No More Learning

Perhaps, in the
short time now left us before the arrival of your
friend, you will be good enough to tell us some-
thing of your experiences of university life, so as
to close the circle of observations, to which we
were involuntarily urged, respecting our educational
institutions. We may also be allowed to remind
you that you, at an earlier stage of your remarks,
gave me the promise that you would do so.
Starting with the public school, you claimed for it
an extraordinary importance: all other institutions
must be judged by its standard, according as its
aim has been proposed; and, if its aim happens
to be wrong, all the others have to suffer. Such
an importance cannot now be adopted by the
universities as a standard; for, by their present
system of grouping, they would be nothing more
than institutions where public school students
might go through finishing courses. You promised
me that you would explain this in greater detail
later on: perhaps our student friends can bear
witness to that, if they chanced to overhear that
part of our conversation. "
"We can testify to that," I put in. The
philosopher then turned to us and said: "Well,
if you really did listen attentively, perhaps you
can now tell me what you understand by the ex-
pression 'the present aim of our public schools. '
Besides, you are still near enough to this sphere
to judge my opinions by the standard of your own
impressions and experiences. "
My friend instantly answered, quickly and


## p. 123 (#143) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 123
smartly, as was his habit, in the following words:
"Until now we had always thought that the sole
object of the public school was to prepare students
for the universities. This preparation, however,
should tend to make us independent enough for
the extraordinarily free position of a university
student; * for it seems to me that a student, to a
greater extent than any other individual, has more
to decide and settle for himself. He must guide
himself on a wide, utterly unknown path for many
years, so the public school must do its best to
render him independent. "
I continued the argument where my friend left
off. "It even seems to me," I said, "that every-
thing for which you have justly blamed the public
school is only a necessary means employed to
imbue the youthful student with some kind of in-
dependence, or at all events with the belief that
there is such a thing. The teaching of German
composition must be at the service of this inde-
pendence: the individual must enjoy his opinions
and carry out his designs early, so that he may be
able to travel alone and without crutches. In this
way he will soon be encouraged to produce original
work, and still sooner to take up criticism and
analysis. If Latin and Greek studies prove insuffi-
cient to make a student an enthusiastic admirer
* The reader may be reminded that a German university
student is subject to very few restrictions, and that much
greater liberty is allowed him than is permitted to English
students. Nietzsche did not approve of this extraordinary
freedom, which, in his opinion, led to intellectual law-
lessness. —Tr.


## p. 124 (#144) ############################################

124 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
of antiquity, the methods with which such studies
are pursued are at all events sufficient to awaken
the scientific sense, the desire for a more strict
causality of knowledge, the passion for finding out
and inventing. Only think how many young men
may be lured away for ever to the attractions of
science by a new reading of some sort which they
have snatched up with youthful hands at the
public school! The public school boy must learn
and collect a great deal of varied information:
hence an impulse will gradually be created, accom-
panied with which he will continue to learn and
collect independently at the university. We
believe, in short, that the aim of the public school
is to prepare and accustom the student always to
live and learn independently afterwards, just as
beforehand he must live and learn dependently at
the public school. "
The philosopher laughed, not altogether good-
naturedly, and said: "You have just given me a
fine example of that independence. And it is this
very independence that shocks me so much, and
makes any place in the neigbourhood of present-
day students so disagreeable to me. Yes, my
good friends, you are perfect, you are mature;
nature has cast you and broken up the moulds,
and your teachers must surely gloat over you.
What liberty, certitude, and independence of
judgment; what novelty and freshness of insight!
You sit in judgment—and the cultures of all ages
run away. The scientific sense is kindled, and
rises out of you like a flame—let people be care-
ful, lest you set them alight! If I go further into


## p. 125 (#145) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 125
the question and look at your professors, I again
find the same independence in a greater and even
more charming degree: never was there a time
so full of the most sublime independent folk,
never was slavery more detested, the slavery of
education and culture included.
"Permit me, however, to measure this independ-
ence of yours by the standard of this culture, and
to consider your university as an educational
institution and nothing else. If a foreigner desires
to know something of the methods of our uni-
versities, he asks first of all with emphasis: 'How
is the student connected with the university? '
We answer: 'By the ear, as a hearer. ' The
foreigner is astonished. 'Only by the ear? ' he
repeats. 'Only by the ear,' we again reply. The
student hears. When he speaks, when he sees,
when he is in the company of his companions
when he takes up some branch of art: in short,
when he lives, he is independent, i. e. not dependent
upon the educational institution. The student
very often writes down something while he hears;
and it is only at these rare moments that he hangs
to the umbilical cord of his alma mater. He him-
self may choose what he is to listen to; he is not
bound to believe what is said; he may close his
ears if he does not care to hear. This is the
'acroamatic' method of teaching.
"The teacher, however, speaks to these listening
students. Whatever else he may think and do
is cut off from the student's perception by an
immense gap. The professor often reads when
he is speaking. As a rule he wishes to have as


## p. 126 (#146) ############################################

126 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
many hearers as possible; he is not content to
have a few, and he is never satisfied with one
only. One speaking mouth, with many ears, and
half as many writing hands—there you have
to all appearances, the external academical
apparatus; the university engine of culture set in
motion. Moreover, the proprietor of this one
mouth is severed from and independent of the
owners of the many ears; and this double in-
dependence is enthusiastically designated as
'academical freedom. ' And again, that this free-
dom may be broadened still more, the one may
speak what he likes and the other may hear what
he likes; except that, behind both of them, at a
modest distance, stands the State, with all the
intentness of a supervisor, to remind the professors
and students from time to time that it is the aim,
the goal, the be-all and end-all, of this curious
speaking and hearing procedure.
"We, who must be permitted to regard this
phenomenon merely as an educational institution,
will then inform the inquiring foreigner that what
is called 'culture' in our universities merely pro-
ceeds from the mouth to the ear, and that every
kind of training for culture is, as I said before,
merely 'acroamatic. ' Since, however, not only
the hearing, but also the choice of what to hear is
left to the independent decision of the liberal-
minded and unprejudiced student, and since, again,
he can withhold all belief and authority from what
he hears, all training for culture, in the true sense
of the term, reverts to himself: and the independ-
ence it was thought desirable to aim at in the


