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ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.

— Essays,
 
Burt's Library of the World’s Pest Books.

 

ESSAYS

OF

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.

SELECTED AND TRANSLATED

By T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.

Vitam impendere vero.—JUVENAL.

 

NEW YORK:
A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER,
ESY4YSOIS

Nt

DB
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

SCHOPENHAUER is one of the few philosophers who can
be generally understood without a commentary. All his
theories claim to be drawn direct from facts, to be
suggested by observation, and to interpret the world as it
is; and whatever view he takes, he is constant in his
appeal to the experience of common life. This character-
istic endows his style with a freshness and vigor which
would be difficult to match in the philosophical writing
of any country, and impossible in that of Germany.
If it were asked whether there were any circumstances,
apart from heredity, to which he owed his mental habit,
the answer might be found in the abnormal character of
his early education, his acquaintance with the world
rather than with books, the extensive travels of his boy-
hood, his ardent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake
and without regard to the emoluments and endowments
of learning. He was trained in realities even more than
in ideas; and hence he is orginal, forcible, clear, an
enemy of all philosophic indefiniteness and obscurity; so
that it may well be said of him, in the words of a writer
in the ‘‘ Revue Contemporaine,” ce n'est pas un philosophe
comme les autres, c’est un philosophe qui a vu le monde.

It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible within
the limits of a prefatory note, to attempt an account of
Schopenhauer’s philosophy, to indicate its sources, or to
suggest or rebut the objections which may be taken to it.
M. Ribot, in his excellent little book,* has done all that

 

* “La Philosophie de Schopenhauer,” par Th. Ribot.
iv TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

is necessary in this direction. But the essays here pre-
sented need a word of explanation. It should be observed,
and Schopenhauer himself is at pains to point out, that
his system is like a citadel with a hundred gates: at what-
ever point you take it up, wherever you make your
entrance, you are on the road to the center. In this
respect his writings resemble a series of essays composed
in support of a single thesis; a circumstance which led
him to insist, more emphatically even than most philoso-
phers, that for a proper understanding of his system it
was necessary to read every line he had written. Perhaps
it would be more correct to describe ‘‘ Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung” as his main thesis, and his other
treatises as merely corollary to it. The essays in these
volumes form part of the corollary; they are taken from
a collection published toward the close of Schopenhauer’s
life, and by him entitled ‘‘ Parerga und Paralipomena,”
as being in the nature of surplusage and illustrative of his
main position. They are by far the most popular of his
works, and since their first publication in 1851 they
have done much to build up his fame. Written so as to
be intelligible enough in themselves, the tendency of many
of them is toward the fundamental idea on which his
system is based. It may therefore be convenient to
summarize that idea in a couple of sentences; more es-
pecially as Schopenhauer sometimes writes as if his advice
had been followed and his readers were acquainted with
the whole of his work.

All philosophy is in some sense the endeavor to find a
unifying principle, to discover the most general conception
underlying the whole field of nature and of knowledge.
By one of those bold generalizations which occasionally
mark a real advance in science, Schopenhauer conceived
this unifying principle, this underlying unity, to consist
in something analogous to that will which self-conscious-
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. Vv

ness reveals to us. Will is, according to him, the
fundamental reality of the world, the thing-in-itself; and
its objectivation is what is presented in phenomena. The
struggle of the will to realize itself evolves the organism,
which in its turn evolves intelligence as the servant of the
will. And in practical life the antagonism between the
will and the intellect arises from the fact that the former
is the metaphysical substance, the latter something
accidental and secondary. And further, will is desire,
that is to say, need of something; hence need and
pain are what is positive in the world, and the only
possible happiness is a negation, a renunciation of the
will to live.

It is instructive to note, as M. Ribot points out, that in
finding the origin of all things, not in intelligence, as
some of his predecessors in philosophy had done, but in
will, or the force of nature, from which all phenomena
have developed, Schopenhauer was anticipating something
of the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century. To this
it may be added that in combating the method of Fichte
and Hegel, who spun a system out of abstract ideas, and
in discarding it for one based on observation and experi-
ence, Schopenhauer can be said to have brought down
philosophy from heaven to earth.

In Schopenhauer’s view the various forms of religion
are no less a product of human ingenuity than Art or
Science. He holds, in effect, that all religions take their
rise in the desire to explain the world; and that, in regard
to truth and error, they differ, in the main, not by preach-
ing monotheism, polytheism or pantheism, but in so far
as they recognize pessimism or optimism as the true
description of life. Hence any religion which looked
upon the world as being radically evil appealed to him as
containing an indestructible element of truth. I have
endeavored to present his view of two of the great reli-
vi TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

gions of the world in the extract to which I have given
the title of «‘ The Christian System.” The tenor of it is
to show that, however little be may have been in
sympathy with the supernatural element, he owed much
to the moral doctrines of Christianity and of Buddhism,
between which he traced great resemblance.

Of Schopenhauer, as of many another writer, it may be
said that he has been misunderstood and depreciated just
in the degree in which he is thought to be new; and that,
in treating of the conduct of life, he is, in reality, valu-
able only in so far as he brings old truths to remembrance.
His name used to arouse, and in certain quarters still
arouses, a vague sense of alarm; as though he had come
to subvert all the rules of right thinking and all- the
principles of good conduct, rather than to proclaim once
again and give a new meaning to truths with which the
world has long been familiar. Of his philosophy in its
more technical aspects, as matter upon which enough,
perhaps, has been written, no account need be taken here,
except as it affects the form in which he embodies these
truths or supplies the fresh light in which he sees them.
For whatever claims to originality his metaphysical theory
may possess, the chief interest to be found in his views
of life is an affair of form rather than of substance; and
he stands in a sphere of his own, not because he sets new
problems or opens up undiscovered truths, but in the
manner in which he approaches what has been already
revealed.

He is not on that account less important; for the great
mass of men at all times requires to have old truths im-
parted as if they were new—formulated, as it were,
directly for them as individuals, and of special application
to their own circumstances in life. A discussion of human
happiness and the way to obtain it is never either un-
necessary or uncalled for, if one looks to the extent to
TRANSLATORS PREFACE. vil

which the lives of most men fall short of even a poor
ideal, or, again, to the difficulty of reaching any definite
and secure conclusion. For to such a momentous inquiry
as this, the vast majority of mankind gives nothing more
than a nominal consideration, accepting the current
belief, whatever it may be, on authority, and taking as
little thought of the grounds on which it rests as a man
walking takes of the motion of the earth. But for those
who are not indifferent—for those whose desire to fathom
the mystery of existence gives them the right to be called
thinking beings—it is just here, in regard to the conclu-
sion to be reached, that a difficulty arises, a difficulty
affecting the conduet of life: for while the great facts of
existence are alike for all, they are variously appreciated,
and conclusions differ, chiefly from innate diversity of
temperament in those who draw them. Itis innate tem-
perament, acting on a view of the facts necessarily in-
complete, that has inspired so many different teachers.
The tendencies of a man’s own mind—the idols of the
cave before which he bows—interpret the facts in accord-
ance with his own nature: he elaborates a system contain-
ing, perhaps, a grain of truth, to which the whole of life
is then made to conform; the facts purporting to be the
foundation of the theory, and theory in its turn giving
its own color to the facts.

Nor is this error, the manipulation of facts to suit a
theory, avoided in the views of life which are presented
by Schopenhauer. It is true that he aimed especially at
freeing himself from the trammels of previous systems;
but he was caught in those of his own. His natural
desire was to resist the common appeal to anything ex-
tramundane—anything outside or beyond life—as the basis
of either hope or fear. He tried to look at life as it is;
but the metaphysical theory on which his whole philosophy
rests made it necessary for him, as he thought, to regard
vill TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

it as an unmixed evil. He calls our present existence an
infinitesimal moment between two eternities, the past and
the future, a moment—like the life of Plato’s ‘‘ Dwellers
in the Cave”—filled with the pursuit of shadows; where
everything is relative, phenomenal, illusory, and man is
bound in the servitude of ignorance, struggle and need,
in the endless round of effort and failure. If you confine
yourself, says: Schopenhauer, only to some of its small
details, life may indeed appear to be a comedy, because
of the one of two bright spots of happy circumstance to
be found in it here and there; but when you reach a
higher point of view and a broader outlook, these soon be-
come invisible, and life, seen from the cistance which
brings out the true proportion of all its parts, is revealed
as a tragedy—a long record of struggle and pain, with the
death of the hero as the final certainty. How then, he
asks, can a man make the best of his brief hour under the
hard conditions of his destiny? What is the true
Wisdom of Life?

Schopenhauer has no pre-conceived divine plan to
vindicate; no religious or moral enthusiasm to give a
roseate hue to some far-off event, obliging us in the end
to think that all things work together for good. Let
poets and theologians give play to imagination! he, at any
rate, will profess no knowledge of anything beyond our
ken. If our existence does not entirely fail of its aim, it
must, he says, be suffering; for this is what meets us every-
where in the world, and it is absurd to look upon it as the
result of chance. Still, in the face of all this suffering,
and in spite of the fact that the uncertainty of life
destroys its value as an end in itself, every man’s natural
desire is to preserve his existence; so that life is a blind,
unreasoning force, hurrying us we know not whither.
From his high metaphysical standpoint, Schopenhauer is
ready to admit that there are many things in life which.
TRANSLATORS PREFACE. ix

give a short satisfaction and blind us for the moment to
the realities of existence—pleasures as they may be called,
in so far as they are a mode of relief; but that pleasure is
not positive in its nature nor anything more than the
negation of suffering, is proved by the fact that, if pleas-
ures come in abundance, pain soon returns in the form of
satiety; so that the sense of illusion is all that has been
gained. Hence, the most a man can achieve in the way
of welfare is a measure of relief from this suffering; and,
if people were prudent, it is at this they would aim, in-
stead of trying to secure a happiness which always flies
from them.

It is a trite saying that happinessis a delusion, a chimera,
the fata morgana of the heart; but here is a writer who
will bring our whole conduct into line with that, as a
matter of practice; making pain the positive groundwork
of life, and a desire to escape it the spur of all effort.
While most of those who treat of the conduct of life come
at last to the conclusion, more or less vaguely expressed,
that religion and morality form a positive source of true
happiness, Schopenhauer does not professedly take this
view; though it is quite true that the practical outcome of
his remarks tends, as will be seen, in support of it; with
this difference, however—he does not direct the imagina-
tion to anything outside this present life as making it
worth while to live at all; his object is to state the facts of
existence as they immediately appear, and to draw conclu-
sions as to whata wise man will do in the face of
them.

In the practical outcome of Schopenhauer’s ethics—the
end and aim of those maxims of conduct which he recom-
mends, there is nothing that is not substantially akin
to theories of life which, in different forms, the greater
part of mankind is presumed to hold in reverence. It is
the premises rather that the conclusion of his argument
x TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

which interest us as something new. The whole world, he
says, with all its phenomena of change, growth and devel-
opment, is ultimately the manifestation of will— Wille
und Vorstellung—a blind force conscious of itself only
when it reaches the stage of intellect. And life is a con-
stant self-assertion of this will; a long desire which is
never fulfilled; disillusion inevitably following upon attain-
ment, because the will, the thing-in-itselfi—in philosoph-
ical language, the nownenon—always remains as the perma-
nent element; and with this persistent exercise of its claim,
it can never be satisfied. So life is essentially suffering;
and the only remedy for it is the freedom of the intellect
from the servitude imposed by its master, the will.

The happiness a man can attain, is thus, in Schopen-
hauer’s view, negative only; but how is it to be acquired ?
Some temporary relief, he says, may be obtained through
the medium of Art, for in the apprehension of Art we are
raised out of our bondage, contemplating objects of thought
as they are in themselves, apart from their relations to our
own ephemeral existence and free from any taint of the
will. This contemplation of pure thought is destroyed
when Art is degraded from its lofty sphere, and made an
instrument in the bondage of the will. How few of those
who feel that the pleasure of Art transcends all others
could give such a striking explanation of their feeling !

But the highest ethical duty, and consequently the
supreme endeavor after happiness, is to withdraw from the
struggle of life, and so obtain release from the misery
which that struggle imposes upon all, even upon those who
are for the moment successful. For as will is the inmost
kernel of everything, so it is identical under all its mani-
festations; and through the mirror of the world a man
may arrive at the knowledge of himself. The recognition
of the identity of our own nature with that of others is
the beginning and foundation of all true morality. For
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xi

once a man clearly perceives this solidarity of the will,
there is aroused in him a feeling of sympathy which is the
main-spring of ethical conduct. This feeling of sympathy
must, in any true moral system, prevent our obtaining
success at the price of others’ loss. Justice, in this theory,
comes to be a noble, enlightened self-interest; it will for-
bid our doing wrong to our fellow-man, because, in injur-
ing him, we are injuring ourselves—our own nature,
which is identical with his. On the other hand, the recog-
nition of this identity of the will must lead to commisera-
tion—a feeling of sympathy with our fellow-sufferers—to
acts of kindness and benevolence, to the manifestation of
what Kant, in the “‘ Metaphysic of Ethics,” calls the only
absolute good, the good will. In Schopenhauer’s phrase-
ology, the human will, in other words, gows, the love of
life, is in itself the root of all evil, and goodness lies in
renouncing it. Theoretically, his ethical doctrine is the
extreme of socialism, in a large sense; a recognition of the
inner identity and equal claims, of all men with ourselves;
a recognition issuing in dyamy, universal benevolence, and
a stifling of particular desires.

It may come as a surprise to those who affect to hold
Schopenhauer in abhorrence, without, perhaps, really
knowing the nature of his views, that, in this theory of the
essential evil of the human will—éZpws, the common selfish
idea of life—he is reflecting and indeed probably borrowing
what he describes as the fundamental tenet of Christian
theology, that ‘‘the whole creation groaneth and tra-
vaileth in pain,* standing in need of redemption. Though
Schopenhauer was no friend to Christian theology in its
ordinary tendencies, he was very much in sympathy with
some of the doctrines which have been connected with it.
In his opinion the foremost truth which Christianity pro-

 

* Romans viii, 22.
xii TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

claimed to the world lay in its recognition of pessimism,
its view that the world was esséntially corrupt, and that
the devil was its prince or ruler.* It would be out of
place here to inquire into the exact meaning of this state-
ment, or to determine the precise form of compensation
provided for the ills of life under any scheme of doctrine
which passes for Christian: and even if it were in place,
the task would be an extremely difficult one; for probably
no system of belief has ever undergone, at various periods,
more radical changes than Christianity. But whatever
prospect of happiness it may have held out, at an early
date of its history, it soon came to teach that the necessary
preparation for happiness, as a positive spiritual state, is
renunciation, resignation, a looking away from external
life to the inner life of the soul—a kingdom not of this
world. So far, at least, as concerns its view of the world
itself, and the main lesson and duty which life teaches,
there is nothing in the theory of pessimism which does not
accord with that religion which is looked up to as the
guide of life over a great part of the civilized world.

What Schopenhauer does is to attempt a metaphysical ex-
planation of the evil of life, without any reference to any-
thing outside it. Philosophy, he urges, should be cosmol-
ogy, not theology; an explanation of the world, not a
scheme of divine knowledge: it should leave the gods
alone—to use an ancient phrase—and claim to be left alone
in return. Schopenhauer was not concerned, as the
apostles and fathers of the Church were concerned, to
formulate a scheme by which the ills of this life should be
remedied in another—an appeal to the poor and oppressed,
conveyed often in a material form, as, for instance, in the
story of Dives and Lazarus. In his theory of life as the
self-assertion of will, he endeavors to account for the sin,

 

* John xii,31
TRANSLATORS PREFACE. xiii

misery and iniquity of the world, and to point to the way
of escape—the denial of the will to live.

Though Schopenhauer’s views of life have this much in
common with certain aspects of Christian doctrine, they
are in decided antagonism with another theory, which,
though, comparatively speaking, the birth of yesterday,
has already been dignified by the name of a religion, and
has, no doubt, a certain number of followers. It is the
theory which looks upon the life of mankind asa continual
progress toward a state of perfection, and humanity in its
nobler tendencies as itself worthy of worship. To those
who embrace this theory, it will seem that because Schopen-
hauer does not hesitate to declare the evil in the life of
mankind to be far in excess of the good, and that, as long
as the human will remains what it is, there can be no radi-
cal change for the better, he is therefore outside the pale
of civilization, an alien from the commonwealth of ordered
knowledge and progress. But it has yet to be seen
whether the religion of humanity will fare better, as a
theory of conduct or as a guide of life, than either Chris-
tianity or Buddhism. If any one doctrine may be named
which has distinguished Christianity wherever it has been
a living force among its adherents, it is the doctrine of
renunciation; the same doctrine which in a different shape
and with other surroundings, forms the spirit of Bud-
dhism. With those great religions of the world which man-
kind has hitherto professed to revere as the most ennobling
of all influences. Schopenhauer’s theories, not perhaps in
their details, but in the principle which informs them, are
in close alliance.

Renunciation, according to Schopenhauer, is the truest
wisdom of life, from the higher ethical standpoint. His
heroes are the Christian ascetics of the Middle Age, and
the followers of Buddha who turn away from the Sansara
to the Nirvana. But our modern habits of thought are
xIV TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

different. We look askance at the doctrines, and we have
no great enthusiasm for the heroes. The system which is
in vogue among us just now objects to the identification
of nature with evil, and in fact, abandons ethical dualism
altogether. And if nature is not evil, where, it will be
asked, is the necessity or the benefit of renunciation
—a question which may even come to be generally
raised, in a not very distant future, on behalf of some new
conception of Christianity.

And from another point of view, let it be frankly
admitted that renunciation is incompatible with ordinary
practice, with the rules of life as we are compelled to
formulate them; and that, to the vast majority, the doc-
trine seems little but a mockery, a hopelessly unworkable
plan, inapplicable to the conditions under which men
have to exist.

In spite of the fact that he is theoretically in sympathy
with truths which lie at the foundation of certain widely
revered systems, the world has not yet accepted Schopen-
hauer for what he proclaimed himself to be, a great
teacher: and probably for the reason that hope is not an
element in his wisdom of life, and that he attenuates love
into something that is not a real, living force—a shadowy
recognition of the identity of the will. For men are disin-
clined to welcome a theory which neither flatters their
present position nor holds out any prospect of better things
to come. Optimism—the belief that in the end everything
will be for the best—is the natural creed of mankind; and
a writer who of set purpose seeks to undermine it by an
appeal to facts is regarded as one who tries to rob human-
ity of its rights. How seldom an appeal to the facts
within our reach is really made! Whether the evil of life
actually out-weighs the good—or, if we should look for
better things, what is the possibility or the nature of a
future life, either for ourselves as individuals, or as part
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. xv

of some great whole, or, again, as contributing to a coming
state of perfection?—such inquiries claim an amount of
attention which the mass of men everywhere is unwilling
to give. But, in any case whether it is a vague assent to
current beliefs, or a blind reliance on a baseless certainty,
or an impartial attempt to put away what is false—hope
remains as the deepest foundation of every faith in a
happy future.

But it should be observed that this looking to the
future as a complement for the present is dictated mainly
by the desire to remedy existing ills; and that the great
hold which religion has on mankind, as an incentive to
present happiness, is the promise it makes of coming per-
fection. Hope for the future is a tacit admission of evil
in the present; for ifa man is completely happy in this
life, and looks upon happiness as the prevailing order, he
will not think so much of another. So a discussion of the
nature of happiness is not thought complete if it takes
account only of our present life, and unless it connects
what we are now and what we do here with what we may
be hereafter. Schopenhauer’s theory does not profess to
do this; it promises no positive good to the individual; at
most, only relief: he breaks the idol of the world, and
sets up nothing in its place; and like many another
iconoclast, he has long been condemned by those whose
temples he has desecrated. If there are optimistic
theories of life, it is not life itself, he would argue, which
gives color to them; it is rather the reflection of some
great final cause which humanity has created as the last
hope of its redemption:

‘« Heaven but the vision of fulfilled desire,
And hell the shadow from a soul on fire,
Cast on the darkness into which ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall] so soon expire.” *

 

* Omar Khayyam ; translated by E. Fitzgerald.
xvi TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

Still, hope, it may be said, is not knowledge, nor a real
answer to any question; at most, a makeshift, a moral
support for intellectual weakness. The truth is that, as
theories, both optimism and pessimism are failures; be-
cause they are extreme views where only a very partial
judgment is possible. And in view of the great uncer-
tainty of all answers, most of those who do not accept a
stereotyped system leave the question alone, as being either
of little interest, or of no bearing on the welfare of their
lives, which are commonly satisfied with low aims; tacitly
ridiculing those who demand an answer as the most press-
ing affair of existence. But the fact that the final pro-
blems of the world are still open, makes in favor of an
honest attempt to think them out, in spite of all previous
failure or still existing difficulty; and however old these
problems may be, the endeavor to solve them is one which
it is always worth while to encourage afresh. For the
individual advantages which attend an effort to find the
true path accrue quite apart from any success in reaching
the goal; and even though the height we strive to climb
be inaccessible, we can still see and understand more than
those who never leave the plain. The sphere, it is true,
is enormous—the study of human life and destiny as a
whole; and our mental vision is so ill-adapted to a range
of this extent that to aim at forming a complete scheme is
to attempt the impossible. It must be recognized that
the data are insufficient for large views, and that we ought
not to go beyond the facts we have, the facts of ordinary
life, interpreted by the common experience of every day.
These form our only material. The views we take must
of necessity be fragmentary—a mere collection of apereus,
rough guesses at the undiscovered; of the same nature, in-
deed, as all our possessions in the way of knowledge—little
tracts of solid land reclaimed from the mysterious ocean of
the unknown.
TRANSLATORS PREFACE. xvil

But if we do not admit Schopenhauer to be a great
teacher—because he is out of sympathy with the highest
aspirations of mankind, and too ready to dogmatize from
partial views—he is a very suggestive writer, and emi-
nently readable. His style is brilliant, animated, forcible,
pungent; although it is also discursive, irresponsible, and
with a tendency to superficial generalization. He brings in
the most unexpected topics without any very sure sense of
their relative place; everything, in fact, seems to be fair
game, once he has taken up his pen. His irony is note-
worthy; for it extends beyond mere isolated sentences, and
sometimes applies to whole passages, which must be read
cum grano salis. Andif he has grave faults as well as
excellences of literary treatment, he is at least always witty
and amusing, and that, too, in dealing with subjects—as
here, for instance, with the Conduct of Life—on which
many others have been at once severe and dull. It is easy
to complain that though he is witty and amusing, he is
often at the same time bitter and ill-natured. This is in
some measure the unpleasant side of his uncompromising
devotion to truth, his resolute eagerness to dispel illusion
at any cost—those defects of his qualities which were
intensified by a solitary and, until his last years, unappre-
ciated life. He was naturally more disposed to coerce than
to flatter the world into accepting his views; he was above
all things «a esprit fort, and at times brutal in the use of
his strength. Ifit should be urged that, however great
his literary qualities, he is not worth reading because he
takes a narrow view of life and is blind to some of its
greatest blessings, it will be well to remember the profound
truth of that line which a friend inscribed on his earliest
biography: “Si non errasset fecerat ille minus,” * a truth
which is seldom without application, whatever be the form of
‘human effort. Schopenhauer cannot be neglected because

 

* Slightly altered from Martial. Epigram : I, xxii,
gauly g
xviii TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

he takes an unpleasant view of existence, for it is a view
which must present itself, at some time, to every thought-
ful person. To be outraged by Schopenhauer means to be
ignorant of many of the facts of life.

In this one of his smaller works, ‘‘ Aphorismen zur
Lebensweisheit,” Schopenhauer abandons his high meta-
physical standpoint, and discusses, with the same zest and
appreciation as in fact marked his enjoyment of them,
some of the pleasures which a wise man will seek to obtain
—health, moderate possessions, intellectual riches. And
when, as in this little work, he comes to speak of the
wisdom of life as the practical art of living, the pessimist
view of human destiny is obtruded as little as possible.
His remarks profess to be the result of a compromise—an
attempt to treat life from the common standpoint. He is
content to call these witty and instructive pages a series of
aphorisms; thereby indicating that he makes no claim to
expound a complete theory of conduct. It will doubtless
occur to any intelligent reader that his observations are
but fragmentary thoughts on various phases of life; and,
in reality, mere aphorisms—in the old, Greek sense of the
word—pithy distinctions, definitions of facts, a marking-
off, as it were, of the true from the false in some of our
ordinary notions of life and prosperity. Here there is
little that is not in complete harmony with precepts to
which the world has long been accustomed; and in this
respect, also, Schopenhauer offers a suggestive comparison
rather than a contrast with most writers on happiness.

The philosopher in his study is conscious that the world
is never likely to embrace his higher metaphysical or
ethical standpoint, and annihilate the will to live; nor did
Schopenhauer himself do so except so far as he, in
common with most serious students of life, avoided the
ordinary aims of mankind. The theory which rec-
ommended universal benevolence as the highest ethical
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE. xix

duty, came, as a matter of practice, to mean a formal
standing-aloof—the ne plus ultra of individualism. The
Wisdom of Life, as the practical art of living, is a com-
promise. We are here not by any choice of our own; and
while we strive to make the best of it, we must not let
ourselves be deceived. If you want to be happy, he says,
it will not do to cherish illusions. Schopenhauer would
have found nothing admirable in the conclusion at which
the late M. Edmond Scherer, for instance, arrived.
“Tart de vivre,” he wrote in his preface to Amiel’s
“Journal,” ‘‘c’est de se faire une raison, de souscrire au
compromis, de se préter aux fictions.” Schopenhauer
conceives his mission to be, rather, to dispel illusion, to
tear the mask from life; a violent operation, not always
productive of good. Some illusion, he urges, may
profitably be dispelled by recognizing that no amount of
external aid will make up for inward deficiency; and that
if a man has not got the elements of happiness in himself,
all the pride, pleasure, beauty and interest of the world
will not give it to him. Success in life, as gauged by the
ordinary material standard, means to place faith wholly in
externals as the source of happiness; to assert and empha-
size the common will to live, in a word to be vulgar.
He protests against this search for happiness—something
subjective—in ‘the world of our surroundings, or anywhere
but in a man’s own self; a protest the sincerity of which
might well be imitated by some professed advocates of
spiritual claims.

It would be interesting to place his utterances on this
point side by side with those of a distinguished interpreter
of nature in this country, who has recently attracted
thousands of readers by describing ‘‘The Pleasures of
Life;” in other words, the blessings which the world holds
out to all who can enjoy them—health, books, friends,
travel, education, art. On the common ground of their
XX TRANSLATORS PREFACE.

regard for these pleasures there is no disagreement between
the optimist and the pessimist. Buta characteristic dif-
ference of view may be found in the application of a rule of
life which Schopenhauer seems never to tire of repeating;
namely, that happiness consists for the most part in what
a man is in himself, and that the pleasure he derives from
these blessings will depend entirely upon the extent to
which his personality really allows him to appreciate them.
This is a rule which runs some risk of being overlooked
when a writer tries to dazzle the mind’s eye by describing
all the possible sources of pleasure in the world of our
surroundings; but Sir John Lubbock, in common with
every one who attempts a fundamental answer to the
question of happiness, cannot afford to overlook it. The
truth of the rule is perhaps taken for granted in his account
of life’s pleasures; but it is significant that it is only when
he comes to speak of life’s troubles that he freely admits
the force of it. ‘‘ Happiness,” he says, in this latter con-
nection, ‘depends much more on what is within than
without us.” Yet arigid application of this truth might
perhaps discount the effect of those pleasures with which
the world is said to abound. That happiness as well as
unhappiness depends mainly upon what is within, is more
clearly recognized in the case of trouble; for when troubles
come upon a man, they influence him, as a rule, much
more deeply than pleasures. How few, even among the
millions to whom these blessings are open—health, books,
travel, art—really find any true or permanent happiness
in them!

While Schopenhauer’s view of the pleasures of life may
be elucidated by comparing it with that of a popular
writer like Sir John Lubbock, and by contrasting the
appeals they severally make to the outer and the inner
world asa source of happiness; Schopenhauer’s view of
lite itself will stand out more clearly if we remember the
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XXx1

opinion so boldly expressed by the same English writer.
“Tf we resolutely look,” observes Sir John Lubbock, “I
do not say at the bright side of things, but at things as
they really are; if we avail ourselves of the manifold bless-
ings which surround us, we cannot but feel that life is
indeed a glorious inheritance.” * There is a splendid excess
of optimism about this statement which well fits it to show
up the darker picture drawn by the German philosopher.

Finally, it should be remembered that though Schopen-
hauer’s picture of the world is gloomy and somber, there
is nothing weak or unmanly in his attitude. If a happy
existence, he says—not merely an existence free from pain
—is denied us, we can at least be heroes and face life with
courage: das hichste was der Mensch erlangen kann rst ein
heroischer Lebenslauf. A noble character will never
complain at misfortune; for if a mau looks round him at
other manifestations of that which is his own inner nature,
the will, he finds sorrows happening to his fellow-men
harder to bear than any that have come upon himeelf.
And the ideal of nobility is to deserve the praise which
Hamlet—in Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Pessimism—gave to
his friend: .

‘Thou hast been
As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.”

But perhaps Schopenhauer’s theory carries with it its
own correction. He describes existence as a more or less
violent oscillation between pain and boredom. If this
were really the sum of life, and we had to reason from
such a partial view, it is obvious that happiness would lie
in action; and that life would be so constituted as to
supply two natural and inevitable incentives to action;
and thus to contain in itself the very conditions of happi-
ness. Life itself reveals our destiny. It is not the

 

*« The Pleasures of Life. Part I. p. 5.”
xxii TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

struggle which produces misery, it is the mistaken aims
and the low ideals—was uns alle bandigt, das Gemerne!
That Schopenhauer conceives life as an evil is a
deduction, and possibly a mistaken deduction, from his
metaphysical theory. Whether his scheme of things is
correct or not—and it shares the common fate of all
metaphysical systems in being unverifiable, and to that
extent unprofitable—he will in the last resort have made
good his claim to be read by his insight into the varied
needs of human life. It may be that a future age will
consign his metaphysics to the philosophical lumber-room;
but he is a literary artist as well as a philosopher, and he
can make a bid for fame in either capacity. T. B.S.
CONTENTS.

THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

PAGE

Tnitrod wetions ici tee aie los eaten ea pdisag aldabiewennes* 1

I, Division of the Subject........... 0... eee eee eee 2

II. Personality, or What a Man Is...............0... 0000 eee 10

Til. Property, or What a Man Has.................0ee eee eee 33
IV. Position, or a Man’s Place in the Estimation of Others—

Sect. 1. Reputation......... 0... cece eee ees eee eevee 40

OD PHO 0 grees Sia ei areiase: bts wale ood we alae aiesetels 46

(6B. Rankiit jasc diaceetatare pee ee caviaeuwe cada 49

68S Ah HONOR secre is ae oe vie ote Mi aaa mata 50

66s, HAIG net. ween teense oatnwws ce otaniuenees "8

COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

Introduction: 4) s2csiiesckwkk tan udinciodednaad ies genes 95

Te General Riles s:ucaeu Aiieee eta aeang cad eeeea ee Aas 96

Tl. Our Relation to Ourselves...........65 cece eee e cece eens 106

JII. Our Relation to Others.......... cece ee eee eee eee ee eens 141

IV.. Worldly Fortune... .c0.sc0d000 eae dese che eeed ee se eeaes 168

V. The Ages of Life........-. cece c cece cece ence e cece eens 180

RELIGION AND OTHER ESSAYS.

Religion: A Dialogue......--. +e eee ee ec eeee teen ee teeen eres 207

A Few Words on Pantheism......... 0... cess eee cece ence eeeee 240

J On Books and Reading.......0.scseeeeeeseeeeeeee teens eee ees 248
xxiv CONTENTS.

PAGE.
On Physiognomy esio5 45 s.ccsesicaiedaecadies nee eeee ess sees 250
Psychological Observations. .......... ccs c eee e eee cece cence 258
The Christian System ........... cece eee cence eee eee seccceces 268
"The Failure of PDUOSOPhY: wateecs Sv Ges Baas deat oeeweec ee ss 277
The Metaphysics of Fine Art............ cece cece eeeeee ee ereee 279
THE ART OF LITERATURE.
On Anthorshipis cvecssa: oe aieaiduauccentied am aiieeied aden wee e aude 291
ODASty lessen 5 80 oh ed eerie eee ro iaihle a Bales @iene eaaa aaa terres 298
On the Study of Latin. ...... cc cece cece eee e ene ne ee eeeee 313
On Men vof- Weaming: 3 .osnsccssccenatew tence cease shales a5 316
On Thinking for One’s Self............0 cece eee e cere ec eee eee 821
On Some Forms of Literature......... 0... cece eee ee cece ee eeeee 330
On: CLL CISIMy c..cedan se aPiekierins S604 08 eee Re AAERMEES Bases os 337
On Reputation...... .. mina teresa ween MES ad a Ce erator isiartenne 347
On: GENIUS: asic daniacionteelns ae amore 8S ben ate eaes wae sarees 362
STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.
* On the Sufferings of the World............. 0c. cece eee eee ees 381
On the Vanity of Existence.......... 0... cece eee e ences 394
WOn Suicides cc cncvassa awe duaangad canvingeidea vee aaa dae veces 399
Immortality: A Dialogue........... 0. ccc eee cece ee ecace 404
Further Psychological Observations...............,. ......00. 408
YOn Education. ........cccccceevee esse ceeeeeseeeeeecccceceees 427
OY Gn seat rta ee eae Sev eons ae! 4.0L: 434
Win Noises sa veveae Nenee sages taaieed edi mae eae coleie gees ca 447
THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

“Le bonheur n’est pas chose aisée: il est trasdifficile de le trouver en nous,
et impossible de Je trouver ailleurs.”*-—CHAMFORT.
THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

INTRODUCTION.

In THESE pages I shallspeak of ‘“The Wisdom of Life” in
the common meaning of the term, as the art, namely, of
ordering our lives so as to obtain the greatest possible
amount of pleasure and success; an art the theory of
which may be called Hudemonology, for it teaches us how
to lead a happy existence. Such an existence might per-
haps be defined as one which, looked at from a purely
objective point of view, or, rather, after cool and mature
reflection—for the question necessarily involves subjective
considerations—would be decidedly preferable to non-
existence ; implying that we should cling to it for its own
sake, and not merely from the fear of death ; and further,
that we should never like it to come to an end.

Now whether human life corresponds, or could possibly
correspond, to this conception of existence, is a question to
which, as is well-known, my philosophical system returns
a negative answer. On the eudemonistic hypothesis, how-
ever, the question must be answered in the affirmative ;
and I have shown, in the second volume of my chief work
(ch. 49), that this hypothesis is based upon a fundamental
mistake. Accordingly, in elaborating the scheme of a
happy existence, I have had to make a complete surrender
of the higher metaphysical and ethical standpoint to which
my own theories lead ; and everything I shall say here will
to some extent rest upon a compromise ; in so far, that is,
as I take the common standpoint of every day, and
embrace the error which is at the bottom of it. My
remarks, therefore, will possess only a qualified value, for
the very word eudemonology is a euphemism. Further, I
make no claims to completeness ; partly because the sub-
ject is inexhaustible, and partly because I should otherwise
2 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

have to say over again what has been already said by
others.

The only book composed, as far as I remember, with a
like purpose to that which animates this collection of
aphorisms, is Cardan’s De utilitate ex adversis captenda,
which is well worth reading, and may be used to supple-
ment the present work. Aristotle, it is true, has a few
words on eudemonology in the fifth chapter of the first
book of his“ Rhetoric ;” but what he says does not come to
very much. As compilation is not my business, I have
made no use of these predecessors; more especially
because in the process of compiling individuality of view
is lost, and individuality of view is the kernel of works of
this kind. In general, indeed, the wise in all ages have
always said the same thing, and the fools, who at all times
form the immense majority, have in their way too acted
alike, and done just the opposite ; and so it will continue.
For, as Voltaire says, “‘ we shall leave this world as foolish
and as wicked as we found it on our arrival.”

CHAPTER I.
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.

ARISTOTLE* divides the blessings of life into three clas-
ges—those which come to us from without, those of the soul,
and those of the body. Keeping nothing of this division
but the number, I observe that the fundamental differ-
ences in human lot may be reduced to three distinct
classes :

(1) What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the
widest sense of the word; under which are included
health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character,
intelligence and education.

(2) What a man has: that is, property and possessions
of every kind.

(3) How a man stands in the estimation of others: by
which is to be understood, as everybody knows, what a man
is in the eyes of his fellow-men, or, more strictly, the light
in which they regard him. This is shown by their opinion

 

* «Eth, Nichom.,” I. 8,
DIVISION OF THE sUBJECT. 3

of him ; and their opinion is in its turn manifested by the
honor in which he is held, and by his rank and reputation.

The differences which come under the first head are
those which Nature herself has set between man and
man ; and from this fact alone we may at ounce infer that
they influence the happiness or unhappiness of mankind in
a much more vital and radical way than those contained
under the two following heads, which are merely the effect
of human arrangements. Compared with genuiue per-
sonal advantages, such as a great mind ora great heart,
all the privileges of rank or birth, even of royal birth, are
but as kings on the stage to kings in real life. The same
thing was said long ago by Metrodorus, the earliest dis-
ciple of Epicurus, who wrote as the title of one of his
chapters, ‘“‘ The happiness we receive from ourselves is
greater than that which we obtain from our surroundings. ””*
And it is an obvious fact, which cannot be called in question,
that the principal element in a man’s well-being—indeed,
in the whole tenor of his existence—is what he is made
of, his inner constitution. For this is the immediate
source of that inward satisfaction or dissatisfaction re-
sulting from the sum total of his sensations, desires and
thoughts ; while his surroundings,on the other hand, exert
only a mediate or indirect influence upon him. This is
why the same external events or circumstances affect no
two people alike ; even with perfectly similar surround-
ings every one lives in a world of hisown. For a man has
immediate apprehension only of his own ideas, feelings
and volitions; the outer world can influence him only in
so far as it brings these to life. The world in which a
man lives shapes itself chiefly by the wayin which he
looks at it, and so it proves different to different men; to
one it is barren, dull, and superficial ; to another rich,
interesting, and full of meaning. On hearing of the
interesting events which have happened in the course of a
man’s experience, many people will wish that similar
things had happened in their lives too, completely forget-
ting that they should be envious rather of the mental
apitude which lent those events the significance they
possess when he describes them ; toa man of genius they
were interesting adventures ; but to the dull perceptions

 

* Cf, Clemens Alex. Strom. II., 21.
4 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

of an ordinary individual they would have been stale,
everyday occurrences. This is in the highest degree the
case with many of Goethe’s and Byron’s poems, which are
obviously founded upon actual facts ; where it is open to a
foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful
things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty
power of phantasy which was capable of turning a fairly
common experience into something so great and beautiful.

In the same way, a person of melancholy temperament
will make a scene in a tragedy out of what appears to the
sanguine man only in the light of an interesting conflict,
and to a phlegmatic soul as something without any mean-
ing—all of which rests upon the fact that every event, in
order to be realized and appreciated, requires the co-opera-
tion of two factors: namely, a subject and an object ;
although these are as closely and necessarily connected as
oxygen and hydrogenin water. When therefore the objective
or external factor in an experience is actually the same, but
the subjective or personal appreciation of it varies, the
event is just as much a different one in the eyes of different
persons as if the objective factors had not been alike ; for
to a blunt intelligence the fairest and best object in the
world presents only a poor reality, and is therefore only
poorly appreciated—like a fine landscape in dull weather,
or in the reflection of a bad camera obscura. In plain
language, every man is pent up within the limits of his
own consciousness, and cannot directly get beyond those
limits any more than he can get beyond his own skin; so
external aid is not of much use to him. On the stage, one
man is a prince, another a minister, a third a servant or a
soldier or a general, and so on—mere external differences :
the inner reality, the kernel of all these appearances is the
same—a poor player, with all the anxieties of his lot. In
life it is just the same. Differences of rank and wealth
give every man his part to play, but this by no means implies
a difference of inward happiness and pleasure ; here, too,
there is the same being in all—a poor mortal, with his hard-
shipsand troubles. Though these may, indeed, in every case
proceed from dissimilar causes, they are in their essential
nature much the same in all their forms, with degrees of in-
tensity which vary, nodoubt, but inno wise correspond to the

arta man has to play, to the presence or absence of position
and wealth. Since everything which exists or happens for
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 5

aman exists only in his consciousness and happens for it
alone, the must essential thing for a man is the constitu-
tion of this consciousness, which is in most cases fur more
important than the circumstances which go to form its
contents. All the pride and pleasure of the world,
mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, is poor indeed
compared with the imagination of Cervanies writing his
‘Don Quixote” in a miserable prison. The objective half of
life and reality is in the hand of fate, and accordingly
takes various forms in different cases: the subjective half
is ourself, and in essentials it always remains the same.
Hence the life of every man is stamped with the same
character throughout, however much his external circum-
stances may alter; it is like a series of variations on a
single theme. No one can get beyond his own individual-
ity. An animal, under whatever circumstances it is
placed, remains within the narrow limits to which nature
has irrevocably consigned it; so that our endeavors to
make a pet happy must always keep within the compass of
its nature, and be restricted to what it can feel. So it is
with man; the measure of the happiness he can attain is
determined beforehand by his individuality. More espe-
cially is this the case with the mental powers which fix
once for all his capacity for the higher kinds of pleasure.
If these powers are small, no efforts from without, nothing
that his fellowmen or that fortune can do for him, will
suffice to raise him above the ordinary degree of human
happiness and pleasure, half animal though it be; his only
resources are his sensual appetite—a cozy and cheerful
family life at the most—low company and vulgar pastime ;
even education, on the whole, can avail little, if anything,
for the enlargement of his horizon. For the highest,
most varied and lasting pleasures are those of the mind,
however much our youth may deceive us on this point ; and
the pleasures of the mind turned chiefly on the powers of
the mind. It is clear, then, that our happiness depends in
a great degree upon what we are, upon our individuality,
while lot or destiny is generally taken to mean only what
we have, or our reputation. ur lot in this sense, may
improve ; but we do not ask much of it if we are inwardly
rich: on the other hand, a fool remains a fool, a dull
blockhead, to his last hour, even though he were sur-
rounded by hourisin paradise. This is why Goethe, in the
6 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

West-éstlicher Divan, says that every man, whether he
occupy a low position in life, or emerges as its victor,
testifies to personality as the greatest factor in happiness :

“Volk und Knecht und Ueberwinder
Sie gestehen, zu jeder Zeit,
Hochstes Gliick der Erdenkinder
Sei nur die Persidnlichkeit.”

Everything confirms the fact that the subjective element
in life is incomparably more important for our happiness
and pleasure than the objective, from such sayings as
«Hunger is the best sauce,” and “Youth and age cannot live
together,” up to the life of the genius and the saint.
Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may
really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing
king. A quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the
enjoyment of a perfectly sound physique, an intellect
clear, lively, penetrating and seeing things as they are, a
moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good conscience
-—these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make
up for or replace. For what a man is in himself, what
accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give
or take away, is ebviously more essential to him than
everything he has in the way of possessions, or even what
he may be in the eyes of the world. An intellectual man
in complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own
thoughts and fancies, while no amount or diversity of
social pleasure, theaters, excursions and amusements, can
ward off boredom from a dullard. A good, temperate,
gentle character can be happy in needy circumstances,
while a covetous, envious and malicious man, even if he
be the richest in the world, goes miserable. Nay more;
to one who has the constant delight of a special individ-
uality, with a high degree of intellect, most of the
pleasures which are run after by mankind are perfectly
superfluous ; they are even a trouble and a burden. And
so Horace says of himself, that, however many are deprived
of the fancy goods of life, there is one at least who can
live without them :

‘‘Gemmas, marmor, ebur, Tyrrhena sigilla, tabellas,
Argentum, vestes Geetulo murice tinctas
Sunt qui non habeant, est qui von curat habere;”
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. ¥

and when Socrates saw various articles of luxury spread
out for sale, he exclaimed : ‘‘ How much there is in the
world that I do not want.”

So the first and most essential element in our life’s
happiness is what we are, our personality, if for no other
reason than that it is a constant factor coming into play
under all circumstances; besides, unlike the blessings
which are described under the other two heads, it is not
the sport of destiny and cannot be wrested from us; and;
so far, it is endowed with an absolute value in contrast to
the merely relative worth of the other two. The conse-
quence of this is that it is much more difficult than people
commonly suppose to get a hold on a man from without.
But here the all-powerful agent, Time, comes in and claims
its rights, and before its influence physical and mental
advantages gradually waste away. Moral character alone
remains inaccessible to it. In view of the destructive
effect of time, it seems, indeed, as if the blessings named
under the other two heads, of which time cannot directly
rob us, were superior to those of the first. Another advan-
tage might be claimed for them, namely, that being in
their very nature objective and external, they are attain-
able, and every one is presented with the possibility, at
least, of coming into possession of them; while what is
subjective is not open to us to acquire, but making its
entry bya kind of divine right,it remains for life, immutable,
inalienable, an inexorable doom. Let me quote those
lines in which Goethe describes how an unalterable destiny
is assigned to every man at the hour of his birth, so that
he can develop only in the lines laid down for him, as it
were, by the conjunctions of the stars; and how the
Sibyl and the prophets declare that himself a man can
never escape, nor any power of time avail to change the
path on which his life is cast :

«« Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen,
Die Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten,
Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen,
Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten.
So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen,
So sagten schon Sibyllen und Propheten;
Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstiickelt
Gepragte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt.”

The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is

,
8 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

to make the most advantageous use possible of the personal
qualities we possess, and accordingly to follow such pur-
suits only as will call them into play, to strive after the
kind of perfection of which they admit and to avoid every
other ; consequently, to choose the position, occupation
and manner of life which are most suitable for their
development. :
Imagine a man endowed with Herculean strength who is
compelled by circumstances to follow a sedentary occupa-
tion, some minute exquisite work of the hands, for ex-
ample, or to engage in study and mental labor demanding
quite other powers, and just those which he has not got,
compelled, that is, to leave unused the powers in which he
is pre-eminently strong ; a man placed like this will never
feel happy all his life through. Even more miserable will
be the lot of the man with intellectual powers of a very
high order, who has to leave them undeveloped and un-
employed, in the pursuit of a calling which does not
require them, some bodily labor, perhaps, for which his
strength is insufficient. Still, in a case of this kind, it
should be our care, especially in youth, to avoid the preci-
pice of presumption, and not ascribe to ourselves a super-
fluity of power which is not there.
Since the blessings described under the first head
decidedly outweigh those contained under the other two,
it is manifestly a wiser course to aim at the maintenance
of our health and the cultivation of our faculties, than at
the amassing of wealth ; but this must not be mistaken as
meaning that we should neglect to acquire an adequate
supply of the necessaries of life. Wealth, in the strict sense
of the word, that is, great superfluity, can do little for our
happiness ; and many rich people feel unhappy just because
they are without any true mental culture or knowledge,
and consequently have no objective interests which would
qualify them for intellectual occupations. For beyond
the satisfaction of some real and natural necessities, all
that the possession of wealth can achieve has a very small
influence upon our happiness, in the proper sense of the
word ; indeed, wealth rather disturbs it, because the preser-
vation of property entails a great many unavoidable
anxieties. And still men are a thousand times more
intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though
it is quite certain that what a man is contributes much
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 9

more to his happiness than what he has. So you may see
many a man, as industrious as an ant, ceaselessly occupied
from morning to night in the endeavor to increase his heap
of gold. Beyond the narrow horizon of means to this end,
he knows nothing ; his mind isa blank, and consequently
-unsusceptible to any other influence. The highest pleas-
ures, those of the intellect, are to him inaccessible, and he
tries in vain to replace them by the fleeting pleasures of
sense in which he indulges, lasting but a brief hour and at
tremendous cost. And if he is lucky, his struggles result
in his having a really great pile of gold, which he leaves to
his heir, either to make it still larger, or to squander it in
extravagance. A life like this, though pursued with a
sense of earnestness and an air of importance, is just as
silly as many another which has a fool’s cap for its
symbol.

What a man has in himself is, then, the chief element
in his happiness. Because this is, as a rule, so very little,
most of those who are placed beyond the struggle with
penury, feel at bottom quite as unhappy as those who are
still engaged in it. Their minds are vacant, their imagi-
nation dull, their spirits poor, and so they are driven to the
company of those like them—for similis simili gaudet—
where they make common pursuit of pastime and enter-
tainment, consisting for the most part in sensual pleasure,
amusement of every kind, and finally, in excess and
libertinism. A young man of rich family enters upon life
with a large patrimony, and often runs through it in an
incredibly short space of time, in vicious extravagance ;
and why ? Simply because, here too, the mind is empty
and void, and so the man is bored with existence. He was
sent forth into the world outwardly rich but inwardly
poor, and his vain endeavor was to make his external
wealth compensate for his inner poverty, by trying to
obtain everything from without, like an old man who seeks
to strengthen himself as King David or Marechal de Retz
tried todo. And go in the end one who is inwardly poor
comes to be also poor outwardly.

I need not insist upon the importance of the other two
kinds of blessings which make up the happiness of human
life; nowadays the value of possessing them is too well
known to require advertisement. The third class, it is
true, may seem, compared with the second, of a very
10 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

ethereal character, as it consists only of other people’s
opinions. Still every one has to strive for reputation, that
is tosay, a good name. Rank, on the other hand, should
be aspired to only by those who serve the state, and fame
by very few indeed. In any case, reputation is looked
upon as a priceless treasure, and fame as the most precious
of all the blessings a man can attain—the Golden Fleece,
as it were, of the elect: while only fools will prefer rank
to property. Thesecond and third classes, moreover, are
reciprocally cause and effect ; so far that is, as Petronius’
maxim, habes habederis, is true ; and conversely, the favor
of others, in all its forms, often puts us in the way of get-
ting what we want.

CHAPTER II.
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS,

WE HAVE already seen, in general, that what aman is
contributes much more to his happiness than what he has
or how he is regarded by others. What aman is, and so
what he has in his own person, is always the chief thing to
consider; for his individuality accompanies him always
and everywhere, and gives its color to all his experiences.
In every kind of enjoyment for instance, the pleasure de-
pends principally upon the man himself. Every one admits
this in regard to physical, and how much truer it is of in-
tellectual pleasure. When we use that English expression,
“¢to enjoy one’s self,” we are employing a very striking and
appropriate phrase; for observe—one says, not “he enjoys
Paris,” but ‘he enjoys himself in Paris.” To a man
possessed of an ill-conditioned individuality, all pleasure is
like delicate wine in a mouth made bitter with gall.
Therefore, in the blessings as well as in the ills of life, less
depends upon what befalls us than upon the way in which
it is met, that is, upon the kind and degree of our general
susceptibility. What a man is and has in himself—in a
word, personality, with all it entails, is the only immediate
and direct factor in his happiness and welfare. All else is
mediate and indirect, and its influence can be neutralized
and frustrated ; but the influence of personality never
This is why the envy which personal qualities excite is the

\
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN JS. 11

most implacable of all—as itis also the most carefully
dissembled.

Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever
present and lasting element in all we do or suffer ; our in-
dividuality is persistently at work, more or less, at every
moment of our life: all other influences are temporal,
incidental, fleeting, and subject to every kind of chance
and change. ‘This is why Aristotle says : ‘+ It is not wealth
but character that lasts.” * And just for the same reason
we can more easily bear a misfortune which comes to us
entirely from without, than one which we have drawn upon
ourselves ; for fortune may always change, but not charac-
ter. Therefore, subjective blessings—a noble nature, a
capable head, a joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well-
constituted, perfectly sound physique, in a word, mens
sana in corpore sano, are the first and most important ele-
ments in happiness ; so that we should be more intent on
promoting and preserving such qualities than on the pos-
session of external wealth and external honor.

And of all these, the one which makes us the most
directly happy is a genial flow of good spirits; for this
excellent quality is its own immediate reward. The man
who is cheerful and merry has always a good reason for
being so—the fact, namely, that he isso. There is noth-
ing which, like this quality, can so completely replace the
loss of every other blessing. If you know any one who is
young, handsome, rich and esteemed, and you want to
know, further, if he is happy, ask, Is he cheerful and
genial ?—and if he is, what does it matter whether he is
young or old, straight or humpbacked, poor or rich ?—he
is happy. In my early days I once opened an old book and’
found these words: ‘If you laugh a great deal, you are
happy ; if you cry a great deal, you are unhappy ”—a very
simple remark, no doubt ; but just because it is so simple
I have never been able to forget it, even though it isin the
last degree a truism. So if cheerfulness knocks at our
door, we should throw it wide open, for it never comes in-
opportunely ; instead of that, we often make scruples about
letting it in. Wewant to bequite sure that we have every
reason to be contented, then we are afraid that cheerful-

 

* Eth. Eud., vii. 2. 87 :—

€ 5 ,

Hvap pve BéBvior, ov ra ypyuata,
12 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

ness of spirits may interfere with serious reflections or
weighty cares. Cheerfulness is a direct and immediate
gain—the very coin, as it were, of happines, and not, like
allelse, merely a check upon the bank ; for it alone makes
us immediately happy in the present moment, and that is
the highest blessing for beings like us, whose existence is
but an infinitesimal moment between two eternities. To
s cure and promote this feeling of cheerfulness should
be the supreme aim of all our endeavors after happiness.
Now it is certain that nothing contributes so little to
cheerfulness as riches, or so much, as health. Is it not in
the lower classes, the so-called working classes, more
especially those of them who live in the country, that we
see cheerful and contented faces? and is it not among
the rich, the upper classes, that we find faces full of ill-
humor and vexation ? Consequently we should try as much
as possible to maintain a high degree of health ; for cheer-
fulness is the very flower of it. I need hardly say what
one must do to be healthy—avoid every kind of excess, all
violent and unpleasant emotion, all mental overstrain,
take daily exercise in the open air, cold baths and such like
hygienic measures. For without a proper amount of daily
exercise no one can remain healthy; all the processes of life
demand exercise for the due performance of their functions,
exercise not only of the parts more immediately concerned,
but also of the whole body. For, as Aristotle rightly
says, ‘‘ Life is movement ;” it is its very essence. Cease-
less and rapid motion goes on in every part of the organism.
The heart, with its complicated double systole and diastole,
beats strongly and untiringly ; with twenty-eight beats it
*has to drive the whole of the blood through arteries, veins
and capillaries ; the lungs pump like a steam-engine, with-
out intermission ; the intestines are always in peristaltic
action ; the glands are all constantly absorbing and secret-
ing ; even the brain has a double motion of its own, with
every beat of the pulse and every breath we draw. When
people can get no exercise at all, as is the case with the
countless numbers who are condemned to a sedentary
life, there is a glaring and fatal disproportion between out-
ward inactivity and inner tumult. For this ceaseless in-
ternal motion requires some external counterpart, and the
want of it produces effects like those of emotion which we
are obliged to suppress. Even trees must be shaken by
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT’ A MAN IS. 13

the wind, if they are to thrive. The rule which finds
its application here may be most briefly expressed in Latin ;
omnis motus, quo celerior, eo magis motus.

How much our happiness depends upon our spirits, and
these again upon our state of health, may be seen by com-
paring the influence which the same external circumstances
or events have upon us when we are well and strong with
the effect which they have when we are depressed and
troubled with ill-health. It is not what things are
objectively and in themselves, but what they are for us, in
our way of looking at them, that makes us happy or the
reverse. As Epictetus says, ‘‘ Men are not influenced by
things but by their thoughts about things.” And, in gen-
eral, nine-tenths of our happiness depends upon health
alone. With health, everything is a source of pleasure ;
without it, nothing else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable ;
even the other personal blessings—a great mind, a happy
temperament—are degraded and dwarfed for want of it.
So it is really with good reason that, when two people
meet, the first thing they do is to inquire after each other’s
health, and to express the hope that it is good ; for good
health is by far the most important element in human
happiness. It follows from all this that the greatest of
follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness,
whatever it may be, for gain, advancement, learning or
fame, let alone, then, for fleeting sensual pleasures.
Everything else should rather be postponed to it.

But however much health may contribute to that flow of
good spirits which is so essential to our happiness, good
spirits do not entirely depend upon health ; for a man may
be perfectly sound in his physique and still possess a
melancholy temperament and be generally given up to sad
thoughts. The ultimate cause of this is undoubtedly to be
found in innate, and therefore unalterable, physical con-
stitution, especially in the more or less normal relation
of a man’s sensitiveness to his muscular and vital energy.
Abnormal sensitiveness produces inequality of spirits, a
predominating melancholy, with periodical fits of unre-
strained liveliness. A genius is one whose nervous power
or sensitiveness is largely in excess ; as Aristotle* has very
correctly observed, ‘‘ Men distinguished in philosophy,

 

* Probl. xxx. ep. 1,
14 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

iti “4, appear to be all of a melancholy
ee poets, “This is davbtless the passage which Cicero

ament. ;
naa We mind when he says, as he often. does, “‘Aristoteles
ait omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse. * Shakespeare has

eatly expressed this radical and innate diversity of
toorperapiant i those lines in ‘‘ The Merchant of Venice : ”

«« Nature has framed strange fellows in her time ;
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh, like parrots at a bag-piper ;

And others of such vinegar aspect,
That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.”

This is the difference which Plato draws between
ebuodos and Svoxodos—the man of easy, and the man of
difficult disposition—in proof of which he refers to the
varying degrees of susceptibility which different people
show to pleasurable and painful impressions; so that one
man will laugh at what makes another despair. As a rule,
the stronger the susceptibility to unpleasant impressions,
the weaker is the susceptibility to pieasant ones, and vice
versd. If it is equally possible for an event to turn out
well or ill, the SvexoAos will be annoyed or grieved if the
issue is unfavorable, and will not rejoice, should it be
happy. On the other hand, the edxodos, will neither worry
nor fret over an unfavorable issue, but rejoice if it turns
out well. If the one is successful in nine out of ten
undertakings, he will not be pleased, but rather annoyed
that one has miscarried ; while the other, if only a single
one succeeds, will manage to find consolation in the fact
and remain cheerful. But here is another instance of the
truth, that hardly any evil is entirely without its compen-
sation ; for the misfortunes and sufferings which the
dvexo0Aor, that is, people of gloomy and anxious character,
have to overcome, are, on the whole, more imaginary and
therefore less real than those which befall the gay and
careless; for a man who paints everything black, who
constantly fears the worst and takes measures accordingly,
Aes Ee be disappointed so often in this world, as one who
aie a ae eae bright side of things. And whena
: ne nerves, ora derangement of the

 

 

* Tuse. i., 33.
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 15

‘digestive organs, plays into the hand of an innate tendency
to gloom, this tendency may reach such a height that
permanent discomfort produces a weariness of life. So
arises an inclination to suicide, which even the most
trivial unpleasantness may actually bring about; nay,
when the tendency attains its worst form, it may be
occasioned by nothing in particular, but a man may resolve
to put an end to his existence, simply because he is per-
manently unhappy, and then coolly and firmly carry out
his determination ; as may be seen by the way in which
the sufferer, when placed under supervision, as he usually
is, eagerly waits to seize the first unguarded moment,
when, without a shudder, without a struggle or recoil, he
may use the now natural and welcome means of effect-
ing his release.* Even the healthiest, perhaps even the
most cheerful man, may resolve upon death under certain
circumstances; when, for instance, his sufferings, or his
fears of some inevitable misfortune, reach such a pitch as
to outweigh the terrors of death. The only difference lies
in the degree of suffering necessary to bring about the
fatal act, a degree which will be high in the case of a
cheerful, and low in that of a gloomy man. The greater
the melancholy, the lower need the degree be: in the end,
it may even sink to zero. Butif a man is cheerful, and
his spirits are supported by good health, it requires a
high degree of suffering to make him lay hands upon
himself. There are countless steps in the scale between
the two extremes of suicide, the suicide which springs
merely from a morbid intensification of innate gloom, and
the suicide of the healthy and cheerful man, who has
entirely objective grounds for putting an end to his
existence.

Beauty is partly an affair of health. It may be
reckoned as a personal advantage ; though it does not,
properly speaking, contribute directly to our happiness.

t does so indirectly, by impressing other people ; and it is
no unimportant advantage, even in man. Beauty is an
open letter of recommendation, predisposing the heart to
favor the person who presents it. “As is well said in those
lines of Homer, the gift of beauty is not lightly to be

 

* For a detailed description of this condition of mind ¢f. Esquiro]
Des maladies mentales,
16 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

thrown away, that glorious gift which none can bestow
save the gods alone—

odrot andBAnr é6ri eay Epinvdéa SOpa,
7 , x sce AGGLE. ay 2
booa nev advroi Sadi, Exedy S’ovu ay T15 EdoITO.

The most general survey shows us that the two foes of
human happiness are pain and boredom. We may go
further, and say that in the degree in which we are fortu-
nate enough to get away from the one, we approach the
other. Life presents, in fact, a more or less violent oscil-
lation between the two. ‘The reason of this is that each of
these two poles stands in a double antagonism to the other,
external or objective, and inner or subjective. Needy sur-
roundings and poverty produce pain ; while, if a man is
more than well off, he is bored. Accordingly, while the
lower classes are engaged in a ceaseless struggle with need,
in other words, with pain, the upper carry on a constant
and often desperate battle with boredom.t The inner or
subjective antagonism arises from the fact that, in the
individual, susceptibility to pain varies inversely with sus-
ceptibility to boredom, because susceptibility is directly
proportionate to mental power. Let me explain, A dull
mind is, as a rule associated with dull sensibilities, nerves
which no stimulus can affect, a temperament, in short,
which does not feel pain or anxiety very much, however

reat or terrible it may be. Now, intellectual dullness is
at the bottom of that vacuity of soul which is stamped on
so many faces, a state of mind which betrays itself by a
constant and lively attention to all the trivial cireumstances
in the external world. This is the true source of boredom
—a continual panting after excitement, in order to havea
pretext for giving the mind and spirits something to occupy
them. "The kind of things people choose for this purpose
shows that they are not very particular, as witness the
miserable pastimes they have recourse to, and their ideas
of social pleasure and conversation ; or, again, the number
of people who gossip on the doorstep or gape out of the

* «Tliad” 3, 65. =

+ And the extremes meet; for the lowest state of civilization
a nomad or wandering life, finds its counterpart in the highest,
where every one is at times a tourist. The earlier stage was a case of
necessity ; the latter is a remedy for boredom,

 
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 1”

window. It is mainly because of this inner vacuity of
soul that people go in quest of society, diversion, amuse-
ment, luxury of every sort, which lead many to extrava-
gance and misery. Nothing is so good a_ protection
against such misery as inward wealth, the wealth of the
mind, because the greater it grows, the less room it leaves
for boredom. The inexhaustible activity of thought !
finding ever new material to work upon in the multifarious
phenomena of self and nature, and able and ready to form
new combinations of them—there you have something
that invigorates the mind, and apart from moments of
relaxation, sets it far above the reach of boredom.

