e Art of Literature 
 
 SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 BAILEY SAUN0ERS 
 
|pvv&»<mi2g 
 
SCHOPENHAUER SERIES, 
 
 Uniformly Bound in Cloth. Price 2s. 6d. 
 
 1. THE WISDOM OP LIFE, being the first part 
 
 of Arthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit. 
 Translated, with a Preface, by T. Bailey Saunders, M.A. 
 Second Edition. 
 
 Press Notices. 
 
 "Schopenhauer is not simply a moralist writing in his study and applying 
 abstract principles to the conduct of thought and action, but is also in a large 
 measure a man of the world, with a firm grasp of the actual, and is therefore able 
 to speak in a way which, to use Bacon's phrase, comes home to men's business 
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 enced by his frequent recourse to illustrations, and his singularly apt use of them 
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 Review. 
 
 2. COUNSELS AND MAXIMS : Being the Second 
 Part of Arthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit. 
 Translated by T. Bailey Saunders, M.A. Second Edition. 
 
 11 In publishing these two little volumes Mr. Saunders has done English readers 
 
 a genuine service He has also introduced his translation by a clear and 
 
 thoroughly helpful preface in which are defined with sufficient exactness Schopen- 
 hauer's philosophic standpoint and the relation of his minor writings to his chief 
 
 metaphysical treatise Schopenhauer is commonly ranked among the few 
 
 philosophers, including our own Berkeley, who possess a literary style. The 
 aphorisms give an excellent sample of this style. By their very form they exhibit 
 
 a 
 
SCHOPENHA UER SERIES, Continued— 
 
 at its best Schopenhauer's characteristic manner— his directness, his momentum, 
 his brevity Even in point of substance, it contains many a keen observa- 
 tion, and enforces unpalatable, but eminently wholesome truths. Nor 
 
 do we remember to have met with a finer plea, on the whole, for that inner self- 
 culture which is the great and unfailing condition of human happiness."— 
 Athenceum. 
 
 "It was a happy thought which inspired Mr. Saunders to translate some of 
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 ing the pungent flavour of the original, and at the same time in dressing his dish 
 for the English palate." — Academy. 
 
 " The translator's work appears to be admirably done, running smoothly and 
 
 idiomatically as an original work My readers will do well to acquaint 
 
 themselves with this little book."— National Reformer. 
 
 " Let your view of Schopenhauer be what it may, you cannot help enjoying and 
 admiring the wealth of observation, reflection, and wisdom in ' Counsels and 
 Maxims.'" — Truth. 
 
 3. RELIGION : A Dialogue, and other Essays. By 
 Arthur Schopenhauer. Selected and Translated by T. 
 Bailey Saunders, M. A. Third and Enlarged Edition. 
 
 " In this modest volume we have a selection of very readable essays from the 
 writings of the famous pessimistic philosopher, clothed in good, intelligible 
 English." — Literary World. 
 
 " Mr. Saunders' extracts from Schopenhauer's Parerga unci Paralipomena make 
 a most readable booklet. They do not deal with the more technical aspects of his 
 philosophy .... but contain some of Schopenhauer's brilliant obiter dicta on 
 matters of more immediate popular interest." — Scots Observer. 
 
 " There is no doubt either as to the public interest taken in Schopenhauer or as 
 to the services rendered to his memory by Mr. Saunders. This is a very handy 
 and useful little book." — Spectator. 
 
 " Many who are unequal to the strain of prolonged study of Schopenhauer's 
 works will greatly value this excellent little volume."— Glasgow Herald. 
 
 " The essays are eminently readable and full of clever things. To the translator 
 we cannot pay a higher compliment than by saying that he never makes us aware 
 Of his existence."— Igdrasil. 
 
 4. THE ART OP LITERATURE. A Series of Essays. 
 By Arthur SchopelNhauer. Selected and Translated, with 
 a Preface, by T. Bailey Saunders, M.A. 
 
 5. STUDIES IN PESSIMISM : A Series of Essays. 
 By Arthur Schopenhauer. Selected and Translated by T. 
 Bailey Saunders, M.A. 
 
 "We have once more to thank Mr. Saunders for a series of extracts from 
 the ' Parerga.' Like the former translations this one is extremely well done, and 
 the volume should be popular." — Glasgov) Herald. 
 
 " If others have been the prophets of Schopenhauer to the mass of English 
 readers, Mr. S .unders may fairly claim to have been the philosopher's interpreter. 
 He has known how to make the pessimist not only intelligible, but attractive to 
 the general reader by administrating Schopenhauer's wisdom in small doses, and 
 in a form not too highly concentrated. The series of little books by which Mr. 
 Saunders has done this still goes on. The latest number is by no means the least 
 interesting of them all, and Mr. Saunders' version is again admirable. He 
 writes readable idiomatic English, untainted by any infection of Teutonism that 
 might easily have weakened the style." — Scotsman. 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN &* CO., LONDON. 
 
THE ART OF LITERATURE 
 
 a Series of Essa?s 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER 
 
 Vitam impendere vero. — Juvenal 
 
 SELECTED AND TRANSLATED 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY 
 
 T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. 
 
 SECOND 
 
 EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. 
 NEW YORK: MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of California, Los Angeles 
 
 http://archive.org/details/artofliteraturesOOscho 
 
B 
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The contents of this, as o£ the other volumes in the 
 series, have been drawn from Schopenhauer's Parerga, 
 and amongst the various subjects dealt with in that 
 famous collection of essays, Literature holds an im- 
 portant place. Nor can Schopenhauer's opinions fail 
 to be of special value when he treats of literary form 
 and method. For, quite apart from his philosophical 
 pretensions, he claims recognition as a great writer; 
 he is, indeed, one of the best of the few really excellent 
 prose-writers of whom Germany can boast. While he 
 is thus particularly qualified to speak of Literature as 
 an Art, he has also something to say upon those in- 
 fluences which, outside of his own merits, contribute 
 so much to an author's success, and are so often under- 
 valued when he obtains immediate popularity. Scho- 
 penhauer's own sore experiences in the matter of re- 
 putation lend an interest to his remarks upon that 
 subject, although it is too much to ask of human 
 nature that he should approach it in any dispassionate 
 spirit. 
 
 In the following pages we have observations upon 
 style by one who was a stylist in the best sense of the 
 word, not affected, nor yet a phrase-monger ; on think- 
 
VI TRANSLATORS PREFACE. 
 
 ing for oneself by a philosopher who never did any- 
 thing else ; on criticism by a writer who suffered much 
 from the inability of others to understand him ; on 
 reputation by a candidate who, during the greater 
 part of his life, deserved without obtaining it ; and on 
 genius by one who w T as incontestably of the privileged 
 order himself. And whatever may be thought of some 
 of his opinions on matters of detail — on anonymity, 
 for instance, or on the question whether good work is 
 never done for money — there can be no doubt that 
 his general view of literature, and the conditions 
 under which it flourishes, is perfectly sound. 
 
 It might be thought, perhaps, that remarks which 
 were meant to apply to the German language would 
 have but little bearing upon one so different from it 
 as English. This would be a just objection if Scho- 
 penhauer treated literature in a petty spirit, and con- 
 fined himself to pedantic inquiries into matters of 
 grammar and etymology, or mere niceties of phrase. 
 But this is not so. He deals w x ith his subject broa lly, 
 and takes large and general views ; nor can anyone who 
 knows anything of the philosopher suppose this to mean 
 that he is vague and feeble. It is true that now and 
 again in the course of these essays he makes remarks 
 which are obviously meant to apply to the failings of 
 certain writers of his own age and country ; but in 
 such a case I have generally given his sentences a 
 turn, which, while keeping them faithful to the spirit 
 of the original, secures for them a less restricted range, 
 and makes Schopenhauer a critic of similar faults in 
 whatever age or country they may appear. This has 
 been done in spite of a sharp word on page 8 of this 
 
Translator's preface. vii 
 
 volume, addressed to translators who dare to revise 
 their author ; but the change is one with which not 
 even Schopenhauer could quarrel. 
 
 It is thus a significant fact — a testimony to the 
 depth of his insight and, in the main, the justice of 
 his opinions — that views of literature which appealed 
 to his own immediate contemporaries, should be 
 found to hold good elsewhere and at a distance of 
 fifty years. It means that what he had to say was 
 worth saying ; and since it is adapted thus equally to 
 diverse times and audiences, it is probably of perma- 
 nent interest. 
 
 The intelligent reader will observe that much of the 
 charm of Schopenhauer's writing comes from its 
 strongly personal character, and that here he has to 
 do, not with a mere maker of books, but with a man 
 who thinks for himself and has no false scruples in 
 putting his meaning plainly upon the page, or in un- 
 masking sham wherever he finds it. This is nowhere 
 so true as when he deals with literature ; and just as 
 in his treatment of life, he is no flatterer to men in 
 general, so here he is free and outspoken on the pecu- 
 liar failings of authors. At the same time he gives 
 them good advice. He is particularly happy in recom- 
 mending restraint in regard to reading the works of 
 others, and the cultivation of independent thought ; 
 and herein he recalls a saying attributed to Hobbes, 
 who was not less distinguished as a writer than as a 
 philosopher, to the effect that " if he had read as 
 much as other men, he should have been as ignorant as 
 they." 
 
 Schopenhauer also utters a warning, which we shall 
 
viii translator's preface. 
 
 do well to take to heart in these days, against mingling 
 the pursuit of literature with vulgar aims. If we 
 follow him here, we shall caref ully distinguish between 
 literature as an object of life and literature as a means 
 of living, between the real love of truth and beauty, 
 and that detestable false love which looks to the price 
 it will fetch in the market. I am not referring to 
 those who, while they follow a useful and honour- 
 able calling in bringing literature before the public, 
 are content to be known as men of business. If, by 
 the help of some second witch of Endor, we could 
 raise the ghost of Schopenhauer, it would be interest- 
 ing to hear his opinion of a certain kind of literary 
 enterprise which has come into vogue since his day, 
 and now receives an amount of attention very much 
 beyond its due. We may hazard a guess at the 
 direction his opinion would take. He would doubt- 
 less show us how this enterprise, which is carried on 
 by self-styled literary men, ends by making literature 
 into a form of merchandise, and treating it as though 
 it were so much goods to be bought and sold at a 
 profit, and most likely to produce quick returns if 
 the maker's name is well known. Nor would it be 
 the ghost of the real Schopenhauer unless we heard 
 a vigorous denunciation of men who claim a connection 
 with literature by a servile flattery of successful 
 living authors — the dead cannot be made to pay — in 
 the hope of appearing to advantage in their reflected 
 light and turning that advantage into money. 
 
 In order to present the contents of this book in a 
 convenient form, I have not scrupled to make an 
 arrangement with the chapters somewhat different 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. IX 
 
 from that which exists in the original ; so that two or 
 more subjects which are there dealt with successively 
 in one and the same chapter, here stand by themselves. 
 In consequence of this, some of the titles of the 
 sections are not to be found in the original. I may 
 state, however, that the essays on Authorship and 
 Style and the latter part of that on Criticism are 
 taken direct from the chapter headed Ueber Schrift- 
 stellerei und Stil; and that the remainder of the essay 
 on Criticism, with that of Reputation, is supplied by 
 the remarks Ueber Urtheil, Kritik, Beifall und Ruhm. 
 The essays on The Study of Latin, on Men of Learn- 
 ing, and on Some Forms of Literature, are taken 
 chiefly from the four sections Ueber Gelehrsamkeit 
 und Gelehrte, Ueber Sprache und Worte, Ueber Lesen 
 und Bucher : Anhang, and Zur Metaphysik des 
 Schonen. The essay on Thinking for Oneself is a 
 rendering of certain remarks under the heading 
 
 CD O 
 
 Selbstdenken. Genius was a favourite subject of 
 speculation with Schopenhauer, and he often touches 
 upon it in the course of his works ; always, however, 
 to put forth the same theory in regard to it as may be 
 found in the concluding section of this volume. 
 Though the essay has little or nothing to do with 
 literary method, the subject of which it treats is the 
 most needful element of success in literature ; and I 
 have introduced it on that ground. It forms part of 
 a chapter in the Parerga entitled Den Intellekt itber~ 
 haupt und in jeder Beziehung betrejfende Gedanken : 
 Anhang verwandter Stellen. 
 
 It has also been part of my duty to invent a title 
 for this volume ; and I am well aware that objection 
 
X translator's preface. 
 
 may be made to the one I have chosen, on the ground 
 that in common language it is unusual to speak of 
 literature as an art, and that to do so is unduly to 
 narrow its meaning and to leave out of sight its main 
 function as the record of thought. But there is no 
 reason why the word Literature should not be 
 employed in that double sense which is allowed to 
 attach to Painting, Music, Sculpture, as signifying 
 either the objective outcome of a certain mental 
 activity, seeking to express itself in outward form ; 
 or else the particular kind of mental activity in 
 question, and the methods it follows. And we do, in 
 fact, use it in this latter sense, when we say of a writer 
 that he pursues literature as a calling. If, then, litera- 
 ture can be taken to mean a process as well as a result 
 of mental activity, there can be no error in speaking 
 of it as Art. I use that term in its broad sense, as 
 meaning skill in the display of thought ; or, more 
 fully, a right use of the rules applying to the practical 
 exhibition of thought, with whatever material it may 
 deal. In connection with literature, this is a sense 
 and an application of the term which have been suffi- 
 ciently established by the example of the great writers 
 of antiquity. 
 
 It may be asked, of course, whether the true thinker, 
 who will always form the soul of the true author, will 
 not be so much occupied with what he has to say, 
 that it will appear to him a trivial thing to spend 
 great effort on embellishing the form in which he 
 delivers it. Literature, to be worthy of the name, 
 must, it is true, deal with noble matter — the riddle of- 
 our existence, the great facts of life, the changing 
 
translator's preface. xi 
 
 passions of the human heart, the discernment of some 
 deep moral truth. It is easy to lay too much stress 
 upon the mere garment of thought ; to be too pre- 
 cise ; to give to the arrangement of words an atten- 
 tion that should rather be paid to the promotion of 
 fresh ideas. A writer who makes this mistake is 
 like a fop who spends his little mind in adorning 
 his person. In short, it may be charged against the 
 view of literature which is taken in calling it an Art, 
 that, instead of making truth and insight the author s 
 aim, it favours sciolism and a fantastic and affected 
 style. There is, no doubt, some justice in the objection ; 
 nor have we in our own day, and especially amongst 
 younger men, any lack of writers who endeavour to 
 win confidence, not by adding to the stock of ideas in 
 the world, but by despising the use of plain language. 
 Their faults are not new in the history of literature; 
 and it is a pleasing sign of Schopenhauer's insight that 
 a merciless exposure of them, as they existed half a 
 century ago, is still quite applicable to their modern 
 form. 
 
 And since these writers, who may, in the slang 
 of the hour, be called " impressionists " in literature, 
 follow their own bad taste in the manufacture of dainty 
 phrases, devoid of all nerve, and generally with some 
 quite commonplace meaning, it is all the more necessary 
 to discriminate carefully between artifice and art. But 
 although they may learn something from Schopen- 
 hauer's advice, it is not chiefly to them that it is 
 offered. It is to that great mass of writers, whose 
 business is to fill the columns of the newspaper and 
 the pages of the review, and to produce the ton of 
 
Xll TRANSLATOR S PREFACE, 
 
 novels that appear every year. Now that almost 
 everyone who can hold a pen aspires to be called an 
 author, it is well to emphasize the fact that literature 
 is an art in some respects more important than any 
 other. The problem of this art is the discovery of 
 those qualities of style and treatment which entitle 
 any work to be called good literature. It will be safe 
 to warn the reader at the very outset that, if he 
 wishes to avoid being led astray, he should in his 
 search for these qualities turn to books that have stood 
 the test of time. For such an amount of hasty writ- 
 ing is done in these days that it is really difficult for 
 anyone who reads much of it to avoid contracting its 
 faults, and thus gradually coming to terms of danger- 
 ous familiarity with bad methods. This advice will 
 be especially needful if things that have little or no 
 claim to be called literature at all — the newspaper, 
 the monthly magazine, and the last new tale of 
 intrigue or adventure — fill a large measure, if not the 
 whole, of the time given to reading. Nor are those 
 who are sincerely anxious to have the best thought in 
 the best language quite free from danger if they give 
 too much attention to contemporary authors, even 
 though these seem to think and write excellently. 
 For one generation alone is incompetent to decide 
 upon the merits of any author whatever ; and as 
 literature, like all art, is a thing of human invention, 
 so it can be pronounced good only if it obtains lasting 
 admiration, by establishing a permanent appeal to 
 mankind's deepest feeling for truth and beauty. It is 
 in this sense that Schopenhauer is perfectly right in 
 holding that the neglect of the ancient classics, which 
 
TRANSLATORS PREFACE. xili 
 
 are the best of all models in the art of writing, will 
 infallibly lead to a degeneration of literature. And 
 the method of discovering the best qualities of style, 
 and of forming a theory of writing, is not to follow 
 some trick or mannerism that happens to please for 
 the moment, but to study the way in which great 
 authors have done their best work. 
 
 It will be said that Schopenhauer tells us nothing 
 we did not know before. Perhaps so ; as he himself 
 says, the best things are seldom new. But he puts 
 the old truths in a fresh and forcible way ; and no 
 one who knows anything of good literature will deny 
 that these truths are just now of very fit application. 
 It was probably to meet a real want that, a year or 
 two ago, an ingenious person succeeded in drawing 
 a great number of English and American writers into 
 a confession of their literary creed and the art they 
 adopted in authorship ; and the interesting volume in 
 which he gave these confessions to the world con- 
 tained some very good advice, although most of it had 
 been said before in different forms. More recently a 
 new departure, of very doubtful use, has taken place ; 
 and two books have been issued, which aim, the one 
 at being an author's manual, the other at giving 
 hints on essays and how to write them. A glance 
 at these books will probably show that their 
 authors have still something to learn. Both of 
 these ventures seem, unhappily, to be popular ; and, 
 although they may claim a position next-door to that 
 of the present volume, I beg to say that it has no con- 
 nection with them whatever. Schopenhauer does not 
 attempt to teach, the art of making bricks without stra w 
 
XIV TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 I wish to take this opportunity of tendering my 
 thanks to a large number of reviewers for the very 
 gratifying reception given to the earlier volumes of 
 this series. And I have great pleasure in expressing 
 my obligations to my friend Mr. W. G. Collingwood, 
 who has looked over most of my proofs and often 
 given me excellent advice in my effort to turn Schopen- 
 hauer into readable English. 
 
 T. B. S. 
 February, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Preface v 
 
 * On Authorship • - i 
 
 On Style - - - 15 
 
 On the Study of Latin 39 
 
 On Men of LEx\rning 47 
 
 On Thinking for Oneself 57 
 
 ^On Some Forms of Literature 73 
 
 - On Criticism - 85 
 
 On Reputation --------103 
 
 On Genius ---------127 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP. 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP. 
 
 There are, first of all, two kinds of authors : those 
 who write for the subject's sake, and those who write 
 for writing's sake. While the one have had thoughts or 
 experiences which seem to them worth communicating, 
 the others want money; and so they write, for 
 money. Their thinking is part of the business of 
 writing. They may be recognised by the way in 
 which they spin out their thoughts to the greatest 
 possible length ; then, too, by the very nature of their 
 thoughts, which are only half -true, perverse, forced, 
 vacillating; again, by the aversion they generally 
 show to saying anything straight out, so that they 
 may seem other than they are. Hence their writing 
 is deficient in clearness and definiteness, and it is not 
 long before they betray that their only object in 
 writing at all is to cover paper. This sometimes 
 happens with the best authors; now and then, for 
 example, with Lessing in his Dramaturgic, and even 
 in many of Jean Paul's romances. As soon as the 
 reader perceives this, let him throw the book away ; 
 for time is precious. The truth is that when an 
 author begins to write for the sake of covering paper 
 he is cheating the reader ; because he writes under the 
 pretext that he has something to say. 
 
 Writing for money and reservation of copyright 
 are, at bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes 
 
4 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 anything that is worth writing, unless he writes 
 entirely for the sake of his subject. What an in- 
 estimable boon it would be, if in every branch of 
 literature there were only a few books, but those ex- 
 cellent ! This can never happen, as long as money 
 is to be made by writing. It seems as though the 
 money lay under a curse ; for every author degenerates 
 as soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way 
 for the sake of gain. The best works of the greatest 
 men all come from the time when they had to write 
 for nothing or for very little. And here, too, that 
 Spanish proverb holds good, which declares that honour 
 and money are not to be found in the same purse — 
 honra y provecho no caben en un saco. The reason 
 why Literature is in such a bad plight nowadays is 
 simply and solely that people write books to make 
 money. A man who is in want sits down and writes 
 a book, and the public is stupid enough to buy it. 
 The secondary effect of this is the ruin of language. 
 
 A great many bad writers make their whole living 
 by that foolish mania of the public for reading no- 
 thing but what has just been printed, — journalists, I 
 mean. Truly, a most appropriate name. In plain 
 language it is journeymen, day-labourers ! 
 
 Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of 
 authors. First come those who write without think- 
 ing. They write from a full memory, from remini- 
 scences ; it may be, even straight out of other people's 
 books. This class is the most numerous. Then 
 come those who do their thinking whilst they are 
 writing. They think in order to write ; and there is 
 no lack of them. Last of all come those authors 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP. 5 
 
 who think before they begin to write They are 
 rare. 
 
 Authors of the second class, who put off their think- 
 ing until they come to write, are like a sportsman 
 who goes forth at random and is not likely to bring 
 very much home. On the other hand, when an 
 author of the third or rare class writes, it is like a 
 battue. Here the game has been previously captured 
 and shut up within a very small space ; from which 
 it is afterwards let out, so many at a time, into 
 another space, also confined. The game cannot pos- 
 sibly escape the sportsman ; he has nothing to do but 
 aim and fire — in other words, write down his thoughts. 
 This is a kind of sport from which a man has some- 
 thing to show. 
 
 But even though the number of those who really 
 think seriously before they begin to write is small, 
 extremely few of them think about the subject itself: 
 the remainder think only about the books that have 
 been written on the subject, and what has been said 
 by others. In order to think at all, such writers need 
 the more direct and powerful stimulus of having other 
 people's thoughts before them. These become their im- 
 mediate theme; and the result is that they are always 
 under their influence, and so never, in any real sense 
 of the word, original. But the former are roused to 
 thought by the subject itself, to which their thinking is 
 thus immediately directed. This is the only class that 
 produces writers of abiding fame. 
 
 It must, of course, be understood that I am speak- 
 ing here of writers who treat of great subjects ; not of 
 writers on the art of making brandy. 
 
6 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 Unless an author takes the material on which he 
 writes out of his own head, that is to say, from his 
 own observation, he is not worth reading. Book- 
 manufacturers, compilers, the common run of history- 
 writers, and many others of the same class, take their 
 material immediately out of books ; and the material 
 goes straight to their finger-tips without even paying 
 freight or undergoing examination as it passes through 
 their heads, to say nothing of elaboration or revision. 
 How very learned many a man would be if he knew 
 everything that was in his own books ! The conse- 
 quence of this is tbab these writers talk in such a 
 loose and vague manner, that the reader puzzles his 
 brains in vain to understand what it is of which they 
 are really thinking. They are thinking of nothing. It 
 may now and then be the case that the book from which 
 they copy has been composed exactly in the same way ; 
 so that writing of this sort is like a plaster cast of a 
 cast ; and in the end, the bare outline of the face, and 
 that, too, hardly recognisable, is all that is left of your 
 Antinous. Let compilations be read as seldom as 
 possible. It is difficult to avoid them altogether; 
 since compilations also include those text-books which 
 contain in a small space the accumulated knowledge 
 of centuries. 
 
 There is no greater mistake than to suppose that 
 the last work is always the more correct ; that what 
 is written later on is in every case an improvement 
 on what was written before ; and that change always 
 means progress. Real thinkers, men of right judg- 
 ment, people who are in earnest with their subject, — 
 these are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP. 7 
 
 everywhere in the world : it is always on the alert, 
 taking the mature opinions of the thinkers, and in- 
 dustriously seeking to improve upon them (save the 
 mark !) in its own peculiar way. 
 
