{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_51548/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_51548","id":"gutenberg_51548","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51548","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Philosophy, Ancient"],"text":"EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY & OTHER ESSAYS\n\nBy\n\nFRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE\n\nTRANSLATED BY\n\nMAXIMILIAN A. M\u00dcGGE\n\nAUTHOR OF \"FR. NIETZSCHE, HIS LIFE AND WORK,\" ETC.\n\n\nThe Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche\n\nThe First Complete and Authorised English Translation\n\nEdited by Dr Oscar Levy\n\nVolume Two\n\nT.N. FOULIS\n\n13 & 15 FREDERICK STREET\n\nEDINBURGH: AND LONDON\n\n1911\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nTRANSLATOR'S PREFACE\n\n1. THE GREEK STATE--Preface to an unwritten book (1871)\n\n2. THE GREEK WOMAN--Fragment (1871)\n\n3. ON MUSIC AND WORDS--Fragment (1871)\n\n4. HOMER'S CONTEST--Preface to an unwritten book (1872)\n\n5. THE RELATION OF SCHOPENHAUER'S PHILOSOPHY TO A GERMAN CULTURE\n--Preface to an unwritten book (1872)\n\n6. PHILOSOPHY DURING THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS (1873)\n\n7. ON TRUTH AND FALSITY IN THEIR ULTRAMORAL SENSE (1873)\n\n\n\n\nTRANSLATOR'S PREFACE\n\n\nThe essays contained in this volume treat of various subjects. With\nthe exception of perhaps one we must consider all these papers as\nfragments. Written during the early Seventies, and intended mostly as\nprefaces, they are extremely interesting, since traces of Nietzsche's\nlater tenets--like Slave and Master morality, the Superman--can be\nfound everywhere. But they are also very valuable on account of the\nyoung philosopher's daring and able handling of difficult and abstruse\nsubjects. \"Truth and Falsity,\" and \"The Greek Woman\" are probably the\ntwo essays which will prove most attractive to the average reader.\n\nIn the essay on THE GREEK STATE the two tenets mentioned above\nare clearly discernible, though the Superman still goes by the\nSchopenhauerian label \"genius.\" Our philosopher attacks the modern\nideas of the \"dignity of man\" and of the \"dignity of labour,\" because\nExistence seems to be without worth and dignity. The preponderance\nof such illusory ideas is due to the political power nowadays vested\nin the \"slaves.\" The Greeks saw no dignity in labour. They saw the\nnecessity of it, and the necessity of slavery, but felt ashamed of\nboth. Not even the labour of the artist did they admire, although they\npraised his completed work.\n\nIf the Greeks perished through their slavery, one thing is still more\ncertain: we shall perish through the lack of slavery. To the essence\nof Culture slavery is innate. It is part of it. A vast multitude must\nlabour and \"slave\" in order that a few may lead an existence devoted to\nbeauty and art.\n\nStrife and war are necessary for the welfare of the State. War\nconsecrates and purines the State. The purpose of the military State\nis the creating of the military genius, the ruthless conqueror, the\nWar-lord. There also exists a mysterious connection between the State\nin general and the creating of the genius.\n\nIn THE GREEK WOMAN, Nietzsche, the man who said, \"One cannot think\nhighly enough of women,\" delineates his ideal of woman. Penelope,\nAntigone, Electra are his ideal types.\n\nPlato's dictum that in the perfect State the family would cease to\nexist, belongs to the most intimate things uttered about the relation\nbetween women and the State. The Greek woman as mother had to vegetate\nin obscurity, to lead a kind of Cranfordian existence for the greater\nwelfare of the body politic. Only in Greek antiquity did woman occupy\nher proper position, and for this reason she was more honoured than she\nhas ever been since. Pythia was the mouthpiece, the symbol of Greek\nunity.\n\nON MUSIC AND WORDS. Music is older, more fundamental than language.\nMusic is an expression of cosmic consciousness. Language is only a\ngesture-symbolism.\n\nIt is true the music of every people was at first allied to lyric\npoetry; \"absolute music\" always appeared much later. But that is due\nto the double nature in the essence of language. The _tone_ of the\nspeaker expresses the basic pleasure- and displeasure-sensations of the\nindividual. These form the tonal subsoil common to all languages; they\nare comprehensible everywhere. Language itself is a super-structure on\nthat subsoil; it is a gesture-symbolism for all the other conceptions\nwhich man adds to that subsoil.\n\nThe endeavour to illustrate a poem by music is futile. The text of\nan opera is therefore quite negligible. Modern opera in its music is\ntherefore often only a stimulant or a remembrancer for set, stereotyped\nfeelings. Great music, _i.e.,_ Dionysean music, makes us forget to\nlisten to the words.\n\nHOMER'S CONTEST. The Greek genius acknowledged strife, struggle,\ncontest to be necessary in this life. Only through competition and\nemulation will the Common-Wealth thrive. Yet there was no unbridled\nambition. Everyone's individual endeavours were subordinated to the\nwelfare of the community. The curse of present-day contest is that it\ndoes not do the same.\n\nIn THE RELATION OF SCHOPENHAUER'S PHILOSOPHY TO A GERMAN CULTURE an\namusing and yet serious attack is made on the hollow would-be culture\nof the German Philistines who after the Franco-Prussian war were\nswollen with self-conceit, self-sufficiency, and were a great danger to\nreal Culture. Nietzsche points out Schopenhauer's great philosophy as\nthe only possible means of escaping the humdrum of Philistia with its\nhypocrisy and intellectual ostrichisation.\n\nThe essay on GREEK PHILOSOPHY DURING THE TRAGIC AGE is a performance\nof great interest to the scholar. It brims with ideas. The Hegelian\nSchool, especially Zeller, has shown what an important place is held by\nthe earlier thinkers in the history of Greek thought and how necessary\na knowledge of their work is for all who wish to understand Plato and\nAristotle. _Diels'_ great book: \"Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker\",\n_Benn's, Burnet's_ and _Fairbanks'_ books we may regard as the\nperistyle through which we enter the temple of Early Greek Philosophy.\nNietzsche's essay then is like a beautiful festoon swinging between the\ncolumns erected by Diels and the others out of the marble of facts.\n\nBeauty and the personal equation are the two \"leitmotive\" of\nNietzsche's history of the pre-Socratian philosophers. Especially\ndoes he lay stress upon the personal equation, since that is the\nonly permanent item of interest, considering that every \"System\"\ncrumbles into nothing with the appearance of a new thinker. In this\nway Nietzsche treats of _Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides,\nXenophanes, Anaxagoras._ There are also some sketches of a draft for\nan intended but never accomplished continuation, in which Empedocles,\nDemocritus and Plato were to be dealt with.\n\nProbably the most popular of the Essays in this book will prove to be\nthe one on TRUTH AND FALSITY. It is an epistemological rhapsody on the\nrelativity of truth, on \"Appearance and Reality,\" on \"perceptual flux\"\nversus--\"conceptual conceit.\"\n\nMan's intellect is only a means in the struggle for existence, a means\ntaking the place of the animal's horns and teeth. It adapts itself\nespecially to deception and dissimulation.\n\nThere are no absolute truths. Truth is relative and always imperfect.\nYet fictitious values fixed by convention and utility are set down as\ntruth. The liar does not use these standard coins of the realm. He is\nhated; not out of love for truth, no, but because he is dangerous.\n\nOur words never hit the essence, the \"X\" of a thing, but indicate only\nexternal characteristics. Language is the columbarium of the ideas, the\ncemetery of perceptions.\n\nTruths are metaphors, illusions, anthropomorph isms about which one has\nforgotten that they are such. There are different truths to different\nbeings. Like a spider man sits in the web of his truths and ideas. He\nwants to be deceived. By means of error he mostly lives; truth is often\nfatal. When the liar, the story-teller, the poet, the rhapsodist lie to\nhim without hurting him he--loves them!--\n\nThe text underlying this translation is that of Vol. I. of the\n\"Taschenausgabe.\" One or two obscure passages I hope my conjectures may\nhave elucidated. The dates following the titles indicate the year when\nthese essays were written.\n\nIn no other work have I felt so deeply the great need of the science of\nSignifies with its ultimate international standardisation of terms, as\nattempted by Eisler and Baldwin. I hope, however, I have succeeded in\nconveying accurately the meaning of the author in spite of a certain\n_looseness_ in his philosophical terminology.\n\nThe English language is somewhat at a disadvantage through its lack\nof a Noun-Infinitive. I can best illustrate this by a passage from\n_Parmenides_:\n\n\u03c7\u03c1\u1f74 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03bb\u03ad\u03b3\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd \u03c4\u03b5 \u03bd\u03bf\u03b5\u1fd1\u03bd \u03c4' \u1f10\u1f78\u03bd \u1f14\u03bc\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9\u00b7 \u1f14\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9, \u03bc\u03b7\u03b4\u1f72\u03bd \u03b4' \u03bf\u1f50\u03ba\n\u1f14\u03c3\u03c4\u03b9\u03bd\u00b7 \u03c4\u03ac \u03c3' \u1f10\u03b3\u1f7c \u03c8\u03c1\u03ac\u03b6\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03b1\u03b9 \u1f04\u03bd\u03c9\u03b3\u03b1.\n\nIn his usual masterly manner _Diels_ translates these lines with: \"Das\nSagen und Denken musz ein Seiendes sein. Denn das Sein existiert, das\nNichts existiert nicht; das heisz ich dich wohl zu beherzigen.\" On\nthe other hand in _Fairbanks'_ \"version\" we read: \"It is necessary\nboth to say and to think that being is; for it is possible that being\nis, and it is impossible that not being is; this is what I bid thee\nponder.\" In order to avoid a similar obscurity, throughout the paper on\n\"EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY\" I have rendered \"das Seiende\" (\u03c4\u1f78 \u1f10\u1f78\u03bd) with\n\"Existent\", \"das Nicht-Seiende\" with \"Non-Existent\"; \"das Sein\" (\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bd\u03b1\u03b9)\nwith \"Being\" and \"das Nicht-Sein\" with \"Not-Being.\"\n\nI am directly or indirectly indebted for many suggestions to several\nfriends of mine, especially to two of my colleagues, J. Charlton\nHipkins, M.A., and R. Miller, B.A., for their patient revision of the\nwhole of the proofs.\n\nM. A. M\u00dcGGE.\n\nLONDON, _July_ 1911.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREEK STATE\n\n\nPreface to an Unwritten Book (1871)\n\n\nWe moderns have an advantage over the Greeks in two ideas, which are\ngiven as it were as a compensation to a world behaving thoroughly\nslavishly and yet at the same time anxiously eschewing the word\n\"slave\": we talk of the \"dignity of man\" and of the \"dignity of\nlabour.\" Everybody worries in order miserably to perpetuate a miserable\nexistence; this awful need compels him to consuming labour; man\n(or, more exactly, the human intellect) seduced by the \"Will\" now\noccasionally marvels at labour as something dignified. However in\norder that labour might have a claim on titles of honour, it would be\nnecessary above all, that Existence itself, to which labour after all\nis only a painful means, should have more dignity and value than it\nappears to have had, up to the present, to serious philosophies and\nreligions. What else may we find in the labour-need of all the millions\nbut the impulse to exist at any price, the same all-powerful impulse by\nwhich stunted plants stretch their roots through earthless rocks!\n\nOut of this awful struggle for existence only individuals can emerge,\nand they are at once occupied with the noble phantoms of artistic\nculture, lest they should arrive at practical pessimism, which Nature\nabhors as her exact opposite. In the modern world, which, compared\nwith the Greek, usually produces only abnormalities and centaurs, in\nwhich the individual, like that fabulous creature in the beginning of\nthe Horatian Art of Poetry, is jumbled together out of pieces, here in\nthe modern world in one and the same man the greed of the struggle for\nexistence and the need for art show themselves at the same time: out of\nthis unnatural amalgamation has originated the dilemma, to excuse and\nto consecrate that first greed before this need for art. Therefore; we\nbelieve in the \"Dignity of man\" and the \"Dignity of labour.\"\n\nThe Greeks did not require such conceptual hallucinations, for among\nthem the idea that labour is a disgrace is expressed with startling\nfrankness; and another piece of wisdom, more hidden and less\narticulate, but everywhere alive, added that the human thing also was\nan ignominious and piteous nothing and the \"dream of a shadow.\" Labour\nis a disgrace, because existence has no value in itself; but even\nthough this very existence in the alluring embellishment of artistic\nillusions shines forth and really seems to have a value in itself, then\nthat proposition is still valid that labour is a disgrace--a disgrace\nindeed by the fact that it is impossible for man, fighting for the\ncontinuance of bare existence, to become an _artist._ In modern times\nit is not the art-needing man but the slave who determines the general\nconceptions, the slave who according to his nature must give deceptive\nnames to all conditions in order to be able to live. Such phantoms as\nthe dignity of man, the dignity of labour, are the needy products of\nslavedom hiding itself from itself. Woful time, in which the slave\nrequires such conceptions, in which he is incited to think about and\nbeyond himself! Cursed seducers, who have destroyed the slave's state\nof innocence by the fruit of the tree of knowledge! Now the slave must\nvainly scrape through from one day to another with transparent lies\nrecognisable to every one of deeper insight, such as the alleged \"equal\nrights of all\" or the so-called \"fundamental rights of man,\" of man as\nsuch, or the \"dignity of labour.\" Indeed he is not to understand at\nwhat stage and at what height dignity can first be mentioned--namely,\nat the point, where the individual goes wholly beyond himself and no\nlonger has to work and to produce in order to preserve his individual\nexistence.\n\nAnd even on this height of \"labour\" the Greek at times is overcome by\na feeling, that looks like shame. In one place Plutarch with earlier\nGreek instinct says that no nobly born youth on beholding the Zeus in\nPisa would have the desire to become himself a Phidias, or on seeing\nthe Hera in Argos, to become himself a Polyklet; and just as little\nwould he wish to be Anacreon, Philetas or Archilochus, however much he\nmight revel in their poetry. To the Greek the work of the artist falls\njust as much under the undignified conception of labour as any ignoble\ncraft. But if the compelling force of the artistic impulse operates in\nhim, then he _must_ produce and submit himself to that need of labour.\nAnd as a father admires the beauty and the gift of his child but thinks\nof the act of procreation with shamefaced dislike, so it was with the\nGreek. The joyful astonishment at the beautiful has not blinded him\nas to its origin which appeared to him, like all \"Becoming\" in nature,\nto be a powerful necessity, a forcing of itself into existence. That\nfeeling by which the process of procreation is considered as something\nshamefacedly to be hidden, although by it man serves a higher purpose\nthan his individual preservation, the same feeling veiled also the\norigin of the great works of art, in spite of the fact that through\nthem a higher form of existence is inaugurated, just as through\nthat other act comes a new generation. The feeling of _shame_ seems\ntherefore to occur where man is merely a tool of manifestations of will\ninfinitely greater than he is permitted to consider himself in the\nisolated shape of the individual.\n\nNow we have the general idea to which are to be subordinated the\nfeelings which the Greek had with regard to labour and slavery. Both\nwere considered by them as a necessary disgrace, of which one feels\n_ashamed,_ as a disgrace and as a necessity at the same time. In this\nfeeling of shame is hidden the unconscious discernment that the real\naim _needs_ those conditional factors, but that in that _need_ lies the\nfearful and beast-of-prey-like quality of the Sphinx Nature, who in\nthe glorification of the artistically free culture-life so beautifully\nstretches forth her virgin-body. Culture, which is chiefly a real need\nfor art, rests upon a terrible basis: the latter however makes itself\nknown in the twilight sensation of shame. In order that there may be a\nbroad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development of art, the enormous\nmajority must, in the service of a minority, be slavishly subjected\nto life's struggle, to a _greater_ degree than their own wants\nnecessitate. At their cost, through the surplus of their labour, that\nprivileged class is to be relieved from the struggle for existence, in\norder to create and to satisfy a new world of want.\n\nAccordingly we must accept this cruel sounding truth, that _slavery\nis of the essence of Culture;_ a truth of course, which leaves no\ndoubt as to the absolute value of Existence. _This truth_ is the\nvulture, that gnaws at the liver of the Promethean promoter of Culture.\nThe misery of toiling men must still increase in order to make the\nproduction of the world of art possible to a small number of Olympian\nmen. Here is to be found the source of that secret wrath nourished\nby Communists and Socialists of all times, and also by their feebler\ndescendants, the white race of the \"Liberals,\" not only against\nthe arts, but also against classical antiquity. If Culture really\nrested upon the will of a people, if here inexorable powers did not\nrule, powers which are law and barrier to the individual, then the\ncontempt for Culture, the glorification of a \"poorness in spirit,\" the\niconoclastic annihilation of artistic claims would be _more than_ an\ninsurrection of the suppressed masses against drone-like individuals;\nit would be the cry of compassion tearing down the walls of Culture;\nthe desire for justice, for the equalization of suffering, would\nswamp all other ideas. In fact here and there sometimes an exuberant\ndegree of compassion has for a short time opened all the flood gates\nof Culture-life; a rainbow of compassionate love and of peace appeared\nwith the first radiant rise of Christianity and under it was born\nChristianity's most beautiful fruit, the gospel according to St John.\nBut there are also instances to show that powerful religions for long\nperiods petrify a given degree of Culture, and cut off with inexorable\nsickle everything that still grows on strongly and luxuriantly. For it\nis not to be forgotten that the same cruelty, which we found in the\nessence of every Culture, lies also in the essence of every powerful\nreligion and in general in the essence of _power,_ which is always\nevil; so that we shall understand it just as well, when a Culture is\nshattering, with a cry for liberty or at least justice, a too highly\npiled bulwark of religious claims. That which in this \"sorry scheme\" of\nthings will live (_i.e.,_ must live), is at the bottom of its nature a\nreflex of the primal-pain and primal-contradiction, and must therefore\nstrike our eyes--\"an organ fashioned for this world and earth\"--as\nan insatiable greed for existence and an eternal self-contradiction,\nwithin the form of time, therefore as Becoming. Every moment devours\nthe preceding one, every birth is the death of innumerable beings;\nbegetting, living, murdering, all is one. Therefore we may compare\nthis grand Culture with a blood-stained victor, who in his triumphal\nprocession carries the defeated along as slaves chained to his chariot,\nslaves whom a beneficent power has so blinded that, almost crushed by\nthe wheels of the chariot, they nevertheless still exclaim: \"Dignity of\nlabour!\" \"Dignity of Man!\" The voluptuous Cleopatra-Culture throws ever\nagain the most priceless pearls, the tears of compassion for the misery\nof slaves, into her golden goblet. Out of the emasculation of modern\nman has been born the enormous social distress of the present time,\nnot out of the true and deep commiseration for that misery; and if it\nshould be true that the Greeks perished through their slavedom then\nanother fact is much more certain, that we shall perish through the\n_lack_ of slavery. Slavedom did not appear in any way objectionable,\nmuch less abominable, either to early Christianity or to the Germanic\nrace. What an uplifting effect on us has the contemplation of the\nmedi\u00e6val bondman, with his legal and moral relations,--relations that\nwere inwardly strong and tender,--towards the man of higher rank, with\nthe profound fencing-in of his narrow existence--how uplifting!--and\nhow reproachful!\n\nHe who cannot reflect upon the position of affairs in Society without\nmelancholy, who has learnt to conceive of it as the continual painful\nbirth of those privileged Culture-men, in whose service everything\nelse must be devoured--he will no longer be deceived by that false\nglamour, which the moderns have spread over the origin and meaning\nof the State. For what can the State mean to us, if not the means by\nwhich that social-process described just now is to be fused and to\nbe guaranteed in its unimpeded continuance? Be the sociable instinct\nin individual man as strong as it may, it is only the iron clamp of\nthe State that constrains the large masses upon one another in such a\nfashion that a chemical decomposition of Society, with its pyramid-like\nsuper-structure, is _bound_ to take place. Whence however originates\nthis sudden power of the State, whose aim lies much beyond the insight\nand beyond the egoism of the individual? How did the slave, the blind\nmole of Culture, _originate_? The Greeks in their instinct relating\nto the law of nations have betrayed it to us, in an instinct, which\neven in the ripest fulness of their civilisation and humanity never\nceased to utter as out of a brazen mouth such words as: \"to the victor\nbelongs the vanquished, with wife and child, life and property. Power\ngives the first _right_ and there is no right, which at bottom is not\npresumption, usurpation, violence.\"\n\nHere again we see with what pitiless inflexibility Nature, in order\nto arrive at Society, forges for herself the cruel tool of the\nState--namely, that _conqueror_ with the iron hand, who is nothing else\nthan the objectivation of the instinct indicated. By the indefinable\ngreatness and power of such conquerors the spectator feels, that they\nare only the means of an intention manifesting itself through them\nand yet hiding itself from them. The weaker forces attach themselves\nto them with such mysterious speed, and transform themselves so\nwonderfully, in the sudden swelling of that violent avalanche, under\nthe charm of that creative kernel, into an affinity hitherto not\nexisting, that it seems as if a magic will were emanating from them.\n\nNow when we see how little the vanquished trouble themselves after a\nshort time about the horrible origin of the State, so that history\ninforms us of no class of events worse than the origins of those\nsudden, violent, bloody and, at least in _one_ point, inexplicable\nusurpations: when hearts involuntarily go out towards the magic of\nthe growing State with the presentiment of an invisible deep purpose,\nwhere the calculating intellect is enabled to see an addition of forces\nonly; when now the State is even contemplated with fervour as the\ngoal and ultimate aim of the sacrifices and duties of the individual:\nthen out of all that speaks the enormous necessity of the State,\nwithout which Nature might not succeed in coming, through Society,\nto her deliverance in semblance, in the mirror of the genius. What\ndiscernments does the instinctive pleasure in the State not overcome!\nOne would indeed feel inclined to think that a man who looks into the\norigin of the State will henceforth seek his salvation at an awful\ndistance from it; and where can one not see the monuments of its\norigin--devastated lands, destroyed cities, brutalised men, devouring\nhatred of nations! The State, of ignominiously low birth, for the\nmajority of men a continually flowing source of hardship, at frequently\nrecurring periods the consuming torch of mankind--and yet a word, at\nwhich we forget ourselves, a battle cry, which has filled men with\nenthusiasm for innumerable really heroic deeds, perhaps the highest and\nmost venerable object for the blind and egoistic multitude which only\nin the tremendous moments of State-life has the strange expression of\ngreatness on its face!\n\nWe have, however, to consider the Greeks, with regard to the unique\nsun-height of their art, as the \"political men in themselves,\" and\ncertainly history knows of no second instance of such an awful\nunchaining of the political passion, such an unconditional immolation\nof all other interests in the service of this State-instinct; at the\nbest one might distinguish the men of the Renascence in Italy with a\nsimilar title for like reasons and by way of comparison. So overloaded\nis that passion among the Greeks that it begins ever anew to rage\nagainst itself and to strike its teeth into its own flesh. This bloody\njealousy of city against city, of party against party, this murderous\ngreed of those little wars, the tiger-like triumph over the corpse\nof the slain enemy, in short, the incessant renewal of those Trojan\nscenes of struggle and horror, in the spectacle of which, as a genuine\nHellene, Homer stands before us absorbed with _delight_--whither does\nthis na\u00efve barbarism of the Greek State point? What is its excuse\nbefore the tribunal of eternal justice? Proud and calm, the State steps\nbefore this tribunal and by the hand it leads the flower of blossoming\nwomanhood: Greek society. For this Helena the State waged those\nwars--and what grey-bearded judge could here condemn?--\n\nUnder this mysterious connection, which we here divine between State\nand art, political greed and artistic creation, battlefield and work\nof art, we understand by the State, as already remarked, only the\ncramp-iron, which compels the Social process; whereas without the\nState, in the natural _bellum omnium contra omnes_ Society cannot\nstrike root at all on a larger scale and beyond the reach of the\nfamily. Now, after States have been established almost everywhere, that\nbent of the _bellum omnium contra omnes_ concentrates itself from time\nto time into a terrible gathering of war-clouds and discharges itself\nas it were in rare but so much the more violent shocks and lightning\nflashes. But in consequence of the effect of that _bellum,_--an effect\nwhich is turned inwards and compressed,--Society is given time during\nthe intervals to germinate and burst into leaf, in order, as soon as\nwarmer days come, to let the shining blossoms of genius sprout forth.\n\nIn face of the political world of the Hellenes, I will not hide those\nphenomena of the present in which I believe I discern dangerous\natrophies of the political sphere equally critical for art and society.\nIf there should exist men, who as it were through birth are placed\noutside the national-and State-instincts, who consequently have to\nesteem the State only in so far as they conceive that it coincides\nwith their own interest, then such men will necessarily imagine as the\nultimate political aim the most undisturbed collateral existence of\ngreat political communities possible, which _they_ might be permitted\nto pursue their own purposes without restriction. With this idea in\ntheir heads they will promote _that_ policy which will offer the\ngreatest security to these purposes; whereas it is unthinkable, that\nthey, against their intentions, guided perhaps by an unconscious\ninstinct, should sacrifice themselves for the State-tendency,\nunthinkable because they lack that very instinct. All other citizens\nof the State are in the dark about what Nature intends with her\nState-instinct within them, and they follow blindly; only those who\nstand outside this instinct know what _they_ want from the State and\nwhat the State is to grant them. Therefore it is almost unavoidable\nthat such men should gain great influence in the State because they\nare allowed to consider it as a _means,_ whereas all the others under\nthe sway of those unconscious purposes of the State are themselves\nonly means for the fulfilment of the State-purpose. In order now to\nattain, through the medium of the State, the highest furtherance\nof their selfish aims, it is above all necessary, that the State be\nwholly freed from those awfully incalculable war-convulsions so that\nit may be used rationally; and thereby they strive with all their\nmight for a condition of things in which war is an impossibility. For\nthat purpose the thing to do is first to curtail and to enfeeble the\npolitical separatisms and factions and through the establishment of\nlarge _equipoised_ State-bodies and the mutual safeguarding of them\nto make the successful result of an aggressive war and consequently\nwar itself the greatest improbability; as on the other hand they will\nendeavour to wrest the question of war and peace from the decision of\nindividual lords, in order to be able rather to appeal to the egoism\nof the masses or their representatives; for which purpose they again\nneed slowly to dissolve the monarchic instincts of the nations. This\npurpose they attain best through the most general promulgation of\nthe liberal optimistic view of the world, which has its roots in the\ndoctrines of French Rationalism and the French Revolution, _i.e.,_ in\na wholly un-Germanic, genuinely neo-Latin shallow and unmetaphysical\nphilosophy. I cannot help seeing in the prevailing international\nmovements of the present day, and the simultaneous promulgation of\nuniversal suffrage, the effects of the _fear of war_ above everything\nelse, yea I behold behind these movements, those truly international\nhomeless money-hermits, as the really alarmed, who, with their\nnatural lack of the State-instinct, have learnt to abuse politics as\na means of the Exchange, and State and Society as an apparatus for\ntheir own enrichment. Against the deviation of the State-tendency\ninto a money-tendency, to be feared from this side, the only remedy\nis war and once again war, in the emotions of which this at least\nbecomes obvious, that the State is not founded upon the fear of the\nwar-demon, as a protective institution for egoistic individuals, but\nin love to fatherland and prince, it produces an ethical impulse,\nindicative of a much higher destiny. If I therefore designate as a\ndangerous and characteristic sign of the present political situation\nthe application of revolutionary thought in the service of a selfish\nState-less money-aristocracy, if at the same time I conceive of the\nenormous dissemination of liberal optimism as the result of modern\nfinancial affairs fallen into strange hands, and if I imagine all evils\nof social conditions together with the necessary decay of the arts to\nhave either germinated from that root or grown together with it, one\nwill have to pardon my occasionally chanting a P\u00e6an on war. Horribly\nclangs its silvery bow; and although it comes along like the night,\nwar is nevertheless Apollo, the true divinity for consecrating and\npurifying the State. First of all, however, as is said in the beginning\nof the \"Iliad,\" he lets fly his arrow on the mules and dogs. Then he\nstrikes the men themselves, and everywhere pyres break into flames.\nBe it then pronounced that war is just as much a necessity for the\nState as the slave is for society, and who can avoid this verdict if\nhe honestly asks himself about the causes of the never-equalled Greek\nart-perfection?\n\nHe who contemplates war and its uniformed possibility, the _soldier's\nprofession,_ with respect to the hitherto described nature of the\nState, must arrive at the conviction, that through war and in the\nprofession of arms is placed before our eyes an image, or even perhaps\nthe _prototype of the State._ Here we see as the most general effect of\nthe war-tendency an immediate decomposition and division of the chaotic\nmass into _military castes,_ out of which rises, pyramid-shaped,\non an exceedingly broad base of slaves the edifice of the \"martial\nsociety.\" The unconscious purpose of the whole movement constrains\nevery individual under its yoke, and produces also in heterogeneous\nnatures as it were a chemical transformation of their qualities until\nthey are brought into affinity with that purpose. In the highest\ncastes one perceives already a little more of what in this internal\nprocess is involved at the bottom, namely the creation of the _military\ngenius_--with whom we have become acquainted as the original founder of\nstates. In the case of many States, as, for example, in the Lycurgian\nconstitution of Sparta, one can distinctly perceive the impress of that\nfundamental idea of the State, that of the creation of the military\ngenius. If we now imagine the military primal State in its greatest\nactivity, at its proper \"labour,\" and if we fix our glance upon the\nwhole technique of war, we cannot avoid correcting our notions picked\nup from everywhere, as to the \"dignity of man\" and the \"dignity of\nlabour\" by the question, whether the idea of dignity is applicable\nalso to that labour, which has as its purpose the destruction of the\n\"dignified\" man, as well as to the man who is entrusted with that\n\"dignified labour,\" or whether in this warlike task of the State those\nmutually contradictory ideas do not neutralise one another. I should\nlike to think the warlike man to be a _means_ of the military genius\nand his labour again only a tool in the hands of that same genius; and\nnot to him, as absolute man and non-genius, but to him as a means of\nthe genius--whose pleasure also can be to choose his tool's destruction\nas a mere pawn sacrificed on the strategist's chessboard--is due a\ndegree of dignity, of that dignity namely, _to have been deemed worthy\nof being a means of the genius._ But what is shown here in a single\ninstance is valid in the most general sense; every human being, with\nhis total activity, only has dignity in so far as he is a tool of _the_\ngenius, consciously or unconsciously; from this we may immediately\ndeduce the ethical conclusion, that \"man in himself,\" the absolute man\npossesses neither dignity, nor rights, nor duties; only as a wholly\ndetermined being serving unconscious purposes can man excuse his\nexistence.\n\n_Plato's perfect State_ is according to these considerations certainly\nsomething still greater than even the warm-blooded among his admirers\nbelieve, not to mention the smiling mien of superiority with which\nour \"historically\" educated refuse such a fruit of antiquity. The\nproper aim of the State, the Olympian existence and ever-renewed\nprocreation and preparation of the genius,--compared with which\nall other things are only tools, expedients and factors towards\nrealisation--is here discovered with a poetic intuition and painted\nwith firmness. Plato saw through the awfully devastated Herma of the\nthen-existing State-life and perceived even then something divine in\nits interior. He _believed_ that one might be able to take out this\ndivine image and that the grim and barbarically distorted outside and\nshell did not belong to the essence of the State: the whole fervour\nand sublimity of his political passion threw itself upon this belief,\nupon that desire--and in the flames of this fire he perished. That in\nhis perfect State he did not place at the head _the_ genius in its\ngeneral meaning, but only the genius of wisdom and of knowledge, that\nhe altogether excluded the inspired artist from his State, that was\na rigid consequence of the Socratian judgment on art, which Plato,\nstruggling against himself, had made his own. This more external,\nalmost incidental gap must not prevent our recognising in the total\nconception of the Platonic State the wonderfully great hieroglyph of\na profound and eternally to be interpreted _esoteric doctrine of the\nconnection between State and Genius._ What we believed we could divine\nof this cryptograph we have said in this preface.