Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 52

207.

SOLAR ORBIT OF AN IDEA.-When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature is usually very low. Gradually the idea develops in warmth, and is hottest (that is to say, exerts its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already on the wane.

208.

HOW TO HAVE EVERY MAN AGAINST YOU.-If some one now dared to say, "He that is not for me is against me," he would at once have all against him.-This sentiment does credit to our era.

209.

BEING ASHAMED OF WEALTH.-Our age endures only a single species of rich men-those who are ashamed of their wealth. If we hear it said of any one that he is very rich, we at once feel a similar sentiment to that experienced at the sight of a repulsively swollen invalid, one suffering from diabetes or dropsy. We must with an effort remember our humanity, in order to go about with this rich man in such a way that he does not notice our feeling of disgust. But as soon as he prides himself at all on his wealth, our feelings are mingled with an almost compa.s.sionate surprise at such a high degree of human unreason. We would fain raise our hands to heaven and cry, "Poor deformed and overburdened creature, fettered a hundredfold, to whom every hour brings or may bring something unpleasant, in whose frame twitches every event that occurs in scores of countries, how can you make us believe that you feel at ease in your position? If you appear anywhere in public, we know that it is a sort of running the gauntlet amid countless glances that have for you only cold hate or importunity or silent scorn. You may earn more easily than others, but it is only a superfluous earning, which brings little joy, and the guarding of what you have earned is now, at any rate, a more troublesome business than any toilsome process of earning. You are continually suffering, because you are continually losing. What avails it you that they are always injecting you with fresh artificial blood? That does not relieve the pain of those cupping-gla.s.ses that are fixed, for ever fixed, on your neck!-But, to be quite fair to you, it is difficult or perhaps impossible for you _not_ to be rich. You _must_ guard, you _must_ earn more; the inherited bent of your character is the yoke fastened upon you. But do not on that account deceive us-be honestly and visibly ashamed of the yoke you wear, as in your soul you are weary and unwilling to wear it. This shame is no disgrace."

210.

EXTRAVAGANT PRESUMPTIONS.-There are men so presumptuous that they can only praise a greatness which they publicly admire by representing it as steps and bridges that lead to themselves.

211.

ON THE SOIL OF INSULT.-He who wishes to deprive men of a conception is generally not satisfied with refuting it and drawing out of it the illogical worm that resides within. Rather, when the worm has been killed, does he throw the whole fruit as well into the mire, in order to make it ign.o.ble in men's sight and to inspire disgust. Thus he thinks that he has found a means of making the usual "third-day resurrection" of conceptions an impossibility.-He is wrong, for on the very soil of insult, in the midst of the filth, the kernel of the conception soon produces new seeds.-The right thing then, is not to scorn and bespatter what one wishes finally to remove, but to lay it tenderly on ice again and again, having regard to the fact that conceptions are very tenacious of life. Here we must act according to the maxim: "One refutation is no refutation."

212.

THE LOT OF MORALITY.-Since spiritual bondage is being relaxed, morality (the inherited, traditional, instinctive mode of action in accordance with moral sentiments) is surely also on the decline. This, however, is not the case with the individual virtues, moderation, justice, repose; for the greatest freedom of the conscious intellect leads at some time, even unconsciously, back to these virtues, and then enjoins their practice as expedient.

213.

THE FANATIC OF DISTRUST AND HIS SURETY.-_The Elder_: You wish to make the tremendous venture and instruct mankind in the great things? What is your surety?

_Pyrrho_: It is this: I intend to warn men against myself; I intend to confess all the defects of my character quite openly, and reveal to the world my hasty conclusions, my contradictions, and my foolish blunders.

"Do not listen to me," I will say to them, "until I have become equal to the meanest among you, nay am even less than he. Struggle against truth as long as you can, from your disgust with her advocate. I shall be your seducer and betrayer if you find in me the slightest glimmering of respectability and dignity."

_The Elder_: You promise too much; you cannot bear this burden.

_Pyrrho_: Then I will tell men even that, and say that I am too weak, and cannot keep my promise. The greater my unworthiness, the more will they mistrust the truth, when it pa.s.ses through my lips.

_The Elder_: You propose to teach distrust of truth?

_Pyrrho_: Yes; distrust as it never was yet on earth, distrust of anything and everything. This is the only road to truth. The right eye must not trust the left eye, and for some time light must be called darkness: this is the path that you must tread. Do not imagine that it will lead you to fruit trees and fair pastures. You will find on this road little hard grains-these are truths. For years and years you will have to swallow handfuls of lies, so as not to die of hunger, although you know that they are lies. But those grains will be sown and planted, and perhaps, perhaps some day will come the harvest. No one may _promise_ that day, unless he be a fanatic.

_The Elder_: Friend, friend! Your words too are those of a fanatic!

_Pyrrho_: You are right! I will be distrustful of all words.

_The Elder_: Then you will have to be silent.

_Pyrrho_: I shall tell men that I have to be silent, and that they are to mistrust my silence.

_The Elder_: So you draw back from your undertaking?

_Pyrrho_: On the contrary-you have shown me the door through which I must pa.s.s.

_The Elder_: I don't know whether we yet completely understand each other?

_Pyrrho_: Probably not.

_The Elder_: If only you understand yourself!

(Pyrrho turns round and laughs.)

_The Elder_: Ah, friend! Silence and laughter-is that now your whole philosophy?

_Pyrrho_: There might be a worse.

214.

EUROPEAN BOOKS.-In reading Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Fontenelle (especially the _Dialogues des Morts_), Vauvenargues, and Chamfort we are nearer to antiquity than in any group of six authors of other nations. Through these six the spirit of the last centuries before Christ has once more come into being, and they collectively form an important link in the great and still continuous chain of the Renaissance.

Their books are raised above all changes of national taste and philosophical nuances from which as a rule every book takes and must take its hue in order to become famous. They contain more real ideas than all the books of German philosophers put together: ideas of the sort that breed ideas--I am at a loss how to define to the end: enough to say that they appear to me writers who wrote neither for children nor for visionaries, neither for virgins nor for Christians, neither for Germans nor for-I am again at a loss how to finish my list. To praise them in plain terms, I may say that had they been written in Greek, they would have been understood by Greeks. How much, on the other hand, would even a Plato have understood of the writings of our best German thinkers-Goethe and Schopenhauer, for instance-to say nothing of the repugnance that he would have felt to their style, particularly to its obscure, exaggerated, and occasionally dry-as-dust elements? And these are defects from which these two among German thinkers suffer least and yet far too much (Goethe as thinker was fonder than he should have been of embracing the cloud, and Schopenhauer almost constantly wanders, not with impunity, among symbols of objects rather than among the objects themselves).-On the other hand, what clearness and graceful precision there is in these Frenchmen! The Greeks, whose ears were most refined, could not but have approved of this art, and one quality they would even have admired and reverenced-the French verbal wit: they were extremely fond of this quality, without being particularly strong in it themselves.