naivety, he does so in adulthood. Theartist especially, in whom the power of imitation is particularlystrong, must fall prey to the feeble manysidedness of modern life asto a serious childhood illness; in his youth and childhood · he willlook more like an adult than his real self. The marvellously accuratearchetypal youth who is the Siegfried of the Ring des Nibelungen *could have been produced only by a man, and by a man moreoverwho had found his own youth late in life. And as Wagner's youthcame late, so did his full maturity; so that in this respect at least he isthe opposite of an anticipatory nature.As soon as his spiritual and moral maturity arrives, the drama ofhis life also begins. And how different he looks now! His natureappears in a fearful way simplified, torn apart into two drives orspheres. Below there rages the precipitate current of a vehement willwhich as it were strives to reach up to the light through every runway,cave and crevice, and desires power. Only a force wholly pure andfree could direct this will on to the pathway to the good andbenevolent; had it been united with a narrow spirit, such anunbridled tyrannical will could have become a fatality; and a way outinto the open, into air and sunlight, was in any event bound to befound soon. A mighty striving conscious of repeated failure makesone bad; inadequacy can sometimes be inherent in circumstances,* The Nibelung'S Ring, the tetralogy for the performance of which Wagner designedand erected the Festival Theatre at Bayreuth, in Bavaria, and the first performance ofwhich inaugurated the Bayreuth Festival. Wagner designated the Ring a 'Stage FestivalDrama for Three Days and a Fore-Evening'. The 'Fore-Evening' is Das Rheingold (TheRhine-Gold), a music-drama in a single act (four scenes); the first 'day' is Die Walkilre(The Valkyrie), a music-drama in three acts; the second 'day' is Siegfried, also in threeacts; and the third 'day' is GOtterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods), in three acts and aprologue. The whole work takes between 15 and 16 hours to perform, depending onthe tempo of performance, and is the longest musical composition in existence (TheRhine-Gold, which runs for about two-and-a-half hours, is the longest uninterruptedmusical movement). The present essay was published in July 1876 to coincide withthe inauguration of the festival, which took place on 13, 14, 16 and 17 August with thefirst public performance of the Ring.20 1

Untimely Meditationsin the unalterability of fate, and not in lack of force; but he who cannotcease from striving in spite of this insufficiency becomes as itwere embittered and thus irritable and unjust. Perhaps he seeks thecause of his lack of success in others; he can, indeed, with apassionate hatred treat all the world as being to blame fo r it; perhapshe goes off defiantly along sidepaths and into subterfuges, or takes toviolence: thus it happens that benevolent natures turn savage ontheir way to a laudable goal. Even among those whose objective isonly their own moral purification, among hermits and monks, thereare to be found such savage and morbid men, hollowed out and consumedby failure. It was a spirit full of love, with voice overllowingwith goodness and sweetness, with a hatred of violence and selfdestruction,which desires to see no one in chains - it was such aspirit that spoke to Wagner. It descended upon him, covered himwith its wings, and showed him the path. We are now taking a lookinto the other sphere of Wagner's nature: but how are we to .describe it?The figures which an artist creates art not he himself, but a successionof figures upon whom he has patently bestowed his lovedoes tell us at any rate something about the artist himself. Now callto mind Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman and Senta, Tannhanser andElizabeth, Lohengrin and Elsa, Tristan and Marke, Hans Sachs,Wotan and Briinnhilde: there passes through all of them a subterraneancurrent of moral ennoblement and enlargement whichunites them, a current which flows ever more clear and pure - andhere, if with shy reserve, we stand before a development in the innermostrecesses of Wagner's own soul. In what artist can we perceiveanything similar at a similar peak of greatness? Schiller's figures,from the Robbers to Wallenstein and Tell, go through such a courseof ennoblement and likewise express something of the developmentof their creator, but Wagner's standard is higher and the course islonger. Everything participates in this purification and expresses it,not only the myth but also the music; in the Ring des Nibelungen I discoverthe most moral music I know, for example when Briinnhilde isawoken by Siegfried; here he attains to an elevation and sanctity ofmood that makes us think of the glowing ice- and snow-coveredpeaks of the Alps, so pure, solitary, inaccessible, chaste and bathedin the light oflove does nature appear here; clouds and storms, eventhe sublime itself, are beneath it. Looking back from this vantagepoint upon Tannhauser and the Dutchman, we feel how Wagnerevolved: how he started darkly and restlessly, how he stormily202

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthsought relief, strove for power and intoxication, often flew back indisgust, how he wanted to throw off his burden, longed to forget, todeny, to renounce - the entire stream plunged now into this valley,now into that, and bored its way into the darkest ravines: - in thenight of this half-subterranean turmoil a star appeared high abovehim shining with a sad light, and he named it for what he recognizedit to be: loyalty, selfless loyalty! Why did it seem to him to shine morebrightly and purely than any other? what secret does the wordloyalty hold for his whole being? For the image and problem ofloyalty is impressed upon everything he thought and created; thereexists in his works a virtually complete series of all possible kinds ofloyalty, the most glorious and rarest among them: loyalty of brotherto sister, of friend to friend, of servant to master, Elizabeth toTannhauser, Senta to the Dutchman, Elsa to Lohengrin, Isolde,Kurwenal and Marke to Tristan, Briinnhilde to Wotan's innermostdesire - to make only a start on the series. It is the most personalprimal event that Wagner experiences within himself and revereslike a religious mystery: he expresses it in the word loyalty and henever wearies of displaying it in a hundred shapes and, in the abundanceof his gratitude, of bestowing upon it the finest things hepossesses and the finest he can do - that marvellous experience andrecognition that one sphere of his being remains loyal to the other,shows loyalty out of free and most selfless love, the creative, innocent,more illuminated sphere to the dark, intractable andtyrannical.3It was in the relationship of these two profound forces with oneanother, in the surrender of the one to the other, that there lay thegreat necessity which had to be fu lfilled if he was to be whole andwholly himself: at the same time it was the only act that did not lie inhis own power, which he could only watch and endure, while thepossibility of seduction to disloyalty, and the frightfu l danger it representedto him, was always present. In the uncertainty that thusarose there lay an abundant source of suffering. Each of his drivesstrove without limit, each of his talents, joyful in its existence, wantedto tear itself free from the others and satisfy itself individually; thegreater their abundance, the greater was the tumult and the greaterthe hostility when they crossed one another. In addition there wasthe impulse, deriving from chance and from life itself, to acquire203

Untimely Meditationspower, fame, pleasure, and he was tormented even more frequendyby the inexorable need to earn a living: traps and fetters layeverywhere. How is it possible to stay loyal, to remain whole, underthese conditions? - This doubt often overcame him, and then, aswould happen with an artist, fo und expression in the figures of hisart: Elizabeth can only suffer, pray and die for Tannhauser, she savesthe restless and immoderate man through her loyalty, but not fo rthis life. Danger and despair lie in wait for every true artist throwninto the modern world. He can acquire honours and power in manyfo rms, he is frequently offered peace and contentment, but alwaysonly in the shape in which they are known to modern man and inwhich to the honest artist they must become choking foul air. It is inthe temptation to this, and likewise in resistance to this temptation,that his danger lies; in disgust with the modern manner of acquiringpleasure and reputation, in rage at all self-seeking contentment inthe manner of modern man. Think of him occupying an officialposition, as Wagner had to fill the office of conductor at town andcourt theatres; we can see how the mostiierious artist will try forciblyto impose seriousness on the institution of which he is part, aninstitution which has, however, been constructed frivolously anddemands frivolity almost as a matter of principle; how he partiallysucceeds but in the end always fails; how he begins to feel disgustand wants to flee; how he fails to find anywhere to flee to, and is againand again obliged to return to the gypsies and outcasts of our cultureas one of them. If he frees himself from one situation he rarely findsa better, and sometimes he is plunged into the direst need. ThusWagner moves from town to town, companion to companion, countryto country, and one hardly knows what it was in each of them thatkept him there for as long as it did. A heavy atmosphere lies over thegreater part of his life hitherto; he seems to have abandoned anygeneral hopes and to have lived from day to day: and thus he eludeddespair, but at the price of abandoning belief. He must often havefelt like a· wanderer in the night, heavily burdened and profoundlyexhausted, who is yet each night revitalized; sudden death thenappeared to his eyes, not as something to fear, but as an alluringspectre. Burden, pathway and night, all gone in a trice! - that was aseductive idea. A hundred times he threw himself back into life withshort-breathed hope and put all spectres behind him. But he almostalways did so with an immoderation which revealed that he placedno great faith in this hope but was only intoxicating himself with it.The contrast between his desires and his incapacity to fulfil them was204

Richard Wagner in Bayreutha goad tormenting him; exasperated by continual deprivation, hisjudgment gave way to excess whenever his poverty was for once suddenlyeased. His life became ever more complicated; but theexpedients by means of which he handled it became ever bolder andmore inventive, though they were in fact merely the emergencyactions of the dramatist, designed to deceive only fo r a moment. Assoon as he needs them he has them, and they are used up just asquickly. Seen fr om close to and without love, Wagner' s life has, torecall an idea of Schopenhauer's, much of the comedy about it, andmarkedly grotesque comedy at that. How the feeling and recognitionthat whole stretches of his life are marked by a grotesque lackof dignity must affect an artist who, more than any other, can breathefreely only in the sublime and more than sublime - that is somethingfor the thinker to reflect on.In the midst of all this activity, of which only a detailed accountcan evoke the degree of pity, horror and admiration it deserves,there was unfolded a talent for learning quite extraordinary evenamong Germans, the nation most gifted in learning; and in thistalent there again appeared a danger even greater than that attendinga life apparently unstable and rootless and confusedly directed byrestless illusion. From an experimenting novice Wagner grew intoan omniscient master of music and of the stage and in all technicalmatters an innovator and developer. No one will any longer contestthat he has provided the supreme model for all art in the grand manner.But he became even more, and to become it he was spared as littleas anyone else would be the task of appropriating to himself all thatis highest in culture. And how he did it! It is a joy to see; he acqttiredand absorbed it from all sides, and the bigger and heavier the structurebecame, the firmer grew the arch of thought that was to orderand control it. And yet it has rarely been made so hard for anyone todiscover the way into the sciences and skills, and often he had toimprovise these ways in for himself. The rejuvenator of the simpledrama, the discoverer of the place of the arts in a true human society,the poetic elucidator of past philosophies of life, the philosopher,the historian, the aesthetician and critic, the master of language, themythologist and my tho-poet who fo r the first time enclosed thewhole glorious, primeval structure within a ring and carved upon itthe runes of his spirit - what an abundance of knowledge Wagnerhad to assemble and encompass to be able to become all that! Andyet the weight of it as a whole did not stifle his will to action, nor didthe attractions of its individual aspects entice him aside. To judge205

Untimely Meditationshow uncommon such a posture is, one should compa r e it with thatof its great counter-example, Goethe, who, as a learner and man ofknowledge, appears like a many-branched river system which fails tosustain its full force as far as the sea but loses and scatters at least asmuch on its windings and meanderings as it bears on to its estuary. Itis true that such a nature as Goethe's has and gives more enjoyment,something mild and nobly prodigal hovers about it, whereas theviolence of Wagner's current may terrify and scare one away. But lethim who will be afraid: we others shall take courage from the sight ofa hero who, even in regard to modern culture, 'has not learnedfear' . *Just as little has he learned to let himself be placated by historyand philosophy, to allow their softening and quietist effects tooperate upon him. Neither the creative nor the embattled artist wasdeflected from his course by the force of what he had learned or theact oflearning itself. As soon as his creative power takes hold on himhistory becomes malleable clay in his hands; his relationshiptowards it suddenly becomes quite di,ierent from that of anyscholar, it becomes similar to that of the Greek towards his myths,that is to say towards something which offers material for plastic andpoetic invention, performed with love and a certain shy devotion, tobe sure, but nonetheless also with the magisterial right of the creator.And precisely because it is to him even more flexible and changeablethan any dream, he can transform a single event into something thattypifies whole ages and thus achieve a truth of representation such asthe historian can never attain to. Where else has the courtly Middle. Ages been transformed into a flesh-and-blood figure as it has inLohengrin? And will the Meistersinger not speak of the Germannature to all fu ture ages - more, will it not constitute one of the ripestfruits of that nature, which always seeks reformation not revolution,and though broadly content with itself has not fo rgotten that noblestexpression of discontent, the innovative deed?And it was to precisely this kind of discontent that Wagner wascompelled again and again by his involvement with history andphilosophy: he discovered here, not only weapons and armour, butalso and above all the inspiring afflatus that wafts from the tombs ofall great warriors, of all great sufferers and thinkers. One cannotstand out more clearly from the whole contemporary age thanthrough the way one employs history and philosophy. The former,'" A phrase from Siegfried.206

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthas it is commonly understood, now seems to have been assigned thetask of letting modern man catch his breath as he runs panting andsweating towards his goal, so that for a moment he can feel as it wereunharnessed. What the individual Montaigne signifies within theagitation of the spirit of the Reformation, a coming to rest withinoneself, a peaceful being for oneself and relaxation - and that wascertainly how his best reader, Shakespeare, experienced him - iswhat history is for the modern spirit. If the Gennans have for a centurybeen especially devoted to the study of history, this shows thatwithin the agitation of the contemporary world they represent theretarding, delaying, pacifying power: which some might perhapsturn into a commendation of them. On the whole, however, it is adangerous sign when the spiritual struggles of a people are concernedprincipally with the past, a mark of debility, of regression andfeebleness: so that it is exposd in the most dangerous fashion toevery rampant fever going, the political fever for instance. In the historyof the modern spirit our scholars represent such a condition ofweakness, in antithesis to all revolutionary and refonn movements;the task they have set themselves is not the proudest, but they havesecured for themselves a kind of peaceable happiness. Every freer,more manly step goes past them, to be sure - though by no meanspast history itself! The latter has quite different forces within it, a factrealized by precisely such natures as Wagner: only it has to be writtenin a much more serious, much stricter manner, out of a mighty souland in general no longer optimistically, as it always has beenhitherto; differendy, that is to say, from how German scholars havewritten it up to now. There is something palliative, obsequious andcontented about all their work, and they approve of the way thingsare. It is a great deal if one of them lets it be seen that he is contentedonly because things could have been worse: most of them involuntarilybelieve that the way things have turned out is very good. Ifhistorywere not still a disguised Christian theodicy, if it were written withmore justice and warmth of feeling, it would truly be of no usewhatever for the purpose to which it is now put: to serve as an opiatefor everything revolutionary and innovative. Philosophy is in asimilar situation: all most people want to learn from it is a rough -very rough! - understanding of the world, so as then to accommodatethemselves to the world. And even its noblest representativesemphasize so strongly its power to soothe and console that theindolent and those who long for rest must think they are seeking thesame thing philosophy is seeking. To me, on the other hand, the207

Untimely Meditationsmost vital of questions for philosophy appears to be to what extentthe character ofthe world is unalterable: so as, once this question hasbeen answered, to set about improving that part olit recognized as alterablewith the most ruthless courage. True philosophers themselves teachthis lesson, through the fact that they have worked to improve thevery much alterable judgments of mankind and have not kept theirwisdom to themselves; it is also taught by those true disciples of truephilosophers who, like Wagner, know how to imbibe from them anenhanced resolution and inflexibility but no soporific juices.Wagner is most a philosopher when he is most energetic and heroic.And it was precisely as a philosopher that he passed through notonly the fire of various philosophical systems without feeling fear,but also through the smoke of scholarly knowledge, and remainedloyal to his higher self, which demanded of him deeds in which hismanyfaceted nature participated as a whole and bade him suffer and learnso as to be capable of these deeds.4bThe history of the evolution of culture since the Greeks is shortenough, if one takes into account the actual distance covered andignores the halts, regressions, hesitatio.ns and lingerings. TheHellenization of the world and, to make this possible, the orientalizationof the Hellenic - the twofold task of the great Alexander ­is still the last great event; the old question whether a culture can betransplanted to a foreign soil at all is still the problem over which themoderns weary themselves. The rhythmic play against one anotherof these two factors is what has especially determined the course ofhistory hitheno. Here Christianity, for example, appears as a pieceof oriental antiquity, thought and worked through by men withexcessive thoroughness. As its influence has waned, the power of theHellenic cultural world has again increased; we experiencephenomena which are so peculiar they would hang in the air incomprehensibleto us if we could not look back over a tremendous spaceof time and connect them with their Greek counterparts. Thus thereare between Kant and the Eleatics, >:< Schopenhauer and Empedocles,Aeschylus and Richard Wagner such approximations and affinities#The Eleatics: the followers of the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides (bornabout 510 Bq. the first European metaphysician any of whose writings havesurvived.208

Richard Wagner in Bayreuththat one is reminded almost palpably of the very relative nature of allconcepts of time: it almost seems as though many things belongtogether and time is only a cloud which makes it hard for our eyes toperceive the fact. The history of the exact sciences especially evokesthe impression that we even now stand in the closest proximity to theAlexandrian-Hellenic world and that the pendulum of history hasswung back to the point from which it started its swing intoenigmatic distant and lost horizons. The picture presented by ourcontemporary world is certainly not a novel one: to him who knowshistory it must seem more and more as though he were recognizingthe old fam iliar features of a face. The spirit of Hellenic culture liesendlessly dispersed over our present-day world: while forces of allkinds crowd fO lWard and the fruits of the modern sciences andaccomplishments are bartered, the pale features of the Hellenicappear ghostlike in the distance. The earth, which has now been sufficientlyorientalized, longs again fo r the Hellenic; he who wants toassist here has need of speed and a winged fo ot, to be sure, if he is tobring together all the manifold disseminated points of knowledge,the remotest continents of talent, to run through and command thewhole tremendous region. Thus it i that we now have need of aseries of counter-Alexanders possessing the mighty capacity to drawtogether and unite, to reach the remotest threads and to preserve theweb from being blown away. Not to cut the Gordian knot, as Alexanderdid, so that its ends fluttered to all the corners of the earth, butto tie itagain - that is now the task. I recognize in Wagner such a counter­Alexander: he unites what was separate, feeble and inactive; if amedicinal expression is permitted, he possesses an astringent power:to this extent he is one of the truly great cultural masters. He is masterof the arts, the religions, the histories of the various nations, yet he isthe opposite of a polyhistor, a spirit who only brings together andarranges: fo r he is one who unites what he has brought together intoa living structure, a simplifier of the world. One will not misunderstandsuch an idea if one compares this most general task set for him by hisgenius with the much narrower one which the name of Wagnerusually calls to mind. What is expected of him is a reform of thetheatre: supposing he achieved it, what would thereby have beenaccomplished fo r that higher and remoter task?Certainly modern man would have been altered and reformed:everything in our modern world is so dependent on everything elsethat to remove a single nail is to make the whole building trembleand collapse. This may seem an exaggerated thing to say of the209

Untimely MeditationsWagnerian reform, yet any real reform could be expected to lead to asimilar result. It is quite impossible to produce the highest andpurest effect of which the art of the theatre is capable without at thesame time effecting innovations everywhere, in morality andpolitics, in education and society. Love and justice grown mighty inone domain, in this instance that of art, must in accordance with thelaw of their inner compulsion extend themselves into other domainsand cannot return to the inert condition of their former chrysalisstage. Even to grasp the extent to which the relationship of our arts tolife is a symbol of the degeneration of this life, the extent to whichour theatre is a disgrace to those who maintain and frequent it, onehas to adopt a completely new viewpoint and be able for once toregard the commonplace and everyday as something very uncommonand complex. Strangely clouded judgment, ill-dissembled thirst fo ramusement, fo r distraction at any cost, scholarly considerations,pomposity and affectation on the part of the performers, brutalgreed for money on that of the proprietors, vacuity and thoughtlessnesson that of a society which thinks of theeople only insofar as it isemployable or dangerous to it and attends concerts and the theatrewithout any notion of possessing a duty towards them all thistogether constitutes the musty corrupted air of our world of arttoday: but if one is as accustomed to it as our cultivated people are,one no doubt believes it necessary for one's health and feels ill if deprivedof it for any length of time. There is really only one short wayof convincing oneself of how vulgar, how peculiarly and oddlyvulgar, our theatrical institutions are, and that is to compare themwith the former reality of the Greek theatre. If we knew nothing ofthe Greeks, then the conditions that now obtain would perhaps beunavoidable and the kind of objections first raised in the grand mannerby Wagner would be regarded as the dreams of dwellers in theland of nowhere. The way people are, it might perhaps be said, thekind of art we have is satisfactory and suited to them - and they havenever been any different! - But they most certainly have been different,and even now there are people who are not satisfied with ourpresent institutions - as the fact of Bayreuth itself demonstrates.Here you will discover spectators prepared and dedicated, peoplewith the feeling of being at the summit of their happiness and that.their whole nature is being pulled together for yet higher and widerendeavours; here you will discover the most devoted self-sacrifice onthe part of the artists and, the spectacle of all spectacles, the victoriouscreator of a work which is itself the epitome of an abundance210

