(from alpine recollections.)

1

light reveals to us beauty—but also ugliness. throw vitriol in the face of a beautiful woman, and the beauty is gone, no power on earth will enable us to look upon her with the same rapture as before. could even the sincerest, deepest love endure the change? true, the idealists will hasten to say that love overcomes all things. but idealism needs be prompt, for if she leaves us one single moment in which to see, we shall see such things as are not easily explained away. that is why idealists stick so tight so logic. in the twinkling of an eye logic will convey us to the remotest conclusions and forecasts. reality could never overtake her. love is eternal, and consequently a disfigured face will seem as lovely to us as a fresh one. this is, of course, a lie, but it helps to preserve old tastes and obscures danger. real danger, however, was never dispelled by words. in spite of schiller and eternal love, in the long run vitriol triumphs, and the agreeable young man is forced to abandon his beloved and acknowledge himself a fraud. light, the source of his life and hope, has now destroyed hope and life for him. he will not return to idealism, and he will hate logic: light, that seemed to him so beautiful, will have become hideous. he will turn to darkness, where logic and its binding conclusions have no power, but where the fancy is free for all her vagaries. without light we should never have known that vitriol ruins beauty. no science, nor any art can give us what darkness gives. it is true, in our young days when all was new, light brought us great happiness and joy. let us, therefore, remember it with gratitude, as a benefactor we no longer need. do after all let us dispense with gratitude, for it belongs to the calculating, bourgeois virtues. do ut des. let us forget light, and gratitude, and the qualms of self-important idealism, let us go bravely to meet the coming night. she promises us great power over reality. is it worth while to give up our old tastes and lofty convictions? love and light have not availed against vitriol. what a horror would have seized us at the thought, once upon a time! that short phrase can annul all schiller. we have shut our eyes and stopped our ears, we have built huge philosophic systems to shield us from this tiny thought. and now—now it seems we have no more feeling for schiller and the great systems, we have no pity on our past beliefs. we now are seeking for words with which to sing the praises of our former enemy. night, the dark, deaf, impenetrable night, peopled with horrors—does she not now loom before us, infinitely beautiful? does she not draw us with her still, mysterious, fathomless beauty, far more powerfully than noisy, narrow day? it seems as if, in a short while, man will feel that the same incomprehensible, cherishing power which threw us out into the universe and set us, like plants, to reach to the light, is now gradually transferring us to a new direction, where a new life awaits us with all its stores. fata volentem ducunt, nolentem trahunt. and perhaps the time is near when the impassioned poet, casting a last look to his past, will boldly and gladly cry:

hide thyself, sun! o darkness, be welcome!

2

psychology at last leads us to conclude that the most generous human impulses spring from a root of egoism. tolstoy's "love to one's neighbour," for example, proves to be a branch of the old self-love. the same may be said of kant's idealism, and even of plato's. though they glorify the service of the idea, in practice they succeed in getting out of the vicious circle of egoism no better than the ordinary mortal, who is neither a genius nor a flower of culture. in my eyes this is "almost" an absolute truth. (it is never wrong to add the retractive "almost"; truth is too much inclined to exaggerate its own importance, and one must guard oneself against its despotic authority.) thus—all men are egoists. hence follows a great deal. i even think this proposition might provide better grounds for metaphysical conclusions than the doubtful capacity for compassion and love for one's neighbour which has been so tempting to dogma. for some reason men have imagined that love for oneself is more natural and comprehensible than love for another. why? love for others is only a little-rarer, less widely diffused than love to oneself. but then hippopotami and rhinoceros, even in their own tropical regions, are less frequent than horses and mules. does it follow that they are less natural and transcendental? positivism is not incumbent upon blood-thirsty savages. nay, as we know, many of them are less positive-minded than our learned men. for instance, a future life is to them such an infallible reality that they even enter into contracts, part of which is to be fulfilled in the next world. a german metaphysician won't go as far as that. hence it follows that the way to know the other world is not by any means through love, sympathy, and self-denial, as schopenhauer taught. on the contrary, it appears as if love for others were only an impediment to metaphysical flights. love and sympathy chain the eye to the misery of this earth, where such a wide field for active charity opens out. the materialists were mostly very good men—a fact which bothered the historians of philosophy. they preached matter, believed in nothing, and were ready to perform all kinds of sacrifices for their neighbours. how is this? it is a case of clearest logical consequence: man loves his neighbour, he sees that heaven is indifferent to misery, therefore he takes upon himself the r?le of providence. were he indifferent to the sufferings of others, he would easily become an idealist and leave his neighbours to their fate. love and compassion kill belief, and make a man a positivist and a materialist in his philosophical outlook. if he feels the misery of others, he leaves off meditating and wants to act. man only thinks properly when he realises he has nothing to do, his hands are tied. that is why any profound thought must arise from despair. optimism, on the other hand, the readiness to jump hastily from one conclusion to another, may be regarded as an inevitable sign of narrow self-sufficiency, which dreads doubt and is consequently always superficial. if a man offers you a solution of eternal questions, it shows he has not even begun to think about them. he has only "acted." perhaps it is not necessary to think—who can say how we ought or ought not to live? and how could we be brought to live "as we ought," when our own nature is and always will be an incalculable mystery. there is no mistake about it, nobody wants to think, i do not speak here of logical thinking. that, like any other natural function, gives man great pleasure. for this reason philosophical systems, however complicated, arouse real and permanent interest in the public provided they only require from man the logical exercise of the mind, and nothing else. but to think—-really to think—surely this means a relinquishing of logic. it means living a new life. it means a permanent sacrifice of the dearest habits, tastes, attachments, without even the assurance that the sacrifice will bring any compensation. artists and philosophers like to imagine the thinker with a stern face, a profound look which penetrates into the unseen, and a noble bearing—an eagle preparing for flight. not at all. a thinking man is one who has lost his balance, in the vulgar, not in the tragic sense. hands raking the air, feet flying, face scared and bewildered, he is a caricature of helplessness and pitiable perplexity. look at the aged turgenev, his poems in prose and his letter to tolstoy. maupassant thus tells of his meeting with turgenev: " there entered a giant with a silvery head." quite so! the majestic patriarch and master, of course! the myth of giants with silver locks is firmly established in the heart of man. then suddenly enters turgenev in his prose poems—pale, pitiful, fluttering like a bird that has been "winged." turgenev, who has taught us everything—how can he be so fluttered and bewildered? how could he write his letter to tolstoy? did he not know that tolstoy was finished, the source of his creative activity dried up, that he must seek other activities. of course he knew—and still he wrote that letter. but it was not for tolstoy, nor even for russian literature, which, of course, is not kept going by the death-bed letters and covenants of its giants. in the dreadful moments of the end, turgenev, in spite of his noble size and silver locks, did not know what to say or where to look for support and consolation. so he turned to literature, to which he had given his life.... he yearned that she, whom he had served so long and loyally, should just once help him, save him from the horrible and thrice senseless nightmare. he stretched out his withered, numbing hands to the printed sheets which still preserve the traces of the soul of a living, suffering man. he addressed his late enemy tolstoy with the most flattering name: "great writer of the russian land"; recollected that he was his contemporary, that he himself was a great writer of the russian land. but this he did not express aloud. he only said, "i can no longer——" he praised a strict school of literary and general education. to the last he tried to preserve his bearing of a giant with silvery locks. and we were gratified. the same persons who are indignant at gogol's correspondence, quote turgenev's letter with reverence. the attitude is everything. turgenev knew how to pose passably well, and this is ascribed to him as his greatest merit. mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur. but gogol and turgenev felt substantially the same. had turgenev burnt his own manuscripts and talked of himself instead of tolstoy, before death, he would have been accounted mad. moralists would have reproached him for his display of extreme egoism.... and philosophy? philosophy seems to be getting rid of certain prejudices. at the moment when men are least likely to play the hypocrite and lie to themselves turgenev and gogol placed their personal fate higher than the destinies of russian literature. does not this betray a "secret" to us? ought we not to see in absolute egoism an inalienable and great, yes, very great quality of human nature? psychology, ignoring the threats of morality, has led us to a new knowledge. yet still, in spite of the instances we have given, the mass of people will, as usual, see nothing but malice in every attempt to reveal the human impulses that underlie "lofty" motives. to be merely men seems humiliating to men. so now malice will also be detected in my interpretation of turgenev's letter, no matter what assurance i offer to the contrary.

3

on method.—a certain naturalist made the following experiment: a glass jar was divided into two halves by a perfectly transparent glass partition. on the one side of the partition he placed a pike, on the other a number of small fishes such as form the prey of the pike. the pike did not notice the partition, and hurled itself on its prey, with, of course, the result only of a bruised nose. the same happened many times, and always the same result. at last, seeing all its efforts ended so painfully, the pike abandoned the hunt, so that in a few days, when the partition had been removed it continued to swim about among the small fry without daring to attack them.... does not the same happen with us? perhaps the limits between "this world" and "the other world" are also essentially of an experimental origin, neither rooted in the nature of things, as was thought before kant, or in the nature of our reason, as was thought after kant. perhaps indeed a partition does exist, and make vain all attempts to cross over.. but perhaps there comes a moment when the partition is removed. in our minds, however, the conviction is firmly rooted that it is impossible to pass certain limits, and painful to try: a conviction founded on experience. but in this case we should recall the old scepticism of hume, which idealist philosophy has regarded as mere subtle mind-play, valueless after kant's critique. the most lasting and varied experience cannot lead to any binding and universal conclusion. nay, all our a priori, which are so useful for a certain time, become sooner or later extremely harmful. a philosopher should not be afraid of scepticism, but should go on bruising his jaw. perhaps the failure of metaphysics lies in the caution and timidity of metaphysicians, who seem ostensibly so brave. they have sought for rest—which they describe as the highest boon. whereas they should have valued more than anything restlessness, aimlessness, even purposelessness. how can you tell when the partition will be removed? perhaps at the very moment when man ceased his painful pursuit, settled all his questions and rested on his laurels, inert, he could with one strong push have swept through the pernicious fence which separated him from the unknowable. there is no need for man to move according to a carefully-considered plan. this is a purely aesthetic demand which need not bind us. let man senselessly and deliriously knock his head against the wall—if the wall go down at last, will he value his triumph any the less? unfortunately for us the illusion has been established in us that plan and purpose are the best guarantee of success. what a delusion it is! the opposite is true. the best of all that genius has revealed to us has been revealed as the result of fantastic, erratic, apparently ridiculous and useless, but relentlessly stubborn seeking. columbus, tired of sitting on the same spot, sailed west to look for india. and genius, in spite of vulgar conception, is a condition of chaos and unutterable restlessness. not for nothing has genius been counted kin to madness. genius flings itself hither and thither because it has not the sitzfleisch necessary for industrious success in mediocrity. we may be sure that earth has seen much more genius than history has recorded; since genius is acknowledged only when it has been serviceable. when the tossing-about has led to no useful issue—which is the case in the majority of instances—it arouses only a feeling of disgust and abomination in all witnesses. "he can't rest and he can't let others rest." if lermontov and dostoevsky had lived in times when there was no demand for books, nobody would have noticed them. lermontov's early death would have passed unregretted. perhaps some settled and virtuous citizen would have remarked, weary of the young man's eternal and dangerous freaks: "for a dog a dog's death." the same of gogol, tolstoy, poushkin. now they are praised because they left interesting books.... and so we need pay no attention to the cry about the futility and worthlessness of scepticism, even scepticism pure and unadulterated, scepticism which has no ulterior motive of clearing the way for a new creed. to knock one's head against the wall out of hatred for the wall: to beat against established and obstructive ideas, because one detests them: is it not an attractive proposition? and then, to see ahead uncertainly and limitless possibilities, instead of up-to-date "ideals," is not this too fascinating? the highest good is rest! i shall not argue: de gustibus aut nihil aut bene.... by the way, isn't it a superb principle? and this superb principle has been arrived at perfectly by chance, unfortunately not by me, but by one of the comical characters in tchekhov's seagull. he mixed up two latin proverbs, and the result was a splendid maxim which, in order to become an a priori, awaits only universal acceptance.