But, on the other hand, this high degree of intelligence
is rooted in a high degree of susceptibility, greater strength
of will, greater passionateness; and from the union of
these qualities comes an increased capacity for emotion, an
enhanced sensibility to all mental and even bodily pain,
greater impatience of obstacles, greater resentment of in-
terruption—all of which tendencies are augmented by the
power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole
range of thought, including what is disagreeable. This
applies, in varying degrees, to every step in the long scale
of mental power, from the veriest dunce to the greatest
genius that ever lived. Therefore the nearer any one is,
either from a subjective or from an objective point of view,
to one of these sources of suffering in human life, the
farther he is from the other. And so a man’s natural
bent will lead him to make his objective world conform to
his subjective as much as possible; that is to say, he will
take the greatest measures against that form of suffering
to which he is most liable. The wise man will, above all,
strive after freedom from pain and annoyance, quiet and
leisure, consequently a tranquil, modest life, with as few
encounters as may be ; and so, after a little experience of
his so-called fellow-men, he willelect to live in retirement,
or even, if he is a man of great intellect, in solitude. For
the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from
other people, the less, indeed, other people can be to him.
This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a
man unsocial. True, if quality of intellect could be made
up for by quantity, it might be worth while to live even in
the great world; but, unfortunately, a hundred fools
together will not make one wise man.
18 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

But the individual who stands at the other end of the
svale is no sooner free from the pangs of need than he en-
deavors to get pastime and society at any, cost, taking up
with the first person he meets, and avoiding nothing so
much as himself. For in solitude, where every one is
thrown upon his own resources, what a man has in him-
self comes to light; the fool in fine raiment groans under
the burden of his miserable personality, a burden which he
can never throw off, while the man of talent peoples the
waste places with his animating thoughts. Seneca de-
clares that folly is its own burden—ommnits stultitia laborat
fastidio sui—a very true saying, with which may be com-
pared the words of Jesus, the son of Sirach, “ The life of a
fool is worse than death.’?* And, as arule, it will befound
that a man is sociable just in the degree in which he is in-
tellectually poor and generally vulgar. For one’s choice
in this world does not go much beyond solitude on one
side and vulgarity on the other. Itissaid that the most
sociable of all people are the negroes; and they are at _the
bottom of the scale in intellect. I remember reading
once in a French papert that the blacks in North America,
whether free or unslaved, are fond of shutting themselves
up in large numbers in the smallest space, because they
cannot have too much of one another’s snub-nosed
company.

The brain may be regarded asa kind of parasite of the
organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the
body: and leisure, that is, the time one has for the free
enjoyment of one’s consciousness or individuality, is the
fruit or produce of the rest of existence, which is in
general only labor and effort. But what does most
people’s leisure yield?—boredom and dullness; except of
course, when it is occupied with sensual pleasure or folly.
How little such leisure is worth may be seen in the way in
which it is spent: and, as Ariosto observes, how miserable
are the idle hours of ignorant men!—ozio lungo duomini
ignoranti. Ordinary people think merely how they shall
spend their time; a man of any talent tries to use it. The
reason why people of limited intellect are apt to be bored
is that their intellect is absolutely nothing more than the

 

*Ecclesiasticus, xxii. 11. +Ze Commerce, Oct. 19th, 1887.
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 19

meéans by which the motive power of the will is put into
force: and whenever there is nothing particular to set the
will in motion, it rests, and their intellect takes a holiday,
because, equally with the will, it requires something ex-
ternal to bring it into play. The result is an awful
stagnation of whatever power a man has—in a word,
boredom. ‘To counteract this miserable feeling, men run
to trivialities which please for the moment they are taken
up, hoping thus to engage the will in order to rouse it to
action, and so set the intellect in motion; for it is the
latter which has to give effect to these motives of the will.
Compared with real and natural motives, these are but as
paper money to coin; for their value is only arbitrary—
card games and the like, which have been invented for
this very purpose. And if there is nothing else to be done,
aman will twirl his thumbs or beat the devil’s tattoo; or
a cigar may be a welcome substitute for exercising his
brains. Hence, in all countries the chief occupation of
society is card-playing,* and it isthe gauge of its value,
and an outward sign that it is bankrupt in thought.
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal
cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots! But
I do not wish to be unjust; so let me remark that it may
certainly be said in defense of card-playing that it is a
preparation for the world and for business life, because
one learns thereby how to make a clever use of fortuitous
but unalterable circumstances (cards, in this case), and
to get as much out of them as one can: and to do this a
man must learn a little dissimulation, and how to put a
good face upon a bad business. But, on the other hand,
it is exactly for this reason that card-playing is so demoral-
izing, since the whole object of it is to employ every kind
of trick and machination in order to win what belongs to
another. And a habit of this sort, learned at the card-table,
strikes root and pushes its way into practical life; and in
the affairs of every day a man gradually comes to regard
meum and tuum in much the same light as cards, and to
consider that he may use to the utmost whatever

 

*Translator’s Note.—Card-playing to this extent is now, no doubt,
a thing of the past, at any rate among the nations of northern
Europe. The present fashion is rather in favor of a dilettante in-
terest in art or literature.
20 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

advantages he possesses, so long as he does not come with-
in the arm of the law. Examples of what I mean are of
daily occurrence in mercantile life. Since, then, leisure is
the flower, or rather the fruit, of existence, as it puts a
man into possession of himself, those are happy indeed
who possess something real in themselves. But what do
you get from most people’s leisure?—only a good-for-
nothing fellow, who is terribly bored and a burden to him-
self. Let us, therefore, rejoice, dear brethren, for ‘‘ we are
not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.”

Further, as no land is so weil off as that which requires
few imports, or noneat all, so the happiest man is one who
has enough in his own inner wealth, and requires little or
nothing from outside for his maintenance, for imports are
expensive things, reveal dependence, entail danger, occa-
sion trouble, and, when all is said and done, are a poor sub-
stitute for home produce. No man ought to expect much
from others, or, in general, from the external world. What
one human being can be to another is not avery great
deal : in the end every one stands alone, and the important
thing is who it is that stands alone. Here, then, is
another application of the general truth which Goethe
recognizes in ‘* Dichtung und Wahrheit ” (Bk. IIT.), that in
everything a man has ultimately to appeal to himself ; or,
as Goldsmith puts it in “‘ The Traveller :”

“Still to ourselves in every place consign’d
Our own felicity we make or find.”

Himself is the source of the best and most a man can be
or achieve. The more this isso—the more aman finds his
sources of pleasure in himself—the happier he ill be.
Therefore, it is with great truth that Aristotle* says, ‘<T'o
be happy means to be self-sufficient.” For all other sources
of happiness are in their nature most uncertain, precarious,
fleeting, the sport of chance ; and so even under the most
favorable circumstances they can easily be exhausted ; nay,
this is unavoidable, because they are not always within
reach. And in old age these sources of happiness must
necessarily dry up: love leaves us then, and wit, desire to
travel, delight in horses, aptitude for social intercourse ;

 

* Eth, Eud., vii. 2,
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 21

friends and relations, too, are taken from us by death.
Then more than ever, it depends upon what a man has in
himself ; for this will stick to him longest and at any period
of life it is the only genuine and lasting source of happi-
ness. There is not much to be got anywhere in the
world. It is filled with misery and pain; and if a man
escapes these, boredom lies in wait for him at every corner.
Nay more ; it is evil which generally has the upper hand,
and folly makes the most noise. Fate is cruel, and man-
kind pitiable. In such a world as this, a man who is rich
in himeelf is like a bright, warm, happy room at Christmas-
tide, while without are the frost and snow of a December
night. Therefore, without doubt, the happiest destiny on
earth is to have the rare gift of a rich individuality, and,
more especially, to be possessed of a good endowment of
intellect ; this is the happiest destiny, though it may not be,
after all, a very brilliant one. There wis great wisdom in
that remark which Queen Christina of Sweden made, in her
nineteenth year, about Descartes, who had then lived for
twenty years in the deepest solitude in Holland, and, apart
from report, was known to her only by: a single essay : “ M.
Descartes,” she said, ‘‘is the happiest of men, and his con-
dition seems to me much to be envied.”* Of course, as was
the case with Descartes, external circumstances must be
favorable enough to allow a man to be master of his life
and happiness ; or, as we read in Ecclesiastest—‘‘ Wisdom
is good together with an inheritance, and profitable unto
them that see the sun.” The man to whom nature and fate
have granted the blessing of wisdom, will be most anxious
and careful to keep open the fountains of happiness which
be has in himself ; and for this, independence and leisure
are necessary. To obtain them, he will be willing to
moderate his desires and harbor his resources, all the more
because he is not, like others, restricted to the external
world for his pleasures. So he will not be misled by expec-
tations of office, or money, or the favor and applause of
his fellow-men, into surrendering himself in order to con-
form to low desires and vulgar tastes ; nay, in such a case
he will follow the advice that Horace gives in his epistle

 

* “Vie de Descartes,” par Baillet. Liv. vii., ch. 10,
¢ vii. 12.
92 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

to Mecenas.* It isa great piece of folly to sacrifice the
inner for the outer man, to give the whole or the greater
part of one’s quiet leisure and independence for splendor,
rank, pomp, titles and honor. This is what Goethe did.
My good luck drew me quite in the other direction.

The truth which I am insisting upon here, the truth,
namely, that the chief source of human happiness is in-
ternal, is confirmed by that most accurate observation of
Aristotle in the ‘‘ Nichomchen Ethics,” } that every pleasure
presupposes some sort of activity, the application of some
sort of power, without which it cannot exist. The doctine
of Aristotle’s, that a man’s happiness consists in the free
exercise of his highest faculties, is also enunicated by
Stobeus in his exposition of the Peripatetic philoso-
phy :{ ‘“‘ happiness,” he says, ‘‘means vigorous and success-
ful activity in all your undertakings ;” and he explains that
by vigour (d@per7) he means mastery in any thing, whatever
itbe. Now, the original purpose of those forces with which
nature has endowed man is to enable him to struggle against
the difficulties which beset him on all sides. But if this
struggle comes to an end, his unemployed forces become
a burden to him ; and he has to set to work and play with
them—use them, I mean, for no purpose at all, beyond
avoiding the other source of human suffering, boredom, to
which he is at once exposed. Itis the upper classes, people
of wealth, who are the greatest victims of boredom.
Lucretius long ago described their miserable state, and
the truth of his description may be still recognized to-day,
in the life of every great capital—where the rich man is
seldom in his own halls, because it bores him to be there,
and still he returns thither because he is no better off out-
side—or else he is away in post-haste to his house in the
country, as if it were on fire ; and he is no sooner arrived
there, than he is bored again, and seeks to forget every-
thing in sleep, or else hurries back to town once more.

“« Exit saepe foras magnis ex edibus ille,
Esse domi quem pertaesum est, subitoque reventat ;
Quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse.
* Lib. 1., ep. 7.

Nec somnum plebis laudo, satur altilium, nee
Otia divitiis Arabum liborrima muto.

+ i. 7 and vii. 18, 14. ¢ Ecl. eth. ii, ch. 7
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. yy

Currit, agens mannos, ad villam precipitanter,
Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans :
Oscitat extemplo, tetigit quum limina villae ;

Aut abit in somnum gravis, atque oblivia quaerit ;
Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit.” *

In their youth, such people must have had a superfluity
of muscular,and vital euergy—powers which unlike those
of the mind, cannot maintain their full degree of vigor
very long; and in later years they either have no mental
powers at all, or cannot develop any for want of employ-
ment which would bring them into play; so that they are
ina wretched plight. Wl, however, they still possess,
for thisis the only power that is inexhaustible; and they
try to stimulate their will by passionate excitement, such as
games of chance for high stakes—undoubtedly a most de-
grading form of vice. And one may say generally that if
a man finds himself with nothing to do, he is sure to choose
some amusement suited to the kind of power in which he
excels—bowls, jt may be, or chess; hunting or painting;
horse-racing or music; cards, or poetry, heraldry, philosophy,
or some other dilettante interest. We might classify these
interests methodically, by reducing them to expressions of
the three fundamental powers, the factors, that is to say,
which go to make up the physiological constitution of man;
and further, by considering these powers by themselves,
and apart from any of the definite aims which they may sub-
serve, and simply as affording three sources of possible
pleasure, out of which every man will choose what suits him,
according as he excels in one direction or another.

First of all come the pleasures of vital energy, of food,
drink, digestion, rest and sleep; and there are parts of the
world where it can be said that these are characteristic and
national pleasures. Secondly, there are the pleasures of
muscular energy, such as walking, running, wrestling,
dancing, fencing, riding and similar athletic pursuits,
which sometimes take the form of sport, and sometimes of
a military-life, and real warfare. Thirdly, there are the
pleasures of sensibility, such as observation, thought, feel-
ing, ora taste for poetry orculture, music, learning, reading,
meditation, invention, philosophy and the like. Asregards
the value, relative worth and duration of each of these
kinds of pleasure, a great deal might be said, which, how-

 

* 111, 10738.
24 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

ever, I leave the reader to supply. But every one will see
that the nobler the power which is brought into play, the
greater will be the pleasure which it gives; for pleasure al-
ways involves the use of one’s own powers, and_ happiness
consists in a frequent repetition of pleasure. No one will
deny that in this respect the pleasures of sensibility occupy
a higher place than either of the other two fundamental
kinds; which exist in an equal, nay, in a greater degree in
brutes; it is his preponderating amount of sensibility which
distinguishes man from other animals. Now, our mental
powers are forms of sensibility, and tnerefore a preponder-
ating amount of it makes us capable of that kind of pleasure
which has to do with mind, so-called intellectual pleasure;
and the more sensibility predominates, the greater the
pleasure will be. *

 

*Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the mechanical
and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding to the vege-
table, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the animal world,
where intelligence and consciousness begin, at first very weak, and
only after many intermediate stages attaining its last great develop-
ment in man, whose intellect is Nature’s crowning point; the goal of
all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her works. And
even within the range of the human intellect, there area great many
observable differences of degree, andit is very seldom that intellect
reaches its highest point, intelligence properly so-called, which in
this narrow and strict sense of the word, is nature’s most consummate
product, andso the rarest and most precious thing of which the
world can boast. The highest product of Nature is the clearest
degree of consciousness, in which the world mirrors itself more plain-
ly and completely than anywhere else. A man endowed with this
form of intelligence is in possession of what is noblest and best on
earth; and accordingly, he has a_source of pleasure in comparison
with which all others are small. From his surroundings he asks
nothing but leisure for the free enjoyment of what he has got, time,
as it were, to polish his diamond. All other pleasures that are not
of the intellect are of a lower kind; for they are, one and all, move-
ments of will—desires, hopes, fears and ambitions, no matter to what
directed: they are always satisfied at the cost of pain, and in the case
of ambition, generally with more or less of illusion. With intel-
lectual pleasure, on the other hand, truth becomes clearer and clearer.
In the realm of intelligence pain has no power. Knowledge is all in
all, Further, intellectual pleasures are accessible entire! y and only
through the medium of the intelligence and are limited by its capacity.
For all the wit there is in the world is useless to him who has none.
Still this advantage is accompanied by a substantial disadvantage; for
the whole of Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence
comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest de-
gree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point,
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 25

The normal, ordinary man takes a vivid interest in any-
thing only in so far as it excites his will, that is to say, is
a matter of personal interest tohim. But constant excite-
ment of the will is never an unmixed good, to say the least;
in other words, it involves pain. Card-playing, that uni-
versal occupation of ‘‘good society” everywhere, is a device
for providing this kind of excitement, and that, too, by
means of interests so smallas to produce slightand momen-
tary, instead of real and permanent, pain. Card-playing
is, in fact, a mere tickling of the will.*

On the other hand, a man of powerful intellect is capable
of taking a vivid interest in things in the way of mere
knowledge, with no admixture of will; nay, such an interest
is a necessity to him. It places him in asphere where pain
is an alien, a diviner air where the gods live serene:

Geot peta Ecorres.t

Look on these two pictures—the life of the masses, one
long, dull record of struggle and effort entirely devoted to
the petty interests of personal welfare, to misery in all its
forms, a life beset by intolerable boredom as soon as ever
those aims are satisfied and the man is thrown back upon
himself, whence he can be roused again to some sort of move-
ment only by the wild fire of passion. On the otherside you

 

*Vulgarity is, at bottom, the kind of consciousness in which the
will completely predominates over the intellect, where the latter does
nothing more than perform the service of its master, the will. There-
fore, when the will makes no demands, supplies no motives, strong
or weak, the intellect entirely loses its power, and the result is com-
plete vacancy of mind. Now will without intellect is the most vul-
gar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead,
who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he
is made. This is the condition of mind called vulgarity, in which
the only active elements are the organs of sense, and that small
amount of intellect which is necessary for apprehending the data of
sense. Accordingly, the vulgar man is constantly open to all sorts
of impressions, and immediately perceives all the little tritling things
that go on in his environment: the lightest whisper, the most trivial
circumstance, is sufficient to rouse his attention; he is just like an
animal. Such a man’s mental condition reveals itself in his face, in
his whole exterior; and hence that vulgar, repulsive appearance,
which is all the more offensive, if as is usually the case, his will—
the only factor in his consciousness—is a base, selfish and altogether
bad one.

+ Odyssey IV., 805.
26 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

have a man endowed with a high degree of mental power,
leading an existence rich in thought and full of life and
meaning, occupied by worthy and interesting objects as
goon as ever he is free to give himself to them, bearing in
himself a source of the noblest pleasure. What external
promptings he wants come from the works of nature, and
from the contemplation of human affairs and the achieve-
ments of the great of all ages and countries, which are
thoroughly appreciated by a man of this type alone, as
being the only one who can quite understand and feel with
them. And so it is for him alone that those great ones
have really lived ; it is to him that they make their appeal ;
the rest are but casual hearers who only half understand
either them or their followers. Of course, this character-
istic of the intellectual man implies that he has one more
need than the others, the need of reading, observing,
studying, meditating, practicing, the need, in short, of un-
disturbed leisure. For, as Voltaire has very rightly said,
‘there are no real pleasures without real needs ;” and the
need of them is why to such a man pleasures are accessible
which are denied to others—the varied beautics of nature
and art. and literature. T’o heap these round people who
do not want them and cannot appreciate them, is like ex-
pecting gray hairs to fall in love. A man who is privi-
leged in this respect leads two lives, a personal and ar
intellectual life; and the latter gradually comes to be
looked upon as the true one, and the former as merely a
means to it. Other people make this shallow, empty and
troubled existence an end in itself. To the life of the in-
tellect such a man will give the preference over all his
other occupations: by the constant growth of insight and
knowledge, this intellectual life, like a slowly-forming
work of art, will acquire a consistency, a permanent inten-
sity, a unity which becomes ever more and more complete ;
compared with which a life devoted to the attainment of:
personal comfort, a life that may broaden indeed, but can
never be deepened, makes but a poor show: and yet, as I
have said, people make this baser sort of existence an end
in itself.

The ordinary life of every day, so far as it is not moved
by passion, is tedious and insipid ; and if it is so moved,
it soon becomes painful. Those alone are happy whom
nature has favored with some superfluity of intellect, some-
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 2%

thing beyond what is just nesessary to carry out the be-
hests of their will; for it enables them to lead an intellect-
ual life as well, a life unattended by pain and full of vivid
interests. Mere leisure, that is to say, intellect unoccu-
pied in the service of the will, is not of itself sufficient :
there must be a real superfluity of power, set free from the
service of the will and devoted to that of the intellect ; for,
as Seneca says, o¢vuwm sine litteris mors est et vivi hominis
sepultura—illiterate leisure is a form of death, a living
tomb. Varying with the amount of the superfluity, there
will be countless developments in this second life, the life
of the mind ; it may be the mere collection and labeling
of insects, birds, minerals, coins, or the highest achieve-
ments of poetry and philosophy. The life of the mind is
not only a protection, against boredom, it also wards‘off the
pernicious effects of boredom ; it keeps us from bad com-
pany, from the many dangers, misfortunes, losses and
extravagances which the man who places his happiness
entirely in the objective world is sure to encounter. My
philosophy, for instance, has never brought me in a six-
pence ; but it has spared me many an expense.

The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things
external to him, in property, rank, wife and children,
friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them
or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happi-
ness is destroyed. In other words, his center of gravity is
not in himself; it is constantly changing its place, with
every wish and whim. If heis a man of means, one day it
will be his house in the country, another buying horses,
or entertaining friends, or traveling—a life, in short, of
general luxury, the reason being that he seeks his pleasure
in things outside him. Like one whose healthand strength
are gone, he tries to regain by the use of jellies and drugs,
instead of by developing his own vital power, the true
source of what he has lost. Before proceeding to the oppo-
site, let us compare with this common type the man who
comes midway between the two, endowed, it may be, not
exactly with distinguished powers of mind, but with some-
what more than the ordinary amount of intellect. He will
take a dilettante interest in art, or devote his attention to
some branch of science—botany, for example, or physics,
astronomy, history, and find a great deal of pleasure in
such studies, and amuse himself with them when external
28 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

sources of happiness are exhausted or fail to satisfy him
any more. Of a man like this it may be said that his cen-
ter of gravity is partly in himself. Buta dilettante inter-
est in art is a very differcnt thing from creative activity;
and an amateur pursuit of science is apt to be superficial
and not to penetrate to the heart of the matter. A man
cannot entirely identify himself with such pursuits, or
have his whole existence so completely filled and permeated
with them that he loses all interest in everything else. It
is only the highest intellectual power, what we call genius,
that attains to this degree of intensity, making all time
and existence its theme, and striving to express its peculiar
conception of the world, whether it contemplates life as
the subject of poetry or of philosophy. Hence, undis-
turbed occupation with himself, his own thoughts and
works, is a matter of urgent necessity to such a man; soli-
tude is welcome, leisure is the highest good, and every-
thing else is unnecessary, nay, even burdensome.

This is the only type of man of whom it can be said that
his center of gravity is entirely in himself ; which explains
why it is that people of this sort—and they are very rare—
no matter how excellent their character may be, do not
show that warm and unlimited interest in friends, family,
and the communityin general, of which others are so often
capable ; for if they have only themselves they are not in-
consolable for the loss of everything else. This gives an
isolation to their character, which is all the more effective
since other people never really quite satisfy them, as being,
on the whole, of a different nature: nay more, since this
difference is constantly forcing itself upon their notice,
they get accustomed to move about among mankind as
alien beings, and in thinking of humanity in general, to
say they instead of we.

So the conclusion we come to is that the man whom
nature has endowed with intellectual wealth is the hap-
plest ; so true it is that the subjective concerns us more
than the objective ; for whatever the latter may be, it can
work only indirectly, secondarily, and through the medium
of the former—a truth finely expressed by Lucian :

Todos 6 THS PuyHs TAOVTOS udvos Eotiv aANOAS
Tadira Séyer dtynv mreiova ray uredvoorv *

 

* Epigrammata, 12,
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN JB. 29

—the wealth of the soul is the only true wealth, for with
all other riches comesa bane even greater than they. The
man of inner wealth wants nothing from outside but the
negative gift of undisturbed leisure, to develop and mature
his intellectual faculties, that is, to enjoy his wealth; in
short, he wants permission to be himself, his whole life
long, every day and every hour. If he is destined to impress
the character of his mind upon the whole race, he has only
one measure of happiness or unhappiness—to succeed or
fail in perfecting his powers and completing his work.
All else is of small consequence. Accordingly the greatest
minds of all ages have set the highest value upon undis-
turbed leisure, as worth, exactly as much as the man
himself. ‘*‘ Happiness appears to consist in leisure,” says
Aristotle ;* and Diogenes Laertius reports that ‘“ Socrates
praised leisure as the fairest of all possessions.” So, in the
‘*Nichomachean Ethics,” Aristotle concludes that a life
devoted to philosophy is the happiest ; or, as he says in
the ‘* Politics,”+ ‘* the free exercise of any power, whatever
it may be, is happiness.” This, again, tallies with what
Goethe says in‘* Wilhelm Meister: ” ‘the man who is born
with a talent which he is meant to use, finds his greatest
happiness in using it.”

But to be in possession of undisturbed leisure, is far
from being the common lot; nay, it is something alien to
human nature, for the ordinary man’s destiny is to spend
life in procuring what is necessary for the subsistence of
himself and his family ; he is a son of struggle and need,
not a free intelligence. So people as a rule soon get tired
of undisturbed leisure, and it becomes burdensome if there
are no fictitious and forced aims to occupy it, play, pas-
time and hobbies of every kind. For this very reason it is
full of possible danger, and difficilis in otio quies is a true
saying—it is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to
do. On the other hand, a measure of intellect far surpass-
ing the ordinary, is as unnatural as it is abnormal. But
if it exists, and the man endowed with it is to be happy,
he will want precisely that undisturbed leisure which the
others find burdensome or pernicious ; for without it he is
a Pegasus in harness, and consequently unhappy. If these
two unnatural circumstances, external and _ internal,

 

#* Eth. Nichom. x. 7 tiv. 11,
30 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

undisturbed leisure and great intellect, happen to coincide
in the same person, it is a great piece of fortune ; and if
fate is so far favorable, a man can lead the higher life, the
life protected from the two opposite sources of human
suffering, pain and boredom, from the painful struggle for
existence, and the incapacity for enduring leisure (which
is free existence itself) evils which may be escaped only
by being mutually neutralized. ;
But there is something to be said in opposition to this
view. Great intellectual gifts mean an activity pre-
eminently nervous in its character, and consequently a
very high degree of susceptibility to pain in every form.
Further, such gifts imply an intense temperament, larger
and more vivid ideas, which, as the inseparable accom-
paniment of great intellectual power, entail on its pos-
sessor a corresponding intensity of the emotions, making
them incomparably more violent than those to which the
ordinary man isa prey. Now, there are more things in
the world productive of pain than of pleasure. Again, a
large endowment of intellect tends to estrange the man
who has it from other people and their doings; for the
more a man has in himself, the less he will be able to find
in them; and the hundred things in which they take
delight, he will think shallow and insipid. Here, then,
perhaps, is another instance of that law of compensation
which makes itself felt everywhere. How often one
hears it said, and said, too, with some plausibility, that
the narrow-minded man is at bottom the happiest,
even though his fortune is unenviable. I shall make no
attempt to forestall the reader’s own judgment on this
point ; more especially as Sophocles himself has given
utterance to two diametrically opposite opinions :

IIoAAG r6 gpovety evdarpovias
apwrov vmdapyet.*

He says in one place—wisdom is the greatest part of happi-
ness ; and again, in another passage, he declares that the
life of the thoughtless is the most pleasant of all:

Ev tH ppoveiv yap undév 716705 Bi0S.+

 

* Antigone, 1847-8. + Ajax, 554,
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN JS. 81

The philosophers of the Old Testament find themselves
in a like contradiction.

‘<The life of a fool is worse than death ” *
and—

“In much wisdom is much grief ;
And he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” +

I may remark, however, that a man who has no mental
needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal
amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called
a philistine—an expression at first peculiar to the German
language, a kind of slang term at the universities, after-
ward used, by analogy, in a higher sense, though still in its
original meaning, as denoting one who is not a “‘ Son of the
Muses.” A philistine isand remains auovcos &vyp. Ishould
prefer to take a higher point of view, and apply the term
philistine to people who are always seriously occupied with
realities which are no realities; but as such a definition
would be a transcendental one, and therefore not generally
intelligible, it would hardly be in place in the present
treatise, which aims at being popular. The other defini-
tion can be more easily elucidated, indicating, as it does,
satisfactorily enough, the essential nature of all those
qualities which distinguish the philistine. He is defined
to be “a man without mental needs.” From this it follows,
firstly, in relation to himself, that he has no intellectual
pleasures ; for, as was remarked before, there are no real
pleasures without real needs. The philistine’s life is
animated by no desire to gain knowledge and insight for
their own sake, or to experience that true esthetic pleasure
which is so nearly akin to them. If pleasures of this kind
are fashionable, and the philistine finds himself compelled
to pay attention to them, he will force himself to do so,
but he will take as little interest in them as possible.
His only real pleasures are of a sensual kind, and he thinks
that these indemnify him for the loss of the others.
To him oysters and champagne are the height of exist-
ence; the aim of his life is to procure what will contribute
to his bodily welfare, and he is indeed in a happy way if

 

* Ecclesiasticus, xxii, 11. + Ecclesiastes, i. 18,
32 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

this causes him some trouble. If the luxuries of life are
heaped upon him, he will inevitably be bored, and against
boredom he has a great many fancied remedies, balls,
theaters, parties, cards, gambling, horses, women, drinking,
traveling and so on; all of which cannot protect a man
from being bored, for where there are 10 intellectual
needs, no intellectual pleasures are possible. The peculiar
characteristic of the philistine is a dull, dry kind of gravity,
akin to that of animals. Nothing really pleases, or excites,
or interests him, for sensual pleasure is quickly exhausted,
and the society of philistines soon becomes burdensome,
and one may even get tired of playing cards. True, the
pleasures of vanity are left, pleasures which he enjoys in
his own way, either by feeling himself superior in point of
wealth, or rank, or influence and power to other people,
who thereupon pay him honor ; or at any rate, by going
about with those who have a superfluity of these blessings,
sunning himself in the reflection of their splendor—what
the English call a snob,

From the essential nature of the philistine it follows,
secondly, in regard to others, that, as he possesses no in-
tellectual, but only physical needs, he will seek the society
of those who can satisfy the latter, but not the
former. The last thing he will expect from his friends is
the possession of any sort of intellectual capacity; nay, if
he chances to meet with it, it will rouse his antipathy and
even hatred ; simply because in addition to an unpleasant
sense of inferiority, he experiences, in his heart, a dull
kind of envy, which has to be carefully concealed even
from himself. Nevertheless, it sometimes grows into a
secret feeling of rancor. But for all that, it will never
occur to him to make his own ideas of worth or value con-
form to the standard of such qualities ; he will continue
to give the preference to rank and riches, power and in-
fluence, which in his eyes seem to be the only genuine ad-
vantage, in the world; and his wish will be to excel
in them himself. All this is the consequence of his
being a man without intellectual needs. ‘The great
affliction of all philistines is that they have no interest in
ideas, and that,to escape being bored, they arein constant
need of realities. Now realities are either unsatisfactory
or dangerous ; when they lose their interest, they become
fatiguing. But the ideal world is illimitable and calm,
PROPER}, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 33

‘Something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.”

Note.—In these remarks on the personal qualities which
go to make happiness, I have been mainly concerned with
the physical and intellectual nature of man. For an
account of the direct and immediate influence of morality
upon happiness, let me refer to my prize essay on ‘The
Foundation of Morals ” (Sec. 22).

CHAPTER III.
PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS.

EPIcurvs divides the needs of mankind into three classes,
and the division made by this great professor of happiness
is a true and a fine one. First come natural and necessary
needs, such as, when not satisfied, produce pain—food and
clothing, victus et amictus, needs which can easily be satis-
fied. Secondly, there are those needs which, though
natural, are not necessary, such as the gratification of cer-
tain of the senses. I may add, however, that in the re-
port given by Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus does not mention
which of the senses he means; so that on this point my ac-
count of his doctrine is somewhat more definite and exact
than the original. These are needs rather more difficult to
satisfy. The third class consists of needs which are neither
natural nor necessary, the need of luxury and _prodigality,
show and splendor, which never come to an end, and are
very hard to satisfy.*

It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limits which
reason should impose on the desire for wealth; for there is
no absolute or definite amount of wealth which will satisfy
aman. The amountis always relative, thatis to say, just
so much as will maintain the proportion between what he
wants and what he gets; for to measure a man’s happiness
only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to
get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall
have a numerator but no denominator. A man never feelg
the loss of things which it never occurs to him to ask for;

 

* Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Bk. x., ch. xxvii., pp. 127 and 149; also
Cicero de finibus, i, 18,
34 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

he is just as happy without them; while another, who may
have a hundred times as much, feels miserable because he
has not got the one thing which he wants. In fact, here
too, every man has an horizon of his own, and he will ex-
pect just as much as he thinks it possible for him to get.
Ifan object within his horizon looks as though he could con-
fidently reckon on getting it, heis happy; but if difficulties
come in the way, he is miserable. What lies beyond his
horizon has no effect at all upon him. So it is that the
vast possessions of the rich do not agitate the poor, and
conversely, that a wealthy man is not consoled by all his
wealth for the failure of his hopes. Riches, one may say,
are like seawater; the more you drink, the thirstier you
become: and the same is true of fame. The loss of wealth
and prosperity leaves a man, as soon as the first pangs of
grief are over, in very much the same habitual temper as
before; and the reason of thisis, that as soon as fate dimin-
ishes the amount of his possessions, he himself immediately
reduces the amount of his claims. But when misfortune
comes upon us, to reduce the amount of our claims is just
what is most painful; ouce that we have done so, the pain
becomes less and less, and is felt no more; like an old
wound which has healed. Conversely, when a piece of
good fortune befalls us, our claims mount higher and higher
as there is nothing to regulate them; itis in this feeling of
expansion that the delight of it lies. But itlasts no longer
than the process itself, and when the expansion is com-
plete, the delight ceases; we have become accustomed to
the increase in our claims, and consequently indifferent to
the amount of wealth which satisfies them. ‘There is a
passage in the ‘‘ Odyssey ”* illustrating this truth, of
which I may quote the last two lines:

Totos yap vdos é6ri émixboviwr avipdawr
Oiov ip imap éye marnp dvdparv ve Veer re.

—the thoughts of man that dwells on the earth are as the
day granted him by the father of gods and men. Dis-
content springs from a constant endeavor to increase the
amount of our claims, when we are powerless to increase
the amount which will satisfy them. —

When we consider how full of needs the human’ race is,

* x viii. 180-7.
PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAB. 35

how its whole existence is based upon them, it is nota mat-
ter for surprise that wealth is held in more sincere esteem,
nay, in greater honor, than anything else in the world; nor
ought’ we to wonder that gain is made the only goal of life
and everything that does not lead to it pushed aside or
thrown overboard—philosophy, for instance, by those who
profess it. People are often reproached for wishing for
money above all things, and for lovingit more than any-
thing else; but it is natural and even inevitable for people
to love that which, like an unwearied Proteus, is always
ready to turn itself into whatever object their wandering
wishes or manifold desires may for the moment fix upon.
Everything else can satisfy only one wish, one need; food is
good only if you are hungry: wine, if you are able to enjoy
it; drugs, if you are sick; fur for the winter; love for youth,
and so on. These areall only relatively good dyata xpos r2.
Money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a
concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an
abstract satisfaction of all.

If a man has an independent fortune, he should regard
it as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes
which he may encounter ; he should not look upon it as
giving him leave to get what pleasure he can out of the
world, or as rendering it incumbent upon him tospend it in
this way. People who are not born with a fortune, but
end by making a large one through the exercise of whatever
talents they possess, almost always come to think that their
talents are their capital, and that the money they have
gained is merely the interest upon it; they do not lay by
a part of their earnings to form permanent capital, but
spend their money much as they have earned it. Accord-
ingly, they often fall into poverty ; their earnings decrease,
or come to an end altogether, either because their talent
is exhausted by becoming antiquated—as, for instance,
very often happens in the case of fine art; or else it was
valid only under a special conjunction of circumstances
which has now passed away. ‘There is nothing to prevent
those who live on the common labor of their hands from
treating their earnings in that way if they like; becanse
their kind of skill is not likely to disappear, or, if it does,
it can be replaced by that of their fellow-workmen ;
morever, the kind of work they do is always in demand ;
so that what the proverb says is quite true, ‘a useful trade
36 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

is a mine of gold.” But with artists and professionals of
of every kind the case is quite different, and that is the
reason why they are well paid. They ought to build up a
capital out of their earnings; but they recklessly look
upon them as merely interest, and end in ruin. On the
other hand, people who inherit money know, at least, how
to distinguish between capital and interest, and most of
them try to make their capital secure and not enroach
upon it; nay if they can, they put by at least an eighth of
their interest in order to meet future contingencies. So
most of them maintain their position. These few remarks
about capital and interest are not applicable to com-
mercial life, for merchants look upon money only as a
means of further gain, just as a workman regards his
tools ; so even if their capital has been entirely the result
of their own efforts, they try to preserve and increase it
by using it. Accordingly, wealth is nowhere so much at
home as in the merchant class.

It will generally be found that those who know what it
is to have been in need and destitution are very much less
afraid of it, and consequently more inclined to extrava-
gance, than those who know poverty only by hearsay.
People who have been born and bred in good circumstances,
are as a rule, much more careful about the future, more
economical, in fact, than those who by a piece of good
luck, have suddenly passed from poverty to wealth.
This looks as if poverty were not really such a very
wretched thing as it appears from a distance. The true
reason, however, is rather the fact that the man who has
been born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it
as something without which he could no more live than he
could live without air; he guards it as he does his very
life ; and so he is generally a lover of order, prudent and
economical. But the man who has been born into a poor
position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any
chance he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a super-
fluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because if it
comes to an end, he can get on just as wellas before, with
one anxiety the less; or, as Shakespeare saysin Henry VI*.,

F . the adage must be verified
That beggars mounted run their horse to death.”

* Part HI., Act 1, Se. 4.
PROPERIY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 37

But it should be said that people of this kind havea firm
and excessive trust, partly in fate, partly in the peculiar
means which have already raised them out of need and
poverty—a trust not only of the head, but of the heart
also; and so they do not, like the man born rich, look
upon the shallows of poverty as bottomless, but console
themselves with the thought that once they have touched
one again, they can take another upward flight.

t is this trait in human character which explains the fact
that women who were poor before their marriage often
make greater claiins, and are more extravagant, than those
who have brought their husbands a rich dowry ; because
as a rule, rich girls bring with them, not only a fortune,
but also more eagerness, nay, more of the inherited in-
stinct, to preserve it, than poor girls do. If any one
doubts the truth of this, and thinks that it is just the
opposite, he will find authority for his view in Ariosto’s
first satire; but, on the other hand, Dr. Johnson agrees
with my opinion. ‘* A woman of fortune,” he says, ‘‘ being
used to the handling of money, spends it judiciously ;
but a woman who gets the command of money for the
first time upon her marriage, has such a gusto in spending
it, that she throws it away with great profusion.” * Andin
any case let me advise any one who marries a poor girl not
to leave her the capital but only the interest, and to take
especial care that she has not the management of the
children’s fortune.

I do not by any means think that I am touching upon a
subject which is not worth my while to mention when I
recommend people to be careful to preserve what they
have earned or inherited. For to start life with just
as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one
to live comfortably without having to work—even if one
has only just enough for one’s self, not to speak of a family
—is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated ; for
it means exemption and immunity from that chronic
disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a
plague ; it is emancipation from that forced labor which
is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favorable
fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be,
in the proper sense of the word, sai juris, master of his

 

* Boswell’s “‘ Life of Johnson”: ann: 1776, etat : 67,
36 [HH WISDOM OF LIFE.

own time and powers, and able to say every morning,
“This day is my own.” And just for the same reason the
difference between the man who has a hundred a year and
the man who has a thousand, is infinitely smaller than the
difference between the former and a man who has nothing
at all. But inherited wealth reaches its utmost value
when it falls to the individual endowed with mental powers
of a high order, who is resolved to pursue a line of life
not compatible with the making of money; for he is then
doubly endowed by fate and can live for his genius; and
he will pay his debt to mankind a hundred times, by
achieving what no other could achieve, by producing some
work which contributes to the general good, and redounds
tothe honor of humanity atlarge. Another, again, may
use his wealth to further philanthropic schemes, and make
himself well-deserving of his fellow-men. But aman who
does none of these things, who does not even try todo them,
who never attempts to study thoroughly some one branch
of knowledge so that he may at least do what he can
toward promoting it—such a one, born as he is into riches,
is a mere idler and thief of time, a contemptible fellow.
He will not even be happy, because, in his ease, exemption
from need delivers him up to the other extreme of human
suffering, boredom, which is such martyrdom to him,
that he would have been better off if poverty had given
him something to do. Andas he is bored he is apt to be
extravagant, and so lose the advantage of which he showed
himself unworthy. Countless numbers of people find
themselves in want, simply because, when they had money,
they spent it only to get momentary relief from the feel-
ing of boredom which oppressed them. It is quite another
matter if one’s object is success in political life, where
favor, friends and connections are all-important, in order
to mount by their aid step by step on the ladder of
promouons and perhaps gain the topmost rung. In this

ind of life, it is much better to be cast on the world
without a penny: and if the aspirant is not of noble family,
but is a man of some talent, it will redound to his advan-
tage to be an absolute pauper. For what every one most
aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove
them inferior to himself; and how much more is this the
case in politics. Now, it is only an absolute pauper who
has such a thorough conviction of his own complete,
PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 3y

profound and positive inferiority from every point of view,
of his own utter insignificance and worthlessness, that he
can take his place quietly in the political machine.*
He is the only one who can keep on bowing low enough,
and even go right down upon his face if necessary; he
alone can submit to everything and laugh at it; he alone
knows the entire worthlessness of merit ; he alone uses his
loudest voice and his boldest type whenever he has to
speak or write of those who are placed over his head, or
occupy any position of influence; and if they do a little
scribbling, he is ready to applaud it as a master-work.
‘He alone undertands how to beg, and so betimes, when he
is hardly out of his boyhood, he becomes a high priest of
that hidden mystery which Goethe brings to light :

“« Ueber’s Niedertrichtige
Niemand sich beklage :
Denn es ist das Miichtige
‘Was man dir auchsage :”

—it is no use to complain of low aims; for, whatever
people may say, they rule the world.

On the other hand, the man who is born with enough
to live upon is generally of a somewhat independent turn
of mind; he is accustomed to keep his head up; he has not
learned all the arts of the beggar; perhaps he even presumes
a little upon the possession of talents which, ashe ought to
know, can never compete with cringing mediocrity; in the
long run he comes to recognize the inferiority of those who
are placed over his head, and when they try to put insults
upon him, he becomes refractory and shy. This is not the
way to get on in the world. Nay, such a man may at last
incline to the opinion freelyexpressed by Voltaire: ‘‘We
have only two days to live; itis not worth our while to spend
them in cringing to contemptible rascals.” But alas! let me
observe by the way, that “‘ contemptible rascal ” is an attri-
bute which may be predicated of an abominable number of

 

* Translator’s Note.—Schopenhauer is probably here making one
of his many virulent attacks upon Hegel ; in this case-on account of
what he thought to be the philosopher's abject servility to the govern-
ment of his day. Though the Hegelian sytem has been the fruitful
mother of many liberal ideas, there can be no doubt that Hegel’s
influence in his own lifetime, was an effective support of Prussian
bureaucracy.
40 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

people. What Juvenal says—it is difficult to rise if your
poverty is greater than your talent—

«¢ Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat
Res angusta domi ”—

is more applicable to a career of art and literature than to
political and social ambition.

Wife and children I have not reckoned among a man’s
possessions; he is rather in their possession. It would be
easier to include friends under that head; but a man’s
friends belong to him not awhit more than he belongs to
them.

CHAPTER IV.

POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE IN THE ESTIMATION OF
OTHERS.

Section 1.—Reputation.

By a peculiar weakness of human nature, people gene-
rally think too much about the opinion which others form
of them; although the slightest reflection will show that
this opinion, whatever it may be, is not in itself essential
to happiness. ‘Therefore it ig hard to understand why
everybody feels so very pleased when he sees that other
people have a good opinion of him, or say anything flatter-
ing to his vanity. If you stroke a cat, it will purr; and as
inevitably, if you praise a man, a sweet expression of de-
light will appear on his face; and even though the praise is
a palpable le, it will be welcome, if the matter is one on
which he prides himself. If only other people will applaud
him, a man may console himself for downright misfortune,
or for the pittance he gets from the two sources of human
happiness already discussed: and conversely, itis astonish-
ing how infalliblya man will be annoyed, and in some
cases deeply pained, by any wrong done to his feeling of
self-importance, whatever be the nature, degree, or cireum-
stances of the injury, or by any depreciation, slight, or dis-
regard.

Ifthe feeling of honor rests upon this peculiarity of
human nature, it may have a very salutary effect upon the
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 4\

welfare of a great many people, as asubstitute for morality:
but upon their happiness, more especially upon that peace
of mind and independence which are so essential to hap-
piness, its effect will be disturhing and prejudicial rather
than salutary. Therefore itis advisable, from our point
of view, to set limits to this weakness, and duly to con-
sider and rightly to estimate the relative value of ad-
vantages, and thus temper, as far as possible, this great
susceptibility to other people’s opinion, whether the opinion
be one flattering to our vanity, or whether it causes us
pain; for in either case it is the same feeling which is
touched. Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other
people are pleased to think—and how little it requires to
disconcert or soothe the mind that is greedy of praise:

“Sic leve, sic parvum est, animum quod laudis avarum
Subruit ac reficit.”*

Therefore it will very much conduce to our happiness
if we duly compare the value of what a man is inand for
himself with what he is in the eyes of others. Under the
former comes everything that fills up the span of our ex-
istence and makes it what itis, in short, all the advantages
already considered and summed up under the heads of
personality and property; and the sphere in which all this
takes place is the man’s own consciousness. On the other
hand, the sphere of what we are for other people is their
consciousness, 1ot ours; it is the kind of figure we make in
their eyes, together with the thoughts which this arouses. f
But this is something which has no direct and immediate
existence for us, but can effect us only mediately and in-
directly, so far, that is, as other people’s behavior to-
ward us is directed by it; and even then it ought to affect us
only in so far as it can move us to modify what we are in
and for ourselves. Apart from this, what goeson in other
people’s consciousness is, as such, a matter of indifference
to us; and in time we get really indifferent to it, when we
come to see how superficial and futile are most people’s

 

* Horace, Epist: IJ, 1, 180.

Let me remark that people in the highest positions in life, with
all their brilliance, pomp, display, magnificence and general show,
may well say: Our happiness lies entirely outside us, for it exists
only in the heads of others.
42 THH WISDOM OF LIFE.

thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their senti-
ments, how perverse their opinions, and how much of error
there isin most of them: when we learn by experience
with what depreciation a man will speak of his fellow, when
he is not obliged to fear him, or thinks that what he says
will not come to hisears. And if ever we have had an op-
portunity of seeing how the greatest of men will meet with
nothing but slight from half-a-dozen blockheads, we shall
understand that to lay great value upon what other people
say is to pay them too much honor.

At all events, a man isin a very bad way, who finds no
source of happiness in the first two classes of blessings al-
ready treated of, but has to seek it in the third, in other
words, not in what he isin himself, but in what he isin the
opinion of others. For, after all, the foundation of our
whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness, is our
physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is
health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to
maintain ourselvesin independence and freedom from care.
There can be no competiton or compensation between these
essential factors on the one side, and honor, pomp, rank and
reputation on the other, however much value we may set upon
the latter. Noone would hesitate to sacrifice the latter for the
former, if it were necessary. Weshould add very much toour
happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that
every man’s chief and real existence is in his own skin, and
notin other people’s opinions; and, consequently, that the
actual conditions of our personal life—health tempera-
ment, capacity, income, wife, children, friends, home,
are a hundred times more important for our happiness than
what other people are pleased to think of us: otherwise we
shall be miserable. And if people insist that honor is
dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that exist-
ence and well being are as nothing compared with other
people’s opinions. Of course, this may be only an exag-
geratel way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation,
that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we
are to make any progress in the world: but I shall come
back to that presently. When we see that almost every-
thing men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort
and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the pro-
cess, has, in the end, no further object than to raise them-
selves in the estimation vf others; when we see that not
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 43

only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even
knowledge* and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the
ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one’s fellow
men—is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which
human folly can go? To set much too high a value on other
people’s opinion is a common error everywhere; an error, it
may be, rootedein human nature itself, or the result of
civilization and social arrangements generally; but, what-
ever its source, it exercises a very immoderate influence on
all we do, and is very prejudicial to our happiness. We
can trace it from a timorous and slavish regard for what
other people will say, up to the feeling which made Virgin-
ius plunge the dagger into his daughter’s heart, or induces
many a man to sacrifice quiet, riches, health and even life
itself, for posthumous glory. Undoubtedly this feeling is
a very convenient instrument in the hands of those who
have the control or direction of their fellow-men; and ac-
cordingly we find that in every scheme for training up
humanity in the way it should go, the maintenance and
strengthening of the feeling of honor occupies an important
place. But itis quite a different matter in its effect on
human happiness, of which it is here our object to treat;
and we should rather be careful to dissuade people from
setting too much store by whatothers think of them. Daily
‘ experience shows us, however, that this is just the mistake
people persist in making; most men set the utmost value
precisely on what other people think, and are more con-
cerned about it than about what goes on in their own con-
sciousness, which is the thing most immediately and directly
present to them. They reverse the natural order—regarding
the opinions of others as real existence and their own
consciousness as something shadowy; making the derivative
and secondary into the principal, and considering the pic-
ture they present to the world of more importance than
their own selves. By thus trying to get a direct and im-
mediate result out of what has no really direct or immediate
existence, they fall into the kind of folly which is called
vanity—the appropriate term for that which has no solid
or intrinsic value. Like a miser, such people forget the
end in their eagerness to obtain the means.

 

*Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoe sciat alter (Persius i. 27)
—knowledge is no use unless others know that you have it.
44 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

The truth is that the value we set upon the opinion of
others, and our constant endeavor in respect of it, are each
quite out of proportion to any result we may reasonably
hope to attain; so that this attention to other people’s atti-
tude may be regarded as a kind of universal mania which
every one inherits. In all we do, almost the first thing we
think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the
troubles and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on
this score; it is the anxiety which is at the bottom of all that
feeling of self-importance, which is so often mortified be-
cause it isso very morbidly sensitive. It is solicitude about
what others will say that underlies all our vanity and pre-
tension, yes, and all our show and swagger too. Without
it, there would not be a tenth part of tie luxury which ex-
ists. Pride in every form, point dhonneur and punctilio,
however varied their kind or sphere, are at bottom nothing
but this—anxiety about what others will say—and_ what
sacrifices it often costs! One can see it even in achild; and
though it exists at every period of life, it is strongest in
age; because, when the capacity for sensual pleasure fails,
vanity and pride have only avarice to share their dominion.
Frenchmen, perhaps, afford the best example of this feel-
ing, and among them it is a regular epidemic, appearing
sometimes in the most absurd ambition, or in a ridiculous
kind of national vanity and the most shameless boasting.
However, they frustrate their own aims, for other people
make fun of them and call them Ja grande nation.

By way of specially illustrating this perverse and
exuberant respect for other people’s opinion, let me take a
passage from the Zimes of March 81st, 1846, giving a
detailed account of the execution of one Thomas Wix, an
apprentice who, from motives of vengeance, had murdered
his master. Here we have very unusual circumstances
and an extraordinary character, though one very suitable
for our purpose ; and these combine to give a striking
picture of this folly, which is so deeply rooted in human
nature, and allow us to form an accurate notion of the
extent to which it will go. On the morning of the
execution, says the report, ‘‘the rev. ordinary was early in
attendance upon him, but Wix, beyond a quiet demeanor,
betrayed no interest in his ministrations, appearing to
feel anxious only to acquit himself ‘bravely’ before the
spectators of his ignominious end, . ... In the pro-
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 45

cession Wix fell into his proper place with alacrity, and,
as he entered the Chapel-yard, remarked, sufficiently loud
to be heard by several persons near him, ‘ Now, then, as Dr.
Dodd said, I shall soon know the grand secret.? On
reaching the scaffold, the miserable wretch mounted the
drop without the slightest assistance, and, when he got to
the center, he bowed to the spectators twice, a proceeding
whick called forth a tremendous cheer from the degraded
crowd beneath.”

This is an admirable example of the way in which a
man, with death in the most dreadful form before his very
eyes, and eternity beyond it, will care for nothing but the
impression he makes upon a crowd of gapers, and the
opinion he leaves behind him in their heads. ‘There was
much the same kind of thing in the case of Lecomte, who
was executed at Frankfurt, also in 1846, for an attempt on
the king’s life. At the trial he was very much annoyed
that he was not allowed to appear, in decent attire, before
the Upper House; and on the day of the execution it was
a special grief to him that he was not permitted to shave.
It is not only in recent times that this kind of thing has
been known to happen. Mateo Aleman tells us, in the
Introduction to his celebrated romance, “Guzman de
Alfarache,” that many infatuated criminals, instead of
devoting their last hours to the welfare of their souls, as
they ought to have done, neglect this duty for the purpose
of preparing and committing to memory a speech to be
made from the scaffold.

I take these extreme cases as being the best illustrations
of what I mean: for they give us a magnified reflection of
our own nature. The anxieties of all of us, our worries,
vexations, bothers, troubles, uneasy apprehensions and
strenuous efforts are due, in perhaps the large majority of
instances,to what other people will say ; and we are just
as foolish in this respect as those miserable criminals.
Envy and hatred are very often traceable to a similar
source.

Now, it is obvious that happiness, which consists for the
most part in peace of mind and contentment, would be
served by nothing so much as by reducing this impulse of
human nature within reasonable limits—which would
perhaps make it one-fiftieth part of what it is now. ‘By
doing so, we should get rid of a thorn in the flesh which is
46 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

always causing us pain. But it is a very difficult task, be-
cause the impulsein question is a natural and innate perver-
sity of human nature. Tacitus, says, ‘I'he lust of fame is the
last that a wise man shakes off.” * The only way of putting an
end to this universal folly is to see clearly that it isa folly;
and this may be done by recognizing the fact that most of
the opinions in men’s heads are apt tobe false, perverse, er-
roneous and absurd, and so in themselves unworthy of any
attention; further, that other people’s opinions can have
very little real and positive influence upon usin most of the
circumstances and affairs of life. Again, this opinion is
generally of such an unfavorable character that 1t would
worry a man to death to hear everything that was said of
him, or the tone in which he was spoken of. And finally,
among other things, we should be clear about the fact that
honor itself has no really direct, but only an indirect,
value. If people were generally converted from this uni-
versal folly, the result would be such an addition to our
peace of mind and cheerfulness as at present seems in-
conceivable; people would present a firmer and more confi-
dent front to the world, and generally behave with less
embarrassment and restraint. Itis observable that a retired
mode of life has an exceedingly beneficial influence on our
peace of mind, and this is mainly because we thus escape
having to live constantly in the sight of others, and pay
everlasting regard to their casual opinions; in a word, we
are able to return upon ourselves. At the same time a
good deal of positive misfortune might be avoided, which
we are now drawn into by striving after shadows, or, to
speak more correctly, by indulging a mischievous piece of
folly; and we should consequently have more attention to
vive to solid realities and enjoy them with less inter-
ruption than at present. But yaderd rae xada—what is
worth doing is hard to do.

Section 2.—Pride.
The folly of our nature which we are discussing puts
forth three shoots, ambition, vanity and pride. The differ-
ence between the last two is this: pride is an established

conviction of one’s own paramount worth in some par-
ticular respect, while vanity is the desire of rousing such a

 

* Hist, iv., 6,
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 4?

conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the
secret hope of ultimately coming to the same conviction
one’sself. Pride works from within; it is the direct appreci-
ation of one’s self. Vanity isthe desire to arrive at this
appreciation indirectly, from without. So we find that
vain people are talkative, and proud, taciturn. But the
vain person ought to be aware that the good opinion of
others, which he strives for, may be obtained much more
easily and certainly by persistent silence than by speech,
even though he has very good things to say. Any one who
wishes to affect pride is not therefore a proud man; but he
will soon have to drop this, as every other assumed char-
acter.

It is only a firm, unshakeable conviction of pre-eminent
worth and special value which makes a man proud in the
true sense of the word—a conviction which may, no doubt,
be a mistaken one or rest on advantages which are of an
adventitious and conventional character : still pride is not
the less pride for all that, so long as it be present in real
earnest. And since pride is thus rooted in conviction, it
resembles every other form of knowledge in not being
within our own arbitrament. Pride’s worst foe—I mean
its greatest obstacle—is vanity, which courts the applause
of the world in order to gain the necessary foundation for
a high opinion of one’s own worth, while pride is based
upon a pre-existing conviction of it.

It is quite true that pride is something which is gener-
ally found fault with, and cried down; but usually, I
imagine, by those who have nothing upon which they can
pride themselves. In view of the impudence and fool-
hardiness of most people, any one who possesses any kind
of superiority or merit will do well to keep his eyes fixed
on it, if he does not want it to be entirely forgotten ; for
if a man is good-natured enough to ignore his own
privileges, and hob-nob with the generality of other people,
as if he were quite on their level, they will be sure to treat
him, frankly and candidly, as one of themselves. This
is a piece of advice I would specially offer to those whose
superiority is of the highest kind—real superiority, I mean,
of a purely personal nature—which caunot, like orders and
titles, appeal to the eye or ear at every moment ; as other-
wise, they will find that familiarity breeds contempt or, as
the Romans used to say, sus Minervum, ‘Joke with a
48 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

slave, and he’ll soon show his heels,” is an excellent Arabian
proverb; nor ought we to despise what Horace says,

“‘Sume superbiam
Quesitam meritis ”—

usurp the fame you have deserved. No doubt, when
modesty was made a virtue, it was a very advantageous
thing for the fools ; for everybody is expected to speak of
himself as if he were one. This is leveling down indeed !
for it comes to look as if there were nothing but fools in
the world..

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a
man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no
qualities of his own of which he can be proud ; otherwise,
he would not have recourse to those which he shares with
so many millions of his fellow-men. The man who is
endowed with important personal qualities will be only too
ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls
short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes.
But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he
can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation
to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all
its faults and follies, tooth and nail, thus re-imbursing
himself for his own inferiority. For example. if you
speak of the stupid and degrading bigotry of the English
nation with the contemptit deserves, you will hardly find one
Englishman in fifty to agree with you; but if there shonld
be one, he will generally happen to be an intelligent man.

The Germans have no national pride, which shows how
honest they are, as everybody knows and how dishonest are
those who, bya piece of ridiculous affectation, pretend that
they are proud of their country—the Deutsche Briider and
the demagogues who flatter the mob in order to mislead it.
I have heard it said that gunpowder was invented by a
German. I donbt it. Lichtenberg asks, ‘“‘Why is it that a
man who is not a German does notcare about pretending
that he is one; and that if he makes any pretense at all, it
is to be a Frenchman or an Englishman ?”*

 

* Translator’s Note.—It should be remembered that these remarks
were written in theearlier part of the present century, and that a
German philosopher nowadays, even though he were as apt to say
bitter things as Schopenhauer, could hardly write in a simliar
strain,
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 49

However that may be, individuality is a far more im-
portant thing than nationality, and in any given man de-
serves a thousand-fold more consideration, And since you
cannot speak of national character without referring to large
masses of people, it is impossible to be loud in your praises
and at the same time honest. National character is only
another name for the particular form which the littleness,
perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country.
If we become disgusted with one, we praise another, until
we get disgusted with this too. Every nation mocks at
other nations, and all are right.

The contents of this chapter, which treats, as I have
said, of what we represent in the world, or what we are in
the eyes of others, may be further distributed under three
heads; honor, rank and fame.

Section 3.—Rank.

Let us take rank first, as it may be dismissed in a few
words, although it plays an important part in the eyes of
the masses and of the philistines, and is a most useful
wheel in the machinery of the state.

It has a purely conventional value. Strictly speaking, it
isa sham; its method is to exact an artificial respect, and,
as a matter of fact, the whole thing is a mere farce.

Orders, it may be said, are billsof exchange drawn on
public opinion, and the measure of their value is the credit
of the drawer. Of course, as a substitute for pensions, they
save the state a good deal of money; and besides, they serve
a very useful purpose, if they are distributed with discrimi-
nation and judgment. For people in general have eyes
and ears, it is true: but not much else, very little judgment
indeed, or even memory. ‘There are many services to the
state quite beyond the range of their understanding: others
again, are appreciated and made much of for a time, and
then soon forgotten. It seems to me, therefore, very
proper, that a cross or a star should proclaim to the mass
of people always and everywhere, ‘“This man is not like you;
he has done something.” But orders lose their value when
they are distributed unjustly, or without due selection, or
in too great numbers: a prince should be as careful in con-
ferring them as a man of business is in signing a bill. It
js a pleonasm to inscribe on any order for distinguished
50 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

service; for every order ought to be for distinguished serv-
ice. That stands to reason.

Section 4.—Honor.

Honor is a much larger question than rank, and more
difficult to discuss. Tet us begin by trying to define it.

If I were to say honor is external conscience, and conscience
is inward honor, no doubta good many people would assent;
but there would be more show than reality about such a
definition, and it would hardly go to the root of the matter.
I prefer to say, honor is, on its objective side, other people’s
opinion of what we are worth; on its subjective side, it is
the respect we pay to this opinion. From the latter point
of view, to be a man of honor is to exercise what is
often a very wholesome, but by no means a purely moral,
influence.

The feelings of honor and shame exist in every man who
is not utterly depraved, and honor is everywhere recognized
as something particularly valuable. The reason of this is
as follows. By and in himselfa man can accomplish very
little; he is ike Robinson Crusoe on adesert island. It is
only in society that a man’s powers can be called into full
activity. He very soon finds thisout when his conscious-
ness begins to develop, and there arises in him the desire to
be looked upon as a useful member of society, as one, that
is, who is capable of playing his part as a man—pro parte
virili—thereby acquiring a right to the benefits of social
life. Now, to be a useful member of society, one must do
two things; firstly, what every one is expected to do every-
where, and, secondly, what one’sown particular position
in the world demands and requires.

But a man soon discovers that everything depends upon
his being useful, not in his own opinion, but in the opinion
of others; and so he tries his best to make that favorable
impression upon the world, to which he attaches such a
high value. Hence, this primitive and innate characteristic
of human nature, which is called the feeling of honor, or,
under another aspect, the feeling of shame—verecundia.
It is this which brings a blush to his eheek at the thought
of having suddenly to fall in the estimation of others, even
when he knows that he is innocent, nay, even if his
remissness extends to no absolute obligation, but only to
one which he has taken upon himself of his own free will,
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLAGE. bl

Conversely, nothing in life gives a man so much courage as
the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other
people regard him with favor; because it means that every
ove joins to give him help and protection, which is an
infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than any-
thing he can do himself.

