Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

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