order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them--they
will rather have little faith in "TRUTH" bringing with it such revels
for the feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one
says in their presence "That thought elevates me, why should it not be
true?" or "That work enchants me, why should it not be beautiful?" or
"That artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they
will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus
rapturous, idealistic, feminine, and hermaphroditic, and if any one
could look into their inmost hearts, he would not easily find therein
the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with "antique taste,"
or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation
necessarily found even among philosophers in our very uncertain and
consequently very conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and every
habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters,
will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of
the future, they may even make a display thereof as their special
adornment--nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that
account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to
have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is
criticism and critical science--and nothing else whatever!" Though this
estimate of philosophy may enjoy the approval of all the Positivists of
France and Germany (and possibly it even flattered the heart and taste
of KANT: let us call to mind the titles of his principal works), our new
philosophers will say, notwithstanding, that critics are instruments of
the philosopher, and just on that account, as instruments, they are
far from being philosophers themselves! Even the great Chinaman of
Konigsberg was only a great critic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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