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PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS |
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[b]CHAPTER 3: Ideas concerning the Intellect generally and in all Respects[/b]
§ 27
Every method in philosophy which is ostensibly without any assumption is humbug; for we must always regard something as given in order to start therefrom. Thus it states the [x] [1] that is the indispensable condition of all human action, even of philosophizing; since we are just as little capable of floating mentally in ether as we are of so doing physically. But such a point of departure in philosophizing, such a thing that is for the time being taken as given, must afterwards be again compensated and justified. This will be either subjective and thus possibly self-consciousness, representation or mental picture, the subject, the will; or else it will be objective and hence that which presents itself in the consciousness of other things, thus the world of reality, external objects, nature, matter, atoms, even a God, even a mere arbitrarily invented concept such as substance, the Absolute, or whatever it is supposed to be. And so to reconcile again the arbitrary procedure here carried out and to rectify the assumption, we must subsequently change the standpoint and take up the opposite one from which we now deduce once again in a supplementary philosophical argument that which was initially taken as given. Ita res accendent lumina rebus. [2]
For example, if we start from the subjective, as did Berkeley, Locke, and Kant in whom this method of consideration reached its highest level, we shall nevertheless obtain a philosophy that is in part very one-sided and to some extent not entirely justified, although this way has the greatest advantages on account of the really immediate nature of the subjective. We shall get such a philosophy unless we supplement it by taking once more as our starting-point what was deduced in it as given, and so by deducing from the opposite standpoint the subjective from the objective, as previously the objective had been from the subjective. I believe that, in the main, I have furnished this supplement to the Kantian philosophy in the second volume of my chief work, chapter 22, and in the work On the Will in Nature under the heading' Physiology of Plants', where I deduce the intellect by starting from external nature.
Now if we start the opposite way from the objective and at once take as our data the very many things around us, such as matter together with all the forces manifesting themselves therein, we soon have the whole of nature since such a method of consideration furnishes pure naturalism, more accurately called by me absolute physics. Therefore what is given and consequently is absolutely real, as generally understood, consists in the laws and forces of nature together with matter their bearer. Specially considered, however, it consists in an immense number of suns floating freely in infinite space and of planets revolving round them. Accordingly, the result everywhere is nothing but spheres, some illuminating, others illuminated. On the surface of the latter, in consequence of a process of putrefaction, life has developed which furnishes organic beings of many different degrees. These appear as individuals that begin and end in time through generation and death in accordance with the laws of nature which govern vital force. Such laws, like all others, constitute the prevailing order of things which lasts from eternity to eternity, without beginning and end and without accounting for themselves. Man occupies the highest point of that gradation of beings; and his existence also has a beginning, and in its course there are many grievous sorrows and few joys sparingly meted out; and then, like every other, it has an end after which it seems as though it had never been. Our absolute physics, which here conducts the investigation and fulfils the role of philosophy, now explains to us how, in consequence of those absolutely existing and valid laws of nature, one phenomenon always produces or even supplants another. Here everything happens quite naturally and is, therefore, perfectly clear and intelligible, so that to the whole of the world thus explained we could apply a phrase that Fichte was in the habit of using when from the professorial throne he produced his dramatic talents with profound seriousness, impressive emphasis, and an air so disconcerting to students: 'It is because it is; and it is as it is because it is so.' Accordingly from this standpoint, it seems to be a mere whim still to want to look for other explanations of a world that is rendered so clear, and to try to find them in a wholly imaginary metaphysics whereon a system of morality would again be based that had its sole support in those fictions of metaphysics because it could not be established through physics. On this rests the obvious contempt with which physicists look down on metaphysics. But in spite of all the self-sufficiency of that purely objective philosophizing, the one-sidedness of the standpoint and the necessity to change it and thus to make the theme of investigation the knowing subject, together with its cognitive faculty in which alone all those worlds first have their existence, will sooner or later assert themselves in many different forms and on many different occasions. Thus, for example, the view that the validity of all such knowledge is only relative and conditioned, but not unconditioned, as our present-day rationalists take it to be, is the basis of that expression of the Christian mystics who call the human intellect the light of nature and declare it to be in the last resort incompetent. On this account the rationalists look down on the profound mysteries of Christianity, just as the physicists ridicule metaphysics. For instance, they consider that the dogma of original sin is a superstition because their plain and homely Pelagian intellect has happily made out that no one can be responsible for what another did six thousand years before him. For the rationalist confidently follows his light of nature and so really and quite seriously imagines that forty or fifty years ago, namely before his papa in nightcap had procreated him and his simple mama had safely brought him forth into this world, he was simply and absolutely nothing and arose out of nothing precisely at the moment. For only thus can he not be responsible for anything. The sinner and original sinner!
And so, as I have said, in many different ways, but most of all on the inescapable path of philosophy, speculation that follows objective knowledge will sooner or later begin to suspect something and thus to see that all its wisdom, obtained on the objective side, is accepted on the credit of the human intellect and consequently is absolutely conditioned thereby. Nevertheless, such an intellect must have its own forms, functions, and method of presentation. There follows from all this the necessity here to change the standpoint and to adopt the subjective method instead of the objective, and thus to make the intellect itself the theme of our investigation and put its authority to the test. For hitherto, this intellect has with absolute self-confidence calmly built up its dogmatism and has quite boldly passed a priori judgement on the world and everything therein, even on its possibility. This change will in the first instance lead to Locke, then to the Critique of Pure Reason, and finally to the knowledge that the light of nature is one that is directed only outwards and that, if it wanted to bend back and illuminate its own interior, it cannot do so, and so cannot immediately dispel the darkness that prevails there. Only on the roundabout path of reflection that is followed by those philosophers, and with great difficulty, does it obtain information about its own mechanism and nature. Accordingly, it becomes clear to the intellect that it is originally destined to grasp mere relations, such being sufficient for the service of an individual will, and that it is, therefore, directed essentially outwards. Even here it is only a superficial force like electricity; in other words, it grasps merely the surface of things, but never penetrates their interior. Again for the very same reason, it is incapable of fully and fundamentally understanding and fathoming a single thing of all those that are objectively clear and real to it, even the smallest and simplest; on the contrary, in each and every thing the main point remains for it a mystery. But in this way, the intellect is then led to a deeper insight which is denoted by the word idealism, namely that this objective world and its order, as apprehended by the intellect with its operations, does not exist unconditionally and therefore in itself, but arises by means of the brain's functions and so exists primarily in the brain alone. Consequently in this form, it has only a conditioned and relative existence and is, therefore, a mere phenomenon, a mere appearance. Hitherto, man had looked for the grounds of his own existence, whereby he assumed that the laws of knowing, thinking, and experience were purely objective, that they existed absolutely in and by themselves, and that he and everything else existed merely in virtue of them. But now he recognizes conversely that his intellect, and consequently his existence as well, are the condition of all those laws and what follows therefrom. Finally, he sees also that the ideality of space, time, and causality, which has now become clear to him, makes way for an entirely different order of things from that of nature. Yet he is forced to regard the order of nature as the result or hieroglyphic of that other order.
§ 27
How little suited to philosophical reflection the human intellect is as a rule, is seen, among other things, in the fact that even now, after all that has been said on the subject since Descartes, realism still always confidently faces idealism with the naive assertion that bodies exist as such not merely in our representation or mental picture, but also really and actually. But it is precisely this reality itself, this mode and manner of existence together with all that it contains, whereof we affirm that it exists only in the representation and is not to be found anywhere else, since it is only a certain necessary arrangement of the nexus of our representations. In spite of all that the earlier idealists, especially Berkeley, taught, it is only through Kant that we first obtain a really thorough conviction of it because he does not dispose of the matter all at once, but goes into detail, separates the a priori, and everywhere takes into account the empirical element. Now whoever has once understood the ideality of the world sees that the statement that such a world would still exist even if it were not the representation or mental picture of anyone, is really meaningless, since it states a contradiction. For the fact of its being in existence means simply that it is represented or becomes a mental picture; its existence itself resides in the representation or mental picture of the subject. This is precisely what is stated by the expression 'it is object'.* Accordingly, the nobler, older, and better religions, such as Brahmanism and Buddhism, also base their teachings entirely on idealism and consequently expect even the masses to acknowledge this. Judaism, on the other hand, is a veritable concentration and consolidation of realism.
A piece of fraudulent trickery, introduced by Fichte and since admitted by the universities, is to be found in the expression 'the ego'. That which is essentially and positively subjective is here converted into the object by the substantive part of speech and the article in front of it. For in reality I or ego indicates the subjective as such which can, therefore, never become object, namely the knowing in contrast to, and as a condition of, all that is known. The wisdom of all languages has expressed this by treating ego or I not as a substantive; and so to carry out his purpose, Fichte had simply to strain the meaning of language. An even more brazen piece of trickery of this same Fichte is the scandalous misuse of the word setzen, to set, to put, to posit, ponere, which, instead of being denounced and exploded, is frequently employed, even at the present day, by almost all philosophasters, on his example and authority, as a regular expedient for sophisms and false teachings. Setzen, ponere, from which we get propositio, has for ages been a purely logical expression stating that in the logical sequence of a disputation or of any other discussion, we assume, presuppose, and affirm something for the time being and thus temporarily give it logical validity and formal truth, whereby its reality, its material truth and actuality remain absolutely untouched, unsettled, and undecided. Fichte, however, gradually obtained surreptitiously for this setzen a real, but naturally obscure and vague, meaning that was accepted by the duffers and constantly used by the sophists. Thus since the ego first posited itself and then the non-ego, to put or to posit is the equivalent of to create, to produce, in short, to put into the world, we know not how. Then everything we would like to assume as existing without reasons or grounds and to impose on others, is just put or posited, and there it stands before us quite real. This is the method still in force of the so-called post-Kantian philosophy, and it is the work of Fichte.
§ 29
The ideality of time, discovered by Kant, is really contained already in the law of inertia appertaining to mechanics. For at bottom, this law states that mere time is incapable of producing any physical effect; thus by itself and alone, time effects no change in the rest or motion of a body. We see from this that time is not something physically real, but transcendentally ideal, in other words, that it has its origin not in things, but in the knowing subject. If time were inherent in things themselves as a quality or accident, then its quantum and hence its length or shortness would necessarily be capable of changing something in them. But it is quite incapable of doing this; on the contrary, it passes over things without making the slightest impression thereon. For in the course of time causes alone are effective, certainly not the course itself. Therefore if a body is withdrawn from all chemical influences, thousands of years do not bring about any change in it; as for instance, the mammoth in the ice-floe on the River Lena, the fly in the amber, a precious metal in absolutely dry air, Egyptian antiquities (even wigs) in the dry rock-tomb. Therefore it is the same absolute ineffectiveness of time which appears in mechanics as the law of inertia. If a body has once received motion, no time can deprive it thereof or even diminish this; such motion is absolutely endless unless physical causes operate against it. In the same way, a body at rest remains so eternally unless physical causes make their appearance and set it in motion. Therefore it follows from this that time is something that does not affect bodies, indeed that the two are of a heterogeneous nature, since that reality attaching to bodies cannot be attributed to time. Accordingly, time is absolutely ideal, that is, it belongs to the mere representation and to the apparatus thereof. Bodies, on the other hand, through the manifold variety of their qualities and of the effects of these, show that they are not merely ideal, but that at the same time something objectively real, a thing-in-itself, is revealed in them, however different such may be from this its phenomenon.
Motion is, in the first instance, a merely phoronomical event, that is to say, one whose elements are taken solely from time and space. Matter is that which is movable; it is already an objectification of the thing-in-itself. But now its absolute indifference to rest and motion, enabling it to remain for ever in the one as in the other as soon as it has assumed this and to be disposed to fly as well as to rest throughout an eternity, shows that space and time and thus the opposite extremes of motion and rest that arise simply from these, do not adhere at all to the thing-in-itself which manifests itself as matter and endows this with all its forces. On the contrary, space and time are utterly foreign to the thing-in-itself and consequently have come not from what appears in the phenomenon, but from the intellect that perceives and apprehends this phenomenon. Space and time belong to this intellect as the forms thereof.
Incidentally, if anyone wishes to have a really vivid intuition of this law of inertia, let him imagine he is standing on the edge of the world before empty space and is firing a pistol into it. The bullet will fly in a constant direction throughout all eternity; billions of years of flight will never weary it; there will never be any lack of space into which it will continue to fly; nor will time ever run short for it and come to an end. Moreover, there is the fact that we know all this a priori and, precisely on this account, with absolute certainty. I think that the transcendental ideality, i.e. the cerebral phantasmagoria, of the whole thing becomes uncommonly clear.
