On the Use and Abuse of History for Life

IX

1 Is our age perhaps such a first comer? In fact, the vehemence of its historical sense is so great and expresses itself in such a universal and simply unlimited way that at least in this the coming ages will assess its quality as a first comer, if in fact there are going to be coming ages at all, understood in the sense of culture. But right here there remains a serious doubt. Close by the pride of the modern man stands his irony about his very self, his consciousness that he must live in a historicizing and, as it were, a twilight mood, and his fear that in future he will be totally unable to rescue any more of his youthful hopes and powers. Here and there people go even further, into cynicism, and justify the passage of history, indeed, of the whole development of the world as essentially for the use of modern man, according to the cynical rule that things must turn out just as they are going right now, that man must be nothing other than what people now are, and that against this Must no one may rebel. In the sense of well being of such a cynicism a person who cannot maintain that view with irony curses himself. In addition, the last decade offers him as a gift one of its most beautiful inventions, a rounded and sonorous phrase for such cynicism: it calls his style of living mindlessly with the times, "the full dedication of the personality to the world process." The personality and the world process! The world process and the personality of the turnip flea! If only people did not have to hear the eternal hyperbole of all hyperboles, the word World, World, World, when really each person should speak in all honesty only of Men, Men, Men. Heirs of the Greeks and Romans? Of Christianity? That all appears as nothing to this cynic. But heirs of the world process! The high points and targets of the world process! High points and targets of the world process! Sense and solution of all riddles of becoming in general, expressed in the modern man, the ripest fruit of the tree of knowledge—I call that a swollen feeling of elation. By this symbol are the first comers of all ages known, even if they have come along right at the end. Historical considerations have never flown so far afield, not even in dreams. For now the history of human beings is only the continuation of the history of animals and plants. Indeed, even in the furthest depths of the sea the historical universalist finds the traces of himself, as living mucus; he gazes in astonishment (as if at a miracle) at the immense route which human beings have already passed through and trembles at the sight of the even more astonishing miracle, modern man himself, who has the ability to survey this route. He stands high and proud on the pyramid of the world process. As he sets down on the top of it the final stone of his knowledge, he appears to call out to nature listening all around, "We are at the goal, we are the goal, we are the perfection of nature."

2 Arrogant European of the nineteenth century, you are raving! Your knowledge does not complete nature, but only kills your own. For once measure your height as a knower against your depth as a person who can do something. Of course, you clamber on the solar rays of knowledge upward towards heaven, but you also climb downward to chaos. Your way of going, that is, clambering about as a knower, is your fate. The ground and floor move back away from you into the unknown; for your life there are no supports any more, but only spider's threads, which every new idea of your knowledge rips apart. But no more serious talk about this, for it is possible to say something more cheerful.

3 The incredibly thoughtless fragmenting and fraying of all the fundamentals, their disintegration into a constantly flowing and dissolving becoming, the inexhaustible spinning away and historicizing of all that has come into being because of modern men, the great garden spiders in the knots of the world net, that may keep the moralists, the artists, the devout, as well as the statesman, busy and worried. Today it should for once cheer us up, because we see all this in the gleaming magical mirror of a philosophical writer of parodies, in whose head the age has come to an ironical consciousness of itself, a consciousness clear all the way to lunacy (to speak in Goethe's style). Hegel once taught us, "when the spirit makes a sudden turn, then we philosophers are still there." Our age has made a turn into self-irony, and, lo and behold, E. von Hartmann was also at hand and had written his famous Philosophy of the Unconscious, or, to speak more clearly, his philosophy of unconscious irony. Rarely have we read a more amusing invention and a more philosophically roguish prank than Hartmann's. Anyone who is not enlightened by him concerning Becoming, who is not really set right on the inside, is truly ripe for the state of existing in the past. The start and the goal of the world process, from the first motions of consciousness right to the state of being hurled back into nothingness, together with the precisely defined task of our generation for the world process, all presented from such a wittily inventive font of inspiration of the unconscious and illuminated with an apocalyptic light, with everything so deceptively imitative of a unsophisticated seriousness, as if it were really serious philosophy and not playful philosophy, such a totality makes its creator one of the pre-eminent writers of philosophical parodies of all times. Let us sacrifice on an altar, sacrifice to him, the inventor of a truly universal medicine, a lock of hair, to steal an expression of admiration from Schleiermacher. For what medicine would be healthier against the excess of historical culture than Hartmann's parody of all world history? 

