ENGENDERS or PRODUCES--both words understood in their fullest sense--the
man of learning, the scientific average man, has always something of
the old maid about him; for, like her, he is not conversant with the two
principal functions of man. To both, of course, to the scholar and
to the old maid, one concedes respectability, as if by way of
indemnification--in these cases one emphasizes the respectability--and
yet, in the compulsion of this concession, one has the same admixture
of vexation. Let us examine more closely: what is the scientific man?
Firstly, a commonplace type of man, with commonplace virtues: that is
to say, a non-ruling, non-authoritative, and non-self-sufficient type
of man; he possesses industry, patient adaptableness to rank and file,
equability and moderation in capacity and requirement; he has the
instinct for people like himself, and for that which they require--for
instance: the portion of independence and green meadow without which
there is no rest from labour, the claim to honour and consideration
(which first and foremost presupposes recognition and recognisability),
the sunshine of a good name, the perpetual ratification of his value and
usefulness, with which the inward DISTRUST which lies at the bottom of
the heart of all dependent men and gregarious animals, has again and
again to be overcome. The learned man, as is appropriate, has also
maladies and faults of an ignoble kind: he is full of petty envy, and
has a lynx-eye for the weak points in those natures to whose elevations
he cannot attain. He is confiding, yet only as one who lets himself go,
but does not FLOW; and precisely before the man of the great current he
stands all the colder and more reserved--his eye is then like a smooth
and irresponsive lake, which is no longer moved by rapture or sympathy.
The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable results
from the instinct of mediocrity of his type, from the Jesuitism of
mediocrity, which labours instinctively for the destruction of
the exceptional man, and endeavours to break--or still better, to
relax--every bent bow To relax, of course, with consideration, and
naturally with an indulgent hand--to RELAX with confiding sympathy
that is the real art of Jesuitism, which has always understood how to
introduce itself as the religion of sympathy.