Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume SixNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Human, All-Too-Human: A Book for Free Spirits, Part 1: Complete Works, Volume Six
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Human beings
THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE.--To him who works and seeks in her, Science
gives much pleasure,--to him who _learns_ her facts, very little. But
as all important truths of science must gradually become commonplace
and everyday matters, even this small amount of pleasure ceases, just
as we have long ceased to take pleasure in learning the admirable
multiplication table. Now if Science goes on giving less pleasure in
herself, and always takes more pleasure in throwing suspicion on the
consolations of metaphysics, religion and art, that greatest of all
sources of pleasure, to which mankind owes almost its whole humanity,
becomes impoverished. Therefore a higher culture must give man a
double brain, two brain-chambers, so to speak, one to feel science
and the other to feel non-science, which can lie side by side, without
confusion, divisible, exclusive; this is a necessity of health. In one
part lies the source of strength, in the other lies the regulator;
it must be heated with illusions, onesidednesses, passions; and the
malicious and dangerous consequences of over-heating must be averted
by the help of conscious Science. If this necessity of the higher
culture is not satisfied, the further course of human development can
almost certainly be foretold: the interest in what is true ceases as it
guarantees less pleasure; illusion, error, and imagination reconquer
step by step the ancient territory, because they are united to
pleasure; the ruin of science: the relapse into barbarism is the next
result; mankind must begin to weave its web afresh after having, like
Penelope, destroyed it during the night. But who will assure us that it
will always find the necessary strength for this?
252.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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