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthof victorious artistic deeds. Must it not seem almost like magic toencounter such a phenomenon in the world of today? Must notthose who are permitted to participate in it not be transformed andrenewed, so as henceforth to transform and renew in other domainsof life? Has a harbour not been reached after the desert expanse ofthe sea, does a stillness not lie over the water here? - When he who. has experienced the profound and solitary mood which reigns herereturns to the shallows and lowlands of life, must he not ask withIsolde: 'How could I have endured it? How do I endure it now?' *And if he cannot endure to keep his happiness and unhappinessselfishly to himself, he will henceforth seize every opportunity tobear witness through his actions. Where are those who suffer onaccount of the institutions of the present? he will ask. Where are ournatural allies, together with whom we can fight against the rampantaggression of contemporary bogus culture? For at present - at present!- we have only one enemy, those 'cultivated people' for whom theword 'Bayreuth' signifies one of their most shattering defeats - theyrendered no assistance, they raged against it, or they exhibited thateven more effective hardness-of-hearing which has now become acustomary weapon of refined opposition. But the fact that theirenmity and malice was incapable of destroying Wagner or of hinderinghis work teaches us one more thing: it betrays that they are weak andthat the resistance of the former rulers will no longer be able towithstand many more attacks. The time has come for those whowant conquest and victory, the greatest domains lie open, andwherever there are possessions a question-mark is set against thename of the possessor. Thus the structure of education, for example,has been recognized as rotten, and everywhere there are those whohave already silently quitted it. If only those who are already in factprofoundly disaffected could be incited to a public declaration andto public indignation! If only they could be roused out of their despairingdespondency! I know that if one were to deduct what thesenatures contribute to the proceeds of our whole system of culture,the latter would be subjected to the most enfeebling blood-lettingimaginable. Of the scholars, for example, only those infected withthe political mania and the literary scribblers of all kinds would beleft behind under the old regime. The repellent structure which nowderives its strength from the spheres of power and injustice, from thestate and society, and sees its advantage in rendering the latter ever*From Tristan und Isolde.21 1

Untimely Meditationsmore evil and ruthless, would without it be something feeble andweary: at the first sign of open contempt it would collapse. He whofights for love and justice between men has least to fear from it: for itis only when he has come to the end of the struggle he is now wagingagainst their advanced guard, the culture of today, that he willencounter his real enemies.To us, Bayreuth signifies the morning consecration on the day ofbattle. We could not be done a greater injustice than if it wereassumed we were concerned only with art: as though it were a kind ofcure and intoxicant with the aid of which one could rid oneself ofevery other sickness. What we see depicted in the tragic art-work ofBayreuth is the struggle of the individual against everything thatopposes him as apparently invincible necessity, with power, law,tradition, compact and the whole prevailing order of things. Theindividual cannot live more fairly than in being prepared to die inthe struggle for love and justice and in sacrificing himself to it. Theglance with which the mysterious eye of tragedy gazes upon us is nosorcery that prostrates us and paralyses (jUr limbs. Even though itdemands that we be quiet so long as it is gazing upon us - for art doesnot exist for the struggle itself, but for the intervals of quiet beforeand in the midst of it, for those moments when, glancing behind andlooking ahead, we comprehend the symbolic, when feelings of tirednesswhich overcome us are attended by a refreshing dream. Dayand the battle dawn together, the sacred shadows disperse and art isagain far distant from us; but its morning consolation lies upon usstill. For the individual discovers everywhere else nothing but what ispersonally dissatisfying and impervious to him: how could he fightwith any kind of courage if he had not first been consecrated tosomething higher than his own person! The greatest causes of sufferingthere are for the individual - that men do not share all knowledge incommon, that ultimate insight can never be certain, that abilities aredivided unequally - all this puts him in need of art. We cannot behappy so long as everything around us suffers and creates suffering;we cannot be moral so long as the course of human affairs is determinedby force, deception and injustice; we cannot even be wise solong as the whole of mankind has not struggled in competition forwisdom and conducted the individual into life and knowledge in the. way dictated by wisdom. How could we endure to live in the feelingof this threefold incapacity if we were unable to recognize in ourstruggles, striving and failures something sublime and significantand did not learn from tragedy to take delight in the rhythm of grandpassion and in its victim. Art is, to be sure, no instructor or educator212

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthin direct action; the artist is never an educator or counsellor in thissense; the objectives for which the tragic hero strives are not withoutfurther ado the things worth striving for per se. Our evaluation ofthings so long as we are firmly under the spell of art is different, as itis in a dream: that which, while the spell lasts, we consider so muchworth striving for that we ally ourselves with the hero when he prefersto die rather than renounce it - in real life this is seldom of thesame value or worthy of the same degree of effort: that is preciselywhy art is the activity of man in repose. The struggles it depicts aresimplifications of the real struggles oflife; its problems are abbreviationsof the endlessly complex calculus of human action and desire.But the greatness and indispensability of art lie precisely in its beingable to produce the appearance of a simpler world, a shorter solutionof the riddle oflife. No one who suffers from life can do without thisappearance, just as no one can do without sleep. The harder itbecomes to know the laws of life, the more ardently do we long forthis appearance of simplification, even if only for moments, thegreater grows the tension between general knowledge of things andtht.! individual's spiritual-moral capacities. Art exists so that the bowshall not break.The individual must be consecrated to something higher thanhimself - that is the meaning of tragedy; he must be free of the terribleanxiety which death and time evoke in the individual: for at anymoment, in the briefest atom of his life's course, he may encountersomething holy that endlessly outweighs all his struggle and all hisdistress - this is what it means to have a sense for the tragic; all theennoblement of mankind is enclosed in this. supreme task; thedefinite rejection of this task would be the saddest picture imaginableto a friend of man. That is my view of things!' There is only onehope and one guarantee for the future of humanity: it consists in hisretention of the sense for the tragic. An unheard-of cry of distress wouldresound across the earth if mankind should ever lose it completely;and, conversely, there is no more rapturous joy than to know whatwe know - that the tragic idea has again been born into the world.For this joy is altogether universal and suprapersonal, the rejoicingof mankind at the guarantee of the unity and continuance of thehuman as such.5Wagner subjected the life of the present and the past to the illuminationof an insight strong enough to penetrate to uncommonly213

Untimely Meditationsremote regions: that is why he can be called a simplifier of the world,for simplification of the world consists in being able to view and thusmaster the tremendous abundance of an apparently chaotic wildernessand to bring together in unity that which was formerly thoughtto be set irreconcilably asunder. Wagner did this by discovering arelationship between two things which appeared to be completelyalien to one another as though they dwelt in different spheres: betweenmusic and life, and likewise between music and drama. He did notinvent or create these relationships: they are there, lying ineverybody's path, just as every great problem is like the preciousstone which thousands walk over before one finally picks it up. Whatdoes it signify, Wagner asked himself, that precisely such an art asmusic should have arisen with such incomparable force in the life ofmodern man? It is not at all necessary to have a low opinion of thislife in order to perceive a problem here; no, when one considers allthe great forces pertaining to this life and pictures to oneself an existencestriving mightily upwards and struggling for conscious freedomand independence of tlwught - only then does music appear truly anenigma in this world. Must one not say that music could not arise outof this age! But what then is the meaning of its existence? Is it achance event? A single great artist might be a chance event, certainly;but the appearance of a series of great artists such as the history ofmodern music discloses - a series equalled only once before, in theage of the Greeks - makes one think it is not chance but necessity thatrules here. This necessity is precisely the problem to which Wagnerfurnishes an answer.First of all he recognized a state of distress extending as far ascivilization now unites nations: everywhere language is sick, and theoppression of this tremendous sickness weighs on the whole ofhuman development. Inasmuch as language has had continually toclimb up to the highest rung of achievement possible to it so as toencompass the realm of thought - a realm diametrically opposed tothat for the expression of which it was originally supremely adapted,namely the realm of strong feelingsit has during the brief period ofcontemporary civilization become exhausted through this excessiveeffort: so that now it is no longer capable of performing that functionfor the sake of which alone it exists: to enable suffering mankind tocorne to an understanding with one another over the simplest needsoflife. Man can no longer express his needs and distress by means oflanguage, thus he can no longer really communicate at all: andunder these dimly perceived conditions language has everywhere214

-\ IRichard Wagner in Bayreuthbecome a power in its own right which now embraces mankind withghostly arms and impels it to where it does not really want to go. Assoon as men seek to come to an understanding with one another,and to unite for a common work, they are seized by the madness ofuniversal concepts, indeed even by the mere sounds of words, and,as a consequence of this incapacity to communicate, everything theydo together bears the mark of this lack of mutual understanding,inasmuch as it does not correspond to their real needs but only tothe hollowness of those tyrannical words and concepts: thus to all itsother sufferings mankind adds suffering from convention, that is to sayfrom a mutual agreement as to words and actions without a mutualagreement as to feelings. Just as when every art goes into decline apoint is reached at which its morbidly luxuriant forms and techniquesgain a tyrannical domination over the souls of youthful artistsand make them their slaves, so with the decline of language we arethe slaves of words; under this constraint no one is any longer capableof revealing himself, of speaking naively, and few are capable of preservingtheir individuality at all in the face of an education whichbelieves it demonstrates its success, not in going out to meet clearneeds and feelings in an educative sense, but in entangling theindividual in the net of 'clear concepts' and teaching him to thinkcorrectly: as if there were any sense whatever in making of a man abeing who thinks · and concludes correctly if one has not first succeededin making of him one who feels rightly. Now when the musicof our German masters resounds in the ears of mankind injured tothis extent, what is it really that here becomes audible? Precisely thisright feeling, the enemy of all convention, all artificial alienation andincomprehension between man and man: this music is a return tonature, while being at the same time the purification and transformationof nature; for the pressing need for that return to nature arosein the souls of men filled with love, and in their art there sounds naturetransformed· in love:Let us take this to be one of Wagner' s answers to the question s towhat music signifies in our time: he also has a second. Therelationship between music and life is not only that of one kind oflanguage to another kind of language, it is also the relationship betweenthe perfect world of sound and the totality of the world ofsight. Regarded as a phenomenon for the eyes, however, and comparedwith the phenomena of life of earlier times, the existence ofmodern men exhibits an unspeakable poverty and exhaustion, despitethe unspeakable gaudiness which can give pleasure only to the215

Untimely Meditationsmost superficial glance. If one looks a little more closely andanalyses the impression made by this vigorously agitated play ofcolours, does the whole not appear as the glitter and sparkle ofcountless little stones and fragments borrowed from earlier cultures?Is everything here not inappropriate pomp, imitated activity,presumptuous superficiality? A suit of gaudy patches for the nakedand freezing? A dance of seemingjoy exacted from sufferers? An airof haughty pride worn by one wounded to the depths? And amid itall, concealed and dissembled only by the rapidity of the movementand confusionhoary impotence, nagging discontent, industriousboredom, dishonourable wretchedness! The phenomenon of modernman has become wholly appearance; he is not visible in what herepresents but rather concealed by it; and the remnant of artisticinventiveness retained by a nation, by the French and Italians forinstance, is employed in this art of concealment. Wherever 'form' isnowadays demanded, in society and in conversation, in literaryexpression, in traffic between states, what is involuntarily understoodby it is a pleasing appearance, the antidlesis of the true concept ofform as shape necessitated by content, which has nothing to do with'pleasing' or 'displeasing' precisely because it is necessary and notarbitrary. But even in civilized nations where this form is notexpressly demanded, that necessary shape which is true form is justas little in evidence: it is only that the striving after a pleasingappearance has been less successful, even though pursued with atleast as much zeal. For how pleasing the appearance is, in the one caseor the other, and why it must be agreeable to everyone that modemman at least makes an effort at an appearance, each will decide to thedegree to which he himself is a modern man. 'Only galley-slavesunderstand one another', says Tasso, 'but we politely misunderstandothers so that they shall misunderstand us in return.' *In this world of forms and desired misunderstanding there nowappear souls filled with music - to what purpose? In noble honesty,in a passion that is suprapersonal, they move to a grand, free rhythm,they glow with the mighty tranquil fire of the music that wells upout of inexhaustible depths within them - all this to what purpose?Through these souls music reaches out to its correspondingnecessary shape in the world of the visible, that is to say, to itslOIn Goethe's Torquato Tasso, Act 5 Scene 5 (the italicizing of 'misunderstand' isNietzsche's).216

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthsister, gymnastics: in its search for this it becomes judge over the wholevisible world of the present. This is Wagner's second answer to thequestion as to what significance music can have in this age. Help me,he cries to all who can hear, help me to discove:r that culture whoseexistence my music, as the rediscovered language of true feeling,prophesies; reflect that the soul of music now wants to create foritself a body, that it seeks its path through all of you to visibility inmovement, deed, structure and morality! There are men who comprehendthis call, and there will be more and more of them; and theyhave also for the first time grasped anew what it means to found thestate upon music, something the ancient Hellenes not only graspedbut also demanded of themselves: whereas they would condemn thecontemporary state as unconditionally as most men now condemnthe church. The path to so new yet not wholly unheard-of a goal leads toan admission to ourselves that the m,ost shameful shortcoming ofour education and the actual ground of its inability to emerge frombarbarism is its lack of the enlivening and formative soul of music,and that its demands and institutions are products of a time whenthe music from which we expect so much had not yet been born.Our education is the most backward structure of the present day,and it is backward precisely in regard to the only new educative forcewhich contemporary mankind has that previous centuries did nothave - or which they could have if they would cease their mindlessscurrying forward under the lash of the moment! Because they haveup to now not let the soul of music lodge within them, they have asyet no inkling of gymnastics in the Greek and Wagnerian sense of theword; and this is again the reason their plastic artists are condemnedto hopelessness so long as they continue to desire to dispense withmusic to conduct them into a new visible world: it does not matterhow much talent they have, it will come either too late or too soonand in any case at the wrong time, for it is superfluous and ineffective,since the perfect and highest products of former ages, the patternfor our contemporary artists, are themselves superfluous andalmost ineffective and hardly capable now of setting one stone uponanother. If they behold within themselves no new figures beforethem but only the old figures behind them, then they may serve historybut they cannot serve life, and they are dead while they are stillbreathing: . he who feels true, fruitful life within him, however - andat present that means music - could he be misled for a moment intoexpecting anything further from something that exhausts itself infigures, forms and styles? He has gone beyond all vanities of this217

Untimely Meditationssort; and he thinks of discovering artistic wonders outside his idealworld of sound as little as he expects great writers still to emergefrom our exhausted and colourless languages. Rather than givingear to any kind of vain consolation, he can endure to direct his profoundly dissatisfied gaze upon our modern world: let him becomefull of bitterness and hatred if his heart is not warm enough for pity!Even malice and mockery is better than that he should, in the mannerof our 'friendsof art', give himself over to fraudulent selfcontentmentand quiet dipsomania! But even if he can do more thandeny and mock, ifhe can love, pity and assist, he must nonetheless atfirst deny, so as to create a pathway fo r his helpful soul. If music isone day to move many men to piety for music and to acquaint themwith its highest objectives, an end must first be made to all pleasureseekingtraffic with so sacred an art; the fo undation upon which ourartistic entertainments, theatre, museums, concert societies rest,namely the aforesaid 'friend of art' , must be placed under an interdict;the public judgment which lays such peculiar stress on cultivatingthis species of friendship fo r art must be l>eaten from the field by abetter judgment. In the meantime we must count even the declaredenemy of art as a real and useful ally, since that of which he hasdeclared himself an enemy is precisely art as the 'friend of art'understands it: for he knows no other! Let him by all means call thefriend of art to account for the senseless squandering of money onthe construction of his theatres and public monuments, the engagementof his 'celebrated' singers and actors, the maintenance of hiswholly unproductive art-schools and picture-galleries: not to speak. of all the effort, time and money thrown away in every household oninstruction in supposed 'artistic pursuits'. Here there is no hungerand no satiety, but only an insipid pretence of both designed to misleadthe judgment of others; or, even worse, if art is taken relativelyseriously one demands of it the engendering of hunger and desireand discovers its task to lie precisely in this artificially engenderedexcitement. As though one feared perishing through one's own selfdisgustand dullness, one calls up every evil demon so as to be drivenlike a deer by these hunters: one thirsts for suffering, anger, passion,sudden terror, breathless tension, and calls upon the artist as the onewho can conjure up this spectral chase. Within the spiritual. "household of our cultivated people art is now a wholly spurious or ashameful, ignominious need, either nothing or something malign.The better and rarer kind of artist is as though caught up in abewildering dream so as not to see all this, and he hesitantly repeats218

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthin an uncertain tone ghostly words he thinks he hears coming fromfar away but cannot quite grasp; the artist of the modern stamp, onthe other hand, is full of contempt for the dreamy groping of hisnobler colleague and leads the whole brawling crowd of passionsand abominations after him on a string so as to let them loose onmodern men when required: for the latter would rather be hunted,injured and torn to pieces than have to live quietly alone with themselves.Alone with themselves! - the idea of this makes modern soulsquake, it is their kind of terror and fear of ghosts.When in populous cities I watch the thousands pass by andbehold their gloomy or harried expressions, I tell myself repeatedlythat they must be feeling unwell. But for all these people art existsmerely so that they shall feel even more unwell, even gloomier andmore senseless, or even more harried and greedy. For they areunremittingly ridden and drilled by fa lse feeling, which in this wayprevents them from admitting to themselves how wretched they are;if they want to speak, convention whispers something into their earwhich makes them forget what it was they really wanted to say; if theywant to come to an understanding with one another, their ownunderstanding is paralysed as though by a spell, so that what theycall happiness is really their misfortune and they wilfully collaboratetogether to advance their own adversity. Thus they are whollytransformed and reduced to the helpless slaves of false feeling.6Here are two examples to demonstrate how perverse the sensibilitiesof our age have become and how the age has no perception of thisperversity. In former times one looked down with honest nobility onpeople who dealt in money as a business, even though one had needof them; one admitted to oneself that every society had to have intestines.Now, as the most covetous of its regions, they are the rulingpower in the soul of modern humanity. In former times there wasnothing one was warned against more than against taking the day,the moment, too seriously; one was urged nil admirari and to be concernedwith matters of eternity; now only one kind of seriousnessstill remains in the modern soul, that directed towards the newsbrought by the newspapers or the telegraph. To employ the momentand, so as to profit from it, to assess its value as quickly as possible! -one might believe that modern man has retained only one of the virtues,that of presence of mind. Unhappily, it is in truth more like the219

Untimely Meditationsomnipresence of a dirty, insatiable greed and a prying curiosity.Whether mind is now present at all - we shall leave that question to thejudges of the future who will one day put modern man through theirsieve. But that this age is vulgar can be seen already, for it holds inhonour that which former noble ages despised; and if it has appropriatedto itself all that is valuable in the art and wisdom of the pastand promenades around in this most opulent of all raiment, it showsan uncanny awareness of its vulgarity in that it employs this cloak notto keep itself warm, but only to disguise itself. The need to dissembleand to conceal itself seems more pressing than the need not to becold. Thus our contemporary scholars and philosophers do notemploy the wisdom of the Indians and the Greeks so as to grow wiseand calm within themselves: the sole purpose of their work is tocreate for the present day an illusory reputation for wisdom. Studentsof animal behaviour exert themselves to represent the bestial outbreaksof violence and cunning and revengefulness in the mutualrelations between contemporary states and men as unalterable lawsof nature. Historians are engaged with inxious assiduity in provingthe proposition that every age possesses rights of its own and its ownconditions of existence - this by way of preparing the basis of thedefence to be presented at the court proceedings which will bevisited upon our age. Theories of the state, of the nation, of theeconomy, trade, justice - they all now have the character of a preparatoryapologia; it seems, indeed, as though the only task of all activespirit not used up in propelling the great economy- and powermachineis the defence and exculpation of the present.Before what accuser? one asks in perplexity.Before its own bad conscience.And the task of modern art, too, suddenly becomes clear:stupefaction or delirium! To put to sleep or to intoxicate! To silencethe conscience, by one means or the other! To help the modern soulto forget its feeling of guilt, not to help it to return to innocence! Andthis at least for moments at a time! To defend man against himself bycompelling him to silence and to an inability to hear! - the few whohave felt what this most shameful of tasks, this dreadful degradationof art, really means will find their souls filling to the brim with regretand pity: but also with a new mighty longing. He who desired toliberate art, to restore its desecrated sanctity, would first have to haveliberated himself from the modern soul; only when innocent himselfcould he discover the innocence of art, and he thus has twotremendous acts of purification and consecration to accomplish. If220