 If the reader wishes to study any subject, let him 
 beware of rushing to the newest books upon it, and 
 confining his attention to them alone, under the 
 notion that science is always advancing, and that the 
 old books have been drawn upon in the writing of 
 the new. They have been drawn upon, it is true ; 
 but how ? The writer of the new book often does 
 not understand the old books thoroughly, and yet he 
 is unwilling to take their exact words ; so he bungles 
 them, and says in his own bad way that which has 
 been said very much better and more clearly by the 
 old writers, who wrote from their own lively know- 
 ledge of the subject. The new writer frequently 
 omits the best things they say, their most striking 
 illustrations, their happiest remarks ; because he does 
 not see their value or feel how pregnant they are. 
 The only thing that appeals to him is what is shallow 
 and insipid. 
 
 It often happens that an old and excellent book is 
 ousted by new and bad ones, which, written for 
 money, appear with an air of great pretension and 
 much puffing on the part of friends. In science a man 
 tries to make his mark by bringing out something- 
 fresh. This often means nothing more than that he 
 attacks some received theory which is quite correct, in 
 order to make room for his own false notions. Some- 
 times the effort is successful for a time ; and then a 
 return is made to the old and true theory. These 
 
8 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 innovators are serious about nothing but their own 
 precious self: it is this that they want to put forward, 
 and the quick way of doing so, as they think, is to 
 start a paradox. Their sterile heads take naturally 
 to the path of negation ; so they begin to deny truths 
 that have long been admitted — the vital power, for 
 example, the sympathetic nervous system, generatio 
 eguivoca, Bichat's distinction between the working of 
 the passions and the working of intelligence ; or else 
 they want us to return to crass atomism, and the like. 
 Hence it frequently happens that the course of science 
 is retrogressive. 
 
 To this class of writers belong those translators 
 who not only translate their author but also correct 
 and revise him ; a proceeding which always seems to 
 me impertinent. To such writers I say : Write books 
 yourself which are worth translating, and leave other 
 people's works as they are ! 
 
 The reader should study, if he can, the real authors, 
 the men who have founded and discovered things ; or, 
 at any rate, those who are recognised as the great 
 masters in every branch of knowledge. Let him bay 
 second-hand books rather than read their contents in 
 new ones. To be sure, it is eas} T to add to any new 
 discovery — inventis aliquid addere facile est; and, 
 therefore, the student, after well mastering the rudi- 
 ments of his subject, will have to make himself 
 acquainted with the more recent additions to the 
 knowledge of it. And, in general, the following rule 
 may be laid down here as elsewhere : if a thing is 
 new, it is seldom good ; because if it is good, it is only 
 for a short time new. 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP. 9 
 
 What the address is to a letter, the title should be 
 to a book ; in other words, its main object should be 
 to bring the book to those amongst the public who 
 will take an interest in its contents. It should, there- 
 fore, be expressive ; and since by its very nature it 
 must be short, it should be concise, laconic, pregnant, 
 and if possible give the contents in one word. A 
 prolix title is bad; and so is one that says nothing, or 
 is obscure and ambiguous, or even, it may be, false 
 and misleading; this last may possibly involve the 
 book in the same fate as overtakes a wrongly ad- 
 dressed letter. The worst titles of all are those which 
 have been stolen, those, I mean, which have already 
 been borne by other books ; for they are in the first 
 place a plagiarism, and secondly the most convincing 
 proof of a total lack of originality in the author. A 
 man who has not enough originality to invent a new 
 title for his book, will be still less able to give it new 
 contents. Akin to these stolen titles are those which 
 have been imitated, that is to say, stolen to the ex- 
 tent of one half ; for instance, long after I had pro- 
 duced my treatise On Will in Nature, Oersted wrote 
 a book entitled On Mind in Nature. 
 
 A book can never be anything more than the im- 
 press of its author's thoughts ; and the value of these 
 will lie either in the matter about which he has 
 thought, or in the form which his thoughts take, in 
 other words, what it is that he has thought about it. 
 
 The matter of books is most various ; and various 
 also are the several excellences attaching to books on 
 the score of their matter. By matter I mean every- 
 thing that comes within the domain of actual experi- 
 
10 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 ence ; that is to say, the facts of history and the facts 
 of nature, taken in and by themselves and in their 
 widest sense. Here it is the thing treated of which 
 gives its peculiar character to the book ; so that a 
 book can be important, whoever it was that wrote it. 
 
 But in regard to the form, the peculiar character of 
 a book depends upon the person who wrote it. It 
 may treat of matters which are accessible to everyone 
 and well known ; but it is the way in which they are 
 treated, what it is that is thought about them, that 
 gives the book its value ; and this comes from its 
 author. If, then, from this point of view a book is 
 excellent and beyond comparison, so is its author. It 
 follows that if a writer is worth reading, his merit 
 rises just in proportion as he owes little to his matter ; 
 therefore, the better known and the more hackneyed 
 this is, the greater he will be. The three great 
 tragedians of Greece, for example, all worked at the 
 same subject-matter. 
 
 So when a book is celebrated, care should be taken 
 to note whether it is so on account of its matter or 
 its form ; and a distinction should be made ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 Books of great importance on account of their 
 matter may proceed from very ordinary and shallow 
 people, by the fact that they alone have had access to 
 this matter ; books, for instance, which describe 
 journeys in distant lands, rare natural phenomena, or 
 experiments; or historical occurrences of which the 
 writers were witnesses, or in connection with which 
 they have spent much time and trouble in the research 
 and special study of original documents. 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP. 11 
 
 On the other hand, where the matter is accessible 
 to everyone or very well known, everything will 
 depend upon the form ; and what it is that is thought 
 about the matter will give the book all the value it 
 possesses. Here only a really distinguished man will 
 be able to produce anything worth reading ; for the 
 others will think nothing but what anyone else can 
 think. They will just produce an impress of their 
 own minds ; but this is a print of which everyone 
 possesses the original. 
 
 However, the public is very much more concerned 
 to have matter than form ; and for this very reason it 
 is deficient in any high degree of culture. The public 
 shows its preference in this respect in the most 
 laughable way when it comes to deal with poetry ; 
 for there it devotes much trouble to the task of 
 tracking out the actual events or personal circum- 
 stances in the life of the poet which served as the occa- 
 sion of his various works; nay, these events and circum- 
 stances come in the end to be of greater importance 
 than the works themselves ; and rather than read 
 Goethe himself, people prefer to read what has been 
 written about him, and to study the legend of Faust 
 more industriously than the drama of that name. 
 And when Burger declared that " people would write 
 learned disquisitions on the question, Who Leonora 
 really was," we find this literally fulfilled in Goethe's 
 case ; for we now possess a great many learned dis- 
 quisitions on Faust and the legend attaching to him. 
 Study of this kind is, and remains, devoted to the 
 material of the drama alone. To give such preference 
 to the matter over the form, is as though a man were 
 
12 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 to take a fine Etruscan vase, not to admire its shape 
 or colouring, but to make a chemical analysis of the 
 clay and paint of which it is composed. 
 
 The attempt to produce an effect by means of the 
 material employed — an attempt which panders to this 
 evil tendency of the public — is most to be condemned 
 in branches of literature where any merit there may 
 be lies expressly in the form : I mean, in poetical 
 work. For all that, it is not rare to find bad 
 dramatists trying to fill the house by means of the 
 matter about which they write. For example, authors 
 of this kind do not shrink from putting on the stage 
 any man who is in any way celebrated, no matter 
 whether his life may have been entirely devoid of 
 dramatic incident ; and sometimes, even, they do not 
 wait until the persons immediately connected with 
 him are dead. 
 
 The distinction between matter and form to which 
 I am here alluding, also holds good of conversation. 
 The chief qualities which enable a man to converse 
 well are intelligence, discernment, wit and vivacity : 
 these supply the form of conversation. But it is not 
 long before attention has to be paid to the matter 
 of which he speaks; in other words, the subjects 
 about which it is possible to converse with him — his 
 knowledge. If this is very small, his conversation will 
 not be worth anything, unless he possesses the above- 
 named formal qualities in a very exceptional degree ; 
 for he will have nothing to talk about but those facts 
 of life and nature which everybody knows. It will 
 be just the opposite, however, if a man is deficient in 
 these formal qualities, but has an amount of know. 
 
ON AUTHORSHIP. 13 
 
 ledge which lends value to what he says. This value 
 will then depend entirely upon the matter of his 
 conversation ; for, as the Spanish proverb has rt 
 mas sabe el necio en su> casa, que el sdbio en la agena 
 — a fool knows more of his own business than a wise 
 man of others'. 
 
ON STYLE. 
 
ON STYLE. 
 
 Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer 
 index to character than the face. To imitate another 
 man's style is like wearing a mask, which, be it 
 never so fine, is not long in arousing disgust and 
 abhorrence, because it is lifeless; so that even the 
 ugliest living face is better. Hence those who write 
 in Latin and copy the manner of ancient authors, 
 may be said to speak through a mask ; the reader, 
 it is true, hears what they say, but he cannot 
 observe their physiognomy too; he cannot see their 
 style. With the Latin works of writers who think 
 for themselves, the case is different, and their style is 
 visible; writers, I mean, who have not condescended to 
 any sort of imitation, such as Scotus Erigena, Petrarch, 
 Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, and many others. And 
 affectation in style is like making grimaces. Further, 
 the language in which a man writes is the physiog- 
 nomy of the nation to which he belongs ; and here 
 there are many hard and fast differences, beginning 
 from the language of the Greeks, down to that of the 
 Caribbean islanders. 
 
 To form a provisional estimate ot the value of a 
 writer's productions, it is not directly necessary to 
 know the subject on which he has thought, or what 
 it is that he has said about it ; that would imply a 
 perusal of all his works. It will be enough, in the 
 
 B 
 
18 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 main, to know how he has thought. This, which 
 means the essential temper or general quality of his 
 mind, may be precisely determined by his style. A 
 man's style shows the formal nature of all his 
 thoughts — the formal nature which can never change, 
 be the subject or the character of his thoughts what 
 it may: it is, as it were, the dough out of which all the 
 contents of his mind are kneaded. When Eulenspiegel 
 was asked how long it would take to walk to 
 the next village, he gave the seemingly incongruous 
 answer : Walk. He wanted to find out by the man's 
 pace the distance he would cover in a given time. 
 In the same way, when I have read a few pages 
 of an author, I know fairly well how far he can 
 bring me. 
 
 Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own 
 natural style, because in his heart he knows the truth 
 of what I am saying. He is thus forced, at the out- 
 set, to give up any attempt at being frank or naive — 
 a privilege which is thereby reserved for superior 
 minds, conscious of their own worth, and therefore 
 sure of themselves. What I mean is that these 
 everyday writers are absolutely unable to re- 
 solve upon writing just as they think ; because 
 they have a notion that, were they to do so, their 
 work might possibly look very childish and simple. 
 For all that, it would not be without its value. If 
 they would only go honestly to work, and say, quite 
 simply, the things they have really thought, and 
 just as they have thought them, these writers would 
 be readable and, within their own proper sphere, 
 even instructive. 
 
ON STYLE. 19 
 
 But instead of that, they try to make the reader 
 believe that their thoughts have gone much further 
 and deeper than is really the case. They say what 
 they have to say in long sentences that wind about in 
 a forced and unnatural way ; they coin new words 
 and write prolix periods which go round and round 
 the thought and wrap it up in a sort of disguise. 
 They tremble between the two separate aims of com- 
 municating what they want to say and of concealing 
 it. Their object is to dress it up so that it may look 
 learned or deep, in order to give people the impression 
 that there is very much more in it than for the 
 moment meets the eye. They either jot down their 
 thoughts bit by bit, in short, ambiguous, and para- 
 doxical sentences, which apparently mean much more 
 than they say, — of this kind of writing Schilling's 
 treatises on natural philosophy are a splendid in- 
 stance ; or else they hold forth with a deluge of words 
 and the most intolerable diffusiveness, as though no 
 end of fuss were necessary to make the reader under- 
 stand the deep meaning of their sentences, whereas it 
 is some quite simple if not actually trivial idea, — 
 examples of which may be found in plenty in the 
 popular works of Fichte, and the philosophical manuals 
 of a hundred other miserable dunces not worth men- 
 tioning; or, again, they try to write in some particular 
 style which they have been pleased to take up and 
 think very grand, a style, for example, par excellence 
 profound and scientific, where the reader is tormented 
 to death by the narcotic effect of long-spun periods 
 without a single idea in them, — such as are furnished 
 in a special measure by those most impudent of all 
 
20 THE ART 01 LITERATURE. 
 
 mortals, the Hegelians; 1 or it may be that it is an 
 intellectual style they have striven after, where it 
 seems as though their object were to go crazy alto- 
 gether ; and so on in many other cases. All these 
 endeavours to put off the nascetur ridicuhis mus — 
 to avoid showing the funny little creature that 
 is born after such mighty throes — often make it diffi- 
 cult to know what it is that they really mean. And 
 then, too, they write down words, nay, even whole 
 sentences, without attaching any meaning to them 
 themselves, but in the hope that some one else will 
 get sense out of them. 
 
 And what is at the bottom of all this ? Nothing 
 but the untiring effort to sell words for thoughts ; a 
 mode of merchandise that is always trying to make 
 fresh openings for itself, and by means of odd expres- 
 sions, turns of phrase, and combinations of every sort, 
 whether new or used in a new sense, to produce the 
 appearance of intellect in order to make up for the 
 very painfully felt lack of it. 
 
 It is amusing to see how writers with this object in 
 view will attempt first one mannerism and then 
 another, as though they were putting on the mask of 
 intellect! This mask may possibly deceive the in- 
 experienced for a while, until it is seen to be a dead 
 thing, with no life in it at all : it is then laughed at and 
 exchanged for another. Such an author will at one 
 moment write in a dithyrambic vein, as though he 
 were tipsy; at another, nay, on the very next page, he 
 will be pompous, severe, profoundly learned and 
 
 1 In their Hegel-gazette, commonly known as Jahrbilcher der 
 iv issensch aftlichen Literatur. 
 
ON STYLE. 21 
 
 prolix, stumbling on in the most cumbrous way and 
 chopping up everything very small; like the late 
 Christian Wolf, only in a modern dress. Longest of 
 all lasts the mask of unintelligibility; but this is only 
 in Germany, whither it was introduced by Fichte, 
 perfected by Schelling, and carried to its highest pitch 
 in Hegel — always with the best results. 
 
 And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no 
 one can understand; just as, contrarily, nothing is 
 more difficult than to express deep things in such a way 
 that every one must necessarily grasp them. All the 
 arts and tricks I have been mentioning are rendered 
 superfluous if the author really has any brains; for 
 that allows him to show himself as he is, and confirms 
 to all time Horace's maxim that good sense is the 
 source and origin of good style : — 
 
 Scribendi recte sapere est et prineipium et fons. 
 
 But those authors I have named are like certain 
 workers in metal, who try a hundred different com- 
 pounds to take the place of gold — the only metal 
 which can never have any substitute. Rather than 
 do that, there is nothing against which a writer should 
 be more upon his guard than the manifest endeavour 
 to exhibit more intellect than he really has ; because 
 this makes the reader suspect that he possesses very 
 little; since it is always the case that if a man affects 
 anything, whatever it may be, it is just there that he 
 is deficient. 
 
 That is why it is praise to an author to say that he 
 is naive; it means that he need not shrink from 
 showing himself as he is. Generally speaking, to be 
 
22 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 naive is to be attractive; while lack of naturalness is 
 everywhere repulsive. As a matter of fact we find 
 that every really great writer tries to express his 
 thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely and shortly as 
 possible. Simplicity has always been held to be a 
 mark of truth; it is also a mark of genius. Style 
 receives its beauty from the thought it expresses; but 
 with sham-thinkers the thoughts are supposed to be 
 fine because of the style. Style is nothing but the 
 mere silhouette of thought; and an obscure or bad 
 style means a dull or confused brain. 
 
 The first rule, then, for a good style is that the 
 author should have something to say ; nay, this is in 
 itself almost all that is necessary. Ah, how much it 
 means! The neglect of this rule is a fundamental trait 
 in the philosophical writing, and, in fact, in all the 
 reflective literature, of my country, more especially 
 since Fichte. These writers all let it be seen that 
 they want to appear as though they had something 
 to say; whereas they have nothing to say. Writing 
 of this kind was brought in by the pseudo-philosophers 
 at the Universities, and now it is current everywhere, 
 even among the first literary notabilities of the age. 
 It is the mother of that strained and vague style, 
 where there seem to be two or even more meanings 
 in the sentence ; also of that prolix and cumbrous 
 manner of expression, called le stile empese; again, of 
 that mere waste of words which consists in pouring 
 them out like a flood ; finally, of that trick of con- 
 cealing the direst poverty of thought under a farrago 
 of never-ending chatter, which clacks away like a 
 windmill and quite stupefies one — stuff which a man 
 
ON STYLE. 23 
 
 may read for hours together without getting hold of 
 a single clearly expressed and definite idea. 1 How- 
 ever, people are easy-going, and they have formed the 
 habit of reading page upon page of all sorts of such 
 verbiage, without having any particular idea of what 
 the author really means. They fancy it is all as it 
 should be, and fail to discover that he is writing 
 simply for writing's sake. 
 
 On the other hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, 
 soon wins his reader's confidence that, when he writes, 
 he has really and truly something to say ; and this 
 gives the intelligent reader patience to follow him 
 with attention. Such an author, just because he 
 really has something to say, will never fail to express 
 himself in the simplest and most straightforward 
 manner; because his object is to awake the very 
 same thought in the reader that he has in himself, 
 and no other. So he will be able to affirm with 
 Boileau that his thoughts are everywhere open to the 
 light of day, and that his verse always says something, 
 whether it says it well or ill : — 
 
 Mapensde au grand jour partout s'offre et £ expose, 
 Kt mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujour 's quelqne chose: 
 
 while of the writers previously described it may be 
 asserted, in the words of the same poet, that they talk 
 much and never say anything at all — qui parlant 
 beaucowp ne disent jamais rien. 
 
 Another characteristic of such writers is that they 
 
 1 Select examples of the art of writing in this style are to be 
 found almost passim in the Jahrbilclier published at Halle, after- 
 wards called the Dcittschen Jahrbilclier. 
 
24 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 always avoid a positive assertion wherever they can 
 possibly do so, in order to leave a loophole for escape 
 in case of need. Hence they never fail to choose the 
 more abstract way of expressing themselves ; whereas 
 intelligent people use the more concrete ; because the 
 latter brings things more within the range of actual 
 demonstration, which is the source of all evidence. 
 
 There are many examples proving this preference 
 for abstract expression ; and a particularly ridiculous 
 one is afforded by the use of the verb to condition in 
 the sense of to cause or to produce. People say to 
 condition something instead of to cause it, because 
 being abstract and indefinite it says less ; it affirms 
 that A cannot happen without B y instead of that J. is 
 caused by B. A back door is always left open ; and 
 this suits people whose secret knowledge of their own 
 incapacity inspires them with a perpetual terror of all 
 positive assertion; while with other people it is merely 
 the effect of that tendency by which everything 
 that is stupid in literature or bad in life is immediately 
 imitated — a fact proved in either case by the rapid 
 way in which it spreads. The Englishman uses his 
 own judgment in what he writes as well as in what 
 he does; but there is no nation of which this eulogy 
 is less true than of the Germans. The consequence of 
 this state of things is that the word cause has of late 
 almost disappeared from the language of literature, 
 and people talk only of condition. The fact is worth 
 mentioning because it is so characteristically ridiculous. 
 
 The very fact that these commonplace authors are 
 never more than half -conscious when they write, would 
 be enough to account for their dulness of mind and 
 
ON STYLE. 25 
 
 the tedious things they produce. I say they are only 
 half-conscious, because they really do not themselves 
 understand the meaning of the words they use : they 
 take words ready-made and commit them to memory. 
 Hence when they write, it is not so much words as 
 whole phrases that they put together — phrases banales. 
 This is the explanation of that palpable lack of clearly- 
 expressed thought in what they say. The fact is that 
 they do not possess the die to give this stamp to their 
 writing ; clear thought of their own is just what they 
 have not got. And what do we find in its place ? — a 
 vague, enigmatical intermixture of words, current 
 phrases, hackneyed terms, and fashionable expressions. 
 The result is that the foggy stuff they write is like a 
 page printed with very old type. 
 
 On the other hand, an intelligent author really 
 speaks to us when he writes, and that is why he is 
 able to rouse our interest and commune with us. It 
 is the intelligent author alone who puts individual 
 words together with a full consciousness of their 
 meaning, and chooses them with deliberate design. 
 Consequently, his discourse stands to that of the 
 writer described above, much as a picture that has been 
 really painted to one that has been produced by the 
 use of a stencil. In the one case, every word, every 
 touch of the brush, has a special purpose ; in the other, 
 all is done mechanically. The same distinction may 
 be observed in music. For just as Lichtenberg says 
 that Garrick's soul seemed to be in every muscle in his 
 body, so it is the omnipresence of intellect that always 
 and everywhere characterises the work of genius. 
 
 I have alluded to the tediousnes* which marks the 
 
26 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 works of these writers ; and in this connection it is to 
 be observed, generally, that tediousness is of two 
 kinds: objective and subjective. A work is objectively 
 tedious when it contains the defect in question; that 
 is to say, when its author has no perfectly clear 
 thought or knowledge to communicate. For if a man\ 
 has any clear thought or knowledge in him, his aim 
 will be to communicate it, and he will direct his 
 energies to this end ; so that the ideas he furnishes 
 are everywhere clearly expressed. The result is that 
 he is neither diffuse, nor unmeaning, nor^confused, and 
 consequently not tedious. In such a case, even though 
 the author is at bottom in error, the error is at any 
 rate clearly worked out and well thought over, so that 
 it is at least formally correct; and thus some value 
 always attaches to the work. But for the same reason 
 a work that is objectively tedious is at all times 
 devoid of any value whatever. 
 
 The other kind of tediousness is only relative : a 
 reader may find a work dull because he has no interest 
 in the question treated of in it, and this means that 
 his intellect is restricted. The best work may, there- 
 fore, be tedious subjectively, tedious, I mean, to this 
 or that particular person; just as, contrarily, the 
 worst work may be subjectively engrossing to this 
 or that particular person who has an interest in the 
 question treated of, or in the writer of the book. 
 
 It would generally serve writers in good stead if 
 they would see that, whilst a man should, if possible, 
 think like a great genius, he should talk the same 
 language as everyone else. Authors should use com- 
 
 mon words to say uncommon things. But they do just 
 
ON STYLE. 27 
 
 the opposite. We find them trying to wrap up trivial 
 ideas in grand words, and to clothe their very ordinary 
 thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the most 
 far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-way expressions. 
 Their sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts. 
 They take so much pleasure in bombast, and write in 
 such a high-flown, bloated, affected, hyperbolical and 
 acrobatic style that their prototype is Ancient Pistol, 
 whom his friend FalstafF once impatiently told to say 
 what he had to say like a man of this world. 1 
 
 There is no expression in any other language exactly 
 answering to the French stile empese; but the thing 
 itself exists all the more often. When associated with 
 affectation, it is in literature what assumption of 
 dignity, grand airs and primness are in society ; and 
 equally intolerable. Dulness of mind is fond of 
 donning this dress; just as in ordinary life it is stupid 
 people who like being demure and formal. 
 
 An author who writes in the prim style resembles 
 a man who dresses himself up in order to avoid being 
 confounded or put on the same level with the mob — 
 a risk never run by the gentleman, even in his worst 
 clothes. The plebeian may be known by a certain 
 showiness of attire and a wish to have everything 
 spick and span ; and, in the same way, the common- 
 place person is betrayed by his style. 
 
 Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he 
 tries to write exactly as he speaks. There is no style 
 of writing but should have a certain trace of kinship 
 with the epigraphic or monumental style, which is, 
 
 1 King Henry IV., Part IT, Act v. Sc. 3. 
 
28 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 indeed, the ancestor of all styles. For an author to 
 write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the 
 opposite fault, to speak as he writes ; for this gives a 
 pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time 
 makes him hardly intelligible. 
 