A consideration of space, analogous and parallel to the foregoing one of time, might perhaps be associated with the fact that matter cannot be increased or diminished either by scattering it far and wide or again by compressing it in space; and also that in absolute space rest and motion in a straight line coincide phoronomically and are the same thing.
An anticipation of the Kantian doctrine of the ideality of time is seen in very many statements of ancient philosophers concerning which I have in other passages already mentioned what is necessary. Spinoza plainly says: tempus non est affectio rerum, sed tantum merus modus cogitandi. [3] (Cogitata metaphysica, c. 4.) The consciousness of the ideality of time really underlies even the concept of eternity which has existed from time immemorial. Thus essentially, eternity is the very opposite of time and those with any insight have always understood its concept in this way. This they were able to do only as a result of feeling that time resides merely in our intellect, not in the essence of things-in- themselves. It is merely through lack of understanding that the wholly incompetent were incapable of interpreting the concept of eternity except as an endless time. It is just this that forced the scholastics to such express utterances as: aeternitas non est temporis sine fine successio, sed Nunc stans; [4] even Plato had said so in the Timaeus, and Plotinus repeats it: [x]. [5] For this purpose, we could call time an eternity drawn apart and base thereon the statement that, if there were no eternity, there also could be no time, indeed that our intellect can produce this only because we ourselves stand in eternity. Since Kant, the concept of being outside time has in the same sense been introduced into philosophy; nevertheless, we should be very cautious in our use of it, for it is one of those that may well be thought of, but can never be substantiated and realized by any intuitive perception.
That time runs on with perfect regularity everywhere and in all bodies might be quite conceivable if it were something purely external, objective, and perceivable through the senses as are bodies. But it is not so; we cannot see or touch it. Moreover, it is by no means the mere movement or other change of bodies; on the contrary, this is in time which is, therefore, already presupposed by it as a condition. For a clock goes too quickly or too slowly, but not time with it; on the contrary, that which is uniform, regular, and normal and to which quick and slow refer, is the actual course of time. The clock measures time but does not make it. If all clocks stopped; if the sun itself stood still; if all kinds of motion or change ceased, all this would not for one moment impede the flow of time, but it would continue its uniform course and now, unattended by any changes, would elapse. Yet, as I have said, it is nothing perceivable by any of the senses, nothing given externally and hence nothing really objective. The only thing left for us to say is that it is something residing within us, our own mental process advancing uninterruptedly or, as Kant says, the form of the inner sense and of all our making of representations or mental pictures. Consequently, time constitutes the very basis and foundation of this worldly scene. The uniformity and regularity of its course in all heads shows more than anything that we are all enveloped in the same dream, indeed that it is one being or entity that dreams it.* Time seems to us to be so entirely a matter of course, that we are naturally not clearly conscious of it, but notice only the course of the changes in it which are, it is true, known purely empirically. It is, therefore, an important step towards philosophical enlightenment if once we fix our gaze on time itself and ask quite consciously: 'What is this essence or entity which cannot be seen or heard, but into which everything must enter in order actually to exist and which moves forward with inexorable uniformity and regularity, without anything being able in the very least to retard or accelerate it, such as, on the other hand, we are able to do with the changes of things occurring in it in order to be finished and done with them in a given time?' But time seems to us to be so much a matter of course that, instead of asking such a question, we cannot possibly think of an existence without it; for us it is the permanent presupposition of all existence. It is just this that shows that time is a mere form of our intellect, that is, of our cognitive apparatus, in which just as in space everything must manifest itself. Therefore along with the brain, time, together with all the ontology of beings based thereon, is abolished. The same thing may also be demonstrated in space in so far as I can leave behind me all worlds, however many, yet I can never get outside space, but carry this about with me everywhere because it adheres to my intellect and belongs to the representation-mechanism in my skull.
Without considerations of this kind whose basis is the Critique of Pure Reason, no serious progress in metaphysics is possible. And so the sophists who have set them aside, in order to substitute for them systems of identity and nonsense of all kinds and again to naturalize them at large, deserve no mercy.
Time is not merely a form a priori of our knowing, but is the foundation or ground-bass thereof; it is the primary woof for the fabric of the whole world that manifests itself to us and the bearer of all our intuitive apprehensions. The other forms of the principle of sufficient reason are, so to speak, copies of it; it is the archetype of everything. And so all our representations or mental pictures concerning existence and reality are inseparable from it and we never get away from picturing all things to ourselves as one after another. The when is still just as inevitable as the where; and yet everything manifesting itself in time is mere appearance or phenomenon.
Time is that disposition of our intellect by virtue whereof the thing we apprehend as the future does not seem to exist at all; yet this illusion vanishes when the future has become the present. In some dreams, clairvoyant somnambulism, and second sight, that deceptive form is temporarily pushed aside and the future then manifests itself as the present. This is why attempts that are sometimes made intentionally to frustrate the prophecy of a man endowed with second sight, even if only in minor incidents, were bound to fail; for he has already seen it actually existing at the time, just as we perceive only the present; it therefore has the same constancy and immutability as has the past. (Examples of attempts of this kind are found in Kieser's Archiv fur thierischen Magnetismus, vol. VIII, Pt. III, pp. 71, 87, 90.)
Accordingly, the necessity of all that happens, in other words, of everything successively occurring in time, a necessity that is revealed to us by means of the chain of causes and effects, is merely the way in which we perceive under the form of time that which exists uniformly and unaltered. Or again, this necessity is the impossibility that what exists is yet not identical with itself, one and unalterable, although we recognize it today as future, tomorrow as present, and the day after tomorrow as past. In the fitness and appropriateness of the organism, there is revealed the unity of the will that objectifies itself in it; and yet such unity is perceived in our apprehension (that is tied to space) as a plurality of parts and their conformity to a purpose. (See On the Will in Nature, 'Comparative Anatomy'.) In the same way, the necessity of all that happens which is brought about through the causal chain, re-establishes the unity of the essence-in-itself that is objectified in all such events. This unity, however, is perceived in our apprehension (that is tied to time) as a succession of states and thus as past, present, and future; whereas the essence-in-itself does not know all this, but exists in the Nunc stans. [6]
Separations by means of space are in somnambulistic clairvoyance much more frequently and thus more easily eliminated than are those by means of time. For what is merely absent and distant is much oftener brought to intuitive perception than what is actually still in the future. In Kant's language this would be explained by saying that space is merely the form of the outer sense, time that of the inner. That time and space are intuitively perceived a priori according to their form, has been taught by Kant; but that this can be done also according to their content, is taught by clairvoyant somnambulism.
§ 30
The most illuminating, and at the same time simplest, proof of the ideality of space is that we cannot abolish it in our thoughts as we can everything else. We can only empty space; we can think away from it everything, absolutely everything, and cause everything to vanish; we can even quite easily imagine that the space between the fixed stars is absolutely empty. But in no way can we possibly get rid of space itself; whatever we do and wherever we put ourselves space is there and nowhere has it an end, for it is the very basis and the first condition of all our representations or mental pictures. This proves quite positively that space appertains to our intellect itself and is an integral part thereof. Indeed, it is the part that furnishes the first thread of the warp for the intellect's fabric whereon the variegated world of objects is subsequently laid. For space exhibits itself as soon as an object is to be represented in my head and then accompanies all the movements, turns, and attempts of the intuitively perceiving intellect as persistently as the spectacles on my nose accompany all the turns and movements of my person, or as the shadow accompanies its body. If I notice that something is with me everywhere and under all circumstances, I conclude that it is inherent in me, like a peculiar odour, for example, which I would like to avoid but which is to be found wherever I go. It is precisely the same with space; whatever I may think, whatever world I may picture to myself, space is always there before everything else and will not go away. Now if from this it becomes obvious that space is a function, indeed a basic function, of my intellect itself, then the resultant ideality extends also to everything spatial, to everything that manifests itself in space. Yet every such thing in itself may have an objective existence, but in so far as it is spatial, and thus has shape, size, and movement, it is subjectively conditioned. Again, astronomical calculations that prove to be so accurate and correct are possible only by the fact that space is really in our head. Consequently, we know things not as they are in themselves, but only as they appear. This is the great Kant's great doctrine.
It is the absurdest of all ideas, but in a certain sense the most fruitful, to regard infinite space as independent of us and thus as existing absolutely objectively and in itself and to think that a mere copy of it, as something infinite, comes into our head through our eyes. For whoever becomes clearly conscious of the absurdity of this idea in this way recognizes at once the mere phantom-existence of this world, since he apprehends it as a mere brain-phenomenon that disappears as such when the brain dies in order to leave behind an entirely different world, namely that of things-in-themselves. The fact that his head is in space does not prevent him from seeing that space is nevertheless only in his head. *
§ 31
What light is for the external physical world, the intellect is for the inner world of consciousness. For the intellect is related to the will and so also to the organism that is in fact merely the objectively and intuitively perceived will, in much the same way as is the light to the combustible body and to oxygen by whose combination it blazes forth. And just as this light is the purer, the less it is mixed with the smoke of the burning body, so too is the intellect the purer, the more completely it is separated from the will whence it has sprung. In bolder metaphor, it might even be said that life is, as we know, a process of combustion and the development of light that takes place in such a process is the intellect.
§ 32
Our knowledge, like our eyes, looks only outwards and not inwards so that when the knower attempts to turn inwards in order to know himself, he looks into utter darkness and falls into a complete void. This is due to the following two reasons:
(1) The subject of knowing is not something autonomous, a thing-in-itself; it has no independent, original, and substantial existence, but is a mere phenomenon, something secondary and accidental, conditioned in the first instance by the organism that is the phenomenal appearance of the will. In a word, the subject of knowing is nothing but the focus wherein all the forces of the brain converge, as I have explained in the second volume of my chief work, chapter 22. How then is this subject of knowing to know itself, for in itself it is nothing? If it turns inwards, it recognizes, of course, the will that is the basis of its true nature. However, for the knowing subject this is not self-knowledge in the real sense, but knowledge of something else which is yet different from the knowing subject itself, but is then at once, as something already known, only a phenomenon. Yet it is such a phenomenon that has merely time as its form, not space in addition, as have the things of the external world. But apart from this, the subject knows the will only as it does external things in its manifestations and thus in the individual acts of will and other affections that we understand by the name of desires, emotions, passions, and feelings. Consequently, it knows the will still always as phenomenon, though not under the limitation of space as in the case of external things. For the above reason, however, the knowing subject cannot know itself since there is in it nothing except the fact that it is the knower but, precisely on that account, never the known. It is a phenomenon that has no other expression or manifestation than knowledge; consequently no other manifestation can be known in it.
(2) The will in us is certainly a thing-in-itself, existing by itself, something primary and autonomous, whose phenomenon manifests itself as organism in the spatially intuitively perceiving apprehension of the brain. Nevertheless, the will is incapable of any self-knowledge because, in and by itself, it is something that merely wills, not something that knows. For as such the will knows absolutely nothing and consequently not even itself. Knowledge is a secondary and mediate function that does not immediately belong to the will, to that which is primary in its own essential nature.
§ 33
The simplest impartial self-examination, along with the conclusions of anatomy, leads to the result that the intellect, like its objectification the brain, and the sense-apparatus attached thereto, are nothing but a greatly enhanced susceptibility to impressions from without. But the intellect does not constitute our original and true inner nature; and so in us it is not that which is in the plant the germinating force, or in the stone gravity together with chemical forces; only the will proves to be this. On the contrary, the intellect is in us that which in the plant may promote or hinder its mere susceptibility to external influences or to physical and chemical impressions, and whatever else may affect its growth and success. In us, however, that susceptibility is so greatly enhanced that, on the strength of it, the entire objective world, the world as representation, manifests itself and so to this extent originates as object. To make this clear, let us picture to ourselves the world without any animated beings. It is then without perception of any kind and so objectively does not really exist at all; however, let this be assumed. Now let us imagine a number of plants that have sprung up from the ground close to one another. They are now affected by influences of many kinds, such as air, wind, the ousting of one plant by another, moisture, cold, light, warmth, electrical tension, and so on. Now let us enhance ever more in our thoughts the susceptibility of these plants to such influences; it then finally becomes sensation accompanied by the ability to refer this to its cause; and so in the end it becomes perception. But the world stands out at once, manifesting itself in space, time, and causality; yet it remains a mere result of external influences on the susceptibility of plants. This graphical consideration is well calculated to render clear the merely phenomenal existence of the external world. For to whom will it occur to maintain that the conditions, having their existence in such an intuitive perception that comes from mere relations between external impression and vivid susceptibility, present us with the truly objective, inner, and original constitution of all those natural forces that are supposed to act on the plant and hence present us with the world of things-in-themselves? We can, therefore, see from this graphic description why the sphere of the human intellect has such narrow limits, as is shown by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason.
