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Maxims and Reflections
461
If one has not read the newspapers for some months and then reads them all together, one sees, as one never saw before, how much time is wasted with this kind of literature.
462
The classical is health; and the romantic, disease.
463
Ovid remained classical even in exile: it is not in himself that he sees misfortune, but in his banishment from the metropolis of the world.
464
The romantic is already fallen into its own abysm. It is hard to imagine anything more degraded than the worst of the new productions.
465
Bodies which rot while they are still alive, and are edified by the detailed contemplation of their own decay; dead men who remain in the world for the ruin of others, and feed their death on the living, – to this have come our makers of literature.
When the same thing happened in antiquity, it was only as a strange token of some rare disease; but with the moderns the disease has become endemic and epidemic.
466
Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.
467
What a day it is when we must envy the men in their graves!
468
The things that are true, good, excellent, are simple and always alike, whatever their appearance may be. But the error that we blame is extremely manifold and varying; it is in conflict not only with the good and the true, but also with itself; it is self-contradictory. Thus it is that the words of blame in our literature must necessarily outnumber the words of praise.
469
The Greeks, whose poetry and rhetoric was of a simple and positive character, express approval more often than disapproval. With the Latin writers it is the contrary; and the more poetry and the arts of speech decay, the more will blame swell and praise shrink.
470
'What are tragedies but the versified passions of people who make Heaven knows what out of the external world?'
471
There are certain empirical enthusiasts who are quite right in showing their enthusiasm over new productions that are good; but they are as ecstatic as if there were no other good work in the world at all.
472
In Sakontala the poet appears in his highest function. As the representative of the most natural condition of things, the finest mode of life, the purest moral endeavour, the worthiest majesty, and the most solemn worship, he ventures on common and ridiculous contrasts.
473
Shakespeare's Henry IV. If everything were lost that has ever been preserved to us of this kind of writing, the arts of poetry and rhetoric could be completely restored out of this one play.
474
Shakespeare's finest dramas are wanting here and there in facility: they are something more than they should be, and for that very reason indicate the great poet.
475
Shakespeare is dangerous reading for budding talents: he compels them to reproduce him, and they fancy they are producing themselves.
476
Yorick Sterne was the finest spirit that ever worked. To read him is to attain a fine feeling of freedom; his humour is inimitable, and it is not every kind of humour that frees the soul.
477
The peculiar value of so-called popular ballads is that their motives are drawn direct from nature. This, however, is an advantage of which the poet of culture could also avail himself, if he knew how to do it.
478
But in popular ballads there is always this advantage, that in the art of saying things shortly uneducated men are always better skilled than those who are in the strict sense of the word educated.
479
Gemüth = Heart. The translator must proceed until he reaches the untranslatable; and then only will he have an idea of the foreign nation and the foreign tongue.
480
When we say of a landscape that it has a romantic character, it is the secret feeling of the sublime taking the form of the past, or, what is the same thing, of solitude, absence, or seclusion.
481
The Beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, without its presence, would never have been revealed.
482
It is said: Artist, study nature! But it is no trifle to develop the noble out of the commonplace, or beauty out of uniformity.
483
When Nature begins to reveal her open secret to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, Art.
484
For all other Arts we must make some allowance; but to Greek Art alone we are always debtors.
485
There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.
486
Even in the moments of highest happiness and deepest misery we need the Artist.
487
False tendencies of the senses are a kind of desire after realism, always better than that false tendency which expresses itself as idealistic longing.
488
The dignity of Art appears perhaps most conspicuously in Music; for in Music there is no material to be deducted. It is wholly form and intrinsic value, and it raises and ennobles all that it expresses.
489
It is only by Art, and especially by Poetry, that the imagination is regulated. Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.
490
If we were to despise Art on the ground that it is an imitation of Nature, it might be answered that Nature also imitates much else; further, that Art does not exactly imitate that which can be seen by the eyes, but goes back to that element of reason of which Nature consists and according to which Nature acts.
