Nietzsche's value lies in his being one of these vehicles of culture: a mind which, itself independent, diffuses independence and may become to others a liberating force, such as Schopenhauer was to Nietzsche himself in his younger days. [2] _The Birth of Tragedy_, p. 150 ff. (English edition). [3] The author of these lines has not made himself the advocate of this view, as has sometimes been publicly stated, but on the contrary has opposed it. After some uncertainty I pronounced against it as early as 1870, in _Den franske Æsthetik i vore Dage_, pp. 105, 106, and afterwards in many other places. [4] Nietzsche; _Thoughts out of Season_, II., p. 155 f. (English edition). Renan: _Dialogues et Fragments Philosophiques_, p. 103. Flaubert: _Lettres à George Sand_, p. 139 ff. 2. Four of Nietzsche's early works bear the collective title, _Thoughts out of Season_ (_Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen_), a title which is significant of his early-formed determination to go against the stream. One of the fields in which he opposed the spirit of the age in Germany is that of education, since he condemns in the most uncompromising fashion the entire historical system of education of which Germany is proud, and which as a rule is everywhere regarded as desirable. His view is that what keeps the race from breathing freely and willing boldly is that it drags far too much of its past about with it, like a round-shot chained to a convict's leg. He thinks it is historical education that fetters the race both in enjoyment and in action, since he who cannot concentrate himself on the moment and live entirely in it, can neither feel happiness himself nor do anything to make others happy. Without the power of feeling unhistorically, there is no happiness. And in the same way, forgetfulness, or rather, non-knowledge of the past is essential to all action. Forgetfulness, the unhistorical, is as it were the enveloping air, the atmosphere, in which alone life can come into being. In order to understand it, let us imagine a youth who is seized with a passion for a woman, or a man who is swayed by a passion for his work. In both cases what lies behind them has ceased to exist--and yet this state (the most unhistorical that can be imagined) is that in which every action, every great deed is conceived and accomplished. Now answering to this, says Nietzsche, there exists a certain degree of historical knowledge which is destructive of a man's energy and fatal to the productive powers of a nation.