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREEK WOMAN\n\n\n(Fragment, 1871)\n\n\nJust as Plato from disguises and obscurities brought to light the\ninnermost purpose of the State, so also he conceived the chief cause\nof the position of the _Hellenic Woman_ with regard to the State; in\nboth cases he saw in what existed around him the image of the ideas\nmanifested to him, and of these ideas of course the actual was only a\nhazy picture and phantasmagoria. He who according to the usual custom\nconsiders the position of the Hellenic Woman to be altogether unworthy\nand repugnant to humanity, must also turn with this reproach against\nthe Platonic conception of this position; for, as it were, the existing\nforms were only precisely set forth in this latter conception. Here\ntherefore our question repeats itself: should not the nature and the\nposition of the Hellenic Woman have a _necessary_ relation to the goals\nof the Hellenic Will?\n\nOf course there is one side of the Platonic conception of woman, which\nstands in abrupt contrast with Hellenic custom: Plato gives to woman a\nfull share in the rights, knowledge and duties of man, and considers\nwoman only as the weaker sex, in that she will not achieve remarkable\nsuccess in all things, without however disputing this sex's title to\nall those things. We must not attach more value to; this strange notion\nthan to the expulsion of the artist out of the ideal State; these are\nside-lines daringly mis-drawn, aberrations as it were of the hand\notherwise so sure and of the so calmly contemplating eye which at times\nunder the influence of the deceased master becomes dim and dejected; in\nthis mood he exaggerates the master's paradoxes and in the abundance of\nhis love gives himself satisfaction by very eccentrically intensifying\nthe latter's doctrines even to foolhardiness.\n\nThe most significant word however that Plato as a Greek could say on\nthe relation of woman to the State, was that so objectionable demand,\nthat in the perfect State, the _Family was to cease._ At present let us\ntake no account of his abolishing even marriage, in order to carry out\nthis demand fully, and of his substituting solemn nuptials arranged by\norder of the State, between the bravest men and the noblest women, for\nthe attainment of beautiful offspring. In that principal proposition\nhowever he has indicated most distinctly--indeed too distinctly,\noffensively distinctly--an important preparatory step of the Hellenic\nWill towards the procreation of the genius. But in the customs of the\nHellenic people the claim of the family on man and child was extremely\nlimited: the man lived in the State, the child grew up for the State\nand was guided by the hand of the State. The Greek Will took care that\nthe need of culture could not be satisfied in the seclusion of a small\ncircle. From the State the individual has to receive everything in\norder to return everything to the State. Woman accordingly means to the\nState, what _sleep_ does to man. In her nature lies the healing power,\nwhich replaces that which has been used up, the beneficial rest in\nwhich everything immoderate confines itself, the eternal Same, by which\nthe excessive and the surplus regulate themselves. In her the future\ngeneration dreams. Woman is more closely related to Nature than man and\nin all her essentials she remains ever herself. Culture is with her\nalways something external, a something which does not touch the kernel\nthat is eternally faithful to Nature, therefore the culture of woman\nmight well appear to the Athenian as something indifferent, yea--if one\nonly wanted to conjure it up in one's mind, as something ridiculous.\nHe who at once feels himself compelled from that to infer the position\nof women among the Greeks as unworthy and all too cruel, should not\nindeed take as his criterion the \"culture\" of modern woman and her\nclaims, against which it is sufficient just to point out the Olympian\nwomen together with Penelope, Antigone, Elektra. Of course it is true\nthat these are ideal figures, but who would be able to create such\nideals out of the present world?--Further indeed is to be considered\n_what sons_ these women have borne, and what women they must have been\nto have given birth to such sons! The Hellenic woman as _mother_ had\nto live in obscurity, because the political instinct together with\nits highest aim demanded it. She had to vegetate like a plant, in\nthe narrow circle, as a symbol of the Epicurean wisdom \u03bb\u03ac\u03b8\u03b5 \u03b2\u03c5\u03ce\u03c3\u03b1\u03c2.\nAgain, in more recent times, with the complete disintegration of the\nprinciple of the State, she had to step in as helper; the family as a\nmakeshift for the State is her work; and in this sense the _artistic\naim_ of the State had to abase itself to the level of a _domestic_ art.\nThereby it has been brought about, that the passion of love, as the\none realm wholly accessible to women, regulates our art to the very\ncore. Similarly, home-education considers itself so to speak as the\nonly natural one and suffers State-education only as a questionable\ninfringement upon the right of home-education: all this is right as\nfar as the modern State only is concerned.--With that the nature of\nwoman withal remains unaltered, but her _power_ is, according to the\nposition which the State takes up with regard to women, a different\none. Women have indeed really the power to make good to a certain\nextent the deficiencies of the State--ever faithful to their nature,\nwhich I have compared to sleep. In Greek antiquity they held that\nposition, which the most supreme will of the State assigned to them:\nfor that reason they have been glorified as never since. The goddesses\nof Greek mythology are their images: the Pythia and the Sibyl, as well\nas the Socratic Diotima are the priestesses out of whom divine wisdom\nspeaks. Now one understands why the proud resignation of the Spartan\nwoman at the news of her son's death in battle can be no fable. Woman\nin relation to the State felt herself in her proper position, therefore\nshe had more _dignity_ than woman has ever had since. Plato who through\nabolishing family and marriage still intensifies the position of woman,\nfeels now so much _reverence_ towards them, that oddly enough he is\nmisled by a subsequent statement of their equality with man, to abolish\nagain the order of rank which is their due: the highest triumph of the\nwoman of antiquity, to have seduced even the wisest!\n\nAs long as the State is still in an embryonic condition woman as\n_mother_ preponderates and determines the grade and the manifestations\nof Culture: in the same way as woman is destined to complement the\ndisorganised State. What Tacitus says of German women: _inesse\nquin etiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant, nec aut consilia\nearum aspernantur aut responsa neglegunt,_ applies on the whole to\nall nations not yet arrived at the real State. In such stages one\nfeels only the more strongly that which at all times becomes again\nmanifest, that the instincts of woman as the bulwark of the future\ngeneration are invincible and that in her care for the preservation\nof the species Nature speaks out of these instincts very distinctly.\nHow far this divining power reaches is determined, it seems, by the\ngreater or lesser consolidation of the State: in disorderly and more\narbitrary conditions, where the whim or the passion of the individual\nman carries along with itself whole tribes, then woman suddenly comes\nforward as the warning prophetess. But in Greece too there was a never\nslumbering care that the terribly overcharged political instinct might\nsplinter into dust and atoms the little political organisms before\nthey attained their goals in any way. Here the Hellenic Will created\nfor itself ever new implements by means of which it spoke, adjusting,\nmoderating, warning: above all it is in the _Pythia,_ that the power\nof woman to compensate the State manifested itself so clearly, as it\nhas never done since. That a people split up thus into small tribes\nand municipalities, was yet at bottom _whole_ and was performing the\ntask of its nature within its faction, was assured by that wonderful\nphenomenon the Pythia and the Delphian oracle: for always, as long as\nHellenism created its great works of art, it spoke out of _one_ mouth\nand as _one_ Pythia. We cannot hold back the portentous discernment\nthat to the Will individuation means much suffering, and that in order\nto reach those _individuals_ It _needs_ an enormous step-ladder of\nindividuals. It is true our brains reel with the consideration whether\nthe Will in order to arrive at _Art,_ has perhaps effused Itself out\ninto these worlds, stars, bodies, and atoms: at least it ought to\nbecome clear to us then, that Art is not necessary for the individuals,\nbut for the Will itself: a sublime outlook at which we shall be\npermitted to glance once more from another position.\n\n\n\n\nON MUSIC AND WORDS\n\n\n(Fragment, 1871)\n\n\nWhat we here have asserted of the relationship between language and\nmusic must be valid too, for equal reasons concerning the relationship\nof _Mime_ to _Music._ The Mime too, as the intensified symbolism of\nman's gestures, is, measured by the eternal significance of music,\nonly a simile, which brings into expression the innermost secret\nof music but very superficially, namely on the substratum of the\npassionately moved human body. But if we include language also in the\ncategory of bodily symbolism, and compare the _drama,_ according to\nthe canon advanced, with music, then I venture to think, a proposition\nof Schopenhauer will come into the clearest light, to which reference\nmust be made again later on. \"It might be admissible, although a purely\nmusical mind does not demand it, to join and adapt words or even a\nclearly represented action to the pure language of tones, although the\nlatter, being self-sufficient, needs no help; so that our perceiving\nand reflecting intellect, which does not like to be quite idle, may\nmeanwhile have light and analogous occupation also. By this concession\nto the intellect man's attention adheres even more closely to music,\nby this at the same time, too, is placed underneath that which the\ntones indicate in their general metaphorless language of the heart,\na visible picture, as it were a schema, as an example illustrating a\ngeneral idea ... indeed such things will even heighten the effect\nof music.\" (Schopenhauer, Parerga, II., \"On the Metaphysics of the\nBeautiful and \u00c6sthetics,\" \u00a7 224.) If we disregard the naturalistic\nexternal motivation according to which our perceiving and reflecting\nintellect does not like to be quite idle when listening to music, and\nattention led by the hand of an obvious action follows better--then\nthe drama in relation to music has been characterised by Schopenhauer\nfor the best reasons as a schema, as an example illustrating a general\nidea: and when he adds \"indeed such things will even heighten the\neffect of music\" then the enormous universality and originality of\nvocal music, of the connection of tone with metaphor and idea guarantee\nthe correctness of this utterance. The music of every people begins in\nclosest connection with lyricism and long before absolute music can be\nthought of, the music of a people in that connection passes through\nthe most important stages of development. If we understand this primal\nlyricism of a people, as indeed we must, to be an imitation of the\nartistic typifying Nature, then as the original prototype of that union\nof music and lyricism must be regarded: _the duality in the essence\nof language,_ already typified by Nature. Now, after discussing the\nrelation of music to metaphor we will fathom deeper this essence of\nlanguage.\n\nIn the multiplicity of languages the fact at once manifests itself,\nthat word and thing do not necessarily coincide with one another\ncompletely, but that the word is a symbol. But what does the word\nsymbolise? Most certainly only conceptions, be these now conscious\nones or as in the greater number of cases, unconscious; for how\nshould a word-symbol correspond to that innermost nature of which we\nand the world are images? Only as conceptions we know that kernel,\nonly in its metaphorical expressions are we familiar with it; beyond\nthat point there is nowhere a direct bridge which could lead us to it.\nThe whole life of impulses, too, the play of feelings, sensations,\nemotions, volitions, is known to us--as I am forced to insert here in\nopposition to Schopenhauer--after a most rigid self-examination, not\naccording to its essence but merely as conception; and we may well be\npermitted to say, that even Schopenhauer's \"Will\" is nothing else but\nthe most general phenomenal form of a Something otherwise absolutely\nindecipherable. If therefore we must acquiesce in the rigid necessity\nof getting nowhere beyond the conceptions we can nevertheless again\ndistinguish two main species within their realm. The one species\nmanifest themselves to us as pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations and\naccompany all other conceptions as a never-lacking fundamental basis.\nThis most general manifestation, out of which and by which alone we\nunderstand all Becoming and all Willing and for which we will retain\nthe name \"Will\" has now too in language its own symbolic sphere:\nand in truth this sphere is equally fundamental to the language,\nas that manifestation is fundamental to all other conceptions. All\ndegrees of pleasure and displeasure--expressions of _one_ primal\ncause unfathomable to us--symbolise themselves in _the tone of the\nspeaker:_ whereas all the other conceptions are indicated by the\n_gesture-symbolism_ of the speaker. In so far as that primal cause\nis the same in all men, the _tonal subsoil_ is also the common\none, comprehensible beyond the difference of language. Out of it\nnow develops the more arbitrary gesture-symbolism which is not\nwholly adequate for its basis: and with which begins the diversity\nof languages, whose multiplicity we are permitted to consider--to\nuse a simile--as a strophic text to that primal melody of the\npleasure-and-displeasure-language. The whole realm of the consonantal\nand vocal we believe we may reckon only under gesture-symbolism:\nconsonants _and_ vowels without that fundamental tone which is\nnecessary above all else, are nothing but _positions_ of the organs\nof speech, in short, gestures--; as soon as we imagine the _word_\nproceeding out of the mouth of man, then first of all the root of the\nword, and the basis of that gesture-symbolism, the _tonal subsoil,_\nthe echo of the pleasure-and-displeasure-sensations originate. As our\nwhole corporeality stands in relation to that original phenomenon, the\n\"Will,\" so the word built out of its consonants and vowels stands in\nrelation to its tonal basis.\n\nThis original phenomenon, the \"Will,\" with its scale of\npleasure-and-displeasure-sensations attains in the development of music\nan ever more adequate symbolic expression: and to this historical\nprocess the continuous effort of lyric poetry runs parallel, the effort\nto transcribe music into metaphors: exactly as this double-phenomenon,\naccording to the just completed disquisition, lies typified in language.\n\nHe who has followed us into these difficult contemplations readily,\nattentively, and with some imagination--and with kind indulgence where\nthe expression has been too scanty or too unconditional--will now\nhave the advantage with us, of laying before himself more seriously and\nanswering more deeply than is usually the case some stirring points of\ncontroversy of present-day \u00e6sthetics and still more of contemporary\nartists. Let us think now, after all our assumptions, what an\nundertaking it must be, to set music to a poem; _i.e.,_ to illustrate\na poem by music, in order to help music thereby to obtain a language\nof ideas. What a perverted world! A task that appears to my mind like\nthat of a son wanting to create his father! Music can create metaphors\nout of itself, which will always however be but schemata, instances as\nit were of her intrinsic general contents. But how should the metaphor,\nthe conception, create music out of itself! Much less could the idea,\nor, as one has said, the \"poetical idea\" do this. As certainly as a\nbridge leads out of the mysterious castle of the musician into the free\nland of the metaphors--and the lyric poet steps across it--as certainly\nis it impossible to go the contrary way, although some are said to\nexist who fancy they have done so. One might people the air with the\nphantasy of a Raphael, one might see St. Cecilia, as he does, listening\nenraptured to the harmonies of the choirs of angels--no tone issues\nfrom this world apparently lost in music: even if we imagined that that\nharmony in reality, as by a miracle, began to sound for us, whither\nwould Cecilia, Paul and Magdalena disappear from us, whither even\nthe singing choir of angels! We should at once cease to be Raphael:\nand as in that picture the earthly instruments lie shattered on the\nground, so our painter's vision, defeated by the higher, would fade\nand die away.--How nevertheless could the miracle happen? How should\nthe Apollonian world of the eye quite engrossed in contemplation be\nable to create out of itself the tone, which on the contrary symbolises\na sphere which is excluded and conquered just by that very Apollonian\nabsorption in Appearance? The delight at Appearance cannot raise out\nof itself the pleasure at Non-appearance; the delight of perceiving is\ndelight only by the fact that nothing reminds us of a sphere in which\nindividuation is broken and abolished. If we have characterised at\nall correctly the Apollonian in opposition to the Dionysean, then the\nthought which attributes to the metaphor, the idea, the appearance,\nin some way the power of producing out of itself the tone, must\nappear to us strangely wrong. We will not be referred, in order to be\nrefuted, to the musician who writes music to existing lyric poems; for\nafter all that has been said we shall be compelled to assert that the\nrelationship between the lyric poem and its setting must in any case\nbe a different one from that between a father and his child. Then what\nexactly?\n\nHere now we may be met on the ground of a favourite \u00e6sthetic notion\nwith the proposition, \"It is not the poem which gives birth to\nthe setting but the _sentiment_ created by the poem.\" I do not\nagree with that; the more subtle or powerful stirring-up of that\npleasure-and-displeasure-subsoil is in the realm of productive art\n_the_ element which is inartistic in itself; indeed only its total\nexclusion makes the complete self-absorption and disinterested\nperception of the artist possible. Here perhaps one might retaliate\nthat I myself just now predicated about the \"Will,\" that in music\n\"Will\" came to an ever more adequate symbolic expression. My answer,\ncondensed into an \u00e6sthetic axiom, is this: _the Will is the object of\nmusic but not the origin of it,_ that is the Will in its very greatest\nuniversality, as the most original manifestation, under which is to\nbe understood all Becoming. That, which we call _feeling,_ is with\nregard to this Will already permeated and saturated with conscious and\nunconscious conceptions and is therefore no longer directly the object\nof music; it is unthinkable then that these feelings should be able\nto create music out of themselves. Take for instance the feelings of\nlove, fear and hope: music can no longer do anything with them in a\ndirect way, every one of them is already so filled with conceptions.\nOn the contrary these feelings can serve to symbolise music, as the\nlyric poet does who translates for himself into the simile-world of\nfeelings that conceptually and metaphorically unapproachable realm\nof the Will, the proper content and object of music. The lyric poet\nresembles all those hearers of music who are conscious of an _effect\nof music on their emotions;_ the distant and removed power of music\nappeals, with them, to an _intermediate realm_ which gives to them\nas it were a foretaste, a symbolic preliminary conception of music\nproper, it appeals to the intermediate realm of the emotions. One might\nbe permitted to say about them, with respect to the Will, the only\nobject of music, that they bear the same relation to this Will, as the\nanalogous morning-dream, according to Schopenhauer's theory, bears to\nthe dream proper. To all those, however, who are unable to get at music\nexcept with their emotions, is to be said, that they will ever remain\nin the entrance-hall, and will never have access to the sanctuary of\nmusic: which, as I said, emotion cannot show but only symbolise.\n\nWith regard however to the origin of music, I have already explained\nthat that can never lie in the Will, but must rather rest in the lap of\nthat force, which under the form of the \"Will\" creates out of itself a\nvisionary world: _the origin of music lies beyond all individuation,_ a\nproposition, which after our discussion on the Dionysean self-evident.\nAt this point I take the liberty of setting forth again comprehensively\nside by side those decisive propositions which the antithesis of the\nDionysean and Apollonian dealt with has compelled us to enunciate:\n\nThe \"Will,\" as the most original manifestation, is the object of music:\nin this sense music can be called imitation of Nature, but of Nature in\nits most general form.--\n\nThe \"Will\" itself and the feelings--manifestations of the Will already\npermeated with conceptions--are wholly incapable of creating music out\nof themselves, just as on the other hand it is utterly denied to music\nto represent feelings, or to have feelings as its object, while Will is\nits only object.--\n\nHe who carries away feelings as effects of music has within them as\nit were a symbolic intermediate realm, which can give him a foretaste\nof music, but excludes him at the same time from her innermost\nsanctuaries.--\n\nThe lyric poet interprets music to himself through the symbolic\nworld of emotions, whereas he himself, in the calm of the Apollonian\ncontemplation, is exempted from those emotions.--\n\nWhen, therefore, the musician writes a setting to a lyric poem he is\nmoved as musician neither through the images nor through the emotional\nlanguage in the text; but a musical inspiration coming from quite a\ndifferent sphere _chooses_ for itself that song-text as allegorical\nexpression. There cannot therefore be any question as to a necessary\nrelation between poem and music; for the two worlds brought here into\nconnection are too strange to one another to enter into more than a\nsuperficial alliance; the song-text is just a symbol and stands to\nmusic in the same relation as the Egyptian hieroglyph of bravery did to\nthe brave warrior himself. During the highest revelations of music we\neven feel involuntarily the _crudeness_ of every figurative effort and\nof every emotion dragged in for purposes of analogy; for example, the\nlast quartets of Beethoven quite put to shame all illustration and the\nentire realm of empiric reality. The symbol, in face of the god really\nrevealing himself, has no longer any meaning; moreover it appears as an\noffensive superficiality.\n\nOne must not think any the worse of us for considering from this point\nof view one item so that we may speak about it without reserve, namely\nthe _last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony,_ a movement which\nis unprecedented and unanalysable in its charms. To the dithyrambic\nworld-redeeming exultation of this music Schiller's poem \"To Joy,\"\nis wholly incongruous, yea, like cold moon-light, pales beside that\nsea of flame. Who would rob me of this sure feeling? Yea, who would\nbe able to dispute that that feeling during the hearing of this music\ndoes not find expression in a scream only because we, wholly impotent\nthrough music for metaphor and word, already _hear nothing at all\nfrom Schiller's poem._ All that noble sublimity, yea the grandeur of\nSchiller's verses has, beside the truly na\u00efve-innocent folk-melody of\njoy, a disturbing, troubling, even crude and offensive effect; only\nthe ever fuller development of the choir's song and the masses of the\norchestra preventing us from hearing them, keep from us that sensation\nof incongruity. What therefore shall we think of that awful \u00e6sthetic\nsuperstition that Beethoven himself made a solemn statement as to his\nbelief in the limits of absolute music, in that fourth movement of the\nNinth Symphony, yea that he as it were with it unlocked the portals\nof a new art, within which music had been enabled to represent even\nmetaphor and idea and whereby music had been opened to the \"conscious\nmind.\" And what does Beethoven himself tell us when he has choir-song\nintroduced by a recitative? \"Alas friends, let us intonate not these\ntones but more pleasing and joyous ones!\" More pleasing and joyous\nones! For that he needed the convincing tone of the human voice, for\nthat he needed the music of innocence in the folk-song. Not the word,\nbut the \"more pleasing\" sound, not the idea but the most heartfelt\njoyful tone was chosen by the sublime master in his longing for the\nmost soul-thrilling ensemble of his orchestra. And how could one\nmisunderstand him! Rather may the same be said of this movement as\n_Richard Wagner_ says of the great \"_Missa Solemnis_\" which he calls \"a\npure symphonic work of the most genuine Beethoven-spirit\" (Beethoven,\np. 42). \"The voices are treated here quite in the sense of human\ninstruments, in which sense Schopenhauer quite rightly wanted these\nhuman voices to be considered; the text underlying them is understood\nby us in these great Church compositions, not in its conceptual\nmeaning, but it serves in the sense of the musical work of art, merely\nas material for vocal music and does not stand to our musically\ndetermined sensation in a disturbing position simply because it does\nnot incite in us any rational conceptions but, as its ecclesiastical\ncharacter conditions too, only touches us with the impression of\nwell-known symbolic creeds.\" Besides I do not doubt that Beethoven, had\nhe written the Tenth Symphony--of which drafts are still extant--would\nhave composed just the _Tenth_ Symphony.\n\nLet us now approach, after these preparations, the discussion of the\n_opera,_ so as to be able to proceed afterwards from the opera to\nits counterpart in the Greek tragedy. What we had to observe in the\nlast movement of the Ninth, _i.e.,_ on the highest level of modern\nmusic-development, viz., that the word-content goes down unheard in\nthe general sea of sound, is nothing isolated and peculiar, but the\ngeneral and eternally valid norm in the vocal music of all times, the\nnorm which alone is adequate to the origin of lyric song. The man in\na state of Dionysean excitement has a _listener_ just as little as\nthe orgiastic crowd, a listener to whom he might have something to\ncommunicate, a listener as the epic narrator and generally speaking the\nApollonian artist, to be sure, presupposes. It is rather in the nature\nof the Dionysean art, that it has no consideration for the listener:\nthe inspired servant of Dionysos is, as I said in a former place,\nunderstood only by his compeers. But if we now imagine a listener at\nthose endemic outbursts of Dionysean excitement then we shall have to\nprophesy for him a fate similar to that which Pentheus the discovered\neavesdropper suffered, namely, to be torn to pieces by the M\u00e6nads. The\nlyric musician sings \"as the bird sings,\"[1] alone, out of innermost\ncompulsion; when the listener comes to him with a demand he must\nbecome dumb. Therefore it would be altogether unnatural to ask from\nthe lyric musician that one should also understand the text-words of\nhis song, unnatural because here a demand is made by the listener, who\nhas no right at all during the lyric outburst to claim anything. Now\nwith the poetry of the great ancient lyric poets in your hand, put\nthe question honestly to yourself whether they can have even thought\nof making themselves clear to the mass of the people standing around\nand listening, clear with their world of metaphors and thoughts;\nanswer this serious question with a look at Pindar and the \u00c6schylian\nchoir songs. These most daring and obscure intricacies of thought,\nthis whirl of metaphors, ever impetuously reproducing itself, this\noracular tone of the whole, which we, _without_ the diversion of music\nand orchestration, so often cannot penetrate even with the closest\nattention--was this whole world of miracles transparent as glass to\nthe Greek crowd, yea, a metaphorical-conceptual interpretation of\nmusic? And with such mysteries of thought as are to be found in Pindar\ndo you think the wonderful poet could have wished to elucidate the\nmusic already strikingly distinct? Should we here not be forced to an\ninsight into the very nature of the lyricist--the artistic man, who\nto _himself_ must interpret music through the symbolism of metaphors\nand emotions, but who has nothing to communicate to the listener; an\nartist who, in complete aloofness, even forgets those who stand eagerly\nlistening near him. And as the lyricist his hymns, so the people sing\nthe folk-song, for themselves, out of in-most impulse, unconcerned\nwhether the word is comprehensible to him who does not join in the\nsong. Let us think of our own experiences in the realm of higher\nart-music: what did we understand of the text of a Mass of Palestrina,\nof a Cantata of Bach, of an Oratorio of H\u00e4ndel, if we ourselves perhaps\ndid not join in singing? Only for _him who joins_ in singing do lyric\npoetry and vocal music exist; the listener stands before it as before\nabsolute music.\n\nBut now the _opera_ begins, according to the clearest testimonies, with\nthe _demand of the listener to understand the word._\n\nWhat? The listener _demands?_ The word is to be understood?\n\nBut to bring music into the service of a series of metaphors and\nconceptions, to use it as a means to an end, to the strengthening\nand elucidation of such conceptions and metaphors--such a peculiar\npresumption as is found in the concept of an \"opera,\" reminds me of\nthat ridiculous person who endeavours to lift himself up into the air\nwith his own arms; that which this fool and which the opera according\nto that idea attempt are absolute impossibilities. That idea of the\nopera does not demand perhaps an abuse from music but--as I said--an\nimpossibility. Music never _can_ become a means; one may push,\nscrew, torture it; as tone, as roll of the drum, in its crudest and\nsimplest stages, it still defeats poetry and abases the latter to its\nreflection. The opera as a species of art according to that concept is\ntherefore not only an aberration of music, but an erroneous conception\nof \u00e6sthetics. If I herewith, after all, justify the nature of the opera\nfor \u00e6sthetics, I am of course far from justifying at the same time bad\nopera music or bad opera-verses. The worst music can still mean, as\ncompared with the best poetry, the Dionysean world-subsoil, and the\nworst poetry can be mirror, image and reflection of this subsoil, if\ntogether with the best music: as certainly, namely, as the single tone\nagainst the metaphor is already Dionysean, and the single metaphor\ntogether with idea and word against music is already Apollonian. Yea,\neven bad music together with bad poetry can still inform as to the\nnature of music and poesy.\n\nWhen therefore Schopenhauer felt Bellini's \"Norma,\" for example, as the\nfulfilment of tragedy, with regard to that opera's music and poetry,\nthen he, in Dionysean-Apollonian emotion and self-forgetfulness, was\nquite entitled to do so, because he perceived music and poetry in\ntheir most general, as it were, philosophical value, _as_ music and\npoetry: but with that judgment he showed a poorly educated taste,--for\ngood taste always has historical perspective. To us, who intentionally\nin this investigation avoid any question of the historic value of an\nart-phenomenon and endeavour to focus only the phenomenon itself,\nin its unaltered eternal meaning, and consequently in its _highest_\ntype, too,--to us the art-species of the \"opera\" seems to be justified\nas much as the folk-song, in so far as we find in both that union\nof the Dionysean and Apollonian and are permitted to assume for the\nopera--namely for the highest type of the opera--an origin analogous to\nthat of the folk-song. Only in so far as the opera historically known\nto us has a completely different origin from that of the folk-song\ndo we reject this \"opera,\" which stands in the same relation to that\ngeneric notion just defended by us, as the marionette does to a living\nhuman being. It is certain, music never can become a means in the\nservice of the text, but must always defeat the text, yet music must\nbecome bad when the composer interrupts every Dionysean force rising\nwithin himself by an anxious regard for the words and gestures of his\nmarionettes. If the poet of the opera-text has offered him nothing more\nthan the usual schematised figures with their Egyptian regularity, then\nthe freer, more unconditional, more Dionysean is the development of the\nmusic; and the more she despises all dramatic requirements, so much\nthe higher will be the value of the opera. In this sense it is true the\nopera is, at its best, good music, and nothing but music: whereas the\njugglery performed at the same time is, as it were, only a fantastic\ndisguise of the orchestra, above all, of the most important instruments\nthe orchestra has: the singers; and from this jugglery the judicious\nlistener turns away laughing. If the mass is diverted by _this very\njugglery_ and only _permits_ the music with it, then the mob fares as\nall those do who value the frame of a good picture higher than the\npicture itself. Who treats such na\u00efve aberrations with a serious or\neven pathetic reproach?\n\nBut what will the opera mean as \"dramatic\" music, in its possibly\nfarthest distance from pure music, efficient in itself, and purely\nDionysean? Let us imagine a passionate drama full of incidents which\ncarries away the spectator, and which is already sure of success\nby its plot: what will \"dramatic\" music be able to add, if it does\nnot take away something? Firstly, it _will_ take away much: for in\nevery moment where for once the Dionysean power of music strikes\nthe listener, the eye is dimmed that sees the action, the eye that\nbecame absorbed in the individuals appearing before it: the listener\nnow _forgets_ the drama and becomes alive again to it only when the\nDionysean spell over him has been broken. In so far, however, as music\nmakes the listener forget the drama, it is not yet \"dramatic\" music:\nbut what kind of music is that which is not _allowed_ to exercise\nany Dionysean power over the listener? And how is it possible? It is\npossible as _purely conventional symbolism,_ out of which convention\nhas sucked all natural strength: as music which has diminished to\nsymbols of remembrance: and its effect aims at reminding the spectator\nof something, which at the sight of the drama must not escape him lest\nhe should misunderstand it: as a trumpet signal is an invitation for\nthe horse to trot. Lastly, before the drama commenced and in interludes\nor during tedious passages, doubtful as to dramatic effect, yea,\neven in its highest moments, there would still be permitted another\nspecies of remembrance-music, no longer purely conventional, namely\n_emotional-music,_ music, as a stimulant to dull or wearied nerves.