4

metaphysicians praise the transcendental, and carefully avoid it. nietzsche hated metaphysics, he praised the earth—bleib nur der erde treu, o meine bruder—and always lived in the realm of the transcendental. of course the metaphysicians behave better: this is indisputable. he who would be a teacher must proclaim the metaphysical point of view, and he may become a hero without ever smelling powder. in these anxious days, when positivism seems to fall short, one cannot do better than turn to metaphysics. then the young man need not any more envy alexander the macedonian. with the assistance of a few books not only earthly states are conquered, but the whole mysterious universe. metaphysics is the great art of swerving round dangerous experience. so metaphysicians should be called the positivists par excellence. they do not despise all experience, as they assert, but only the dangerous experiences. they adapt the safest of all methods of selfdefence, what the english call protective mimicry. let us repeat to all students—professors know it already: he who would be a sincere metaphysician must avoid risky experience. schiller once asked: how can tragedy give delight? the answer—to put it in our own words—was: if we are to obtain delight from tragedy, it must be seen only upon the stage.—in order to love the transcendental it also should be known only from the stage, or from books of the philosophers. this is called idealism, the nicest word ever invented by philosophising men.

5

poetae nascuntur.—wonderful is man. knowing nothing about it, he asserts the existence of an objective impossibility. even a little while ago, before the invention of the telephone and telegraph, men would have declared it impossible for europe to converse with america. now it is possible. we cannot produce poets, therefore we say they are born. certainly we cannot make a child a poet by forcing him to study literary models, from the most ancient to the most modern. neither will anybody hear us in america no matter how loud we shout here. to make a poet of a man, he must not be developed along ordinary lines. perhaps books should be kept from him. perhaps it is necessary to perform some apparently dangerous operation on him: fracture his skull or throw him out of a fourth-storey window. i will refrain from recommending these methods as a substitute for paedagogy. but that is not the point. look at the great men, and the poets. except john stuart mill and a couple of other positivist thinkers, who had learned fathers and virtuous mothers, none of the great men can boast of, or better, complain of, a proper upbringing. in their lives nearly always the decisive part was played by accident, accident which reason would dub meaninglessness, if reason ever dared raise its voice against obvious success. something like a broken skull or a fall from the fourth floor—not metaphorically, but often absolutely literally—has proved the commencement, usually concealed but occasionally avowed, of the activity of genius. but we repeat automatically: poetae nascuntur, and are deeply convinced that this extraordinary truth is so lofty it needs no verification.

6

"until apollo calls him to the sacrifice, ignobly the poet is plunged in the cares of this shoddy world; silent is his lyre, cold sleeps his soul, of all the petty children of earth most petty it seems is he." pisaryev, the critic, was exasperated by these verses. presumably, if they had not belonged to poushkin, all the critics along with pisaryev would have condemned them and their author to oblivion. suspicious verse! before apollo calls to him—the poet is the most insignificant of mortals! in his free hours, the ordinary man finds some more or less distinguished distraction fox himself: he hunts, attends exhibitions of pictures, or the theatre, and finally rests in the bosom of his family. but the poet is incapable of normal existence. immediately he has finished with apollo, forgetting all about altars and sacrifices, he proceeds to occupy himself with unworthy objects. or he abandons himself to the dolce far niente, the customary pastime of all favourites of the muses. let us here remark that not only all poets, but all writers and artists in general are inclined to lead bad lives. think what tolstoy tells us, in confession and elsewhere, of the best representatives of literature in the fifties. on the whole it is just as poushkin says in his verses. whilst he is engaged in composition, an author is a creature of some consequence: apart from this, he is nothing. why are apollo and the muses so remiss? why do they draw to themselves wayward or vicious votaries, instead of rewarding virtue? we dare not suspect the gods, even the dethroned, of bad intentions. apollo loved virtuous persons—and yet virtuous persons are evidently mediocre and unfit for the sacred offices. if any man is overcome with a great desire to serve the god of song, let him get rid of his virtues at once. curious that this truth is so completely unknown to men. they think that through virtue they can truly deserve the favour and choice of apollo. and since industry is the first virtue, they peg away, morning, noon, and night. of course, the more they work the less they do. which really puzzles and annoys them. they even fling aside the sacred arts, and all the labours of a devotee; they give themselves up to idleness and other bad habits. and sometimes it so happens, that just as a man decides that it is all no good, the muses suddenly visit him. so it was with dostoevsky and others; schiller alone managed to get round apollo. but perhaps it was only his biographers he got round. germans are so trustful, so easy to deceive. the biographers saw nothing unusual in schiller's habit of keeping his feet in cold water whilst he worked. no doubt they felt that if the divine poet had lived in the sahara, where water is precious as gold, and the inspired cannot take a footbath every day, then the speeches of the marquis of pola would have lacked half their nobleness, at least. and apparently schiller was not so wonderfully chaste, if he needed such artificial resources in the composition of his fine speeches. in a word, we must believe poushkin. a poet is, on the one hand, among the elect; on the other hand, he is one of the most insignificant of mortals. hence we can draw a very consoling conclusion: the most insignificant of men are not altogether so worthless as we imagine. they may not be fit to occupy government positions or professorial chairs, but they are often extremely at home on parnassus and such high places. apollo rewards vice, and virtue, as everybody knows, is so satisfied with herself she needs no reward. then why do the pessimists lament? leibnitz was quite right: we live in the best possible of worlds. i would even suggest that we leave out the modification "possible."

7

it is das ewig weibliche, with russian writers. poushkin and lermontov loved women and were not afraid of them; poushkin, who trusted his own nature, was often in love, and always sang his love of the moment. when infatuated with a bacchante, he glorified bacchantes. when he married, he warbled of a modest, nun-like beauty, his wife. a synthesising mind would probably not know what to do with all poushkin's sorts of love. nor is lermontov any better. he abused women, but, as byelinsky observed after meeting him, he loved women more than anything in the world. and again, not women of one mould only: any and all attractive females: the wild bella, the lovely mary, thamar; one and all, no matter of what race or condition. every time lermontov is in love, he assures us his love is so deep and ardent and even moral, that we cannot judge him without conpunction. vladimir soloviov alone was not afraid to condemn him. he brought poushkin as well as lermontov to account for their moral irregularities, and he even went so far as to say that it was not he himself who judged them, but fate, in whose service he acted as public denouncer. lermontov and poushkin, both dying young, had deserved death for their frivolities. but there was nobody else besides vladimir soloviov to darken the memories of the two poets. it is true tolstoy cannot forgive poushkin's dissolute life, but he does not apply to fate for a verdict. according to tolstoy morality can cope even with a titan like poushkin. in tolstoy's view morality grows stronger the harder the job it has to tackle. it pardons the weak offenders without waste of words, but it never forgives pride and self-confidence. if tolstoy's edicts had been executed, all memorials to poushkin would have disappeared; chiefly because of the poet's addiction to the eternal female. in such a case tolstoy is implacable. he admits the the kind of love whose object is the establishing of a family, but no more. don juan is a hateful transgressor. think of levin, and his attitude to prostitutes. he is exasperated, indignant, even forgets the need for compassion, and calls them "beasts." in the eternal female tolstoy sees temptation, seduction, sin, great danger. therefore it is necessary to keep quite away from the danger. but surely danger is the dragon which guards every treasure on earth. and again, no matter what his precautions, a man will meet his fate sooner or later, and come into conflict with the dragon. surely this is an axiom. poushkin and lermontov loved danger, and therefore sought women. they paid a heavy price, but while they lived they lived freely and lightly. if they had cared to peep in the book of destinies, they might have averted or avoided their sad end. but they preferred to trust their star—lucky or unlucky. tolstoy was the first among us—we cannot speak of gogol—who began to fear life. he was the first to start open moralising. in so far as public opinion and personal dignity demand it, he did go to meet his dangers: but not a step further. so he avoided women, art, and philosophy. love per se, that is, love which does not lead to a family, like wisdom per se, which is wisdom that has no utilitarian motive, and like art for art's sake, seemed to him the worst of temptations, leading to the destruction of the soul. when he plunged too deep in thinking, he was seized with panic. "it seemed to me i was going mad, so i went away to the bashkirs for koumiss." such confessions are common in his works. and surely there is no other way with temptations, than to cut short, at once, before it is too late. tolstoy preserved himself on account of his inborn instinct for departing betimes from a dangerous situation. save for this cautious prompting he would probably have ended like lermontov or poushkin. true, he might have gone deeper into nature, and revealed us rare secrets, instead of preaching at us abstinence, humility, simplicity and so on. but such luck fell to the fate of dostoevsky. dostoevsky had very muddled relations with morality. he was too racked by disease and circumstance to get much profit out of the rules of morality. the hygiene of the soul, like that of the body, is beneficial only to healthy men. to the sick it is simply harmful. the more dostoevsky engaged himself with high morality, the more inextricably entangled he became. he wanted to respect the personality in a woman, and only the personality, and so he came to the point where he could not look on any woman, however ugly, with indifference. the elder karamazov and his affair with elizabeth smerdyascha (stinking lizzie)—in what other imagination could such a union have been contemplated? dostoevsky, of course, reprimands karamazov, and thanks to the standards of modern criticism, such a reprimand is accounted sufficient to exonerate our author. but there are other standards. if a writer sets out to tell you that no drab could be so loathsome that her ugliness would make you forget she was woman; and if for illustration of this novel idea we are told the history of fiodov karamazov with the deformed, repulsive idiot, stinking lizzie; then, in face of such "imaginative art" it is surely out of place to preserve the usual confidence in that writer. we do not speak of the interest and appreciation of dostoevsky's tastes and ideas. not for one moment will i assert that those who with poushkin and lermontov can see the eternal female only in young and charming women, have any advantage over dostoevsky. of course, we are not forbidden to live according to our tastes, and we may, like tolstoy, call certain women "beasts." but who has given us the right to assert that we are higher or better than dostoevsky? judging "objectively," all the points go to show that dostoevsky is better—at any rate he saw further, deeper. he could find an original interest, he could discover das ewig weibliche where we should see nothing of attraction at all, where goethe would avert his face. stinking lizzie is not a beast, as levin would say, but a woman who is able, if even for a moment, to arouse a feeling of love in a man. and we thought she was worse than nothing, since she roused in us only disgust. dostoevsky made a discovery, we with our refined feelings missed it. his distorted, abnormal sense showed a greater sensitiveness, in which our high morality was deficient.... and the road to the great truth this time, as ever, is through deformity. idealists will not agree. they are quite justly afraid that one may not reach the truth, but may get stuck in the mud. idealists are careful men, and not nearly so stupid as their ideals would lead us to suppose.

8

new ideas, even our own, do not quickly conquer our sympathies. we must first get accustomed to them.

9

a point of view.—every writer, thinker—even every educated person thinks it necessary to have a permanent point of view. he climbs up some elevation and never climbs down again all his days. whatever he sees from this point of view, he believes to be reality, truth, justice, good—and what he does not see he excludes from existence. man is not much to blame for this. surely there is no very great joy in moving from point of view to point of view, shifting one's camp from peak to peak. we have no wings, and "a winged thought" is only a nice metaphor—unless, of course, it refers to logical thinking. there to be sure great volatility is usual, a lightness which comes from perfect na?veté, if not ignorance. he who really wishes to know something, and not merely to have a philosophy, does not rely on logic and is not allured by reason. he must clamber from summit to summit, and, if necessary, hibernate in the dales. for a wide horizon leads to illusions, and in order to familiarise oneself with any object, it is essential to go close up to it, touch it, feel it, examine it from top to bottom and on every side. one must be ready, should this be impossible otherwise, to sacrifice the customary position of the body: to wriggle, to lie flat, to stand on one's head, in a word, to assume the most unnatural of attitudes. can there be any question of a permanent point of view? the more mobility and elasticity a man has, the less he values the ordinary equilibrium of his body; the oftener he changes his outlook, the more he will take in. if, on the other hand, he imagines that from this or the other pinnacle he has the most comfortable survey of the world and life, leave him alone; he will never know anything. nay, he does not want to know, he cares more about his personal convenience than about the quality of his work. no doubt he will attain to fame and success, and thus brilliantly justify his "point of view."