491
Further, the Arts also produce much out of themselves, and, on the other hand, add much where Nature fails in perfection, in that they possess beauty in themselves. So it was that Pheidias could sculpture a god although he had nothing that could be seen by the eye to imitate, but grasped the appearance which Zeus himself would have if he were to come before our eyes.
492
Art rests upon a kind of religious sense: it is deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with Religion.
493
A noble philosopher spoke of architecture as frozen music; and it was inevitable that many people should shake their heads over his remark. We believe that no better repetition of this fine thought can be given than by calling architecture a speechless music.
494
Art is essentially noble; therefore the artist has nothing to fear from a low or common subject. Nay, by taking it up, he ennobles it; and so it is that we see the greatest artists boldly exercising their sovereign rights.
495
In every artist there is a germ of daring, without which no talent is conceivable.
496
All the artists who are already known to me from so many sides, I propose to consider exclusively from the ethical side; to explain from the subject-matter and method of their work the part played therein by time and place, nation and master, and their own indestructible personality; to mould them to what they became and to preserve them in what they were.
497
Art is a medium of what no tongue can utter; and thus it seems a piece of folly to try to convey its meaning afresh by means of words. But, by trying to do so, the understanding gains; and this, again, benefits the faculty in practice.
498
An artist who produces valuable work is not always able to give an account of his own or others' performances.
499
We know of no world except in relation to mankind; and we wish for no Art that does not bear the mark of this relation.
500
Higher aims are in themselves more valuable, even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite attained.
501
Blunt naïvety, stubborn vigour, scrupulous observance of rule, and any other epithets which may apply to older German Art, are a part of every earlier and simpler artistic method. The older Venetians, Florentines, and others had it all too.
502
Because Albrecht Dürer, with his incomparable talent, could never rise to the idea of the symmetry of beauty, or even to the thought of a fitting conformity to the object in view, are we never to spurn the ground!
503
Albrecht Dürer had the advantage of a very profound realistic perception, an affectionate human sympathy with all present conditions. He was kept back by a gloomy phantasy, devoid both of form and foundation.
504
It would be interesting to show how Martin Schön stands near him, and how the merits of German Art were restricted to these two; and useful also to show that it was not evening every day.
505
In every Italian school the butterfly breaks loose from the chrysalis.
506
After Klopstock released us from rhyme, and Voss gave us models of prose, are we to make doggerel again like Hans Sachs?
507
Let us be many-sided! Turnips are good, but they are best mixed with chestnuts. And these two noble products of the earth grow far apart.
508
In every kind of Art there is a degree of excellence which may be reached, so to speak, by the mere use of one's own natural talents. But at the same time it is impossible to go beyond that point, unless Art comes to one's aid.
509
In the presence of Nature even moderate talent is always possessed of insight; hence drawings from Nature that are at all carefully done always give pleasure.
510
To make many sketches issue at last in a complete work is something that not even the best artists always achieve.
511
In the sphere of true Art there is no preparatory school, but there is a way of preparation; and the best preparation is the interest of the most insignificant pupil in the work of the master. Colour-grinders have often made excellent painters.
512
If an artist grasps Nature aright and contrives to give its form a nobler, freer grace, no one will understand the source of his inspiration, and every one will swear that he has taken it from the antique.
513
In studying the human form, let the painter reject what is exaggerated, false, and mechanical; but let him learn to grasp of what infinite grace the human body is capable.
514
Kant taught us the critique of the reason. We must have a critique of the senses if Art in general, and especially German Art, is ever to regain its tone and move forward on the path of life and happiness.
SCIENCE
515
In the sphere of natural science let us remember that we have always to deal with an insoluble problem. Let us prove keen and honest in attending to anything which is in any way brought to our notice, most of all when it does not fit in with our previous ideas. For it is only thereby that we perceive the problem, which does indeed lie in nature, but still more in man.