 An obscure and vague manner of expression is 
 always and everywhere a very bad sign. In ninety- 
 nine cases out of a hundred it comes from vagueness 
 of thought ; and this again almost always means that 
 there is something radically wrong and incongruous 
 about the thought itself — in a word, that it is in- 
 correct. When a right thought springs up in the 
 mind, it strives after expression and is not long in 
 reaching it; for clear thought easily finds words to 
 fit it. If a man is capable of thinking anything at all, 
 he is also always able to express it in clear, intelligible, 
 and unambiguous terms. Those writers who con- 
 struct difficult, obscure, involved, and equivocal sent- 
 ences, most certainly do not know aright what it is 
 that they want to say : they have only a dull con- 
 sciousness of it, which is still in the stage of struggle 
 to shape itself as thought. Often, indeed, their desire 
 is to conceal from themselves and others that they 
 really have nothing at all to say. They wish to 
 appear to know what they do not know, to think 
 what they do not think, to say what they do not say. 
 If a man has some real communication to make, which 
 will he choose — an indistinct or a clear way of ex- 
 pressing himself ? Even Quintilian remarks that 
 things which are said by a highly educated man are 
 often easier to understand and much clearer ; and that 
 the less educated a rmn is, the more obscurely he will 
 
ON STYLE. 29 
 
 write — pier unique ace id it ut faciliora sint ad intelli- 
 gendum et lucidiora multo quce a doctissimo quoquc 
 dicuntur .... Erit ergo etiam obscurior quo quisque 
 deterior. 
 
 An author should avoid enigmatical phrases : he 
 should know whether he wants to say a thing or does 
 not want to say it. It is this indecision of style 
 that makes so many writers insipid. The only case 
 that offers an exception to this rule arises when it 
 is necessary to make a remark that is in some way 
 improper. 
 
 As exaggeration generally produces an effect the 
 opposite of that aimed at ; so words, it is true, serve 
 to make thought intelligible — but only up to a certain 
 point. If words are heaped up beyond it, the thought 
 becomes more and more obscure again. To find where 
 the point lies is the problem of style, and the business 
 of the critical faculty ; for a word too much always 
 defeats its purpose. This is what Voltaire means 
 when he says that the adjective is the enemy of the 
 substantive. But, as we have seen, many people try 
 to conceal their poverty of thought under a flood of 
 verbiage. 
 
 Accordingly, let all redundancy be avoided, all 
 stringing together of remarks which have no meaning 
 and are not worth perusal. A writer must make a 
 sparing use of the readers time, patience and attention ; 
 so as to lead him to believe that his author writes 
 what is worth careful study, and will reward the time 
 spent upon it. It is always better to omit something 
 good than to add that which is not worth saying at 
 all. This is the right application of Hesiod's maxim, 
 
30 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 irXkov rnxi(rv wdvros 1 — the half is more than the 
 whole. Le secret pour etre ennuyeux, c'est de 
 tout dire. Therefore, if possible, the quintessence only ! 
 mere leading thoughts ! nothing that the reader would 
 think for himself. To use many words to communi- 
 cate few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable 
 sign of mediocrity. To gather much thought into 
 few words stamps the man of genius. 
 
 Truth is most beautiful undraped ; and the im- 
 pression it makes is deep in proportion as its expres- 
 sion has been simple. This is so, partly because it then 
 takes unobstructed possession of the hearer's whole 
 soul, and leaves him no by-thought to distract him ; 
 partly, also, because he feels that here he is not being 
 corrupted or cheated by the arts of rhetoric, but that 
 all the effect of what is said comes from the thing it- 
 self. For instance, w^hat declamation on the vanity of 
 human existence could ever be more telling than the 
 words of Job? — Man that is born of a woman hath 
 but a short time to live and is full of misery. He 
 cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower ; he fleeth 
 as it %vere a shadow, and never continueth in one 
 stay. 
 
 For the same reason Goethe's naive poetry is incom- 
 parably greater than Schiller's rhetoric. It is this, 
 again, that makes many popular songs so affecting. As 
 in architecture an excess of decoration is to be avoided, 
 so in the art of literature a writer must guard against 
 all rhetorical finery, all useless amplification, and all 
 superfluity of expression in general ; in a word, he must 
 strive after chastity of style. Every word that can 
 1 Works and Days, 40. 
 
ON STYLE. 31 
 
 be spared is hurtful if it remains. The law of sim- 
 plicity and naivety holds good of all fine art ; for it 
 is quite possible to be at once simple and sublime. 
 
 True brevity of expression consists in everywhere 
 saying only what is worth saying, and in avoiding 
 tedious detail about things which everyone can 
 supply for himself. This involves correct discrimina^ 
 tioR between what is necessary and what is super 
 fluous. A writer should never be brief at the expense 
 of being clear, to say nothing of being grammatical. 
 It shows lamentable want of judgment to weaken 
 the expression of a thought, or to stunt the meaning 
 of a period for the sake of using a few words less. 
 But this is the precise endeavour of that false brevity 
 nowadays so much in vogue, which proceeds by 
 leaving out useful words and even by sacrificing 
 grammar and logic. It is not only that such writers 
 spare a word by making a single verb or adjective do 
 duty for several different periods, so that the reader, 
 as it were, has to grope his way through them in the 
 dark ; they also practise, in many other respects, an 
 unseemly economy of speech, in the effort to effect 
 what they foolishly take to be brevity of expression 
 and conciseness of style. By omitting something that 
 might have thrown a light over the whole sentence, 
 they turn it into a conundrum, which the reader tries 
 to solve by going over it again and again. 1 
 
 1 Translator's Note. In the original, Schopenhauer here enters 
 upon a lengthy examination of certain common errors in the 
 writing and speaking of German. His remarks are addressed 
 to his own countrymen, and would lose all point, even if they 
 were intelligible, in an English translation. But for those who 
 
32 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing 
 else, that gives brevity to style, and makes it concise 
 and pregnant. If a writers ideas are important, 
 luminous, and generally worth communicating, they 
 will necessarily furnish matter and substance enough 
 to fill out the periods which give them expression, and 
 make these in all their parts both grammatically and 
 verbally complete ; and so much will this be the case 
 that no one will ever find them hollow, empty or feeble. 
 The diction will everywhere be brief and pregnant, and 
 allow the thought to find intelligible and easy expres- 
 sion, and even unfold and move about with grace. 
 
 Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms 
 of speech, let a writer enlarge his thoughts. If a man 
 has been thinned by illness and finds his clothes too 
 big, it is not by cutting them down, but by recover- 
 ing his usual bodily condition, that he ought 
 to make them fit him again. 
 
 Let me here mention an error of style very 
 prevalent nowadays, and, in the degraded state 
 of literature and the neglect of ancient languages, 
 always on the increase; I mean subjectivity. A 
 writer commits this error when he thinks it 
 enough if he himself knows what he means 
 and wants to say, and takes no thought for the 
 reader, who is left to get at the bottom of it as best 
 he can. This is as though the author were holding 
 
 practise their German by conversing or corresponding with 
 Germans, let me recommend what he there says as a useful 
 corrective to a slipshod style, such as can easily be contracted 
 if it is assumed that the natives of a country always know 
 their own language perfectly. 
 
ON STYLE. 33 
 
 a monologue ; whereas it ought to be a dialogue ; and 
 a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all 
 the more clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the 
 questions of his interlocutor. 
 
 Style should for this very reason never be sub- 
 jective, but objective ; and it will not be objective unless 
 the words are so set down that they directly force the 
 reader to think precisely the same thing as the author 
 thought when he wrote them. Nor will this result be 
 obtained unless the author has always been careful 
 to remember that thought so far follows the law 
 of gravity that it travels from head to paper much 
 more easily than from paper to head ; so that he must 
 assist the latter passage by every means in his power. 
 If he does this, a writer's words will have a purely 
 objective effect, like that of a finished picture in oils ; 
 whilst the subjective style is not much more certain 
 in its working than spots on the wall, which 
 look like figures only to one whose phantasy has been 
 accidentally aroused by them; other people see no- 
 thing but spots and blurs. The difference in question 
 applies to literary method as a whole ; but it is. often 
 established also in particular instances. For example, 
 in a recently published work I found the following 
 sentence : / have not written in order to increase the 
 number of existing books. This means just the 
 opposite of what the writer wanted to say, and is 
 nonsense as well. 
 
 He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the 
 very outset that he does not attach much importance 
 to his own thoughts. For it is only where a man is 
 convinced of the truth and importance of his thoughts, 
 
34 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 that he feels the enthusiasm necessary for an untiring 
 and assiduous effort to find the clearest, finest, and 
 strongest expression for them, — just as for sacred relics 
 or priceless works of art there are provided silvern or 
 golden receptacles. It was this feeling that led ancient 
 authors, whose thoughts, expressed in their own words, 
 have lived thousands of years, and therefore bear the 
 honoured title of classics, always to write with care. 
 Plato, indeed, is said to have written the introduction 
 to his Republic seven times over in different ways. 1 
 
 As neglect of dress betrays want of respect for the 
 company a man meets, so a hasty, careless, bad style 
 shows an outrageous lack of regard for the reader, 
 who then rightly punishes it by refusing to read the 
 book. It is especially amusing to see reviewers 
 criticising the works of others in their own most care- 
 less style — the style of a hireling,, It is as though a 
 judge were to come into court in dressing-gown and 
 slippers ! If I see a man badly and dirtily dressed, I 
 feel some hesitation, at first, in entering into conversa- 
 tion with him : and when, on taking up a book, I am 
 struck at once by the negligence of its style, I put 
 it away. 
 
 Good writing should be governed by the rule that 
 a man can think only one thing clearly at a time ; 
 and, therefore, that he should not be expected to 
 think two or even more things in one and the same 
 moment. But this is what is done when a writer 
 breaks up his principal sentence into little pieces, for 
 
 1 Translator's Note. It is a fact worth mentioning that the first 
 twelve words of the Republic are placed in the exact order which 
 would be natural in English. 
 
ON STYLE. 35 
 
 the purpose of pushing into the gaps thus made two 
 or three other thoughts by way of parenthesis; there- 
 by unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the reader. 
 And here it is again my own countrymen who are 
 chiefly in fault. That German lends itself to this way 
 of writing, makes the thing possible, but does not 
 iustify it. No prose reads more easily or pleasantly 
 than French, because, as a rule, it is free from the 
 error in question. The Frenchman strings his 
 thoughts together, as far as he can, in the most 
 logical and natural order, and so lays them before his 
 reader one after the other for convenient delibera- 
 tion, so that every one of them may receive undivided 
 attention. The German, on the other hand, weaves 
 them together into a sentence which he twists and 
 crosses, and crosses and twists again ; because he 
 wants to say six things all at once, instead of ad- 
 vancing them one by one. His aim should be to 
 attract and hold the reader's attention ; but, above 
 and beyond neglect of this aim, he demands from the 
 reader that he shall set the above mentioned rule at 
 defiance, and think three or four different thoughts at 
 one and the same time ; or since that is impossible, 
 that his thoughts shall succeed each other as quickly 
 as the vibrations of a cord. In this way an author 
 lays the foundation of his stile empese, which is then 
 carried to perfection by the use of high-flown, pompous 
 expressions to communicate the simplest things, and 
 other artifices of the same kind. 
 
 In those long sentences rich in involved parentheses, 
 like a box of boxes one within another, and padded 
 out like roast geese stuffed with apples, it is really 
 
36 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 the memory that is chiefly taxed ; while it is the 
 understanding and the judgment which should be 
 called into play, instead of having their activity 
 thereby actually hindered and weakened. 1 This kind 
 of sentence furnishes the reader with mere half- 
 phrases, which he is then called upon to collect care- 
 fully and store up in his memory, as though they 
 were the pieces of a torn letter, afterwards to be 
 completed and made sense of by the other halves 
 to which they respectively belong. He is expected 
 to go on reading for a little without exercising any 
 thought, nay, exerting only his memory, in the hope 
 that, when he comes to the end of the sentence, he 
 may see its meaning and so receive something to 
 think about; and he is thus given a great deal to 
 learn by heart before obtaining anything to under- 
 stand. This is manifestly wrong and an abuse of the 
 reader's patience. 
 
 The ordinary writer has an unmistakable pre- 
 ference for this style, because it causes the reader 
 to spend time and trouble in understanding that which 
 he would have understood in a moment without it ; 
 and this makes it look as though the writer had more 
 depth and intelligence than the reader. This is, in- 
 deed, one of those artifices referred to above, by means 
 of which mediocre authors unconsciously, and as it 
 were by instinct, strive to conceal their poverty of 
 
 1 Translator's Note. This sentence in the original is obviously 
 meant to illustrate the fault of which it speaks. It does so by 
 the use of a construction very common in German, but happily 
 unknown in English; where, however, the fault itself exists 
 none the less, though in a different form. 
 
ON STYLE. 37 
 
 thought and give an appearance of the opposite. 
 Their ingenuity in this respect is really astounding. 
 
 It is manifestly against all sound reason to put one 
 thought obliquely on top of another, as though both 
 together formed a wooden cross. But this is what is 
 done where a writer interrupts what he has begun to 
 say, for the purpose of inserting some quite alien 
 matter ; thus depositing with the reader a meaningless 
 half -sentence, and bidding him keep it until the com- 
 pletion comes. It is much as though a man were 
 to treat his guests by handing them an empty plate.. 
 in the hope of something appearing upon it. And 
 commas used for a similar purpose belong to the same 
 family as notes at the foot of the page and parentheses 
 in the middle of the text ; nay, all three differ only in 
 degree. If Demosthenes and Cicero occasionally 
 inserted words by way of parenthesis, they would 
 have done better to have refrained. 
 
 But this style of writing becomes the height of 
 absurdity when the parentheses are not even fitted 
 into the frame of the sentence, but wedged in so as 
 directly to shatter it. If, for instance, it is an im- 
 pertinent thing to interrupt another person when he 
 is speaking, it is no less impertinent to interrupt 
 oneself. But all bad, careless, and hasty authors, 
 who scribble with the bread actually before their 
 eyes, use this style of writing six times on a 
 page, and rejoice in it It consists in — it is 
 advisable to give rule and example together, 
 wherever it is possible — breaking up one phrase in 
 order to glue in another. Nor is it merely out of 
 laziness that they write thus. They do it out of 
 
38 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 stupidity ; they think there is a charming legerete 
 about it; that it gives life to what they say. No 
 doubt there are a few rare cases where such a form of 
 sentence may be pardonable. 
 
 Few write in the way in which an architect builds; 
 who, before he sets to work, sketches out his plan, 
 and thinks it over down to its smallest details. Nay, 
 most people write only as though they were playing 
 dominoes ; and as in this game the pieces are arranged 
 half by design, half by chance, so it is with the 
 sequence and connection of their sentences. They 
 only just have an idea of what the general shape of 
 their work will be, and of the aim they set before 
 themselves. Many are ignorant even of this, and 
 write as the coral-insects build : period joins to period, 
 and Lord knows what the author means. 
 
 Life now-a-days goes at a gallop ; and the way in 
 which this affects literature is to make it extremely 
 superficial and slovenly. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 
 
 The abolition of Latin as the universal language of 
 learned men, together with the rise of that provin- 
 cialism which attaches to national literatures, has 
 been a real misfortune for the cause of knowledge in 
 Europe. For it was chiefly through the medium of 
 the Latin language that a learned public existed in 
 Europe at all — a public to which every book as it came 
 out directly appealed. The number of minds in the 
 whole of Europe that are capable of thinking and 
 judging is small, as it is ; but when the audience is 
 broken up and severed by differences of language, 
 the good these minds can do is very much weakened. 
 This is a great disadvantage ; but a second and worse 
 one will follow, namely, that the ancient languages 
 will cease to be taught at all. The neglect of them is 
 rapidly gaining ground both in France and Germany. 
 If it should really come to this, then farewell, 
 humanity ! farewell, noble taste and high thinking ! 
 The age of barbarism will return, in spite of railways, 
 telegraphs and balloons. We shall thus in the end 
 lose one more advantage possessed by all our ancestors. 
 For Latin is not only a key to the knowledge of 
 Roman antiquity ; it also directly opens up to us the 
 Middle Age in every country in Europe, and modern 
 times as well, down to about the year 1750. Erigena, 
 
 for example, in the ninth century, John of Salisbury 
 
 41 
 
42 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 in the twelfth, Raimond Lully in the thirteenth, with 
 a hundred others, speak straight to us in the very- 
 language that they naturally adopted in thinking of 
 learned matters. They thus come quite close to us 
 even at this distance of time : we are in direct contact 
 with them, and really come to know them. How 
 would it have been if everyone of them spoke 
 in the language that was peculiar to his time and 
 country ? We should not understand even the half of 
 what they said. A real intellectual contact with them 
 would be impossible. We should see them like shadows 
 on the farthest horizon, or, may be, through the trans- 
 lator's telescope. 
 
 It was with an eye to the advantage of writing in 
 Latin that Bacon, as he himself expressly states, pro- 
 ceeded to translate his Essays into that language, 
 under the title Sermones fideles ; at which work 
 Hobbes assisted him. 1 
 
 Here let me observe, by way of parenthesis, that 
 when patriotism tries to urge its claims in the domain 
 of knowledge, it commits an offence which should not 
 be tolerated. For in those purely human questions 
 which interest all men alike, where truth, insight, 
 beauty, should be of sole account, what can be more 
 impertinent than to let preference for the nation to 
 which a man's precious self happens to belong, affect 
 the balance of judgment, and thus supply a reason 
 for doing violence to truth and being unjust to the 
 great minds of a foreign country in order to make 
 much of the smaller minds of one's own ! Still, there 
 
 1 Cf. Thomae Hobbes vita : Carolopoli apud Meutherium 
 Anglicum, 1G81, p. 22. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 43 
 
 are writers in every nation in Europe who afford ex- 
 amples of this vulgar feeling. It is this which led 
 Yriarte to caricature them in the thirty-third of his 
 charming Literary Fables. 1 
 
 In learning a language, the chief difficulty consists 
 in making acquaintance with every idea which it 
 expresses, even though it should use words for which 
 there is no exact equivalent in the mother tongue ; 
 and this often happens. In learning a new language 
 a man has, as it were, to mark out in his mind the 
 boundaries of quite new spheres of ideas, with the 
 result that spheres of ideas arise where none 
 were before. Thus he not only learns words, he 
 gains ideas too. 
 
 This is nowhere so much the case as in learning 
 ancient languages, for the differences they present in 
 
 1 Translator 's Note. Tomas de Yriarte (1750-91), a Spanish 
 poet, and keeper of archives in the War Office at Madrid. 
 His two best known works are a didactic poem, entitled La 
 Musica, and the Fables here quoted, which satirise the peculiar 
 foibles of literary men. They have been translated into many 
 languages ; into English by Rockliffe (3rd edition 1866). 
 The fable in question describes how r , at a picnic of the animals, 
 a discussion arose as to which of them carried off the palm for 
 superiority of talent. The praises of the ant, the dog, the bee, 
 and the parrot were sung in turn ; but at last the ostrich stood 
 up and declared for the dromedary. Whereupon the dromedary 
 stood up and declared for the ostrich. No one could discover 
 the reason for this mutual compliment. Was it because both 
 w r ere such uncouth beasts, or had such long necks, or were 
 neither of them particularly clever or beautiful ? or was it 
 because each had a hump? No ! said the fox, you are all wrong. 
 Don't you see they are both foreigners ? Cannot the same bo 
 said of many men of learning ? 
 
44 THE AM OF LITERATURE. 
 
 their mode of expression as compared with modern 
 languages is greater than can be found amongst 
 modern languages as compared with one another. 
 This is shown by the fact that in translating into Latin, 
 recourse must be had to quite other turns of phrase 
 than are in use in the original. The thought that is 
 to be translated has to be melted down and recast ; 
 in other words, it must be analysed and then recom- 
 posed. It is just this process which makes the study 
 of the ancient languages contribute so much to the 
 education of the mind. 
 
 It follows from this that a man's thought varies 
 according to the language in which he speaks. His 
 ideas undergo a fresh modification, a different shading, 
 as it were, in the study of every new language. 
 Hence an acquaintance with many languages is not 
 only of much indirect advantage, but it is also a 
 direct means of mental culture, in that it cor- 
 rects and matures ideas by giving prominence 
 to their many-sided nature and their different 
 varieties of meaning, as also that it increases dex- 
 terity of thought ; for in the process of learning 
 many languages ideas become more and more in- 
 dependent of words. The ancient languages effect 
 this to an incomparably greater degree than the 
 modern, in virtue of the difference to which I have 
 alluded. 
 
 From what I have said, it is obvious that to imitate 
 the style of the ancients in their own language, which 
 is so very much superior to ours in point of gram- 
 matical perfection, is the best way of preparing for 
 a skilful and finished expression of thought in the 
 
ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 45 
 
 mother-tongue. Nay, if a man wants to be a great 
 writer, he must not omit to do this ; just as, in the 
 case of sculpture or painting, the student must educate 
 himself by copying the great masterpieces of the past, 
 before proceeding to original work. It is only by 
 learning to write Latin that a man comes to treat 
 diction as an art. The material in this art is language, 
 which must therefore be handled with the greatest 
 care and delicacy. 
 
 The result of such study is that a writer will pay 
 keen attention to the meaning and value of words, their 
 order and connection, their grammatical forms. He 
 will learn how to weigh them with precision, and so 
 become an expert in the use of that precious in- 
 strument which is meant not only to express valuable 
 thought, but to preserve it as well. Further, he will 
 learn to feel respect for the language in which he writes, 
 and thus be saved from any attempt to remodel it by 
 arbitrary and capricious treatment. Without this 
 schooling, a man's writing may easily degenerate into 
 mere chatter. 
 
 To be entirely ignorant of the Latin language is 
 like being in a fine country on a misty day. The 
 horizon is extremely limited. Nothing can be seen 
 clearly except that which is quite close ; a few steps 
 beyond, everything is buried in obscurity. But the 
 Latinist has a wide view, embracing modern times, 
 the Middle Age and Antiquity ; and his mental 
 horizon is still further enlarged if he studies Greek or 
 even Sanscrit. 
 
 If a man knows no Latin, he belongs to the vulgar, 
 even though he be a great virtuoso on the electrical 
 
4t) THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 machine and have the base of hydrofluoric acid in his 
 crucible. 
 
 There is no better recreation for the mind than the 
 study of the ancient classics. Take any one of them 
 into your hand, be it only for half an hour, and you 
 will feel yourself refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, 
 strengthened ; just as though you had quenched your 
 thirst at some pure spring. Is this the effect of the 
 old language and its perfect expression, or is it the 
 greatness of the minds whose works remain unharmed 
 and unweakened by the lapse of a thousand years ? 
 Perhaps both together. But this I know. If the 
 threatened calamity should ever come, and the ancient 
 languages cease to be taught, a new literature will 
 arise, of such barbarous, shallow and worthless stuff 
 as never was seen before. 
 
ON MEN OF LEARNING. 
 
ON MEN OF LEARNING. 
 
 When one sees the number and variety of institutions 
 which exist for the purposes of education, and the vast 
 throng of scholars and masters, one might fancy the 
 human race to be very much concerned about truth 
 and wisdom. But here, too, appearances are deceptive. 
 The masters teach in order to gain money, and strive, 
 not after wisdom, but the outward show and re- 
 putation of it ; and the scholars learn, not for the sake 
 of knowledge and insight, but to be able to chatter 
 and give themselves airs. Every thirty years a new 
 race comes into the world — a youngster that knows 
 nothing about anything, and after summarily de- 
 vouring in all haste the results of human knowledge 
 as they have been accumulated for thousands of years, 
 aspires to be thought cleverer than the whole of the 
 past. For this purpose he goes to the University, 
 and takes to reading books — new books, as being of 
 his own age and standing. Everything he reads 
 must be briefly put, must be new ! he is new himself. 
 Then he falls to and criticises. And here I am not 
 taking the slightest account of studies pursued for 
 the sole object of making a living. 
 
 Students, and learned persons of all sorts and every 
 age, aim as a rule at acquiring information rather 
 than insight. They pique themselves upon knowing 
 about everything — stones, plants, battles, experiments, 
 
 D 
 
50 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 and all the books in existence. It never occurs to 
 them that information is only a means of insight, and 
 in itself of little or no value ; that it is his way of 
 thinking that makes a man a philosopher. When 
 I hear of these portents of learning and their imposing 
 erudition, I sometimes say to myself: Ah, how 
 little they must have had to think about, to have 
 been able to read so much ! And when I actually find 
 it reported of the elder Pliny that he was continually 
 reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in 
 his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, 
 whether the man was so very lacking in thought of 
 his own that he had to have alien thought incessantly 
 instilled into him ; as though he were a consumptive 
 patient taking jellies to keep himself alive. And 
 neither his undiscerning credulity nor his inexpressibly 
 repulsive and barely intelligible style — which seems 
 like that of a man taking notes, and very economical 
 of paper — is of a kind to give me a high opinion of 
 his power of independent thought. 
 
