Maxims and Reflections Part 19

424

Superst.i.tion is the poetry of life, and so it does not hurt the poet to be superst.i.tious.

425

That glorious hymn, _Veni Creator Spiritus_, is really an appeal to genius. That is why it speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and power.

426

Translators are like busy match-makers: they sing the praises of some half-veiled beauty, and extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible longing for the original.

427

A Spinoza in poetry becomes a Machiavelli in philosophy.

428

Against the three unities there is nothing to be said, if the subject is very simple; but there are times when thrice three unities, skilfully interwoven, produce a very pleasant effect.

429

The sentimentality of the English is humorous and tender; of the French, popular and pathetic; of the Germans, nave and realistic.

430

Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the dialectic of the feelings.

431

If a man sets out to reproach an author with obscurity, he should first of all examine his own mind, to see if he is himself all clearness within. Twilight makes even plain writing illegible.

432

It is with books as with new acquaintances. At first we are highly delighted, if we find a general agreement,--if we are pleasantly moved on any of the chief sides of our existence. With a closer acquaintance differences come to light; and then reasonable conduct mainly consists in not shrinking back at once, as may happen in youth, but in keeping firm hold of the things in which we agree, and being quite clear about the things in which we differ, without on that account desiring any union.

433

In psychological reflection the greatest difficulty is this: that inner and outer must always be viewed in parallel lines, or, rather, interwoven. It is a continual systole and diastole, an inspiration and an expiration of the living soul. If this cannot be put into words, it should be carefully marked and noted.

434

My relations with Schiller rested on the decided tendency of both of us towards a single aim, and our common activity rested on the diversity of the means by which we endeavoured to attain that aim.

435

Once when a slight difference was mentioned between us, of which I was reminded by a pa.s.sage in a letter of his, I made the following reflections: There is a great difference between a poet seeking the particular for the universal, and seeing the universal in the particular. The one gives rise to Allegory, where the particular serves only as instance or example of the general; but the other is the true nature of Poetry, namely, the expression of the particular without any thought of, or reference to, the general. If a man grasps the particular vividly, he also grasps the general, without being aware of it at the time; or he may make the discovery long afterwards.

436

There may be eclectic philosophers, but not an eclectic philosophy.

437

But every one is an eclectic who, out of the things that surround and take place about him, appropriates what is suited to his nature; and this is what is meant by culture and progress, in matters of theory or practice.

438

Various maxims of the ancients, which we are wont to repeat again and again, had a meaning quite different from that which is apt to attach to them in later times.

439

The saying that no one who is unacquainted with or a stranger to geometry should enter the philosopher's school, does not mean that a man must become a mathematician to attain the wisdom of the world.

440

Geometry is here taken in its primary elements, such as are contained in Euclid and laid before every beginner; and then it is the most perfect propaedeutic and introduction to philosophy.

441

When a boy begins to understand that an invisible point must always come before a visible one, and that the shortest way between two points is a straight line, before he can draw it on his paper with a pencil, he experiences a certain pride and pleasure. And he is not wrong; for he has the source of all thought opened to him; idea and reality, _potentia et actu_, are become clear; the philosopher has no new discovery to bring him; as a mathematician, he has found the basis of all thought for himself.

442

And if we turn to that significant utterance, _Know thyself_, we must not explain it in an ascetic sense. It is in nowise the self-knowledge of our modern hypochondrists, humorists, and self-tormentors. It simply means: pay some attention to yourself; take note of yourself; so that you may know how you come to stand towards those like you and towards the world. This involves no psychological torture; every capable man knows and feels what it means. It is a piece of good advice which every one will find of the greatest advantage in practice.

443

Let us remember how great the ancients were; and especially how the Socratic school holds up to us the source and standard of all life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty speculation, but live and do.

444

So long as our scholastic education takes us back to antiquity and furthers the study of the Greek and Latin languages, we may congratulate ourselves that these studies, so necessary for the higher culture, will never disappear.

445

If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon, we get the feeling as if it were only then that we really became men.

446

The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak Latin, has a higher and grander idea of himself than would be permissible in ordinary life.

447

In the presence of antiquity, the mind that is susceptible to poetry and art feels itself placed in the most pleasing ideal state of nature; and even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the frightful burden which the tradition of several thousand years has rolled upon us.

448

There is no such thing as patriotic art and patriotic science. Both art and science belong, like all things great and good, to the whole world, and can be furthered only by a free and general interchange of ideas among contemporaries, with continual reference to the heritage of the past as it is known to us.