The variety of relations in which a man can stand to
other people so as to obtain their confidence, that is their
good opinion, gives rise to a distinction between several
kinds of honor, resting chiefly on the different bearings
that mem may take to fwum; or, again, on the perform-
ance of various pledges ; or finally, on the relation of the
sexes. Hence, there are three main kinds of honor, each
of which takes various forms—civic honor, official honor,
and sexual honor.

Civic honor has the widest sphere of all. It consists
in the assumption that we shall pay unconditional respect to
the rights of others, and, therefore, never use any unjust
or unlawful means of getting what we want. It is the
condition of all peaceable intercourse between man and
man; and itis destroyed by anything that openly and
manifestly militates against this peaceable intercourse,
anything, accordingly, which entails punishment at the
hands of the law, always supposing that the punishment
is a just one.

The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that
moral character is unalterable: a single bad action implies
that future actions of the same kind will, under similar
circumstances, also be bad. This is well expressed by the
English use of the word character as meaning credit,
reputation, honor. Hence honor, once lost, can never be
recovered ; unless the loss rested on some mistake, such
as may occur if a man is slandered or his actions viewed
in a false light. So the law provides remedies against
slander, libel, and even insult: for insult, though it
amount to no more than mere abuse, is-a kind of summary
slander with a suppression of the reasons. What I mean
may be well put in the Greek phrase—not quoted from
any author—éorzr 7 Aovdopia d1afhod7 ovrrouds. It is true
that if a man abuses another, he is simply showing that
he has no real or true causes of complaint against him ;
as, otherwise, he would bring these forward as the premises,
and rely upon his hearers to draw the conclusion them-
52 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

selves : instead of which, he gives the conclusion and leaves
out the premises, trusting that people will suppose that he
has done so only for the sake of being brief.

Civic honor draws its existence and name from the
middle classes ; but it applies equally to all, not excepting
the highest. No man can disregard it, and it is a very
serious thing, of which every one should be careful not to
make light. The man who breaks confidence has forever
forfeited confidence, whatever he may do, and whoever he
may be; and the bitter consequences of the loss of con-
fidence can never be averted. .

There is a sense in which honor may be said to have a
negative character in opposition to the positive character
of fame. For honor is not the opinion people have of
particular qualities which a man may happen to possess
exclusively : it is rather the opinion they have of the
qualities which a man may be expected to exhibit, and to
which he should not prove false. Honor, therefore, means
that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he
is. Fame is something which must be won; hunor only
something which must not be lost. The absence of fame
is obscurity, which is only a negative ; but loss of honor is
shame, which is a positive quality. This negative char-
acter of honor must not be confused with anything passive ;
for honor is above all things active in its working. It is
the only quality which proceeds directly from the man who
exhibits it: it is concerned entirely with what he does and
leaves undone, and has nothing to do with the actions of
others or the obstacles they place in his way. It is some-
thing entirely in our own power—zoy ég’fjuwr. This distinc-
tion, as we shall see presently, marks off true honor from
the sham honor of chivalry.

Slander is the only weapon by which honor can be at-
tacked from without: and the only way to repel the attack
is to confute the slander with the proper amount of pub-
licity, and a due unmasking of him who utters it.

The reason why respect is paid to age is that old people
have necessarily shown in the course of their lives whether
or not they have been able to maintain their honor un-
blemished; while that of young people has not yet been put
to the proof, though they are credited with the possession
of it. For neither length of years—equaled, as it is, and
even excelled, in the case of some of the lower animals—
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 53

nor, again, experience, which is only a closer knowledge of
the world’s ways, can be any sufficient reason for the re-
spect which the young are everywhere required to show to-
ward the old; for if it were merely a matter of years, the
weakness which attends on age would call rather for con-
sideration than for respect. It is, however, a remarkable
fact that white hair always commands reverence—a rever-
ence really innate and instinctive. Wrinkles—a much
surer sign of old age—command no reverence at all; you
never hear any one speak of ‘‘venerable wrinkles;” but
“‘venerable white hair” is a common expression.

Honor has only an indirect value. For, as I explained
at the beginning of this chapter, what other people think
of us, if it affects us at all, can affect us only in so far as it
governs their behavior toward us, and only just so long as
we live with, or have to do with, them. But it is to
society alone that we owe that safety which we and our
possessions enjoy in a state of civilization; in all we do we
need the help of others, and they, in their turn, must have
confidence in us before they can have anything to do with
us. Accordingly, their opinion of us is, indirectly, a mat-
ter of great importance; though I cannot see how it can
have a direct or immediate value. This is an opinion also
held by Cicero. “I quite agree,” he writes, ‘with what
Chrysippus and Diogenes used to say, that a good reputation
is not worth raising a finger to obtain, if it were not that
it is so useful.”* This truth has been insisted upon at great
length by Helvetius in his chief work Del’Esprit,+ the
conclusion of which is that we love esteem not for its own
sake, but solely for the advantages which it brings. And
as the means can never be more than the end, that saying,
of which so much is made, ‘‘honor is dearer than life itself”
is, as I have remarked, a very exaggerated statement. So
much, then, for civic honor.

Orticial honor is the general opinion of other people that
a man who fills any office really has the necessary qualities
for the proper discharge of all the duties which appertain
to it. ‘The greater and more important the duties a man
has to discharge in the state, and the higher and more
influential the office which he fills, the stronger must be
the opinion which people have of the moral and intellect-

 

* « De finibus ” iii., 17. t “ Dise:” iii., 18.
£4 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

ual qualities which render him fit for his post. Theré-
fore, the higher his position, the greater must be the
degree of honor paid to him, expressed, as it is, in titles;
orders and the generally subservient behavior of others
toward him. Asa rule, a man’s official rank implies the
particular degree of honor which ought to be paid to him,
however much this degree may be modified by the capacity
of the masses to form any motion of its importance.
Still, as a matter of fact, greater honor is paid to 4 man
who fulfills special duties than to the common citizen,
whose honor mainly consists in keeping clear of dishonor.

Official honor demands, further, that the man who
occupies an office must maintain respect for it, for the
sake both of his colleagues and of those who will come
after him. This respect an official can maintain by a
proper observance of his duties, and by repelling any
attack that may be made upon the office itself or upon
its occupant: he must not, for instance, pass over unh-
heeded any statement to the effect that the duties of the
office are not properly discharged, or that the office itself
does not conduce to the public welfare. He must prove
the unwarrantable nature of such attacks by enforcing the
legal penalty for them.

Subordinate to the honor of official personages comes
that of those who serve the state in any other capacity, as
doctors, lawyers, teachers, any one, in short, who by gradu-
ating in any subject, or by any other public declaration
that he is qualified to exercise some special skill, claims to
practice it; in a word, the honor of all those who take any
public pledges whatever. Under this head comes military
honor, in the true sense of the word, the opinion that
people who have bound themselves to defend their country
really possess the requisite qualities which will enable them
to do so, especially courage, personal bravery and strength,
and that they are perfectly ready to defend their conntry
to the death, and never and under no circumstances desert
the flag to which they have once sworn allegiance. I have
here taken official honor in a wider sense than that in which
it is generally used, namely, the respect due by citizens to
an office itself.

__ In treating of sexual honor and the principles on which
it rests, a little more attention and analysie are necessary ;
and what I shall say will support my contention that all
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACR. 55
honor really rests upon a utilitarian basis. There are two
natural divisions of the subject—the honor of women and
the honor of men, in either side issuing in a well-under-
stood esprit de corps. The former is by far the more im-
portant of the two, because the most essential feature in
woman’s life is her relation to man.

Female honor is the general opinion in regard to a girl
that she is pure, and in regard to a wife that she is faith-
ful. The importance of this opinion rests upon the follow-
ing considerations. Women depend upon men in all
the relations of life; men upon women it might be
said, in one only. So anarrangement is made for mutual
interdependence—man undertaking responsibility for all
woman’s needs and also for the children that spring from
their union—an arrangement on which is based the welfare
of the whole female race. To carry out this plan, women
have to band together with a show of esprit de corps, and
present one undivided front to their common enemy, man
—who possesses all the good things of the earth, in virtue
of his superior physical and intellectual power—in_ order
to lay siege to and conquer him, and so get possession of
him and a share of those good things. To this end the
honor of all women depends upon the enforcement of the
rule that no woman should give herself to a man except in
marriage, in order that every man may be forced, as it
were, to surrender and ally himself with a woman ; by this
arrangement provision is made for the whole of the female
race. This is a result, however which can be obtained only
by astrict observance of the rule; and, accordingly, women
everywhere show true esprit de corps, in carefully insisting
upon its maintenance. Any girl who commits a breach of
the rule betrays the whole female race, because its welfare
would be destroyed if every woman were to do likewise ; so
she is cast out with shame as one who has lost her honor.
No woman will have anything more to do with her; she
is avoided like the plague. ‘I'he same doom is awarded to
a woman who breaks the marriage’tie ; for in so doing she
is false to the terms upon which the man capitulated :
and as her conduct is such as to frighten other men from
making a similar surrender, it imperils the welfare of all
her sisters. Nay more; this deception and coarse breach
of troth is a crime punishable by the loss, not only of per-
sonal, but also of civic honor. ‘This is why we minimize
56 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

the shame of a girl, but not of a wife; because, in the
former case, marriage can restore honor, while in the latter,
no atonement can be made for the breach of contract.

Once this esprit de corps is acknowledged to be the foun-
dation of female honor, and is seen to be a wholesome, nay,
a necessary arrangement, as at bottom a matter of prudence
and interest, its extreme importance for the welfare of
women will berecognized. Butit does not possess anything
more than a relative value. It isno absolute end, lying be-
yond all other aim of existence and valued above life itself.
In this view, there will be nothing to applaud in the forced
and extravagant conduct of a Lucretia or a Virginius—con-
duct which can easily degenerate into tragic farce, and
produce a terrible feeling of revulsion. The conclusion of
Emilia Galotti, for instance, makes one leave the theater
completely ill at ease; and, on the other hand, all the rules
of female honor cannot prevent a certain sympathy with
Clarain Egmont. To carry this principle of female honor
too far is to forget the end in thinking of the means—and
this is just what people often do; for such exaggeration
suggests that the value of sexual honor is absolute; while
the truth is that it is more relative than any other kind.
One might goso far as to say that its value is purely con-
vential, when one sees from Thomasius how in all ages and
countries, up to the time of the Reformation, irregularities
were permitted and recognized by law, with no derogation
to female honor—not to speak of the temple of Mylitta at
Babylon.*

There are also of course, certain circumstances in civil life
which make external forms of marriage impossible, especially
in Catholic countries, where there is no such thing as divorce.
Ruling princes everywhere, would, inmy opinion, do much
better, from a moral point of view, to dispense with forms
altogether rather than contract a morganatic marriage, the
descendants of which might raise claims to the throne if the
legitimate stock happened to die out: so that there is a pos-
sibility, though perhaps, a remote one, that a morganatic
marriage might produce acivil war. And, besides, such a
marriage, concluded in defiance of all outward ceremony, is
a concession made to women and priests—two classes of
persons to whom one should be most careful to give as little

 

* Herodotus, i. 199.
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 54

tether as possible. It is further to be remarked that every
man in a country can marry the woman of his choice, ex-
cept one poor individual, namely the prince. His hand
belongs to his country, and can be given in marriage only
for reasons of state, that is, for the good of the country.
Still, for all that, he isa man; and, asa man, he likes to
follow whither his heart leads. It is an unjust, ungrateful
and priggish thing to forbid, or to desire to forbid, a prince
from following bis inclinations in this matter; of course, as
long as the lady has no influeuce upon the government of
the country. From her point of view she occupies an ex-
ceptional position, and does not come under the ordinary
rules of sexual honor: for she has merely given herself to a
man who loves her, and whom she loves but cannot marry.
And in general, the fact that the principle of female honor
has no origin in nature, is shown by the many bloody sacri-
fices which have been offered to it—the murder of chil-
dren and the mother’s suicide. No doubt a girl who con-
travenes the code commits a breach of faith against her whole
sex: but this faith is one which is only secretly taken for
granted, and not sworn to. And since, in most cases, her
own prospects suffer most immediately, her folly is infinitely
greater than her crime.

The corresponding virtue in men is a product of the one
I have been discussing. It is their esprit de corps, which
demands that, once a man has made that surrender of him-
self in marriage which is so advantageous to his conqueror,
he shall take care that the terms of the treaty are maintained
both in order that the agreement itself may lose none of its
force by the permission of any laxity in its observance, and
that men, having given up everything, may, at least, be as-
sured of their bargain, namely, exclusive possession. Ac-
cordingly, it is part of a man’s honor to resent a breach of
the marriage tie on the part of his wife, and to punish it,
at the very least by separating from her. If he condones the
offense, his fellow-men cry shame upon him: but the shame
in this case is not nearly so foul as that of the woman who
has lost her honor: the stain is by no means of so deep a
dye—levioris notae macula—because a man’s relation to
woman is subordinate to many other and more important
affairs in his life. ‘The two great dramatic poets of modern
times have each taken man’s honor as the theme of two
plays; Shakespeare in “‘Othello” and ‘“The Winter’s Tale,”
58 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

and Calderon in ‘‘El medico de su honra” (the ‘Physician
of his Honor),” and “‘Asecreto agravios ecreta vengeanza”
(‘for Secret Insult Secret Vengeance).” It should be said,
however that honor demands the punishment of the wife
only; to punish her paramout too, is a work of superogation.
This confirms the view I have taken, that a man’s honor
originates in esprit de corps.

The kind of honor which I have been discussing hitherto
has always existed in its various forms and _ principles
among all nations and at all times; although the history
of female honor shows that its principles have undergone
certain local modifications at different periods. But there
is another species of honor which differs from this entirely,
a species of honor of which the Greeks and Romans had
no conception, and up to this day it is perfectly unknown
among Chinese, Hindoos or Mohammedans. It is a
kind of honor which arose only in the Middle Age, and is
indigenous only to Christian Europe, nay, only to an ex-
tremely small portion of the population, that is to say, the
higher classes of society and those who ape them. It is
knightly honor, or point d’honneur. Its principles are
quite different from those which underlie the kind of honor
I have been treating until now, and in some respects are
even opposed to them. Thesort Iam referring to produces
the cavalier; while the other kind creates the man of
honor. As this is so, 1 shall proceed to give an explana-
tion of its principles, as a kind of code or mirror of
knightly courtesy.

(1.) To begin with, honor of this sort consists, not in
other people’s opinion of what we are worth, but wholly
and entirely in whether they express it or not, no matter
whether they really have any opinion at all, let alone
whether they know of reasons for having one. Other
people may entertain the worst opinion of us in con-
sequence of what we do, and may despise us as much as they
like ; so long as no one dares to give expression to his
opinion, our honor remains untarnished. So if our
actions and qualities compel the highest respect from other
people, and, they have no option but to give this respect
—as soon as any one, no matter how wicked or foolish he
may be, utters something depreciatory of us, our honor is
offended, nay, gone forever, nnless we can manage to
restore it. A superfluous proof of what I say, namely,
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 59

that knightly honor depends, not upon what people think,
but upon what they say, is furnished by the fact that in-
sults can be withdrawn, or, if necessary, from the subject of
an apology, which makes them as though they had never
been uttered. Whether the opinion which underlay the
expression has also been rectified, and why the expression
should ever have been used, are questions which are
perfectly unimportant : so long as the statement is with-
drawn, all is well. The truth is that conduct of this kind
aims, not at earning respect, but at extorting it.

(2.) In the second place, this sort of honor rests, not on
what a man does, but on what he suffers, the obstacles
he encounters ; differing from the honor which prevails in
all else, in consisting, not in what he says or does himself,
but in what another man says or does. His honor is thus
at the mercy of every man who can talk it away on the tip
of his tongue ; and if he attacks it, in a moment it is gone
forever—unless the man who is attacked manages to wrest
it back again by a process which 1 shall mention presently,
a process which involves danger to his life, health, freedom,
property and peace of mind. A man’s whole conduct may
be in accordance with the most righteous and noble prin-
ciples, his spirit may be the purest that ever breathed, his
intellect of the very highest order; and yet his honor may
disappear the moment that any one is pleased to insult
him, any one at all who has not offended against this code
of honor himself, let him be the most worthless rascal or
the most stupid beast, an idler, gambler, debtor, a man, in
short, of no account at all. It is usually this sort of
fellow who likes to insult people; for, as Seneca* rightly
remarks, ‘‘ ut quisgne contemtissimus et ludibrio est it a
solutissime lingue est”—the more contemptible and ridicu-
lous a man is, the readier he is with his tongue. His in-
sults are most likely to be directed against the very kind
of man I have described, because people of different tastes
can never be friends, and the sight of pre-eminent merit
is apt to raise the secret ire of a ne’er-do-well. What
Goethe says in the ‘‘ West-dstlicher Divan,” is quite true,
that it is uselesss to complain against your enemies; for
they can never become your friends, if your whole being
is a standing reproach to them :

 

* « De Constantia,” 11,
60 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

«¢Was klagst du tiber Feinde?
Sollten Solche je werden Freunde
Denen das Wesen, wie du bist,
Im stillen ein ewiger Vorwurf ist?”

It is obvious that people of this worthless description
have good cause to be thankful to the principle of honor,
because it puts them on a level with people who in every
other respect stand far above them. If a fellow likes to
insult any one, attribute to him, for example, some bad
quality, this is taken as prima facie a well-founded opinion
true in fact; a decree, as it were, with all the force of law;
nay, if it is not at once wiped out in blood, it is a judg-
ment which holds good and valid to all time. In other
words, the man who is insulted remains—in the eyes of all
honorable people—what the man who uttered the insult—
even though he were the greatest wretch on earth—was
pleased to call him; for he has ‘‘put up with” the insult—the
technical term, I believe. Accordingly, all honorable
people will have nothing more todo with him, and treat
him like a leper, and, it may be, refuse to go into any com-
pany where he may be found, and so on.

This wise proceeding may, I think, be traced back to the
fact that in the Middle Age, up to the fifteenth century, it
was not the accuser in any criminal process who had to
prove the guilt of the accused, but the accused who had to
prove his innocence.* This he could do by swearing he was
not guilty; and his backers—consacramentales—had to come
and swear that in their opinion he was incapable of perjury.
If he could find no one to help him in this way, or the ac-
cuser took objection to his backers, recourse was had to
trial “by the judgment of God,” which generally meant a
duel. For the accused was now in disgrace.t and had to
clear himself. Here then is the origin of the notion of
disgrace, and of that whole system which prevails nowa-
days among honorable people—only that the oath is omitted.
This is also the explanation of that deep feeling of indigna-
tion which honorable people are called upon to show if they

 

* See C. G. von Wachter’s ‘‘ Beitrage zur deutschen Geschichte,”
especially the chapter on criminal law.

+ Translator’s Note.—It is true that this expression has another and
special meaning in the technical terminology of chivalry, but it is the
nearest English equivalent which I can find for the German—ein
Beschoitener.
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 6L

are given the lie: itisa reproach which they say must be wiped
outin blood. It seldom comes to this pass, however, though
lies are of common occurrence: but in England, more than
elsewhere, itis a superstition which has taken very deep
root. Asa matter of order, a man who threatens to kill
another for telling a lie should never have told one himself.
The fact is, that the criminal trial of the Middle Age also
admitted of a shorter form. In reply to the charge, the
accused answered: ‘That isa lie,” whereupon it was left to
be decided by “‘the judgment of God.” Hence, the code of
knightly honor prescribes that, when the lie is given, an
appeal toarms follows asa matter of course. So much, then
for the theory of insult.

But there is something even worse than insult, something
so dreadful that I must beg pardon of all ‘‘honorable people”
for so much as mentioning it in this code of knightly honor
for I know they will shiver, and their hair will stand on
end, at the very thought of it—the swmmwm malum the
greatest evil on earth, worse than death and damnation. A
man may give another—horribile dictu!—aslap or a blow.
Thisis such an awful thing, and so utterly fatal to all
honor, that, while any other species of insult may be healed
by blood-letting, this can be cured only by the coup-de-
grace.

(3.) In the third place, this kind of honor has absolutely
nothing to do with what a man may be in and for himself;
or, again, with the question whether his moral character can
ever become better or worse, and all such pedantic inquiries.
If your honor happens to be attacked, or toall appearances
gone, it can very soon be restored in its entirety if you are
only quick enough in having recourse to the one universal
remedy—a duel. But if the aggressor does not belong to
the classes which recognize the code of knightly honor, or
has himself once offended against it, there is a safer way of
meeting any attack upon your honor, whether it consists
in blows, or merely in words. If you are armed, you can
strike down your opponent on the spot, or perhaps an hour
later. This will restore your honor.

But if you wish to avoid such an extreme step, from fear
of any unpleasant consequences arising therefrom, or from
uncertainty as to whether the aggressor is subject to the
laws of knightly honor or not, there is another means of
making your position good, namely, the Avantage. This
62 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

consists in returning rudeness with still greater rudeness;
and if insults are no use, youcan try a blow, which forms a
sort of climax in the redemption of your honor; for instance
a box on the ear may be cured by a blow with a stick, and
a blow with a stick bya thrashing with a horsewhip; and
as the approved remedy for this last, some people recom-
mend you to spit at your opponent. * If all these means
are of no avail, you must not shrink from drawing blood.
And the reason for these methods of wiping out insult is,
in this code, as follows:

(4.) To receive an insult is disgraceful; to give one, honor-
able. Let me take an example. My opponent has truth,
right and reason on his side. Very well. I insult him.
Thereupon right and honor leave him and come to me, and
for the time being, he has lost them—until he gets them
back, not by the exercise of right or reason, but by ‘shoot-
ing and sticking me. Accordingly, rudeness is a quality
which, in point of honor, is a substitute for any other and
outweighs them all. The rudest is always right. What
more do you want? However stupid, bad or wicked a man
may have been, if he is only rude into the bargain, he con-
dones and legitimizes all his faults. If in any discussion
or conversation, another man shows more knowledge,
greater love of truth, a sounder judgment, better under-
standing than we, or generally exhibits intellectual qualities
which cast ours into the shade, we can at once annul his
superiority and our own.shallowness, and in our turn_be
superior to him, by being insulting and offensive. For
rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses in-
tellect. Ifour opponent does not care for our mode of at-
tack, and will not answer still more rudely, so as to plunge
us into the ignoble rivalry of the Avantage, we are the
victors and honor is on our side. Truth, knowledge,
understanding, intellect, wit, must beat a retreat and leave
the field to this almighty insolence.

“Honorable people” immediately make a show of moun-
ting their war-horse, ifany one utters an opinion adverse to
theirs, or shows more intelligence than they can muster;
and if in any controversy they are ata loss for a reply, they

 

* Translatur’s Note.—It must be remembered that Schopenhauer
is here describing, or perhaps caricaturing, the manners and customs
of the German aristocracy of half a century ago. Now, of course,
nous avons change tout celal
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 63

look about for some weapon of rudeness, which willserve as
well and come readier to haud; so they retire masters of the
position. It must now be obvious that people are quite
right in applauding this principle of honor as having
ennobled the tone of society. ‘This principle springs from
tee which forms the heart and soul of the entire
code.

(5.) Fifthly, the code implies that the highest court to
which a man can appeal in any differences he may have
with another on a point of honor is the court of physical
force, that is, of brutality. Every piece of rudeness is,
strictly speaking, an appeal to brutality: for it isa declara-
tion that intellectual strength and moral insight are in-
competent to decide, and that the battle must be fought
out by physical force—a strugele which, in the case of man,
whom Franklin defines as a tool-making animal, is decided
by the weapons peculiar to the species; and the decision is
irrevocable. ‘This is the well-known principle of the right
of might—irony, of course, like the wit ofa fool, a par-
alel phrase. The honor of aknight may be called the glory
of might.

(6.) Lastly, if, as we saw above, civic honor is very
scrupulous in the matter of mewm and tuum, paying
great respect to obligations and a promise once made, the
code we are here discussing displays, on the other hand,
the noblest liberality. There is only one word which may
not be broken, the word of honor—‘‘ upon my honor,” as
people say—the presumption being, of course, that every
other form of promise may be broken. Nay, if the worst
comes to the worst, it is easy to break even one’s word of
honor, and still remain honorable—again by adopting that
universal remedy, the duel, and fighting with those who
maintain that we pledged our word. Further, there is one
debt, and onealone, that under no circumstances must be left
upaid—a gambling debt, which has accordingly been called
a debt of honor. In all other kinds of debt you may cheat
Jews and Christiansas much as you like; and your
knightly honor remains without a stain.

The unprejudiced reader will see at once that such a
strange, savage and ridiculous code of honor as this has no
foundation in human nature, nor any warrant in a healthy
view of human affairs. The extremely narrow sphere of
its operation serves only to intensify the feeling, which is
64 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

exclusively confined to Europe since the Middle Age, and
then only to the upper classes, officers and soldiers, and
people who imitate them, Neither Greeks nor Romans
knew anything of this code of honor or of its principles ;
nor the highly civilized nations of Asia, ancient or modern.
Among them no other kind of honor is recognized but
that which I discussed first, in virtue of which a man is
what he shows himself to be by his actions, not what any
wagging tongue is pleased to say of him. They thought
that what a man said or did might perhaps affect his own
honor, but not any other man’s. To them, a blow was
but a blow —and any horse or donkey could give a harder
one—a blow which under certain circumstances might
make a man angry and demand immediate vengeance ;
but it had nothing to do with honor. No one kept ac-
count of blows or insulting words, or of the satisfaction
which was demanded or omitted to be demanded. Yet in
personal bravery and contempt of death, the ancients were
certainly not inferior to the nations of Christian Europe.
The Greeks and Romans were thorough heroes, if you like ;
but they knew nothing about point @honneur. If they
had any idea of a duel, it was totally unconnected with the
life of the nobles; it was merely the exhibition of mer-
cenary gladiators, slaves devoted to slaughter, condemned
criminals, who, alternately with wild beasts, were set to
butcher one another to make a Roman holiday. When
Christianity was introduced, gladiatorial shows were done
away with, and their place taken, in Christian times, by
the duel, which was a way of settling difficulties by “the
judgment of God.” If the gladiatorial fight was a cruel
sacrifice to the prevailing desire for great spectacles,
dueling is acruel sacrifice to existing prejudices ; a sacrifice,
not of criminals, slaves and prisoners, but of the noble and
the free.*

There are a great many traits in the character of the
ancients which show that they were entirely free from these
prejudices. When for instance, Marius was summoned
to a duel by a Teutonic chief, he returned answer to the
effect that, if the chief were tired of his life, he might go

 

* Translator’s Note. These and other remarks on dueling will
no doubt wear a belated look to English readers; but they are
hardly yet antiquated for most parts of the Continent,
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 65

and hang himself; at the same time he offered him a
veteran gladiator for a round or two. Plutarch relates in
his life of Themistocles that Eurybiades, who was in com-
mand of the fleet, once raised his stick to strike him;
whereupon Themistocles, instead of drawing bis sword,
simply said : ‘Strike, but hear me.” Tow sorry the reader
must be, if he is an honorable man, to find that we have
no information that the Athenian officers refused in a body
to serve any longer under Themistocles, if he acted like
that! There isa modern French writer who declares that
if any one considers Demosthenes a man of honor, his
ignorance will excite a smile of pity, and that Cicero was
not a man of honor either!* In a certain passage in
Plato’s ‘‘ Laws,”’} the philosopher speaks at length of azuta
or assault, showing us clearly enough that the ancients had
no notion of any feeling of honor in connection with such
matters. Socrates’ frequent discussions were often fol-
lowed by his being severely handled, and he bore it all
mildly. Once, for instance, when somebody kicked him, the
patience with which he took the insult surprised one of
his friends. ‘‘ Do you think,” said Socrates, “ that if an ass
happened to kick me, I should resent it ?”{ On another
occasion, when he was asked, ‘‘ Hasnotthat fellow abused
and insulted you ?” ‘*No,” was his answer, ‘‘ what he says is
not addressed to me.Ӥ Stobzeus has preserved a long passage
from Musonius, from which we can see how the ancients
treated insults. They knew no other form of satisfaction
than that which the law provided, and wise people despised
even this. Ifa Greek received a box on the ear, he could
get satisfaction by the aid of the law: as is evident from
Plato’s ‘‘Gorgias,” where Socrates’ opinion may be found.
The same thing may be seen in the account given by
Gellius of one Lucius Veratius, who had the audacity to
give some Roman citizens whom he met on the road a box
on the ear, without any provocation whatever; but to
avoid any ulterior consequences, he told a slave to bring a
bag of small money, and on the spot paid the trivial legal
penalty to the men whom he had astonished by his
conduct.

 

* Soirées littéraires: par C. Durand, Rouen, 1828. +Bk. ix,
¢ Diogenes Laertius, ii. 21, § Ibid. 36,
66 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

Crates, the celebrated cynic philosopher, got such a
box onthe ear from Nicodromus, the musician, that his face
swelled up and became black and blue; whereupon he put
a label on his forehead, with the inscription, Nicodromus
fecit, which brought much disgrace to the fluteplayer who
had committed such a piece of brutality upon the man
whom all Athens honored as a household god.* And in a
letter to Melesippus, Diogenes of Sinope tells us that he
got a beating from the drunken sons of the Athenians ; but
he adds that it was a matter of no importance.t And
Seneca devotes the last few chapters of his ‘‘ De Constantia ”
to a lengthy discussion on insult—contumelia ; in order to
show that a wise man will take no notice of it. In Chapter
XIV. he says, ‘‘ What shall a wise man do, if he is givena
blow? What Cato did, when someone struck him on the
mouth ; not fire up or avenge the insult, or even return
the blow, but simply ignore it.”

“Yes,” you say, ‘‘but these men were philosophers.” —And
you are fools, eh? Precisely.

It is clear that the whole code of knightly honor was ut-
terly unknown to the ancients; for the simple reason that
they always took anatural and unprejudiced view of human
affairs, and did not allow themselves to be influenced by any
such vicious and abominable folly. A blowin the face was
to them a blow and nothing more, a trivial physical injury;
wheras the moderns make a catastrophe out of it, a theme
for a tragedy: as, for instance, in the Cid of Corneille, or
in arecent (rerman comedy of middle class life, called ‘“‘The
Power of Circumstance,” which should have been entitled
“The Power of Prejudice.” If a member of the national
assembly at Paris got a blow on the ear, it would resound
from one end of Europe to theother. The examples which
I have given of the way in which such an occurrence would
have been treated in classic times may not suit the ideas of
“honorable people;” so let me recommend to their notice,
asa kind of antidote, the story of Monsieur Desglands in
Diderot’s masterpiece, ‘‘Jacques le fataliste.” It isan excel-
lent specimen of modern knightly honor, which, no doubt
they will find enjoyable and edifying. {

 

* Diogenes Laertius, vi. 87, and Apul: Flor: p. 126.
+ Cf. Casaubon’s Note, ad Diog. Laert., vi. 33.
¢ Transiator’s Note.—The story to which Schopenhauer here refers
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 6%

From what I have said it must be quite evident that the
principle of knightly honor has no essential and spontaneous
origin inhuman nature. It is an artificial product, and its
source is not hard to find. Its existence obviously dates
from the time when people used their fists more than their
heads, when priestcraft had enchained the human intellect,
the much bepraised Middle Age, with its system of chiv-
alry. That was the time when people let the Almighty
not only care for them but judge for them too: when dif-
ficult cases were decided by an ordeal, a “judgment of God;”
which, with few exceptions, meant a duel, not only where
nobles were concerned, butin the case of ordinary citizens
as well. There is a néat illustration of this in Shakespeare’s
“Henry VI.”* Every judicialsentence was subject to an ap-
peal to arms—a court, as it were of higher instance, namely
“the judgment of God;” and this really meant that physical
strength and activity, that is, our animal nature, usurped
the place of reason on the judgment seat, deciding in mat-
ters of right and wrong, not by what a man had done, but
by the force with which he was opposed, the samesystem, in
fact as prevails to-day under the principles of knightly honor.
If any one doubts that such is really the origin of our
modern duel, let him read an excellent work by J. B. Mil-
lingen, ‘“he History of Dueling.” + Nay, you may still
find among the supporters of the system—who, by the way,
are not usually the most educated or thoughtful of men—
some who look upon the result of a duelas really consti-
tuting a divine judgment in the matter in dispute: no doubt
in consequence of the traditional feeling on the subject.

 

is briefly as follows: Two gentlemen, one of whom was named Des-
glands, were paying court to the same lady. As they sat attable side
by side, with the lady opposite, Desglands did his best to charm her
with his conversation; but she pretended not to hear him, and kept
looking at his rival. In the agony of jealousy, Desglands, as he was
holding a fresh egg in his hand, involuntarily crushed it; the shell
broke, and its contents bespattered his rival’s face. Seeing him raise
his hand, Desglands seized it and whispered: ‘‘Sir, I take it as given.”
The next day Desglands appeared with a large piece of black stick-
ing-plaster upon his right cheek. In the duel which followed, Des--
glands severely wounded his rival; upon which he reduced the size of
the plaster. When his rival recovered, they had another duel; Des-
glands drew blood again, and again made his plaster a little smaller;
and so on for five or six times. After every duel Desglands’ plaster
grew less and less, until at last his rival was killed.

* Part IL, Act 2, Sc. 3. + Published in 1849,
68 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

But leaving aside the question of origin, it must now be
clear to us that the main tendency of the principle is to
use physical menace for the purpose of extorting an appear-
ance of respect which is deemed too difficult or superfluous
to acquire in reality; a proceeding which comes to much
the same thing as if you were to prove the warmth of your
room by holding your hand on the thermometer and so
make it rise. In fact, the kernel of the matter is this:
whereas civic honor aims at peaceable intercourse, and con-
sists in the opinion of other people that we deserve full
confidence, because we pay unconditional respect to their
rights; knightly honor, on the other hand, lays down that
we are to be feared, as being determined at all costs to
maintain our own,

As not much reliance can be placed upon human integrity,
the principle that it is more essential to arouse fear than to
invite confidence would not, perhaps, be a false one, if we
were living in a state of nature, where every man would
have to protect himself and directly maintain his own
rights. But in civilized life, when the state undertakes the
protection of our person and property, the principle is no
longer applicable: it stands, like the castles and watch-
towers of the age when might was right, a useless and for-
lorn object, amid well-tilled fieldsand frequented roads, or
even railways.

Accordingly, the application of knightly honor, which
still recognizes this principle, is confined to those small
cases of personal assault which meet with but slight punish-
ment at the hands of the law, or even none at all, for de
minimis non—mnere trivial wrongs, committed sometimes
only in jest. The consequence of this limited application
of the principle is that it has forced itself into an exagger-
ated respect for the value of the person—a respect utterly
alien to the nature, constitution or destiny of man—which
it has elevated into a species of sanctity: and as it con-
siders that the state has imposed a very insufficient penalty
on the commission of such trivial injuries, it takes upon
itself to punish them by attacking the aggressor in life or
limb. The whole thing manifestly rests upon an excessive
degree of arrogant pride, which, completely forgetting
what man really is, claims that he shall be absolutely free
from all attack or even censure. Those who determine
to carry out this principle by main force, and announce,
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 69

as their rule of action, ‘whoever insults or strikes me shall
die!” ought for their pains to be banished the country.*

As a palliative to this rash arrogance, people are in the
habit of giving wayon everything. If two intrepid persons
meet, and neither will give way, the slightest difference
may cause a shower of abuse, then fisticuffs, and, finally,
a fatal blow: so that it would really be a more decorous
proceeding to omit the intermediate steps and appeal to
arms at once. An appeal to arms has its own special for-
malities; and these have developed into a rigid and precise
system of laws and regulations, together forming the most
solemn farce there is—a regular temple of honor dedicated
to folly! For if two intrepid persons dispute over some
trivial matter (more important affairs are dealt with by
law), one of them, the cleverer of the two, will of course
yield; and they will agree to differ. That this is so is
proved by the fact that common people—or, rather, the
numerous classes of the community who do not acknowledge
the principle of knightly honor, let any dispute run its
natural course. Among these classes homicide is a hun-
dred-fold rarer than among those—and they amount per-
haps, in all, to hardly one ina thousand—who pay homage
to the principie : and even blows are of no very frequent
occurrence.

Then it has been said that the manners and tone of good
society are ultimately based upon this principle of honor,

 

* Knightly honor is the child of pride and folly, and it is need,
not pride, which is the heritage of the human race. It isa very re-
markable fact that this extreme form of pride should be found ex-
clusively among the adherents of the religion which teaches the
deepest humility. Still, this pride must not be put down to religion,
but, rather, to the fuedal system, which made every nobleman a petty
sovereign who recognized no human judge, and learned to regard
lis person as sacred and inviolable, and any attack upon it, or any
blow or insulting word, as an offense punishable by death. The
principle of knightly honor and of the duel was at first confined to
the nobles, and, later on, also to officers in the army, who, enjoying
a kind of off-and-on relationship with the upper classes, though they
were never incorporated with them, were anxious not to be behind
them. It is true that duels were the product of the old ordeals; but
the latter are not the foundation, but rather the consequence and ap-
plication of the principle of honor: the man who recognized no human
judge appealed to thedivine. Ordeals, however, are not peculiar to
Christendom: they may be found in great force among the Hindoos,
especially of ancient times; and there are traces of them even now,
40 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

which, with its system of duels, is made out to be a bul-
wark against the assaults of savagery and rudeness. But
Athens, Corinth and Rome could assuredly boast of good,
nay, excellent society, and manners and tone of a high order,
without any support from the bogey of knightly honor.
It is true that women did not occupy that prominent place
in ancient society which they hold now, when conversation
has taken on a frivolous and trifling character, to the ex-
clusion of that weighty discourse which distinguished the
ancients. This change has certainly contributed a great
deal to bring about the tendency, which is observable in
good society nowadays, to prefer personal courage to the
possession of any other quality. The fact is that personal
courage is really a very subordinate virtue—merely the
distinguishing mark of a subaltern—a virtue, indeed, in
which we are surpassed by the lower animals ; or else you
would not hear people say, ‘‘as brave as a lion.” Far from
being the pillar of society knightly honor affords a sure
asylum, in general for dishonesty and wickedness, and also
for small incivilities, want of consideration and unmanner-
liness. Rude behavior is often passed over in silence be-
cause no one cares to risk his neck in correcting it.

After what I have said, it will not appear strange that
the dueling system is carried to the highest pitch of
sanguinary zeal precisely in that nation whose political and
financial records show that they are not too honorable.
What that nation is like in its private and domestic life, is
a question which may be best put to those who are ex-
perienced in the matter. Their urbanity and social culture
have long been conspicuous by their absence.

There is no truth, then, in such pretexts. It can he
urged with more justice that as, when you snarl at a dog,
he snarls in return, and when you pet him, he fawns; so
it lies in the nature of men to return hostility by hostility,
and to be embittered and irritated at any signs of deprecia-
tory treatment or hatred: and, as Cicero says, ‘there is
something so penetrating in the shaft of envy that even
men of wisdom and worth find its wound a painful one ;”
and nowhere in the world, except, perhaps, in a few
religious sects, is an insult or a blow taken with equanimity.
And yet a natural view of either would in no case demand
anything more than a requital proportionate to the offense,
and would never go the length of assigning death as the
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. a4

proper penalty for any one who accuses another of lying
or stupidy or cowardice. The old German theory of blood
for a blow is a revolting superstition of the age of chivalry.
And in any case the return or requital of an insult is dic-
tated by anger, and not by any such obligation of honor
and duty as the advocates of chivalry seek to attach to it:
The fact is that, the greater the truth, the greater the
slander ; and it is clear that the slightest hint of some real
delinquency will give much greater offense than a most
terrible accusation which is perfectly baseless: so that a
man who is quite sure that he has done nothing to deserve
a reproach may treat it with contempt, and will be safe in
doing so. The theory of honor demands that he shall show
a susceptibility which he does not possess, and take bloody
vengeance for insults which he cannot feel. A man must
himself have but a poor opinion of his own worth who
hastens to prevent the utterance of an unfavorable opinion
by giving his enemy a black eye.

True appreciation of his own value will make a man
really indifferent to insult ; but if he cannot help resenting
it, a little shrewdness and culture will enable him to save
appearances and dissemble his anger. If we could only
get rid of this superstition about honor—the idea, I mean,
that it disappears when you are insulted, and can be
restored by returning the insult; if we could only stop
people from thinking that wrong, brutality and insolence
can be legalized by expressing readiness to give satisfaction,
that is, to fight in defense of it, we should all soon come
to the general opinion that insult and depreciation are
like a battle in which the loser wins; and that, as Vin-
cenzo Monti says, abuse resembles a church procession,
because it always returns to the point from which it sets out.
If we could only get people to look upon insult in_ this
light, we should no longer have to say something rude in
order to prove that we are in the right. Now, unfortu-
nately, if we want to take a serious view of any question, we
have first of all to consider whether it will not give offense
in some way or other to the dullard, who generally shows
alarm and resentment at the merest sign of intelligence:
and it may easily happen that the head which contains the
intelligent view has to be pitted against the noddle which
is empty of everything but narrowness and stupidity.
If all this were done away with, intellectual superiority
92 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

could take the leading place in society which is its due—a
place now occupied, though people do not like to confess
it, by excellence of physique, mere fighting pluck, in fact :
and the natural effect of such a change would be that the
best kind of people would have one reason the less for
withdrawing from society. This would pave the way for
the introduction of real courtesy and genuinely good
society, such as undoubtedly existed in Athens, Corinth
and Rome. If any one wants to see a good example of
what I mean I should like him to read Xenophon’s
“« Banquet.”

The last argument in defense of knightly honor no doubt
is, that, but for its existence, the world—awful thought!
—would be a regular bear-garden. To which I may briefly
reply that nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a
thousand who do not recognize the code, have often given
and received a blow without any fatal consequences: where-
as among the adherents of the code, a blowusnally means
death to one of the parties. But let meexamine this argu-
ment more closely.

I have often tried to find some tenable, or at any rate,
plausible basis—other than a merely conventional one—some
positive reasons, that is to say, for the rooted conviction
which a portion of mankind entertains, that a blow isa very
dreadful thing; but I have looked for it in vain, either in
the animal or in the rational side of human nature. A
blow is, and always will be, a trivial physical injury which
one man can do to another: proving, thereby, nothing more
than his superiority in strength or skill, or that his enemy
was off his guard. Analysis will carry usnofurther. The
same knight who regardsa blow from the human hand as
the greatest of evils, if he gets a ten times harder blow from
his horse, will give you the assurance, ashe limps away in
suppressed pain, that it is amatter of noconsequence what-
ever. So I have come to think that it is the human hand
which is at the bottom ofthe mischief. And yet in a bat-
tle the knight may get cuts and thrusts from the same hand,
and still assure you that his wounds are not worth mention-
ing. Now, I hear that a blow from the flat of a sword is
not by any means so bad as a blow with a stick; and that, a
short time ago, cadets were liable to be punished by the one
but not the other, and that the very greatest honor of all is
the accolade. This is all the psychological or moral basis
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLAGE. Wg

that I can find; and so there is nothing left me but to pro-
nounce the whole thing an antiquated superstition that has
taken deep root, and one more of the many examples which
show the force of tradition. My view is confirmed by the
well-known fact that in China a beating with a bamboo is
a very frequent punishment for the common people, and
even for officials of every class; which shows that human
nature, even in a highly civilized state, does not run in the
same groove here and in China.

On the contrary, an unprejudiced view of human nature
shows that it is just as natural for man to beat as it is for
savage animals to bite and rend in pieces, or for horned
beasts to butt or push. Man may be said to be the animal
that beats. Hence it is revolting to our sense of the fitness
of things to hear, as we sometimes do, that one man has
bitten another; on the other hand, it isa natural and every-
day occurrence for him to get blows or give them. It isin-
telligible enough that, as we become educated, we are glad
to dispense with blows by asystem of mutual restraint. But
it is a cruel thing to compel a nation or a single class to re-
gard a blow as an awful misfortune which must have death
and murder for its consequences. There are too many
genuine evils in the world to allow of our increasing them by
imaginary misfortunes, which bring real ones in their train;
and yet this is the precise effect of the superstition, which
thus proves itself at once stupid and malign.

It does not seem to me wise of governments and legis-
lative bodies to promote any such folly by attempting to do
away with flogging asa punishment in civil or military life.
Their idea is that they are acting in the interests of human-
ity; but, in point of fact, they are doing just the opposite;
for the abolition of flogging will serve only to strengthen
this in human and abominable superstition, to which so
many sacrifices have already been made. For all offenses,
except the worst, a beating is the obvious, and therefore the
natural penalty; anda man who will notlisten to reason will
yield to blows. It seems to me right and proper to administer
corporal punishment to the man who possesses nothing and
therefore cannot be fined, or cannot be put in prison be-
cause his master’s interests would suffer by the loss of his
services. There are really no arguments against it; only
mere talk about ‘‘the dignity of man”—talk which proceeds,
not from any clear notions on the subject, but from the per-
wa THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

nicious superstition I have been describing. That it is a
superstition which lies at the bottom of the whole business
is proved by an almost laughable example. Not long ago
in the military discipline of many countries, the cat was
replaced by the stick. Ineither case the object was to
produce physical pain; but the latter method involved no
disgrace, and was not derogatory to honor. .

By promoting this superstition, the state is playing into
the hands of the principle of knightly honor, and therefore
of the duel; while at the same time itis trying, or at any
rate it pretends that it is trying to abolish the duel by leg-
islative enactment. Asa natural consequence we find that
this fragmentof the theory that ‘“‘might 1s right,” which has
come down to us from the most savage days of the MiddleAge,
has still in this nineteenth century a good deal of life left
in it—more shame tous! It is high time for the principle
to be driven out bag and baggage. Nowadays, no one is
allowed to set dogs or cocks to fight each other—at any rate
in England it is a penal offerse—but men are plunged into
deadly strife, against their will, by the operation of this
ridiculous, superstitious and absurd principle which imposes
upon us the obligation as its narrow-minded supporters and
advocates declare of fighting with one another like gladi-
ators, for any little trifle. Let me recommend our purists
to adopt the expression baiting,* instead of duel, which
probably comes to us, not from the Latin dwellam but from
the Spanish dwelo—meaning sufferiug, nuisance, annoy-
ance.

In any case, we may well laugh at the pedantic excess to
which this foolish system has been carried. It is really
revolting that this principle, with its absurd code, can
form a power within the state—imperium in timperio—a
power too easily put in motion, which, recognizing no right
but might, tyrannizes over the classes which come within
its range, by keeping up a sort of inquisition, before which
any one may be haled on the most flimsy pretext, and there
and then be tried on an issue of life and death between him-
self and his opponent. This is the lurking place from
which every rascal, if he only belongs to the classes in ques-
tion, may menace and even exterminate the noblest and
best of men, who, as such, must of course be an object of

 

* Ritterhetze.
’

POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACH. 75

hatred to him. Our system of justice and police-protection
has made it impossible in these days for any scoundrel in
the street to attack us with—‘Your money or your life!”
and common sense ought now to be able to prevent rogues
disturbing the peaceable intercourse of society by coming
at us with—‘‘Your honor or your life!” An end should be
put to the burden, which weighs upon the higher classes—
the burden, I mean, of having to be ready every moment
to expose life and limb to the mercy of any une who takes
it into his rascally head to be coarse, rude, foolish or mali-
cious. It is perfectly atrocious thata pair of silly, passion-
ate boys should be wounded, maimed or even killed, simply
because they have had a few words. :

The strength of this tyrannical power within the state,
and the force of the superstition, may be measured by the
fact that people who are prevented from restoring their
knightly honor by the superior or inferior rank of their
aggressor, or anything else that puts the persons on a dif-
ferent level, often come to a tragic-comic end by committing
suicide in sheer despair. You may generally knowa thing
to be false and ridiculous by finding that, if itis carried to
its logical conclusion, it results in a contradiction: and here
too, we have a very glaring absurdity. For an officer is
forbidden to take part ina duel; but if he is challenged
and declines to come out, he is punished by being dismissed
the service.

Aslam on the matter, let me be more frank still.
The important distinction, which is often insisted upon,
between killing your-enemy in a fair fight with equal weap-
ons, and lying in ambush for him, is entirely a corollary of
the fact that the power within the state, of whichI have
spoken, recognizes no other right than might, that is, the
right of the stronger, and appeals to a ‘‘judgment of God,”
as the basis of the whole code. For to kill a man in a fair
fight, is to prove that you are superior to him in strength
or skill; and to justify the deed, you must assume that the
right of the stronger is really a right.

But the truth isthat, if my opponent is unable to defend
himself, it gives me the possibility, but not by any means
the right, of killing him. The right, the moral justification,
must depend entirely upon the motives which I have for
taking his life. Even supposing that I have sufficient
motive for taking a man’s life, there is no reason why I
"6 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

should make his death depend upon whether Ican shoot or
fence better than he. In such a case, it is immaterial in
what way I kill him, whether I attack him from the front
or the rear. From a moral point of view, the right of the
stronger is no more convincing than the right of the more
skillful; and it is skill which is employed if you murder a
man treacherously. Might and skill are in this case equally
right: in a duel, for instance, both the one and the other
come into play; for a feint is only another name for treach-
ery. If I consider myself morally justified in taking a
man’s life, it is stupid of me to try first of all whether he
can shoot or fence better than I; as, if he can, he will not
only have wronged me, but have taken my life into the
bargain.

It is Rousseau’s opinion that the proper way to avenge
an ingult is, not to fight a duel with your aggressor, but to
assassinate him—an opinion, however, which he is cautious
enough only to barely indicate in a mysterious note to one
of the books of his ‘‘Kmile.” Thisshows the philosopher so
completely under the influence of the medieval supersti-
tion of knightly honor that he considers it justifiable to
murder a man who accuses you of lying: while he must
have known that every man, and himself especially, has
deserved to have thelie given him times without number.

The prejudice which justifies the killing of your adver-
sary, so long as it is done in an opencontest and with equal
weapons, obviously looks upon might as really right, and a
duel as the interference of God. The Italian who, in a fit
of rage, falls upon his aggressor wherever he finds him,
and despatches him without any ceremony, acts, at any
rate, consistently and naturally: he may be cleverer, but he
is not worse, than the duelist. If you say, I am justified
in killing my adversary in a duel, because he is at the mo-
ment doing his best to kill me; I can reply that it is your
challenge which has placed him under the necessity of de-
fending himself: and that by mutually putting it on the
ground of self-defense, the combatants are seeking a
plausible pretext for committing murder. I should rather
justify the deed by the legal maxim Volenti nonsit injwria, be-
cause the parties mutually agree to set their life upon the is-
sue. This argument may, however, be rebutted by showing
that the injured party is not injured volens; because it is
this tyrannical principle of knightly honor, with its absurd
POSITION, OR. A MAN’S PLACE. Uy

code, which forcibly dragsone at least of the combatants
before a bloody inquisition.

I have been rather prolix on the subject of knightly
honor, but I had good reasons for being so, because the
Augean stable of moral and intellectual enormity in this
world can be cleaned out only with the besom of philoso-
phy. There are two things which more than all else serve
to make the social arrangements of modern life compare
unfavorably with those of antiquity, by giving our age a
gloomy, dark and sinister aspect, from which antiquity,
fresh, natural and, as it were, in the morning of life, is
completely free; I mean modern honor and modern disease
—parenobile fratrum! which have combined to poison all
the relations of life, whether public or private. The
second of this noble pair extends its influence much farther
than at first appears to be the case, as being not merely a
physical, but also a moral disease. From the time that
poisoned arrows have been found in Cupid’s quiver, an
estranging, hostile, nay devilish element has entered into
the relations of men and women, like a sinister thread of
fear and mistrust in the warp and woof of their intercourse ;
indirectly shaking the foundations of human fellowship,
and so more or less affecting the whole tenor of existence.
But it would be beside my present purpose to pursue the
subject further.

An influence analogous to this, though working on other
lines, is exerted by the principle of knightly honor—that
solemn farce, unknown to the ancient world, which makes
modern society stiff, gloomy and timid, forcing us to keep
the strictest watch on every word that falls. Nor is this
all. The principle is a universal Minotaur; and the
goodly company of the sons of noble houses which it de-
mands in yearly tribute, comes, not from one country
alone as of old, but from every land in Europe. It is
high time to make a regular attack upon this foolish
system ; and that is what Iam trying to do now. Would
that these two monsters of the modern world might dis-
appear before the end of the century !

Let us hope that medicine may be able to find some
means of preventing the one, and that, by clearing our
ideas, philosophy may put an end to the other; for it
is only by clearing our ideas that the evil can be eradicated.
Governments have tried to do so by legislation, and failed.
78 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

Still, if they are really concerned to suppress the dueling
system ; and if the small success that has attended their
efforts is really due only to their inability to cope with the
evil, I do not mind proposing a law the success of which I
am prepared to guarantee. It will involve no sanguinary
measures, and can be put into operation without recourse
either to the scaffold or the gallows, or to imprisonment
for life. It is a small homepathic pilule, with no serious
after effects. If any man send or accept a challenge, let
the corporal take him before the guard house, and there
give him, in broad daylight twelve strokes with a stick
a la Chinoise; a non-commissioned officer or a private to
receive six. Ifa duel has actually taken place, the usual
criminal proceeding should be instituted.

A person with knightly notions might, perhaps, object
that, if such a punishment were carried out, a man of
honor would possibly shoot himself; to which I should
answer that it is better for a fool like that to shoot himself
rather than other people. However, I know very well
that goverments are not really in earnest about putting
down dueling. Civil officials, and much more so, officers
in the army (except those in the highest positions), are
paid most inadequately for the services they perform ; and
the deficiency is made up by honor, which is represented
by titles and orders, and, in general, by the system of rank
and distinction. ‘The duel is, so to speak, a very service-
able extra-horse for people of rank : so they are trained in
the knowledge of it at the universities. The accidents
which happen to those who use it make up in blood for
the deficiency of the pay.

Just to complete the discussion, let me here mention the
subject of national honor. It is the honor of a nation asa
unit in the aggregate of nations. And as there is no court
to appeal to but the court of force; and as every nation
must be prepared to defend its own interests, the honor of
a nation consists in establishing the opinion, not only that
it may be trusted (its credit), but also that it is to be
feared. An attack upon its rights must never be allowed
to pass unheeded. It is a combination of civic and of
knightly honor.

Section 5.—Fame.
' Under the heading of place in the estimation of the
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 19

world we have put Fume ; and this we must now proceed
to consider.

Fame and honor are twins; and twins, too, like Castor
and Pollux, of whom the one was mortal and the other was
not. Fame is the undying brother of ephemeral honor.
I speak, of course, of the highest kind of fame, that is, of
fame in the true and genuine sense of the word ; for, to be
sure, there are many sorts of fame, some of which last but
aday. Honor is concerned merely with such qualities as
every one may be expected to show under similar circum-
stances ; fame only of those which cannot be required of
any man. Honor isof qualities which every one has a right
to attribute to himself; fame only of those which should
be left to others to attribute. While onr honor extends
as far as people have knowledge of us; fame runs in ad-
vance, and makes us known wherever it finds its way.
Every one can make a claim to honor; very few to fame,
as being attainable only in virtue of extraordinary achieve-
ments.

These achievements may be of two kinds, either actions
or work ; and so to fame there are two paths open. On
the path of actions, a great heart is the chief recommen-
dation ; on that of works, a great head. ach of the two
paths has its own peculiar advantages and detriments ; and
the chief difference between them is that actions are
fleeting, while works remain. The influence of an action,
be it never so noble, can last but a short time; but a work
of genius is a living influence, beneficial and ennobling
throughout the ages. All that can remain of actions is a
memory, and that becomes weak and disfigured by time—a
matter of indifference to us, until at last it is extinguished
altogether ; unless, indeed, history takes it up, and pre-
sents it, fossilized, to posterity. Works are immortal in
themselves, and once committed to writing, may live for-
ever. Of Alexander the Great we have but the name and
the record: but Plato and Aristotle, Homer and Horace
are alive, and as directly at work to-day as they were in
their own life-time. The ‘‘ Vedas” and their ‘‘Upanis-
hads,” are still with us: but of all contemporaneous actions
not a trace has come down to us.*

 

* Accordingly it is a poor compliment, though sometimes a fash-
jonable one, to try to pay honor to a work by calling it an action,
80 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

Another disadvantage under which actions labor is that
they depend upon chance for the possibility of coming into
existence ; and hence, the fame they win does not flow
entirely from their intrinsic value, but also from the cir-
cumstances which happened to lend them importance and
luster. Again, the fame of actions, if, as in war, they are
purely personal, depends upon the testimony of fewer
witnesses ; and these are not always present, and even if
present, are not always just or unbiased observers. This
disadvantage, however, is counterbalanced by the fact that
actions have the advantage of being of a practical char-
acter, and, therefore, within the range of general human
intelligence ; so that once the facts have been correctly re-
ported, justice is immediately done; unless, indeed, the
motive underlying the action is not at-first preperly under-
stood or appreciated. No action can be really understood
apart from the motive which prompted it.

It is just the contrary with works. Their inception does
not depend upon chance, but wholly and entirely upon
their author; and whatever they are in and for themselves,
that they remain as long as they live. Further, there is a
difficulty in properly judging them, which become all the
harder, the higher their character; often there are no
persons competent to understand the work, and often no
unbiased or honest critics. ‘Their fame, however, does not
depend upon one judge only ; they can enter an appeal to
another. In the case of actions, as I have said, it is only
their memory which comes down to posterity, and then

 

For a work is something essentially higher in its nature. An action
is always something based on motive, and, therefore, fragmentary
and fleeting—a part, in fact, of that Will which is the universal and
original element in the constitution of the world. But a great and
beautiful work has a permanent character, as being of universal
significance, and sprung from the Intellect, which rises, like a per-
fume, above the faults and follies of the world of Will.

The fame of a great action has this advantage, that it generally
starts with a loud explosion; so loud, indeed, as to be heard all over
Europe: whereas the fame of a great work is slow and gradual in
its beginnings ; the noise it makes is at first slight, but it goes on
growing greater, until at last, aftera hundred years perhaps, it at-
tains its full force ; but then it remains, because the works remain,
for thousands of years. But in the other case, when the first explo-
sion is over, the noise it makes grows less and less, and is heard by
fewer and fewer persons ; until it ends by the actions having only a
shadowy existence in the pages of history.
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 81

only in the traditional form ; but works are handed down
themselves, and, except when parts of them have been lost,
in the form in which they first appeared. In this case there
is no room for any disfigurement of the facts; and any
circumstances which may have prejudiced them in their
origin, fall away with the lapse of time. Nay, it is often
only after the lapse of time that the persons really com-
petent to judge them appear—exceptional critics sitting in
judgment on exceptional works, and giving their weighty
verdicts in succession. These collectively form a perfectly
just appreciation ; and though there are cases where it has
taken some hundreds of years to form it, no further lapse
of time is able to reverse the verdict; so secure and in-
evitable is the fame of a great work.

Whether authors ever live to see the dawn of their fame
depends upon the chance of circumstance; and the higherand
more important their works are, the less likelihood there is
of their doingso. That was an incomparably fine saying of
Seneca’s, that fame follows merit as surely as the body
casts a shadow; sometimes falling in front, and sometimes
behind. And he goes on to remark that ‘‘though the envy
of contemporaries be shown by universal silence, there will
come those who will judge without enmity or favor.” From
this remark it is manifest that even in Seneca’s age there
were rascals who understood the art of suppressing merit
by maliciously ignoring its existence, and of concealing
good work from the public in order to favor the bad: it is
an art well understood in our day, too, manifesting itself,
both then and now, in ‘‘an envious conspiracy of silence.”

Asa general rule, the longer a man’s fame is likely to
last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent prod-
ucts require time for their development. The fame which
lasts to posterity is like an oak, of very slow growth: and
that which endures but a little while, like plants which
spring up in a year and then die; while false fame is like a
fungus, shooting up in a night and perishing as soon.

And why? For this reason; the more a man belongs to pos-
terity, in other words, to humanity in general, the more of
an alien he is to his contemporaries; since his work is not
meant for them as such, but only for them in so far as
they form part of mankind at large; thereis none of that
familiar local color about his productions which would ap-
peal to them: and so what he does, fuils of recognition be-
82 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

cause it is strange. People are more likely to appreciate
the man who serves the circumstances of his own brief hour,
or the temper of the moment—belonging to it, and living
and dying with it.

The general history of art and literature shows that the
highest achievements of the human mind are, as arule, not
favorably received at first; but remain in obscurity until
they win notice from intelligence of a higher order, by
whose influence they are brought into a position which they
then maintain, in virtue of the authority thus given
them.

If the reason of this should be asked, it will be found
that ultimately, a man can really understand and appreci-
ate those things only which are of like nature with himself.
The dull person will like what is dull, and the common
person what is common; a man whose ideas are mixed will
be attracted by confusion of thought; and folly will appeal
to him who has no brains at all; but first of all, a man will
like his own works, as being of a character thoroughly at
one with himself. ‘This isa truth as old as Epicharmus of
fabulous memory—

Oavuacrov ovdév tri we TXV obTa AsyELy
Kai dvédvew abvroiiy advrovs, nai Soneiv
Kaarws nepvuévar nai yap 6 uvoov uvvt
KadAdtGrov etuev pdtvetat, uai Bods Boi
Ovos & ov@ udddioroy [éoriv], os 8? vi.

The sense of this passage—for it should not be lost—is
that we should not be surprised if people are pleased with
themselves, and fancy that they are in good case; for to a
dog the best thing in the world is a dog; to an ox, an ox;
to an ass, an ass; and to a sow, a sow.

The strongest arm is unavailing to give impetus to a
feather-weight; for, instead of speeding on its way and hit-
ting its mark with effect, it will soon fall to the ground,
having expended what little energy was given to it, and
possessing no mass of its own tobe the vehicle of momen-
tum. Soitiswith great and noble thoughts, nay, with
the very masterpieces of genius when there are none but
little, weak, and perverse minds to appreciate them—a
fact which has been deplored by a chorus of the wise in all
ages, Jesus the son of Sirach, for instance, declares that
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACR. 83

‘He that telleth a tale toa fool speaketh to one in slumber:
when he hath told his tale, he will say, ‘What is the mat-
ter?” * And Hamlet says, ‘‘A knavish speech sleeps in a
fool’s ear.”+ And Goethe is of the same opinion, that a dull
ear mocks at the wisest word,

“Das glucklichste Wort es wird verhohnt,
Wenn der Horer ein Schiefohr ist; ”

and again, that we should not be disconraged if people are
stupid, for you can make no rings if you throw your stone
into a marsh.

