Volume Ii Part 53 (2/2)

220.

REACTION AGAINST THE CIVILISATION OF MACHINERY.-The machine, itself a product of the highest mental powers, sets in motion hardly any but the lower, unthinking forces of the men who serve it. True, it unfetters a vast quant.i.ty of force which would otherwise lie dormant. But it does not communicate the impulse to climb higher, to improve, to become artistic.

It creates activity and monotony, but this in the long-run produces a counter-effect, a despairing ennui of the soul, which through machinery has learnt to hanker after the variety of leisure.

221.

THE DANGER OF ENLIGHTENMENT.-All the half-insane, theatrical, b.e.s.t.i.a.lly cruel, licentious, and especially sentimental and self-intoxicating elements which go to form the true revolutionary substance, and became flesh and spirit, before the revolution, in Rousseau-all this composite being, with fact.i.tious enthusiasm, finally set even ”enlightenment” upon its fanatical head, which thereby began itself to s.h.i.+ne as in an illuminating halo. Yet, enlightenment is essentially foreign to that phenomenon, and, if left to itself, would have pierced silently through the clouds like a shaft of light, long content to transfigure individuals alone, and thus only slowly transfiguring national customs and inst.i.tutions as well. But now, bound hand and foot to a violent and abrupt monster, enlightenment itself became violent and abrupt. Its danger has therefore become almost greater than its useful quality of liberation and illumination, which it introduced into the great revolutionary movement.

Whoever grasps this will also know from what confusion it has to be extricated, from what impurities to be cleansed, in order that it may then by itself continue the work of enlightenment and also nip the revolution in the bud and nullify its effects.

222.

Pa.s.sION IN THE MIDDLE AGES.-The Middle Ages are the period of great pa.s.sions. Neither antiquity nor our period possesses this widening of the soul. Never was the capacity of the soul greater or measured by larger standards. The physical, primeval sensuality of the barbarian races and the over-soulful, over-vigilant, over-brilliant eyes of Christian mystics, the most childish and youthful and the most over-ripe and world-weary, the savageness of the beast of prey and the effeminacy and excessive refinement of the late antique spirit-all these elements were then not seldom united in one and the same person. Thus, if a man was seized by a pa.s.sion, the rapidity of the torrent must have been greater, the whirl more confused, the fall deeper than ever before.-We modern men may be content to feel that we have suffered a loss here.

223.

ROBBING AND SAVING.-All intellectual movements whereby the great may hope to rob and the small to save are sure to prosper. That is why, for instance, the German Reformation made progress.

224.

GLADSOME SOULS.-When even a remote hint of drink, drunkenness, and an evil-smelling kind of jocularity was given, the souls of the old Germans waxed gladsome. Otherwise they were depressed, but here they found something they really understood.

225.

DEBAUCHERY AT ATHENS.-Even when the fish-market of Athens acquired its thinkers and poets, Greek debauchery had a more idyllic and refined appearance than Roman or German debauchery ever had. The voice of Juvenal would have sounded there like a hollow trumpet, and would have been answered by a good-natured and almost childish outburst of laughter.

226.

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