Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

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