4 If we want a correct matter-of-fact account of what Hartmann is telling us about the noxious tri-legged stool of unconscious irony, then we would say that he is telling us that our age would have to be just the way it is if humanity is to ever get seriously fed up with this existence. That is what we believe in our hearts. That frightening fossilizing of the age, that anxious rattling of the bones, which David Strauss has described for us in his naive way as the most beautiful reality, is justified in Hartmann not only retrospectively ex causis efficientibus [from efficient causes, i.e., as the result of certain mechanical causes], but even looking ahead, ex causa finali [from a final cause, i.e., as having a higher purpose]. The joker lets his light stream over the most recent periods of our time, and there finds that our age is very good, especially for the person who wants to endure as strongly as possible the indigestible nature of life and who cannot wish that doomsday comes quickly enough. Indeed, Hartmann calls the age which humanity is now approaching the "maturity of humanity." But that maturity is, according to his own description, the fortunate condition where there is still only " pure mediocrity" and culture is "some evening farce for the Berlin stockbroker," where "geniuses are no longer a requirement of the age, because that means casting pearls before swine or also because the age has progressed to a more important level, beyond the stage for which geniuses are appropriate," that is, to that stage of social development in which each worker "with a period of work which allows him sufficient leisure for his intellectual development leads a comfortable existence." You rogue of all rogues, you speak of the yearning of contemporary humanity; but you also know what sort of ghost will stand at the end of this maturity of humanity as the result of that intellectual development—disgust. Things stand in a state of visible wretchedness, but they will get even more wretched, "before our eyes the Antichrist reaches out further and further around him"—but things must be so, things must come about this way, because for all that we are on the best route to disgust with all existing things. "Thus, go forward vigorously into the world process as a worker in the vineyard of the Lord, for the process is the only thing which can lead to redemption." 

5 The vineyard of the Lord! The process! For redemption! Who does not see and hear the historical culture which knows the word "becoming" only as it intentionally disguises itself in a misshapen parody, as it expresses through the grotesque grimacing mask held up in front of its face the most willful things about itself! For what does this last mischievous summons to the workers in the vineyard essentially want from them? In what work are they to strive vigorously forwards? Or, to ask the question another way, what has the historically educated man, the modern fanatic swimming and drowning in the flood of becoming, still left to do, in order to reap that disgust, the expensive grapes of that vineyard? He has to do nothing other than continue to live as he has been living, to continue loving what he has loved, to continue to hate what he has hated, and to continue reading the newspapers which he has been reading. For him there is only one sin, to live differently from the way he has been living. But we are told the way he has been living with the excessive clarity of something written in stone by that famous page with the sentences in large print, in which the entire contemporary cultural rabble kingdom is caught up in a blind rapture and a frenzy of delight, because they believe they read their own justification, indeed, their own justification in the light of the apocalypse. For the unconscious writer of parody has required of each one of them "the complete dedication of his personality to the world process in pursuit of its goal, for the sake of the world's redemption," or still more pellucid, "the approval of the will to live is proclaimed as right only provisionally, for only in the full dedication to life and its pains, not in cowardly renunciation and drawing back, is there something to achieve for the world process," "the striving for individual denial of the will is just as foolish and useless, even more foolish, than suicide." "The thinking reader will also understand without further suggestions how a practical philosophy built on these principles would look and that such a philosophy cannot contain any falling apart but only the full reconciliation with life." 