On the other hand, the thing-in-itself is only the will. Accordingly, it is the creator and bearer of all the properties and qualities of the phenomenon. It is undoubtedly charged with what is moral; but even knowledge and its power and thus the intellect belong to the phenomenon of the will and therefore indirectly to it. That the narrow-minded and stupid always meet with a certain amount of contempt may be due at any rate in part to the fact that the will in them has so lightened its burden and taken on for the purpose of its aims only an ounce or two of intellectual force.
§ 34
Not only is all evidence intuitively perceptual, as I have already said in § 25 and also in my chief work (volume i, § 14), but so too is all true and genuine comprehension of things. This is proved by the innumerable figurative expressions in all languages which are the united attempts to reduce everything abstract to something intuitively perceptual. For the mere abstract concepts of a thing do not give us any real understanding thereof, although they enable us to talk about it, just as many speak of many things. Some, in fact, do not need for this purpose any concepts at all, but manage with mere words, for example, with the technical terms they have learnt. On the other hand, to understand anything really and truly, it is necessary for us to grasp it in intuitive perception, to receive a clear picture of it, if possible from reality itself, but otherwise by means of the imagination. Even what is too great or too complicated to be taken in at a glance, must be conjured up in our minds through intuitive perception, either partially or by a representative type that can easily be surveyed, if we are really to understand it. But what does not admit even of this, must be made clear at any rate by an attempt at a picture and simile from the intuitive perception that is so very much the basis of our knowledge. This is seen also when we think, indeed in abstracto, of very large numbers and likewise of very great distances, as in astronomy, which can be expressed only by such numbers. Yet we do not really understand them directly, but have of them merely a comparative conception.
But more than anyone else should the philosopher draw from that fountain-head, from knowledge of intuitive perception, and should, therefore, keep his eye always on things themselves, on nature, the world, and life, and should make these, not books, the text of his thoughts. Moreover, he should always test and control in them all ready-made concepts and therefore use books not as sources of knowledge, but only as aids thereto. For only at second hand and often somewhat adulterated does he receive what is given by books; it is indeed only a reflection, a counterfeit, of the original, namely of the world; and rarely has the mirror been perfectly clean. On the other hand, nature, reality, never lies; indeed with her truth is always plain truth. Therefore the philosopher has to make her his study, namely her great and clear features and her main and fundamental character whence his problem is developed. He will accordingly make the subject of his consideration important and universal phenomena, in other words, that which is everywhere and at all times. On the other hand he will leave to the physicist, the zoologist, the historian, and so on, special, particular, rare, microscopic, or fleeting phenomena. He is concerned with more important things; the totality and size of the world, its essential nature, and fundamental truths are his high aim. Therefore he cannot at the same time meddle with details and trivialities; just as a man surveying a landscape from a mountain top cannot at the same time examine and determine plants that are growing far down in the valley, but leaves such work to one who is botanizing down there. To devote himself and all his strength to a special branch of knowledge, a man must certainly have a great liking for it and yet also show a great lack of interest in all the others. For he can do the former only on condition that he remains ignorant in all the latter; just as a man who marries has to give up all other women. Minds of the highest eminence, therefore, will never devote themselves to a special branch of knowledge; for an insight into the totality of things is too near to their hearts. They are generals not captains; conductors not instrumentalists. Yet how could a great mind find satisfaction in getting to know from the sum-total of things a definite branch, a single field, exactly and in its relations to all the rest, but in leaving out of account everything else? On the contrary, a great intellect obviously turns to the whole and his efforts are directed to the totality of things, the world in general, where nothing should be strange or foreign to him. Consequently, he cannot spend his life exhausting all the tiny details of one branch of knowledge.
§ 35
The eye becomes weak after staring for some time at an object and is no longer capable of seeing anything. In the same way, the intellect through continuously thinking about the same thing becomes incapable of further meditation and comprehension; it grows dull and confused. We must leave it and come back to it, when we shall find it again fresh and in clear outline. Therefore when Plato relates in the Symposium (220) that, while reflecting on something that occurred to him, Socrates stood stock still like a statue for twenty-four hours, we are bound to say to this not only non e vero, but also e mal trovato. [7] From the intellect's need for rest we see also why if, as newcomers and strangers, we look after a lengthy pause into the daily course of the things of this world and thus have a fresh and really unprejudiced insight into them, their connection and significance are made thoroughly and profoundly clear to us; so that we then see things palpably and plainly and fail to understand how it is that they are not noticed by all those who hourly move among them. Such a bright moment can accordingly be compared to a lucid interval.
§ 36
In a higher sense, even the hours of inspiration with their moments of illumination and real conception are only the lucida intervalla of genius. Accordingly, it might be said that genius dwells only one storey above madness. But yet even the rational man's reason [Vernunft] really operates only in lucidis intervallis; for he is not always rational, Even the prudent are not so all the time; the scholar does not exhibit his qualities at every moment; for sometimes he will not be able to recall and muster in some order the things that are most familiar to him; in short: nemo omnibus horis sapit. [8] All this seems to point to a certain ebb and flow of the humours of the brain, or to a relaxation and tension of its filaments.*
Now if, during a spring-tide of this kind, some new and profound insight suddenly comes to us, whereby our ideas naturally .ttain to a higher degree of animation, the cause of this will invariably be one of intuitive perception; and an intuitive insight will underlie every great thought. For words awaken ideas in others, but pictures or images in us.
§ 37
That we should write down as soon as possible our own valuable meditations goes without saying. Indeed, if at times we forget what we have experienced, how much more do we forget what we have thought! But thoughts come not when we want them, but when they want to. On the other hand, it is better not to write down what we obtain ready-made from without, what has merely been learnt, or what can in any case be found again in books. We should, therefore, refrain from making a collection of literary extracts and cuttings; for to write something down is equivalent to consigning it to oblivion. But we should deal sternly and despotically with our memory lest it should forget how to obey. For example, if we cannot recall some fact, verse, or word, we should not look it up in books, but worry the memory periodically for weeks until it has fulfilled its obligation. For the longer we have had to try to recollect it, the more firmly will it afterwards stick in our memory; what we have with so much effort worked up from the depths of memory will then be much more readily at our disposal another time than if we had refreshed our memory with the aid of books.* Mnemonics, on the other hand, rests ultimately on the fact that we have more confidence in our wit than in our memory and therefore transfer the functions of the latter to the former. In other words, wit must substitute for something difficult to retain something that is easy to retain in order, at some future time, to translate the latter back into the former. Mnemonics, however, is related to natural memory as an artificial leg to a real one and, like everything, underlies Napoleon's utterance: tout ce qui n'est pas naturel est impaifait. [9] It is a good thing initially to make use of words or facts recently learnt, like a temporary crutch, until they are assimilated in the direct and natural memory. How our memory starts from the often immense range of its storehouse to find at once what is required at the time; how the blind and sometimes long search for this really takes place; how what was at first vainly sought comes to us quite automatically and on the spur of the moment as if it had been whispered to us and often when we discover a tiny thread attached to it, but otherwise also after a few hours or days; all this is a mystery to us who are actively concerned in the matter. To me, however, there seems to be no doubt that these very subtle and mysterious operations with such an immense quantity and variety of material for recollection can never be replaced by an artificial and conscious play with analogies. Yet in the case of these, the natural memory must again always remain the primum mobile; [10] but then it has to retain two things instead of one, the symbol and the symbolized. In any case such an artificial memory can contain only a relatively small store. Generally speaking, however, there are two ways in which things are stamped on our memory: (a) deliberately by our purposely memorizing them, whereby we can sometimes make use of mnemonic tricks if it is a case of mere words or numbers; or (b) they are stamped automatically on the memory without any action on our part by virtue of the impression they make on us; and then indeed we call them unforgettable. Just as a wound is often not felt at the time it is received but only later, so many an event or idea we have heard or read about makes a deeper impression on us than we are at once aware of; but later it occurs to us again and again. The result of this is that it is not forgotten, but is incorporated in the system of our thoughts, ready to appear at the right moment. Moreover, it is obvious that in some respect they are of interest to us. But for this it is necessary for us to have a keen and acute mind that eagerly assimilates what is objective and strives for knowledge and insight. The surprising ignorance of many scholars in things that concern their branch of knowledge is due ultimately to their lack of objective interest in such things; and so the observations, remarks, and views concerning these do not make a vivid impression on them and are, therefore, not retained. For speaking generally, they study not con amore but under self-compulsion. Now the more things there are in which a man takes a lively objective interest, the more will be fixed in his memory in this spontaneous manner; and so they will be at a maximum in youth when the novelty of things enhances an interest in them. This second way is much more certain than the first and, moreover, selects entirely by itself what is of importance to us, although in the case of blockheads it is restricted to personal affairs.
§ 38
The quality of our thoughts (their formal worth) comes from within, but their trend or bearing and thus their material from without; so that what we are thinking at any given moment is the product of two fundamentally different factors. Accordingly, objects are for the mind what the plectrum is for the lyre; hence the great variety of thoughts stimulated in different minds by the same spectacle. When in the heyday of my intellect at the height of its powers the hour came through favourable circumstances in which the brain was at its highest tension, my eye would encounter any object it liked, and this spoke revelations to me; there then ensued a series of ideas that were worth recording and were written down. But with advancing years, especially with the powers on the wane, such hours have become ever rarer; for the objects are the plectrum, but the intellect is the lyre. The question whether this is well tuned to a high pitch establishes the great difference of the world as manifested in every mind. Now just as this depends on physiological and anatomical conditions, so, on the other hand, mere chance holds the plectrum by producing the objects that are to engage our attention. But here a great part of the matter is still left to our discretion in that we can, partially at any rate, determine it to our liking by means of the objects with which we are occupied or surrounded. We should, therefore, give to them some care and attention and proceed with methodical deliberateness. Such advice is given in Locke's excellent little book On the Conduct of the Understanding. Sound serious thoughts on worthy subjects, however, cannot be conjured up arbitrarily and at any time. All we can do is to keep the path clear for them by banishing all futile, foolish, or vulgar ruminations, and by turning away from all humbug and tomfoolery. And so we can say that, in order to think of something sensible, the quickest way is not to think of anything absurd or preposterous. We need only keep the field open to sound ideas and they will come. Therefore whenever we have a free moment with nothing to do, we should not forthwith seize a book, but should for once let our mind become tranquil, and then in it something good may easily arise. The remark made by Riemer in his book on Goethe is very true where he says that our own thoughts come to us almost always when we are walking or standing and extremely rarely when we are seated. Now since the entry generally of vivid, searching, and valuable ideas is the result more of favourable internal conditions than of external, it is clear that several ideas of this kind that relate to entirely different subjects, often appear in rapid succession and even wellnigh simultaneously in which case they cross and encroach on one another like the crystals of a druse. In fact, it is possible for us to have the same experience as the man has who courses two hares at the same time.
§ 39
How limited and inadequate the normal human intellect is and how slight is clearness of consciousness, can be gathered from the fact that, in spite of the ephemeral brevity of man's life that is cast into the stream of endless time, of the precarious nature of our existence, of the numberless mysteries that everywhere obtrude, of the significant character of so many phenomena, and of the utter inadequacy of life; that, in spite of this, not all philosophize constantly and unremittingly; in fact, not even many, or some, or perhaps only a few; no, only here and there, only the absolute exceptions philosophize. Through this dream the rest live not so very differently from the animals from whom, in the long run, they differ only by their foresight and provision for a few years. Their metaphysical need that makes itself felt is catered for in advance by the authorities through religions; and whatever these may be, they suffice. Jevertheless, it might well be that many more philosophize in secret than is apparent, although this may subsequently prove to be the case. For ours is truly a sorry plight! To live a span of years full of trouble, want, anguish, and pain, without in the least knowing whence, whither, and to what purpose, and in addition to all this, the priests and parsons of every persuasion with their respective revelations on the subject together with their threats to unbelievers. Moreover, there is the fact that we look at and associate with one another, like masks with masks; we know not who we are, but are like masks that do not know even themselves. And this is precisely how the animals regard us, and we them.
