Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

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