10

fame.—"a thread from everyone, and the naked will have a shirt." there is no beggar but has his thread of cotton, and he will not grudge it to a naked man—no, nor even to a fully dressed one; but will bestow it on the first comer. the poor, who want to forget their poverty, are very ready with their threads. moreover, they prefer to give them to the rich, rather than to a fellow-tramp. to load the rich with benefits, must not one be very rich indeed? that is why fame is so easily got. an ambitious person asks admiration and respect from the crowd, and is rarely denied. the mob feel that their throats are their own, and their arms are strong. why not vociferate and clap, seeing that you can turn the head not only of a beggar like yourself, but of a future hero, god knows how almighty a person. the humiliated citizen who has hitherto been hauled off to the police station if he shouted, suddenly feels that his throat has acquired a new value. never before has anyone given a rap for his worthless opinion, and now seven cities are ready to quarrel for it, as for the right to claim homer. the citizen is delighted, he shouts at the top of his voice, and is ready to throw all his possessions after his shouts. so the hero is satisfied. the greater the shout, the deeper his belief in himself and his mission. what will a hero not believe! for he forgets so soon the elements of which his fame and riches are made. heroes usually are convinced that they set out on their noble career, not to beg shouts from beggars, but to heap blessings on mankind. if they could only call to mind with what beating hearts they awaited their first applause, their first alms, how timidly they curried favour with ragged beggars, perhaps they would speak less assuredly of their own merits. but our memory is fully acquainted with herbert spencer and his law of adaptability, and thus many a worthy man goes gaily on in full belief in his own stupendous virtue.

11

in defence of righteousness.—inexperienced and ingenuous people see in righteousness merely a burden which lofty people have assumed out of respect for law or for some other high and inexplicable reason. but a righteous man has not only duties but rights. true, sometimes, when the law is against him, he has to compromise. yet how rarely does the law desert him! no cruelty matters in him, so long as he does not infringe the statutes. nay, he will ascribe his cruelty as a merit to himself, since he acts out of no personal considerations, but in the name of sacred justice. no matter what he may do, once he is sanctioned he sees in his actions only merit, merit, merit. modesty forbids him to say too much—but if he were to let go, what a luxurious panegyric he might deliver to himself! remembering his works, he praises himself at all times; not aloud, but inwardly. the nature of virtue demands it: man must rejoice in his morality and ever keep it in mind. and after that, people declare that it is hard to be righteous. whatever the other virtues may be, certainly righteousness has its selfish side. as a rule it is decidedly worth while to make considerable sacrifices in order later on to enjoy in calm confidence all that surety and those rights bestowed on a man by morality and public approval. look at a german who has paid his contribution to a society for the assistance of the indigent. not one stray farthing will he give, not to a poor wretch who is starving before his eyes. and in this he feels right. this is righteousness out and out: pay your tax and enjoy the privileges of a high-principled man. so righteousness is much in vogue with cultured, commercial nations. russians have not quite got there. they are afraid of the exactions of righteousness, not guessing the enormous advantages derived. a russian has a permanent relationship with his conscience, which costs him far more than the most moral german, or even englishman, has to pay for his righteousness.

12

the best way of getting rid of tedious, played-out truths is to stop paying them the tribute of respect and to treat them with a touch of easy familiarity and derision. to put into brackets, as dostoevsky did, such words as good, self-sacrifice, progress, and so on, will alone achieve you much more than many brilliant arguments would do. whilst you still contest a certain truth, you still believe in it, and this even the least penetrating individual will perceive. but if you favour it with no serious attention, and only throw out a scornful remark now and then, the result is different. it is evident you have ceased to be afraid of the old truth, you no longer respect it. and this sets people thinking.

13

four walls.—arm-chair philosophy is being condemned—rightly. an arm-chair thinker is busy deciding on everything that is taking place in the world: the state of the world market, the existence of a world-soul, wireless telegraphy and the life after death, the cave dweller and the perfectibility of man, and so on and so on. his chief business is so to select his statements that there shall be no internal contradiction; and this will give an appearance of truth. such work, which is quite amusing and even interesting, leads at last to very poor results. surely verisimilitudes of truth are not truth: nor have necessarily anything in common with truth. again, a man who undertakes to talk of everything probably knows nothing. thus a swan can fly, and walk, and swim. but it flies indifferently, walks badly, and swims poorly. an arm-chair philosopher, enclosed by four walls, sees nothing but those four walls, and yet of these precisely he does not choose to speak. if by accident he suddenly realised them and spoke of them his philosophy might acquire an enormous value. this may happen when a study is converted into a prison: the same four walls, but impossible not to think of them! whatever the prisoner turns his mind to—homer, the greek-persian wars, the future world-peace, the bygone geological cataclysms—still the four walls enclose it all. the calm of the study supplanted by the pathos of imprisonment. the prisoner has no more contact with the world, and no less. but now he no longer slumbers and has grayish dreams called world-conceptions. he is wide awake and strenuously living. his philosophy is worth hearing. but man is not distinguished for his powers of discrimination. he sees solitude and four walls, and says: a study. he dreams of the market-place, where there is noise and jostling, physical bustle, and decides that there alone life is to be met. he is wrong as usual. in the market-place, among the crowd, do not men sleep their deadest sleep? and is not the keenest spiritual activity taking place in seclusion?

14

the spartans made their helots drunk as an example and warning to their noble youths. a good method, no doubt, but what are we of the twentieth century to do? whom shall we make drunk? we have no slaves, so we have instituted a higher literature. novels and stories describe drunken, dissolute men, and paint them in such horrid colours that every reader feels all his desire for vice depart from him. unfortunately only our russians are either too conscientious or not sufficiently rectilinear in their minds. instead of showing the drunken helot as an object of repugnance, as the spartans did, they try to describe vice truthfully. realism has taken hold. indeed, why make a fuss? what does it matter if the writer's description is a little more or less ugly than the event? was justice invented that everything, even evil, should be kept intact? surely evil must be simply rooted out, banned, placed outside the pale. the spartans did not stand on ceremony with living men, and yet our novelists are afraid of being unjust to imaginary drunken helots. and, so to speak, out of humane feeling too.... how naive one must be to accept such a justification! yet everybody accepts it. tolstoy alone, towards the end, guessed that humanitarianism is only a pretext in this case, and that we russians have described vice not only for the purpose of scaring our readers. in modern masters the word vice arouses not disgust, but insatiable curiosity. perhaps the wicked thing has been persecuted in vain, like so many other good things. perhaps it should have been studied, perhaps it held mysteries.... on the strength of this "perhaps" morality was gradually abandoned, and tolstoy remained almost alone in his indignation. realism reigns, and a drunken helot arouses envy in timid readers who do not know where to put their trust, whether in the traditional rules or in the appeal of the master. a drunken helot an ideal! what have we come to? were it not better to have stuck to lycurgus? have we not paid too dearly for our progress?

many people think we have paid too dearly—not to mention tolstoy, who is now no longer taken quite seriously, though still accounted a great man. any mediocre journalist enjoys greater influence than this master-writer of the russian land. it is inevitable. tolstoy insists on thinking about things which are nobody's concern. he has long since abandoned this world—and does he continue to exist in any other? difficult question! "tolstoy writes books and letters, therefore he exists." this inference, once so convincing, now has hardly any effect on us: particularly if we take into account what it is that tolstoy writes. in several of his last letters he expresses opinions which surely have no meaning for an ordinary man. they can be summed up in a few words. tolstoy professes an extreme egoism, sollipsism, solus-ipse-ism. that is, in his old age, after infinite attempts to love his neighbour, he comes to the conclusion that not only is it impossible to love one's neighbour, but that there is no neighbour, that in all the world tolstoy alone exists, that there is even no world, but only tolstoy: a view so obviously absurd, that it is not worth refuting. by the way, there is also no possibility of refuting it, unless you admit that logical inferences are non-binding. sollipsism dogged tolstoy already in early youth, but at that time he did not know what to do with the impertinent, oppressive idea, so he ignored it. finally, he came to it. the older a man becomes, the more he learns how to make use of impertinent ideas. fairly recently tolstoy could pronounce such a dictum: "christ taught men not to do stupid things." who but tolstoy could have ventured on such an interpretation of the gospels? why have we all held—all of us but tolstoy—that these words contained the greatest blasphemy on christ and his teaching? but it was tolstoy's last desperate attempt to save himself from sollipsism, without at the same time flying in the face of logic: even christ appeared among men only to teach them common sense. whence follows that "mad" thoughts may be rejected with an easy conscience, and the advantage, as usual, remains with the wholesome, reasonable, sensible thoughts. there is room for good and for reason. good is self-understood; it need not be explained. if only good existed in the world, there would exist no questions, neither simple nor ultimate. this is why youth never questions. what indeed should it question: the song of the nightingale, the morning of may, happy laughter, all the predicates of youth? do these need interpretation? on the contrary, any explanation is reduced to these the proper questions arise only on contact with evil. a hawk struck a nightingale, flowers withered, boreas froze laughing youth—and in terror our questions arose. "that is evil. the ancients were right. not in vain is our earth called a vale of tears and sorrow." and once questions are started, it is impossible and unseemly to hurry the answers, still less anticipate the questions. the nightingale is dead and will sing no longer, the listener is frozen to death and can hear no more songs. the situation is so palpably absurd that only with the intention of getting rid of the question at any cost will one strive for a sensible answer. the answer must be absurd—if you don't want it, don't question. but if you must question, then be ready beforehand to reconcile yourself with something like sollipsism or modern realism. thought is in a dilemma, and dare not take the leap to get out. we laugh at philosophy, and, as long as possible, avoid evil. but nearly all men feel the intolerable cramp of such a situation, and each at his risk ventures to swim to shore on some more or less witty theory. a few courageous ones speak the truth—but they are neither understood nor respected. when a man's words show the depth of the pain through which he has passed, he is not, indeed, condemned, but the world begins to talk of his tragic state of soul, and to take on a mournful look fitting to the occasion. others more scrupulous feel that phrases and mournful looks are unfitting, yet they cannot dwell at length on the tragedies of outsiders, so they take on an exaggeratedly stern bearing, as if to say, "we feel deeply, but we do not wish to show our feeling." they really feel nothing, only want to make others believe how sensitive and modest they are. at times this leads to curious results, even in writers of the first order of renown. thus anatole france, the inventor of that most charming smile which is intended to convince men that he feels everything and understands everything, but does not cry out, because that would not be fitting, in one of his novels takes upon himself the noble r?le of advocate of the victims of a crime, against the criminal. "our time," he says, "out of pity to the criminal forgets the sufferings of his victim." this, i repeat, is one of the most curious misrepresentations of modern endeavour. it is true we in russia talk a good deal about compassion, particularly to criminals, and anatole france is by no means the only man who thinks that our distinguishing characteristic is extreme sensitiveness and tender-heartedness. but as a matter of fact the modern man who thinks for himself is not drawn to the criminal by a sense of compassion, which would incontestably be better applied to the victim, but by curiosity, or if you like, inquisitiveness. for thousands of years man has sought to solve the great mystery of life through a god-conception—with theodicy and metaphysical theories as a result, both of which deny the possibility of a mystery. theodicy has long ago wearied us. the mechanistic theories, which contend that there is nothing special in life, that its appearance and disappearance depend on the same laws as those of the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter, these look more plausible at first sight, but people do not take to them. and no theory can survive men's reluctance to believe in it. in a word, good has not justified the expectations placed on it. reason has done no better. so overwrought mankind has turned from its old idols and enthroned madness and evil. the smiling anatole argues, and proves—proves excellently. but who does not know what his proofs amount to?—and who wants them? it may be our children will take fright at the task we have undertaken, will call us "squandering parents," and will set themselves again to heaping up treasures, spiritual and material. again they will believe in ideals, progress, and such like. for my own part, i have hardly any doubt of it. sollipsism and the cult of groundlessness are not lasting, and, most of all, they are not to be handed down. the final triumph, in life as in old comedies, rests with goodness and common sense. history has known many epochs like ours, and gone through with them. degeneration follows on the heels of immoderate curiosity, and sweeps away all refined and exaggerately well-informed individuals. men of genius have no posterity—or their children are idiots. not for nothing is nature so majestically serene: she has hidden her secrets well enough. which is not surprising, considering how unscrupulous she is. no despot, not the greatest villain on earth, has ever wielded power with the cruelty and heartlessness of nature. the least violation of her laws—and the severest punishment follows. disease, deformity, madness, death -what has not our common mother contrived to keep us in subjection? true, certain optimists think that nature does not punish us, but educates us. so tolstoy sees it. "death and sufferings, like animated scarecrows, boo at man and drive him into the one way of life open to him: for life is subject to its own law of reason." not a bad method of upbringing. exactly like using wolves and bears. unfortunate man, bolting from one booing monster, is not always able in time to dodge into the one correct way, and dashes straight into the maw of another beast of prey. then what? and this often happens. without disparagement of the optimists, we may say that sooner or later it happens to every man. after which no more running. you won't tear yourself out of the claws of madness or disease. only one thing is left: in spite of traditions, theodicy, wiseacres, and most of all in spite of oneself, to go on praising mother nature and her great goodness. let future generations reject us, let history stigmatise our names, as the names of traitors to the human cause—still we will compose hymns to deformity, destruction, madness, chaos, darkness. and after that—let the grass grow.