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthhe were victorious, if he spoke to men out of his liberated soul in thelanguage of his liberated art, only then would he encounter hisgreatest danger and his most tremendous battle; men would rathertear him and his art to pieces than admit they must perish for shamein the face of them. It is possible that the redemption of art, the onlygleam of light to be hoped for in the modern age, will be an eventreserved to only a couple of solitary souls, while the many continueto gaze into the flickering and smoky fire of their art: for they do notwant light, they want bedazzlement; they hate light - when it isthrown upon themselves.Thus they avoid the new bringer of light; but, constrained by thelove out of which he was born, he pursues them and wants to constrainthem. 'You shall pass through my mysteries', he cries to them,'you need their purifications and convulsions. Risk it for the sake ofyour salvation and desert for once the dimly lit piece of nature andlife which is all you seem to know; I lead you into a realm that is justas real, you yourselves shall say when you emerge out of my cave intoyour daylight which life is more real, which is really daylight andwhich cave. Nature is in its depths much richer, mightier, happier,more dreadful; in the way you usually live you do not know it: learnto become nature again yourselves and then with and in nature letyourselves be transformed by the magic of my love and fire.'It is the voice of Wagner's art which speaks thus to mankind. Thatwe children of a wretched age were permitted to be the first to hear itshows how worthy of pity precisely our age must be, and shows ingeneral that true music is a piece of fate and primal law; for it isimpossible to derive its appearance at precisely this time from anempty, meaningless act of chance; a Wagner who appeared bychance would have been crushed by the superior force of the opposingelement into which he was thrown. But there lies over the evolutionof the real Wagner a transfiguring and justifying necessity. Tobehold his art coming into existence is to behold a glorious spectacle,notwithstanding the suffering that attended it, for reason, law, purposeare evident everywhere. In his joy at this spectacle, the beholderwill laud this suffering itself and reflect with'delight on how primordiallydetermined nature and giftedness must turn everything toprosperity and gain no matter how hard the school it has to passthrough; how every kind of peril makes it bolder and every victorymore thoughtful; how it feeds on poison and misfortune and growsstrong and healthy in the process. Mockery and contradiction by theworld around it are a goad and a stimulus; if it wanders into error, it22 1

-."Untimely Meditationsreturns home with the most marvellous booty; if it sle e ps, 'its sleeponly gives it new strength'. * It even steals the body and makes itmore robust; it does not consume life however long it lives; it rulesover man like a winged passion and at the moment his foot hasgrown weary in the sand or is hurt against a stone it lifts him into theair. It can do nothing other than communicate, everyone is tocollaborate in its work, it is not niggardly with its gifts. If it isrepulsed, it gives more abundantly; if the recipient misuses it, it addsto its gifts the most precious jewel it possesses - and the oldest andmost recent experience teaches that the recipients have never beenquite worthy of the gift. Primordially determined nature throughwhich music speaks to the world of appearance is thus the mostenigmatic thing under the sun, an abyss in which force and goodnessdwell together, a bridge between the self and the non-self. Who can,clearly name the purpose for which it exists at all, even though it maybe apparent that purposiveness exists in the way it came into being?But the happiest presentiment may permit us to ask: should thegreater exist for the sake of the less, the,greatest giftedness for thegood of the smallest, the highest virtue and holiness for the sake offrailty? Did true music not resound because mankind deserved it leastbut needed it most? If we let ourselves ponder the boundless miracle ofthis possibility and then, out of this reflection, look back on life, weshall see all flooded in light, however dark and misty it may haveseemed before.7Nothing else is possible: he before whom there stands such a natureas Wagner's is from time to time compelled to reflect upon himself,upon his own pettiness and frailty, and to ask himself: what wouldthis nature have with you? to what end do you really exist? - Probablyhe will be unable to find an answer, and will then stand perplexed athis own being. Let him then be satisfied to have experienced eventhis; let him hear in the fact that he feels alienated from his own being theanswer to his question. For it is with precisely this feeling that he participatesin Wagner's mightiest accomplishment, the central point ofhis power, the demonic transmissibility and self-relinquishment of his, ,nature, with which others are able to communicate just as readily asit communicates with other natures, and whose greatness consists in*From Hans Sachs's monologue in Act III of Meistersinger.222

· rRichard Wagner in Bayreuthits capacity both to surrender and to receive. By apparently succumbingto Wagner's overflowing nature, he who reflects upon ithas in fact participated in its energy and has thus as it were through himacquired power against him; and whoever examines himself closelyknows that even mere contemplation involves a secret antagonism,the antagonism involved in comparison. If his art allows us toexperience all that a soul encounters when it goes on a journey - participationin other souls and their destiny, acquisition of the abilityto look at the world through many eyes - we are then, throughknowledge of such strange and remote things, also made capable ofseeing him himself after having experienced him himself. Then wefeel certain that in Wagner all that is visible in the world wants tobecome more profound and more intense by becoming audible,that it seeks here its lost soul; and that all that is audible in the worldlikewise wants to emerge into the light and also become aphenomenon fo r the eye; that it wants as it were to acquire corporality.His art always conducts him along this twofold path, from aworld as an audible spectacle into a world as a visible spectacleenigmatically related to it, and the reverse; he is continually compelled- and the beholder is compelled with him - to translate visiblemovement back into soul and primordial life, and conversely to seethe most deeply concealed inner activity as visible phenomenon andto clothe it with the appearance of a body. All this constitutes theessence of the dithyrambic dramatist, this concept extended to em braceat once the actor, poet and composer: as it must be, since it isnecessarily derived from the only perfect exemplar of the dithyrambicdramatist before Wagner, from Aeschylus and his fellow Greekartists. If one has tried to see the evolution of the greatest artists asderiving from inner constraints or lacunae; if, for example, poetrywas for Goethe a kind of substitute for a failed calling as a painter; ifone can speak of Schiller'S plays as being vulgar eloquence redirected;if Wagner himself seeks to interpret the promotion of music by theGermans by supposing among other things that, denied the seductivestimulus of a naturally melodious voice, they were compelledto take the art of music with something of the same degree ofseriousness as their religious reformers took Christianity -: so, if onewanted in a similar way to associate Wagner's evolution with such aninner constraint, one might assume the existence in him of anoriginal histrionic talent which had to deny itself satisfaction by themost obvious and trivial route and which found its expedient anddeliverance in drawing together all the arts into a great histrionic223

Untimely Meditationsmanifestation. But then one would also have to be al l owed to say thatthe mightiest musical natures, in despair at having to speak to thesemi- or non-musical, violently fo rced entry to the other arts so asfinally to communicate themselves with hundredfold clarity andcompel the people to understand them. But, however one may picturethe evolution of the potential dramatist, in his perfect maturityhe is a figure without any kind of constraint or lacunae: the actuallyfree artist who can do nothing other than think in all the arts at once,the mediator between and reconciler of spheres apparently dividedfrom one another, the restorer of a unity and totality to the artisticfaculty which can in no way be divined or arrived at by reasoning,but only demonstrated through a practical deed. He before whomthis deed is suddenly performed, however, will be overpowered by itas by the uncanniest, most magnetic magic: all at once he standsbefore a power which makes all resistance senseless, which indeedseems to rob all one's previous life of sense and comprehensibility:in an ecstasy, we swim in an enigmatic, fiery element, we no longerknow ourself, no longer recognize thi most familiar things; we nolonger possess any standard of measurement, everything fixed andrigid begins to grow fluid, everything shines in novel colours, speaksto us in new signs and symbols: - now, involved in this mixture of joyand fear, one would have to be Plato to be able to resolve as he didand to say to the dramatist: 'if a man who, by virtue of his wisdomcould become all possible things and imitate all things, should enterour community, let us revere him as something miraculous andholy, anoint his head with oil and set a wreath upon it, but then try topersuade him to go away to another community'. It may be that oneliving in the Platonic community can and must persuade himself tosuch a thing: all we others, who live in no such community but incommunities constituted quite differently, desire and demand thatthe sorcerer should come to us, even though we may fear him - inorder that our community and the false reason and power whoseembodiment it is should for once be denied. A condition of mankind,of its communities, moralities, societies, institutions as awhole, which could do without the imitative artist is perhaps not acomplete impossibility, but this 'perhaps' is one of the boldest thereis and amounts to the same thing as a 'very improbably'; only heshould be permitted to speak of it who could anticipate and realizein his mind the supreme moment of all time yet to come and then,like Faust, had to grow blind - had to and had a right to, for we haveno right even to this blindness, whereas Plato for example, after having224

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthcast a single glance into the Hellenic ideal, had the right to be blindto Hellenic reality. We others, on the contrary, need art preciselybecause we have evolved looking into the fa ce of reality; and we need preciselythe universal dramatist so that he may, for a few hours at least,redeem us from the fearful tension which the seeing man now feelsbetween himself and the tasks imposed upon him. With him weascend to the topmost rung of sensibility and only there do we fancywe have returned to free nature and the realm of freedom; from thisheight we behold, as though in immense air-drawn reflections, ourstruggles, victories and defeats as something sublime and significant;we have delight in the rhythm of passion and in its victim, withevery mighty step the hero takes we hear the dull echo of death andin its proximity we sense the supreme stimulus to life: thustransformed into tragic men we return to life in a strangely consoledmood, with a new feeling of security, as though out of supremedangers, excesses, ecstasies, we had found our way back to thelimited and familiar: back to where we are now abundantlybenevolent and in any event nobler than we were before; for everythingthat here appears serious and distressful, as progress towards agoal, is now, by comparison with the path we ourselves havetraversed, even if only in a dream, more like strangely isolated fragmentsof that total experience of which we have a terrified recollection;indeed, we shall run into danger, and be tempted to take lifetoo easily, precisely because we have taken art so uncommonlyseriously to allude to an expression with which Wagner characterizedthe course of his own life. For if we, who can only experiencethis art of the dithyrambic dramatist, not create it, find the dreamalmost more real than waking actuality, how must the creator of itevaluate this antithesis! There he stands in the midst of all the noisysummonses and importunities of the day, of the necessities oflife, ofsociety, of the state - as what? Perhaps as though he were the onlyone awake, the only one aware of the real and true, among confusedand tormented sleepers, among sufferers deluded by fancy; sometimesno doubt he even feels as though a victim of a protractedsleeplessness, as though condemned to pass a clear and consciouslife in the company of sleepwalkers and creatures of a spectral earnestness:so that all that seems everyday to others to him appearsuncanny, and he feels tempted to counter the impression producedby this phenomenon with exuberant mockery. But thissensation becomes a peculiar hybrid, when to the brightness ofthis exuberance there is joined a quite different impulse, the225

Untimely Meditationslonging to descend from the heights into the depths, t h e living desirefor the earth, for the joy of communion - then, when he recalls all heis deprived of as a solitary creator, the longing at once to take all thatis weak, human and lost and, like a god come to earth, 'raise it toHeaven in fiery arms', so a s at last to find love and no longer onlyworship, and in love to relinquish himself utterlyl The hybrid sensationassumed here is, however, the actual miracle in the soul ofthe dithyrambic dramatist; and if his nature can be conceptualizedanywhere, it must be here. For the creative moments in hisart are produced by the tension occasioned by this hybrid, when theuncanny and exuberant sensation of surprise and amazement atthe world is coupled with the ardent longing to approach this sameworld as a lover. Whatever glances he may then cast upon earth andlife, they are always beams of sunlight which 'suck up moisture', congregatemist, spread thunderclouds. His glance falls at once clearsightedand lovingly seljless: and everything he now illuminates with thetwofold light of this glance is at once compelled by nature to dischargeall its forces with fearful rapidify in a revelation of its mostdeeply hidden secrets: and it does so out of shame. It is more than afigure of speech to say that with this glance he has surprised nature,that he has seen her naked: so that now she seeks to conceal hershame by fleeing into her antitheses. What has hitherto been invisibleand inward escapes into the sphere of the visible and becomesappearance; what was hitherto only visible flees into the dark oceanof the audible: thus; by seeking to hide herselj; nature reveals the character ofher antitheses. In an impetuously rhythmic yet hovering dance, inecstatic gestures, the primordial dramatist speaks of what is nowcoming to pass within him and within nature: the dithyramb of hisdance is as much dread understanding and exuberant insight as it isa loving approach and joyful self-renunciation. Intoxicated, theword follows in the train of this rhythm; coupled with the word theresounds the melody; and melody in turn showers its fire into therealm of images and concepts. A dream apparition, like and unlikethe image of nature and her wooer, floats by, it condenses into morehuman forms, it expands as the expression of a wholly heroicexuberant will, of an ecstatic going-under and cessation of will: -thus does tragedy come into being, thus there is bestowed upon lifeits most glorious form of wisdom, that of the tragic idea, thus there isat last arose the greatest sorcerer and benefactor of mortals, thedithyrambic dramatist. -226

Richard Wagner in Bayreuth8Wagner's actual life, that is to say the gradual revelation of thedithyrambic dramatist, was at the same time an unceasing strugglewith himself insofar as he was not only a dithyrambic dramatist: hisstruggle with the world which resisted him was so furious anduncanny because he heard this 'world', this bewitching enemy,speaking out of his own being and because he harboured withinhimself a mighty demon of resistance. When the ruling idea of his life- the idea that an incomparable amount of influence, the greatestinfluence of all the arts, could be exercised through the theatre -seized hold on him, it threw his being into the most violent fe rment.It did not produce an immediate clear decision as to his fu tureactions and objective; this idea appeared at first almost as a temptation,as an expression of his obscure personal will, which longedinsatiably fo r power and fa me. Influence, incomparable influence -how? over whom? - that was from now on the question and questthat ceaselessly occupied his head and heart. He wanted to conquerand rule as no artist had done before, and if possible to attain with asingle blow that tyrannical omnipotence for which his instinctsobscurely craved. With a jealous, deeply probing glance he scannedeverything that enjoyed success, he observed even more those uponwhom influence had to be exerted. Through the magical eye of thedramatist, who can read souls as easily as he can the most familiarwriting, he saw to the bottom of the spectators and listeners, andthough he was often disturbed by what he learned he nonethelessreached at once for the means of mastering it. These means werealways available to him; what produced a strong effect upon him hewas able himself to produce; of his models he understood at everystage just as much as he was himself able to create, and he neverdoubted that he could do whatever he wanted to. In this he isperhaps an even more 'presumptuous' nature than Goethe, whosaid of himself: 'I always believed I had everything; they could haveset a crown upon my head and I would have thought it quite inorder.' Wagner's ability and his 'taste' and likewise his. objective -these have at all times corresponded as closely to one another as akey does to a lock: - together they became great and free but theywere not so at first. What to him were the feeble, noble yet selfishlysolitary sensations experienced far from the great crowd by this orthat friend of art educated in literature and aesthetically refined? Butthose violent storms of the soul produced by the great crowd when227

Untimely Meditationsdramatic song rises in intensity, that sudden explosiv ' e intoxicationof spirit, honest through and through and selfless - that was the echoof his own feeling and experience, and when he heard it he was permeatedwith a glowing anticipation of supreme power andinfluence! Thus it was he came to understand that grand opera was themeans through which he could give expression to his ruling idea; hisdesire drew him towards it, his eyes turned in the direction of itshome. A long period of his life, together with the daring changes andalterations his plans, studies, places of residence, acquaintanceshipsunderwent, are explicable only by reference to this desire and to theexternal resistance the needy, restless, passionately naive Germanartist was bound to encounter. Another artist understood better howto become master in this domain; and now it has gradually becomeknown with what an intricate web of influences of every kind Meyerbeerprepared and achieved each of his great victories, and with whatscru·pulous care he weighed the succession of 'effects' in the operaitself, it is also possible to understand how shamed and incensedWagner felt when his eyes were openedflto the kind of 'artifices' theartist was virtually obliged to employ ifhe was to wrest a success fromthe public. I doubt whether there has been another great artist in allhistory who started out so greatly in error and who engaged in themost revolting form of his art with such goodwill and naivety: andyet the way in which he did it had greatness in it and was thereforeextraordinarily fruitful. For out of the despair he felt when he cameto recognize his error he also came to comprehend the nature ofmodern success, of the modern public and of the whole of modernartistic falsity. By becoming a critic of , effect' he produced in himselfthe first trembling awareness of how he himself might be purified. Itwas as though from then on the spirit of music spoke to him with awholly novel psychical magic. As if he were returning to life after along illness, he hardly trusted his eyes or his hands, he crept alonggroping; and thus it appeared to him a miraculous discovery whenhe found he was still a musician, still an artist, indeed that it was onlynow that he had become a musician and artist at all.Every further stage in Wagner's evolution is characterized by acloser and closer union between his two fu ndamental drives: theirwariness of one another diminishes, and hereafter his higher self nolonger condescends to serve its violent, more earthly brother, it lovesit and cannot but serve it. Finally, when the goal of this evolution hasbeen reached, the most tender and pure elements are containedwithin the most powerful, the impetuous drive goes its way as before228

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthbut along a different path to where the higher self is at home; andconversely, the latter descends to earth and in everything earthlyrecognizes its own image. If it were possible to speak in this fashionof the ultimate goal and issue of this evolution and still remainintelligible, then it would also be possible to discover the inetaphysicalexpression which would describe a lengthy, intermediatestage in this evolution; but I doubt if the former can be done, and Ishall therefore not attempt the latter either. This intermediate stagecan be distinguished historically from the earlier and later stageswith two phrases: Wagner becomes a social revolutionary, Wagnerrecognizes that the only artist there has been hitherto is the poetizingfolk. * He was led to both by the ruling idea which, after that period ofgreat despair and atonement, appeared before him in a new shapeand more powerfully than ever. Influence, incomparable influenceby means of the theatre! - but over whom? He shuddered when herecalled those whom he had hitherto sought to influence. From hisown experience he knew the whole shameful situation in which artand artists find themselves: how a soulless or soul-hardened society,which calls itself good but is in fact evil, counts art and artists asamong its retinue of slaves whose task it is to satisfy its imagined needs.Modern art is luxury: he grasped that fact, as he did the fact that itmust stand or fall with the society to which it belongs. Just as it hasemployed its power over the powerless, over the folk, in the mosthardhearted and cunning fashion so as to render them ever moreserviceable, base and less natural, and to create out of them the modern'worker', so it has deprived the folk of the greatest and purestthings its profoundest needs moved it to produce and in which, asthe true and only artist, it tenderly expressed its sou'! - its mythology,its song, its dance, its linguistic inventiveness - in order to distil fromthem a lascivious antidote to the exhaustion and boredom of itsexistence, the arts of today. How this society came into being, how itknew how to imbibe new strength from apparently antagonisticspheres of power, how for example Christianity degenerated tohypocrisy and superficiality and allowed itself to be used as a shieldagainst the fo lk, as a fortress for this society and its property, andhow science and scholarship offered themselves only too pliably to* Paraphrasing Wagner, here and elsewhere in this essay, Nietzsche uses the wordVolk in the sense in which Wagner used it, i.e. the 'people' or the 'nation' as a cultural,as opposed to political, entity. This sense of Volk has an English analogue in thephrases 'folk-story' and 'folk-music'; and, although the word by itselfis now archaic inEnglish, there seems to be no alternative to using it here.229

i\! -, I, I,I!-lnUntimely Meditationsthis forced service - all this Wagner pursued through the ages, onlyto spring up in rage and disgust when he had finished: he hadbecome a revolutionary out of pity for the folk. From then on heloved the folk and yearned for them as he yearned after his art, forah! it was only in them, only in the folk, though it was now artificiallysuppressed so that it could hardly any longer be imagined, that henow saw the only spectator and listener who might be worthy of andequal to the power of his art-work as he dreamed of it. Thus hisreflections collected around the question: how does the folk comeinto being? how can it be resurrected?He found only one answer: - if a multiplicity of people sufferedthe same need as he suffered, that would be the folk, he said to himself.And where the same need led to the same impulse and desire,the same kind of satisfaction must necessarily be sought and thesame happiness discovered in this satisfaction. When he then castaround for that which cheered and consoled him the most in hisneed, which came to meet it most warmly and profoundly, he wasaware with inspiriting certainty that it coqJd only be the myth andmusic - the myth which he recognized as the product and languageof the folk's need, music having a similar though even moreenigmatic origin. In these two elements he bathed and healed hissoul, they were what he desired most ardently: - from this conditionhe could infer how closely related his need was to that experiencedby the folk when it came into being, and in what manner the folkwould have to be resurrected if there were to be many Wagners. How,then, did myth and music fare in our modern society, insofar as theyhad not fallen victim to it? They had both suffered a similar fate, awitness to their mysterious affinity: myth had been deeply debasedand disfigured, transformed into the 'fairy tale', the plaything of thewomen and children of the degenerate folk and quite divested of itsmiraculous and serious manly nature; music had maintained itselfamong the poor and simple, among the solitary, the German musicianhad failed to establish himself in the luxury trade in the artsand had himself become a fairy tale full of monsters and touchingsounds and signs, an asker of the wrong questions, something quiteenchanted and in need of redemption. Here the artist heard clearlythe command directed at him alone - to restore to the myth itsmanliness, and to take the spell from music and bring it to speech: allat once he felt his strength fo r drama unfettered, his right to rule overan as yet undiscovered middle realm between myth and music,established. He now set before mankind his new art-work, within230