 We have seen that much reading and learning is 
 prejudicial to thinking for oneself; and, in the same 
 way, through much writing and teaching, a man loses 
 the habit of being quite clear, and therefore thorough, in 
 regard to the things he knows and understands ; 
 simply because he has left himself no time to acquire 
 clearness or thoroughness. And so, when clear know- 
 ledge fails him in his utterances, he is forced to fill out 
 the gaps with words and phrases. It is this, and not 
 the dryness of the subject-matter, that makes most 
 books such tedious reading. There is a saying that a 
 good ccok can make a palatable dish even out of an 
 
ON MEN OF LEARNING. 51 
 
 old shoe ; and a good writer can make the dryest 
 things interesting. 
 
 With by far the largest number of learned men, 
 knowledge is a means, not an end. That is why they 
 will never achieve any great work ; because, to do 
 that, he who pursues knowledge must pursue it as an 
 end, and treat everything else, even existence itself, as 
 only a means. For everything which a man fails to 
 pursue for its own sake is but half-pursued ; and true 
 excellence, no matter in what sphere, can be attained 
 only where the work has been produced for its own 
 sake alone, and not as a means to further ends. 
 
 And so, too, no one will ever succeed in doing any- 
 thing really great and original in the way of thought, 
 who does not seek to acquire knowledge for himself, 
 and, making this the immediate object of his studies, 
 decline to trouble himself about the knowledge of 
 others. But the average man of learning studies for 
 the purpose of being able to teach and write. His 
 head is like a stomach and intestines which let the 
 food pass through them undigested. That is just why 
 his teaching and writing is of so little use. For it is 
 not upon undigested refuse that people can be 
 nourished, but solely upon the milk which secretes 
 from the very blood itself. 
 
 The wig is the appropriate symbol of the man of 
 learning, pure and simple. It adorns the head with a 
 copious quantity of false hair, in lack of one's own : 
 just as erudition means endowing it with a great 
 mass of alien thought. This, to be sure, does not 
 clothe the head so well and naturally, nor is it so 
 generally useful, nor so suited for all purposes, nor so 
 
52 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 firmly rooted ; nor when alien thought is used up, can 
 it be immediately replaced by more from the same 
 source, as is the case with that which springs from 
 soil of one's own. So we find Sterne, in his Tristram 
 Shandy, boldly asserting that an ounce of a man's 
 own wit is worth a ton of other people's. 
 
 And in fact the most profound erudition is no more 
 akin to genius than a collection of dried plants is like 
 Nature, with its constant flow of new life, ever fresh, 
 ever young, ever changing. There are no two things 
 more opposed than the childish naivety of an ancient 
 author and the learning of his commentator. 
 
 Dilettanti, dilettanti! This is the slighting way 
 in which those who pursue any branch of art or 
 learning for the love and enjoyment of the thing, 
 — per il loro diletto, are spoken of by those who have 
 taken it up for the sake of gain, attracted solely by 
 the prospect of money. This contempt of theirs comes 
 from the base belief that no man will seriously devote 
 himself to a subject, unless he is spurred on to it by 
 want, hunger, or else some form of greed. The 
 public is of the same way of thinking; and hence its 
 general respect for professionals and its distrust of 
 dilettanti. But the truth is that the dilettante treats 
 his subject as an end, whereas the professional, pure 
 and simple, treats it merely as a means. He alone 
 will be really in earnest about a matter, who has a 
 direct interest therein, takes to it because he likes it, 
 and pursues it con amove. It is these, and not 
 hirelings, that have always done the greatest work. 
 
 In the republic of letters it is as in other republics ; 
 favour is shown to the plain man — he who goes his 
 
ON MEN OF LEARNING. 53 
 
 way in silence and does not set up to be cleverer than 
 others. But the abnormal man is looked upon as 
 threatening danger ; people band together against 
 him, and have, oh ! such a majority on their side. 
 
 The condition of this republic is much like that of 
 a small State in America, where every man is intent 
 only upon his -own advantage, and seeks reputation 
 and power for himself, quite heedless of the general 
 weal, which then goes to ruin. So it is in the re- 
 public of letters ; it is himself, and himself alone, that 
 a man puts forward, because he wants to gain fame. 
 The only thing in which all agree is in trying to keep 
 down a really eminent man, if he should chance to 
 show himself, as one who would be a common 
 peril. From this it is easy to see how it fares with 
 knowledge as a whole. 
 
 Between professors and independent men of learn- 
 ing there has always been from of old a certain 
 antagonism, which may perhaps be likened to that 
 existing between dogs and wolves. In virtue of their 
 position, professors enjoy great facilities for becoming 
 known to their contemporaries. Contrarily, indepen- 
 dent men of learning enjoy, by their position, great 
 facilities for becoming known to posterity; to which 
 it is necessary that, amongst other and much rarer 
 gifts, a man should have a certain leisure and 
 freedom. As mankind takes a long time in finding 
 out on whom to bestow its attention, they may both 
 work together side by side. 
 
 He who holds a professorship may be said to receive 
 his food in the stall; and this is the best way with 
 ruminant animals. But he who finds his food for 
 
54 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 himself at the hands of Nature is better off in the 
 open field. 
 
 Of human knowledge as a whole and in every branch 
 of it, by far the largest part exists nowhere but on 
 paper — I mean, in books, that paper memory of man- 
 kind. Only a small part of it is at any given period 
 really active in the minds of particular persons. This 
 is due, in the main, to the brevity and uncertainty of 
 life; but it also comes from the fact that men are lazy 
 and bent on pleasure. Every generation attains, on 
 its hasty passage through existence, just so much of 
 human knowledge as it needs, and then soon dis- 
 appears. Most men of learning are very superficial. 
 Then follows a new generation, full of hope, but 
 ignorant, and with everything to learn from the 
 beginning. It seizes, in its turn, just so much as it 
 can grasp, or find useful on its brief journey, and then 
 too goes its way. How badly it would fare with 
 human knowledge if it were not for tlie art of writing 
 and printing ! This it is that makes libraries the only 
 sure and lasting memory of the human race, for its 
 individual members have all of them but a very 
 limited and imperfect one. Hence most men of 
 learning: are as loth to have their knowledge ex- 
 amined as merchants to lay bare their books. 
 
 Human knowledge extends on all sides farther 
 than the eye can reach; and of that which would be 
 generally worth knowing, no one man can possess 
 even the thousandth part. 
 
 All branches of learning have thus been so much 
 enlarged that he who would u do something'' has to pur- 
 sue no more than one subject and disregard all others. 
 
ON MEN OF LEARNING. 55 
 
 In his own subject he will then, it is true, be superior 
 to the vulgar ; but in all else he will belong to it. If 
 we add to this that neglect of the ancient languages, 
 which is now-a-days on the increase and is doing away 
 with all general education in the humanities — for a 
 mere smattering of Latin and Greek is of no use — we 
 shall come to have men of learning who outside their 
 own subject display an ignorance truly bovine. 
 
 An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par 
 with a workman in a factory, whose whole life is 
 spent in making one particular kind of screw, or catch, 
 or handle, for some particular instrument or machine, 
 in which, indeed, he attains incredible dexterity. The 
 specialist may also be likened to a man who lives in 
 his own house and never leaves it. There he is 
 perfectly familiar with everything, every little step, 
 corner, or board; much as Quasimodo in Victor Hugo's 
 Notre Dame knows the cathedral; but outside it, all 
 is strange and unknown. 
 
 For true culture in the humanities it is absolutely 
 necessary that a man should be many-sided and take 
 large views; and for a man of learning in the higher 
 sense of the word, an extensiveacquaintancewith history 
 is needful. He, however, who wishes to be a complete 
 philosopher, must gather into his head the remotest 
 ends of human knowledge : for where else could they 
 ever come together ? 
 
 It is precisely minds of the first order that will 
 never be specialists. For their very nature is to make 
 the whole of existence their problem; and this is a 
 subject upon w r hich they will every one of them in 
 some form provide mankind with a new revelation. 
 
56 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 For he alone can deserve the name of genius who 
 takes the All, the Essential, the Universal, for the 
 theme of his achievements; not he who spends his 
 life in explaining some special relation of things one 
 to another. 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 
 
 A library may be very large ; but if it is in disorder, 
 it is not so useful as one that is small but well 
 arranged. In the same way, a man may have a great 
 mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up by 
 thinking it over for himself, it has much less value 
 than a far smaller amount which he has thoroughly 
 pondered. For it is only when a man looks at his 
 knowledge from all sides, and combines the things he 
 knows by comparing truth with truth, that he obtains 
 a complete hold over it and gets it into his power. A 
 man cannot turn over anything in his mind unless he 
 knows it ; he should, therefore, learn something ; but 
 it is only when he has turned it over that he can be 
 said to know it. 
 
 Reading and learning are things that anyone can 
 do of his own free will ; but not so thinking. Think- 
 ing must be kindled, like a fire by a draught ; it must 
 be sustained by some interest in the matter in hand. 
 This interest may be of purely objective kind, or 
 merely subjective. The latter comes into play only in 
 things that concern us personally. Objective interest 
 is confined to heads that think by nature ; to whom 
 thinking is as natural as breathing ; and they are 
 very rare. This is why most men of learning show so 
 little of it. 
 
 It is incredible what a different effect is produced 
 upon the mind by thinking for oneself, as compared 
 
 59 
 
GO THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 with reading. It carries on and intensifies that 
 original difference in the nature of two minds which 
 leads the one to think and the other to read. What 
 I mean is that reading forces alien thoughts upon the 
 mind — thoughts which are as foreign to the drift and 
 temper in which it may be for the moment, as the 
 seal is to the wax on which it stamps its imprint. 
 The mind is thus entirely under compulsion from 
 without ; it is driven to think this or that, though for 
 the moment it may not have the slightest impulse or 
 inclination to do so. 
 
 But when a man thinks for himself, he follows the 
 impulse of his own mind, which is determined for 
 him at the time, either by his environment or some 
 particular recollection. The visible world of a man's 
 surroundings does not, as reading does, impress a 
 single definite thought upon his mind, but merely 
 gives the matter and occasion which lead him to 
 think what is appropriate to his nature and present 
 temper. So it is, that much reading deprives the 
 mind of all elasticity ; it is like keeping a spring con- 
 tinually under pressure. The safest way of having 
 no thoughts of one's own is to take up a book every 
 moment one has nothing else to do, It is this practice 
 which explains why erudition makes most men more 
 stupid and silly than they are by nature, and prevents 
 their writings obtaining any measure of success. They 
 remain, in Pope's words : 
 
 For ever reading, never to be read ! 1 
 
 Men of learning are those who have done their 
 
 1 Dunciad, iii. 194. 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 61 
 
 reading in the pages of a book. Thinkers and men of 
 genius are those who have gone straight to the book 
 of Nature ; it is they who have enlightened the world 
 and carried humanity further on its way. 
 
 If a man's thoughts are to have truth and life in 
 them, they must, after alL be his own fundamental 
 thoughts ; for these are the only ones that he can fully 
 and wholly understand. To read another's thoughts 
 is like taking the leavings of a meal to which 
 we have not been invited, or putting on the 
 clothes which some unknown visitor has laid 
 aside. 
 
 The thought we read is related to the thought 
 which springs up in ourselves, as the fossil-impress of 
 some prehistoric plant to a plant as it buds forth in 
 springtime. 
 
 Reading is nothing more than a substitute for 
 thought of one's own. It means putting the mind into 
 leading-strings. The multitude of books serves only 
 to show how many false paths there are, and how 
 widely astray a man may wander if he follows any of 
 them. But he who is guided by his genius, he who 
 thinks for himself, who thinks spontaneously and 
 exactly, possesses the only compass by which he can 
 steer aright. A man should read only when his own 
 thoughts stagnate at their source, which will happen 
 often enough even with the best of minds. On the other 
 hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring 
 away one's own original thoughts is sin against the 
 Holy Spirit. It is like running away from Nature to 
 look at a museum of dried plants or gaze at a land- 
 scape in copperplate* 
 
62 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 A man may have discovered some portion of truth 
 or wisdom, after spending a great deal of time and 
 trouble in thinking it over for himself and adding 
 thought to thought ; and it may sometimes happen 
 that he could have found it all ready to hand in a 
 book and spared himself the trouble. But even so, it 
 is a hundred times more valuable if he has acquired 
 it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only when 
 we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as 
 an integral part, a living member, into the whole 
 system of our thought ; that it stands in complete 
 and firm relation with what we know ; that it is 
 understood with all that underlies it and follows from 
 it ; that it wears the colour, the precise shade, the 
 distinguishing mark, of our own way of thinking; 
 that it comes exactly at the right time, just as we felt 
 the necessity for it ; that it stands fast and cannot be 
 forgotten. This is the perfect application, nay, the 
 interpretation, of Goethe's advice to earn our inheri- 
 tance for ourselves so that we may really possess it : — 
 
 Was du ererbt von deinen Vatern hast, 
 Erwirb es, urn es zu besitzen. 1 
 
 The man who thinks for himself, forms his own 
 opinions and learns the authorities for them only 
 later on, when they serve but to strengthen his belief 
 in them and in himself. But the book-philosopher 
 starts from the authorities. He reads other people's 
 books, collects their opinions, and so forms a whole 
 for himself, which resembles an automaton made up 
 of anything but flesh and blood. Contrarily, he who 
 1 Faust, I. 329. 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 63 
 
 thinks for himself creates a work like a living man as 
 made by Nature. For the work comes into being as 
 a man does ; the thinking mind is impregnated from 
 without, and it then forms and bears its child. 
 
 Truth that has been merely learned is like an 
 artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose ; at best, 
 like a nose made out of another's flesh ; it adheres to 
 us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by 
 thinking of our own is like a natural limb ; it alone 
 really belongs to us. This is the fundamental differ- 
 ence between the thinker and the mere man of learn- 
 ing. The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks 
 for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light 
 and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour 
 perfectly harmonised ; it is true to life. On the other 
 hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of 
 learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of 
 colours, which at most are systematically arranged, 
 but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning. 
 
 Reading is thinking with some one else's head 
 instead of one's own. To think with one's own head 
 is always to aim at developing a coherent whole — a 
 system, even though it be not a strictly complete one ; 
 and nothing hinders this so much as too strong a 
 current of others' thoughts, such as comes of continual 
 reading. These thoughts, springing every one of 
 them from different minds, belonging to different 
 systems, and tinged with different colours, never of 
 themselves flow together into an intellectual whole ; 
 they never form a unity of knowledge, or insight, or 
 conviction ; but, rather, fill the head with a Babylonian 
 confusion of tongues. The mind that is over-loaded 
 
64 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 with alien thought is thus deprived of all clear in- 
 sight, and so well-nigh disorganised. This is a state 
 of things observable in many men of learning ; and it 
 makes them inferior in sound sense, correct judgment 
 and practical tact, to many illiterate persons who, 
 after obtaining a little knowledge from without, by 
 means of experience, intercourse with others, and a 
 small amount of reading, have always subordinated it 
 to, and embodied it with, their own thought. 
 
 The really scientific thinker does the same 
 thing as these illiterate persons, but on a larger 
 scale. Although he has need of much knowledge, 
 and so must read a great deal, his mind is 
 nevertheless strong enough to master it all, to 
 assimilate and incorporate it with the system of his 
 thoughts, and so to make it fit in with the organic 
 unity of his insight, which, though vast, is always 
 growing. And in the process, his own thought, like 
 the bass in an organ, always dominates everything, 
 and is never drowned by other tones, as happens 
 with minds which are full of mere antiquarian lore ; 
 where shreds of music, as it were, in every key, 
 mingle confusedly, and no fundamental note is heard 
 at all. 
 
 Those who have spent their lives in reading, and 
 taken their wisdom from books, are like people who 
 have obtained precise information about a country 
 from the descriptions of many travellers. Such people 
 can tell a great deal about it; but, after all, they 
 have no connected, clear, and profound knowledge of 
 its real condition. But those who have spent their 
 lives in thinking resemble the travellers themselves ; 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 65 
 
 they alone really know what they are talking about ; 
 they are acquainted with the actual state of affairs, 
 and are quite at home in the subject. 
 
 The thinker stands in the same relation to the 
 ordinary book-philosopher as an eye-witness does to 
 the historian ; he speaks from direct knowledge of 
 his own. That is why all those who think for them- 
 selves come, at bottom, to much the same conclusion. 
 The differences they present are due to their different 
 points of view ; and when these do not affect the 
 matter, they all speak alike. They merely express 
 the result of their own objective perception of things. 
 There are many passages in my works which I have 
 given to the public only after some hesitation, 
 because of their paradoxical nature ; and afterwards 
 I have experienced a pleasant surprise in finding the 
 same opinion recorded in the works of great men 
 who lived long ago. 
 
 The book-philosopher merely reports what one 
 person has said and another meant, or the objections 
 raised by a third, and so on. He compares different 
 opinions, ponders, criticises, and tries to get at the 
 truth of the matter ; herein on a par with the critical 
 historian. For instance, he will set out to inquire 
 whether Leibnitz was not for some time a follower of 
 Spinoza, and questions of a like nature. The curious 
 student of such matters may find conspicuous examples 
 of what I mean in Herbart's Analytical Elucidation of 
 Morality and Natural Right, and in the same authors 
 Letters on Freedom. Surprise may be felt that a man 
 of the kind should put himself to so much trouble ; 
 for, on the face of it, if he would only examine the 
 
 B 
 
66 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 matter for himself, he would speedily attain his object 
 by the exercise of a little thought. But there is a 
 small difficulty in the way. It does not depend 
 upon his own will. A man can always sit down and 
 read, but not — think. It is with thoughts as with 
 men : they cannot always be summoned at pleasure ; 
 we must wait for them to come. Thought about a 
 subject must appear of itself, by a happy and har- 
 monious combination of external stimulus with mental 
 temper and attention ; and it is just that which never 
 seems to come to these people. 
 
 This truth may be illustrated by what happens in 
 the case of matters affecting our own personal in- 
 terest. When it is necessary to come to some resolu- 
 tion in a matter of that kind, we cannot well sit 
 down at any given moment and think over the merits 
 of the case and make up our mind ; for, if we try to 
 do so, we often find ourselves unable, at that par- 
 ticular moment, to keep our mind fixed upon the 
 subject ; it wanders off to other things. Aversion to 
 the matter in question is sometimes to blame for this. 
 In such a case we should not use force, but wait for 
 the proper frame of mind to come of itself. It often 
 comes unexpectedly and returns again and again ; and 
 the variety of temper in which we approach it at 
 different moments puts the matter always in a fresh 
 light. It is this long process which is understood by 
 the term a ripe resolution. For the work of coming 
 to a resolution must be distributed ; and in the 
 process much that is overlooked at one moment 
 occurs to us at another ; and the repugnance vanishes 
 when we find, as we usually do, on a closer in- 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 67 
 
 spection, that things are not so bad as they 
 seemed. 
 
 This rule applies to the life of the intellect as well 
 as to matters of practice. A man must wait for the 
 right moment. Not even the greatest mind is capable 
 of thinking for itself at all times. Hence a great 
 mind does well to spend its leisure in reading, which, 
 as I have said, is a substitute for thought : it brings 
 stuff to the mind by letting another person do the 
 thinking ; although that is always done in a manner 
 not our own. Therefore, a man should not read too 
 much, in order that his mind may not become 
 accustomed to the substitute and thereby forget the 
 reality ; that it may not form the habit of walking in 
 well-worn paths ; nor by following an alien course of 
 thought grow a stranger to its own. Least of all 
 should a man quite withdraw his gaze from the real 
 world for the mere sake of reading; as the impulse 
 and the temper which prompt to thought of one's own 
 come far oftener from the world of reality than from 
 the world of books. The real life that a man sees 
 before him is the natural subject of thought; and in 
 its strength as the primary element of existence, it 
 can more easily than anything else rouse and in- 
 fluence the thinking mind. 
 
 After these considerations, it will not be matter for 
 surprise that a man who thinks for himself can easily 
 be distinguished from the book-philosopher by the 
 very way in which he talks, by his marked earnest- 
 ness, and the originality, directness, and personal con- 
 viction that stamp all his thoughts and expressions. 
 The book-philosopher, on the other hand, lets it be 
 
68 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 seen that everything he has is second-hand ; that his 
 ideas are like the lumber and trash of an old furniture- 
 shop, collected together from all quarters. Mentally, 
 he is dull and pointless — a copy of a copy. His 
 literary style is made up of conventional, nay, 
 vulgar phrases, and terms that happen to be cur- 
 rent ; in this respect much like a small State where 
 all the money that circulates is foreign, because it 
 has no coinage of its own. 
 
 Mere experience can as little as reading supply the 
 place of thought. It stands to thinking in the same 
 relation in which eating stands to digestion and 
 assimilation. When experience boasts that to its dis- 
 coveries alone is due the advancement of the human 
 race, it is as though the mouth were to claim the 
 whole credit of maintaining the body in health. 
 
 The works of all truly capable minds are distin- 
 guished by a character of decision and dejiniteness, 
 which means that they are clear and free from ob- 
 scurity. A truly capable mind always knows definitely 
 and clearly what it is that it wants to express, 
 whether its medium is prose, verse, or music. Other 
 minds are not decisive and not definite ; and by this 
 they may be known for what they are. 
 
 The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest 
 order is that it always judges at first hand. Every- 
 thing it advances is the result of thinking for itself ; 
 and this is everywhere evident by the way in which 
 it gives its thoughts utterance. Such a mind is like a 
 Prince. In the realm of intellect its authority 
 is imperial, whereas the authority of minds of a 
 lower order is delegated only; as may be seen in 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 69 
 
 their style, which has no independent stamp of 
 its own. 
 
 Every one who really thinks for himself is so far 
 like a monarch. His position is undelegated and 
 supreme. His judgments, like royal decrees, spring 
 from his own sovereign power and proceed directly 
 from himself. He acknowledges authority as little as 
 a monarch admits a command ; he subscribes to 
 nothing but what he has himself authorised. The 
 multitude of common minds, labouring under all sorts 
 of current opinions, authorities, prejudices, is like 
 the people, which silently obeys the law and accepts 
 orders from above. 
 
 Those who are so zealous and eager to settle de- 
 bated questions by citing authorities, are really glad 
 when they are able to put the understanding and the 
 insight of others into the field in place of their own, 
 which are wanting. Their number is legion. For, as 
 Seneca says, there is no man but prefers belief to the 
 exercise of judgment — unusquisque mavwlt credere 
 quam judicare. In their controversies such people 
 make a promiscuous use of the weapon of authority, 
 and strike out at one another with it. If any one 
 chances to become involved in such a contest, he will 
 do well not to try reason and argument as a mode of 
 defence; for against a weapon of that kind these people 
 are like Siegfrieds, with a skin of horn, and dipped in 
 the flood of incapacity for thinking and judging. 
 They will meet his attack by bringing up their 
 authorities as a way of abashing him — argumentum 
 ad verecundiam, and then cry out that they have 
 won the battle. 
 
70 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 In the real world, be it never so fair, favourable 
 and pleasant, we always live subject to the law of 
 gravity, which we have to be constantly overcoming. 
 But in the world of intellect we are disembodied 
 spirits, held in bondage to no such law, and free from 
 penury and distress. Thus it is that there exists no 
 happiness on earth like that which, at the auspicious 
 moment, a fine and fruitful mind finds in itself. 
 
 The presence of a thought is like the presence of a 
 woman we love. We fancy we shall never forget the 
 thought nor become indifferent to the dear one. But 
 out of sight, out of mind ! The finest thought runs 
 the risk of being irrevocably forgotten if we do not 
 write it down, and the darling of being deserted if we 
 do not marry her. 
 
 There are plenty of thoughts which are valuable to 
 the man who thinks them ; but only few of them 
 which have enough strength to produce repercussive 
 or reflex action — I mean, to win the reader's sympathy 
 after they have been put on paper. 
 
 But still it must not be forgotten that a true value 
 attaches only to what a man has thought in the first 
 instance for his own case. Thinkers may be classed 
 according as they think chiefly for their own case or 
 for that of others. The former are the genuine inde- 
 pendent thinkers ; they really think and are really 
 independent; they are the true philosophers ; they 
 alone are in earnest. The pleasure and the happiness 
 of their existence consist in thinking. The others are the 
 sophists ; they want to seem that which they are not, 
 and seek their happiness in what they hope to Let 
 from the world. They are in earnest about nothing 
 
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 71 
 
 else. To which of these two classes a man belongs 
 may be seen by his whole style and manner. Lichten- 
 berg is an example for the former class; Herder, 
 there can be no doubt, belongs to the second. 
 
