Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

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