Volume II of "Thoughts out of Season" contains "The Use and Abuse of
History" and "Schopenhauer as Educator," both written in 1874. In the
first of these essays Nietzsche attacked the study of history which was
then the foremost educational fad in Germany. He denied it a place in
the curriculum of culture unless it had for its foundation a profound
knowledge of the causes of history. Also in this essay he made a plea
for the individualistic interpretation of history, arguing that the
events founded on the activities of majorities are useless to a true
understanding of the fundamentals of racial development. Here again
we encounter the foreshadowing of the philosophy of the superman.
Nietzsche paid high tribute to Schopenhauer in his essay "Schopenhauer
as Educator." Without subscribing unqualifiedly to all the doctrines
of the great pessimist, he nevertheless allied himself philosophically
with Schopenhauer's theory that all logic is an outgrowth of the law of
self-preservation.
In the autumn of 1874 Nietzsche wrote a series of brief comments
dealing with the subject of education. These paragraphs contain
about 20,000 words, and were to have constituted, when completed,
the fifth part of "Thoughts Out of Season." He never finished them,
however, and they were not published until after his death. These
fragments appear, under the caption of "We Philologists," at the end
of the volume entitled "The Case of Wagner." "We Philologists" is a
protest against the manner in which classical culture was promulgated
in the universities. It offers a stinging criticism of those German
professors, the philologists, to whom was entrusted the duty of
disseminating Greek cultural ideals, and in addition presents a concise
outline of what genuine Hellenic culture should consist. Nietzsche
protests against the filtering of pagan antiquity through Christian
doctrines--the method of teaching then in vogue--and insists that such
a form of education entirely misses its aim. Although "We Philologists"
is comparatively of small value to the student of Nietzsche's later
philosophy, it is interesting to note that as early as 1874, his
anti-Christian spirit was already well defined.