\nI am able to distinguish in the so-called dramatic music these two\nelements only: a conventional rhetoric and remembrance-music, and a\nsensational music with an effect essentially physical: and thus it\nvacillates between the noise of the drum and the signal-horn, like\nthe mood of the warrior who goes into the battle. But now the mind,\nregaling itself on pure music and educated through comparison, demands\na _masquerade_ for those two wrong tendencies of music; \"Remembrance\"\nand \"Emotion\" are to be played, but in good music, which must be\nin itself enjoyable, yea, valuable; what despair for the dramatic\nmusician, who must mask the big drum by good music, which, however,\nmust nevertheless have no purely musical, but only a stimulating\neffect! And now comes the great Philistine public nodding its thousand\nheads and enjoys this \"dramatic music\" which is ever ashamed of itself,\nenjoys it to the very last morsel, without perceiving anything of its\nshame and embarrassment. Rather the public feels its skin agreeably\ntickled, for indeed homage is being rendered in all forms and ways to\nthe public! To the pleasure-hunting, dull-eyed sensualist, who needs\nexcitement, to the conceited \"educated person\" who has accustomed\nhimself to good drama and good music as to good food, without after all\nmaking much out of it, to the forgetful and absent-minded egoist, who\nmust be led back to the work of art with force and with signal-horns\nbecause selfish plans continually pass through his mind aiming at\ngain or pleasure. Woe-begone dramatic musicians! \"Draw near and view\nyour Patrons' faces! The half are coarse, the half are cold.\" \"Why\nshould you rack, poor foolish Bards, for ends like these the gracious\nMuses?\"[2] And that the muses are tormented, even tortured and flayed,\nthese veracious miserable ones do not themselves deny!\n\nWe had assumed a passionate drama, carrying away the spectator, which\neven without music would be sure of its effect. I fear that that in\nit which is \"poetry\" and _not_ action proper will stand in relation\nto true poetry as dramatic music to music in general: it will be\nremembrance-and emotional-poetry. Poetry will serve as a means, in\norder to recall in a conventional fashion feelings and passions,\nthe expression of which has been found by real poets and has become\ncelebrated, yea, normal with them. Further, this poetry will be\nexpected in dangerous moments to assist the proper \"action,\"--whether\na criminalistic horror-story or an exhibition of witchery mad with\nshifting the scenes,--and to spread a covering veil over the crudeness\nof the action itself. Shamefully conscious, that the poetry is only\nmasquerade which cannot bear the light of day, such a \"dramatic\"\nrime-jingle clamours now for \"dramatic\" music, as on the other hand\nagain the poetaster of such dramas is met after one-fourth of the\nway by the dramatic musician with his talent for the drum and the\nsignal-horn and his shyness of genuine music, trusting in itself and\nself-sufficient. And now they see one another; and these Apollonian and\nDionysean caricatures, this _par nobile fratrum,_ embrace one another!\n\n\n[1] A reference to Goethe's ballad, The Minstrel, st. 5:\n\n\"I sing as sings the bird, whose note The leafy bough is heard on. The\nsong that falters from my throat For me is ample guerdon.\" TR.\n\n\n[2] A quotation from Goethe's \"Faust\": Part I., lines 91, 92, and 95,\n96.--TR.\n\n\n\n\nHOMER'S CONTEST\n\n\nPreface to an Unwritten Book (1872)\n\n\nWhen one speaks of \"_humanity_\" the notion lies at the bottom,\nthat humanity is that which _separates_ and distinguishes man from\nNature. But such a distinction does not in reality exist: the\n\"natural\" qualities and the properly called \"human\" ones have grown\nup inseparably together. Man in his highest and noblest capacities\n_is_ Nature and bears in himself her awful twofold character. His\nabilities generally considered dreadful and inhuman are perhaps indeed\nthe fertile soil, out of which alone can grow forth all humanity in\nemotions, actions and works.\n\nThus the Greeks, the most humane men of ancient times, have in\nthemselves a trait of cruelty, of tiger-like pleasure in destruction:\na trait, which in the grotesquely magnified image of the Hellene, in\nAlexander the Great, is very plainly visible, which, however, in their\nwhole history, as well as in their mythology, must terrify us who\nmeet them with the emasculate idea of modern humanity. When Alexander\nhas the feet of Batis, the brave defender of Gaza, bored through,\nand binds the living body to his chariot in order to drag him about\nexposed to the scorn of his soldiers, that is a sickening caricature of\nAchilles, who at night ill-uses Hector's corpse by a similar trailing;\nbut even this trait has for us something offensive, something which\ninspires horror. It gives us a peep into the abysses of hatred. With\nthe same sensation perhaps we stand before the bloody and insatiable\nself-laceration of two Greek parties, as for example in the Corcyrean\nrevolution. When the victor, in a fight of the cities, according to\nthe _law_ of warfare, executes the whole male population and sells all\nthe women and children into slavery, we see, in the sanction of such a\nlaw, that the Greek deemed it a positive necessity to allow his hatred\nto break forth unimpeded; in such moments the compressed and swollen\nfeeling relieved itself; the tiger bounded forth, a voluptuous cruelty\nshone out of his fearful eye. Why had the Greek sculptor to represent\nagain and again war and fights in innumerable repetitions, extended\nhuman bodies whose sinews are tightened through hatred or through the\nrecklessness of triumph, fighters wounded and writhing with pain, or\nthe dying with the last rattle in their throat? Why did the whole Greek\nworld exult in the fighting scenes of the \"Iliad\"? I am afraid, we do\nnot understand them enough in \"Greek fashion,\" and that we should even\nshudder, if for once we _did_ understand them thus.\n\nBut what lies, as the mother-womb of the Hellenic, _behind_ the Homeric\nworld? In the _latter,_ by the extremely artistic definiteness, and the\ncalm and purity of the lines we are already lifted far above the purely\nmaterial amalgamation: its colours, by an artistic deception, appear\nlighter, milder, warmer; its men, in this coloured, warm illumination,\nappear better and more sympathetic--but where do we look, if, no\nlonger guided and protected by Homer's hand, we step backwards into\nthe pre-Homeric world? Only into night and horror, into the products\nof a fancy accustomed to the horrible. What earthly existence is\nreflected in the loathsome-awful theogonian lore: a life swayed only\nby the _children of the night,_ strife, amorous desires, deception,\nage and death. Let us imagine the suffocating atmosphere of Hesiod's\npoem, still thickened and darkened and without all the mitigations and\npurifications, which poured over Hellas from Delphi and the numerous\nseats of the gods! If we mix this thickened Boeotian air with the grim\nvoluptuousness of the Etruscans, then such a reality would _extort_\nfrom us a world of myths within which Uranos, Kronos and Zeus and\nthe struggles of the Titans would appear as a relief. Combat in this\nbrooding atmosphere is salvation and safety; the cruelty of victory is\nthe summit of life's glories. And just as in truth the idea of Greek\nlaw has developed from _murder_ and expiation of murder, so also nobler\nCivilisation takes her first wreath of victory from the altar of the\nexpiation of murder. Behind that bloody age stretches a wave-furrow\ndeep into Hellenic history. The names of Orpheus, of Mus\u00e6us, and\ntheir cults indicate to what consequences the uninterrupted sight of\na world of warfare and cruelty led--to the loathing of existence, to\nthe conception of this existence as a punishment to be borne to the\nend, to the belief in the identity of existence and indebtedness. But\nthese particular conclusions are not specifically Hellenic; through\nthem Greece comes into contact with India and the Orient generally. The\nHellenic genius had ready yet another answer to the question: what does\na life of fighting and of victory mean? and gives this answer in the\nwhole breadth of Greek history.\n\nIn order to understand the latter we must start from the fact that\nthe Greek genius admitted the existing fearful impulse, and deemed it\n_justified;_ whereas in the Orphic phase of thought was contained the\nbelief that life with such an impulse as its root would not be worth\nliving. Strife and the pleasure of victory were acknowledged; and\nnothing separates the Greek world more from ours than the _colouring,_\nderived hence, of some ethical ideas, _e.g.,_ of _Eris_ and of _Envy_.\n\nWhen the traveller Pausanius during his wanderings through Greece\nvisited the Helicon, a very old copy of the first didactic poem of the\nGreeks, \"The Works and Days\" of Hesiod, was shown to him, inscribed\nupon plates of lead and severely damaged by time and weather. However\nhe recognised this much, that, unlike the usual copies, it had _not_\nat its head that little hymnus on Zeus, but began at once with the\ndeclaration: \"_Two_ Eris-goddesses are on earth.\" This is one of the\nmost noteworthy Hellenic thoughts and worthy to be impressed on the\nnew-comer immediately at the entrance-gate of Greek ethics. \"One would\nlike to praise the one Eris, just as much as to blame the other, if\none uses one's reason. For these two goddesses have quite different\ndispositions. For the one, the cruel one, furthers the evil war and\nfeud! No mortal likes her, but under the yoke of need one pays honour\nto the burdensome Eris, according to the decree of the immortals. She,\nas the elder, gave birth to black night. Zeus the high-ruling one,\nhowever, placed the other Eris upon the roots of the earth and among\nmen as a much better one. She urges even the unskilled man to work, and\nif one who lacks property beholds another who is rich, then he hastens\nto sow in similar fashion and to plant and to put his house in order;\nthe neighbour vies with the neighbour who strives after fortune. Good\nis this Eris to men. The potter also has a grudge against the potter,\nand the carpenter against the carpenter; the beggar envies the beggar,\nand the singer the singer.\"\n\nThe two last verses which treat of the _odium figulinum_ appear to\nour scholars to be incomprehensible in this place. According to their\njudgment the predicates: \"grudge\" and \"envy\" fit only the nature of\nthe evil Eris, and for this reason they do not hesitate to designate\nthese verses as spurious or thrown by chance into this place. For\nthat judgment however a system of Ethics other than the Hellenic must\nhave inspired these scholars unawares; for in these verses to the\ngood Eris Aristotle finds no offence. And not only Aristotle but the\nwhole Greek antiquity thinks of spite and envy otherwise than we do\nand agrees with Hesiod, who first designates as an evil one that Eris\nwho leads men against one another to a hostile war of extermination,\nand secondly praises another Eris as the good one, who as jealousy,\nspite, envy, incites men to activity but not to the action of war to\nthe knife but to the action of _contest._ The Greek is _envious_ and\nconceives of this quality not as a blemish, but as the effect of a\n_beneficent_ deity. What a gulf of ethical judgment between us and him?\nBecause he is envious he also feels, with every superfluity of honour,\nriches, splendour and fortune, the envious eye of a god resting on\nhimself, and he fears this envy; in this case the latter reminds him\nof the transitoriness of every human lot; he dreads his very happiness\nand, sacrificing the best of it, he bows before the divine envy.\nThis conception does not perhaps estrange him from his gods; their\nsignificance on the contrary is expressed by the thought that with them\nman in whose soul jealousy is enkindled against every other living\nbeing, is _never_ allowed to venture into contest. In the fight of\nThamyris with the Muses, of Marsyas with Apollo, in the heart-moving\nfate of Niobe appears the horrible opposition of the two powers, who\nmust never fight with one another, man and god.\n\nThe greater and more sublime however a Greek is, the brighter in him\nappears the ambitious flame, devouring everybody who runs with him on\nthe same track. Aristotle once made a list of such contests on a large\nscale; among them is the most striking instance how even a dead person\ncan still incite a living one to consuming jealousy; thus for example\nAristotle designates the relation between the Kolophonian Xenophanes\nand Homer. We do not understand this attack on the national hero of\npoetry in all its strength, if we do not imagine, as later on also with\nPlato, the root of this attack to be the ardent desire to step into\nthe place of the overthrown poet and to inherit his fame. Every great\nHellene hands on the torch of the contest; at every great virtue a new\nlight is kindled. If the young Themistocles could not sleep at the\nthought of the laurels of Miltiades so his early awakened bent released\nitself only in the long emulation with Aristides in that uniquely\nnoteworthy, purely instinctive genius of his political activity, which\nThucydides describes. How characteristic are both question and answer,\nwhen a notable opponent of Pericles is asked, whether he or Pericles\nwas the better wrestler in the city, and he gives the answer: \"Even if\nI throw him down he denies that he has fallen, attains his purpose and\nconvinces those who saw him fall.\"\n\nIf one wants to see that sentiment unashamed in its na\u00efve expressions,\nthe sentiment as to the necessity of contest lest the State's welfare\nbe threatened, one should think of the original meaning of _Ostracism,_\nas for example the Ephesians pronounced it at the banishment of\nHermodor. \"Among us nobody shall be the best; if however someone is the\nbest, then let him be so elsewhere and among others.\" Why should not\nsomeone be the best? Because with that the contest would fail, and the\neternal life-basis of the Hellenic State would be endangered. Later on\nOstracism receives quite another position with regard to the contest;\nit is applied, when the danger becomes obvious that one of the great\ncontesting politicians and party-leaders feels himself urged on in\nthe heat of the conflict towards harmful and destructive measures and\ndubious _coups d'\u00e9tat._ The original sense of this peculiar institution\nhowever is not that of a safety-valve but that of a stimulant.\nThe all-excelling individual was to be removed in order that the\ncontest of forces might re-awaken, a thought which is hostile to the\n\"exclusiveness\" of genius in the modern sense but which assumes that in\nthe natural order of things there are always _several_ geniuses which\nincite one another to action, as much also as they hold one another\nwithin the bounds of moderation. That is the kernel of the Hellenic\ncontest-conception: it abominates autocracy, and fears its dangers; it\ndesires as a _preventive_ against the genius--a second genius.\n\nEvery natural gift must develop itself by contest. Thus the Hellenic\nnational pedagogy demands, whereas modern educators fear nothing as\nmuch as, the unchaining of the so-called ambition. Here one fears\nselfishness as the \"evil in itself\"--with the exception of the\nJesuits, who agree with the Ancients and who, possibly, for that\nreason, are the most efficient educators of our time. They seem to\nbelieve that Selfishness, _i.e.,_ the individual element is only the\nmost powerful _agens_ but that it obtains its character as \"good\" and\n\"evil\" essentially from the aims towards which it strives. To the\nAncients however the aim of the agonistic education was the welfare of\nthe whole, of the civic society. Every Athenian for instance was to\ncultivate his Ego in contest, so far that it should be of the highest\nservice to Athens and should do the least harm. It was not unmeasured\nand immeasurable as modern ambition generally is; the youth thought of\nthe welfare of his native town when he vied with others in running,\nthrowing or singing; it was her glory that he wanted to increase with\nhis own; it was to his town's gods that he dedicated the wreaths which\nthe umpires as a mark of honour set upon his head. Every Greek from\nchildhood felt within himself the burning wish to be in the contest\nof the towns an instrument for the welfare of his own town; in this\nhis selfishness was kindled into flame, by this his selfishness was\nbridled and restricted. Therefore the individuals in antiquity were\nfreer, because their aims were nearer and more tangible. Modern man, on\nthe contrary, is everywhere hampered by infinity, like the fleet-footed\nAchilles in the allegory of the Eleate Zeno: infinity impedes him, he\ndoes not even overtake the tortoise.\n\nBut as the youths to be educated were brought up struggling against\none another, so their educators were in turn in emulation amongst\nthemselves. Distrustfully jealous, the great musical masters, Pindar\nand Simonides, stepped side by side; in rivalry the sophist, the higher\nteacher of antiquity meets his fellow-sophist; even the most universal\nkind of instruction, through the drama, was imparted to the people\nonly under the form of an enormous wrestling of the great musical and\ndramatic artists. How wonderful! \"And even the artist has a grudge\nagainst the artist!\" And the modern man dislikes in an artist nothing\nso much as the personal battle-feeling, whereas the Greek recognises\nthe artist _only in such a personal struggle._ There where the modern\nsuspects weakness of the work of art, the Hellene seeks the source of\nhis highest strength! That, which by way of example in Plato is of\nspecial artistic importance in his dialogues, is usually the result\nof an emulation with the art of the orators, of the sophists, of the\ndramatists of his time, invented deliberately in order that at the end\nhe could say: \"Behold, I can also do what my great rivals can; yea\nI can do it even better than they. No Protagoras has composed such\nbeautiful myths as I, no dramatist such a spirited and fascinating\nwhole as the Symposion, no orator penned such an oration as I put\nup in the Georgias--and now I reject all that together and condemn\nall imitative art! Only the contest made me a poet, a sophist, an\norator!\" What a problem unfolds itself there before us, if we ask\nabout the relationship between the contest and the conception of the\nwork of art!--If on the other hand we remove the contest from Greek\nlife, then we look at once into the pre-Homeric abyss of horrible\nsavagery, hatred, and pleasure in destruction. This phenomenon alas!\nshows itself frequently when a great personality was, owing to an\nenormously brilliant deed, suddenly withdrawn from the contest and\nbecame _hors de concours_ according to his, and his fellow-citizens'\njudgment. Almost without exception the effect is awful; and if one\nusually draws from these consequences the conclusion that the Greek was\nunable to bear glory and fortune, one should say more exactly that he\nwas unable to bear fame without further struggle, and fortune at the\nend of the contest. There is no more distinct instance than the fate\nof Miltiades. Placed upon a solitary height and lifted far above every\nfellow-combatant through his incomparable success at Marathon, he feels\na low thirsting for revenge awakened within himself against a citizen\nof Para, with whom he had been at enmity long ago. To satisfy his\ndesire he misuses reputation, the public exchequer and civic honour and\ndisgraces himself. Conscious of his ill-success he falls into unworthy\nmachinations. He forms a clandestine and godless connection with Timo\na priestess of Demeter, and enters at night the sacred temple, from\nwhich every man was excluded. After he has leapt over the wall and\ncomes ever nearer the shrine of the goddess, the dreadful horror of a\npanic-like terror suddenly seizes him; almost prostrate and unconscious\nhe feels himself driven back and leaping the wall once more, he falls\ndown paralysed and severely injured. The siege must be raised and a\ndisgraceful death impresses its seal upon a brilliant heroic career,\nin order to darken it for all posterity. After the battle at Marathon\nthe envy of the celestials has caught him. And this divine envy breaks\ninto flames when it beholds man without rival, without opponent, on\nthe solitary height of glory. He now has beside him only the gods--and\ntherefore he has them against him. These however betray him into a deed\nof the Hybris, and under it he collapses.\n\nLet us well observe that just as Miltiades perishes so the noblest\nGreek States perish when they, by merit and fortune, have arrived from\nthe racecourse at the temple of Nike. Athens, which had destroyed the\nindependence of her allies and avenged with severity the rebellions\nof her subjected foes, Sparta, which after the battle of \u00c6gospotamoi\nused her preponderance over Hellas in a still harsher and more cruel\nfashion, both these, as in the case of Miltiades, brought about their\nruin through deeds of the Hybris, as a proof that without envy,\njealousy, and contesting ambition the Hellenic State like the Hellenic\nman degenerates. He becomes bad and cruel, thirsting for revenge, and\ngodless; in short, he becomes \"pre-Homeric\"--and then it needs only a\npanic in order to bring about his fall and to crush him. Sparta and\nAthens surrender to Persia, as Themistocles and Alcibiades have done;\nthey betray Hellenism after they have given up the noblest Hellenic\nfundamental thought, the contest, and Alexander, the coarsened copy and\nabbreviation of Greek history, now invents the cosmopolitan Hellene,\nand the so-called \"Hellenism.\"\n\n\n\n\nTHE RELATION OF SCHOPENHAUER'S PHILOSOPHY TO A GERMAN CULTURE\n\n\nPreface to an Unwritten Book (1872)\n\n\nIn dear vile Germany culture now lies so decayed in the streets,\njealousy of all that is great rules so shamelessly, and the general\ntumult of those who race for \"Fortune\" resounds so deafeningly, that\none must have a strong faith, almost in the sense of _credo quia\nabsurdum est,_ in order to hope still for a growing Culture, and above\nall--in opposition to the press with her \"public opinion\"--to be able\nto work by public teaching. With violence must those, in whose hearts\nlies the immortal care for the people, free themselves from all the\ninrushing impressions of that which is just now actual and valid, and\nevoke the appearance of reckoning them indifferent things. They must\nappear so, because they want to think, and because a loathsome sight\nand a confused noise, perhaps even mixed with the trumpet-flourishes\nof war-glory, disturb their thinking, and above all, because they want\nto _believe_ in the German character and because with this faith they\nwould lose their strength. Do not find fault with these believers if\nthey look from their distant aloofness and from the heights towards\ntheir Promised Land! They fear those experiences, to which the kindly\ndisposed foreigner surrenders himself, when he lives among the Germans,\nand must be surprised how little German life corresponds to those great\nindividuals, works and actions, which, in his kind disposition he\nhas learned to revere as the true German character. Where the German\ncannot lift himself into the sublime he makes an impression less than\nthe mediocre. Even the celebrated German scholarship, in which a number\nof the most useful domestic and homely virtues such as faithfulness,\nself-restriction, industry, moderation, cleanliness appear transposed\ninto a purer atmosphere and, as it were, transfigured, is by no means\nthe result of these virtues; looked at closely, the motive urging to\nunlimited knowledge appears in Germany much more like a defect, a gap,\nthan an abundance of forces, it looks almost like the consequence\nof a needy formless atrophied life and even like a flight from the\nmoral narrow-mindedness and malice to which the German without such\ndiversions is subjected, and which also in spite of that scholarship,\nyea still within scholarship itself, often break forth. As the true\nvirtuosi of philistinism the Germans are at home in narrowness of life,\ndiscerning and judging; if any one will carry them above themselves\ninto the sublime, then they make themselves heavy as lead, and as such\nlead-weights they hang to their truly great men, in order to pull them\ndown out of the ether to the level of their own necessitous indigence.\nPerhaps this Philistine homeliness may be only the degeneration of\na genuine German virtue--a profound submersion into the detail, the\nminute, the nearest and into the mysteries of the individual--but this\nvirtue grown mouldy is now worse than the most open vice, especially\nsince one has now become conscious, with gladness of the heart, of this\nquality, even to literary self-glorification. Now the _\"Educated\"_\namong the proverbially so cultured Germans and the _\"Philistines\"_\namong the, as everybody knows, so uncultured Germans shake hands\nin public and agree with one another concerning the way in which\nhenceforth one will have to write, compose poetry, paint, make music\nand even philosophise, yea--rule, so as neither to stand too much aloof\nfrom the culture of the one, nor to give offence to the \"homeliness\"\nof the other. This they call now \"The German Culture of our times.\"\nWell, it is only necessary to inquire after the characteristic by which\nthat \"educated\" person is to be recognised; now that we know that his\nfoster-brother, the German Philistine, makes himself known as such to\nall the world, without bashfulness, as it were, after innocence is lost.\n\nThe educated person nowadays is educated above all _\"historically,\"_ by\nhis historic consciousness he saves himself from the sublime in which\nthe Philistine succeeds by his \"homeliness.\" No longer that enthusiasm\nwhich history inspires--as Goethe was allowed to suppose--but just the\nblunting of all enthusiasm is now the goal of these admirers of the\n_nil admirari,_ when they try to conceive everything historically; to\nthem however we should exclaim: Ye are the fools of all centuries!\nHistory will make to you only those confessions, which you are worthy\nto receive. The world has been at all times full of trivialities and\nnonentities; to your historic hankering just these and only these\nunveil themselves. By your thousands you may pounce upon an epoch--you\nwill afterwards hunger as before and be allowed to boast of your sort\nof starved soundness. _Illam ipsam quam iactant sanitatem non firmitate\nsed iciunio consequuntur. (Dialogus de oratoribus, cap._ 25.) History\nhas not thought fit to tell you anything that is essential, but\nscorning and invisible she stood by your side, slipping into this one's\nhand some state proceedings, into that one's an ambassadorial report,\ninto another's a date or an etymology or a pragmatic cobweb. Do you\nreally believe yourself able to reckon up history like an addition\nsum, and do you consider your common intellect and your mathematical\neducation good enough for that? How it must vex you to hear, that\nothers narrate things, out of the best known periods, which you will\nnever conceive, never!\n\nIf now to this \"education,\" calling itself historic but destitute of\nenthusiasm, and to the hostile Philistine activity, foaming with rage\nagainst all that is great, is added that third brutal and excited\ncompany of those who race after \"Fortune\"--then that in _summa_ results\nin such a confused shrieking and such a limb-dislocating turmoil that\nthe thinker with stopped-up ears and blindfolded eyes flees into the\nmost solitary wilderness,--where he may see, what those never will\nsee, where he must hear sounds which rise to him out of all the depths\nof nature and come down to him from the stars. Here he confers with\nthe great problems floating towards him, whose voices of course sound\njust as comfortless-awful, as unhistoric-eternal. The feeble person\nflees back from their cold breath, and the calculating one runs right\nthrough them without perceiving them. They deal worst, however, with\nthe \"educated man\" who at times bestows great pains upon them. To him\nthese phantoms transform themselves into conceptual cobwebs and hollow\nsound-figures. Grasping after them he imagines he has philosophy; in\norder to search for them he climbs about in the so-called history\nof philosophy--and when at last he has collected and piled up quite\na cloud of such abstractions and stereotyped patterns, then it may\nhappen to him that a real thinker crosses his path and--puffs them\naway. What a desperate annoyance indeed to meddle with philosophy as\nan \"educated person\"! From time to time it is true it appears to him\nas if the impossible connection of philosophy with that which nowadays\ngives itself airs as \"German Culture\" has become possible; some mongrel\ndallies and ogles between the two spheres and confuses fantasy on\nthis side and on the other. Meanwhile however _one_ piece of advice\nis to be given to the Germans, if they do not wish to let themselves\nbe confused. They may put to themselves the question about everything\nthat they now call Culture: is _this_ the hoped-for German Culture, so\nserious and creative, so redeeming for the German mind, so purifying\nfor the German virtues that their only philosopher in this century,\nArthur _Schopenhauer,_ should have to espouse its cause?\n\nHere you have the philosopher--now search for the Culture proper to\nhim! And if you are able to divine what kind of culture that would have\nto be, which would correspond to such a philosopher, then you have, in\nthis divination, already _passed sentence_ on all your culture and on\nyourselves!\n\n\n\n\nPHILOSOPHY DURING THE TRAGIC AGE OF THE GREEKS\n\n\n(1873)\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\n(_Probably_ 1874)\n\n\nIf we know the aims of men who are strangers to us, it is sufficient\nfor us to approve of or condemn them as wholes. Those who stand nearer\nto us we judge according to the means by which they further their\naims; we often disapprove of their aims, but love them for the sake of\ntheir means and the style of their volition. Now philosophical systems\nare absolutely true only to their founders, to all later philosophers\nthey are usually _one_ big mistake, and to feebler minds a sum of\nmistakes and truths; at any rate if regarded as highest aim they are\nan error, and in so far reprehensible. Therefore many disapprove of\nevery philosopher, because his aim is not theirs; they are those whom I\ncalled \"strangers to us.\" Whoever on the contrary finds any pleasure at\nall in great men finds pleasure also in such systems, be they ever so\nerroneous, for they all have in them one point which is irrefutable, a\npersonal touch, and colour; one can use them in order to form a picture\nof the philosopher, just as from a plant growing in a certain place one\ncan form conclusions as to the soil. _That_ mode of life, of viewing\nhuman affairs at any rate, has existed once and is therefore possible;\nthe \"system\" is the growth in this soil or at least a part of this\nsystem....\n\nI narrate the history of those philosophers simplified: I shall bring\ninto relief only _that_ point in every system which is a little bit\nof _personality,_ and belongs to that which is irrefutable, and\nindiscussable, which history has to preserve: it is a first attempt\nto regain and recreate those natures by comparison, and to let the\npolyphony of Greek nature at least resound once again: the task is, to\nbring to light that which we must _always love and revere_ and of which\nno later knowledge can rob us: the great man.\n\n\n\nLATER PREFACE\n\n\n(_Towards the end of_ 1879)\n\n\nThis attempt to relate the history of the earlier Greek philosophers\ndistinguishes itself from similar attempts by its brevity. This has\nbeen accomplished by mentioning but a small number of the doctrines of\nevery philosopher, _i.e.,_ by incompleteness. Those doctrines, however,\nhave been selected in which the personal element of the philosopher\nre-echoes most strongly; whereas a complete enumeration of all possible\npropositions handed down to us--as is the custom in text-books--merely\nbrings about one thing, the absolute silencing of the personal element.\nIt is through this that those records become so tedious; for in systems\nwhich have been refuted it is only this personal element that can still\ninterest us, for this alone is eternally irrefutable. It is possible\nto shape the picture of a man out of three anecdotes. I endeavour to\nbring into relief three anecdotes out of every system and abandon the\nremainder.\n\n\n\n1.\n\n\nThere are opponents of philosophy, and one does well to listen to them;\nespecially if they dissuade the distempered heads of Germans from\nmetaphysics and on the other hand preach to them purification through\nthe Physis, as Goethe did, or healing through Music, as Wagner. The\nphysicians of the people condemn philosophy; he, therefore, who wants\nto justify it, must show to what purpose healthy nations use and have\nused philosophy. If he can show that, perhaps even the sick people\nwill benefit by learning why philosophy is harmful just to them. There\nare indeed good instances of a health which can exist without any\nphilosophy or with quite a moderate, almost a toying use of it; thus\nthe Romans at their best period lived without philosophy. But where is\nto be found the instance of a nation becoming diseased whom philosophy\nhad restored to health? Whenever philosophy showed itself helping,\nsaving, prophylactic, it was with healthy people; it made sick people\nstill more ill. If ever a nation was disintegrated and but loosely\nconnected with the individuals, never has philosophy bound these\nindividuals closer to the whole. If ever an individual was willing to\nstand aside and plant around himself the hedge of self-sufficiency,\nphilosophy was always ready to isolate him still more and to destroy\nhim through isolation. She is dangerous where she is not in her full\nright, and it is only the health of a nation but not that of every\nnation which gives her this right.\n\nLet us now look around for the highest authority as to what\nconstitutes the health of a nation. I he Greeks, as _the_ truly\nhealthy nation, have _justified_ philosophy once for all by having\nphilosophised; and that indeed more than all other nations. They could\nnot even stop at the right time, for still in their withered age\nthey comported themselves as heated notaries of philosophy, although\nthey understood by it only the pious sophistries and the sacrosanct\nhair-splittings of Christian dogmatics. They themselves have much\nlessened their merit for barbarian posterity by not being able to stop\nat the right time, because that posterity in its uninstructed and\nimpetuous youth necessarily became entangled in those artfully woven\nnets and ropes.\n\nOn the contrary, the Greek knew how to begin at the right time, and\nthis lesson, when one ought to begin philosophising, they teach more\ndistinctly than any other nation. For it should not be begun when\ntrouble comes as perhaps some presume who derive philosophy from\nmoroseness; no, but in good fortune, in mature manhood, out of the\nmidst of the fervent serenity of a brave and victorious man's estate.\nThe fact that the Greeks philosophised at that time throws light on\nthe nature of philosophy and her task as well as on the nature of the\nGreeks themselves. Had they at that time been such commonsense and\nprecocious experts and gayards as the learned Philistine of our days\nperhaps imagines, or had their life been only a state of voluptuous\nsoaring, chiming, breathing and feeling, as the unlearned visionary is\npleased to assume, then the spring of philosophy would not have come to\nlight among them. At the best there would have come forth a brook soon\ntrickling away in the sand or evaporating into fogs, but never that\nbroad river flowing forth with the proud beat of its waves, the river\nwhich we know as Greek Philosophy.