 When one considers how vast and how close to us 
 is the problem of existence — this equivocal, tortured, 
 fleeting, dream-like existence of ours — so vast and so 
 close that a man no sooner discovers it than it over- 
 shadows and obscures all other problems and aims ; 
 and when one sees how all men, with few and rare 
 exceptions, have no clear consciousness of the problem, 
 nay, seem to be quite unaware of its presence, but 
 busy themselves with everything rather than with 
 this, and live on, taking no thought but for the pass- 
 ing day and the hardly longer span of their own 
 personal future, either expressly discarding the pro- 
 blem or else over-ready to come to terms with it by 
 adopting some system of popular metaphysics and 
 letting it satisfy them ; when, I say, one takes all this 
 to heart, one may come to the opinion that man may 
 be said to be a thinking being only in a very remote 
 sense, and henceforth feel no special surprise at 
 any trait of human thoughtlessness or folly ; but 
 know, rather, that the normal man's intellectual range 
 of vision does indeed extend beyond that of the brute, 
 whose whole existence is, as it w T ere, a continual 
 present, w T ith no consciousness of the past or the 
 future, but not such an immeasurable distance as is 
 generally supposed. 
 
 This is, in fact, corroborated by the way in 
 which most men converse ; where their thoughts 
 are found to be chopped up fine, like chafl^ so 
 
72 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 that for them to spin out a discourse of any 
 length is impossible. 
 
 If this world were peopled by really thinking- 
 beings, it could never be that noise of every kind 
 would be allowed such generous limits, as is the case 
 with the most horrible and at the same time aimless 
 form of it. 1 If Nature had meant man to think, she 
 would not have given him ears ; or, at any rate, 
 she would have furnished them with air-tight flaps, 
 such as are the enviable possession of the bat. But, 
 in truth, man is a poor animal like the rest, and his 
 powers are meant only to maintain him in the struggle 
 for existence ; so he must needs keep his ears 
 always open, to announce of themselves, by night as 
 by day, the approach of the pursuer. 
 
 1 Translator s Note. Schopenhauer refers to the cracking of 
 whips. See the essay On Noise in Studies in Pessimism. 
 
ON 
 SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 
 
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 
 
 In the drama, which is the most perfect reflection of 
 human existence, there are three stages in the pre- 
 sentation of the subject, with a corresponding variety 
 in the design and scope of the piece. 
 
 At the first, which is also the most common, stage, 
 the drama is never anything more than merely in- 
 teresting. The persons gain our attention by follow- 
 ing their own aims, which resemble ours ; the action 
 advances by means of intrigue and the play of char- 
 acter and incident ; while wit and raillery season the 
 whole. 
 
 At the second stage, the drama becomes sentimental. 
 Sympathy is roused with the hero and, indirectly, 
 with ourselves. The action takes a pathetic turn ; 
 but the end is peaceful and satisfactory. 
 
 The climax is reached with the third stage, which 
 is the most difficult. There the drama aims at being 
 tragic. We are brought face to face with great suffer- 
 ing and the storm and stress of existence ; and the 
 outcome of it is to show the vanity of all human 
 effort. Deeply moved, we are either directly prompted 
 to disengage our will from the struggle of life, or else 
 a chord is struck in us which echoes a similar feeling. 
 
 The beginning, it is said, is always difficult. In the 
 drama it is just the contrary ; for there the difficulty 
 always lies in the end. This is proved by countless 
 
 75 
 
76 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 plays which promise very well for the first act or two, 
 and then become muddled, stick or falter — notoriously 
 so in the fourth act — and finally conclude in a way that 
 is either forced or unsatisfactory or else long foreseen 
 by every one. Sometimes, too, the end is positively 
 revolting, as in Lessing's Emilia Qalotti, which sends 
 the spectators home in a temper. 
 
 This difficulty in regard to the end of a play arises 
 partly because it is everywhere easier to get things 
 into a tangle than to get them out again; partly also 
 because at the beginning we give the author carte 
 blanche to do as he likes, but, at the end, make certain 
 definite demands upon him. Thus we ask for a con- 
 clusion that shall be either quite happy or else quite 
 tragic ; whereas human affairs do not easily take so 
 decided a turn ; and then we expect that it shall be 
 natural, fit and proper, unlaboured, and at the same 
 time foreseen by no one. 
 
 These remarks are also applicable to an epic and to 
 a novel ; but the more compact nature of the drama 
 makes the difficulty plainer by increasing it. 
 
 E nihilo nihil fit That nothing can come from 
 nothing is a maxim true in fine art as elsewhere. In 
 composing an historical picture, a good artist will use 
 living men as a model, and take the ground-work of 
 the faces from life ; and then proceed to idealise them 
 in point of beauty or expression. A similar method, I 
 fancy, is adopted by good novelists. In drawing a 
 character they take the general outline of it from 
 some real person of their acquaintance, and then 
 idealise and complete it to suit their purpose. 
 
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 77 
 
 A NOVEL will be of a high and noble order, the 
 moreltTepfesents of inner, and the less it represents 
 of outer, life ; and the ratio between the two will 
 supply a means of judging any novel, of whatever 
 kind, from Tristram Shandy down to the crudest 
 and most sensational tale of knight or robber. 
 Tristram Shandy has, indeed, as good as no action at 
 all ; and there is not much in La Nouvelle Heloise 
 and Wilhelm Meister. Even Don Quixote has re- 
 latively little ; and what there is, is very unimportxnt, 
 and introduced merely for the sake of fun. And these 
 four are the best of all existing novels. 
 
 Consider, further, the wonderful romances of Jean 
 Paul, and how much inner life is shown on the 
 narrowest basis of actual event. Even in Walter 
 Scott's novels there is a great preponderance of inner 
 over outer life, and incident is never brought in except 
 for the purpose of giving play to thought and emotion ; 
 whereas, in bad novels, incident is there on its own 
 account. Skill consists in setting the inner life in 
 motion with the smallest possible array of circum- 
 stance; for it is this inner life that really excites our 
 interest. 
 
 The business of the novelist is not to relate great 
 events, but to make small ones interesting. 
 
 History, which I like to think of as the contrary 
 of poetry (Icrropovnevov — 7r€7ro trjfxevov), is for time what 
 geography is for space ; and it is no more to be called 
 a science, in any strict sense of the word, than is 
 geography, because it does not deal with universal 
 
78 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 truths, but only with particular details. 1 History has 
 always been the favourite study of those who wish to 
 learn something, without having to face the effort 
 demanded by any branch of real knowledge, which 
 taxes the intelligence. In our time history is a 
 favourite pursuit ; as witness the numerous books 
 upon the subject which appear every year. 
 
 If the reader cannot help thinking, with me, that 
 history is merely the constant recurrence of similar 
 things, just as in a kaleidoscope the same bits of glass 
 are presented, but in different combinations, he will 
 not be able to share all this lively interest ; nor, how- 
 ever, will he censure it. But there is a ridiculous and 
 absurd claim, made by many people, to regard history 
 as a part of philosophy, nay, as philosophy itself ; 
 they imagine that history can take its place. 
 
 The preference shown for history by the greater 
 public in all ages may be illustrated by the kind of 
 conversation which is so much in vogue everywhere 
 in society. It generally consists in one person relating 
 something, and then another person relating something 
 else ; so that in this way everyone is sure of receiving 
 attention. Both here and in the case of history it is 
 plain that the mind is occupied with particular details. 
 But as in science, so also in every worthy conversa- 
 tion, the mind rises to the consideration of some 
 general truth. 
 
 This objection does not, however, deprive history 
 
 1 Translators Note. — This line of argument is not likely to be 
 popular now-a-days ; but if the reader is interested by it, he will 
 find it more fully stated in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 
 Vol. II., c. 38. 
 
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 79 
 
 of its value. Human life is short and fleeting, and 
 many millions of individuals share in it, who are 
 swallowed by that monster of oblivion which is wait- 
 ing for them with ever-open jaws. It is thus a very 
 thankworthy task to try to rescue something — the 
 memory of interesting and important events, or the 
 leading features and personages of some epoch — from 
 the general shipwreck of the world. 
 
 From another point of view, we might look upon 
 history as the sequel to zoology ; for while with all 
 other animals it is enough to observe the species, with 
 man individuals, and therefore individual events, have 
 to be studied ; because every man possesses a character 
 as an individual. And since individuals and events 
 are without number or end, an essential imperfection 
 attaches to history. In the study of it, all that a man 
 learns never contributes to lessen that which he has 
 still to learn. With any real science, a perfection of 
 knowledge is, at any rate, conceivable. 
 
 When we gain access to the histories of China and 
 of India, the endlessness of the subject-matter will 
 reveal to us the defects in the study, and force our 
 historians to see that the object of science is to recog- 
 nise the many in the one, to perceive the rules in any 
 given example, and to apply to the life of nations a 
 knowledge of mankind; not to go on counting up 
 facts ad infinitum. 
 
 There are two kinds of history ; the history of 
 politics and the history of literature and art. The 
 one is the history of the will ; the other, that of the 
 intellect. The first is a tale of woe, even of terror: it 
 is a record of agony, struggle, fraud, and horrible 
 
80 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 murder en masse. The second is everywhere pleasing 
 and serene, like the intellect when left to itself, even 
 though its path be one of error. Its chief branch is 
 the history of philosophy This is, in fact, its funda- 
 mental bass, and the notes of it are heard even in the 
 other kind of history. These deep tones guide the 
 formation of opinion, and opinion rales the world. 
 Hence philosophy, rightly understood, is a material 
 force of the most powerful kind, though very slow in 
 its working. The philosophy of a period is thus the 
 fundamental bass of its history. 
 
 The newspaper is the second-hand in the clock of 
 history ; and it is not only made of baser metal than 
 those which point to the minute and the hour, but it 
 seldom goes right. 
 
 The so-called leading article is the chorus to the 
 drama of passing events. 
 
 Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to jour- 
 nalism as it is to the dramatic art; for the object of 
 journalism is to make events go as far as possible. 
 Thus it is that all journalists are, in the very nature 
 of their calling, alarmists ; and this is their way of 
 giving interest to what they w r rite. Herein they are 
 like little dogs; if anything stirs, they immediately 
 set up a shrill bark. 
 
 Therefore, let us carefully regulate the attention to 
 be paid to this trumpet of danger, so that it may not 
 disturb our digestion. Let us recognise that a news- 
 paper is at best but a magnifying-glass, and very 
 often merely a shadow on the wall. 
 
 The pen is to thought what the stick is to walking; 
 
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 81 
 
 but you walk most easily when you have no stick, 
 and you think with the greatest perfection when you 
 have no pen in your hand. It is only when a man 
 begins to be old that he likes to use a stick and is 
 glad to take up his pen. 
 
 When an hypothesis has once come to birth in the 
 mind, or gained a footing there, it leads a life so far 
 comparable with the life of an organism, as that it 
 assimilates matter from the outer world only when it 
 is like in kind with it and beneficial ; and when, 
 contrarily, such matter is not like in kind but hurtful, 
 the hypothesis, equally with the organism, throws it 
 off, or, if forced to take it, gets rid of it again entire. 
 
 To gain immortality an author must possess so many 
 excellences that, while it will not be easy to find 
 anyone to understand and appreciate them all, there 
 will be men in every age who are able to recognise 
 and value some of them. In this way the credit 
 of his book will be maintained throughout the long 
 course of centuries, in spite of the fact that human 
 interests are always changing. 
 
 An author like this, who has a claim to the 
 continuance of his life even with posterity, can only 
 be a man who, over the wide earth, will seek his like 
 in vain, and offer a palpable contrast with everyone 
 else in virtue of his unmistakable distinction. Nay 
 more: were he, like the wandering Jew, to live 
 through several generations, he would still remain in 
 the same superior position. If this were not so, it 
 would be difficult to see why his thoughts should not 
 perish like those of other men, 
 
82 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 Metaphors and similes are of great value, in so far 
 as they explain an unknown relation by a known one. 
 Even the more detailed simile which grows into a 
 parable or an allegory, is nothing more than the 
 exhibition of some relation in its simplest, most 
 visible and palpable form. The growth of ideas rests, 
 at bottom, upon similes; because ideas arise by a 
 process of combining the similarities and neglecting 
 the differences between things. Further, intelligence, 
 in the strict sense of the word, ultimately consists in 
 a seizing of relations ; and a clear and pure grasp of 
 relations is all the more often attained when the 
 comparison is made between cases that lie wide apart 
 from one another, and between things of quite differ- 
 ent nature. As long as a relation is known to me as 
 existing only in a single case, I have none but an 
 individual idea of it — in other words, only an intui- 
 tive or perceptive knowledge of it ; but as soon as I 
 see the same relation in two different cases, I have a 
 general idea of its whole nature, and this is a deeper 
 and more perfect knowledge. 
 
 Since, then, similes and metaphors are such a 
 powerful engine of knowledge, it is a sign of great 
 intelligence in a writer if his similes are unusual and, 
 at the same time, to the point. Aristotle also observes 
 that by far the most important thing to a writer is 
 to have this power of metaphor; for it is a gift which 
 cannot be acquired, and it is a mark of genius. 1 
 
 As regards reading, to require that a man shall 
 retain everything he has ever read, is like asking him 
 
 1 Poetics, c. 22. 
 
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 88 
 
 to carry about with him all be has ever eaten. The 
 one kind of food has given him bodily, and the other 
 mental, nourishment ; and it is through these two 
 means that he has grown to be what he is. The body 
 assimilates only that which is like it ; and so a man 
 retains in his mind only that which interests him, in 
 other words, that which suits his system of thought 
 or his purposes in life. Everyone has purposes, no 
 doubt ; but very few have anything like a system of 
 thought. Few people take an objective interest in 
 anything, and so their reading does them no good; 
 they retain nothing. 
 
 If a man wants to read good books, he must make 
 a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and 
 time and energy limited. 
 
 Eepetitio est mater studiorum. Any book that is 
 at all important ought to be at once read through 
 twice ; partly because, on a second reading, the con- 
 nection of the different portions of the book will be 
 better understood, and the beginning comprehended 
 only when the end is known ; and partly because we 
 are not in the same temper and disposition on both 
 readings. On the second perusal we get a new view 
 of every passage and a different impression of the 
 whole book, which then appears in another light. 
 
 It would be a good thing to buy books if one could 
 also buy the time in which to read them ; but gener- 
 ally the purchase of a book is mistaken for the 
 acquisition of its contents. 
 
 A man's works are the quintessence of his mind, 
 and even though he may possess very great capacity, 
 they will always be incomparably more valuable than 
 
84 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 his conversation. Nay, in all essential matters his 
 works will not only make up for the lack of personal 
 intercourse with him, but they will far surpass it in 
 solid advantages. The writings even of a man of 
 moderate genius may be edifying, worth reading and 
 instructive, because they are his quintessence — the 
 result and fruit of all his thought and study ; whilst 
 conversation with him may be unsatisfactory. 
 
 So it is that we can read books by men in whose 
 company we find nothing to please, and that a high 
 degree of culture leads us to seek entertainment 
 almost wholly from books and not from men. 
 
ON CRITICISM. 
 
ON CRITICISM. 
 
 The following brief remarks on the critical faculty 
 are chiefly intended to show that, for the most part, 
 there is no such thing. It is a rara avis ; almost as 
 rare, indeed, as the phoenix, which appears only once 
 in five hundred years. 
 
 . When we speak of taste — an expression not chosen 
 with any regard for it — we mean the discovery, or, it 
 may be only the recognition, of what is right aestheti- 
 cally, apart from the guidance of any rule ; and this, 
 either because no rule has as yet been extended to the 
 matter in question, or else because, if existing, it is 
 unknown to the artist, or the critic, as the case may 
 be. Instead of taste, we might use the expression 
 aesthetic sense, if this were not tautological. 
 
 The perceptive critical taste is, so to speak, the 
 female analogue to the male quality of productive 
 talent or genius. Not capable of begetting great work 
 itself, it consists in a capacity of reception, that is to 
 say, of recognising as such what is right, fit, beautiful, 
 or the reverse ; in other words, of discriminating the 
 good from the bad, of discovering and appreciating 
 the one and condemning the other. 
 
 In appreciating a genius, criticism should not deal 
 with the errors in his productions or with the poorer 
 of his works, and then proceed to rate him low ; it 
 
 should attend only to the qualities in which he most 
 
 87 
 
88 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 excels. For in the sphere of intellect, as in other 
 spheres, weakness and perversity cleave so firmly to 
 human nature that even the most brilliant mind is 
 not wholly and at all times free from them. Hence 
 the great errors to be found even in the works of the 
 greatest men ; or as Horace puts it, quandoque bonus 
 dormitat Homerus. 
 
 That which distinguishes genius, and should be the 
 standard for judging it, is the height to which it is 
 able to soar when it is in the proper mood and finds a 
 fitting occasion — a height always out of the reach of 
 ordinary talent. And, in like manner, it is a very 
 dangerous thing to compare two great men of the 
 same class ; for instance, two great poets, or musicians, 
 or philosophers, or artists ; because injustice to the 
 one or the other, at least for the moment, can hardly 
 be avoided. For in making a comparison of the kind 
 the critic looks to some particular merit of the one 
 and at once discovers that it is absent in the other, 
 who is thereby disparaged. And then if the process 
 is reversed, and the critic begins with the latter and dis- 
 covers his peculiar merit, which is quite of a different 
 order from that presented by the former, with whom 
 it may be looked for in vain, the result is that both 
 of them suffer undue depreciation. 
 
 There are critics who severally think that it rests 
 with each one of them what shall be accounted good, 
 and what bad. They all mistake their own toy- 
 trumpets for the trombones of fame. 
 
 A drug does not effect its purpose if the dose is too 
 larpfe : and it is the same with censure and adverse 
 criticism when it exceeds the measure of justice. 
 
ON CRITICISM. 89 
 
 The disastrous thing for intellectual merit is that it 
 must wait for those to praise the good who have 
 themselves produced nothing but what is bad ; nay, 
 it is a primary misfortune that it has to receive its 
 crown at the hands of the critical power of mankind 
 — a quality of which most men possess only the weak 
 and impotent semblance, so that the reality may be 
 numbered amongst the rarest gifts of nature. Hence 
 La Bruyere's remark is, unhappily, as true as it is 
 neat. Apres V esprit de discernement, he says, ce qu'il 
 y a an monde de plus rare, ce sont les diamans et les 
 perles. The spirit of discernment! the critical faculty! 
 it is these that are lacking. Men do not know how 
 to distinguish the genuine from the false, the corn 
 from the chaff, gold from copper ; or to perceive the 
 wide gulf that separates a genius from an ordinary 
 man. Thus we have that bad state of things described 
 in an old-fashioned verse, which gives it as the lot of 
 the great ones here on earth to be recognised only 
 when they are gone : — 
 
 Es ist nun das Geschich der Grossen hier auf Erden, 
 
 Erst wann sie nicht mehr sind, von uns erhannt zu werden. 
 
 When any genuine and excellent work makes its 
 appearance, the chief difficulty in its way is the 
 amount of bad work it finds already in possession of 
 the field, and accepted as though it were good. And 
 then if, after a long time, the new comer really suc- 
 ceeds, by a hard struggle, in vindicating his place for 
 himself and winning reputation, he will soon encounter 
 fresh difficulty from some affected, dull, awkward 
 
90 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 imitator, whom people drag in, with the object of 
 calmly setting him up on the altar beside the genius ; 
 not seeing the difference and really thinking that 
 here they have to do with another great man. This 
 is what Yriarte means by the first lines of his 28th 
 Fable, where he declares that the ignorant rabble 
 always sets equal value on the good and the bad : — 
 
 Siempre acostumbra hacer el vulgo necio 
 De lo bueno y lo malo igual aprecio. 
 
 So even Shakespeare's dramas had, immediately after 
 his death, to give place to those of Ben Jonson, 
 Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and to yield the 
 supremacy for a hundred years. So Kant's serious 
 philosophy was crowded out by the nonsense of Fichte, 
 Schelling, Jacobi, Hegel. And even in a sphere 
 accessible to all, we have seen unworthy imitators 
 quickly diverting public attention from the incompar- 
 able Walter Scott. For, say what you will, the public 
 has no sense for excellence, and therefore no notion 
 how very rare it is to find men really capable of doing 
 anything great in poetry, philosophy, or art, or that 
 their works are alone worthy of exclusive attention. 
 The dabblers, whether in verse or in any other high 
 sphere, should be every day unsparingly reminded 
 that neither gods, nor men, nor booksellers have 
 pardoned their mediocrity : — 
 
 mediocribus esse poetis 
 Non homines, non D% non concessere columnce. 1 
 
 Are they not the weeds that prevent the corn coming 
 1 Horace, Ars Poet lea, 372, 
 
ON CRITICISM. 91 
 
 up, so that they may cover all the ground themselves ? 
 And then there happens that which has been well 
 and freshly described by the lamented Feuchtersleben, 1 
 who died so young: how people cry out in their 
 haste that nothing is being done, while all the while 
 great work is quietly growing to maturity ; and then, 
 when it appears, it is not seen or heard in the clamour, 
 but goes its way silently, in modest grief : — 
 
 " 1st dock," — rufen sie vermessen — 
 " Nichts im Werke, nichts gethan / " 
 TJnd das Grosse, reift indessen 
 Still her an. 
 
 Es erscheint nun : niemand sieht es, 
 Niemand hb'rt es im Geschrei. 
 Mit bescheid'ner Trailer zieht es 
 Still vorbei. 
 
 This lamentable dearth of the critical faculty is not 
 less obvious in the case of science, as is shown by the 
 tenacious life of false and disproved theories. If they 
 are once accepted, they may go on bidding defiance to 
 truth for fifty or even a hundred years and more, as 
 stable as an iron pier in the midst of the waves. 
 The Ptolemaic sj^stem was still held a century after 
 Copernicus had promulgated his theory. Bacon, 
 Descartes and Locke made their way extremely 
 slowly and only after a long time ; as the reader may 
 
 1 Translator's Note. — Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben 
 (1808-49), an Austrian physician, philosopher, and poet, and a 
 specialist in medical psychology. The best known of his songs 
 is that beginning " Es ist bestimmt in Gottes, Bath," to which 
 Mendelssohn composed one of his finest melodies. 
 
92 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 see by d'Alembert's celebrated Preface to the Encyclo- 
 pcedia. Newton was not more successful ; and this is 
 sufficiently proved by the bitterness and contempt 
 with which Leibnitz attacked his theory o£ gravi- 
 tation in the controversy with Clarke. 1 Although 
 Newton lived for almost forty years after the 
 appearance of the Principia, his teaching was, 
 when he died, only to some extent accepted in 
 his own country, whilst outside England he 
 counted scarcely twenty adherents ; if we may 
 believe the introductory note to Voltaire's exposition 
 of his theory. It was, indeed, chiefly owing to this 
 treatise of Voltaire's that the system became known 
 in France nearly twenty years after Newton's death. 
 Until then a firm, resolute, and patriotic stand was 
 made by the Cartesian Vortices; whilst only forty 
 years previously, this same Cartesian philosophy 
 had been forbidden in the French schools ; and 
 now in turn d'Agnesseau, the Chancellor, re- 
 rused Voltaire the Imprimatur for his treatise 
 on the Newtonian doctrine. On the other hand, 
 in our day Newton's absurd theory of colour 
 still completely holds the field, forty years after 
 the publication of Goethe's. Hume, too, was dis- 
 regarded up to his fiftieth year, though he began very 
 early and wrote in a thoroughly popular style. And 
 Kant, in spite of having written and talked all his 
 life lonsr, did not become a famous man until 
 he was sixty. 
 
