Reflections in the Spirit of the Wanderers:

Art, Ethics, Nature

 

Everything clever has already been thought; one must merely try to think it again.

 

How can one come to know oneself? Through contemplation never, more likely through action. Try to do your duty, and you shall know at once what you are.

 

But what is your duty? What the day demands.

 

The rational world should be regarded as a great, immortal in­dividual, who ineluctably brings about that which must be, and thereby gains mastery even over chance.

 

The longer I live, the more irked I am to see man, who actually occupies his high position in order to rule over Nature, in order to free himself and his loved ones from the harsh grip of necessity ­when I see how, from some false preconception, he does the very opposite of what he wants, and then, because the undertaking as a whole is ruined, dabbles wretchedly in details.

 

Capable active man, earn and expect for yourself:

from the great – grace,

from the mighty – favor,

from the active and good – furtherance,

from the multitude – popularity,

from the individual – love.

 

Dilettantes, when they have done their best, are wont to excuse themselves by saying the work is not yet finished. Of course, it can never be finished, because it was never begun properly. The master presents his work as finished after only a few strokes; polished or not, it is nevertheless complete. The cleverest dilettante gropes in uncertainty, and as the work grows, the original insecurity becomes ever more perceptible. At the very end, the initial failure is revealed, when it cannot be corrected, and so of course the work cannot be finished.

 

For true art there can be no schooling, but certainly preparation. What is best, however, is for the humblest student to participate in the work of the master. Excellent painters have begun as a grinders of colors.

 

Another matter altogether is imitation, to which man's natural inclination toward activity can be drawn fortuitously by a significant artist, who executes difficult things with ease.

 

We are sufficiently convinced of the necessity of the plastic artist's doing studies from Nature and of their value in general; yet we cannot deny that we are often troubled when we become aware of the misuse of such a laudable endeavor.

 

To our mind, the young artist should embark on few, if any, studies from Nature without also thinking how he would develop each sketch into a whole, how he might transform this detail into a pleasing picture and enclose it in a frame, to present it to the art lover and connoisseur.

 

Many a beautiful thing stands isolated in the world, but it is for the mind to discover the connections and thereby create works of art. The flower acquires its charm only from the insect that clings to it, from the dewdrop that moistens it, from the vase from which it draws its last nourishment. There is no bush, no tree, that cannot be given significance by the proximity of a rock or spring, or that would not gain greater appeal simply by being portrayed at a mod­erate remove. The same holds for human figures and animals of every sort.

 

The advantage the young artist derives from this is manifold. He learns to think, to join properly what belongs together, and if he composes cleverly in this fashion, he will not lack for what is called originality, the development of diversity out of a single element.

 

Should he meet the requirements of true art pedagogy itself in this respect, he has gained along the way the great additional benefit, which ought not to be sneered at, that he has learned to produce saleable drawings, graceful and pleasing to the collector.

 

Such a work need not be executed and polished to the highest degree. If it has been well observed, thought out, and completed, it may be more attractive to the collector than a more ambitious elaborate work.

 

Let every young artist look through the studies in his sketch books and portfolio and consider how many of those drawings he might have made appealing and desirable in this manner.

 

This is not a question of aiming for the heights, though we might also speak of that; it is said only to warn against following a false path and to point to the higher way.

 

Let the artist try this out for only half a year and never reach for charcoal or brush without intending to make a completed picture of the natural object before him. If he has native talent, it will soon be revealed what purpose we had in mind with these suggestions.

 

Tell me with whom you associate, and I will tell you who you are. Once I know with what you occupy yourself, I know what you can become.

 

Every man must think in his own way, since he always finds on his path a truth, or a sort of truth, which helps him through life. Only he should not let himself go; he must keep watch over himself; naked instinct ill becomes a human being.

 

Unrestrained activity, of whatever kind, leads at last to bank­ruptcy.

 

In the works of man, as in those of Nature, we must attend first and foremost to intentions.

 

People go wrong, in regard to themselves and others, because they treat the means as an end, so that for sheer activity nothing happens, or perhaps something detestable.

 

What we think out, what we undertake, should be of such perfect beauty and purity that the world could only mar it. We would then have the advantage that we could adjust what has been disrupted and restore what has been destroyed.