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthwhich he had enclosed all he knew of power, effectiveness and joy,with the great, painfully incisive question: 'Where are you who sufferand desire as I do? Where are the many which I long to see become afolk? The sign by which I shall know you is that you shall have thesame happiness and the same comfort in common with me: yoursuffering shall be revealed to me through your joy!' Thus he ques-"tioned in Tannhiiuser and Lohengrin, thus he looked about him for hisown kind; the solitary thirsted for the many.Yet what happened? No one answered, no one understood thequestion. Not that there was utter silence; on the contrary, therewere answers to a thousand questions he had never asked at all, therewere twitterings about the new art-works as though they had beencreated for the express purpose of being talked to pieces. The wholelust for aesthetic chattering and scribbling erupted among the Germanslike a fever, the art-works and the person of the artist were assessedand fingered with that shamelessness which characterizes Germanscholars no less than it does German journalists. Wagner tried toassist an understanding of his question through prose writings: freshconfusion, fresh buzzing - a musician who writes and thinks was toall the world in those days a monstrosity; then they cried: he is atheorist who wants to transform art according to intellectual concepts,stone him! - Wagner was as though stunned; his question hadnot been understood, his need not comprehended, his art-workswere like communications to the deaf and blind, his folk was like aphantom; he reeled and faltered. The possibility of a total upheavalof all things rose before his eyes, and he no longer shrank from thispossibility: perhaps a new hope could be erected on the other side ofrevolution and destruction, perhaps not - and in any event nothingnessis better than something repulsive. Before long he was a politicalrefugee and penniless.Yet it was only now, when his outward and inner destiny had takenso fearful a turn, that the great man entered upon the period of hislife over which the light of supreme mastery lies like the glitter ofliquid gold! Only now did the genius of the dithyrambic dramathrow off his last concealment! He is utterly alone, time seems nothingto him, he has abandoned hope: thus his universal glanceagain descends into the depths, and this time to the very bottom:there he sees that suffering pertains to the essence of things and fromthen on, grown as it were more impersonal, he accepts his own shareof suffering more calmly. The desire for supreme power, theinheritance of earlier years, is wholly translated into artistic23 1

iIIUntimely Meditationscreativity; now he speaks through his art only to himself and no longerto a 'public' or folk, and struggles to bestow upon it the greatestclarity and capacity to conduct such a mighty colloquy. His workstoo had been different during the preceding period: in them too hehad, if nobly and tenderly, sought to produce an immediate effect:for these works were meant as a question designed to evoke an instantanswer; and how often Wagner desired to make himself moreeasily understood by those to whom he put it - so that he went out tomeet them and their inexperience in being questioned and conformedto older forms and means of expression; where he had tofear that he would fail to convince and be understood in his ownlanguage, he had tried to put his question in a tongue half foreign tohim, though familiar to his listeners. Now there was no longer anythingto constrain him to such consideration; now he wanted onlyone thing: to come to terms with himself, to think of the nature of theworld in the form of actions, to philosophize in sound; what was leftin him of intentionality was bent upon the expression of his finalinsights. He who is worthy to know what teo k place in him then, whathe was accustomed to discuss with himself in the darkest sanctuaryof his soul - not many are worthy of it - let him hear, behold andexperience Tristan und Isolde, the actual opus metaphysicum of all art, awork upon which there lies the broken glance of a dying man withhis insatiable sweet longing for the mysteries of night and death, fardistant from life, which, as evil, deception and separation, shineswith an uncanny ghostly morning brightness and distinctness: andwith this a drama of the most austere strictness of form, ovelWhelmingin its simple grandeur, and only thus adequate to the mystery ofwhich it speaks, the mystery of death in life, of unity in duality. Andyet there is something even more miraculous than this work: theartist himself, who after producing it could soon afterwards create aworld of a completely different colouring, the Meistersinger vonNiirnberg, and who was indeed, in these two works, only as it wereresting and refreshing himself so as then to complete with measuredpace the four-part giant structure he had already sketched out andbegun, the object of his reflection and invention over twenty years,his Bayreuth art-work, the Ring des Nibelungen! Whoever can feel perplexedat the proximity of Tristan and the Meistersinger has failed tounderstand the life and nature of all truly great Germans on animportant point: he does not know upon what basis alone that uniquelyGerman cheerfulness exhibited by Luther, Beethoven and Wagner cangrow, a kind of cheerfulness which other nations completely fail to232

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthunderstand and which contemporary Germans themselves ppearto have lost - that golden, thoroughly fermented mixture of simplicity,the penetrating glance of love, reflective mind and roguishnesssuch as Wagner has dispensed as the most delicious of draughtsto all who have suffered profoundly from life and return to it as itwere with the smile of convalescents. And, as he himself lookedupon the world with more reconciled eyes, was seized less often withrage and disgust, renounced power more in sorrow and love thanwith a shudder, as he thus quietly pushed fo rward his greatest workand laid score beside score, something happened which made himstop and listen: fri ends were coming to tell him of a subterraneanmovement of many souls - it was far from being the 'folk' that washere in motion and announcing itself, but perhaps the germ and firstsource oflife of a truly human community to be perfected in the distantfuture; for the present no more than a guarantee that his greatwork could one day be placed in the hands and care of faithful mencharged with and worthy of guarding this most glorious oflegacies inthe years to come; in the love of friends the days of his life began toshine in warmer colours; his noblest care and concern, as it were toreach the goal of his work before evening and to find for it a shelter,was no longer his care and concern alone. And then there occurredan event which he could understand only symbolically and whichsignified for him a new comfort, a sign of good fortune. A great Germanwar made him look up, a war of those same Germans whom he knewto have degenerated and fallen so far from the German highmindednesswhich he had come to know from his observation of himselfand of the other great Germans of historyhe saw that, in a quitetremendous situation, these Germans had exhibited two genuinevirtues, simple bravery and presence of mind, and he began to thinkthat perhaps he was not the last German and that one day his workwould secure the protection of a more formidable power than that ofhis self-sacrificing but few friends, which would preserve it fo r thatfuture destined to it as the art-work of the future. Perhaps, when hesought to advance this belief to a hope of immediate realization, itwas not always possible to shield it from doubt: it is enough that itgave to him a tremendous incitement to remember a lofty dutyas yet unfulfilled.His work would not have been finished, not brought to a conclusion,if he had entrusted it to posterity only as a mute score; hehad publicly to demonstrate and give instruction in what could notbe guessed, in what he alone knew, of the new style needed for its233

IUntimely MeditationsIIperformance and representation, so as to provide a model no othercould provide and thus fo und a stylistic tradition inscribed, not insigns on paper, but in effects upon the souls of men. This hadbecome all the more serious a duty inasmuch as his other works hadmeanwhile suffered the most intolerable and absurd fate precisely inregard to the style of their performance: they were famous, admiredand - mishandled without anyone's apparently being indignant overthe fact. For, strange though it may sound, as in clearsightedknowledge of what his contemporaries were like he abandoned evermore earnestly the desire for success with them and renounced theidea of power, 'success' and 'power' came to him; at least all theworld told him so. It was no good fo r him to expose repeatedly andemphatically how such 'successes' were complete misunderstandingsand, to him, humiliations; people were so unused to seeing anartist distinguish between the differing effects produced by his worksthat even his most solemn protests were never really taken seriously.After he had realized the connection between our theatrical worldand theatrical success and the character tof contemporary man, hissoul ceased to have anything to do with this theatre; he was no longerconcerned with aesthetic enthusiasms or the jubilation of excitedmasses, indeed he was filled with wrath to see his art fed so indiscriminatelyinto the gaping maw of insatiable boredom and thirst fo rdistraction. Just how superficial and thoughtless every effect producedhere must be, how here it was a matter rather of cramming astomach never satisfied than of feeding a hungry one, he concludedespecially from one regularly recurring phenomenon: everywhere,even on the part of the performers and producers, his art was takento be precisely the same kind of thing as any other music for the stageand subjected to the rules of the repulsive recipe-book of ordinaryopera production; indeed, the cultivated conductors cut and hackedat his works until they really were operas which, now they had hadthe soul taken out of them, the singers felt capable of encompassing;and when attempts were made to perform them properly, Wagner'sdirections were fo llowed with the sort of ineptitude and prudishanxiety that would, fo r instance, represent the nocturnal riot in thestreets of Nuremberg prescribed for the second act of the Meistersingerwith a troop of posturing ballet dancers and in all thiseveryone appeared to be acting in good faith and without any maliciousintent. Wagner's self-sacrificing attempts to indicate by deedand example at any rate simple correctness and completeness in theperformance of his works, and to introduce individual singers to his234

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthquite novel style of execution, were repeatedly swept away by thesludge of prevailing thoughtlessness and habit; and these effects,moreover, always involved him in mixing with a theatre whosewhole being had become for him an object of. disgust. Did notGoethe himself lose the desire to attend performances of his ownIphigenie: 'I suffer dreadfully', he said in explanation, 'when I have toassociate with these phantoms, who never appear as they ought todo.' Meanwhile his 'success' at this theatre grown repulsive to himcontinued to increase; finally the point was reached at which thegreat theatres lived for the most part on the fat takings brought themby the Wagnerian art-works disguised as operas. The confusioninvolved in this growing passion on the part of the opera public evenseized hold on many of Wagner's friends: though he had sufferedmuch in patience, he now had to suffer the worst and see his friendsintoxicated by 'successes' and 'victories' precisely where hisuniquely lofty idea was denied and derided. It almost seemed asthough a people in many respects serious and ponderous was refusingto be deprived of a systematic levity in regard to its most seriousartist, as though this were why everything vulgar, thoughtless, ineptand malicious in the German character had to be discharged at him.- When, therefore, during the German War a more expansive andfreer current of feeling seemed to come uppermost, Wagner rememberedthe duty imposed upon him by his loyalty to rescue at any ratehis greatest work from the success born of misunderstanding andthe abuse to which his other words had been subjected, and to presentit at its own unique tempo as an example for all future time: thushe conceived the idea of Bayreuth. In the wake of that current of feelinghe believed he saw an enhanced feeling of duty also awaken in thoseto whom he wished to entrust his most precious possession - and itwas out of this feeling of mutual duty that there grew the event whichlies like strange sunlight upon recent and immediately coming years;designed for the benefit of a distant future, a future that is merelypossible but not demonstrable, a future that is to the present andto men knowing only the present not much more than an enigmaor an abomination, to those few permitted to assist in its creationa foretaste and fore-experience of the highest kind through whichthey know themselves blessed, blessing and fruitful beyond theirspan of time, to Wagner himself a darkness of toil, care, reflection,wrath, a renewed raging of the hostile elements, but aboveall the light of the star of selfless loyalty and in this light transformedinto an unspeakable happiness!235

Untimely MeditationsOne hardly needs to say that the breath of the tragic lies over thislife. And everyone who can sense something of it from out of his ownsoul, everyone to whom the constraint of a tragic deception as to thegoal of life, the bending and breaking of intentions, renunciationand purification through love are things not wholly unknown, mustfeel in that which Wagner now exhibits as an art-work a dreamlikerecollection of the great man's own heroic existence. From some fardistance we shall believe we hear Siegfried telling of his deeds: intothe touching happiness of recollection there is weaved the profoundsadness of late summer, and all nature lies still in a yellow eveninglight. -9To reflect on what Wagner the artist is, and to meditate on the spectacleof a truly liberated artistic capacity and autocracy, is something thateveryone who has thought about and suffered from Iww Wagner theman evolved will have need of as a means of recovery and refreshment.If art in general is only the ability to comm1tnicate to others what onehas experienced, if every art-work contradicts itself if it cannot makeitself understood, then Wagner's greatness as an artist must consistin precisely that demonic communicability of his nature, which as itwere speaks of itself in every language and makes known its inner,most personal experience with the extremest clarity; his appearancein the history of the arts is like a volcanic eruption of the totalundivided artistic capacity of nature itself after humanity had accustomeditself to seeing the arts isolated from one another as thoughthis were an eternal rule. One can thus be undecided which name toaccord him, whether he should be called a poet or a sculptor or amusician, each word taken in an extraordinarily wide sense, orwhether a new word has to be created to describe him.Thepoetic element in Wagner is disclosed by the fact that he thinks invisible and palpable events, not in concepts; that is to say, he thinksmythically, as the folk has always thought. The myth is not foundedon a thought, as the children of an artificial culture believe, it is itselfa mode of thinking; it communicates an idea of the world, but as asuccession of events, actions and sufferings. Der Ring des Nibeluf!gen isa tremendous system of thought without the conceptual form ofthought. Perhaps a philosopher could set beside it something exactlycorresponding to it but lacking in image or action and speaking to usmerely in concepts: one would then have presented the same thingin two disparate spheres, once for the folk and once for the antithesis236

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthof the folk, the theoretical man. Thus Wagner does not address himselfto the latter; for the theoretical man understands of the poetical,of the myth, precisely as much as a deaf man does of music, that is tosay both behold a movement which seems to them meaningless.From within one of these disparate spheres one cannot see into theother: so long as one is under the spell of the poet one thinks withhim, as though one were a being who only fe els, sees and hears; theconclusions one draws are the linking together of the events onesees, that is to say factual causalities, not logical ones.N ow, if the gods and heroes of such mythological dramas asWagner writes are to communicate also in words, there is no greaterdanger than that this spoken language will awaken the theoretical manin us and thereby heave us over into the other, non-mythical sphere:so that in the end we should not through the employment of wordshave understood more clearly what is taking place before us but, onthe contrary, have failed to understand it at all. That is why Wagnerhas forced language back to a primordial state in which it hardly yetthinks in concepts and in which it is itself still poetry, image and feeling;the fearlessness with which Wagner set about this quite frightful tas kshows how fo rcibly he was led by the spirit of poetry, as one who hasto follow wherever his ghostly guide may lead him. Every word ofthese dramas had to be able to be sung, and it had to be appropriateto gods and heroes: that was the tremendous demand Wagner presentedto his linguistic imagination. Anyone else would surely havedespaired of succeeding; for our language seems almost too old andtoo devastated fo r one to be able to demand of it what Wagnerdemanded: and yet the blow he struck against the rock called forthan abundant spring. Because he had loved this language more anddemanded more ofit than other Germans, Wagner had also sufferedmore from its degeneration and enfeeblement, from the manifoldlosses and mutilation it had sustained, from its clumsy sentencestructure, from its unsingable auxiliary verbs - all things which haveentered into the language through sin and depravity. On the otherhand, he sensed with profound pride the natural originality andinexhaustibility still existing in this language, the resonant strengthof its roots in which he suspected, in contrast to the highly derivativeand artificially rhetorical languages of the Roman family, a wonderfulinclination to and preparation for music, for true music. A joy inGerman permeates Wagner's poetry, a cordiality and ingenuousnessin dealing with it that is to be encountered in no other Germanexcept Goethe. Individuality of expression, bold compression,237

Untimely Meditationsforcefulness and rhythmic versatility, a remarkabl e richness instrong and significant words, simplification of sentence construction,an almost unique inventiveness in the language of surging feelingand presentiment, occasionally a quite pure bubbling up of popularcolloquialisms and proverbiality- these are among the qualities thatwould have to be listed, and yet the mightiest and most admirablewould still have been fo rgotten. Whoever reads, one after the other,two such poems as Tristan and the Meistersinger will feel a sense ofamazement and perplexity in respect of the verbal language similarto that which he fe els in respect of the music: namely, how it couldhave been possible to create two worlds as disparate in form, colourand articulation as they are in soul. Th is is the mightiest of Wagner'sgifts, something that only a great master can succeed in: the ability tomint fo r every work a language of its own and to bestow upon a newsubjectivity also a new body and a new sound. Where this rarest ofpowers expresses itself, censure of individual excesses and singularities,or of the more frequent obscurities of expression and thought, willalways be no more than petty and unfrl.&itful. Moreover, those whohave hitherto censured most loudly have at bottom fo und not somuch the language as the soul, the whole way of feeling and suffering,repellent and unheard-of. Let us wait until they themselves haveacquired a new soul, then they themselves will also speak a newlanguage: and then, it seems to me, the German language as a wholewill be in better shape than it is now.Before all, however, no one who reflects on Wagner as poet andsculptor of language should forget that none of the Wagneriandramas is intended to be read, and thus they must not be importunedwith the demands presented to the spoken drama. The latterwants to influence the feelings solely through concepts and words;this ojective brings it beneath the sway of rhetoric. But in life passionis rarely loquacious: in the spoken drama it has to be if it is to communicateitself at all. When the language of a people is already in astate of decay and detrition, however, the poet of the spoken dramais tempted to give his thoughts and language unusual colours and toinvent neologisms; he wants to elevate language so that it can againexpress exalted feelings and he thereby incurs the danger of notbeing understood at alL He likewise seeks to communicate somethingof nobility to the passions through witty aphorisms and conceitsand thereby falls into another kind of danger: he appears falseand artificial. For real passion does not speak in maxims, and thepoetic easily arouses distrust of its honesty if it differs essentially238

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthfrom this reality. Wagner, on the other hand, as the first to recognizethe inner deficiencies of the spoken drama, presents every dramaticevent in a threefold rendering, through words, gestures and music:the music transmits the fundamental impulses in the depths of thepersons represented in the drama directly to the soul of the listeners,who now perceive in these same persons' gestures the first visiblefo rm of those inner events, and in the words a second, paler manifestationof them translated into a more conscious act of will. All theseeffects take place simultaneously without in the least interfering withone another, and compel him before whom such a drama is presentedto a quite novel understanding and empathy, just as though his senseshad all at once grown more spiritual and his spirit more sensual, andas though everything that longs to know is now in a free and blissfultransport of knowing. Because every event in a Wagnerian drama,illumined from within as it is by music, communicates itself to thespectator with the utmost clarity., its author was able to dispense withall those means of which the poet of the spoken drama has need ifheis to give the events of his play warmth and luminosity. The wholeeconomy of the drama could be made simpler, the architect'srhythmic sense could again venture to reveal itself in the greatoverall proportions of the building; for there was now no motivewhatever for that deliberate complexity and confusing multiplicitythrough which the poet of the spoken drama seeks to arouse interestand tension and then enhance them to a feeling of happy astonishment.The impression of idealized remoteness and nobility couldnow be achieved without artifice. Language retreated from rhetoricalexpansiveness to the economy and fo rce of a speech of feeling: andalthough the performer talked about his deeds and feelings far lessthan before, the inward events which the poet of the spoken dramahad hitherto kept off the stage on account of their supposedlyundramatic nature now compelled the listener to a passionateempathy with them, while the gestures which attended them neededto be only of the gentlest. Now, passion sung takes somewhat longerthan passion spoken; music stretches feeling, as it were: from whichit follows that in general the performer who is also a singer has toovercome that agitation of movement from which the spoken dramasuffers. He finds himself drawn towards an ennoblement of his gestures,and he does so all the more in that the music has plunged hisfeelings into the bath of a purer aether and has thus involuntarilymade them more beautiful.The extraordinary tasks Wagner has set his actors and singers will239

Untimely Meditationsfor generations to come incite them to competition with oneanother, so as at last to achieve a perfect visible and palpable representationof the image of the Wagnerian hero which already liesperfectly realized in the music of the drama. Following this lead, theeye of the plastic artist will at last behold the miracle of a new visibleworld such as only the creator of such works as the Ring des Nibelungenhas seen before him: as a sculptor of the highest kind who, likeAeschylus, points the way to an art of the future. Indeed, must notthe jealousy aroused when the plastic artist compares the effect of hisart with that of such music as Wagner's not in itself inspire greattalents: a music in which there reposes the purest sunlit happiness;so that to him who hears this music it is as though almost all earliermusic had spoken in a superficial and constricted language, asthough it were a game played before those unworthy of seriousnessor a means of instruction and demonstration for those unworthyeven of play. That earlier music inspires in us only for brief hoursthat happiness which we feel in Wagnerian music all the time: raremoments of forgetfulness when it spea;.s to itself alone and, likeRaphael's Cecilia, directs its glance away from its listeners, whodemand of it only distraction, merriment or scholarliness.Of Wagner the musician it can be said in general that he has bestoweda language upon everything in nature which has hitherto notwanted to speak: he does not believe that anything is obliged to bedumb. He plunges into daybreaks, woods, mist, ravines, mountainheights, the dread of night, moonlight, and remarks in them a secretdesire: they want to resound. If the philosopher says it is one willwhich in animate and inanimate nature thirsts fo r existence, themusician adds: and this will wants at every stage an existence insound.Before Wagner, music was as a whole narrowly bounded; itapplied to the steady, permanent states of mankind, to that whichthe Greeks called ethos, and it was only with Beethoven that it beganto discover the language of pathos, of passionate desire, of thedramatic events which take place in the depths of man. Formerly theobjective was to give expression in sound to a mood, a state of determinationor cheerfulness or reverence or penitence; by means of acertain striking uniformity of fo rm, and through protracting thisuniformity fo r some time, one wanted to compel the listener tointerpret the mood of the music and in the end to be transportedinto it himself. Different forms were needed fo r each of these imagesof different moods and states; other forms were determined by con-240

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthvention. The question oflength was a matter fo r the judgment of thecomposer, who, while wanting to transport the listener into a certainmood, did not want to bore him by going on for too long. A furtherstep was taken when images of antithetical moods were placed oneafter the other and the charm of contrast was discovered, and afurther step still when a single musical movement took into itself anantithetical ethos, for example by allowing a masculine theme tocome into conflict with a feminine theme. All these are still rude andprimitive stages of music. The first law originated in fear of passion,the second in fear of boredom; all deepening and excess of feelingwas felt to be 'unethical'. But when the art of ethos had presented thesame customary states and moods in hundredfold repetition itfinally succumbed to exhaustion, notwithstanding the marvellousinventiveness of its masters. Beethoven was the first to let musicspeak a new language, the hitherto forbidden language of passion:but because his art had grown out of the laws and conventions of theart of ethos, and had as it were to try to justify itself before them, hisartistic development was peculiarly difficult and bes(t with confusions. An inner dramatic event- for every passion takes a dramaticcourse - wanted to break through to a new form, but the traditionalscheme of the music of moods set itself in opposition and spokeagainst it almost as morality speaks against the rise of immorality. Itsometimes seems as . though Beethoven had set himself the contradictorytask of expressing pathos through the forms of ethos. Thisidea is, however, inadequate to his last and greatest works. To reproducethe great vaulting arch of a passion he really did discover anew means: he removed individual portions of its flightpath andilluminated these with the greatest distinctness, so that from themthe listener would divine the entire curve. Viewed superficially, thenew form seemed like several musical movements put together,each of them apparently representing a single enduring state, inreality however a moment in the dramatic course of the passion. Itcould happen that the listener would think he was hearing the oldmusic of mood but failing to grasp the relationship of the severalparts to one another, which could no longer be understood byreference to the old canon of antithetical parts. Even among composersthere arose a contempt for the demand for the constructionof an artistic whole, and the sequence of the parts of their worksbecame arbitrary. The invention of the grand fo rm for the expressionof passion led via a misunderstanding back to the singlemovement with whatever content the composer might choose, and24 1

