Drear old age, they say, has the right to complain about the world; it may be pardoned for preferring to look back on better days when life was at the full. Joyous youth should smile upon life, ignoring defects, making the most of what is there, and trusting readily to the sweet deceits of hope. But the truth, a correct estimate of the world, is credited to him alone, who secure in the contentment of middle age, neither vainly grieves nor falsely hopes. Such contentment, however, is but folly’s passage from hope in life to contempt for it; such wisdom but the hollow echo of footsteps reluctantly moving on from youth to age; such satisfaction is a stupid turn of make-believe courtesy on the part of one who would escape outright impeachment of a world, in which his stay is bound to be soon cut short, and who would no less avoid impeaching his own judgment; such praise of middle-life is vanity ashamed of its mistakes, it is a forgetting of recent desires, it is the complacency which contents itself with poverty rather than submit to toil. I did not flatter myself when I was young, and therefore, I do not flatter the world now, nor at any time. It cannot disappoint one who expects nothing, nor will he offend it in revenge. I have done little to make things what they are, and so I need not expect to find them better. Nothing disgusts me more than the vile praise which is lavished on the world from all sides, by those who wish to shine in the reflected light of their own handiwork. This perverse generation loves to talk of how it has improved the world, in order to plume itself and to be considered superior to its ancestors. Were perfected human nature already in blossom and diffusing its first sweet fragrance, were the seeds of self-culture for ever so many individuals already assured of their growth on the soil of a common civilization, if the breath of every life were already free and sacred, and if a pervasive love drew all humanity into miraculous relationships ever productive of new and marvelous fruit,—even then this generation could not outdo its glittering praise of mankind’s present estate. To hear them discourse on the world of today, one would imagine the thundering voice of their mighty reason¹ had burst the chains of ignorance, that they had at last succeeded in setting up a perfect portrait of human nature, which formerly had been painted obscurely in colors of darkness so as to be scarcely recognizable,1 but which now was marvelously illumined by light from above,² so that no sane vision could longer mistake the general outlines or even the individual traits; they speak as if the music of their wisdom had transformed raw, predatory self-seeking into the tamest house-pet and taught it the arts. Every least moment is supposed to have been full of progress. O how deeply I despise this generation, which plumes itself more shamelessly than any previous one ever did, which can scarcely endure the belief in a still better future and reviles everyone who dedicates himself thereto, simply because the true goal of mankind, toward which the age has risked scarcely a single step, lies unknown to it in the dim distance!
Of course, if one is content to have man control the material world alone, tapping all its powers for his own service,³ and conquering space so that it no longer cripples the strength of his spirit,⁴ the mere nod of his will instantly and everywhere producing the action it intends, with all things under the dominion of ideas and the spirit’s presence everywhere revealed; whoever is content to see crude matter vitalized and to have mankind find the joy of living in the consciousness of mastering its body,⁵2—let him, for whom this is the ultimate aim, join in the noisy praise of our times. For now as never before may man justly boast such mastery. However much remains undone, enough has been accomplished to make him feel lord of the earth, believing that nothing may be left unattempted in this, his own particular domain, and that the concept⁶ of impossibility, ever narrowing, must finally vanish altogether. In respect to this purpose I feel that communion with mankind augments my own powers in every moment of my life. Each of us plies his own particular trade, completing the work of someone whom he never knew, or preparing the way for another who in turn will scarcely recognize how much he owes to him. Thus the work⁷ of humanity is promoted throughout the world; everyone feels the influence of others as part of his own life; by the ingenious mechanism of this community the slightest movement of each individual is conducted like an electric spark, through a long chain of a thousand living links, greatly amplifying its final effect; all are, as it were, members of a great organism, and whatever they may have done severally, is instantaneously consummated as its work. Probably this sense of life’s enhancement by common effort is more vividly and more satisfyingly present in me than in those who are so loud in its praise. For I am not disturbed and disappointed by their gloomy supposition that the gains, which all helped to produce and to maintain are enjoyed so unequally. Lazy thinking and emptiness of mind can be but a loss to anyone, habit levies it, tax on us all, and whenever I compare a person’s restrictions with his powers, I arrive at the same ratio, expressing in different ways an equal measure of life for all.3 But even so I regard this whole sense of a common material progress to be of little value; it is not further gain in this direction that I desire for the world; it causes me mortal agony that this, an unholy waste of its holy powers, should be regarded as mankind’s entire task. My demands are not so modest as to be content with the improvement of man’s relation to external nature, even though this relation were already brought to the highest point of perfection!⁸ Is man then merely a creature of the senses, for whom a heightened feeling of vitality, of health and strength can be the highest good? Is the spirit satisfied to inhabit the body, extending and augmenting its powers in conscious mastery thereof? For this is the multitude’s whole ambition, and upon such achievements they base their unmeasured pride. From caring for their own physical existence and well-being they have come to care for the similar well-being of all, but that is as far as they have risen in their consciousness of humanity. That is what virtue, justice, and love mean to them; that is the essence of their noisy triumph over base self-seeking; that is the end of all their wisdom, and such are the only links they are able to break in the chain of ignorance; everybody is to co-operate and every association is to be formed for an aim no higher than this. O what a perversion to think a man should devote his spiritual powers to secure for others what he himself spurns as inferior! How disfigured the mind which deems it a virtue to sacrifice the highest in such low idolatry!