Dancing and Thinking

Learning to think: our schools no longer have any idea what this means. Even in our universities, even among students of philosophy themselves, the theory, the practice, the vocation of logic is beginning to die out. Read German books: no longer the remotest recollection that a technique, a plan of instruction, a will to mastery is required for thinking — that thinking has to be learned in the way dancing has to be learned, as a form of dancing. . . . Who among Germans still knows from experience that subtle thrill which the possession of intellectual light feet communicates to all the muscles! — A stiffly awkward air in intellectual matters, a clumsy hand in grasping — this is in so great a degree German that foreigners take it for the German nature in general. The German has no fingers for nuances. . . . dancing in any form cannot be divorced from a noble education, being able to dance with the feet, with concepts, with words: do I still have to say that one has to be able to dance with the pen — that writing has to be learned?

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1888; trans. R. J. Hollingdale, 1968)

'adjusted...to the most dubious mediocrity'

Great and fine things can never be common property: pulchrum est paucorum hominum.* — What is the cause of the decline of German culture? That 'higher education' is no longer a privilege — the democratism of 'culture' made 'universal' and common. . . . Not to overlook the fact that military privileges absolutely compel too great attendance at higher schools, which means their ruin. — No one is any longer free in present-day Germany to give his children a noble education: our 'higher' schools are one and all adjusted — as regards their teachers, their curricula and their instructional aims — to the most dubious mediocrity.

*beauty is for the few 

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1888; trans. R. J. Hollingdale, 1968)

'the kind of feelings most foreign to love'

Supposing that what I felt for her was really love—which will appear at least doubtful to anyone who follows the story of our relationship—how could that passion have been accompanied from its birth with the kind of feelings most foreign to love, with peace of heart, calmness, serenity, security, confidence? How, on meeting a charming woman for the first time, a polished and attractive woman superior to myself in rank, a woman unlike any I had spoken to before, a woman on whom my fate to some extent hung—for I was dependent on the amount of interest she might feel in me—how was it then, taking all this into account, that I felt as carefree and as much at my ease as if I were perfectly certain to please her? Why did I not have a moment's embarrassment, timidity, or concern? I was bashful by nature, easily put out of countenance, and had never seen the world. How was it then that from the first day, the first instant, I assumed the easy manner, the affectionate language and familiar tone of ten years later, of a time when the greater intimacy had made it natural? Is there such a thing as love, not without desire—for desire I had—but without disquietude and jealousy? Does one not wish at least to learn from the woman one loves whether one is loved in return?

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (1781; trans. J.M. Cohen 1953)