## p. 127 (#147) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 127
public school now presents itself with the highest
possible pride as 'academical self-training for
culture,' and struts about in its brilliant plumage.
"Happy times, when youths are clever and
cultured enough to teach themselves how to walk!
Unsurpassable public schools, which succeed in
implanting independence in the place of the de-
pendence, discipline, subordination, and obedience
implanted by former generations that thought it
their duty to drive away all the bumptiousness
of independence! Do you clearly see, my good
friends, why I, from the standpoint of culture,
regard the present type of university as a mere
appendage to the public school? The culture
instilled by the public school passes through the
gates of the university as something ready and
entire, and with its own particular claims: it
demands, it gives laws, it sits in judgment. Do
not, then, let yourselves be deceived in regard to
the cultured student; for he, in so far as he thinks
he has absorbed the blessings of education, is
merely the public school boy as moulded by the
hands of his teacher: one who, since his academi-
cal isolation, and after he has left the public school,
has therefore been deprived of all further guidance
to culture, that from now on he may begin to live
by himself and be free.
"Free! Examine this freedom, ye observers
of human nature! Erected upon the sandy,
crumbling foundation of our present public school
culture, its building slants to one side, trembling
before the whirlwind's blast. Look at the free
student, the herald of self-culture: guess what his


## p. 128 (#148) ############################################

128 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
instincts are; explain him from his needs! How
does his culture appear to you when you measure
it by three graduated scales: first, by his need for
philosophy; second, by his instinct for art; and
third, by Greek and Roman antiquity as the in-
carnate categorical imperative of all culture?
"Man is so much encompassed about by the
most serious and difficult problems that, when they
are brought to his attention in the right way, he
is impelled betimes towards a lasting kind of philo-
sophical wonder, from which alone, as a fruitful
soil, a deep and noble culture can grow forth. His
own experiences lead him most frequently to the
consideration of these problems; and it is especially
in the tempestuous period of youth that every
personal event shines with a double gleam, both
as the exemplification of a triviality and, at the
same time, of an eternally surprising problem,
deserving of explanation. At this age, which, as
it were, sees his experiences encircled with meta-
physical rainbows, man is, in the highest degree,
in need of a guiding hand, because he has suddenly
and almost instinctively convinced himself of the
—ambiguity of existence, and has lost the firm sup-
port of the beliefs he has hitherto held.
"This natural state of great need must of course
be looked upon as the worst enemy of that beloved
independence for which the cultured youth of the
present day should be trained. All these sons of
the present, who have raised the banner of the
'self-understood,' are therefore straining every
nerve to crush down these feelings of youth, to
cripple them, to mislead them, or to stop their


## p. 129 (#149) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 129
growth altogether; and the favourite means em-
ployed is to paralyse that natural philosophic
impulse by the so-called "historical culture. " A
still recent system,* which has won for itself a
world-wide scandalous reputation, has discovered
the formula for this self-destruction of philosophy;
and now, wherever the historical view of things
is found, we can see such a naive recklessness
in bringing the irrational to 'rationality' and
'reason' and making black look like white, that
one is even inclined to parody Hegel's phrase and
ask: 'Is all this irrationality real? ' Ah, it is
only the irrational that now seems to be 'real,'
i. e. really doing something; and to bring this
kind of reality forward for the elucidation of history
is reckoned as true ' historical culture. ' It is into
this that the philosophical impulse of our time has
pupated itself; and the peculiar philosophers of
our universities seem to have conspired to fortify
and confirm the young academicians in it.
"It has thus come to pass that, in place of a
profound interpretation of the eternally recurring
problems, a historical—yea, even philological—
balancing and questioning has entered into the
educational arena: what this or that philosopher
has or has not thought; whether this or that essay
or dialogue is to be ascribed to him or not; or
even whether this particular reading of a classical
text is to be preferred to that. It is to neutral |
preoccupations with philosophy like these that our
students in philosophical seminaries are stimulated;
* Hegel's. —Tr.
I


## p. 130 (#150) ############################################

130 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
whence I have long accustomed myself to regard
such science as a mere ramification of philology,
and to value its representatives in proportion as
they are good or bad philologists. So it has come
about that philosophy itself is banished from the
universites: wherewith our first question as to
the value of our universities from the standpoint
of culture is answered.
"In what relationship these universities stand
to art cannot be acknowledged without shame:
in none at all. Of artistic thinking, learning,
striving, and comparison, we do not find in them
a single trace; and no one would seriously think
that the voice of the universities would ever be
raised to help the advancement of the higher
national schemes of art. Whether an individual
teacher feels himself to be personally qualified for
art, or whether a professorial chair has been estab-
lished for the training of sestheticising literary
historians, does not enter into the question at all:
the fact remains that the university is not in a
position to control the young academician by
severe artistic discipline, and that it must let
happen what happens, willy-nilly—and this is the
cutting answer to the immodest pretensions of the
universities to represent themselves as the highest
educational institutions.
"We find our academical 'independents' grow-
ing up without philosophy and without art; and
how can they then have any need to 'go in for'
the Greeks and Romans ? —for we need now no
longer pretend, like our forefathers, to have any
great regard for Greece and Rome, which, besides,
\


## p. 131 (#151) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 131
sit enthroned in almost inaccessible loneliness and
majestic alienation. The universities of the present
time consequently give no heed to almost extinct
educational predilections like these, and found
their philological chairs for the training of new
and exclusive generations of philologists, who on
their part give similar philological preparation in
the public schools—a vicious circle which is use-
ful neither to philologists nor to public schools,
but which above all accuses the university for the
third time of not being what it so pompously
proclaims itself to be—a training ground for
culture. Take away the Greeks, together with
philosophy and art, and what ladder have you
still remaining by which to ascend to culture?
For, if you attempt to clamber up the ladder
without these helps, you must permit me to inform
you that all your learning will lie like a heavy
burden on your shoulders rather than furnishing
you with wings and bearing you aloft.
"If you honest thinkers have honourably
remained in these three stages of intelligence,
and have perceived that, in comparison with the
Greeks, the modern student is unsuited to and
unprepared for philosophy, that he has no truly
artistic instincts, and is merely a barbarian be-
lieving himself to be free, you will not on this
account turn away from him in disgust, although
you will, of course, avoid coming into too close
proximity with him. For, as he now is, he is not
to blame: as you have perceived him he is the
dumb but terrible accuser of those who are to
blame.
f