\n\nTrue, it has been eagerly pointed out how much the Greeks could\nfind and learn abroad, in the Orient, and how many different things\nthey may easily have brought from there. Of course an odd spectacle\nresulted, when certain scholars brought together the alleged masters\nfrom the Orient and the possible disciples from Greece, and exhibited\nZarathustra near Heraclitus, the Hindoos near the Eleates, the\nEgyptians near Empedocles, or even Anaxagoras among the Jews and\nPythagoras among the Chinese. In detail little has been determined;\nbut we should in no way object to the general idea, if people did not\nburden us with the conclusion that therefore Philosophy had only been\nimported into Greece and was not indigenous to the soil, yea, that\nshe, as something foreign, had possibly ruined rather than improved\nthe Greek. Nothing is more foolish than to swear by the fact that the\nGreeks had an aboriginal culture; no, they rather absorbed all the\nculture flourishing among other nations, and they advanced so far,\njust because they understood how to hurl the spear further from the\nvery spot where another nation had let it rest. They were admirable\nin the art of learning productively, and so, like them, we _ought_\nto learn from our neighbours, with a view to Life not to pedantic\nknowledge, using everything learnt as a foothold whence to leap\nhigh and still higher than our neighbour. The questions as to the\nbeginning of philosophy are quite negligible, for everywhere in the\nbeginning there is the crude, the unformed, the empty and the ugly;\nand in all things only the higher stages come into consideration.\nHe who in the place of Greek philosophy prefers to concern himself\nwith that of Egypt and Persia, because the latter are perhaps more\n\"original\" and certainly older, proceeds just as ill-advisedly as\nthose who cannot be at ease before they have traced back the Greek\nmythology, so grand and profound, to such physical trivialities as\nsun, lightning, weather and fog, as its prime origins, and who fondly\nimagine they have rediscovered for instance in the restricted worship\nof the one celestial vault among the other Indo-Germans a purer form\nof religion than the poly-theistic worship of the Greek had been. The\nroad towards the beginning always leads into barbarism, and he who is\nconcerned with the Greeks ought always to keep in mind the fact that\nthe unsubdued thirst for knowledge in itself always barbarises just as\nmuch as the hatred of knowledge, and that the Greeks have subdued their\ninherently insatiable thirst for knowledge by their regard for Life,\nby an ideal need of Life,--since they wished to live immediately that\nwhich they learnt. The Greeks also philosophised as men of culture and\nwith the aims of culture, and therefore saved themselves the trouble\nof inventing once again the elements of philosophy and knowledge\nout of some autochthonous conceit, and with a will they at once set\nthemselves to fill out, enhance, raise and purify these elements they\nhad taken over in such a way, that only now in a higher sense and in a\npurer sphere they became inventors. For they discovered the _typical\nphilosopher's genius,_ and the inventions of all posterity have added\nnothing essential.\n\nEvery nation is put to shame if one points out such a wonderfully\nidealised company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters,\nThales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles,\nDemocritus and Socrates. All those men are integral, entire and\nself-contained,[1] and hewn out of one stone. Severe necessity exists\nbetween their thinking and their character. They are not bound by any\nconvention, because at that time no professional class of philosophers\nand scholars existed. They all stand before us in magnificent solitude\nas the only ones who then devoted their life exclusively to knowledge.\nThey all possess the virtuous energy of the Ancients, whereby they\nexcel all the later philosophers in finding their own form and in\nperfecting it by metamorphosis in its most minute details and general\naspect. For they were met by no helpful and facilitating fashion. Thus\ntogether they form what Schopenhauer, in opposition to the Republic of\nScholars, has called a Republic of Geniuses; one giant calls to another\nacross the arid intervals of ages, and, undisturbed by a wanton, noisy\nrace of dwarfs, creeping about beneath them, the sublime intercourse of\nspirits continues.\n\nOf this sublime intercourse of spirits I have resolved to relate those\nitems which our modern hardness of hearing might perhaps hear and\nunderstand; that means certainly the least of all. It seems to me\nthat those old sages from Thales to Socrates have discussed in that\nintercourse, although in its most general aspect, everything that\nconstitutes for our contemplation the peculiarly Hellenic. In their\nintercourse, as already in their personalities, they express distinctly\nthe great features of Greek genius of which the whole of Greek history\nis a shadowy impression, a hazy copy, which consequently speaks less\nclearly. If we could rightly interpret the total life of the Greek\nnation, we should ever find reflected only that picture which in her\nhighest geniuses shines with more resplendent colours. Even the first\nexperience of philosophy on Greek soil, the sanction of the Seven Sages\nis a distinct and unforgettable line in the picture of the Hellenic.\nOther nations have their Saints, the Greeks have Sages. Rightly it has\nbeen said that a nation is characterised not only by her great men\nbut rather by the manner in which she recognises and honours them. In\nother ages the philosopher is an accidental solitary wanderer in the\nmost hostile environment, either slinking through or pushing himself\nthrough with clenched fists. With the Greek however the philosopher is\nnot accidental; when in the Sixth and Fifth centuries amidst the most\nfrightful dangers and seductions of secularisation he appears and as\nit were steps forth from the cave of Trophonios into the very midst of\nluxuriance, the discoverers' happiness, the wealth and the sensuousness\nof the Greek colonies, then we divine that he comes as a noble warner\nfor the same purpose for which in those centuries Tragedy was born\nand which the Orphic mysteries in their grotesque hieroglyphics give\nus to understand. The opinion of those philosophers on Life and\nExistence altogether means so much more than a modern opinion because\nthey had before themselves Life in a luxuriant perfection, and because\nwith them, unlike us, the sense of the thinker was not muddled by\nthe disunion engendered by the wish for freedom, beauty, fulness of\nlife and the love for truth that only asks: What is the good of Life\nat all? The mission which the philosopher has to discharge within a\nreal Culture, fashioned in a homogeneous style, cannot be clearly\nconjectured out of our circumstances and experiences for the simple\nreason that we have no such culture. No, it is only a Culture like the\nGreek which can answer the question as to that task of the philosopher,\nonly such a Culture can, as I said before, justify philosophy at all;\nbecause such a Culture alone knows and can demonstrate why and how the\nphilosopher is _not_ an accidental, chance wanderer driven now hither,\nnow thither. There is a steely necessity which fetters the philosopher\nto a true Culture: but what if this Culture does not exist? Then the\nphilosopher is an incalculable and therefore terror-inspiring comet,\nwhereas in the favourable case, he shines as the central star in the\nsolar-system of culture. It is for this reason that the Greeks justify\nthe philosopher, because with them he is no comet.\n\n\n[1] _Cf._ Napoleon's word about Goethe: \"Voil\u00e0 un homme!\"--TR.\n\n\n\n2\n\n\nAfter such contemplations it will be accepted without offence if I\nspeak of the pre-Platonic philosophers as of a homogeneous company, and\ndevote this paper to them exclusively. Something quite new begins with\nPlato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with\nthat Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers\nsince Plato lack something essential.\n\nWhoever wants to express himself unfavourably about those older masters\nmay call them one-sided, and their _Epigones,_ with Plato as head,\nmany-sided. Yet it would be more just and unbiassed to conceive of\nthe latter as philosophic hybrid-characters, of the former as the\npure types. Plato himself is the first magnificent hybrid-character,\nand as such finds expression as well in his philosophy as in his\npersonality. In his ideology are united Socratian, Pythagorean, and\nHeraclitean elements, and for this reason it is no typically pure\nphenomenon. As man, too, Plato mingles the features of the royally\nsecluded, all-sufficing Heraclitus, of the melancholy-compassionate and\nlegislatory Pythagoras and of the psycho-expert dialectician Socrates.\nAll later philosophers are such hybrid-characters; wherever something\none-sided does come into prominence with them as in the case of the\nCynics, it is not type but caricature. Much more important however is\nthe fact that they are founders of sects and that the sects founded\nby them are all institutions in direct opposition to the Hellenic\nculture and the unity of its style prevailing up to that time. In\ntheir way they seek a redemption, but only for the individuals or at\nthe best for groups of friends and disciples closely connected with\nthem. The activity of the older philosophers tends, although they were\nunconscious of it, towards a cure and purification on a large scale;\nthe mighty course of Greek culture is not to be stopped; awful dangers\nare to be removed out of the way of its current; the philosopher\nprotects and defends his native country. Now, since Plato, he is in\nexile and conspires against his fatherland.\n\nIt is a real misfortune that so very little of those older philosophic\nmasters has come down to us and that all complete works of theirs are\nwithheld from us. Involuntarily, on account of that loss, we measure\nthem according to wrong standards and allow ourselves to be influenced\nunfavourably towards them by the mere accidental fact that Plato\nand Aristotle never lacked appreciators and copyists. Some people\npresuppose a special providence for books, a _fatum libellorum;_ such\na providence however would at any rate be a very malicious one if it\ndeemed it wise to withhold from us the works of Heraclitus, Empedocles'\nwonderful poem, and the writings of Democritus, whom the ancients put\non a par with Plato, whom he even excels as far as ingenuity goes,\nand as a substitute put into our hand Stoics, Epicureans and Cicero.\nProbably the most sublime part of Greek thought and its expression\nin words is lost to us; a fate which will not surprise the man who\nremembers the misfortunes of Scotus Erigena or of Pascal, and who\nconsiders that even in this enlightened century the first edition of\nSchopenhauer's \"_The World As Will And Idea_\" became waste-paper. If\nsomebody will presuppose a special fatalistic power with respect to\nsuch things he may do so and say with Goethe: \"Let no one complain\nabout and grumble at things vile and mean, they _are_ the real\nrulers,--however much this be gainsaid!\" In particular they are more\npowerful than the power of truth. Mankind very rarely produces a good\nbook in which with daring freedom is intonated the battle-song of\ntruth, the song of philosophic heroism; and yet whether it is to live a\ncentury longer or to crumble and moulder into dust and ashes, depends\non the most miserable accidents, on the sudden mental eclipse of men's\nheads, on superstitious convulsions and antipathies, finally on fingers\nnot too fond of writing or even on eroding bookworms and rainy weather.\nBut we will not lament but rather take the advice of the reproving and\nconsolatory words which Hamann addresses to scholars who lament over\nlost works. \"Would not the artist who succeeded in throwing a lentil\nthrough the eye of a needle have sufficient, with a bushel of lentils,\nto practise his acquired skill? One would like to put this question to\nall scholars who do not know how to use the works of the Ancients any\nbetter than that man used his lentils.\" It might be added in our case\nthat not one more word, anecdote, or date needed to be transmitted to\nus than has been transmitted, indeed that even much less might have\nbeen preserved for us and yet we should have been able to establish the\ngeneral doctrine that the Greeks justify philosophy.\n\nA time which suffers from the so-called \"general education\" but has\nno culture and no unity of style in her life hardly knows what to\ndo with philosophy, even if the latter were proclaimed by the very\nGenius of Truth in the streets and market-places. She rather remains\nat such a time the learned monologue of the solitary rambler, the\naccidental booty of the individual, the hidden closet-secret or the\ninnocuous chatter between academic senility and childhood. Nobody\ndare venture to fulfil in himself the law of philosophy, nobody\nlives philosophically, with that simple manly faith which compelled\nan Ancient, wherever he was, whatever he did, to deport himself as\na Stoic, when he had once pledged his faith to the Stoa. All modern\nphilosophising is limited politically and regulated by the police to\nlearned semblance. Thanks to governments, churches, academies, customs,\nfashions, and the cowardice of man, it never gets beyond the sigh: \"If\nonly!...\" or beyond the knowledge: \"Once upon a time there was...\"\nPhilosophy is without rights; therefore modern man, if he were at all\ncourageous and conscientious, ought to condemn her and perhaps banish\nher with words similar to those by which Plato banished the tragic\npoets from his State. Of course there would be left a reply for her, as\nthere remained to those poets against Plato. If one once compelled her\nto speak out she might say perhaps: \"Miserable Nation! Is it my fault\nif among you I am on the tramp, like a fortune teller through the land,\nand must hide and disguise myself, as if I were a great sinner and ye\nmy judges? Just look at my sister, Art! It is with her as with me; we\nhave been cast adrift among the Barbarians and no longer know how to\nsave ourselves. Here we are lacking, it is true, every good right; but\nthe judges before whom we find justice judge you also and will tell\nyou: First acquire a culture; then you shall experience what Philosophy\ncan and will do.\"--\n\n\n\n3.\n\n\nGreek philosophy seems to begin with a preposterous fancy, with the\nproposition that _water_ is the origin and mother-womb of all things.\nIs it really necessary to stop there and become serious? Yes, and\nfor three reasons: Firstly, because the proposition does enunciate\nsomething about the origin of things; secondly, because it does\nso without figure and fable; thirdly and lastly, because in it is\ncontained, although only in the chrysalis state, the idea: Everything\nis one. The first mentioned reason leaves Thales still in the company\nof religious and superstitious people, the second however takes him\nout of this company and shows him to us as a natural philosopher, but\nby virtue of the third, Thales becomes the first Greek philosopher.\nIf he had said: \"Out of water earth is evolved,\" we should only have\na scientific hypothesis; a false one, though nevertheless difficult\nto refute. But he went beyond the scientific. In his presentation of\nthis concept of unity through the hypothesis of water, Thales has not\nsurmounted the low level of the physical discernments of his time, but\nat the best overleapt them. The deficient and unorganised observations\nof an empiric nature which Thales had made as to the occurrence and\ntransformations of water, or to be more exact, of the Moist, would\nnot in the least have made possible or even suggested such an immense\ngeneralisation. That which drove him to this generalisation was a\nmetaphysical dogma, which had its origin in a mystic intuition and\nwhich together with the ever renewed endeavours to express it better,\nwe find in all philosophies,--the proposition: _Everything is one!_\n\nHow despotically such a faith deals with all empiricism is worthy of\nnote; with Thales especially one can learn how Philosophy has behaved\nat all times, when she wanted to get beyond the hedges of experience\nto her magically attracting goal. On light supports she leaps in\nadvance; hope and divination wing her feet. Calculating reason too,\nclumsily pants after her and seeks better supports in its attempt to\nreach that alluring goal, at which its divine companion has already\narrived. One sees in imagination two wanderers by a wild forest-stream\nwhich carries with it rolling stones; the one, light-footed, leaps\nover it using the stones and swinging himself upon them ever further\nand further, though they precipitously sink into the depths behind\nhim. The other stands helpless there most of the time; he has first\nto build a pathway which will bear his heavy, weary step; sometimes\nthat cannot be done and then no god will help him across the stream.\nWhat therefore carries philosophical thinking so quickly to its goal?\nDoes it distinguish itself from calculating and measuring thought\nonly by its more rapid flight through large spaces? No, for a strange\nillogical power wings the foot of philosophical thinking; and this\npower is Fancy. Lifted by the latter, philosophical thinking leaps\nfrom possibility to possibility, and these for the time being are\ntaken as certainties; and now and then even whilst on the wing it\ngets hold of certainties. An ingenious presentiment shows them to\nthe flier; demonstrable certainties are divined at a distance to be\nat this point. Especially powerful is the strength of Fancy in the\nlightning-like seizing and illuminating of similarities; afterwards\nreflection applies its standards and models and seeks to substitute\nthe similarities by equalities, that which was seen side by side by\ncausalities. But though this should never be possible, even in the case\nof Thales the indemonstrable philosophising has yet its value; although\nall supports are broken when Logic and the rigidity of Empiricism want\nto get across to the proposition: Everything is water; yet still there\nis always, after the demolition of the scientific edifice, a remainder,\nand in this very remainder lies a moving force and as it were the hope\nof future fertility.\n\nOf course I do not mean that the thought in any restriction or\nattenuation, or as allegory, still retains some kind of \"truth\"; as\nif, for instance, one might imagine the creating artist standing\nnear a waterfall, and seeing in the forms which leap towards him,\nan artistically prefiguring game of the water with human and animal\nbodies, masks, plants, rocks, nymphs, griffins, and with all existing\ntypes in general, so that to him the proposition: Everything is water,\nis confirmed. The thought of Thales has rather its value--even after\nthe perception of its indemonstrableness--in the very fact, that it was\nmeant unmythically and unallegorically. The Greeks among whom Thales\nbecame so suddenly conspicuous were the anti-type of all realists\nby only believing essentially in the reality of men and gods, and\nby contemplating the whole of nature as if it were only a disguise,\nmasquerade and metamorphosis of these god-men. Man was to them the\ntruth, and essence of things; everything else mere phenomenon and\ndeceiving play. For that very reason they experienced incredible\ndifficulty in conceiving of ideas as ideas. Whilst with the moderns\nthe most personal item sublimates itself into abstractions, with\nthem the most abstract notions became personified. Thales, however,\nsaid, \"Not man but water is the reality of things \"; he began to\nbelieve in nature, in so far that he at least believed in water. As\na mathematician and astronomer he had grown cold towards everything\nmythical and allegorical, and even if he did not succeed in becoming\ndisillusioned as to the pure abstraction, Everything is one, and\nalthough he left off at a physical expression he was nevertheless among\nthe Greeks of his time a surprising rarity. Perhaps the exceedingly\nconspicuous _Orpheans_ possessed in a still higher degree than he the\nfaculty of conceiving abstractions and of thinking unplastically; only\nthey did not succeed in expressing these abstractions except in the\nform of the allegory. Also Pherecydes of Syrus who is a contemporary\nof Thales and akin to him in many physical conceptions hovers with\nthe expression of the latter in that middle region where Allegory is\nwedded to Mythos, so that he dares, for example, to compare the earth\nwith a winged oak, which hangs in the air with spread pinions and which\nZeus bedecks, after the defeat of Kronos, with a magnificent robe of\nhonour, into which with his own hands Zeus embroiders lands, water\nand rivers. In contrast with such gloomy allegorical philosophising\nscarcely to be translated into the realm of the comprehensible, Thales'\nare the works of a creative master who began to look into Nature's\ndepths without fantastic fabling. If as it is true he used Science\nand the demonstrable but soon out-leapt them, then this likewise\nis a typical characteristic of the philosophical genius. The Greek\nword which designates the Sage belongs etymologically to _sapio,_ I\ntaste, _sapiens,_ the tasting one, _sisyphos,_ the man of the most\ndelicate taste; the peculiar art of the philosopher therefore consists,\naccording to the opinion of the people, in a delicate selective\njudgment by taste, by discernment, by significant differentiation. He\nis not prudent, if one calls _him_ prudent, who in his own affairs\nfinds out the good; Aristotle rightly says: \"That which Thales and\nAnaxagoras know, people will call unusual, astounding, difficult,\ndivine but--useless, since human possessions were of no concern to\nthose two.\" Through thus selecting and precipitating the unusual,\nastounding, difficult, and divine, Philosophy marks the boundary-lines\ndividing her from Science in the same way as she does it from Prudence\nby the emphasising of the useless. Science without thus selecting,\nwithout such delicate taste, pounces upon everything knowable, in the\nblind covetousness to know all at any price; philosophical thinking\nhowever is always on the track of the things worth knowing, on the\ntrack of the great and most important discernments. Now the idea of\ngreatness is changeable, as well in the moral as in the \u00e6sthetic\nrealm, thus Philosophy begins with a legislation with respect to\ngreatness, she becomes a Nomenclator. \"That is great,\" she says,\nand therewith she raises man above the blind, untamed covetousness\nof his thirst for knowledge. By the idea of greatness she assuages\nthis thirst: and it is chiefly by this, that she contemplates the\ngreatest discernment, that of the essence and kernel of things, as\nattainable and attained. When Thales says, \"Everything is water,\" man\nis startled up out of his worm-like mauling of and crawling about among\nthe individual sciences; he divines the last solution of things and\nmasters through this divination the common perplexity of the lower\ngrades of knowledge. The philosopher tries to make the total-chord of\nthe universe re-echo within himself and then to project it into ideas\noutside himself: whilst he is contemplative like the creating artist,\nsympathetic like the religionist, looking out for ends and causalities\nlike the scientific man, whilst he feels himself swell up to the\nmacrocosm, he still retains the circumspection to contemplate himself\ncoldly as the reflex of the world; he retains that cool-headedness,\nwhich the dramatic artist possesses, when he transforms himself into\nother bodies, speaks out of them, and yet knows how to project this\ntransformation outside himself into written verses. What the verse is\nto the poet, dialectic thinking is to the philosopher; he snatches\nat it in order to hold fast his enchantment, in order to petrify it.\nAnd just as words and verse to the dramatist are only stammerings in\na foreign language, to tell in it what he lived, what he saw, and\nwhat he can directly promulgate by gesture and music only, thus the\nexpression of every deep philosophical intuition by means of dialectics\nand scientific reflection is, it is true, on the one hand the only\nmeans to communicate what has been seen, but on the other hand it is\na paltry means, and at the bottom a metaphorical, absolutely inexact\ntranslation into a different sphere and language. Thus Thales saw the\nUnity of the \"Existent,\" and when he wanted to communicate this idea he\ntalked of water.\n\n\n\n4\n\n\nWhilst the general type of the philosopher in the picture of Thales\nis set off rather hazily, the picture of his great successor already\nspeaks much more distinctly to us. _Anaximander_ of Milet, the\nfirst philosophical author of the Ancients, writes in the very way\nthat the typical philosopher will always write as long as he is\nnot alienated from ingenuousness and _na\u00efvet\u00e9_ by odd claims: in\na grand lapidarian style of writing, sentence for sentence ... a\nwitness of a new inspiration, and an expression of the sojourning in\nsublime contemplations. The thought and its form are milestones on\nthe path towards the highest wisdom. With such a lapidarian emphasis\nAnaximander once said: \"Whence things originated, thither, according\nto necessity, they must return and perish; for they must pay penalty\nand be judged for their injustices according to the order of time.\"\nEnigmatical utterance of a true pessimist, oracular inscription on the\nboundary-stone of Greek philosophy, how shall we explain thee?\n\nThe only serious moralist of our century in the Parergis (Vol. ii.,\nchap. 12, \"Additional Remarks on The Doctrine about the Suffering in\nthe World, Appendix of Corresponding Passages\") urges on us a similar\ncontemplation: \"The right standard by which to judge every human\nbeing is that he really is a being who ought not to exist at all,\nbut who is expiating his existence by manifold forms of suffering\nand death:--What can one expect from such a being? Are we not all\nsinners condemned to death? We expiate our birth firstly by our\nlife and secondly by our death.\" He who in the physiognomy of our\nuniversal human lot reads this doctrine and already recognises the\nfundamental bad quality of every human life, in the fact that none\ncan stand a very close and careful contemplation--although our time,\naccustomed to the biographical epidemic, seems to think otherwise and\nmore loftily about the dignity of man; he who, like Schopenhauer, on\n\"the heights of the Indian breezes\" has heard the sacred word about\nthe moral value of existence, will be kept with difficulty from\nmaking an extremely anthropomorphic metaphor and from generalizing\nthat melancholy doctrine--at first only limited to human life--and\napplying it by transmission to the general character of all existence.\nIt may not be very logical, it is however at any rate very human and\nmoreover quite in harmony with the philosophical leaping described\nabove, now with Anaximander to consider all Becoming as a punishable\nemancipation from eternal \"Being,\" as a wrong that is to be atoned\nfor by destruction. Everything that has once come into existence also\nperishes, whether we think of human life or of water or of heat and\ncold; everywhere where definite qualities are to be noticed, we are\nallowed to prophesy the extinction of these qualities--according to\nthe all-embracing proof of experience. Thus a being that possesses\ndefinite qualities and consists of them, can never be the origin and\nprinciple of things; the veritable _ens,_ the \"Existent,\" Anaximander\nconcluded, cannot possess any definite qualities, otherwise, like\nall other things, it would necessarily have originated and perished.\nIn order that Becoming may not cease, the Primordial-being must be\nindefinite. The immortality and eternity of the Primordial-being lies\nnot in an infiniteness and inexhaustibility--as usually the expounders\nof Anaximander presuppose--but in this, that it lacks the definite\nqualities which lead to destruction, for which reason it bears also its\nname: The Indefinite. The thus labelled Primordial-being is superior\nto all Becoming and for this very reason it guarantees the eternity\nand unimpeded course of Becoming. This last unity in that Indefinite,\nthe mother-womb of all things, can, it is true, be designated only\nnegatively by man, as something to which no predicate out of the\nexisting world of Becoming can be allotted, and might be considered a\npeer to the Kantian \"Thing-in-itself.\"\n\nOf course he who is able to wrangle persistently with others as to what\nkind of thing that primordial substance really was, whether perhaps an\nintermediate thing between air and water, or perhaps between air and\nfire, has not understood our philosopher at all; this is likewise to\nbe said about those, who seriously ask themselves, whether Anaximander\nhad thought of his primordial substance as a mixture of all existing\nsubstances. Rather we must direct our gaze to the place where we can\nlearn that Anaximander no longer treated the question of the origin\nof the world as purely physical; we must direct our gaze towards that\nfirst stated lapidarian proposition. When on the contrary he saw a sum\nof wrongs to be expiated in the plurality of things that have become,\nthen he, as the first Greek, with daring grasp caught up the tangle of\nthe most profound ethical problem. How can anything perish that has a\nright to exist? Whence that restless Becoming and giving-birth, whence\nthat expression of painful distortion on the face of Nature, whence the\nnever-ending dirge in all realms of existence? Out of this world of\ninjustice, of audacious apostasy from the primordial-unity of things\nAnaximander flees into a metaphysical castle, leaning out of which he\nturns his gaze far and wide in order at last, after a pensive silence,\nto address to all beings this question: \"What is your existence worth?\nAnd if it is worth nothing why are you there? By your guilt, I observe,\nyou sojourn in this world. You will have to expiate it by death. Look\nhow your earth fades; the seas decrease and dry up, the marine-shell\non the mountain shows you how much already they have dried up; fire\ndestroys your world even now, finally it will end in smoke and ashes.\nBut again and again such a world of transitoriness will ever build\nitself up; who shall redeem you from the curse of Becoming?\"\n\nNot every kind of life may have been welcome to a man who put such\nquestions, whose upward-soaring thinking continually broke the empiric\nropes, in order to take at once to the highest, superlunary flight.\nWillingly we believe tradition, that he walked along in especially\ndignified attire and showed a truly tragic hauteur in his gestures\nand habits of life. He lived as he wrote; he spoke as solemnly as he\ndressed himself, he raised his hand and placed his foot as if this\nexistence was a tragedy, and he had been born in order to co-operate\nin that tragedy by playing the _r\u00f4le_ of hero. In all that he was the\ngreat model of Empedocles. His fellow-citizens elected him the leader\nof an emigrating colony--perhaps they were pleased at being able to\nhonour him and at the same time to get rid of him. His thought also\nemigrated and founded colonies; in Ephesus and in Elea they could not\nget rid of him; and if they could not resolve upon staying at the spot\nwhere he stood, they nevertheless knew that they had been led there by\nhim, whence they now prepared to proceed without him.\n\nThales shows the need of simplifying the empire of plurality, and\nof reducing it to a mere expansion or disguise of the _one single_\nexisting quality, water. Anaximander goes beyond him with two steps.\nFirstly he puts the question to himself: How, if there exists an\neternal Unity at all, is that Plurality possible? and he takes the\nanswer out of the contradictory, self-devouring and denying character\nof this Plurality. The existence of this Plurality becomes a moral\nphenomenon to him; it is not justified, it expiates itself continually\nthrough destruction. But then the questions occur to him: Yet why has\nnot everything that has become perished long ago, since, indeed, quite\nan eternity of time has already gone by? Whence the ceaseless current\nof the River of Becoming? He can save himself from these questions\nonly by mystic possibilities: the eternal Becoming can have its origin\nonly in the eternal \"Being,\" the conditions for that apostasy from\nthat eternal \"Being\" to a Becoming in injustice are ever the same, the\nconstellation of things cannot help itself being thus fashioned, that\nno end is to be seen of that stepping forth of the individual being out\nof the lap of the \"Indefinite.\" At this Anaximander stayed; that is,\nhe remained within the deep shadows which like gigantic spectres were\nlying on the mountain range of such a world-perception. The more one\nwanted to approach the problem of solving how out of the Indefinite the\nDefinite, out of the Eternal the Temporal, out of the Just the Unjust\ncould by secession ever originate, the darker the night became.----\n\n\n\n5\n\n\nTowards the midst of this mystic night, in which Anaximander's problem\nof the Becoming was wrapped up, Heraclitus of Ephesus approached and\nilluminated it by a divine flash of lightning. \"I contemplate the\nBecoming,\" he exclaimed,--\"and nobody has so attentively watched this\neternal wave-surging and rhythm of things. And what do I behold?\nLawfulness, infallible certainty, ever equal paths of Justice,\ncondemning Erinyes behind all transgressions of the laws, the whole\nworld the spectacle of a governing justice and of demoniacally\nomnipresent natural forces subject to justice's sway. I do not behold\nthe punishment of that which has become, but the justification of\nBecoming. When has sacrilege, when has apostasy manifested itself in\ninviolable forms, in laws esteemed sacred? Where injustice sways, there\nis caprice, disorder, irregularity, contradiction; where however Law\nand Zeus' daughter, Dike, rule alone, as in this world, how could the\nsphere of guilt, of expiation, of judgment, and as it were the place of\nexecution of all condemned ones be there?\"\n\nFrom this intuition Heraclitus took two coherent negations, which are\nput into the right light only by a comparison with the propositions of\nhis predecessor. Firstly, he denied the duality of two quite diverse\nworlds, into the assumption of which Anaximander had been pushed; he\nno longer distinguished a physical world from a metaphysical, a realm\nof definite qualities from a realm of indefinable indefiniteness. Now\nafter this first step he could neither be kept back any longer from\na still greater audacity of denying: he denied \"Being\" altogether.\nFor this one world which was left to him,--shielded all round by\neternal, unwritten laws, flowing up and down in the brazen beat of\nrhythm,--shows nowhere persistence, indestructibility, a bulwark in the\nstream. Louder than Anaximander, Heraclitus exclaimed: \"I see nothing\nbut Becoming. Be not deceived! It is the fault of your limited outlook\nand not the fault of the essence of things if you believe that you see\nfirm land anywhere in the ocean of Becoming and Passing. You need names\nfor things, just as if they had a rigid permanence, but the very river\nin which you bathe a second time is no longer the same one which you\nentered before.\"\n\nHeraclitus has as his royal property the highest power of intuitive\nconception, whereas towards the other mode of conception which is\nconsummated by ideas and logical combinations, that is towards reason,\nhe shows himself cool, apathetic, even hostile, and he seems to\nderive a pleasure when he is able to contradict reason by means of a\ntruth gained intuitively, and this he does in such propositions as:\n\"Everything has always its opposite within itself,\" so fearlessly\nthat Aristotle before the tribunal of Reason accuses him of the\nhighest crime, of having sinned against the law of opposition.