Volume Ii Part 3 (1/2)

24.

APPLAUSE ITSELF AS THE CONTINUATION OF THE PLAY.-Sparkling eyes and an amiable smile are the tributes of applause paid to all the great comedy of world and existence-but this applause is a comedy within a comedy, meant to tempt the other spectators to a _plaudite amici_.

25.

COURAGE FOR TEDIUM.-He who has not the courage to allow himself and his work to be considered tedious, is certainly no intellect of the first rank, whether in the arts or in the sciences.-A scoffer, who happened for once in a way to be a thinker, might add, with a glance at the world and at history: ”G.o.d did not possess this courage, for he wanted to make and he made all things so interesting.”

26.

FROM THE MOST INTIMATE EXPERIENCE OF THE THINKER.-Nothing is harder for a man than to conceive of an object impersonally, I mean to see in it an object and not a person. One may even ask whether it is possible for him to dispense for a single moment with the machinery of his instinct to create and construct a personality. After all, he a.s.sociates with his thoughts, however abstract they may be, as with individuals, against whom he must fight or to whom he must attach himself, whom he must protect, support and nourish. Let us watch or listen to ourselves at the moment when we hear or discover a new idea. Perhaps it displeases us because it is so defiant and so autocratic, and we unconsciously ask ourselves whether we cannot place a contradiction of it by its side as an enemy, or fasten on to it a ”perhaps” or a ”sometimes”: the mere little word ”probably” gives us a feeling of satisfaction, for it shatters the oppressive tyranny of the unconditional. If, on the other hand, the new idea enters in gentle shape, sweetly patient and humble, and falling at once into the arms of contradiction, we put our autocracy to the test in another way. Can we not come to the aid of this weak creature, stroke it and feed it, give it strength and fulness, and truth and even unconditionality? Is it possible for us to show ourselves parental or chivalrous or compa.s.sionate towards our idea?-Then again, we see here a judgment and there a judgment, sundered from each other, never looking at or making any movement towards each other. So we are tickled by the thought, whether it be not here feasible to make a match, to draw a _conclusion_, with the antic.i.p.ation that if a consequence follows this conclusion it is not only the two judgments united in wedlock but the matchmakers that will gain honour. If, however, we cannot acquire a hold upon that thought either on the path of defiance and ill-will or on that of good-will (if we hold it to be true)-then we submit to it and do homage to it as a leader and a prince, give it a chair of honour, and speak not of it without a flourish of trumpets: for we are bright in its brightness.

Woe to him who tries to dim this brightness! Perhaps we ourselves one day grow suspicious of our idea. Then we, the indefatigable ”king-makers” of the history of the intellect, cast it down from its throne and immediately exalt its adversary. Surely if this be considered and thought out a little further, no one will speak of an ”absolute impulse to knowledge”!

Why, then, does man prefer the true to the untrue, in this secret combat with thought-personalities, in this generally clandestine match-making of thoughts, const.i.tution-founding of thoughts, child-rearing of thoughts, nursing and almsgiving of thoughts? For the same reason that he practises honesty in intercourse with real persons: _now_ from habit, heredity, and training, _originally_ because the true, like the fair and the just, is more expedient and more reputable than the untrue. For in the realm of thought it is difficult to a.s.sume a power and glory that are built on error or on falsehood. The feeling that such an edifice might at some time collapse is humiliating to the self-esteem of the architect-he is ashamed of the fragility of the material, and, as he considers himself more important than the rest of the world, he would fain construct nothing that is less durable than the rest of the world. In his longing for truth he embraces the belief in a personal immortality, the most arrogant and defiant idea that exists, closely allied as it is to the underlying thought, _pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim!_ His work has become his ”ego,” he transforms himself into the Imperishable with its universal challenge. It is his immeasurable pride that will only employ the best and hardest stones for the work-truths, or what he holds for such. Arrogance has always been justly called the ”vice of the sage”; yet without this vice, fruitful in impulses, Truth and her status on earth would be in a parlous plight. In our propensity to fear our thoughts, concepts and words, and yet to honour ourselves in them, unconsciously to ascribe to them the power of rewarding, despising, praising, and blaming us, and so to a.s.sociate with them as with free intellectual personalities, as with independent powers, as with our equals-herein lie the roots of the remarkable phenomenon which I have called ”intellectual conscience.” Thus something of the highest moral species has bloomed from a black root.

27.

THE OBSCURANTISTS.-The essential feature of the black art of obscurantism is not its intention of clouding the brain, but its attempt to darken the picture of the world and cloud our idea of existence. It often employs the method of thwarting all illumination of the intellect, but at times it uses the very opposite means, seeking by the highest refinement of the intellect to induce a satiety of the intellect's fruits. Hair-splitting metaphysicians, who pave the way for scepticism and by their excessive ac.u.men provoke a distrust of ac.u.men, are excellent instruments of the more subtle form of obscurantism.-Is it possible that even Kant may be applied to this purpose? Did he even _intend_ something of the sort, for a time at least, to judge from his own notorious exposition: ”to clear the way for belief by setting limitations to knowledge”?-Certainly he did not succeed, nor did his followers, on the wolf and fox tracks of this highly refined and dangerous form of obscurantism-the most dangerous of all, for the black art here appears in the garb of light.

28.

BY WHAT KIND OF PHILOSOPHY ART IS CORRUPTED.-When the mists of a metaphysical-mystical philosophy succeed in making all aesthetic phenomena _opaque_, it follows that these phenomena cannot be comparatively valued, inasmuch as each becomes individually inexplicable. But when once they cannot be compared for the sake of valuation, there arises an entire absence-of-criticism, a blind indulgence. From this source springs a continual diminution of the enjoyment of art (which is only distinguished from the crude satisfaction of a need by the highest refinement of taste and appreciation). The more taste diminishes, the more does the desire for art change and revert to a vulgar hunger, which the artist henceforth seeks to appease by ever coa.r.s.er fare.

29.

ON GETHSEMANE.-The most painful thing a thinker can say to artists is: ”Could ye not _watch_ with me one hour?”

30.

AT THE LOOM.-There are many (artists and women, for instance) who work against the few that take a pleasure in untying the knot of things and unravelling their woof. The former always want to weave the woof together again and entangle it and so turn the conceived into the unconceived and if possible inconceivable. Whatever the result may be, the woof and knot always look rather untidy, because too many hands are working and tugging at them.