516
A man cannot well stand by himself, and so he is glad to join a party; because if he does not find rest there, he at any rate finds quiet and safety.
517
It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.
518
In the history of science and throughout the whole course of its progress we see certain epochs following one another more or less rapidly. Some important view is expressed, it may be original or only revived; sooner or later it receives recognition; fellow workers spring up; the outcome of it finds its way into the schools; it is taught and handed down; and we observe, unhappily, that it does not in the least matter whether the view be true or false. In either case its course is the same; in either case it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a lifeless word stamped on the memory.
519
First let a man teach himself, and then he will be taught by others.
520
Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of an impatient understanding that would gladly be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place pictures, notions, nay, often mere words. We may surmise, or even see quite well, that such theories are make-shifts; but do not passion and party-spirit love a make-shift at all times? And rightly, too, because they stand in so much need of it.
521
It is difficult to know how to treat the errors of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands alone; if he surrender to them, they bring him neither joy nor credit.
522
There are some hundred Christian sects, every one of them acknowledging God and the Lord in its own way, without troubling themselves further about one another. In the study of nature, nay, in every study, things must of necessity come to the same pass. For what is the meaning of every one speaking of toleration, and trying to prevent others from thinking and expressing themselves after their own fashion?
523
To communicate knowledge by means of analogy appears to me a process equally useful and pleasant. The analogous case is not there to force itself on the attention or prove anything; it offers a comparison with some other case, but is not in union with it. Several analogous cases do not join to form a seried row: they are like good society, which always suggests more than it grants.
524
To err is to be as though truth did not exist. To lay bare the error to oneself and others is retrospective discovery.
525
With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organised afresh. The change takes place usually in accordance with new maxims as they arise, but it always remains provisional.
526
When we find facts within our knowledge exhibited by some new method, or even, it may be, described in a foreign language, they receive a peculiar charm of novelty and wear a fresh air.
527
If two masters of the same art differ in their statement of it, in all likelihood the insoluble problem lies midway between them.
528
The orbits of certainties touch one another; but in the interstices there is room enough for error to go forth and prevail.
529
We more readily confess to errors, mistakes, and shortcomings in our conduct than in our thought.
530
And the reason of it is that the conscience is humble and even takes a pleasure in being ashamed. But the intellect is proud, and if forced to recant is driven to despair.
531
This also explains how it is that truths which have been recognised are at first tacitly admitted, and then gradually spread, so that the very thing which was obstinately denied appears at last as something quite natural.
532
Ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago.
533
When a man sees a phenomenon before him, his thoughts often range beyond it; when he hears it only talked about, he has no thoughts at all.
534
Authority. Man cannot exist without it, and yet it brings in its train just as much of error as of truth. It perpetuates one by one things which should pass away one by one; it rejects that which should be preserved and allows it to pass away; and it is chiefly to blame for mankind's want of progress.
535
Authority – the fact, namely, that something has already happened or been said or decided, is of great value; but it is only a pedant who demands authority for everything.
536
An old foundation is worthy of all respect, but it must not take from us the right to build afresh wherever we will.
537
Our advice is that every man should remain in the path he has struck out for himself, and refuse to be overawed by authority, hampered by prevalent opinion, or carried away by fashion.
538
The various branches of knowledge always tend as a whole to stray away from life, and return thither only by a roundabout way.
539
For they are, in truth, text-books of life: they gather outer and inner experiences into a general and connected whole.
540
An important fact, an ingenious aperçu, occupies a very great number of men, at first only to make acquaintance with it; then to understand it; and afterwards to work it out and carry it further.
541
On the appearance of anything new the mass of people ask: What is the use of it? And they are not wrong. For it is only through the use of anything that they can perceive its value.
542
The truly wise ask what the thing is in itself and in relation to other things, and do not trouble themselves about the use of it, – in other words, about the way in which it may be applied to the necessities of existence and what is already known. This will soon be discovered by minds of a very different order – minds that feel the joy of living, and are keen, adroit, and practical.