§ 40
We might almost imagine that half of all our thinking occurred unconsciously. The conclusion is in most cases drawn without the premisses having been clearly thought out. This can be inferred from the fact that sometimes an event, whose consequences we cannot possibly foresee and whose eventual effect on our affairs we are even less able to judge clearly, nevertheless does exert an unmistakable influence on our whole frame of mind by making it either cheerful or melancholy. This can be only the consequence of an unconscious rumination, as is still more obvious in what follows. I have made myself acquainted with the actual data of a theoretical or practical affair; now after a few days, without my having thought of it again, the result as to how the matter stands or what is to be done about it will often occur to me quite automatically and be clear in my mind. Here the operation whereby this was brought about remains just as hidden from me as does that of a calculating machine; it has been simply an unconscious rumination. In the same way, when I have recently written something on a subject, but have then dismissed the matter from my mind, an additional note sometimes occurs to me when I am not thinking about it at all. In like manner, I can for days search in my memory for a name that has escaped me; and then when I am not thinking about it at all, it suddenly occurs to me, as though it had been whispered in my ear. In fact, our best, most terse, and most profound thoughts suddenly occur in consciousness like an inspiration and often at once in the form of a striking and significant sentence. But they are obviously the results of long and unconscious meditation and of countless apercus that often lie in the distant past and are individually forgotten. Here I refer to what I have said on the subject in my chief work, volume two, chapter fourteen. One might almost venture to put forward the physiological hypothesis that conscious thought takes place on the surface of the brain and unconscious in the innermost recesses of its medullary substance.
§ 41
With the monotony of life and its resultant shallowness, we should after a number of years find it insufferably tedious, were it not for the steady progress of knowledge and insight as a whole and for the better and clearer comprehension of all things and their circumstances, partly as the fruit of maturity and experience and also in consequence of the changes that we ourselves undergo through the different periods of our lives. In this way, things are to a certain extent presented to us from an ever fresh point of view whence they reveal aspects, as yet unknown to us, and appear to be different. And so in spite of a decline in the intensity of our intellectual powers, the dies diem docet [11] always goes on untiringly and spreads over life an ever-fresh charm by invariably presenting what is identical as something different and new. Therefore Solon's words are the motto of any old thinker: [x]. [12]
Incidentally, the many different changes in our mood and temperament, by virtue whereof we daily see things in a different light, at all times render us the same service. They also lessen the monotony of our consciousness and thought by acting thereon in the same way as does the constantly changing illumination with its endlessly manifold light-effects on a beautiful piece of country, in consequence whereof the landscape seen by us a hundred times always delights us afresh. Thus when we are in a changed mood, what we know appears to be new and awakens in us fresh ideas and views.
§ 42
Whoever tries to settle something a posteriori and thus by experiment, although he could see and decide it a priori, for instance, the necessity of a cause for every change, or mathematical truths, or propositions from mechanics and astronomy that are reducible to mathematics, or even such as follow from very well-known and unquestionable laws of nature, renders himself an object of contempt. A fine example of this is afforded by our most recent materialists who start [rom chemistry and whose exceedingly one-sided erudition has already caused me to remark elsewhere [13] that mere chemistry may well qualify a man to be a druggist, but not a philosopher. They believe they have made on the empirical path a new discovery in the a priori truth, which has been expressed a thousand times before them, that matter is permanent; and this they boldly announce, despite a world that does not yet know anything of it, and frankly demonstrate it on the empirical path. ('The proof of this could be furnished only by our scales and retorts' says Dr. Louis Buchner in his book Kraft und Stoff, 5th edn., p. 14, which is the naive echo of his school.) But here they are so timorous or even so ignorant that they do not use the only correct and valid word 'matter' [Materie], but 'material' [Stoff] that is more familiar to them. Thus the a priori proposition: 'Matter is permanent and therefore its quantum can never be increased or diminished' is expressed by them as: ' Material is immortal', and in this they feel original and important, scilicet in their new discovery. For such little men naturally do not know that disputes have been going on for hundreds and even thousands of years concerning the pre-eminence and relation of permanent matter to the ever-present form. They come quasi modo geniti [14] and suffer severely from [x], [15] described by Gellius (Xl. 7) as vitium serae eruditionis; ut, quod nunquam didiceris, diu ignoraveris, cum id scire aliquando coeperis, magni facias quo in loco cumque in loco et quacunque in rie dicere. [16] If only someone, naturally endowed with patience, would take the trouble to drub into these apothecaries' apprentices and barbers' assistants who, coming from their kitchens of chemistry, know nothing, the difference between matter and material. For material is already qualified matter, in other words, the union of matter with form, both of which can again be separated. Consequently, matter alone is that which is permanent, not material which can still always become something else-not excepting your sixty chemical elements. The indestructibility of matter can never be decided by experiments; and so as regards this, we should be for ever uncertain were it not firmly established a priori. How wholly and definitely a priori and hence independent of all experience the knowledge of the indestructibility of matter is and of its passage through all forms, is testified by Shakespeare, who certainly knew very little physics and had not much general knowledge; yet he represents Hamlet as saying:
[quote]The imperial Caesar, dead, and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O! that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall t'expel the winter's flaw!
-- Hamlet, Act v, Sc. I.[/quote]
He therefore makes the same application of that truth which our present-day materialists have often served up from the dispensary and clinic, in that they obviously take pride in the fact and here consider such a truth to be a result of empiricism, as was previously shown. On the other hand, whoever tries to demonstrate a priori what can be known only a posteriori from experience behaves like a charlatan and makes himself ridiculous. A foretaste of this mistake was furnished by examples from Schelling and his followers when they shot a priori at an a posteriori fixed target, as someone very neatly expressed it at the time. We shall become best acquainted with Schelling's achievements in this direction from his Erster Entwurf einer Naturphilosophie. Here it is obvious that from nature before us he abstracted, secretly and quite empirically, universal truths and then formulated some expressions of its character as a whole. He then appears with these as a priori found principles of the conceivability of a nature at all, and from them again happily derives the facts of the case which are met with and underlie such principles; and accordingly he demonstrates to his students that nature cannot be other than she is:
[quote]Then, the philosopher steps in And shows, no otherwise it could have been: [17][/quote]
As an amusing example of this kind, we should read on pp. 96, 97 of the above-mentioned book the a priori deduction of inorganic nature and gravity. To me it is like a child doing conjuring tricks; I see clearly how he slips the pellets under the cup and then later I am supposed to show surprise at finding them there. After such a precedent of the master, we shall not be surprised at meeting his disciples years afterwards on the same path and at seeing how they try to deduce a priori the course of nature from vague, empirically grasped concepts, such as oval-form, spherical-form, and from arbitrarily assumed, ambiguous analogies, such as egg-animals, trunk-animals, belly animals, breast animals, and similar tomfoolery. On the other hand, we clearly see in their serious deductions that they always cast a glance at what is only certain a posteriori and yet often flagrantly violate nature in order to mould her to their whims and fancies. How worthy the French are by contrast with their honest empiricism which admittedly attempts to learn only from nature and to explore her course, but not to lay down her laws. Merely on the path of induction they found their division of the animal kingdom which is as profoundly conceived as it is admirable and which the Germans are quite unable even to appreciate. They therefore push it into the background in order to bring forward through queer and curious notions, like those previously mentioned, their own originality; and then for this they admire one another-these discerning and impartial judges of intellectual merit! What luck to be born of such a nation!
§ 43
It is quite natural for us to maintain a defensive and negative attitude to every new opinion on whose subject we have already given a firm judgement. For such an opinion makes a hostile encroachment on the hitherto exclusive system of our convictions, disturbs the peace and consolation derived therefrom, expects us to undertake fresh exertions, and declares as wasted all our previous efforts. Accordingly, a truth that brings us back from errors is comparable to a medicine both by its bitter and nasty taste and by the fact that it does not show its effect the moment it is taken, but only after some time.
And so if we see an individual obstinately sticking to his errors, this is much more the case with the great majority; for on their opinions once formed experience and instruction may toil in vain for hundreds of years. Thus there are certain universally popular errors firmly accredited and daily repeated by millions with the utmost complacency. I have begun to make a list of them and request others to add to it.
(1) Suicide is a cowardly act.
(2) Whoever distrusts others is himself dishonest.
(3) Merit and genius are sincerely modest and unassuming.
(4) Those who are mad are extremely unfortunate.
(5) Philosophy cannot be learnt, but only philosophizing. (This is the opposite of the truth.)
(6) It is easier to write a good tragedy than a good comedy.
(7) The statement, attributed to Bacon, that a little taste in philosophy leads possibly to atheism, but fuller draughts lead back to religion. Is that so? Allez voir! (Bacon, De augmentis scientiarum, lib. I, p. 5).
(8) 'Knowledge is power'. The devil a bit! A man can have a great deal of knowledge without for that reason possessing the least power, while another has the greatest power with the least knowledge. Therefore Herodotus very rightly expresses the opposite statement: [x] [18] (lib. IX, c. 16). Occasionally a man's knowledge gives him power over others, for example, when he knows their secrets, or they cannot get to the bottom of his; but this still does not warrant the statement that knowledge is power.
Men repeat most of these to one another without thinking very much in connection with them and merely because, when they first heard them, they discovered that they sounded very wise and clever.
§ 44
We can observe, especially when travelling, how dull and irksome is the way of thinking of the masses and how difficult it is to tackle them. For whoever is fortunate enough to be free to live more with books than with men, has always in view only the easy communication of ideas and knowledge together with the rapid action and reaction of minds on one another. In this way, he may easily forget how utterly different things are in the world of men and women, the only world of reality, so to speak; and in the end he even imagines that every insight gained at once becomes the common property of mankind. But we need only travel by rail for a day to notice that, where we now happen to be, certain prejudices, erroneous notions, manners, customs, and clothes prevail which have in fact been upheld for centuries and are unknown at the place where we were the day before. It is the same with provincial dialects. From all this we can judge how wide the gulf is between books and the masses and how slowly but surely acknowledged truths reach the crowd. And so as regards the rapidity of transmission, nothing is less like physical light than is that of the intellect.
It all comes to this, then, that the masses do very little thinking because they have no time to practise it; but in this way, of course, they cling to their errors for a very long time. On the other hand, they are not, like the learned world, a weathercock of daily fluctuating opinions that point in all directions. This is a very fortunate circumstance, for to picture the great heavy masses in rapid motion is a terrifying thought, especially when we reflect how everything would be overthrown and swept away by them if they turned and changed their course.
§ 45 Craving for knowledge, when directed to the universal, is simply called desire for knowledge; but when it is directed to the particular, it is called inquisitiveness or curiosity. Boys often show a desire for knowledge, little girls mere curiosity, the latter to an astonishing degree and often with tiresome ingenuousness. The tendency to the particular that is characteristic of the female sex and their insusceptibility to the universal are here already in evidence.
A happily organized mind and consequently one equipped with power of judgement has two excellent qualities. The first is that, of everything seen, experienced, and read by it, what is important and significant is noted by it and automatically impressed on the memory, to be brought out in future when required, whereas the remaining material again flows away. The memory of such a mind is, accordingly, like a fine sieve that retains only the larger pieces, whereas that of others is like a coarse sieve that lets everything through except what is by chance left behind. The second good quality of such a mind, which is akin to the first, is that what is relevant to a subject, is analogous or otherwise related thereto, however remote it may be, always occurs to such a mind at the right moment. This is due to the fact that in things it grasps what is really essential, whereby it at once recognizes what is identical and therefore homogeneous, even in things that are otherwise most varied and dissimilar.
§ 47
Intellect is not an extensive quantity, but an intensive; and so a man in this respect may confidently be a match for ten thousand. Even a whole host of a thousand blockheads does not produce one shrewd and intelligent man.
§ 48
Two closely related faculties, that of judging and of having ideas of one's own, are what is really lacking in miserable, commonplace minds whereof the world is full to overflowing. But these two qualities they lack to such a degree that, for anyone who does not belong to their set, it is not easy for him to form any conception of this and thus of the wretchedness of their existence, of the fastidium sui quo laborat omnis stultitia. [19] But from this defect, we clearly see, on the one hand, the trivial nature of all the scribblings of all nations, which are declared by contemporaries to be literature, and, on the other, the fate of that which is genuine and true when it makes its appearance among such men. Thus all real musing and meditating is to a certain extent an attempt to put a great mind on small men; no wonder that it does not at once succeed. The pleasure afforded by an author always calls for a certain sympathy or harmony between his way of thinking and the reader's, and it will be the greater, the more accomplished the reader. And so a great mind is enjoyed wholly and entirely only by such another. This is precisely why bad or mediocre authors fill thinking minds with disgust and aversion. Even conversation with most people has just the same effect; at every step we feel inadequacy and disharmony.
