Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 49

171.

THE EMPLOYEES OF SCIENCE AND THE OTHERS.-Really efficient and successful men of science might be collectively called "The Employees." If in youth their ac.u.men is sufficiently practised, their memory is full, and hand and eye have acquired sureness, they are appointed by an older fellow-craftsman to a scientific position where their qualities may prove useful. Later on, when they have themselves gained an eye for the gaps and defects in their science, they place themselves in whatever position they are needed. These persons all exist for the sake of science. But there are rarer spirits, spirits that seldom succeed or fully mature-"for whose sake science exists"-at least, in their view. They are often unpleasant, conceited, or cross-grained men, but almost always prodigies to a certain extent. They are neither employees nor employers; they make use of what those others have worked out and established, with a certain princely carelessness and with little and rare praise-just as if the others belonged to a lower order of beings. Yet they possess the same qualities as their fellow-workers, and that sometimes in a less developed form.

Moreover, they have a peculiar limitation, from which the others are free; this makes it impossible to put them into a place and to see in them useful tools. They can only live in their own air and on their own soil.

This limitation suggests to them what elements of a science "are theirs"-in other words, what they can carry home into their house and atmosphere: they think that they are always collecting their scattered "property." If they are prevented from building at their own nest, they perish like shelterless birds. The loss of freedom causes them to wilt away. If they show, like their colleagues, a fondness for certain regions of science, it is always only regions where the fruits and seeds necessary to them can thrive. What do they care whether science, taken as a whole, has untilled or badly tilled regions? They lack all impersonal interest in a scientific problem. As they are themselves personal through and through, all their knowledge and ideas are remoulded into a person, into a living complexity, with its parts interdependent, overlapping, jointly nurtured, and with a peculiar atmosphere and scent as a whole.-Such natures, with their system of personal knowledge, produce the illusion that a science (or even the whole of philosophy) is finished and has reached its goal.

The life in their system works this magic, which at times has been fatal to science and deceptive to the really efficient workers above described, and at other times, when drought and exhaustion prevailed, has acted as a kind of restorative, as if it were the air of a cool, refreshing resting-place.-These men are usually called _philosophers_.

172.

RECOGNITION OF TALENT.-As I went through the village of S., a boy began to crack his whip with all his might-he had made great progress in this art, and he knew it. I threw him a look of recognition-in reality it hurt me cruelly. We do the same in our recognition of many of the talents. We do good to them when they hurt us.

173.

LAUGHING AND SMILING.-The more joyful and a.s.sured the mind becomes, the more man loses the habit of loud laughter. In compensation, there is an intellectual smile continually bubbling up in him, a sign of his astonishment at the innumerable concealed delights of a good existence.

174.

THE TALK OF INVALIDS.-Just as in spiritual grief we tear our hair, strike our foreheads, lacerate our cheeks or even (like dipus) gouge our eyes out, so against violent physical pain we call to our aid a bitter, violent emotion, through the recollection of slanderous and malignant people, through the denigration of our future, through the sword-p.r.i.c.ks and acts of malice which we mentally direct against the absent. And at times it is true that one devil drives out another-but then we have the other.-Hence a different sort of talk, tending to alleviate pain, should be recommended invalids: reflections upon the kindnesses and courtesies that can be performed towards friend and foe.

175.

MEDIOCRITY AS A MASK.-Mediocrity is the happiest mask which the superior mind can wear, because it does not lead the great majority-that is, the mediocre-to think that there is any disguise. Yet the superior mind a.s.sumes the mask just for their sake-so as not to irritate them, nay, often from a feeling of pity and kindness.

176.

THE PATIENT.-The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait, and both without impatience. They do not give a thought to the petty human being below who is consumed by his impatience and his curiosity.

177.

THE BEST JOKER.-My favourite joke is the one that takes the place of a heavy and rather hesitating idea, and that at once beckons with its finger and winks its eye.

178.