“Du wirkest nicht, Alles bleibt so stumpf;
Sei guter Dinge !
Der Stein in Sumpf
Macht keine Ringe.”

Lichtenberg asks: ‘‘When a head and a book come into
collision, and one sounds hollow, is it always the book?”
And in another place: ‘‘ Workslike this are as a mirror;
if an ass looks in, you cannot expect an apostle to look out.”
We should do well to remember old Gellert’s fine and
touching lament, that the best gifts of all find the fewest
admirers, and that most men mistake the bad for the good
—a daily evil that nothing can prevent, like a plague which
no remedy can cure. There is but one thing to be done,
though how difticult!—the foolish must become wise—and
that they can never be. The value of life they never know:
they see with the outer eye but never with the mind, and
praise the trivial because the good is strange to them:

“Nie kennen sie den Werth der Dinge,
Ihr Auge schliesst, nicht ihr Verstand;
Sie loben ewig das Geringe
Wiel sie das Gutrinie gekannt.”

To the intellectual incapacity which, as Goethe says
fails to recognize and appreciate the good which exists,
must be added something which comes into play everywhere,
the moral baseness of mankind, here taking the form ofenvy.
The new fame that a man wins raises him afresh over
the heads of his fellows, who are thus degraded in pro-
portion. All conspicuous merit is obtained at the cost of

 

* Ecclesiasticus, xxii., 8. + Act., iv., sc. 2,
84 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

those who possess none: or, as Goethe has it in the <“West
éstlicher Divan,” another’s praise is one’s own depreci-
ation—

«Wenn wir Andern Ehre geben —
Mussen wir uns selbst entadeln.”

We see, then, how it is that, whatever be the form which
excellence takes, mediocrity, the common lotof by far the
greatest number, is leagued against it in a conspiracy to re-
sist, and if possible, to suppress it. The pass-word of this
league is a bas le mérite. Nay more; those who have done
something themselves, and enjoy a certain amount of fame,
do not care about the appearance of a new reputation, be-
cause its success is apt to throw theirs into the shade.
Hence, Goethe declares that if we had to depend for our
life upon the favor of others, we should never have lived
at all; from their desire to appear important themselves,
people gladly ignore our very existence;

“Hatteich gezaudert zu werden,
Bis man mir’s Leben gegéunt,
Ich, ware noch nicht auf Erden,
Wenn ihr seht, wie sie sich geberden,
Die um etwas zu scheinen,
Mich gerne méchten verneinen.”

Honor, on the contrary, generally meets with fair ap-
preciation, and is not exposed to the onslaught of envy;
nay, every man is credited with the possession of it until
the contrary is proved. But fame has to be won in despite
of envy, and the tribunal which awards the laurel is com-
posed of judges biased against the applicant from the very
first. Honor is something which we are able and ready to
share with every one; fame suffers encroachment and is ren-
dered more unattainable in proportion as more people come
by it. Further, the difficulty of winning fame by any
given work stands in inverse ratio to the number of people
who are likely to read it; and hence it isso much harder to
become famous as the author of a learned work than as a
writer who aspires only to amuse. It is hardest of all in
the case of philosophical works, because the result at
which they aim is rather vague and, at the same time, useless
from a material point of view; they appeal chiefly to readers
who are working on the same lines themselves.
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. K5

Tt is clear, then, from whatI have said as to the diffi-
culty of winning fame, that those who labor, not ont of
love for their subject, nor from pleasure in pursuing it,
but under the stimulus of ambition, rarely or never leave
mankind a legacy of immortal works. The man who seeks
to do what is good and genuine, mustavoid what is bad,
and be ready to defy the opinions of the mob, nay, even to
despise it and its misleaders. Hence the truth of the re-
mark (especially insisted upon by Osorius de Gloria), that
fame shuns those who seek it, and seeks those who shun it;
for the one adapt themselves to the taste of their con-
temporaries, and the others work in defiance of it.

But, difficult though it be to acquire fame, it is an easy
thing to keep it when once acquired. Here, again, fame
is in direct opposition to honor, with which every one is
presumably to be accredited. Honor has not to be won ;
it must only not be lost. But there lies the difficulty !
For by a single unworthy action, it is gone irretrievably.
But fame, in the proper sense of the word, can never dis-
appear ; for the action or work by which it was acquired
can never be undone; and fame attaches to its author,
even though he does nothing to deserve it anew. The
fame which vanishes, or is outlived, proves itself thereby
to have been spurious, in other words, unmerited, and due
to a momentary over-estimate of a man’s work; not to
speak of the kind of fame which Hegel enjoyed, and which
Lichtenberg describesas “‘ trumpeted forth by aclique of ad-
miring under-graduates—the resounding echo of empty
heads; such a fame as will make posterity smile when it lights
upon a grotesque architecture of words, a fine nest with
the birds long ago flown; it will knock at the door of this
decayed structure of conventionalities and find it utterly
empty ! not even a trace of thought there to invite the
passer-by.”

The truth is that fame means nothing but what a man
is in comparison with others. It is essentially relative in
character, and therefore only indirectly valuable ; for it
vanishes the moment other people become what the famous
man is. Absolute value can be predicated only of what a
man possesses under any and all circumstances—here, what
a man is directly and in himself. It is the possession of a
great heart or a great head, and not the mere fame of it
86 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

which is worth having, and conducive to happiness. Not
fame, but that which deserves to be famous, is what a man
should hold in esteem. This is, as it were, the true under-
lying substance, and fame is only an accident, affecting
its subject chiefly asa kind of external symptom, which
serves to confirm his own opinion of himself. Light is not
visible unless it meets with something to reflect it; and
talent is sure of itself only when its fame is noised abroad.
But fame is not a certain symptom of merit ; because you
can have the one without the other; or, as Lessing nicely
puts it, ‘Some people obtain fame, and others deserve it.”

It would be a miserable existence which should make its
value or want of value depend upon what other people
think ; but such would be the life ofa hero or a genius if its
worth consisted in fame, that is, in the applause of the
world. Every man lives and exists on his own account,
and, therefore, mainly in and for himself; and what he is
and the whole manner of his being concern himself more
than any one else; so if he is not worth much in this re-
spect, he cannot be worth much otherwise. The idea
which other people form of his existence is something sec-
ondary, derivative, exposed to all the chances of fate, and
in the end affecting him but very indirectly. Besides,
other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home
of a man’s true happiness—a fanciful happiness perhaps,
but not a real one.

And what a mixed company inhabits the Temple of
Universal Fame! generals, ministers, charlatans, jugglers,
dancers, singers, millionaires and Jews! It isatemple in
which more sincere recognition, more genuine esteem, is
given to the several excellences of such folk, than to
superiority of mind, even of a high order, which obtains
from the great majority only a verbal acknowledgment.

From the point of view of human happiness, fame is,
surely, nothing but a very rare and delicate morsel for the
appetite that feeds on pride and vanity—an appetite which,
however carefully concealed, exists to an immoderate de-
gree in every man, and is perhaps, strongest of all in those
who set their hearts on becoming famous at any cost.
Such people generally have to wait some time in uncere
tainty as to their own value, before the opportunity comes
which will put it to the proof and let other people see what
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. gy

they are made of ; but until then, they feel as if they were
suffering secret injustice.*

But, as I explained at the beginning of this chapter,
an unreasonable value is set upon other people’s opinion,
and one quite disproportionate to its real worth. Hobbes
has some strong remarks on this subject ; and no doubt he
isquite right. ‘* Mental pleasure,” he writes, ‘‘and ecstasy
of any kind, arise when, on comparing ourselves with others,
we come to the conclusion that we may think well of our-
selves.” So we can easily understand the great value
which is always attached to fame, as worth any sacrifices if
there is the slighest hope of attaining it.

“Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble mind)
To scorn delights and live laborious days.”’+

And again :

“« How hard it is to climb
The beights where Fame’s proud temple shines afar !”

We can thus understand how it is that the vainest people
in the world are always talking about Ja gloire, with the
most implicit faith in it as a stimulus to great actions and
great works. But there can be no doubt that fame is some-
thing secondary in its character, a mere echo or reflection
—as it were, a shadow or symptom—of merit : and, inany
case, what excites admiration must be of more value than
the admiration itself. The truth is that a man is made happy,
not by fame, but by that which brings him fame, by his
merits, or to speak more correctly, by the disposition and
capacity from which his merits proceed, whether they be
moral or intellectual. The best side of a man’s nature
must of necessity be more important for him than for any
one else: the reflection of it, the opinion which exists in
the heads of others, is a matter that can affect him only in

 

* Our greatest pleasure consists in being admired ; but those who
admire us, even if they have every reason to do so, are slow to ex-
press their sentiments. Hence he is the happiest man who, no
matter how, manages sincerely to admire himself—so long as other
people leave him alone.

} Milton ‘‘ Lycidas.”
gg THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

a very subordinate degree. He who deserves fame with-
out getting it possesses by far the more important element
of happiness, which should console him for the loss of the
other. It is not that a man is thought to be great by
masses of incompetent and often infatuated people, but
that he really is great, which should move us to envy his
position; and bis happiness lies, not in the fact that
posterity will hear of him, but that he is the creator of
thoughts worthy to be treasured up and studied for hun-
dreds of years.

Besides, if a man has done this, he possesses something
which cannot be wrested from him, and, unlike fame, it is
a possession dependent entirely upon himself. If admi-
ration were his chief aim, there would be nothing in him to
admire. This is just what happens in the case of false,
that is, unmerited, fame; for its recipient lives upon it
without actually possessing the solid substratum of which
fame is the outward and visible sign. False fame must
often put its possessor out of conceit with himself; for the
time may come when, in spite of the illusions born of self-
love, he will feel giddy on the heights which he was never
meant to climb, or look upon himself as spurious coin; and
in the anguish of threatened discovery and well-merited
degradation, he will read the sentence of posterity on the
foreheads of the wise—like a man who owes his property
toa forged will. The truestfame, the fame that comes
after death, is never heard of by its recipient: and yet he
is called a happy man. His happiness lay both in the pos-
session of those great qualities which won him fame, and
in the opportunity that was granted him of developing
them—the leisure he had to act as he pleased, to dedicate
himself to his favorite pursuits. It is only work done
from the heart that ever gains the laurel.

Greatness of soul, or wealth of intellect, is what makes a
man happy—intellect, such as, when stamped on its pro-
ductions, will receive the admiration of centuries tu come—
thoughts which made him happy at the time, and will in
their turn be a source of study and delight to the noblest
minds of the most remote posterity. The value of posthu-
mous fame lies in deserving it; and this is its own reward.
Whether works destined to fame attain it in the lifetime of
their author is a chance affair, of no very great importance.
For the average man has no critical power of his own, and
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACE. 89

is absolutely incapable of appreciating the difficulty of a
great work. People are always swayed by authority; and
where fame is widespread, it means that ninety-nine out of
a hundred take it on faith alone. If aman is famed far
and wide in his own lifetime, he will, if he is wise, not set
too much value upon it, because it is no more than the
echo of a few voices, which the chance of a day has touched
in his favor.

Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of
an audience if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and
that, to conceal their infirmity, they set to work to clap
vigorously as soon as ever they saw one or two persons
applauding? And what would he say if he got to know
that those one or two persons had often taken bribes to
secure the loudest applause for the poorest player!

It is easy to see why contemporary praise so seldom
develops into posthumous fame. D’Alembert, in an ex-
tremely fine description of the temple of literary fame,
remarks that the sanctuary of the temple is inhabited by
the great dead, who during their life had no place there,
and by a very few living persons, who are nearly all ejected
on their death. Let me remark, in passing, that to erect
a@ monument to a man in his lifetime is as much as declar-
ing that posterity is not to be trusted in its judgment of
him. Ifa man does happen to see his own true fame, it
can very rarely be before he is old, though there have been
artists and musicians who have been exceptions to this
rule, but very few philosophers. This is confirmed by the
portraits of people celebrated by their works; for most of
them are taken only after their subjects have attained celeb-
rity, generally depicting them as old and gray; more
especially if philosophy has been the work of their lives.
From a eudemonistic standpoint, this is a very proper
arrangement; as fame and youth are too much for a mortal
at one and the same time. Life is such a poor business that
the strictest economy must be exercised in its good things.
Youth has enough and to spare in itself, and must rest
content with what it has. But when the delights and joys
of life fall away in old age, as the leaves from a tree in
autumn, fame buds forth opportunely, like a plant that is
green in winter. Fame is, as it were, the fruit that must
grow all the summer before it can be enjoyed at Yule.
There is no greater consolation in age than the feeling of
90 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

having put the whole force of one’s youth into works
which still remain young. ;

Finally, let us examine a little more closely the kinds of
fame which attach to various intellectual pursuits; for it
is with fame of this sort that my remarks are more imme-
diately concerned.

I think it may be said broadly that the intellectual
superiority it denotes consists in forming theories, that is,
new combinations of certain facts. These facts may be of
very different kinds; but the better they are known, and
the more they come within every-day experience, the
greater and wider will be the fame which is to be won by
theorizing about them. For instance, if the facts in ques-
tion are numbers or lines or special branches of science,
such as physics, zodlogy, botany, anatomy, or corrupt pas-
sages in ancient authors, or undecipherable inscriptions,
written, it may be, in some unknown alaphabet, or obscure
points in history; the kind of fame which may be obtained
by correctly manipulating such facts will not extend much
beyond those who make a study of them—a small number
of persons, most of whom live retired lives and are envious
of others who become famous in their special branch of
knowledge.

But if the facts be such as are known to every one, for
example, the fundamental characteristics of the human
mind or the human heart, which are shared by all alike; or
the great physical agencies which are constantly in opera-
tion before our eyes, or the general course of natural laws;
the kind of fame which is to be won by spreading the
light of a new and manifestly true theory in regard to them,
is such as in time will extend almost all over the civilized
world; for if the facts be such as every one can grasp, the
theory also will be generally intelligible. But the extent
of the fame will depend upon the difficulties overcome; and
the more generally known the facts are, the harder it will,
be to form a theory that shall be both new and true; be-
cause a great many heads will have been occupied with them
and there will be little or no possibility of saying anything
that has not been said before. On the other hand, facts
which are not accessible to everybody, and can be got at
only after much difficulty and labor, nearly always admit
of new combinations and theories; so that, if sound under-
standing and judgment are brought to bear upon them—

ee;
POSITION, OR A MAN’S PLACER. 91

qualities which do not involve very high intellectual power
—a man may easily be so fortunate as to light upon some
new theory in regard to them which shall be also true.
But fame won on such paths does not extend much beyond
those who possess a knowledge of the facts in question. ‘T'o
solve problems of this sort requires, no doubt, a great deal
of study and labor, if only to get at the facts: whileon the
path where the greatest and most widespread fame is to be
won, the facts may be grasped without any labor at all.
But just in proportion as less labor is necessary, more talent
or genius is required; and between such qualities and the
drudgery of research no comparison is possible, in respect
either of their intrinsic value, or of the estimation in which
they are held. e

And so people who feel that they possess solid intellectual
capacity and a sound judgment, and yet cannot claim the
highest mental powers, should not be afraid of laborious
study; for by its aid they may work themselves above the
great mob of humanity who have the facts constantly be-
fore their eyes, and reach those secluded spots which are
accessible to learned toil. For this is a sphere where there
are infinitely fewer rivals, and a man of only moderate
capacity may soon find an opportunity of proclaiming a
theory that shall be both newand true; nay, the merit of
his discovery will partly rest upon the difficulty of coming
at the facts. But applause from one’s fellow-students, who
are the only persons with a knowledge of the subject,
sounds very faint to the far-off multitude. And if we fol-
low up this sort of fame far enough, we shall at last come
to a point where facts very difficult to get at are in them-
selves sufficient to lay a foundation of fame, without any
necessity for forming a theory—travels, for instance, in
remote and little-known countries, which make a man
famous by what he has seen, not by what he has thought.
The great advantage of this kind of fame is that to relate
what one has seen, is much easier than to impart one’s
thoughts and people are apt to understand descriptions
better than ideas, reading the one more readily than the
other; for, as Asmus says:

«« When one goes forth a-voyaging
He has a tale to tell.”

And yet, for all that, a personal acquaintance with cele-
92 THE WISDOM OF LIFE.

brated travelers often reminds us ofa line from Horacv—
new scenes do not always mean new ideas—

“Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currvnt.”*

But if a man finds himself in possession of great mental
faculties, such as alone should venture on the solution of
the hardest of all problems—those which concern nature
as a whole and humanity in its widest range, he will do
well to extend his view equally in all directions, without
ever straying too far amid the intricacies of various by-
paths, or invading regions little known; in other words,
without occupying himself with special branches of knowl-
edge, to say nothing of their petty details. There is no
necessity for him to seek out subjects difficult of access,
in order to escape a crowd of rivals; the common objects
of life will give him material for new theories at once
serious and true; and the service he renders will be appreci-
ated by all those—and they form a great part of mankind
who know the facts of which he treats. What a vast dis-
tinction there is between students of physics, chemistry,
anatomy, mineralogy, zoology, philology, history, and the
men who deal with the great facts of human life, the poet
and the philosopher !

 

* Epist. I. II.
COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

**Le bonheur n’est pas chose aisée: il est trésdifficile de le trouver en nous,
et impossible de le trouver ailleurs.”.—CHaMmFoRT.
COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.*

INTRODUCTION.

IF my object in these pages were to present a complete
scheme of counsels and maxims for the guidance of life,
I should have to repeat the numerous rules—some of them
excellent—which have been drawn up by thinkers of all
ages, from Theognis and Solomont down to La Roche-
foucauld ; and, in so doing, I should inevitably entail upon
the reader a vast amount of well-worn conmonplace.
But the fact is that in this work I make still less claim to
exhaust my subject than in any other of my writings.

An author who makes no claims to completeness must
also, in a great measure, abandon any attempt at system-
atic arrangement. For his double loss in this respect, the
reader may console himself by reflecting that a complete
and systematic treatment of such a subject as the guidance
of life could hardly fail to be a very wearisome business.
T have simply put down those of my thoughts which appear
to be worth communicating—thoughts which, as far as I
know, have not been uttered, or, at any rate, not just in
the same form, by any one else; so that my remarks may

 

* For convenience of publication, I have divided this translation
of Schopenhauer’s ‘‘Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit” into two
parts ; and for the sake of appearances, a new series of chapters has
been begun in the present volume. But it should be understood
that there is no such division in the original, and that ‘‘ The Wisdom
of Life” and ‘‘Counsels and Maxims” form a single treatise, devoted
to a popular exposition of the author’s views on matters of practice.
To the former volume I have prefixed some remarks which may help
the reader to appreciate the value of Schopenhauer’s teaching, and
to determine its relation to certain well-known theories of life.

+ L refer to the proverbs and maxims ascribed, in the Old Testa-
ment, to the king of that name,
96 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

be taken as a supplement to what has been already achieved
in the immense field. .

However, by way of introducing some sort of order into
the great variety of matters upon which advice will be
given in the following pages, I shall distribute what I have
to say under the following heads: (1) general rules; (2)
our relation to ourselves; (3) our relation to others; and
finally, (4) rules which concern our manner of life and
our worldly circumstances. I shall conclude with some
remarks on the changes which the various periods of life
produce in us.

CHAPTER I.
GENERAL RULES.

§ 1. The first and foremost rule for the wise conduct
of life seems to me to be contained in a view to which Aris-
totle parenthetically refers in the-“‘“Nichomachean Ethics ” *
6 pporvipo0s Td kAvmor S165HEL od TO HSV, OF, as it may be ren-
dered, ‘‘ not pleasure, but freedom from pain is what the
wise man will aim at.”

The truth of this remark turns upon the negative char-
acter of happiness—the fact that pleasure is only the nega-
tion of pain, and that pain is the positive element in life.
Though I have given a detailed proof of this proposition
in my chief work,t I may supply one more illustration of
it here, drawn from a circumstance of daily occurrence.
Suppose that, with the exception of some sore or painful
spot, we are physically in a sound and healthy condition;
the pain of this one spot will completely absorb our at-
tention, causing us to lose the sense of general well-being,
and destroying all our comfort in life. In the same way,
when all our affairs but one turn out as we wish, the single
instance in which our aims are frustrated is a constant
trouble to us, even though it be something quite trivial.
We think a great deal about it, and very little about those
other and more important matters in which we have been
successful. In both these cases what has met with resist-

 

_* vii, (11) 12.
+ “ Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.” Vol. I. p. 58,
GENERAL RULES. 97

ance is the will; in the one case as it is objectified in the
organism, in the other, as it presents itself in the struggle
of life; and in both, it is plain that the satisfaction of the
will consists in nothing else than that it meets with no re-
sistance. Itis, therefore, a satisfaction which is not di-
rectly felt; at most, we can become conscious of it only
when we reflect upon our condition. But that which
checks or arrests the will issomething positive; it proclaims
its own presence. All pleasure consistsin merely removing
this check—in other words, in freeing us from its action;
and hence pleasure is a state which can never last very
long.

This is the true basis of the above excellent rule quoted
from Aristotle, which bids us direct our aim, not toward
securing what is pleasurable and agreeable in life, but to-
ward avoiding, as far as possible, its innumerable evils. If
this were not the right course to take, that saying of Vol-
taire’s ‘‘Happiness is but a dream and sorrow is real,” would
be as false as it is, in fact, true. A man who desires to
make up the book of his life and determine where the
balance of happiness lies, must put down in his accounts,
not the pleasures which he has enjoyed, but the evils which
he has escaped. That is the true method of eudemonology
for all endemonology must begin by recognizing that its
very name is a euphemism, and that ‘‘to live happily” only
means ‘‘to live less unhappily’—to live a tolerable life.
There is no doubt that life is givenus, not to be enjoyed,
but to be overcome—-to be got over. There are numerous
expressions illustrating this—such as degere vitam, vita de-
fungi: or in Italian st scampa cosi; or in German, man
muss suchen durchzukommen, er wird schon durch die Welt
kommen, and soon. In old age it is indeed a consolation
to think that the work of life is over and done with. The
happiest lot is not to have experienced the keenest delights
or the greatest pleasures, but to have brought life to a close
without any very great pain, bodily or mental. To meas-
ure the happiness of a life by its delights or pleasures, is to
apply a false standard. For pleasures are and remain some-
thing negative; that they produce happiness is a delusion;
cherished by envy to its own punishment. Pain is felt to
be something positive, and hence its absence is the true
standard of happiness. And if, over and above freedom
from pain, there is also an absence of boredom, the essential
98 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

conditions of earthly happiness are attained: for all else is
chimerical.

It follows from this that a man should never try to pur-
chase pleasure at the cost of pain, or even at the risk of
incurring it; to do so is to pay what is positive and real
for what is negative and illusory; while there is a net
profit in sacrificing pleasure for the sake of avoiding pain.
In either case it isa matter of indifference whether the
pain follows the pleasure or precedes it. While it is a com-
plete inversion of the natural order to try and turn this
scene of misery into a garden of pleasure, to aim at joy and
pleasure rather than at the greatest possible freedom from
pain—and yet how many do it! there is some wisdom in
taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind
of hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little
room that shall not be exposed to the fire. The fool rushes
after the pleasures of life and finds himself their dupe;
the wise man avoids its evils; and even if, notwithstand-
ing his precautions, he falls into misfortune, that is the
fault of fate, not of his own folly. As far as he is success-
ful in his endeavors, he cannot be said to have lived a life
of illusion ; for the evils which he shuns are very real.
Even if he goes too far out of his way to avoid evils, and
makes an unnecessary sacrifice of pleasure, he is, in reality,
not the worse off for that ; for all pleasures are chimerical,
and to mourn for having lost any of them is a frivolous,
and even ridiculous proceeding.

The failure to recognize this truth—a failure promoted
by optimistic ideas—is the source of much unhappiness.
In moments free from pain, our restless wishes present, as
it were in a mirror, the image of a happiness that has no
counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow it; in doing
so we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is something
undeniably real. Afterward we come to look with regret
upon that lost state of painlessness ; it is a paradise which
we have gambled away ; it is no louger with us, and we
long in vain to undo what has been done. One might well
fancy that these visions of wishes fulfilled were the work of
some evil spirit, conjured up in order to entice us away
from that painless state which forms our highest happi-
ness.

A careless youth may think that the world is meant to
be enjoyed, as though it were the abode of some real or
GENERAL RULES. 99

pos‘tive happiness, which only those fail to attain who are
not clever enough to overcome the difficulties that lie in
the way. This false notion takes a stronger hold on him
when he comes to read poetry and romance, and to be de-
ceived by outward show—the hypocrisy that characterizes
the world from beginning to end ; on which I shall have
something to say presently. The result is that his life is
the more or less deliberate pursuit of positive happiness ;
and happiness he takes to be equivalent to a series of
definite pleasures. In seeking for these pleasures he en-
counters danger—a fact which should not be forgotten.
He hunts for game that does not exist ; and so he ends by
suffering some very real and positive misfortune—pain,
distress, sickness, lose, care, poverty, shame, and all the
thousand ills of life. Too late he discovers the trick that
has been played upon him.

But if the rule I have mentioned is observed, and a plan
of life is adopted which proceeds by avoiding pain—in
other words, by taking measures of precaution against
want, sickness, and distress in all its forms, the aim is a
real one, and something may be achieved which will be
great in proportion as the plan is not disturbed by striving
after the chimera of positive happiness. This agrees with
the opinion expressed by Goethe in the “ Elective Affin-
ities,” and there put into the mouth of Mittler—the man
who isalways trying to make other people happy: “To de-
sire to get rid of an evil is a definite object, but to desire a
better fortune than one has is blind folly.” The same
truth is contained in that fine French proverb: le
mieux est Vennemt du bren—leave well alone. And, as I
have remarked in my chief work,* this is the leading
thought underlying the philosophical system of the
cynics. For what was it led the cynics to repudiate
pleasure in every form, if it was not the fact that pain is,
in a greater or less degree, always bound up with pleasure ?
To go out of the way of pain seemed to them so much
easier than to secure pleasure. Deeply impressed as they
were by the negative nature of pleasure and the positive
nature of pain, they consistently devoted all their efforts
to the avoidance of pain. The first step to that end was,
in their opinion, a complete and deliberate repudiation of

* « Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” vol. ii., ch. 16,
100 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

pleasure, as something which served only to entrap the
victim in order that he might be delivered over to pain.

We are all born, as Schiller says, in Arcadia. In other
words, we come into the world full claims to happiness and
pleasure, and we cherish the fond hope of making them
good. But, asa rule, Fate soon teaches us, in arough and
ready way, that we really possess nothing at all, but that
everything in the world is at its command, in virtue of an
unassailable right, not only to all we have or acquire, to wife
or child, but even to our very limbs, our arms, legs, eyes
and ears, nay, even to the nose in the middle of our face.
And in any case, after some little time, we learn by ex-
perience that happiness and pleasure are a fata morgana,
which, visible from afar, vanish as weapproach ; that, on
the other hand, suffering and pain are a reality, which
makes its presence felt without any intermediary; and for
its effect, stands in no need of illusion or the play of false
hope.

If the teaching of experience bears fruit in us, we soon
give up the pursuit of pleasure and happiness, and think
much more about making ourselves secure against the at-
tacks of pain and suffering. We see that the best the
world has to offer isan existence free from pain—a quiet
tolerable life; and we confine our claims to this, as to some-
thing we can more surely hope to achieve. For the safest
way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be
very happy. Merck, the friend of Goethe’s youth, was con
scious of this truth when he wrote: ‘It is the wretched
way people have of setting upa claim to happiness—and
that, too, in a measure corresponding with their desires—
that ruins everything in this world. A man will make
progress if he can get rid of this claim, and desire noth-
ing but what he sees before him.”* Accordingly it is ad-
visable to put very moderate limits upon our expectations
of pleasure, possessions, rank, honor and so on; because it
is just this striving and struggling to be happy, to dazzle
the world, to lead a life full of pleasure, which entail great
misfortune. It is prudent, and wise, I say, to reduce one’s
claims, if only for the reason that it is extremely easy to be
very unhappy; while to be very happy is not indeed dif-

 

* Letters to and from Merck.
GENERAL RULES. 101

ficult, but quite impossible. With justice sings the poet
of life’s wisdom:

“ Auream quisquis mediocritatem
Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti
Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda

Sobrius aula.

“‘Sevius ventis agitatur ingens
Pinus: et celse graviori casu
Decidunt turres; feriuntque summos

Fulgura montes ” *

—the golden mean is best—to live free from the squalor of
a mean abode, and yet not be a mark forenvy. It is the
tall pine which is cruelly shaken by the wind, and the lofty
towers that fall so heavily; the highest summits that are
struck in the storm.

He who bas taken to heart the teaching of my philosophy
—who knows, therefore, that our whole existence is some-
thing which had better not have been, and that to disown
and disclaim it is the highest wisdom—he will have no
great expectations from anything or any condition in life;
he will spend passion upon nothing in the world, nor la-
ment over-much if he fails in any of his undertakings. He
will feel the deep truth of what Platot says: otre mi rav
avopwnivey doy ov weyaAns Gxovdys—hothing in human
oo is worth any great anxiety; or, as the Persian poet

as it:

‘* Though from thy grasp all worldly things should flee
Grieve not for them, for they are nothing worth:
And though a world in thy possession be.
Joy not, for worthless are the things of earth.
Since to that better world ’tis given to thee
To pass, speed on, for this is nothing worth.” ¢

The chief obstacle to our arriving at these salutary
views is that hypocrisy of the world to which I have al-
ready alluded—an hypocrisy which snould be early re-
vealed to the young. Most of the glories of the world are

 

* Horace. Odes II. x.
* “Republic,” x, 604.

* Translator’s Note.—From the ‘“‘Anvar-i Suhaili”—‘‘The Lights of
Canopus”—being the Persian version of the Tables of Bidpai.” Trans-
alted by E. B. Eastwick, ch iii. Story iv., p. 289.
102 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

mere outward show, like the scenes on a stage: there is
nothing real about them. Ships festooned and hung with
pennants, firing of cannon, illuminations, beating of drums
and blowing of trumpets, shouting and applauding—these
are all the outward sign, the pretense and suggestion—as
it were the hieroglyphic—of joy: but just there, joy is as
a rule, not to be found; itis the only guest who has de-
clined to be present at the festival. Where this guest may
really be found, he comes generally without invitation ;
he is not formaily announced, but slips in quietly by him-
self sans facon ; often making his appearance under the
most unimportant and trivial circumstances, and in the
commonest company—anywhere, in short, but where the
society is brilliant and distinguished. Joy is like the gold
in the Australian mines—found only now and then, as it
were, by the caprice of chance, and according to no rule
or law ; oftenest in very little grains, and very seldom in
heaps. All that outward show which I have described, is
only an attempt to make people believe that it is really joy
which has come to the festival ; and to produce this 1m-
pression upon the spectators is, in fact, the whole object
of it.

With mourning it is just the same. That long funeral
procession, moving up so slowly; how melancholy it looks !
what an endless row of carriages! But look into them—
they are allempty ; the coachmen of the whole town are the
sole escort the dead man has to his grave. Eloquent
picture of the friendship and esteem of the world! This
ce the falsehood, the hallowness, the hypocrisy of human
affairs ! ;

Take another example—a roomful of guests in full dress,
being received with great ceremony. You could almost
believe that this is a noble and distinguished company ;
but, as a matter of fact, it is compulsion, pain and bore-
dom who are the real guests. For where many are invited,
it is a rabble—even if they all wear stars. Really good
society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant
festivals and noisy entertainments, there is always, at
bottom, a sense of emptiness prevalent. A false tone is
there: such gatherings are in strange contrast with the
misery and barrenness of our existence. The contrast
brings the true condition into greater relief. Still, these
gatherings are effective from the outside ; and that is just
GENERAL RULBS. 103

their ptirpose. Chamfort* makes the excellent remark
that society—les cercles, les salons, ce qu'on appelle le monde
—is like a miserable play, or a bad opera, without any
interest in itself, but supported for a time by mechanical
aid, costumes and scenery.

And so, too, with academies and chairs of philosophy.
You have a kind of a sign-board hung out to show the
apparent abode of wisdom: but wisdom is another guest
who declines the invitation; she is to be found elsewhere.
The chiming of bells, ecclesiastical millinery, attitudes of
devotion, insane antics—these are the pretense, the false
show of piety. Andso on. Everything in the world is
like a hollow nut; there is little kernel anywhere, and
when it does exist, it is still more rare to find it in the
shell. You may look for it elsewhere, and find it, as a
rule, only by chance.

§ 2. To estimate a man’s condition in regard to happi-
ness, it is necessary to ask, not what things please him, but
what things trouble him: and the more trivial these things
are in themselves, the happier the man will be. ‘To be ir-
ritated by trifles, a man must be well off: for in misfortune
trifles are unfelt. e

§ 3. Care should be taken notto build the happiness
of life upona ‘“‘broad foundation”—not to require a great
many things in order to be happy. For happiness on such
a foundation is the most easily undermined; it offers many
more opportunities for accidents; and accidents are always
happening. The architecture of happiness follows a plan
in this respect just the opposite of that adopted in every
other case, where the broadest foundation offers the great-
est security. Accordingly, to reduce your claims to the
lowest possible degree, in comparison with your means—of
whatever kind these may be—is the surest way of avoiding
extreme misfortune.

To make extensive preparations for life—no matter what
form they may take—is one of the greatest and commonest
of follies. Such preparations presuppose, in the first place,

 

* Translator’s Note.—Nicholas ‘“‘ Chamfort ” (1741-94), a French
miscellaneous writer, whose brilliant conversation, power of sar-
casm, and epigrammatic force, coupled with an extraordinary career,
render him one of the most interesting and remarkable men of his
time. Schopenhauer undoubtedly owed much to this writer, to
whom he constantly refers.
104 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

a long life, the full and complete term of years appointed
to man—and how few reach it! and even if it be reached;
it ig still too short for all the plans that have been made.
for to carry them out requires more time than was thought
necessary at the beginning. And then how many mis-
chances and obstacles stand in the way! how seldom the
goal is ever reached in human affairs! And lastly even
though the goal be reached, the changes which time
works in us have been left out of the reckoning; we forget
that the capacity whether for achievement or for enjoyment
does not last a whole lifetime. So we often toil for things
which are no longer suited to us when we attain them; and
again, the years we spend in preparing for some work, un-
consciously rob us of the power for carrying it out. How
often it happens that a man is unable to enjoy the wealth
which he acquired at so much trouble and risk, and that
the fruits of his labor are reserved for others; or that he is
incapable of filling the position which he has won after so
many years of toil and struggle. Fortune has come too
late for him; or, contrarily, he has come too late for fortune
—when, for instance, he wants to achieve great things, say
in art or literature; the popular taste has changed, it may
be;a new generation has grown up, which takes no interest
in his work; others have gone a shorter way and got the start
ofhim. These are the facts of life which Horace must
have had in view, when he lamented the uselessness of all
advice:

“ quid eternis minorem
Consiliis animum fatigas?” *

The cause of this commonest of all follies is that optical
illusion of the mind from which every one suffers, making
life, at its beginning, seem of long duration, and at its end,
when one looks back over the course of it, how short a
time it seems! There is some advantage in the illusion;
but for it, no great work would ever be done.

Our life is like a journey on which, as we advance, the
landscape takes a different view fiom that which it pre-
sented at first, and changes again, as wecome nearer. This
is just what happens—especially with our wishes. We
often find something else, nay, something better than what

 

* Odes II. xi,
GENERAL RULES, 105

we were looking for: and what we look for, We often find
on a very different path from that on which we began a
vain search. Instead of finding, as we expected, pleasure,
happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge—a
real and permanent blessing, instead of a fleeting and il-
lusory one.

This is the thought that runs through ‘Wilhelm
Meister,” like the bass in a piece of music. In this work
of Goethe’s, we have a novel of the ‘‘intellectual” kind,
and, therefore, superior to all others, even to Sir Walter
Scott’s, which are, one and all, “‘ethical;” in other words,
they treat of human nature only from the side of the will.
So, too, in the Zauberfléte—that grotesque, but still signi-
ficant, and even ambiguous hieroglyphic—the same thought
is symbolized, but in great, coarse lines, much in the way
in which scenery is painted. Here the symbol would be
complete if Tamino were in the end to be cured of his desire
to possess Tamina, and received, in her stead initiation into,
the mysteries of the Temple of Wisdom. It is quite right
for Papageno, his necessary contrast, to succeed in getting
his Papagena.

Men of any worth or value soon come to see that they are
in the hands of Fate, and gratefully submit to be molded
by its teachings. They recognize that the fruit of life
is experience, and not happiness; they become accustomed
and content to exchange hope for insight: and, in the end,
they can say, with Petrarch, that all they care for is to
learn:

“ Altro diletto che ’mparar, non provo.”

It may even be that they tosome extent still follow their
old wishes and aims, trifling with them, as it were, for the
sake of appearances; all the while really and seriously look-.
ing for nothing but instruction; a process which lends them
an air of genius, a trait of something contemplative and
sublime.

In their search for gold, the alchemists discovered other
things—gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature.
There is a sense in which we are all alchemists.
106 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

CHAPTER II.
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES.

§ 4, The mason employed on the building of a house
may be quite ignorant of its general design: or, at any rate,
he may not keep it constantly in mind. So it is with man
in working through the days and hours of his life, he takes
little thought of its character as a whole.

If there is any merit or importance attaching to a man’s
career, if he lays himself out carefully for some special
work, it is all the more necessary and advisable for him to
turn his attention now and then to its plan, that is to say,
the miniature sketch of its general outlines. Ofcourse, to
do that, he must have applied the maxim I'v.&@z Geavror; he
must have made some little progress in the art of under-
standing himself. He must know what is his real, chief,
and foremost object in life—what it is that he most wants
in order to be happy; and then, after that, what occupies
the second and third place in his thoughts; he must find
out what, on the whole, his vocation really is—the part he
has to play, his general relation to the world. If he maps
out important work for himself on great lines, a glance at
this miniature plan of his life will more than anything else
stimulate, rouse and ennoble him, urge him on to action
and keep him from false paths.

Again, just asthe traveler, on reaching a height gets a
connected view over the road he has taken, with its many
turns and windings; so it is only when we have completed
a period in our life, or approach the end of it altogether,
that we recognize the true connection between all our
actions—what it is we have achieved, what work we have
done. It is only then that we see the precise chain of
cause and effect, and the exact value of all ourefforts. For
as long as we are actually engaged in the work of life, we
always act in accordance with the nature of our character,
under the influence of motive, and within the limits of our
capacity—in a word, from beginning to end, under a law
of necessity; atevery moment we do just what appears to.
us right and proper. It is only afterward, when we come
to look back at the whole course of our life and its generak
result, that we see the why and wherefore of it all.
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 10%

When we are actually doing some great deed, or creating
some immortal work, we are not conscious of it assuch; we
think only of satisfying present aims, of fulfilling the in-
tentions we happen to have at the time, of doing the right
thing atthe moment. It is only when we come to view
our life as a connected whole that our character and capac-
ities show themselves in their true light; that we see how,
in particular instances, some happy inspiration, as it were,
led us to choose the only true path out of a thousand which
might have brought usto ruin. It was our genius that
guided us, a force felt in the affairs of the intellect as in
those of the world; and working by its defect just in the
same way in regard to evil and disaster.

§ 5. Another important element in the wise conduct of
life is to preserve a proper proportion between our thought
for the present and our thought for the future; in order
not to spoil the one by paying over-great attention to the
other. Many live too much in the present—frivolous
people, I mean; others, too much in the future, ever anx-
ious and full of care. Itis seldom that a man holds the
right balance between the twoextremes. Those whostrive
and hope and live only in the future, always looking ahead
and impatiently anticipating what is coming, as some-
thing which will make them happy when they get it, are,
in spite of their very clever airs, exactly like those donkeys
one sees in Italy, whose pace may be hurried by fixing a
stick on their heads with a wisp of hay at the end of it;
this is always just in front of them, and they keep on
trying to get it. Such people are in a constant state of
illusion as to their whole existence ; they go on living ad
anterim, until at last they die.

Instead, therefore, of always thinking about our plans
and anxiously looking to the future, or of giving ourselves
up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the
present is the only reality, the only certainty ; that the
future almost always turns out contrary to our expecta-
tions; that the past, too, was very different from what we
suppose it to have been. Both the past and the future are,
ou the whole, of less consequence than we think. Dis-
tance, which makes objects look smal] to the outward eye,
makes them look big to the eye of thought. The present
alone is true and actual; it is the only time which pos-
sesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively.
108 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

Therefore we should always be glad of it, and give it the
welcome it deserves, and enjoy every hour that is bearable
by its freedom from pain and annoyance with a full con-
sciousness of its value. We shall hardly be able to do this
if we make a wry face over the failure of our hopes in the
past or over our anxiety for the future. It is the height of
folly to refuse the present hour of happiness, or wantonly
to spoil it by vexation at by-gones or uneasiness about
what is to come. There is a time, of course, for fore-
thought, nay, even for repentance ; but when it is over let
us think of what is past as of something to which we have
said farewell, of necessity subduing our hearts—

AAG ra pdv MporEerdyOat EdGomey AYYUMEY OL TEP
Guudr évi 6rihec6r piloy Saudoarres avayuy,*

and of the future as of that which lies beyond our power,
in the lap of the gods—

GAN nrot piv tdvTA Gedy ev yovvaci nEtrat.t

But in regard to the present let us remember Seneca’s
advice, and live each day as if it were our whole life —
singulas dies singulas vitas puta: let us make it as
agreeable as possible, it is the only real time we have.

Only those evils which are sure to come at a definite
date have any right to disturb us ; and how few there are
which fulfill this description. . For evils are of two kinds ;
either they are possible only, at most probable; or they
are inevitable. Even in the case of evils which are sure
to happen, the time at which they will happen is uncer-
tain. A man who is always preparing for either class of
evil will not have a moment of peace left him. So, if we
are not to lose all comfort in life through the fear of evils,
some of which are uncertain in themselves, and others, in
the time at which they will occur, we should look upon the
one kind as never likely to happen, and the other as not
likely to happen very soon.

Now, the less our peace of mind is disturbed by fear,
the more likely it is to be agitated by desire and expecta-
tion. This is the true meaning of that song of Goethe’s
which is such a favorite with every one: /ch hab’ mein’

 

* «Tliad,” xix. 65. + Ibid, xvii. 514.
OUR RELATION T0 OURSELVES. 109

Sach’ auf nichts gestellt, Itis only after a man has got
rid of all pretension, and taken refuge in mere unembel-
lished existence, that he is able to attain that peace of
mind which is the foundation of human happiness.
Peace of mind! that is something essential to any enjoy-
ment of the present moment; and unless its separate
moments are enjoyed, there is an end of life’s happiness as
a whole. We should always recoilect that to-day comes
only once, and never returns. “We fancy that it will come
again to-morrow ; but to-morrow is another day, which,
in its turn, comes once only. We are apt to forget that
every day is an integral, and therefore irreplaceable portion
of life, and to look upon life as though it were a collective
idea or name which does not suffer if one of the indi-
viduals it covers is destroyed.

We should be more likely to appreciate and enjoy the
present, if, in those good days when we are well and strong,
we did not fail to reflect how, in sickness and sorrow, every
past hour that was free from pain and privation seemed in
our memory so infinitely to be envied—as it were, a lost
paradise, or some one who was only then seen to have acted
asa friend. But we live through our days of happiness
without noticing them; it is only when evil comes upon
us that we wish them back. A thousand gay and pleasant
hours are wasted in ill-humor ; we let them slip by unen-
joyed, and sigh for them in vain when the sky is overcast.
Those present moments that are bearable, be they never so
trite and common—passed by in indifference, or, it may be,
impatiently pushed away—those are the moments we
should honor; never failing to remember that the ebbing
tide is even now hurrying them into the past, where mem-
ory will store them transfigured and shining with an im-
perishable light—in some after-time, and above all, when
our days are evil, to raise the veil and present them as the
object of our fondest regret.

§ 6. ‘‘Limitation always makes for happiness.” We
are happy in proportion as our range of vision, our sphere
of work, our points of contact with the world, are restricted
and circumscribed. We are more likely to feel worried and
anxious if these limits are wide; for it means that our
cares, desires and terrors are increased and intensified.
That is why the blind are not so unhappy as we might be
inclined to suppose, otherwise there would not be that
110 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

gentle and almost serene expression of peace in their
faces.

Another reason why limitation makes for happiness is
that the second half of life proves even more dreary than
the first. As the years wearon, the horizon of our aims
and our points of contact with the world become more ex-
tended. In childhood our horizon is limited to the nar-
rowest sphere about us; in youth there is already a very
considerable widening of our view; in manhood it com-
prises the whole range of our activity, often stretching out
over a very distant sphere—the care, for instance, of a state
or a nation in old age it embraces posterity.

But even in the affairs of the intellect limitation is neces-
sary, if we are to be happy. For the less the will is excited
the less we suffer. We have seen that suffering is some-
thing positive, and that happiness is only a negative con-
dition. To limit the sphere of outward activity is to re-
lieve the will of external stimulus: to limit the sphere of
our intellectual efforts is to relieve the will of internal
sources of excitement. This latter kind of limitation is at-
tended by the disadvantage that it opens the door to bore-
dom, which is a direct source of countless sufferings: for to
banish boredom, a man will have recourse to any means
that may be handy—dissipation, society, extravagance,
gaming, and drinking, and the like, which in their turn
bring mischief, ruin and misery in their train. Dofficiles in
otio guies—it is difficult to keep quiet if you have noth-
ing todo. That limitation in the sphere of outward ac-
tivity is conducive, nay, even necessary to human happiness
such as it is, may be seen in the fact that the only kind of
poetry which depicts men in a happy state of life—idyllic
poetry, I mean—always aims, as an intrinsic part of its
treatment, at representing them in very simple and re-
stricted circumstances. It is this feeling too, which is at
the bottom of the pleasure we tuke in what are called genre
pictures.

“Simplicity,” therefore, as far as it can be attained, and
even monotony, in our manner of life, if it does not mean
that we are bored, will contribute to happiness; just because
under such circumstances, life, and consequently the bur-
den which is the essential concomitant of life, will be least
felt. Our existence will glide on peacefully like a stream
which no waves or whirlpools disturb,
28 OUR RELATION 10 OURSELVES. 111

§ 7. Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state de-
pends, ultimately, upon the kind of matter that pervades
and engrosses our consciousness. In this respect purely
intellectual occupation, for the mind that iscapable of it,
will, as a rule, domuch more in the way of happiness than
any form of practical life, with its constant alternations of
success and failure, and all the shocks and torments it pro-
duces. But it must be confessed that for such occupation
a pre-eminent amount of intellectual capacity is necessary.
And in this connection it may be noted that, just asa life
devoted to outward activity will distract and divert a man
from study and also deprive him of that quiet concentra-
tion of mind which is necessary for such work; so, on the
other hand, a long course of thought will make him more
or less unfit for the noisy pursuits of real life. Itis advis-
able, therefore, to suspend mental work for awhile, if cir-
cumstances happen which demand any degree of energy in
affairs of a practical nature.

§ 8. To live a life that shall be entirely prudent and
discreet, and to drawfrom experience all the instruction
it contains, it is requisite to be constantly thinking back—
to make a kind of recapitulation of what we have done, of
our impressions and sensations, to compare our former with
our present judgments—what we set before us and strug-
gled to achieve, with the actual result and satisfaction we
have obtained. To do this is to get a repetition of the private
‘lessons of experience—lessons which are given to every
one.

Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind
of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the com-
mentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and in-
tellectual knowledge, and very little experience, the result
is like those books which have on each page two lines of
text to forty lines of commentary. A great deal of experi-
ence with little reflection and scanty knowledge, gives us
books like those of the ‘‘editio Bipontina,”* where there are
no notes and much that is unintelligible.

The advice here given ison a par with arule recommended

 

* “Translator’s Note—A series of Greek, Latin and French classics
published at Zweibriicken in the Palatinate, from and after the year
1779. Cf. Butter, Veber die Bipuntiner: und die editiones Bipontinae,
“112 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

by Pythagoras—to review, every night before going to sleep
what we have done during the day. Tolive atrandom, in
the hurly-burly of business or pleasure, without ever reflect-
ing upon the past—to go on, asit were, pulling cotton off
the reel of life—is to have no clear idea of what we are
about: and a man who lives in this state will have chaos in
his emotions and certain confusion in his thoughts; as is
soon manifest by the abrupt and fragmentary character of
his conversation, which becomes a kind of mincemeat. A
man will be all the more exposed to this fate in proportion
as he livesa restless life in the world, amid a crowd of
various impressions and with a correspondingly small
amount of activity on the part of his own mind.

And in this connection it will be in place to observe that,
when events and circumstances which have influenced us
pass away in the course of time, we are unable to bring
back and renew the particlar mood or state of feeling which
they aroused in us: but we can remember what we were led
to say and doin regard to them; and this forms, as it were,
the result, expression and measure of those events. We
should, therefore, be careful to preserve the memory of our
thoughts at important points in our life: and herein lies
the great advantage of keeping a journal.

§9. To be self-sufficient, to beall in all to one’s self, to
want fornothing, to be able to say omnia mea mecum
porto—that is assuredly the chief qualification for happi-
ness. Hence Aristotle’s remark, 9 evéamoria rar
avrapywr éore*--to be happy means to be self-
sufficicnt--cannot be too often repeated. Itis, at bottom,
the same thought asis present in that very well-turned sen-
tence from Chamfort, which I have prefixed asa motto to
this volume. For while a man cannot reckon with cer-
tainty uponany one but himself, the burdens and disad-
vantages, the dangers and annoyances which arise from
having to do with others, are not only countless but una-
voidable.

There is no more mistaken path to happiness than
worldliness, revelry, high life: for the whole object of it
is to transform our miserable existence into a succession of
joys, delights and pleagsures—a process which cannot fail

 

*« Kudem. Eth,” VIL. ii, 8%
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES, 113

to result in disappointment and delusion ; on a par, in this
respect with its obdhgato accompaniment the interchange
of lies.*

All society necessarily involves, as the first condition of
its existence, mutual accommodation and restraint upon
the part of its members. ‘This means that the larger it is,
the more insipid will be its tone. A man can be himeelf
only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude,
he will not love freedom ; for it is only when he is alone
that he is really free. Constraint is always present in
society, like a companion of whom there is no riddance ;
and in proportion to the greatness of a man’s individuality,
it will be hard for him to bear the sacrifices which all
intercourse with others demands. Solitude will be
welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man’s
personal value is large or small—the wretch feeling,
when he is alone, the whole burden of his misery; the
great intellect delighting in its greatness ; and every one,
in short, being just what he is.

Further, if a man stands high in Nature’s list, it is
natural and inevitable that he should feel solitary. It
will be an advantage to him if his surroundings do not
interfere with this feeling; for if he has to see a great
deal of other people who are not of like character with
himself, they will exercise a disturbing influence upon
him, adverse to his peace of mind; they will rob him, in
fact, of himself, and give him nothing to compensate for
the loss.

But while Nature sets very wide differences between
man and man in respect both of morality and of intellect,
society disregards and effaces them ; or, rather, it sets up
artificial differences in their stead—gradations of rank and
position, which are very often diametrically opposed to
those which Nature establishes. The result of this arrange-
ment is to elevate those whom Nature has placed low, and
to depress the few who stand high. These latter, then,
usually withdraw from society, where, as soon as it is at
all numerous, vulgarity reigns supreme.

 

* As our body is concealed by the clothes we wear, so our mind is
veiled in lies. The veil is always there, and it is only through it
that we can sometimes guess at what a man really thinks; just as
from his clothes we arrive at the general shape of his body.
114 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

What offends a great intellect in society is the equality
of rights, leading to equality of pretensions, which every
one enjoys ; while at the same time, inequality of capacity
means a corresponding disparity of social power. So-called
good society recognizes every kind of claim but that of
intellect, which is a contraband article; and people are
expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience toward
every form of folly and stupidity, perversity and dull-
ness while personal merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for
being present, or else conceal itself altogether. Intellect-
ual superiority offends by its very existence, without any
desire to do so.

The worst of what is called good society is not only that
it offers us the companionship of people who are unable to
win either our praise or our affection, but that it does not
allow of our being that which we naturally are; it compels
us, for the sake of harmony, to shrivel up, or even alter
our shape altogether. Intellectual conversation whether
grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is
downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is
absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This de-
mands an act of severe self-denial; we have to forfeit three-
fourths of ourselves in order to become like other people.
No doubt their company may be set down against our loss
in this respect; but the more a man is worth, the more he
will find that what he gains does not cover what he loses,
and that the balance ison the debit side of the account;
for the people with whom he deals are generally
bankrupt—that is to say, there is nothing to be got from
their society which can compensate either for its boredom,
annoyance and disagreeableness, or for the self-denial which
it renders necessary. Accordingly, most society is so con-
stituted as to offer a good profit to any one who will ex-
change it for solitude. .

Nor is this all. By way of providing a substitute for
real—I mean intellectual—superiority, which is seldom to
be met with, and intolerable when it is found, society has
capriciously adopted a false kind of superiority, conven-
tional in its character, and resting upon abitrary principles
—-a tradition, as it were, handed down in the higher circles
and, like a password, subject to alterations; I refer to bon
ton fashion. Whenever this kind of superiority comes
into collision with the real kind, its weakness is manifest,
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 115

Moreover, the presence of “‘ good tone” means the absence
of good sense.

No man can be in perfect accord with any one but
himself—not even with a friend or the partner of his life;
differences of individuality and temperament are always
bringing in some degree of discord, thongh it may be a very
slight one. ‘That genuine, profound peace of mind, that
perfect tranquillity of soul, which, next to health, is the
highest blessing the earth can give, is to be attained only
in solitude, and, as a permanent mood, only in complete
retirement: and then, if there is anything great and rich
in the man’s own self, his way of life is the happiest that
may be found in this wretched. world.

Let me speak plainly. However close the bond of friend-
ship, love, marriage, a man, ultimately, looks to himself,
to his own welfare alone: at most, to his child’s too. The
less necessity there is for you to come into contact with
mankind in general, in the relations whether of business or
of personal intimacy, the better off you are. Loneliness
and solitude have their evils, itis true; but if you cannot
feel them all at once, you can at least see where they lie;
on the other hand, society is insidious in this respect; as in
offering you what appears to be the pastime of pleasing social
intercourse, it works great and often irreparable mischief.
The young should early be trained to bear being left alone;
for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.

It follows from this that a man is best off if he be thrown
upon his own resources and can be all in all to himself;
and Cicero goes so far as to say that a man who is in this
condition cannot fail to be very happy—nemo potest non
beatissimus esse qui est totus aptus ex sese, quique in se
uno ponit omnia.* The more a man has himself, the less
others can be to him. The feeling of self-sufficiency !
it is that which restrains those whose personal value is in
itself great riches, from such considerable sacrifices as are
demanded by intercourse with the world, let alone, then,
from actually practicing self-denial by going out of their
way toseekit. Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant
just from the very opposite feeling; to bear others’ com-
pany is easier for them than to bear their own. Moreover,
respect is not paid in this world to that which has real

 

* « Paradoxa Stoicoruim,” II,
116 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

merit ; it is reserved for that which has none. So retiré-
ment is at once a proof and a result of being distinguished
by the possession of meritorious qualities. It will there-
fore show real wisdom on the part of any one who is worth
anything in himself, to limit his requirements as may be
necessary, in order to preserve or extend his freedom, and,
—since aman must come into some relations with his
fellow-men—to admit them to his intimacy as little as
possible.

I have said that people are rendered sociable by their in-
ablity to endure solitude, that is to say, their own society.
They become sick of themselves. It is this vacuity of
soul which drives them to intercourse with others—to
travels in foreign countries. Their mind is wanting in
elasticity ; it has no movement of its own, and so they try
to give it some—by drink, for instance. How much
drunkenness is due to this cause alone! They are always
looking for some form of excitement, of the strongest kind
they can bear—the excitement of being with people of like
nature with themselves; and if they fail in this, their
mind sinks by its own weight, and they fall into a grievous
lethargy.* Such people, it may be said, possess only a
small fraction of humanity in themselves ; and it requires
a great many of them put together to make up a fair
amount of it—to attain any degree of consciousness as men.
A man, in the full sense of the word—a man par excel-

 

* It is a well-known fact, that we can more easily bear up under
evils which fall upon a great many people besides ourselves. As
boredom seems to be an evil of this kind, people band together to
offer it a common resistance. The love of life is at bottom only the
fear of death ; and, in the same way, the social impulse does not
rest directly upon the love of society, but upon the fear of solitude;
it is not alone the charm of being in others’ company that people
seek, it is the dreary oppression of being alone—the monotony of
their own consciousness—that they would avoid. They will do any-
thing to escape it—even tolerate bad companions, and put up with
the feeling of constraint which all society involves, in this case a very
burdensome one. But if aversion to such society conquer the aver-
sion to being alone, they become accustomed to solitude and hardened
to its immediate effects. They no longer find solitude to be such a
very bad thing, and settle down comfortably to it without any han-
kering after society; and this, partly because it is only indirectly
that they need others’ company and partly because they have be-
come accustomed to the benefits of being alone,
OUR RELATION 70 OURSELVES. 117

lence—does not represent a fraction, but a whole number ;
he is complete in himself.

Ordinary society is, in this respect, very like the kind
of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed solely
of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note; and the
music is produced by each note coming in just at the right
moment. In the monotonous sound ofa single horn, you
have a precise illustration of the effect of most people’s
minds. How often there seems to be only one thought
there! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why
people are so bored ; and also why they are so sociable, why
they like to go about in crowds—why mankind is so
gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that
makes a man find solitude intolerable. Omnis stultitia
laborat fastidio sui: folly is truly its own burden. Put a
great many men together, and you may get some result—
some music from your horns!

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert
without any help from any one else, playing on a single
instrument—a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in it-
self. Such aman is a little world in himself; and the
effect produced by various instruments together he pro-
duces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness.
Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony: he is a
soloist and performs by himself—in solitude, it may be;
or, if in company with other instruments, only as princi-
pal; or for setting the tone, as in singing. However,
those who are fond of society from time to time may profit
by this simile, and lay it down as a general rule that
deficiency of quality in those we meet may be to some ex-
tent compensated by an increase in quantity. One man’s
company may be quiet enough, if he is clever; but where
you have only ordinary people to deal with, it is advisable
to have a great many of them, so that some advantage may
accrue by letting them all work together—on the analogy
of the horns; and may Heaven grant you patience for your
task !

That mental vacuity and barrenness of soul to which I
have alluded, is responsible for another misfortune. When
men of the better class form a society for promoting some
noble or ideal aim, the result almost always is that the in-
numerable mob of lumanity comes crowding in too, as it
always does everywhere, like vermin—their object being
118 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

to try and get rid of boredom, or some other defect of their
nature; and anything that will effect that, they seize upon at
once, without the slightest discrimination. Some of them
will slip into that society, or push themselves in, and then
either soon destroy it altogether, or alter it so much that
in the end it comes to have a purpose the exact opposite of
that which it had at first.

This is not the only point of view from which the social
impulse may be regarded. On cold days people manage to
get some warmth by crowding together ; and you can warm
your mind in the same way—by bringing it into contact
with others. But aman who has a great deal of intellectual
warmth in himself will stand in no need of such resources.
I have written a little fable illustrating this: it may be
found elsewhere.* As a general rule, it may be said that
a man’s sociability stands very nearly in inverse ratio to his
intellectual value: to say that ‘‘so and so” is very un-
sociable, is almost tantamount to saying that he isa man
of great capacity.

Solitude is doubly advantageous to sucha man. Firstly
it allows him to be with himself, and, secondly, it prevents
him being with others—an advantage of great moment; for
how much constraint, annoyance, and even danger there is
in all intercourse with the world. Tout notre mal, says La
Bruyére, vient de ne pouvoir étre seul. It is really a very
risky, nay, a fatal thing, to be sociable; because it means
contact with natures, the great majority of which are bad

 

* Translator’s Note.—The passage to which Schopenhauer refers
is “Parrega;” vol. ii. § 413. (4th. edition). The fable is of
certain porcupines, who huddled together for warmth on a cold day ;
but as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were
obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again,
when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of
huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off
by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same
way, the need of society drives the human porcupines together—only
to be mutally repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities
of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover
to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of
politeness and fine manners ; and those who transgress it are roughly
told—in the English phrase—‘‘to keep their distance.” By this
arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately
satisfied—but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some
heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick
other people nor get pricked himself.

as
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 119

morally, and dull or perverse, intellectually. To be un-
sociable is not to care about such people; and to have
enough in one’s self to dispense with the necessity of their
company is a great piece of good fortune; because almost
all our sufferings spring from having to do with other people
and that destroys the peace of mind, which, as I have said
comes next after health in the elements of happiness.
Peace of mind is impossible without a considerable amount
of solitude. The cynics renounced all private property in
order to attain the bliss of having nothing to trouble them;
and to renounce society with the same object is the wisest
thing a man can do. Bernardin de Saint Pierre has the
very excellent and pertinent remark that to be sparing in
regard to food is a means of health; in regard to society, a
means of tranquillity—la diéte des alimens nous rend la
santé du corps, et celledes hommes latranquallitée de Vdme.
To be soon on friendly, or even affectionate, terms with
solitude is like winning « gold mine: but this is not some-
thing which everybodycan do. The prime reason forsocial
intercourse is mutual need; and as soon as that is satisfied,
boredom drives people together once more. Ifit were not
for these two reasons, a man would probably elect to remain
alone; if only because solitude is the sole condition of life
which gives full play to that feeling of exclusive importance
which every man has in his own eyes—as if he were the
only person in the world! a feeling which, in the throng and
press of real life, soon shrivels up to nothing, getting, at
every step, a painful démenti. From this point of view
it may be said that solitude is the original and natural state
of man, where, like another Adam, he is as happy as his
nature will allow.

But still, had Adam no father or mother? There is an-
other sense in which solitude is not the natural state; for,
at higentrance into the world, # man finds himself with
parents, brothers sisters, that is to say, in society, and not
alone. Accordingly it cannot be said that the love of soli-
tude is an original characteristic of human nature; it is
rather the result of experience and reflection, and these in
their turn depend upon the development of intellectual
power, and increase with the years. : ae

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with
age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left
alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by
120 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

itself isa great punishment. Young people soon get on
very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few
among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and
then to be alone—but to spend the whole day thus would
be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is
little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less
and. legs trouble as he advances in years, An old man who has
outlived all his frieuds, and is either indifferent or dead
to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude
and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement
and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intel-
lectual capacity.