Untimely Meditationstension between different parts of a work ceased altogether. That iswhy the symphony after Beethoven is such a strangely confusedstructure, especially when in its individual parts it still stammers thelanguage of Beethoven ian pathos. The means are not appropriate tothe objective, and the objective as a whole is not at all clear to thelistener because it was never clear to the composer either. But thedemand that one should have something quite definite to say, andthat one should say it as clearly as possible, is the more indispensablethe higher, more difficult and more ambitious a species of workis.That is why Wagner's whole struggle was to find every means ofprocuring clarity; to this end he needed above all to liberate himselffrom every prejudice and claim of the older music of static states andto put into the mouth of his music, which may be called the operationsof feeling and passion become sound, a speech free of allambiguity. If we look at what he achieved, it must seem to us asthough he has done in the realm of music what the inventor of freestandingsculpture did in that of the plaic arts. Measured againstWagner's, all earlier music seems stiff or timid, as though it wereashamed to be seen from all sides. Wagner seizes every degree andevery shade of feeling with the greatest sureness and definiteness: hetakes the tenderest, most remote and wildest emotions in handwithout fear oflosing his grip on them and holds them as somethinghard and firm, even though to anyone else they may be as elusive as abutterfly. His music is never indefinite, indicating only a generalmood; everything that speaks through it, man or nature, has a strictly. individualized passion; storm and fire take on the compelling forceof a personal will. Over all the individuals realized in sound and thestruggles their passions undergo, over the whole vortex of opposingforces, there soars in the supremest self-possession an oveIWhelmingsymphonic intelligence which out of all this conflict brings forthconcord: Wagner's music as a whole is an image of the world as it wasunderstood by the great Ephesian philosopher: * a harmony producedby conflict, the unity of justice and enmity. I wonder at thefact that it is possible to calculate the grand course of a total passionout of a multiplicity of individual passions each heading in a differentdirection: that such a thing is possible I see demonstrated byeach individual act of a Wagnerian drama, which narrates the personalhistory of various individuals together with a general history of*Heraclitus (sixth cemury BC).242

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthall of them. At the very beginning we sense that we have before usindividtial conflicting currents but at the same time a stream with apowerful directionality which is master of them all: this streammoves restlessly at first, over hidden jagged rocks, the flood sometimesseems to divide as though it wanted to go in different directions.Gradually we notice that the inner general movement hasbecome more powerful, more compelling; the convulsive restlessnesshas passed over into a broad, fearfully strong movementtowards an as yet unknown goal; and suddenly the whole breadth ofthe stream ends by plunging down into the depths with a demonicjoy in the abyss and in its seething waves. Wagner is never moreWagner than when difficulties multiply tenfold and he can rule overgreat affairs with the joy of a lawgiver. To subdue contending massesto a simple rhythm, to subject a multiplicity of demands and desiresto the rule of a single will - these are the tasks for which he feels hewas born, in the performance of which he feels himself free. Henever loses his breath in the process, he never arrives at his goalpanting. He has striven as ceaselessly to impose the harshest lawsupon himself as others strive to lighten their burden; he is oppressedby life and art when he cannot play with their most difficult problems.Consider, for instance, the relation between sung melody andthe melody of unsung speech, and how Wagner treats the pitch,volume and tempo of passionate human speech as a natural modelwhich it is his task to transform into art: - consider how this sungpassion is then ordered within the total symphonic complex of themusic and recognize a miracle of difficulties overcome: his inventivenesshere, in great things .and small, the omnipresence of hisspirit and his diligence, is such that at the sight of a Wagnerian scoreone could believe that before him there was no such thing as labourand exertion. It seems that, in regard to the toil involved in art too,he could have said that the actual virtue of the dramatist consists inself-sacrifice; but he would probably retort: there is only one kind oftoil, that of him who has not yet become free; virtue and goodnessare easy.Taken as a whole, Wagner as an artist has about him something ofDemosthenes: a tremendous seriousness as to his subject combinedwith a strength of grip that seizes it every time without fail; he layshold of it in a moment and his hand clings fast as though it were ofbrass. Like Demosthenes, he conceals his art or makes his audienceforget it by compelling them to concentrate on the subject; and yet,again like Demosthenes, he is the last and highest exemplar of a243

11'1 ';Untimely Meditationswhole series of artistic spirits and consequently has more to concealthan the first in the series had; his art, as nature reproduced andrediscovered, has the effect of nature. He has nothing epideicticabout him, as have all earlier composers who occasionally played agame with their art and put their mastery on display. At a performanceof a Wagnerian art-work one is not aware of what is interestingor enjoyable, or of Wagner himself, or of art at all: one feels only thenecessity ofit all. What severity and uniformity of purpose he imposedupon his will, what self-overcoming the artist had need of in theyears of his development so as at last in his maturity to do with joyfulfreedom what was necessary at every moment of creation, no onewill ever be able to calculate: it is enough if we sense in individualcases how, with a certain cruelty of decision, his music subordinatesitself to the course of the drama, which is as inexorable as fate, whilethe fiery soul of this art thirsts to roam about for once unchecked inthe freedom of the wilderness.10An artist who possesses this power over himself subjugates all otherartists even without wanting to do so. To him alone, on the otherhand, do those he subjects, his friends and adherents, represent nodanger or limitation: whereas lesser characters who seek supportfrom their friends generally lose their freedom through them. It iswonderful to see how his whole life long Wagner has avoided anykind of party, but how nonetheless a circle of adherents has formeditselfbehind every phase in the development of his art, apparently inorder to keep him fixed at that phase. He was always able to frustratethis intention and to pass through to the next phase; his path hasbeen too long, moreover, for any other individual to have found iteasy to accompany him the whole way and so unusual and steep thateven the most loyal would find themselves out of breath. At almostevery stage of Wagner's life his friends would have liked to have laiddown the law to him; and so, for different reasons, would hisenemies. If the purity of his artistic character had been only a degreeless firm he could have become the uncontested master of contemporaryart and music a great deal sooner: - which is what he hasfinally become, though in the much higher sense that everythingthat takes place in any domain of art sees itself involuntarily setbefore the judgment seat of his art and his artistic character. He hassubdued even the most reluctant: there is no longer any musician of244

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthtalent who does not inwardly listen to him and find him more worthlistening to than his own and all other music together. Some, determinedto mean something at all cost, wrestle with this overwhelminginner influence, exile themselves to the circle of the older mastersand prefer to found their 'independence' on Schubert -or Handelrather than on Wagner. In vain! By struggling against their betterconscience, they themselves grow meaner and pettier as artists, theyruin their character by having to endure base friends and allies: andafter all these sacrifices they still find themselves, perhaps in adream, giving ear to Wagner. These opponents are pitiable: theybelieve they have lost a great deal when they lose themselves, butthey are here in error.Now, it is plain that Wagner is not very much concerned whethercomposers from now on compose in a Wagnerian manner orwhether they compose at all; indeed, he does what he can to destroythe unfortunate current belief that a school of composers must nownecessarily attach itself to him. Insofar as he exercises a directinfluence on present-day musicians he tries to instruct them in thean of grand execution; it seems to him that the evolution of the anhas reached a point at which the will to become an efficient master ofperformance and practical musicianship is far more estimable thanthe thirst to be 'creative' at any cost. For, at the stage the an has nowreached, such creativity, by multiplying and then wearing outthrough everyday use the techniques and inventions of genius, hasthe fatal consequence of trivializing the effect of what is truly great.In an, even the good is superfluous and harmful when it originatesin imitation of the best. Wagnerian means and ends belong together:to feel the truth of this requires nothing more than anistic honesty,and it is dishonesty to observe the means and then employ them forquite different, pettier ends.If Wagner thus declines to live among a crowd of composers allcomposing away in the Wagnerian manner, he is all the more insistentin setting every talent the new task of discovering together with himthe stylistic laws of dramatic performance. He feels a profound need tofound for his art a stylistic tradition by means of which his work couldlive on unalloyed from one age to the next until it attains thatfuture'for which its creator has destined it.Wagner possesses the insatiable urge to impart everything pertainingto this foundation of a style and thereby to the continuingexistence of his an. To make his work, as a sacred deposit and truefruit of his existence (to employ an expression of Schopenhauer's),245

Untimely Meditationsthe property of mankind, to lay it down fo r a posterity better able tojudge it, has become to him a goal which takes precedence over allother goals and for the sake of which he wears the crown of thornswhich shall one day blossom into a laurel-wreath: his efforts are concentratedon the safeguarding of his work just as decidedly as arethose of the insect in its final stage on safeguarding its eggs and oncaring for the brood whose existence it will never know: it depositsthe eggs where it knows for sure they will one day find life andnourishment, and dies contented.This goal, which takes precedence over al l other goals, inspireshim to ever new inventions; the more clearly he feels himself in conflictwith his most unresponsive age and its utter unwillingness to listen,the more abundantly does he draw on the well of his demonic geniusfo r communication. Gradually, however, even this age begins to giveway before his unwearying promptings and enticements and lendshim its ear. Whenever an opportunity, great or small, of elucidatinghis thoughts by practical example appeared in the distance, Wagnerwas prepared for it: he applied his ideas to the prcumstances obtainingand made them speak even out of the most inadequate embodiments.Whenever an even halfway receptive soul appeared he casthis seed into it. He attached his hopes to things at which the coldobserver shrugged his shoulders; he was willing to deceive himself ahundred times if it meant being once in the right as against thisobserver. As the wise man traffics with living men only so far as hecan thereby augment the treasury of his knowledge, so it almostseems as though the artist can have no traffic with the men of his ageexcept that through which he can perpetuate his art: to love himmeans to love his art and its perpetuation, and he likewise understandsonly one kind of hatred directed at himself, that which seeksto break down the bridges between his art and its fu ture. The pupilsWagner reared for himself, the individual musicians and performersto whom he spoke a word or illustrated a gesture, the great and modestorchestras he directed, the towns which saw him earnestly at work,the princes and women who, half timidly, half with love, participatedin his plans, the various European countries of which hewas temporarily the judge and bad conscience: all gradually becamean echo of his idea, of his inexhaustible striving for a fruitfulness inthe future; if this echo often returned to him distorted and confused,in the end it grew to the overwhelming chorus which the overwhelmingintensity of the message he cried to the world was bound finally toevoke; and soon it will be impossible not to hear him or to mis-246

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthunderstand him. Already this chorus is making the art-centres ofmodern man tremble; whenever the breath of his spirit has waftedinto these gardens, everything withered and ready to fall there hasbeen shaken; and even more eloquent than this trembling is auniversal uncertainty: no one knows any longer where the influenceof Wagner may not suddenly break out. He is quite incapable ofregarding the welfare of art as being in any way divorced from thegeneral welfare: wherever the modern spirit represents a danger ofany kind, there with the most observant mistrust he also suspects adanger to art. In his imagination he takes apart the building of ourcivilization and lets nothing decayed, nothing frivolously constructed,escape; if he encounters firm walls or durable foundations, he atonce thinks of a way of employing them as bulwarks and protectiveroofs for his art. He lives like a fugitive whose aim is to preserve, nothimself, but a secret; like an unfortunate woman who wants to savethe life of the child she carries in her womb, not her own: he lives likeSieglinde, 'for the sake of love' . *For it is, to be sure, a life full of torment and shame, to be a homelesswanderer in a world to which one nonetheless has to speak andof which one has to make demands, which one despises and yet isunable to do without - it is the actual predicament of the artist of thefuture; he cannot, like the philosopher, hunt after knowledge all byhimself in a dark corner, for he needs human souls as mediators withthe future, public institutions as guarantees of this future, as bridgesbetween the now and the hereafter. His art is not to be embarked onthe ship of the written word, as the philosopher's work can be: artwants peifonners as transmitters, not letters and notes. Across wholestretches of Wagner's life there resounds a fear that he will not meetthese performers and that, instead of the practical example he oughtto give them, he will be fo rced to confine himself to indications inwriting, and instead of active demonstration present the merestshadow of it to those who read books, which means on the wholethose who are not artists.Wagner as a writer is like a brave man whose right hand has beencut off and who fights on with his left: he always suffers when hewrites, because a temporarily ineluctable necessity has robbed himI of the ability to communicate in the way appropriate to him, in the* In Die Walkure, Sieglinde, the mother of Siegfried, is urged by Briinnhilde to 'livefor the sake of love' by saving herself from the wrath of Wotan, not for her own sake,but for that of the child she is carrying.247

Untimely Meditationsfo rm of aluminous and victorious example. His writ i ngs containnothing canonical, nothing strict and severe: what is canonical is inhis works. They are attempts to comprehend the instinct whichimpelled him to create his works, and as it were to set himself beforehis own eyes; if he can only manage to transform his instinct intoknowledge, he hopes the reverse process will take place within thesouls of his readers: it is with this objective that he writes. If it shouldin the event prove that he was here attempting the impossible,Wagner would nonetheless only be sharing the same fate as all thosewho have reflected on art; and over most of them he has the advantageof being the repository of the mightiest instinct for all the artscollectively. I know of no writings on aesthetics so illuminating asWagner' s; what is to be learned about the birth of a work of art is tobe learned from them. It is one of the truly great artists who hereappears as a witness and through a long course of years deposes histestimony ever more freely, clearly and distinctly; even when heblunders in a point of knowledge he nonetheless strikes fire. Certainof his writings, such as Beethoven, On Cond1Jcting, On Actors and Singersand State and Religion, strike dumb every urge to contradiction andcompel one to regard them with the silent reverence appropriate tothe opening of a precious shrine. Others, especially those of earlieryears and including Opera and Drama, are disturbing: they evidencean irregularity of rhythm through which they are, as prose, throwninto disorder. Their argumentation is full of gaps, and theiremotional leaps hinder rather than accelerate their progress; a kindof reluctance on the part of the writer lies over them like a shadow, as. though the artist is ashamed of intellectual demonstration. The hardestthing of all about them for those not wholly initiated is, perhaps, animpression they give of dignified self-assertiveness; it is a tonepeculiar to them and one hard to describe: to me it seems as thoughWagner were often speaking in the presence of enemies - for all these writingsare in spoken, not in written style, and one will find them muchclearer if one hears them read well aloudenemies with whom hecannot be familiar or intimate and at whom he is thus compelled todeclaim from a distance. But sometimes his passionate engagementbreaks through this deliberate dignity of style, and then the artificial,verbose and laboured periods vanish and there escape from himsentences and whole pages which are among the most beautiful in allGerman prose. Even supposing, however, that in such passages he isspeaking to his friends and that the spectre of his enemies has for themoment vacated its place by his chair, all the friends and enemies248

Richard Wagner in BayreuthWagner addresses as a writer nonetheless have something in commonwhich distinguishes them fu ndamentally from that 'folk' fo rwhom he creates as an artist. In the refinement and unfruitfulness oftheir culture they are altogether divorced from the world of the folk, and hewho wants to make himself understood by them has to -speak in amanner divorced from that of the folk: as our best prose writers havedone and as Wagner also does. With what degree of self-constraintwe can guess. But the force of the drive, protective and as it weremotherly, which he brings to every sacrifice draws him back into theatmosphere of the scholar and the cultivated to which as a creator hehas said farewell for ever. He subjects himself to the language of cultureand to all its laws of communication, even though he was thefirst to feel the profound inadequacy of this fo rm of communication.For if there is anything that sets his art apart from all other art ofmodern times it is this: it no longer speaks the language of the cultureof a caste and in general no longer recognizes any distinctionbetween the cultivated and the uncultivated. It therewith sets itself inopposition to the entire culture of the Renaissance, which had previouslyenveloped us modern men in its light and shade. Bytransporting us for moments out of this mantle of light and shade,Wagner's art enables us for the first time to see how uniform thatwhole period was: Goethe and Leopardi then appear to us as the lastgreat fo llowers of the Italian philologist-poets, Faust as a representationof the riddle propounded by modern times of the theoreticalman who thirsts for real life - an enigma the furthest removed fromthe world of the folk; even the Goethean song is an imitation of afolk-song, not an example of it, and the poet well knew why headmonished one of his followers with the words: 'My things cannotbecome popular; whoever thinks they can and tries to make them sois in error.'That it was in any way possible for an art to exist which was sobright and warm that it would both enlighten the poor and lowly andmelt the arrogance of the learned was something that could not bedivined before it had come about. But now that it has come about, itmust transform every notion of education and culture in the spirit ofeveryone who experiences it; it will seem to him that a curtain hasbeen raised on a fu ture in which there are no longer any great andgood things except those which all hearts share in common. The illodour which has hitherto clung to the word 'common' will then havebeen removed from it.249

Untimely MeditationsIf we venture thus to gaze into the future, we are als aware of theuncanny social insecurity which characterizes our own times andcannot conceal from ourselves the peril facing an art which seems tohave no roots at all ifit does not have them in the distant future, andwhich reveals to us its blossoming branches rather than the foundationout of which it grows. How can we preserve this homeless anso that it shall survive into this future? How can we dam the flood of, the apparently ineluctable revolution in such a way that this happyanticipation and guarantee of a better fu ture, a freer humanity, is notalso swept away with all that which is dedicated to and wonhy ofdestruction?Whoever fe els this anxiety participates in Wagner's anxiety; withhim, he will feel himself driven to seek out those existing powerswhich have the will to be the guardian spirits of mankind's noblestproperty through these coming times of earthquake and upheaval . Itis only in this sense that Wagner in his writings inquires of thecultivated whether they are willing to take his legacy, the preciousring of his art, into their treasure-house; and even the sublime trustwhich Wagner has reposed in the German spirit even in respect of itspolitical goals seems to me to have its origin in his crediting thenation of the Reformation with that strength, kindness and braveryneeded to 'divert the sea of revolution into the quietly flowingstream of humanity': and I could almost think that this and nothingelse is what he intended to express through the symbolism of hisKaisennarsch. *In general, however, the creative artist's urge to help is too great,. the horizon of his philanthropy too spacious, for his purview to belimited to the area bounded by any one nation. His conceptions are,like those of every great and good German, supra-Gennan, and his anspeaks, not to nations, but to individual men.But to men of the future.This is the faith which characterizes him, his torment and his distinction.No artist at any time in the past has received so remarkablea dowry from his genius, no one but he has had to imbibe with thatdraught of nectar enthusiasm has dispensed for him so sharp a dropof bitterness. It is not, as one might suppose, the misunderstood,mistreated and as it were fu gitive anist who adopted this faith as ameans of defence: success or failure in the eyes of his con tem->liThe Emperor March, composed by Wagner in 1871 to celebrate the founding ofthe Reich.250

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthporaries could neither raise it up nor account for it. Whether itpraised or rejected him, he did not belong to this generation: - thatwas the judgment of his instinct; and that there will ever be a generation,that belongs to him cannot be proved to, him who does notalready believe it. But even this unbeliever can, however, pose thequestion as to what a generation would have to be like if Wagner wasto recognize in it his 'folk', as the epitome of all those who feel a needin common and want to be redeemed from it through an art in common.Schiller, to be sure, was more believing and more hopeful: hedid not ask what an age would be like if the instinct of the artist whoprophesies it should prove sound, he rather demanded of theartists:Erhebet euch mit kiihnem FliigelHoch iiber euren Zeitenlauf!Fern dammre schon in eurem SpiegelDas kommende Jahrhundert auf!- Raise yourselves on daring wing high above your own age! Let thecoming century distantly dawn already in your mirror!11May sane reason preserve us from the belief that mankind will at anyfuture time attain to 'a final ideal order of things, and-that happinesswill then shine down upon it with unwavering ray like the sun of thetropics: with such a beliefWagner has nothing to do, he is no utopian.If he cannot cease to believe in the future this means no more thanthat he perceives in the men of today qualities which do not belongto the unalterable character and bone-structure of human naturebut are changeable, indeed transitory, and that it is precisely becauseof these qualities that art has to be homeless among them and hehimself has to be the herald of another age. No golden age, no cloudlesssky is allotted to this coming generation to which his instinctdirects him and whose vague lineaments can, so far as it is possible toinfer the nature of the need from the nature of the gratification, bediscerned in the secret writing of his art. Neither will suprahumangoodness and justice span the fields of this fu ture like an immovablerainbow. Perhaps this generation as a whole will even seem more evilthan the present generation - for, in wicked as in good things, it willbe more candid; it is possible, indeed, that if its soul should speak outin free full tones it would shake and terrify our soul as would thevoice of some hitherto concealed evil spirit of nature. Or how do251