15

astrology and alchemy lived their day and died a natural death. but they left a posterity—chemistry inventing dyes, and astronomy accumulating formulae. so it is. geniuses beget idiots: especially when the mothers are very virtuous, as in this case, when their virtue is extraordinary. for the mothers are public utility and morality. the alchemists wasted their time seeking the philosopher's stone; the astrologers, swindled people telling fortunes by the stars. wedded to utility these two fathers have begotten the chemists and astronomers. ... nobody will dispute the genealogy. perhaps even none will dispute that, from idiotic children one may, with a measure of probability, infer genius in the parents. there are certain indications that this is so—though of course one may not go beyond supposition. but supposition is enough. there are more arguments in store. for instance—our day is so convinced of the absolute nonsense and uselessness of alchemy and astrology that no one dreams of verifying the conviction. we know there were many charlatans and liars amongst alchemists and astrologers. but what does this prove? in every department there are the same mediocre creatures who speculate on human credulity. however positive our science of medicine is, there are many fraudulent doctors who rob their patients. the alchemists and astrologers were, in all probability, the most remarkable men of their time. i will go further: in spite of dye-stuffs and formulae, even in our nineteenth century, which was so famous for its inventions and discoveries, the most eminent, talented men still sought the philosopher's stone and forecast the destinies of man. and those among them who were possessed of a poetic gift won universal attention. in the old days, consensu sapientium, a poet was allowed all kinds of liberties: he might speak of fate, miracles, spirits, the life beyond—indeed of anything, provided he was interesting. that was enough. the nineteenth century paid its tribute to restlessness. never were there so many disturbing, throbbing writers as during the epoch of telephones and telegraphs. it was held indecent to speak in plain language of the vexed and troubled aspirations of the human spirit. those guilty of the indecency were even dosed with bromides and treated with shower-baths and concentrated foods. but all this is external, it belongs to a history of "fashions" and cannot interest us here. the point is that alchemy and astrology did not die, they only shammed death and left the stage for a time. now, apparently, they are tired of seclusion and are coming forward again, having pushed their unsuccessful children into the background. well, so be it. a la bonne heure!...

16

man comes to the pass where all experience seems exhausted. wherever he go, whatever he see, all is old and wearyingly familiar. most people explain this by saying that they really know everything, and that from what they have experienced they can infer all experience. this phase of the exhaustion of life usually comes to a man between thirty-five and forty—the best period, according to karamzin. not seeing anything new, the individual assumes he is completely matured and has the right to judge of everything. knowing what has been he can forecast what will be. but karamzin was mistaken about the best period, and the "mature" people are mistaken about the "nothing new can happen." the fact of spiritual stagnation should not be made the ground for judging all life's possibilities from known possibilities. on the contrary, such stagnation should prove that however rich and multifarious the past may have been, it has not exhausted a tittle of the whole possibilities. from that which has been it is impossible to infer what will be. moreover, it is unnecessary—except, perhaps, to give us a sense of our full maturity and let us enjoy all the charms of the best period of life, so eloquently described by karamzin. the temptation is not overwhelming. so that, if man is under the necessity of enduring a period of arrest and stagnation, and until such time as life re-starts is doomed to meditation, would it not be better to use this meditating interregnum for a directly opposite purpose from the one indicated: that is to say, for the purpose of finding in our past signs which tell us that the future has every right to be anything whatsoever, like or utterly unlike the past. such signs, given a good will to find them, may be seen in plenty. at times one comes to the conclusion that the natural connection of phenomena, as hitherto observed, is not at all inevitable for the future, and that miracles which so far have seemed impossible, may come to seem possible, even natural, far more natural than that loathsome law of sequence, the law of the regularity of phenomena. we are bored stiff with regularity and sequence—confess it, you also, you men of science. at the mere thought that, however we may think, we can get no further than the acknowledgment of the old regularity, an invincible disgust to any kind of mental work overcomes us. to discover another law—still another—when already we have far more than we can do with! surely if there is any will-to-think left in us, it is established in the supposition that the mind cannot and must not have any bounds, any limits; and that the theory of knowledge, which is based on the history of knowledge and on a few very doubtful assumptions, is only a piece of property belonging to a certain caste, and has nothing to do with us others—und die natur zuletzt sich doch ergründe. what a mad impatience seizes us at times when we realise that we shall never fathom the great mystery! every individual in the world must have felt at one time the mad desire to unriddle the universe. even the stodgy philosophers who invented the theory of knowledge have at times made surreptitious sorties, hoping to open a path to the unknown, in spite of their own fat, senseless books that demonstrate the advantages of scientific knowledge. man either lives in continuous experience, or he frees himself from conclusions imposed by limited experience. all the rest is the devil. from the devil come the blandishments with which karamzin charmed himself and his readers.... or is it the contrary? who will answer! once again, as usual, at the end of a pathetic speech one is left with a conjecture. let every man please himself. but what about those who would like to live according to karamzin, but cannot? i cannot speak for them. schiller recommended hope. will it do? to be frank, hardly. he who has once lost his peace of mind will never find it again.

17

ever since kant succeeded in convincing the learned that the world of phenomena is quite other than the world of true reality, and that even our own existence is not our real existence, but only the visible manifestation of a mysterious, unknown substance (substantia)—philosophy has been stuck in a new rut, and cannot move a single millimetre out of the track laid out by the great k?nigsbergian. backward or forward it can go, but necessarily in the kantian rut. for how can you get out of the counterposing of the phenomenon against the thing-in-itself? this proposition, this counterposing seems inalterable, so there is nothing left but to stick your head in the heavy draught-collar of the theory of knowledge. which most philosophers do, even with a glad smile, which inevitably rouses a suspicion that they have got what they wanted, and their "metaphysical need" was nothing more than a need for a harness. otherwise they would have kicked at the sight of the collar. surely the contraposition between the world of phenomena and the thing-in-itself is an invention of the reasoning mind, as is the theory of knowledge deduced from this contraposing. therefore the freedom-loving spirit could reject it in the very beginning—and basta! with the devil one must be very cautious. we know quite well that if he only gets hold of the tip of your ear he will carry off your whole body. so it is with reason. grant it one single assumption, admit but one proposition—and finita la commedia. you are in the toils. metaphysics cannot exist side-by-side with reason. everything metaphysical is absurd, everything reasonable is—positive. so we come upon a dilemma. the fundamental predicate of metaphysics is absurdity: and yet surely many positive assertions can lay legitimate claim to that self-same, highly-respectable predicate. what then? is there means of distinguishing a metaphysical absurdity from a perfectly ordinary one? may one have recourse to criteria? will not the very criterion prove a pitfall wherein cunning reason will catch the poor man who was rushing out to freedom? there can be no two answers to this question. all services rendered by reason must be paid for sooner or later at the exorbitant price of self-renunciation. whether you accept the assistance in the noble form of the theory of knowledge, or merely as a humble criterion, at last you will be driven forth into the streets of positivism. this happens all the time to young, inexperienced minds. they break the bridle and dash forward into space, to find themselves rushing into the same old rome, whither, as we know, all roads lead: or, to use more lofty language, rushing into the stable whither also all roads lead. the only way to guard against positivism—granting, of course, that positivism no longer attracts your sympathies—is to cease to fear any absurdities, whether rational or metaphysical, and systematically to reject all the services of reason. such behaviour has been known in philosophy; and i make bold to recommend it. credo, quia absurdum comes from the middle ages. modern instances are nietzsche and schopenhauer. both present noble examples of indifference to logic and common-sense: particularly schopenhauer, who, a kantian, even in the name of kant made such daring sallies against reason, driving her into confusion and shame. that astounding kantian even went so far, in the master's name still, as to attempt the overthrow of the space and time notions. he admitted clairvoyance—and to this day the learned are bothered whether to class that admission among the metaphysical or the ordinary absurdities. really, i can't advise them. a very clever man insists on an enormous absurdity, so i am satisfied. schopenhauer's whole campaign against intellect is very comforting. it is evident that, though he set out from the kantian stable, he soon got sick of hauling along down the cart-ruts, and having broken the shafts, he trotted jauntily into a jungle of irreconcilable contradictions, without reflecting in the least where he was making for. the primate of will over reason; and music as the expression of our deepest essence; are not these assertions sufficient to show us how dexterously he wriggled out from the harness of synthetic judgments a priori which kant had placed upon every thinker. there is indeed much more music than logic in the philosophy of schopenhauer; not for nothing is he excluded from the universities. but of course one may speak of him in the open; not of his ideas, naturally, but of his music. the european market is glutted with ideas. how neat and nicely-finished and logically well-turned-out those ideas are. schopenhauer had no such goods. but what lively and splendid contradictions he boldly spreads on his stall, often even without suspicion that he ought to hide them from the police. schopenhauer cries and laughs and gets furious or glad, without ever realising that this is forbidden to a philosopher. "do not speak, but sing," said zarathustra, and schopenhauer ready fulfilled the command in great measure. philosophy may be music—though it doesn't follow that music may be called philosophy. when a man has done his work, and gives himself up to looking and listening and pleasantly accepting everything, hiding nothing from himself, then he begins to "philosophise." what good are abstract formulae to him? why should he ask himself, before he begins to think: "what can i think about, what are the limits of thought?" he will think, and those who like can do the summing up and the building of theories of knowledge. what is the earthly use of talking about beauty? beautiful things must be created. not one single aesthetic theory has so far been able to guess what direction the artists' mind will next take, or what are the limits to his creative activity. the same with the theory of knowledge. it may arrest the work of a man of learning, if he be himself afraid that he is going too far, but it is powerless to pre-determine human thought. even kant's counterposing of things-in-themselves to the world of phenomena cannot finally clip the wings of human curiosity. there will come a time when this unshakeable foundation of positivism will be shaken. all gnosiological disputes as to what thought can or cannot achieve will seem to our posterity just as amusing as the disputes of the schoolmen seem to us. "why did they argue about the nature of truth, when they might have gone out and looked for truth itself?" the future historians will ask. let us have an answer ready for them. our contemporaries do not want to go out and seek, so they make a great deal of talk about a theory of knowledge.

18

"trust not thyself, young dreamer."—however sincerely you may long for truth, whatever sufferings and horrors you may have surpassed, do not believe your own self, young dreamer. what you are looking for, you won't find. at the utmost, if you have a gift for writing you will bring out a nice original book. even—do not be offended—you may be satisfied with such a result. in nietzsche's letters relating to the year 1888, the year when brandes discovered him, you will find a sad confirmation of the above. had not nietzsche struggled, sought, suffered?—and behold, towards the end of his life, when it would have seemed that all mundane rewards had become trivial to him, he threw himself with rapture on the tidings of first fame, and rushed to share his joy with all his friends, far and near. he does not tire of telling in dozens of letters and in varying forms the story of how brandes first began his lectures on him, nietzsche, how the audience consisted of three hundred people, and he even quotes brandes' placard announcement in the original danish. fame just threw him a smile, and forgotten are all the horrible experiences of former days. the loneliness, the desertedness, the cave in the mountain, the man into whose mouth the serpent climbed—all forgotten, every thought turned to the ordinary, easily-comprehensible good. such is man.

mit gier'ger hand nach sch?tzen gr?bt

und froh ist wenn er regenwürmer findet.

19

when a man is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn mankind. later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he writes to convince himself. a few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a "superfluous" man is so horrible.

20

a very original man is often a banal writer, and vice versa. we tend so often to write not about what is going on in us, but of our pia desideria. thus restless, sleepless men sing the glory of sleep and rest, which have long been sung to death. and those who sleep ten hours on end and are always up to the mark must perforce dream about adventures and storms and dangers, and even extol everything problematical.

21

when one reads the books of long-dead men, a strange sensation comes over one. these men who lived two hundred, three hundred, three thousand years ago are so far off now from this writing which they have left on earth. yet we look for eternal truths in their works.