\nIntuitive representation however embraces two things: firstly, the\npresent, motley, changing world, pressing on us in all experiences,\nsecondly, the conditions by means of which alone any experience of\nthis world becomes possible: time and space. For these are able to be\nintuitively apprehended, purely in themselves and independent of any\nexperience; _i.e.,_ they can be perceived, although they are without\ndefinite contents. If now Heraclitus considered time in this fashion,\ndissociated from all experiences, he had in it the most instructive\nmonogram of all that which falls within the realm of intuitive\nconception. Just as he conceived of time, so also for instance did\nSchopenhauer, who repeatedly says of it: that in it every instant\nexists only in so far as it has annihilated the preceding one, its\nfather, in order to be itself effaced equally quickly; that past\nand future are as unreal as any dream; that the present is only the\ndimensionless and unstable boundary between the two; that however, like\ntime, so space, and again like the latter, so also everything that\nis simultaneously in space and time, has only a relative existence,\nonly through and for the sake of a something else, of the same kind\nas itself, _i.e.,_ existing only under the same limitations. This\ntruth is in the highest degree self-evident, accessible to everyone,\nand just for that very reason, abstractly and rationally, it is only\nattained with great difficulty. Whoever has this truth before his eyes\nmust however also proceed at once to the next Heraclitean consequence\nand say that the whole essence of actuality is in fact activity, and\nthat for actuality there is no other kind of existence and reality,\nas Schopenhauer has likewise expounded (\"The World As Will And Idea,\"\nVol. I., Bk. I, sec. 4): \"Only as active does it fill space and time:\nits action upon the immediate object determines the perception in\nwhich alone it exists: the effect of the action of any material object\nupon any other, is known only in so far as the latter acts upon the\nimmediate object in a different way from that in which it acted before;\nit consists in this alone. Cause and effect thus constitute the whole\nnature of matter; its true being _is_ its action. The totality of\neverything material is therefore very appropriately called in German\n_Wirklichkeit_ (actuality)--a word which is far more expressive than\n_Realit\u00e4t_ (reality).[2] That upon which actuality acts is always\nmatter; actuality's whole 'Being' and essence therefore consist only in\nthe orderly change, which _one_ part of it causes in another, and is\ntherefore wholly relative, according to a relation which is valid only\nwithin the boundary of actuality, as in the case of time and space.\"\n\nThe eternal and exclusive Becoming, the total instability of all\nreality and actuality, which continually works and becomes and never\n_is,_ as Heraclitus teaches--is an awful and appalling conception,\nand in its effects most nearly related to that sensation, by which\nduring an earthquake one loses confidence in the firmly-grounded earth.\nIt required an astonishing strength to translate this effect into\nits opposite, into the sublime, into happy astonishment. Heraclitus\naccomplished this through an observation of the proper course of all\nBecoming and Passing, which he conceived of under the form of polarity,\nas the divergence of a force into two qualitatively different, opposite\nactions, striving after reunion. A quality is set continually at\nvariance with itself and separates itself into its opposites: these\nopposites continually strive again one towards another. The common\npeople of course think to recognise something rigid, completed,\nconsistent; but the fact of the matter is that at any instant, bright\nand dark, sour and sweet are side by side and attached to one another\nlike two wrestlers of whom sometimes the one succeeds, sometimes the\nother. According to Heraclitus honey is at the same time sweet and\nbitter, and the world itself an amphora whose contents constantly need\nstirring up. Out of the war of the opposites all Becoming originates;\nthe definite and to us seemingly persistent qualities express only the\nmomentary predominance of the one fighter, but with that the war is not\nat an end; the wrestling continues to all eternity. Everything happens\naccording to this struggle, and this very struggle manifests eternal\njustice. It is a wonderful conception, drawn from the purest source\nof Hellenism, which considers the struggle as the continual sway of a\nhomogeneous, severe justice bound by eternal laws. Only a Greek was\nable to consider this conception as the fundament of a _Cosmodicy;_ it\nis Hesiod's good Eris transfigured into the cosmic principle, it is\nthe idea of a contest, an idea held by individual Greeks and by their\nState, and translated out of the gymnasia and pal\u00e6stra, out of the\nartistic agonistics, out of the struggle of the political parties and\nof the towns into the most general principle, so that the machinery of\nthe universe is regulated by it. Just as every Greek fought as though\nhe alone were in the right, and as though an absolutely sure standard\nof judicial opinion could at any instant decide whither victory is\ninclining, thus the qualities wrestle one with another, according to\ninviolable laws and standards which are inherent in the struggle. The\nThings themselves in the permanency of which the limited intellect of\nman and animal believes, do not \"exist\" at all; they are as the fierce\nflashing and fiery sparkling of drawn swords, as the stars of Victory\nrising with a radiant resplendence in the battle of the opposite\nqualities.\n\nThat struggle which is peculiar to all Becoming, that eternal\ninterchange of victory is again described by Schopenhauer: (\"The World\nAs Will And Idea,\" Vol. I., Bk. 2, sec. 27) \"The permanent matter\nmust constantly change its form; for under the guidance of causality,\nmechanical, physical, chemical, and organic phenomena, eagerly striving\nto appear, wrest the matter from each other, for each desires to\nreveal its own Idea. This strife may be followed up through the whole\nof nature; indeed nature exists only through it.\" The following pages\ngive the most noteworthy illustrations of this struggle, only that\nthe prevailing tone of this description ever remains other than that\nof Heraclitus in so far as to Schopenhauer the struggle is a proof of\nthe Will to Life falling out with itself; it is to him a feasting\non itself on the part of this dismal, dull impulse, as a phenomenon\non the whole horrible and not at all making for happiness. The arena\nand the object of this struggle is Matter,--which some natural forces\nalternately endeavour to disintegrate and build up again at the expense\nof other natural forces,--as also Space and Time, the union of which\nthrough causality _is_ this very matter.\n\n\n[2] Mira in quibusdam rebus verborum proprietas est, et consuetudo\nsermonis antiqui qu\u00e6dam efficacissimis notis signat (Seneca, Epist.\n81).--TR.\n\n\n\n6\n\n\nWhilst the imagination of Heraclitus measured the restlessly moving\nuniverse, the \"actuality\" (_Wirklichkeit_), with the eye of the happy\nspectator, who sees innumerable pairs wrestling in joyous combat\nentrusted to the superintendence of severe umpires, a still higher\npresentiment seized him, he no longer could contemplate the wrestling\npairs and the umpires, separated one from another; the very umpires\nseemed to fight, and the fighters seemed to be their own judges--yea,\nsince at the bottom he conceived only of the one Justice eternally\nswaying, he dared to exclaim: \"The contest of The Many is itself pure\njustice. And after all: The One is The Many. For what are all those\nqualities according to their nature? Are they immortal gods? Are they\nseparate beings working for themselves from the beginning and without\nend? And if the world which we see knows only Becoming and Passing but\nno Permanence, should perhaps those qualities constitute a differently\nfashioned metaphysical world, true, not a world of unity as Anaximander\nsought behind the fluttering veil of plurality, but a world of eternal\nand essential pluralities?\" Is it possible that however violently he\nhad denied such duality, Heraclitus has after all by a round-about way\naccidentally got into the dual cosmic order, an order with an Olympus\nof numerous immortal gods and demons,--viz., _many_ realities,--and\nwith a human world, which sees only the dust-cloud of the Olympic\nstruggle and the flashing of divine spears,--_i.e.,_ only a Becoming?\nAnaximander had fled just from these definite qualities into the lap of\nthe metaphysical \"Indefinite\"; because the former _became_ and passed,\nhe had denied them a true and essential existence; however should it\nnot seem now as if the Becoming is only the looming-into-view of a\nstruggle of eternal qualities? When we speak of the Becoming, should\nnot the original cause of this be sought in the peculiar feebleness of\nhuman cognition--whereas in the nature of things there is perhaps no\nBecoming, but only a co-existing of many true increate indestructible\nrealities?\n\nThese are Heraclitean loop-holes and labyrinths; he exclaims once\nagain: \"The 'One' is the 'Many'.\" The many perceptible qualities are\nneither eternal entities, nor phantasmata of our senses (Anaxagoras\nconceives them later on as the former, Parmenides as the latter),\nthey are neither rigid, sovereign \"Being\" nor fleeting Appearance\nhovering in human minds. The third possibility which alone was left\nto Heraclitus nobody will be able to divine with dialectic sagacity\nand as it were by calculation, for what he invented here is a rarity\neven in the realm of mystic incredibilities and unexpected cosmic\nmetaphors.--The world is the _Game_ of Zeus, or expressed more\nphysically, the game of fire with itself, the \"One\" is only in this\nsense at the same time the \"Many.\"--\n\nIn order to elucidate in the first place the introduction of fire as\na world-shaping force, I recall how Anaximander had further developed\nthe theory of water as the origin of things. Placing confidence in the\nessential part of Thales' theory, and strengthening and adding to the\nlatter's observations, Anaximander however was not to be convinced\nthat before the water and, as it were, after the water there was no\nfurther stage of quality: no, to him out of the Warm and the Cold\nthe Moist seemed to form itself, and the Warm and the Cold therefore\nwere supposed to be the preliminary stages, the still more original\nqualities. With their issuing forth from the primordial existence\nof the \"Indefinite,\" Becoming begins. Heraclitus who as physicist\nsubordinated himself to the importance of Anaximander, explains to\nhimself this Anaximandrian \"Warm\" as the respiration, the warm breath,\nthe dry vapours, in short as the fiery element: about this fire he now\nenunciates the same as Thales and Anaximander had enunciated about\nthe water: that in innumerable metamorphoses it was passing along the\npath of Becoming, especially in the three chief aggregate stages as\nsomething Warm, Moist, and Firm. For water in descending is transformed\ninto earth, in ascending into fire: or as Heraclitus appears to have\nexpressed himself more exactly: from the sea ascend only the pure\nvapours which serve as food to the divine fire of the stars, from the\nearth only the dark, foggy ones, from which the Moist derives its\nnourishment. The pure vapours are the transitional stage in the passing\nof sea into fire, the impure the transitional stage in the passing\nof earth into water. Thus the two paths of metamorphosis of the fire\nrun continuously side by side, upwards and downwards, to and fro, from\nfire to water, from water to earth, from earth back again to water,\nfrom water to fire. Whereas Heraclitus is a follower of Anaximander in\nthe most important of these conceptions, _e.g.,_ that the fire is kept\nup by the evaporations, or herein, that out of the water is dissolved\npartly earth, partly fire; he is on the other hand quite independent\nand in opposition to Anaximander in excluding the \"Cold\" from the\nphysical process, whilst Anaximander had put it side by side with the\n\"Warm\" as having the same rights, so as to let the \"Moist\" originate\nout of both. To do so, was of course a necessity to Heraclitus, for\nif everything is to be fire, then, however many possibilities of its\ntransformation might be assumed, nothing can exist that would be the\nabsolute antithesis to fire; he has, therefore, probably interpreted\nonly as a degree of the \"Warm\" that which is called the \"Cold,\" and\nhe could justify this interpretation without difficulty. Much more\nimportant than this deviation from the doctrine of Anaximander is a\nfurther agreement; he, like the latter, believes in an end of the\nworld periodically repeating itself and in an ever-renewed emerging of\nanother world out of the all-destroying world-fire. The period during\nwhich the world hastens towards that world-fire and the dissolution\ninto pure fire is characterised by him most strikingly as a demand\nand a need; the state of being completely swallowed up by the fire as\nsatiety; and now to us remains the question as to how he understood\nand named the newly awakening impulse for world-creation, the\npouring-out-of-itself into the forms of plurality. The Greek proverb\nseems to come to our assistance with the thought that \"satiety gives\nbirth to crime\" (the Hybris) and one may indeed ask oneself for a\nminute whether perhaps Heraclitus has derived that return to plurality\nout of the Hybris. Let us just take this thought seriously: in its\nlight the face of Heraclitus changes before our eyes, the proud gleam\nof his eyes dies out, a wrinkled expression of painful resignation, of\nimpotence becomes distinct, it seems that we know why later antiquity\ncalled him the \"weeping philosopher.\" Is not the whole world-process\nnow an act of punishment of the Hybris? The plurality the result of a\ncrime? The transformation of the pure into the impure, the consequence\nof injustice? Is not the guilt now shifted into the essence of the\nthings and indeed, the world of Becoming and of individuals accordingly\nexonerated from guilt; yet at the same time are they not condemned for\never and ever to bear the consequences of guilt?\n\n\n\n7\n\n\nThat dangerous word, Hybris, is indeed the touchstone for every\nHeraclitean; here he may show whether he has understood or mistaken\nhis master. Is there in this world: Guilt, injustice, contradiction,\nsuffering?\n\nYes, exclaims Heraclitus, but only for the limited human being, who\nsees divergently and not convergently, not for the contuitive god;\nto him everything opposing converges into one harmony, invisible it\nis true to the common human eye, yet comprehensible to him who like\nHeraclitus resembles the contemplative god. Before his fiery eye no\ndrop of injustice is left in the world poured out around him, and even\nthat cardinal obstacle--how pure fire can take up its quarters in\nforms so impure--he masters by means of a sublime simile. A Becoming\nand Passing, a building and destroying, without any moral bias, in\nperpetual innocence is in this world only the play of the artist and of\nthe child. And similarly, just as the child and the artist play, the\neternally living fire plays, builds up and destroys, in innocence--and\nthis game the _\u00c6on_ plays with himself. Transforming himself into water\nand earth, like a child he piles heaps of sand by the sea, piles up\nand demolishes; from time to time he recommences the game. A moment of\nsatiety, then again desire seizes him, as desire compels the artist to\ncreate. Not wantonness, but the ever newly awakening impulse to play,\ncalls into life other worlds. The child throws away his toys; but soon\nhe starts again in an innocent frame of mind. As soon however as the\nchild builds he connects, joins and forms lawfully and according to an\ninnate sense of order.\n\nThus only is the world contemplated by the \u00e6sthetic man, who has\nlearned from the artist and the genesis of the latter's work, how the\nstruggle of plurality can yet bear within itself law and justice,\nhow the artist stands contemplative above, and working within the\nwork of art, how necessity and play, antagonism and harmony must pair\nthemselves for the procreation of the work of art.\n\nWho now will still demand from such a philosophy a system of Ethics\nwith the necessary imperatives--Thou Shalt,--or even reproach\nHeraclitus with such a deficiency. Man down to his last fibre is\nNecessity and absolutely \"unfree \"--if by freedom one understands the\nfoolish claim to be able to change at will one's _essentia_ like a\ngarment, a claim, which up to the present every serious philosophy\nhas rejected with due scorn. That so few human beings live with\nconsciousness in the _Logos_ and in accordance with the all-overlooking\nartist's eye originates from their souls being wet and from the fact\nthat men's eyes and ears, their intellect in general is a bad witness\nwhen \"moist ooze fills their souls.\" Why that is so, is not questioned\nany more than why fire becomes water and earth. Heraclitus is not\n_compelled_ to prove (as Leibnitz was) that this world was even the\nbest of all; it was sufficient for him that the world is the beautiful,\ninnocent play of the _\u00c6on._ Man on the whole is to him even an\nirrational being, with which the fact that in all his essence the law\nof all-ruling reason is fulfilled does lot clash. He does not occupy\na specially favoured position in nature, whose highest phenomenon is\nnot simple-minded man, but fire, for instance, as stars. In so far as\nman has through necessity received a share of fire, he is a little\nmore rational; as far as he consists of earth and water it stands\nbadly with his reason. He is not compelled to take cognisance of the\n_Logos_ simply because he is a human being. Why is there water, why\nearth? This to Heraclitus is a much more serious problem than to ask,\nwhy men are so stupid and bad. In the highest and the most perverted\nmen the same inherent lawfulness and justice manifest themselves.\nIf however one would ask Heraclitus the question \"Why is fire not\nalways fire, why is it now water, now earth?\" then he would only just\nanswer: \"It is a game, don't take it too pathetically and still less,\nmorally.\" Heraclitus describes only the existing world and has the same\ncontemplative pleasure in it which the artist experiences when looking\nat his growing work. Only those who have cause to be discontented\nwith his natural history of man find him gloomy, melancholy, tearful,\nsombre, atrabilarious, pessimistic and altogether hateful. He however\nwould take these discontented people, together with their antipathies\nand sympathies, their hatred und their love, as negligible and perhaps\nanswer them with some such comment as: \"Dogs bark at anything they do\nnot know,\" or, \"To the ass chaff is preferable to gold.\"\n\nWith such discontented persons also originate the numerous complaints\nas to the obscurity of the Heraclitean style; probably no man has ever\nwritten clearer and more illuminatingly; of course, very abruptly,\nand therefore naturally obscure to the racing readers. But why a\nphilosopher should intentionally write obscurely--a thing habitually\nsaid about Heraclitus--is absolutely inexplicable; unless he has some\ncause to hide his thoughts or is sufficiently a rogue to conceal his\nthoughtlessness underneath words. One is, as Schopenhauer says, indeed\ncompelled by lucid expression to prevent misunderstandings even in\naffairs of practical every-day life, how then should one be allowed to\nexpress oneself indistinctly, indeed puzzlingly in the most difficult,\nmost abstruse, scarcely attainable object of thinking, the tasks of\nphilosophy? With respect to brevity however Jean Paul gives a good\nprecept: \"On the whole it is right that everything great--of deep\nmeaning to a rare mind--should be uttered with brevity and (therefore)\nobscurely so that the paltry mind would rather proclaim it to be\nnonsense than translate it into the realm of his empty-headedness.\nFor common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and\nrichest saying nothing but their own every-day opinion.\" Moreover and\nin spite of it Heraclitus has not escaped the \"paltry minds\"; already\nthe Stoics have \"re-expounded\" him into the shallow and dragged down\nhis \u00e6sthetic fundamental-perception as to the play of the world to the\nmiserable level of the common regard for the practical ends of the\nworld and more explicitly for the advantages of man, so that out of his\nPhysics has arisen in those heads a crude optimism, with the continual\ninvitation to Dick, Tom, and Harry, \"_Plaudite amici!_\"\n\n\n\n8\n\n\nHeraclitus was proud; and if it comes to pride with a philosopher then\nit is a great pride. His work never refers him to a \"public,\" the\napplause of the masses and the hailing chorus of contemporaries. To\nwander lonely along his path belongs to the nature of the philosopher.\nHis talents are the most rare, in a certain sense the most unnatural\nand at the same time exclusive and hostile even toward kindred talents.\nThe wall of his self-sufficiency must be of diamond, if it is not to\nbe demolished and broken, for everything is in motion against him. His\njourney to immortality is more cumbersome and impeded than any other\nand yet nobody can believe more firmly than the philosopher that he\nwill attain the goal by that journey--because he does not know where\nhe is to stand if not on the widely spread wings of all time; for the\ndisregard of everything present and momentary lies in the essence of\nthe great philosophic nature. He has truth; the wheel of time may roll\nwhither it pleases, never can it escape from truth. It is important\nto hear that such men have lived. Never for example would one be able\nto imagine the pride of Heraclitus as an idle possibility. In itself\nevery endeavour after knowledge seems by its nature to be eternally\nunsatisfied and unsatisfactory. Therefore nobody unless instructed\nby history will like to believe in such a royal self-esteem and\nconviction of being the only wooer of truth. Such men live in their\nown solar-system--one has to look for them there. A Pythagoras, an\nEmpedocles treated themselves too with a super-human esteem, yea, with\nalmost religious awe; but the tie of sympathy united with the great\nconviction of the metempsychosis and the unity of everything living,\nled them back to other men, for their welfare and salvation. Of that\nfeeling of solitude, however, which permeated the Ephesian recluse\nof the Artemis Temple, one can only divine something, when growing\nbenumbed in the wildest mountain desert. No paramount feeling of\ncompassionate agitation, no desire to help, heal and save emanates from\nhim. He is a star without an atmosphere. His eye, directed blazingly\ninwards, looks outward, for appearance's sake only, extinct and icy.\nAll around him, immediately upon the citadel of his pride beat the\nwaves of folly and perversity: with loathing he turns away from them.\nBut men with a feeling heart would also shun such a Gorgon monster\nas cast out of brass; within an out-of-the-way sanctuary, among the\nstatues of gods, by the side of cold composedly-sublime architecture\nsuch a being may appear more comprehensible. As man among men\nHeraclitus was incredible; and though he was seen paying attention to\nthe play of noisy children, even then he was reflecting upon what never\nman thought of on such an occasion: the play of the great world-child,\nZeus. He had no need of men, not even for his discernments. He was\nnot interested in all that which one might perhaps ascertain from\nthem, and in what the other sages before him had been endeavouring to\nascertain. He spoke with disdain of such questioning, collecting, in\nshort \"historic\" men. \"I sought and investigated myself,\" he said, with\na word by which one designates the investigation of an oracle; as if\nhe and no one else were the true fulfiller and achiever of the Delphic\nprecept: \"Know thyself.\"\n\nWhat he learned from this oracle, he deemed immortal wisdom, and\neternally worthy of explanation, of unlimited effect even in the\ndistance, after the model of the prophetic speeches of the Sibyl.\nIt is sufficient for the latest mankind: let the latter have that\nexpounded to her, as oracular sayings, which he like the Delphic god\n\"neither enunciates nor conceals.\" Although it is proclaimed by him,\n\"without smiles, finery and the scent of ointments,\" but rather as with\n\"foaming mouth,\" it _must_ force its way through the millenniums of\nthe future. For the world needs truth eternally, therefore she needs\nalso Heraclitus eternally; although he has no need of her. What does\nhis fame matter to _him?_--fame with \"mortals ever flowing on!\" as he\nexclaims scornfully. His fame is of concern to man, not to himself;\nthe immortality of mankind needs him, not he the immortality of the\nman Heraclitus. That which he beheld, _the doctrine of the Law in the\nBecoming, and of the Play in the Necessity,_ must henceforth be beheld\neternally; he has raised the curtain of this greatest stage-play.\n\n\n\n9\n\n\nWhereas in every word of Heraclitus are expressed the pride and the\nmajesty of truth, but of truth caught by intuitions, not scaled by\nthe rope-ladder of Logic, whereas in sublime ecstasy he beholds but\ndoes not espy, discerns but does not reckon, he is contrasted with his\ncontemporary _Parmenides,_ a man likewise with the type of a prophet\nof truth, but formed as it were out of ice and not out of fire, and\nshedding around himself cold, piercing light.\n\nParmenides once had, probably in his later years, a moment of the\nvery purest abstraction, undimmed by any reality, perfectly lifeless;\nthis moment--un-Greek, like no other in the two centuries of the\nTragic Age--the product of which is the doctrine of \"Being,\" became a\nboundary-stone for his own life, which divided it into two periods; at\nthe same time however the same moment divides the pre-Socratic thinking\ninto two halves, of which the first might be called the Anaximandrian,\nthe second the Parmenidean. The first period in Parmenides' own\nphilosophising bears still the signature of Anaximander; this\nperiod produced a detailed philosophic-physical system as answer to\nAnaximander's questions. When later that icy abstraction-horror caught\nhim, and the simplest proposition treating of \"Being\" and \"Not-Being\"\nwas advanced by him, then among the many older doctrines thrown by him\nupon the scrap heap was also his own system. However he does not appear\nto have lost all paternal piety towards the strong and well-shapen\nchild of his youth, and he saved himself therefore by saying: \"It is\ntrue there is only one right way; if one however wants at any time to\nbetake oneself to another, then my earlier opinion according to its\npurity and consequence alone is right.\" Sheltering himself with this\nphrase he has allowed his former physical system a worthy and extensive\nspace in his great poem on Nature, which really was to proclaim the\nnew discernment as the only signpost to truth. This fatherly regard,\neven though an error should have crept in through it, is a remainder\nof human feeling, in a nature quite petrified by logical rigidity and\nalmost changed into a thinking-machine.\n\nParmenides, whose personal intercourse with Anaximander does not seem\nincredible to me, and whose starting from Anaximander's doctrine is\nnot only credible but evident, had the same distrust for the complete\nseparation of a world which only is, and a world which only becomes, as\nhad also caught Heraclitus and led to a denying of \"Being\" altogether.\nBoth sought a way out from that contrast and divergence of a dual order\nof the world. That leap into the Indefinite, Indefinable, by which\nonce for all Anaximander had escaped from the realm of Becoming and\nfrom the empirically given qualities of such realm, that leap did not\nbecome an easy matter to minds so independently fashioned as those of\nHeraclitus and Parmenides; first they endeavoured to walk as far as\nthey could and reserved to themselves the leap for that place, where\nthe foot finds no more hold and one has to leap, in order not to fall.\nBoth looked repeatedly at that very world, which Anaximander had\ncondemned in so melancholy a way and declared to be the place of wanton\ncrime and at the same time the penitentiary cell for the injustice of\nBecoming. Contemplating this world Heraclitus, as we know already, had\ndiscovered what a wonderful order, regularity and security manifest\nthemselves in every Becoming; from that he concluded that the Becoming\ncould not be anything evil and unjust. Quite a different outlook had\nParmenides; he compared the qualities one with another, and believed\nthat they were not all of the same kind, but ought to be classified\nunder two headings. If for example he compared bright and dark, then\nthe second quality was obviously only the _negation_ of the first;\nand thus he distinguished positive and negative qualities, seriously\nendeavouring to rediscover and register that fundamental antithesis\nin the whole realm of Nature. His method was the following: He took a\nfew antitheses, _e.g.,_ light and heavy, rare and dense, active and\npassive, and compared them with that typical antithesis of bright and\ndark: that which corresponded with the bright was the positive, that\nwhich corresponded with the dark the negative quality. If he took\nperhaps the heavy and light, the light fell to the side of the bright,\nthe heavy to the side of the dark; and thus \"heavy\" was to him only\nthe negation of \"light,\" but the \"light\" a positive quality. This\nmethod alone shows that he had a defiant aptitude for abstract logical\nprocedure, closed against the suggestions of the senses. The \"heavy\"\nseems indeed to offer itself very forcibly to the senses as a positive\nquality; that did not keep Parmenides from stamping it as a negation.\nSimilarly he placed the earth in opposition to the fire, the \"cold\"\nin opposition to the \"warm,\" the \"dense\" in opposition to the \"rare,\"\nthe \"female\" in opposition to the \"male,\" the \"passive\" in opposition\nto the \"active,\" merely as negations: so that before his gaze our\nempiric world divided itself into two separate spheres, into that\nof the positive qualities--with a bright, fiery, warm, light, rare,\nactive-masculine character--and into that of the negative qualities.\nThe latter express really only the lack, the absence of the others, the\npositive ones. He therefore described the sphere in which the positive\nqualities are absent as dark, earthy, cold, heavy, dense and altogether\nas of feminine-passive character. Instead of the expressions \"positive\"\nand \"negative\" he used the standing term \"existent\" and \"non-existent\"\nand had arrived with this at the proposition, that, in contradiction to\nAnaximander, this our world itself contains something \"existent,\" and\nof course something \"non-existent.\" One is not to seek that \"existent\"\noutside the world and as it were above our horizon; but before us,\nand everywhere in every Becoming, something \"existent\" and active is\ncontained.\n\nWith that however still remained to him the task of giving the more\nexact answer to the question: What is the Becoming? and here was the\nmoment where he had to leap, in order not to fall, although perhaps to\nsuch natures as that of Parmenides, even any leaping means a falling.\nEnough! we get into fog, into the mysticism of _qualitates occult\u00e6,_\nand even a little into mythology. Parmenides, like Heraclitus, looks\nat the general Becoming and Not-remaining and explains to himself a\nPassing only thus, that the \"Non-Existent\" bore the guilt. For how\nshould the \"Existent\" bear the guilt of Passing? Likewise, however,\nthe Originating, i.e., the Becoming, must come about through the\nassistance of the \"Non-Existent\"; for the \"Existent\" is always there\nand could not of itself first originate and it could not explain any\nOriginating, any Becoming. Therefore the Originating, the Becoming\nas well as the Passing and Perishing have been brought about by the\nnegative qualities. But that the originating \"thing\" has a content,\nand the passing \"thing\" loses a content, presupposes that the positive\nqualities--and that just means that very content--participate\nlikewise in both processes. In short the proposition results: \"For the\nBecoming the 'Existent' as well as the 'Non-Existent' is necessary;\nwhen they co-operate then a Becoming results.\" But how come the\n\"positive\" and the \"negative\" to one another? Should they not on the\ncontrary eternally flee one another as antitheses and thereby make\nevery Becoming impossible? Here Parmenides appeals to a _qualitas\nocculta,_ to a mystic tendency of the antithetical pairs to approach\nand attract one another, and he allegorises that peculiar contrariety\nby the name of Aphrodite, and by the empirically known relation of\nthe male and female principle. It is the power of Aphrodite which\nplays the matchmaker between the antithetical pair, the \"Existent\"\nand the \"Non-Existent.\" Passion brings together the antagonistic and\nantipathetic elements: the result is a Becoming. When Desire has become\nsatiated, Hatred and the innate antagonism again drive asunder the\n\"Existent\" and the \"Non-Existent\"--then man says: the thing perishes,\npasses.\n\n\n\n10\n\n\nBut no one with impunity lays his profane hands on such awful\nabstractions as the \"Existent\" and the \"Non-Existent\"; the blood\nfreezes slowly as one touches them. There was a day upon which an odd\nidea suddenly occurred to Parmenides, an idea which seemed to take\nall value away from his former combinations, so that he felt inclined\nto throw them aside, like a money bag with old worn-out coins. It is\ncommonly believed that an external impression, in addition to the\ncentrifugal consequence of such ideas as \"existent\" and \"non-existent,\"\nhas also been co-active in the invention of that day; this impression\nwas an acquaintance with the theology of the old roamer and rhapsodist,\nthe singer of a mystic deification of Nature, the Kolophonian\n_Xenophanes._ Throughout an extraordinary life Xenophanes lived as\na wandering poet and became through his travels a well-informed and\nmost instructive man who knew how to question and how to narrate, for\nwhich reason Heraclitus reckoned him amongst the polyhistorians and\nabove all amongst the \"historic\" natures, in the sense mentioned.\nWhence and when came to him the mystic bent into the One and the\neternally Resting, nobody will be able to compute; perhaps it is only\nthe conception of the finally settled old man, to whom, after the\nagitation of his erratic wanderings, and after the restless learning\nand searching for truth, the vision of a divine rest, the permanence of\nall things within a pantheistic primal peace appears as _the_ highest\nand greatest ideal. After all it seems to me quite accidental that in\nthe same place in Elea two men lived together for a time, each of whom\ncarried in his head a conception of unity; they formed no school and\nhad nothing in common which perhaps the one might have learned from\nthe other and then might have handed on. For, in the case of these two\nmen, the origin of that conception of unity is quite different, yea\nopposite; and if either of them has become at all acquainted with the\ndoctrine of the other then, in order to understand it at all, he had to\ntranslate it first into his own language. With this translation however\nthe very specific element of the other doctrine was lost. Whereas\nParmenides arrived at the unity of the \"Existent\" purely through an\nalleged logical consequence and whereas he span that unity out of the\nideas \"Being\" and \"Not-Being,\" Xenophanes was a religious mystic and\nbelonged, with that mystic unity, very properly to the Sixth Century.