 Artists and poets have, to be sure, more chance than 
 thinkers, because their public is at least a hundred 
 1 See especially §§ 35, 113, 118, 120, 122, 128, 
 
ON CRITICISM. 93 
 
 times as large. Still, what was thought of Beethoven; 
 and Mozart during their lives ? what of Dante ? what 
 even of Shakespeare ? If the latter's contemporaries 
 had in any way recognised his worth, at least one 
 good and accredited portrait of him would have come 
 down to us from an age when the art of painting 
 flourished ; whereas we possess only some very doubt- 
 ful pictures, a bad copperplate, and a still worse 
 bust on his tomb. 1 And in like manner, if he had 
 been duly honoured, specimens of his handwriting 
 would have been preserved to us by the hundred, in- 
 stead of being confined, as is the case, to the signatures 
 to a few legal documents. The Portuguese are still 
 proud of their only poet Camoens. He lived, however, 
 on alms collected every evening in the street by a 
 black slave whom he had brought with him from the 
 Indies. In time, no doubt, justice will be done to 
 everyone ; tempo e galant' uomo ; but it is as late and 
 slow in arriving as in a court of law, and the secret 
 condition of it is that the recipient shall be no longer 
 alive. The precept of Jesus the son of Sirach is 
 faithfully followed: Judge none blessed before his 
 death? He, then, who has produced immortal works, 
 must find comfort by applying to them the words of 
 the Indian myth, that the minutes of life amongst the 
 immortals seem like years of earthly existence ; and 
 so, too, that years upon earth are only as the minutes 
 of the immortals. 
 
 1 A. Wivell : An Inquiry into the History, Authenticity, and 
 Characteristics of Shakespeare's Portraits ; with 21 engravings. 
 London, 1836. 
 
 2 Ecclesiasticus, xi. 28. 
 
94 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 This lack of critical insight is also shown by the 
 fact that, while in every century the excellent work 
 of earlier time is held in honour, that of its own is 
 misunderstood, and the attention which is its due is 
 given to bad work, such as every decade carries with 
 it only to be the sport of the next. That men are 
 slow to recognise genuine merit when it appears in 
 their own age, also proves that they do not under- 
 stand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowledged 
 w T orks of genius, which they honour only on the score 
 of authority. The crucial test is the fact that bad 
 work — Fichte's philosophy, for example — if it wins 
 any reputation, also maintains it for one or two 
 generations ; and only when its public is very large 
 does its fall follow sooner. 
 
 Now, just as the sun cannot shed its light 
 but to the eye that sees it, nor music sound 
 but to the hearing ear, so the value of all 
 masterly work in art and science is conditioned 
 by the kinship and capacity of the mind to which 
 it speaks. It is only such a mind as this that 
 possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the 
 spirits that lie hidden in great work. To the ordi- 
 nary mind a masterpiece is a sealed cabinet of mys- 
 tery, — an unfamiliar musical instrument from which 
 the player, however much he may flatter himself, can 
 draw none but confused tones. How different a 
 painting looks when seen in a good light, instead of 
 in some dark corner ! Just in the same way, the 
 impression made by a masterpiece varies with the 
 capacity of the mind to understand it. 
 
 A fine work, then, requires a mind sensitive to its 
 
ON CRITICISM. 95 
 
 beauty; a thoughtful work, a mind that can really 
 think, i£ it is to exist and live at all. But alas ! it 
 may happen only too often that he who gives a fine 
 work to the world afterwards feels like a maker of 
 fireworks, who displays with enthusiasm the wonders 
 that have taken him so much time and trouble to 
 prepare, and then learns that he has come to the 
 wrong place, and that the fancied spectators were one 
 and all inmates of an asylum for the blind. Still., 
 even that is better than if his public had consisted 
 entirely of men who made fireworks themselves ; as 
 in this case, if his display had been extraordinarily 
 good, it might possibly have cost him his head. 
 
 The source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling 
 of kinship. Even with the sense of beauty it is un- 
 questionably our own species in the animal world, 
 and then again our own race, that appears to us the 
 fairest. So too in intercourse with others, every man 
 shows a decided preference for those who resemble 
 him ; and a blockhead will find the society of another 
 blockhead incomparably more pleasant than that of 
 any number of great minds put together. Every man 
 must necessarily take his chief pleasure in his own 
 work, because it is the mirror of his own mind, the 
 echo of his own thought ; and next in order will come 
 the work of people like him ; that is to say, a dull, 
 shallow and perverse man, a dealer in mere words, 
 will give his sincere and hearty applause only to 
 that which is dull, shallow, perverse or merely verbose. 
 On the other hand, he will allow merit to the work of 
 great minds only on the score of authority, in other 
 words, because he is ashamed to speak his opinion ; 
 
96 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 for in reality they give him no pleasure at all. They 
 do not appeal to him ; nay, they repel him ; and he 
 will not confess this even to himself. The works of 
 genius cannot be fully enjoyed except by those who 
 are themselves of the privileged order. The first re- 
 cognition of them, however, when they exist without 
 authority to support them, demands considerable 
 superiority of mind. 
 
 When the reader takes all this into consideration, 
 he should be surprised, not that great work is so late 
 in winning reputation, but that it wins it at all. And 
 as a matter of fact, fame comes only by a slow and 
 complex process. The stupid person is by degrees 
 forced, and as it were tamed, into recognising the 
 superiority of one who stands immediately above him ; 
 this one in his turn bows before some one else ; and so 
 it goes on until the weight of the votes gradually pre- 
 vail over their number ; and this is just the condition 
 of all genuine, in other words, deserved fame. But 
 until then, the greatest genius, even after he has passed 
 his time of trial, stands like a king amidst a crowd of 
 his own subjects, who do not know him by sight and 
 therefore will not do his behests ; unless, indeed, his 
 chief ministers of state are in his train. For no 
 subordinate official can be the direct recipient of the 
 royal commands, as he knows only the signature of 
 his immediate superior ; and this is repeated all the 
 way up into the highest ranks, where the under- 
 secretary attests the minister's signature, and the 
 minister that of the king. There are analogous stages 
 to be passed before a genius can attain widespread 
 fame. This is why his reputation most easily comes 
 
ON CRITICISM. 97 
 
 to a standstill at the very outset; because the highest 
 authorities, of whom there can be but few, are most fre- 
 quently not to be found ; but the further down he goes 
 in the scale the more numerous are those who take the 
 word from above, so that his fame is no more arrested. 
 
 We must console ourselves for this state of things 
 by reflecting that it is really fortunate that the 
 greater number of men do not form a judgment on 
 their own responsibility, but merely take it on author- 
 ity. For what sort of criticism should we have on 
 Plato and Kant, Homer, Shakespeare and Goethe, if 
 every man were to form his opinion by what he really 
 has and enjoys of these writers, instead of being 
 forced by authority to speak of them in a fit and 
 proper way, however little he may really feel what he 
 says. Unless something of this kind took place, it 
 would be impossible for true merit, in any high sphere, 
 to attain fame at all. At the same time it is also 
 fortunate that every man has just so much critical 
 power of his own as is necessary for recognising the 
 superiority of those who are placed immediately over 
 him, and for following their lead. This means that 
 the many come in the end to submit to the authoiity 
 of the few ; and there results that hierarchy of critical 
 judgments on w 7 hich is based the possibility of a 
 steady, and eventually wide-reaching, fame. 
 
 The lowest class in the community is quite im- 
 pervious to the merits of a great genius; and for 
 these people there is nothing left but the monument 
 raised to him, which, by the impression it produces 
 on their senses, awakes in them a dim idea of the 
 man's greatness. 
 
98 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 Literary journals should be a dam against the un- 
 conscionable scribbling of the age, and the ever- 
 increasing deluge of bad and useless books. Their 
 judgments should be un corrupted, just and rigorous ; 
 and every piece of bad work done by an incapable 
 person ; every device by which the empty head tries 
 to come to the assistance of the empty purse, that is 
 to say, about nine-tenths of all existing books, should 
 be mercilessly scourged. Literary journals would then 
 perform their duty, which is to keep down the craving 
 for writing and put a check upon the deception of the 
 public, instead of furthering these evils by a miserable 
 toleration, which plays into the hands of author and 
 publisher, and robs the reader of his time and his 
 money. 
 
 If there were such a paper as I mean, every 
 bad writer, every brainless compiler, every plagiarist 
 from others' books, every hollow and incapable place- 
 hunter, every sham-philosopher, every vain and 
 languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect 
 of the pillory in which his bad work would inevitably 
 have to stand soon after publication. This would 
 paralyse his twitching fingers, to the true welfare of 
 literature, in which what is bad is not only useless 
 but positively pernicious. Now, most books are bad 
 and ought to have remained unwritten. Conse- 
 quently praise should be as rare as is now the case 
 with blame, which is withheld under the influence of 
 personal considerations, coupled with the maxim 
 accedas socius, laudes lander is ut absens. 
 
 It is quite wrong to try to introduce into literature 
 the same toleration as must necessarily prevail in 
 
ON CRITICISM. 99 
 
 society towards those stupid, brainless people who 
 everywhere swarm in it. In literature such people 
 are impudent intruders ; and to disparage the bad is 
 here duty towards the good ; for he who thinks 
 nothing bad will think nothing good either. Politeness, 
 which has its source in social relations, is in literature 
 an alien, and often injurious, element; because it 
 exacts that bad work shall be called good. In this 
 way the very aim of science and art is directly 
 frustrated. 
 
 This ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only 
 by people who joined incorruptible honesty with rare 
 knowledge and still rarer power of judgment ; so that 
 perhaps there could, at the very most, be one, and 
 even hardly one, in the whole country; but there it 
 would stand, like a just Areopagus, every member of 
 which would have to be elected by all the others. 
 Under the system that prevails at present, literary 
 journals are carried on by a clique, and secretly per- 
 haps also by booksellers for the good of the trade ; 
 and they are often nothing but coalitions of bad 
 heads to prevent the good ones succeeding. As 
 Goethe once remarked to me, nowhere is there so 
 much dishonesty as in literature. 
 
 But, above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary 
 rascality, would have to disappear. It was introduced 
 under the pretext of protecting the honest critic, who 
 warned the public, against the resentment of the 
 author and his friends. But where there is one case 
 of this sort, there will be a hundred where it merely 
 serves to take all responsibility from the man who 
 cannot stand by what he has said, or possibly to 
 
100 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 conceal the shame of one who has been cowardly and 
 base enough to recommend a book to the public for 
 the purpose of putting money into his own pocket. 
 Often enough it is only a cloak for covering the 
 obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the 
 critic. It is incredible what impudence these fellows 
 will show, and what literary trickery they will 
 venture to commit, as soon as they know they are 
 safe under the shadow of anonymity. Let me recom- 
 mend a general Anticriticism, a universal medicine 
 or panacea, to put a stop to all anonymous re- 
 viewing, whether it praises the bad or blames the 
 good : Rascal ! your name ! For a man to wrap him- 
 self up and draw his hat over his face, and then fall 
 upon people who are walking about without any 
 disguise — this is not the part of a gentleman, it is the 
 part of a scoundrel and a knave. 
 
 An anonymous review has no more authority than an 
 anonymous letter ; and one should be received with 
 the same mistrust as the other. Or shall we take 
 the name of the man who consents to preside over 
 what is, in the strict sense of the word, une societe 
 anonyme as a guarantee for the veracity of his 
 colleagues ? 
 
 Even Rousseau, in the preface to the Nouvelle 
 Helo'ise, declares tout honnete homme doit avouer les 
 livres qu'il publie ; which in plain language means 
 that every honourable man ought to sign his articles, 
 and that no one is honourable who does not do so. 
 How much truer this is of polemical writing, which is 
 the general character of reviews ! Riemer was quite 
 right in the opinion he gives in his Reminiscences of 
 
ON CRITICISM. 101 
 
 Goethe i 1 An overt enemy, he says, an enemy who 
 meets you face to face, is an honourable man, who will 
 treat you fairly, and with whom you can come to terms 
 and be reconciled : but an enemy who conceals himself 
 is a base, cowardly scoundrel, who has not courage 
 enough to avow his own judgment; it is not his opinion 
 that he cares about, but only the secret pleasure of 
 wreaking his anger without being found out or 
 punished. This will also have been Goethe's opinion, 
 as he was generally the source from which Riemer 
 drew his observations. And, indeed, Rousseau's 
 maxim applies to every line that is printed. Would a 
 man in a mask ever be allowed to harangue a mob, 
 or speak in any assembly ; and that, too, when he was 
 going to attack others and overwhelm them with abuse ? 
 Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and 
 journalistic rascality. It is a practice which must be 
 completely stopped. Every article, even in a news- 
 paper, should be accompanied by the name of its 
 author; and the editor should be made strictly re- 
 sponsible for the accuracy of the signature. The 
 freedom of the press should be thus far restricted ; so 
 that what a man publicly proclaims through the far- 
 sounding trumpet of the newspaper, he should be 
 answerable for, at any rate with his honour, if he has 
 any ; and if he has none, let his name neutralise the 
 effect of his words. And since even the most in- 
 significant person is known in his own circle, the 
 result of such a measure would be to put an end to 
 two-thirds of the newspaper lies, and to restrain the 
 audacity of many a poisonous tongue. 
 1 Preface, p. xxix. 
 
ON REPUTATION. 
 
ON REPUTATION. 
 
 Writers may be classified as meteors, planets and 
 fixed stars. A meteor makes a striking effect for a 
 moment. You look up and cry There ! and it is gone 
 for ever. Planets and wandering stars last a much 
 longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars and 
 are confounded with them by the inexperienced ; but 
 this is only because they are near. It is not long 
 before they too must yield their place ; nay, the light 
 they give is reflected only, and the sphere of their 
 influence is confined to their own orbit — their con- 
 temporaries. Their path is one of change and move- 
 ment, and with the circuit of a few years their tale is 
 told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant ; 
 their position in the firmament is secure ; they shine 
 with a light of their own ; their effect to-day is the 
 same as it was yesterday, because, having no parallax, 
 their appearance does not alter with a difference in 
 our standpoint. They belong not to one system, one 
 nation only, but to the universe. And just because 
 they are so very far away, it is usually many years 
 before their light is visible to the inhabitants 
 of this earth. 
 
 We have seen in the previous chapter that where a 
 man's merits are of a high order, it is difficult for him 
 to win reputation, because the public is uncritical and 
 
 105 
 
106 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 lacks discernment. But another and no less serious 
 hindrance to fame comes from the envy it has to en- 
 counter. For even in the lowest kinds of work, envy 
 balks even the beginnings of a reputation, and never 
 ceases to cleave to it up to the last. How great a 
 part is played by envy in the wicked ways of the 
 world ! Ariosto is right in saying that the dark side 
 of our mortal life predominates, so full it is of this 
 evil ; — 
 
 questa assai piii oscura che serena 
 Vita mortal, tutta oVinvidia piena. 
 
 For envy is the moving spirit of that secret and in- 
 formal, though flourishing, alliance everywhere made 
 by mediocrity against individual eminence, no matter 
 of what kind. In his own sphere of work no one 
 will allow another to be distinguished : he is an in- 
 truder who cannot be tolerated. Si quelquun excelle 
 parmi nous, qvJil aille exceller ailleurs! this is the 
 universal password of the second-rate. In addition, 
 then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it 
 has in being: understood and recognised, there is the 
 envy of thousands to be reckoned with, all of them 
 bent on suppressing, nay, on smothering it altogether. 
 No one is taken for what he is, but for what others 
 make of him \ and this is the handle used by medio- 
 crity to keep down distinction, by not letting it come 
 up as long as that can possibly be prevented. 
 
 There are two ways of behaving in regard to 
 merit : either to have some of one's own, or to refuse 
 any to others. The latter method is more convenient, 
 
ON REPUTATION, 107 
 
 and so it is generally adopted. As envy is a mere 
 sign o£ deficiency, so to envy merit argues the lack of 
 it. My excellent Balthazar Gracian has given a very 
 fine account of this relation between envy and merit 
 in a lengthy fable, which may be found in his Discreto 
 under the heading Hombre de ostentacion. He de- 
 scribes all the birds as meeting together and conspiring 
 against the peacock, because of his magnificent feathers: 
 If said the magpie, we could only manage to put a 
 stop to the cursed parading of his tail, there would 
 soon be an end of his beauty ; for what is not seen 
 is as good as what does not exist. 
 
 This explains how modesty came to be a . virtue. 
 It was invented only as a protection against envy. 
 That there have always been rascals to urge this 
 virtue, and to rejoice heartily over the bashfulness of 
 a man of merit, has been shown at length in my 
 chief work. 1 In Lichtenberg's Miscellaneous Writ- 
 ings I find this sentence quoted : Modesty should be 
 the virtue of those who possess no other. Goethe has 
 a well-known saying, which offends many people : It 
 is only knaves who are modest ! — Nnr die Lumpen 
 sind bescheiden! but it has its prototype in Cervantes, 
 who includes in his Journey up Parnassus certain 
 rules of conduct for poets, and amongst them the 
 following : Everyone whose verse shows him to be a 
 poet should have a high opinion of himself, relying on 
 the proverb that he is a knave who thinks himself one. 
 And Shakespeare, in many of his Sonnets, which 
 gave him the only opportunity he had of speaking of 
 
 1 Welt als Wille, Vol-. II. c. 37. 
 
108 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 himself, declares, with a confidence equal to his in- 
 genuousness, that what he writes is immortal. 1 
 
 A method of underrating good work often used by 
 envy — in reality, however, only the obverse side of it 
 — consists in the dishonourable and unscrupulous 
 laudation of the bad ; for no sooner does bad work 
 gain currency than it draws attention from the good. 
 But however effective this method may be for a while, 
 especially if it is applied on a large scale, the day of 
 reckoning comes at last, and the fleeting credit given 
 to bad work is paid off by the lasting discredit which 
 overtakes those who abjectly praised it. Hence these 
 critics prefer to remain anonymous. 
 
 A like fate threatens, though more remotely, those 
 who depreciate and censure good work; and conse- 
 quently many are too prudent to attempt it. But 
 there is another way ; and when a man of eminent 
 merit appears, the first effect he produces is often only 
 to pique all his rivals, just as the peacocks tail 
 offended the birds. This reduces them to a deep 
 silence ; and their silence is so unanimous that it 
 savours of preconcertion. Their tongues are all 
 
 1 Collier, one of his critical editors, in his Introduction to the 
 Sonnets, remarks upon this point : " In many of them are to 
 be found most remarkable indications of self-confidence and of 
 assurance in the immortality of his verses, and in this respect 
 the author's opinion was constant and uniform. He never 
 scruples to express it, . . . and perhaps there is no writer of 
 ancient or modern times who, for the quantity of such writings 
 left behind him, has so frequently or so strongly declared that 
 what he had produced in this department of poetry * the world 
 would not willingly let die.' n 
 
ON REPUTATION. 109 
 
 paralysed. It is the silentium livoris described by 
 Seneca. This malicious silence, which is technically 
 known as ignoring, may for a long time interfere with 
 the growth of reputation ; if, as happens in the higher 
 walks of learning, where a man's immediate audience is 
 wholly composed of rival workers and professed stud- 
 ents, who then form the channel of his fame, the greater 
 public is obliged to use its suffrage without being able 
 to examine the matter for itself. And if, in the end, 
 that malicious silence is broken in upon by the voice 
 of praise, it will be but seldom that this happens en- 
 tirely apart from some ulterior aim, pursued by those 
 who thus manipulate justice. For, as Goethe says in 
 the West-ostlicher Divan, a man can get no recogni- 
 tion, either from many persons or from only one, unless 
 it is to publish abroad the critic's own discernment : — 
 
 Demi es ist kein Anerkennen, 
 Weder Vieler, noch des Einen, 
 Wenn es nicht am Tage fordert, 
 Wo man selbst was mb'chte scheinen. 
 
 The credit you allow to another man engaged in work 
 similar to your own or akin to it, must at bottom be 
 withdrawn from yourself; and you can praise him 
 only at the expense of your own claims. 
 
 Accordingly, mankind is in itself not at all inclined 
 to award praise and reputation ; it is more disposed to 
 blame and find fault, whereby it indirectly praises it- 
 self. If, notwithstanding this, praise is won from 
 mankind, some extraneous motive must prevail. I 
 am not here referring to the disgraceful way in which 
 mutual friends will puff one another into a reputation; 
 
110 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 outside of that, an effectual motive is supplied by 
 the feeling that next to the merit of doing something 
 oneself, comes that of correctly appreciating and re- 
 cognising what others have done. This accords with 
 the threefold division of heads drawn up by Hesiod, 1 and 
 afterwards by Machiavelli. 2 There are, says the latter, 
 in the capacities of "mankind, three varieties : one man 
 will understand a thing by himself ; another so far 
 as it is explained to him; a third, neither of himself 
 nor when it is put clearly before him. He, then, who 
 abandons hope of making good his claims to the first 
 class, will be glad to seize the opportunity of taking a 
 place in the second. It is almost wholly owing to 
 this state of things that merit may always rest assured 
 of ultimately meeting with recognition. 
 
 To this also is due the fact that when the value of 
 a work has once been recognised and may no longer 
 be concealed or denied, all men vie in praising and 
 honouring it ; simply because they are conscious of 
 thereby doing themselves an honour. They act in the 
 spirit of Xenophon's remark : he must be a wise man 
 who knows what is wise. So when they see that the 
 prize of original merit is for ever out of their reach, 
 they hasten to possess themselves of that which comes 
 second best — the correct appreciation of it. Here it 
 happens as with an army which has been forced to 
 yield ; when, just as previously every man wanted to 
 be foremost in the fight, so now every man tries to be 
 foremost in running away. They all hurry forward 
 to offer their applause to one who is now recogni. ed 
 
 1 Works and Days, 293. 
 
 2 The Prince, ch. 22. 
 
ON REPUTATION. Ill 
 
 to be worthy of praise, in virtue of a recognition, as a 
 rule unconscious, of that law of homogeneity which I 
 mentioned in the last chapter ; so that it may seem as 
 though their way of thinking and looking at things 
 were homogeneous with that of the celebrated man, 
 and that they may at least save the honour of their 
 literary taste, since nothing else is left them. 
 
 From this it is plain that, whereas it is very difficult 
 to win fame, it is not hard to keep it when once at- 
 tained ; and also that a reputation which comes 
 quickly does not last very long ; for here too, quodcito 
 fit, cito perit It is obvious that if the ordinary, 
 average man can easily recognise, and the rival workers 
 willingly acknowledge, the value of any performance, 
 it will not stand very much above the capacity of 
 either of them to achieve it for themselves. Tantum 
 quisque laudat, quantum se posse sperat imitari — a 
 man will praise a thing only so far as he hopes to be 
 able to imitate it himself. Further, it is a suspicious 
 sign if a reputation comes quickly ; for an application 
 of the laws of homogeneity will show that such a re- 
 putation is nothing but the direct applause of the 
 multitude. What this means may be seen by a remark 
 once made by Phocion, when he was interrupted in a 
 speech by the loud cheers of the mob. Turning to 
 his friends who were standing close by, he asked : 
 Have I made a mistake and said something stupid ? l 
 
 Contrarily, a reputation that is to last a long timo 
 
 must be slow in maturing, and the centuries of its 
 
 duration have generally to be bought at the cost of 
 
 contemporary praise. For that which is to keep its 
 
 1 Plutarch : Apophthegms. 
 
112 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 position so long, must be of a perfection difficult to 
 attain ; and even to recognise this perfection requires 
 men who are not always to be found, and never in 
 numbers sufficiently great to make themselves heard ; 
 whereas envy is always on the watch and doing 
 its best to smother their voice. But with moderate 
 talent, which soon meets with recognition, there is the 
 danger that those who possess it will outlive both it 
 and themselves ; so that a youth of fame may be 
 followed by an old age of obscurity. In the case of 
 great merit, on the other hand, a man may remain un- 
 known for many years, but make up for it later on by 
 attaining a brilliant reputation. And if it should be 
 that this comes only after he is no more, well ! he is to 
 be reckoned amongst those of whom Jean Paul says 
 that extreme unction is their baptism. He may con- 
 sole himself by thinking of the Saints, who also are 
 canonised only after they are dead. 
 
 Thus what Mahlmann 1 has said so well in Herodes 
 holds good ; in this world truly great work never 
 pleases at once, and the god set up by the multitude 
 keeps his place on the altar but a short time : — 
 
 Ich denize, das wahre Grosse in der Welt 
 1st immer nur Das was nicht gleich gefallt 
 Und wen der Pobel zum Gotte weiht 
 Der steht anf dem Altar nur kurze Zeit. 
 
 It is worth mention that this rule is most directly con- 
 firmed in the case of pictures, where, as connoisseurs 
 well know, the greatest masterpieces are not the first 
 
 1 Translator's Note.— August Mahlmann (1771-1826), journa- 
 list, poet and story- writer. His Herodes vor Bethlehem is a 
 parody of Kotzebue's Hussiten vor Naumburg. 
 