 

With whole, half, and quarter mistakes it is exceedingly difficult and troublesome to put them right, to sift them, and to place their elements of truth in the proper context.

 

It not always necessary for the truth to be tangible; it is enough if it hovers over us spiritually and produces harmony, if it wafts gravely and kindly through the air like the pealing of bells.

 

When I inquire of younger German painters, even those who have spent some time in Italy, why they assault our eyes with such ugly, colors, especially in their landscapes, and seem to shun any harmony, they reply boldly and confidently: that is precisely how they see Nature.

 

Kant has made us aware that there is such as thing as a critique of reason, that this highest faculty possessed by man has cause to keep watch over itself. What great benefits this voice has brought us, I would hope everyone has observed in himself. In the same sense I should like to suggest that a critique of the senses is necessary if art, and especially German art, is ever to recover its vitality and move forward at a gratifying pace.

 

Though born a rational being, man needs much education, whether gradually imparted by the care of his parents and teachers, by gentle example, or revealed by stem experience. Likewise a potential artist is born, but not an accomplished one. He may look at the world with fresh eyes, he may have a good eye for form, proportion, move­ment; but for the higher aspects of composition, for placement, light, shadow, color, he may lack natural talent, without knowing it.

 

Unless he is inclined to learn from more highly trained artists of past and present days what he lacks in order to be a true artist, a false notion of preserving originality will lead him to look over his own shoulder. For not only what we are born with, but also whatever we can acquire belongs to us, and we are those things.

 

General notions and great arrogance are always poised to bring about dreadful misfortune.

 

"To play the flute, it is not enough to blow; you must also move your fingers."

 

Botanists have a category of plants they call Incompletae. One may also say that there are incomplete, unfinished human beings. They are those whose actions and achievements are not in propor­tion to their longing and striving.

 

The humblest person can be complete if he operates within the limits of his capacities and skills; but even great strengths are ob­scured, nullified, and destroyed if that indispensable moderation is lacking. We will see more of this evil in modem times, for who will be able to meet the challenges of this much more demanding age and its rapid pace?  

 

Only, intelligent and active people, who know their own powers and utilize them with moderation and good sense, will go far in world.

 

A great error: thinking oneself more than one is, and valuing oneself less than one is worth.

 

Now and then I encounter a youth who seems to need no alteration or improvement. But it alarms me when I see so many entirely ready to swim with the stream of the age, and this is the point I always wish to call to mind: that man is given the rudder of his fragile bark in order that he follow not the caprice of the waves but his own will, informed by insight.

 

But how is a young man to learn on his own to consider repre­hensible and harmful things that everyone does, approves and en­courages? Why should he not let himself and his instincts go along as well?

 

To my mind, the greatest evil of our time, which allows nothing to come to fruition, is that each moment consumes its predecessor, each day is squandered in the next, and so we live perpetually from hand to mouth, without ever producing anything. Do we not already have newspapers for each part of the day! Some clever soul could probably insert one or two more. The result is that everyone's deeds, actions, scribblings, indeed, all his intentions, are dragged before the public. No one is permitted to rejoice or sorrow except to en­tertain all the rest; and so everything leaps from house to house, from town to town, from empire to empire, and finally from con­tinent to continent, always express.

 

As little as the steam engines can be throttled can anything similar be done in the moral realm. The liveliness of commerce, the con­tinual rustle of paper money, the increase in debts to payoff other debts – all these are frightful elements that the young man of the present confronts. He is fortunate if he is endowed with a moderate, peaceable disposition that neither makes excessive demands on the world nor allows itself to be determined by it.

 

But the spirit of the day threatens him in every sphere, and noth­ing is more important than to make him aware early enough of the direction toward which his will must steer.

 

The significance of purity in word and deed grows with the years, and if I have someone around me for a longer period, I always try to alert him of the differences between straightforwardness, trust, and indiscretion, that in fact there are no distinct differences, but only subtle shadings, from the most innocent act to the most destructive, which must be observed, or rather, felt.

 

Here we must exercise our tact, or else we run the danger that we may unwittingly forfeit the good opinion of people just as we are trying to win it. One does come to learn this in the course of life but, only after paying a high tuition, which one can alas not spare one's descendants.