While on this subject, let me utter a warning that we should not underrate a new and possibly true dictum or idea because we find it in an inferior book or hear it from the lips of a blockhead; for the former has stolen it and the latter has picked it up, a fact that is naturally concealed. Then there is also the Spanish proverb: Mas sabe el necio en su casa, que el cuerdo en la agena (A fool is better acquainted with his own house than is a clever man with another's). Thus in his own branch, everyone knows more than we. Finally, it is well known that even a blind hen occasionally finds a grain of corn. In fact, it is even true that il y a un mystere dans l'esprit des gens qui n'en ont pas. [20] Therefore:
[quote] [x] (Et hortulanus saepe opportunissima dixit.) [21] *[/quote]
It may well happen that long ago we once heard from an unimportant and uneducated man a remark or the description of some experience, which, however, we have not since forgotten. But then, on account of its source, we are inclined to underrate it or regard it as something that was long ago universally known. We should now ask ourselves whether we have ever again heard it in all the time that has since elapsed or have even read about it. If this is not the case, we should hold it in esteem. Would one underrate a diamond because it might have been raked out from some muck-heap?
§ 49
There cannot be a musical instrument that does not add a touch of something strange to the pure tone, in consequence of the vibrations in the material of the instrument itself, the tone itself consisting only of vibrations of the air. In fact through their impulse, the vibrations in the instrument first produce those of the air and give rise to an unimportant secondary sound. In precisely this way, every tone receives that which is specifically peculiar to it and thus that which, for example, distinguishes the tone of the violin from that of the flute. But the less there is of this inessential admixture, the purer the tone; and so the human voice has the purest because no artificial instrument can compete with one that is natural. Now in the same way, there cannot be an intellect that does not add to the essential and purely objective element of knowledge something subjective and foreign to that element, something springing from the man who carries and conditions the intellect, and thus something individual whereby the purely objective element is invariably vitiated. The intellect in which this influence is least, will be the most purely objective and consequently the most perfect. As a result of this, the productions of every intellect contain and reproduce really only that which it regularly apprehends in things and hence the purely objective. This is the reason why such productions appeal to everyone the moment he understands them. I have, therefore, said that genius consists in the objectivity of the mind. Yet an absolutely objective and thus perfectly pure intellect is just as impossible as is an absolutely pure tone; the latter because the air cannot become vibrated by itself, but must in some way be impelled; the former because an intellect cannot exist by itself, but can appear only as the instrument of a will, or (speaking literally) because a brain is possible only as part of an organism. An irrational and even blind will that manifests itself as an organism is the root and foundation of every intellect; hence the inadequacy and imperfection of everyone and the characteristics of folly and perversity without which there can be no human being; and so also the expression' no lotus without a stem', and Goethe says:
[quote]The Tower of Babel haunts them still, They cannot be united! For every man his crotchet has, And Copernicus also his. [22][/quote]
In addition to the tainting and infection of knowledge through individuality, through the subject's disposition that is given once for all, we now have that infection that arises directly from the will and its mood of the moment and thus from the interests, passions, and emotions of the knower. To estimate entirely how much the subjective element is added to our knowledge, we ought to look more frequently at one and the same event with the eyes of two men with different dispositions and interests. As this is not feasible, we must be content to observe how very different the same persons and objects appear to us at different times, in different moods, and on different occasions.
It would certainly be a fine thing for our intellect if it existed by itself and were thus an original and pure intelligence and not merely a secondary faculty, which is necessarily rooted in a will, but which, in virtue of such a basis, must suffer a contamination of almost all its knowledge and judgements. But for this, it might be a pure organ of knowledge and truth. Yet as things now are, how rarely shall we see quite clearly in a matter wherein we are in some way interested! It is hardly possible; for in every argument and every additional datum, the will speaks at once and indeed without our being able to distinguish between its voice and that of the intellect itself, for the two are merged into one ego. This becomes most clear when we try to prophesy the outcome of some matter that interests us; for interest impairs the intellect at almost every step, first as fear and then as hope. Here it is hardly possible to see clearly, for the intellect then resembles a torch by which one is supposed to read, whereas the night breeze agitates it. Precisely on this account, a loyal and sincere friend is of inestimable value in very disturbing circumstances because he himself does not take part in things and sees them as they are, whereas in our eyes they appear falsified through the deception of the passions. We can have an accurate judgement on things that have happened and a correct forecast of things to come, only when they do not concern us at all and thus leave our interests absolutely untouched. Moreover, we are not uncorrupted; on the contrary, without our noticing it, our intellect is infected and poisoned by the will. This and also the incompleteness, or even interpolation, of the data explain why men of intellect and knowledge are sometimes completely mistaken in prophesying the outcome of political affairs.
With artists, poets, and authors generally, one of the subjective infections of the intellect is also what we are accustomed to call ideas of the times or at the present day 'consciousness of the times', and thus certain views and notions that are in vogue. The author who is tinged with their colour, has allowed himself to be impressed by them, whereas he should have ignored and rejected them. Now when, after a shorter or longer spell of years, those views have vanished entirely into oblivion, his works of that period which still exist are deprived of the support that they had in such views and then often seem to be inconceivably absurd, or at any rate like an old calendar. It is only the absolutely genuine poet or thinker who rises superior to all such influences. Even Schiller had run his eye over the Critique of Practical Reason and had been impressed thereby; but Shakespeare had run his eye simply over the world. And so in all his plays, but most clearly in those dealing with English history, we see how the characters, with one or two exceptions that are not too glaring, are set in motion generally by motives of self-interest or wickedness. For he wished to show in the mirror of poetry men, not moral caricatures; and so everyone recognizes them in the mirror and his works live today and for all time. The characters in Schiller's Don Carlos can be divided fairly sharply into white and black, angels and devils. Even now they seem to be strange and peculiar. What will be the verdict after another fifty years?
§ 50
The life of plants is taken up with mere existence; accordingly, its pleasure is a dull enjoyment that is purely and absolutely subjective. With animals, knowledge comes as something additional; yet this remains restricted entirely to motives and indeed to those that are nearest and immediate. And so they too find complete satisfaction in mere existence and this suffices to fill their lives. Accordingly, they can spend many hours in complete idleness without feeling ill at ease or impatient, although they do not think, but merely perceive intuitively. Only in the cleverest of all the animals, in dogs and monkeys, do the need for occupation and, consequently, boredom make themselves felt. They therefore like to play and amuse themselves by gaping and staring at passers-by. Thus they already come within the category of human window-gapers who everywhere stare at us, but excite real indignation only when it is observed that they are students.
Only in man has knowledge, i.e. consciousness of other things in contrast to mere self-consciousness, reached a high degree and been enhanced to prudence and reflectiveness through the appearance of reason [Vernunft]. As a result, his life can be occupied not only with mere existence, but also with knowledge as such which is to a certain extent a second existence outside his own person and in other beings and things. But with him knowledge is also for the most part restricted to motives which, however, include distant ones and, when taken in bulk, go by the name of 'useful knowledge'. On the other hand, free knowledge, in other words, knowledge devoid of aim or purpose, does not in him usually go beyond curiosity and a desire to be entertained; yet it is present in everyone, at least to this extent. If, however, the motives grant him some relaxation, a great part of his life will be taken up with mere existence. Mere gaping and idling that are so frequent are evidence of this; and so too is that sociability that consists mainly of his being merely with other people either with exceedingly poor and paltry conversation or with none at all.* Indeed, although they are not clearly aware of it, most people resolve in their heart of hearts to manage with the least possible display of ideas; and this is their chief maxim and guide to conduct because for them thinking is so troublesome a burden. Accordingly, they do only just as much thinking as is rendered absolutely necessary by their professional business; and then again as much as is required by their different pastimes, conversation as well as games, both of which must then be so arranged that they can be carried on with a minimum of thought. If, however, in their hours of leisure they lack such facilities, rather than take up a book that would tax their powers of thought, they will lie down by the window for hours, gaping at the most trifling events and so really furnishing us with an illustration of Ariosto's ozio lungo d' uomini ignoranti. [23]
Only where the intellect already exceeds the necessary amount, does knowledge become more or less an end in itself. Accordingly, it is a wholly abnormal occurrence when in anyone the intellect relinquishes its natural vocation of serving the will and thus of grasping the mere relations of things, in order to occupy itself in a purely objective way. But this is just the origin of art, poetry, and philosophy which are, therefore, created by an organ that is not primarily intended for them. Thus the intellect is originally a hireling engaged on a laborious task and kept busy and in constant demand from morning till night by its lord and master, the will. But if in an hour of leisure this hard-driven drudge manages to produce a piece of its work spontaneously and of its own accord and without any interested motive, merely for its own satisfaction and delight, then this is a genuine work of art and, if carried to great heights, indeed a work of genius.*
Such an application of the intellect to what is purely objective underlies in its higher degrees all artistic, poetical, and philosophical achievements and generally those that are purely scientific. It already occurs in the comprehension and study of such works and likewise in the free consideration of any subject, that is to say, one that is in no way concerned with personal interests. In fact, such a use of the intellect enlivens even a mere conversation when the theme thereof is purely objective, that is to say, is in no way related to the interest and hence the will of the speakers. Every such purely objective use of the intellect is related to the subjective, in other words, to the use that concerns, though still indirectly, a personal interest, as dancing to walking. For it is, like dancing, the expenditure to no purpose of superfluous energy. On the other hand, the subjective use of the intellect is certainly the natural; for the intellect has arisen merely to serve the will. But precisely on this account, we have it in common with the animals; it is the slave of a pressing need, bears the stamp of our wretchedness, and in it we appear to be very much like glebae adscripti. [24] It occurs not merely in our work and personal activity, but also in all our conversations on personal and material affairs generally, such as eating, drinking, and other comforts and pleasures, then our livelihood and everything connected therewith together with advantages of every kind, even when these concern the community; for this remains a common weal. Most people are, of course, incapable of using their intellect in any other way because with them it is merely an instrument in the service of the will and is entirely used up therein, with nothing left over. This makes them so dull and tedious, as serious as animals, and incapable of any objective conversation. We also see in their faces how short the bond is between intellect and will. The expression of thick-headedness, which we so often come across in so depressing a way, simply indicates that limitation of all their knowledge to the affairs of their will. We see that there exists just as much intellect as is needed by the particular will in question for its aims, and nothing more; this is why they look so vulgar. (Cf. World as Will and Representation, vol. ii, chap. 31.) Accordingly, their intellect lapses into idleness as soon as the will stops spurring it. They take no objective interest in anything at all. They never give their attention, let alone their consideration, to any matter that has no reference, at any rate a possible one, to their person; otherwise, there is nothing that awakens in them an interest. Never once are they to any extent enlivened by a joke or anything witty; on the contrary, they detest everything that calls for even merely the least thought. At most, they raise a laugh by means of coarse jokes; otherwise they are serious-looking brutes, all because they are capable of only a subjective interest. This is precisely why card-playing is for them a suitable entertainment, for money of course; because this does not, like drama, music, conversation, and so on, keep within the sphere of mere knowledge, but sets in motion the will itself, that which is primary and is bound to be met with everywhere. For the rest, they are men of business, tradesmen from the cradle to the grave, the born porters and carriers of life. Their pleasures are all sensual since they have no susceptibility for any others. Only on matters of business should we speak to them, not otherwise. To be sociable with them is degrading; by so doing we make ourselves really cheap and common. It is their conversation which Giordano Bruno describes (at the end of the Cena delle ceneri) as vili, ignobili, barbare ed indegne conversazioni, [25] and which he vows he will positively avoid. On the other hand, the conversation between men who are in any way capable of a purely objective use of their intellect, even if the purport is ever so easy and amounts to mere joking, is always a free play of intellectual powers. Therefore such a conversation is related to that of others as dancing to walking; in fact, it is like a dance between two or more; whereas the other kind of conversation resembles a mere marching of men beside or behind one another for the purpose of arriving at a destination.
