On Men of Learning
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
When one sees the number and variety of institutions which exist for the
purposes of education, and the vast throng of scholars and masters, one
might fancy the human race to be very much concerned about truth and
wisdom. But here, too, appearances are deceptive. The masters teach in
order to gain money, and strive, not after wisdom, but the outward show
and reputation of it; and the scholars learn, not for the sake of knowledge
and insight, but to be able to chatter and give themselves airs. Every thirty
years a new race comes into the world—a youngster that knows nothing
about anything, and after summarily devouring in all haste the results of
human knowledge as they have been accumulated for thousands of years,
aspires to be thought cleverer than the whole of the past. For this purpose he
goes to the University, and takes to reading books—new books, as being of
his own age and standing. Everything he reads must be briefly put, must be
new! he is new himself. Then he falls to and criticises. And here I am not
taking the slightest account of studies pursued for the sole object of making
a living.
Students, and learned persons of all sorts and every age, aim as a rule at
acquiring information rather than insight. They pique themselves upon
knowing about everything—stones, plants, battles, experiments, and all the
books in existence. It never occurs to them that information is only a means
of insight, and in itself of little or no value; that it is his way of thinking that
makes a man a philosopher. When I hear of these portents of learning and
their imposing erudition, I sometimes say to myself: Ah, how little they
must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much! And when
I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading
or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the question forces
itself upon my mind, whether the man was so very lacking in thought of his
own that he had to have alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as
though he were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive.
And neither his undiscerning credulity nor his inexpressibly repulsive and
barely intelligible style—which seems like of a man taking notes, and very
economical of paper—is of a kind to give me a high opinion of his power of
independent thought.
We have seen that much reading and learning is prejudicial to thinking
for oneself; and, in the same way, through much writing and teaching, a
man loses the habit of being quite clear, and therefore thorough, in regard to
the things he knows and understands; simply because he has left himself no
time to acquire clearness or thoroughness. And so, when clear knowledge
fails him in his utterances, he is forced to fill out the gaps with words and
phrases. It is this, and not the dryness of the subject-matter, that makes most
books such tedious reading. There is a saying that a good cook can make a
palatable dish even out of an old shoe; and a good writer can make the
dryest things interesting.
With by far the largest number of learned men, knowledge is a means,
not an end. That is why they will never achieve any great work; because, to
do that, he who pursues knowledge must pursue it as an end, and treat
everything else, even existence itself, as only a means. For everything
which a man fails to pursue for its own sake is but half-pursued; and true
excellence, no matter in what sphere, can be attained only where the work
has been produced for its own sake alone, and not as a means to further
ends.
And so, too, no one will ever succeed in doing anything really great and
original in the way of thought, who does not seek to acquire knowledge for
himself, and, making this the immediate object of his studies, decline to
trouble himself about the knowledge of others. But the average man of
learning studies for the purpose of being able to teach and write. His head is
like a stomach and intestines which let the food pass through them
undigested. That is just why his teaching and writing is of so little use. For
it is not upon undigested refuse that people can be nourished, but solely
upon the milk which secretes from the very blood itself.
The wig is the appropriate symbol of the man of learning, pure and
simple. It adorns the head with a copious quantity of false hair, in lack of
one's own: just as erudition means endowing it with a great mass of alien
thought. This, to be sure, does not clothe the head so well and naturally, nor
is it so generally useful, nor so suited for all purposes, nor so firmly rooted;
nor when alien thought is used up, can it be immediately replaced by more
from the same source, as is the case with that which springs from soil of
one's own. So we find Sterne, in his Tristram Shandy, boldly asserting that
an ounce of a man's own wit is worth a ton of other people's.
And in fact the most profound erudition is no more akin to genius than a
collection of dried plants in like Nature, with its constant flow of new life,
ever fresh, ever young, ever changing. There are no two things more
opposed than the childish naïveté of an ancient author and the learning of
his commentator.