 

The relationship of the arts and sciences to life is very different, depending on the level at which they are situated, on the conditions of the time, and on thousands of other chance factors.  For this reason no one can easily make sense of it as a whole.

 

Poetry has its greatest effect at the beginnings of situations, even if they are completely primitive, half cultivated; or at a turning point for a culture, as it becomes aware of a foreign culture, so that one might say in that case also that the effect of newness is making itself felt.

 

Music in the best sense of the word, has less need of newness. In fact, the older it is: the more accustomed one is to it, the greater its effect.

 

The dignity of art appears perhaps most eminently in music, which has no content that must be discounted. It is entirely form and attitude and elevates and ennobles everything it expresses.

 

Music is either sacred or profane. The sacred is wholly suitable to its dignity, and here music exerts the greatest influence on life, an influence which remains constant through all periods and epochs. Profane music should certainly be cheerful.

 

Any music that mixes the sacred and the profane is godless, and halfhearted music which prefers to express weak, pitiful, wretched emotions is tasteless. For it is not serious enough to be sacred, and it lacks the chief characteristic of its opposite: cheerfulness.

 

The holiness of church music, the cheerfulness and playfulness of folk music are the two pivots about which true music revolves. At these two points it always displays an unfailing effect: devotion or dancing. Mixing causes confusion; the weakened form is flat, and if music turns to didactic or descriptive poetry and the like, it be­comes cold.

 

Sculpture is effective only in its highest realization; anything me­diocre can be impressive for more than one reason, but mediocre art works of this sort confuse more than they please. Sculpture must therefore seek some interesting content, and that it finds in the portrayal of important people. But here, too, it must attain a high degree of excellence if it is to be both true and dignified.

 

Painting is the most permissive and comfortable of all the arts. The most permissive because people give it a good deal of credit and take pleasure in it for the sake of its subject matter, even when it is only craftsmanship or scarcely art, partly because a soulless technical accomplishment arouses admiration in uneducated and educated viewers alike, so that it need merely approach true art in order to be warmly received. True colors, surfaces, relationships among the visible elements are pleasing in themselves, and since in any case the eye is accustomed to seeing everything, a misdrawn figure and thus a defective drawing are not so repugnant to it as a discord to the ear. One accepts the poorest copy, because one is accustomed to seeing even poorer objects. Consequently the painter need be only a middling artist to find a larger audience than a musician of the same stature. At any rate, the lesser artist can always function by himself, whereas the lesser musician must ally himself with others, to produce some effect through joint achievement.

 

To the question of whether in viewing artistic achievements one should or should not draw comparisons, we would reply as follows: the trained expert should draw comparisons, because he has the ideal hovering before him, has already grasped what can and cannot be achieved. The amateur, on the way toward acquiring such train­ing, serves himself best when he draws no comparisons but considers each achievement separately; he thereby gradually develops his feel­ing and sense for general principles. The comparisons of novices are actually only a convenience to avoid making a judgment.

 

Love of truth manifests itself in this, that one can find and value the good everywhere.

 

A historical sense for mankind means one so well trained that when it evaluates contemporary accomplishments and merits, it also considers the past in its assessment.

 

The best thing we have from history is the enthusiasm it arouses.

 

Peculiarity elicits peculiarity.

 

One must take into account that there are a great many people who also want to say something important, but are not productive, and so the strangest things come out.

 

Profound and serious thinkers are not in good odor with the public.

 

If I am to listen to someone else's opinion, it must be expressed positively; I have enough problematic thoughts of my own.

 

Superstition is integral to man's being, and when we think we have banished it entirely, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and crannies, from which, when it feels relatively safe, it suddenly emerges.

 

We would know a good many things better if we did not want to know them too precisely. After all, an object becomes comprehensible to us only at an angle of less than forty-five degrees.

 

Microscopes and telescopes actually confuse man's clear senses.

 

I keep still about many things, for I do not want to confuse people, and am quite content if they are happy when I am annoyed.

 

Everything that liberates the mind without giving us more self-mastery is harmful.

 

The what of a work of an interests people more than its how. They can grasp the former through details but cannot comprehend the latter as a whole. Hence the focus on specific passages, by which process, if one looks closely, the effect of the whole is still conveyed, but unbeknownst to all.