This inclination that is always associated with the ability to make such a free and thus abnormal use of the intellect now reaches in the man of genius a degree where knowledge becomes the main thing, the end and purpose of his whole life, whereas his own existence drops to something of secondary importance, to the mere means. Thus the normal relation of things is entirely reversed. Accordingly, the genius by means of his discerning apprehension of the rest of the world generally lives more in this than in his own person. The wholly abnormal enhancement of his powers of knowledge makes it impossible for him to fill his time with mere existence and with the aims and objects thereof. His mind needs constant and vigorous occupation. He therefore lacks that imperturbability in going through the broad scenes of daily life; he is wanting in that easy and agreeable ability to identify himself with everyday life which is given to ordinary men who go through even the ceremonial part of it with genuine pleasure. Accordingly, genius is a bad thing to have for ordinary practical life, such as is suitable for normal intellectual powers, and, like all abnormalities, it is a drawback. For with this enhancement of intellectual powers, the intuitive apprehension of the external world has attained to so great an objective clearness and furnishes so much more than is required for the service of the will that this abundance becomes a positive hindrance to such service. A consideration of the given phenomena, as such and in themselves, always diverts one from that of their relations to the individual will and to one another, and consequently disturbs and hinders their calm comprehension. On the other hand, a wholly superficial consideration of things is sufficient for the service of the will; for it furnishes nothing but their connection with our particular aims for the time being, and with what is bound up therewith; consequently it consists of nothing but relations, with the greatest possible blindness to everything else. This kind of knowledge is impaired and becomes confused through an objective and complete apprehension of the true nature of things. Hence the saying of Lactantius is here confirmed: Vulgus interdum plus sapit: quia tantum quantum opus est sapit. [26] (Divinae institutiones, lib. II, c. 5.)
Therefore genius is absolutely opposed to qualification for practical action, especially in the highest scene thereof, the sphere of world politics; just because the noble perfection and fine susceptibility of the intellect impede the energy of the will. But if only such energy that appears as boldness and firmness is endowed with a capable and straightforward intellect, a correct judgement, and a modicum of cunning, it will make a statesman or general and, if it amounts to stubbornness and audacity, will in favourable circumstances produce even a character famous in world history. But it is ridiculous to attempt to talk of genius in connection with such men. It isjust the lower grades of intellectual superiority, such as shrewdness, cunning, and definite but one-sided talents that enable one to get on in the world and readily establish one's good fortune, especially when impudence and effrontery (like the audacity just mentioned) supplement such talents. For at all these lower grades of intellectual superiority, the intellect still remains always true to its natural destiny, to the service of its own will, only that it carries out this duty with greater precision and facility. In the case of genius, on the other hand, the intellect withdraws from that service; and so genius is decidedly unfavourable to a person's good fortune; therefore Goethe represents Tasso as saying:
[quote]A laurel crown, wherever seen by you, Is more a sign of sorrow than of luck.[/quote]
Accordingly, genius is for the man so gifted a direct gain, it is true, yet not an indirect one.*
§ 51
For the man capable of understanding anything cum grano salis, [27] the relation between the genius and the normal individual might perhaps be expressed most clearly in the following manner. The genius is one who has a double intellect, first for himself and the service of his will, and secondly for the world whose mirror he becomes by his apprehending it in a purely objective way. The sum total or quintessence of this apprehension is reproduced in works of art, poetry, or philosophy, after technical development and improvement have been added. The normal man, on the other hand, has only the first intellect that can be called subjective, just as that of genius may be called objective. Although this subjective intellect may be present in very different degrees of keenness and perfection, it is still always separated by a definite gradation from that double intellect of the genius; in much the same way as the notes of the chest-voice, however high, are still always essentially different from the falsetto notes of the head. Like the two upper octaves of the flute and the harmonics of the violin, these are the unison of the two halves of the vibration-column of air which is divided by a nodal point. On the other hand, in the chest-voice and the lower octave of the flute, only the entire and undivided air-column vibrates. Therefore this may enable one to understand that specific peculiarity of genius which is so obviously stamped on the works and even the physiognomy of the man so gifted. Moreover, it is clear that such a double intellect is in most cases bound to be a hindrance to the service of the will; and this explains the above-mentioned poor aptitude of genius for practical life. In particular, he lacks that sober circumspection that characterizes the ordinary simple intellect, whether it be keen or dull.
§ 52
The brain as a parasite is nourished by the organism without contributing directly to the internal economy thereof; for up there in its fixed and well-protected abode it leads a self-sufficient and independent life. In the same way, the man with great mental gifts leads a second purely intellectual life apart from the individual life that is common to all. Such an intellectual life consists in the constant increase, rectification, and extension not of mere learning and erudition, but of systematic knowledge and insight in the real sense. It remains untouched by the fate of his own person, in so far as it is not disturbed by this in its pursuits. Such a life, therefore, exalts the man and sets him above fate and its fluctuations. It consists in constant thinking, learning, experimenting, and practising, and gradually becomes the chief existence to which the personal is subordinated as the mere means to an end. An example of the independent and separate nature of this intellectual life is furnished by Goethe. In the midst of all the tumult of battle during the war in the Champagne, he observed phenomena for the theory of colour; and as soon as he was granted a short respite in the fortress of Luxemburg during the interminable misery of that campaign, he took up the notebooks of his theory of colour. He has thus left for us an ideal that we, the salt of the earth, should follow by always attending undisturbed to our intellectual life, however much our personal life may be affected and shaken by the storm and stress of the world, always bearing in mind that we are the sons not of the handmaid, but of the free. As our emblem and family crest I suggest a tree violently shaken by the storm, but still bearing its red fruit on every branch, with the inscription: dum convellor mitescunt, [28] or even: conquassata sed ferax. [29]
To that purely intellectual life of the individual, there corresponds just such a life of the whole of mankind whose real life is likewise to be found in the will both as regards its empirical and its transcendent significance. This purely intellectual life of mankind consists in its advance in knowledge by means of the sciences and in the perfection of the arts, both of which progress slowly throughout the ages and centuries and to which each generation furnishes its contribution as it hurries past. Like an ethereal addition, this intellectual life hovers, as a sweet-scented air that is developed from the ferment over the stir and movement of the world, that real life of nations which is dominated by the will. Along with the history of the world, that of philosophy, the sciences, and the arts pursues its innocent and bloodless path.
§ 53
The difference between the genius and normal minds is certainly only quantitative in so far as it is one of degree; yet we are tempted to regard it as qualitative when we consider how, in spite of their difference, ordinary minds nevertheless have a certain common tendency in their thinking. By virtue of this, all their thoughts on similar occasions at once pursue the same path and follow the same track. Hence the frequent agreement of their judgements which is not based on truth and goes to such lengths that certain fundamental views, at all times firmly held by them, are always repeated and brought forward afresh, whereas the great minds of all times are openly or secretly opposed to them.
§ 54
A genius is a man in whose head the world as representation has attained a degree of more clearness and stands out with the stamp of greater distinctness; and as the most important and profound insight is furnished not by a careful observation of details, but only by an intensity of apprehension of the whole, so mankind can look forward to the greatest instruction from him. If he develops and perfects himself, he will give this now in one form and now in another. Accordingly, we can also define genius as an exceedingly clear consciousness of things and thus also of the opposite, namely of our own self. Mankind, therefore, looks up to one so gifted for information about things and about its own true nature.*
Like everyone else, however, such a man is what he is primarily for himself; and this is essential, inevitable, and unalterable. On the other hand, what he is for others remains, as something secondary, subject to chance. In no case can they receive from his mind more than a reflection by means of an attempt, made by both sides, to think his thoughts with their minds in which, however, such thoughts will always remain exotic plants and consequently stunted and enfeebled.
§ 55
To have original, extraordinary, possibly even immortal ideas, it is sufficient to become so completely estranged from the world and things for a few moments that the most ordinary objects and events appear to be wholly new and unfamiliar, whereby their true nature is disclosed. But what is here required is not exactly difficult; on the contrary, it is not in our power at all and is just the dispensation of genius.*
§ 56
Genius is among other minds what the carbuncle stone is among precious stones; it radiates its own light, whereas the others reflect only the light they have received. It may also be said that the genius is related to others as idioelectrical bodies are to mere conductors of electricity. Hence the term is not appropriate to the mere scholar in the real sense, who further teaches what he has learnt, just as idioelectrical bodies are not conductors. On the contrary, genius is related to mere learning as the text of a song to the notes. A scholar is one who has learnt much; a genius is one from whom mankind learns what he has not learnt from anyone. Therefore great minds, whereof there is hardly one in a hundred millions, are the lighthouses of mankind without which men would lose themselves in the infinite sea of the most egregious errors and demoralization.
However, the simple scholar in the real sense, say the professor- in-ordinary of Gottingen, regards the genius in much the same way as we look at a hare, namely as something palatable only after it has been killed and prepared for dinner. Thus he regards the genius as one who must be shot at, so long as he is alive.
§ 57
Whoever wants to experience the gratitude of his contemporaries must keep in step with them. But in this way nothing great is ever produced. Whoever intends to achieve this must, therefore, direct his gaze to posterity and confidently elaborate his work for future generations. Of course, it may well happen that he will remain unknown to his contemporaries and then be comparable to the man who, compelled to spend his life on a lonely island, laboriously erects there a monument for the purpose of handing on to future seafarers information of his existence. If this seems to him a hard lot, he can console himself with the thought that even the ordinary merely practical man often suffers a similar fate without having to expect any compensation. Thus ifhe is in a favourable position, such a man will be active and productive in a material way. He will earn, buy, build, cultivate, construct, layout, establish, arrange, and embellish with daily effort and unflagging zeal. Here he imagines he is working for himself and yet in the end only his descendants, and very often not even his own, reap the benefit of all this. Accordingly, he too can say: nos, non nobis, [30] and his work has been his reward. It is, therefore, no better for him than for the man of genius who also naturally hopes for reward or at any rate for honour, and who in the end has done everything merely for posterity. For this, of course, both have also inherited a great deal from their ancestors.
Now the compensation I have previously mentioned, which is the privilege of genius, is to be found not in what he is to others, but in what he is to himself. Who, indeed, has really and truly lived more than the man who had moments whose mere echo is audible through the tumult and confusion of centuries? Perhaps, after all, it would be most prudent for such a man if, to be himself undisturbed and unmolested, he allowed himself to enjoy, as long as he lived, the pleasure of his own thoughts and works and he appointed the world merely as the heir to his rich and full existence. The mere impression of this, somewhat like an ichnolith, would then come to the world only after his death. (Cf. Byron, Prophecy of Dante, beginning of can. IV.) [31]
But the advantage a man of genius has over others is not limited to the activity of his highest powers. A man, who is extraordinarily well built, supple, and agile, performs all his movements with exceptional ease and even pleasure in that he takes a direct delight in an activity for which happily he is specially endowed and which he, therefore, often practises to no purpose. Moreover, not only as a rope- or solo-dancer does he take leaps that others are unable to perform, but in the easier dance steps that the rest do, in fact even in mere walking, he generally reveals a rare resilience and nimbleness. In the same way, a man with a truly superior mind will produce not merely ideas and works that could never come from others and will show his greatness not in these alone, but, as knowing and thinking are themselves an activity that is natural and easy to him, he will at all times take delight in these. Therefore even smaller things that are accessible to others will be apprehended by him more easily, quickly, and correctly than by them. Thus he will take a direct and lively pleasure in every increase of knowledge, in every problem solved, and in every witty and terse idea, whether it be his own or another's. And so his mind is constantly active without any other aim or object and thus becomes for him a perennial source of pleasure so that boredom, that ever-present bugbear of ordinary men and women, can never come upon him. Then there is also the fact that the masterpieces of his predecessors or of great minds contemporary with him exist in their fulness really only for him. The ordinary inferior mind looks forward to the product of a great mind which is recommended to him in much the same way as a victim of gout looks forward to a ball. The one goes to the ball out of pure convention and the other reads the great work in order to be up to the mark. For La Bruyere is quite right when he says: tout l' esprit qui est au monde est inutile a celui qui n' en a point. [32] Again, all the ideas of a clever man or of a genius are related to those of an ordinary person, even where they are essentially the same, as pictures done in vivid and striking colours are to mere outlines or sketches in feeble water-colours. All this, then, is part of the reward of genius to compensate him for a lonely existence in a world that is different from and repugnant to him. Thus since all greatness is relative, it is immaterial whether I say Caius was a great man or Caius had to live among pitiably small men; for Brobdingnag and Lilliput are different only through their point of departure. Therefore however great, admirable, and entertaining the author of immortal works appears to be to his numerous posterity, others during his lifetime must have seemed to him just as paltry, pitiable, and uninteresting. This is what I meant when I said that, if there are three hundred feet from the base to the top of a tower, there will also certainly be just three hundred from the top to the base.*
Accordingly, we should not be surprised if we have found men of genius often unsociable and sometimes stern and forbidding. For want of sociability is not to blame for this; on the contrary, their course through this world resembles that of a man out for a walk on a fine early morning when he contemplates with delight nature in all her freshness and splendour. Yet he has to rely on this, for no other society is to be found, except perhaps a peasant or two bending over the earth and cultivating the land. Thus it often happens that a man with a great mind prefers his own monologue to the dialogue that can be had in the world. Yet if he once condescends to this, it may be that its emptiness will cause him to revert again to the monologue. For he forgets the man to whom he is talking, or at any rate cares little whether or not that man understands him, and speaks to him as does a child to a doll.