## p. 132 (#152) ############################################

132 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
"You should understand the secret language
spoken by this guilty innocent, and then you, too,
would learn to understand the inward state of
that independence which is paraded outwardly
with so much ostentation. Not one of these
noble, well-qualified youths has remained a
stranger to that restless, tiring, perplexing, and
debilitating need of culture: during his university
term, when he is apparently the only free man in
a crowd of servants and officials, he atones for
this huge illusion of freedom by ever-growing
inner doubts and convictions. He feels that he
can neither lead nor help himself; and then he
plunges hopelessly into the workaday world and
endeavours to ward off such feelings by study.
The most trivial bustle fastens itself upon him;
he sinks under his heavy burden. Then he
suddenly pulls himself together; he still feels
some of that power within him which would have
enabled him to keep his head above water. Pride
and noble resolutions assert themselves and grow
in him. He is afraid of sinking at this early
stage into the limits of a narrow profession; and
now he grasps at pillars and railings alongside
the stream that he may not be swept away by
the current. In vain! for these supports give
way, and he finds he has clutched at broken
reeds. In low and despondent spirits he sees
his plans vanish away in smoke. His condition
is undignified, even dreadful: he keeps between
the two extremes of work at high pressure and
a state of melancholy enervation. Then he be-
comes tired, lazy, afraid of work, fearful of


## p. 133 (#153) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 133
everything great; and hating himself. He looks
into his own breast, analyses his faculties, and
finds he is only peering into hollow and chaotic
vacuity. And then he once more falls from the
heights of his eagerly-desired self-knowledge into
an ironical scepticism. He divests his struggles
,^of their real importance, and feels himself ready
, to undertake any class of useful work, however
degrading. He now seeks consolation in hasty
and incessant action so as to hide himself from
himself. And thus his helplessness and the want
of a leader towards culture drive him from one
form of life into another: but doubt, elevation,
worry, hope, despair — everything flings him
hither and thither as a proof that all the stars "1
above him by which he could have guided his J
ship have set.
"There you have the picture of this glorious
independence of yours, of that academical freedom,
reflected in the highest minds—those which are
truly in need of culture, compared with whom
that other crowd of indifferent natures does not
count at all, natures that delight in their freedom
in a purely barbaric sense. For these latter show
by their base smugness and their narrow pro-
fessional limitations that this is the right element
for them: against which there is nothing to be
said. Their comfort, however, does not counter-
balance the suffering of one single young man
who has an inclination for culture and feels the
need of a guiding hand, and who at last, in a
moment of discontent, throws down the reins and
begins to despise himself. This is the guiltless


## p. 134 (#154) ############################################

134 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
innocent; for who has saddled him with the
unbearable burden of standing alone? Who has
urged him on to independence at an age when
one of the most natural and peremptory needs of
youth is, so to speak, a self-surrendering to great
leaders and an enthusiastic following in the foot-
steps of the masters?
"It is repulsive to consider the effects to which
the violent suppression of such noble natures may
lead. He who surveys the greatest supporters
and friends of that pseudo-culture of the present
time, which I so greatly detest, will only too
frequently find among them such degenerate and
shipwrecked men of culture, driven by inward
despair to violent enmity against culture, when,
in a moment of desperation, there was no one at
hand to show them how to attain it. It is not
the worst and most insignificant people whom we
afterwards find acting as journalists and writers
for the press in the metamorphosis of despair:
the spirit of some well-known men of letters
might even be described, and justly, as degenerate
studentdom. How else, for example, can we
reconcile that once well-known 'young Germany'
with its present degenerate successors? Here we
discover a need of culture which, so to speak, has
grown mutinous, and which finally breaks out into
the passionate cry: I am culture! There, before
the gates of the public schools and universities, we
can see the culture which has been driven like a
fugitive away from these institutions. True, this
culture is without the erudition of those establish-
ments, but assumes nevertheless the mien of a


## p. 135 (#155) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 135
sovereign; so that, for example, Gutzkow the
novelist might he pointed to as the best example
of a modern public school boy turned aesthete.
Such a degenerate man of culture is a serious
matter, and it is a horrifying spectacle for us to
see that all our scholarly and journalistic publicity
bears the stigma of this degeneracy upon it. How
else can we do justice to our learned men, who
pay untiring attention to, and even co-operate in
the journalistic corruption of the people, how else
than by the acknowledgment that their learning
must fill a want of their own similar to that filled
by novel-writing in the case of others: i. e. a
flight from one's self, an ascetic extirpation of
their cultural impulses, a desperate attempt to
annihilate their own individuality. From our
degenerate literary art, as also from that itch for
scribbling of our learned men which has now
reached such alarming proportions, wells forth
the same sigh: Oh that we could forget ourselves!
The attempt fails: memory, not yet suffocated by
the mountains of printed paper under which it is
buried, keeps on repeating from time to time:,
'A degenerate man of culture! Born for
culture and brought up to non-culture! Help-
less barbarian, slave of the day, chained to the
present moment, and thirsting for something—
ever thirsting! '
"Oh, the miserable guilty innocents! For they
lack something, a need that every one of them must \
have felt: a real educational institution, which could
give them goals, masters, methods, companions;
and from the midst of which the invigorating and


## p. 136 (#156) ############################################

136 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
uplifting breath of the true German spirit
would inspire them. Thus they perish in the
wilderness; thus they degenerate into enemies
of that spirit which is at bottom closely allied
to their own; thus they pile fault upon fault
higher than any former generation ever did,
soiling the clean, desecrating the holy, canon-
ising the false and spurious. It is by them
that you can judge the educational strength of
our universities, asking yourselves, in all serious-
ness, the question: What cause did you promote
through them? The German power of invention,
the noble German desire for knowledge, the qualify-
ing of the German for diligence and self-sacrifice
—splendid and beautiful things, which other
nations envy you; yea, the finest and most
magnificent things in the world, if only that true
German spirit overspread them like a dark thunder-
cloud, pregnant with the blessing of forthcoming
rain. But you are afraid of this spirit, and it has
therefore come to pass that a cloud of another sort
has thrown a heavy and oppressive atmosphere
around your universities, in which your noble-
minded scholars breathe wearily and with
difficulty.
"A tragic, earnest, and instructive attempt was
made in the present century to destroy the cloud
I have last referred to, and also to turn the people's
looks in the direction of the high welkin of the
German spirit. In all the annals of our universities
we cannot find any trace of a second attempt, and
he who would impressively demonstrate what is
now necessary for us will never find a better