 

The question "where did the author get this?" likewise leads only to the what, while the how remains a mystery.

 

The imagination is regulated only by art, especially by poetry. There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.

 

Mannerism is idealism gone wrong, subjectivized idealism. Hence it seldom lacks cleverness.

 

The philologist must rely on the congruity of the written tradition. The basis of it is a manuscript, but a manuscript may contain actual gaps, copying errors which make for gaps in the sense, and whatever else may be a flaw in a manuscript. Now a second copy turns up, and a third. Comparison among these makes it possible to perceive more and more of what is sensible and rational in the transmitted texts. Indeed the philologist goes further and demands that his inner sense be increasingly able to grasp and portray the congruity of the material without external aids. Since a special tact, a special immersion in his long dead author are necessary for this, and a certain degree of ingenuity is required, we cannot blame the philologist if he takes it upon himself as well to make judgments of taste, in which, however, he does not always excel.

 

A poet must rely on representation. The latter is at its best when it vies with reality, i.e., when the descriptions are so lively in spirit that they seem actual to everyone. At its peak, poetry seems completely external; the more it withdraws into internal feelings, the more it is in danger of sinking. – Poetry that represents only internal feelings, without embodying them in external images, or that does not imbue these external images with internal feelings – both are the final stages from which poetry crosses into ordinary life.

 

Rhetoric relies upon all the advantages of poetry, all its privileges. It appropriates them and misuses them to obtain certain momentary outward advantages in civic life – whether moral or immoral.

 

Literature is the fragment of fragments; the least part of all that ever happened and was spoken was written down, and of what was written only the least part has survived.

 

Lord Byron is a talent fully developed in natural truth and gran­deur, although wild and disturbing; and therefore there is hardly anyone comparable to him.

 

The special value of so-called folk songs is that their motifs are drawn directly from Nature. However, the educated poet could also avail himself of this advantage, if he knew how.

 

But here the former always have the advantage, in that natural people are better at laconic expression than the educated.

 

Shakespeare is dangerous reading for budding talents; he compels them to reproduce him, and they think they are producing them­selves.

 

No one can pass judgment on history unless he has experienced history himself. This is true of entire nations. The Germans can pass judgment on literature only now that they have a literature themselves.

 

One is truly alive only when one enjoys the good will of others.

 

Piety is not an end but a means to rise to the highest level of culture through pure peace of mind.

 

That is why one can observe that those who set piety as their end and goal usually become hypocrites.

 

"When a man is old, he must do more than when he was young."

 

Duty fulfilled continues to feel like guilt because one has never done quite enough to satisfy oneself.

 

Only the unloving person perceives faults; therefore, in order to recognize them, one must become unloving, but no more than is necessary for this purpose.

 

The greatest happiness is the one that corrects our faults and makes good our errors.

 

If thou canst read, then thou shalt understand; if thou canst write, then thou must know something; if thou canst believe, then thou shalt comprehend; when thou desirest, thou wilt be obligated; when thou demandest, thou wilt not receive, and when thou art experi­enced, thou shalt be useful.

 

We acknowledge no one but he who is useful to us. We acknowl­edge our prince because we see our property secured beneath his aegis. We expect of him protection against disagreeable circum­stances from without and within.

 

The brook is friends with the miller, to whom it is useful, and is glad to tumble over the mill wheels. What good is it to the brook to glide indifferently through the valley?

 

He who contents himself with pure experience and acts according to it has truth enough. The growing child is wise in this respect.

 

Theory in and for itself is of no use, except insofar as it makes us believe in the relatedness of phenomena.

 

All abstractions are brought closer to human understanding through application, and similarly, human understanding attains abstraction through action and observation.

 

He who demands too much or who rejoices in complexity is exposed to confusion.

 

There is nothing wrong with thinking by analogy; analogies have the virtue of not concluding and not aiming for ultimate answers. By contrast, induction is dangerous, since it begins with a foregone conclusion in view and in working toward it sweeps both falsehood and truth along in its path.

 

Ordinary perception, an accurate view of earthly things, is a legacy common to all ordinary human understanding. – Pure perception of outer and inner aspects is very rare.

