Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1CHAPTER VI: WE
SCHOLARS
- At the risk that moralizing may also reveal itself here
as that which it has always been—namely, resolutely MON-
TRER SES PLAIES, according to Balzac—I would venture
to protest against an improper and injurious alteration of
rank, which quite unnoticed, and as if with the best con-
science, threatens nowadays to establish itself in the relations
of science and philosophy. I mean to say that one must have
the right out of one’s own EXPERIENCE—experience, as it
seems to me, always implies unfortunate experience?—to
treat of such an important question of rank, so as not to
speak of colour like the blind, or AGAINST science like
women and artists (“Ah! this dreadful science!’ sigh their
instinct and their shame, ‘it always FINDS THINGS OUT!’).
The declaration of independence of the scientific man, his
emancipation from philosophy, is one of the subtler after-
effects of democratic organization and disorganization: the
self- glorification and self-conceitedness of the learned man
is now everywhere in full bloom, and in its best springtime—
which does not mean to imply that in this case self-praise
smells sweet. Here also the instinct of the populace cries,
‘Freedom from all masters!’ and after science has, with the
happiest results, resisted theology, whose ‘hand-maid’ it