Dilettanti, dilettanti! This is the slighting way in which those who
pursue any branch of art or learning for the love and enjoyment of the thing,
—per il loro diletto, are spoken of by those who have taken it up for the
sake of gain, attracted solely by the prospect of money. This contempt of
theirs comes from the base belief that no man will seriously devote himself
to a subject, unless he is spurred on to it by want, hunger, or else some form
of greed. The public is of the same way of thinking; and hence its general
respect for professionals and its distrust of dilettanti. But the truth is that the
dilettante treats his subject as an end, whereas the professional, pure and
simple, treats it merely as a means. He alone will be really in earnest about
a matter, who has a direct interest therein, takes to it because he likes it, and
pursues it con amore. It is these, and not hirelings, that have always done
the greatest work.
In the republic of letters it is as in other republics; favor is shown to the
plain man—he who goes his way in silence and does not set up to be
cleverer than others. But the abnormal man is looked upon as threatening
danger; people band together against him, and have, oh! such a majority on
their side.
The condition of this republic is much like that of a small State in
America, where every man is intent only upon his own advantage, and
seeks reputation and power for himself, quite heedless of the general weal,
which then goes to ruin. So it is in the republic of letters; it is himself, and
himself alone, that a man puts forward, because he wants to gain fame. The
only thing in which all agree is in trying to keep down a really eminent
man, if he should chance to show himself, as one who would be a common
peril. From this it is easy to see how it fares with knowledge as a whole.
Between professors and independent men of learning there has always
been from of old a certain antagonism, which may perhaps be likened to
that existing been dogs and wolves. In virtue of their position, professors
enjoy great facilities for becoming known to their contemporaries.
Contrarily, independent men of learning enjoy, by their position, great
facilities for becoming known to posterity; to which it is necessary that,
amongst other and much rarer gifts, a man should have a certain leisure and
freedom. As mankind takes a long time in finding out on whom to bestow
its attention, they may both work together side by side.
He who holds a professorship may be said to receive his food in the
stall; and this is the best way with ruminant animals. But he who finds his
food for himself at the hands of Nature is better off in the open field.
Of human knowledge as a whole and in every branch of it, by far the
largest part exists nowhere but on paper,—I mean, in books, that paper
memory of mankind. Only a small part of it is at any given period really
active in the minds of particular persons. This is due, in the main, to the
brevity and uncertainty of life; but it also comes from the fact that men are
lazy and bent on pleasure. Every generation attains, on its hasty passage
through existence, just so much of human knowledge as it needs, and then
soon disappears. Most men of learning are very superficial. Then follows a
new generation, full of hope, but ignorant, and with everything to learn
from the beginning. It seizes, in its turn, just so much as it can grasp or find
useful on its brief journey and then too goes its way. How badly it would
fare with human knowledge if it were not for the art of writing and printing!
This it is that makes libraries the only sure and lasting memory of the
human race, for its individual members have all of them but a very limited
and imperfect one. Hence most men of learning as are loth to have their
knowledge examined as merchants to lay bare their books.
Human knowledge extends on all sides farther than the eye can reach;
and of that which would be generally worth knowing, no one man can
possess even the thousandth part.
All branches of learning have thus been so much enlarged that he who
would "do something" has to pursue no more than one subject and disregard
all others. In his own subject he will then, it is true, be superior to the
vulgar; but in all else he will belong to it. If we add to this that neglect of
the ancient languages, which is now-a-days on the increase and is doing
away with all general education in the humanities—for a mere smattering of
Latin and Greek is of no use—we shall come to have men of learning who
outside their own subject display an ignorance truly bovine.
An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par with a workman in a
factory, whose whole life is spent in making one particular kind of screw, or
catch, or handle, for some particular instrument or machine, in which,
indeed, he attains incredible dexterity. The specialist may also be likened to
a man who lives in his own house and never leaves it. There he is perfectly
familiar with everything, every little step, corner, or board; much as
Quasimodo in Victor Hugo's Nôtre Dame knows the cathedral; but outside
it, all is strange and unknown.
For true culture in the humanities it is absolutely necessary that a man
should be many-sided and take large views; and for a man of learning in the
higher sense of the word, an extensive acquaintance with history is needful.
He, however, who wishes to be a complete philosopher, must gather into his
head the remotest ends of human knowledge: for where else could they ever
come together?
It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be specialists. For
their very nature is to make the whole of existence their problem; and this is
a subject upon which they will every one of them in some form provide
mankind with a new revelation. For he alone can deserve the name of
genius who takes the All, the Essential, the Universal, for the theme of his
achievements; not he who spends his life in explaining some special
relation of things one to another.