## p. 137 (#157) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. r
example. I refer to the old, primitive Burschen-
schaft*
"When the war of liberation was over, the
young student brought back home the unlooked-
for and worthiest trophy of battle—the freedom
of his fatherland. Crowned with this laurel he
thought of something still nobler. On returning
to the university, and finding that he was breathing
heavily, he became conscious of that oppressive
and contaminated air which overhung the culture
of the university. He suddenly saw, with horror-
struck, wide-open eyes, the non-German barbarism,
hiding itself in the guise of all kinds of schol-
asticism; he suddenly discovered that his own
leaderless comrades were abandoned to a repulsive
kind of youthful intoxication. And he was ex-
asperated. He rose with the same aspect of proud
indignation as Schiller may have had when reciting
the Rodders to his companions: and if he had
prefaced his drama with the picture of a lion, and
the motto, ' in tyrannos,' his follower himself was
that very lion preparing to spring; and every
'tyrant' began to tremble. Yes, if these indignant
youths were looked at superficially and timorously,
they would seem to be little else than Schiller's
robbers: their talk sounded so wild to the anxious
listener that Rome and Sparta seemed mere
nunneries compared with these new spirits. The
consternation raised by these young men was
indeed far more general than had ever been
* A German students' association, of liberal principles,
founded for patriotic purposes at Jena in 1813.


## p. 138 (#158) ############################################

FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.

caused by those other ' robbers' in court circles,
of which a German prince, according to Goethe,
is said to have expressed the opinion: 'If he
had been God, and had foreseen the appearance
of the Robbers, he would not have created the
world. '
"Whence came the incomprehensible intensity
of this alarm? For those young men were the
bravest, purest, and most talented of the band both
in dress and habits: they were distinguished by a
magnanimous recklessness and a noble simplicity.
A divine command bound them together to seek
harder and more pious superiority: what could be
feared from them? To what extent this fear was
merely deceptive or simulated or really true is
something that will probably never be exactly
known ; but a strong instinct spoke out of this fear
and out of its disgraceful and senseless persecution.
This instinct hated the Burschenschaft with an
intense hatred for two reasons: first of all on ac-
count of its organisation, as being the first attempt
to construct a true educational institution, and,
secondly, on account of the spirit of this in-
stitution, that earnest, manly, stern, and daring
German spirit; that spirit of the miner's son,
Luther, which has come down to us unbroken from
the time of the Reformation.
"Think of the fate of the Burschenschaft when
I ask you, Did the German university then under-
stand that spirit, as even the German princes in
their hatred appear to have understood it? Did
the alma mater boldly and resolutely throw her pro-
tecting arms round her noble sons and say: 'You
\


## p. 139 (#159) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 139
must kill me first, before you touch my children? '
I hear your answer—by it you may judge whether
the German university is an educational institution
or not.
"The student knew at that time at what depth
a true educational institution must take root,
namely, in an inward renovation and inspiration of
the purest moral faculties. And this must always
be repeated to the student's credit. He may have
learnt on the field of battle what he could learn
least of all in the sphere of ' academical freedom':
that great leaders are necessary, and that all cul-
ture begins with obedience. And in the midst of
victory, with his thoughts turned to his liberated
fatherland, he made the vow that he would remain
German. German! Now he learnt to understand
his Tacitus; now he grasped the signification of
Kant's categorical imperative; now he was enrap-
tured by Weber's " Lyre and Sword " songs. * The
gates of philosophy, of art, yea, even of antiquity,
opened unto him ; and in one of the most memor-
* Weber set one or two of Korner's " Lyre and Sword"
songs to music. The reader will remember that these
lectures were delivered when Nietzsche was only in his
twenty-eighth year. Like Goethe, he afterwards freed him-
self from all patriotic trammels and prejudices, and aimed at
a general European culture. Luther, Schiller, Kant, Korner,
and Weber did not continue to be the objects of his venera-
tion for long : indeed, they were afterwards violently attacked
by him, and the superficial student who speaks of inconsist-
ency may be reminded of Nietzsche's phrase in stanza 12 of
the epilogue to Beyond Good and Evil: "Nur wer sich
wandelt, bleibt mit mir verwandt"; i. e. only the changing
ones have anything in common with me. —Tr.


## p. 140 (#160) ############################################

I40 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
able of bloody acts, the murder of Kotzebue, he
revenged—with penetrating insight and enthusi-
astic short-sightedness—his one and only Schiller,
prematurely consumed by the opposition of the
stupid world: Schiller, who could have been his
leader, master, and organiser, and whose loss he
now bewailed with such heartfelt resentment.
"For that was the doom of those promising
students: they did not find the leaders they wanted.
They gradually became uncertain, discontented,
and at variance among themselves; unlucky in-
discretions showed only too soon that the one
indispensability of powerful minds was lacking
in the midst of them: and, while that mysterious
murder gave evidence of astonishing strength, it
gave no less evidence of the grave danger arising
from the want of a leader. They were leaderless—
therefore they perished.
"For I repeat it, my friends! All culture begins
with the very opposite of that which is now so
highly esteemed as 'academical freedom': with
'obedience, with subordination, with discipline, with
subjection. And as leaders must have followers so
also must the followers have a leader—here a certain
I reciprocal predisposition prevails in the hierarchy
i of spirits: yea, a kind of pre-established harmony.
This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things
naturally tend, is always threatened by that pseudo-
culture which now sits on the throne of the present.
It endeavours either to bring the leaders down to i
the level of its own servitude or else to cast them
out altogether. It seduces the followers when they
are seeking their predestined leader, and overcomes


