Untimely Meditations 119resignation, devoid of strength, or cynical, it culminates in an attitude of
nihilistic egoism altogether indifferent to everything that is not useful in
an economic sense.
Nietzsche began with a problem that would at first glance appear to
interest only the world of scholarship and education—namely his era's
fixation on history, on things that happened and developed, the inunda-
tion of historical information, and the endless squandering of effort on
picayune issues that served no purpose other than the self-preservation
of the scholarly enterprise. Nietzsche used the appeal of historidsm in
the scholarly world as a point of departure for his critique of the era as
a whole. He countered with an emphatic defense of life. The philosophy
of life that he developed in the coming decades originated in this essay,
a seminal Nietzschean text.
Centuries of historical and sdentific research have produced a vast
quantity of knowledge. Since erudition and knowledge were proclaimed
the highest ideals, educated contemporaries want to take in as much of
it as possible, with the result that "in the end, modern man drags around
with him a huge quantity of indigestible stones of knowledge, which
then, on occasion, rumble around inside his body, as they say in fairy
tales. This rumbling reveals the fundamental characteristic of modern
man: the curious disparity of an interior with no corresponding exteri-
or, and an interior with no corresponding interior—a disparity that was
alien to ancient peoples" (1,272; HL § 4). Nietzsche considered this
opposition between interior and exterior a fundamental characteristic of
German culture. A time-honored German tradition regards its undi-
gested knowledge as profound introspection and forgoes style and wit
on the outside. People foster "inward cultivation for outward barbar-
ians" (1,274; HL § 4), only there is no actual inward cultivation. It does
not take shape in life; it is not, to use a favorite Nietzschean expression,
"incorporated." Gaudiness, cheap showmanship, epigonalism in art and
architecture, and boorish manners in the social sphere characterize this
attitude. People take pride in their rough edges and consider their culture
superior to French civilization and refinement, and yet "in our belief