 

The former manifests itself in practical good sense, in direct action; the latter symbolically, preeminently in mathematics, in numbers and formulas, in speech, primordially, in tropes, as the poetry of genius, as the proverbial expression of human understanding.

 

That which is absent affects us through tradition. Its usual form is what we call historical. A higher form, allied to the imagination, is mythical. Should one look beyond this one for yet a third form, some kind of meaning, it turns into mysticism. It is also apt to become sentimental, so that we appropriate only what we find agreeable.

 

The agencies to which we must attend if we wish truly to advance are those which:

 

prepare

accompany

contribute

aid

advance

strengthen

hinder

have lasting effects.

 

In thought as in action one must distinguish between what is accessible and what is inaccessible. Without this, little can be ac­complished in life or in knowledge.

 

"Le sens commun est Ie Genie de l'humanité."

 

Common sense, which is supposed to be the guiding spirit of mankind, must be viewed first of all through its manifestations. If we examine what mankind uses it for, we discover the following:

Mankind is limited by its needs. If these go unmet, it becomes impatient; if they are met, mankind seems apathetic. The true hu­man being therefore alternates between the two states, and he wilI use his understanding, his so-called common sense, to satisfy his needs. This done, he has the task of filling up the spaces left by apathy. If this remains confined to the nearest and most essential boundaries, he can succeed. But if his needs mount, if they overstep the limits of the ordinary, then common sense no longer suffices, is no longer a guiding spirit, and the realm of error stands open before mankind.

 

There is nothing so irrational that good sense or accident cannot set it straight, and nothing so rational that bad sense and accident cannot lead it astray.

 

Every great idea, as soon as it makes an appearance, exerts a tyrannical effect; hence the advantages it produces are transformed all too soon into disadvantages. Therefore one can defend and celebrate any institution when one recalls its beginnings and can show that everything that was true of it in the beginning still holds.

 

Lessing, who resented many kinds of constraints, has one of his characters say: No one must be compelled. A witty man, inclined to gaiety said: To want is to be compelled. A third, to be sure an educated man, added: To the person of insight, wanting comes naturally. And so the whole circle of understanding, will, and obligation seemed to be taken care of. But on the whole, man's understanding, of whatever sort, determines his actions and omissions; for which reason nothing is more terrifying than watching ignorance in action.

 

These are two forces for peace: justice and propriety.

 

Justice emphasizes obligation, government authority seemliness. Justice deliberates and resolves, authority supervises and com­mands. Justice pertains to the individual, authority to the entirety.

 

The history of knowledge is a great fugue, in which the voices of the peoples come to the fore in turn.

 

In the natural sciences there are a number of problems which cannot be discussed properly without enlisting the aid of meta­physics – but not school wisdom and empty words; it is what was, is, and will be before, with, and after physics.

 

Authority, meaning that in the past something has happened, been said, or been decided, has great worth. But only the pedant would demand authority all the time.

 

Old foundations are to be honored, but we must not give up our right to lay new foundations again.

 

Stand fast where you are! – A maxim more necessary than ever, since on the one hand people are being swept into large parties; yet on the other hand each individual wants to make his mark according to his own insight and ability.

 

It is always better to say directly what one thinks without arguing too much, for all the arguments we present are merely variations on our opinions, and those who are opposed hear neither the one nor the other.

 

Since I am becoming increasingly acquainted with and immersed in natural science and following its day-to-day progress, many reflections have forced themselves upon me. In regard to the progress and regress that occur simultaneously, I shall make only one here: that we cannot eliminate even recognized errors from science. The reason for this is an open secret.

 

I call it an error when some event is interpreted falsely, when some event is interpreted falsely, when it is related to something else falsely, when it is derived falsely. Now it can happen, however, in the course of experience and thought that a phenomenon is seen in its logical relationship, and correctly derived. People are pleased, but ascribe no special importance to it, and calmly leave the error lying right next to it. I know of a whole little warehouse of errors that are being carefully stored.

 

Now since nothing really interests people except their own opinions, everyone with an opinion to express looks to the right and to the left for expedients to bolster himself and others. The truth is used as long as it serves the turn; but in the heat of rhetoric, falsehoods are also seized upon wherever they can be used for the moment, to confuse the issue with half arguments, or to patch together fragments into an apparent whole. When I first discovered this, I was annoyed; then I was depressed, and now it gives me malicious pleasure. I have promised myself never again to unmask such a procedure.