## p. 141 (#161) ############################################

FIFTH LECTURE. 141
them by the fumes of its narcotics. When, how-
ever, in spite of all this, leader and followers have
at last met, wounded and sore, there is an impas-
sioned feeling of rapture, like the echo of an ever-
sounding lyre, a feeling which I can let you divine
only by means of a simile.
"Have you ever, at a musical rehearsal, looked
at the strange, shrivelled-up, good-natured species
of men who usually form the German orchestra?
What changes and fluctuations we see in that
capricious goddess ' form '! What noses and ears,
what clumsy, danse macabre movements! Just
imagine for a moment that you were deaf, and had
never dreamed of the existence of sound or music,
and that you were looking upon the orchestra as
a company of actors, and trying to enjoy their
performance as a drama and nothing more.
Undisturbed by the idealising effect of the
sound, you could never see enough of the stern,
medieval, wood-cutting movement of this comical
spectacle, this harmonious parody on the homo
sapiens.
"Now, on the other hand, assume that your
musical sense has returned, and that your ears are
opened. Look at the honest conductor at the head
of the orchestra performing his duties in a dull,
spiritless fashion: you no longer think of the
comical aspect of the whole scene, you listen—
but it seems to you that the spirit of tediousness
spreads out from the honest conductor over all
his companions. Now you see only torpidity and
flabbiness, you hear only the trivial, the rhythmic-
ally inaccurate, and the melodiously trite. You see
J


## p. 142 (#162) ############################################

142 FUTURE OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
the orchestra only as an indifferent, ill-humoured,
and even wearisome crowd of players.
"But set a genius—a real genius—in the midst
of this crowd; and you instantly perceive some-
thing almost incredible. It is as if this genius, in
his lightning transmigration, had entered into these
mechanical, lifeless bodies, and as if only one
demoniacal eye gleamed forth out of them all.
Now look and listen—you can never listen enough!
When you again observe the orchestra, now loftily
storming, now fervently wailing, when you notice
the quick tightening of every muscle and the
rhythmical necessity of every gesture, then you too
will feel what a pre-established harmony there is
between leader and followers, and how in the
hierarchy of spirits everything impels us towards
the establishment of a like organisation. You can
divine from my simile what I would understand by
a true educational institution, and why I am very
far from recognising one in the present type of
university. "
[From a few MS. notes written down by Nietzsche in the
spring and autumn of 1872, and still preserved in the Nietzsche
Archives at Weimar, it is evident that he at one time intended
to add a sixth and seventh lecture to the five just given.
These notes, although included in the latest edition of
Nietzsche's works, are utterly lacking in interest and con-
tinuity, being merely headings and sub-headings of sections
in the proposed lectures. They do not, indeed, occupy more
than two printed pages, and were deemed too fragmentary
for translation in this edition. ]
\


## p. 143 (#163) ############################################

HOMER
AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
r-
.


## p. 144 (#164) ############################################



## p. 145 (#165) ############################################

HOMER
AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
{Inaugural Address delivered at B&le University,
2%thofMay 1869. )
At the present day no clear and consistent opinion
seems to be held regarding Classical Philology.
We are conscious of this in the circles of the learned
just as much as among the followers of that science
itself. The cause of this lies in its many-sided
character, in the lack of an abstract unity, and in
the inorganic aggregation of heterogeneous scientific
activities which are connected with one another only
by the name "Philology. " It must be freely ad-
mitted that philology is to some extent borrowed
from several other sciences, and is mixed together
like a magic potion from the most outlandish
liquors, ores, and bones. It may even be added
that it likewise conceals within itself an artistic
element, one which, on aesthetic and ethical grounds,
may be called imperatival—an element that acts
in opposition to its purely scientific behaviour.
Philology is composed of history just as much as
of natural science or aesthetics: history, in so far
as it endeavours to comprehend the manifestations
of the individualities of peoples in ever new images,
K


## p. 146 (#166) ############################################

iaS homer axd classical philology.
\
and the prevailing law in the disappearance of
phenomena; natural science, in so far as it strives
to fathom the deepest instinct of man, that of
speech; aesthetics, finally, because from various
antiquities at our disposal it endeavours to pick
out the so-called " classical" antiquity, with the view
and pretension of excavating the ideal world buried
under it, and to hold up to the present the mirror
of the classical and everlasting standards. That
these wholly different scientific and aesthetico-
ethical impulses have been associated under a
common name, a kind of sham monarchy, is shown
especially by the fact that philology at every period
from its origin onwards was at the same time
pedagogical. From the standpoint of the peda-
gogue, a choice was offered of those elements
which were of the greatest educational value; and
thus that science, or at least that scientific aim,
which we call philology, gradually developed out
of the practical calling originated by the exigencies
of that science itself.
These philological aims were pursued sometimes
with greater ardour and sometimes with less, in
accordance with the degree of culture and the de-
velopment of the taste of a particular period; but,
on the other hand, the followers of this science are
in the habit of regarding the aims which correspond
to their several abilities as the aims of philology;
whence it comes about that the estimation of philo-
logy in public opinion depends upon the weight of
the personalities of the philologists!
At the present time—that is to say, in a period
which has seen men distinguished in almost every


## p. 147 (#167) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 147
department of philology—a general uncertainty of
judgment has increased more and more, and like-
wise a general relaxation of interest and participa-
tion in philological problems. Such an undecided
and imperfect state of public opinion is damaging
to a science in that its hidden and open enemies can
work with much better prospects of success. And
philology has a great many such enemies. Where
do we not meet with them, these mockers, always
ready to aim a blow at the philological " moles,"
the animals that practise dust-eating exprof 'esso,and 1 /
that grub up and eat for the eleventh time what they
have already eaten ten times before. For opponents
of this sort, however, philology is merely a useless,
harmless, and inoffensive pastime, an object of
laughter and not of hate. But, on the other hand,
there is a boundless and infuriated hatred of philo-
logy wherever an ideal, as such, is feared, where the
modern man falls down to worship himself, and
where Hellenism is looked upon as a superseded
and hence very insignificant point of view. Against
these enemies, we philologists must always count
upon the assistance of artists and men of artistic
minds ; for they alone can judge how the sword of
barbarism sweeps over the head of every one who
loses sight of the unutterable simplicity and noble
dignity of the Hellene; and how no progress in
commerce or technical industries, however brilliant,
no school regulations, no political education of the
masses, however widespread and complete, can pro-
tect us from the curse of ridiculous and barbaric
offences against good taste, or from annihilation by
the Gorgon head of the classicist.