6 The thinking reader will understand it. And people could misunderstand Hartmann! How unspeakably amusing it is that people misunderstand him! Should contemporary Germans be very sensitive? A trusty Englishman noticed their lack of a Delicacy of Perception, and even dared to say "in the German mind there does seem to be something splay, something blunt-edged, unhandy and infelicitous" Would the great German writer of parodies really contradict him? In fact, according to Hartmann's explanation, we are approaching "that ideal condition, where the race of mankind consciously makes his own history." But obviously we are quite far from that state, perhaps even more ideal, where humanity reads Hartmann's book with awareness. If that state ever arrives, then no person will let the word "World process" pass his lips any more, without these lips breaking into a smile. For with that phrase people will remember the time when Hartmann's parodying gospel with its stolidly middle-class notion of that "German mind," and with "the distorted seriousness of the owl," as Goethe puts it, was listened to, absorbed, disputed, honored, publicized, and canonized. But the world must go forward. The ideal condition cannot be dreamed up; it must be fought for and won. Only through joy does the way go to redemption, to redemption from that misunderstood owl-like seriousness. The time will come in which people wisely refrain from all constructions of the world process or even of human history, a time in which people in general no longer consider the masses but once again think about individuals who construct a sort of bridge over the chaotic storm of becoming. These people do not set out some sort of process, but live timelessly and contemporaneously, thanks to history which permits such a combination. They live like the republic of geniuses, about which Schopenhauer once explained that one giant shouts out to another across the barren intervals of time, and undisturbed by the wanton and noisy midgets who creep around them, the giants continue their lofty spiritual conversation. The task of history is to be a mediator between them and thus to provide an opportunity and the energies for the development of greatness. No, the goal of humanity cannot finally be anywhere but in its greatest examples.

