§378

Kant wrote an essay on the living forces, but I would like to write a dirge and a threnody on them, because their all too excessive use in knocking, hammering and ramming has been a daily pain to me my whole life through. Of course there are people, indeed quite a few who smile at this, because they are insensitive to sounds; but these are the same ones who are also insensitive to reasons, thoughts, poetry and works of art, in brief, to spiritual impressions of any kind, due to the tough and unyielding texture of their brain matter. On the other hand, in the biographies or other accounts of personal utterances of almost all great writers, for instance Kant, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Jean Paul, I find complaints about the anguish caused to thinking men by noise; indeed, if such information is missing in any one case, then it is merely because the context did not lead to it. I interpret the matter as follows: just as a large diamond cut into pieces is equal in value only to so many small ones, or an army shattered to pieces and dissolved into small units is no longer capable of anything, so too a great mind is no more capable than an ordinary one as soon as it is interrupted, disturbed, distracted and diverted, because its superiority is conditioned by concentrating all its powers on one point and object, as a concave mirror does all of its rays, and precisely this is prevented by the noisy interruption. This is why eminent minds have always abhorred every kind of disturbance, interruption and diversion, especially those of a violent nature through noise, whereas others are not especially bothered by this. The most sensible and intelligent of all European nations has even called the rule ‘never interrupt’ its eleventh commandment. But noise is the most impertinent of all interruptions, since it breaks up and indeed breaks down even our own thoughts. But where there is nothing to interrupt, noise is of course not particularly sensed. – Occasionally I am tormented and bothered by a moderate and constant noise before I am clearly aware of it, in that I sense it merely as a constant hindrance to my thinking, like dragging a weight with my foot, until I realize what it is.