## p. 148 (#168) ############################################

148 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
Whilst philology as a whole is looked on with
jealous eyes by these two classes of opponents, there
are numerous and varied hostilities in other direc-
tions of philology; philologists themselves are
quarrelling with one another; internal dissensions
are caused by useless disputes about precedence and
mutual jealousies, but especially by the differences
—even enmities—comprised in the name of philo-
logy, which are not, however, by any means
naturally harmonised instincts.
Science has this in common with art, that the
most ordinary, everyday thing appears to it as
something entirely new and attractive, as if meta-
morphosed by witchcraft and now seen for the first
time. Life is worth living, says art, the beautiful
temptress; life is worth knowing, says science.
With this contrast the so heartrending and dog-
matic tradition follows in a theory, and conse-
quently in the practice of classical philology derived
from this theory. We may consider antiquity
from a scientific point of view ; we may try to look
at what has happened with the eye of a historian,
or to arrange and compare the linguistic forms of
ancient masterpieces, to bring them at all events
under a morphological law; but we always lose the
wonderful creative force, the real fragrance, of the
atmosphere of antiquity ; we forget that passionate
emotion which instinctively drove our meditation
and enjoyment back to the Greeks. From this
point onwards we must take notice of a clearly
determined and very surprising antagonism which
philology has great cause to regret. From the
circles upon whose help we must place the most


## p. 149 (#169) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 149
implicit reliance—the artistic friends of antiquity,
the warm supporters of Hellenic beauty and noble
simplicity—we hear harsh voices crying out that
it is precisely the philologists themselves who are
the real opponents and destroyers of the ideals of
antiquity. Schiller upbraided the philologists with
having scattered Homer's laurel crown to the winds.
It was none other than Goethe who, in early life
a supporter of Wolf's theories regarding Homer,
recanted in the verses—
With subtle wit you took away
Our former adoration:
The Iliad, you may us say,
Was mere conglomeration.
Think it not crime in any way:
Youth's fervent adoration
Leads us to know the verity,
And feel the poet's unity.
The reason of this want of piety and reverence
must lie deeper; and many are in doubt as to
whether philologists are lacking in artistic capacity
and impressions, so that they are unable to do
justice to the ideal, or whether the spirit of negation
has become a destructive and iconoclastic principle
of theirs. When, however, even the friends of
antiquity, possessed of such doubts and hesitations,
point to our present classical philology as some-
thing questionable, what influence may we not
ascribe to the outbursts of the "realists" and the
claptrap of the heroes of the passing hour? To
answer the latter on this occasion, especially when
we consider the nature of the present assembly,
would be highly injudicious; at any rate, if I do


## p. 150 (#170) ############################################

150 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
not wish to meet with the fate of that sophist who,
when in Sparta, publicly undertook to praise and
defend Herakles, when he was interrupted with the
query: "But who then has found fault with him? "
I cannot help thinking, however, that some of these
scruples are still sounding in the ears of not a few
in this gathering; for they may still be frequently
heard from the lips of noble and artistically gifted
men—as even an upright philologist must feel them,
and feel them most painfully, at moments when his
spirits are downcast. For the single individual
there is no deliverance from the dissensions referred
to; but what we contend and inscribe on our banner
is the fact that classical philology, as a whole, has
nothing whatsoever to do with the quarrels and
bickerings of its individual disciples. The entire
scientific and artistic movement of this peculiar
centaur is bent, though with cyclopic slowness, upon
bridging over the gulf between the ideal antiquity
—which is perhaps only the magnificent blossom-
ing of the Teutonic longing for the south—and
the real antiquity; and thus classical philology
pursues only the final end of its own being, which
is the fusing together of primarily hostile impulses
that have only forcibly been brought together.
Let us talk as we will about the unattainability of
this goal, and even designate the goal itself as an
illogical pretension—the aspiration for it is very
real; and I should like to try to make it clear by an
example that the most significant steps of classical
philology never lead away from the ideal antiquity,
but to it; and that, just when peoptelire speaking
unwarrantably of the overthrowdT sacred shrines,


## p. 151 (#171) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 151
new and more worthy altars are being erected.
Let us then examine the so-called Homeric question
from this standpoint, a question the most important
problem of which Schiller called a scholastic
barbarism.
The important problem referred to is the question
of the personality of Homer.
We now meet everywhere with the firm opinion
that the question of Homer's personality is no
longer timely, and that it is quite a different thing
from the real "Homeric question. " It may be
added that, for a given period—such as our pre-
sent philological period, for example—the centre
of discussion may be removed from the problem
of the poet's personality; for even now a pains-
taking experiment is being made to reconstruct
the Homeric poems without the aid of personality,
treating them as the work of several different
persons. But if the centre of a scientific question
is rightly seen to be where the swelling tide of
new views has risen up, i. e. where individual
scientific investigation comes into contact with the
whole life of science and culture—if any one, in
other words, indicates a historico-cultural valua-
tion as the central point of the question, he must
also, in the province of Homeric criticism, take
his stand upon the question of personality as
being the really fruitful oasis in the desert of the
whole argument. For in Homer the modern
world, I will not say has learnt, but has examined,
a great historical point of view; and, even without
now putting forward my own opinion as to
whether this examination has been or can be


## p. 152 (#172) ############################################

152 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
happily carried out, it was at all events the first
example of the application of that productive
point of view. By it scholars learnt to recognise
condensed beliefs in the apparently firm, immobile
figures of the life of ancient peoples; by it they
for the first time perceived the wonderful capa-
bility of the soul of a people to represent the
conditions of its morals and beliefs in the form of
a personality. When historical criticism has con-
fidently seized upon this method of evaporating
apparently concrete personalities, it is permissible to
point to the first experiment as an important event
in the history of sciences, without considering
whether it was successful in this instance or not
It is a common occurrence for a series of
striking signs and wonderful emotions to precede
an epoch-making discovery. Even the experiment
I have just referred to has its own attractive
history; but it goes back to a surprisingly ancient
era. Friedrich August Wolf has exactly indicated
the spot where Greek antiquity dropped the
question. The zenith of the historico-literary
studies of the Greeks, and hence also of their
point of greatest importance—the Homeric question
—was reached in the age of the Alexandrian
grammarians. Up to this time the Homeric ques-
tion had run through the long chain of a uniform
process of development, of which the standpoint
of those grammarians seemed to be the last link,
the last, indeed, which was attainable by antiquity.
They conceived the Iliad and the Odyssey as the
creations of one single Homer; they declared it to
be psychologically possible for two such different
-