543
Every investigator must before all things look upon himself as one who is summoned to serve on a jury. He has only to consider how far the statement of the case is complete and clearly set forth by the evidence. Then he draws his conclusion and gives his vote, whether it be that his opinion coincides with that of the foreman or not.
544
And in acting thus he remains equally at ease whether the majority agree with him or he finds himself in a minority. For he has done what he could: he has expressed his convictions; and he is not master of the minds or hearts of others.
545
In the world of science, however, these sentiments have never been of much account. There everything depends on making opinion prevail and dominate; few men are really independent; the majority draws the individual after it.
546
The history of philosophy, of science, of religion, all shows that opinions spread in masses, but that that always comes to the front which is more easily grasped, that is to say, is most suited and agreeable to the human mind in its ordinary condition. Nay, he who has practised self-culture in the higher sense may always reckon upon meeting an adverse majority.
547
There is much that is true which does not admit of being calculated; just as there are a great many things that cannot be brought to the test of a decisive experiment.
548
It is just for this that man stands so high, that what could not otherwise be brought to light should be brought to light in him.
What is a musical string, and all its mechanical division, in comparison with the musician's ear? May we not also say, what are the elementary phenomena of nature itself compared with man, who must control and modify them all before he can in any way assimilate them to himself?
549
To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.
550
The ultimate origin of things is completely beyond our faculties; hence when we see anything come into being, we look upon it as having been already there. This is why we find the theory of emboîtement intelligible.
551
There are many problems in natural science on which we cannot fittingly speak unless we call metaphysics to our aid; but not the wisdom of the schools, which consists in mere verbiage. It is that which was before physics, exists with it, and will be after it.
552
Since men are really interested in nothing but their own opinions, every one who puts forward an opinion looks about him right and left for means of strengthening himself and others in it. A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it; whether it be to dazzle others with it as a kind of half-truth, or to employ it as a stopgap for effecting an apparent union between things that have been disjointed. This experience at first caused me annoyance, and then sorrow; and now it is a source of mischievous satisfaction. I have pledged myself never again to expose a proceeding of this kind.
553
Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge. It is a revelation working from within on the outer world, and lets a man feel that he is made in the image of God. It is a synthesis of World and Mind, giving the most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of things.
554
A man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not try to fathom it.
555
There are pedants who are also rascals, and they are the worst of all.
556
A man does not need to have seen or experienced everything himself. But if he is to commit himself to another's experiences and his way of putting them, let him consider that he has to do with three things – the object in question and two subjects.
557
The supreme achievement would be to see that stating a fact is starting a theory.
558
If I acquiesce at last in some ultimate fact of nature, it is, no doubt, only resignation; but it makes a great difference whether the resignation takes place at the limits of human faculty, or within the hypothetical boundaries of my own narrow individuality.
559
If we look at the problems raised by Aristotle, we are astonished at his gift of observation. What wonderful eyes the Greeks had for many things! Only they committed the mistake of being over-hasty, of passing straightway from the phenomenon to the explanation of it, and thereby produced certain theories that are quite inadequate. But this is the mistake of all times, and still made in our own day.
560
Hypotheses are cradle-songs by which the teacher lulls his scholars to sleep. The thoughtful and honest observer is always learning more and more of his limitations; he sees that the further knowledge spreads, the more numerous are the problems that make their appearance.
561
Our mistake is that we doubt what is certain and want to establish what is uncertain. My maxim in the study of Nature is this: hold fast what is certain and keep a watch on what is uncertain.
562
What a master a man would be in his own subject if he taught nothing useless!
563
The greatest piece of folly is that every man thinks himself compelled to hand down what people think they have known.
564
If many a man did not feel obliged to repeat what is untrue, because he has said it once, the world would have been quite different.
