40
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science.
373
'Science' as prejudice. - It follows from the laws that govern rank ordering
(Rangordnung) that scholars, insofar as they belong to the
intellectual middle class, are not even allowed to catch sight of the truly
great problems and question marks; moreover, their courage and eyes
simply don't reach that far - and above all, the need that makes them
scholars, their inner expectations and wish that things might be such and
such, their fear and hope, too soon find rest and satisfaction. What
makes, for instance, the pedantic Englishman Herbert Spencer rave in
his own way and makes him draw a line of hope, a horizon which
defines what is desirable; that definitive reconciliation of 'egoism and
altruism' about which he spins fables - this almost nauseates the likes of
us: a human race that adopts as its ultimate perspective such a
Spencerian perspective would strike us as deserving of contempt, of
annihilation! But that he had to view as his highest hope what to others
counts and should count only as a disgusting possibility is a question
mark that Spencer would have been unable to foresee. So, too, it is with
the faith with which so many materialistic natural scientists rest
content: the faith in a world that is supposed to have its equivalent and
measure in human thought, in human valuations - a 'world of truth'
that can be grasped entirely with the help of our four-cornered little
human reason - What? Do we really want to demote existence in this
way to an exercise in arithmetic and an indoor diversion for mathematicians?
Above all, one shouldn't want to strip it of its ambiguous
character: that, gentlemen, is what good taste demands - above all, the
taste of reverence for everything that lies beyond your horizon! That the
only rightful interpretation of the world should be one to which you
have a right; one by which one can do research and go on scientifically
in your sense of the term (you really mean mechanistically?) - one that
permits counting, calculating, weighing, seeing, grasping, and nothing
else - that is a crudity and naivete, assuming it is not a mental illness, an
idiocy. Would it not be quite probable, conversely, that precisely the
most superficial and external aspect of existence - what is most
apparent; its skin and its sensualization - would be grasped first and
might even be the only thing that let itself be grasped? Thus, a
'scientific' interpretation of the world, as you understand it, might still
be one of the stupidest of all possible interpretations of the world, i.e. one
of those most lacking in significance. This to the ear and conscience of
Mr Mechanic, who nowadays likes to pass as a philosopher and insists
that mechanics is the doctrine of the first and final laws on which
existence may be built, as on a ground floor. But an essentially
mechanistic world would be an essentially meaningless world! Suppose
one judged the value of a piece of music according to how much of it
could be counted, calculated, and expressed in formulas - how absurd
such a 'scientific' evaluation of music would be What would one have
comprehended, understood, recognized? Nothing, really nothing of
what is 'music' in it!
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