Volume Ii Part 49 (1/2)
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, refres.h.i.+ng 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.