 

Each thing that exists is an analogue for all that exists; thus being always seems to us separate and interconnected at the same time, If the analogy is pursued too far, everything becomes identical; if it is avoided, everything scatters into an infinitude of particulars. In both cases reflection stagnates, either overwhelmed by life or killed.

 

Reason is directed at that which is becoming, understanding at that which has become. The former does not ask "to what end?" nor the latter "whence?" – Reason delights in things unfolding; un­derstanding would like to keep everything fixed, so as to make use of it.

 

It is an innate human peculiarity, and one intimately bound up with man's nature, that he finds what is most immediate insufficient for knowledge. Yet every phenomenon of which we become aware ourselves is what is most immediate at the moment, and we can demand an explanation of it, if we try hard to penetrate it.

 

But men will not learn this, since it goes counter to their nature. For this reason even educated people, when they have identified something true right on the spot, cannot refrain from connecting it not only with what is most immediate but also with the most distant and faraway things, so that error is piled on error. The immediate phenomenon is connected with the distant one only in the sense that everything is based upon a few great laws that manifest themselves everywhere.

 

What is the universal?

The individual case.

What is the particular?

Millions of cases.

There are two errors analogy must avoid: the first, lapsing into witticisms, where it evaporates into nothingness; the other, veiling itself in tropes and images, which, however, is less harmful.

 

Neither mythology nor legends are to be tolerated in science. Leave these to the poets, whose calling it is to employ them for the benefit and pleasure of the world. Let the man of science confine himself to the most immediate, clearest actuality. Should he, how­ever, occasionally want to step forth as a rhetorician, let that not be forbidden to him.

 

To save myself, I regard all appearances as independent of one another and try to isolate them strictly. Then I regard them as correlates, and they join together and acquire a life of their own. I apply this primarily to Nature. But this form of observation is also fruitful with respect to the most recent violent developments in world history that encompass us.

 

Everything we call invention or discovery in the higher sense is the significant exercise or enactment of a basic feeling for truth, which, having long since developed unobtrusively within us, un­expectedly leads to a fruitful insight with lightning swiftness. It is a revelation from within in response to something from without that gives man a presentiment of his godlike nature. It is a synthesis of world and spirit, offering blissful assurance of the eternal harmony of existence.

 

Man must cling to the belief that the incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise he would not undertake research.

 

Every particular is comprehensible if it can be applied in some way. In this manner the incomprehensible can become useful.

 

There is a tender empirics that enters into so intimate an iden­tification with its object that it actually becomes a theory. But this heightening of intellectual capacity is characteristic of a highly de­veloped age.

 

The most obnoxious are the niggling observers and capricious theorists; their experiments are petty and complicated, their hy­potheses abstruse and peculiar.

 

There are pedants who are also rogues, and these are the worst of all.

 

One need not travel around the world to know that the sky is blue everywhere.

 

The universal and the particular come together; the particular is the universal appearing under various conditions.

 

One need not have seen and experienced everything for oneself; but if you choose to trust someone else and his representations, bear in mind that now you are dealing with three elements: with the object and two subjectivities.

 

The fundamental property of the living entity: to divide, to unite to dissolve in the universal, to persist in its particularity, to metamorphose, to assert its specificity, and, since anything alive can manifest itself under thousands of conditions, to emerge and dis­appear, to solidify and to melt, to freeze and to flow, to expand and contract. Since all these processes are taking place in the same mo­ment, anything and everything can occur at the same time. Origination and extinction, creation and destruction, birth and death, joy and sorrow – everything interacts, in equal sense and equal measure, for which reason even the most particular event always appears as the image and likeness of the universal.

 

If all existence is an eternal parting and uniting, then it follows that human beings, in view of this overwhelming situation, will also be forever parting and coming together.

 

A clear distinction must be drawn between physics and mathe­matics. The former must exist in complete independence and en­deavor to penetrate Nature and the sacred secret of life with all its loving, reverent, pious powers, quite untroubled by what mathe­matics achieves and does for its part. Conversely, mathematics must declare its independence of everything external to itself, must follow its own great intellectual course and develop itself more purely than is possible if, as formerly, it concerns itself with what is at hand and attempts either to gain from it or adapt to it.