565
Every man looks at the world lying ready before him, ordered and fashioned into a complete whole, as after all but an element out of which his endeavour is to create a special world suited to himself. Capable men lay hold of the world without hesitation and try to shape their course as best they can; others dally over it, and some doubt even of their own existence.
The man who felt the full force of this fundamental truth would dispute with no one, but look upon another's mode of thought equally with his own, as merely a phenomenon. For we find almost daily that one man can think with ease what another cannot possibly think at all; and that, too, not in matters which might have some sort of effect upon their common weal or woe, but in things which cannot touch them at all.
566
There is nothing more odious than the majority; it consists of a few powerful men to lead the way; of accommodating rascals and submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men who trot after them, without in the least knowing their own mind.
567
When I observe the luminous progress and expansion of natural science in modern times, I seem to myself like a traveller going eastwards at dawn, and gazing at the growing light with joy, but also with impatience; looking forward with longing to the advent of the full and final light, but, nevertheless, having to turn away his eyes when the sun appeared, unable to bear the splendour he had awaited with so much desire.
568
We praise the eighteenth century for concerning itself chiefly with analysis. The task remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the false syntheses which prevail, and to analyse their contents anew.
569
A school may be regarded as a single individual who talks to himself for a hundred years, and takes an extraordinary pleasure in his own being, however foolish and silly it may be.
570
In science it is a service of the highest merit to seek out those fragmentary truths attained by the ancients, and to develop them further.
571
If a man devotes himself to the promotion of science, he is firstly opposed, and then he is informed that his ground is already occupied. At first men will allow no value to what we tell them, and then they behave as if they knew it all themselves.
572
Nature fills all space with her limitless productivity. If we observe merely our own earth, everything that we call evil and unfortunate is so because Nature cannot provide room for everything that comes into existence, and still less endow it with permanence.
573
Everything that comes into being seeks room for itself and desires duration: hence it drives something else from its place and shortens its duration.
574
There is so much of cryptogamy in phanerogamy that centuries will not decipher it.
575
What a true saying it is that he who wants to deceive mankind must before all things make absurdity plausible.
576
The further knowledge advances, the nearer we come to the unfathomable: the more we know how to use our knowledge, the better we see that the unfathomable is of no practical use.
577
The finest achievement for a man of thought is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and quietly to revere the unfathomable.
578
The discerning man who acknowledges his limitations is not far off perfection.
579
There are two things of which a man cannot be careful enough: of obstinacy if he confines himself to his own line of thought; of incompetency, if he goes beyond it.
580
Incompetency is a greater obstacle to perfection than one would think.
581
The century advances; but every individual begins anew.
582
What friends do with us and for us is a real part of our life; for it strengthens and advances our personality. The assault of our enemies is not part of our life; it is only part of our experience; we throw it off and guard ourselves against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or any other of the external evils which may be expected to happen.
583
A man cannot live with every one, and therefore he cannot live for every one. To see this truth aright is to place a high value upon one's friends, and not to hate or persecute one's enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater advantage for a man to gain than to find out, if he can, the merits of his opponents: it gives him a decided ascendency over them.
584
Every one knows how to value what he has attained in life; most of all the man who thinks and reflects in his old age. He has a comfortable feeling that it is something of which no one can rob him.
585
The best metempsychosis is for us to appear again in others.
586
It is very seldom that we satisfy ourselves; all the more consoling is it to have satisfied others.
587
We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done, and attained.
588
The sympathetic youth sees nothing of this; he reads, enjoys, and uses the youth of one who has gone before him, and rejoices in it with all his heart, as though he had once been what he now is.
589
Science helps us before all things in this, that it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder with which Nature fills us; then, however, as life becomes more and more complex, it creates new facilities for the avoidance of what would do us harm and the promotion of what will do us good.
590
It is always our eyes alone, our way of looking at things. Nature alone knows what she means now, and what she had meant in the past.