## p. 153 (#173) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 153
works to have sprung from the brain of one
genius, in contradiction to the Chorizontes, who
represented the extreme limit of the scepticism of
a few detached individuals of antiquity rather than
antiquity itself considered as a whole. To explain
the different general impression of the two books
on the assumption that one poet composed them
both, scholars sought assistance by referring to the
seasons of the poet's life, and compared the poet
of the Odyssey to the setting sun. The eyes of
those critics were tirelessly on the lookout for
discrepancies in the language and thoughts of the
two poems; but at this time also a history of the
Homeric poem and its tradition was prepared,
according to which these discrepancies were not
due to Homer, but to those who committed his
words to writing and those who sang them. It
was believed that Homer's poem was passed from
one generation to another viva voce, and faults
were attributed to the improvising and at times
forgetful bards. At a certain given date, about
the time of Pisistratus, the poems which had been
repeated orally were said to have been collected
in manuscript form; but the scribes, it is added,
allowed themselves to take some liberties with
the text by transposing some lines and adding
extraneous matter here and there. This entire
hypothesis is the most important in the domain
of literary studies that antiquity has exhibited;
and the acknowledgment of the dissemination of
the Homeric poems by word of mouth, as opposed
to the habits of a book-learned age, shows in
particular a depth of ancient sagacity worthy of


## p. 154 (#174) ############################################

154 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
our admiration. From those times until the
generation that produced Friedrich August Wolf
we must take a jump over a long historical vacuum;
but in our own age we find the argument left just
as it was at the time when the power of contro-
versy departed from antiquity, and it is a matter
of indifference to us that Wolf accepted as certain
tradition what antiquity itself had set up only as
a hypothesis. It may be remarked as most
characteristic of this hypothesis that, in the strict-
est sense, the personality of Homer is treated
seriously; that a certain standard of inner harmony
is everywhere presupposed in the manifestations
of the personality; and that, with these two ex-
cellent auxiliary hypotheses, whatever is seen to
be below this standard and opposed to this inner
harmony is at once swept aside as un-Homeric.
But even this distinguishing characteristic, in place
of wishing to recognise the supernatural existence
of a tangible personality, ascends likewise through
all the stages that lead to that zenith, with ever-
increasing energy and clearness. Individuality
is ever more strongly felt and accentuated; the
psychological possibility of a single Homer is ever
more forcibly demanded. If we descend back-
wards from this zenith, step by step, we find
a guide to the understanding of the Homeric
problem in the person of Aristotle. Homer was
for him the flawless and untiring artist who knew
his end and the means to attain it; but there is
still a trace of infantile criticism to be found in
Aristotle—i. e. , in the naive concession he made to
the public opinion that considered Homer as the


## p. 155 (#175) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 155
author of the original of all comic epics, the
Margites. If we go still further backwards from
Aristotle, the inability to create a personality is
seen to increase; more and more poems are attri-
buted to Homer; and every period lets us see its
degree of criticism by how much and what it con-
siders as Homeric. In this backward examination,
we instinctively feel that away beyond Herodotus
there lies a period in which an immense flood of
great epics has been identified with the name of
Homer.
Let us imagine ourselves as living in the time
of Pisistratus: the word " Homer" then compre-
hended an abundance of dissimilarities. What
was meant by "Homer" at that time? It is
evident that that generation found itself unable to
grasp a personality and the limits of its manifesta-
tions. Homer had now become of small conse-
quence. And then we meet with the weighty
question: What lies before this period? Has
Homer's personality, because it cannot be grasped,
gradually faded away into an empty name? Or
had all the Homeric poems been gathered together
in a body, the nation naively representing itself
by the figure of Homer? Was the person created
out of a conception, or the conception out of a person?
This is the real " Homeric question," the central
problem of the personality.
The difficulty of answering this question, how-
ever, is increased when we seek a reply in another
direction, from the standpoint of the poems them-
selves which have come down to us. As it is
difficult for us at the present day, and necessitates


## p. 156 (#176) ############################################

156 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
a serious effort on our part, to understand the law
of gravitation clearly—that the earth alters its
form of motion when another heavenly body
changes its position in space, although no material
connection unites one to the other—it likewise
costs us some trouble to obtain a clear impression
of that wonderful problem which, like a coin long
passed from hand to hand, has lost its original
and highly conspicuous stamp. Poetical works,
which cause the hearts of even the greatest geniuses
to fail when they endeavour to vie with them,
and in which unsurpassable images are held up
for the admiration of posterity—and yet the poet
who wrote them with only a hollow, shaky name,
whenever we do lay hold on him; nowhere the
solid kernel of a powerful personality. "For who
would wage war with the gods: who, even with
the one god? " asks Goethe even, who, though a
genius, strove in vain to solve that mysterious
problem of the Homeric inaccessibility.
The conception of popular poetry seemed to
lead like a bridge over this problem—a deeper
and more original power than that of every single
creative individual was said to have become active;
the happiest people, in the happiest period of its
existence, in the highest activity of fantasy and
formative power, was said to have created those
immeasurable poems. In this universality there
is something almost intoxicating in the thought of
a popular poem: we feel, with artistic pleasure,
the broad, overpowering liberation of a popular
gift, and we delight in this natural phenomenon
as we do in an uncontrollable cataract. But as


## p. 157 (#177) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 157
soon as we examine this thought at close quarters,
we involuntarily put a poetic mass of people in the
place of the poetising soul of the people: a long
row of popular poets in whom individuality has
no meaning, and in whom the tumultuous move-
ment of a people's soul, the intuitive strength of a
people's eye, and the unabated profusion of a
people's fantasy, were once powerful: a row of
original geniuses, attached to a time, to a poetic
genus, to a subject-matter.
Such a conception justly made people suspicious.
Could it be possible that that same Nature who so
sparingly distributed her rarest and most precious
production—genius—should suddenly take the
notion of lavishing her gifts in one sole direction?
And here the thorny question again made its
appearance: Could we not get along with one
genius only, and explain the present existence of
that unattainable excellence? And now eyes
were keenly on the lookout for whatever that
excellence and singularity might consist of. Im-
possible for it to be in the construction of the
complete works, said one party, for this is far from
faultless; but doubtless to be found in single songs:
in the single pieces above all; not in the whole.
A second party, on the other hand, sheltered them-
selves beneath the authority of Aristotle, who
especially admired Homer's "divine" nature in
the choice of his entire subject, and the manner
in which he planned and carried it out. If, how-
ever, this construction was not clearly seen, this
fault was due to the way the poems were handed
down to posterity and not to the poet himself—