Untimely Meditationsthese propositions strike us: that passion is better than stoicism andhypocrisy; that to be honest, even in evil, is better than to lose oneselfin the morality of tradition; that the free man can be good or evil butthe unfree man is a disgrace to nature and is excluded from bothheavenly and eanhly solace; finally, that he who wants to becomefree has to become so through his own actions and that freedom fallsinto no one's lap like a miraculous gift. However shrill and uncannyall this may sound, what speaks here is the voice of that world of thefuture which has a genuine need of art and which can thus expectgenuine satisfaction from it; it is the language of nature restored alsoin the world of man, it is precisely that which I earlier called rightfeeling, in contrast to the false feeling which predominates today.But only nature can enjoy genuine satisfactions and redemptions:unnature and false feeling cannot do so. If it should become aware ofitself, unnature can only long for nothingness, while nature desirestransformation through love: the former wants not to be, the latterwants to be diff erent. Let him who has grasped this pass in review, inall quietness of soul, the simple themes of Wagner's art, and ask himselfwhether it is nature or unnature, as they have just been described,where here pursues its goals.A man homeless and despairing finds redemption from his tormentthrough the compassionate love of a woman who prefers to dierather than be unfaithful to him: the theme of the Fliegende Hollander.- A loving woman, renouncing all happiness for herself, becomes, ina heavenly transformation of amor into caritas, a saint, and saves thesoul of him she loves: the theme of Tannhiiuser. -The highest andmost glorious descends to men out of desire for them and will not beasked whence it has come; when the fatal question is asked, under apainful compulsion it returns to its higher life: the theme ofLohengrin. The loving soul of woman and of the folk are happy toreceive the new beneficent genius, although the preservers of traditiondefame and repulse it: the theme of the Meistersinger. -Twolovers who are unaware they are in love, but believe on the contrarythat they are deeply wounded and despised by one another, demandfrom one another a death-potion, apparendy to expiate their offencebut in reality from an unconscious impulse: they want to be freed bydeath from all separation and dissimulation. The supposed proximityof death unbinds their souls and conducts them to a brief,dreadful happiness, as though they really had escaped from day anddelusion, indeed from life: the theme of Tristan und Isolde.In the Ring des Nibelungen the tragic hero is a god who thirsts afterpower and who, through neglecting no path to its attainment, binds252

Richard Wagner in Bayreuthhimself with treaties, loses his freedom, and becomes enmeshed inthe curse which lies upon all power. His unfreedom is broughthome to him especially by the fact that he no longer has any meansof getting possession of the golden ring, the epitome of all earthlypower and representing at the same time the most extreme danger tohimself so long as it is in the possession of his enemies: he is overcomeby fear of the ending and twilight of all the gods and by despairat being able only to watch this ending approach and do nothing toprevent it. He needs a free, fearless human being who, without hisassistance or advice, indeed in conflict with the divine order, will ofhis own volition perfo rm the deed denied to the god: this humanbeing is nowhere to be seen, and it is precisely when a new hope ofhim dawns that the god is compelled to obey the constraint thatbinds him: what he loves most he has to destroy, and has to punishan act of the purest pity. At length he comes to feel a disgust forpower, which bears in its womb only evil and unfreedom, his willbreaks, he himselflongs for the ending that threatens him from afar.And only now does there come to pass that which previously he hadmost desired: the free, fearless human being appears, born in conflictwith all that is custom and tradition; his begetters expiate thefact that their union was counter to the order of nature and morality:they perish, but Siegfried lives. At the sight of his wonderful evolutionand blossoming, disgust gives way in Wotan's soul, he followsthe hero's fortunes with the eye of fatherly love and anxiety. How heforges the sword fo r himself, slays the dragon, gains the ring, eludesthe cunningest deception, awakens Brilnnhilde; how the curse thatlies on the ring does not spare even him but approaches him closerand closer; how, loyal in disloyalty, wounding through love her heloves most, he is engulfed by the mists and shadows of guilt, but atlast emerges as clear as the sun and goes under, igniting the wholeheavens with his fiery glow and cleansing the world of the curse: allthis the god - whose commanding spear has been shattered in combatwith the freest of men, who has thereby deprived him of hispower- beholds with joy at his own defeat, rejoicing and at one withhis conqueror: his eye reposes with the light of a painful blissfulnessupon the concluding events, he has become free in love, freefrom himself.And now ask yourselves, you who are living today! Was thiscreated for you? Have you the courage to point to the stars in thiscelestial vault of beauty and goodness and say: it is our life thatWagner has set among the stars!Where among you are those able to interpret the divine image of253

Untimely MeditationsWotan by reference to their own life and who themselves, like him,grow ever greater the fu rther they withdraw? Which of you willrenounce power, in the knowledge and experience that power isevil? Where are those who, like Brunnhilde, relinquish their wisdomout oflove and yet in the end learn from their life the highest wisdomof all: 'deepest suffering of sorrowing love opened my eyes'.' Andwhere are the free and fearless, those who in innocent selfishnessgrow and blossom out of themselves, the Siegfrieds among you?He who thus asks, and asks in vain, will have to look towards thefu ture; and if in some remote age his glance should discover preciselythat 'folk' for whom Wagner's art is a record of its own history,he will also have finally come to understand what Wagner will be to thisfolk: something he can not be to any of us, namely not the seer of afu ture, as he would perhaps like to appear to us, but the interpreterand transfigurer of a past.*Words of Briinnhilde in one of the many different versions Wagner wrote of theclosing scene of Giitterdiimmerung: not in th e final version set to music, but included ina passage appended as a fo otnote to the sce in the 1872 edition of the Ringtext.254

GLOSSARY OF NAMESAUERBACH, Berthold (1812-82) : novelist and story-writer.BAGEHOT, Walter (1826-77) : English economist and journalist.BRANDES, George (1842-1927) : Danish literary critic and historian. The first person togive academic lectures on Nietzsche.BRANDIS, Christian August (1790-1867) : historian of Greek philosophy and professorat the University of Bonn.BULOW, Hans von (1830-94) : German composer and conductor. Married CosimaLiszt, who eventually left him for Richard Wagner.'BURCKHARDT, Jacob (1818-97) : Swiss historian, author of the Civilization of theRenaissance in Italy; he was a senior colleague of Nietzsche's at BaselUniversity.CARRIERE, Phillip Mori (1817-95) : idealist and professor of philosophy at Munich.DEMOSTHENES (384 or 383-322 BC) : Greek orator and statesman.DEUSSEN, Paul (1845-1919): German philosopher and translator of Sanskrit texts.Founder of the Schopenhauer society, Deussen and Nietzsche were pupils togetherat Pforta and remained friends for many years.DEVRIENT, Eduard (1801-77) : German actor, producer and dramatist.DIOGENES LAERTIUS (fl. AD 222-35) : biographer of the Greek philosophers.DUBOIS-REYMOND, Emil (1818-96) : scientist and advocate of agnosticism.ECKERMANN, Johann Peter (1792-1854) : German writer who became an associate andassistant of Goethe during the latter's last years and produced in his Gespriichemit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens (1836---48) the German equivalent ofBoswell's Johnson.ECKHART, Meister (1260-1327) : German mystic.EMPEDOCLES (c. 490-430 BC) : Greek philosopher and statesman.ERWIN VON STEINBACH (d. 1318): principal architect of Strasbourg Cathedral,which is the 'monument' alluded to on p. 73. Goethe's essay. 'Von deutscherBaukunst' (1772) is the source of Nietzsche's observations here.FORSTER-NIETZSCHE, Elisabeth (1846-1935) : Nietzsche's sister, with whom he had aclose but frequently stormy personal relationship.GAST, Peter (see Heinrich Koselitz) .GERSDORFF, Carl von (1844-1904) : Prussian nobleman who befriended Nietzschewhile they were both pupils at Pforta. Gersdorff became an enthusiasticSchopenhauerian and Wagnerian and remained in touch with Nietzsche for therest of his life.GERVINUS, Georg Gottfried (1805-71): German literary critic and a pioneer of thestudy of literary history.255

Glossary of namesGOTISCHED, Johann Christoph (1700-66) : German philosopher and literary critic;the 'literary dictator' of German letters for roughly 30 years (about 1730 to 1760) .GRILLPARZER, Franz (1791-1872) : Austrian dramatist and critic.GUTZKOW, Karl Friedrich (1811-78) : dramatist, novelist, journalist.HARMS, Hans Joachim Friedrich (1816-80): eclectic idealist and professor of philosophyat the University of Berlin.HARTMANN, Eduard von (1842-1906) : German philosopher and mathematician,whose Philosophy oj the Unconscious (1869) is an eclectic blend of Hegelian andSchopenhauerian doctrines.HERBART, Johann Friedrich (1776-1841): Professor of Philosophy at the University ofG6ttingen and founder of empirical psychology.HOLDERLIN, Friedrich (1770-1843) : poet. Unappreciated in his own day, he is nowregarded as one of the greatest masters of German poetry. Like Nietzsche, he diedinsane.KLEIST, Heinrich von (1777-1811): dramatist and story-writer.KOSELITZ, Heinrich (1854-1918) : German composer who functioned for many yearsas Nietzsche's editorial assistant and trusted friend. At Nietzsche's urging, K6selitzadopted the stage name 'Peter Gast' , which is how he is always referred to byNietzsche.LEOPARDI, Giacomo, Count (1798-1837) : Italian poet.LESSING, Gotthold, Ephraim (1729-81): dramatist and critic; the most admiredliterary figure of the age preceding that of Goethe.LICHTENBERG, Georg Christoph (1742-99) : aphorist and satirist.LUCRETIUS (Titus Lucretius Carus: 99/94-55/51 Bt): Roman philosophical poet.MANDEVILLE, Bernard de (1670?-1733) : English philosopher and satirist, best knownfor his satirical work, The Fable oj the Bees (1705).MERCK, Johann Heinrich (1741-91): close friend of Goethe's during the latter'searlier years; noted in German literary history for his influence on Goethe as aknowledgable, if sometimes wounding, critic of Goethe's literary productions.MEYER,Jiirgen (1829-97) : professor of philosophy at the University of Bonn and exponentof a psychological interpretation of Kantianism; author of a critical work onSchopenhauer.MEYERBEER, Giacomo (1791-1864) : German composer who enjoyed his greatest successas the founder of 'grand opera' in Paris.MEYSENBUG, Malwinda von (1816-1903) : educational reformer, friend of revolutionaries,and wealthy patron of the arts and letters, Meysenbug met Nietzsche at theceremonial laying of the foundation stone of the Bayreuth theatre in 1872.Nietzsche subsequently stayed at her villas in Sorrento and Rome and correspondedwith her regularly.MOLTKE, Helmut, Count von (1800-91): Prussian general and for 30 years (1858-88)chief of staff of the Prussian army.MOMMSEN, Theodor (1817-1903) : historian and Nobel prizewinner; author of theHistory oj Rome.NIEBUHR, Barthold Georg (1776-1831): historian, his history of Rome being his mostfamous work.OVERBECK, Franz (1837-1905) : Professor of New Testament and Church History atBasel, where he and Nietzsche became very close friends. Overbeck was one ofNietzsche's most trusted friends during his later years.PASSOW, Franz Ludwig Carl Friedrich (1786-1833) : German classicist and Greeklexicographer.POLYBIUS (c. 201-c. 120 BC) : Greek historian; his Histories are essentially the story ofthe rise of the Roman Empire.RAMLER, Karl Wilhelm (1725-98) : poet and translator of classical poets.RANKE, Leopold von (1795-1886) : historian, author of the History oJ the Popes.256

Glossary of namesRitE, Paul (IS49-1901): German moral philosopher and author of The Origins oj OurMoral Sentiments (IS77) . Nietzsche and Ree were close friends for almost a decadeand lived together in Italy on several occasions.RIEHL, Wilhelm Heinrich (IS23-97) : writer, historian and composer; his Hausmusiksettings of 50 poems - was published in IS55; thedesign shows a family ofat least eight people and a cat gathered around a piano a clear_ indication of thecharacter of Riehl's music.RlTfER, Heinrich (1791-1S69): professor of philosophy at Gottingen and famous historianof philosophy.ROHDE, Erwin (IS45-9S): German philologist who became acquainted with Nietzschewhile they were students together at Bonn and Leipzig. Rohde and Nietzscheremained dose throughout Nietzsche's Basel period, but were estranged soonthereafter.SALOM E , Lou (lS61-1937): Russian novelist and memoirist, best known for her intellectualfriendships 'with such men as Rilke, Freude, and Adler. In the early ISS0sSalome was close to both Nietzsche and Paul Ree.SANDERS, Daniel (ISI9-97) : lexicographer and author of a dictionary on properusage, with illustrations from 'classic' authors.SAVONAROLA, Girolamo (l452-9S) : Florentine religious reformer.SCALIGER, julius Caesar (l484-155S) : classical scholar.SCHLEIERMACHER, Friedrich Daniel Ernst (1768-1834) : theologian; the founder ofmodern Protestant theology.SCHOPENHAUER, Arthur (l7S8-1S60): philosopher, author of The World as Will andIdea (lSI9) . one of the great philosophical texts of the nineteenth century.Although he had no genuine successors and founded no school, his influencewas very widespread from about the middle of the century onwards, his mostfamous disciple being Richard Wagner, who believed that Schopenhauer hadrevealed to him the meaning of his own works and who then consciously pursueda Schopenhauerean line. In his youth Nietzsche counted himself a disciple ofSchopenhauer, though he later repudiated all his doctrines. In the presentcentury Schopenhauer's philosophy of will has been one of the influences behindthe development of existentialism and Freudian psychology.Anne Louise, Baronne de (1766-1S17) : French writer; noteworthy in thepresent context for her study of German life and letters and her efforts to makethe French understand them.STRAUSS, David Friedrich (IS0S-74) : theologian who, under the influence of thephilosophy of Hegel, propounded in his Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (IS35-6)the thesis that the events narrated in the Gospels are not historical but mythical -a thesis which ensured his exclusion from teaching in German universities. In hislast work, Der alte und neue Glaube (IS72), he renounced Christianity altogether infavour of a form of scientific materialism. Though he is now a familiar name onlyto students of nineteenth-century theology, Strauss enjoyed considerable fameand notoriety in his own time.THIERS, Louis Adolphe (1797-1S77): extremely influential French historian.VISCHER, Friedrich Theodor (IS07-S7) : theologian, aesthetician and man of letters.WAGNER, Cosima (IS37-1930): daughter of Franz Liszt, who married Hans von Biilow,but soon left him for Richard Wagner, with whom she lived in exile in Tribschen,where Nietzsche met her in IS69. Cosima and Richard Wagner finally married inIS70.WAGNER, Richard (lSI3-S3): composer, dramatist and man of letters. His career inthe theatre over the half-century IS32-S2, as opera composer and librettist, conductor,reformer and finally as the creator of the Bayreuth Festival, and hisinfluence on the course not only of opera composition and production but ofmusic in general, are unexampled in the history of music and possibly in that of257

Glossary of namesany other art. A wholly exceptional personality, he polarized all who knew himinto devoted friends and admirers or unconditional enemies; Nietzsche, whomet him in 1868 and became an intimate acquaintance, was at first the former,subsequently the latter.WACKERNAGEL, Wilhelm (1806-69): Germanist and poet.WILAMOWITZ-MOLLENDORF, Ulrich von (1848-1931): distinguished classical philologistwho attended Pforta a few years after Nietzsche and published a scathingreview of The Birth of Tragedy in 1872.WINCKELMANN, Johann Joachim (1717-68): archaeologist and historian of art; hisview of the world of ancient Greece became canonical for eighteenth-centuryGermany.WOLF, Friedrich August (1759-1824): German scholar and the founder of modernclassical philology.ZELLER, Eduard (1814-1908): professor of philosophy at Heidelberg and celebratedhistorian of Greek philosophy.ZOLLNER,Johann Karl Friedrich (1834-82): German astronomer and cosmologist.258

--!Notesp. 7, 1. 25 confessions: The full title of the 1872 work by Straussthat provoked Nietzsche's response is Der alte und der neueGlaube: Ein Bekenntnis (The Old and the New Faith: A Confession) .p. 11, 1. 1 enthusiasm: An allusion to Goethe, Maximen undReflexionen (Maxims and Reflections) , no. 495: 'The best thing weobtain from history is the enthusiasm it provokes' (an excerptfrom Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren [1829] ).p. 11, footnote: These are the opening words of Horace's firstEpistle.p. 17, 1. 7 people: Lichtenberg, Vermischte Schriften (1867) , vol. 1,p. 188.p. 21, 1. 25 conversion: It was claimed by some that Winckelmannhad converted to Catholicism simply in order to gain betteraccess to Roman collections of antique art.p. 30, 1. 28 difficult: An allusion to the epigraph of Schopenhauer'sUber die Grundlage der Moralitiit (On the Foundations of Morality[1841]).p. 31, last line feathers: The word 'Strauss' means 'ostrich' inGerman. Here, as elsewhere in the first Meditation, Nietzscheplays upon the literal meaning of the name.p. 32, 1. 35 called it: Lichtenberg, Vermischte Schriften (1867) ,vol. 1, p. 90.p. 34, 1. 25 oracle: An allusion to Balthasar Gracian's 1647 El oracylumanual y arte de prudentia (Oracular Handbook and Art ofPrudence) , a collection of practical aphorisms much admired bySchopenhauer, who translated it into German.p. 43, 1. 12 carriage: Straussen-Wagen, a pun on Strassen-Wagen or'streetcar' .259

Notesp. 44, 1. 12 Voltaire (p. 219): A citation from Strauss's publishedlectures Voltaire: Sechs Vortriige (1870) .p. 48, 1. 16 once said: Lichtenberg, Ve rmischte Schriften, vol. 1,p. 306.p. 49, 1. 1 Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer, Aus Schopenhauers handschriftlichenNachlaJ3, ed. ]. Frauenstadt (1864) [hereafter,NachlaJ3] , pp. 60-I.p. 50, 1. 19 puts it: NachlaJ3, pp. 60-1.p. 52, footnote: Tacitus, Dialogue on Oratory, XXIII.3.p. 53, 1. lfirmitas: 'strength'.p. 53, 1. 37 nourishment: Schopenhauer, NachlaJ3, pp. 60-I.p. 54, 1. 32 paws off: Schopenhauer, Parerga und Paralipomena(1851), vol. 2, 'On Authorship and Style', 283.p. 59, 1. 4 from Goethe: Goethe's letter to Schiller, 19 December1798.p. 59, 1. 4 .ceterum censeo: An allusion to the famous words withwhich Cato the Elder is supposed to have concluded everyspeech he made before the Roman§enate: 'I am of the opinionthat Carthage must be dc;stroyed.'p. 60, 1. 11 faults: Goethe, Wahrheit und Dichtung (Poetry and Tru th[1814]), Bk. III, ch. 13.p. 62, 1. 15 finger: An allusion to Cratylus, a sophist who, accordingto Aristotle (Metaphysics, IV. 1 0 1 Oa.12), concluded that sincetruth could neither be known nor spoken, he would not speakat all, but ' only move his finger'.p. 64, 1. 33 Goethe's words: Maxims and Reflections, no. 25 I.p. 65, 1. 28 says mockingly: Though cited by Hume in Part X ofDialogues on Natural Religion (1779), this verse (which Nietzschequotes in English) is actually from John Dryden's playAurengzebe (1675), Act IV, Scene 1.p. 66, 1. 24 Leopardi: From his poem 'A se stesso' ('To Himself),cited by Nietzsche in German translation.p. 67, 1. 36 Goethe said: Conversations with Eckermann (1836),21 July 1827.p. 68, 1. 3 fortune: Polybius, Histories 1.1.2.p. 69, 1. 20 Schopenhauer called it: Parerga und Paralipomena,vol. 1, 'Aphorisms on Worldly Wisdom', ch. 3.p. 71, 1. 6 their master: See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the EminentPhilosophers, VIILII.p. 73, 1. 22 monumental work: An allusion to Goethe's 1772 essay'Von deutscher Baukunst' ('On German Architecture'),260

Notesdedicated to Erwin von Steinbach, builder of the Strasbourgcathedral.p. 73, 1. 29 Burckhardt puts it: The Civilization of the Renaissance inItaly, 2nd edn. (1869), Bk. III, ch. 10.p. 76, 1. 11 existed: Goethe, Faust, Pt. I, 1339-4l.p. 78, 1. 17 fairy tale: Grimm, 'The Wolf and the Seven LittleGoats'.p. 81, 1. 35 us moderns: A loose quotation from Grillparzer'sSlimmtliche Werke (1872), vol. 9, p. 187.p. 83, 1. 39 reasonable man: See Schiller's poem, 'Die Worte desGlaubens' ('Words of Faith').p. 85, 1. 33 Shakespeare: Goethe, 'Shakespeare und kein Ende'(,Shakespeare without End' ), l.p. 91, 1. 32 to declare: A quotation assembled from two passages inGrillparzer's Slimmtliche Werke, vol. 9, pp. 129, 40.p. 92, 1. 13 imagination: From Schiller's inaugural lecture as aProfessor of History atJena (26 May 1789), 'Was heisst und zuwelchem Ende studiert man Universalgeshichte?' ('What is"Universal History" and why should one study it?').p. 92, 1. 15 virtuoso: Leopold von Ranke.p. 92, 1. 20 compelled: Goethe's letter to Schiller, 21 February 179B.p. 94, 1. 19 historiens de M. Thiers: 'The historians who followM. Thiers'.p. 96, 1. 7 cruellest tyrant: Goethe, 'Fragment iiber die Natur'(,Fragment on Nature'). Nietzscheapparently quotes thispassage as cited in Eduard von Hartmann 's Die Philosophie derUnbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious) (1869), since hiscitation includes the same alteration found in Hartmann'squotation.p. 96, 1. 25 theologus liberal is vulgaris: 'common liberal theologian'.p. 97, 1. 19 actio in distans: 'action from a distance '.p. 97, 1. 28 Meistersinger: See Wagner, Die Meistersinger, Act III, Scene I.p. 98, 1. 31 called real: H61derlin's letter to Isaak von Sinclair,24 December 1798.p. 100, 1. 1 application: See Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, nos.693 and 694.p. 101, 1. 29; 'memento mari' : 'remember that you must die '.p. 101, 1. 32 'memento vivere': 'remember that you are alive '.p. 103, 1. 16 a life of the spirit: From Wackernagel, Abhandlungenzur deutsche Literaturgeschichte (Essays on the History of GermanLiterature) , in Kleinere Schrifien, vol. 2 (1873) .261