\nAlthough he was no such revolutionising personality as Pythagoras\nhe had nevertheless in his wanderings the same bent and impulse to\nimprove, purify, and cure men. He was the ethical teacher, but still\nin the stage of the rhapsodist; in a later time he would have been\na sophist. In the daring disapproval of the existing customs and\nvaluations he had not his equal in Greece; moreover he did not, like\nHeraclitus and Plato, retire into solitude but placed himself before\nthe very public, whose exulting admiration of Homer, whose passionate\npropensity for the honours of the gymnastic festivals, whose adoration\nof stones in human shape, he criticised severely with wrath and scorn,\nyet not as a brawling Thersites. The freedom of the individual was with\nhim on its zenith; and by this almost limitless stepping free from all\nconventions he was more closely related to Parmenides than by that last\ndivine unity, which once he had beheld, in a visionary state worthy of\nthat century. His unity scarcely had expression and word in common with\nthe one \"Being\" of Parmenides, and certainly had not the same origin.\n\nIt was rather an opposite state of mind in which Parmenides found his\ndoctrine of \"Being,\" On that day and in that state he examined his\ntwo co-operating antitheses, the \"Existent\" and the \"Non-Existent,\"\nthe positive and the negative qualities, of which Desire and Hatred\nconstitute the world and the Becoming. He was suddenly caught up,\nmistrusting, by the idea of negative quality, of the \"Non-Existent.\"\nFor can something which does not exist be a quality? or to put the\nquestion in a broader sense: can anything indeed which does not exist,\nexist? The only form of knowledge in which we at once put unconditional\ntrust and the disapproval of which amounts to madness, is the tautology\nA = A. But this very tautological knowledge called inexorably to him:\nwhat does not exist, exists not! What is, is! Suddenly he feels\nupon his life the load of an enormous logical sin; for had he not\nalways without hesitation assumed that _there were existing_ negative\nqualities, in short a \"Non-Existent,\" that therefore, to express it by\na formula, A = Not-A, which indeed could only be advanced by the most\nout and out perversity of thinking. It is true, as he recollected, the\nwhole great mass of men judge with the same perversity; he himself\nhas only participated in the general crime against logic. But the\nsame moment which charges him with this crime surrounds him with the\nlight of the glory of an invention, he has found, apart from all human\nillusion, a principle, the key to the world-secret, he now descends\ninto the abyss of things, guided by the firm and fearful hand of the\ntautological truth as to \"Being.\"\n\nOn the way thither he meets Heraclitus--an unfortunate encounter! Just\nnow Heraclitus' play with antinomies was bound to be very hateful to\nhim, who placed the utmost importance upon the severest separation of\n\"Being\" and \"Not-Being\"; propositions like this: \"We are and at the\nsame time we are not\" --\"'Being' and 'Not-Being' is at the same time\nthe same thing and again not the same thing,\" propositions through\nwhich all that he had just elucidated and disentangled became again\ndim and inextricable, incited him to wrath. \"Away with the men,\" he\nexclaimed, \"who seem to have two heads and yet know nothing! With them\ntruly everything is in flux, even their thinking! They stare at things\nstupidly, but they must be deaf as well as blind so to mix up the\nopposites\"! The want of judgment on the part of the masses, glorified\nby playful antinomies and praised as the acme of all knowledge was to\nhim a painful and incomprehensible experience.\n\nNow he dived into the cold bath of his awful abstractions. That which\nis true must exist in eternal presence, about it cannot be said \"it\nwas,\" \"it will be.\" The \"Existent\" cannot have become; for out of what\nshould it have become? Out of the \"Non-Existent\"? But that does not\nexist and can produce nothing. Out of the \"Existent\"? This would not\nproduce anything but itself. The same applies to the Passing, it is\njust as impossible as the Becoming, as any change, any increase, any\ndecrease. On the whole the proposition is valid: Everything about which\nit can be said: \"it has been\" or \"it will be\" does not exist; about\nthe \"Existent\" however it can never be said \"it does not exist.\" The\n\"Existent\" is indivisible, for where is the second power, which should\ndivide it? It is immovable, for whither should it move itself? It\ncannot be infinitely great nor infinitely small, for it is perfect and\na perfectly given infinitude is a contradiction. Thus the \"Existent\"\nis suspended, delimited, perfect, immovable, everywhere equally\nbalanced and such equilibrium equally perfect at any point, like a\nglobe, but not in a space, for otherwise this space would be a second\n\"Existent.\" But there cannot exist several \"Existents,\" for in order to\nseparate them, something would have to exist which was not existing, an\nassumption which neutralises itself. Thus there exists only the eternal\nUnity.\n\nIf now, however, Parmenides turned back his gaze to the world of\nBecoming, the existence of which he had formerly tried to understand\nby such ingenious conjectures, he was wroth at his eye seeing the\nBecoming at all, his ear hearing it. \"Do not follow the dim-sighted\neyes,\" now his command runs, \"not the resounding ear nor the\ntongue, but examine only by the power of the thought.\" Therewith he\naccomplished the extremely important first critique of the apparatus\nof knowledge, although this critique was still inadequate and proved\ndisastrous in its consequences. By tearing entirely asunder the\nsenses and the ability to think in abstractions, _i.e._ reason, just\nas if they were two thoroughly separate capacities, he demolished\nthe intellect itself, and incited people to that wholly erroneous\nseparation of \"mind\" and \"body\" which, especially since Plato, lies\nlike a curse on philosophy. All sense perceptions, Parmenides judges,\ncause only illusions and their chief illusion is their deluding us to\nbelieve that even the \"Non-Existent\" exists, that even the Becoming has\na \"Being.\" All that plurality, diversity and variety of the empirically\nknown world, the change of its qualities, the order in its ups and\ndowns, is thrown aside mercilessly as mere appearance and delusion;\nfrom there nothing is to be learnt, therefore all labour is wasted\nwhich one bestows upon this false, through-and-through futile world,\nthe conception of which has been obtained by being hum-bugged by the\nsenses. He who judges in such generalisations as Parmenides did, ceases\ntherewith to be an investigator of natural philosophy in detail; his\ninterest in phenomena withers away; there develops even a hatred of\nbeing unable to get rid of this eternal fraud of the senses. Truth is\nnow to dwell only in the most faded, most abstract generalities, in the\nempty husks of the most indefinite words, as in a maze of cobwebs; and\nby such a \"truth\" now the philosopher sits, bloodless as an abstraction\nand surrounded by a web of formul\u00e6. The spider undoubtedly wants the\nblood of its victims; but the Parmenidean philosopher hates the very\nblood of his victims, the blood of Empiricism sacrificed by him.\n\n\n\n11\n\n\nAnd that was a Greek who \"flourished\" about the time of the outbreak\nof the Ionic Revolution. At that time it was possible for a Greek\nto flee out of the superabundant reality, as out of a mere delusive\nschematism of the imaginative faculties--not perhaps like Plato into\nthe land of the eternal ideas, into the workshop of the world-creator,\nin order to feast the eyes on unblemished, unbreakable primal-forms of\nthings--but into the rigid death-like rest of the coldest and emptiest\nconception, that of the \"Being.\" We will indeed beware of interpreting\nsuch a remarkable fact by false analogies. That flight was not a\nworld-flight in the sense of Indian philosophers; no deep religious\nconviction as to the depravity, transitoriness and accursedness of\nExistence demanded that flight--that ultimate goal, the rest in the\n\"Being,\" was not striven after as the mystic absorption in _one_\nall-sufficing enrapturing conception which is a puzzle and a scandal\nto common men. The thought of Parmenides bears in itself not the\nslightest trace of the intoxicating mystical Indian fragrance, which\nis perhaps not wholly imperceptible in Pythagoras and Empedocles; the\nstrange thing in that fact, at this period, is rather the very absence\nof fragrance, colour, soul, form, the total lack of blood, religiosity\nand ethical warmth, the abstract-schematic--in a Greek!--above all\nhowever our philosopher's awful energy of striving after _Certainty,_\nin a mythically thinking and highly emotional--fantastic age is quite\nremarkable. \"Grant me but a certainty, ye gods!\"is the prayer of\nParmenides, \"and be it, in the ocean of Uncertainty, only a board,\nbroad enough to lie on! Everything becoming, everything luxuriant,\nvaried, blossoming, deceiving, stimulating, living, take all that for\nyourselves, and give to me but the single poor empty Certainty!\"\n\nIn the philosophy of Parmenides the theme of ontology forms the\nprelude. Experience offered him nowhere a \"Being\" as he imagined it to\nhimself, but from the fact that he could conceive of it he concluded\nthat it must exist; a conclusion which rests upon the supposition\nthat we have an organ of knowledge which reaches into the nature of\nthings and is independent of experience. The material of our thinking\naccording to Parmenides does not exist in perception at all but is\nbrought in from somewhere else, from an extra-material world to which\nby thinking we have a direct access. Against all similar chains of\nreasoning Aristotle has already asserted that existence never belongs\nto the essence, never belongs to the nature of a thing. For that very\nreason from the idea of \"Being\"--of which the _essentia_ precisely is\nonly the \"Being\"--cannot be inferred an _existentia_ of the \"Being\" at\nall. The logical content of that antithesis \"Being\" and \"Not-Being\"\nis perfectly nil, if the object lying at the bottom of it, if the\nprecept cannot be given from which this antithesis has been deduced\nby abstraction; without this going back to the precept the antithesis\nis only a play with conceptions, through which indeed nothing is\ndiscerned. For the merely logical criterion of truth, as Kant teaches,\nnamely the agreement of a discernment with the general and the formal\nlaws of intellect and reason is, it is true, the _conditio sine qua\nnon,_ consequently the negative condition of all truth; further however\nlogic cannot go, and logic cannot discover by any touchstone the error\nwhich pertains not to the form but to the contents. As soon, however,\nas one seeks the content for the logical truth of the antithesis:\n\"That which is, is; that which is not, is not,\" one will find indeed\nnot a simple reality, which is fashioned rigidly according to that\nantithesis: about a tree I can say as well \"it is\" in comparison with\nall the other things, as well \"it becomes\" in comparison with itself\nat another moment of time as finally also \"it is not,\" _e.g._,\" it is\nnot yet tree,\" as long as I perhaps look at the shrub. Words are only\nsymbols for the relations of things among themselves and to us, and\nnowhere touch absolute truth; and now to crown all, the word \"Being\"\ndesignates only the most general relation, which connects all things,\nand so does the word \"Not-Being.\" If however the Existence of the\nthings themselves be unprovable, then the relation of the things among\nthemselves, the so-called \"Being\" and \"Not-Being,\" will not bring us\nany nearer to the land of truth. By means of words and ideas we shall\nnever get behind the wall of the relations, let us say into some\nfabulous primal cause of things, and even in the pure forms of the\nsensitive faculty and of the intellect, in space, time and causality\nwe gain nothing, which might resemble a \"_Veritas \u00e6terna?_\" It is\nabsolutely impossible for the subject to see and discern something\nbeyond himself, so impossible that Cognition and \"Being\" are the most\ncontradictory of all spheres. And if in the uninstructed _na\u00efvet\u00e9_\nof the then critique of the intellect Parmenides was permitted to\nfancy that out of the eternally subjective idea he had come to a\n\"Being-In-itself,\" then it is to-day, after Kant, a daring ignorance,\nif here and there, especially among badly informed theologians who\nwant to play the philosopher, is proposed as the task of philosophy:\n\"to conceive the Absolute by means of consciousness,\" perhaps even\nin the form: \"the Absolute is already extant, else how could it be\nsought?\" as Hegel has expressed himself, or with the saying of Beneke:\n\"that the 'Being' must be given somehow, must be attainable for us\nsomehow, since otherwise we could not even have the idea of 'Being.'\"\nThe idea of \"Being\"! As though that idea did not indicate the most\nmiserable empiric origin already in the etymology of the word. For\n_esse_ means at the bottom: \"to breathe,\" if man uses it of all other\nthings, then he transmits the conviction that he himself breathes and\nlives by means of a metaphor, _i.e.,_ by means of something illogical\nto the other things and conceives of their Existence as a Breathing\naccording to human analogy. Now the original meaning of the word soon\nbecomes effaced; so much however still remains that man conceives of\nthe existence of other things according to the analogy of his own\nexistence, therefore anthropomorphically, and at any rate by means\nof an illogical transmission. Even to man, therefore apart from that\ntransmission, the proposition: \"I breathe, therefore a 'Being' exists\"\nis quite insufficient since against it the same objection must be made,\nas against the _ambulo, ergo sum,_ or _ergo est_.\n\n\n\n12\n\n\nThe other idea, of greater import than that of the \"Existent,\" and\nlikewise invented already by Parmenides, although not yet so clearly\napplied as by his disciple Zeno is the idea of the Infinite. Nothing\nInfinite can exist; for from such an assumption the contradictory\nidea of a perfect Infinitude would result. Since now our actuality,\nour existing world everywhere shows the character of that perfect\nInfinitude, our world signifies in its nature a contradiction against\nlogic and therewith also against reality and is deception, lie,\nfantasma. Zeno especially applied the method of indirect proof; he\nsaid for example, \"There can be no motion from one place to another;\nfor if there were such a motion, then an Infinitude would be given as\nperfect, this however is an impossibility.\" Achilles cannot catch up\nthe tortoise which has a small start in a race, for in order to reach\nonly the point from which the tortoise began, he would have had to run\nthrough innumerable, infinitely many spaces, viz., first half of that\nspace, then the fourth, then the sixteenth, and so on _ad infinitum._\nIf he does in fact overtake the tortoise then this is an illogical\nphenomenon, and therefore at any rate not a truth, not a reality, not\nreal \"Being,\" but only a delusion. For it is never possible to finish\nthe infinite. Another popular expression of this doctrine is the\nflying and yet resting arrow. At any instant of its flight it has a\nposition; in this position it rests. Now would the sum of the infinite\npositions of rest be identical with motion? Would now the Resting,\ninfinitely often repeated, be Motion, therefore its own opposite?\nThe Infinite is here used as the _aqua fortis_ of reality, through\nit the latter is dissolved. If however the Ideas are fixed, eternal\nand entitative--and for Parmenides \"Being\" and Thinking coincide--if\ntherefore the Infinite can never be perfect, if Rest can never become\nMotion, then in fact the arrow has not flown at all; it never left its\nplace and resting position; no moment of time has passed. Or expressed\nin another way: in this so-called yet only alleged Actuality there\nexists neither time, nor space, nor motion. Finally the arrow itself is\nonly an illusion; for it originates out of the Plurality, out of the\nphantasmagoria of the \"Non-One\" produced by the senses. Suppose the\narrow had a \"Being,\" then it would be immovable, timeless, increate,\nrigid and eternal--an impossible conception! Supposing that Motion was\ntruly real, then there would be no rest, therefore no position for the\narrow, therefore no space--an impossible conception! Supposing that\ntime were real, then it could not be of an infinite divisibility; the\ntime which the arrow needed, would have to consist of a limited number\nof time-moments, each of these moments would have to be an _Atomon_--an\nimpossible conception! All our conceptions, as soon as their\nempirically-given content, drawn out of this concrete world, is taken\nas a _Veritas \u00e6terna,_ lead to contradictions. If there is absolute\nmotion, then there is no space; if there is absolute space then there\nis no motion; if there is absolute \"Being,\" then there is no Plurality;\nif there is an absolute Plurality, then there is no Unity. It should\nat least become clear to _us_ how little we touch the heart of things\nor untie the knot of reality with such ideas, whereas Parmenides and\nZeno inversely hold fast to the truth and omnivalidity of ideas and\ncondemn the perceptible world as the opposite of the true and omnivalid\nideas, as an objectivation of the illogical and contradictory. With all\ntheir proofs they start from the wholly undemonstrable, yea improbable\nassumption that in that apprehensive faculty we possess the decisive,\nhighest criterion of \"Being\" and \"Not-Being,\" _i.e.,_ of objective\nreality and its opposite; those ideas are not to prove themselves\ntrue, to correct themselves by Actuality, as they are after all really\nderived from it, but on the contrary they are to measure and to judge\nActuality, and in case of a contradiction with logic, even to condemn.\nIn order to concede to them this judicial competence Parmenides had to\nascribe to them the same \"Being,\" which alone he allowed in general\nas _the_ \"Being\"; Thinking and that one increate perfect ball of the\n\"Existent\" were now no longer to be conceived as two different kinds\nof \"Being,\" since there was not permitted a duality of \"Being.\" Thus\nthe over-risky flash of fancy had become necessary to declare Thinking\nand \"Being\" identical. No form of perceptibility, no symbol, no simile\ncould possibly be of any help here; the fancy was wholly inconceivable,\nbut it was necessary, yea in the lack of every possibility of\nillustration it celebrated the highest triumph over the world and\nthe claims of the senses. Thinking and that clod-like, ball-shaped,\nthrough-and-through dead-massive, and rigid-immovable \"Being,\" must,\naccording to the Parmenidean imperative, dissolve into one another and\nbe the same in every respect, to the horror of fantasy. What does it\nmatter that this identity contradicts the senses! This contradiction\nis just the guarantee that such an identity is not borrowed from the\nsenses.\n\n\n\n13\n\n\nMoreover against Parmenides could be produced a strong couple of\n_argumenta ad hominem_ or _ex concessis,_ by which, it is true, truth\nitself could not be brought to light, but at any rate the untruth of\nthat absolute separation of the world of the senses and the world of\nthe ideas, and the untruth of the identity of \"Being\" and Thinking\ncould be demonstrated. Firstly, if the Thinking of Reason in ideas is\nreal, then also Plurality and Motion must have reality, for rational\nThinking is mobile; and more precisely, it is a motion from idea to\nidea, therefore within a plurality of realities. There is no subterfuge\nagainst that; it is quite impossible to designate Thinking as a rigid\nPermanence, as an eternally immobile, intellectual Introspection of\nUnity. Secondly, if only fraud and illusion come from the senses,\nand if in reality there exists only the real identity of \"Being\" and\nThinking, what then are the senses themselves? They too are certainly\nAppearance only since they do not coincide with the Thinking, and\ntheir product, the world of senses, does not coincide with \"Being.\"\nIf however the senses themselves are Appearance to whom then are\nthey Appearance? How can they, being unreal, still deceive? The\n\"Non-Existent\" cannot even deceive. Therefore the Whence? of deception\nand Appearance remains an enigma, yea, a contradiction. We call these\n_argumenta ad hominem:_ The Objection Of The Mobile Reason and that\nof The Origin Of Appearance. From the first would result the reality\nof Motion and of Plurality, from the second the impossibility of the\nParmenidean Appearance, assuming that the chief-doctrine of Parmenides\non the \"Being\" were accepted as true. This chief-doctrine however only\nsays: The \"Existent\" only has a \"Being,\" the \"Non-Existent\" does not\nexist. If Motion however has such a \"Being,\" then to Motion applies\nwhat applies to the \"Existent\" in general: it is increate, eternal,\nindestructible, without increase or decrease. But if the \"Appearance\"\nis denied and a belief in it made untenable, by means of that question\nas to the Whence? of the \"Appearance,\" if the stage of the so-called\nBecoming, of change, our many-shaped, restless, coloured and rich\nExistence is protected from the Parmenidean rejection, then it is\nnecessary to characterise this world of change and alteration as a\n_sum_ of such really existing Essentials, existing simultaneously\ninto all eternity. Of a change in the strict sense, of a Becoming\nthere cannot naturally be any question even with this assumption. But\nnow Plurality has a real \"Being,\" all qualities have a real \"Being\"\nand motion not less; and of any moment of this world--although these\nmoments chosen at random lie at a distance of millenniums from one\nanother--it would have to be possible to say: all real Essentials\nextant in this world are without exception co-existent, unaltered,\nundiminished, without increase, without decrease. A millennium later\nthe world is exactly the same. Nothing has altered. If in spite of\nthat the appearance of the world at the one time is quite different\nfrom that at the other time, then that is no deception, nothing merely\napparent, but the effect of eternal motion. The real \"Existent\" is\nmoved sometimes thus, sometimes thus: together, asunder, upwards,\ndownwards, into one another, pell-mell.\n\n\n\n14\n\n\nWith this conception we have already taken a step into the realm\nof the doctrine of _Anaxagoras._ By him both objections against\nParmenides are raised in full strength; that of the mobile Thinking\nand that of the Whence? of \"Appearance\"; but in the chief proposition\nParmenides has subjugated him as well as all the younger philosophers\nand nature-explorers. They all deny the possibility of Becoming and\nPassing, as the mind of the people conceives them and as Anaximander\nand Heraclitus had assumed with greater circumspection and yet still\nheedlessly. Such a mythological Originating out of the Nothing, such\na Disappearing into the Nothing, such an arbitrary Changing of the\nNothing into the Something, such a random exchanging, putting on and\nputting off of the qualities was henceforth considered senseless; but\nso was, and for the same reasons, an originating of the Many out of the\nOne, of the manifold qualities out of the one primal-quality, in short\nthe derivation of the world out of a primary substance, as argued by\nThales and Heraclitus. Rather was now the real problem advanced of\napplying the doctrine of increate imperishable \"Being\" to this existing\nworld, without taking one's refuge in the theory of appearance and\ndeception. But if the empiric world is not to be Appearance, if the\nthings are not to be derived out of Nothing and just as little out of\nthe one Something, then these things must contain in themselves a real\n\"Being,\" their matter and content must be unconditionally real, and\nall change can refer only to the form, _i.e.,_ to the position, order,\ngrouping, mixing, separation of these eternally co-existing Essentials.\nIt is just as in a game of dice; they are ever the same dice; but\nfalling sometimes thus, sometimes thus, they mean to us something\ndifferent. All older theories had gone back to a primal element, as\nwomb and cause of Becoming, be this water, air, fire or the Indefinite\nof Anaximander. Against that Anaxagoras now asserts that out of the\nEqual the Unequal could never come forth, and that out of the one\n\"Existent\" the change could never be explained. Whether now one were\nto imagine that assumed matter to be rarefied or condensed, one would\nnever succeed by such a condensation or rarefaction in explaining the\nproblem one would like to explain: the plurality of qualities. But if\nthe world in fact is full of the most different qualities then these\nmust, in case they are not appearance, have a \"Being,\" _i.e.,_ must\nbe eternal, increate, imperishable and ever co-existing. Appearance,\nhowever, they cannot be, since the question as to the Whence? of\nAppearance remains unanswered, yea answers itself in the negative! The\nearlier seekers after Truth had intended to simplify the problem of\nBecoming by advancing only one substance, which bore in its bosom the\npossibilities of all Becoming; now on the contrary it is asserted:\nthere are innumerable substances, but never more, never less, and never\nnew ones. Only Motion, playing dice with them throws them into ever\nnew combinations. That Motion however is a truth and not Appearance,\nAnaxagoras proved in opposition to Parmenides by the indisputable\nsuccession of our conceptions in thinking. We have therefore in the\nmost direct fashion the insight into the truth of motion and succession\nin the fact that we think and have conceptions. Therefore at any rate\nthe _one_ rigid, resting, dead \"Being\" of Parmenides has been removed\nout of the way, there are many \"Existents\" just as surely as all\nthese many \"Existents\" (existing things, substances) are in motion.\nChange is motion--but whence originates motion? Does this motion leave\nperhaps wholly untouched the proper essence of those many independent,\nisolated substances, and, according to the most severe idea of the\n\"Existent,\" _must_ not motion in itself be foreign to them? Or does\nit after all belong to the things themselves? We stand here at an\nimportant decision; according to which way we turn, we shall step into\nthe realm either of Anaxagoras or of Empedocles or of Democritus. The\ndelicate question must be raised: if there are many substances, and if\nthese many move, what moves them? Do they move one another? Or is it\nperhaps only gravitation? Or are there magic forces of attraction and\nrepulsion within the things themselves? Or does the cause of motion\nlie outside these many real substances? Or putting the question\nmore pointedly: if two things show a succession, a mutual change of\nposition, does that originate from themselves? And is this to be\nexplained mechanically or magically? Or if this should not be the case\nis it a third something which moves them? It is a sorry problem, for\nParmenides would still have been able to prove against Anaxagoras the\nimpossibility of motion, even granted that there are many substances.\nFor he could say: Take two Substances existing of themselves, each with\nquite differently fashioned, autonomous, unconditioned \"Being\"--and\nof such kind are the Anaxagorean substances--they can never clash\ntogether, never move, never attract one another, there exists between\nthem no causality, no bridge, they do not come into contact with one\nanother, do not disturb one another, they do not interest one another,\nthey are utterly indifferent. The impact then is just as inexplicable\nas the magic attraction: that which is utterly foreign cannot exercise\nany effect upon another, therefore cannot move itself nor allow\nitself to be moved. Parmenides would even have added: the only way of\nescape which is left to you is this, to ascribe motion to the things\nthemselves; then however all that you know and see as motion is indeed\nonly a deception and not true motion, for the only kind of motion which\ncould belong to those absolutely original substances, would be merely\nan autogenous motion limited to themselves without any effect. But\nyou _assume_ motion in order to explain those effects of change, of\nthe disarrangement in space, of alteration, in short the causalities\nand relations of the things among themselves. But these very effects\nwould not be explained and would remain as problematic as ever; for\nthis reason one cannot conceive why it should be necessary to assume a\nmotion since it does not perform that which you demand from it. Motion\ndoes not belong to the nature of things and is eternally foreign to\nthem.\n\nThose opponents of the Eleatean unmoved Unity were induced to make\nlight of such an argument by prejudices of a perceptual character. It\nseems so irrefutable that each veritable \"Existent\" is a space-filling\nbody, a lump of matter, large or small but in any case spacially\ndimensioned; so that two or more such lumps cannot be in one space.\nUnder this hypothesis Anaxagoras, as later on Democritus, assumed that\nthey must knock against each other; if in their motions they came by\nchance upon one another, that they would dispute the same space with\neach other, and that this struggle was the very cause of all Change.\nIn other words: those wholly isolated, thoroughly heterogeneous and\neternally unalterable substances were after all not conceived as\nbeing absolutely heterogeneous but all had in addition to a specific,\nwholly peculiar quality, also one absolutely homogeneous substratum: a\npiece of space-filling matter. In their participation in matter they\nall stood equal and therefore could act upon one another, _i.e.,_\nknock one another. Moreover all Change did not in the least depend on\nthe heterogeneity of those substances but on their homogeneity, as\nmatter. At the bottom of the assumption of Anaxagoras is a logical\noversight; for that which is _the_ \"Existent-In-Itself\" must be wholly\nunconditional and coherent, is therefore not allowed to assume as its\ncause anything,--whereas all those Anaxagorean substances have still\na conditioning Something: matter, and already assume its existence;\nthe substance \"Red\" for example was to Anaxagoras not just merely red\nin itself but also in a reserved or suppressed way a piece of matter\nwithout any qualities. Only with this matter the \"Red-In-Itself\" acted\nupon other substances, not with the \"Red,\" but with that which is\nnot red, not coloured, nor in any way qualitatively definite. If the\n\"Red\" had been taken strictly as \"Red,\" as the real substance itself,\ntherefore without that substratum, then Anaxagoras would certainly not\nhave dared to speak of an effect of the \"Red\" upon other substances,\nperhaps even with the phrase that the \"Red-In-Itself\" was transmitting\nthe impact received from the \"Fleshy-In-Itself.\" Then it would be clear\nthat such an \"Existent\" _par excellence_ could never be moved.\n\n\n\n15\n\n\nOne has to glance at the opponents of the Eleates, in order to\nappreciate the extraordinary advantages in the assumption of\nParmenides. What embarrassments,--from which Parmenides had\nescaped,--awaited Anaxagoras and all who believed in a plurality of\nsubstances, with the question, How many substances? Anaxagoras made the\nleap, closed his eyes and said, \"Infinitely many\"; thus he had flown\nat least beyond the incredibly laborious proof of a definite number\nof elementary substances. Since these \"Infinitely Many\" had to exist\nwithout increase and unaltered for eternities, in that assumption was\ngiven the contradiction of an infinity to be conceived as completed\nand perfect. In short, Plurality, Motion, Infinity driven into flight\nby Parmenides with the amazing proposition of the one \"Being,\" returned\nfrom their exile and hurled their projectiles at the opponents of\nParmenides, causing them wounds for which there is no cure. Obviously\nthose opponents have no real consciousness and knowledge as to the\nawful force of those Eleatean thoughts, \"There can be no time, no\nmotion, no space; for all these we can only think of as infinite,\nand to be more explicit, firstly infinitely large, then infinitely\ndivisible; but everything infinite has no 'Being,' does not exist,\" and\nthis nobody doubts, who takes the meaning of the word \"Being\" severely\nand considers the existence of something contradictory impossible,\n_e.g.,_ the existence of a completed infinity. If however the very\nActuality shows us everything under the form of the completed infinity\nthen it becomes evident that it contradicts itself and therefore has no\ntrue reality. If those opponents however should object: \"but in your\nthinking itself there does exist succession, therefore neither could\nyour thinking be real and consequently could not prove anything,\" then\nParmenides perhaps like Kant in a similar case of an equal objection\nwould have answered: \"I can, it is true, say my conceptions follow upon\none another, but that means only that we are not conscious of them\nunless within a chronological order, _i.e.,_ according to the form of\nthe inner sense. For that reason time is not a something in itself\nnor any order or quality objectively adherent to things.\" We should\ntherefore have to distinguish between the Pure Thinking, that would\nbe timeless like the one Parmenidean \"Being,\" and the consciousness\nof this thinking, and the latter would already translate the thinking\ninto the form of appearance, _i.e.,_ of succession, plurality and\nmotion. It is probable that Parmenides would have availed himself\nof this loophole; however, the same objection would then have to be\nraised against him which is raised against Kant by A. Spir (\"Thinking\nAnd Reality,\" 2nd ed., vol. i., pp. 209, &c). \"Now, in the first place\nhowever it is clear, that I cannot know anything of a succession as\nsuch, unless I have the successive members of the same simultaneously\nin my consciousness. Thus the conception of a succession itself is\nnot at all successive, hence also quite different from the succession\nof our conceptions. Secondly Kant's assumption implies such obvious\nabsurdities that one is surprised that he could leave them unnoticed.\nC\u00e6sar and Socrates according to this assumption are not really dead,\nthey still live exactly as they did two thousand years ago and only\nseem to be dead, as a consequence of an organisation of my inner\nsense.\" Future men already live and if they do not now step forward as\nliving that organisation of the \"inner sense\" is likewise the cause\nof it. Here above all other things the question is to be put: How can\nthe beginning and the end of conscious life itself, together with\nall its internal and external senses, exist merely in the conception\nof the inner sense? _The_ fact is indeed this, that one certainly\ncannot deny the reality of Change. If it is thrown out through the\nwindow it slips in again through the keyhole. If one says: \"It merely\nseems to me, that conditions and conceptions change,\"--then this very\nsemblance and appearance itself is something objectively existing and\nwithin it without doubt the succession has objective reality, some\nthings in it really do succeed one another.--Besides one must observe\nthat indeed the whole critique of reason only has cause and right of\nexistence under the assumption that to us our _conceptions_ themselves\nappear exactly as they are. For if the conceptions also appeared to us\notherwise than they really are, then one would not be able to advance\nany solid proposition about them, and therefore would not be able to\naccomplish any gnosiology or any \"transcendental\" investigation of\nobjective validity. Now it remains however beyond all doubt that our\nconceptions themselves appear to us as successive.