7 By contrast, our comic person naturally states with that wonderful dialectic, just as worthy of admiration as its admirers, "With the idea of this development it would be inconsistent to ascribe to the world process an infinite length of time in the past, because then each and every imaginable development must have already been gone through; that, however, is not the case (O you rascal). And we are no more able to assign to the process an infinite future period. Both of these raise the idea of development to a final goal (O, once again, you rascal) and makes the world process like the water drawing of the Danaids. The complete victory of the logical over the illogical (O, you rascal of all rascals), however, must coincide with the temporal end of the world process, the day of judgment." No, you lucidly mocking spirit, as long as the illogical still prevails to the extent it does today, for example, as long as people can still talk of the "world process" with a common understanding, in the way you talk, judgment day is still a long way off. For it is still too joyful on this earth; many illusions are still blooming (for example, the illusion of your contemporaries about you). We are not yet sufficiently ripe to be flung back into your nothingness. For we believe that things here will get even more amusing when people first begin to understand you, you misunderstood unconscious man. However, if in spite of this, disgust should come with power, just as you have predicted to your readers, if you should be right in your description of your present and future (and no one has hated both with such disgust as you have) then I am happily prepared to vote with the majority, in the way you have proposed, that next Saturday evening at twelve o'clock precisely your world will go under, and our decree may conclude that from tomorrow on there will be no more time and no newspaper will appear any more. However, perhaps the result will fail to materialize, and we have made our decree in vain. But then at any rate we will not lack the time for a beautiful experiment. We take a balance scale and put in one scale pan Hartmann's unconsciousness and in the other Hartmann's world process. There are people who think that they will both weigh the same, for in each scale pan would lie an equally poor quotation and an equally good jest. When people first come to understand Hartmann's jest, then no one will use Hartmann's talk of "world process" as anything but a joke. In fact, it is high time we moved forward to proclaim satirical malice against the dissipation of the historical sense, against the excessive pleasure in the process at the expense of being and living, against the senseless shifting of all perspectives. And in praise of the author of the Philosophy of the Unconscious it should always be repeated that he was the first to succeed in registering keenly the ridiculousness of the idea of the "world process" and to allow an even keener appreciation of that ridiculousness through the particular seriousness of his treatment. Why the "world" is there, why "humanity" is there—these should not concern us at all for the time being. For it may be that we want to make a joke. The presumptuousness of the small human worm is simultaneously the funniest and the most joyful thing on this earthly stage. But why you, as an individual, are there, that is something I am asking you. And if no one else can say it for you, then at least try once to justify the sense of your existence, as it were, a posteriori by establishing for yourself a purpose, a final goal, a "To this end," and a high and noble "To this end." If you are destroyed by this, well, I know no better purpose for life than to die in service of the great and the impossible, animae magnae prodigus [a generous man with a great spirit].  If by contrast the doctrine of the sovereign becoming, of the fluidity of all ideas, types, and styles, of the lack of all cardinal differences between man and animal (doctrines which I consider true but deadly) are foisted on people for another generation with the frenzied instruction which is now customary, then it should take no one by surprise if people destroy themselves in egotistical trifles and misery, ossifying themselves in their self-absorption, initially falling apart and ceasing to be a people. Then, in place of this condition, perhaps systems of individual egotism, alliances for the systematic larcenous exploitation of those non-members of the alliance and similar creations of utilitarian nastiness will step forward onto the future scene. Let people just proceed to prepare these creations, to write history from the standpoint of the masses and to seek for those laws in it which are to be inferred from the needs of these masses, and for the laws of motion of the lowest clay and loam layers of society. To me, the masses seem to be worth a glance in only in three respects: first as blurred copies of great men, presented on bad paper with worn out printing plates, then as the resistance against the great men, and finally as working implements of the great. For the rest, let the devil and statistics carry them off! How might statistics demonstrate that there could be laws in history? Laws? Yes, statistics prove how coarse and disgustingly uniform the masses are. Are we to call the effects of the powerful forces of stupidity, mimicry, love, and hunger laws? Now, we are willing to concede that point, but by the same token the principle then is established that as far as there are laws in history, they are worth nothing and history is worth nothing. However, precisely this sort of history nowadays is generally esteemed, the history which takes the large mass tendencies as the important and principal thing in history and considers all great men only like the clearest examples of bubbles which become visible in the watery flood. Thus, the mass is to produce greatness out of itself, and chaos is to produce order from itself. At the end, of course, the hymn is sung to the productive masses. Everything which has preoccupied such masses for a long time is then called "Great" and, as people say, "a historical power" has come into being. But is that not a case of quite deliberately exchanging quantity and quality? When the podgy masses have found some idea or other (for example, a religious idea) quite adequate, has tenaciously defended it, and dragged it along for centuries, then, and only then, the discoverer and founder of that idea is to be great. But why? The most noble and highest things have no effect at all on the masses. The historical success of Christianity, its historical power, tenacity, and duration, all that fortunately proves nothing with respect to the greatness of its founder. Basically, that would act as a proof against him. But between him and that historical success lies a very earthly and dark layer of passion, error, greed for power and honor, the persisting powers of the imperium romanum, a layer from which Christianity acquired that earthy taste and scrap of ground which made possible its perseverance in this world and, as it were, gave it its durability. Greatness should not depend upon success. Demosthenes had greatness, although at the same time he had no success. The purest and most genuine followers of Christianity were always more likely to put their worldly success, their so-called "historical power," into question and to restrict it rather than to promote it. For they trained themselves to stand outside "the world" and did not worry themselves about the "progress of the Christian idea." For this reason, for the most part they are also unknown to history and have remained unnamed. To express this in a Christian manner: in this way the devil is the regent of the world and the master of success and progress. He is in all historical powers the essential power, and so it will substantially remain, although it may for some time sound quite painful to ears which have become accustomed to the idolatry of success and historical power. For in this matter these people have practiced giving things new names and have rechristened even the devil. It is certainly a time of great danger: human beings seem to be close to discovering that the egotism of the individual, the group, or the masses was the lever of historical movements at all times. However, at the same time, people are not at all worried by this discovery. On the contrary, people declaim: Egotism is to be our God. With this new faith people are on the point of erecting, with the clearest of intentions, future history on egotism. But it is only to be a clever egotism subject to a few limitations, in order that it may consolidate itself in an enduring way. It is the sort of egotism which studies history just in order to acquaint itself with unclever egotism. Through this study people have learned that the state has received a very special mission in the established world system of egotism: the state is to become the patron of all clever egotism, so that, with its military and police forces, it may protect against the frightening outbreak of the unintelligent egotism. For the same purpose history, that is, the history of animals and human beings, is also stirred into the popular masses and working classes, who are dangerous because they are unintelligent, for people know that a small grain of historical education is capable of breaking the rough and stupefied instincts and desires or to divert them into the path of improved egotism. In summa: people are paying attention now, to express oneself with E. von Hartmann, " to a deliberate looking into the future for a practical homely structure in their earthly home region." The same writer calls such a period the "full maturity of mankind" and makes fun about what is now called "Man," as if with that term one is to understand only the sober selfish person; in the same way he also prophecies that after such a period of full maturity there comes to this "Man" an appropriate old age, but apparently only with this idea to vent his ridicule on our contemporary old men. For he speaks of the mature peacefulness with which they "review all the chaotic stormy suffering of their past lives and understand the vanity of the previously assumed goals of their striving." No, a maturity of this sly egotism of a historical culture is appropriate for an old age of hostile craving and disgraceful clinging to life and then a final act, with its 