Notesp. 104, 1. 33 only by the history: This mocking ch ' aracterization ofthe 'Hegelian' attitude toward history is taken directly fromGrillparzer, Gesiimmelte Werke, vol. 9, p. 157.p. 107, 1. 23 the world-process: This quotation is from Hartmann 'sPhilosophy of the Unconscious, which is frequently quoted (oftenwithout attribution and never with page re f erences) byNietzsche in the pages that fo llow. Unless otherwise indicated,therefore, it should be assumed that all the unidentified quotationsin this section are from Hartmann.p. 108, 1. 26 philosophers too are there: Hegel, 'Introduction ' toLectures on the Philosophy of History (1837) .p. 109, 1. 13 ex causis efficientibus: 'by means of efficient causes'.p. 109, 1. 14 ex causafinali: 'by means of a final cause '.p. 110, 1. 32 A worthy Englishman: That is, Walter Bagehot, whosePhysics and Politics (1869) is cited by Nietzsche in section 3 ofSchopenhauer as educator. The passage that follows is quoted inEnglish.p. 111, 1. 14 Schopenhauer once spoke: See Schopenhauer, Diehandschriftliche Nachlaj3, ed. Arthur Hiibscher (1970), vol. 3,p. 188.p. 111, 1. 30 Danaides' water-jugs: In Greek mythology, the fortyninedaughters of Danaus, who killed their husbands on hisorders, were condemned to an eternity of drawing water withsieves.p. 118, 1. 40 nature's workman: See Plato, Republic m.414b.p. 119, 1. 7 aeterna veritas: 'eternal truth' .p. 119, 1. 37 cogito, ergo sum: Descartes' famous formula, 'I think,therefore I am.'p. 119, 1. 37 vivo, ergo cogito: 'I live, therefore I think'.p. 122, 1. 26 Heraclitus has said: Heraclitus, fragment 93 (Diels­Kranz) .p. 128, 1. 9 private laziness: An allusion to the subtitle of Bernardde Mandevilles's Fable of the Bees (1705): 'private vices, publicbenefits' .p. 131, 1. 1 son called it: See Bk. 1, ch . 2 of Benvenuto Cellini'sLife, which Nietzsche read and cited in Goethe's German translation.p. 143, 1. 5 matter of grace: This anecdote is related by W.Gwinner in Schopenhauer aus personlichem Umgange dargestellt(1862) , p. 108.p. 150, 1. 7 adiaphora: 'matters of indifference '.262

Notesp. 151, 1. 10 Typhon under Etna: According to Greek mythology,Typhon - described variously as a hurricane, a fire-breathinggiant and a monster with 100 heads - was buried beneathMount Etna.p. 152, 1. 25 Catilinist: Lucius Sergius Catiline (c. 108-62 Be) was arevolutionary conspirator who led an abortive coup againstRome.p. 153, 1. 20 suffering: This passage from Meister Eckhart(1260-328) (Werke, ed. Franz Pfeiffer [1857] , vol. 1, p. 492) isquoted by Nietzsche from Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille undVorstellung (1844) (The World as Will and Representation) , vol. 2,ch. 48.p. 160, 1. 40 no other use: Goethe's letter to Charlotte von Stein, 3March 1785.p. 164, 1. 10 rightful path: An allusion to Goethe's Faust, Pt. I,328-9.p. 167, 1. 40 catches fire: Wagner, 'Uber das Dirigieren' ('OnConducting'), in Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen (1871-3),vol. 8, p. 387.p. 172, 1. 25 empty stomach: Quoted from Goethe's German translationof Diderot's Rameau 's Nephew.p. 179, 1. 37 Schopenhauer: See Parerga und Paralipomena, vol. 2,§ 19l.p. 184, 1. 6 on university philosophy: In Schopenhauer, Parergaund Paralipomena, vol. 1.p. 184, 1. 23 Ceramicus: A famous cemetery in Athens.p. 189, 1. 26 Voyage to· Laputa: See ]. Swift, Gulliver's Travels(1726), Pt. III, ch. 2.p. 190, 1. 5 Herbartians: The followers of Johann FriedrichHerbart.p. 192, 1. 18 possessed over all others: See Schopenhauer'spreface to the first edition of The World as Will and Representation.p. 199, 1. 17 silence of the Pythagoreans: See Diogenes Laertius,Lives of the Eminent Philosophers VII.10, for a description of thelong silence imposed upon Pythagoras' students.p. 202, 1. 15 showed him the path: See Wagner, 'Eine Meittheilungan meine Freunde' ('A Communication to My Friends'),Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, p. 325.p. 202, 1. 23 Brilnnhilde: These are all characters from Wagnerianoperas, including Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhiiuser,Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, The Meistersinger and the four parts263

Notesof The Ring of the Niebelungen. Other characters are alluded tolater. Indeed, a deep and detailed familiarity with Wagner'swork is simply presupposed by Nietzsche below, with explicitand implicit allusions and references to Wager's writings andmusical compositions, few of which are actually identified byNietzsche himself.p. 205, 1. 9 an idea of Schopenhauer's: See The World as Will andRepresentation, vol. 1, § 58.p. 206, 1. 30 reformation not revolution: Nietzsche here echoes aclaim made about the Germans in Wagner's Beethoven,Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 9, p. 105) .p. 214, 1. 14 the life of modern man: See Wagner, 'Zukunftsmusik'(,Future Music'), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 7, p. 150.p. 215, 1. 32 transformed in love: For this paragraph, see Wagner,'Opern und Drama' (,Opera and Drama'), Gesammelte Schriften,vol. 4, pp. 122-3.p. 217, 1. 2 world of the present: See Wagner, '-eTber musikalischeKritik' ('Concerning Musical Crititism'), Gesammelte Schriften,vol. 5, pp. 74-8.p. 219, 1. 33 nil admirari: 'to wonder at nothing'. From Horace,Epistles, LVI.l: 'to wonder at nothing is perhaps the only thingthat can make a man happy and keep him so'.p. 223, 1. 23 the appearance of a body: See Wagner, 'DasKunstwerk der Zukunft' (,The Artwork of the Future'),Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, p. 114.p. 223, 1. 36 reformers took Christianity: See Wagner, 'Brief aneinen italienischen Freund' (,Letter to an Italian Friend'),Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 9, p. 344.p. 224, 1. 27 to another community: Plato, Republic, IIL398a.p. 224, 1. 40 had to grow blind: See Goethe, Faust, Pt. II,11495-510.p. 225, 1. 26 course of his own life: See Wagner, 'Uber Staat undReligion' ('Concerning State and Religion'), GesammelteSchriften, vol. 8, pp. 7-9.p. 226, 1. 5 in fiery arms: A loose citation from Goethe's poem'Der Gott und die Bejadere'.p. 227, 1. 34 it quite in order: A paraphrase of a passage fromGoethe, Aus meinem Leben: Fragmentarisches (Fragments from MyLife) , Siimmtliche Werke (1857) , vol. 27, p. 507.p. 228, 1. 8 direction of its home: That is, toward Paris, whereWagner lived from 1839 to 1842.264

Notesp. 229, 1. 31 the arts of today: See Wagner, 'The Artwork of theFuture', Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, p. 61.p. 230, 1. 13 he said to himself: See ibid., p. 59.p. 231, 1. 36 seems nothing to him: See Wagner, 'EpilogischerBericht' ('Epilog-Report'), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, p. 369.p. 232, 1. 21 opus metaphysicum: 'metaphysical work'.p. 233, 1. 10 score beside score: See Wagner, 'Epilog-Report',Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6, p. 378.p. 233, 1. 24 A great German war: The Franco-Prussian War(1870-1).p. 235, 1. 8 as they ought to do : Goethe, Conversations withEckermann, 1 April 1827.p. 237, 1. 38 for true music: See Wagner, 'Opera and Drama',Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, pp. 263ff.p. 240, 1. 19 Raphael's Cecilia: See the conclusion of Bk. III (§ 52)of The World as Will and Representation, where Schopenhauerdescribes Raphael's painting, Saint Cecilia, as the perfect symbolof the 'transition' from aesthetic contemplation to resignationof the will.p. 242, 1. 12 means of procuring clarity: See Wagner, 'ACommunication to My Friends', Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4,pp. 367-8.p. 244, 1. 3 epideictic: 'Epideictic' oratory was intended merely asa virtuoso display; its goal was to impress, not to persuade or toconvince.p. 245, 1. 40 To make his work: The rest of this paragraph, withthe exception of the portion placed in parenthesis and the useof emphasis, is a direct quote from Schopenhauer, Parerga undParalipomena, vol. 2, § 60.p. 249, 1. 31 so is in error: Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann, 11October 1828.p. 250, 1. 23 stream of humanity: Freely quoted from Wagner'sintroduction to vols. 3 and 4 of Gesammelte Schriften, pp. 7-8.p. 251, 1. 16 Jahrhundert auf: From Schiller's poem, 'Die Kiinstler'('The Artists').p. 252, 1. 25 amor into caritas: Amor suggests sexual love; caritasdenotes love of one's neighbour.265

Indexabstraction, and fe eling 81-2, 86academics see scholarshipactionand history 59, 67-9, 72, 75, 85, 87, 92,102and inwardness 81and knowledge 108and Schopenhauerean man 156-7, 160and Wagner 197, 232Aeschylus 13and Wagner 208, 223, 240aestheticsand cultural philistinism 11, 16-24,37-8, 39, 44, 117and monumental history 71-2and Strauss 17-20and Wagner 205, 218, 248alienation, from being 222animalsand memory 60-1, 62, 63and suffering 157antiquityand Christianity 132-3, 208as exemplar 192German nation as heirs 100-4and history xv, 67, 70, 72-5, 77appearance, and reality xvii, xxviii, xxxin.13, 216, 222, 226Arrowsmith, William xlvartcause and effect 178and the individual 212-13and life and music 218-19, 221-5,243and life and philosophy vii, 11, 160-1,177-8, 181-2, 210modern 220, 229and science 120-1and Wagner xxii, 197-9, 205, 218-21,229-36, 240-4, 246-52asceticism, in Christianity 28, 29Auerbach, Berthold 50, 255t;Bagehot, Walter 138, 189, 255barbarism, and culture 6, 8, 13, 36, 38,79-80, 148, 217Bayreuth festival ix, xi, xx-xxiii,xxxvi-xxxvii, 197-9, 257and cultural reform 210-12, 235becoming, and existence xix, 62, 108-10,155, 161, 188Beethoven, Ludwig von 90, 97, 138, 140,232and pathos 240-2and Strauss 22-4, 25, 28beingand alienation 222and existence 155belief, confession of l4-16, 17-19Berger, August xlvBildungsphilister see philistines, culturalThe Birth of Tragedy from the spirit of Musicvii, ix, xxxii n.20, xxxvicritique x, xxxvi, 258subsequent editions xxxviiBismarck, Otto von 33Brahms, Johannes, and Wagner xxiBrandes, Georg Morris xxiii, xxiv-xxv,xxvi, 255Brandis, Christian August 186, 255BUlow, Cosima von see Wagner,CosimaBUlow, Hans von xxv, 255, 257Burckhardt,Jacob ix, 73, 255266

IndexCarriere, Phillip Moriz 148, 255Cellini, Benvenuto 130-1chance, and history 70, 91-2, 128, 162,197, 221chauvinism, critique of xiii, 3-7cheerfulnessand history 63, 69, IIIand Schopenhauer 135-6and Strauss 27-8, 135and Wagner 232-3Christianityabandonment by Nietzsche xiiand antiquity 132-3, 208and greed of the state 166and historical judgment 102and idealism 96-7and Strauss l4-17, 28, 29, 33, 41, 257and the Volk 229and worldly success 113-15classicsand cultural philistinism 9-12and German language 48-50and Strauss as writer 37-48, 51-5and university philosophers 186Collins, Adrian xlvcommunication, and Wagner 215, 236-9,246-9confession, of cultural philistinism 12-13,14-34, 45consecration, to culture 163-4, 212-13contemplation 159and antagonism 223and Goethean man 151-2content, and form 78-82, 86, 166, 168,169, 174, 216convention 78, 80, 82, 85, 170and individuality 127, 138, 215, 219Copernicus, Nicolas 170creativityand destruction xxviii, 47-8, 95, 153and history 71, 75, 91, 93and transformation xv, 62-3, 77and Wagner 206, 226, 231-2, 244, 245Cromwell, Oliver 129cultureclassical 100-4, 107, 122-3cultural chauvinism 3-7decorative 123entertainment culture xiii, 36and greed 164-5, 168-75and Hellenization 208-9historical 100-3, 107, 109-10, 114and history 78-80, 98as liberation 130, 162-3popular/genuine xiii-xiv, 3-9, 69reform viii-ix, xlvi, 97, 160, 209-12,217-18and science 35-8, 117, 169task 208-13, 222-6tragic ix, 212-1 3as unity of style xxviii, 5-6, 7-8, 49, 79-82see also philistines, culturalcynicism 83, 107, 116Cynics 61-2Dannhauer, Werner J. xlvDarwin, Charles 29-31, 34, 42David Strauss, the confessor and the writerand ethics 29-31and German culture 3-6, 7-14, 34, 35,38-9and public opinion xlv-xlvi, 3, 7, 24,38-9, 45and Strauss as classic writer 37-48, 51-5and Strauss as confessor 14-19, 24-34, 45and Strauss as cultural philistine xiii,12, 13, 14-34, 35, 47Demosthenes 113-14, 243, 255destruction, creative power xxviii, 47-8, 153Deussen, Paul xvii, 255Devrient, Eduard 50, 255Diogenes Laertius 98, 186-7, 194, 255,263n.'The Dionysia Worldview' ixdramadithyrambic 223, 225-6, 227, 231and Goethe 19and history 91, 92tragic 212-1 3, 225-6and Wagner 205, 214, 223-6, 227,229-33, 237-40, 243-4dualism see appearance; realityDubois-Reymond, Emil 167, 255Eckermann,johann Peter 6, 106, 255Eckhart, Meister 153, 255educationand cultural philistinism 37-8, 117erotic dimension viiand feeling 215and greed 164-5, 174-5and history 79, 83-4, 87, 100-1, 116-19and liberation of the self 129-30and music 217-1 8in philosophy 182-7reform viii-ix, 175-6, 192-3and role of philosopher xvii-xix,130-46, 147, 156, 177-82267

Indexegoismand history 71, 75individual 113, 114-15, 149-50practical 83refined 9, 165and truth 88Eleatic philosophers 208-9elegance, and German culture 166--8Emerson, Ralph Waldo 129n., 193Empedocles xlvii, 145, 146, 208, 255enlightenment 159entertainment, art as 109enthusiasm, and cultural philistinism10-11Epicureanism, cultural 165epigoneand cultural philistinism 10, 11and history 83, 94, 100-4, 122-3essentialism xixethics see moralityevolutionand morality 29-32and world-process Ill, 114example, philosopher as xvii-xvii, 88, 132,136--46, 156, 161-2, 177-82'Exhortation to the Germans' xx, xxxviiexistenceand action 69and antiquarian history 72-4and becoming xix, 62, 108-10, 155,161, 188and critical history 76historicity xv, 61-6, 86, 120and life 119-20, 128, 155, 157-9and optimism 147-8and Schopenhauer 144-6, 257existentialism xixexperience, drrect l18, 187faith, and knowledge 41-3fame 69, 178-9, 227fanaticismand cultural philistinism 11and monumental history 71feelingand abstraction 81-2, 86and aesthetic judgment xiv, 89-90,93false 219, 252and language 214-15, 217, 237-9and music 241-3, 252finders, and seekers 8-10folk, and Wagner 229-33, 236--7, 249,251-2 ,254forgetfulness see history, and theunhistorical; memoryform, and content 78-82, 86, 166, 168,169, 174, 216Forster-Nietzsche, Elizabeth xxxix, 255France, culture 3-6, 80, 134, 166--7Franco-Prussian Warand cultural philistinism xiii, 13and German culture xiii, xxxvi, 3-5, 7,166--7and Wagner 233, 235freedom see independenceFritsch, E. W. ix, xifutureand cultural renewal xlviand past xlvi, 63, 65, 67, 77, 94-5,104and teleology 111-12 , 115and true self xixand Wagner 250-2, 254Gast, Peter (Heinrich Koselitz) xxi, xxviii,xxxvii, 256genealogical analysis xxixgeneraftzation, and history 92-3geniusand cultural philistine 11, 21, 33, 37,47-8,99and present age 23-4, 30, 109, 128,142-3, 179-80production of l63-4, 169, 176, 182, 187and scholarship 174, 186and Schopenhauer viii, xviii, xxxii n.15,111, 142-3, 146, 179-81and Strauss 46-8and Wagner viii, 137, 209, 231, 250Germany, founding of Reich xiii, xxxvi, 3,147, 250Gersdorff, Carl von xiii, xxi, 255Gervinus, Georg Gottfried 19-20, 23, 255gesture, and drama 239Gibbon, Edward 117Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 25n., 28n.,60, 106, 111, 136and art and nature 92, 151, 160compared with Wagner 206as epic poet 200Faust l5n., 19, 45, 86n., 144n., 151, 153,249and German culture 6, 9, 11, 138, 167and history 11, 59,64, 67, 73, 85and the individual 100and influence 227lp higenie 235and literature 19-22 ,34, 45-6268

---IIndexand man 150-2, 155, 156and Schopenhauer 134, 181and science 99-100Gottsched,johann Christoff 117, 256Gozzi, Carlo 154Gracian, Balthasar 259Gray, Richard T. xlvgreatnesscultivation 161-2in events 197and heroism 154-5and the masses 113-14and monumental history 69, 72of VVagner 197-9, 202, 228, 236greedand commercial society 164-5, 169,174, 176, 210, 219-20and form and content 166, 168, 169,174and the sciences 169, 182and the state 165-6, 169, 174, 176Grillparzer, Franz, Political and AestheticWritings xiv-xv, 20, 81, 91, 256Gutzkow, Karl Friedrich 49, 256gymnastics, and music 217happiness 61-3, 65-6, 68, 127, 138artificial 149and the folk 230-1as goal 162and greed 164-5and Schopenhauerian man 142, 153,155and VVagner 230-1 , 240, 252Harms, Hansjoachim Friedrich 148, 256Hartmann, Eduard von, Philosophy o/theUnconscious xiv-xv, 108-12, 114-16,256, 261n.Haydn, joseph 22, 45Hegel, G. W F.and the state 191and Strauss 27, 54see also neo-HegelianismHeraclitus 62, 86, 122, 242Herbart,johann Friedrich 190, 256heroic, theand philosophy 153-5, 176, 193, 208and VVagner 206, 208, 213, 226, 240,252-3Hesiod 101historicism, critique xiv-xv, 31-2, 59-123historyantiquarian xv, 67, 70, 72-5, 77and art 95-6and classical studies 60, 93critical xv, 67, 70-1, 72, 75--6, 77, 87-100and cultural philistinism 10-1 1, 117and human life xiv-xvi, 59-67, 71 , 72-6,77, 83-7, 97, 101-2, 122and illusion xxvii, 95--:.7, IIIand justice 88-97, 207and memory 60-4, 78-9, 101-2, 104monumental xv, 67-72, 75, 77and objectivity 88-95of philosophy 186-7as a science 67, 77-82, 99-100and Strauss 17-18and the suprahistoricaI 65-7, 120-1and the unhistorical xv, 60-5, 67, 79,102, 115, 120-1and VVagner 205-7, 209Hobbes, Thomas 30Holbach, Baron d', System de la nature 34H6lderlin, Friedrich 12-13, 98, 138,256Hollindale, R. J. xlivHoltzendorf, 96'Homer and Classical Philology' viii-ixhonestyand the artist 127, 245and history 84, 123and need for exemplar 133, 137and Schopenhauer 135, 136, 140and youth 121, 127horizon, bounded 120humanism, secular xii, xxixhumanitycreativity and transformation xv, xxvi,77higher form xxviiiand Schopenhauerian man xviii-xix,xxxii n.15, 150-1Hume, David, and history 65, 260n.idealism, and history 96identityGerman 54, 81-2and weakening of personality 84'Idylls of Messina' xxxviiiillusion, and history xxvii, 95-7, 111imitationand the artist 201, 224and cultural philistinism 11-12, 80,166-8and history 68-70, 78, 123of nature 130independence xxix-xxx, 137-8and Schopenhauer xviii, 182-3269