## p. 158 (#178) ############################################

IS8 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
it was the result of retouchings and interpolations,
owing to which the original setting of the work
gradually became obscured. The more the first
school looked for inequalities, contradictions,
perplexities, the more energetically did the other
school brush aside what in their opinion obscured
the original plan, in order, if possible, that nothing
might be left remaining but the actual words of
the original epic itself. The second school of
thought of course held fast by the conception of
an epoch-making genius as the composer of the
great works. The first school, on the other hand,
wavered between the supposition of one genius
plus a number of minor poets, and another
hypothesis which assumed only a number of
superior and even mediocre individual bards, but
also postulated a mysterious discharging, a deep,
national, artistic impulse, which shows itself in
individual minstrels as an almost indifferent
medium. It is to this latter school that we must
attribute the representation of the Homeric poems
as the expression of that mysterious impulse.
All these schools of thought start from the
assumption that the problem of the present form
of these epics can be solved from the standpoint
of an aesthetic judgment—but we must await the
decision as to the authorised line of demarcation
between the man of genius and the poetical soul
of the people. Are there characteristic differences
between the utterances of the man of genius and
the poetical soul of the people t
This whole contrast, however, is unjust and
misleading. There is no more dangerous


## p. 159 (#179) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. 159
assumption in modern aesthetics than that of
popular poetry and individual poetry, or, as it is
usually called, artistic poetry. This is the re-
action, or, if you will, the superstition, which
followed upon the most momentous discovery of
historico-philological science, the discovery and
appreciation of the soul of the people. For this
discovery prepared the way for a coming scientific
view of history, which was until then, and in many
respects is even now, a mere collection of materials,
with the prospect that new materials would con-
tinue to be added, and that the huge, overflowing
pile would never be systematically arranged. The
people now understood for the first time that the
long-felt power of greater individualities and wills
was larger than the pitifully small will of an in-
dividual man; * they now saw that everything truly
great in the kingdom of the will could not have
its deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral
individual will; and, finally, they now discovered
the powerful instincts of the masses, and diagnosed
those unconscious impulses to be the foundations
and supports of the so-called universal history. But
the newly-lighted flame also cast its shadow: and
this shadow was none other than that superstition
already referred to, which popular poetry set up
in opposition to individual poetry, and thus en-
larged the comprehension of the people's soul to
that of the people's mind. By the misapplication
of a tempting analogical inference, people had
* Of course Nietzsche saw afterwards that this was not so.
—TR.


## p. 160 (#180) ############################################

l6o HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
reached the point of applying in the domain of
the intellect and artistic ideas that principle of
greater individuality which is truly applicable only
in the domain of the will. The masses have never
experienced more flattering treatment than in thus
having the laurel of genius set upon their empty
heads. It was imagined that new shells were
forming round a small kernel, so to speak, and
that those pieces of popular poetry originated like
avalanches, in the drift and flow of tradition. They
were, however, ready to consider that kernel as
being of the smallest possible dimensions, so that
they might occasionally get rid of it altogether with-
out losing anything of the mass of the avalanche.
According to this view, the text itself and the
stories built round it are one and the same thing.
Now, however, such a contrast between popular
poetry and individual poetry does not exist at all;
on the contrary, all poetry, and of course popular
poetry also, requires an intermediary individuality.
This much-abused contrast, therefore, is necessary
only when the term individual poem is understood
to mean a poem which has not grown out of the
soil of popular feeling. but which has been composed
by a non-popular poet in a non-popular atmos-
phere—something which has come to maturity in
the study of a learned man, for example.
With the superstition which presupposes poet-
ising masses is connected another: that popular
poetry is limited to one particular period of a
people's history and afterwards dies out—which
indeed follows as a consequence of the first super-.
stition I have mentioned. According to this


## p. 161 (#181) ############################################

HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY. l6l
school, in the place of the gradually decaying
popular poetry we have artistic poetry, the work of
individual minds, not of masses of people. But the
same powers which were once active are still so j
and the form in which they act has remained
exactly the same. The great poet of a literary
period is still a popular poet in no narrower sense
than the popular poet of an illiterate age. The
difference between them is not in the way they
originate, but it is their diffusion and propagation,
in short, tradition. This tradition is exposed to
eternal danger without the help of handwriting,
and runs the risk of including in the poems the
remains of those individualities through whose oral
tradition they were handed down.
If we apply all these principles to the Homeric
poems, it follows that we gain nothing with our
theory of the poetising soul of the people, and
that we are always referred back to the poetical
individual. We are thus confronted with the task
of distinguishing that which can have originated
only in a single poetical mind from that which
is, so to speak, swept up by the tide of oral
tradition, and which is a highly important
constituent part of the Homeric poems.
Since literary history first ceased to be a mere
collection of names, people have attempted to
grasp and formulate the individualities of the
poets. A certain mechanism forms part of the
method: it must be explained—i. e. , it must be
deduced from principles—why this or that in-
dividuality appears in this way and not in that.
People now study biographical details, environ-
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162 HOMER AND CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY.
merit, acquaintances, contemporary events, and
believe that by mixing all these ingredients
together they will be able to manufacture the
wished-for individuality. But they forget that
the punctum saliens, the indefinable individual
characteristics, can never be obtained from a com-
pound of this nature. The less there is known
about the life and times of the poet, the less
applicable is this mechanism. When, however,
we have merely the works and the name of the
writer, it is almost impossible to detect the in-
dividuality, at all events, for those who put their
faith in the mechanism in question; and particu-
larly when the works are perfect, when they are
pieces of popular poetry. For the best way for
these mechanicians to grasp individual character-
istics is by perceiving deviations from the genius
of the people; the aberrations and hidden allusions:
and the fewer discrepancies to be found in a poem
the fainter will be the traces of the individual poet
who composed it.
All those deviations, everything dull and below
the ordinary standard which scholars think they
perceive in the Homeric poems, were attributed
to tradition, which thus became the scapegoat.
What was left of Homer's own individual work?
Nothing but a series of beautiful and prominent
passages chosen in accordance with subjective
taste.