Modesty in a great mind would really be to men's liking, but unfortunately it is a contradictio in adjecto. [33] Thus it would compel such a mind to give preference and attach value to the ideas, opinions, and views, as well as to the mode and manner of others, of those others indeed whose number is legion, rather than to his own; it would force him to subordinate and adapt his own very different ideas to those of others, or even to suppress them entirely to enable those others to hold the field. But then he would produce precisely nothing, or his achievements would be the same as those of others. Rather is he able to produce what is great, genuine, and extraordinary only in so far as he disregards the methods, ideas, and views of his contemporaries, quietly produces what they censure, and disdains what they praise. No man becomes great without this arrogance; but if his life and work should have fallen on times that cannot acknowledge and appreciate him, he still always remains true to himself and then resembles some noble traveller who has to spend the night at a miserable inn; on the next day he is glad to continue his journey.
At all events, a thinker or poet may be content with his times if only they allow him to think and write poetry undisturbed in his own corner; and with his good fortune if this grants him a corner in which he can think and write poetry, without having to bother about others.
For that the brain is a mere labourer in the service of the belly is, of course, the common lot of almost all who do not live on the work of their hands, and to this they are well able to reconcile themselves. But for great minds, for those whose cerebral powers exceed the amount required for serving the will, it is exasperating. Such a man, therefore, will prefer, if necessary, to live in the most restricted circumstances if such grant him the free use of his time for the development and application of his powers and so give to him the leisure that is invaluable. It is naturally different with ordinary men whose leisure is without objective value and is even for them not without its dangers, a fact of which they seem to be aware. For the technical skill of our times, which has been raised to unprecedented heights, increases and multiplies objects of luxury and thus gives to those favourites of fortune the choice between more leisure and mental culture, on the one hand, and more luxury and good living with intense activity, on the other. Characteristically enough, as a rule they choose the latter and prefer champagne to leisure. This is also consistent; for to them every mental exertion that does not serve the purposes of the will is foolish and the tendency to such exertion is by them called eccentricity. Accordingly, they regard a persistence in the aims of the will and of the belly as a concentricity; for the will is certainly the centre and indeed the very kernel of the world.
On the whole, however, alternatives of this kind are by no means of frequent occurrence. For just as most people do not have a surplus of money, but only just enough for their needs, so is it the same with intellect; of this they have just enough for the service of their will, that is, for carrying on their business. When this is done, they are content to be able to gape, or to indulge in sensual pleasures as well as in childish games, such as cards and dice; or they carryon the dullest discourses, or dress up and then bow to one another. There are few who have even a small surplus of intellectual powers. Now just as those with a small surplus of money give themselves pleasure, so do those others give themselves intellectual pleasure. They pursue some liberal study that brings them in nothing, or an art, and are generally in some way capable of an objective interest; and so it is possible to converse with them. But with the others, it is better not to enter into any relations; for with the exception of those cases in which they give an account of their own experiences, report something about their line of business, or at any rate contribute something they have learnt from others, what they have to say will not be worth listening to. What we say to them will seldom be properly grasped and understood and will also in most instances run counter to their views. Hence Balthasar Gracian admirably describes them as hombres que no lo son -- human beings who are not human; and Giordano Bruno says in these words the same thing: Quanta differenza sia di contrattare e ritrovarsi tra gli uomini, e tra color, che son fetti ad imagine e similitudine di quelli [34] (Della causa, Dial. I, p. 224, ed. Wagner). This agrees marvellously with the statement in the Kural: [35] 'The common people look like human beings; but I have never seen anything like them.'* To anyone who needs lively entertainment for the purpose of banishing the dreariness of solitude, I recommend a dog in whose moral and intellectual qualities he will almost always experience delight and satisfaction.
On all occasions, however, we wish to guard against being unjust. I have often been astonished at the cleverness, and again at the occasional stupidity of my dog; and my experiences with the human race have been much the same. Times without number, I have been filled with indignation by their incapacity, their complete lack of judgement, and their bestiality, and have had to agree with the old complaint:
[quote]Humani generis mater nutrixque profecto Stultitia est. [36] [/quote]
But at other times, I have again been astonished how, in spite of such a race, it was possible for useful and fine arts and sciences of many kinds to come into being, take root, maintain and perfect themselves, although they always came from individuals, from the exceptions. I am also astonished to see how with fidelity and persistence this race has preserved and protected from destruction the works of great minds such as Homer, Plato, Horace, and others for two or three thousand years by copying and keeping them in a safe place. This it has done, in spite of all the evils and atrocities in its history, whereby it has shown that it recognized the value of those works. I am likewise surprised at the special achievements of individuals and sometimes at the traits of intellect or judgement, as if by inspiration, in the case of those who in other respects belong to the masses; occasionally even with the crowd itself when, as often happens, it judges quite correctly as soon as its chorus has become full and complete. This is like the sounding of untrained voices which always proves to be harmonious, if only there are very many of them. Those who go beyond the crowd and who are described as having genius, are merely the lucida intervalla of the whole human race. Accordingly, they achieve what is absolutely denied to others; and thus their originality is so great that not only does their difference from others become obvious, but even the individuality of each one of them is so strongly marked that there is a complete difference of character and mind between all those of genius who have ever existed. By virtue of such a difference, each genius has in his works made a present to the world which it could never have received from anyone else in the whole of mankind. For this very reason, Ariosto's simile is so very pertinent and rightly famous: Natura it fece, e poi ruppe ta stampa. [37]
§ 58
By virtue of the limited amount of human capacity, every great mind is so only on condition of his having, even intellectually, some decidedly weak side, some quality wherein he is sometimes inferior even to mediocre minds. It will be the one quality that might have stood in the way of his outstanding ability; yet it will always be difficult to describe in a word what that quality is even in the case of a given individual. It may be better expressed indirectly; for example, Plato's weak side is precisely that wherein Aristotle's strength consists, and vice versa. Kant's weak side is that wherein Goethe is great, and vice versa.
§ 59
Men are also fond of venerating something, only that in most cases they come with their veneration to the wrong house, where it stops until posterity comes along to put it right. After this has been done, the veneration that is shown by the great educated public to genius deteriorates in just the same way as that shown by the faithful to their saints very easily degenerates into the puerile adoration of relics. Thousands of Christians adore the relics of a saint whose life and teaching are to them unknown. The religion of thousands of Buddhists consists much more in the veneration of the Dalaba (sacred tooth) or other Dhatu (relics),* or indeed of the Dagoba (stupa) enclosing them, the sacred Patra (begging-bowl), the footstep in stone, or the holy tree planted by the Buddha, than in a thorough knowledge and faithful practice of his exalted teaching. Petrarch's house in Arqua, Tasso's alleged prison in Ferrara, Shakespeare's house at Stratford with his chair, Goethe's house in Weimar with its furniture, Kant's old hat, likewise their respective autographs, are gaped at with awe and attention by many who have never read the works of those men. They cannot do anything more than just gape. Among the more intelligent, however, is to be found the desire to see the objects that a man of great intellect had before his eyes. Here by a strange illusion, there is the mistaken notion that with the object they bring back also the subject, or that something of him must cling to the object. Akin to such men are those who earnestly strive to investigate and become thoroughly acquainted with the subject-matter of poetical works, for instance with the Faust legend and its literature, and then with the actual personal circumstances and events in the poet's life which gave rise to his work. They resemble the man who sees at the theatre a fine piece of scenery and then hurries on to the stage to examine the wooden scaffolding whereby it is supported. Instances enough are at the present day afforded by the critical investigators of Faust and the Faust legend, of Frederica in Sesenheim, of Gretchen in the Weissadlergasse, of Lottie Werther's family, and so on. They prove the truth that men are interested not in the form, that is, the treatment and presentation, but in the matter; they are concerned with the theme. But those who make themselves acquainted with the story of a philosopher's life, instead of studying his thoughts, resemble those who, instead of studying a painting, are more interested in the frame and consider the style of its carving and the cost of gilding it.
So far so good; yet there is another class whose interest is likewise directed to what is material and personal, but who on this path go farther, and indeed to the point of complete futility. Thus a great mind has revealed to them the treasures of his innermost nature and, by a supreme effort of his powers, has produced works that will contribute not only to their uplift and enlightenment, but also to that of their descendants to the tenth or even twentieth generation. Because he has done this and has presented mankind with a matchless gift, these rogues think themselves entitled to sit in judgement on his personal morals to see whether they might not be able to discover in him some blot or blemish for relieving the pain felt by them' in the overwhelming sense of nothingness' [38] at the sight of so great a mind. Hence arise, for example, the detailed investigations of Goethe's life from the moral point of view which have been carried out in innumerable books and journals, whether he should or ought to have married this girl or that with whom in his youth he had had a love-affair; or whether, instead of honestly devoting himself to the service of his country, he should not have been a man of the people, a German patriot worthy of a seat in the Paulskirche, and so on. By such flagrant ingratitude and malicious backbiting, these intrusive and officious judges show that morally they are just as much knaves as they are intellectually, which is saying a good deal.
§ 60
Talent works for money and fame; on the other hand, it is not so easy to state the motive that urges the genius to elaborate his works. Money seldom comes to genius; and it is not fame; only Frenchmen can mean anything like this. Fame is too uncertain and is, more closely considered, of little value:
[quote]Responsura tuo nunquam est par fama labori. [39][/quote]
In the same way, it is not exactly the genius's own delight, for this is almost outweighed by the great effort he has put into the work. On the contrary, it is an instinct of quite a peculiar kind whereby the genius is urged to express in works that will endure that which he perceives and feels without being aware of any further motive. On the whole, it happens with the same necessity with which a tree bears fruit and nothing further is required from without except a soil wherein the individual can thrive. More closely considered, it is as though the will-to-live, as the spirit of the human species, were in such an individual conscious of having here reached by some rare chance and for a brief span of time a greater clearness of intellect, and were now trying to acquire for the whole species that is also the true inner nature of this individual at least the results or products of that clear vision and thought in order that the light radiating from him might afterwards with good effect pierce the darkness and dulness of the ordinary man's consciousness. Hence arises that instinct that urges the genius to complete his works without regard for any reward, approbation, or sympathy, and in solitude and with no attention to his own well-being to devote to them the greatest effort and industry. In this way, he is urged to think more of posterity than of the contemporary world by which he would merely be led astray. For posterity is a greater part of the species and in the course of time the few who are capable of judgement come along individually. Meanwhile, it is often with him as with the artist who laments in Goethe's Kunstlers Apotheose:
[quote]A friend who'd take delight in me, A prince who'd prize my talents, Alas have failed to come my way. In cloisters did I meet with none But dull and shallow patrons. Thus did I always plague myself Without adepts or pupils.[/quote]
To make his work, as being a sacred deposit and the real fruit of his existence, the property of mankind and to hand it on to a posterity with better judgement, this is his aim which is more important than all others and for which he wears a crown of thorns that shall one day sprout into a wreath of laurel. His efforts are just as decidedly concentrated on the completion and security of his work as are those of the insect in its final form on the security of its eggs and the provision for the brood it will never live to see. It deposits the eggs where, as it well knows, they will one day find life and nourishment, and then dies fearlessly and with resignation.
[b]APPENDIX[/b]
A: 'The failure of philosophy till now has been necessary and is explained by the fact that, instead of confining himself to a deeper comprehension of the world as given, the philosopher wants at once to go beyond it and attempts to discover the ultimate grounds of all existence, the eternal relations of things. To think of these things is quite beyond the capacity of our intellect whose comprehension is fit only for what philosophers have at one time called finite things, at another phenomena, in short, the fleeting forms of this world and what is suitable for our persons, our purposes, and our preservation. Our intellect is immanent, and thus our philosophy too should be immanent and not aspire to supramundane things, but restrict itself to a thorough understanding of the world as given, which supplies material enough.'
B: 'If that is so, then in our intellect we have a miserable gift from nature. Thus it is only fit to grasp the relations which concern our paltry individual existence and which last only during the brief span of our temporal life. On the other hand, it is quite incapable of grasping that which alone is worthy of the interest of a thinking individual, the explanation of our existence generally and the interpretation of the circumstances of the world as a whole, in short, the solution to the riddle of our life-dream; and even if all this were expounded to it, it would be incapable of comprehending it. This being so, I do not find it worth my while to cultivate it and to concern myself with it. It is a thing that is not worth my stooping in order to pick it up.'
