Volume Ii Part 54 (1/2)

CLEVERNESS OF THE GREEK.-As the desire for victory and pre-eminence is an ineradicable trait of human nature, older and more primitive than any respect of or joy in equality, the Greek State sanctioned gymnastic and artistic compet.i.tions among equals. In other words, it marked out an arena where this impulse to conquer would find a vent without jeopardising the political order. With the final decline of gymnastic and artistic contests the Greek State fell into a condition of profound unrest and dissolution.

227.

THE ”ETERNAL EPICURUS.”-Epicurus has lived in all periods, and lives yet, unbeknown to those who called and still call themselves Epicureans, and without repute among philosophers. He has himself even forgotten his own name-that was the heaviest luggage that he ever cast off.

228.

THE STYLE OF SUPERIORITY.-”University slang,” the speech of the German students, has its origin among the students who do not study. The latter know how to acquire a preponderance over their more serious fellows by exposing all the farcical elements of culture, respectability, erudition, order, and moderation, and by having words taken from these realms always on their lips, like the better and more learned students, but with malice in their glance and an accompanying grimace. This language of superiority-the only one that is original in Germany-is nowadays unconsciously used by statesmen and newspaper critics as well. It is a continual process of ironical quotation, a restless, cantankerous squinting of the eye right and left, a language of inverted commas and grimaces.

229.

THE RECLUSE.-We retire into seclusion, but not from personal misgivings, as if the political and social conditions of the day did not satisfy us; rather because by our retirement we try to save and collect forces which will some day be urgently needed by culture, the more this present is _this present_, and, as such, fulfils its task. We form a capital and try to make it secure, but, as in times of real danger, our method is to bury our h.o.a.rd.

230.

TYRANTS OF THE INTELLECT.-In our times, any one who expressed a single moral trait so thoroughly as the characters of Theophrastus and Moliere do, would be considered ill, and be spoken of as possessing ”a fixed idea.” The Athens of the third century, if we could visit it, would appear to us populated by fools. Nowadays the democracy of ideas rules in every brain-there the mult.i.tude collectively is lord. A single idea that tried to be lord is now called, as above stated, ”a fixed idea.” This is our method of murdering tyrants-we hint at the madhouse.

231.

A MOST DANGEROUS EMIGRATION.-In Russia there is an emigration of the intelligence. People cross the frontier in order to read and write good books. Thus, however, they are working towards turning their country, abandoned by the intellect, into a gaping Asiatic maw, which would fain swallow our little Europe.

232.

POLITICAL FOOLS.-The almost religious love of the king was transferred by the Greeks, when the monarchy was abolished, to the _polis_. An idea can be loved more than a person, and does not thwart the lover so often as a beloved human being (for the more men know themselves to be loved, the less considerate they usually become, until they are no longer worthy of love, and a rift really arises). Hence the reverence for State and _polis_ was greater than the reverence for princes had ever been. The Greeks are the political fools of ancient history-today other nations boast that distinction.