Human, All Too Human Volume Ii Part 2

12.

THE METAPHYSICIANS' KNAPSACK.-To all who talk so boastfully of the scientific basis of their metaphysics it is best to make no reply. It is enough to tug at the bundle that they rather shyly keep hidden behind their backs. If one succeeds in lifting it, the results of that "scientific basis" come to light, to their great confusion: a dear little "G.o.d," a genteel immortality, perhaps a little spiritualism, and in any case a complicated ma.s.s of poor-sinners'-misery and pharisee-arrogance.

13.

OCCASIONAL HARMFULNESS OF KNOWLEDGE.-The utility involved in the unchecked investigation of knowledge is so constantly proved in a hundred different ways that one must remember to include in the bargain the subtler and rarer damage which individuals must suffer on that account. The chemist cannot avoid occasionally being poisoned or burnt at his experiments. What applies to the chemist, is true of the whole of our culture. This, it may be added, clearly shows that knowledge should provide itself with healing balsam against burns and should always have antidotes ready against poisons.

14.

THE CRAVING OF THE PHILISTINE.-The Philistine thinks that his most urgent need is a purple patch or turban of metaphysics, nor will he let it slip.

Yet he would look less ridiculous without this adornment.

15.

ENTHUSIASTS.-With all that enthusiasts say in favour of their gospel or their master they are defending themselves, however much they comport themselves as the judges and not the accused: because they are involuntarily reminded almost at every moment that they are exceptions and have to a.s.sert their legitimacy.

16.

THE GOOD SEDUCES TO LIFE.-All good things, even all good books that are written against life, are strong means of attraction to life.

17.

THE HAPPINESS OF THE HISTORIAN.-"When we hear the hair-splitting metaphysicians and prophets of the after-world speak, we others feel indeed that we are the 'poor in spirit,' but that ours is the heavenly kingdom of change, with spring and autumn, summer and winter, and theirs the after-world, with its grey, everlasting frosts and shadows." Thus soliloquised a man as he walked in the morning suns.h.i.+ne, a man who in his pursuit of history has constantly changed not only his mind but his heart.

In contrast to the metaphysicians, he is happy to harbour in himself not an "immortal soul" but many _mortal_ souls.

18.

THREE VARIETIES OF THINKERS.-There are streaming, flowing, trickling mineral springs, and three corresponding varieties of thinkers. The layman values them by the volume of the water, the expert by the contents of the water-in other words, by the elements in them that are not water.

19.

THE PICTURE OF LIFE.-The task of painting the picture of life, often as it has been attempted by poets and philosophers, is nevertheless irrational.

Even in the hands of the greatest artist-thinkers, pictures and miniatures of one life only-their own-have come into being, and indeed no other result is possible. While in the process of developing, a thing that develops, cannot mirror itself as fixed and permanent, as a _definite object_.

20.

TRUTH WILL HAVE NO G.o.dS BEFORE IT.-The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

21.

WHERE SILENCE IS REQUIRED.-If we speak of freethinking as of a highly dangerous journey over glaciers and frozen seas, we find that those who do not care to travel on this track are offended, as if they had been reproached with cowardice and weak knees. The difficult, which we find to be beyond our powers, must not even be mentioned in our presence.

22.

_Historia in Nuce._-The most serious parody I ever heard was this: "In the beginning was the nonsense, and the nonsense was with G.o.d, and the nonsense was G.o.d."(4)

23.

INCURABLE.-The idealist is incorrigible: if he be thrown out of his Heaven, he makes himself a suitable ideal out of h.e.l.l. Disillusion him, and lo! he will embrace disillusionment with no less ardour than he recently embraced hope. In so far as his impulse belongs to the great incurable impulses of human nature, he can bring about tragic destinies and later become a subject for tragedy himself, for such tragedies as deal with the incurable, implacable, inevitable in the lot and character of man.