A: 'My dear sir, if we dispute and contend with nature, we are usually in the wrong. Just think! Natura nihil facit frustra nec supervacaneum (et nihil largitur). [40] We are simply temporal, finite, transient, dreamlike, fleeting beings like shadows. What could such beings do with an intellect that grasped the infinite, eternal, and absolute relations of things? And how could such an intellect once again relinquish those relations in order to turn to the petty circumstances of our ephemeral existence, which are for us the only real ones and actually concern us, and still be fit for these? By granting us such an intellect, nature would have not only made an immense frustra and mistake, but would also have worked entirely against her purpose with us. For what good would it do? As Shakespeare says:
[quote]we fools of nature, So horridly to shake our disposition, With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.
-- Hamlet, Act I, Sc. 4.[/quote]
Would not such a perfect and exhaustive metaphysical insight render us incapable of all physical insight, of all our affairs and actions? Would it not rather plunge us for ever into a state of chill horror, like that of one who has seen a ghost?'
B: 'But you are making a wicked petitio principii [41] when you say that we are merely temporal, transient, and finite beings. We are at the same time infinite, eternal, and the original principle of nature herself. Therefore it is worth our while to go on trying to see" if nature is not ultimately fathomed".' [42]
A: 'According to your own metaphysics, we are infinite and eternal only in a certain sense, only as thing-in-itself not as phenomenon, only as the inner principle of the world not as individuals, only as will-to-live not as subjects of individual knowledge. Here it is a case only of our intelligent nature, not of the will; and, as intelligences, we are individual and finite; accordingly, our intellect is also of such a nature. The purpose of our life (if I may venture to use a metaphorical expression) is practical, not theoretical; our doing, not our knowing, appertains to eternity. Our intellect exists to guide these actions of ours and at the same time to hold up a mirror to our will; and this is what it does. It is extremely probable that anything more would render the intellect unfit for this. Indeed we see already how genius, this small surplus of intellect, is a bar to the career of the individual so endowed and makes him extremely unhappy, although inwardly for him it may be a blessing.'
B: 'It is a good thing for you to remind me of genius! To some extent it overthrows the facts you are trying to vindicate. In the case of genius, the theoretical side enormously outweighs the practical. Although the genius cannot grasp eternal relations, he sees somewhat more deeply into the things of this world, attamen est quadam prodire tenus. [43] This certainly renders the intellect that is favoured with genius less fit for grasping finite earthly relations; it is like using a telescope in a theatre. Here seems to be the point where we agree and our common observations come to a standstill.'
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[b]Notes:[/b] 1 ['Give me a foothold (and I move the earth)' (attributed to Archimedes).]
2 ['Thus does one thing throw light on others.' (Lucretius, I. 1109.)]
* If I behold some object such as a view and think to myself that, if at this moment my head were chopped off, I know that the object would still be there unmoved and undisturbed, then this implies fundamentally and at bottom that I too would still exist. This will be obvious to a few, but let it be said for these. 3 ['Time is not a modification of things, but only a mere mode of thinking.']
4 ['Eternity is not a succession of time without end, but a permanent Now."]
5 ['Time is the moved image of eternity.']
* If, with this subjective origin of time, we were to be very surprised at the perfect regularity of its course in so many different heads, this would be based on a misunderstanding. For regularity would necessarily signify here that, in a certain time, an equal amount of time elapsed and thus the absurd assumption would have to be made of a second time wherein the first passed away quickly or slowly.
6 ['Permanent now'.] * When I say 'in a different world', it shows a great want of understanding on the part of anyone who asks: 'Where then is the other world?' For space that imparts a meaning to all Where, belongs essentially to this world outside which there is no Where. Peace, serenity, and bliss dwell only where there are no Where and no When.
7 ['It is not true'; 'it is a poor invention.']
* According as the energy of the mind is raised or relaxed (in consequence of the organism's physiological state), the mind soars into very different heights, sometimes floating up in the ether and surveying the world, sometimes skimming over the morasses of the earth, often between the two extremes, but nearer to one of them! Here the will can do nothing.
8 ['No one is wise all the time.']
* Memory is a capricious and arbitrary thing, somewhat like a young girl. Sometimes it refuses quite unexpectedly to give what it has already furnished a hundred times, and then later on it presents us with this quite automatically when we are no longer thinking about it.
A word sticks more firmly in the memory, if we have associated it with a mental image rather than with a mere concept.
It would be a fine thing if we now knew for all time what we have learnt; but it is otherwise. Everything we have learnt must from time to time be brushed up by repetition, otherwise it is gradually forgotten. But as mere repetition is tedious, we must always learn something in addition. Hence: aut progredi, aut regredi ['either go forward or go back'].
9 ['Everything that is not natural is imperfect.']
10 ['The first mobile thing', 'the first thing to be moved', 'the first motive'.] 11 ['One day instructs another.'] 12 ['The older I grow, the more I add to my store of knowledge.']
13 [In the preface to the work On the Will in Nature.]
14 ['As newborn babes' (I Peter 2:2).]
15 ['Learning too late'.]
16 ['The mistake of learning too late which consists in our repeating, everywhere and on all occasions, as something important that which we had never previously learnt and for long had not known, after we finally began to know it'.]
17 [Goethe's Faust, Pt. I, Bayard Taylor's translation.]
18 ['The most grievous affliction among men is for one to understand a great deal and yet be incapable of anything.']
19 ['Of the disgust with itself from which all stupidity suffers.'] (See volume one, page 331 for the more accurate quotation from Seneca.)
* The above is quoted by Gaisford in the preface to Stobaeus, Floritegium, p. xxx, according to Gellius, lib. II, c. 6. In the Florilegium itself, vol. I, p. 107, it runs:
[x] (Saepe etiam stupidi non intempesta loquuntur.) ['Even a foolish man often makes a pertinent remark.'] as a verse of Aeschylus which the editor doubts.
20 ['There is a mystery in the minds of those men who have none.']
21 ['Even a gardener often makes a pertinent remark.'] 22 (Sprichwortlich, Weimar edition, vol II, p. 231.) * The commonplace fellow shuns physical exertion, but mental effort even more so. He is, therefore, so ignorant and so lacking in ideas and judgement.
23 ['The boredom of the ignorant' (Orlando furioso, XXXIV. 75).]
* No difference of position, rank, or birth is so great as the gulf between the countless millions who regard and use their brains only as the servant of their bellies, that is to say, as an instrument for the aims of their will, and those exceedingly few and rare individuals who have the courage to say: No, my mind is too good for that; it should be active merely for its own purpose, for comprehending the marvellous and multicoloured spectacle of this world, in order later to reproduce it in some form as a picture or an explanation, according to the disposition of the individual who for the time being carries such a mind. These are the truly noble and the real noblesse of the world; the others are serfs, glebae adscripti ['soil-bound serfs']. Here, of course, are meant only those who have not merely the courage, but also the call and thus the right to emancipate the intellect from the service of the will, with the result that it is worth the sacrifice. With the rest where all this only partially exists, that gulf is not so wide; yet a sharp line of demarcation always remains, even in the case of a small but decided talent.
What a nation has to show in the way of works of fine art, poetry, and philosophy, is the product of a surplus of intellect which has existed in it.
The great majority are so constituted that, by their whole nature, they can never be serious about anything except eating, drinking, and copulating. All that the rare and more exalted natures have brought into the world either as religion, science, or art, will be used at once by the great majority as instruments for their own base ends, for in most cases they will make these their masks.
The intellect of ordinary people is kept strictly tied, namely to its fixed point, the will, so that it resembles a short and therefore rapidly swinging pendulum, or an angle of elongation with short radius vector. The result is that in things they see really nothing except just their advantage or disadvantage, the latter, however, the more clearly whereby there comes a great facility in dealing with things. The intellect of the genius, on the other hand, sees the things themselves, and in this consists his aptitude. But in this way, the knowledge of his advantage or disadvantage is obscured or even suppressed; and so it often happens that other people get through life's journey much more skilfully than he. Both can be compared to two chess players in a stranger's house before whom genuine Chinese chessmen, exceedingly beautiful and artistically carved, have been placed. One loses because his contemplation of the beautiful figures always distracts and diverts his attention; the other who has no interest in such things, sees in them mere chessmen and wins. 24 ['Soil-bound serfs'.]
25 ['Common, ignoble, barbarous, and unworthy conversations'.]
26 ['The mob often has more sense and understanding because it has only as much as is necessary.'] * We clearly see in animals that their intellect is active merely in the service of their will; and as a rule it is not very different in the case of human beings. Even in them we see generally the same thing; in fact in the ease of many a man, it is even seen that he was never active in any other way, but that his attention was always directed to the petty aims and ends of life and to the means, often so sordid and unworthy, of attaining them. If a man has a definite surplus of intellect over and above that necessary for serving the will; and if such surplus then assumes on its own accord an entirely free activity which is not stirred by the will or concerned with the aims thereof and the result of which will be a purely objective comprehension of the world and of things-then such a man is a genius. It is stamped on his countenance, as also is every surplus above the aforesaid meagre measure, although less strongly marked.
The most correct scale for measuring the hierarchy of intelligences is furnished by the degree with which they apprehend things merely individually or more and more universally. The animal knows only the individual thing as such and so remains involved entirely in the apprehension of that which is individual. Every human being, however, summarizes into concepts that which is individual, and precisely in this does the use of his reason [Vernunft] consist. These concepts become more and more universal, the higher his intelligence stands. Now if this apprehension of the universal penetrates into intuitive knowledge and not merely concepts but also intuitively perceived things are grasped immediately as something universal, there arises the knowledge of the (Platonic) Ideas. It is aesthetic knowledge and, when it is self-acting or spontaneous, it becomes genius and attains the highest degree when it becomes philosophical. For then the whole of life, of beings and their fleeting nature, of the world and all it contains, appears in its true essence intuitively grasped. In this form it forces itself on our consciousness as the subject of meditation. It is the highest degree of reflectiveness. Therefore between this and merely animal knowledge are to be found innumerable degrees that are distinguished by the fact of our apprehension's becoming ever more universal.
27 ['With a grain of salt'.]
28 ['While I am being pulled and dragged they are ripening.']
29 ['Shaken but fruitful'.]
* Through the rarest concurrence of several extremely favourable circumstances, a man is occasionally born, say once in a century, who has an intellect noticeably in excess if the normal measure-this secondary and thus accidental quality with reference to the will. Now it may be long before he is recognized and acknowledged, stupidity preventing the one and envy the other. But when once this happens, people crowd round him and his works in the hope that some light from him may penetrate the darkness of their own existence, or indeed furnish them with some information about it-to a certain extent a revelation coming from a higher being (and be he ever so little). * By itself alone, genius can no more have original ideas than a woman by herself can have children; but the external occasion must also appear as the father, so to speak, in order to render genius fruitful so that it may give birth to something.
30 ['Through us not for us'.]
31 Byron's lines are:
Many are poets who have never penn'd Their inspiration, and perchance the best: They felt, and loved, and died, but would not lend Their thoughts to meaner beings; they compress'd The God within them, and rejoin'd the stars Unlaurell'd upon earth, ...
32 ['All the intelligence in the world is useless to him who has none.']
* Great minds, therefore, owe some indulgence to small ones just because they are great only by virtue of the smallness of the others; for everything is relative.
33 ['Contradiction in the adjective', e.g. in such expressions as 'wooden iron', 'cold fire', 'hot snow'.]
* If we bear in mind how much these ideas and even expressions agree, in spite of a great difference in the times and countries, it cannot be doubted that they have sprung from the same object. Therefore I was certainly not under the influence of these passages (one of which had not yet been printed and the other had not been in my hands for twelve years) when some twenty years ago I was thinking of having a snuff-box made on the lid of which two fine large chestnuts would be represented, in mosaic if possible, with a leaf that would show they were horse-chestnuts. This symbol would at all times give me a graphic description of that very idea.
34 ['What a difference there is whether we have to do with human beings or with those who are only created in their image and likeness!']
35 [The Kural of Tiruvalluver, German translation by Karl Grant in Bibliotheca Tamulica, Leipzig, 1856.]
36 ['Folly is indeed the mother and nurse of the human race.']
* Cf. Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism, London, 1850, pp. 224 and 216; Manual of Budhism, London, 1853, p. 351.
37 ['Nature stamped it and then smashed the mould.']
38 [From Schiller's Don Carlos.] 39 ['The fame that is your due will never accord with your work.' (Horace, Satires, II. 8.66.)]
40 ['Nature makes nothing in vain and nothing superfluous (and makes no presents).'] 41 ['Begging of the question'.]
42 [From Goethe.] 43 ['But yet it is right to go to the very limit.' (Horace, Epistles, 1. 1.32.)]
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