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CHAPTER VI. WE SCHOLARS
204. At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here as that
which it has always been--namely, resolutely MONTRER SES PLAIES,
according to Balzac--I would venture to protest against an improper and
injurious alteration of rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the
best conscience, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations
of science and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have the right
out of one's own EXPERIENCE--experience, as it seems to me, always
implies unfortunate experience?--to treat of such an important question
of rank, so as not to speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST science
like women and artists ("Ah! this dreadful science!" sigh their instinct
and their shame, "it always FINDS THINGS OUT!"). The declaration of
independence of the scientific man, his emancipation from philosophy,
is one of the subtler after-effects of democratic organization and
disorganization: the self-glorification and self-conceitedness of
the learned man is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best
springtime--which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise
smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries, "Freedom
from all masters!" and after science has, with the happiest results,
resisted theology, whose "hand-maid" it had been too long, it now
proposes in its wantonness and indiscretion to lay down laws for
philosophy, and in its turn to play the "master"--what am I saying!
to play the PHILOSOPHER on its own account. My memory--the memory of
a scientific man, if you please!--teems with the naivetes of insolence
which I have heard about philosophy and philosophers from young
naturalists and old physicians (not to mention the most cultured and
most conceited of all learned men, the philologists and schoolmasters,
who are both the one and the other by profession). On one occasion it
was the specialist and the Jack Horner who instinctively stood on the
defensive against all synthetic tasks and capabilities; at another time
it was the industrious worker who had got a scent of OTIUM and refined
luxuriousness in the internal economy of the philosopher, and felt
himself aggrieved and belittled thereby. On another occasion it was the
colour-blindness of the utilitarian, who sees nothing in philosophy but
a series of REFUTED systems, and an extravagant expenditure which "does
nobody any good". At another time the fear of disguised mysticism and of
the boundary-adjustment of knowledge became conspicuous, at another
time the disregard of individual philosophers, which had involuntarily
extended to disregard of philosophy generally. In fine, I found most
frequently, behind the proud disdain of philosophy in young scholars,
the evil after-effect of some particular philosopher, to whom on the
whole obedience had been foresworn, without, however, the spell of his
scornful estimates of other philosophers having been got rid of--the
result being a general ill-will to all philosophy. (Such seems to
me, for instance, the after-effect of Schopenhauer on the most modern
Germany: by his unintelligent rage against Hegel, he has succeeded in
severing the whole of the last generation of Germans from its connection
with German culture, which culture, all things considered, has been
an elevation and a divining refinement of the HISTORICAL SENSE, but
precisely at this point Schopenhauer himself was poor, irreceptive,
and un-German to the extent of ingeniousness.) On the whole, speaking
generally, it may just have been the humanness, all-too-humanness of the
modern philosophers themselves, in short, their contemptibleness, which
has injured most radically the reverence for philosophy and opened the
doors to the instinct of the populace. Let it but be acknowledged to
what an extent our modern world diverges from the whole style of the
world of Heraclitus, Plato, Empedocles, and whatever else all the royal
and magnificent anchorites of the spirit were called, and with what
justice an honest man of science MAY feel himself of a better family and
origin, in view of such representatives of philosophy, who, owing to
the fashion of the present day, are just as much aloft as they are down
below--in Germany, for instance, the two lions of Berlin, the anarchist
Eugen Duhring and the amalgamist Eduard von Hartmann. It is especially
the sight of those hotch-potch philosophers, who call themselves
"realists," or "positivists," which is calculated to implant a
dangerous distrust in the soul of a young and ambitious scholar those
philosophers, at the best, are themselves but scholars and specialists,
that is very evident! All of them are persons who have been vanquished
and BROUGHT BACK AGAIN under the dominion of science, who at one time
or another claimed more from themselves, without having a right to the
"more" and its responsibility--and who now, creditably, rancorously, and
vindictively, represent in word and deed, DISBELIEF in the master-task
and supremacy of philosophy After all, how could it be otherwise?
Science flourishes nowadays and has the good conscience clearly visible
on its countenance, while that to which the entire modern philosophy has
gradually sunk, the remnant of philosophy of the present day, excites
distrust and displeasure, if not scorn and pity Philosophy reduced to
a "theory of knowledge," no more in fact than a diffident science of
epochs and doctrine of forbearance a philosophy that never even
gets beyond the threshold, and rigorously DENIES itself the right
to enter--that is philosophy in its last throes, an end, an agony,
something that awakens pity. How could such a philosophy--RULE!
205. The dangers that beset the evolution of the philosopher are, in
fact, so manifold nowadays, that one might doubt whether this fruit
could still come to maturity. The extent and towering structure of the
sciences have increased enormously, and therewith also the probability
that the philosopher will grow tired even as a learner, or will attach
himself somewhere and "specialize" so that he will no longer attain to
his elevation, that is to say, to his superspection, his circumspection,
and his DESPECTION. Or he gets aloft too late, when the best of his
maturity and strength is past, or when he is impaired, coarsened, and
deteriorated, so that his view, his general estimate of things, is no
longer of much importance. It is perhaps just the refinement of his
intellectual conscience that makes him hesitate and linger on the
way, he dreads the temptation to become a dilettante, a millepede, a
milleantenna, he knows too well that as a discerner, one who has lost
his self-respect no longer commands, no longer LEADS, unless he should
aspire to become a great play-actor, a philosophical Cagliostro and
spiritual rat-catcher--in short, a misleader. This is in the last
instance a question of taste, if it has not really been a question of
conscience. To double once more the philosopher's difficulties, there is
also the fact that he demands from himself a verdict, a Yea or Nay, not
concerning science, but concerning life and the worth of life--he learns
unwillingly to believe that it is his right and even his duty to obtain
this verdict, and he has to seek his way to the right and the belief
only through the most extensive (perhaps disturbing and destroying)
experiences, often hesitating, doubting, and dumbfounded. In fact, the
philosopher has long been mistaken and confused by the multitude, either
with the scientific man and ideal scholar, or with the religiously
elevated, desensualized, desecularized visionary and God-intoxicated
man; and even yet when one hears anybody praised, because he lives
"wisely," or "as a philosopher," it hardly means anything more than
"prudently and apart." Wisdom: that seems to the populace to be a kind
of flight, a means and artifice for withdrawing successfully from a
bad game; but the GENUINE philosopher--does it not seem so to US,
my friends?--lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all,
IMPRUDENTLY, and feels the obligation and burden of a hundred attempts
and temptations of life--he risks HIMSELF constantly, he plays THIS bad
game.