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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
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.
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