ON REPUTATION. 113 
 
 to attract attention. If they make a deep impression, 
 it is not after one, but only after repeated, inspection ; 
 but then they excite more and more admiration every 
 time they are seen. 
 
 Moreover, the chances that any given work will be 
 quickly and rightly appreciated, depend upon two 
 conditions : firstly, the character of the work, whether 
 high or low, in other words, easy or difficult to under- 
 stand ; and, secondly, the kind of public it attracts, 
 whether large or small. This latter condition is, no 
 doubt, in most instances a corollary of the former; 
 but it also partly depends upon whether the work in 
 question admits, like books and musical compositions, 
 of being reproduced in great numbers. By the com- 
 pound action of these two conditions, achievements 
 which serve no materially useful end — and these alone 
 are under consideration here- — will vary in regard to 
 the chances they have of meeting w T ith timely recog- 
 nition and due appreciation; and the order of pre- 
 cedence, beginning with those who have the greatest 
 chance, will be somewhat as follows : acrobats, circus- 
 riders, ballet-dancers, jugglers, actors, singers, musi- 
 cians, composers, poets (both the last on account of 
 the multiplication of their works), architects, painters, 
 sculptors, philosophers. 
 
 The last place of all is unquestionably taken by 
 philosophers, because their works are meant not for 
 entertainment, but for instruction, and because they 
 presume some knowledge on the part of the reader, 
 and require him to make an effort of his own to under- 
 stand them. This makes their public extremely small, 
 and causes their fame to be more remarkable for its 
 
 H 
 
114 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 length than for its breadth. And, in general, it may- 
 be said that the possibility of a man's fame lasting a 
 long time, stands in almost inverse ratio with the 
 chance that it will be early in making its appearance ; 
 so that, as regards length of fame, the above order of 
 precedence may be reversed. But, then, the poet and 
 the composer will come in the end to stand on the 
 same level as the philosopher ; since, when once a work 
 is committed to writing, it is possible to preserve it to 
 all time. However, the first place still belongs by 
 right to the philosopher, because of the much greater 
 scarcity of good work in this sphere, and the high 
 importance of it ; and also because of the possibility 
 it offers of an almost perfect translation into any 
 language. Sometimes, indeed, it happens that a 
 philosophers fame outlives even his works themselves; 
 as has happened with Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, 
 Democritus, Parmenides, Epicurus, and many others. 
 
 My remarks are, as I have said, confined to achieve- 
 ments that are not of any material use. Work that 
 serves some practical end, or ministers directly to 
 some pleasure of the senses, will never have any diffi- 
 culty in being duly appreciated. No first-rate pastry- 
 cook could long remain obscure in any town, to say 
 nothing of having to appeal to posterity. 
 
 Under fame of rapid growth is also to be reckoned 
 fame of a false and artificial kind ; where, for instance, 
 a book is worked into a reputation by means of un- 
 just praise, the help of friends, corrupt criticism, 
 prompting from above and collusion from below. All 
 this tells upon the multitude, which is rightly pre- 
 sumed to have no power of judging for itself. This 
 
ON DEPUTATION. 115 
 
 sort of fame is like a swimming-bladder ; by its aid a 
 heavy body may keep afloat. It bears up for a certain 
 time, long or short according as the bladder is well 
 sewed up and blown ; but still the air comes out 
 gradually, and the body sinks. This is the inevitable 
 fate of all works which are famous by reason of some- 
 thing outside of themselves. False praise dies away ; 
 collusion comes to an end; critics declare the reputation 
 ungrounded ; it vanishes, and is replaced by so much 
 the greater contempt. Contrarily, a genuine work, 
 which, having the source of its fame in itself, can 
 kindle admiration afresh in every age, resembles a 
 body of low specific gravity, which always keeps up 
 of its own accord, and so goes floating down the stream 
 of time. 1 
 
 Men of great genius, whether their work be in 
 poetry, philosophy or art, stand in all ages like 
 isolated heroes, keeping up single-handed a desperate 
 struggle against the onslaught of an army of op- 
 ponents. Is not this characteristic of the miserable 
 nature of mankind ? The dulness, grossness, per- 
 versity, silliness and brutality of by far the greater 
 part of the race, are always an obstacle to the efforts 
 of the genius, whatever be the method of his art ; they 
 so form that hostile army to which at last he has to 
 
 1 Translator's Note. — At this point Schopenhauer interrupts 
 the thread of his discourse to speak at length upon an example 
 of false fame. Those who are at all acquainted with the 
 philosopher's views will not be surprised to find that the writer 
 thus held up to scorn is Hegel ; and readers of the other volumes 
 in this series will, with the translator, have had by now quite 
 enough of the subject. The passage is therefore omitted. 
 
116 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 succumb. Let the isolated champion achieve what he 
 may : it is slow to be acknowledged ; it is late in 
 being appreciated, and then only on the score of 
 authority; it may easily fall into neglect again, at 
 any rate for a while. Ever afresh it finds itself 
 opposed by false, shallow, and insipid ideas, which are 
 better suited to that large majority, and so generally 
 hold the field. Though the critic may step forth and 
 say, like Hamlet when he held up the two portraits 
 to his wretched mother, Have you eyes 1 Have you 
 eyes ? alas ! they have none. When I watch the 
 behaviour of a crowd of people in the presence of 
 some great masters work, and mark the manner of 
 their applause, they often remind me of trained 
 monkeys in a show. The monkeys' gestures are, no 
 doubt, much like those of men ; but now and again 
 they betray- that the real inward spirit of those 
 gestures is not in them. Their irrational nature 
 peeps out. 
 
 It is often said of a man that he is in advance of 
 his age; and it follows from the above remarks that 
 this must be taken to mean that he is in advance of 
 humanity in general. Just because of this fact, a 
 genius makes no direct appeal except to those who are 
 themselves considerably above the average in capacity; 
 and these are too rare to allow of their ever forming a 
 numerous body at any one period. If he is in this 
 respect not particularly favoured by fortune, he will 
 be misunderstood by his own age ; in other words, he 
 will remain unaccepted until time gradually brings 
 together the voices of those few persons who are 
 capable of judging a work of such high character. 
 
ON REPUTATION. 117 
 
 Then posterity will say : This man was in advance 
 of his age, instead of in advance of humanity ; 
 because humanity will be glad to lay the burden of 
 its own faults upon a single epoch. 
 
 Hence if a man has been superior to his own age, 
 he would also have been superior to any other ; pro- 
 vided that, in that age, by some rare and happy 
 chance, a few just men, capable of judging in the 
 sphere of his achievements, had been born at the 
 same time with him ; just as when, according to a 
 beautiful Indian myth, Vischnu becomes incarnate as 
 a hero, so, too, Brahma at the same time appears as 
 the singer of his deeds ; and hence Valmiki, Vyasa 
 and Kalidasa are incarnations of Brahma. 
 
 In this sense, then, it may be said that every 
 immortal work puts its age to the proof, whether or 
 no it will be able to recognise the merit of it. As a 
 rule, the men of any age stand such a test no better 
 than the neighbours of Philemon and Baucis, who 
 expelled the deities they failed to recognise. Accord- 
 ingly, the right standard for judging the intellectual 
 worth of any generation is supplied, not by the great 
 minds that make their appearance in it — for their 
 capacities are the work of Nature, and the possibility 
 of cultivating them a matter of chance circumstance — 
 but by the way in which contemporaries receive their 
 works ; whether, I mean, they give their applause 
 soon and with a will, or late and in niggardly fashion, 
 or leave it to be bestowed altogether by posterity. 
 
 This last fate will be specially reserved for works 
 of a high character. For the happy chance men- 
 tioned above will be all the more certain not to come, 
 
118 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 in proportion as there are few to appreciate the kind 
 of work done by great minds. Herein lies the 
 immeasurable advantage possessed by poets in respect 
 of reputation ; because their work is accessible to 
 almost every one. If it had been possible for Sir 
 Walter Scott to be read and criticised by only some 
 hundred persons, perhaps in his life-time any common 
 scribbler would have been preferred to him; and 
 afterwards, when he had taken his proper place, it 
 would also have been said in his honour that he was 
 in advance of his age. But if envy, dishonesty and 
 the pursuit of personal aims are added to the in- 
 capacity of those hundred persons who, in the name of 
 their generation, are called upon to pass judgment on 
 a work, then indeed it meets with the same sad fate 
 as attends a suitor who pleads before a tribunal of 
 judges one and all corrupt. 
 
 In corroboration of this, we find that the history of 
 literature generally shows all those who made know- 
 ledge and insight their goal to have remained unre- 
 cognised and neglected, whilst those who paraded 
 with the vain show of it received the admiration of 
 their contemporaries, together with the emoluments. 
 
 The effectiveness of an author turns chiefly upon 
 his getting the reputation that he should be read. 
 But by practising various arts, by the operation of 
 chance, and by certain natural affinities, this reputa- 
 tion is quickly won by a hundred worthless people ; 
 while a worthy writer may come by it very slowly 
 and tardily. The former possess friends to help 
 them; for the rabble is always a numerous body 
 which holds well together. The latter has nothing 
 
ON REPUTATION. 119 
 
 but enemies ; because intellectual superiority is every- 
 where and under all circumstances the most hateful 
 thing in the world, and especially to bunglers in the 
 same line of work, who want to pass for something 
 themselves. 1 
 
 This being so, it is a prime condition for doing any 
 great work — any work which is to outlive its own 
 age, that a man pay no heed to his contemporaries, 
 their views and opinions, and the praise or blame 
 which they bestow. This condition is, however, ful- 
 filled of itself when a man really does anything great, 
 and it is fortunate that it is so. For if, in producing 
 such a work, he were to look to the general opinion 
 or the judgment of his colleagues, they would lead 
 him astray at every step. Hence, if a man wants to 
 go down to posterity, he must withdraw from the 
 influence of his own age. This will, of course, gener- 
 ally mean that he must also renounce any influence 
 upon it, and be ready to buy centuries of fame by 
 foregoing the applause of his contemporaries. 
 
 For when any new and wide-reaching truth comes 
 into the world — and if it is new, it must be paradoxi- 
 cal — an obstinate stand will be made against it as 
 long as possible ; nay, people will continue to deny it 
 even after they slacken their opposition and are 
 almost convinced of its truth. Meanwhile it goes on 
 quietly working its way, and, like an acid, under- 
 mining everything around it. From time to time 
 
 1 If the professors of philosophy should chance to think that 
 I am here hinting at them and the tactics they have for more 
 than thirty years pursued toward my works, they have hit the 
 mil upon the head. 
 
120 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 a crash is heard ; the old error comes tottering to 
 the ground, and suddenly the new fabric of thought 
 stands revealed, as though it were a monument just 
 uncovered. Everyone recognises and admires it. To 
 be sure, this all comes to pass for the most part very 
 slowly. As a rule, people discover a man to be worth 
 listening to only after he is gone ; their hear, hear ! 
 resounds when the orator has left the platform. 
 
 Works of the ordinary type meet with a better 
 fate. Arising as they do in the course of, and in con- 
 nection with, the general advance in contemporary 
 culture, they are in close alliance with the spirit of 
 their age — in other words, just those opinions which 
 happen to be prevalent at the time. They aim at 
 suiting the needs of the moment. If they have any 
 merit, it is soon recognised ; and they gain currency 
 as books which reflect the latest ideas. Justice, nay, 
 more than justice, is done to them. They afford little 
 scope for envy ; since, as was said above, a man will 
 praise a thing only so far as he hopes to be able to 
 imitate it himself. 
 
 But those rare works which are destined to become 
 the property of all mankind and to live for centuries, 
 are, at their origin, too far in advance of the point at 
 which culture happens to stand, and on that very 
 account foreign to it and the spirit of their own time. 
 They neither belong to it nor are they in any connection 
 with it, and hence they excite no interest in those 
 who are dominated by it. They belong to another, a 
 higher stage of culture, and a time that is still far 
 off. Their course is related to that of ordinary works 
 as the orbit of Uranus to the orbit of Mercury. For 
 
ON REPUTATION. 121 
 
 the moment they get no justice done to them. People 
 are at a loss how to treat them ; so they leave them 
 alone, and go their own snail's pace for themselves. 
 Does the worm see the eagle as it soars aloft ? 
 
 Of the number of books written in any language 
 about one in 100,000 forms a part of its real and per- 
 manent literature. What a fate this one book has to 
 endure before it outstrips those 100,000 and gains its 
 due place of honour ! Such a book is the work of 
 an extraordinary and eminent mind, and therefore 
 it is specifically different from the others; a fact 
 which sooner or later becomes manifest. 
 
 Let no one fancy that things will ever improve in this 
 respect. No ! the miserable constitution of humanity 
 never changes, though it may, to be sure, take somewhat 
 varying forms with every generation. A distinguished 
 mind seldom has its full effect in the lifetime of its 
 possessor ; because, at bottom, it is completely and 
 properly understood only by minds already akin to it. 
 
 As it is a rare thing for even one man out of many 
 millions to tread the path that leads to immortality, 
 he must of necessity be very lonely. The journey to 
 posterity lies through a horribly dreary region, like 
 the Lybian desert, of which, as is well-known, no one 
 has any idea who has not seen it for himself. Mean- 
 while let me before all things recommend the traveller 
 to take light baggage with him; otherwise he will 
 have to throw away too much on the road. Let him 
 never forget the words of Balthazar Gracian : lo bueno, 
 si breve, dos vezes bueno — good work is doubly good if 
 it is short. This advice is specially applicable to my 
 own countrymen. 
 
122 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 Compared with the short span of time they live, 
 men of great intellect are like huge buildings, standing 
 on a small plot of ground. The size of the building 
 cannot be seen by anyone just in front of it; nor, for 
 an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be 
 estimated while he lives. But when a century 
 has passed, the world recognises it and wishes him 
 back again. 
 
 If the perishable son of time has produced an im- 
 perishable work, how short his own life seems com- 
 pared with that of his child ! He is like Semele or 
 Maia — a mortal mother who gave birth to an im- 
 mortal son ; or, contrarily, like Achilles in regard to 
 Thetis. What a contrast there is between what is 
 fleeting and what is permanent ! The short span of 
 a man's life, his necessitous, afflicted, unstable exist- 
 ence, will seldom allow of his seeing even the be- 
 ginning of his immortal child's brilliant career; nor 
 will the father himself be taken for that which he 
 really is. It may be said, indeed, that a man whose 
 fame comes after him is the reverse of a nobleman, 
 who is preceded by it. 
 
 However, the only difference that it ultimately 
 makes to a man to receive his fame at the hands of 
 contemporaries rather than from posterity, is that in 
 the former case his admirers are separated from him 
 by space, and in the latter by time. For even in the 
 case of contemporary fame, a man does not, as a rule, 
 see his admirers actually before him. Reverence 
 cannot endure close proximity : it almost always 
 dwells at some distance from its object ; and in the 
 presence of the person revered it melts like butter in 
 
ON REPUTATION. 123 
 
 the sun. Accordingly, if a man is celebrated with his 
 contemporaries, nine-tenths of those amongst whom 
 he lives will let their esteem be guided by his rank 
 and fortune ; and the remaining tenth may perhaps 
 have a dull consciousness of his high qualities, because 
 they .have heard about him from remote quarters. 
 There is a fine Latin letter of Petrarch's on this 
 incompatibility between reverence and the presence 
 of the person, and between fame and life. It comes 
 second in his Epistolce familiares, 1 and it is addressed 
 to Thomas Messanensis. He there observes, amongst 
 other things, that the learned men of his age all made 
 it a rule to think little of a man's writings if they had 
 even once seen him. 
 
 Since distance, then, is essential if a famous man is 
 to be recognised and revered, it does not matter 
 whether it is distance of space or of time. It is true 
 that he may sometimes hear of his fame in the one 
 case, but never in the other ; but still, genuine and 
 great merit may make up for this by confidently 
 anticipating its posthumous fame. Nay, he who pro- 
 duces some really great thought is conscious of his 
 connection with coming generations at the very 
 moment he conceives it ; so that he feels the extension 
 of his existence through centuries and thus lives with 
 posterity as well as for it. And when, after enjoying 
 a great man's work, we are seized with admiration 
 for him, and wish him back, so that we might see and 
 speak with him, and have him in our possession, this 
 desire of ours is not unrequited ; for he, too, has had 
 his longing for that posterity which will grant the 
 1 In the Venetian edition of 1492. 
 
124 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 recognition, honour, gratitude and love denied by- 
 envious contemporaries. 
 
 If intellectual works of the highest order are not 
 allowed their due until they come before the tribunal 
 of posterity, a contrary fate is prepared for certain 
 brilliant errors which proceed from men of talent, and 
 appear with an air of being well grounded. These 
 errors are defended with so much acumen and learning 
 that they actually become famous with their own age, 
 and maintain their position at least during their 
 author's lifetime. Of this sort are many false theories 
 and wrong criticisms ; also poems and works of art, 
 which exhibit some false taste or mannerism favoured 
 by contemporary prejudice. They gain reputation 
 and currency simply because no one is yet forthcoming 
 who knows how to refute them or otherwise prove 
 their falsity; and when he appears, as he usually 
 does, in the next generation, the glory of these works 
 is brought to an end. Posthumous judges, be their 
 decision favourable to the appellant or not, form the 
 proper court for quashing the verdict of contem- 
 poraries. That is why it is so difficult and so rare to 
 be victorious alike in both tribunals. 
 
 The unfailing tendency of time to correct know- 
 ledge and judgment should always be kept in view 
 as a means of allaying anxiety, whenever any grievous 
 error appears, whether in art, or science, or practical 
 life, and gains ground ; or when some false and 
 thoroughly perverse policy or movement is undertaken 
 and receives applause at the hands of men. No one 
 should be angry, or, still less, despondent ; but simply 
 imagine that the world has already abandoned the 
 
ON REPUTATION. 125 
 
 error in question, and now only requires time and 
 experience to recognise of its own accord that which 
 a clear vision detected at the first glance. 
 
 When the facts themselves are eloquent of a truth, 
 there is no need to rush to its aid with words : for 
 time will give it a thousand tongues. How long it 
 may be before they speak, will of course depend up- 
 on the difficulty of the subject and the plausibility of 
 the error ; but come they will, and often it would be 
 of no avail to try to anticipate them. In the worst 
 cases it will happen with theories as it happens with 
 affairs in practical life ; where sham and deception, 
 emboldened by success, advance to greater and greater 
 lengths, until discovery is made almost inevitable. 
 It is just so with theories; through the blind con- 
 fidence of the blockheads who broach them, their 
 absurdity reaches such a pitch that at last it is 
 obvious even to the dullest eye. We may thus say to 
 such people : the wilder your statements, the better. 
 
 There is also some comfort to be found in reflecting 
 upon all the whims and crotchets which had their day 
 and have now utterly vanished. In style, in grammar, 
 in spelling, there are false notions of this sort which 
 last only three or four years. But when the errors 
 are on a large scale, while we lament the brevity of 
 human life, we shall, in any case, do well to lag be- 
 hind our own age when we see it on a downward 
 path. For there are two ways of not keeping on a 
 level with the times. A man may be below it ; or he 
 may be above it. 
 
ON GENIUS. 
 
ON GENIUS. 
 
 No difference of rank, position, or birth, is so great 
 as the gulf that separates the countless millions who 
 use their head only in the service of their belly, in 
 other words, look upon it as an instrument of the will, 
 and those very few and rare persons who have the 
 courage to say : No ! it is too good for that ; my head 
 shall be active only in its own service ; it shall try to 
 comprehend the wondrous and varied spectacle of this 
 world, and then reproduce it in some form, whether 
 as art or as literature, that may answer to my 
 character as an individual. These are the truly noble/ 
 the real noblesse of the world. The others are serfs 
 and go with the soil — glebce adscripti. Of course, I 
 am here referring to those who have not only the 
 courage, but also the call, and therefore the right, to 
 order the head to quit the service of the will ; with a 
 result that proves the sacrifice to have been worth the 
 making. In the case of those to w x hom all this can 
 only partially apply, the gulf is not so wide ; but 
 even though their talent be small, so long as it is real, 
 there will always be a sharp line of demarcation be- 
 tween them and the millions. 1 
 
 1 The correct scale for adjusting the hierarchy of intelligences 
 is furnished by the degree in which the mind takes merely in- 
 dividual or approaches universal views of things. The brute 
 recognises only the individual as such : its comprehension does 
 
 I 
 
130 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 The works of fine art, poetry and philosophy pro- 
 duced by a nation are the outcome of the superfluous 
 intellect existing in it. 
 
 For him who can understand aright — cumgrano salis 
 — the relation between the genius and the normal man 
 may, perhaps, be best expressed as follows : A genius 
 has a double intellect, one for himself and the service 
 of his will ; the other for the world, of which he be- 
 comes the mirror, in virtue of his purely objective 
 attitude towards it. The work of art or poetry or 
 philosophy produced by the genius is simply the 
 result, or quintessence, of this contemplative attitude, 
 elaborated according to certain technical rules. 
 
 The normal man, on the other hand, has only a 
 single intellect, which may be called subjective by 
 contrast with the objective intellect of genius. How- 
 ever acute this subjective intellect may be — and it 
 
 not extend beyond the limits of the individual. But man re- 
 duces the individual to the general ; herein lies the exercise of his 
 reason ; and the higher his intelligence reaches, the nearer do 
 his general ideas approach the point at which they become 
 universal. If his grasp of the universal is so deep as to be 
 intuitive, and to apply not only to general ideas, but to an 
 individual object by itself, then there arises a knowledge of the 
 Ideas in the sense used by Plato. This knowledge is of an 
 aesthetic character ; when it is self-active, it rises to genius, and 
 reaches the highest degree of intensity when it becomes 
 philosophic : for then the whole of life and existence as it 
 passes away, the world and all it contains, are grasped in their 
 true nature by an act of intuition, and appear in a form which 
 forces itself upon consciousness as an object of meditation. 
 Here reflection attains its highest point. Between it and the 
 merely animal perception there are countless stages, which differ 
 according to the approach made to a universal view of things. 
 
ON GENIUS. 131 
 
 exists in very various degrees of perfection — it is 
 never on the same level with the double intellect of 
 genius ; just as the open chest notes of the human 
 voice, however high, are essentially different from the 
 falsetto notes. These, like the two upper octaves of 
 the flute and the harmonics of the violin, are produced 
 by the column of air dividing itself into two vibrating 
 halves, with a node between them ; while the open 
 chest notes of the human voice and the lower octave 
 of the flute are produced by the undivided column of 
 air vibrating as a whole. This illustration may help 
 the reader to understand that specific peculiarity of 
 genius which is unmistakably stamped on the works, 
 and even on the physiognomy, of him who is gifted 
 with it. At the same time it is obvious that a double 
 intellect like this must, as a rule, obstruct the service 
 of the will ; and this explains the poor capacity often 
 shown by genius in the conduct of life. And what 
 specially characterises genius is that it has none of 
 that sobriety of temper which is always to be found 
 in the ordinary simple intellect, be it acute or dull. 
 
 The brain may be likened to a parasite which is 
 nourished as a part of the human frame without con- 
 tributing directly to its inner economy; it is securely 
 housed in the topmost storey, and there leads a self- 
 sufficient and independent life. In the same way it 
 may be said that a man endowed with great mental 
 gifts leads, apart from the individual life common to 
 all, a second life, purely of the intellect. He devotes 
 himself to the constant increase, rectification and ex- 
 tension, not of mere learning, but of real systematic 
 knowledge and insight; and remains untouched by the 
 
132 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 fate that overtakes him personally, so long as it does 
 not disturb him in his work. It is thus a life which 
 raises a man and sets him above fate and its changes. 
 Always thinking, learning, experimenting, practising 
 his knowledge, the man soon comes to look upon this 
 second life as the chief mode of existence, and his 
 merely personal life as something subordinate, serving 
 only to advance ends higher than itself. 
 
 An example of this independent, separate existence 
 is furnished by Goethe. During the war in the 
 Champagne, and amid all the bustle of the camp, he 
 made observations for his theory of colour ; and as 
 soon as the numberless calamities of that war allowed 
 of his retiring for a short time to the fortress of 
 Luxembourg, he took up the manuscript of his 
 Farbenlehre. This is an example which we, the salt of 
 the earth, should endeavour to follow, by never letting 
 anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual 
 life, however much the storm of the world may in- 
 vade and agitate our personal environment ; always 
 remembering that we are the sons, not of the bond- 
 woman, but of the free. As our emblem and coat of 
 arms, I propose a tree mightily shaken by the wind, 
 but still bearing its ruddy fruit on every branch ; with 
 the motto Dum convellor mitescwnt, or Gonquassata 
 sed fevax. 
 
