Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

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