Indexindependence (cont.)and Wagner 251-2indifference, and contemporary culture138-9individualand Bayreuth festival 212and convention 127, 138, 215and Schopenhauer 142and weakening of personality 83-7instinctsand history 84, 95-7, 114-15, 117and nature 158and youth 115, 117-18, 120intellectuals see scholarshipinwardness, and modern culture xvi,78-82irony xi, xlv-xlvi, 27n., 69, 83, 86n., 100,104, 116and self-awareness 100, 107-8, 110journalism 147, 192, 198, 231judgmentaesthetic xiv, 38-9, 71, 93, 218historical 93-5, 100-2and the saint 144-5, 182and truth 89justice 115, 207and history 83, 88-97and objectivity 88, 90-1, 93and scholarship 173Kant, Immanueland Eleatics 208-9influence 20, 140-1, 182and Strauss 26-7, 51and style 53and university philosophy 137, 181, 184,188Kaufmann, Walter xxxi n.9, xlivKleist, Heinrich von 138, 140-1, 256knowledgeand culture 5-6, 117-18, 162-4and faith 41-3and fo rgetting 120and happiness 165and history 64-7, 69, 74, 76-7, 78, 94-5,101-3, 118and liberation 162-3limitations xviiiand perfection of nature 108, 158-9,161-4and science vii, viii-x, 120-1, 169-70,173, 188::90and truth 89and wisdom vii, viii-ix, 66-7, 99, 169,220see also scholarshipKoselitz, Heinrich (Peter Gast) xxi, xxviii,xxxvii, 256Laertius Diogenes 98, 186-7, 194, 255,263n.languageGerman 48-50, 53-4, 167and Wagner 205, 214-15, 217, 229,237-9laws, historical 113Leopardi, Giacomo 66, 249, 256Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 256and Schopenhauer 134and Strauss 19-21, 22, 32, 39, 45-7, 52Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 17, 30, 32,48, 256lifeand art and philosophy vii, xxviii,160-1, 177-8, 181-2, 210of the artist 200-2, 203-6andulture 117-20, 123of educator-philosopher 137, 141-2heroic 153-5, 176and music 214-18, 221-3, 243and science 121see also existence; historyliterature, and Strauss 19-22loveand action 64and creativity 95, 215and self-knowledge 163in Wagner 202, 212, 215, 22 1 , 233, 247,252-4loyaltyand philosophy 85and Wagner 203, 204, 235, 253Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) 189,256Ludovici, A. M. xlvLuther, Martin 76, 232mancurrent images 150-5last xxviiiand nature 157-61, 162-4Schopenhauerian xviii-xix, xxxii n.15,150-1, 152-5, 156, 160-1scientific 35-6, 153Mandeville, Bernard de 256, 262n.masses, and history Ill, 113-14maturity, and illusion 97-9, 115270

Indexmediocrity 39-40, 48, 99, 109, 131, 135memoryfear of 158-9and history 60-4, 78-9 , 101-2, 104Mencken, H. L. xlvMerck,Johann Heinrich 48, 256metaphor, in Strauss 25-6, 50-1, 52metaphysicsand meaning of life 157-8and Schopenhauerian man 153and significance of culture 175and Strauss 31-3and university philosophy 188Meyer, Jilrgen 148, 256Meyerbeer, Giacomo 228, 256Meysenbug, Malwida von xxxvi, 256Moltke, Helmuth von 33, 256Mommsen, Theodor 14, 256money-makers, and greed 150, 164-5,169, 174, 176, 210, 219-20Montaigne, Michel de 135, 207moralityand Christianity 132-3conventional xxixand exemplar 132-3and history 105-6and music 202and Strauss 29-31Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 24, 97musicand cultural reform 97, 167, 216-17,240-3and the folk 230-3and German culture 192, 214-15, 230,234and Strauss 22-4, 28, 45see also Beethoven, Ludwig von; Wagner,mythRichardand history 70and Wagner 205-6, 229-30, 236-7naivety, and talent 201naturalism, and Christianity 133natureantitheses 226and man 157-61, 162-4, 177and pmpose 177-9and Rousseauan man 151-2and Schopenhauerean man 160and Strauss 17and Wagner 215, 221-3, 226, 236, 240,244, 252necessityand objectivity 91-2and Wagner 197, 212, 244negationcreative power xxviiiand cultural philistinism 8, 44, 49and human existence 61in Untimely Meditations xxv-xxvineo-Hegelianism, and history xiv-xv, 96,104-5 , 108'A New Year's Word to the Editor of theWeekly Paper The New Reich' xxxvinewspapersand history 18and language 49-50, 54Niebuhr, Barthold Georg 65, 73, 183, 256Nietzsche, Friedrichchronology xxxv-xxxixcorrespondence vii, xvi, xvii, xxiv,xxx n.1critique of Wagner xxiiand growing interest in philosophyix, xhealth x, xxiii, xxvi, xxxvii-xxxvii,xxxixand influence of Schopenhauer xvi-xix,xxxv, 130-6philosophical development xix,xxiv-xxv, xxvii, 130, 136-46as Professor of Classical Philology viii-x,xxix, xxxii n.20, xxxvprojected 'Philosophenbuch' x, xviirejection of Schopenhauer xvi-xvii, xix,xxii, xxxi n.13, xxxii n.14, 257relationship with Wagner viii, xi,xx-xxi, xxv, 258see also Birth of Tragedy; writings ofNietzschenihilism, inevitability xxixobjectivity, and history 83-7, 88, 90-1On the uses and disadvantages of history forlife xiv-xvi, xxxvii, 59-123and antiquarian approach 72-5, 122and critical approach 76-7, 122and current age as late age 100-7,114-15and form and content 77-82and historical judgment 100-2and illusion 95-9, IIIand justice 88-95and memory 60-4, 78-9, 101-2, 104and monumental approach 67-72, 122and suprahistorical view 65-7, 120and weakening of personality 83-7271

IndexOn the uses and disadvantages of history forlife (cont.)and world-process 107-16and youth 116-23opera see Wagner, Richardopinion, publicand cultural philistinism 24, 38-40, 45,47and popular culture xiii, xlv-xlvi, 3, 7,128, 135, 193optimism, in Strauss 27-8oratory, education in 131-2Overbeck, Franz xxxix, 256Parmenides 208n.parodyphilosophical 108-11and Wagner 198-9Pascal, Blaise 36Passow, Franz Ludwig Carl Friedrich 192,256past ,and antiquarian history 72-5, 77, 122and critical history 75-6, 77, 122and future xlvi, 63, 65, 67, 94-5, 104and historical judgment 93-5, 100-2and human existence xv, 61-6, 86, 120and modern politics 207and monumental history 68-72, 77, 122and objectivity 90-1, 94people see folk; Volkperformers, and Wagner 247personalityweakened 79, 83-7, 116and world-process 104-5, 107, 110-11,115-16perspectivism xxviiipessimism xvii , xix, 28, 147, 161philistines, cultural xiii, xiv, xxviii, 7-10and classic writers 49, 51-3, 138and end of seeking 8-10and German culture 7-14, 34, 35-40,117, 148-9and history 10-1 1, 117and Strauss xiii, 12, 13, 14-34, 35,37-40, 43, 45, 47-8and Wagner 210-1 1, 217-19, 249-50weakness 12-13philologyand Classical perspective xlviand cultural philistinism 10and cultural renewal viii-ixand disinterested scholarship xxphilosopheras educator xvii-xix, 130-46, 147, 156,161-2, 177independence xxix-xxx, 137-8, 182-4as solitary 85, 138-40, 143-4, 160, 165,176, 183Strauss as 44university 137, 181, 183-94philosophyand cultural philistinism 10-1 2, 148-9history 186-7and life and art vii, 160-1, 177-8,181-2, 210Nietzsche attempts to switch to ix, xpre-Platonic ix, x-xi, xviiand scholarship xvi, xxviii, 85, 141, 144,153, 170-4, 181, 183-8, 193-4state promotion 182, 183-93task 207-8and Wagner 206, 208, 232, 236-7Platoand citizenship 183as court philosopher 184and d a 224-5and eaucation 118-19poetryand Wagner 236-9and youth 117politicsand existence 147-8see also statePolybius 67-8, 256possibility, human xviii-xix, 69-70present, and history 61-2, 65-6, 69, 75,77, 94, 128and history xiv-xv, 66, 101P .. ... t ..

IndexRee, Paul xxiii, 257religionand antiquarian history 75and historical justice 95and science 120-1and Strauss 14-22, 31-3, 41-3, 51Renaissance, and Wagner 249representation and will see appearance;realityresignation, and Schopenhauer 142Richard Wagner in Bayreuth xx-xxiii, xxx,xxxvii, 197-254and the future 251-4and history and philosophy in Wagner205-8and music and life 213-23and new art 197-9and task of culture 208-13, 222-6and Wagner as artist 236-44and Wagner's art-work 227-36and Wagner's development 200-5,223-4, 227-9, 236and Wagner's influence 244-51Riehl, Wilhelm Heinrich 15, 22, 45, 257Ritter, Heinrich 186Rohde, Erwin ix, x, xxi, 257romanticism, critique xxii, 10Rousseau, Jean:Jacquesand modern images of man 150-2and Strauss 46saintand judgment of existence 144-5, 182and Schopenhauer xviii-xix, 142-3,159-61Salome, Lou xxv, xxxviii, 257Sanders, Daniel 49, 257Savonarola, Girolamo 102, 257Scaliger, JosephJustus 18, 257scepticismand historical culture 100-2, 116and Kant xxviii, 140, 188and Schopenhauer xix, 141Schaberg, William H. xxxii n.19, xlvSchiller, Friedrich vonand the future 251and history 67, 92and reason 83and vulgarity 223Wallenstein 19-21, 202Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst109, 257and Christianity 96and Strauss 27, 51Schmeitznen, Ernst xvi, xxiiischolarshipand cultural philistinism 37-8, 45and cultural renewal viii-ix, 37and genuine culture xiii-xiv, 37, 117,173-7and the genuine philosopher xvi, xxviii,85, 141, 144, 153, 170-4, 181, 183-8,193-4and greed 169, 182and history 94, 99-100, 102, 171and science 43, 131-2, 137, 144,169-70, 188-90, 229-30and Strauss 34-7, 40-1, 43-5, 47-8and writing 40-1 , 131-2Schopenhaue Arthur vii, 257and cultural philistinism 39and current age 144-9, 178-80and fame 69, 178-9and genius 111, 142-3, 146, 179-81and German language 40, 49, 53-4and Hellenic philosophy 208and human possibility xviii-xixand Indian philosophy 192Nietzsche's critique of xvi-xvii, xix, xxii,xxxi n.13, xxxii n.14, 257On the Foundations of Morality 259Parerga und Paralipomena xvi, 154n., 265n.as philosophical educator xvii-xix,xxv-xxvi, 130-46, 156, 161-2, 177-9and Schopenhauerean man xviii-xix,xxxii n.15, 150-5, 156, 160-1as solitary 138-40, 143-4, 179and Strauss 12, 25-6, 27-8, 32and university philosophy 184, 187,192-4The World as Will and Representation xvi,xviii, xxxv, 138-9 , 257, 265n.Schopenhauer as educator xvi-xx, xxii, xxv,xxviii, xxx, xxxvii, 127-94and academic philosophy 182-94and the current age 144-55influence of Schopenhauer onNietzsche xvi-xix, xxxv, 130-6and liberation of the self 127-30and philosopher and scholarship 161-82and public opinion xlvi, 193and Schopenhauer as exemplar 136-46,156, 161-2, 177-82and Schopenhauerean man 156-61scienceand art and religion 120-1and culture 35-8, 117, 169and education 131-2273

IndexScience (cont.)and greed 169history as 67, 77-82, 99-100and knowledge vii, viii-ix, 120-1, 137,169-70, 173, 188-90, 229-30man of xxix, 117, 144in Strauss 41-3secularization 148-50, 153seekers, and finders 8-10self vii, xvias construct xixas essence xixand history 62, 73inner! outer xxviiiliberation xix, 127-30, 161-2self-awareness, ironic 100, 107-8, 110self-satisfaction, critique xxviii, 7-13, 75sensibility, cultural 78-9, 86, 225Shakespeare, William 207simplicityand historiography 94and scholarship 170and Schopenhauer 133-5, 140and Wagner 209, 213, 233social democracy, and Strauss 33Socrates 88, 174solecism 50, 52solitudeand music 226, 230-1of philosopher 138-40, 143-4, 160, 165,176, 183speech, public 48-9Stael, Anne Louise, Baronne de 24, 257stateand culture 174and egoism 114, 149-50and greed 165-6, 169, 174, 176and highest duty of mankind 147-8,158, 162, 185and music 217and promotion of philosophy 182, 183-93and Schopenhauer 180-1Steinbach, Erwin von 73, 255Strauss, David Friedrich xii-xiv, 3-55, 109,257as cheerful thinker 27-8, 135as confessor 14-19, 24-34, 45as cultural philistine xiii, 12, 13-34, 35,37-40, 43, 45, 47-8and Lessing 19-21The Life of Jesus xii, 257The OldFaith and the New: A Confessionxii, xiii, xlvi, 14, 20n., 34-5, 38, 51-2,257and Schopenhauer 12, 25-6, 27-8, 32and science and culture 35-6as secular humanist xxixand Wagner xii, xiiias writer 34-48, 51-5styleand Kant 53and modern writing 49-5 1and public speech 48-9and Schopenhauer 53, 134-5and Strauss as writer xiii, 40-1, 43-8,49, 51-5unity xxviii, 5-6, 7-8, 49, 79-80and Wagner 234, 245, 248subjectivity, and history 91successdeification xiv, 31, 105-6, 114and greatness 113-14, 228and Wagner 234-5sufferingand art 212as punishment 157-8and Schenhauer xviii, 27-8, 143,152-4, 161and science 169and Wagner 203, 221, 230-1, 233Swift,Jonathan 92, 189Tasso, Torquato 216tasteand cultural philistinism 11-12, 37-8,45and history 71, 72and language 49-50Teichmiiller, Gustav xxxi n.9teleologyand cultivation of exemplars 161-4and historicism xv, 31-2, 77, 91-2,100-7and nature 177-9and world-process 107-12, 114-15theatreGreek 210Wagnerian reform 209-1 1, 227, 229,234-5theologyand history 96, 102and Strauss 38-9, 41, 44, 47Thiers, Louis Adolphe 94, 96, 257thought, and language 214timeand human existence xv-xvi, xxviii,60-9, 155as relative 209274

Indextragedy, and the individual 212-13, 225-6,236truthand culture 123and history 84-5, 90-1and justice 88-92and relativism 140-1and scholarship 137, 169-73, 194and Schopenhauer 152-3, 155and the state 185, 190-1will to xxix, 88-9, 145unconsciousin Hartmann 108-9, 111-12and instinct 158uniformityand cultural philistinism 7-8, 85-6and education 118and the masses 113universe, in Strauss 25-7, 31-3, 41-4universities, and academic philosophy137, 181, 183-94Untimely Meditationsand anticipation of future themesxxvii-xxviiicontext vii-xxiv, xlviDavid Strauss, the confessor and the writerxi, xii-xiv, xxxvi, xlv-xlvi, 3-55and negative pathos xxv-xxvineglect xxivnew editions xxiv, xxxviiiOn the uses and disadvantages of history forlife xiv-xvi, xxxvii, 59-123personal significance viii, xxiv-xxx,xlvi-xlviiprojected topics xi-xii, xxiii, xxvi, xxxviipublic reception xiv, xvi, xix-xx,xxi-xxii, xxiiiRichard Wagner in Bayreuth xx-xxiii, xxx,xxxvii, 197-254Schopenhaue:r as educator xvi-xx, xxii, xxv,xxviii, xxx, xxxvii, 127-94thematic unity viititle xliv-xlviiand veneration of Schopenhauer andvirtueWagner xxv-xxviiand education 132and history 105-6Vischer, Friedrich Theodor 12-13, 257visionaryJesus Christ as 29philistine as 16-17Volk229 n.Voltaire, Fran{:ois Marie Arouet 44, 45-7,96vulgarity of modern age 113, 210, 219-20,235Wackernagel, Wilhelm 103, 258Wagner, Cosima viii, ix, xi, xxi, 255, 257Wagner, Richard 257-8and Birthxas 209critique of Nietzsche xxxviidevelopment 200-3, 205, 223-4, 227-9,236, 244and fame 227Fliegende Hollander 252and the folk 229-33, 236-7, 249, 251-2,254friendship with Nietzsche viii, xi,xx-xxi, xxxv-xxxvii, xlvand the future xlviand German culture 167and history 205-7, 209histrionic personality 223-4independence 137-8influence viii, xiv, xxv-xxvi, 227-8, 229,244-7, 258Kaisermarsch 250Lohengrin 252Meistersinger von Nurnberg 97, 206, 222n.,232, 234, 238, 252and music and life 214-18, 221-5Nietzsche's critique xxiiand philosophy 206, 208, 232, 236-7private life 203-5, 227, 236Ring cycle xxi, xxiii, xxxvii, 201-3, 232,236, 240, 252-4and Schopenhauer viii, 257as simplifier of the world 213-14as social revolutionary 229as solitary 226, 230-1and Strauss xii, xiiiTannhiiuser 149, 252Tristan und Isolde 211, 232, 238, 252Die Walkure 247n.see also Bayreuth festivalWagnerian Society xxWilamowitz-Moellerndorf, Ulrich von x,xxxvi, 258willand representation see appearance;realityto action 205to justice 88-90275

Indexwill (cont.)to live 1 10, 145to truth xxix, 88-9Winckelmann,]ohann Joachim 21, 258, 259wisdomand knowledge vii, viii-ix, 66--7, 99,160, 220and life 66--7Wolf, Friedrich August 192, 258world-process 104-5, 107-16writereducation of 131-2, 192Schopenhauer as 134-5Strauss as xiii, 23, 25-6, 40-1, 43-8, 49,51-5Wagner as viii, 231, 247-50writings of NietzscheThe Antichrist xxxixBeyond Good and Evil xxxviiiThe Case of Wagner xxxixA Contribution Towards the Studyand Critique of the Sources ofDiogenes Laertius xxxv-xxxviDawn xxxviiiDaybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices ofMorality xxxviiiDionysian Dithrambs xxxixEcce Homo xxvi, xxvii, xxx, xxxiii n.26,xxxixThe Gay Science xxxviiiHuman, All Too Human vii, xvi-xvii,xxiii, xxvii, xxxii n.14, xxxvii, xxxviiiHy mn to Life xxxviiiMixed opinions and Maxims xxxvii'Music and Drama' xxxviNietzsche contra Wagnerxxxix'On the Future of Our EducationalInstitutions' ix, xiii, xxxvi, xlvOn the Genealogy of Morals xxxviii'On Truth and Lies in a NonmoralSense' x, xxxii n.14'The Origin of Tragic Thought' ix'The Philosopher as Cultural Physician'xvii'Philosophy in the Tragic Age of theGreeks' x, xi, xvii, xxxviSocrates and Greek Tragedy xxxviThus Spoke Zarathustra xv, xxiv, xxviii,xxxiii n.30, xxxviiiTwilight of the Idols xxiii, xxxixThe Wanderer and His Shadow xxxviiiThe Will to Power xxxixWorks xxxixsee also Birth of Tragedy; UntimelyMeditations'Young Hegiian' movement, and Straussyouthxiiand culture 98, 116--23and instincts 115, 117-18, 120and self-liberation 127-9Zeitgeist, and academic philosophy 192Zeller, Eduard 186--7, 258Zeno 184Z6Ilner, ]ohann Karl Friedrich 92, 258Zuckert, Catherine xlv276

Cambridge texts in the history of philosophyTitles published in the series thus farAntoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole Logic or the Art of Thinking (edited byJIll Vance Buroker)Boyle A Free Enquiry into the Vu lgarly Received Notion of Nature (edited byEdward B. Davis and Michael Hunter)Conway The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (edited byAllison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse)Cudworth A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Im mutable Morality with ATreatise of Freewill (edited by Sarah Hutton)Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, with selections from the Objectionsand Replies (edited with an introduction by John Cottingham)Kant Critique of Practical Reason (edited by Mary Gregor with anintroduction by Andrews Reath)Kan t The Metaphysics of Morals (edited by Mary Gregor with anintroduction by Roger Sullivan)Kant Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (edited by Gary Hatfield)La Mettrie Machine Man and Other Wri tings (edited by Ann Thomson)Leibniz New Essays on Human Understanding (edited by Peter Remnantand Jonathan Bennett)Malebranche Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion (edited by NicholasJolley and David Scott)Malebranche The Search after Truth (edited by Thomas M. Lennon andPaul J. Olscamp)Mendelssohn Philosophical Wri tings (edited by Daniel O. Dahlstrom)Nietzsche Daybreak (edited by Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter,translated by RJ. Hollingdale)Nietzsche Human, All To o Human (translated by R J. Hollingdale with anintroduction by Richard Schacht)Nietzsche Untimely Meditations (edited by Daniel Breazeale, translated byRJ. Hollingdale)Schleiermacher On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (edited byRichard Crouter)

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