22

the truth which i have the right to announce so solemnly to-day, even to the first among men, will probably be a stale old lie on my lips to-morrow. so i will deprive myself of the right of calling such a truth my own. probably i shall deprive no one but myself: others will go on loving and praising the self-same truth, living with it.

23

a writer who cannot lie with inspiration—and that is a great art, which few may accomplish—loves to make an exhibition of honesty and frankness. nothing else is left him to do.

24

the source of originality.—a man who has lost all hope of rooting out of himself a certain radical defect of character, or even of hiding the flaw from others, turns round and tries to find in his defect a pertain merit. if he succeeds in convincing his acquaintances, he achieves a double gain: first, he quiets his conscience, and then he acquires a reputation for being original.

25

men begin to strive towards great ends when they feel they cannot cope with the little tasks of life. they often have their measure of success.

26

a belch interrupts the loftiest meditation. you may draw a conclusion if you like: if you don't like, you needn't.

27

a woman of conviction.—we forgive a man his "convictions," however unwillingly. it goes without saying that we balk at any individual who believes in his own infallibility, but one must reconcile oneself with necessity. it is ugly and preposterous to have corns on one's hands, but still, they can't be avoided in this unparadisal earth of sweat and labour. but why see an ideal in callosities? in practical life, particularly in the social political life to which we are doomed, convictions are a necessity. unity is strength, and unity is possible only among people who think alike. again, a deep conviction is in itself a strong force, far more powerful than the most logical argumentation. sometimes one has only to pronounce in a full, round, vibrating chest voice, such as is peculiar to people of conviction, some trifling sentence, and an audience hitherto unconvinced is carried away. truth is often dumb, particularly a new truth, which is most shy of people, and which has a feeble, hoarse voice. but in certain situations that which will influence the crowd is more important than that which is genuine truth. convictions are necessary to a public man; but he who is too clever to believe in himself entirely, and is not enough of an actor to look as if he believed, he had best give up public work altogether. at the same time he will realise that lack of convictions is not profitable, and will look with more indulgence on such as are bound to keep themselves well supplied. yet all the more will he dislike those men who without any necessity disfigure themselves with the coarse tattoo marks. and particularly he will object to such women. what can be more intolerable than a woman of conviction. she lives in a family, without having to grind for her daily bread—why disfigure herself? why wilfully rub her hands into corns, when she might keep them clean and pretty! women, moreover, usually pick up their convictions ready-made from the man who interests them most at the moment. and never do they do this so vigorously as when the man himself seems incapable of paving the way to his ideas! they are full of feeling for him; they rush to the last extremities of resource. will not their feeble little fists help him? it may be touching, but in the end it is intolerable. so it is much pleasanter to meet a woman who believes in her husband and does not consider it necessary to help him. she can then dispense with convictions.

28

emancipation of women.—the one and only way of mastering an enemy is to learn the use of his weapons. starting from this, modern woman, weary of being the slave of man, tries to learn all his tricks. hard is slavery, wonderful is freedom! slavery at last is so unendurable that a human being will sacrifice, everything for freedom. of what use are his virtues to a prisoner languishing in prison? he has one aim, one object—to get out of prison, and he values only such qualities in himself as will assist his escape. if it is necessary to break an iron grating by physical force, then strong muscles will seem to the prisoner the most desirable of all things. if cunning will help him, cunning is the finest thing on earth. something the same happens with woman. she became convinced that man owed his priority chiefly to education and a trained mind, so she threw herself on books and universities. learning that promises freedom is light, everything else darkness. of course, it is a delusion, but you could never convince her of it, for that would mean the collapse of her best hopes of freedom. so that in the end woman will be as well-informed as man, she will furnish herself with broad views and unshakeable convictions, with a philosophy also—and in the end she may even learn to think logically. then, probably, the many misunderstandings between the sexes will cease. but heavens, how tedious it will be! men will argue, women will argue, children will probably be born fully instructed, understanding everything. with what pain will the men of the future view our women, capricious, frivolous, uninformed creatures, understanding nothing and desiring to understand nothing. a whole half of the human race neither would nor could have any understanding! but the hope lies there. maybe we can do without understanding. perhaps a logical mind is not an attribute, but a curse. in the struggle for existence, however, and the survival of the fittest, not a few of the best human qualities have perished. obviously woman's illogicality is also destined to disappear. it is a thousand pities.

29

all kinds of literature are good, except the tedious, said voltaire. we may enlarge the idea. all men and all activities are good, except the tedious. whatever your failings and your vices, if you are only amusing or interesting all is forgiven you. accordingly, frankness and naturalness are quite rightly considered doubtful virtues. if people say that frankness and naturalness are virtues, always take it cum grano salis. sometimes it is permissible and even opportune to fire off truth of all sorts. sometimes one may stretch oneself like a log across the road. but god forbid that such sincere practices should be raised into a principle. to out with the truth at all times, always to reveal oneself entirely, besides being impossible to accomplish, never having been accomplished even in the confessions of the greatest men, is moreover a far more risky business than it seems. i can confidently assert that if any man tried to tell the whole truth about himself, not metaphorically, for every metaphor is a covering ornament, but in plain bare words, that man would ruin himself for ever, for he would lose all interest in the eyes of his neighbours, and even in his own eyes. each of us bears in his soul a heavy wound, and knows it, yet carries himself, must carry himself as if he were aware of nothing, while all around keep up the pretence. remember lermontov:

look! around you, playfully

the crowd moves on the usual road.

scarce a mark of trouble on the festive faces,

not one indecent tear!

and yet is barely one amongst them

but is crushed by heavy torture,

or has gathered the wrinkles of young age

save from crime or loss.

these words are horribly true—and the really horrible should be concealed, it frightens one off. i admit, byron and lermontov could make it alluring. but all that is alluring depends on vagueness, remoteness. any monster may be beautiful in the distance. and no man can be interesting unless he keep a certain distance between himself and people. women do not understand this. if they like a man, they try to come utterly near to him, and are surprised that he does not meet their frankness with frankness, and admit them to his holy of holies. but in the innermost sanctuary the only beauty is inaccessibility. as a rule it is not a sanctuary but a lair where the wounded beast in man has run to lick his wounds. and shall this be done in public? people generally, and women particularly, ought to be given something positive. in books one may still sing the praise of wounds, hopelessness, and despair—whatever you like, for books are still literature, a conventionality. but to strip one's anguish in the open market, to confess an incurable disease to others, this is to kill one's soul, not to relieve it. all, even the best men, have some aversion for you. perhaps in the interest of order and decorum they will grant you a not-too-important place in their philosophy of life. for in a philosophy of life, as in a cemetery, a place is prepared for each and all, and everyone is welcome. there also are enclosures where rubbish is dumped to rot. but for those who have as yet no desire to be fitted into a world-philosophy, i would advise them to keep their tongue between their teeth, or like nietzsche and dostoevsky, take to literature. to a writer, in books and only in books, all is permitted provided he has talent. but in actual living even a writer must not let loose too much, lest people should guess that in his books he is telling the truth.

30

poushkin asserts that the poet himself can and must be the judge of his own work. "are you content, exacting artist? content, then let the mob revile." it is needless to argue against this, for how could you prove that the supreme verdict belongs not to the poet himself, but to public opinion? nor, for that matter, can we prove poushkin right. we must agree or disagree, as we like. but we cannot reject the evidence. whether you like it or not, poushkin was evidently satisfied with his own work, and did not need his reader's sanction. happy man! and it seems to me he owed his happiness exclusively to his inability to pass beyond certain limits. i doubt-if all poets would agree to repeat poushkin's verse quoted above. i decidedly refuse to believe that shakespeare, for instance, after finishing hamlet or king lear could have said to himself: "i, who judge my work more strictly than any other can judge, am satisfied." i do not think he can even have thought for a moment of the merits of his works, hamlet or king lear. to shakespeare, after hamlet, the word "satisfied" must have lost all its meaning, and if he used it, it was only by force of habit, as we sometimes call to a dead person. his own works must have seemed to him imperfect, mean, pitiful, like the sob of a child or the moaning of a sick man. he gave them to the theatre, and most probably was surprised that they had any success. perhaps he was glad that his tears were of some use, if only for amusing and instructing people. and probably in this sense the verdict of the crowd was dearer to him than his own verdict. he could not help accusing his own offspring—thank heaven, other people acquitted it. true, they acquitted it because they did not understand, or understood imperfectly, but this did not matter. "use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape a whipping?" asked hamlet. shakespeare knew that a strict tribunal would reject his works: for they contain so many terrible questions, and not one perfect answer. could anyone be "satisfied" at that rate? perhaps with comedy of errors, twelfth night, or even richard iii.—but after hamlet a man may find rest only in his grave. to speak the whole truth, i doubt if poushkin himself maintained the view we have quoted till the end of his days, or even if he spoke all he felt when he wrote the poem in 1830. possibly he felt how little a poet can be satisfied with his work, but pride prevented his admitting it, and he tried to console himself with his superiority over the crowd. which is undeniably a right thing to do. insults—and poushkin had to endure many—are answered with contempt; and woe to the poor wretch who feels impelled to justify his contempt by his own merits, according to the stern voice of conscience. such niceness is dangerous and unnecessary. if a man would preserve his strength and his confidence he must give up magnanimity, he must learn to despise people, and even if he cannot despise them he must have the air of one who would not give a pin's head for anybody. he must appear always content. ... poushkin was a clever man and a deep nature.

31

metaphysics against their will.—it often occurs to us that evil is not altogether so, unnecessary, after all. diseases, humiliations, miseries, deformity, failure, and all the rest of those plants which flourish with such truly tropical luxuriance on our planet, are probably essential to man. poets sing plentifully of sorrow.

"nous sommes les apprentis, la douleur est notre ma?tre," said de musset. on this subject everybody can bring forth a quotation, not only from the philosophers, who are a cold, heartless tribe, but from tender, gentle, or sentimental poets. doubtless one knows many instances where suffering has profited a man. true also, one knows many cases of the direct opposite. and these are all cases of profound, earnest, outrageous, incredibly outrageous suffering. look at tchekhov's men and women—plainly drawn from life, or at any rate, exceedingly life-' like. uncle vanya, an old man of fifty, cries beside himself all over the stage, "my life is done for, my life is done for," and senselessly shoots at a harmless professor. the hero in a tedious story was a quiet, happy man engaged in work of real importance, when suddenly a horrible disease stole upon him, not killing him, but taking him between its loathsome jaws. but what for? then tchekhov's girls and women! they are mostly young, innocent, fascinating. and always there lies in wait for them round every corner a meaningless, rude, ugly misery which murders even the most modest hopes. they sob bitterly, but fate takes no notice. how explain such horrors? tchekhov is silent. he does not weep himself—he left off long ago, and besides it is a humiliating thing for a grown-up person to do. setting one's teeth, it is necessary either to keep silent or—to explain. well, metaphysics under takes the explanation. where common sense stops, metaphysics must take another stride. "we have seen," it says, "many instances where at first glance suffering seemed absurd and needless, but where later on a profound significance was revealed. thus it may be that what we cannot explain may find its explanation in time. 'life is lost,' cries uncle vanya, 'life is done for,' repeat the voices of girls innocently perishing—yet nothing is lost. the very horror which a drowning man experiences goes to show that the drowning is nothing final. it is only the beginning of greater events. the less a man has fulfilled in experience, the more in him remains of unsatisfied passion and desire, the greater are the grounds for thinking that his essence cannot be destroyed, but must manifest itself somehow or other in the universe. voluntary asceticism and self-denial, such common human phenomena, help to solve the riddle. nobody compels a man, he imposes suffering and abstinence on himself. it is an incomprehensible instinct, but still an instinct which, rooted in the depths of our nature, prompts us to a decision repugnant to reason: renounce life, save yourself. the majority of men do not hear or do not heed the prompting. and then nature, which cannot rely on our sensibility, has recourse to violence. she shows glimpses of paradise to us in our youth, awakens hopes and impossible desires, and at the moment of our supreme expectation she shows us the hollowness of our hope. nearly every life can be summed up in a few words: man was shown heaven—and thrown into the mud. we are all ascetics—voluntary or involuntary. here on earth dreams and hopes are only awakened, not fulfilled. and he who has endured most suffering, most privation, will awaken in the afterwards most keenly alive." such long speeches metaphysics whispers to us. and we repeat them, often leaving out the "it may be." sometimes we believe them, and forge our philosophies from them. even we go so far as to assert that had we the power we would change nothing, absolutely nothing in the world. and yet, if by some miracle such power came into our hands, how triumphantly we would send to the devil all philosophies and lofty world-conceptions, all ideals and metaphysics, and plainly and simply, without reflection, abolish sufferings, deformities, failures, all those things to which we attach such a high educational value, abolish them from the face of the earth. we are fed up, oh, how fed up we are with carrying on our studies. but it can't be helped. faute de mieux, let us keep on inventing systems, thinking them out. but let us agree not to be cross with those who don't want to have anything to do with our systems. really, they have a perfect right.