\"\n\nThe contemplation of this undoubted succession and agitation has now\nurged Anaxagoras to a memorable hypothesis. Obviously the conceptions\nthemselves moved themselves, were not pushed and had no cause of\nmotion outside themselves. Therefore he said to himself, there exists\na something which bears in itself the origin and the commencement\nof motion; secondly, however, he notices that this conception was\nmoving not only itself but also something quite different, the body.\nHe discovers therefore, in the most immediate experience an effect\nof conceptions upon expansive matter, which makes itself known as\nmotion in the latter. That was to him a fact; and only incidentally\nit stimulated him to explain this fact. Let it suffice that he had a\nregulative schema for the motion in the world,--this motion he now\nunderstood either as a motion of the true isolated essences through\nthe Conceptual Principle, the Nous, or as a motion through a something\nalready moved. That with his fundamental assumption the latter kind,\nthe mechanical transmission of motions and impacts likewise contained\nin itself a problem, probably escaped him; the commonness and every-day\noccurrence of the effect through impact most probably dulled his eye to\nthe mysteriousness of impact. On the other hand he certainly felt the\nproblematic, even contradictory nature of an effect of conceptions upon\nsubstances existing in themselves and he also tried therefore to trace\nthis effect back to a mechanical push and impact which were considered\nby him as quite comprehensible. For the Nous too was without doubt such\na substance existing in itself and was characterised by him as a very\ndelicate and subtle matter, with the specific quality of thinking.\nWith a character assumed in this way, the effect of this matter upon\nother matter had of course to be of exactly the same kind as that\nwhich another substance exercises upon a third, _i.e.,_ a mechanical\neffect, moving by pressure and impact. Still the philosopher had now a\nsubstance which moves itself and other things, a substance of which the\nmotion did not come from outside and depended on no one else: whereas\nit seemed almost a matter of indifference how this automobilism was\nto be conceived of, perhaps similar to that pushing themselves hither\nand thither of very fragile and small globules of quicksilver. Among\nall questions which concern motion there is none more troublesome than\nthe question as to the beginning of motion. For if one may be allowed\nto conceive of all remaining motions as effect and consequences, then\nnevertheless the first primal motion is still to be explained; for the\nmechanical motions, the first link of the chain certainly cannot lie in\na mechanical motion, since that would be as good as recurring to the\nnonsensical idea of the _causa sui._ But likewise it is not feasible\nto attribute to the eternal, unconditional things a motion of their\nown, as it were from the beginning, as dowry of their existence. For\nmotion cannot be conceived without a direction whither and whereupon,\ntherefore only as relation and condition; but a thing is no longer\n\"entitative-in-itself\" and \"unconditional,\" if according to its nature\nit refers necessarily to something existing outside of it. In this\nembarrassment Anaxagoras thought he had found an extraordinary help\nand salvation in that Nous, automobile and otherwise independent; the\nnature of that Nous being just obscure and veiled enough to produce the\ndeception about it, that its assumption also involves that forbidden\n_causa sui._ To empiric observation it is even an established fact that\nConception is not a _causa sui_ but the effect of the brain, yea, it\nmust appear to that observation as an odd eccentricity to separate the\n\"mind,\" the product of the brain, from its _causa_ and still to deem it\nexisting after this severing. This Anaxagoras did; he forgot the brain,\nits marvellous design, the delicacy and intricacy of its convolutions\nand passages and he decreed the \"Mind-In-Itself.\" This \"Mind-In-Itself\"\nalone among all substances had Free-will,--a grand discernment! This\nMind was able at any odd time to begin with the motion of the things\noutside it; on the other hand for ages and ages it could occupy itself\nwith itself--in short Anaxagoras was allowed to assume a _first_ moment\nof motion in some primeval age, as the _Chalaza_ of all so-called\nBecoming; _i.e.,_ of all Change, namely of all shifting and rearranging\nof the eternal substances and their particles, Although the Mind itself\nis eternal, it is in no way compelled to torment itself for eternities\nwith the shifting about of grains of matter; and certainly there was a\ntime and a state of those matters--it is quite indifferent whether that\ntime was of long or short duration--during which the Nous had not acted\nupon them, during which they were still unmoved. That is the period of\nthe Anaxagorean chaos.\n\n\n\n16\n\n\nThe Anaxagorean chaos is not an immediately evident conception; in\norder to grasp it one must have understood the conception which our\nphilosopher had with respect to the so-called \"Becoming.\" For in\nitself the state of all heterogeneous \"Elementary-existences\" before\nall motion would by no means necessarily result in an absolute mixture\nof all \"seeds of things,\" as the expression of Anaxagoras runs, an\nintermixture, which he imagined as a complete pell-mell, disordered\nin its smallest parts, after all these \"Elementary-existences\" had\nbeen, as in a mortar, pounded and resolved into atoms of dust, so that\nnow in that chaos, as in an amphora, they could be whirled into a\nmedley. One might say that this conception of the chaos did not contain\nanything inevitable, that one merely needed rather to assume any chance\nposition of all those \"existences,\" but not an infinite decomposition\nof them; an irregular side-by-side arrangement was already sufficient;\nthere was no need of a pell-mell, let alone such a total pell-mell.\nWhat therefore put into Anaxagoras' head that difficult and complex\nconception? As already said: his conception of the empirically given\nBecoming. From his experience he drew first a most extraordinary\nproposition on the Becoming, and this proposition necessarily resulted\nin that doctrine of the chaos, as its consequence.\n\nThe observation of the processes of evolution in nature, not a\nconsideration of an earlier philosophical system, suggested to\nAnaxagoras the doctrine, that _All originated from All;_ this was the\nconviction of the natural philosopher based upon a manifold, and at the\nbottom, of course, excessively inadequate induction. He proved it thus:\nif even the contrary could originate out of the contrary, _e.g.,_ the\nBlack out of the White, everything is possible; that however did happen\nwith the dissolution of white snow into black water. The nourishment of\nthe body he explained to himself in this way: that in the articles of\nfood there must be invisibly small constituents of flesh or blood or\nbone which during alimentation became disengaged and united with the\nhomogeneous in the body. But if All can become out of All, the Firm out\nof the Liquid, the Hard out of the Soft, the Black out of the White,\nthe Fleshy out of Bread, then also All must be contained in All. The\nnames of things in that case express only the preponderance of the one\nsubstance over the other substances to be met with in smaller, often\nimperceptible quantities. In gold, that is to say, in that which one\ndesignates _a potiore_ by the name \"gold,\" there must be also contained\nsilver, snow, bread, and flesh, but in very small quantities; the\nwhole is called after the preponderating item, the gold-substance.\n\nBut how is it possible, that one substance preponderates and fills a\nthing in greater mass than the others present? Experience shows, that\nthis preponderance is gradually produced only through Motion, that\nthe preponderance is the result of a process, which we commonly call\nBecoming. On the other hand, that \"All is in All\" is not the result\nof a process, but, on the contrary, the preliminary condition of all\nBecoming and all Motion, and is consequently previous to all Becoming.\nIn other words: experience teaches, that continually the like is\nadded to the like, _e.g.,_ through nourishment, therefore originally\nthose homogeneous substances were not together and agglomerated, but\nthey were separate. Rather, in all empiric processes coming before\nour eyes, the homogeneous is always segregated from the heterogeneous\nand transmitted (_e.g.,_ during nourishment, the particles of flesh\nout of the bread, &c), consequently the pell-mell of the different\nsubstances is the older form of the constitution of things and in point\nof time previous to all Becoming and Moving. If all so-called Becoming\nis a segregating and presupposes a mixture, the question arises,\nwhat degree of intermixture this pell-mell must have had originally.\nAlthough the process of a moving on the part of the homogeneous to\nthe homogeneous--_i.e.,_ Becoming--has already lasted an immense\ntime, one recognises in spite of that, that even yet in all things\nremainders and seed-grains of all other things are enclosed, waiting\nfor their segregation, and one recognises further that only here and\nthere a preponderance has been brought about; the primal mixture\nmust have been a complete one, _i.e.,_ going down to the infinitely\nsmall, since the separation and unmixing takes up an infinite length of\ntime. Thereby strict adherence is paid to the thought: that everything\nwhich possesses an essential \"Being\" is infinitely divisible, without\nforfeiting its specificum.\n\nAccording to these hypotheses Anaxagoras conceives of the world's\nprimal existence: perhaps as similar to a dust-like mass of infinitely\nsmall, concrete particles of which every one is specifically simple\nand possesses one quality only, yet so arranged that every specific\nquality is represented in an infinite number of individual particles.\nSuch particles Aristotle has called _Homoiomere_ in consideration of\nthe fact that they are the Parts, all equal one to another, of a Whole\nwhich is homogeneous with its Parts. One would however commit a serious\nmistake to equate this primal pell-mell of all such particles, such\n\"seed-grains of things\" to the one primal matter of Anaximander; for\nthe latter's primal matter called the \"Indefinite\" is a thoroughly\ncoherent and peculiar mass, the former's primal pell-mell is an\naggregate of substances. It is true one can assert about this Aggregate\nof Substances exactly the same as about the Indefinite of Anaximander,\nas Aristotle does: it could be neither white nor grey, nor black, nor\nof any other colour; it was tasteless, scentless, and altogether as a\nWhole defined neither quantitatively nor qualitatively: so far goes the\nsimilarity of the Anaximandrian Indefinite and the Anaxagorean Primal\nMixture. But disregarding this negative equality they distinguish\nthemselves one from another positively by the latter being a compound,\nthe former a unity. Anaxagoras had by the assumption of his Chaos at\nleast so much to his advantage, that he was not compelled to deduce the\nMany from the One, the Becoming out of the \"Existent.\"\n\nOf course with his complete intermixture of the \"seeds\" he had to\nadmit one exception: the Nous was not then, nor is It now admixed with\nany thing. For if It were admixed with only one \"Existent,\" It would\nhave, in infinite divisions, to dwell in all things. This exception\nis logically very dubious, especially considering the previously\ndescribed material nature of the Nous, it has something mythological in\nitself and seems arbitrary, but was however, according to Anaxagorean\n_pr\u0153missa,_ a strict necessity. The Mind, which is moreover infinitely\ndivisible like any other matter, only not through other matters but\nthrough Itself, has, if It divides Itself, in dividing and conglobating\nsometimes in large, sometimes in small masses, Its equal mass and\nquality from all eternity; and that which at this minute exists as Mind\nin animals, plants, men, was also Mind without a more or less, although\ndistributed in another way a thousand years ago. But wherever It had a\nrelation to another substance, there It never was admixed with it, but\nvoluntarily seized it, moved and pushed it arbitrarily--in short, ruled\nit. Mind, which alone has motion in Itself, alone possesses ruling\npower in this world and shows it through moving the grains of matter.\nBut whither does It move them? Or is a motion conceivable, without\ndirection, without path? Is Mind in Its impacts just as arbitrary\nas it is, with regard to the time when It pushes, and when It does\nnot push? In short, does Chance, _i.e.,_ the blindest option, rule\nwithin Motion? At this boundary we step into the Most Holy within the\nconceptual realm of Anaxagoras.\n\n\n\n17\n\n\nWhat had to be done with that chaotic pell-mell of the primal state\nprevious to all motion, so that out of it, without any increase of\nnew substances and forces, the existing world might originate, with\nits regular stellar orbits, with its regulated forms of seasons and\ndays, with its manifold beauty and order,--in short, so that out of\nthe Chaos might come a Cosmos? This can be only the effect of Motion,\nand of a definite and well-organised motion. This Motion itself is\nthe means of the Nous, Its goal would be the perfect segregation of\nthe homogeneous, a goal up to the present not yet attained, because\nthe disorder and the mixture in the beginning was infinite. This\ngoal is to be striven after only by an enormous process, not to be\nrealized suddenly by a mythological stroke of the wand. If ever, at\nan infinitely distant point of time, it is achieved that everything\nhomogeneous is brought together and the \"primal-existences\" undivided\nare encamped side by side in beautiful order, and every particle has\nfound its comrades and its home, and the great peace comes about after\nthe great division and splitting up of the substances, and there will\nbe no longer anything that is divided ind split up, then the Nous will\nagain return into Its automobilism and, no longer Itself divided,\nroam through the world, sometimes in larger, sometimes in smaller\nmasses, as plant-mind or animal-mind, and no longer will It take up Its\nnew dwelling-place in other matter. Meanwhile the task has not been\ncompleted; but the kind of motion which the Nous has thought out, in\norder to solve the task, shows a marvellous suitableness, for by this\nmotion the task is further solved in each new moment. For this motion\nhas the character of concentrically progressive circular motion; it\nbegan at some one point of the chaotic mixture, in the form of a little\ngyration, and in ever larger paths this circular movement traverses\nall existing \"Being,\" jerking forth everywhere the homogeneous to\nthe homogeneous. At first this revolution brings everything Dense\nto the Dense, everything Rare to the Rare, and likewise all that is\nDark, Bright, Moist, Dry to their kind; above these general groups or\nclassifications there are again two still more comprehensive, namely\n_Ether,_ that is to say everything that is Warm, Bright, Rare, and\n_A\u00ebr,_ that is to say everything that is Dark, Cold, Heavy, Firm.\nThrough the segregation of the ethereal masses from the a\u00ebrial,\nthere is formed, as the most immediate effect of that epicycle whose\ncentre moves along in the circumference of ever greater circles, a\nsomething as in an eddy made in standing water; heavy compounds are\nled towards the middle and compressed. Just in the same way that\ntravelling waterspout in chaos forms itself on the outer side out of\nthe Ethereal, Rare, Bright Constituents, on the inner side out of the\nCloudy, Heavy, Moist Constituents. Then in the course of this process\nout of that A\u00ebrial mass, conglomerating in its interior, water is\nseparated, and again out of the water the earthy element, and then\nout of the earthy element, under the effect of the awful cold are\nseparated the stones. Again at some juncture masses of stone, through\nthe momentum of the rotation, are torn away sideways from the earth and\nthrown into the realm of the hot light Ether; there in the latter's\nfiery element they are made to glow and, carried along in the ethereal\nrotation, they irradiate light, and as sun and stars illuminate and\nwarm the earth, in herself dark and cold. The whole conception is of\na wonderful daring and simplicity and has nothing of that clumsy and\nanthropomorphical teleology, which has been frequently connected with\nthe name of Anaxagoras. That conception has its greatness just in this,\nthat it derives the whole Cosmos of Becoming out of the moved circle,\nwhereas Parmenides contemplated the true \"Existent\" as a resting, dead\nball. Once that circle is put into motion and caused to roll by the\nNous, then all the order, law and beauty of the world is the natural\nconsequence of that first impetus. How very much one wrongs Anaxagoras\nif one reproaches him for the wise abstention from teleology which\nshows itself in this conception and talks scornfully of his Nous as\nof a _deus ex machina._ Rather, on account of the elimination of\nmythological and theistic miracle-working and anthropomorphic ends and\nutilities, Anaxagoras might have made use of proud words similar to\nthose which Kant used in his Natural History of the Heavens. For it is\nindeed a sublime thought, to retrace that grandeur of the cosmos and\nthe marvellous arrangement of the orbits of the stars, to retrace all\nthat, in all forms to a simple, purely mechanical motion and, as it\nwere, to a moved mathematical figure, and therefore not to reduce all\nthat to purposes and intervening hands of a machine-god, but only to\na kind of oscillation, which, having once begun, is in its progress\nnecessary and definite, and effects result which resemble the wisest\ncomputation of sagacity and extremely well thought-out fitness without\nbeing anything of the sort. \"I enjoy the pleasure,\" says Kant, of\nseeing how a well-ordered whole produces itself without the assistance\nof arbitrary fabrications, under the impulse of fixed laws of motion--a\nwell-ordered whole which looks so similar to that world-system which\nis ours, that I cannot abstain from considering it to be the same.\nIt seems to me that one might say here, in a certain sense without\npresumption: 'Give me matter and I will build a world out of it.'\"\n\n\n\n18\n\n\nSuppose now, that for once we allow that primal mixture as rightly\nconcluded, some considerations especially from Mechanics seem to oppose\nthe grand plan of the world edifice. For even though the Mind at a\npoint causes a circular movement its continuation is only conceivable\nwith great difficulty, especially since it is to be infinite and\ngradually to make all existing masses rotate. As a matter of course one\nwould assume that the pressure of all the remaining matter would have\ncrushed out this small circular movement when it had scarcely begun;\nthat this does not happen presupposes on the part of the stimulating\nNous, that the latter began to work suddenly with awful force, or at\nany rate so quickly, that we must call the motion a whirl: such a\nwhirl as Democritus himself imagined. And since this whirl must be\ninfinitely strong in order not to be checked through the whole world of\nthe Infinite weighing heavily upon it, it will be infinitely quick, for\nstrength can manifest itself originally only in speed. On the contrary\nthe broader the concentric rings are, the slower will be this motion;\nif once the motion could reach the end of the infinitely extended\nworld, then this motion would have already infinitely little speed of\nrotation. _Vice versa,_ if we conceive of the motion as infinitely\ngreat, _i.e.,_ infinitely quick, at the moment of the very first\nbeginning of motion, then the original circle must have been infinitely\nsmall; we get therefore as the beginning a particle rotated round\nitself, a particle with an infinitely small material content. This\nhowever would not at all explain the further motion; one might imagine\neven all particles of the primal mass to rotate round themselves and\nyet the whole mass would remain unmoved and unseparated. If, however,\nthat material particle of infinite smallness, caught and swung by the\nNous, was not turned round itself but described a circle somewhat\nlarger than a point, this would cause it to knock against other\nmaterial particles, to move them on, to hurl them, to make them rebound\nand thus gradually to stir up a great and spreading tumult within\nwhich, as the next result, that separation of the a\u00ebrial masses from\nthe ethereal had to take place. Just as the commencement of the motion\nitself is an arbitrary act of the Nous, arbitrary also is the manner of\nthis commencement in so far as the first motion circumscribes a circle\nof which the radius is chosen somewhat larger than a point.\n\n\n\n19\n\n\nHere of course one might ask, what fancy had at that time so suddenly\noccurred to the Nous, to knock against some chance material particle\nout of that number of particles and to turn it around in whirling dance\nand why that did not occur to It earlier. Whereupon Anaxagoras would\nanswer: \"The Nous has the privilege of arbitrary action; It may begin\nat any chance time, It depends on Itself, whereas everything else is\ndetermined from outside. It has no duty, and no end which It might\nbe compelled to pursue; if It did once begin with that motion and\nset Itself an end, this after all was only--the answer is difficult,\nHeraclitus would say--_play!_\"\n\nThat seems always to have been the last solution or answer hovering on\nthe lips of the Greek. The Anaxagorean Mind is an artist and in truth\nthe most powerful genius of mechanics and architecture, creating with\nthe simplest means the most magnificent forms and tracks and as it were\na mobile architecture, but always out of that irrational arbitrariness\nwhich lies in the soul of the artist. It is as though Anaxagoras was\npointing at Phidias and in face of the immense work of art, the Cosmos,\nwas calling out to us as he would do in front of the Parthenon: \"The\nBecoming is no moral, but only an artistic phenomenon.\" Aristotle\nrelates that, to the question what made life worth living, Anaxagoras\nhad answered: \"Contemplating the heavens and the total order of the\nCosmos.\" He treated physical things so devotionally, and with that\nsame mysterious awe, which we feel when standing in front of an antique\ntemple; his doctrine became a species of free-thinking religious\nexercise, protecting itself through the _odi profanum vulgus et arceo_\nand choosing its adherents with precaution out of the highest and\nnoblest society of Athens. In the exclusive community of the Athenian\nAnaxagoreans the mythology of the people was allowed only as a symbolic\nlanguage; all myths, all gods, all heroes were considered here only as\nhieroglyphics of the interpretation of nature, and even the Homeric\nepic was said to be the canonic song of the sway of the Nous and the\nstruggles and laws of Nature. Here and there a note from this society\nof sublime free-thinkers penetrated to the people; and especially\nEuripides, the great and at all times daring Euripides, ever thinking\nof something new, dared to let many things become known by means of the\ntragic mask, many things which pierced like an arrow through the senses\nof the masses and from which the latter freed themselves only by means\nof ludicrous caricatures and ridiculous re-interpretations.\n\nThe greatest of all Anaxagoreans however is Pericles, the mightiest and\nworthiest man of the world; and Plato bears witness that the philosophy\nof Anaxagoras alone had given that sublime flight to the genius of\nPericles. When as a public orator he stood before his people, in the\nbeautiful rigidity and immobility of a marble Olympian and now, calm,\nwrapped in his mantle, with unruffled drapery, without any change of\nfacial expression, without smile, with a voice the strong tone of\nwhich remained ever the same, and when he now spoke in an absolutely\nun-Demosthenic but merely Periclean fashion, when he thundered, struck\nwith lightnings, annihilated and redeemed--then he was the epitome\nof the Anaxagorean Cosmos, the image of the Nous, who has built for\nItself the most beautiful and dignified receptacle, then Pericles was\nas it were the visible human incarnation of the building, moving,\neliminating, ordering, reviewing, artistically-undetermined force of\nthe Mind. Anaxagoras himself said man was the most rational being or\nhe must necessarily shelter the Nous within himself in greater fulness\nthan all other beings, because he had such admirable organs as his\nhands; Anaxagoras concluded therefore, that that Nous, according to\nthe extent to which It made Itself master of a material body, was\nalways forming for Itself out of this material the tools corresponding\nto Its degree of power, consequently the Nous made the most beautiful\nand appropriate tools, when It was appearing in his greatest fulness.\nAnd as the most wondrous and appropriate action of the Nous was that\ncircular primal-motion, since at that time the Mind was still together,\nundivided, in Itself, thus to the listening Anaxagoras the effect\nof the Periclean speech often appeared perhaps as a simile of that\ncircular primal-motion; for here too he perceived a whirl of thoughts\nmoving itself at first with awful force but in an orderly manner, which\nin concentric circles gradually caught and carried away the nearest and\nfarthest and which, when it reached its end, had reshaped--organising\nand segregating--the whole nation.\n\nTo the later philosophers of antiquity the way in which Anaxagoras\nmade use of his Nous for the interpretation of the world was strange,\nindeed scarcely pardonable; to them it seemed as though he had found a\ngrand tool but had not well understood it and they tried to retrieve\nwhat the finder had neglected. They therefore did not recognise what\nmeaning the abstention of Anaxagoras, inspired by the purest spirit\nof the method of natural science, had, and that this abstention first\nof all in every case puts to itself the question: \"What is the cause\nof Something\"? (_causa efficiens_)--and not \"What is the purpose of\nSomething\"? (_causa finalis_). The Nous has not been dragged in by\nAnaxagoras for the purpose of answering the special question: \"What\nis the cause of motion and what causes regular motions?\"; Plato\nhowever reproaches him, that he ought to have, but had not shown that\neverything was in its own fashion and its own place the most beautiful,\nthe best and the most appropriate. But this Anaxagoras would not have\ndared to assert in any individual case, to him the existing world was\nnot even the most conceivably perfect world, for he saw everything\noriginate out of everything, and he found the segregation of the\nsubstances through the Nous complete and done with, neither at the\nend of the filled space of the world nor in the individual beings.\nFor his understanding it was sufficient that he had found a motion,\nwhich, by simple continued action could create the visible order out\nof a chaos mixed through and through; and he took good care not to put\nthe question as to the Why? of the motion, as to the rational purpose\nof motion. For if the Nous had to fulfil by means of motion a purpose\ninnate in the noumenal essence, then it was no longer in Its free will\nto commence the motion at any chance time; in so far as the Nous is\neternal, It had also to be determined eternally by this purpose, and\nthen no point of time could have been allowed to exist in which motion\nwas still lacking, indeed it would have been logically forbidden to\nassume a starting point for motion: whereby again the conception of\noriginal chaos, the basis of the whole Anaxagorean interpretation of\nthe world would likewise have become logically impossible. In order\nto escape such difficulties, which teleology creates, Anaxagoras had\nalways to emphasise and asseverate that the Mind has free will; all\nIts actions, including that of the primal motion, were actions of the\n\"free will,\" whereas on the contrary after that primeval moment the\nwhole remaining world was shaping itself in a strictly determined, and\nmore precisely, mechanically determined form. That absolutely free\nwill however can be conceived only as purposeless, somewhat after the\nfashion of children's play or the artist's bent for play. It is an\nerror to ascribe to Anaxagoras the common confusion of the teleologist,\nwho, marvelling at the extraordinary appropriateness, at the agreement\nof the parts with the whole, especially in the realm of the organic,\nassumes that that which exists for the intellect had also come into\nexistence through intellect, and that that which man brings about only\nunder the guidance of the idea of purpose, must have been brought about\nby Nature through reflection and ideas of purpose. (Schopenhauer, \"The\nWorld As Will And Idea,\" vol. ii., Second Book, chap. 26: On Teleology).\nConceived in the manner of Anaxagoras, however, the order and\nappropriateness of things on the contrary is nothing but the immediate\nresult of a blind mechanical motion; and only in order to cause this\nmotion, in order to get for once out of the dead-rest of the Chaos,\nAnaxagoras assumed the free-willed Nous who depends only on Itself.\nHe appreciated in the Nous just the very quality of being a thing of\nchance, a chance agent, therefore of being able to act unconditioned,\nundetermined, guided neither by causes nor by purposes.\n\n\n\n\nNotes for a Continuation\n\n\n(Early Part of 1873)\n\n\n1\n\n\nThat this total conception of the Anaxagorean doctrine must be\nright, is proved most clearly by the way in which the successors\nof Anaxagoras, the Agrigentine Empedocles and the atomic teacher\nDemocritus in their counter-systems actually criticised and improved\nthat doctrine. The method of this critique is more than anything a\ncontinued renunciation in that spirit of natural science mentioned\nabove, the law of economy applied to the interpretation of nature.\nThat hypothesis, which explains the existing world with the smallest\nexpenditure of assumptions and means is to have preference: for in such\na hypothesis is to be found the least amount of arbitrariness, and in\nit free play with possibilities is prohibited. Should there be two\nhypotheses which both explain the world, then a strict test must be\napplied as to which of the two better satisfies that demand of economy.\nHe who can manage this explanation with the simpler and more known\nforces, especially the mechanical ones, he who deduces the existing\nedifice of the world out of the smallest possible number of forces,\nwill always be preferred to him who allows the more complicated and\nless-known forces, and these moreover in greater number, to carry on a\nworld-creating play. So then we see Empedocles endeavouring to remove\nthe _superfluity_ of hypotheses from the doctrine of Anaxagoras.\n\nThe first hypothesis which falls as unnecessary is that of the\nAnaxagorean Nous, for its assumption is much too complex to explain\nanything so simple as motion. After all it is only necessary to explain\nthe two kinds of motion: the motion of a body towards another, and the\nmotion away from another.\n\n\n\n2\n\n\nIf our present Becoming is a segregating, although not a complete one,\nthen Empedocles asks: what prevents complete segregation? Evidently a\nforce works against it, _i.e.,_ a latent motion of attraction.\n\nFurther: in order to explain that Chaos, a force must already have\nbeen at work; a movement is necessary to bring about this complicated\nentanglement.\n\nTherefore periodical preponderance of the one and the other force is\ncertain. They are opposites.\n\nThe force of attraction is still at work; for otherwise there would be\nno Things at all, everything would be segregated.\n\nThis is the actual fact: two kinds of motion. The Nous does not explain\nthem. On the contrary, Love and Hatred; indeed we certainly see that\nthese move as well as that the Nous moves.\n\nNow the conception of the primal state undergoes a change: it is\nthe most _blessed._ With Anaxagoras it was the chaos before the\narchitectural work, the heap of stones as it were upon the building\nsite.\n\n\n\n3\n\n\nEmpedocles had conceived the thought of a tangential force originated\nby revolution and working against gravity (\"de coelo,\" i., p. 284),\nSchopenhauer, \"W. A. W.,\" ii. 390.\n\nHe considered the continuation of the circular movement according\nto Anaxagoras _impossible._ It would result in a _whirl, i.e.,_ the\ncontrary of ordered motion.\n\nIf the particles were infinitely mixed, pell-mell, then one would be\nable to break asunder the bodies without any exertion of power, they\nwould not cohere or hold together, they would be as dust.\n\nThe forces, which press the atoms against one another, and which give\nstability to the mass, Empedocles calls \"Love.\" It is a molecular\nforce, a constitutive force of the bodies.\n\n\n\n4\n\n\nAgainst Anaxagoras.\n\n1. The Chaos already presupposes motion.\n\n2. Nothing prevented the complete segregation.\n\n3. Our bodies would be dust-forms. How can motion exist, if there are\nnot counter-motions in all bodies?\n\n4. An ordered permanent circular motion impossible; only a whirl. He\nassumes the whirl itself to be an effect of the \u03bd\u03b5\u1fd1\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2.--\u1f00\u03c0\u03bf\u03c1\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9\u03b1\u03af. How\ndo distant things operate on one another, sun upon earth? If everything\nwere still in a whirl, that would be impossible. Therefore at least two\nmoving powers: which must be inherent in Things.\n\n5. Why infinite \u1f44\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1? Transgression of experience. Anaxagoras meant\nthe chemical atoms. Empedocles tried the assumption of four kinds of\nchemical atoms. He took the aggregate states to be essential, and heat\nto be co-ordinated. Therefore the aggregate states through repulsion\nand attraction; matter in four forms.\n\n6. The periodical principle is necessary.\n\n7. With the living beings Empedocles will also deal still on the same\nprinciple. Here also he denies purposiveness. His greatest deed. With\nAnaxagoras a dualism.\n\n\n\n5\n\n\nThe symbolism of _sexual love._ Here as in the Platonic fable the\nlonging after Oneness shows itself, and here, likewise, is shown\nthat once a greater unity already existed; were this greater unity\nestablished, then this would again strive after a still greater one.\nThe conviction of the unity of everything living guarantees that once\nthere was an _immense Living Something,_ of which we are pieces;\nthat is probably the Sphairos itself. He is the most blessed deity.\nEverything was connected only through love, therefore in the highest\ndegree appropriate. Love has been torn to pieces and splintered by\nhatred, love has been divided into her elements and killed--bereft\nof life. In the whirl no living individuals originate. Eventually\neverything is segregated and now our period begins. (He opposes the\nAnaxagorean Primal Mixture by a Primal Discord.) Love, blind as she\nis, with furious haste again throws the elements one against another\nendeavouring to see whether she can bring them back to life again or\nnot. Here and there she is successful. It continues. A presentiment\noriginates in the living beings, that they are to strive after still\nhigher unions than home and the primal state. Eros. It is a terrible\ncrime to kill life, for thereby one works back to the Primal Discord.\nSome day everything will be again one _single life,_ the most blissful\nstate.\n\nThe Pythagorean-orphean doctrine re-interpreted in the manner of\nnatural science. Empedocles consciously masters both means of\nexpression, therefore he is the first rhetor. Political aims.\n\nThe double-nature--the agonal and the loving, the compassionate.\n\nAttempt of the _Hellenic total reform_.