 That purely intellectual life of the individual has 
 its counterpart in humanity as a whole. For there, 
 too, the real life is the life of the will, both in the 
 empirical and in the transcendental meaning of the 
 word. The purely intellectual life of humanity lies in 
 its effort to increase knowledge by means of the 
 
ON GENIUS. 133 
 
 sciences, and its desire to perfect the arts. Both 
 science and art thus advance slowly from one genera- 
 tion to another, and grow with the centuries, every 
 race as it hurries by furnishing its contribution, This 
 intellectual life, like some gift from heaven, hovers 
 over the stir and movement of the world ; or it is, as it 
 were, a sweet-scented air developed out of the ferment 
 itself — the real life of mankind, dominated by will ; 
 and side by side with the history of nations, the his- 
 tory of philosophy, science and art takes its innocent 
 and bloodless way. 
 
 The difference between the genius and the ordinary 
 man is, no doubt, a quantitative one, in so far as it is 
 a difference of degree ; but I am tempted to regard it 
 also as qualitative, in view of the fact that ordinary 
 minds, notwithstanding individual variation, have a 
 certain tendency to think alike. Thus on similar 
 occasions their thoughts at once all take a similar 
 direction, and run on the same lines ; and this explains 
 why their judgments constantly agree — not, however, 
 because they are based on truth. To such lengths 
 does this go that certain fundamental views obtain 
 amongst mankind at all times, and are always being 
 repeated and brought forward anew, whilst the great 
 minds of all ages are in open or secret opposition to 
 them. 
 
 A genius is a man in whose mind the world is pre- 
 sented as an object is presented in a mirror, but with 
 a degree more of clearness and a greater distinction of 
 outline than is attained by ordinary people. It is 
 from him that humanity may look for most instruc- 
 tion ; for the deepest insight into the most important 
 
134 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 matters is to be acquired, not by an observant atten- 
 tion to detail, but by a close study of things as a 
 whole. And if his mind reaches maturity, the instruc- 
 tion he gives will be conveyed now in one form, now 
 in another. Thus genius may be defined as an emi- 
 nently clear consciousness of things in general, and 
 therefore, also of that which is opposed to them, namely, 
 one's own self. 
 
 The world looks up to a man thus endowed, and 
 expects to learn something about life and its real 
 nature. But several highly favourable circumstances 
 must combine to produce genius, and this is a very 
 rare event. It happens only now and then, let us say 
 once in a century, that a man is born whose intellect 
 so perceptibly surpasses the normal measure as to 
 amount to that second facult}^ which seems to be 
 accidental, as it is out of all relation to the will. He 
 may remain a long time without being recognised or 
 appreciated, stupidity preventing the one and envy 
 the other. But should this once come to pass, man- 
 kind will crowd round him and his works, in the hope 
 that he may be able to enlighten some of the darkness 
 of their existence or inform them about it. His 
 message is, to some extent, a revelation, and he him- 
 self a higher being, even though he may be but little 
 above the ordinary standard. 
 
 Like the ordinary man, the genius is what he is 
 chiefly for himself. This is essential to his nature ; a 
 fact which can neither be avoided nor altered. What 
 he may be for others remains a matter of chance and 
 of secondary importance. In no case can people re- 
 ceive from his mind more than a reflection, and then 
 
ON GENIUS. 135 
 
 only when he joins with them in the attempt to get 
 his thought into their heads ; where, however, it 
 is never anything but an exotic plant, stunted and 
 frail. 
 
 In order to have original, uncommon, and perhaps 
 even immortal thoughts, it is enough to estrange one- 
 self so fully from the world of things for a few 
 moments, that the most ordinary objects and events 
 appear quite new and unfamiliar. In this way their 
 true nature is disclosed. What is here demanded can- 
 not, perhaps, be said to be difficult ; it is not in our 
 power at all, but is just the province of genius. 
 
 By itself, genius can produce original thoughts just 
 as little as a woman by herself can bear children. 
 Outward circumstances must come to fructify genius, 
 and be, as it were, a father to its progeny. 
 
 The mind of genius is among other minds what the 
 carbuncle is among precious stones : it sends forth light 
 of its own, while the others reflect only that which 
 they have received. The relation of the genius to the 
 ordinary mind may also be described as that of an 
 idio-electrical body to one which merely is a conductor 
 of electricity. 
 
 The mere man of learning, who spends his life in 
 teaching what he has learned, is not strictly to be 
 called a man of genius ; just as idio-electrical bodies 
 are not conductors. Nay, genius stands to mere 
 learning as the words to the music in a song. A man 
 of learning is a man who has learned a great deal ; a 
 man of genius, one from whom we learn something 
 which the genius has learned from nobody. Great 
 minds, of which there is scarcely one in a hundred 
 
136 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 millions, are thus the lighthouses of humanity ; and 
 without them mankind would lose itself in the bound- 
 less sea of monstrous error and bewilderment. 
 
 And so the simple man of learning, in the strict 
 sense of the word — the ordinary professor, for in- 
 stance — looks upon the genius much as we look upon 
 a hare, which is good to eat after it has been killed 
 and dressed up. So long as it is alive, it is only good 
 to shoot at. 
 
 He who wishes to experience gratitude from his 
 contemporaries, must adjust his pace to theirs. But 
 great things are never produced in this way. And 
 he who wants to do great things must direct his gaze 
 to posterity, and in firm confidence elaborate his work 
 for coming generations. No doubt, the result may be 
 that he will remain quite unknown to his contempor- 
 aries, and comparable to a man who, compelled to 
 spend his life upon a lonely island, with great effort 
 sets up a monument there, to transmit to future sea- 
 farers the knowledge of his existence. If he thinks 
 it a hard fate, let him console himself with the reflec- 
 tion that the ordinary man who lives for practical 
 aims only, often suffers a like fate, without having 
 any compensation to hope for ; inasmuch as he may, 
 under favourable conditions, spend a life of material 
 production, earning, buying, building, fertilising, laying 
 out, founding, establishing, beautifying, with daily 
 effort and unflagging zeal, and all the time think that 
 he is working for himself ; and yet in the end it is 
 his descendants who reap the benefit of it all, and 
 sometimes not even his descendants. It is the same 
 with the man of genius; he, too, hopes for his reward 
 
ON GENIUS. 137 
 
 and for honour at least ; and at last finds that he has 
 worked for posterity alone. Both, to be sure, have 
 inherited a great deal from their ancestors. 
 
 The compensation I have mentioned as the privilege 
 of genius lies, not in what it is to others, but in what 
 it is to itself. What man has in any real sense lived 
 more than he whose moments of thought make their 
 echoes heard through the tumult of centuries ? Per- 
 haps, after all, it would be the best thing for a genius 
 to attain undisturbed possession of himself, by spend- 
 ing his life in enjoying the pleasure of his own 
 thoughts, his own works, and by admitting the world 
 only as the heir of his ample existence. Then the 
 world would find the mark of his existence only after 
 his death, like the marks in the Ichnolith. 1 
 
 Nor is it only in the activity of his highest powers 
 that the genius surpasses ordinary people. A man 
 who is unusually well-knit, supple and agile, will per- 
 form all his movements with exceptional ease, even 
 with comfort, because he takes a direct pleasure in an 
 activity for which he is particularly well-equipped, 
 and therefore often exercises it without any object. 
 Further, if he is an acrobat or a dancer, not only does 
 he take leaps which other people cannot execute, but 
 he also betrays rare elasticity and agility in those 
 easier steps which others can also perform, and even 
 in ordinary walking. In the same way a man of 
 superior mind will not only produce thoughts and 
 works which could never have come from another ; it 
 
 1 Translator's Note. — For an illustration of this feeling in 
 poetry, Schopenhauer refers the reader to Byron's Prophecy oj 
 Dante : introd. to C. 4. 
 
138 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 will not be here alone that he will show his greatness; 
 but as knowledge and thought form a mode of activity- 
 natural and easy to him, he will also delight himself 
 in them at all times, and so apprehend small matters 
 which are within the range of other minds, more 
 easily, quickly and correctly than they. Thus he 
 will take a direct and lively pleasure in every increase 
 of knowledge, every problem solved, every witty 
 thought, whether of his own or another's ; and so his 
 mind will have no further aim than to be constantly- 
 active. This will be an inexhaustible spring of de- 
 light ; and boredom, that spectre which haunts the 
 ordinary man, can never come near him. 
 
 Then, too, the masterpieces of past and contempor- 
 ary men of genius exist in their fulness for him alone. 
 If a great product of genius is recommended to the 
 ordinary, simple mind, it will take as much pleasure 
 in it as the victim of gout receives in being invited to 
 a ball. The one goes for the sake of formality, and 
 the other reads the book so as not to be in arrear. 
 For La Bruyere was quite right when he said : All 
 the wit in the world is lost upon him who has none. 
 The whole range of thought of a man of talent, or of a 
 genius, compared with the thoughts of the common 
 man, is, even when directed to objects essentially the 
 same, like a brilliant oil-painting, full of life, com- 
 pared with a mere outline or a weak sketch in water- 
 colour. 
 
 All this is part of the reward of genius, and com- 
 pensates him for a lonely existence in a world with 
 which he has nothing in common and no sympathies. 
 Hut since size is relative, it comes to the same thing 
 
ON GENIUS. 139 
 
 whether I say, Caius was a great man, or Caius has 
 to live amongst wretchedly small people ; for Brob- 
 dignack and Lilliput vary only in the point from 
 which they start. However great, then, however ad- 
 mirable or instructive, a long posterity may think the 
 author of immortal works, during his lifetime he will 
 appear to his contemporaries small, wretched, and 
 insipid in proportion. This is what I mean by say- 
 ing that as there are three hundred degrees from the 
 base of a tower to the summit, so there are exactly 
 three hundred from the summit to the base. Great 
 minds thus owe little ones some indulgence ; for it is 
 only in virtue of these little minds that they them- 
 selves are great. 
 
 Let us, then, not be surprised if we find men of 
 genius generally unsociable and repellent. It is not 
 their want of sociability that is to blame. Their path 
 through the world is like that of a man who goes for 
 a walk on a bright summer morning. He gazes with 
 delight on the beauty and freshness of nature, but he 
 has to rely wholly on that for entertainment ; for he 
 can find no society but the peasants as they bend over 
 the earth and cultivate the soil. It is often the case 
 that a great mind prefers soliloquy to the dialogue he 
 may have in this world. If he condescends to it now 
 and then, the hollowness of it may possibly drive him 
 back to his soliloquy; for in forge tfulness of his inter- 
 locutor, or caring little whether he understands or 
 not, he talks to him as a child talks to a doll. 
 
 Modesty in a great mind would, no doubt, be pleas- 
 ing to the world ; but, unluckily, it is a contradictio 
 in adjecto. It would compel a genius to give the 
 
140 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 thoughts and opinions, nay, even the method and 
 style, of the million preference over his own ; to set a 
 higher value upon them ; and, wide apart as they are, 
 to bring his views into harmony with theirs, or even 
 suppress them altogether, so as to let the others hold the 
 field. In that case, however, he would either produce 
 nothing at all, or else his achievements would be just 
 upon a level w T ith theirs. Great, genuine and extra- 
 ordinary work can be done only in so far as its author 
 disregards the method, the thoughts, the opinions of 
 his contemporaries, and quietly works on, in spite of 
 their criticism, on his side despising what they praise. 
 No one becomes great without arrogance of this sort. 
 Should his life and w T ork fall upon a time which 
 cannot recognise and appreciate him, he is at any 
 rate true to himself ; like some noble traveller forced 
 to pass the night in a miserable inn ; when morning 
 comes, he contentedly goes his way. 
 
 A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find 
 with his age if it only permits him to do his work 
 undisturbed in his own corner ; nor with his fate if 
 the corner granted him allows of his following his 
 vocation without having to think about other people. 
 
 For the brain to be a mere labourer in the service 
 of the belly, is indeed the common lot of almost all 
 those w r ho do not live on the work of their hands ; 
 and they are far from being discontented with their 
 lot. But it strikes despair into a man of great mind, 
 whose brain-power goes beyond the measure neces- 
 sary for the service of the will ; and he prefers, if 
 need be, to live in the narrowest circumstances, so 
 long as they afford him the free use of his time for 
 
ON GENIUS. 141 
 
 the development and application of his faculties ; in 
 other words, if they give him the leisure which is 
 invaluable to him. It is otherwise with ordinary 
 people : for them leisure has no value in itself, nor is 
 it, indeed, without its dangers, as these people seem 
 to know. The technical work of our time, which is 
 done to an unprecedented perfection, has, by in- 
 creasing and multiplying objects of luxury, given the 
 favourites of fortune a choice between more leisure 
 and culture upon the one side, and additional luxury 
 and good living, but with increased activity, upon the 
 other; and, true to their character, they choose the 
 latter, and prefer champagne to freedom. And they 
 are consistent in their choice ; for, to them, every 
 exertion of the mind which does not serve the aims 
 of the will is folly. Intellectual effort for its own 
 sake, they call eccentricity. Therefore, persistence in 
 the aims of the will and the belly will be concen- 
 tricity; and, to be sure, the will is the centre, the 
 kernel of the world. 
 
 But in general it is very seldom that any such 
 alternative is presented. For as with money, most 
 men have no superfluity, but only just enough for 
 their needs, so with intelligence ; they possess just 
 what will suffice for the service of the will, that is, 
 for the carrying on of their business. Having made 
 their fortune, they are content to gape or to indulge 
 in sensual pleasures or childish amusements, cards or 
 dice ; or they will talk in the dullest way, or dress 
 up and make obeisance to one another. And how 
 few are those who have even a little superfluity of 
 intellectual power ! Like the others they too make 
 
142 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 themselves a pleasure; but it is a pleasure of the 
 intellect. Either they will pursue some liberal study 
 which brings them in nothing, or they will practise 
 some art ; and, in general, they will be capable of 
 taking an objective interest in things, so that it will 
 be possible to converse with them. But with the 
 others it is better not to enter into any relations at 
 all ; for, except when they tell the results of their 
 own experience or give an account of their special 
 vocation, or at any rate impart what they have 
 learned from someone else, their conversation will not 
 be worth listening to ; and if anything is said to 
 them, they will rarely grasp or understand it aright, 
 and it will in most cases be opposed to their own 
 opinions. Balthazar Gracian describes them very 
 strikingly as men who are not men — hombres che non 
 lo son. And Giordano Bruno says the same thing : 
 What a difference there is in having to do with men 
 compared with those who are only made in their 
 image and likeness I 1 And how wonderfully this 
 passage agrees with that remark in the Kurral : The 
 common people look like men but I have never seen 
 anything quite like them. If the reader will consider 
 the extent to which these ideas agroe in thought and 
 even in expression, and the wide difference between 
 them in point of date and nationality, he cannot 
 doubt but that they are at one with the facts of life. 
 It was certainly not under the influence of those 
 passages that, about twenty years ago, I tried to get 
 a snuff-box made, the lid of which should have two 
 fine chestnuts represented upon it, if possible in 
 1 Opera : ed. Wagner, T. 224. 
 
ON GENIUS. 143 
 
 mosaic ; together with a leaf which was to show that 
 they were horse-chestnuts. This symbol was meant 
 to keep the thought constantly before my mind. If 
 anyone wishes for entertainment, such as will prevent 
 him feeling solitary even when he is alone, let me 
 recommend the company of dogs, whose moral and 
 intellectual qualities may almost always afford de- 
 light and gratification. 
 
 Still, we should always be careful to avoid being 
 unjust. I am often surprised by the cleverness, and 
 now and again by the stupidity, of my dog ; and I 
 have similar experiences with mankind. Countless 
 times, in indignation at their incapacity, their total 
 lack of discernment, their bestiality, I have been 
 forced to echo the old complaint that folly is the 
 mother and the nurse of the human race ; — 
 
 Humani generis mater nutrixque profecto 
 Stultitia est. 
 
 But at other times I have been astounded that from 
 such a race there could have gone forth so many arts 
 and sciences, abounding in so much use and beauty, 
 even though it has always been the few that produce 
 them. Yet these arts and sciences have struck root, 
 established and perfected themselves ; and the race 
 has with persistent fidelity preserved Homer, Plato, 
 Horace and others for thousands of years, by copying 
 and treasuring their writings, thus saving them from 
 oblivion, in spite of all the evils and atrocities that 
 have happened in the world. Thus the race has 
 proved that it appreciates the value of these things, 
 and at the same time it can form a correct view of 
 
144 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 special achievements or estimate signs of judgment 
 and intelligence. When this takes place amongst 
 those who belong to the great multitude, it is by a 
 kind of inspiration. Sometimes a correct opinion 
 will be formed by the multitude itself ; but this is 
 only when the chorus of praise has grown full and 
 complete. It is then like the sound of untrained 
 voices ; where there are enough of them, it is always 
 harmonious. 
 
 Those who emerge from the multitude, those who 
 are called men of genius, are merely the lucida in- 
 tervalla of the whole human race. They achieve that 
 which others could not possibly achieve. Their 
 originality is so great that not only is their divergence 
 from others obvious, but their individuality is ex- 
 pressed with such force, that all the men of genius who 
 have ever existed show, everyone of them, peculiarities 
 of character and mind ; so that the gift of his works 
 is one which he alone of all men could ever have pre- 
 sented to the world. This is what makes that simile 
 of Ariosto's so true and so justly celebrated : Natura 
 lo fece e poi ruppe lo stampo. After Nature stamps 
 a man of genius, she breaks the die. 
 
 But there is always a limit to human capacity; and 
 no one can be a great genius without having some 
 decidedly weak side, it may even be, some intellectual 
 narrowness. In other words, there will be some 
 faculty in which he is now and then inferior to men 
 of moderate endowments. It will be a faculty which, 
 if strong, might have been an obstacle to the exercise 
 of the qualities in which he excels. What this weak 
 point i&, it will always be hard to define with any ac- 
 
ON GENIUS. 145 
 
 curacy even in a given case. It may be better ex- 
 pressed indirectly ; thus Plato's weak point is exactly 
 that in which Aristotle is strong, and vice versa ; and 
 so, too, Kant is deficient just where Goethe is great. 
 
 Now, mankind is fond of venerating something ; 
 but its veneration is generally directed to the wrong 
 object, and it remains so directed until posterity comes 
 to set it right. But the educated public is no sooner 
 set right in this, than the honour which is due to 
 genius degenerates ; just as the honour which the 
 faithful pay to their saints easily passes into a 
 frivolous worship of relics. Thousands of Christians 
 adore the relics of a saint whose life and doctrine are 
 unknown to them ; and the religion of thousands of 
 Buddhists lies more in veneration of the Holy Tooth 
 or some such object, or the vessel that contains it, or 
 the Holy Bowl, or the fossil footstep, or the Holy Tree 
 which Buddha planted, than in the thorough know- 
 ledge and faithful practice of his high teaching. 
 Petrarch's house in Arqua ; Tasso's supposed prison in 
 Ferrara ; Shakespeare's house in Stratford, with his 
 chair ; Goethe's house in Weimar, with its furniture ; 
 Kant's old hat ; the autographs of great men ; these 
 things are gaped at with interest and awe by many 
 who have never read their works. They cannot do 
 anything more than just gape. 
 
 The intelligent amongst them are moved by the wish 
 to see the objects which the great man habitually had 
 before his eyes ; and by a strange illusion, these pro- 
 duce the mistaken notion that with the objects they 
 are bringing back the man himself, or that something 
 of him must cling to them. Akin to such people are 
 
 K 
 
146 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 those who earnestly strive to acquaint themselves with 
 the subject-matter of a poet's works, or to unravel the 
 personal circumstances and events in his life which 
 have suggested particular passages. This is as though 
 the audience in a theatre were to admire a fine scene, 
 and then rush upon the stage to look at the scaffolding 
 that supports it. There are in our day enough instances 
 of these critical investigators, and they prove the 
 truth of the saying that mankind is interested, not in 
 the form of a work, that is, in its manner of treat- 
 ment, but in its actual matter. All it cares for is the 
 theme. To read a philosopher's biography, instead of 
 studying his thoughts, is like neglecting a picture and 
 attending only to the style of its frame, debating 
 whether it is carved well or ill, and how much it cost 
 to gild it. 
 
 This is all very well. However, there is another 
 class of persons whose interest is also directed to 
 material and personal considerations, but they go much 
 further and carry it to a point where it becomes ab- 
 solutely futile. Because a great man has opened up 
 to them the treasures of his inmost being, and, by a 
 supreme effort of his faculties, produced works which 
 not only redound to their elevation and enlighten- 
 ment, but will also benefit their posterity to the tenth 
 and twentieth generation ; because he has presented 
 mankind with a matchless gift, these varlets think 
 themselves justified in sitting in judgment upon his 
 personal morality, and trying if they cannot discover 
 here or there some spot m him which will soothe the 
 pain they feel at the sight of so great a mind, compared 
 with the overwhelming feelingof their own nothingness. 
 
ON GENIUS. 14*7 
 
 This is the real source of all those prolix discussions, 
 carried on in countless books and reviews, on the moral 
 aspect of Goethe's life, and whether he ought not to 
 have married one or other of the girls with whom he 
 fell in love in his young days ; whether, again, instead 
 of honestly devoting himself to the service of his 
 master, he should not have been a man of the people, 
 a German patriot, worthy of a seat in the PcLulskirche, 
 and so on. Such crying ingratitude and malicious de- 
 traction prove that these self -constituted judges are 
 as great knaves morally as they are intellectually, 
 which is saying a great deal. 
 
 A man of talent will strive for money and reputation ; 
 but the spring that moves genius to the production of 
 its works is not so easy to name. Wealth is seldom 
 its reward. Nor is it reputation or glory ; only a 
 Frenchman could mean that. Glory is such an un- 
 certain thing, and, if you look at it closely, of so little 
 value. Besides it never corresponds to the effort you 
 have made : — 
 
 Responsura i/tio nxmquam est par fama labori. 
 
 Nor, again, is it exactly the pleasure it gives you; for 
 this is almost outweighed by the greatness of the effort. 
 It is rather a peculiar kind of instinct, which drives 
 the man of genius to give permanent form to what he 
 sees and feels, without being conscious of any further 
 motive. It works, in the main, by a necessity similar 
 to that which makes a tree bear its fruit ; and no 
 external condition is needed but the ground upon 
 which it is to thrive. 
 
148 THE ART OF LITERATURE. 
 
 On a closer examination, it seems as though, in the 
 case of a genius, the will to live, which is the spirit of 
 the human species, were conscious of having, by some 
 rare chance, and for a brief period, attained a greater 
 clearness of vision, and were now trying to secure it, 
 or at least the outcome of it, for the whole species, to 
 which the individual genius in his inmost being be- 
 longs ; so that the light which he sheds about him 
 may pierce the darkness and dulness of ordinary 
 human consciousness and there produce some good 
 effect. 
 
 Arising in some such way, this instinct drives the 
 genius to carry his work to completion, without think- 
 ing of reward or applause or sympathy; to leave 
 all care for his own personal welfare ; to make his 
 life one of industrious solitude, and to strain his faculties 
 to the utmost. He thus comes to think more about 
 posterity than about contemporaries; because, while 
 the latter can only lead him astray, posterity forms 
 the majority of the species, and time will gradually 
 bring the discerning few who can appreciate him. 
 Meanwhile it is with him as with the artist described 
 by Goethe ; he has no princely patron to prize his 
 talents, no friend to rejoice with him : — 
 
 Ein Filrst der die Talente schcitzt, 
 Ein Freund der sieh mit mlr ergotzt, 
 Die haben leider mir gefehlt. 
 
 His work is, as it were, a sacred object and the true 
 fruit of his life, and his aim in storing it away for a 
 more discerning posterity will be to make it the 
 property of mankind. An aim like this far surpasses 
 
Ott GENIUS. 149 
 
 all others, and for it lie wears the crown of thorns 
 which is one day to bloom into a wreath of laurel. 
 All his powers are concentrated in the effort to com- 
 plete and secure his work ; just as the insect, in the 
 last stage of its development, uses its whole strength 
 on behalf of a brood it will never live to see ; it puts 
 its eggs in some place of safety, where, as it well 
 knows, the young will one day find life and nourish- 
 ment, and then dies in confidence. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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