For this tendency is not, as I have said, a purely natural
one; it does not come into existence asa direct need of hu-
man nature; it is rather the effect of the experience we go
through, the product of reflection upon what our needs
really are; proceeding, more especially, from the insight we
attain into the wretched stuff of which most people are
made, whether you look at their morals or their intellects.
The worst of it all is that, in the individual, moral and intel-
lectual shortcomings are closely connected and play into
each other’s hands, so that all manner of disagreeable results
are obtained, which make intercourse with most people not
only unpleasant but intolerable. Hence, though the world
contains many things which are thoroughly bad, the worst
thing in it is society. Even Voltaire, that sociable French-
man, was obliged to admit that there are every where crowds
of people not worth talking to; la terre est couverte de gens
qui ne méritent pas qwon leur parle. And Petrarch gives
asimilar reason for wishing to be alone—that tender spirit!
so strong and constant in his love of seclusion. The
streams, the plains and woods know well, he says, how he
has tried to escape the perverse and stupid people who have
missed the way to heaven:

“‘ Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita

(Le rive il sanno, e le campagne e i boschi)
Per fuggir quest’ ingegni storti e loschi
Che la strada del ciel’ hanno smarrita.”

He pursues the same strainin that delightful book of his
“De Vita Solitaria,” which seems to have given Zimmerman
the idea of his celebrated work on <‘Solitude.” It is the
secondary and indirect character of the love of seclusion to
OUR RELATION T0 OURSELVES. 121

which Chamfort alludes in the following passage, couched
in his sarcastic vein: ‘On dit quelquefois d'un homme
qui vit seul, il n’aime pas lasociété. C'est souvent comme
ston disait d'un homme quwil waime pas la prome-
nade, sous le prétexte qu'il ne se proméne pas volontiers
le soir dans la forét de Bondy.

You will find a similar sentiment expressed by the Per-
sian poet Sadi, in his ‘Garden of Roses.” “Since that
time,” he says, “we have taken leave of society, preferring
the path of seclusion; for there is safety in solitude. An-
gelus Silesius,* a very gentle and Christian writer, confesses
to the same feeling, in his own mythical language. Herod,
he says, is the common enemy; and when, as with Joseph,
God warns us of danger, we fly from the world to solitude,
from Bethlehem to Egypt; or else suffering and death await
us!

‘‘Herodes ist ein Feind; der Joseph der Verstand,
Dem machte Gott die Gefahrim Traum (in Geist) bekannt;
Die Welt ist Bethlehem, Aegypten Einsamkeit,
Fleuch, meine Seele! fleuch, sonst stirbest du vor Leid.”

Giordano Bruno also declares himself a friend of seclusion.
Tanti womini, he says, che in terra hanne voluto gustare
vita celeste, dissero con una voce, “‘ecce elongavi fugiens et
mansiin solitudine’—those who in this world have desired
a foretaste of the divine life, have always proclaimed with
one voice:

‘* Lo! then would I wander far off:
I would lodge in the wilderness.” +

And in the work from which I have already quoted Sadi
says of himself: ‘‘In disgust with my friends at Damascus
I withdraw into the desert about Jerusalem, to seek the
society of the beasts of thefield.” In short, the same thing
has been said by all whom Prometheus has formed out of
better clay. What pleasure could they find in the company
of people with whom their only common ground is just
what is lowest and least noble in their own nature—the

 

*Translator’s Note—Angelus Silesius, pseudonym for Johannes
Scheffler, a physician and mystic poet of the seventeenth century
(1624-77).

+ Psalms, lv. 7.
122 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

part of them that is commonplace, trivial and vulgar?
What do they want with people who cannot rise to a higher
level, and for whom nothing remains but to drag others
down to theirs ? for this is what they aim at. It is an
aristocratic feeling that is at the bottom of this propensity
to seclusion and solitude. ;

Rascals are always sociable—more’s the pity! and the
chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is
the little pleasure he takes in others’ company. He prefers
solitude more and more, and, in course of time, comes to
see that with few exceptions, the world offers no choice
beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other.
This may sound a hard thing to say; but even Angelus
Silesius, with all his Christian feelings of gentleness and
love, was obliged to admit the truth of it. However pain-
ful solitude may be, he says, be careful not to be vulgar;
for then you may find a desert everywhere:

“Die Einsamkeit ist noth: doch sei nur nicht gemein,
So kannst du uberall in einer Wiiste sein.”

It is natural for great minds—the true teachers of hu-
manity—to care little about the constant company of others
just as little as the schoolmaster cares for joining in the
gambols of the noisy crowd of boys which surrounds him.
The mission of these great minds is to guide mankind over
the sea of error to the haven of truth—to draw it forth from
the dark abysses of a barbarous vulgarity up into the light
of culture and refinement. Men of great intellect live in
the world without really belonging to it; and so, from their
earliest years, they feel that there is a perceptible difference
between them and other people. But it is only gradually,
with the lapse of years, thatthey come to a clear under-
standing of their position. Their intellectual isolation is
then reinforced by actual seclusion in their manner of life;
they let no one approach who is not in some degree
emancipated from the prevailing vulgarity.

From what has been said it is obvious that the love of
solitude is not a direct, original impulse in human nature,
but rather something secondary and of gradual growth.
It is the more distinguishing feature of nobler minds,
developed not without some conquest of natural desires,
and now and then in actual opposition to the promptings

'
OUR RELATION 10 OURSELVES. 123

of Mephistopheles—bidding you exchange a morose and
soul-destroying solitude for life among men, for society ;
7 the worst, he says, will give a sense of human fellow-
ship :

‘Hor’ auf mit deinem Gram zu spielen,
Der, wie ein Geier, dir am Leben frisst :
Die schlechteste Gesellschaft lisst dich fiihlen
Dass du ein Mensch mit Menschen bist.” *

“To be alone is the fate of all great minds—~—a fate
deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less griev-
ous of two evils. As the years increase, it always becomes
easier to say, Dare to be wise—sapere aude. And after
sixty, the inclination to be alone grows into a kind of real,
natural instinct; for at that age everything combines in
favor of it. The strongest impulse—the love of women’s
society—has little or no effect ; it is the sexless condition
of old age which lays the foundation of a certain self-
sufficiency, and that gradually absorbs all desire for others’
company. A thousand illusions and follies are overcome ;
the active years of life are in most cases gone; a man has
no more expectations or plans or intentions. The genera-
tion to which he belonged has passed away, and a new race
has sprung up which looks upon him as essentially outside
its sphere of activity. And then the years pass more
quickly as we become older, and we want to devote our
remaining time to the intellectual rather than to the prac-
tical side of life. For, provided that the mind retains its
faculties, the amount of knowledge and experience we have
acquired, together with the facility we have gained in the
use of our powers, makes it then more than ever easy and in-
teresting to us to pursue the study of any subject. A
thousand things become clear which were formerly
enveloped in obscurity, and results are obtained which give
a feeling of difficulties overcome. From long experience
of men, we cease to expect much from them ; we find that,
on the whole, people do not gain by a nearer acquaintance ;
and that—apart from a few rare and fortunate exceptions
—we haye come across none but defective specimens of
human nature which it is advisable to leave in peace. We
are no more subject to the ordinary illusions of life; and

 

* « Goethe’s ‘‘ Faust,” Part I, 1281-5.
124 COUNSHLS AND MAXIMS.

as, in individual instances, we soon see what a man is made
of, we seldom feel any inclination to come into closer
relations with him. Finally, isolation—our own society—
has become a habit, as it were a second nature, with us,
more especially if we have been on friendly terms with it
from ovr youth up. The love of solitude which was
formerly indulged only at the expense of our desire for
society, has now come to be the simple quality of our
natural disposition—the element proper to our life, as
water to a fish. This is why any one who possesses a
unique individuality—unlike others and therefore neces-
sarily isolated—feels that, as he becomes older, his position
is no longer so burdensome as when he was young.

For as a matter of fact, this very genuine privilege of old
age is one which can be enjoyed only if a man is possessed
of a certain amount of intellect; it will be appreciated most
of all where there is real mental power: but in some degree
by every one. Itisonly people of very. barren and vulgar
nature who will be just as sociable in their old ageas they were
in their youth. But then they become troublesome to a society
to which they are no longer suited, and, at most, manage to
be tolerated; whereas they were formerly in great request.

There is another aspect of thisinverse proportion between
age and sociability—the way in which it conduces to edu-
cation. The younger people are, the more in every respect
they have to learn; and it is just in youth that Nature pro-
vides a system of mutual education, so that mere inter-
course with others, at that time of life, carries instruction
withit. Human society, from this point of view, resembles
a huge academy of learning, on the Bell and Lancaster
system, opposed to the system of education by means of
books and schools, as something artificial and contrary to
the institutions of Nature. It is therefore avery suitable
arrangement that, in his young days, a man should be a
very diligent student at the place of learning provided by
Nature herself.

But there is nothing in life which has not some drawback
—nihil est ab omni parte beatwm, as Horace says; or, in the
words of an Indian proverb, ‘‘no lotus without a stalk.”
Seclusion, which has so many advantages, has also its lit-
tle annoyancesanddrawbacks, which are small, however, in
comparison with those of society; hence any one who is
worth much in himself will get on better without other
OUR RELATION 10 OURSELVES. 125

people than with them. But among the disadvantages of
seclusion there is one which is not so easy to see as the rest.
It is this: when people remain indoors all day, they become
physically very sensitive to atmospheric changes, so that
every little draught is enough to make them ill; so with
our temper; a long course of seclusion makes it so sensitive
that the most trivial incidents, words, or even looks, are
sufficient to disturb or to vex and ‘offend us—little things
which are unnoticed by those who live in the turmoil of
life.

When you find human society disagreeable and feel your-
self justified in flying to solitude, you may be so constituted
as to be unable to bear the depression of it for any length
of time, which will probably be the case if you are young.
Let me advise you, then, to form the habit of taking some
of your solitude with you into society, to learn to be to
some extent alone even though you are in company: not to
say at once what you think, and, onthe other hand, not
to attach too precise a meaning to what others say; rather
not to expect much of them, either morally or intellectually
and to strengthen yourself in the feeling of indifference to
their opinion, which is the surest way of always practicing
a praiseworthy toleration. If you do that, you will not
live so much with other people, though you may appear to
move among them; your relation to thei will be of purely
objective character. ‘his precaution will keep you from
too close contact with society, and therefore secure you
against being contaminated or even outraged by it. * Soci-
ety is in this respect like a fire—the wise man warming
himself at a proper distance from it; not coming tooclose
like the fool, who, on getting scorched, runs away and
shivers in solitude, loud in his complaint that the fire
burns.

§ 10. Envy is natural to man: and still, it is at once a
vice and asource of misery. We should treat it as the

 

* This restricted, or, as it were, entrenched kind of sociability has
been dramatically illustrated in a play—well worth reading—of Mora-
tin’s, entitled ‘‘El Café o sea la Comedia Nuova” (The Cafe or the
New Comedy), chiefly by one of the characters, Don Pedro, and es-
pecially in the second and third scenes of the first act.

+ Envy shows how unhappy people are: and intheir constant atten-
tion to what others doand leave undone, how much they are bored,
126 COUNSEKLS AND MAXIMS,

cnemy of our happiness, and stifle it like an evil thought.
This is the advice given by Seneca; as he well puts it, we
shall be pleased with what we have, if we avoid the self-
torture of comparing our own lot with some other and hap-
pier one—nostra nos sine comparatione delectent; nun-
quam erit felix quem torquebit felicior.* Aud again:
quum adspexeris quot te antecedant, cogita quot se-
guanturt—if a great many people appear to be better off
than yourself, think how many there are in a worse position.
It is a fact that if realcalamity comes upon us, the most
effective consolation—though it springs from the same
source as envy—is just the thought of greater misfortunes
than ours; and the next best is the society of those who are
in the same ill luck as we—the partners of our sorrows.

So much for the envy which we may feel toward others.
As regards the envy which we may excite in them, it should
always be remembered that no form of hatred is so impla-
cable as the hatred that comes from envy; and therefore we
should always carefully refrain from doing anything to
rouse it; nay, as with many another form of vice, it is better
altogether to renounce any pleasure there may be in it be-
cause of the serious nature of its consequences.

Aristocracies are of three kinds: (1) of birth and rank; (2)
of wealth; and (3) of intellect. The Jast is really the most
distinguished of the three, and its claim to occupy the first
position comes to be recognized, if it is only allowed time
to work. So eminent a king as Frederick the Great admit-
ted it—les dmes privilegiées rangent a Végal des souverains,
as he said to his chamberlain, when the latter expressed his
surprise that Voltaire should have a seat at the table re-
served for kings and princes, while ministers and generals
were relegated to the chamberlain’s.

Every one of these aristocracies is surrounded by a host
of envious persons. If you belong to one of them, they
will be secretly embittered against you; and unless they
are restrained by fear, they will always be anxious to let
you understand that you are no better than they. It is by
their anxiety to let you know this, that they betray how
greatly they are conscious that the opposite is the truth.

The line of conduct to be pursued if you are exposed to
envy is to keep the envious persons at a distance, and,

 

* «De Ira:” iii., 80. t “Epist.,” xv.
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 127

as far as possible, avoid all contact with them, so that
there may be a wide gulf fixed between you and them; if
this cannot be done, to bear their attacks with the greatest
composure. In the latter case, the very thing that pro-
vokes the attack will also neutralize it. This is what
appears to be generally done.

The members of one of these aristocracies usually get on
very well with those of another, and there is no call for
envy between them, because their several privileges effect
an equipoise.

§ 11. Give mature and repeated consideration to any
plan before you proceed to carry it out; and even after
you have thoroughly turned it over in your mind, make
some concession to the incompetency of human judgment;
for it may always happen that circumstances which cannot
be investigated or foreseen, will come in and upset the
whole of your calculation. This is a reflection that will
always influence the negative side of the balance—a kind
of warning to refrain from unnecessary action in matters
of importance—quieta non movere. But having once made
up your mind and begun your work, you must let it run
its course and abide the result—not worry yourself by
fresh reflections on what is already accomplished, or by a
renewal of your scruples on the score of possible danger :
free your mind from the subject altogether, and refuse to
go into it again, secure in the thought that you gave it
mature attention at the proper time. This is the same ad-
vice as is given by an Italian proverb—legala bene e pot
lascia la andare--which Goethe has translated thus: see
well to your girths, and then ride on boldly.*

And if, notwithstanding that, you fail, it is because all
human affairs are the sport of chanceand error. Socrates,
the wisest of men, needed the warning voice of his good
genius, or éatudviov to enable him to do what was right in
regard to his own personal affairs, or, at any rate, to avoid
mistakes ; which argues that the human intellect is incom-
petent for the purpose. There is a saying—which is re-
ported to have originated with one the popes—that when

 

* Tt may be observed, in passing, that a great many of the maxims
which Goethe puts under the head of Proverbial, are translations
from the Italian,
128 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

misfortune happens to us, the blame of it, at least in some
degree, attaches to ourselves. If this is not true absolutely
and in every instance, it is certainly true in the great
majority of cases. It even looks as if this truth had a
great deal to do with the effort people make as far as possi-
ble to conceal their misfortunes, and to put the best face
they can upon them, for fear lest their misfortunes may
show how much they are to blame.

§ 12. Inthe case of a misfortune which has already
happened and therefore cannot be altered, you should not
allow yourself to think that it might have been otherwise ;
still less, that it might have been avoided by such and
such means; for reflections of this kind will only add
to your distress and make it intolerable, so that you will
become a tormentor of yourself{—éavrorripwpovpevos. It is
better to follow the example of King David; who, as long
as his son lay on the bed of sickness, assailed Jehovah with
unceasing supplications and entreaties for his recovery ;
but when he was dead, snapped his fingersand thought no
moreofit. If you are not light-hearted enough for that, you
can take refuge in fatalism, and have the great truth
revealed to you that everything which happens is the result
of necessity, and therefore inevitable.

However good this advice may be, it is one-sided and
partial. In relieving and quieting us for the moment, it
1s no doubt effective enough; but when our misfortunes
have resulted——as is usually the case—from our own care-
lessness or folly, or, at any rate, partly by our own fault,
it is a good thing to consider how they might have been
avoided, and to consider it often in spite of its being a
tender subject—a salutary form of self-discipline, which
will make us wiser and better men for the future. If we
have made obvious mistakes, we should not try, as we
generally do, to gloss them over, or to find something to
excuse or extenuate them; we should admit to ourselves
that we have committed faults, and open our eyes wide to
all their enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve to
avoid them in time to come. ‘I'o be sure, that means a
great deal of self-inflicted pain, in the shape of discontent,
but it should be remembered that to spare the rod is to
spoil the child—6 yu Sapeis &vOpa@mo0s od mardeverar.*

* Menander, Monost: 422,
OUR RELATION 10 OURSELVES. 129

§ 13. In all matters affecting our weal or woe, we should
be careful not to let our imagination run away with us,
and build no castles in the air. In the first place, they are
expensive to build, because we have to pull them down
again immediately, and that is a source of grief. We
should be still more on our guard against distressing our
hearts by depicting possible misfortunes. If these were
inisfortunes of a purely imaginary kind, or very remote
and unlikely, we should at once see, on awaking from our
dream, that the whole thing was mere illusion ; we should re-
joice all the more in a reality better than our dreams, or,
at most, be warned against misfortunes which, though very
remote, were still possible. These, however, are not the
sort of playthings in which imagination delights ; it is only
in idle hours that we build castles in the air, and they are
always of a pleasing description. The matter which goes
to form gloomy dreams are mischances which to some ex-
tent really threaten us, though it be from some distance ;
imagination makes them look larger and nearer and more
terrible than they are in reality. This isa kind of dream
which cannot be so readily shaken off on awaking as a
pleasant one; fora pleasant dream is soon dispelled by
reality, leaving, at most, a feeble hope lying in the lap of
possibility. When we have abandoned ourselves to a fit of
the blues, visions are conjured up which do not so easily
vanish again; for it is always just possible that the visions
may be realized. But we are not always able to estimate the
exact degree of possibility : possibility may easily pass into
probability ; and thus we deliver ourselves up to torture.
Therefore we should be careful not to be over-anxious on
any matter affecting our weal or our woe, not to carry our
anxiety to unreasonable or injudicious limits; but coolly
and dispassionately to deliberate upon the matter, as
though it were an abstract question which did not touch us
in particular. We should give no play to imagination
here; for imagination is not judgment—it only conjures
up visions, inducing an unprofitable and often very painful
mood.

The rule on which I am here insisting should be most
carefully observed toward evening. For as darkness
makes us timid and apt to see terrifying shapes everywhere,
there is something similar in the effect of indistinct
thought ; and uncertainty always brings with it a sense of
130 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

danger. Hence, toward evening, when our powers of
thought and judgment are relaxed—at the hour, as it were,
of subjective darkness—the intellect becomes tired, easily
confused, and unable to get at the bottom of things ; and
if, in that state, we meditate on matters of personal interest
to ourselves, they soon assume a dangerous and terrifying
aspect. ‘This is mostly the case at night, when we are in
bed ; for then the mind is fully relaxed, and the power of
judgment quite unequal to its duties; but imagination is
still awake. Night gives a black look to everything, what-
ever it may be. This is why our thoughts, just before we
go to sleep, or as we lie awake through the hours of the
night, are usually such confusions and perversions of facts
as dreams themselves; and when our thoughts at that
time are concentrated upon our own concerns, they are
generally as black and monstrous as possible. In the
morning all such nightmares vanish like dreams; as the
Spanish proverb has it, noche tinta, blanco el dia—the
night is colored, the day is white.

But even toward nightfall, as soon as the candles are lit,
the mind, like the eye, no longer sees things so clearly as
by day ; it is a time unsuited to serious meditation, especi-
ally on unpleasant subjects. The morning is the proper
time for that—as indeed for all efforts without exception,
whether mental or bodily. For the morning is the youth
of the day, when everything is bright, fresh and easy of
attainment ; we feel strong then, and all our faculties are
completely at our disposal. Do not shorten the morning
by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations
or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a
certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are
languid, talkative, silly. Hach day is a little life; every
waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a
little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

But condition of health, sleep, nourishment, temperature
weather, surroundings, and much else that is purely ex-
ternal, have, in general, an important influence upon our
mood and therefore upon our thoughts. Hence both our
view of any matter and our capacity for any work are very
much subject to time and place. So it is best to profit by
a good mood—for how seldom it comes— : :
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 131

“Nehmt die gute Stimmung wahr,
Denn sie kommt so selten.” *

We are not always able to form new ideas about our sur-
roundings, or to command original thoughts; they come if
they will, and when they will. And so, too, we cannot al-
ways succeed in completely considering some personal mat-
ter at the precise time at which we have determined before-
hand to consider it, and just when we set ourselves to do
so. For the peculiar train of thought which is favorable to
it may suddenly become active without any special call be-
ing made uponit, and we may then follow it up with keen
interest. In this way reflection, too, cnooses its own
time.

This reining-in of the imagination which Iam recom-
mending, will also forbid us to sammon up the memory of
past misfortune, to paint a dark picture of the injustice or
barm that has been done us, the losses we have sustained,
the insults, slights and annoyances to which we have been
exposed; for to do that is to rouse into fresh life all those
hateful passions long laid asleep—the angerand resentment
which disturb and pollute our nature. In an excellent par-
able, Proclus, the Neoplatonist, points out how in every
town the mob dwell side by side with those who are rich and
distinguished: so, too, in every man, be he never so noble
and dignified, there is, in the depths of his nature, a mob
of low and vulgar desires which constitute him an animal.
It will not do to let this mob revoit or even so muchas peep
forth from its hiding-place; it is hideous of mien, and its
rebel leaders are those flights of imagination which I have
been describing. The smallest annoyance whether it comes
from our fellow-men or from the things around us, may
swell up into a monster of dreadful aspect, putting us at
our wits’ end—and all because we go on brooding over our
troubles and painting them in the most glaring colors and
on the largest scale. It is much better to take avery calm
and prosaic view of what is disagreeable; for that is the
easiest way of bearing it.

If you hold small objects close to your eyes, you limit
your field of vision and shut out the world. And, in the
same way, the people or the things which stand nearest,
even though they are of the very smallest consequence, are

 

* Goethe.
132 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

apt to claim an amount of attention much beyond their due,
occupying us disagreeably, and leaving no room for serious
thoughts and affairs of importance. We ought to work
against this tendency.

§ 14. Thesight of things which donot belong to us is
very apt to raise the thought: ‘‘Ah, if that were only mine!”
making ussensible of our privation. Instead of that we
should do better by more frequently putting to ourselves
the opposite case: “Ah, if that were not mine!” What I
mean is that we should sometimes try to look upon our pos-
sessions in the light in which they would appear if we had
lost them; whatever they may be, property, health, friends,
a wife or child or some one else we love, our horse or our
dog—it is usually only when we have lost them that we be-
gin to find out their value. But if we come to look at
things in the way I recommend, we shall be doubly the
gainers; we shall at once get more pleasure out of them than
we did before, and we shall do everything in our power to
prevent the loss of them; for instance, by not risking our
property, or angering our friends, or exposing our wives to
temptation, or being careless about our children’s health,
and so on.

We often try to banish the gloom and despondency of the
present by speculating upon our chances of success in the
future; a process which leads us to invent a great many
chimerical hopes. Every one of them contains the germ of
illusion, and disappointment is inevitable when our hopes
are shattered by the hard facts of life.

It is less hurtful to take the chances of misfortune as a
theme for speculation: because in doing so, we provide our-
selves at once with measures of precaution against it, and a
pleasant surprise when it failsto make its appearance. Is
it not a fact that we always feel a marked improvement in
our spirits when we begin to get overa period of anxiety?
I may go further and say that there is some use in occasion-
ally looking upon terrible misfortunes—such as might hap-
pen to us—as though they had actually happened, for then
the trivial reverses which subsequently come in reality, are
much easier to bear. Itis a source of consolation to look
back upon those great misfortunes which never happened.
But in following out this rule, care must be taken not to
neglect whatI have said in the preceding section,
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 133

§ 15. The things which engage our attention—whether
they are matters of business or ordinary events—are of such
diverse kinds, that, if taken quite separately and inno fixed
order or relation, they present a medley of the most glaring
contrasts, with nothing in common, except that they one
and all affect us in particular. There must be acorrespond-
ing abruptness in the thoughts and anxieties which these
various matters arouse in us, if our thoughts are to be in
keeping with their various subjects. Therefore, in setting
about anything, the first step is to withdraw our attention
from everything else; this will enable us to attend to each
matter atits own time, and to enjoy or put up with it,
ee apart from any thought of our remaining interests.

ur thoughts must be arranged, as it were, in little drawers
so that we may open one without disturbing any of the
others.

In this way we can keep the heavy burden of anxiety from
weighing upon us so much as to spoil the little pleasures of
the present, or from robbing us of our rest; otherwise the
consideration of one matter will interfere with every other,
and attention to some important business may lead us to
neglect many affairs which happen to be of less moment.
It is most important for any one who is capable of higher
and nobler thoughts to keep his mind from being so com-
pletely engrossed with private affairs and valgar troubles as
to let them take up all his attention and crowd out worthier
matter; for that is, ina very real sense, to lose sight of the
true end of life—propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.

Of course for this—as for so much else—self-control is
necessary; without it, we cannot manage ourselves in the
way I have described. And self-control may not appear so
very difficult, if we consider that every man has to submit
to a great deal of very severe control on the part of his sur-
roundings, and that without it no form of existence is pos-
sible. Further, a little self-control at the right moment
may prevent much subsequent compulsion at the hands of
others; just as a very small section of a circle close to the
center may correspond to a part near the circumference a
hundred times as large. Nothing will protect us from
external compulsion so much as the control of ourselves;
and as Seneca says, to submit yourself to reason is the way
to make everything else submit to you—si tibivis omnia
subjicere, te subjicee rationi. Self-control, too, is something
134 COUNSELS AND: MAXIMS.

which we have in our own power; and if the worst comes
to the worst, and it touches usin avery sensitive part, we
can always relax its severity. But other people will pay no
regard to our feelings, if they have to use compulsion, and
we shall be treated without pity or mercy. ‘Therefore it
will be prudent to anticipate compulsion by self-control.

§ 16. We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires,
moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual
can attain only an infinitesimal share in anything that is
worth having: and that, on the other hand, every one must
incur many of the ills of life; in a word, we must bear and
forbear—adstinere et sustinere; and if we fail to observe
this rule, no position of wealth or power will prevent us
from feeling wretched. This is what Horace means when
he recommends us to study carefully and inquire diligently
what will best promote a tranquil life—not to be always
agitated by fruitless desires and fears and hopes for things,
which, after all, are not worth very much:

‘* Inter cuncta leges et percontabere doctos
Qua ratione queas traducere leniter aevum:
Ne te semper inops agitet vexetque cupido,
Ne pavor, et rerum mediocriter utilium spes.” *

§ 1%. Life consists in movement, says Aristotle; and he is
obviously right. We exist, physically, because our organism
is the seat of constant motion; and if we are to exist intel-
lectually, it can only be by means of continual occupation
—no matter with what so long as it is some form of practical
or mental activity. You may see that this is so by the way
in which people who have no work or nothing to think
about immediately begin to beat the devil’s tattoo with their
knuckles or a stick or anything that comes handy. The
truth is, that our nature is essentially restless in its char-
acter; we very soon get tired of having nothing to do; it is
intolerable boredom. ‘This impulse to activity should be
regulated, and some sort of method introduced into it,
which of itself will enhance the satisfication we obtain.
Activity—doing something, if possible creating something,
at any rate learning something-—how fortunate it is that
men cannot exist without that! A man wants to use his

 

* Epist. IL. xviii. 97.
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 135
strength, to see, if he can, what effect it will produce; and
he will get the most complete satisfaction of this desire if
he can make or construct something—be it a book or a
basket. There is a direct pleasure in seeing work grow un-
der one’s hands day by day, until at last it is finished. This
is the pleasure attaching to a work of art or a, manuscript,
or even mere manual labor; and, of course, the higher the
work, the greater pleasure it will give.

From this point of view, those are happiest of all who
are conscious of the power to produce great works ani-
mated by some significant purpose: it gives a higher kind
of interest—a sort of rare flavor—to the whole of their
life, which, by its absence from the life of the ordinary
man, makes it, in comparison, something very insipid.
For richly endowed natures, life and the world have a
special interest beyond the mere everyday personal interest
which so many others share; and something higher than
that—a formal interest. It is from life and the world
that they get the material for their works; and as soon as
they are freed from the pressure of personal needs, it is to
the diligent collection of material that they devote their
whole existence. So with their intellect: it is to some ex-
tent of a twofold character, and devoted partly to the
ordinary affairs of every day—those matters of will which
are common to them and the rest of mankind, and partly
to their peculiar work—the pure and objective contempla-
tion of existence. And while, on the stage of the world,
most men play their little part and then pass away, the gen-
ius lives a double life, at once an actor and a spectator.

Let every one, then, do something, according to the
measure of his capacities. ‘To have no regular work, no
set sphere of activity—what a miserable thing it is! How
often long travels undertaken for pleasure make a man
downright unhappy ; because the absence of anything that
can be called occupation forces him, as it were, out of his
right element. Effort, struggles with difficulties! that is
as natural to a man as grubbing in the ground is toa mole.
To have all his wants satisfied is something intolerable—the
feeling of stagnation which comes from pleasures that last
too long. To overcome difficulties isto experience the full
delight of existence, no matter where the obstacles are en-
countered ; whether in the affairs of life, in commerce or
business; or in mental effort—the spirit of inquiry that
'

136 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

tries to master its subject. There is always something
pleasurable in the struggle and the victory. And ifa man
has no opportunity to excite himself, he will do what he
can to create one, and according to his individual bent, he
will hunt or play cup and ball; or led on by this unsus-
pected element in his nature, he will pick a quarrel with
some one, or hatch a plot or intrigue, or take to swindling
and rascally courses generally—all to put an end to
a state of repose which isintolerable. AsI have remarked,
difficilis in otto quies—it is difficult to keep quiet if you
have nothing to do.

§ 18. A man should avoid being led on by the phantoms
of his imagination. This is not the same thing as to sub-
mit to the guidance of ideas clearly thought out: and yet
these are rules of life which most people pervert. If you
examine closely into the circumstances which, in any
deliberation, ultimately turn the scale in favor of some
particular course, you will generally find that the decision
is influenced, not by any clear arrangement of ideas lead-
ing toa formal judgment, but by some fanciful picture
which seems to stand for one of the alternatives in ques-
tion.

In one of Voltaire’s or Diderot’s romances—I forget the
precise reference—the hero, standing like a young Her-
cules at the parting of ways, can see no other represen-
tution of Virtue than his old tutor holding a snuff-box in
his left hand, from which he takesa pinch and moralizes ;
while Vice appears in the shape of his mother’s chamber-
maid. It ism youth, more especially, that the goal of our
efforts comes to be a fanciful picture of happiness, which
continues to hover before our eyes sometimes for half and
even for the whole of our life—a sort of mocking spirit ;

‘for when we think our dream is to be realized, the picture
fades away, leaving us the knowledge that nothing of what
it promised is actually accomplished. How often this is
so with the visions of domesticity—the detailed picture of
what our home will be like; or of life among our fellow-
citizens and in society ; or, again, of living in the country
—the kind of house we shall have, its surroundings, the
marks of honor and respect that will be paid to us, and so
on—whatever our hobby may be; chagu fou a samarotte.
It is often the same, too, with our dreams about one we
OUR RELATION 70 OURSELVES. 137

love. And this is all quite natural; for the visions we
conjure up affect us directly, as though they were real ob-
jects; and so they exercise a more immediate influence
upon our will than an abstract idea, which gives merely a
vague, general outline, devoid of details; and the details
are just the real part of it. We can be only indirectly
affected by an abstract idea, and yet it is the abstract idea
alone which will do as much as it promises; and it is the
function of education to teach us to put our trust in it.
Of course the abstract idea must be occasionally explained
—paraphrased, as it were—by the aid of pictures; but
discreetly, cwm grano salis.

§ 19. The preceding rule may be taken as a special case
of the more general maxim, that a man should never let
himself be mastered by the impressions of the moment, or
indeed by outward appearances at all, which are incom-
parably more powerful in their effects than the mere play
of thought ora train of ideas ; not because these momentary
impressions are rich in virtue of the data they supply—it
is often just the contrary—but because they are something
palpable to the senses and direct in their working ; they
forcibly invade our mind, disturbing our repose and shat-
tering our resolutions.

It is easy to understand that the thing which lies before
our very eyes will produce the whole of its effect at once, but
that time and leisure are necessary for the working of thought
and the appreciation of argument, as it is impossible to
think of everything at one and the same moment. ‘This is
why we are so allured by pleasure, in spite of all our deter-
mination to resist it; or so much annoyed by a criticism,
even though we know that its author is totally incompetent
to judge; or so irritated by an insult, though it comes from
some very contemptible quarter. In the same way, to men-
tion no other instances, ten reasons for thinking that there
is no danger may be outweighed by one mistaken notion
that it is actually at hand. All this shows the radical un-
reason of human nature. Women frequently succumb
altogether to this predominating influence of present impres-
sions, and there are few men so overweighted with reason
as to escape suffering from asimilar cause.

If it is impossible to resist the effects of some external
influence by the mere play of thought, the best thing to do
138 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

is to neutralize it by some contrary influence; for exafnple,
the effect of an insult may be overcome by seeking the
society of those who have a good opinion of us; and the un-
pleasant sensation of imminent danger may be avoided by
fixing our attention on the means of warding it off. Leib-
nitz * tells of an Italian who managed to bear up under the
tortures of the rack by never for a moment ceasing to think
of the gallows which would have awaited him, had he re-
vealed his secret; he kept on crying out: “I see it! I see it!”
—afterward explaining that this was part of his plan.

It is from such reason as this, that we find it so difficult
to stand alone in a matter of opinion—not to be made ir-
resolute by the fact that every one else disagrees with us
and acts accordingly, even though we are quite sure that they
are in the wrong. ‘Take the case of a fugitive king who is
trying to avoid capture; how much consolation he must find
in theceremonious and submissive attitude of a faithful fol-
lower, exhibited secretly so as not to betray his master’s
strict incognito; it must be almost necessary to prevent him
doubting his own existence.

§ 20. In the first part of this work I have insisted upon
the great value of health as the chief and most important
element in happiness. Let me emphasize and confirm what
I have there said by giving a few generalrules as to its
preservation.

The way to harden the body is to impose a great deal of
labor and effort upon it in the days of good health—to exer-
cise it, both asa whole and in its several parts, and to habitu-
ate it to withstand all kinds of noxiousinfluences. But on
the appearance of any illness or disorder, either in the body
as a whole or in any of its parts, a contrary course should
be taken, and every means used to nurse the body, or the
part of it which is affected, and to spare it any effort; for
what is ailing and debilitated cannot be hardened.

The muscles may be strengthened by a vigorous use of
them ; but not so the nerves; they are weakened by it.
Therefore, while exercising the muscles in every way that
is suitable, care should be take to spare the nerves as much
as possible. ‘The eyes, for instance, should be protected
from too strong a light—especially when it is is reflected

 

* «Nouveaux Essais.” Liv. I. ch. 2 Sec. 11.
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 139

light—from any straining of them in the dark, or from
the long-continued examination of minute objects ;
and the ears from too loud sounds. Above all, the brain
should never be forced, or used too much, or at the wrong
time; let it have a rest during digestion; for then the
same vital energy which forms thoughts in the brain has a
great deal of work to do elsewhere—I mean in the digest-
ive organs, where it prepares chyme and chyle. For simi-
lar reasons, the brain should never be used during, or
immediately after, violent muscular exercise. For the
motor nerves are in this respect on a par with the sensory
nerves ; the pain felt when a limb is wounded has its seat
in the brain ; and, in the same way, it is not really our
legs and arms which work and move—it is the brain, or,
more strictly, that part of it which, throngh the medium
of the spine, excites the nerves in the limbs and sets them
in motion. Accordingly, when our arms and legs feel
tired, the true seat of this feeling isin the brain. This is
why it is only in connection with those muscles which are
set in motion consciously and voluntarily—in other words,
depend for their action upon the brain—that any feeling
of fatigue can arise ; this is not the case with those muscles
which work involuntarily, like the heart. It is obvious,
then, that injury is done to the brain if violent muscular
exercise and intellectual exertion are forced upon it at the
same moment, or at very short intervals.

What I say stands in no contradiction with the fact that
at the beginning of a walk, or atany period of a short stroll,
there often comes a feeling of enchanced intellectual
vigor. The parts of the brain that come into play have
had no time to become tired : and besides, slight muscular
exercise conduces to activity of the respiratory organs, and
causes a purer and more oxydated supply of arterial blood
to mount to the brain.

It is most important to allow the brain the full measure
of sleep which is necessary to restore it; for sleep is to a
man’s whole nature what winding up is toa clock.*
This measure will vary directly with the development and
activity of the brain; to overstep the measure is mere

 

* Cf. “‘Weltals Wille und Vorstellung,” 4th Rdition, Bk. II,
pp. 236-40,
140 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

waste of time because if that is done, sleep gains only so
much in length as it loses in depth.*

It should be clearly understood that thought is nothing
but the organic function of the brain; and it has to obey
the same laws in regard to exertion and repose as any other
organic function. ‘The brain can be ruined by overstrain,
just like the eyes. As the function of the stomach is to
digest, so itis that of the brain to think. The notion of a
soul—as something elementary and immaterial, merely
lodging in the brain and needing nothing at all for the
performance of its essential function, which consists in
always and unweariedly thinking—has undoubtedly driven
many people to foolish practices, leading to a deadening of
the intellectual powers ; Frederick the Great, even, once
tried to form the habit of doing without sleep altogether.
It would be well if professors of philosophy refrained from
giving currency to a notion which is attended by practical
results of a pernicious character; but then this is just
what professorial philosophy does, in its old-womanish en-
deavor to keep on good terms with the catechism. A man
should accustom himself to view his intellectual capacities
in no other light than that of physiological functions, and
to manage them accordingly—nursing or exercising them
as the case may be; remembering that every kind of
physical suffering, malady or disorder, in whatever part of
the body it occurs, has its effect upon the mind. The
best advice that 1 know on this subjectis given by
Cabanis in his Rapports du physique et du moral de
Vhomme. t

Through neglect of this rule, many men of genius and
and great scholars have become weak-minded and childish,
or even gone quite mad, as they grew old. To take no

 

* Cf. loc: cit: p. 275. Sleepisa morsel of death borrowed
to keep up and renew the part of life which is exhausted by the day
—le sommeil est un emprunt fait ala mort. Or it might be said
that sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is
called in at death ; and the higher the rate of interest and the more
regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

+ Transiator’s Note.—The work to which Schopenhauer here
refers is a series of essays by Cabanis, a French philosopher (1757-
1808), treating of mental and moral phenomena on a physiological
basis. In his later days, Cabanis completely abandoned his material-
istic standpoint,
OUR RELATION 10 OTHERS. 141

other instances, there can be no doubt that the celebrated
English poets of the early part of this century, Scott,
Wordsworth, Southey, became intellectually dull and in-
capable toward the end of their days, nay, soon after pass-
ing their sixtieth year; and that their imbecility can be
traced to the fact that, at that period of life, they were all
led on, by the promise of high pay, to treat literature as a
trade and to write for money. This seduced them into an
unnatural abuse of their intellectual powers; and a man
who puts his Pegasus into harness, and urges on his Muse
with the whip, will have to pay a penalty similar to that
which is exacted by the abuse of other kinds of power.

And even in the case of Kant, I suspect that the second
childhood of his last four years was due to overwork in
later life, and after he had succeeded in becoming a famous
man.

Every month of the year has its own peculiar and direct
influence upon health and bodily condition generally ; nay,
even upon the state of the mind. It is an influence
dependent upon the weather.

CHAPTER III.
OUR RELATION TO OTHERS.

§ 21. In MAKING his way through life, a man will find
it useful to be ready and able to do two things; to look
ahead and to overlook ; the one will protect him from loss
and injury, the other from disputes and squabbles.

No one who has to live among men should absolutely
discard any person who has his due place in the order of
nature, even though he is very wicked or contemptible or
ridiculous. He must accept him as an unalterable fact—
unalterable, because the necessary outcome of an eternal,
fundamental principle; and in bad cases he should re-
member the words of Mephistopheles: es muss auch solche
Kéiuze geben*—there must be fools and rogues in the world.
If he acts otherwise, he will be committing an injustice, and
giving a challenge of life and death to the man he dis-
cards. No one can alter his own peculiar individuality,

 

* Goethe’s “ Faust,” Part I,
142 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

his moral character, his intellectual capacity, his temper-
ament or physique ; and if we go so far as to condemn a
man from every point of view, there will be nothing left
him but to engage us in deadly conflict; for we are practi-
cally allowing him the right to exist only on condition
that he becomes another man—which is impossible; his
nature forbids it.

So if you have to live among men, you must allow every
one the right to exist in accordance with the character he
has, whatever it turns out to be: and all you should strive
to do is to make use of this character in such a way as its
kind and nature permit, rather than to hope for any alter-
ation in it, or to condemn it offhand for what it is. This
is the true sense of the maxim—‘‘ Live and let live.”
That, however, isa task which is difficult in proportion
as it is right; and he is a happy man who can once
for all avoid having to do with a great many of his fellow
creatures.

The art of putting up with people may be learned by
practicing patience on inanimate objects, which, in virtue
of some mechanical or general physical necessity, oppose a
stubborn resistance to our freedom of action—a form of
patience which is required every day. The patience thus
gained may be applied to our dealings with men, by accus-
toming ourselves to regard their opposition, wherever we
encounter it, as the inevitable outcome of their nature,
which sets itself up against us in virtue of the same rigid law
of necessity as goverus the resistance of inanimate objects.
To become indignant at their conduct is as foolish as to be
angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And
with many people the wisest thing you can do is to resolve
to make use of those whom you cannot alter.

§ 22. It is astonishing how easily and how quickly
similarity, or difference of mind and disposition, makes
itself felt between one man and another as soon as they
begin to talk; every little trifle shows it. When two
people of totally different natures are conversing, almost
everything said by the one will, in a greater or less degree,
displease the other, and in many cases produce positive
annoyance; even though the conversation turn upon
the most out-of-the way subject, or one in which neither
of the parties has any real interest. People of similar
OUR RELATION 10 OTHERS. 143

nature, on the other hand, immediately come to feel a kind
of general agreement ; and if they are cast very much in the
of same mold, complete harmony or even unison will flow
from their intercourse.

This explains two circumstances. First of all, it shows
why it is that common, ordinary people are so sociable and
find good company wherever they go. Ah! those good,
dear, brave people. It is just the contrary with those who
are not of the common run; and the less they are so, the
more unsociable they become ; so that if, in their isolation,
they chance to come across some one in whose nature they
can find even a single sympathetic chord, be it never so
minute, they show extraordinary pleasure in his society.
For one man can be to another only so much as the other
isto him. Great minds are like eagles, and build their
nest in some lofty solitude.

Secondly, we are enabled to understand how it is that
people of like disposition so quickly get on with one another,
as though they were drawn together by magnetic force-—
kindred souls greeting each other from afar. Of course
the most frequent opportunity of observing this is afforded
by people of vulgar tastes and inferior intellect, but only
because their name is legion ; while those who are better
off in this respect and of a rarer nature, are not often to
be met with: they are called rare because you can seldom
find them.

Take the case of a large number of people who have
formed themselves into a league for the purpose of carry-
ing out some practical object; if there be two rascals
among them, they will recognize each other as readily as if
they bore a similar badge, and will at once conspire for
some misfeasance or treachery. In the same way, if you
can imagine—per impossible—a large company of very intel-
ligent and clever people, among whom there are only two
blockheads, these two will be sure to be drawn together by
a feeling of sympathy, and each of them will very soon
secretly rejoice at having found at least one intelligent
person in the whole company. It is really quite curious
to sce how two such men, especially if they are morally
and intellectually of an inferior type, will recognize each
other at first sight; with what zeal tney will strive to be-
come intimate; how affably and cheerily they will run to
greet each other, just as though they were old friends—it
144 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

is all so striking that one is tempted to embrace the Budd-
hist doctrine of metempsychosis and presume that they
were on familiar terms in some former state of existence.

Still, in spite of all this general agreement, men are
kept apart who might come together; or, in some cases
a passing discord springs up between them. This is due
to diversity of mood. You will hardly ever see two peo-
ple exactly in the same frame of mind ; for that is some-
thing which varies with their condition of life, oecupation,
surroundings, health, the train of thought they are in at
the moment, and so on. These differences give rise to
discord between persons of the most harmonious disposi-
tion. To correct the balance properly, so as to remove the
disturbance—to introduce, as it were, a uniform tempera-
ture—is a work demanding a very high degree of culture.
The extent to which uniformity of mood is productive of
good fellowship may be measured by its effects upon a
large company. When, for instance, a great many people
are gathered together and presented with some objective
interest which works upon all alike and influences them in
a similar way, no matter what it be—a common danger or
hope, some great news, a spectacle, a play, a piece of
music, or anything of that kind—you will find them
roused to a mutual expression of thought, and a display of
sincere interest, There will be a general feeling of pleas-
ure among them; for that which attracts their attention
produces a unity of mood by overpowering all private and
personal interests.

And in default of some objective interest of the kind I
have mentioned, recourse is usually had to something sub-
jective. A bottle of wine is not an uncommon means of
introducing a mutual feeling of fellowship; and even tea
and coffee are used for a like end.

The discord which so easily finds its way into all society
as an effect of the different moods in which people happen
to be for the moment, also in part explains why it is that
memory always idealizes, and sometimes almost transfig-
ures, the attitude we have taken up at any period of the
past—a change due to our inability to remember all the
fleeting influences which disturbed us on any given osca-
sion. Memory is in this respect like the lens of a camera
obscura : it contracts everything within its range, and so
produces a much finer picture than the actual landscape
OUR RELATION T0 OTHERS. 145

affords. And, in the case of a man, absence always goes
some way toward securing this advantageous light ; for
though the idealizing tendency of the memory requires
time to complete its work, it begins it at once. Hence
it is a prudent thing to see your friends and acquaintances
only at considerable intervals of time; and on meeting
a again, you will observe that memory has been at
work,

§ 23. No man can see ‘over his own height.” Let me
explain what I mean.

You cannot see in another man any more than you have
in yourself ; and your own intelligence strictly determines the
extent to which he comes within its grasp. If your intel-
ligence is of a very low order, mental qualities in another,
even though they be of the highest kind, will have no
effect at all upon you; you will see nothing in their pos-
sessor except the meanest side of his individuality—in
other words, just those parts of his character and disposi-
tion which are weak and defective. Your whole estimate
of the man will be confined to his defects, and his higher
mental qualities will no more exist for you than colors
exist for those who cannot see.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none. In any
attempt to criticise another’s work, the range of knowl-
edge possessed by the critic is as essential a part of his
verdict as the claims of the work itself.

Hence intercourse with others involves a process of level-
ling down. The qualities which are present in one man,
and absent in another, cannot come into play when they
meet; and the self-sacrifice which this entails upon one of
the parties, calls forth norecognition from the other.

Consider how sordid, how stupid, in a word, how vulgar
most men are, and you will see that it is impossible to talk
to them without becoming vulgar yourself for the time be-
ing. Vulgarity is in this respect like electricity; it is easily
distributed. You will then fully appreciate the truth and
propriety of the expression, ‘‘to make yourself cheap;” and
you will be glad to avoid the society of people whose only
possible point of contact with you is just that part of your
nature of which you have least reason to be proud. So you
will see that, in dealing with fools and blockheads, there is
only one way of showing your intelligence—by having noth-
146 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

ting to do with them. That means, of course, that when
you go into society, you may now and then feel like a good
dancer who gets an invitation toa ball, and on arriving,
finds that every one is lame—with whom is he to dance?

§ 24. I feel respect for the man—and he is one ina hun-
dred—who, when he is waiting or sitting unoccupied, re-
frains from rattling or beating time with anything that hap-
pens to be handy—his stick, or knife and fork, or whatever
else it may be. The probability is that he is thinking of
something.

With a large number of people, it is quite evident that
their power of sight completely dominates over their power
of thought; they seem to be conscious of existence only
when they are making a noise; unless indeed they happen
to be smoking, for this serves a similar end. Itis for the
same reason that they never fail to be all eyes and ears for
what is going on around them.

§ 25. La Rochefoucauld makes the striking remark
that it is difficult to feel deep veneration and great affection
for one and the same person. If this isso, we shall have
to choose whether it is veneration or love that we want from
our fellow-men.

Their love is always selfish, though in very different
ways; and the means used to gain it are not always of a kind
to make us proud. A man is loved by others mainly in the
degree in which he moderates his claim on their good feel-
ing and intelligence: but he must act genuinely in the mat-
ter and without dissimulation—not merely out of forbear-
ance, which is at bottom a kind of contempt. This calls
to mind a very true observation of Helvetius:* “the amount
of intellect necessary to please us, is a most accurate meas-
ure of the amount of intellect we have ourselves.” With
these remarks as premises, it is easy to draw the conclu-
sion.

Now with veneration the case is just the opposite; it is
wrung from men reluctantly, and for that very reason

 

* Translator’s Note.—Helvetius, Claude-Adrien (1715-71), a French
philosophical writer much esteemed by Schopenhauer. His chief
work ‘‘De l’Esprit,’ excited great interest and opposition at the time
of its publication, on account of the author’s pronounced materia]-
ism,
OUR RELATION 170 OTHERS. 144

inostly concealed. Hence, as compared with love, venera-
tion gives more real satisfaction; for it is connected with
aac value, and the same is not directly true of love,
which is subjective in its nature, while veneration is ob-
jective. ‘To be sure, it is more useful to be loved than to
be venerated.

§ 26. Most menare so thoroughly subjective that noth-
ing really interests them but themselves. They always think
of their own case as soon as ever any remark is made, and
their whole attention is engrossed and absorbed by the
merest chance reference to anything which affects them
personally, be it never so remote; with the result that they
have no power left for forming an objective view of things
should the conversation take that turn; neither can they
admit any validity in arguments which tell against their
interest or their vanity. Hence their attention 1s easily dis-
tracted. They are so readily offended, insulted or annoyed,
that in discussing any impersonal matter with them, no care
is too great toavoid letting your remarks bear the slightest
possible reference tothe very worthy and sensitive individuals
whom you have before you for anything you may say will per-
haps hurt their feelings. People really care about nothing
that does not affect them personally. True and striking obser-
vations, fine, subtle and witty things are lost upon them;
they cannot understand or feel them. But anything that
disturbs their petty vanity in the most remote and indirect
way, or reflects prejudicially upon their exceedingly precious
selves—to that, they are most tenderly sensitive. In this
respect they are like the little dog whose toes you are so apt
to tread upon inadvertently—you know it by the shrill
bark it sets up: or, again, they resemble a sick man covered
with sores and boils, with whom the greatest care must be
taken toavoid unnecessary handling. And in some people
this feeling reaches such a pass that, if they are talking
with any one, and he exhibits, or does not sufficiently con-
ceal, his intelligence and discernment, they look upon it as
a downright insult; although for the moment they hide
their ill will, aud the unsuspecting author of it afterward
ruminates in vain upon their conduct. and racks his brains
to discover what in the world he could have done to excite
their malice and hatred.

But it is just as easy to flatter and win them over; and
148 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

this is why their judgment is usually corrupt, and why their
opinions are swayed, not by what is really true and right
but by the favor of the party or class to which they belong.
And the ultimate reason of it all is, that in such people
force of will greatly predominates over knowledge; and
hence their meager intellect is wholly given up to the serv-
ice of the will, and can never free itself from that service
for a moment.

Astrology furnishes a magnificent proof of this miserable
subjective tendency in men, which leads them to see every-
thing only as bearing upon themselves, and to think of
nothing that is not straightway made into a personal mat-
ter. The aim of astrology is to bring the motions of the
celestial bodies into relation with the wretched Hgo and
to establish a connection between a comet in the sky and
squabbles and rascalities on earth. *

§ 27. When any wrong statement is made, whether in
public, or in society, or in books, and well received—or, at
any rate, not refuted—that is no reason why you should
despair or think that there the matter will rest. You
should comfort yourself with the reflection that the ques-
tion will be afterward gradually subjected to examination;
light will be thrown upon it; it will be thought over, con-
sidered, discussed, and generally in the end the correct
view will be reached; so that, after a time—the length of
which will depend upon the difficulty of the subject—every
one will come to understand that which a clear head saw
at once.

In the meantime, of course, you must have patience.
He who can see truly in the midst of general infatuation is
like a man whose watch keeps good time, when all clocks
in the town in which he lives are wrong. He alone knows
the right time; but what use is that to him? for every one
goes by the clocks which speak false, not even excepting
those who know that his watch is the only one that is
right. :

§ 28. Men are like children, in that, if you spoil them,
they become naughty.

herefore it is well not to be too indulgent or charitablo

* See for instance, Stobeeus, ‘‘Eclog.”” I. xii, 9.
OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 149

with any one. You may take it as a general rule that you
will not lose a friend by refusing him a loan, but that you
are very likely to do so by granting it; and, for similar
reasons, you will not readily alienate people by being some-
what proud and careless in your behavior; but if you are
very kind and complaisant toward them, you will often
make them arrogant and intolerable, and so a breach will
ensue.

There is one thing that, more than any other, throws
people absolutely off their balance—the thought that you
are dependent upon them. This is sure to produce an in-
solent and domineering manner toward you. There are
some people, indeed, who become rnde if you enter into
any kind of relation with them; for instance, if you have
occasion to converse with them frequently upon confiden-
tial matters, they soon come to fancy that they can take
liberties with you, and so they try to transgress the laws of
politeness. This is why there are so few with whom you
care to become more intimate, and why you should avoid
familiarity with vulgar people. Jf a man comes to think
that Iam more dependent upon him than he is upon me,
he at once feels as though I had stolen something from
him; and his endeavor will be to have his vengeance and
get it back. The only way to attain superiority in dealing
with men, is to let it be seen that you are independent of
them.

And in this view it is advisable to let every one of your

acquaintance— whether man or woman—feel now and then
that you could very well dispense with their company.
This will consolidate friendship. Nay, with most people
there will be no harm in occasionally mixing a grain of
disdain with your treatment of them; that will make them
“value your friendship all the more. Chi non istima vien
stimato, as a subtle Italian proverb has it—to disregard is
to win regard. But if we really think very highly of a
person, we should conceal it from him like acrime. This
is not a very gratifying thing to do, but itis right. Why,
a dog will not bear being treated too kindly, let alone a
man!

§ 29. It is often the case that people of noble character
and. great mental gifts betray a strange lack of worldly
wisdom and a deficiency in the knowledge of men, more
150 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

especially when they are young; with the result that it is
easy to deceive or mislead them; and that, on the other
hand, natures of the commoner sort are more ready and
successful in making their way in the world.

The reason of this is that, when a man has little or no
experience, he must judge by his own antecedent notions;
and in matters demanding judgment an antecedent notion
is never on the same level as experience. For, with the
commoner sort of people, an antecedent notion means just
their own selfish point of view. This is not the case with
those whose mind and character are above the ordinary; for
it is precisely in this respect—their unselfishness—that
they differ from the rest of mankind; and as they judge
other people’s thoughts and actions by their own high
standard, the result does not always tally with their calcu-
lation.

But if, in the end, aman of noble character comes to
see, as the effect of his own experience, or by the lessons
he learns from others, what it is that may be expected of
men in general-—namely, that five-sixths of them are
morally and intellectually so constituted that, if circum-
stances do not place you in relation with them, you had
better get out of their way and keep as far as possible from
having anything to do with them—still, he will scarcely
ever attain an adequate notion of their wretchedly mean
and shabby nature: all his life long he will have to be
extending and adding to the inferior estimate he forms of
them; and in the meantime he will commit a great many
mistakes and do himself harm.

Then again, after he has really taken to heart the lessons
that have been taught him, it will occasionally happen that,
when he isin the society of people whom he does not know,
he will be surprised to find how thoroughly reasonable
they all appear to be, both in their conversation and in
their demeanor—in fact, quite honest, sincere, virtuous
a trustworthy people, and at the same time shrewd and
clever.

But that ought not to perplex him. Nature is not like
those bad poets, who, in setting a fool or a knave before
us, do their work so clumsily, and with such evident de-
sign, that you might almost fancy you saw the poet stand-
ing behind each of his characters, and continually disavow-
ing their sentiments, and telling you in a tone of warning:
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES. 1A1

“This is a knave; that isa fool; do not mind what he
says.” But nature goes to work like Shakespeare and
Goethe, poets who make every one of their characters—even
if it is the devil himself!—appear to be quite in the right
for the moment that they come before us in their several
parts; the characters are described so objectively that they
excite our interest and compel us to sympathize with their
‘point of view; for, like the works of nature, everyone of
these characters is evolved as the result of some hidden law
or principle, which makes all they say and do appear
natural and therefore necessary. And you will always be
the prey or the plaything of the devils and fools in this
world, if you expect to see them going about with horns or
jangling their bells.

And it should be borne in mind that, in their inter-
course with others, people are like the moon or like
hunchbacks; they show you only one of their sides. Every
man bas an innate talent for mimicry—for making a mask
out of his physiognomy, so that he can always look as if he
really were what he pretends to be; and since he makes his
calculations always within the lines of his individual
nature, the appearance he puts on suits him to a nicety,
and its effect is extremely deceptive. He dons his mask
whenever his object is to flatter himself into some one’s
good opinion; and you may pay just as much attention to
it as if it were made of wax or cardboard, never forgetting
that excellent Italian proverb: non é si tristo cane che non
ment la coda—there is no dog so bad but that he will wag
his tail.

In any case it is well to take care not to form a highly
favorable opinion of a person whose acquaintance you have
only recently made, for otherwise vou are very likely to be
disappointed; and then you will be ashamed of yourself
and perhaps even suffer some injury. And while lam on
the subject, there is another fact that deserves mention.
It is this. A man shows his character just in the way in
which he deals with trifles—for then he is off his guard.
This will often afford a good opportunity of observing the
boundless egoism of a man’s nature, and his total lack of
consideration for others: and if these defects show them-
selves in small things, or merely in his general demeanor,
you will find that they also underlie his action in matters
of importance, although he may disguise the fact. ‘'his is
152 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

an opportunity which should not be missed. If in the
little affairs of every day—the trifles of lite, those matters
to which the rule de minimis non applies—a man is incon-
siderate and seeks only what is advantageous or convenient
to himself, to the prejudice of others’ rights; if he appro-
priates to himself that which belongs to all alike, you may
be sure there is no justice in his heart, and that he would
be a scoundrel on a wholesale scale, only that law and com-
pulsion bind his hands. Do not trust him beyond your
door. He who is not afraid to break the laws of his own
private circle, will break those of the state when he can do
so with impunity.

If the average man were so constituted that the good in
him outweighed the bad, it would be more advisable to
rely upon his sense of justice, fairness, gratitude, fidelity,
love or compassion, than to work upon his fears; but as
the contrary is the case, and it is the bad that outweighs
the good, the opposite course is the more prudent one.

If any person with whom we are associated or have to
do, exhibits unpleasant or annoying qualities, we have only
to ask ourselves whether or not this person is of so much
value to us that we can put up with frequent and repeated
exhibitions of the same qualities in a somewhat aggravated
form.* In case of an affirmative answer to this question,
there will not be much to be said, because talking is very
little use. We must let the matter pass, with or without
some notice; but we should nevertheless remember that we
are thereby exposing ourselves to a repetition of the offense.
If the answer is in the negative, we must break with our
worthy friend at once and forever; or in the case of a serv-
ant, dismiss him. For he will inevitably repeat the
offense, or do something tantamount to it, should the
occasion return, even though for the moment he is deep
and sincere In his assurances of the contrary. ‘There is
nothing, absolutely nothing, that a man cannot forget—
but not himself, his own character. For character is in-
corrigible; because all a man’s actions emanate from an
inward principle, in virtue of which he must always do the
same thing under like circumstances; and he cannot do
otherwise. Let me refer to my prize essay on the so-called

 

* «To forgive and forget.” means to throw away dearly bought ex-
perience.
OUR RELATION T0 OURSELVES, 153

‘Freedom of the Will,” the perusal of which will dissipate
any delusions the reader may have on this subject.

To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have
broken, is a form of weakness ; and you pay the penalty of
it when he takes the first opportunity of doing precisely
the very thing which brought about the breach ; nay, he
does it the more boldly, because he is secretly conscious
that you cannot get on without him. This is also appli-
cable to servants whom you have dismissed, and then taken
into your service again.

For the same reason, you should just as little expect
people to continue to act ina similar way under altered
circumstances. The truth is that men alter their demeanor
and sentiments just as fast as their interest changes; and
their design in this respect is a bill drawn for such short
payment that the man must be still more short-sighted who
accepts the bill without protesting it. Accordingly, sup-
pose you want to know how a man will behave in an office
into which you think of putting him; you should not
build upon expectations, on his promises or assurances.
For, even allowing that he is quite sincere, he is speaking
about a matter of which he has no knowledge. The only
way to calculate how he will behave, is to consider the cir-
cumstances in which he will be placed, and the extent to
which they will conflict with his character.

If you wish to get a clear and profound insight—and it
is very needful—into the true but melancholy elements of
which most men are made, you will find it a very instructive
thing to take the way they behave in the pages of liter-
ature as a commentary to their doings in practical life, and
vice versd. The experience thus gained will be very useful.
in avoiding wrong ideas, whether about yourself or about
others. But if you come across any special trait of mean-
ness or stupidity—in life or in literature—you must be
careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon
it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to
be considered in studying the character of humanity.
Your attitude toward it will be that of the mineralogist
who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a
mineral.