32

old age must be respected—so all say, even the old. and the young willingly meet the demand. but in such spontaneous, even often emphatic respect, is there not something insulting to old age. every young man, by his voluntary deference, seems to say: "and still the rising star shines brighter than the setting." and the old, accepting the respect, are well aware that they can count on nothing more. the young are attentive and respectful to the old only upon the express condition that the latter shall behave like old people, and stand aside from life. let a real man try to follow faust's example, and what a shindy there will be! the old, being as a rule helpless, are compelled to bow to public opinion and behave as if their only interests were the interests of righteousness, good name, and such-like platonic attributes. only a few go against the convention, and these are monsters and degenerates. we do not wish old men to have desires, so that life is arranged as if old men desired nothing. this, of course, is no great matter: even the young are compelled to be satisfied with less than nothing, in our system. we are not out to meddle with human rights. our point is that science and philosophy take enforced appearances for reality. grey hair is supposed to be a sure sign of victory over the passions. hence, seeing that we must all come to grey hairs, therefore the ultimate business of man is to overcome the passions.... on this granite foundation whole systems of philosophy are built. it is not worth while quarrelling with a custom—let us continue to pay respect to old age. but let us look in other directions for philosophic bases. it is time to open a free road to the passions even in the province of metaphysics.

33

dostoevsky—advocatus diaboli.—dostoevsky, like nietzsche, disliked protestantism, and tried every means of degrading it in the eyes of the world. as normally he was not over scrupulous, it is probable he never took the trouble to acquaint himself with luther's teaching. his flair did not deceive him: the protestant religion and morality was most unsuitable to him and his kind. but does this mean that it was to be calumniated, and judged, as dostoevsky judged it, merely by the etymological meaning of a word? protestant—a protester, one who only protests and has no positive content. a child's text-book of history will show the absurdity of the definition. protestantism is, on the whole, the most positive, assertive creed of all the christian religions. it certainly protested against catholicism, but against the destructive tendencies in the latter, and in the name of positive ideals. catholicism relied too much on its power and its spell, and most of all on the infallibility of its dogmas to which it offered millions of victims. to maim and mutilate a man ad majorem gloriam dei was considered a perfectly proper thing in the middle ages, the period of bloom for catholicism. at the risk of appearing paradoxical, i venture to assert that ideas have been invented only for the purpose of giving the right to mutilate people. the middle ages nourished a mysterious, incomprehensible hatred for everything normal, self-satisfied, complete. a young, healthy, handsome man, at peace with himself, aroused suspicion and hostility in a believing catholic. his very appearance offended religion and confuted dogma. it was not necessary to examine him. even though he went to church, and gave no sign of doubt, either in deed or word, yet he must be a heretic, to be converted at all cost. and we know the catholic cost: privation, asceticism, mortification of the flesh. the most normal person, kept on a monastic regime, will lose his spiritual balance, and all those virtues which belong to a healthy spirit and a healthy body. this was all catholicism needed. it tried to obtain from people the extreme endeavour of their whole being. ordinary, natural love, which found its satisfaction—this was sinful. monks and priests were condemned to celibacy—hence monstrous and abnormal passions developed. poverty was preached, and the most unheard-of greed appeared in the world, the more secret the stronger it became. humility was essential—and out of bare-footed monks sprang despots who had no limits to their ambitions. luther was the last man to understand the meaning and value of the tasks which catholicism had set itself. what he saw in rome was not the accidental outcome of this or the other historical circumstance, but a result of the age-long effort of generations that had striven to attribute to life as alarming and dangerous a nature as possible. the sincere, direct, rustic german monk was too simple-minded to make out what was going on in rome. he thought there existed one truth, and that the essence of catholicism lay in what seemed to him an exemplary, virtuous life. he went direct to his aim? what meaning can monasticism have? why deprive a priest of family happiness? how accept the licentiousness of the pope's capital? the common sense of the normal german revolted against the absurdity of such a state of things—and luther neither could nor would see any good where common sense was utterly forgotten. the violent oscillation of life resulting from the continuous quick passage from asceticism and blind faith to unbelief and freedom of the passions aroused a mystic horror in the honest monk and released the enormous powers in him necessary to start the great struggle. how could he help protesting? and who was the denier, luther, or the rome which passed on from the keeping of the divine word to the arbitrary ordaining of all the mysteries of life? luther might have forgiven the monks had they confined themselves to sophistries. but mediaeval monks had nothing in common with our philosophers. they did not look for world-conceptions in books, and logical tournaments amused them only moderately. they threw themselves into the deeps of life, they experimented on themselves and their neighbours. they passed from mortification to licentious bacchanalia. they feared nothing, spared nothing. in a word, the rome against which luther arose had undertaken to build babylon again, not with stones, but with human souls. luther, horrified, withdrew, and with him half europe was withdrawn. that is his positive merit. and dostoevsky attacked lutheranism, and pitied the old catholicism and the breathless heights to which its "spiritual" children had risen. wholesome morality and its support is not enough for dostoevsky. all this is not "positive," it is only "protest." whether i am believed or not, i will repeat that vladimir soloviov, who held that dostoevsky was a prophet, is wrong, and that n. k. mikhailovsky, who calls him a cruel talent and a grubber after buried treasure, is right. dostoevsky grubs after buried treasure—no doubt about that. and, therefore, it would be more becoming in the younger generation that still marches under the flag of pious idealism if, instead of choosing him as a spiritual leader, they avoided the old sorcerer, in whom only those gifted with great shortsightedness or lack of experience in life could fail to see the dangerous man.

34

it is boring and difficult to convince people, and after all, not necessary. it would be much better if every individual kept his own opinions. unfortunately, it cannot be. whether you like it or not, you have to admit the law of gravitation. some people find it necessary to admit the origin of man from the monkey. in the empirical realm, however humiliating it may be, there are certain real, binding, universal truths against which no rebellion will avail. with what pleasure would we declare to a representative of science that fire does not burn, that rattlesnakes are not poisonous, that a fall from a high tower is perfectly agreeable, etc., etc., supposing he were obliged to prove to us the contrary. unluckily the scientific person is free from the burden of proof: nature proves, and thoroughly. if nature, like metaphysics, set out to compel us through syllogisms or sermons to believe in her, how little she would get out of us. she is much more sagacious. morality and logic she has left to hegel and spinoza, for herself she has taken a cudgel. now then, try to argue against this! you will give in against your will. the cleverest of all the metaphysicians, catholic inquisitors, imitated nature. they rarely tried the word, and trusted to the fire of faggots rather than of the heart. had they only had more power, it would not be possible to find two people in the whole world disbelieving in the infallibility of the pope. metaphysical ideas, dreamily expecting to conquer the world by reasoned exposition, will never attain dominion. if they are bent on success, let them try more effective methods of convincing.

35

evolution.—in recent years we see more and more change in the philosophies of writers and even of non-literary people. the old men are beside themselves—such shiftiness seems indecent. after all, convictions are not gloves. but the young carelessly pass on from one idea to another. irresolute men are somewhat timid, and although they abandon their former convictions they do not declare the change openly. others, however, plainly announce, as if it were nothing, how far they now are from the beliefs they held six months ago. one even publishes whole volumes relating how he passed on from one philosophy to another, and then to a third. people see nothing alarming in that kind of "evolution." they believe it is in the ordering of things. but not so at all! the readiness to leave off one set of convictions in order to assume another set shows complete indifference to convictions altogether. not for nothing do the old sound the alarm. but to us who have fought so long against all kinds of constancy, the levity of the young is a pleasant sight. they will don materialism, positivism, kantianism, spiritualism, and so on, one after the other, till they realise that all theories, ideas and ideals are as of little consequence as the hoop-skirts and crinolines of our grandmothers. then they will begin to live without ideals and pre-arranged purposes, without foresight, relying on chance and their own ready wit. this way, too, must be tried. perhaps we shall do better by it.... anyhow, it will be more fun.

36

strength of will.—weakness and paralysis of the will, a very dangerous disease in our times, and in most other times, consists not in the absolute loss of desire, such as takes place in the very old, but in the loss of the capacity to translate desire into deed. a diseased will is often met in violently passionate men, so that the proverb—"say i will not, not i cannot"—does not always hold good. man often would, but cannot. and then the force of desire instead of moving to outward creation, works inwardly. this is justly considered the most dangerous effect of the weakening of the will. for inward working is destructive working. man does not only, to put it scientifically, fail to adapt nature to his needs, but he loses his own power of adaptability to outward circumstances. the most ordinary doctor, or even anybody, decides that he has before him a pathological case which must be treated with care. the patient is of the same opinion, whilst he still hopes. but when the treatment has had no results, the doctor draws back and speaks of the inadequacy of his science. then what is the patient to retire upon? it is disgusting to speak of an incurable disease. so he begins to think, think, think—all the time about things of which nobody thinks. he is gradually forgotten, and gradually he forgets everything—but first of all, that widespread truth which asserts that no judgments are valid save those that are accepted and universal. not that he disputes the truth: he forgets it, and there is none to remind him. to him all his judgments seem valid and important. of course he cannot advance the principle: let all men turn from the external world into themselves. but why advance a principle at all? one can simply say: i am indifferent to the destinies of the external world. i do not want to move mountains or turn rivers aside or rearrange the map of europe. i don't even want to go to the tobacconist to buy cigarettes. i don't want to do anything. i want to think that my inaction is the most important thing on earth, that any "disease" is better than health, and so on and so on without end. to what thought's will not a man abandoned by medicine and doctors sink down! his judgments are not binding on us, that is as clear as day. but are they uninteresting? and is that paralysis, that weakness of will, a disease only?

37

death and metaphysics.—a superficial observer knows that the best things in life are hard to attain. some psychologists even consider that the chief beauty of the highest things consists in their unattainability. this is surely not true—yet there is a grain in it. the roads to good things are dangerous to travel. is it because nature is so much poorer than we imagine, so she must lock up her blessings, or is there some greater meaning in it, that we have not guessed? for the fact is, the more alluring an end we have in view, the more risks and horrors we must undertake to get there. may we not also make a contrary suggestion: that behind every danger something good is hidden, and that therefore danger serves as an indication, a mark to guide us onwards, not as a warning, as we are taught to believe. to decide this would be to decide that behind death, the greatest of dangers, must lie the most promising things. it is as well not to speculate further. we had best stop lest we quarrel even with metaphysics. traditional metaphysics has always been able to illumine our temporal existence with the reflected beams of eternity. let us follow the example. let us make no attempt to know the absolute. if you have discovered a comforting hypothesis, even in the upper transcendental air, drag it quickly to earth where labouring men forever await even an imaginary relief from their lot. we must make use of everything, even of death, to serve the ends of this life of ours.

38

the future.—a clever, reasonable boy, accustomed to trust his common sense, read in a book for children a description of a shipwreck which occurred just as the passengers were eating their sweets at dessert. he was astonished to learn that everyone, women and children as well, who could give no assistance-whatever in saving the ship, left their dessert and rushed on deck with wailing and tears. why wail, why rush about, why be stupidly agitated? the crew knew their business and would do all that could be done. if you are going to perish, perish you will, no matter how you scream. it seemed to the boy that if he had been on the ship he would just have gone on eating his sweets to the last moment. justice should be done to this judicious and irreproachable opinion. there remained only a few minutes to live—would it not have been better to enjoy them? the logic is perfect, worthy of aristotle. and it was found impossible to prove to the boy that he would have left his sweets, even his favourite sweets, under the same circumstances, and rushed, and screamed with the rest. hence a moral—do not decide about the future. to-day common sense is uppermost, and sweets are your highest law. but to-morrow you will get rid of normality and sense, you will link on with nonsense and absurdity, and probably you will even get a taste for bitters. what do you think?

