which the problem of "the real and the apparent world" is dealt with at
present throughout Europe, furnishes food for thought and attention; and
he who hears only a "Will to Truth" in the background, and nothing else,
cannot certainly boast of the sharpest ears. In rare and isolated
cases, it may really have happened that such a Will to Truth--a certain
extravagant and adventurous pluck, a metaphysician's ambition of the
forlorn hope--has participated therein: that which in the end always
prefers a handful of "certainty" to a whole cartload of beautiful
possibilities; there may even be puritanical fanatics of conscience,
who prefer to put their last trust in a sure nothing, rather than in an
uncertain something. But that is Nihilism, and the sign of a despairing,
mortally wearied soul, notwithstanding the courageous bearing such a
virtue may display. It seems, however, to be otherwise with stronger
and livelier thinkers who are still eager for life. In that they side
AGAINST appearance, and speak superciliously of "perspective," in
that they rank the credibility of their own bodies about as low as the
credibility of the ocular evidence that "the earth stands still," and
thus, apparently, allowing with complacency their securest possession
to escape (for what does one at present believe in more firmly than
in one's body?),--who knows if they are not really trying to win back
something which was formerly an even securer possession, something
of the old domain of the faith of former times, perhaps the "immortal
soul," perhaps "the old God," in short, ideas by which they could live
better, that is to say, more vigorously and more joyously, than by
"modern ideas"? There is DISTRUST of these modern ideas in this mode
of looking at things, a disbelief in all that has been constructed
yesterday and today; there is perhaps some slight admixture of satiety
and scorn, which can no longer endure the BRIC-A-BRAC of ideas of the
most varied origin, such as so-called Positivism at present throws on
the market; a disgust of the more refined taste at the village-fair
motleyness and patchiness of all these reality-philosophasters, in whom
there is nothing either new or true, except this motleyness. Therein it
seems to me that we should agree with those skeptical anti-realists and
knowledge-microscopists of the present day; their instinct, which repels
them from MODERN reality, is unrefuted... what do their retrograde
by-paths concern us! The main thing about them is NOT that they wish
to go "back," but that they wish to get AWAY therefrom. A little MORE
strength, swing, courage, and artistic power, and they would be OFF--and
not back!