Of course there are some facts which are very exceptional,
and it is difficult to understand how they arise, and how it
is that there come to be such enormous differences between

e
154 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

man and man ; but, in general, what was said long ago is
quite true, and the world is in a very bad way. In savage
countries they eat one another, in civilized countries they
deceive one another ; and that is what people call the way
of the world! What are states and all the elaborate systems
of political machinery, and the rule of force, whether in
home or in foreign affairs—what are they but barriers
against the boundless iniquity of mankind? Does not all
history show that whenever a king is firmly planted on the
throne, and his people reach some degree of prosperity, he
uses it to lead his army, like a band of robbers, against ad-
joining countries? Are not. almost all wars ultimately
undertaken for purposes of plunder? In the most remote
antiquity, and to some extent also in the Middle Age, the
conquered became slaves—in other words, they had to
work for those who conquered them ; and where is the dif-
ference between that and paying war-taxes, which represent
the product of previous work ?

All war, says Voltaire, is a matter of robbery ; and the
Germans should take that as a warning.

§ 30. No man is so formed that he can be left entirely
to himself, to go his own ways; every one needs to be guided
by a preconceived plan, and to follow certain general rules.
But if this is carried too far, and a man tries to take on a
character which is not natural or innate in him, but is
artificially acquired and evolved merely by a process of
reasoning, he will very soon discover that Nature cannot
be forced, and that if you drive it out, it will return despite
your efforts :

‘*Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret.”

To understand a rule governing conduct toward others,
even to discover it for one’s self and to express it neatly, is
easy enough; and still, very soon afterward, the rule may
be broken in practice. But that is no reason for despair ;
and you need not fancy that as it is impossible to regulate
your life in accordance with abstract ideas and maxims, it
is better to live just as you please. Here, as in all theo-
retical instruction that aims ata practical result, the first
thing to do is to understand the rule ; the second thing is
to learn the practice of it. ‘The theory may be understood
OUR RELATION 10 OTHERS. 155

at once by an effort of reason, and yet the practice of it
acquired only in course of time.

A pupil may learn the various notes on an instrument of
music, or the different positions in fencing ; and when he
makes a mistake, as he is sure to do, however hard he tries,
he is apt to think it will be impossible to observe the rules,
when he is set to read music at sight or challenged to a
furious duel. But for all that, gradual practice makes him
perfect, through a long series of slips, blunders and fresh
efforts. It is Just the same in other things; in learning to
write and speak Latin, aman will forget the grammatical
rules; itis only by long practice that a blockhead turns into a
courtier, that a passionate man beconies shrewd and worldly-
wise, or a frank person reserved, or a noble person ironical.
But though self-discipline of this kind is the result of long
habit, it always works by a sort of external compulsion,
which Nature never ceases to resist and sometimes unexpect-
edly overcomes. ‘The difference between action in accord-
ance with abstract principles, and action as the result of
original innate tendency, is the same as that between a
work of art, say a watch—where form and movement are
impressed upon shapeless and inert matter—and a living
organism, where form and matter are one, and each is
inseparable from the other.

There is a maxim attributed to the Emperor Napoleon,
which expresses this relation between acquired and innate
character, and confirms what I have said: ‘‘everything that
is unnaturalis imperfect ”’—a rule of universal application,
whether in the physical orin the moral sphere. ‘The only
exception I can think of to this rule is aventurine,* a sub-
stance known to mineralogists, which in its natural state
cannot compare with the artificial preparation of it.

And in this connection let me utter a word of protest
against any and every form of affectation. It always arouses
contempt ; in the first place, because it argues deception,
and the deception is cowardly, for it is based on fear; and,
secondly, it argues self-condemnation, because it means
that a man is trying to appear what he is not, and there-
fore something which he thinks better than he actually is.

 

* Transtator’s Note—Aventurine is arare kind of quartz; and the
same name is given to a brownish-colored glass much resembling it,
which is manufactured at Murano. It is so called from the fact that
the glass was discovered by chance (avventura),
156 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

To affect a quality, and to plume yourself upon it, is just
to confess that you have not got it. Whether itis courage,
or learning, or intellect, or wit, or success with women, or
riches, or social position, or whatever else it may be that
a man boasts of, you may conclude by his boasting about
it that that is precisely the direction in which he is rather
weak ; for if a man possesses any faculty to the full, it will
not occur to him to make a great show of affecting it ;
he is quite content to know that he has it. That is the
application of the Spanish proverb: herradura que chacolo-
tea clavo le falta—a clattering hoof means a nail gone.
To be sure, as I said at first, no man ought to let the reins
go quite loose, and show himself just as he is; for there are
many evil and bestial sides to our nature which require to
be hidden away out of sight ; and this justifies the negative
attitude of dissimulation, but it does not justify a positive
feigning of qualities which are not there. It should also
be remembered that affectation is recognized at once, even
before it is clear what it is that is being affected. And,
finally, affectation cannot last very long and one day the
mask will fall off. Nemo potest personam diu ferre fictam,
says Seneca;* ficta cito in naturam suam recidunt—no one
can persevere long in a fictitious character ; for nature will
soon re-assert itself.

§ 31. A man bears the weight of his own body without
knowing it, but he soon feels the weight of any other, if
he tries to move it: in the same way, a man can see other
people’s shortcomings anid vices, but he is blind to his own.
This arrangement has one advantage: it turns other people
into a kind of mirror, in which a man can see clearly every-
thing that is vicious, faulty, ill-bred and loathsome in his
own nature; only, it is generally the old story of the dog
barking at its own image; it is himself that he sees and not
another dog, as he fancies.

He who criticises others, works at the reformation of
himself. Those who form the secret habit of scrutinizing
other people’s general behavior, and passing severe judg-
ment upon what they do and leave undone, thereby improve
themselves, and work out their own perfection: for they
will have sufficient sense of justice, or at any rate enough

 

* « De Clementia,” I. 1,
OUR RELATION 10 OTHERS. 157

pride ana vanity, to avoid in their own case that which they
condemn so harshly elsewhere. But tolerant people are
just the opposite, and claim for themselves the same indul-
gence that they extend to others—hanc veniam damus
petimusque vicissim. It is all very well for the Bible to
talk about the mote in another’s eye and the beam in one’s
own. The nature of the eye is to look not at itself but at
other things; and therefore to observe and blame faults in
another is a very suitable way of becoming conscious of
one’s own. We require a looking-glass for the due dressing
of our morals.

The same rule applies in the case of style and fine writ-
ing. If, instead of condemning, you applaud some new
folly in these matters, you will imitate it. That is just
why literary follies have such vogue in Germany. ‘The
Germans are a very tolerant people—everybody can see
that! Their maxim is—Hane veniam damus petimusque
vicissim.

§ 32. When he is young, a man of noble character fan-
cies that the relations prevailing among mankind, and the
alliances to which these relations lead, are, at bottom and
essentially, ideal in their nature; that is to say, that
they rest upon similarity of disposition or sentiment, or
taste, or intellectual power, and so on.

But, later on, he finds out that it is a real foundation
which underlies these alliances ; that they are based upon
some material interest. This is the true foundation of
almost all alliances: nay, most men have no notion of an
alliance resting apon any other basis. Accordingly, we
find that a man is always measured by the office he holds,
or by his occupation, nationality, or family relations—in a
word, by the position and character which have been
assigned him in the conventional arrangements of life,
where heis ticketed and treated as so much goods. Reference
to what he is in himself, as a man—to the measure of his
own personal qualities—is never made unless for convenience
sake: and so that view of a man is something exceptional,
to be set aside and ignored, the moment that any one finds
it disagreeable; and this is what usually happens. But the
more of personal worth a man has, the less pleasure he will
take in these conventional arrangements; and he will try
to withdraw from the sphere in which they apply. The
158 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

reason why these arrangements exist at all, is simply that
in this world of ours misery and need are the chief fea-
tures: therefore it is everywhere the essential and para-
mount business of life to devise the means of alleviating
them.

§ 33. As paper-money circulates in the world instead of
real coin, so, in the place of true esteem and genuine
friendship, you have the outward appearance of it—a
mimic show made to look as much like the real thing as
possible.

On the other hand, it may be asked whether there are
any people who really deserve the true coin. For my own
part, I should certainly pay more respect to an honest dog
wagging his tail than to a hundred such demonstrations of
human regard.

True and genuine friendship presupposes a strong sym-
pathy with the weal and woe of another—purely objective
in its character and quite disinterested; and this in its turn
means an absolute identification of self with the object of
friendship. The egoism of human nature is so strongly
antagonistic to any such sympathy, that true friendship
belongs to: that class of things—the sea-serpent, for instance
—with regard to which no one knows whether they are fabu-
lous or really exist somewhere or other.

Still, in many cases, there is a grain of true and genuine
friendship in the relations of man to man, though gener-
ally, of course, some secret personal interest is at the
bottom of them—some one among the many forms that
selfishness can take. But in a world where all is imperfect,
this grain of true feeling is such an ennobling influence
that it gives some warrant for calling those relations by the
name of friendship, for they stand far above the ordinary
friendships that prevail among mankind. The latter are
so constituted that, were you to hear how your dear friends
speak of you behind your back, you would never say
another word to them.

Apart from the case where it would be a real help to you
if your friend were to make some considerable sacrifice to
serve you, there is no better means of testing the genuine-
ness of his feeling than the way in which he receives the
news of a misfortune that has just happened to you. At
that moment the expression of his features will either show
OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 159

that his one thought is that of true and sincere sympathy
for you; or else the absolute composure of his countenance,
or the passing trace of something other than sympathy,
will confirm the well-known maxim of La Rochefoucauld:
Dans Vadversité de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons
toujours quelque chose qui ne nous déplatt pas. Indeed,
at such a moment, the ordinary so-called friend will find it
hard to suppress the signs of a slight smile of pleasure.
There are few ways by which you can make more certain
of putting people into a good humor than by telling them
of some trouble that has recently befallen you, or by unre-
servedly disclosing some personal weakness of yours. How
characteristic this is of humanity!

Distance and long absence are always prejudicial to
friendship, however, disinclined a man may be to admit it.
Our regard for people whom we do not see—even though
they be our dearest friends—gradually dries up in the
course of years, and they become abstract notions; so that
our interest in them grows to be more and more intel-
lectual—nay, it is kept up only as a kind of tradition;
while we retain a lively and deep interest in those who are
constantly before our eyes, even if they be only pet
animals. This shows how much men are limited by their
senses, and how true is the remark that Goethe makes in
*‘Tasso” about the dominant influence of the present
moment:

‘« Die Gegenwart ist eine michtige Géttin.” *

“Friends of the house” are very rightly so called; because
they are friends of the house rather than of its master; in
other words, they are more like cats than dogs.

Your friends will tell you that they are sincere ; your
enemies are really so. Let your enemies’ censure be like a
bitter medicine, to be used as a means of self-knowledge.

A friend in need, as the saying goes, is rare. Nay, it is
just the contrary; no sooner have you made a friend than
he is in need, and asks you for a loan.

§ 34. A man must be still a greenhorn in the ways of the
world, if he imagines that he can make himself popular in

 

* Act iv., se. 4.
160 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

society by exhibiting intelligence and discernment. With
the immense majority of people, such qualities excite hatred
and resentment, which are rendered all the harder to bear
by the fact that people are obliged to suppress—even from
themselves—the real reason of their anger.

What actually takes place is this. A man feels and per-
ceives that the person with whom he is conversing is intel-
lectually very much his superior. He thereupon secretly
and half-unconsciously concludes that his interlocutor must
form a proportionately low and limited estimate of his
abilities. That is a method of reasoning—an enthymeme—
which rouses the bitterest feelings of sullen and rancorous
hatred.* And so Gracian is quite right in saying that the
only way to win affection from people is to show the most
animal-like simplicity of demeanor—para ser bien quisto,
el unico medio vestirse la piel del mas simple de los brutos.+

To show your intelligence and discernment is only an
indirect way of reproaching other people for being dull and
incapable. And besides, it is natural for a vulgar man to
be violently agitated by the sight of opposition in any form
and in this case envy comes in as the secret cause of his
hostility. For it is a matter of daily observation that
people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies
their vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without com-
parison with others. Now, there is nothing of which a
man is prouder than of intellectual ability, for it is this
that gives him his commanding place in the animal world.
It is an exceedingly rash thing to let any one see that you
are decidedly superior to him in this respect, and to let

 

* Cf. “Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” Bk. II. p. 256 (4th
Edit.), where I quote from Dr. Johnson, and from Merck, the friend
of Goethe’s youth. The former says: ‘‘ There is nothing by whlch a
man exasperates most people more, than by displaying a superior
ability of brilliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time,
but their envy makes them curse him at their hearts.” (Boswell’s
“ Life of Johnson,” aetat: 74.)

+ Translator’s Note.—Balthazar Gracian ‘‘Oraculo manuel,y arte
de prudencia,” 240. Gracian (1584-1658) was a Spanish prose writer
and Jesuit, whose works deal chiefly with the observation of charac-
ter in the various phenomena of life. Schopenhauer, among others,
had a great admiration for his worldly philosophy, and translated his
‘‘Oraculo manuel ”—a system of rules for the conduct of life—into
German. The same book was translated into English toward the
close of the seventeeth century.
OUR RELATION 10 OTHERS. 161

other people see it too; because he will then thirst for venge-
ance, and generally look about for an opportunity of
taking it by means of insult, because this is to pass from
the sphere of intellect to that of will—and there all are on
an equal footing as regards the feeling of hostility. Hence,
while rank and riches may always reckon upon deferential
treatment in society, that is something which intellectual
ability can never expect; to be ignored is the greatest favor
shown to it; and if people notice it atall, it is because they
regard it as a piece of impertinence, or else as something
to which its possessor has no legitimate right, and upon
which he dares to pride himself; and in retaliation and
revenge for his conduct, people secretly try and humiliate
him in some other way; and if they wait to do this, it is
only for a fitting opportunity. A man may be as humble
as possible in his demeanor, and yet hardly ever get people
to overlook his crime in standing intellectually above
them. In the “‘ Garden of Roses,” Sadi makes the remark :
“You should know that foolish people are a hundredfold
more averse to meeting the wise than the wise are indis-
posed for the company of the foolish.”

On the other hand, it is a real recommendation to be
stupid. For just as warmth is agreeable to the body, so it
does the mind good to feel its superiority ; and a man will
seek company likely to give him this feeling, as instinc-
tively as he will approach the fireplace or walk in the sun
if he wants to get warm. But this means that he will be
disliked on account of his supetiority ; and if a man is to
be liked, he must really be inferior in point of intellect ;
and the same thing holds good of a woman in point of
beauty. To give proof of realand unfeigned inferiority to
some of the people you meet—that is a very difficult busi-
ness indeed !

Consider how kindly and heartily a girl who is passably
pretty will welcome one who is downright ugly. Physical
advantages are not thought so much of in the case of man,
though I suppose you would rather a little man sat next to
you than one who was bigger than yourself. This is why,
among men, it is the dull and ignorant, and among women
the ugly, who are always popular and in request. It is
likely to be said of such people that they are extremely
good-natured, because every one wants to find a pretext for
caring about them—a pretext which will blind both himself
162 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

and other people to the real reason why he likes them.
This is also why mental superiority of any sort always tends
to isolate its possessor : people run away from him out of
pure hatred, and say all manner of bad things about him
by way of justifying their action.* Beauty, in the case of
women, has a similar effect: very pretty girls have no
friends of their own sex, and they even find it hard to get
another girl to keep them company. A handsome woman
should always avoid applying for a position as companion,
because the moment she enters the room, her prospective
mistress will-scowl at her beauty, as a piece of folly with
which, both for her own and for her daughters’ sake, she
can very well dispense. But if the girl has advantages of
rank, the case is very different ; because rank, unlike per-
sonal qualities which work by the force of mere contrast,
produces its effect by a process of reflection ; much in the
same way as the particular hue of a person’s complexion
depends upon the prevailing tone of his immediate sur-
roundings.

§ 35. Our trust in other people often consists in great
measure of pure laziness, selfishness and vanity on our own
part: I say laziness, because, instead of making inquiries
ourselves, and exercising an active care we prefer to trust
others; selfishness, because we are led to confide in people
by the pressure of our own affairs; and vanity, when we
ask confidence for a matter on which we rather pride our-
selves. And yet, for all that, we expect people to be true
to the trust we repose in them.

But we ought not to become angry if people put no

 

* If you desire to get on in the world, friends and acquaintances are
by far the best passport to fortune. The possession of a great deal
of ability makes a man proud, and therefore not apt to flatter those
who have very little, and from whom, on that account, the possession
of great ability should be carefully concealed. The consciousness of
sinall intellectual power has just the opposite effect, and is very com-
patible with a humble, affable and companionable nature, and with
respect for what is mean and wretched. This is why an inferior sort
of man has so many people to befriend and encourage him.

These remarks are applicable not only to advancement in political
life, but to all competition for places of honor and dignity, nay, even
for reputation in the world of science, literature and art. In learned
societies, for example, mediocrity—that very acceptable quality—is
always to the fore, while merit meets with tardy recognition, or
with none at all, So it is in everything.
OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 163

trust in us : because that really means that they pay honesty
the sincere compliment of regarding it as a very rare thing,
so rare, indeed, as to leave usin doubt whether its exist-
ence is not merely fabulous.

§ 36. Politeness, which the Chinese hold to be a cardinal
virtue, is based upon two considerations of policy. I have
explained one of these considerations in my ‘ Ethics” * ; the
other is as follows: Politeness is a tacit agreement that
people’s miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual,
shall on either side be ignored and not made the subject of
reproach ; and since these defects are thus rendered some-
what less obtrusive, the result is mutually advantageous.

It is a wise thing to be polite ; consequently, it isa stupid
thing to be rude. ‘To make enemies by unnecessary and
willful incivility, is justas insane a proceeding as to set your
house on fire. For politeness is like a counter—an avowedly
false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy. A sensible
man will be generous in the use of it. It is customary in
every country to end a letter with the words: ‘ your most
obedient servant ”—votre tres-humble serviteur—suo devo-
tissimo servo. (The Germans are the only people who sup-
press the word servant—diener—because, of conrse, it is
not true!) However, to carry politeness to such an extent
as to damage your prospects, is like giving money where
only counters are expected.

Wax, a substance naturally hard and brittle, can be
made soft by the application of a little warmth, so that it
will take any shape you please. In the same way, by
being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and
obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and
malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what
warmth is to wax.

Of course, it is no easy matter to be polite; in so far, I
mean, ag it requires us to show great respect for everybody,

* Translator’s Note.—In the passage referred to (‘‘ Grundlage der
Moral,” collected works, Vol. IV. pp. 187 and 198), Schopenhauer
explains politeness as a conventional and systematic attempt to mask
the egoism of human nature in the small affairs of life—an
egoism so repulsive that some such device is necessary for the
purpose of concealing its ugliness. The relation which politeness
bears to the true love of one’s neighbor is analogous to that existing
between justice as an affair of legality, and justice as the real integrity
of the heart.
164 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

whereas most people deserve none at all; and again in so
far as it demands that we should feign the most lively
interest in people, when we must be very glad that we
have nothing to do with them. To combine politeness
with pride is a masterpiece of wisdom.

We should be much less ready to lose our temper over
an insult—which, in the strict sense of the word, means
that we have not been treated with respect—if, on the
one hand, we had not such an exaggerated estimate of our
value and dignity—that isto say, if we were not so im-
mensely proud of ourselves ; and, on the other hand, if we
had arrived at any clear notion of the judgment which, in
his heart, one man generally passes upon another. If
most people resent the slightest hint that any blame
attaches to them, you may imagine their feelings if they
were to overhear what their acquaintances say about them.
You should never lose sight of the fact that ordinary
politeness is onlya grinning mask: if it shifts its place a
little, or isremoved for a moment, there is no use raising a
hue andcry. When a manis downright rude, it is as
though he had taken off all his clothes, and stood before
you in puris naturalibus. Like most men in this condi-
tion, he does not present a very attractive appearance.

§ 37. You ought never to take any man as a model for
what you should do or leave undone; because position and
circumstances are in no two cases alike, and difference of
character gives a peculiar, individual] tone to what a man
does. Hence duo cum faciunt idem, non est idem—two
persons may do the same thing with a different result. A
man should act in accordance with his own character, as
soon as he has carefully deliberated on what he is about
to do.

The outcome of this is that originality cannot be dis-
pensed with in practical matters: otherwise, what a man
does will not accord with what he is.

§ 38. Never combat any man’s opinion; for though
you reached the age of Methuselah, you would never have
done setting him right upon all the absurd things that
he believes.

It is also well to avoid correcting people’s mistakes in
conversation, however good your intentions may be ; for it
OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 165

is easy to offend people, and difficult, if not impossible, to
mend them.

If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people
whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should
imagine that you are listening to the dialogue of two fools
inacomedy. Probatum est.

The man who comes into the world with the notion that
he is really going to instruct it in matters of the highest
pene, may thank his stars if he escapes witha whole
skin.

§ 39. If you want your judgment to be accepted, ex-
press it coolly and without passion. All violence has its
seat in the will; and so, if your judgment is expressed
with vehemence, people will consider it an effort of will,
and not the outcome of knowledge, which is in its nature
cold and unimpassioned. Since the will is the primary
and radical element in human nature, and intellect merely
supervenes as something secondary, people are more likely
to believe that the opinion you express with so much vehe-
mence is due to the excited state of your will, rather than
that the excitement of the will comes only from the ardent
nature of your opinion.

. § 40. Even when you are fully justified in praising

yourself, you should never be seduced into doing so. For
vanity is so very common, and merit so very uncommon,
that even if a man appears to be praising himself, though
very indirectly, people will be ready to lay a hundred to
one that he is talking out of pure vanity, and that
he has not sense enough to see what a fool he is making of
himself.

Still, for all that, there may be some truth in Bacon’s
remark that, as in the case of calumny, if you throw
enough dirt, some of it will stick, so it is also in regard to
self-praise ; with the conclusion that self-praise, in small
doses, is to be recommended.*

 

* Translator’s Note.—Schopenhauer alludes to the following pas-
sage in Bacon’s ‘‘De Augmentis Scientarium,” Bk. viii., ch, 2 oh
Sicut enim dici solet de calumnia, audacter calumniare, semper aliquid
haeret : ste dict potest de jacantia (nisi plane deformis fuerit et ridi-
cula), audacter te vendita, semper aliquid haeret. Aaerebeit certe
apud populum licet prudentiores subrideant. Itaque existumatio parta
upud plurimos paucorum fastidium abunde compensabit.
166 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

§ 41. Ifyou have reason to suspect that a person is
telling you a lie, look as though you believed every word
he said. ‘This will give him courage to go on; he will
become more vehement in his assertions, and in the end
betray himself. ; ;

Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal
something from you, but with only partial success, look as
though you did not believe him. This opposition on your
part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of
truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your
incredulity.

§ 42. You should regard all your private affairs as
secrets, and, in respect of them, treat your acquaintances,
even though you are on good terms with them, as perfect
strangers, letting them know nothing more than they can
see for themselves. For in course of time, and tnder
altered circumstances, you may find it a disadvantage
that they know even the most harmless things about

ou.

Z And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show
your intelligence by saying nothing than by speaking
out; for silence is a matter of prudence, while speech has
something in itof vanity. The opportunities for displaying
the one or the other quality occur equally often; but the
fleeting satisfaction afforded by speech is often preferred to
the permanent advantage secured by silence.

The feeling of relief which lively people experience in
speaking alond when no one is listening, should not be in-
dulged, lest it grow into a habit; for in this way thought
establishes such very friendly terms with speech, that con-
versation is apt to become a process of thinking alond.
Prudence exacts that a wide gulf should be fixed between
what we think and what we say.

At times we fancy that people are utterly unable to be-
lieve in the truth of some statement affecting us personally,
whereas it never occurs to them to doubt it, but if we give
them the slightest opportunity of doubting it, they find it
absolutely impossible to believe it any more. We often be-
tray ourselves into revealing something, simply because we
suppose that people cannot help noticing it—just asa man
will throw himself down from a great height because he loses
his head, in other words, because he fancies that he cannot
OUR RELATION TO OTHERS. 164

retain a firm footing any longer; the torment of his posi-
tion is so great, that he thinks it better to put an end to
it at once. This is the kind of insanity which is called
acrophobia.

But it should not be forgotten how clever people are in
regard to affairs which do not concern them, even though
they show no particular sign of acuteness in other matters.
This is a kind of algebra in which people are very pro-
ficient: give them a single fact to go upon, and they will
solve the most complicated problems. So, if you wish to
relate some event that happened long ago, without men-
tioning any names, or otherwise indicating the persons to
whom you refer, you should be very careful not to introduce
into your narrative anything that might point, however
distantly, to some definite fact, whether it is a particular
locality or a date, or the name of some one who was only to
a small extent implicated, or anything else that was even
remotely connected with the event; for that at once gives
people something positive to go upon, and by the aid of
their talent for this sort of algebra, they will discover all
the rest. Their curiosity in these matters becomes a kind
of enthusiasm; their will spurs on their intellect, and drives
it forward to the attainment of the most remote results.
For however unsusceptible and indifferent people may be
to general and universal truths, they are very ardent in the
matter of particular details.

In keeping with what I have said, it will be found that
all those who profess to give instruction in the wisdom of
life are specially urgent in commending the practice of
silence, and assign manifold reasons why it should be ob-
served; so it is not necessary for me to enlarge upon the
subject any further. However, I may just add one or two
little known Arabian proverbs, which occur to me as pecul-
iarly appropriate:

“Do not tellafriend anything that you would conceal
from an enemy.”

“A secret isin my custody, if I keep it; but should it
escape me, it is I who am the prisoner.”

<The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace.”

§ 43. Money is never spent to so much advantage as
when you have been cheated out of it; for at one stroke you
have purchased prudence.
168 COUNSRLS AND MAXTMS.

§ 44. If possible, no animosity should be felt for any
one. But carefully observe and remember the manner in
which a man conducts himself, so that you may take the
measure of his value—at any rate in regard to yourself—
and regulate your bearing toward him accordingly; never
losing sight of the fact that character is unalterable, and
that to forget the bad features in a man’s disposition is like
throwing away hard-won money. Thus you will protect
yourself against the results of unwise intimacy and foolish
friendship.

“* Give way neither to love nor to hate,” is one half of
worldly wisdom: ‘‘ say nothing and believe nothing,” the
other half. Truly, a world where there is need of such
rules as this and the following, isone upon which a man
may well turn his back.

§ 45. To speak angrily to aperson, to show your hatred
by what you say or by the way you look, is an unnecessary
proceeding—dangerous, foolish, ridiculous, and vulgar.

Anger or hatred should never be shown otherwise than
in what you do; and feelings will be all the more effective
in action, in so far as you avoid the exhibition of them in
any other way. It is only cold blooded animals whose bite
is poisonous.

§ 46. To speak without emphasizing your words—par-
ler sans accent—is au old rule with those who are wise in
the world’s ways. It means that you should leave other
people to discover what it is that you have said; and as
their minds are slow, you can make your escape in time. On
the other hand, to emphasize your meaning—yparler avec
accent—is to address their feelings; and the result is always
the opposite of what you expect. If you are only polite
enough in your manner and courteous in your tone there
are many people whom you may abuse outright, and yet
run no immediate risk of offending them.

CHAPTER IV.
WORLDLY FORTUNE.

§ 47. However varied the forms that human destiny
may take, the same elements are always present; and 50
WORLDLY FORTUNE. 169

life is everywhere much of a piece, whether it is passed in
the cottage or in the palace, in the barrack orin the cloister.
Alter the circumstances as much as you please! point to
strange adventures, successes, failures! life is like a sweet-
shop, where there is a great variety of things, odd in shape
and diverse in color—one and all made from the same paste.
And when men speak of some one’s success, the lot of the
man who has failed is not so very different as it seems. The
inequalities in the world are like the combinations in a
kaleidoscope; at every turn a fresh picture strikes the eye;
and yet, in reality, you see only the same bits of glass as
you saw before. :

§ 48. An ancient writer says, very truly, that there are
three great powers in the world: Sagacity, Strength, and
Luck—ouveois, xpadros, rvyn. I think the last is the most
efficacious.

A man’s life is like the voyage of a ship, where luck—
secunda aut adversa fortuna—acts the part of the wind,
and speeds the vessel on its way or drives it far out of its
course. All that the man can do for himself is of little
avail; like the rudder, which, if worked hard and continu-
ously, may help in the navigation of the ship; and yet all
may be lost again by a sudden squall. Butif the wind is
only in the right quarter, the ship will sail on so as not to
need any steering. The power of luck is nowhere better ex-
pressed than inacertain Spanish proverb: Daventura a tu
hijo, y echa lo en el mar—give your son luck and throw him
into the sea.

Still, chance, it may be said, is a malignant power, and
as little as possible should be left to its agency. And yet
where is there any giver who, in dispensing gifts, tells us
quite clearly that we have no right to them, and that we
owe them not to any merit onour part but wholly to the
goodness and grace of the giver—at the same time allow-
ing us to cherish the joyful hope of receiving in all humility,
further undeserved gifts from the same hands—where
is there any giver like that, unless it be Chance? who
understands the kingly art of showing the recipient that
all merit is powerless and unavailing against the royal
grace and favor.

On looking back over the course of his life—that laby-
tinthine way of error—a man must see many points where
170 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

luck failed him and misfortune came; and then it is easy to
carry self-reproach to an unjust excess. For the course of
a man’s life is in no wise entirely of his own making: it is
the product of two factors—the series of things that hap-
pened and his own resolves in regard to them, and these
two are constantly interacting upon and modifying each
other. And besides these, another influence is at work in
the very limited extent of a man’s horizon, whether it is
that he cannot see very far ahead in respect of the plans he
will adopt, or that he is still less able to predict the course
of future events: his knowledge is strictly confined to pres-
ent plans and present events. Hence, as longas a man’s
goal is far off, he cannot steer straight for it; he must be
content to make a course that is approximately right;
and in following the direction in which he thinks he ought
to go, he will often have occasion to tack.

All that a man can do is to form such resolves as from
time to time accord with the circumstances in which he is
placed, in the hope of thus managing to advance a step
nearer toward the final goal. Itis usually the case that
the position in which we stand, and the object at which we
aim, resemble two tendencies working with dissimilar
strength in different directions ; and the course of our life
is represented by their diagonal, or resultant force.

Terence makes the remark that life is like a game at
dice, where if the number that turns up is not precisely the
one you want, you can still contrive to use it equally well:
—in vita est hominum quasi cum ludas tesseris ; si illud
quod maxime opus est jactu non cadit, illud quod cecidit
jorte, id arte ut corrigas.* Or, to put the matter
more shortly, life is like a game of cards, when the cards
are shuffled and dealt by fate. But for my present pur-
pose, the most suitable simile would be that of a game
of chess, where the plan we determined to follow is
conditioned by the play of our rival—in life, by the
caprice of fate. Weare compelled to modify our tactics,
often to such an extent that, as we carry them ont, hardly
a single feature of the original plan can be recognized.

But above and beyond all this, there is another influence
that makes itself felt in our lives. It is a trite saying

* He seems to have been referring to a game something like
backgammon.
WORLDLY FORTUNE. 171

—only too frequently true—that we are often more
foolish than we think. On the other hand, we are often
wiser than we fancy ourselves to be. This, however, is a
discovery which only those can make, of whom it is really
true; and it takes them along time to makeit. Our brains
are not the wisest part of us. In the great moments of
life, when a man decides upon an important step, his action
is directed not so much by any clear knowledge of the right
thing to do, as by an inner impulse—you may almost call
it an instinct—proceeding from the deepest foundations of
his being. If, later on he attempts to criticise his action
by the hight of hard and fast ideas of what is right in the
abstract—those unprofitable ideas which are learned by rote,
or, it may be, borrowed from other people; if he begins to
apply general rules, the principles which have guided
others, to his own case, without sufficiently weighing the
maxim that one man’s meat is another’s poison, then he will
run great risk of doing himself an injustice. The result
will show where the right course lay. It is only when a
man has reached the happy age of wisdom that he is ca-
pable of just judgment in regard either to his own actions
or to those of others.

It may be that this impulse or instinct is the unconscious
effect of a kind of prophetic dream which is forgotten when
we awake—lending our life a uniformity of tone, a dra-
matic unity, such as could never result from the unstable
moments of consciousness, when we are so easily led into
error, so liable to strike a false note. It is in virtue of
some such prophetic dream that a man feels himself called
to great achievements in aspecial sphere, and works in that
direction from his youth up out of an inner and secret
feeling that that is his true path, just as by a similar
instinct the bee is led to build up its cells in the comb.
This is the impulse which Balthazar Gracian calls la gran
sindéresis,*—the great power of moral discernment: it is

 

* Translator’s Note.—This obscure word appears to be derived from
the Greek Guvrypéw (N.T. and Polyb.) meaning ‘‘to observe strictly.”
It occurs in ‘‘ The Doctor and Student” a series of dialogues between a
doctor of divinity and a student on the laws of England, first pub-
lished in 1518; and is there (Dialog. I. ch. 13) explained as “a natural
power of the soule, set in the highest part thereof, moving and stir-
ring it to good, and abhorring evil.” This passage is copied into
Milton’s Commonplace Book, edit. Horwood, £79. The word is also
found in the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy (vol. vi, of the year
172 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

something that a man instinctively feels to be his salvation,
without which he were lost.

To act in accordance with abstract priuciples is a difficult
matter, and a great deal of practice will be required before
you can be even occasionally successful; it often happens
that the principles do not fit in with your particular case.
But every man has certain innate concrete principles—a
part, as it were, of the very blood that flows in his veins,
the sum or result, in fact, of all his thoughts, feelings and
volitions. Usually he has no knowledge of them in any
abstract form; it is only when he looks back upon the
course his life has taken, that he becomes aware of having
been always led on by them—as though they formed an
invisible clue which he had followed unawares.

§ 49. That Time works great changes, and that all
things are in their nature fleeting—these are truths that
should never be forgotten. Hence, in whatever case you
may be, it is well to picture to yourself the opposite: in
prosperity to be mindful of misfortune; in friendship, of
enmity ; in good weather, of days when the sky is overcast;
in love, of hatred ; in moments of trust, to imagine the be-
trayal that will make you regret your confidence ; and so,
too, when you are in evil plight, to have a lively sense of
happier times—what a lasting source of true worldly wisdom
were there! We should then always reflect, and not be so
very easily deceived ; because, in general, we should antici-
pate the very changes that the years will bring.

Perhaps in no form of knowledge is personal experience
so indispensable as in learning to see that all things are un-
stable and transitory in this world. There is nothing that,
in its own place and for the time it lasts, is not a product
of necessity, and therefore capable of being fully justified ;
and it is this fact that makes the circumstances of every
year, every month, even of every day, seem as though they
might maintain their right to last to all eternity. But we

 

1739) in the sense of an innate discernment of moral principles, where
a quotation is given from Madre Maria de Jesus, abbess of the convent
of the Conception at Agreda, a mystical writer of the seventeenth
century, frequently consulted by Philip [V.—and again in the Bologn-
ese Dictionary of 1824, with a similar meaning, illustrated from the
writings of Salvini (1653-1729). For these references I am indebted
to the kindness of Mr. Norman Maccoll,
WORLDLY FORTUNE. 173

know that this can never be the case, and that in a world
where all is fleeting, change alone endures. He is a pru-
dent man who is not only undeceived by apparent stability,
but is able to forecast the lines upon which movement will
take place.*

But people generally think that present circumstances
will last, and that matters will go on in the future much as
they have done in the past. Their mistake arises from the
fact that they do not understand the causes of the things
they see—causes which, unlike the effects they produce,
contain in themselves the germ of future change. The
effects are all that people know, and they hold fast to them
on the supposition that those unknown causes, which were
sufficient to bring them about, will also be able to maintain
them as they are. This is a very common error; and the
fact that it is common is not without its advantage, for it
means that people always err in unison; and hence the
calamity which results from the error affects all alike, and
is therefore easy to bear ; whereas, if a philosopher makes
a mistake, he is alone in his error, and so at a double dis-
advantage. t

But in saying that we should anticipate the effects of
time, I mean that we should mentally forecast what they
are likely to be ; I do not mean that we should practically
forestall them, by demanding the immediate performance
of promises which time alone can fulfill. The man who
makes this demand will find out that there is no worse or
more exacting usurer than Time; and that, if you compel
Time to give money in advance, you will have to pay arate

 

* Chance plays so great a part in all human affairs that when a
man tries to ward off a remote danger by present sacrifice, the danger
often vanishes under some new and unforeseen development of events;
and then the sacrifice, in addition to being a complete loss, brings
about such an altered state of things as to be in itself a source of posi-
tive danger in the face of this new development. In taking measures
of precaution, then, it is well not to look too far ahead, but to reckon
with chance; and often to oppose a courageous front to a danger, in
the hope that, like many a dark thunder-cloud, it may pass away
without breaking. ,

+ Imay remark, parenthically, that all this is a confirmation of
the principle laid down in ‘* Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” (Bk.
I, p. 94: 4th edit.), that error always consists in making a wrong in-
ference, that is, in ascribing a given effect tu something that does not
cause it,
174 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

of interest more ruinous than any Jew would require. It
is possible, for instance, to make a tree burst forth into
leaf, blossom, or even bear fruit within a few days, by the
application of unslaked lime and artificial heat ; but after
that the tree will wither away. Soa young man may abuse his
strength—it may be only for a few weeks—by trying to do
at nineteen what he could easily manage at thirty, and Time
may give him the loan for which he asks ; but the interest
he will have to pay comes out of the strength of his later
years ; nay, it is part of his very life itself.

There are some kinds of illness in which entire restora-
tion to health is possible only by letting the complaint run
its natural course ; after which it disappears without leav-
ing any trace of its existence. But if the sufferer is very
impatient, and while he is still affected, insists that he is
completely well, in this case, too, Time will grant the loan,
and the complaint may be shaken off ; but life-long weak-
ness and chronic mischief will be the interest paid upon
it.

Again, in time of war or general disturbance, a man may
require ready money at once, and have to sell out his in-
vestments in Jand or consols fora third or even a still
smaller fraction of the sum he would have received for
them, if he could have waited for the market to right it-
self, which would have happened in due course; but he
compels Time to grant him a loan, and his loss is the in-
terest he has to pay. Or perhaps he wants to go on a long
journey and requires the money: in one or two years he
could lay by a sufficient sum out of his income, but he can-
not afford to wait; and so he either borrows it or deducts
it from his capital ; in other words, he gets Time to lend
him the money in advance. The interest he pays is a
disordered state of his accounts, and permanent and in-
creasing deficits, which he can never make good.

Such is Time’s usury; and all who cannot wait are its
victims. There is no more thriftless proceeding than to
try and mend the measured pace of Time. Be careful,
then, not to become its debtor.

§ 50. Inthe daily affairs of life, you will have very
many opportunities of recognizing a characteristic differ-
ence between ordinary people and people of prudence and
discretion. In estimating the possibility of danger in con-
WORLDLY FORTUNE. 1%

nection with any undertaking, an ordinary man will confine
his inquiries to the kind of risk that has already attended
such undertakings in the past ; whereas a prudent person
will look ahead, and consider everything that might possi-
bly happen in the future, having regard to a certain
Spanish maxim: lo que no acaece en un ano, acaece en un
rato—a thing may not happen in a year, and yet may hap-
pen within two minutes. .

The difference in question is, of course, quite natural ;
for it requires some amount of discernment to calculate
possibilities ; but a man need only have his senses about
him to see what has already happened.

Do not omit to sacrifice to evil spirits. What I mean is,
that a man should not hesitate about spending time, trouble,
and money, or giving up his comfort, or restricting his
aims and denying himself, if he can thereby shut the door
on the possibility of misfortune. The most terrible misfor-
tunes are also the most improbable and remote—the least
likely to occur. The rule Iam giving is best exemplitied
in the practice of insurance—a public sacrifice made on the
altar Ms anxiety. Therefore take out your policy of insur-
ance ! ‘

§ 51. Whatever fate befalls you, do not give way to
great rejoicings or great lamentation ; partly because all
things are full of change, and your fortune may turn at
any moment; partly because men are so apt to be deceived
in their judgment as to what is good or bad for them.

Almost every one in his time has lamented over some-
thing which afterwards turned out to be the very best
thing for him that could have happened—or rejoiced at an
event which became the source of his greatest sufferings.
The right state of mind has been finely portrayed by
Shakespeare :

“‘T have feltso many quirks of joy and grief
That the first face of neither, on the start,
Can Woman me unto’t.*

And, in general, it may be said that, if a man takes
misfortunes quietly, it is because he knows that very many

 

* « All’s Well that Ends Well,” Act ii. Sc. 2.
176 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

dreadful things may happen in the course of life; and so
he looks upon the trouble of the moment as only a very
small part of that which might come. This is the Stoic
temper—never to be unmindful of the sad fate of human-
ity—condicionis humane oblitus ; but always to remember
that our existence is full of woe and misery, and that the
ills to which we are exposed are innumerable. Wherever
he be, a man need only cast a look around, to revive the
sense of human misery: there before his eyes he can see
mankind struggling and floundering in torment—all for
the sake of a wretched existence, barren and unprofitable !

If he remembers this, a man will not expect very much
from life, but learn'to accommodate himself to a world
where all is relative and no perfect state exists; always
looking misfortune in the face, and if he cannot avoid it,
meeting it with courage.

It should never be forgotten that misfortune, be it great
or small, is the element in which we live. But that is no
reason why a man should indulge in fretful complaints,
and, like Beresford,* pull a long face over the ‘‘ Miseries
of Human Life ”’—and not asingle hour is free from them;
or still less, call upon the Deity at every flea-bite—in
pulicis morsu Deum invocare. Our aim should be to look
well about us, to ward off misfortune by going to meet it,
to attain such perfection and refinement in averting the
disagreeble things of life—whether they come from our
fellow-men or from the physical world—that, like a clever
fox, we may slip out of the way of every mishap, great or
small; remembering that a mishap is generally only our
own awkwardness in disguise.

The main reason why misfortune falls less heavily upon us,
if we have looked upon its occurrence as not impossible, and,
as the saying is, prepared ourselves for it, may be this: if,
before the misfortune comes, we have quietly thought over
it as something which may or may not happen, the whole
of its extent and range is known to us, and we can, at least,
determine how far it will affect us; so that, if it really
arrives, it does not depress us unduly—its weight is not
felt to be greater than it actuallyis. But ifno preparation

 

* Translator’s Note.—Rev. James Beresford (1764-1840), miscel-
laneous writer. The full title of this, his chief work, is ‘‘ The
Miseries of Human Life; or the last groans of Timothy Testy and
Samuel Sensitive, with a few supplementary sighs from Mrs, Testy.”
WORLDLY FORTUNE. 137

has been made to meet it, and it comes unexpectedly, the
mind is in a state of terror for the moment and unable to
measure the full extent of the calamity ; it seems so far-
reaching in its effects that the victim might well think
there was no limit to them in any case, its range is exag-
gerated. In the same way, darkness and uncertainty always
increase the sense of danger. And, of course, if we have
thought over the possibility of misfortune, we have also at
the same time considered the sources to which we shall look
for help and consolation ; or, at any rate, we have accus-
tomed ourselves to the idea of it.

There is nothing that better fits us to endure the mis-
fortunes of life with composure, than to know for certain
that everything that happens—from the smallest up to the
greatest facts of existence—happens of necessity.* A man
soon acconimodates himself tothe inevitable—to something
that must be; and if he knows that nothing can happen
except of necessity, he will see that things cannot be other
than they are, and that even the strangest chances in the
world are just as much a product of necessity as phenom-
ena which obey well-known rules and turn out exactly in
accordance with expectation. Let me here refer to what I
have said elsewhere on the soothing effect of the knowledge
that all things are inevitable and a product of necessity. +

If a man is steeped in the knowledge of this truth, he
will, first of all, do what he can, and then readily endure
what he must.

We may regard the petty vexations of life that are con-
stantly happening, as designed to keep us in practice for
bearing great misfortunes, so that we may not become com-
pletely enervated by a career of prosperity. A man should
be a Siegfried, armed cap-a-pie, toward the small troubles
of every day—those little differences we have with our
fellow-men, insignificant disputes, unbecoming conduct
in other people, petty gossip, and many other similar an-
noyances of life ; he should not feel them at all, much less
take them to heart and brood over them, but hold them at

 

* This is a truth which I have firmly established in my prize-essay
on the ‘‘ Freedom of the Will, ” where the reader will find a de-
tailed explanation of the grounds on which it rests. Cf. especialiy p.
60. [Schopenhauer’s Works, 4th Edit., vol. iv.—7Z7.] :

+ Cf, ‘‘ Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” Bk. I. p. 361 (4th edit.),
1%8 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

arm’s length and push them out of his way, like stones
that lie in the road, and upon no account think about them
and give them a place in his reflections.

§ 52. What people commonly call ‘‘ Fate” is, asa gen-
eral rule, nothing but their own stupid and foolish conduct.
There is a fine passage in Homer,* illustrating the truth of
this remark, where the poet praises .#rzs—shrewd counsel;
and his advice is worthy of all attention. For if wicked-
ness is atoned for only in another world, stupidity gets its
reward here——although, now and then, mercy may be
shown to the offender.

It is not ferocity but cunning that strikes fear into the
heart and forebodes danger; so true it is that the human
brain is a more terrible weapon than the lion’s paw.

The most finished man of the world would be one who
was never irresolute and never in a hurry.

§ 53. Courage comes next to prudence as a quality of
mind very essential to happiness. It is quite true that no one
can endow himself with either, since a man inherits pru-
dence from his mother and courage from his father ; still,
if he has these qualities, he can do much to develop them
by means of resolute exercise.

In this world, “‘ where the game is played with loaded
dice,” a man must have a temper of iron, with armor proof
to the blows of fate, and weapons to make his way against
men. Life is one long battle ; we have to fight at every
step : and Voltaire very rightly says that if we succeed, it
is at the point of the sword, and that we die with the
weapon in our hand—on ne réussit dans ce monde qu’a la
pointe de ’épé, et on meurt les armes & la main. It is a
cowardly soul that shrinks or grows faint and despondent
as soon as the storm begins to gather, or even when the
first cloud appears on the horizon. Our motto should be
“No surrender ;” and far from yielding to the ills of life,
let us take fresh courage from misfortune;

“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito.” *
As long as the issue of any matter fraught with peril is

* * Tliad,” xxiii. 318, sqq. * Virgil, ‘‘ Mneid,” vi., 95,
WORLDLY FORTUNE. 179

still in doubt, and there is yet some possibility left that all
may come right, no one should ever tremble or think of
anything but resistance—just as a man should not despair
of the weather if he can see a bit of blue sky anywhere.
Let our attitude be such that we should not quake even if
the world fell in ruins about us:

“Si fractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferient ruine.” *

Our whole life itself—let alone its blessings—would not
be worth such a cowardly trembling and shrinking of the
heart. Therefore, let us face life courageously and show
a firm front to every ill:

“‘ Quocirca vivite fortes
Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus.”

Still, it is possible for courage to be carried to an excess
and to degenerate into rashness. It may even be said that
some amount of fear is necessary, if we are to exist at all
in the world, and cowardice is only the exaggerated form
of it. This truth has been very well expressed by Bacon,
in his account of ** Terror Panicus ; ” and the etymological
account which he gives of its meaning, is very superior to
the ancient explanation preserved for us by Plutarch.t
He connects the expression with Pan, the personification
of Nature ;{ and observes that fear is innate in every
living thing, and, in fact, tends to its preservation, but
that it is apt to come into play without due cause, and
that man especially exposed to it. The chief feature of
this “‘ Panic Terror” is that there is no clear notion of any
definite danger bound up with it ; that it presumes rather
than knows that danger exists; and that, in case of need,
it pleads fright itself as the reason for being afraid.

 

* Horace, Odes iii. 3. t ‘‘ De Iside et Osiride,” ch. 14.

¢ ‘‘De Sapientia Veterum,” c. 6. ‘Natura enim rerum omnibus
viventibus indidit metum ac formidinem, vite atque essentie sue
conservatricem, ac mala ingruentia vitantem et depellentem.
Verumtamen eadem natura modum tenere nescia est : sed timoribus
salutaribus semper vanos et innanes admiscet; adeo ut omnia (si
intus conspici darentur) Panicis terroribus plenissima sint, praesertim
humana,” .
180 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

CHAPTER V.
THE AGES OF LIFE.

THERE is a very fine saying of Voltaire’s to the effect
that every age of life has its own peculiar mental char-
acter, and that a man will feel completely unhappy if his
mind is not in accordance with his years:

“Qui n’a pas l’esprit de son age,
De son age a tout le malheur.”

It will, therefore, be a fitting close to our speculations
upon the nature of happiness, if we glance at the changes
which the various periods of life produce in us.

Our whole life long it is the present, and the present
alone, that we actually possess; the only difference is that
at the beginning of life we look forward to along future,
and that toward the end we look back upon a long past;
also that our temperament, but not our character, under-
goes certain well-known changes, which make the present
wear a different color at each period of life.

I have elsewhere stated that in childhood we are more
given to using our intellect than our will; and I have ex-
plained why this is so.* It is just for this reason that the
first quarter of life is so happy; as we look back upon it in
after years, it seem a sort of lost paradise. In childhood
our relations with others are limited, our wants are few—
in a word, there is little stimulus for the will; and so our
chief concern is the extension of our knowledge. The
intellect—like the brain, which attains its full size in the
seventh year,} is developed early, though it takes time to

 

*Translator’s Note.—Schopenhauer refers to ‘“‘Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung,” Bk. II. ¢. 31, p.461 (4th. edit.), where he explains
that this is due to the fact that at that period of life the brain and
nervous systein are much more developed than any other part of the
organism.

+Transiator’s Note.—This statement is not quite correct. The
weight of the brain increases rapidly up to the seventh year, more
slowly between the sixteenth and the twentieth year, still more slow-
ly till between thirty and forty years of age, when it attains its maxi-
mum. At each decennial period after this, it is supposed to decrease
in weight on the average an ounce for every ten years,
THE AGES OF LIFE. 181

mature and it explores the whole world of its surroundings
in its constant search fornutriment: it is then that existence
is in itself an ever fresh delight, and all things sparkle with
the charm of novelty.

This is why the years of childhood are like a long poem.
For the function of poetry, as of all art, is to grasp the idea
—in the Platonic sense; in other words, to apprehend a
particular object in such a way as to perceive its essential
nature, the characteristics it has in common with all other
objects of the same kind: so that a single object appears as
the representative of a class, and the results of one experi-
ence hold good for a thousand.

It may be thought that my remarks are opposed to fact,
and that the child is never occupied with anything beyond
the individual objects or events which are presented to it
from time to time, and then only in so far as they interest
and excite its will for the moment; but this is not really the
case. In those early years, life—in the full meaning of the
word, is something so new and fresh, and its sensations are
so keen and unblunted by repetition, that, in the midst of
all its pursuits and without any clear consciousness of what
it is doing, the child is always silently occupied in grasping
the nature of life itself—in arriving at its fundamental
character and general outline by means of separate scenes
and experiences; or, to use Spinoza’s phraseology, the child
is learning to see the things and persons about it swd specie
eternitatis—as particular manifestations of universal
law.

The younger we are, then, the more does every individual
object represent for us the whole class to which it belongs;
but as the years increase, this becomes less and less the
case. That is the reason why youthful impressions are so
different from those of old age. And that is also why the
slight knowledge and experience gained in childhood and
youth afterward come to stand as the permanent rubric,
or heading, for all the knowledge acquired in later life—
those early forms of knowledge passing into categories, as
it were, under which the results of subsequent experience
are classified; though a clear consciousness of what is being
done, does not always attend upon the process.

In this way the earliest years of a man’s life lay the foun-
dation of his view of the world, whether it be shallow or
deep, and although this view may be extended and _per-
182 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

fected later on, it is not materially altered. Itisan effect
of this purely objective and therefore poetical view of the
world—essential to the period of childhood and promoted
by the as yet undeveloped state of the volitional energy—
that, as children, we are concerned much more with the ac-
quisition of pure knowledge than with exercising the
power of will. Hence that grave, fixed look observable in so
many children, of which Raphael makes such a happy use
in his depiction of cherubs, especially in the picture of the
«Sistine Madonna.” The years of childhood are thus ren-
dered so full of bliss that the memory of them is al-
ways coupled with longing and regret.

While we thus eagerly apply ourselves to learning the out-
ward aspect of things, as the primitive method of under-
standing the objects about us, education aims at instilling
into us ideas. But ideas furnish no information as to the
real and essential nature of objects, which, as the foundation
and true content of all knowledge, can be reached only by
the process called intuition. This isa kind of knowledge
which can in no wise be instilled into us from without ;
we must arrive at it by and for ourselves.

Hence a man’s intellectual as well as his moral qualities
proceed from the depths of his own nature, and are not the
result of external influences ; and no educational scheme—
of Pestalozzi, or of any one else—can turn a born simpleton
into a man of sense. The thing is impossible! He was
born a simpleton, and a simpleton he will die.

It is the depth and intensity of this early intuitive
knowledge of the external world that explain why the ex-
periences of childhood take such a firm hold on the
memory. When we were young, we were completely
absorbed in our immediate surroundings ; there was noth-
ing to distract our attention from them ; we looked upon
the objects about us as though they were the only ones of
their kind, as though, indeed, nothing else existed at all.
Later on, when we come to find out how many things
there are in the world, this primitive state of mind van-
ishes, and with it our patience.

I have said elsewhere* that the world, considered as

 

* “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” Bk. II.c 81, p. 426-7
(4th Edit.), to which the reader is referred for a detail explanation
of my meaning.
THE AGES OF LIFE. 183

object—in other words, as it is presented to us objectively
—wears in general a pleasing aspect; but that in the
world, considered as the subject—that is, in regard to its
inner nature, which is will—pain and trouble predominates
I may be allowed to express the matter, briefly, thus : the
world is glorious to look at, but dreadful in reality.

Accordingly, we find that, in the years of childhood,
the world is much better known to us on its outer or ob-
jective side, namely as the presentation of will, than on
the side of its inner nature, namely, as the will itself.
Since the objective side wears a pleasing aspect, and the
inner or subjective side, with its tale of horror, remains as
yet unknown, the youth, as his intelligence develops,
takes all the forms of beauty that he sees, in nature and in
art, for so many objects of blissful existence; they are so
beautiful to the outward eye that, on their inner side, they
must, he thinks, be much more beautiful still. So the
world lies before him like another Eden; and this is the
Arcadia in which we are all born.

A little later, this state of mind gives birth to a thirst
for real life—the impulse to do and suffer—which drives a
man forth into the hurly-burly of the world. There he
learns the other side of existence—the inner side, the will,
which is thwarted at every step. Then comes the great
period of disillusion, a period of very gradual growth, but
once it has fairly begun, aman will tell you that he has got
over all his false notions—l’dye des illusions est passé; and
yet the process is only beginning, and it goes on extending
its sway and applying more and more ta,the whole of life.
So it may be said that in childhood life looks like the
scenery in a theater, as you view it from a distance; and
that in old age it is like the same scenery when youcome
up quite close to it.

And lastly, there is another circumstance that contributes
to the happiness of childhood. As spring commences, the
young leaves on the treesare similar in color and much the
same in shape; and in the first years of life we all resemble
one another and harmonize very well. But with puberty
divergence begins; and, likethe radii of a circle, we go
further and further apart.

The period of youth, which forms the remainder of this
earlier half of our existence—and how many advantages it
has over the later half—is troubled and made miserable by

e
184 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

the pursuit of happiness, as though there were no doubt
that it can be met with somewhere in life—a hope that al-
ways ends in failure and leads to discontent. An illusory
image of some vague future bliss—born of a dream and
shaped by fancy—floats before our eyes: and we search for
the reality in vain. So it is that the young man is gener-
ally dissatisfied with the position in which he finds himself,
whatever it may be; he ascribes his disappointment solely
to the state of things that meets him on his first intro-
duction to life, when he had expected something very dif-
ferent; whereas it is only the vanity and wretchedness of
human life everywhere that he is now for the first time
experiencing.

It would bea great advantage to a young man if his early
training could eradicate the idea that the world hasa great
deal to offer him. Butthe usual result of education is to
strengthen this delusion; and our first ideas of life are
generally taken from fiction rather than from fact.

In the bright dawn of our youthful days, the poetry of
life spreads out a gorgeous vision before us, and we torture
ourselves by longing to see it realized. We might as well
wish to grasp the rainbow! The youth expects his career to
be like an interesting romance; and there lies the germ of
that disappointment which I have been describing.* What
lends a charm to all these visions is just the fact that they
are visionary and not real, and that in contemplating them
we are in the sphere of pure knowledge, which is sufficient
in itself and free from the noise and struggle of life. To
try and realize those visions is to make them an object of
will—a process which always involves pain. +t

If the chief feature of the earlier half of life is a never-
satisfied longing after happiness, the later half is char-
acterized by the dread of misfortune. For, as we advance
in years, it becomes in a greater or less degree clear
that all happiness is chimaerical in its nature, and that
pain alone is real. Accordingly, in later years, we, or at
least, the more prudent among us, are more intent upon
eliminating what is painful from our lives and making our

 

* Cf. loc. cit. p. 428.

+ Let me refer the reader, if he is interested in the subject, to the
volume already cited, chapter 37.
THE AGES OF LIFE. 185

position secure, than on the pursuit of positive pleasure. I
may observe, by the way, that in old age we are better able
to prevent misfortunes from coming, and in youth better
able to bear them when they come.

In my young days, I was always pleased to hear a ring at
my door: ah! thought 1, now for something pleasant. But
in later life my feelings on such occasions were rather akin
to dismay than to pleasure; heaven help me! thought I, what
am I todo? A similar revulsion of feeling in regard to the
world of men takes place in all persons of any talent or dis-
tinction. For that very reason they cannot be said properly
to belong to the world; ina greater orless degree, according
to the extent of their superiority, they stand alone. In their
youth they have a sense of being abandoned by the world;
but later on, they feel as though they had escaped it. The
earlier feeling isan unpleasant one, and rests upon ignorance,
the second is pleasurable—for in the meantime they have
come to know what the world is.

The consequence of this is that, as compared with the ear-
lier, the later half of life, like the second part of a musical
period, has less of passionate longing and more restfulness
about it. And why is this thecase? Simply because, in
youth, a man fancies that there isa prodigious amount of
happiness and pleasure to be had in the world, only that it
is difficult to come by it; whereas, when he becomes old, he
knows that there is nothing of the kind; he makes his mind
completely at ease on the matter, enjoys the present hour
as well as he can, and even takes a pleasure in trifles.

The chief result gained by experience of life is clearness
of view. This is what distinguishes the man of mature
age, and makes the world wear such a different aspect from
that which it presented in his youth or boyhood. Itis only
then that he sees things quite plain, and takes them for
that which they really are; while in earlier years he saw a
phantom-world put together out of the whims and crotchets
of his own mind, inherited prejudice and strange delusion ;
the real world was hidden from him, or the vision of it
distorted. The first thing that experience finds to do is to
tree us from the phantoms of the brain—those false notious
that have been put into us in youth.

To prevent their entrance at all would, of course, be the
best form of education, even though it were only negative
in aim; but it would be a task full of difficulty. At first
186 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

the child’s horizon would have to be limited as much as
possible, and yet within that limited sphere none but clear
and correct notions would have to be given; only after the
child had properly appreciated everything within it, might
the sphere be gradually enlarged; care being always taken
that nothing was left obscure, or half or wrongly understood.
The consequence of this training would be that the child’s
notions of men and things would always be limited and
simple in their character; but on the other hand, they
would be clear and correct, and only need to be extended,
not to be rectified. The same line might be pursued on
into the period of youth. This method of education would
lay special stress upon the prohibition of novel reading; and
the place of novels would be taken by suitable biographical
literature—the life of Franklin, for instance, or Moritz’s
“Anton Reiser.” *

In our early days we fancy that the leading events in our
life, and the persons who are going to play an important
part in it, will make their entrance to the sound of drums
and trumpets; but when, in old age, we look back, we find
that they all came in quite quietly, slipped in, as it were,
by the side-door, almost unnoticed.

From the point of view we have been taking up until
now, life may be compared to a piece of embroidery, of
which, during the first half of his time, a man gets a sight
of the right side, and during the second half, of the wrong.
The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but itis more
instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have
been worked together.

Intellectual superiority, even if it is of the highest kind,
will not secure fora man a preponderating place in conver-
sation until after he is forty years old. For age and experi-
ence, though they can never be a substitute for intellectual
talent, may far outweigh it; and even in a person of the
meanest capacity, they give a certain counterpoise to the
power of an extremely intellectual man so long as the latter
is young. Of course I allude here to personal superiority,
not to the place a man may gain by his works.

And on passing his fortieth year any man of the slightest

 

*Translator’s Note.—Moritz was a miscellaneous writer of the last
century (1757-93). His ‘‘Anton Reiser,” composed in the form of a
novel, is practically an autobiography.
THE AGES OF LIFE. 187

power of mind—any man, that is, who has more than the
sorry share of intellect with which Nature has endowed
five-sixths of mankind—will hardly fail to show some trace
of misanthropy. For, as is natural, he has by that time
inferred other people’s character from an examination of
his own; with the result that he has been gradually disap-
pointed to find that in the qualities of the head or in those
of the heart—and usually in both—he reaches a level to
which they do not attain; so he gladly avoids having any-
thing more to do with them. For it may be said, in gen-
eral, that every man will love or hate solitude—in other
words, his own society—just in proportion as he is worth
anything in himself. Kant has some remarks upon this
kind of misanthropy in his ‘‘Critique of the Faculty of
Judgment.” *

In a young man, it is a bad sign, as well from an intel-
lectual as from a moral point of view, if he is precocious in
understanding the ways of the world, and in adapting him-
self to its pursuits; if he at once knows how to deal with
men, and enters upon life, as it were, fully prepared. It
argues a vulgar nature. On the other hand, to be sur-
prised and astonished at the way people act, and to be
clumsy and cross-grained in having todo with them, indi-
cates a character of the nobler sort.

The cheerfulness and vivacity of youth are partly due
to the fact that, when we are ascending the hill of life,
death is not visible: it lies down at the bottom of the
other-side. But once we have crossed the top of the hill,
death comes in view—death, which, until then, was known
to us only by hearsay. This makes our spirits droop, for
at the same time we begin to feel that our vital powers
are on the ebb. A grave seriousness now takes the place
of that early extravagance of spirit ; and the change is
noticeable even in the expression of a man’s face. Aslong
as we are young, people may tell us what they please! we
look upon life as endless and use our time recklessly ; but
the older we become, the more we practice economy. For
toward the close of life, every day we live gives us the
same kind of sensation as the criminal experiences at every
step on his way to be tried.