39

a priori synthetic judgments.—kant, as we know, found in mathematics and the natural sciences a priori synthetic judgments. was he right or wrong? are the judgments he indicated a priori or a posteriori? anyhow, one thing is certain: they are not accepted as absolutely, but only as relatively indisputable. in metaphysics, where the only curious and important truths are hidden, the case is different. kant was compelled to admit that just where metaphysics begin the capacity of our human reason to judge a priori ends. but since we cannot dispense with metaphysical judgments, he proposed to substitute for them postulates. at the same time he admitted the optimistic presupposition that in the domain of the transcendental we shall find all that we miss in the world of phenomena. so that, because he could not invent a truly scientific metaphysics, he contrived to present us with a non-scientific sort. which is to say, after many round-about journeys he brings his readers along the opposite way right back to the very spot from which he led them off. surely non-scientific metaphysics existed before kant: the mediaeval philosophers had plenty of phantasies and speculations, all supported by "moral" proofs. if kant wanted to reform metaphysics, he should have got rid of its favourite method of obtaining truths through inferential "conclusions." men are greedy, they want to learn much, and get their knowledge cheap. so they think that every truth they have paid for with experience and loss of energy entitles them to a few more truths gratis: or, in philosophic language, a priori, by deduction. they are not ashamed to speculate with a gift that has been given them. instead of looking, listening, touching, seeking, they want to infer and conclude. certainly if they could wring any secret out of nature, no matter by what means, cunning, impudence, fraud, we would forgive them—conquerors are not judged. but nothing comes of their "conclusions" save metaphysical systems and empty prattle. it is surely time to give up conclusions, and get truth a posteriori, as did shakspeare, goethe, dostoevsky; that is, every time you want to know anything, go and look and find out. and if one is lazy, or horrified at a new experiment, let him train himself to look on ultimate questions with indifference, as the positivists do. but moral, ontological and such like arguments!—really, it is disgusting to talk about them. every new experiment is interesting; but our conclusions, i.e., synthetic judgments a priori, are mostly pompous lies, not worth the scrap of paper on which they are recorded.

40

general rules.—people go to philosophers for general principles. and since philosophers are human, they are kept busy supplying the market with general principles. but what sense is there in them? none at all. nature demands individual creative activity from us. men won't understand this, so they wait forever for the ultimate truths from philosophy, which they will never get. why should not every grown-up person be a creator, live in his own way at his own risk and have his own experience? children and raw youths must go in leading strings. but adult people who want to feel the reins should be despised. they are cowards, and slothful: afraid to try, they eternally go to the wise for advice. and the wise do not hesitate to take the responsibility for the lives of others. they invent general rules, as if they had access to the sources of knowledge. what foolery! the wise are no wiser than the stupid—they have only more conceit and effrontery. every intelligent man laughs in his soul at "bookish" views. and are not books the work of the wise? they are often extremely interesting—but only in so far as they do not contain general rules. woe to him, who would build up his life according to hegel, schopenhauer, tolstoy, schiller, or dostoevsky. he must read them, but he must have sense, a mind of his own to live with. those who have tried to live according to theories from books have found this out. at the best, their efforts produced banality. there is no alternative. whether man likes or not he will at last have to realise that cliches are worthless, and that he must live from himself. there are no all-binding, universal judgments—let us manage with non-binding, non-universal ones. only professors will suffer for it....

41

metaphysical consolations.—metaphysics mercilessly persecutes all eudaemonistic doctrines, seeing in them a sort of laesio majestatis of human dignity. our dignity forbids us to place human happiness in the highest goal. suppose it is so? but why then invent consolations, even metaphysical ones? why give to such a "pure" ideal concept as metaphysics such a coarse "sensual" partner as consolation?—sensual in the kantian meaning of the word. metaphysics had much better associate herself with proud disconsolation. consolation brings calm and ease, even quiet gratification to the soul. but surely, if metaphysics condescend to accept any assistance whatever, she must scorn all earthly gratifications, leave them to wingless positivism and materialism. what are joys and pains to metaphysics?—she is one thing, they another. yet all of a sudden metaphysicians begin to shout about consolations. evidently there is a misunderstanding here, and a big one. the more you pierce to the ultimate ends of the "infinite" metaphysical problems, the more finite they reveal themselves. metaphysicians only look out for some new boon—i nearly said pleasure. voltaire said that if there was no god, then he should be invented. we explain these words by the great frenchman's extreme positivism. but the form only is positive, the content is purely metaphysical. all that a metaphysician wants to do is to convince himself that god exists. no matter whether he is mistaken or not, he has found a consolation. it is impossible for him to see that his belief in a certain fact does not make that fact veritable. the whole question is whether there does exist a supreme, conscious first cause, or whether we are slaves to the laws of dead necessity. but what does the metaphysician care about this real question! having declared himself the avowed enemy of eudaemonism, he next seeks consolation, nothing but consolation. to doubt his right to be consoled drives him to fury and madness. he is prepared to support his convictions by every means—ranging from righteous indignation to fists. it is obviously futile to try to enlighten such a creature. once a man cares nothing for god, and seeks only to make the best of his life, you will not tear away his attention from the immediate moment. but perhaps there is a god, and neither voltaire nor the metaphysicians have any need to invent him. the metaphysicians never saw that an avowed disbelief in god does not prove the non-existence of god, but just the opposite; it is a surer sign of faith than ever belief is. unfortunate metaphysicians! they might have found their greatest consolation here, and fists and moral indignation and other forms of chastisement to which they have been driven might have been spared us.

42

practical advice.—people who read much must always keep it in mind that life is one thing, literature another. not that authors invariably lie. i declare that there are writers who rarely and most reluctantly lie. but one must know how to read, and that isn't easy. out of a hundred book-readers ninety-nine have no idea what they are reading about. it is a common belief, for example, that any writer who sings of suffering must be ready at all times to open his arms to the weary and heavy-laden. this is what his readers feel when they read his books. then when they approach him with their woes, and find that he runs away without looking back at them, they are filled with indignation and talk of the discrepancy between word and deed. whereas the fact is, the singer has more than enough woes of his own, and he sings them because he can't get rid of them. l'uccello canto, nella gabbia, non di gioia ma di rabbia, says the italian proverb: "the bird sings in the cage, not from joy but from rage." it is impossible to love sufferers, particularly hopeless sufferers, and whoever says otherwise is a deliberate liar. "come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and i will give you rest." but you remember what the jews said about him: "he speaks as one having authority!" and if jesus had been unable, or had not possessed the right, to answer this sceptical taunt, he would have had to renounce his words. we common mortals have neither divine powers nor divine rights, we can only love our neighbours whilst they still have hope, and any pretence of going beyond this is empty swagger. ask him who sings of suffering for nothing but his songs. rather think of alleviating his burden than of requiring alleviation from him. surely not for ever should we ask any poet to sob and look upon tears. i will end with another italian saying: non e un si triste cane che non meni la coda. ... "no dog so wretched but he wags his tail sometimes."

43

if a patient fulfils all the orders of a sensible doctor, we say he behaves wisely. if he wantonly neglects his treatment, we say he acts stupidly. if a healthy person wished to inoculate himself with some dangerous disease—say phthisis—we should say he was mad, and forcibly restrain him. to such an extent are we convinced that disease is evil, health good. well—on what is our conviction based? at a glance the question seems absurd. but then at a glance people would absolutely refuse to doubt the fixity of the earth, at a glance an ordinary person would giggle if he was shown the problem of the relation between the real world and the ideal. who knows what would seem amenable to discussion to the ordinary person? the philosopher has no right to appeal to the ordinary person. the philosopher must doubt and doubt and doubt, and question when nobody questions, and risk making a laughing-stock of himself. if common sense were enough to settle all problems, we should have known everything long age. so that—why do we value health more than sickness? or even further—which is better, health or sickness. if we will drop the utilitarian point of view—and all are agreed that this has no place in philosophy—then we shall see at once that we have no grounds whatever for preferring health and sickness. we have invented neither the one nor the other. we found them both in the world along with us. why then do we, who know so little about it, take upon ourselves to judge which are nature's successes, which her failures? health is agreeable—sickness disagreeable. but this consideration is unworthy of a philosopher: otherwise why be a philosopher, why distinguish oneself from the herd? the philosopher invented morality, which has at its disposal various pure ideas that have no relation to empirical life. then let us go further. reason should have a supply of pure ideas also. let reason judge in her own independent way, without conforming to conventional ideas. when she has no other resort, let her proceed by the method of negation: everything that common sense asserts, i, reason, declare to be false. so—common sense says sickness is bad, reason therefore asserts that sickness is the highest boon. such reason we should call autonomous, law-unto-itself. like a real monarch, it is guided only by its own will. let all considerations point in favour of health, reason must remain inexorable and keep her stand till we are all brought to obedience. she must praise suffering, deformity, failure, hopelessness. at every step she must fight common-sense and utilitarianism, until mankind is brought under. is she afraid of rebellion? must she in the last issue, like morality, adapt herself to the inclinations of the mob?

44

experience and science.—as we are well aware, science does not, nay cannot, admit experience in all its extent. she throws overboard an enormous quantity of individual facts, regarding them as the ballast of our human vessel. she takes note only of such phenomena as alternate constantly and with a certain regularity. best of all she likes those phenomena which can be artificially provoked, when, so to speak, experiment is possible. she explains the rotation of the earth and succession of the seasons since a regular recurrence is observable, and she demonstrates thunder and lightning with a spark from an electric machine. in a word, in so far as a regular alternation of phenomena is observable, so far extends the realm of science. but what about those individual phenomena which do not recur, and which cannot be artificially provoked? if all men were blind, and one for a moment recovered his sight and opened his eyes on god's world, science would reject his evidence. yet the evidence of one seeing man is worth that of a million blind. sudden enlightenments are possible in our life—even if they endure only for a few seconds. must they be passed over in silence because they are not normal and cannot be provoked?—or treated poetically, as beautiful fictions? science insists on it. she declares that no judgments are true except such as can be verified by all and everyone. she exceeds her bounds. experience is wider than scientific experiment, and individual phenomena mean much more to us than the constantly recurrent.

science is useful—but she need not pretend to truth. she cannot know what truth is, she can only accumulate universal laws. whereas there are, and always have been, non-scientific ways of searching for truth, ways which lead, if not to the innermost secrets, yet to the threshold. these roads, however, we have let fall into ruin whilst we followed our modern methodologies, so now we dare not even think of them. what gives us the right to assert that astrologers, alchemists, diviners, and sorcerers who passed the long nights alone with their thoughts, wasted their time in vain? as for the philosopher's stone, that was merely a plausible excuse invented to satisfy the uninitiated. could an alchemist dare to confess openly that all his efforts were towards no useful or utilitarian end? he had to guard against importunate curiosity and impertinent authority in outsiders. so he lied, now frightening, now alluring the mob through its cupidity. but certainly he had his own important work to do: and it had only one fault, that it was purely personal to him. and about personal matters it is considered correct to keep silent.... astonishing fact! as a rule a man hesitates over trifles. but it does sometimes occur that a moment arrives when he is filled with unheard-of courage and resolution in his judgments. he is ready to stand up for his opinions against all the world, dead or living. whence such sudden surety, what does it mean? rationally we can discover no foundation for it. if a lover has got into his head that his beloved is the fairest woman on earth, worth the whole of life to him; if one who has been insulted feels that his offender is the basest wretch, deserving torture and death; if a would-be columbus persuades himself that america is the only goal for his ambition—who will convince such men that their opinions, shared by none but themselves, are false or unjustifiable? and for whose sake will they renounce their tenets? for the sake of objective truth? that is, for the pleasure of the assurance that all men after them will repeat their judgment for truth? they don't care. let don quixote run broadcast with drawn sword, proving the beauty of dulcinea or the impending horror of windmills. as a matter of fact, he and the german philosophers with him have a vague idea, a kind of presentiment, that their giants are but mill-sails, and that their ideal on the whole is but a common girl driving swine to pasture. to defy such deadly doubt they take to the sword or to argument, and do not rest until they have succeeded in stopping the mouth of everybody. when from all lips they hear the praise of dulcinea they say: yes, she is beautiful, and she never drove pigs. when the world beholds their windmilling exploits with amazement they are filled with triumph; sheep are not sheep, mills are not mills, as you might imagine; they are knights and cyclops. this is called a proven, all-binding, universal truth. the support of the mob is a necessary condition of the existence of modern philosophy and its knights of the woful countenance. scientific philosophy wearies for a new cervantes who will put a stop to its paving the way to truth by dint of argument. all opinions have a right to exist, and if we speak of privilege, then preference should be given to such as are most run down to-day; namely, to such opinions as cannot be verified and which are, for that self-same reason, universal. once, long ago "man invented speech in order to express his real relation to the universe." so he may be heard, even though the relation he wishes to express be unique, not to verified by any other individual. to attempt to verify it by observations and experiments is strictly forbidden. if the habit of "objective verification" has destroyed your native receptivity to such an extent that your eyes and ears are gone, and you must rely only on the evidence of instruments or objects not subject to your will, then, of course, nothing is left you but to stick to the belief that science is perfect knowledge. but if your eyes live and your ear is sensitive—throw away instruments and apparatuses, forget methodology and scientific don-quixotism, and try to trust yourself. what harm is there in not having universal judgments or truths? how will it hurt you to see sheep as sheep? it is a step forward. you will learn not to see with everybody's eyes, but to see as none other sees. you will learn not to meditate, but to conjure up and call forth with words alien to all but yourself an unknown beauty and an unheard-of power. not for nothing, i repeat, did astrologers and alchemists scorn the experimental method—which, by the way, far from being anything new or particularly modern, is as old as the hills. animals experiment, though they do not compose treatises on inductive logic or pride themselves on their reasoning powers. a cow who has burnt her mouth in her trough will come up cautiously next time to feed. every experimenter is the same—only he systematises. but animals can often trust to instinct when experience is lacking. and have we humans got sufficient experience? can experience give us what we want most? if so, let science and craftsmanship serve our everyday need, let even philosophy, also eager to serve, go on finding universal truths. but beyond craft, science, and philosophy there is another region of knowledge. through all the ages men, each one at his own risk, have sought to penetrate into this region. shall we, men of the twentieth century, voluntarily renounce our supreme powers and rights, and because public opinion demands it, occupy ourselves exclusively with discovering useful information? or, in order not to appear mean or poverty-stricken in our own eyes, shall we accept in place of the philosopher's stone our modern metaphysics, which muffles her dread of actuality in postulates, absolutes, and such-like apparently transcendental paraphernalia?