\n\nAll inorganic matter has originated out of organic, it is dead organic\nmatter. Corpse and man.\n\n\n\n6\n\n\nDEMOCRITUS\n\nThe greatest possible simplification of the hypotheses.\n\n1. There is motion, therefore vacuum, therefore a \"Non-Existent.\"\nThinking is motion.\n\n2. If there is a \"Non-Existent\" it must be indivisible, _i.e.,_\nabsolutely filled. Division is only explicable in case of empty spaces\nand pores. The \"Non-Existent\" alone is an absolutely porous thing.\n\n3. The secondary qualities of matter, \u03bd\u03cc\u03bc\u1ff3, not of Matter-In-Itself.\n\n4. Establishment of the primary qualities of the \u1f04\u03c4\u03bf\u03bc\u03b1. Wherein\nhomogeneous, wherein heterogeneous?\n\n5. The aggregate-states of Empedocles (four elements) presuppose only\nthe homogeneous atoms, they themselves cannot therefore be \u1f44\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1.\n\n6. Motion is connected indissolubly with the atoms, effect of gravity.\nEpicur. Critique: what does gravity signify in an infinite vacuum?\n\n7. Thinking is the motion of the fire-atoms. Soul, life, perceptions of\nthe senses.\n    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .\nValue of materialism and its embarrassment.\n\nPlato and Democritus.\n\nThe hermit-like homeless noble searcher for truth. Democritus and the\nPythagoreans together find the basis of natural sciences.\n    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .\nWhat are the causes which have interrupted a flourishing science of\nexperimental physics in antiquity after Democritus?\n\n\n\n7\n\n\nAnaxagoras has taken from Heraclitus the idea that in every Becoming\nand in every Being the opposites are together.\n\nHe felt strongly the contradiction that a body has many qualities and\nhe _pulverised_ it in the belief that he had now dissolved it into\nits true qualities.\n    .    .    .    .    .    .    .\n_Plato:_ first Heraclitean, later Sceptic: Everything, even Thinking,\nis in a state of flux.\n\nBrought through Socrates to the permanence of the good, the beautiful.\n\nThese assumed as entitative.\n\nAll generic ideals partake of the idea of the good, the beautiful, and\nthey too are therefore _entitative_, _being_ (as the soul partakes of\nthe idea of Life). The idea is _formless_.\n\nThrough Pythagoras' metempsychosis has been answered the question: how\nwe can know anything about the ideas.\n\nPlato's end: scepticism in Parmenides. Refutation of ideology.\n\n\n\n8\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nGreek thought during the _tragic age is pessimistic_ or _artistically\noptimistic_.\n\nTheir judgment about _life_ implies more.\n\nThe One, flight from the Becoming. _Aut_ unity, _aut_ artistic play.\n\nDeep distrust of reality: nobody assumes a good god, who has made\neverything _optime_.\n\n    {Pythagoreans, religious sect.\n    {Anaximander.\n    {Empedocles.\n     Eleates.\n    {Anaxagoras.\n    {Heraclitus.\n     Democritus: the world without moral\n       and \u00e6sthetic meaning, pessimism of\n       chance.\n\nIf one placed a tragedy before all these, the three former would see\nin it the mirror of the fatality of existence, Parmenides a transitory\nappearance, Heraclitus and Anaxagoras an artistic edifice and image of\nthe world-laws, Democritus the result of machines.\n    .    .    .    .    .    .    .\n\nWith Socrates _Optimism_ begins, an optimism no longer artistic, with\nteleology and faith in the good god; faith in the enlightened good\nman. Dissolution of the instincts, Socrates breaks with the hitherto\nprevailing _knowledge_ and _culture;_ he intends returning to the old\ncitizen-virtue and to the State.\n\nPlato dissociates himself from the State, when he observes that the\nState has become identical with the new Culture.\n\nThe Socratic scepticism is a weapon against the hitherto prevailing\nculture and knowledge.\n\n\n\n\nON TRUTH AND FALSITY IN THEIR ULTRAMORAL SENSE\n\n\n(1873)\n\n\nIn some remote corner of the universe, effused into innumerable\nsolar-systems, there was once a star upon which clever animals invented\ncognition. It was the haughtiest, most mendacious moment in the history\nof this world, but yet only a moment. After Nature had taken breath\nawhile the star congealed and the clever animals had to die.--Someone\nmight write a fable after this style, and yet he would not have\nillustrated sufficiently, how wretched,; shadow-like, transitory,\npurposeless and fanciful the human intellect appears in Nature. There\nwere eternities during which this intellect did not exist, and when it\nhas once more passed away there will be nothing to show that it has\nexisted. For this intellect is not concerned with any further mission\ntranscending the sphere of human life. No, it is purely human and none\nbut its owner and procreator regards it so pathetically as to suppose\nthat the world revolves around it. If, however, we and the gnat could\nunderstand each other we should learn that even the gnat swims through\nthe air with the same pathos, and feels within itself the flying centre\nof the world. Nothing in Nature is so bad or so insignificant that it\nwill not, at the smallest puff of that force cognition, immediately\nswell up like a balloon, and just as a mere porter wants to have his\nadmirer, so the very proudest man, the philosopher, imagines he sees\nfrom all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically directed upon\nhis actions and thoughts.\n\nIt is remarkable that this is accomplished by the intellect, which\nafter all has been given to the most unfortunate, the most delicate,\nthe most transient beings only as an expedient, in order to detain them\nfor a moment in existence, from which without that extra-gift they\nwould have every cause to flee as swiftly as Lessing's son.[1] That\nhaughtiness connected with cognition and sensation, spreading blinding\nfogs before the eyes and over the senses of men, deceives itself\ntherefore as to the value of existence owing to the fact that it bears\nwithin itself the most flattering evaluation of cognition. Its most\ngeneral effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have\nsomething of deception in their nature.\n\nThe intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual,\ndevelops its chief power in dissimulation; for it is by dissimulation\nthat the feebler, and less robust individuals preserve themselves,\nsince it has been denied them to fight the battle of existence\nwith horns or the sharp teeth of beasts of prey. In man this art\nof dissimulation reaches its acme of perfection: in him deception,\nflattery, falsehood and fraud, slander, display, pretentiousness,\ndisguise, cloaking convention, and acting to others and to himself\nin short, the continual fluttering to and fro around the _one_\nflame--Vanity: all these things are so much the rule, and the law,\nthat few things are more incomprehensible than the way in which an\nhonest and pure impulse to truth could have arisen among men. They\nare deeply immersed in illusions and dream-fancies; their eyes glance\nonly over the surface of things and see \"forms\"; their sensation\nnowhere leads to truth, but contents itself with receiving stimuli\nand, so to say, with playing hide-and-seek on the back of things.\nIn addition to that, at night man allows his dreams to lie to him a\nwhole life-time long, without his moral sense ever trying to prevent\nthem; whereas men are said to exist who by the exercise of a strong\nwill have overcome the habit of snoring. What indeed _does_ man know\nabout himself? Oh! that he could but once see himself complete, placed\nas it were in an illuminated glass-case! Does not nature keep secret\nfrom him most things, even about his body, _e.g.,_ the convolutions of\nthe intestines, the quick flow of the blood-currents, the intricate\nvibrations of the fibres, so as to banish and lock him up in proud,\ndelusive knowledge? Nature threw away the key; and woe co the fateful\ncuriosity which might be able for a moment to look out and down through\na crevice in the chamber of consciousness, and discover that man,\nindifferent to his own ignorance, is resting on the pitiless, the\ngreedy, the insatiable, the murderous, and, as it were, hanging in\ndreams on the back of a tiger. Whence, in the wide world, with this\nstate of affairs, arises the impulse to truth?\n\nAs far as the individual tries to preserve himself against other\nindividuals, in the natural state of things he uses the intellect\nin most cases only for dissimulation; since, however, man both from\nnecessity and boredom wants to exist socially and gregariously, he\nmust needs make peace and at least endeavour to cause the greatest\n_bellum omnium contra omnes_ to disappear from his world. This first\nconclusion of peace brings with it a something which looks like the\nfirst step towards the attainment of that enigmatical bent for truth.\nFor that which henceforth is to be \"truth\" is now fixed; that is to\nsay, a uniformly valid and binding designation of things is invented\nand the legislature of language also gives the first laws of truth:\nsince here, for the first time, originates the contrast between truth\nand falsity. The liar uses the valid designations, the words, in order\nto make the unreal appear as real; _e.g.,_ he says, \"I am rich,\"\nwhereas the right designation for his state would be \"poor.\" He abuses\nthe fixed conventions by convenient substitution or even inversion\nof terms. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful fashion,\nsociety will no longer trust him but will even exclude him. In this way\nmen avoid not so much being defrauded, but being injured by fraud. At\nbottom, at this juncture too, they hate not deception, but the evil,\nhostile consequences of certain species of deception. And it is in\na similarly limited sense only that man desires truth: he covets the\nagreeable, life-preserving consequences of truth; he is indifferent\ntowards pure, ineffective knowledge; he is even inimical towards truths\nwhich possibly might prove harmful or destroying. And, moreover, what\nafter all are those conventions op language? Are they possibly products\nof knowledge, of the love of truth; do the designations and the things\ncoincide? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?\n\nOnly by means of forgetfulness can man ever arrive at imagining that he\npossesses \"truth\" in that degree just indicated. If he does not mean\nto content himself with truth in the shape of tautology, that is, with\nempty husks, he will always obtain illusions instead of truth. What\nis a word? The expression of a nerve-stimulus in sounds. But to infer\na cause outside us from the nerve-stimulus is already the result of a\nwrong and unjustifiable application of the proposition of causality.\nHow should we dare, if truth with the genesis of language, if the point\nof view of certainty with the designations had alone been decisive; how\nindeed should we dare to say: the stone is hard; as if \"hard\" was known\nto us otherwise; and not merely as an entirely subjective stimulus!\nWe divide things according to genders; we designate the tree as\nmasculine,[2] the plant as feminine:[3] what arbitrary metaphors! How\nfar flown beyond the canon of certainty! We speak of a \"serpent\";[4]\nthe designation fits nothing but the sinuosity, and could therefore\nalso appertain to the worm. What arbitrary demarcations! what one-sided\npreferences given sometimes to this, sometimes to that quality of a\nthing! The different languages placed side by side show that with words\ntruth or adequate expression matters little: for otherwise there would\nnot be so many languages. The \"Thing-in-itself\" (it is just this which\nwould be the pure ineffective truth) is also quite incomprehensible\nto the creator of language and not worth making any great endeavour\nto obtain. He designates only the relations of things to men and for\ntheir expression he calls to his help the most daring metaphors. A\nnerve-stimulus, first transformed into a percept! First metaphor! The\npercept again copied into a sound! Second metaphor! And each time he\nleaps completely out of one sphere right into the midst of an entirely\ndifferent one. One can imagine a man who is quite deaf and has never\nhad a sensation of tone and of music; just as this man will possibly\nmarvel at Chladni's sound figures in the sand, will discover their\ncause in the vibrations of the string, and will then proclaim that\nnow he knows what man calls \"tone\"; even so does it happen to us all\nwith language. When we talk about trees, colours, snow and flowers,\nwe believe we know something about the things themselves, and yet we\nonly possess metaphors of the things, and these metaphors do not in the\nleast correspond to the original essentials. Just as the sound shows\nitself as a sand-figure, in the same way the enigmatical _x_ of the\nThing-in-itself is seen first as nerve-stimulus, then as percept, and\nfinally as sound. At any rate the genesis of language did not therefore\nproceed on logical lines, and the whole material in which and with\nwhich the man of truth, the investigator, the philosopher works and\nbuilds, originates, if not from Nephelococcygia, cloud-land, at any\nrate not from the essence of things.\n\nLet us especially think about the formation of ideas. Every word\nbecomes at once an idea not by having, as one might presume, to serve\nas a reminder for the original experience happening but once and\nabsolutely individualised, to which experience such word owes its\norigin, no, but by having simultaneously to fit innumerable, more or\nless similar (which really means never equal, therefore altogether\nunequal) cases. Every idea originates through equating the unequal. As\ncertainly as no one leaf is exactly similar to any other, so certain\nis it that the idea \"leaf\" has been formed through an arbitrary\nomission of these individual differences, through a forgetting of the\ndifferentiating qualities, and this idea now awakens the notion that in\nnature there is, besides the leaves, a something called _the_ \"leaf,\"\nperhaps a primal form according to which all leaves were woven, drawn,\naccurately measured, coloured, crinkled, painted, but by unskilled\nhands, so that no copy had turned out correct and trustworthy as a\ntrue copy of the primal form. We call a man \"honest\"; we ask, why has\nhe acted so honestly to-day? Our customary answer runs, \"On account of\nhis honesty.\" _The_ Honesty! That means again: the \"leaf\" is the\ncause of the leaves. We really and truly do not know anything at all\nabout an essential quality which might be called _the_ honesty, but we\ndo know about numerous individualised, and therefore unequal actions,\nwhich we equate by omission of the unequal, and now designate as honest\nactions; finally out of them we formulate a _qualitas occulta_ with the\nname \"Honesty.\" The disregarding of the individual and real furnishes\nus with the idea, as it likewise also gives us the form; whereas nature\nknows of no forms and ideas, and therefore knows no species but only\nan _x,_ to us inaccessible and indefinable. For our antithesis of\nindividual and species is anthropomorphic too and does not come from\nthe essence of things, although on the other hand we do not dare to\nsay that it does not correspond to it; for that would be a dogmatic\nassertion and as such just as undemonstrable as its contrary.\n\nWhat therefore is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies,\nanthropomorphisms: in short a sum of human relations which became\npoetically and rhetorically intensified, metamorphosed, adorned, and\nafter long usage seem to a nation fixed, canonic and binding; truths\nare illusions of which one has forgotten that they _are_ illusions;\nworn-out metaphors which have become powerless to affect the senses;\ncoins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account\nas coins but merely as metal.\n\nStill we do not yet know whence the impulse to truth comes, for up to\nnow we have heard only about the obligation which society imposes in\norder to exist: to be truthful, that is, to use the usual metaphors,\ntherefore expressed morally: we have heard only about the obligation\nto lie according to a fixed convention, to lie gregariously in a style\nbinding for all. Now man of course forgets that matters are going thus\nwith him; he therefore lies in that fashion pointed out unconsciously\nand according to habits of centuries' standing--and by _this very\nunconsciousness,_ by this very forgetting, he arrives at a sense for\ntruth. Through this feeling of being obliged to designate one thing as\n\"red,\" another as \"cold,\" a third one as \"dumb,\" awakes a moral emotion\nrelating to truth. Out of the antithesis \"liar\" whom nobody trusts,\nwhom all exclude, man demonstrates to himself the venerableness,\nreliability, usefulness of truth. Now as a \"_rational_\" being he\nsubmits his actions to the sway of abstractions; he no longer suffers\nhimself to be carried away by sudden impressions, by sensations, he\nfirst generalises all these impressions into paler, cooler ideas, in\norder to attach to them the ship of his life and actions. Everything\nwhich makes man stand out in bold relief against the animal depends on\nthis faculty of volatilising the concrete metaphors into a schema, and\ntherefore resolving a perception into an idea. For within the range of\nthose schemata a something becomes possible that never could succeed\nunder the first perceptual impressions: to build up a pyramidal order\nwith castes and grades, to create a new world of laws, privileges,\nsub-orders, delimitations, which now stands opposite the other\nperceptual world of first impressions and assumes the appearance of\nbeing the more fixed, general, known, human of the two and therefore\nthe regulating and imperative one. Whereas every metaphor of perception\nis individual and without its equal and therefore knows how to escape\nall attempts to classify it, the great \"edifice of ideas shows the\nrigid regularity of a Roman Columbarium and in logic breathes forth the\nsternness and coolness which we find in mathematics. He who has been\nbreathed upon by this coolness will scarcely believe, that the idea\ntoo, bony and hexa-hedral, and permutable as a die, remains however\nonly as the _residuum of a metaphor,_ and that the illusion of the\nartistic metamorphosis of a nerve-stimulus into percepts is, if not\nthe mother, then the grand-mother of every idea. Now in this game of\ndice, \"Truth\" means to use every die as it is designated, to count its\npoints carefully, to form exact classifications, and never lo violate\nthe order of castes and the sequences of rank. Just as the Romans\nand Etruscans for their benefit cut up the sky by means of strong\nmathematical lines and banned a god as it were into a _templum,_ into a\nspace limited in this fashion, so every nation has above its head such\na sky of ideas divided up mathematically, and it understands the demand\nfor truth to mean that every conceptual god is to be looked for only\nin _his_ own sphere. One may here well admire man, who succeeded in\npiling up an infinitely complex dome of ideas on a movable foundation\nand as it were on running water, as a powerful genius of architecture.\nOf course in order to obtain hold on such a foundation it must be as\nan edifice piled up out of cobwebs, so fragile, as to be carried away\nby the waves: so firm, as not to be blown asunder by every wind. In\nthis way man as an architectural genius rises high above the bee;\nshe builds with wax, which she brings together out of nature; he\nwith the much more delicate material of ideas, which he must first\nmanufacture within himself. He is very much to be admired here--but\nnot on account of his impulse for truth, his bent for pure cognition\nof things. If somebody hides a thing behind a bush, seeks it again and\nfinds it in the self-same place, then there is not much to boast of,\nrespecting this seeking and finding; thus, however, matters stand with\nthe seeking and finding of \"truth\" within the realm of reason. If I\nmake the definition of the mammal and then declare after inspecting a\ncamel, \"Behold a mammal,\" then no doubt a truth is brought to light\nthereby, but it is of very limited value, I mean it is anthropomorphic\nthrough and through, and does not contain one single point which is\n\"true-in-itself,\" real and universally valid, apart from man. The\nseeker after such truths seeks at the bottom only the metamorphosis\nof the world in man, he strives for an understanding of the world as\na human-like thing and by his battling gains at best the feeling of\nan assimilation. Similarly, as the astrologer contemplated the stars\nin the service of man and in connection with their happiness and\nunhappiness, such a seeker contemplates the whole world as related to\nman, as the infinitely protracted echo of an original sound: man; as\nthe multiplied copy of the one arch-type: man. His procedure is to\napply man as the measure of all things, whereby he starts from the\nerror of believing that he has these things immediately before him\nas pure objects. He therefore forgets that the original metaphors of\nperception _are_ metaphors, and takes them for the things themselves.\n\nOnly by forgetting that primitive world of metaphors, only by the\ncongelation and coagulation of an original mass of similes and percepts\npouring forth as a fiery liquid out of the primal faculty of human\nfancy, only by the invincible faith, that _this_ sun, _this_ window,\n_this_ table is a truth in itself: in short only by the fact that\nman forgets himself as subject, and what is more as an _artistically\ncreating_ subject: only by all this does he live with some repose,\nsafety and consequence. If he were able to get out of the prison walls\nof this faith, even for an instant only, his \"self-consciousness would\nbe destroyed at once. Already it costs him some trouble to admit to\nhimself that the insect and the bird perceive a world different from\nhis own, and that the question, which of the two world-perceptions is\nmore accurate, is quite a senseless one, since to decide this question\nit would be necessary to apply the standard of _right perception,_\ni.e., to apply a standard which _does not exist._ On the whole it\nseems to me that the \"right perception\"--which would mean the adequate\nexpression of an object in the subject--is a nonentity full of\ncontradictions: for between two utterly different spheres, as between\nsubject and object, there is no causality, no accuracy, no expression,\nbut at the utmost an _\u00e6sthetical_ relation, I mean a suggestive\nmetamorphosis, a stammering translation into quite a distinct foreign\nlanguage, for which purpose however there is needed at any rate an\nintermediate sphere, an intermediate force, freely composing and\nfreely inventing. The word \"phenomenon\" contains many seductions, and\non that account I avoid it as much as possible, for it is not true\nthat the essence of things appears in the empiric world. A painter\nwho had no hands and wanted to express the picture distinctly present\nto his mind by the agency of song, would still reveal much more with\nthis permutation of spheres, than the empiric world reveals about\nthe essence of things. The very relation of a nerve-stimulus to the\nproduced percept is in itself no necessary one; but if the same percept\nhas been reproduced millions of times and has been the inheritance of\nmany successive generations of man, and in the end appears each time to\nall mankind as the result of the same cause, then it attains finally\nfor man the same importance as if it were _the_ unique, necessary\npercept and as if that relation between the original nerve-stimulus\nand the percept produced were a close relation of causality: just as\na dream eternally repeated, would be perceived and judged as though\nreal. But the congelation and coagulation of a metaphor does not at all\nguarantee the necessity and exclusive justification of that metaphor.\n\nSurely every human being who is at home with such contemplations has\nfelt a deep distrust against any idealism of that kind, as often\nas he has distinctly convinced himself of the eternal rigidity,\nomni-presence, and infallibility of nature's laws: he has arrived at\nthe conclusion that as far as we can penetrate the heights of the\ntelescopic and the depths of the microscopic world, everything is quite\nsecure, complete, infinite, determined, and continuous. Science will\nhave to dig in these shafts eternally and successfully and all things\nfound are sure to have to harmonise and not to contradict one another.\nHow little does this resemble a product of fancy, for if it were one\nit would necessarily betray somewhere its nature of appearance and\nunreality. Against this it may be objected in the first place that if\neach of us had for himself a different sensibility, if we ourselves\nwere only able to perceive sometimes as a bird, sometimes as a worm,\nsometimes as a plant, or if one of us saw the same stimulus as red,\nanother as blue, if a third person even perceived it as a tone, then\nnobody would talk of such an orderliness of nature, but would conceive\nof her only as an extremely subjective structure. Secondly, what is,\nfor us in general, a law of nature? It is not known in itself but\nonly in its effects, that is to say in its relations to other laws\nof nature, which again are known to us only as sums of relations.\nTherefore all these relations refer only one to another and are\nabsolutely incomprehensible to us in their essence; only that which we\nadd: time, space, _i.e.,_ relations of sequence and numbers, are really\nknown to us in them. Everything wonderful, however, that we marvel\nat in the laws of nature, everything that demands an explanation and\nmight seduce us into distrusting idealism, lies really and solely in\nthe mathematical rigour and inviolability of the conceptions of time\nand space. These however we produce within ourselves and throw them\nforth with that necessity with which the spider spins; since we are\ncompelled to conceive all things under these forms only, then it is no\nlonger wonderful that in all things we actually conceive none but these\nforms: for they all must bear within themselves the laws of number,\nand this very idea of number is the most marvellous in all things. All\nobedience to law which impresses us so forcibly in the orbits of stars\nand in chemical processes coincides at the bottom with those qualities\nwhich we ourselves attach to those things, so that it is we who\nthereby make the impression upon ourselves. Whence it clearly follows\nthat that artistic formation of metaphors, with which every sensation\nin us begins, already presupposes those forms, and is therefore only\nconsummated within them; only out of the persistency of these primal\nforms the possibility explains itself, how afterwards--out of the\nmetaphors themselves a structure of ideas, could again be compiled. For\nthe latter is an imitation of the relations of time, space and number\nin the realm of metaphors.\n\n\n[1] The German poet, Lessing, had been married for just a little over\none year to Eva K\u00f6nig. A son was born and died the same day, and the\nmother's life was despaired of. In a letter to his friend Eschenburg\nthe poet wrote: \"... and I lost him so unwillingly, this son! For he\nhad so much understanding! so much understanding! Do not suppose that\nthe few hours of fatherhood have made me an ape of a father! I know\nwhat I say. Was it not understanding, that they had to drag him into\nthe world with a pair of forceps? that he so soon suspected the evil\nof this world? Was it not understanding, that he seized the first\nopportunity to get away from it?...\"\n\nEva K\u00f6nig died a week later.--TR.\n\n[2] In German _the tree--der Baum_--is masculine.--TR.\n\n[3] In German _the plant--die Pflanze--_-is feminine--TR.\n\n[4] _Cf._ the German _die Schlange_ and _schlingen,_ the English\n_serpent_ from the Latin _serpere._--TR.\n\n\n\n2\n\n\nAs we saw, it is _language_ which has worked originally at the\nconstruction of ideas; in later times it is _science._ Just as the\nbee works at the same time at the cells and fills them with honey,\nthus science works irresistibly at that great columbarium of ideas,\nthe cemetery of perceptions, builds ever newer and higher storeys;\nsupports, purifies, renews the old cells, and endeavours above all to\nfill that gigantic framework and to arrange within it the whole of the\nempiric world, _i.e.,_ the anthropomorphic world. And as the man of\naction binds his life to reason and its ideas, in order to avoid being\nswept away and losing himself, so the seeker after truth builds his hut\nclose to the towering edifice of science in order to collaborate with\nit and to find protection. And he needs protection. For there are awful\npowers which continually press upon him, and which hold out against the\n\"truth\" of science \"truths\" fashioned in quite another way, bearing\ndevices of the most heterogeneous character.\n\nThat impulse towards the formation of metaphors, mat fundamental\nimpulse of man, which we cannot reason away for one moment--for thereby\nwe should reason away man himself--is in truth not defeated nor even\nsubdued by the fact that out of its evaporated products, the ideas, a\nregular and rigid new world has been built as a stronghold for it. This\nimpulse seeks for itself a new realm of action and another river-bed,\nand finds it in _Mythos_ and more generally in _Art._ This impulse\nconstantly confuses the rubrics and cells of the ideas, by putting\nup new figures of speech, metaphors, metonymies; it constantly shows\nits passionate longing for shaping the existing world of waking man\nas motley, irregular, inconsequentially incoherent, attractive, and\neternally new as the world of dreams is. For indeed, waking man _per\nse_ is only clear about his being awake through the rigid and orderly\nwoof of ideas, and it is for this very reason that he sometimes comes\nto believe that he was dreaming when that woof of ideas has for a\nmoment been torn by Art. Pascal is quite right, when he asserts, that\nif the same dream came to us every night we should be just as much\noccupied by it as by the things which we see every day; to quote his\nwords, \"If an artisan were certain that he would dream every night\nfor fully twelve hours that he was a king, I believe that he would\nbe just as happy as a king who dreams every night for twelve hours\nthat he is an artisan.\" The wide-awake day of a people mystically\nexcitable, let us say of the earlier Greeks, is in fact through the\ncontinually-working wonder, which the mythos presupposes, more akin to\nthe dream than to the day of the thinker sobered by science. If every\ntree may at some time talk as a nymph, or a god under the disguise of\na bull, carry away virgins, if the goddess Athene herself be suddenly\nseen as, with a beautiful team, she drives, accompanied by Pisistratus,\nthrough the markets of Athens--and every honest Athenian did believe\nthis--at any moment, as in a dream, everything is possible; and all\nnature swarms around man as if she were nothing but the masquerade\nof the gods, who found it a huge joke to deceive man by assuming all\npossible forms.\n\nMan himself, however, has an invincible tendency to let himself\nbe deceived, and he is like one enchanted with happiness when the\nrhapsodist narrates to him epic romances in such a way that they appear\nreal or when the actor on the stage makes the king appear more kingly\nthan reality shows him. Intellect, that master of dissimulation, is\nfree and dismissed from his service as slave, so long as It is able\nto deceive without _injuring,_ and then It celebrates Its Saturnalia.\nNever is It richer, prouder, more luxuriant, more skilful and daring;\nwith a creator's delight It throws metaphors into confusion, shifts the\nboundary-stones of the abstractions, so that for instance It designates\nthe stream as the mobile way which carries man to that place whither\nhe would otherwise go. Now It has thrown off Its shoulders the emblem\nof servitude. Usually with gloomy officiousness It endeavours to point\nout the way to a poor individual coveting existence, and It fares forth\nfor plunder and booty like a servant for his master, but now It Itself\nhas become a master and may wipe from Its countenance the expression\nof indigence. Whatever It now does, compared with Its former doings,\nbears within itself dissimulation, just as Its former doings bore the\ncharacter of distortion. It copies human life, but takes it for a\ngood thing and seems to rest quite satisfied with it. That enormous\nframework and hoarding of ideas, by clinging to which needy man saves\nhimself through life, is to the freed intellect only a scaffolding and\na toy for Its most daring feats, and when It smashes it to pieces,\nthrows it into confusion, and then puts it together ironically, pairing\nthe strangest, separating the nearest items, then It manifests that It\nhas no use for those makeshifts of misery, and that It is now no longer\nled by ideas but by intuitions. From these intuitions no regular road\nleads into the land of the spectral schemata, the abstractions; for\nthem the word is not made, when man sees them he is dumb, or speaks in\nforbidden metaphors and in unheard-of combinations of ideas, in order\nto correspond creatively with the impression of the powerful present\nintuition at least by destroying and jeering at the old barriers of\nideas.\n\nThere are ages, when the rational and the intuitive man stand side by\nside, the one full of fear of the intuition, the other full of scorn\nfor the abstraction; the latter just as irrational as the former is\ninartistic. Both desire to rule over life; the one by knowing how to\nmeet the most important needs with foresight, prudence, regularity;\nthe other as an \"over-joyous\" hero by ignoring those needs and taking\nthat life only as real which simulates appearance and beauty. Wherever\nintuitive man, as for instance in the earlier history of Greece,\nbrandishes his weapons more powerfully and victoriously than his\nopponent, there under favourable conditions, a culture can develop and\nart can establish her rule over life. That dissembling, that denying of\nneediness, that splendour of metaphorical notions and especially that\ndirectness of dissimulation accompany all utterances of such a life.\nNeither the house of man, nor his way of walking, nor his clothing, nor\nhis earthen jug suggest that necessity invented them; it seems as if\nthey all were intended as the expressions of a sublime happiness, an\nOlympic cloudlessness, and as it were a playing at seriousness. Whereas\nthe man guided by ideas and abstractions only wards off misfortune by\nmeans of them, without even enforcing for himself happiness out of the\nabstractions; whereas he strives after the greatest possible freedom\nfrom pains, the intuitive man dwelling in the midst of culture has from\nhis intuitions a harvest: besides the warding off of evil, he attains a\ncontinuous in-pouring of enlightenment, enlivenment and redemption. Of\ncourse when he _does_ suffer, he suffers more: and he even suffers more\nfrequently since he cannot learn from experience, but again and again\nfalls into the same ditch into which he has fallen before. In suffering\nhe is just as irrational as in happiness; he cries aloud and finds no\nconsolation. How different matters are in the same misfortune with\nthe Stoic, taught by experience and ruling himself by ideas! He who\notherwise only looks for uprightness, truth, freedom from deceptions\nand shelter from ensnaring and sudden attack, in his misfortune\nperforms the masterpiece of dissimulation, just as the other did in\nhis happiness; he shows no twitching mobile human face but as it were a\nmask with dignified, harmonious features; he does not cry out and does\nnot even alter his voice; when a heavy thundercloud bursts upon him,\nhe wraps himself up in his cloak and with slow and measured step walks\naway from beneath it.\n\n\nTHE END.","title":"Early Greek Philosophy & Other Essays: Collected Works, Volume Two","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":47542}