From the standpoint of youth, life seems to stretch

 

* “Kritik der Urtheilskraft,” Part 1., § 29, Note ad fin,
188 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

away into an endless future; from the standpoint of old
age, to go back but a little way into the past; so that, at
the beginning, life presents us with a picture in which the
objects appear a great way off, as though we had reversed
our telescope ; while in the end everything seems to close.
To see how short life is, a man must have grown old, that
is to say, he must have lived long.

On the other hand, as the years increase, things look
smaller, one and all; and life, which had so firm and
stable a base in the days of our youth, now seems nothing
but a rapid flight of moments, every one of them illusory ;
we have come to see that the whole world is vanity !

Time itself seems to go at a much slower pace when we
are young; so that not only is the first quarter of life the
happiest, it is also the longest of all; it leaves more mem-
ories behind it. Ifa man were put to it, he could tell you
more out of the first quarter of his life than out of twe of
the remaining periods. Nay, in the spring of life, as in
the spring of the year, the days reach a length that is
positively tiresome; but in the autumn, whether of the
year or of life, though they are short, they are more genial
and uniform.

But why is it that to an old man his past life appears so
short ? For this reason: his memory is short ; and so he
fancies that his life has been short too. He no longer re-
members the insignificant parts of it, and much that was
unpleasant is now forgotten; how little, then, there is
left! For, in general, a man’s memory is as imperfect as
his intellect ; and he must make a practice of reflecting
upon the lessons he has learned and the events he has ex-
perienced, if he does not want them both to sink gradually
into the gulf of oblivion. Now, we are unaccustomed to
reflect upon matters of no importance, or, as a rule, upon
things that we have found disagreeable, and yet that is
necessary if the memory of them is to be preserved. But
the class of things that may be called insignificant is con-
tinually receiving fresh additions: much that wears an air
of importance at first, gradually becomes of no consequence
at all from the fact of its frequent repetition ; so that in
the end we actually lose count of the number of times it
happens. Hence we are better able to remember the
events of our early than of our later years. The longer we
live, the fewer are the things that we can call important or
THE AGES OF LIFE. 189

significant enough to deserve further consideration, and by
this alone can they be fixed in the memory; in other
words, they are forgotten as soon as they are past. Thus
it is that time runs on, leaving always fewer traces of its
passage.

Further, if disagreeable things have happened to us we
do not care to ruminate upon them, least of all when they
touch our vanity, as is usually the case; for few mis-
fortunes fall upon us for which we can be held entirely
blameless: So people are very ready to forget many things
that are disagreeable, as well as many that are unimpor-
tant.

It is from this double canse that our memory is so
short ; and a man’s recollection of what has happened al-
ways becomes proportionately shorter, the more things that
have occupied him in life. The things we did in years gone
by, the events that happened long ago, are like those ob-
jects on the coast which, to the seafarer on his outward
voyage, become smaller every minute, more unrecognizable
and harder to distinguish.

Again, it sometimes happens that memory and imagi-
nation will call up some long past scene as vividly as if it
had occurred only yesterday; so that the event in question
seems to stand very near to the present time. The reason
of this is that it is impossible to call up ail the intervening
period in the same vivid way, as there is no one figure per-
vading it which can be taken in ata glance; and besides
most of the things that happened in that period are forgot-
ten, and all that remains of it is the general knowledge that
we have lived through it—a mere notion of abstract exist-
ence, not a direct vision of some particular experience.
It is this that causes some single event of long ago to ap-
pear as though it took place but yesterday: the intervening
time vanishes, and the whole of life looks incredibly short.
Nay, there are occasional moments in old age when we can
scarcely believe that we are so advanced in years, or that
the long past lying behind us has had any real existence—
a feeling which is mainly due to the circumstance that the
present always seems fixed and immovable as we look at it.
These and similar mental phenomena are ultimately to be
traced to the fact that itis not our nature in itself, but only
the outward presentation of it, that lies in time, and that
190 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

the present is the point of contact between the world as
subject and the world as object. *

Again, why is it that in youth we can see no end to the
years that seem to lie before us? Because we are obliged
to find room for all the things we hope to attain in life.
We cram the years so full of projects that if we were to try
and carry them all out, death would come prematurely
though we reached the age of Methuselah.

Another reason why life looks so long when we are young
is that we are apt to measure its length by the few years we
have already lived. In those early years things are new
to us and so they appear important; we dwell upon them
after they have happened and often call them to mind: and
thus in youth life seems replete with incident, and there-
fore of long duration.

Sometimes we credit ourselves with a longing to be in
some distant spot, whereas, in truth, we are only longing
to have the time back again which we spent there—days
when we were younger and fresher than we are now. In
those moments Time mocksus by wearing the mask of space,
and if we travel to the spot, we can see how much we have
been deceived.

There are two ways of reaching a great age, both of
which presuppose a sound constitution as a conditio sine
quad non. They may be illustrated by two lamps, one of
which burns a long time with very little oil, because it has
a very thin wick: and the other just as long, though it has
avery thick one, because there is plenty of oil to feed it.
Here, the oil is the vital energy, and the difference in the
wick is the manifold way in which the vital energy is
used.

Up to our thirty-sixth year, we may be compared, in re-
spect of the way in which we use our vital energy, to people
who live on the interest of their money; what they spend
to-day, they have again to-morrow. But from the age of
thirty-six onward, our position is like that of the investor

 

*Translator’s Note.—By this remark Schopenhauer means that will,
which, as he argues, forms the inner reality underlying all the phe-
nomena of life and nature, is not in itself affected by time; but that
on the other hand, time is necessary for the objectification of the will
for the will as presented in the passing phenomena of the world.
Time is thus definable asthe condition of change, and the present
time as the only point of contact between reality and appearance,
THE AGES OF LIFE, 194

who begins to entrench upon his capital. At first he hardly
notices any difference at all, as the greater part of his
expenses is covered by the interest of his securities; and
if the deficit is but slight, he pays no attention toit. But
the deficit goes on increasing, until he awakes to the fact
that it is becoming more serious every day; his position be-
comes less and less secure, and he feels himself growing
poorer and poorer, while he has no expectation of this drain
upon his resources coming to an end. His fall from wealth
to poverty becomes faster every moment—like the fall of a
solid body in space, until at Jast he has absolutely nothing
left. A man is truly in a woeful plightif both the terms
of this comparison—his vital energy and his wealth—really
begin to melt away at one and the same time. It is the
dread of this calamity that makes love of possession increase
with age.

On the other hand, at the beginning of life—in the years
before we attain majority, and for some little time after-
ward—the state of our vital energy puts us on a level] with
those who each year lay by a part of their interest and add
it to their capital: in other words, not only does their inter-
est come in regularly, but the capital is constantly receiv-
ing additions. This happy condition of affairs is some-
times brought about—with health as with money—under
the watchful care of some honest guardian. Oh happy
youth, and sad old age!

Nevertheless, a man should economize his strength even
when he is young. Aristotle * observes that among those
who were victors at Olympia only two or three gained a
prize at two different periods, once in boyhood and then
when they came to be men; and the reason of this was that
the premature efforts which the training involved, so com-
pletely exhausted their powers that they failed to last on
into manhood. Asthis is true of muscular, so it is still
more true of nervous energy, of which all intellectual
achievements are the manifestation. Hence, those infant
prodigies—ingenia praecocia—the fruit of a hot-house
education, who surprise us by their cleverness as children,
afterward turn out very ordinary folk. Nay, the manner
in which boys are forced into an early acquaintance with
the ancient tongues may, perhaps be to blame for the dull-

 

* “Politics,”
192 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

ness and lack of judgment which distinguish so many
learned persons.

T have said that almost every man’s character seems to be
specially suited to some one period of life, so that on reach-
ing it the man is at his best. Some people are charming so
long as they are young, and afterward there is nothing at-
tractive about them; others are vigorous and active in man-
hood, and then lose all the value they possess as they ad-
vance in years; many appear to best advantage in old age,
when their character assumes a gentler tone, as becomes
men who have seen the world and take life easily. This is
often the case with the French.

This peculiarity must be due to the fact that the man’s
character has something in it akin to the qualities of youth
or manhood or old age—something which accords with one
or another of these periods of life, or perhaps acts as a cor:
rective to its special failings.

The mariner observes the progress he makes only by the
way in which objects on the coast fade away into the dis-
tance and apparently decrease in size. Inthe same way a
man becomes conscious that he is advancing in years when
he finds that people older than himself begin to seem young
to him.

It has been already remarked that the oldera man be-
comes, the fewer are the traces left in his mind by all that
he sees, does or experiences, and the cause of this has been
explained. There is thus asense in which it may be said
that itis only in youth thata man lives with afull degree of
consciousness and that he is only half alive when he is
old. As the years advance, his consciousness of what
goes on about him dwindles, and the things of life hur-
ry by without making any impression upon him, just
as none is made by a work of art seen forthe thous-
andth time. A man does what his hand finds to do, and
afterward he does not know whether he has done it or
not.

As life becomes more and more unconscious the nearer
it approaches the point at which all consciousness ceases, the
course of time itself seems to increase in rapidity. In
childhood all the things and circumstances of life are novel
and that is sufficient to awake us to the full consciousness of
THE AGES OF LIFE. 193

existence: hence, at that age, the day seems of such immense
length. The same thing happens when we are traveling;
one month seems longer then than four spent at home.
Still, though time seems to last longer when we are young
or on a journey, the sense of novelty does not prevent it
from now and then in reality hanging heavily upon our
hands under both these circumstances, at any rate more than
is the case when we are old or staying at home. But the
intellect gradually becomes so rubbed down and blunted by
long habituation to such sensations that things have a con-
stant tendency to produce less and Jess impression upon us
as they pass by; and this makes time seem increasingly less
important, and therefore shorter in duration: the hours of
the boy arelonger than the days of the old man. Ac-
cordingly, time goes faster and faster the longer we live,
like a ball rolling down hill. Or, to take another example;
as in arevolving disc the further apointlies from the center
the more rapid isits rate of progression, so it is in the
wheel of life; the further you stand from the beginning, the
faster time moves for you. Hence it may be said that as
far as concerns the immediate sensation that time makes
upon our minds, the length of any given year is in direct
proportion to the number of times it will divide our whole
life: for instance, at the age of fifty the year appears to us
only one-tenth as long as it did at the age of five.

This variation in the rate at which time appears to
move, exercises a most decided influence upon the whole
nature of our existence at every period of it. First of all,
it causes childhood—even though it embrace only a span
of fifteen years—to seem the longest period of life, and
therefore the richest in reminiscences. Next, it brings it
about that a man is apt to be bored just in proportion as
he is young. Consider, for instance, that constant need of
occupation—whether it is work or play—that is shown by
children: if they come to an end of both work and play, a
terrible feeling of boredom ensues. Even in youth people
are by no means free from this tendency, and dread the
hours when they have nothing to do. As manhood ap-
proaches, boredom disappears ; and old men find the time
too short when their days fly past them like arrows from a
bow. Of course, I must be understood to speak of men,
not of decrepit brutes. With this increased rapidity of
time, boredom mostly passes away as we advance in life ;
194 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

and as the passions with all their attendant pain are then
laid asleep, the burden of life is, on the whole, appreciably
lighter in later years than in youth, provided, of course,
that health remains. So it is that the period immediately
preceding the weakness and troubles of old age receives
the name of a man’s best years.

That may be a true appellation, in view of the comfort-
able feeling which those years bring ; but for all that the
years of youth, when our consciousness is lively and open
to every sort of impression, have this privilege—that then
the seeds are sown and the buds come forth; it is the
springtime of the mind. Deep truths may be perceived,
but can never be excogitated—that is to say, the first
knowledge of them is immediate, called forth by some
momentary impression. This knowledge is of such a kind
as to be attainable only when the impressions are strong,
lively and deep ; and if we are to be acquainted with deep
truth, everything depends upon a proper use of our early
years. In later life, we may be better able to work upon
other people—upon the world, because our natures are
then finished and rounded off, and no more a prey to fresh
views; but then the world is less able to work upon us.
These are the years of action and achievement ; while youth
is the time for forming fundamental conceptions and lay-
ing down the groundwork of thought.

In youth it is the outward aspect of things that most
engages us; while in age, thought or reflection is the
predominating quality of the mind. Hence, youth is the
time for poetry, and age is more inclined to philosophy.
In practical affairs it is the same: a man shapes his
resolutions in youth more by the impression that the out-
ward world makes upon him; whereas, when he is old, it
is thought that determines his actions. This is partly to
be explained by the fact that it is only when a man is old
that the results of outward observation are present in
sufficient numbers to allow of their being classified ac-
cording to the ideas they represent—a process which in
its turn causes those ideas to be more fully understood in
all their bearings, and the exact value and amount of trust
to be placed in them, fixed and determined, while at the
same time he has grown accustomed to the impressions
produced by the various phenomena of life, and their
effects on him are no longer what they were,
THE AGES OF LIFE. 195

Contrarily, in youth, the impressions that things make,
that is to say, the outward aspects of life, are so overpower-
ingly strong, especially in the case of people of lively and
imaginative disposition, that they view the world like a
picture ; and their chief concern is the figure they cut in
it, the appearance they present ; nay, they are unaware of
the extent to which this is the case. It is a quality of
mind that shows itself—if in no other way—in that personal
vanity, and that love of fine clothes, which distinguish
young people.

There can be no doubt that the intellectual powers are
most capable of enduring great and sustained efforts in
youth, up to the age of thirty-five at latest ; from which
period their strength begins to decline, though very gradu-
ally. Still, the later years of life, and even old age itself,
are not without their intellectual compensation. It is
only then that a man can be said to be really rich in ex-
perience or in learning ; he has then had time and oppor-
tunity enough to enable him to see and think over life
from all its sides; he has been able to compare one thing
with another, and to discover points of contact and con-
necting links, so that only then are the true relations of
things rightly understood. Further, in old age there
comes an increased depth in the knowledge that was ac-
quired in youth ; a man has now many more illustrations
of any ideas he may have attained; things which he
thought he knew when he was young, he now knows in
reality. And besides, his range of knowledge is wider;
and in whatever direction it extends, it is thorough, and
therefore formed into a consistent and connected whole;
whereas in youth knowledge is always defective and
fragmentary.

A complete and adequate motion of life can never be
attained by any one who does not reach old age; for it
is only the old man who sees life whole and knows its
natural course ; it is only he who is acquainted—and this
is most important—not only with its entrance, like the
rest of mankind, but with its exit too; so that he alone
has a full sense of its utter vanity ; while the others never
cease to labor under the false notion that everything will
come right in the end.

On the other hand, there is more conceptive power in
196 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

youth, and at that time of life a man can make more out of
the little that he knows. In age, judgment, penetration
and thoroughness predominate. outh is the time for
amassing the material for a knowledge of the world that
shall be distinctive and peculiar—for an original view of life,
in other words, the legacy that a man of genius leaves to
his fellow-men; it is, however, only in later years that he
becomes master of his material. Accordingly it will be
found that, as a rule, a great writer gives his best work to
the world when he is about fifty years of age. But though
the tree of knowledge must reach its full height before it can
bear fruit, the roots of it lie in youth.

Every generation, no matter how paltry its character,
thinks itself much wiser than the one immediately pre-
ceding it, let alone those that are more remote. It is just
the same with the different periods in a man’s life; and yet
often, in the one case no less than in the other, it is a mis-
taken opinion. In the years of physical growth, when our
powers of mind and our stores of knowledge are receiving
daily additions, it becomes a habit for to-day to look down
with contempt upon yesterday. The habit strikes root, and
remains even after the intellectual powers have begun to de-
cline—when to-day should rather look up with respect to
yesterday. So itis that we often unduly depreciate the
achievements as well as the judgments of our youth.

This seems the place for making the general observation
that, although in its main qualities a man’s intellect or
head as well as his character or heart, is innate, yet the
former is by no means so unalterable in its nature as the
latter. The fact is that the intellect is subject to very many
transformations, which, as a rule do not fail to make their
actual appearance; and this is so, partly because the intel-
lect has a deep foundation in the physique, and partly
because the material with which it deals is given in
experience. And so, from a physical point of view, we
find that ifa man has any peculiar power, it first gradu-
ally increases in strength until it reaches its acme after
which it enters upon a path of slow decadence, until
it ends in imbecility. But, on the other hand, we must not
lose sight of the fact that the material which gives employ-
ment to a man’s powers and keeps them in activity—the
subject matter of thought and knowledge, experience, in-
tellectual attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom
THE AGES OF LIFE. 19”

of things, and so a perfect mental vision, form in them-
selves a mass which continues to increase in size, until the
time comes when weakness shows itself, and the man’s
powers suddenly fail. The way in which these two dis-
tinguishable elements combine in the same nature—the one
absolutely unalterable, and the other subject to change in
two directions opposed to each other—explains the variety
of mental attitude and the dissimilarity of value which
attach to a man at different periods of life.

The same truth may be more broadly expressed by saying
that the first forty years of life furnish the text, while the
remaining thirty supply the commentary; and that without
the commentary we are unable to understand aright the
true sense and coherence of the text, together with the
moral it contains and all the subtle application of which it
admits.

Toward the close of life, much the same thing happens
asat the end of a dal masqué—the masks are taken off.
Then you can see who the people really are, with whom you
have come into contact in your passage through the world.
For by the end of life characters have come out in their
true light, actions have borne fruit, achievements have been
rightly appreciated, and all shams have fallen to pieces.
For this, Time was in every case requisite.

But the most curious fact is that itis also only toward
the close of life that a man really recognizes and understands
his own true self—the aims and objects he has followed in
life, more especially the kind of relationin which he has
stood to other people and to the world. It will often hap-
pen that asa result of this knowledge, a man will have to as-
sign himself a lower place than he formerly thought was his
due. But there are exceptions to this rule; and it will oc-
casionally be the case that he will take a higher position
than he had before. This will be owing to the fact that
he had no adequate notion of the baseness of the world and
that he set up a higher aim for himself than was followed
by the rest of mankind.

The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is
made.

Tt is customary to call youth the happy, and age the sad
part of life. ‘I'his would be true if it were the passions that
made a man happy. Youth is swayed to and fro by them;
and they give a great deal of pain and little pleasure. In
198 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

age the passions cool and leave a man at rest, and then
forthwith his mind takes a contemplative tone; the intellect
is set free and attains the upper hand. And since, in itself,
intellect is beyond the range of pain, a man feels happy
just in so far as his intellect is the predominating part of
him.

It need only be remembered that all pleasure is negative,
and that pain is positive in its nature, inorder to see that
the passions can never be a source of happiness, and that
age is not the less to be envied on the ground that many
pleasures are denied it. For every sort of pleasure is never
anything more than the quietive of some need or longing;
and that pleasure should come to an end as soon as the need
ceases, is no more asubject of complaint than that a man
cannot go on eating after he has had his dinner, or fall
asleep again after a good night’s rest.

So far from youth being the happiest period of life, there
is much more truth in the remark made by Plato, at the
beginning of the ‘‘Republic,” that the prize should rather
be given to old age, because then at last a man is freed from
the animal passion which has hitherto never ceased to dis-
quiet him. Nay, it may even be said that the countless and
manifold humors which have their source in this passion,
and the emotions that spring from it, produce a mild state
of madness: and this lasts as long as the man is subject to
the spell of the impulse —this evil spirit, asit were, of which
there is no riddance—so that he never really becomes a
reasonable being until the pussion is extinguished.

There is no doubt that, in general, and apart from in-
dividual circumstances and particular dispositions, youth
is marked by a certain melancholy and sadness, while
genial sentiments attach to old age; and the reason of this
is nothing but the fact that the young man is still under
the service, nay, the forced labor, imposed by that evil
spirit, which scarcely ever leaves him a moment to him-
self. ‘To this source may be traced, directly or indirectly,
almost all and every ill that befalls or menaces mankind.
The old man is genial and cheerful because, after long
lying in the bonds of passion, he can now move about in
freedom.

_ Still, it should not be forgotten that, when this passion
is extinguished, the true kernel of life is gone, and noth-
THE AGES OF LIFR. 199

ing remains but the hollow shell; or, from another point
of view, life then becomes like a comedy, which, begun
by real actors, is continued and brought to an end by
automata dressed in their clothes.

However that may be, youth is the period of unrest, and
age of repose; and from that very circumstance, the
relative degree of pleasure belonging to each may be in-
ferred. The child stretches out its little hand in the
eager desire to seize all the pretty things that meet its
sight, charmed by the world because all its senses are still
so young and fresh. Much the same thing happens with
the youth, and he displays greater energy in his quest.
He, too, is charmed by all the pretty things and the
many pleasing shapes that surround him; and forthwith
his imagination conjures up pleasures which the world
can never realize. So he is filled with an ardent desire
for he knows not what delights—robbing him of all rest
and making happiness impossible. But when old age is
reached, all this is over and done with, partly because the
blood runs cooler and the senses are no longer so easily
allured; partly because experience has shown the true
value of things and the futility of pleasure, whereby illu-
sion has been gradually dispelled, and the strange fancies
-and prejudices which previously concealed or distorted a
free and true view of the world, have been dissipated and
put to flight; with the result that a man can now get a
juster and clearer view, and see things as they are, and
also in a measure attain more or less insight into the
nullity of all things on this earth.

It is this that gives almost every old man, no matter how
ordinary his faculties may be, a certain tincture of wisdom,
which distinguishes him from the young. But the chief
result of all this change is the peace of mind that ensues
—a great element in happiness, and, in fact, the condition
and essence of it. While the young man fancies that
there is a vast amount of good things in the world, if he
could only come at them, the old man is steeped in the
truth of the Preacher’s words, that ‘‘all things are vanity ”
—knowing that, however gilded the shell, the nut is
hollow.

In these later years, and not before, a man comes to a
true appreciation of MHorace’s maxim: Nil admirari.
200 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.
He is directly and sincerely convinced of the vanity of
everything and that ail the glories of the world are as
nothing, his illusions are gone. He is no more beset with
the idea that there is any particular amount of happiness
anywhere, in the palace or in the cottage, any more than
he himself enjoys when he is free from bodily or mental
pain. The worldly distinctions of great and small, high
and low, exist for him no longer; and in this blissful .state
of mind the old man may look down with a smile upon all
false notions. He is completely undeceived, and knows
that, whatever may be done to adorn human life and deck
it out in finery, its paltry character will soon show through
the glitter of its surroundings; and that, paint and bejewel
itas one may, it remains everywhere much the same—an
existence which has no true value except in freedom from
pain, and is never to be estimated by the presence of pleas-
ure, let alone, then, of display.*

Disillusion is the chief characteristic of old age; for by
that time the fictions are gone which gave life its charm
and spurred on the mind to activity; the splendors of
the world have been proved null and vain; its pomp,
grandeur and magnificence are faded. A man has then
found out that behind most of the things he wants, and
most of the pleasures he longs for, there is very little after:
all ; and so he comes by degrees to see that our existence
is all empty and void. It is only when he is seventy years
old that he quite understands the first words of the
Preacher; and this again explains why it is that old men
are sometimes fretful and morose.

It is often said that the common lot of old age is dis-
ease and weariness of life. Disease is by no means essential
to old age; especially where a really long span of years
is to be attained; for as life goes on, the conditions of
health and disorder tend to increase—crescent vita, crescit
sanitas et morbus. And as far as weariness or boredom is
concerned, 1 have stated above why old age is even less ex-
posed to that form of evil than youth. Nor is boredom
by any means to be taken as a necessary accompaniment
of that solitude, which, for reasons that do not require to
be explained, old age certainly cannot escape; it is rather
the fate that awaits those who have never known any other

 

* Cf. Horace, ‘‘ Epist.” I. 12., 1-4.
THE AGES OF LIFE. 201

pleasures but the gratification of the senses and the de-
lights of society—who have left their minds unenlightened
and their faculties unused. It is quite true that the in-
tellectual faculties decline with the approach of old age; but
where they were originally strong, there will always be
enough left to combat the onslaught of boredom. And
then again, as I have said, experience, knowledge, reflec-
tion, and skill in dealing with men, combine to give an
old man an increasingly accurate insight into the ways of
the world; his judgment becomes keen and he attains a
coherent view of life; his mental vision embraces a wider
range. Constantly finding new uses for his stores of
knowledge and adding to them at every opportunity, he
maintains uninterrupted that inward process of self-educa-
tion which gives employment and satisfaction to the mind,
and thus forms the due reward of all its efforts.

All this serves in some measure as acompensation for de-
creased intellectual power. And besides, Time, as I have
remarked, seems to go much more quickly when we are
advanced in years; and this is in itself a preventive of bore-
dom. There is nogreat harm in the fact that a man’s
bodily strength decreases in old age, unless, indeed, he _re-
quires it to make a living. To be poor when one is old, is
a great misfortune. Ifa man is secure from that, and _re-
tains his health, old age may be a very passable time of
life. Its chief necessity is to be comfortable and well off;
and, in consequence, money is then prized more than ever,
because it is a substitute for failing strength. Deserted by
Venus, the old man likes to turn to Bacchus to make him
merry. In the place of wanting to see things, to travel and
learn, comes the desire to speak and teach. It is a piece
of good fortune if the old man retains some of his love of
study or of music or of the theater—if, in general, he is still
somewhat susceptible to the things about him; as is, indeed,
the case with some people to a very lateage. At that time
of life, what a man has in himself, is of greater advan-
tage to him than ever it was before.

There can be no doubt that most people who have never
been anything but dull and stupid, become more and more
of automata as they grow old. They have always thought,
said and done the same things as their neighbors; and noth-
ing that happens now can change their disposition, or make
them act otherwise. ‘T'o talk to old people of this kind is.
202 COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.

like writing on the sand; if you produce any impression at
all it is gone almost immediately; old age is here nothing but.
the caput mortuwm of life—all that is essential to manhood
is gone. There are cases in which nature supplies a third
‘set of teeth in old age, thereby apparently demonstrating
the fact that that period of life is asecond childhood.

It is certainly avery melancholy thing that all a man’s
-faculties tend to waste away as he grows old, and at a rate
‘that increases in rapidity: but still this is a necessary nay a
‘beneficial arrangement, as otherwise death, for whichit isa
‘preparation, would be too hard to bear. So the greatest
‘boon that follows the attainment of extreme old age is ew-
thanasia—an easy death, not ushered in by disease, and
free from all pain and struggle.* For let a man live as
long as he may, he is never conscious of any moment but
the present, one and indivisible; and in those late years the
mind loses more every day by sheer forgetfulness than ever
it gains anew.

The main difference between youth and age will always
be that youth looks forward to life, and old age to death;
and that while the one has a short past and a long future
before it, the case is just the opposite withthe other. It is
quite true that when a man is old, to die is the only
thing that awaits him; while if he is young, he may expect
to live; and the question arises, Which of the two fates is
the more hazardous, and if life is not a matter which, on
the whole, it is better to have behind one than before? Does
not the Preacher say: ‘‘the day of death [is better] than
the day of one’s birth?” + Its certainly arash thing to
wish for long life; { for, as the Spanish proverb has it, it
means tosee much evil—Quien larga vida vive mucho
mal vide.

 

* See ‘Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” Bk. Il. ch. 41, for a
further description of this happy end to life.

+ Ecclesiastes vii. 1.

{ The life of man cannot, strictly speaking be called either long
or short, since it is the ultimate standard by which duration of time
in regard to all other things is measured.

In one of the Vedic “Upanishads” (Oupnekhat, II.) the ‘natural
length” of human life is put down at one hundred years. And I be-
dieve this to be right. I have observed, as a matter of fact, that it is
only peovle who exceed the age of ninety who attain euthanasia—who
die, that isto say, of no disease, apoplexy or convulsion, and pass
THE AGES OF LIFE. 203

A man’s individual career is not as astrology wishes to
make out, to be predicted from observation of the planets;
but the course of human life in general, as far as the various:
periods of it are concerned, may be likened to the succession
of the planets; so that we may be said to pass under the in-
fluence of each one of them in turn.

At ten, Mercury is in the ascendant; and at that age, a.
man, like this planet, is characterized by extreme mobility:
within a narrow sphere, where trifles have a great effect:
upon him; but under the guidance of so crafty and eloquent:
a god, he easily makes great progress. Venus begins
her sway during his twentieth year, and then a man is
wholly given up to the love of women. At thirty, Mars
comes to the front, and he is now all energy and strength—
daring, pugnacious and arrogant.

Whena man reaches theage of forty, he is under the
rule of the four Asteroids: thatis to say, his life has
gained something in extension. He is frugal; in other
words, by the help of Ceres, he favors what is, useful; he
has his own hearth, by the influence of Vesta; Pallas has
taught him that which is necessary for him to know; and
his wife—his Juno—rules as the mistress of his house. *

 

away without agony of any sort; nay, who sometimes even show no
pallor, butexpire generally ina sitting attitude, and often after a
meal—or I may say, simply cease to live rather than die. To cometo
one’s end before the age of ninety, means to die of disease, in other
words, prematurely.

Now the Old Testament (Psalms xc. 10) puts the limit of human life
at seventy, and ifit is very long, at eighty years; and what is more
noticeable still, Herodotus (i. 32 and iii. 22) says the same thing. But
this is wrong; and theerrorisdue simply toa rough and superficial
estimate of the results of daily experience. For if the natural length
of life were from seventy to eighty years, people, would die
about that time of mere old age. Now this is certainly not the case. If
they die then, they die, like younger people, of disease; and disease is
something abnormal. Therefore it is not natural to die at that age.
It is only when they are between ninety anda hundred that people die
of oldage. die I mean, without suffering from any disease, or show-
ing any special signs of their condition, such asa_ struggle, death
rattle, convulsion, pallor—the absence of all which constitutes
euthanasia. The natural length of human life is a hundred years
and in assigning that limit the Upanishads are right once more.

* The other asteroids which have been discovered since, are an in-
novation, and I shall have nothing to do with them. My relation to
them is that of the professors of philosophy to me—I ignore them,
because they do not suit my book,
204 COUNSELS AND MAX!MS.

But at the age of fifty, Jupiter is the dominant influence.
At that period a man has outlived most of his contempora-
ries, and he can feel himself superior to the generation about
him. He is still in the full enjoyment of hisstrength, and
rich in experience and knowledge; and if he has any power
and position of his own, he is endowed with authority over
all who stand in his immediate surroundings. He is no
more inclined to receive orders from others; he wauts to
take command himself. The work most suitable to him
now is to guide and rule within his own sphere. This is
the point where Jupiter culminates, and where the man of
fifty years is at his best.

Then comes Saturn, at about the age of sixty, a weight
as of lead, dull and slow:

“But old folks, many feign as they were dead,
Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.” *

Last of all, Uranus; or, as the saying is, a man goes
to heaven.

I cannot find a place for Neptune, as this planet has
been very thoughtlessly named; because I may not call it
as it should be called—Eros. Otherwise I should point
out how Beginning and End meet together, and how
closely and intimately Eros is connected with Death ; how
Orcus, or Amenthes, as the Egyptians called him,t+ is not
only the receiver but the giver of all things—AauBdvar nai
dzdovs. Death is the great reservoir of Life. Everything
comes from Orcus; everything that is alive now was once
there. Could we but understand the great trick by which
that is done, all would be clear!

 

* ‘ Romeo and Juliet,” ii. 5.
+ Plutarch, ‘‘ De Iside et Osiride,” c. 29.
RELIGION AND OTHER ESSAYS.
RELIGION:

A DIALOGUE.

DEMOPHELES.—Between ourselves, my dear fellow, I
don’t care about the way you sometimes have of exhibit-
ing your talent for philosophy ; you make religion a sub-
1 for sarcastic remarks, and even for open ridicule.

very one thinks his religion sacred, and therefore you
ought to respect it.

PHILALETHES.—That doesn’t follow! I don’t see why,
because other people are simpletons, I should have any
regard for a pack of lies. I respect truth everywhere,
and so I can’t respect what is opposed to it. My maxim
is Vigeat veritas et pereat mundus, like the lawyers’ Fiat
justitia et pereat mundus. Every profession ought to
have an analogous device.

DeEMOPHELES.—Then I suppose doctors should say Mant
pilule et pereat mundus—there wouldn’t be much diffi-
culty about that !

PHILALETHES.—Heaven forbid! You must take every-
thing cwm grano salis.

DEMOPHELES.—Exactly; that’s why I want you to take
religion cum grano salis. J want you to see that you
must meet the requirements of the people according to
the measure of their comprehension. Where you have
masses of people, of crude susceptibilities and clumsy in-
telligence, sordid in their pursuits and sunk in drudgery,
religion provides the only means of proclaiming and mak-
ing them feel the high import of life. For the average
man takes an interest, primarily, in nothing but what
will satisfy his physical needs and hankerings, and beyond
this, give him a little amusement and pastime. Founders
of religion and philosophers come into the world to rouse
him from his stupor and point to the lofty meaning of ex-
208 RELIGION.

istence; philosophers for the few, the emancipated,
founders of religion for the many, for humanity at large.
For, as your friend Plato has said, the multitude can’t be
philosophers, and you shouldn’t forget that. Religion is
the metaphysics of the masses; by all means let them
keep it: let it therefore command external respect, for to
discredit it is to take it away. Just as they have popular
poetry, and the popular wisdom of proverbs, so they must
have popular metaphysics too: for mankind absolutely
needs an interpretation of life; and this, again, must be
suited to popular comprehension. Consequently, this
interpretation is always an allegorical investiture of the
truth: and in practical life and in its effects on the feel-
ings, that is to say, asa rule of action and as a comfort
and consolation in suffering and death, it accomplishes
perhaps just as much as the truth itself could achieve if
we possessed it. Don’t take offense at its unkempt,
grotesque and apparently absurd form: for with your
education and learning, you have. no idea of the round-
about ways by which people in their crude state have to
receive their knowledge of deep truths. The various
religions are only various forms in which the truth, which
taken by itself is above their comprehension, is grasped
and realized by the masses; and truth becomes inseparable
from these forms. Therefore, my dear sir, don’t take it
amiss if I say that to make a mockery of these forms is
both shallow and unjust.

PHILALETHES.—But isn’t it every bit as shallow and un-
just to demand that there shall be no other system of meta-
physics but this one, cut out as it isto suit the requirements
and comprehension of the masses? that its doctrines shall
be the limit of human speculation, the standard of all
thought, so that the metaphysics of the few, the emanci-
pated, as you call them, must be devoted only to confirm-
ing, strengthening, and explaining the methaphysics of the
masses? that the highest powers of human intelligence shall
remain unused and undeveloped, even be nipped in the bud
inorder that their activity may not thwart the popular
metaphysics? And isn’t this just the very claim which re-
ligion sets up? Isn’t it a little too much to have tolerance
and delicate forbearance preached by what is intolerance
and cruelty itself? Think of the heretical tribunals, in-
quisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates’ cup of poison,
A DIALOGUE. 209

Bruno’s and Vanini’s death in the flames! Is all this to-
day quite a thing of the past? How can genuine philo-
sophical effort, sincere search after truth, the noblest calling
of the noblest men, be letand hindered more completely than
by a conventional system of metaphysics enjoying a state
monopoly, the principles of which are impressed into every
head in earliest youth so earnestly, so deeply, and so firmly,
that, unless the mind is miraculously elastic, they remain
indelible. In this way the groundwork of all healthy
reason is once for all deranged; that is to say, the capacity
for original thought and unbiased judgment, which is weak
enough in itself, is, in regard to those subjects to which it
might be applied, forever paralyzed and ruined.

DEMOPHELES.—Which means, I suppose, that people
have arrived at a conviction which they won’t give up in
order to embrace yours instead.

PHILALETHES.—Ah! if it were only aconviction based on
insight. Then one could bring arguments to bear, and
the battle would be fought with equal weapons. But re-
ligions admittedly appeal, not to conviction as the result
of argument, but to belief as demanded by revelation. And
as the capacity for believing is strongest in childhood,
special care is taken to make sure of this tenderage. This
has much more to do with the doctrines of belief taking
root than threats and reports of miracles. If, in early child-
hood, certain fundamental views and doctrines are paraded
with unusual solemnity, and an air of the greatest earnest-
ness never before visible in anything else; if, at the same
time, the possibility of a doubt about them be completely
passed over, or touched upon only to _ indicate
that doubt is the first step to eternal perdition, the
resulting impression will be so deep that, as a rule,
that is, in almost every case, doubt about them will
be almost as impossible as doubt about one’s own existence.
Hardly one in ten thousand will have the strength of mind
to ask himself seriously and earnestly is that true? To
call such as can do it strong minds, esprits forts, is a de-
scription apter than is generally supposed. But for the
ordinary mind there is nothing so absurd or revolting but
what, if inculcated in that way, the strongest belief in it
will strike root. If, for example, the killing of a heretic
or infidel were essential to the future salvation of his soul,
almost every one would make it the chief event of his life,
210 RELIGION.

and in dying would draw consolation and strength from
the remembrance that he had succeeded. Asa matter of
fact, almost every Spaniard in days gone by used to look
upon an auto da fe as the most pious of all acts and one
most agreeable to God. A parallel to this may be found
in the way in which the Thugs (a religious sect in India,
suppressed a short time ago by the English, who executed
numbers of them) express their sense of religion and their
veneration for the goddess Kali; they take every oppor-
tunity of murdering their friends and traveling compan-
ions, with the object of getting possession of their goods,
and in the serious conviction that they are thereby doing a
praiseworthy action, conducive to their eternal welfare.*
The power of religious dogma, when inculcated early, is
such as to stifle conscience, compassion and finally every
feeling of humanity. Butif you want to see with your
own eyes and close at hand what timely inoculation of
belief will accomplish, look at the English. Here is a
nation favored before all others by nature; endowed, more
than all others, with discernment, intelligence, power of
judgment, strength of character; look at them, abased
and made ridiculous, beyond all others, by their stupid
ecclesiastical superstition, which appears among their other
abilities like a fixed idea or monomania; For this they
have to thank the circumstance that education is in the
hands of the clergy, whose endeavor it is to impress all the
articles of belief, at the earliest age, in a way that amounts
to a kind of paralysis of the brain; this in its turn ex-
presses itself all their life in an idiotic bigotry, which
makes otherwise most sensible and intelligent people among
them degrade themselves so that one can’t make head or
tail of them. If you consider how essential to such a
masterpiece is inoculation in the tender age of childhood,
the missionary system appears no longer only as the acme
of human importunity, arrogance and impertinence, but
also as an absurdity, if it doesn’t confine itself to nations,
which are still in their infancy, like Caffirs, Hottentots,
South Sea Islanders, etc. Among these races it is success-
ful; but in India the Brahmans treat the discourses of the
missionaries with contemptuous smiles of approbation, or

 

* Cf. Illustrations of the history and practice of the Thugs, Lon.
don, 1837; also the Hdinburgh Review, Oct.-Jan., 1836-7,
A DIALOGUE. 211
simply shrug their shoulders. And one may say generally
that the proselytizing efforts of the missionaries in India,
in spite of the most advantageous facilities, are, as a rule,
a failure. An authentic report in Vol. XXI. of the
Asiatic Journal (1826) states that after so many years of
missionary activity not more than three hundred living
converts were to be found in the whole of India, where the
population of the English possessions alone comes to one hun-
dred and fifteen millions; and at the same time it is admitted
that the Christian converts are distinguished for their ex-
treme immorality. Three hundred venal and bribed souls
out of so many millions! There is no evidence that things
have gone better with Christianity in India since then, in
spite of the fact that the missionaries are now trying, con-
trary to stipulation and in schools exclusively designed for
secular English instruction, to work upon the children’s
minds as they please, in order tosmuggle in Christianity;
against which the Hindoos are most jealously on their
guard. As I have said, childhood is the time to sow the
seeds of belief, and not manhood; more especially where
an earlier faith has taken root. An acquired conviction
such as is feigned by adults is, as a rule, only the mask for
some kind of personal interest. And it is the feeling that
this is almost bound to be the case which makes a man
who has changed his religion in mature years an object of
contempt to most people everywhere; who thus show that
they look upon religion, not asa matter of reasoned con-
viction, but merely as a belief inoculated in childhood,
before any test can be applied. And that they are right
in their view of religion is also obvious from the way in
which not only the masses, who are blindly credulous, but
also the clergy of every religion, who, as such, have faith-
fully and zealously studied its sources, foundations, dogmas
and disputed points, cleave as a body to the religion of
their particular country; consequently for a minister of
one religion or confession to go over to another is the
rarest thing in the world. The Catholic clergy, for ex-
ample, are fully convinced of the truth of all the tenets of
their church, and so are the Protestant clergy of theirs,
and both defend the principles of their creeds with like
zeal. And yet the conviction is governed merely by the
country native to each; to the South German ecclesiastic
the truth of the Catholic dogma is quite obvious, to the
213 RELIGION.

North German, the Protestant. If, then, these convic-
tions are based on objective reasons, the reasons must be
climatic, and thrive, like plants, some only here, some
only there. The convictions of those who are thus locally
convinced are taken on trust and believed by the masses
every where.

DEMOPHELES.—Well, no harm is done, and it doesn’t
make any real difference. As a fact, Protestantism is
more suited to the north, Catholicism to the south.

PHILALETHES.—So it seems. Still I take a higher
standpoint, and keep in view a more important object, the
progress, namely, of the knowledge of truth among man-
kind. And from this point of view, it is a terrible thing
that, wherever a man is born, certain propositions are in-
culcated in him in earliest youth, and he is assured that he
may never have any doubts about them, under penalty of
thereby forfeiting eternal salvation; propositions, I mean,
which affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and
accordingly determine forever, and, if they are false, distort
forever, the point of view from which our knowledge
starts; and as, further, the corollaries of these propositions
touch the entire system of our intellectual attainments at
every point, the whole of human knowledge is thoroughly
adulterated by them. Evidence of this is afforded by
every literature; the most striking by that of the Middle
Age, but in a too considerable degree by that of the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries. Look at even the first
minds of all those epochs; how paralyzed they are by false
fundamental positions like these; how, more especially,
all insight into the true constitution and working of Nature
is, as it were, blocked up. During the whole of the Chris-
tian period Theism presents a solid barrier to all intellect-
ual effort, and chiefly to philosophy, arresting or stunting
all progress. For the scientific men of these ages God,
devil, angels, demons hid the whole of nature; no inquiry
was followed to the end, nothing ever thoroughly examined;
everything which went beyond the most obvious causal
nexus was immediately set down to those personalities.
“‘ It was at once explained by a reference to God, angels
or demons,” as Pomponatius expressed himself when the
matter was being discussed, ‘“‘and philosophers at any
rate have nothing analogous.” There is, to be sure, a
suspicion of irony in this statement of Pompanatius, as his
A DIALOGUE. 213

perfidy in other matters is known; still, he is only giving
expression to the general way of thinking of his age.
And if, on the other hand, any one possessed the rare
quality of an elastic mind, which alone could burst the
bonds, his writings and he himself with them were burned;
as happened to Bruno and Vanini. How completely an
ordinary mind is paralyzed by that early preparation in
metaphysics is seen in the most vivid way and on its most
ridiculous side whenever it undertakes to criticise the
doctrines of an alien creed. The efforts of the ordinary
man are generally found to be directed to a careful ex-
hibition of the incongruity of its dogmas with those of his
own belief: he is at great pains to show that not only do
they not say, but certainly do not mean, the same thing;
and with that he thinks, in his simplicity, that he has
demonstrated the falsehood of the alien creed. He really
never dreams of putting the question which of the two
may be right; his own articles of belief he looks upon as
& priori true and certain principles.

DEMOPHELES.—So that’s your higher point of view!
I assure you there is a higher still. ‘First live, then
philosophize” is a maxim of more comprehensive import
than appears at first sight. ‘The first thing to do is to
control the raw and evil dispositions of the masses, so as
to keep them from pushing injustice to extremes, and
from committing cruel, violent and disgraceful acts. If
you were to wait until they had recognized and grasped the
truth, you would undoubtedly come too late; and truth,
supposing that it had been found, would surpass their
powers of comprehension. In any case an allegorical in-
vestiture of it, a parable or myth, is all that would be of
any service to them. As Kant said, there must be a public
standard of Right and Virtue; it must always flutter high
overhead. It is a matter of indifference what heraldic
figures are inscribed on it, so long as they signify what is
meant. Such an allegorical representation of truth is
always and everywhere, for humanity at large, a serviceable
substitute for a truth to which it can never attain, for a
philosophy which it can never grasp; let alone the fac’
that it is daily changing its shape, and has in no form as
yet met with general acceptance. Practical aims, then,
my good Philalethes, are in every respect superior to theo-
retical.
214 RELIGION.

PHILALETHES.— What you say is very like the ancient
advice of Timeus of Locrus, the Pythagorean, ‘‘stop the
mind with falsehood if you can’t speed it with truth.” I
almost suspect that your plan is the one which is so much
in vogue just now, that you want to impress upon us
that

“ The hour is nigh
When we may feast in quiet.”

You recommend us, in fact, to take timely precautions so
that the waves of the discontented raging masses mayn’t
disturb us at table. But the whole point of view is as
false as it is nowadays popular and commended; and so I
make haste to enter a protest against it. It is false that
state, justice, law cannot be upheld without the assistance
of religion and its dogmas; and that justice and public
order need religion as a necessary complement, if legisla-
tive enactments are to be carried out. It is false, were it
repeated a hundred times! An effective and _ striking
argument to the contrary is afforded by the ancients, es-
pecially the Greeks. They had nothing at all of what we
understand by religion. They had no sacred documents,
no dogma to be learned and its acceptance furthered by
every one, its principles to be inculcated early on the young.
Just as little was moral doctrine preached by the ministers
of religion, nor did the priests trouble themselves about
morality or about what the people did or left undone.
Not at all. The duty of the priests was confined to tem-
ple-ceremonial, prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions,
lustrations and the like, the object of which was anything
but the moral improvement of the individual. What was
called religion consisted, more especially in the cities, in
giving temples here and there to some of the gods of the
greater tribes, in which the worship described was carried
on as a state matter, and was consequently, in fact, an
affair of police. No one, except the functionaries per-
forming, was in any way compelled to attend, or even to
believe in it. In the whole of antiquity there is no trace
of any obligation to believe in any particular dogma.
Merely in the case of an open denial of the existence of
the gods, or any other reviling of them, a penalty was im-
posed, and that on account of the insult offered to the
state, which served those gods: beyond this it was free to
A DIALOGUE. 215

every one to think of them what he pleased. If any one
wanted to gain the favor of those gods privately, by prayer
or sacrifice, it was open to him to do so at his own expense
and at his own risk; if he didn’t do it, no one made any
objection, least of all the state. In the case of the Romans
every one had his own Lares and Penates at home: these
were, however, in reality, only the venerated busts of an-
cestors. Of the immortality of the soul and a life beyond
the grave, the ancients had no firm, clear or, least of all,
dogmatically fixed idea, but very loose, fluctuating, in-
definite and problematical notions, every one in his own
way: and the ideas about the gods were just as varying,
individual and vague. There was therefore really no
religion, in our sense of the word, among the ancients.
But did anarchy and° lawlessness prevail among them on
that account? Is not law and civil order, rather, so much
their work, that it still forms the foundation of our own?
Was there not complete protection for property, even
though it consisted for the most part of slaves? And did
not this state of things last for more than a thousand years?
So that I can’t recognize, I must even protest against the
practical aims and the necessity of religion in the sense
indicated by you, and so popular nowadays, that is, as
an indispensable foundation of all legislative arrange-
ments. For, if you take that point of view, the pure and
sacred endeavor after truth will, to say the least, appear
quixotic, and even criminal, if it ventures, in its feeling of
justice, to denounce the authoritative creed asa usurper
who has taken possession of the throne of truth and main-
tained his position by keeping up the deception.
DEMOPHELES.—But religion is not opposed to truth;
it itself teaches truth. And as the range of its activity is
not a narrow lecture room, but the world and humanity
at large, religion must conform to the requirements and
comprehension of an audience so numerous and so mixed.
Religion must not let truth appear in its naked form; or,
to use a medical simile, it must not exhibit it pure, but must
employ a mythical vehicle, a medium, as it were. You
can also compare truth in this respect to certain chemical
stuffs which in themselves are gaseous, but which for
medicinal uses, as also for preservation or transmission,
must be bound to a stable, solid base, because they would
otherwize volatilize. Chlorine gas, for example, is for all
216 RELIGION.

purposes applied only in the form of chlorides. But if
truth, pure, abstract and free from all mythical alloy, is
always to remain unattainable, even by philosophers, it
might be compared to fluorine, which cannot even be
isolated, but must always appear in combination with other
elements. Or, to take a less scientific simile, truth, which
is inexpressible except by means of myth and allegory, is
like water, which can be carried about only in vessels: a
philosopher who insists on obtaining it pure is like a man
who breaks the jug in order to get the water by itself.
This is, perhaps, an exact analogy. At any rate, religion
is truth allegorically and mythically expressed, and so
rendered attainable and digestible by mankind in general.
Mankind couldn’t possibly take it pure and unmixed, just
as we can’t breathe pure oxygen; we require an addition
of four times its bulk in nitrogen. In plain language, the

rofound meaning, the high aim of life, can only be un-
folded and presented to the masses symbolically, because
they are incapable of grasping it in its true signification.
Philosophy, on the other hand, should be like the Eleu-
sinian mysteries, for the few, the élite.

PHILALETHES.—I understand. It comes, in short, to
truth wearing the garment of falsehood. But in doing so
it enters on a fatal alliance. Whata dangerous weapon is
put into the hands of those who are authorized to employ
falsehood as the vehicle of truth! If it is as you say,
I fear the damage caused by the falsehood will be greater
than any advantage the truth could ever produce. Of
course, if the allegory were admitted to be such, I should
raise no objection; but with the admission it would rob
itself of all respect, and consequently, of all utility. The
allegory must, therefore, put in a claim to be true in the
proper sense of the word, and maintain the claim; while,
at the most, it is true only in an allegorical sense. Here
lies the irreparable mischief, the permanent evil; and this
is why religion has always been and will always be in con-
flict with the noble endeavor after pure truth.

DEMOPHELES.—Oh no! that danger is guarded against.
If religion mayn’t exactly confess its allegorical nature, it
gives sufficient indication of it.

PHILALETHES.——How so?

DeMOPHELES.—In its mysteries. <‘‘ Mystery,” is in
reality only a technical theological term for religious
A DIALOGUE. 217

allegory. All religions have their mysteries. Properly
speaking, a mystery isa dogma which is plainly absurd,
but which, nevertheless, conceals in itself a lofty truth,
and one which by itself would be completely incompre-
hensible to the ordinary understanding of the raw multi-
tude. The multitude accepts it in this disguise on trust,
and believes it, without being led astray by the absurdity
of it, which even to its intelligence is obvious; and in this
way it participates in the kernel of the matter so far as it
is possible for it todo so. To explain what I mean, I may
add that even in philosophy an attempt has been made to
make use of a mystery. Pascal, for example, who was at
once a pietist, a mathematician, and a philosopher, says
in this threefold capacity: ‘‘ God is everywhere center and
nowhere periphery.” Malebranche has also the just re-
mark: ‘“‘ Liberty is a mystery.” One could goa step fur-
ther and maintain that in religions everything is mystery.
For to impart truth, in the proper sense of the word, to
the multitude in its raw state is absolutely impossible; all
that can fall to its lot is to be enlightened by a mytho-
logical reflection of it. Naked truth is out of place be-
fore the eyes of the profane vulgar; it can only make
its appearance thickly veiled. Hence, it is unreasonable
to require of a religion that it shall be true in the proper
sense of the word; and this, I may observe in passing, is
nowadays the absurd contention of Rationalists and
Supernaturalists alike. Both start from the position that
religion must be the real truth; and while the former de-
monstrate that it is not the truth, the latter obstinately
maintain that it is; or rather, the former dress up and
arrange the allegorical element in such a way, that, in the
proper sense of the word, it could be true, but would be,
in that case, a platitude; while the latter wish to main-
tain that it is true in the proper sense of the word, with-
out any further dressing; a belief, which, as we ought to
know, is only to be enforced by inquisitions and the stake.
As a fact, however, myth and allegory really form the
proper element of religion; and under this indispensable
condition, which is imposed by the intellectual limitation
of the multitude, religion provides a sufficient satisfaction
for those metaphysical requirements of mankind which are
indestructible. It takes the place of that pure philosophi-
cal truth which is infinitely difficult and perhaps never
attainable.
218 RELIGION.

PHILALETHES.—Ah! just as a wooden leg takes the
place of a natural one; it supplies what is lacking, barely
does duty for it, claims to be regarded as a natural leg,
and is more or less artfully put together. ‘The only
difference is that, while a natural leg as a rule preceded
the wooden one, religion has everywhere got the start of
philosophy.

DEMOPHELES.—That may be, but still for a man who
hasn’t a natural leg,a wooden one is of great service.
You must bear in mind that the metaphysical needs of
mankind absolutely require satisfaction, because the
horizon of man’s thoughts must have a back-ground and
not remain unbounded. Man has, as a rule, no faculty
for weighing reasons and discriminating between what is
false and what is true; and besides, the labor which nature
and the needs of nature impose upon him, leaves him no
time for such inquiries, or for the education which they
presuppose. In his case, therefore, it is no use talking of
a reasoned conviction; he has to fall back on belief and
authority. Ifa really true philosophy were to take the
place of religion, nine-tenths at least of mankind would
have to receive it on authority; that is to say, it too would
be a matter of faith, for Plato’s dictum, that the multi-
tude can’t be philosophers, will always remain true.
Authority, however, is an affair of time and circumstance
alone, and soit can’t be bestowed on that which has only
reason in its favor; it must accordingly be allowed to
nothing but what has acquired it in the course of history,
even if it is only an allegorical representation of truth.
Truth in this form, supported by authority, appeals first
of all to those elements in the human constitution which
are strictly metaphysical, that is to say, to the need man
feels of a theory in regard to the riddle of existence which
forces itself upon his notice, a need arising from the con-
sciousness that behind the, physical in the world there is a
metaphysical, something permanent as the foundation of
constant change. Then it appeals to the will, to the fears
and hopes of mortal beings living in constant struggle; for
whom, accordingly, religion creates gods and demons
whom they can cry to, appease and win over. Finally, it
appeals to that moral consciousness which is undeniably
present in man, lends to it that corroboration and support
without which it would not easily maintain itself in the
A DIALOGUE. 239

struggle against so many temptations. It is just from this
side that religion affords an inexhaustible source of con-
solation and comfort in the innumerable trials of life, a
comfort which does not leave men in death, but rather
then only unfolds its full efficacy. So religion may be
compared to one who takes a blind man by the hand and
leads him, because he is unable to see for himself, whose
concern it is to reach his destination, not to look at every-
thing by the way.

PHILALETHES.-—That is certainly the strong point of
religion. If it isa fraud, it isa pious fraud; that is un-
deniable. But this makes priests something between de-
ceivers and teachers of morality: they daren’t teach the
real truth, as you have quite rightly explained, even if
they knew it, which is not the case. A true philosophy,
then, can always exist, but not a true religion; true, I
mean, in the proper understanding of the word, not merely
in that flowery or allegorical sense which you have de-
scribed; a sense in which all religions would be true, only
in various degrees. It is quite in keeping with the in-
extricable mixture of weal and woe, honesty and deceit,
good and evil, nobility and baseness, which is the average
characteristic of the world everywhere, that the most im-
portant, the most lofty the most sacred truths can make
their appearance only in combination with a lie, can even
borrow strength from a lie as from something that works
more powerfully on mankind; and, as revelation, must be
ushered in by a lie. This might indeed be regarded as
the cachet of the moral world. However, we won’t give
up the hope that mankind will eventually reach a point of
maturity and education at which it can on the one side
produce, and on the other receive, the true philosophy.
Simplex sigillum veri: the naked truth must be so simple
and intelligible that it can be imparted to all in its trne
form, without any admixture of myth and fable, without
disguising it in the form of religion.

DEMOPHELES.—You’ve no notion how stupid most
people are.

PHILALETHES.--I am only expressing a hope which I
can’t give up. If it were fulfilled, truth in its simple and
intelligible form would of course drive religion from the
place it has so long occupied as its representative, and by
that very means kept open for it. The time would have
220 RELIGION.

come when religion would have carried out her object and
completed her course: the race she had brought to years
of discretion she could dismiss, and herself depart in
peace: that would be the euthanasia of religion. But as
long as she lives, she has two faces, one of truth, one of
fraud. According as you look at one or the other, you
will bear her favor or ill-will. Religion must be regarded
as a necessary evil, its necessity resting on the pitiful im-
becility of the great majority of mankind, incapable of
grasping the truth, and therefore requiring, in its pressing
need, something to take its place.

DemMopHELES.—Really, one would think that you phi-
losophers had truth in a cupboard, and that all you had to
do was to go and get it!

PHILALETHES.— Well, if we haven’t got it, it is chiefly
owing to the pressure put upon philosophy by religion at
all times and in all places. People have tried to make the
expression and communication of truth, even the contem-
plation and discovery of it, impossible, by putting children,
in their earliest years, into the hands of priests to be
manipulated; to have the lines in which their funda-
mental thoughts are henceforth torun, laid down with such
firmness as, in essential matters, to be fixed and determined
for this whole life. When I take up the writings even of
the best intellects of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies (more especially if I have been engaged in oriental
studies), I am sometimes shocked to see how they are
paralyzed and hemmed in on all sides by Jewish ideas.
How can any one think out the true philosophy when he
is prepared like this?

DEMOPHELES.—Even if the true philosophy were to be dis-
covered, religion wouldn’t disappear from the world, as
you seem to think. There can’t be one system of meta-
physics for everybody; that’s rendered impossible by the
natural differences of intellectual power between man and
man, and the differences, too, which education makes.
It is a necessity for the great majority of mankind to en-
gage in that severe bodily labor which cannot be dispensed
with if the ceaseless requirements of the whole race are
to be satisfied. Not only does this leave the majority no
time for education, for learning, for contemplation; but
by virtue of the hard and fast antagonism between
muscles and mind, the intelligence is blunted by so much
A DIALOGUE. 221

exhausting bodily labor, and becomes heavy, clumsy, awk-
ward and consequently incapable of.grasping any other
than quite simple situations. At least nine-tenths of the
human race falls under this category. But still people
require a system of metaphysics, that is, an account of the
world and our existence, because such an account belongs
to the most natural needs of mankind, they require a
popular system; and to be popular it must combine many
rare qualities. It must be easily understood, and at the
same time possess, on the proper points, a certain amount
of obscurity, even of impenetrability; then a correct and
satisfactory system of morality must be bound up with its
dogmas; above all, it must afford inexhaustible consolation
in suffering and death; the consequence of all this. is,
that it can only be true in an allegorical and not in a real
sense. Further, it must have the support of an authority
which is impressive by its great age, by being universally
recognized, by its documents, their tone and utterances;
qualities which are so extremely difficult to combine that
many aman wouldn’t be so ready, if he considered the
matter, to help to undermine a religion, but would reflect
that what he is attacking is a people’s most sacred treas-
ure. If you want to form an opinion on religion, you
should always bear in mind the character of the great
multitude for which itis destined, and form a picture to
yourself of its complete inferiority, moral and intellectual.
It is incredible how far this inferiority goes, and how
perseveringly a spark of truth will glimmer on even under
the crudest covering of monstrous fable or grotesque cere-
mony, clinging indestructibly, like the odor of musk, to
everything that has once come into contact with it. In
illustration of this, consider the profound wisdom of the
Upanishads, and then look at the mad idolatry in the
India of to-day, with its pilgrimages, processions and
festivities, or at the insane and ridiculous goings-on of the
Saniassi. Still one can’t deny that in all this insanity and
nonsense there lies some obscure purpose which accords
with, or isa reflection of the profound wisdom I men-
tioned. But for the brute multitude, it has to be dressed
up inthis form. In such a contrast as this-we have the two
poles of humanity, the wisdom of the individual and the
bestiality of the many, both of which find their point of
contact in the moral sphere, hat saying from the
222 RELIGION.

Kurral must occur to everybody, “‘ Base people look like
men, but I have never seen their exact counterpart.”
The man of education may, all the same, interpret reli-
gion to himself cwm grano salis; the man of learning, the
contemplative spirit may secretly exchange it for a phi-
losophy. But here again one philosophy wouldn’t suit
everybody; by the laws of affinity every system would draw
to itself that public to whose education and capacities it
was most suited. So there is always an inferior meta-
physical system of the schools for the educated multitude,
and a higher one for the édi¢e. Kant’s lofty doctrine, for
instance, had to be degraded to the level of the schools
and ruined by such men as Fries, Krug and Salat. In
short, here, if anywhere, Goethe’s maxim is true, ‘‘ One
does not suit all.” Pure faith in revelation and pure meta-.
physics are for the two extremes, and for the intermediate
steps mutual modifications of both in innumerable com-
binations and gradations. And this is rendered neces-
sary by the immeasurable differences which nature and
education have placed between man and man.

PHILALETHES.—The view you take reminds me seriously
of the mysteries of the ancients, which you mentioned
just now. Their fundamental purpose seems to have
been to remedy the evil arising from the differences of
intellectual capacity and education. The plan was out of
the great multitude utterly impervious to unveiled truth,
to select certain persons who might have it revealed to
them up to a given point; out of these, again to choose
others to whom more would be revealed, as being able to
grasp more; and so on up to the Epopts. These grades
corresponded to the little, greater and greatest mysteries.
The arrangement was founded on a correct estimate of the
intellectual inequality of mankind.

DermoPHELFS.—To some extent the education in our
lower, middle and high schools corresponds to the varying
grades of initation into the mysteries.

PHILALETHES.—In a very approximate way: and then
only in so far as subjects of higher knowledge are written
about exclusively in Latin. But since that has ceased to
be the case, all the mysteries are profaned.