 

Natural science requires a categorical imperative as much as moral science; however, one must remember that that is not the end but only the beginning.

 

The highest wisdom would be to comprehend that everything factual is already theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the primary law of chromatics. Do not look for anything behind the phenomena; they themselves are the lesson.

 

In the scences there are many certainties, as soon as one does not allow oneself to be led astray by the exceptions and learns to show proper respect for the problems.

 

When I finally come to rest at the primal phenomenon, that, too, is merely resignation. Still, there is a vast difference between re­signing myself to the limits of human existence itself and accepting hypothetical limitations of my narrow individuality.

 

When one examines the problems treated by Aristotle, one is astounded by his powers of observation and by all the Greeks had eyes for. But they commit the mistake of being overhasty, proceed­ing directly from the phenomenon to its explanation, as a result of which wholly inadequate theoretical assertions appear. This, however, is a universal mistake, still committed today.

 

Hypotheses are lullabies with which the teacher rocks his students to sleep. The thoughtful, faithful observer learns more and more to recognize his limitations. He sees that the farther knowledge extends, the more problems appear.

 

Our mistake consists in doubting certainties and wanting to pin down uncertainties. My maxim in scientific research is: to hold onto the certainties and to be alert to the uncertainties.

 

Venial hypotheses are the ones proposed almost as a joke to be disproved by sober Nature.

 

How could anyone hope to appear as a master in his field if he taught nothing useless?

 

The height of folly is that everyone thinks he must pass on what is believed to be known.

 

Because didactic presentations must offer certainty, since the stu­dent does not want to have anything uncertain passed on to him, the teacher must not leave any problem unsolved, or even skirt it at some distance. Things must be immediately pinned down ("bepaalt," as they say in Dutch), and so for a while one believes one possesses the unknown territory, until someone else pulls the stakes out again, and promptly stakes out another, larger or smaller, area.

 

Lively inquiry into the cause, mistaking cause for effect, and resting content with a false theory do great harm, not to be dwelt on here.

 

If many people did not feel obliged to repeat what is untrue simply because they had said it before, they would have developed into very different people.

 

The false has the advantage that people can always gabble about it; the truth must be put to use at once, or else it is not there.

 

Anyone who does not comprehend how truth simplifies practical life, may fuss and fret all he likes in order to gloss over his misguided, laborious blunderings a little.

 

The Germans, and not they alone, possess the talent of making the sciences inaccessible.

 

The Englishman is a master at putting a new discovery to immediate use, until it leads again to new discoveries and fresh applications. Is it any wonder that they are ahead of us in everything?

 

The thinking man has the strange characteristic that he likes to conjure up an imaginary picture on the spot where an unresolved problem lies, a picture that continues to haunt him even when the problem has been solved and the truth revealed.

 

A particular cast of mind is required to conceive of a formless reality in its unique nature and to distinguish it from chimeras which have a way of obtruding themselves upon us with a certain vivid reality.

 

In observing Nature on both a large scale and a small, I have unceasingly posed the question: is it the object or is it you yourself finding expression here? And in this spirit I observe both my prede­cessors and my colleagues.

 

Every man sees the finished and regulated, formed, complete world only as an element from which he is trying to create a particular world suitable to him. Capable people set to without hesitation and try to manage as best they can. Others waver on the brink; some even doubt of its existence.

Anyone thoroughly imbued with this basic truth would quarrel with no one, but would simply regard the other's way of thinking, as well as his own, as a phenomenon. For we witness almost daily that one person can comfortably entertain thoughts that are impossible for someone else to think, and indeed not only in things that have any influence at all on our weal and woe, but in things that are of no consequence.

 

One actually knows what one knows only for oneself. If I speak with someone about what I believe I know, he at once believes that he knows better, and I must always withdraw into myself with my knowledge.

 

Truth is constructive. From error nothing comes; it only entangles us.

 

Man finds himself surrounded by effects and cannot but inquire into the causes. For the sake of convenience he seizes upon the nearest as the best and contents himself with that. This is especially true of the