THE ACCESSARIES OF ALL REVERENCE.-Wherever the past is revered, the over-cleanly and over-tidy people should not be admitted. Piety does not feel content without a little dust, dirt, and dross.

179.

THE GREAT DANGER OF SAVANTS.-It is just the most thorough and profound savants who are in peril of seeing their life's goal set ever lower and lower, and, with a feeling of this in their minds, to become ever more discouraged and more unendurable in the latter half of their lives. At first they plunge into their science with s.p.a.cious hopes and set themselves daring tasks, the ends of which are already antic.i.p.ated by their imaginations. Then there are moments as in the lives of the great maritime discoverers-knowledge, presentiment, and power raise each other higher and higher, until a new sh.o.r.e first dawns upon the eye in the far distance. But now the stern man recognises more and more how important it is that the individual task of the inquirer should be limited as far as possible, so that it may be entirely accomplished and the intolerable waste of force from which earlier periods of science suffered may be avoided. In those days everything was done ten times over, and then the eleventh always had the last and best word. Yet the more the savant learns and practises this art of solving riddles in their entirety, the more pleasure he finds in so doing. But at the same time his demands upon what is here called "entirety" grow more exacting. He sets aside everything that must remain in this sense incomplete, he acquires a disgust and an acute scent for the half-soluble-for all that can only give a kind of certainty in a general and indefinite form. His youthful plans crumble away before his eyes. There remains scarcely anything but a few little knots, in untying which the master now takes his pleasure and shows his strength. Then, in the midst of all this useful, restless activity, he, now grown old, is suddenly then often overcome by a deep misgiving, a sort of torment of conscience. He looks upon himself as one changed, as if he were diminished, humbled, transformed into a dexterous _dwarf_; he grows anxious as to whether mastery in small matters be not a convenience, an escape from the summons to greatness in life and form. But he cannot pa.s.s _beyond_ any longer-the time for that has gone by.

180.

TEACHERS IN THE AGE OF BOOKS.-Now that self-education and mutual education are becoming more widespread, the teacher in his usual form must become almost unnecessary. Friends eager to learn, who wish to master some branch of knowledge together, find in our age of books a shorter and more natural way than "school" and "teachers."

181.

VANITY AS THE GREATEST UTILITY.-Originally the strong individual uses not only Nature but even societies and weaker individuals as objects of rapine. He exploits them, so far as he can, and then pa.s.ses on. As he lives from hand to mouth, alternating between hunger and superfluity, he kills more animals than he can eat, and robs and maltreats men more than is necessary. His manifestation of power is at the same time one of revenge against his cramped and worried existence. Furthermore, he wishes to be held more powerful than he is, and thus misuses opportunities; the accretion of fear that he begets being an accretion of power. He soon observes that he stands or falls not by what he _is_ but by what he is _thought_ to be. Herein lies the origin of vanity. The man of power seeks by every means to increase others' faith in his power.-The thralls who tremble before him and serve him know, for their part, that they are worth just so much as they appear to him to be worth, and so they work with an eye to this valuation rather than to their own self-satisfaction. We know vanity only in its most weakened forms, in its idealisations and its small doses, because we live in a late and very emasculated state of society.

Originally vanity is the great utility, the strongest means of preservation. And indeed vanity will be greater, the cleverer the individual, because an increase in the belief in power is easier than an increase in the power itself, but only for him who has intellect or (as must be the case under primitive conditions) who is cunning and crafty.

182.

WEATHER-SIGNS OF CULTURE.-There are so few decisive weather-signs of culture that we must be glad to have at least one unfailing sign at hand for use in house and garden. To test whether a man belongs to us (I mean to the free spirits) or not, we must test his sentiments regarding Christianity. If he looks upon Christianity with other than a critical eye, we turn our backs to him, for he brings us impure air and bad weather.-It is no longer our task to teach such men what a sirocco wind is. They have Moses and the prophets of weather and of enlightenment.(24) If they will not listen to these, then--