There are truths which are best recognized by medio-
cre minds, because they are best adapted for them, there
are truths which only possess charms and seductive power
for mediocre spirits:—one is pushed to this probably un-
pleasant conclusion, now that the influence of respectable
but mediocre Englishmen—I may mention Darwin, John
Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer—begins to gain the ascen-
dancy in the middle-class region of European taste. Indeed,
who could doubt that it is a useful thing for SUCH minds
to have the ascendancy for a time? It would be an error to
consider the highly developed and independently soaring
minds as specially qualified for determining and collecting
many little common facts, and deducing conclusions from
them; as exceptions, they are rather from the first in no very
favourable position towards those who are ‘the rules.’ Af-
ter all, they have more to do than merely to perceive:—in
effect, they have to BE something new, they have to SIGNI-
FY something new, they have to REPRESENT new values!
The gulf between knowledge and capacity is perhaps great-
er, and also more mysterious, than one thinks: the capable
man in the grand style, the creator, will possibly have to be
an ignorant person;—while on the other hand, for scien-
tific discoveries like those of Darwin, a certain narrowness,
aridity, and industrious carefulness (in short, something
English) may not be unfavourable for arriving at them.—
Finally, let it not be forgotten that the English, with their
profound mediocrity, brought about once before a general
depression of European intelligence.