Last scene of all
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childhood and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
[From Shakespeare's As You Like It, II, vii.]

8 Whether the dangers of our life and our culture now come from these desolate, toothless and tasteless old men, whether they come from those so-called "Men" of Hartmann's, in opposition to both we wish to hold on with our teeth to our right to our youth and not to grow tired of defending, in our youth, the future against these forceful portrayers of the future. In this fight, however, we would have to acknowledge a particularly unpleasant perception: that people intentionally promote the excesses of the historical sense from which the present time suffers, they encourage them, and they use them. 

9 However, people use history against the young, in order to train them for that maturity of egotism which is striven for everywhere; people use it to break the natural aversion of youth through a transfiguring, that is to say, a magically scientific illumination of that manly-effeminate egotism. Yes, people know what a certain predominance of history is capable of; people know it only too well: to uproot the strongest instincts of youth, fire, defiance, forgetting of the self, to dampen down the heat of their sense of right and wrong, to hold back or repress the desire to mature slowly with the contrary desire to be finished quickly, to be useful and productive, to infect the honesty and boldness of the feelings with doubts. Indeed, history is itself capable of deceiving the young about their most beautiful privilege, about their power to cultivate in themselves with complete conviction a great idea and to allow an even greater idea to grow forth out of it. A certain excess of history is capable of all this. We have seen it. And this is the reason: through its incessant shifting of the horizons of significance, through the elimination of a surrounding atmosphere, it no longer allows a person to perceive and to act unhistorically. He then draws himself from the infinity of his horizon back into himself, into the smallest egotistical region and there must wither away and dry up. He probably achieves cleverness in this, but never wisdom. He permits himself inner conversations, calculates, and gets along well with the facts, does not boil over, winks, and understands how to seek out his own advantage or that of his party amid the advantages and disadvantages of strangers; he forgets superfluous modesty and thus step by step becomes a "Man" and an "Old Man" on the Hartmann model. But he should become this—that is the precise sense of the cynical demand nowadays for "the complete dedication of the personality to the world process," so far as his goal is concerned, for the sake of the redemption of the world, as that rascal E. Hartmann assures us. Now, the will and goal of these Hartmann "men" and "old men" is indeed hardly the redemption of the world. Certainly the world would be more redeemed if it were redeemed from these men and old men. For then the kingdom of youth would come.