45

the russian spirit.—it will easily be admitted that the distinguishing qualities of russian literature, and of russian art in general, are simplicity, truthfulness, and complete lack of rhetorical ornament. whether it be to our credit or to our discredit is not for me to judge, but one thing seems certain: that our simplicity and truthfulness are due to our relatively scanty culture. whilst european thinkers have for centuries been beating their brains over insoluble problems, we have only just begun to try our powers. we have no failures behind us. the fathers of the profoundest russian writers were either landowners, dividing their time between extravagant amusement and state service, or peasants whose drudgery left them no time for idle curiosity. such being the case, how can we know whether human knowledge has any limits? and if we don't know, it seems to us it is only because we haven't tried to find out. other people's experience is not ours. we are not bound by their conclusions. indeed, what do we know of the experience of others, save what we gather, very vaguely and fragmentarily and unreliably, from books? it is natural for us to believe the best, till the contrary is proved to us. any attempt to deprive us of our belief meets with the most energetic resistance.

the most sceptical russian hides a hope at the bottom of his soul. hence our fearlessness of the truth, realistic truth which so stunned european critics. realism was invented in the west, established there as a theory. but in the west, to counteract it, were invented numberless other palliating theories whose business it was to soften down the disconsolate conclusions of realism. there in europe they have the l'être suprême, the deus sive natura, hegel's absolute, kant's postulates, english utilitarianism, progress, humanitarianism, hundreds of philosophic and sociological theories in which even extreme realists can so cleverly dish up what they call life, that life, or realism, ceases to be life or reality altogether.

the westerner is self-reliant. he knows that if he doesn't help himself nobody will help him. so he directs all his thoughts to making the best of his opportunities. a limited time is granted him. if he can't get to the end of his song within the time-limit, the song must remain unsung. fate will not give him one minute's grace for the unbeaten bars. therefore as an experienced musician he adapts himself superbly. not a second is wasted. the tempo must not drag for an instant, or he is lost. the tempo is everything, and it exacts facility and quickness of movement. during a few short beats the artist must produce many notes, and produce them so as to leave the impression that he was not hurried, that he had all the time in the world at his disposal. moreover, each note must be complete, accomplished, have its fulness and its value. native talent alone will not suffice for this. experience is necessary, tradition, training, and inherited instinct. carpe diem—the european has been living up to the motto for two thousand years. but if we russians are convinced of anything, it is that we have time enough and to spare. to count days, much less hours and minutes—find me the russian who could demean himself to such a bourgeois occupation. we look round, we stretch ourselves, we rub our eyes, we want first of all to decide what we shall do, and how we shall do it, before we can begin to live in earnest. we don't choose to decide anyhow, nor at second-hand, from fragments of other people's information. it must be from our own experience, with our own brains, that we judge. we admit no traditions. in no literature has there been such a-determined struggle with tradition as in ours. we have wanted to re-examine everything, re-state everything. i won't deny that our courage is drawn from our quite uncultured confidence in our own powers. byelinsky, a half-baked undergraduate, deriving his knowledge of european philosophy at third hand, began a quarrel with the universe over the long-forgotten victims of philip ii. and the inquisition. in that quarrel is the sense and essence of all creative russian literature. dostoevsky, towards his end, raised the same storm and the same question over the little tear of an unfortunate child.

a russian believes he can do anything, hence he is afraid of nothing. he paints life in the gloomiest colours—and were you to ask him: how can you accept such a life? how can you reconcile yourself with such horrors of reality as have been described by all your writers, from poushkin to tchekhov? he would answer in the words of dmitri karamazov: i do not accept life. this answer seems at first sight absurd. since life is here, impossible not to accept it. but there is a sub-meaning in the reply, a lingering belief in the possibility of a final triumph over "evil." in the strength of this belief the russian goes forth to meet his enemy—he does not hide from him. our sectarians immolate themselves. tolstoyans and votaries of the various sects that crop up so plentifully in russia go in among the people, they go, god knows to what lengths, destroying their own lives and the lives of others. writers do not lag behind sectarians. they, too, refuse to be prudent, to count the cost or the hours. minutes, seconds, time-beats, all this is so insignificant as to be invisible to the naked eye. we wish to draw with a generous hand from fathomless eternity, and all that is limited we leave to european bourgeoisie. with few exceptions russian writers really despise the pettiness of the west. even those who have admired europe most have done so because they failed most completely to understand her. they did not want to understand her. that is why we have always taken over european ideas in such fantastic forms. take the sixties for example. with its loud ideas of sobriety and modest outlook, it was a most drunken period. those who awaited the new messiah and the second advent read darwin and dissected frogs. it is the same to-day. we allow ourselves the greatest luxury that man can dream of—sincerity, truthfulness—as if we were spiritual croesuses, as if we had plenty of everything, could afford to let everything be seen, ashamed of nothing. but even croesuses, the greatest sovereigns of the world, did not consider they had the right to tell the truth at all times. even kings have to pretend—think of diplomacy. whereas, we think we may speak the truth, and the truth only, that any lie which obscures our true substance is a crime; since our true substance is the world's finest treasure, its finest reality.... tell this to a european, and it will seem a joke to him, even if he can grasp it at all. a european uses all his powers of intellect and talent, all his knowledge and his art for the purpose of concealing his real self and all that really affects him:—for that the natural is ugly and repulsive, no one in europe will dispute for a moment. not only the fine arts, but science and philosophy in europe tell lies instinctively, by lying they justify their existence. first and last, a european student presents you with a finished theory. well, and what does all the "finish" and the completeness signify? it merely means that none of our western neighbours will end his speech before the last reassuring word is said; he will never let nature have the last word; so he rounds off his synthesis. with him, ornament and rhetoric is a sine qua non of creative utterance, the only remedy against all ills. in philosophy reigns theodicy, in science, the law of sequence. even kant could not avoid declamation, even with him the last word is "moral necessity." thus there lies before us the choice between the artistic and accomplished lie of old, cultured europe, a lie which is the outcome of a thousand years of hard and bitter effort, and the artless, sincere simplicity of young, uncultured russia.

they are nearer the end, we are nearer the beginning. and which is nearer the truth? and can there be a question of voluntary, free choice? probably neither the old age of europe nor the youth of russia can give us the truth we seek. but does such a thing as ultimate truth exist? is not the very conception of truth, the very assumption of the possibility of truth, merely an outcome of our limited experience, a fruit of limitation? we decide a priori that one thing must be possible, another impossible, and from our arbitrary assumptions we proceed to deduce the body of truth. each one judges in his own way, according to his powers and the conditions of his existence. the timid, scared man worries after order, that will give him a day of peace and quiet, youth dreams of beauty and brilliance, old age doesn't want to think of anything, having lost the faculty for hope. and so it goes on, ad infinitum. and this is called truth, truths! every man thinks that his own experience covers the whole range of life. and, therefore, the only men who turn out to be at all in the right are empiricists and positivists. there can be no question of truth once we tear ourselves away from the actual conditions of life.

our confident truthfulness, like european rhetoric, turns out to be "beyond truth and falsehood." the young east and the old west alike suffer from the restrictions imposed by truth—but the former ignores the restrictions, whilst the latter adapts itself to them. after all, it comes to pretty much the same in the end. is not clever rhetoric as delightful as truthfulness? each is equally life. only we find unendurable a rhetoric which poses as truth, and a truthfulness which would appear cultured. such a masquerade would try to make us believe that truth, which is only limitedness, has a real objective existence. which is offensive. until the contrary is proved, we need to think that only one assertion has or can have any objective reality: that nothing on earth is impossible. every time somebody wants to force us to admit that there are other, more limited and limiting truths, we must resist with every means we can lay hands on. we do not hesitate even to make use of morality and logic, both of which we have abused so often. but why not use them!

when a man is at his last resources, he does not care what weapons he picks up.

46

nur für schwindelfreie.—to be proper, i ought to finish with a moral. i ought to say to the reader that in spite of all i have said, or perhaps because of all i have said—for in conclusions, as you are aware, "in spite of" is always interchangeable with "because of," particularly if the conclusion be drawn from many scattered data—well then, because of all i have said, hope is not lost. every destruction leads to construction, sweet rest follows labour, dawn follows the darkest hour, and so on and so on and so on—all the banalities with which a writer reconciles his reader. but it is never too late for reconciliation, and it is often too early. so why not postpone the moral for a few years—even a few dozen years, god granting us the length of life? why make the inevitable "conclusion" at the end of every book? i am almost certain that sooner or later i can promise the reader all his heart desires. but not yet. he may, of course, dispense with my consolations. what do promises matter, anyhow? especially when neither reader nor writer can fulfil them. but if there is no escape, if a writer is finally obliged to admit in everybody's hearing that the secret desires of poor mankind may yet be realised, let "us at least give the wretched writer a respite, let him postpone his confession till old age—usque ad infinitum,... meanwhile our motto "nur für schwindelfreie." there are in the alps narrow, precipitous paths where only mountaineers may go, who feel no giddiness. giddy-free! "only for the giddy-free," it says on the notice-board. he who is subject to giddiness takes a broad, safe road, or sits away below and admires the snowy summits. is it inevitably necessary to mount up? beyond the snow-line are no fat pastures nor goldfields. they say that up there is to be found the clue to the eternal mystery—but they say so many things. we can't believe everything. he who is tired of the valleys, loves climbing, and is not afraid to look down a precipice, and, most of all, has nothing left in life but the "metaphysical craving," he will certainly climb to the summits without asking what awaits him there. he does not fear, he longs for giddiness. but he will hardly call people after him: he doesn't want just anybody for a companion. in such a case companions are not wanted at all, much less those tender-footed ones who are used to every convenience, roads, street lamps, guide-posts, careful maps which mark every change in the road ahead. they will not help, only hinder. they will prove superfluous, heavy ballast, which may not be thrown overboard. fuss over them, console them, promise them! who would be bothered? is it not better to go one's way alone, and not only to refrain from enticing others to follow, but frighten them off as much as possible, exaggerate every danger and difficulty? in order that conscience may not prick too hard—we who love high altitudes love a quiet conscience—let us find a justification for their inactivity. let us tell them they are the best, the worthiest of people, really the salt of the earth. let us pay them every possible mark of respect. but since they are subject to giddiness, they had better stay down. the upper alpine ways, as any guide will tell you, are nur für schwindelfreie.