DEMOPHELES.—-However that may be,I wanted to re-
mind you that you should look at religion more from the
practical than from the theoretical side. Personified meta-

 
A DIALOGUE. 223

physics may be the enemy of religion, but all the same
personified morality will be its friend. Perhaps the
metaphysical element in all religions is false; but the
moral element in all is true. This might perhaps be pre-
sumed from the fact that they all disagree in their meta-
physics, but are in accord as regards morality,
PHILALETHES.—Which is an illustration of the rule of
logic that false premises may give a true conclusion.
DeEmopHELEs.—Let me hold you to your conclusion:
let me remind you that religion has two sides. If it can’t
stand when looked at from its theoretical, that is, its
intellectual side; on the other hand, from the moral side,
it proves itself the only means of guiding, controlling and
mollifying those races of animals endowed with reason,
whose kinship with the ape does not exclude a kinship
with the tiger. But at the same time religion is, as a rule,
a sufficient satisfaction for their dull metaphysical neces-
sities. You don’t seem to me to possess a proper idea of
the difference, wide as the heavens asunder, the deep gulf
between your man of learning and enlightenment, ac-
customed to the process of thinking, and the heavy,
clumsy, dull and sluggish consciousness of humanity’s
beasts of burden, whose thoughts have once and for all
taken the direction of anxiety about their livelihood, and
cannot be put in motion in any other; whose muscular
strength is so exclusively brought into play that the nerv-
ous power, which makes intelligence, sinks to a very low
ebb. People like that must have something tangible which
they can lay hold of on the slippery and thorny pathway
of their life, some sort of beautiful fable, by means of
which things can be imparted to them which their crude
intelligence can entertain only in picture and parable.
Profound explanations and fine distinctions are thrown
away upon them. If you conceive religion in this light,
and recollect that its aims are above all practical, and only
in a subordinate degree theoretical, it will appear to you
as something worthy of the highest respect.
PHILALETHES.—A respect which will finally rest upon
the principle that the end sanctifies the means. I don’t
feel in favor of a compromise on a basis like that. Reli-
gion may be an excellent means of taming and training the
perverse, obtuse and ill-disposed members of the biped race:
in the eyes of the friend of truth every fraud, even
224 RELIGION.

though it be a pious one, is to be condemned. A system
of deception, a pack of lies, would be a strange means of
inculcating virtue. ‘he flag to which I have taken the
oath is truth: I shall remain faithful to it everywhere, and
whether I succeed or not, I shall fight for light and truth!
If I see religion on the wrong side——

DEMOPHELES.—But you won’t. Religion isn’t a decep-
tion: it is true and the most important of all truths.
Because its doctrines are, as I have said, of such a lofty
kind that the multitude can’t grasp them without an
intermediary; because, I say, its light would blind the
ordinary eye, it comes forward wrapped in the veil of allegory
and teaches, not indeed what is exactly true in itself, but
what is true in respect of the lofty meaning contained in
it; and, understood in this way, religion is the truth.

PHILALETHES.—It would be all right if religion were
only at liberty to be true in a merely allegorical sense.
But its contention is that it is downright true in the
proper sense of the word. Herein lies the deception, and
it is here that the friend of truth must take up a hostile
position.

DeEMOPHELES.—This deception is a sine gua non. It
religion were to admit that it was only the allegorical
meaning in its doctrines which was true, it would rob it-
self of all efficacy. Such rigorous treatment as this would
destroy its invaluable influence on the hearts and morals
of mankind. Instead of insisting on that with pedantic
obstinacy, look at its great achievements in the practical
sphere, its furtherance of good and kindly feelings, its
guidance in conduct, the support and consolation it gives
to suffering humanity in life and death. How much you
ought to guard against letting theoretical cavils discredit
in the eyes of the multitude, and finally wrest from it,
something which is an inexhaustible source of consolation
and tranquillity, something which, in its hard lot, it needs
so much, even more than we do. On that score alone,
religion should be free from attack.

PHILALETHES.—With that kind of argument you could
have driven Luther from the field, when he attacked the
sale of indulgences. How many a man got consolation
from the letters of indulgence, a consolation which noth-
ing else could give, a complete tran yuillity: so that he
joyfully departed with the fullest confidence in the packet
A DIALOGUE. 225

of them which he held in his hand at the hour of death,
convinced that they were so many cards of admission to
all the nine heavens. What is the use of grounds of con-
solation and tranquillity which are constantly overshadowed
by the Damocles-sword of illusion? ‘The truth, my dear
sir, is the only safe thing; the truth alone remains stead-
fast and trusty; it is the only solid consolation; it is the
indestructible diamond.

DEMOPHELES.—Yes, if you had truth in your pocket,
ready to favor us with it on demand. All you’ve got are
metaphysical systems, in which nothing is certain but the
headaches they cost. Before you take anything away,
you must have something better to put in its place.

PHILALETHES.—That’s what you keep on saying. To
free a man from error is to give, uot to take away.
Knowledge that a thing is false isa truth. Error always
does harm: sooner or later it will bring mischief to the
man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people;
confess ignorance of what you don’t know, and leave every
one to form his own articles of faith for himself. Perhaps
they won’t turn out so bad, especially as they’ll rub one
another’s corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes.
The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foun-
dation of toleranve. Those who possess knowledge and
capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy,
or even in their own persons carry the history of philos-
ophy a step further.

DEMOPHELES.—That’ll be a pretty business! A whole
nation of raw metaphysicians, wrangling and eventually
coming to blows with one another!

PHILALETHES.—Well, well, a few blows here and there
are the sauce of life; or at any rate a very inconsiderable
evil, compared with such things as priestly dominion, plun-
dering of the laity, persecution of heretics, courts of in-
quisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres of St.
Bartholomew. These have been the results of popular
metaphysics imposed from without; so I stick to the old
saying that you can’t get grapes from thistles, nor expect
good to come from a pack of lies.

DEMOPHELES.—How often must I repeat that religion
is anything but a pack of lies? It is the truth itself, only
in a mythical, allegorical vesture. But when you spoke of
your plan of every one being his own founder of religion,
226 RELIGION.

I wanted to say that a particularism like this is totally
opposed to human nature, and would consequently destroy
all social order. Man is a metaphysical animal—that is to
say, he has paramount metaphysical necessities; accord-
ingly, he conceives life above all in its metaphysical
significance and wishes to bring everything into line with
that. Consequently, however strange it may sound in
view of the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the
fundamentals of metaphysics is the chief thing; because a
genuine and lasting bond of union is only possible among
those, who are of one opinion on these points. Asa result
of this, the main point of likeness and of contrast between
nations is rather religion than government, or even
language; and so the fabric of society, the state, will stand
firm only when founded on a system of metaphysics which
is acknowledged by all. This, of course, can only be a
popular system—that is, a religion: it becomes part and
parcel of the constitution of the state, of all the public
manifestations of the national life, and also of all solemn
acts of individuals. This was the case in ancient India,
among the Persians, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks and Romans:
it is still the case in the Brahman, Buddhist and Moham-
medan nations. In China there are three faiths, it
is true, of which the most prevalent—Buddhism—is pre-
cisely the one which is not protected by the state: still,
there is a saying in China, universally acknowledged, and
of daily application, that ‘‘ the three faiths are only one,”
—that is to say, they agree in essentials. The emperor
confesses all three together at the same time. And Europe
is the union of Christian states: Christianity is the basis
of every one of the members, and the common bond of all.
Hence Turkey, though geographically in Europe, is not
properly to be reckoned as belonging to it. In the same
way, theEuropean princes hold their place “‘ by the grace of
God:” and the pope is the vicegerent of God. Accord-
ingly, as his throne was the highest, he used to wish all
thrones to be regarded as held in fee from him. In the
same way, too, archbishops and bishops, as such, possessed
temporal power; and in England they still have seats and
votes in the Upper House. Protestant princes, as such,
are heads of their churches: in England, a few years ago,
this was a girl eighteen years old. By the revolt from the
pope, the Reformation shattered the European fabric, and
A DIALOGUR. 22K

in a special degree dissolved the true unity of Germany by de-
stroying its common religious faith. This union, which
had practically come to an end, had, accordingly, to be
restored later on by artificial and purely political means.
You see, then, how closely connected a common faith is
with the social order and the constitution of every state.
Faith is everywhere the support of the laws and the con-
stitution, the foundation, therefore, of the secial fabric,
which could hardly hold together at all if religion did not
lend weight to the authority of government and the dignity
of the ruler.

PHILALETHES.—Oh, yes, princes use God as a kind of
bogey to frighten grown-up children to bed with, if noth-
ing else avails: that’s why they attach so much importance
to the Deity. Very well. Let me, in passing, recommend
our rulers to give their serious attention, regularly twice
every year, to the fifteenth chapter of the First Book of
Samuel, that they may be constantly reminded of what it
means to prop the throne on the altar. Besides, since the
stake, that wltuma ratio theologorum, has gone out of
fashion, this method of government has lost its efficacy.
For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms; they
shine only when it’s dark. <A certain amount of general
ignorance is the condition of all religions, the element in
which alone they can exist. And as soon as astronomy,
natural science, geology, history, the knowledge of
countries and peoples have spread their light broadcast,
and philosophy finally is permitted to say a word, every
faith founded on miracles and revelation must disappear;
and philosophy takes its place. In Europe the day of
knowledge and science dawned toward the end of the
fifteenth century with the appearance of the Renaissance
Platonists: its sun rose higher in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries so rich in results, and scattered the mists
of the Middle Age. Church and Faith were compelled to
disappear in the same proportion; and so in the eight-
eenth century English and French philosophers were able
to take up an attitude of direct hostility; until, finally,
under Frederick the Great, Kant appeared, and took
away from religious belief the support it had previously
enjoyed from philosophy: he emancipated the handmaid
of theology, and in attacking the question with German
thoroughness and patience, gave it an earnest, instead of a
228 RELIGION.

frivolous tone. The consequence of this is that we see
Christianity undermined in the nineteenth century, a
serious faith in it almost completely gone; we see it fight-
ing even for bare existence, while anxious princes try to
set it up a little by artificial means, as a doctor uses a drug
on a dying patient. In this connection there is passage in
Condorcet’s ‘‘ Des Progrés de Vesprit humain,” which
looks as if written as a warning to our age: ‘‘ the religious
zeal shown by philosophers and great men was only a
political devotion; and every religion which allows itself
to be defended as a belief that may usefully be left to the
people, can only hope for an agony more or less pro-
longed.” In the whole course of the events which I have
indicated, you may always observe that faith and knowl-
edge are related as the two scales of a balance; when the
one goes up, the other goes down. So sensitive is the
balance that it mdicates momentary influences. When,
for instance, at the beginning of this century, those in-
roads of French robbers under the leadership of Buona-
parte, and the enormous efforts necessary for driving
them out and punishing them, had brought about a tem-
porary neglect of science, and consequently a certain
decline in the general increase of knowledge, the Church
immediately began to raise her head again and Faith began
to show fresh signs of life: which, to be sure, in keeping
with the times, was partly poetical in its nature. On the
other hand, in the more than thirty years of peace which
tollowed, leisure and prosperity furthered the building up
of science and the spread of knowledge in an extraordinary
degree’ the consequence of which is what I have indicated,
the dissolution and threatened fall of religion. Perhaps
the time is approaching which has so often been proph-
esied, when religion will take her departure from European
humanity, like a nurse which the child has out-grown:
the child will now be given over to the instructions of a
tutor. For there is no doubt that religious doctrines
which are fonnded merely on authority, miracles and
revelations, are only suited to the childhood of humanity.
Every one will admit that a race, the past duration of
which on the earth all accounts, physical and historical,
agree in placing at not more than some hundred times the
life of a man of sixty, is as yet only in its first childhood.

DemopHeELes.—Instead of taking an undisguised pleas-
A DIALOGUE. 999

ure in prophesying the downfall of Christianity, how I
wish you would consider what « measureless debt of grati-
tude European humanity owes to it, how greatly it has
benefitted by the religion which, after a long interval,
followed it from its old home in the East. Hurope re-
ceived from Christianity ideas which were quite new to it,
the knowledge, I mean, of the fundamental truth that life
cannot be an end in itself, that the true end of our ex-
istence lies beyond it. The Greeks and Romans had
placed this end altogether in our present life, so that in
this sense they may certainly be called blind heathens.
And, in keeping with this view of life, all their virtues can
be reduced to what is serviceable to the community, to
what is useful, in fact. Aristotle says quite naively,
‘« Those virtues must necessarily be the greatest which are
the most useful to others.” So the ancients thought
patriotism the highest virtue, although it is really a very
doubtful one, since narrowness, prejudice, vanity and an
enlightened self-interest are main elements in it. Just
before the passage I quoted, Aristotle enumerates all the
virtues, in order to discuss them singly. They are
Justice, Courage, Temperance, Magnificence, Magnan-
imity, Liberality, Gentleness, Good Sense and Wisdom.
How different from the Christian virtues! Plato himself,
incomparably the most transcendental philosopher of pre-
Christian antiquity, knows no higher virtue than justice;
and he alone recommends it unconditionally and for its
own sake, whereas the rest make a happy life, vita beata,
the aim of all virtue, and moral conduct the way to attain
it. Christianity freed European humanity from this
shallow, crude identification of itself with the hollow un-
certain existence of every day,

** celumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.”

Christianity, accordingly, does not preach mere Justice,
but the Love of Mankind, Compassion, Good Works,
Forgiveness, Love of your Enemies, Patience, Humility,
Resignation, Faith and Hope. It even went a step
further, and taught that the world is of evil, and that we
need deliverance. It preached despisal of the world, self-
denial, chastity, giving up of one’s own will, that is,
230 RELIGION.

turning away from life and its illusory pleasures. It
taught the healing power of pain: an instrument of
torture is the symbol of Christianity. I am quite ready
to admit that this earnest, this only correct view of life
was thousands of years previously spread all over Asia in
other forms, agit is still, independently of Christianity;
but for European humanity it was a new and great revela-
tion. For it is well known that the population of Europe
consists of Asiatic races driven out as wanderers from
their own homes, and gradually settling down in Europe;
on their wanderings these races lost the original religion
of their homes, and with it the right view of life: so,
under a new sky, they formed religions for themselves,
which were rather crude; the worship of Odin, for in-
stance, the Druidic or the Greek religion, the metaphysical
content of which was little and shallow. In the mean-
time the Greeks developed a special, one might almost say,
an instinctive sense of beauty, belonging to them alone of
all the nations who have ever existed on theearth, pecul-
iar, fine and exact: so that their mythology took, in the
mouth of their poets, and in the hands of their artists, an
exceedingly beautiful and pleasing shape. On the other
hand, the true and deep significance of life was lost to the
Greeks and Romans. They lived on like grown-up
children, till Christianity came and recalled them to the
serious side of existence.

PHILALETHES.—And to see the effects you need only
compare antiquity with the Middle Age; the time of Peri-
cles, say, with the fourteenth century. Youcould scarcely,
believe you were dealing with the same kind of beings.
There, the finest development of humanity, excellent
institutions, wise laws, shrewdly apportioned offices,
rationally ordered freedom, all the arts, including poetry
and philosophy, at their best; the production of works
which, after thousands of years, are unparalleled, the crea-
tious, as it were, of a higher order of beings, which we can
never imitate; life embellished by the noblest fellowship,
as portrayed in Xenophon’s ‘‘ Banquet.” Look on the
other picture, if you can; a time at which the Church had
enslaved the minds, and violence the bodies of men, that
knights and priests might lay the whole weight of life
upon the common beast of burden, the third estate.
There, you have might as right, Feudalism and Fanati-
A DIALOGUE. 23]

cism in close alliance, and in their train abominable
ignorance and darkness of mind, a corresponding intoler-
ance, discord of creeds, religious wars, crusades, inquisi-
tions and persecutions; as the form of fellowship, chivalry,
compounded of savagery and folly, with its pedantic
system of ridiculous false pretenses carried to an extreme,
its degrading superstition and apish veneration for
women. Gallantry is the residue of this veneration, de-
servedly requited as it is by feminine arrogance: it affords
continual food for laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks
would have joined init. Inthe golden Middle Age the
practice developed into a regular and methodical service of
women; it imposed deeds of heroism, cours d’amour,
bombastic troubadour songs etc.; although it is to be
observed that these last buffooneries, which had an _intel-
lectual side, were chiefly at home in France; whereas
among the material sluggish Germans, the knights dis-
tinguished themselves rather by drinking and _ stealing;
they were good at boozing and filling their castles with
plunder; though in the courts to be sure, there was no
lack of insipid love-songs. What caused this utter trans-
formation? Migration and Christianity.
DemMopHELES.—I am glad you reminded me of it.
Migration was the source of the evil; Christianity the dam
on which it broke. It was chiefly by Christianity that the
raw, wild hordes which came flooding in were controlled
and tamed. ‘The savage man must first of all learn to
kneel, to venerate, to obey; after that, he can be civilized.
This was‘done iu Ireland by St. Patrick, in Germany by
Winifried the Saxon, who was a genuine Boniface. It
was migration of peoples, the last advance of Asiatic races
toward Europe, followed only by the fruitless attempts of
those under Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timur, and as a
comic afterpiece, by the gypsies—it was this movement
which swept away the humanity of the ancients. Christian-
ity was precisely the principle which set itself to work
against this savagery; just as later, through the whole of
the Middle Age, the Church and its hierarchy were most
necessary toset limits to the savage barbarism of those
masters of violence, the princes and knights; it was what
broke up the ice-floes in that mighty deluge. Still, the
chief aim of Christianity is not so much to make this life
pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away
232 RELIGION.

over this span of time, over this fleeting dream, and seeks
to lead us to eternal welfare. Its tendency is ethical in
the highest sense of the word, a sense unknown in Europe
till its advent; as I have shown you, by putting the
morality and religion of the ancients side by side with
those of Christendom.

PiUILALETHES.— You are quite right as regards theory;
but look at the practice! In comparison with the ages of
Christianity the ancient world was unquestionably less
cruel than the Middle Age, with its deaths by exquisite
torture, its innumerable burnings at the stake. The an-
cients, further, were very enduring, laid great stress on
justice, frequently sacrificed themselves for their country,
showed such traces of every kind of magnanimity, and
such genuine manliness, that to this day an acquaintance
with their thoughts and actions is called the study of
Humanity. The fruits of Christianity were religious wars,
butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the
natives in America, and the introduction of African slaves
in their place; and among the ancients there is nothing
analogous to this, nothing that can be compared with it;
for the slaves of the ancients, the familia, the verne,
were a contented race, and faithfully devoted to their
masters’ service, and as different from the miserable
negroes of the sugar plantations, which are a disgrace to
humanity, as their two colors are distinct. Those special
moral delinquencies for which we reproach the ancients,
and which are perhaps less uncommon nowadays than
appears on the surface to be the case, are trifles compared
with the Christian enormities I have mentioned. Can
you then, all considered, maintain that mankind has been
really made morally better by Christianity?

Demornetes.—lIf the results haven’t everywhere been
in keeping with the purity and truth of the doctrine, it
may be because the doctrine has been too noble,
too elevated for mankind, that its aim has been
placed too high. It was so much easier to come up to the
heathen system, or to the Mohammedan. It is precisely
what is noble and dignified that is most liable everywhere
to misuse and fraud: adusus optimi pessimus. ~ Those
high doctrines have accordingly now and then served as a
pretext for the most abominable proceedings, and for acts
of unmitigated wickedness. The downfall of the in-
A DIALOGUE. 233

stitutions of the old world, as well as of its arts and
sciences, is, as I have said, to be attributed to the inroad
of foreign barbarians. The inevitable result of this inroad
was that ignorance and savagery got the upper hand;
consequently violence and knavery established their
dominion, and knights and priests became a burden to
mankind. It is partly, however, to be explained by the fact
that the new religion made eternal and not temporal wel-
fare the object of desire, taught that simplicity of heart
was to be preferred to knowledge, and looked askance at
all worldly pleasure. Now the arts and sciences subserve
worldly pleasure; but in so far as they could be made
serviceable to religion they were promoted, and attained
a certain degree of perfection.

PHILALETHES.—In a very narrow sphere. The sciences
were suspicious companions, and as such, were placed
under restrictions: on the other hand darling ignorance,
that element so necessary to a system of faith, was care-
fully nourished.

DEMOPHELES.—And yet mankind’s possessions in the
way of knowledge up to that period, which were preserved
in the writings of the ancients, were saved from destruc-
tion by the clergy, especially by those in the monasteries.
How would it have fared if Christianity hadn’t come in
just before the migration of peoples?

PHILALETHES.—It would really be a most useful inquiry
to try and make, with the coldest impartiality, an unprej-
udiced, careful and accurate comparison of the advantages
and disadvantages which may be put down to religion.
For that, of course, a much larger knowledge of historical
and psychological data than either of us command, would
be necessary. Academies might make it a subject for a
prize essay.

DeEMOPHELES.—They’ll take good care not to do so.

PHILALETHES.—I’m surprised to hear you say that: it’s
a bad lookout for religion. However, there are acad-
emies which, in proposing a subject for competition,
make it a secret condition that the prize is to go to the
man who best interprets their own view. If wecould only
begin by getting a statistician to tell us how many crimes
are prevented every year by religious, and how many by
other motives, there would be very few of the former.
If a man feels tempted to commit a crime, you may rely
234 RELIGION.

upon it that the first consideration which enters his head
is the penalty appointed for it, and the chances that it
will fall upon him: then comes, as a second consideration,
the risk to his reputation. If Iam not mistaken, he will
ruminate by the hour on these two impediments, before
he ever takes a thought of religious considerations. If he
gets safely over those two first bulwarks against crime, I
think religion alone will very rarely hold him back from
it.

DemopHELes.—I think that it will very often do so,
especially when its influence works through the medium
of custom. An atrocious act is at once felt to be repul-
sive. What is this but the effect of early impressions?
Think, for instance, how often a man, especially if of
noble birth, will make tremendous sacrifices to perform
what he has promised, motived entirely by the fact that
his father has often earnestly impressed upon him in his
childhood that ‘‘a man of honor” or ‘a gentleman” or
“a cavalier” always keeps his word inviolate.

PHILALETHES.—That’s no use unless there is a certain
inborn honorableness. You mustn’t ascribe to religion
what results from innate goodness of character, by which
compassion for the man who would suffer by the crime
keeps a man from committing it. This is the genuine
moral motive, and as such it is independent of all
religions.

DeMOPHELES.—But this is a motive which rarely affects
the multitude unless it assumes a religious aspect. The
religious aspect at any rate strengthens its power for good.
Yet without any such natural foundation, religious motives
alone are powerful to prevent crime. We need not be
surprised at this in the case of the multitude when we see
that even people of education pass now and then under
the influence, not indeed of religious motives, which are
founded on something which is at least allegorically true,
but of the most absurd superstition, and allow themselves
to be guided by it all their life long; as, for instance,
undertaking nothing on a Friday, refusing to sit down
thirteen at table, obeying chance omens, and the like.
How much more likely is the multitude to be guided by
such things. You can’t form any adequate idea of the
narrow limits of the mind in its raw state; it is a place of
absolute darkness, especially when, as often happens, a bad,
A DIALOGUE. 235

unjust, and malicious heart is at the bottom of it. People
in this condition—and they form the great bulk of human-
ity—must be led and controlled as well us may be, even if
it be by really superstitious motives; until such time as
they become susceptible to truer and better ones. As an
instance of the direct working of religion, may be cited
the fact, common enough, in Italy especially, of a thief
restoring stolen goods, through the influence of his con-
fessor, who says he won’t absolve him if he doesn’t.
Think again of the case of an oath, where religion shows
a most decided influence: whether it be that a man places
himself expressly in the position of a purely moral
being, and as such looks upon himself as solemnly ap-
pealed to, as seems to be the case in France, where the
formula is simply je le jure, and also among the Quakers,
whose solemn yea or nay is regarded as a substitute for
the oath; or whether it be that a man really believes he is
pronouncing something which may affect lis eternal
happiness—-a belief which is presumably only the investi-
ture of the former feeling. At any rate, religious consider-
ations are a means of awaking and calling out a man’s
moral nature. How often it happens that a man agrees
to take a false oath, and then, when it comes to the point,
suddenly refuses, and truth and right win the day.
PHILALETHES.—Oftener still false oaths are really
taken, and truth and right trampled under foot, though
all witnesses of the oath know it well. Still you are
quite right to quote the oath as an undeniable example of
the practical efficacy of religion. But, in spite of all
you’ve said, I doubt whether the efficacy of religion goes
much beyond this. Just think; if a public proclamation
were suddenly made, announcing the repeal of all the
criminal laws; I fancy neither you nor I would have the
courage to go home from here under the protection of re-
ligious motives. If, in the same way, all religions were
declared untrue, we could, under the protection of the
laws alone, go on living as before, without any special
addition to our apprehensions or our measures of precan-
tion. I will go beyond this, and say that religions have
very frequently exercised a decidedly demoralizing influ-
ence. One may say generally that duties toward God and
duties toward humanity are in inverse ratio. It is easy to
let adulation of the Deity make amends for lack of proper
236 RELIGION.

behavior toward man. And so we see that in all times and
in all countries the great majority of mankind find it
much easier to beg their way to heaven by prayers than to
deserve to go there by their actions. In every religion it
soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies, rites and
the like are proclaimed to be more agreeable to the Divine
will than moral actions; the former, especially if they are
bound up with the emoluments of the clergy, gradually
come to be looked upon as a substitute for the latter,
Sacrifices in temples, the saying of masses, the founding
of chapels, the planting of crosses by the roadside, soon
come to be the most meritorious works, so that even great
crimes are expiated by them, as also by penance, subjection
to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages, donations to
the temples and the clergy, the building of monasteries
and the like. The consequence of all this is that the
priests finally appear as middlemen in the corruption of
the gods. And if matters don’t go quite so far as that,
where is the religion whose adherents don’t consider
prayers, praise and manifold acts of devotion, a substitute,
at least in part, for moral conduct? Look at England,
where by an audacious piece of priestcraft, the Christian
Sunday, introduced by Constantine the Great as a substi-
tute for the Jewish Sabbath, is in a mendacious way
identified with it, and takes its name—and this in order
that the commands of Jehovah for the Sabbath (that is,
the day on which the Almighty had to rest from his six
days’ labor, so that it is essentially the last day of the week),
might be applied to the Christian Sunday, the dies solis,
the first day of the week which the sun opens in glory,
the day of devotion and joy. The consequence of this
fraud is that “ Sabbath-breaking,” or ‘‘the desecration of
the Sabbath,” that is, the slightest occupation, whether of
business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, worldly
books, are on Sundays looked upon as great sins. Surely
the ordinary man must believe that if, as his spiritual
guides impress upon him, he is only constant in “a strict
observance of the holy Sabbath,” and ‘a regular attend-
ance on Divine Service,” that is, if he only invariably idles
away his time on Sundays and doesn’t fail to sit two hours
in church to hear the same litany for the thousandth time
and mutter it in tune with the others, he may reckon on
indulgence in regard to those little peccadilloes which he
A DIALOGUE. 234

occasionally allows himself. Those devils in human form—
the slave owners and traders in the free states of North
America (they should be called the slave states)—are, as a
rule, orthodox, pious Anglicans who would consider it a
grave sin to work on Sundays: and in confidence in this,
and their regular attendance at church, they hope for
eternal happiness. ‘The demoralizing tendency of religion
is less problematical than its moral influence. How great
and how certain that moral influence must be to make
amends for the enormities which religions, especially the
Christian and Mohammedan religions, have produced and
spread over the earth! Think of the fanaticism, the end-
less persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy
of which the ancients had no conception! think of the
crusades, a butchery lasting two hundred years and inex-
cusable, its war-cry “It is the will of God,” its object to
gain possession of the grave of one who preached love and
sufferance! think of the cruel expulsion and extermination
of the Moors and Jews from Spain! think of the orgies of
blood, the inquisitions, the heretical tribunals, the bloody
and terrible conquests of the Mohammedans in three conti-
nents, or those of Christianity in America, whose inhabit-
ants were for the most part, and in Cuba entirely,
exterminated. According to Las Casas, Christianity
murdered twelve millionsin forty years, of course, all in
majorem Det gloriam, and for the propagation of the
Gospel, and because what wasn’t Christian wasn’t even
looked upon as human! IJ have, it is true, touched upon
these matters before; but when in our day, we hear of
“Latest News from the Kingdom of God,”* we shall not
be weary of bringing old news to mind. And, above all,
don’t let us forget India, the cradle of the human race,
or at least of that part of it to which we belong, where
firsts Mohammedans, and then Christians, were most
cruelly infuriated against the adherents of the original
faith of mankind. ‘The destruction or disfigurement of
the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous
and barbarous act, still bears witness to the monotheistic
fury of the Mohammedans, carried on from Marmud the
Ghaznevid of cursed memory down to Aureng Zeb, the

 

* A missionary periodical, the fortieth annual number of which
appeared in 1856.
238 RELIGION.

fratricide, whom the Portuguese Christians have zealously
imitated by destruction of temples and the auto da fé of
the inquisition at Goa. Don’t let us forget the chosen
people of God, who after they had, by Jehovah’s express
command, stolen from their old and trusty friends in
Egypt the gold and silver vessels which had been lent to
them, made a murderous and plundering inroad into ‘‘ the
Promised Land,” with the murderer Moses at their head,
to tear it from the rightful owners, again by the same
Jehovah’s express and repeated commands, showing no
mercy, exterminating the inhabitants, women, children
and all (Joshua, ch. 9 and 10). And all this, simply be-
cause they weren’t circumcised and didn’t know Jehovah,
which was reason enough to justify every enormity against
them; just as for the same reason, in earlier times, the
infamous knavery of the Patriarch Jacob and his chosen
people against Hamor, king of Shalem, and his people, is
reported to his glory because the people were unbelievers!
(Genesis xxxiii. le.) Truly, it is the worst side of reli-
gions that the believers of one religion have allowed them-
selves every sin against those of another, and with the
utmost ruffianism and cuelty persecuted them; the
Mohammedans against the Christians and Hindoos; the
Christians against the Hindoos, Mohammedans, American
natives, negroes, Jews, heretics, and others.

Perhaps J go too far in saying all religions. For the
sake of truth, I must add that the fanatical enormities
perpetrated in the name of religion are only to be put
down to the adherents of monotheistic creeds, that is, the
Jewish faith and its two branches, Christianity and
Islamism. We hear of nothing of the kind in the case of
Hindoos and Buddhists. Although it is a matter of
common knowledge that about the fifth century of our
era Buddhism was driven out by the Brahmans from its
ancient home in the southernmost part of the Indian
peninsula, and afterward spread over the whole of the
rest of Asia; as far as I know, we have no definite account
of any crimes of violence, or wars, or cruelties, perpetrated
in the course of it. That may, of course, be attributable
to the obscurity which veils the history of those countries;
but the exceedingly mild character of their religion, to-
gether with their unceasing inculcation of forbearance
toward all living things, and the fact that Brahmanism by
A DIALOGUE. 239

its caste system properly admits no proselytes, allows one
to hope that their adherents may be acquitted of shedding
of blood on a large scale, and of cruelty in any form.
Spence Hardy, in his excellent book on ‘Eastern
Monachism,” praises the extraordinary tolerance of the
Buddhists, and adds his assurance that the annals of
Buddhism will furnish fewer instances of religious persecu-
tion than those of any other religion. As a matter of fact,
it is only to monotheism that intolerance is essential: an
only god is by his nature a jealous god, who can allow no
other god to exist. Polytheistic gods, on the other hand,
are naturally tolerant; they live and let live; their
own colleagues are the chief objects of their sufferance, as
being gods of the same religion. This toleration is after-
ward extended to foreign gods, who are, accordingly,
hospitably received, and later on admitted, in some cases,
to an equality of rights; the chief example of which is
shown by the fact that the Romans willingly admitted and
venerated Phrygian, Egyptian and other gods. Hence, it
is that monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle
of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical trib-
unals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of
the gods, that razing of Indian temples, and Egyptian
colossi, which had looked on the sun three thousand years;
just because a jealous god had said, ‘‘’Thou shalt make no
graven image.”

But to return to the chief point. You are certainly
right in insisting on the strong metaphysical needs of
mankind; but religion appears to me to be not so much
a satisfaction as an abuse of those needs. At any rate, we
have seen that in regard to the furtherance of morality,
its utility is, for the most part, problematical, its dis-
advantages, and especially the atrocities which have
followed in its train, patent to the light of day. Of
course it is quite a different matter if we consider the
utility of religion as a prop of thrones; for where these are
held ‘‘ by the grace of God,” throne and altar are inti-
mately associated; and every wise prince who loves his throne
and his family will appear at the head of his people as an
exemplar of true religion. Even Machiavelli, in the eight-
eenth chapter of his book, most earnestly recommended
religion to princes. Beyond this, one may say that revealed
religions stand to philosophy exactly in the relation of
240 A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

“sovereigns by the grace of God,” to “‘ the sovereignty of
the people; ” so that the two former terms of the parallel
are in natural alliance.

DeMopHELEs.—Oh, don’t take that tone! Yon’re going
hand in hand with ochlocracy and anarchy, the arch-
enemy of all legislative order, all civilization and all
humanity.

PHILALETHES.—You are right. It was only a sophism
of mine, what the fencing-master calls a feint. I retract
it. But see how disputing sometimes makes an honest
man unjust and malicious. Let us stop.

DeMopHELES.—I can’t help regretting that, after all
the trouble I’ve taken, I haven’t altered your disposition
in regard to religion. On the other hand, I can assure
you that everything you have said hasn’t shaken my con-
viction of its high value and necessity.

PHILALETHES.--I believe you; for as we read in
Hudibras:

“He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still.”

My consolation is that, alike in controversies and in taking
mineral waters, the after effects are the true ones.

DeEMOPHELES.—Well, I hope it’ll be beneficial in your
case.

PHILALETHES.—It might be so, if I could digest a
certain Spanish proverb.

DzuMoPHELES.— Which is?

PHILALETHES.—“‘ Behind the cross stands the devil.”

DeEMOPHELES.—Come, don’t let us-part with sarcasms.
Let us rather admit that religion, like Janus, or better
still, like the Brahman god of death, Yama, has two faces,
and like him, one friendly, the other sullen. Each of us
has kept his eyes fixed on one alone.

PHILALETHES.—You are right, old fellow!

A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

THE controversy between Theism and Pantheism
might be presented in an allegorical or dramatic form by
supposing a dialogue between two persons in the pit of a
A FEW WORDS ON PANTHHISM. 241

theater at Milan during the performance of a piece. One
of them, convinced that he is in Girolamo’s renowned
marionette-theater, admires the art by which the director
gets up the dolls and guides their movements. ‘‘ Oh, you
are quite mistaken,” says the other, ‘‘ we’re in the Teatro
della Scala; it is the manager and his troop who are on the
stage; they are the persons you see before you; the poet
too is taking a part.”

The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says
nothing. To call the world ‘‘God” is not to explain it;
it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous
synonym forthe word‘ world.” It comes to the same thing
whether you say ‘‘the world is God,” or ‘*God is the
world.” But if you start from “God” as something that
is given in experience, and has to be explained, and then
say, “God is the world,” you are affording what is, to some
extent, an explanation, in so far as you are reducing what
is unknown to what is partly known (ignotwm per notius);
but it is only a verbal explanation. If however, you start
from what is really given, that is to say, from the world,
and say, “the worid is God,” it is clear that you say
nothing, or at least you are explaining what is unknown
by what is more unknown.

Hence Pantheism presupposes Theism; only in so far as
you start from a god, that is, in so far as you possess him
as something with which you are already familiar, can you
end by identifying him with the world; and your purpose
in doing so is to put him out of the way in a decent
fashion. In other words, you do not start clear from the
world as something that requires explanation; you start
from God as something that is given, and not knowing
what to do with him, you make the world take over hi.
role, This is the origin of Pantheism. Taking an un-
prejudiced view of the world as it is, no one would dream
of regarding it asa god. It must be a very ill-advised god
who knows no better way of diverting himself than by
turning into such a world as ours, such a mean, shabby
world, there to take the form of innumerable millions who
live indeed, but are fretted and tormented, and who
manage to exist awhile together only by preying on one
another; to bear misery, need and death, without measure
and without object, in the form, for instance, of millions
of negro slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe
242 A FEW WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

who, in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in
damp rooms or the cheerless halls of a factory. What a
pastime this for a god, who must, as such, be used to
another mode of existence!

We find accordingly that what is described as the great
advance from Theism to Pantheism, if looked at seriously,
and not simply as a masked negation of the sort indicated
above, is a transition from what is unproved and hardly
conceivable to what is absolutely absurd. For, however
obscure, however loose or confused may be the -idea which
we connect with the word ‘‘ God,” there are two pred-
icates which are inseparable from it, the highest power
and the highest wisdom. It is absolutely absurd to
think that a being endowed with these qualities should
have put himself into the position described above.
Theism, on the other hand, is something which is merely
unproved; and if it is difficult to look upon the infinite
world as the work of a personal, and therefore individual,
Being, the like of which we know only from our experi-
ence of the animal world, it is nevertheless not an abso-
lutely absurd idea. That a Being, at once almighty and
all-good, should create a world of torment is always
conceivable; even though we do not know why he does
so; and accordingly we find that when people ascribe the
height of goodness to this Being, they set up the inscru-
table nature of his wisdom as the refuge by which the
doctrine escapes the charge of absurdity. Pantheism,
however, assumes that the creative God is himself the
world of infinite torment, and, in this little world alone,
dies every second, and that entirely of his own will; which
is absurd. It would be much more correct to identify
the world with the devil, as the venerable author of the
‘“ Deutsche Theolcgie” has, in fact, done in a passage of his
immortal work, where he says, ‘‘ Wherefore the evil spirit
and nature are one, and where nature is not overcome,
neither is the evil adversary overcome.”

It is manifest that the Pantheists give the Sansara the
name of God. The same name is given by the mystics to
the Nirvana. The latter, however, state more about the
Nirvana than they know, which is not done by the
Buddhists, whose Nirvana is accordingly a relative noth-
ing. It is only Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans who
give its proper and correct meaning to the word “ God,”
ON BOOKS AND READING. 243

The expression, often heard nowadays, “the world is
an end-in-itself,” leaves it uncertain whether Pantheism
or a simple Fatalism is to be taken as the explanation of it.
But, whichever it be, the expression looks upon the world
from a physical point of view only, and leaves out of sight
its moral significance, because you cannot assume a moral
significance without presenting the world as means to a
higher end. The notion that the world has a physical but
not a moral meaning is the most mischievous error sprung
from the greatest mental perversity.

ON BOOKS AND READING.

IgNORANCE is degrading only when found in company
with riches. The poor man is restrained by poverty
and need: labor occupies his thoughts, and takes the
place of knowledge. But rich men who are ignorant
live for their lusts only, and are like the beasts of the
field; as may be seen every day; and they can also
be reproached for not having used wealth and leisure for
that which gives them their greatest value.

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely
repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the
pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has
outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of
the work of thought is already done for us. This is why
it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied
with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind
is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts.
So it comes about that if any one spends almost the whole
day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the
intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses
the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides,
at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many
learned persons; they have read themselves stupid. For
to occupy every spare moment in reading, and to do noth-
ing but read, is even more paralyzing to the mind than
constant manual Jabor, which at least allows those engaged
in it to follow their own thoughts. A spring never free
from the pressure of some foreign body at last loses its
elasticity: and so does the mind if other people’s thoughts
244 ON BOOKS AND READING.

are constantly forced upon it. Just as you can ruin the
stomach and impair the whole body by taking too much
nourishment, so you can overfill and choke the mind by
feeding it too much. The more you read, the fewer are
the traces left by what you have read; the mind becomes
like a tablet crossed over and over with writing. ‘There
is no time for ruminating, and in no other way can you
assimilate what you have read. If you read on and on
without setting your own thoughts to work, what you have
read cannot strike root, and is generally lost. It is, in
fact, just the same with mental as with bodily food;
hardly the fifth part of what one takes is assimilated.
The rest passes off in evaporation, respiration, and the like.

The result of all this is that thoughts put on paper are
nothing more than footsteps in the sand; you see the way
the man has gone, but to know what he saw on his walk,
you want his eyes.

There is no quality of style that can be gained by reading
writers who possess it; whether it be persuasiveness, im-
agination, the gift of drawing compurisons, boldness,
bitterness, brevity, grace, ease of expression or wit, unex-
pected contrasts, a laconic or naive manner, and the like.
But if these qualities are already in us, exist, that is to
say, potentially, we can call them forth and bring them to
consciousness; we can learn the purposes to which they
can be put; we can be strengthened in our inclination to
use them, or get courage to do so; we can judge by ex-
amples the effect of applying them, and so acquire the
correct use of them; and of course it is only when we have
arrived at that point that we actually possess these
qualities. The only way in which reading can form style
is by teaching us the use to which we can put our own
natural gifts. We must have these gifts before we begin
to learn the use of them. Without them, reading teaches
us nothing but cold, dead mannerisms and makes us
shallow imitators.

The strata of the earth preserve in rows the creatures
which lived in former ages; and the array of books on the
shelves of a library stores up in like manner the errors of
the past and the way in which they have been exposed.
Like those creatures, they too were full of life in their
ON BOOKS AND READING. 245

time, and madea great deal of noise; but now they are
stiff and fossilized, and an object of curiosity to the
literary paleontologist alone.

Herodotus relates that Xerxes wept at the sight of his
army, which stretched further than the eye could reach, in
the thought that of all these, after a hundred years, not
one would be alive. And in looking over a huge catalogue
of new books, one might weep at thinking that, when ten
years have passed, not one of them will be heard of.

It is in literature as in life: wherever you turn, you
stumble at once upon the incorrigible mob of humanity,
swarming in all directions, crowding and soiling every-
thing, like flies in summer. Hence the number, which
no man can count, of bad. books, those rank weeds of
literature, which draw nourishment from the corn and
choke it. The time, money and attention of the public,
which rightfully beloug to good books and their noble
aims, they take for themselves: they are written for the
mere purpose of making money or procuring places.
So they are not only useless, they do positive mischief.
Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature has no
other aim than to get a few shillings out of the pockets of
the public; and to this end author, publisher and reviewer
are in league.

Let me mention a crafty and wicked trick, albeit a
profitable and successful one, practiced by litéérateurs,
hack writers and voluminous authors. In complete dis-
regard of good taste and the true culture of the period,
they have succeeded in getting the whole of the world of
fashion into leading strings, so that they are all
trained to read in time, and all the same thing, viz,. the
newest books; and that for the purpose of getting food
for conversation ix the circles in which they move.
This is the aim served by bad novels, produced by writers
who were once celebrated, as Spindler, Bulwer-Lytton,
Eugene Sue. What can be more miserable than the lot of
a reading public like this, always bound to peruse the
latest works of extremely commonplace persons who write
for money only, and who are therefore never few in
number? and for this advantage they are content to know
by name only the works of the few superior minds of all
246 ON BOOKS AND READING.

ages and all countries. Literary newspapers, too, are 4
singularly cunning device for robbing the reading public
of the time which, if culture is to be attained, should be
devoted to the genuine productions of literature, instead
of being occupied by the daily bungling of commonpiace
persons.

Hence, in regard to reading, it is a very important
thing to be able to refrain. Skill in doing so consists in
not taking into one’s hands any book merely because at
the time it happens to be extensively read; such as polit-
ical or religions pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like,
which make a noise, and may even attain to several
editions in the first and last year of their existence.
Consider, rather, that the man who writes for fools is
always sure of a large audience; be careful to limit your
time for reading, and devote it exclusively to the works of
those great minds of all times and countries, who o’ertop
the rest of humanity, those whom the voice of fame points
to as such. These alone really educate and instruct.
You can never read bad literature too little, nor good
literature too much. Bad books are intellectual poison;
they destroy the mind. Because people always read what
is new instead of the best of all ages, writers remain in
the narrow circle of the ideas which happen to prevail in
their time; and so the period sinks deeper and deeper into
its own mire.

There are at all times two literaturesin progress, running
side by side, but little known to each other: the one real,
the other only apparent. The former grows into per-
manent literature; it is pursued by those who live for
science or poetry; its course is sober and quiet, but ex-
tremely slow; and it produces in Europe scarcely a dozen
works in a century; these, however, are permanent. The
other kind is pursued by persons who live on science or
poetry; it goes at a gallop, with much noise and shouting
of partisans; and every twelvemonth putsa thousand works
on the market. But after a few years one asks, ‘‘ Where
are they? where is the glory which came so soon and made
so much clamor?” This kind may be called fleeting, and
the other, permanent literature.

In the history of politics, half a century is always a
ON BOOKS AND RKADING. 244

considerable time; the matter which goes to form them is
ever on the move; there is always something going on.
But in the history of literature there is often a complete
standstill for the same period; nothing has happened, for
clumsy attempts don’t count. You are just where you
were fifty years previously.

To explain what I mean, let me compare the advance of
knowledge among mankind to the course taken by a
planet. The false paths on which humanity usually enters
after every important advance are like the epicycles in the
Ptolemaic system, and after passing through one of them,
the world is just where it was before it entered it. But
the great minds, who really bring the race further on its
course, do not accompany it on the epicycles it makes
from time to time. This explains why posthumous fame
is often bought at the expense of contemporary praise,
and vice versd. An instance of such an epicycle is the
philosophy started by Fichte and Schelling, and crowned
by Hegel’s caricature of it. This epicycle was a deviation
from the limit to which philosophy had been ultimately
bought by Kant; and at that point I took it up again
afterward, to carry it further. In the intervening period
the sham philosophers I have mentioned and some others
went through their epicycle, which has just came to an
end; so that those who went with them on their course
are conscious of the fact that they are exactly at the
point from which they started.

This circumstance explains why it is that, every thirty
years or so, science, literature, and art, as expressed in the
spirit of the age are declared bankrupt. The errors which
appear from time to time mount to such a height in that
period that the mere weight of their absurdity makes the
fabric fall; while the opposition to them has been gather-
ing force at the same time. So an upset takes place, often
followed by an error in the opposite direction. To ex-
hibit these movements in their periodical return would be
the true practical aim of the history of literature: little
attention, however, is paid to it. And besides, the com-
paratively short duration of these periods makes it diffi-
cult to collect the data of epochs long gone by, so that it
is most convenient to observe how the matter stands in
one’s own generation. An instance of this tendency,
drawn from physical science, is supplied in the Neptunian
248 ON BOOKS AND READING.

geology of Werter. But let me keep to the example cited
above, the nearest we can take. In German philosophy,
the brilliant epoch of Kant was immediately followed by a
period which aimed rather at being imposing than at con-
vincing. Instead of being thorough and clear, it tried to
be dazzling, hyperbolical, and, in a special degree, unin-
telligible: instead of seeking truth, it intrigued. Phi-
losophy could make no progress in this fashion; and at last
the whole school and its method became bankrupt.
For the effrontery of Hegel and his fellows came to such a
pass—whether because they talked such sophisticated
nonsense, or were so unscrupulously puffed, or because the
entire aim of this pretty piece of work was quite obvious—
that in the end there was nothing to prevent the char-
latanry of the whole business from becoming manifest to
everybody: and when, in consequence of certain dis-
closures, the favor it had enjoyed in high quarters was
withdrawn, the system was openly ridiculed. This most
miserable of all the meager philosophies that have ever
existed came to grief, and dragged down with it into the
abysm of discredit the systems of Fichte and Schelling
which had preceded it. And so, as far as Germany is
concerned, the total philosophical incompetence of the
first half of the century following upon Kant is quite
plain: and still the Germans boast of their talent for
philosophy in comparision with foreigners, especially since
an English writer has been so maliciously ironical as to
call them ‘‘a nation of thinkers.”

For an example of the general system of epicycles drawn
from the history of art, look at the school of sculpture
which flourished in the last century and took its name
from Bernini, more especially at the development of it
which prevailed in France. The ideal of this school was
not antique beauty, but commonplace nature: instead of
the simplicity and grace of ancient art, it represented the
manners of a French minuet. This tendency became
bankrupt when, under Winckelmann’s direction, a return
was made to the antique school. The history of painting
furnishes an illustration in the first quarter of the century,
when art was looked upon merely asa means and instru-
ment of medizval religious sentiment and its themes con-
sequently drawn from ecclesiastical subjects alone: these,
however, were treated by painters who had none of the
ON BOOKS AND READING. 249

true earnestness of faith, and in their delusion they
followed Francesco Francia, Pietro Perugino, Angelico
da Fiesole and others like them, rating them higher even
than the really great masters who followed. It was in
view of this error, and because in poetry an analogous aim
had at the same time found favor, that Goethe wrote his
‘* Pfaffenspiel.” This school, too, got the reputation of
being whimsical, became bankrupt, and was followed by a
return to nature, which proclaimed itself in genre pictures
and scenes of life of every kind, even though it now and
then strayed into what was vulgar.

The progress of the human mind in literature is
similar. The history of literature is for the most part like
the catalogue of a museum of deformities; the spirit in
which they keep best is pigskin. The few creatures that
have been born in goodly shape need not be looked for
there. They are still alive, and are everywhere to be met
with in the world, immortal, and with their years ever green.
They alone form what I have called real literature; the
history of which, poor asit is in persons, we learn from
our youth up out of the mouths of all educated people,
before compilations recount it for us.

As an antidote to the prevailing monomania for reading
literary histories, in order to be able to chatter about
everything, without having any real knowledge at all, let
me refer toa passage in Lichtenberg’s works, (vol. II. p.
302), which is well worth perusal.

I believe that the over-minute acquaintance with the history of
science and learning, which is such a prevalent feature of our day,
is very prejudicial to the advance of knowledge itself. There is
pleasure in following up this history; but, as a matter of fact, it
leaves the mind, not empty indeed, but without any power of its
own, just because it makes it so full. Whoever has felt the desire,
not to fill up his mind, but to strengthen it, to devolop his faculties
and aptitudes, and generally, to enlarge his powers, will have found
that there is nothing so weakening as intercourse with a so-called
littérateur, on a matter of knowledge on which he has not thought
at all, though he knows a thousand little facts appertaining to its
history and literature. It is like reading a cookery-book when you
are hungry. I believe that so-called literary history will never
thrive among thoughtful people, who are conscious of their own
worth andthe worth of real knowledge. These people are more
given to employing their own reason than to troubling themselves
to know how others have ea:ployed theirs. The worst of it is that,
as you will find, the more knowledge takes the direction of literary
250 PHYSIOGNOMY.

research, the less the power of promoting knowledge becomes; the
only thing that increases is pride in the possession of it. Such
persons believe that they possess knowledge in a greater degree
than those who really possessit. It is surely a well-founded remark,
that knowledge never makes its possessor proud. Those alone let
themselves be blown out with pride, who, incapable of extending
knowledge in their own persons, occupy themselves with clearing
up dark points in its history, or are able to recount what others have
done. They are proud, because they consider this occupation,
which is mostly of a mechanical nature, the practice of knowledge.
I could illustrate what I mean by examples, but it would be an
odious task.

Still, I wish some one would attempt a tragical history
of literature, giving the way in which the writers and
artists, who form the proudest possession of the various
nations which have given them birth, have been treated
by them during their lives. Such a history would exhibit
the ceaseless warfare, which what was good and genuine
in all times and countries has had to wage with what was bad
and perverse. It would tell of the martyrdom of almost
all those who truly enlightened humanity, of almost all
the great masters of every kind of art: it would show us
how, with few exceptions, they were tormented to death,
without recognition, without sympathy, without followers;
how they lived in poverty and misery, while fame,
honor, and riches, were the lot of the unworthy; how
their fate was that of Esau, who, while he was hunting
and getting venison for his father, was robbed of the
blessing by Jacob, disguised in his brother’s clothes; how,
in spite of all, they were kept up by the love of their work,
until at last the bitter fight of the teacher of humanity
is over, until the immortal laurel is held out to him, and
the hour strikes when it can be said:

“Der schwere Panzer wird zum Fligelkleide
Kurz ist der Schmerz, unendlich ist die Freude.”

PHYSIOGNOMY.

THAT the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the
face an expression and revelation of the whole character,
is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a
safe one to go by; evidenced as it is by the fact that
people are always anxious to see any one who has made
PHYSIOGNOMY. 251

himself famous by good or evil, or as the author of some
extraordinary work; or if they cannot get a sight of him,
to hear at any rate from others what he looks like. So
people go to places where they may expect to see the
person who interests them; the press, especially in
England, endeavors to give a minute and striking de-
scription of his appearance; painters and engravers lose
no time in putting him visibly before us; and finally
photography, on that very account of such high value,
affords the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.
It is also a fact that in private life every one criticises the
physiognomy of those he comes across, first of all secretly
trying to discern their intellectual and moral character
from their features. This would be a useless proceeding
if, as some foolish people fancy, the exterior of a man is a
matter of no account; if, as they think, the soul is one
thing and the body another, and the body related to the
soul merely as the coat to the man himself.

On the contrary, every human face is a hieroglyphic,
and a hieroglyphic, too, which admits of being deciphered,
the alphabet of which we carry about with us already per-
fected. Asa matter of fact, the face of a man gives us
fuller and more interesting information than his tongue;
for his face is the compendium of all he will ever say, as it
is the one record of ull his thoughts and endeavors.
And, moreover, the tongue tells the thought of one man only,
whereas the face expresses a thought of nature itself: so
that every one is worth attentive observation, even though
every one may not be worth talking to. And if every
individual is worth observation as a single thought of
nature, how much more so is beauty, since it is a higher
and more general conception of nature, is, in fact, her
thought of a species. This is why beauty is so captivating:
itis a fundamental thought of nature: whereas the in-
dividual is only a by-thought, a corollary.

In private, people always proceed upon the principle
that a man is what he looks; and the principle is a right
one, only the difficulty lies in its application. For though
the art of applying the principle is partly innate and may
be partly gained by experience, no one is a master of it,
and even the most experienced is not infallible. But for
all that, whatever Figaro may say, it is not the face which
deceives; it is we who deceive ourselves in reading in it
what is not there.
25% PH¥SIOGNOMY.

The deciphering of a face is certainly a great and diffi-
cult art, and the principles of it can nevér be learned in
the abstract. The first condition of success is to maintain
a purely objective point of view, which is no easy matter.
For, as soon as the faintest trace of anything subjective is
present, whether dislike or favor, or fear or hope, or even
the thought of the impression we ourselves are making
upon the object of our attention, the characters we are
trying to decipher become confused and corrupt. The
sound of a language is really appreciated only by one who
does not understand it, aud that because, in thinking of
the signification of a word, we pay no regard to the sign
itself. So, in the same way, a physiognomy is correctly
gauged only by one to whom it is still strange, who has
not grown accustomed to the face by constantly meeting
and conversing with the man himself. It is, therefore,
strictly speaking, only the first sight of a man which
affords that purely objective view which is necessary for
deciphering his features. An odor affects us only when
we first come in contact with it, and the first glass of a
wine is the one which gives us its true taste: in the same
way, it is only at the first encounter that a face makes its
full impression upon us. Consequently the first impression
should be carefully attended to and noted, even written
down if the subject of it is of personal importance, pro-
vided of course, that one can trust one’s own sense of
physiognomy. Subsequent acquaintance and intercourse
will obliterate the impression, but time will one day prove
whether it is true.

Let us, however, not conceal from ourselves the fact
that this first impression is for the most part extremely
unedifying. How poor most faces are! With the ex-
ception of those that are beautiful, good-natured or
intellectual, that is to say, the very few and far between,
I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a
new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the
reason that it presents a new and surprising combination
of unedifying elements. ‘To tell the truth, it is, asa rule,
a sorry sight. There are some people whose faces bear the
stamp of such artless vulgarity and baseness of character,
such an animal limitation of intelligence, that one
wonders how they can appear in public with such a coun-
tenance, instead of wearing a mask. There are faces,
PHYSIOGNOMY. 253

indeed, the very sight of which produces a fecling of
pollution. One cannot therefore take it amiss of people,
whose privileged position admits of it, if they manage
to live in retirement and completely free from the painful
sensation of ‘‘seeing new faces.” The metaphysical ex-
planation of this circumstance rests upon the considera-
tion that the individuality of a man is precisely that by
the very existence of which he should be reclaimed and
corrected. If, on the other hand, a psychological ex-
planation is satisfactory, let any one ask himself what
kind of physiognomy he may expect in those who have all
their life long, except on the rarest occasions, harbored
nothing but petty, base and miserable thoughts, and
vulgar, selfish, envious, wicked and malicious desires.
Every one of these thoughts and desires has set its mark
upon the face during the time it lasted, and by constant
repetition, all these marks have in course of time become
furrows and blotches, so to speak. Consequently, most
people’s appearance is such as to produce a shock at first
sight: and it is only gradually that one gets accustomed
to it, that is to say, becomes so deadened to the impres-
sion that it has no more effect on one.

And that the prevailing facial expression is the result of
a long process of innumerable, fleeting and characteristic
contractions of the features is just the rcason why intel-
lectual countenances are of gradual formation. It is
indeed only in old age that intellectual men attain their
sublime expression, while portraits of them in their youth
show only the first traces of it. But, on the other hand,
what 1 have just said about the shock which the first sight
of a face generally produces is in keeping with the remark
that it is only at that first sight that it makes its true and
full impression. For to get a purely objective and un-
corrupted impression of it, we must stand in no kind of
relation to the person; if possible, we must not yet have
spoken with him. For every conversation places us to
some extent upon a friendly footing, establishes a certain
rapport, a mutual subjective relation, which is at once
unfavorable to an objective point of view. And as every
one’s endeavor is to win esteem or friendship for himself,
the man who is under observation will at once employ all
those arts of dissimulation in which he is already versed,
and corrupt us with his airs, hypocrisies and flatteries; so
254 . PHYSIOGNOMY.

that what the first look clearly showed will soon be seen
by us no more.

This fact is at the bottom of the saying that ‘‘ most
people gain by further acquaintance; ” it ought, however,
to run, ‘‘delude us by it.” Jt is only when, later on, the
bad qualities manifest themselves that our first judgment
as a rule receives its justification and makes good its
scornful verdict. It may be that ‘“‘a further acquaint-
ance” is an unfriendly one, and if that is so, we do not
find in this case either that people gain by it. Another
reason why people apparently gain on a nearer acquaint-
ance is that the man whose first aspect warns us from
him, as soon as we converse with him, no longer shows his
own being and character, but also his education; that is,
not only what he really is by nature, but also what he has
appropriated to himself out of the common wealth of
mankind. Three-fourths of what he says belongs not to
him, but to the sources from which he obtained it; so
that we are often surprised to hear a minotaur speak so
humanly. If we make a still closer acquaintance, the
animal nature, of which his face gave promise, will
manifest itself ‘“‘in all its splendor.” If one is gifted with
an acute sense for physiognomy, one should take special
note of those verdicts which preceded a closer acquaintance
and were therefore genuine. For the face of a man is the
exact expression of what he is; and if he deceives us, that
is our fault, not his. What a man says, on the other hand,
is what he thinks, more often what he has learned, or it
may be even, what he pretends to think. And _ besides,
this, when we talk to him, or even hear him talking to
others, we pay no attention to his physiognomy proper.
It is the underlying substance, the fundamental datum,
and we disregard it; what interests us is its pathognomy, its
play of feature during conversation. This, however, is
so arranged as to turn the good side upward.

When Socrates said to a young man who was introduced
to him to have his capabilities tested, “‘Talk in order
that I may see you,” if indeed by ‘“‘seeing” he did not
simply mean “hearing” he was right, so far as it is only
in conversation that the features and especially the eyes
become animated, and the intellectual resources and
capacities set their mark upon the countenance. This puts
us in a position to form a provisional notion of the degree
PHYSIOGNOMY. 255

and capacity of intelligence; which was in that case
Socrates’ aim. But in this connection it is to be ob-
served, firstly, that the rule does not apply to moral
qualities, which lie deeper; and in the second place, that
what from an objective point of view we gain by the
clearer development of the countenance in conversation,
we lose from a subjective standpoint on account of the
personal relation into which the speaker at once enters in
regard to us, and which produces a slight fascination, so
that, as explained above, we are not left impartial
observers. Consequently from the last point of view we
might say with greater accuracy, ‘“‘ Do not speak in order
that I may see you.”

For to get a pure and fundamental conception of a
man’s physiognomy, we must observe him when he is
alone and left to himself. Society of any kind and con-
versation throw a reflection upon him which is not hisown,
generally to his advantage; as he is thereby placed in a
state of action and re-action which sets him off. But
alone and left to himself, plunged in the depths of his
own thoughts and sensations, he is wholly himself, and a
penetrating eye for physiognomy can at one glance take a
general view of his entire character. For his face, looked
at by and in itself, expresses the keynote of all his
thoughts and endeavors, the arrét irrevocable, the irrev-
ocable decree of his destiny, the consciousness of which
only comes to him when he is alone.

The study of physiognomy is one of the chief means of
a knowledge of mankind, because the cast of a man’s face
is the only sphere in which his arts of dissimulation are of
no avail, since these arts extend only to that play of
feature which is akin to mimicry. And that is why I
recommend such a study to be undertaken when the sub-
ject of it is alone and given up to his own thoughts, and
before he is spoken to: and this partly for the reason
that it is only in such a condition that inspection of the
physiognomy pure and simple is possible, because conver-
sation at once lets in a pathognomical element, in which a
man can apply the arts of dissimulation which he has
learned: partly again because personal contact, even of
the very slightest kind, gives a certain bias and so corrupts
the judgment of the observer.

And in regard to the study of physiognomy in general,
256 PHYSIOGNOMY.

it is further to be observed that intellectual capacity is
much easier of discernment than moral character. The
former naturally takes a much more outward direction,
and expresses itself not only in the face and the play of
feature, but also in the gait, down even to the very
slightest movement. One could perhaps discriminate
from behind between a blockhead, a fool and a man of
genius. The blockhead would be discerned by the
torpidity and sluggishness of all his movements: folly sets
its mark upon every gesture, and so does intellect and a
studious nature. Hence that remark of La Bruyére that
there is nothing so slight, so simple or imperceptible but
that our way of doing it enters in and betrays us: a fool
neither comes nor goes, nor sits down, nor gets up, nor
holds his tongue, nor moves about in the same way as an
intelligent man. (And this is, be it observed by way of
parenthesis, the explanation of that sure and certain in-
stinct which, according to Helvetius, ordinary folk possess
of discerning people of genius, and of getting out of
their way.)

The chief reason for this is that, the larger and more
developed the brain, and the thinner, in relation to it the
spine and nerves, the greater is the intellect; and not the
intellect alone, but at the same time the mobility and
pliancy of all the limbs: because the brain controls them
more immediately and resolutely; so that everything
hangs more upon a single thread, every movement of
which gives a precise expression to its purpose. ‘his is
analogous to, nay, is immediately connected with the fact
that the higher an animal stands in the scale of develop-
ment, the easier it becomes to kill it by wounding a single
spot. Take, for example, batrachia: they are slow,
cumbrous and sluggish in their movements; they are un-
intelligent, and at the same time, extremely tenacious of
life; the reason of which is that with a very small brain,
their spine and nerves are very thick. Now gait and
movement of the arms are mainly functions of the brain;
our limbs receive their motion and every little modification
of it from the brain through the medium of the spine.
This is why conscious movements fatigue us; the sensation
of fatigue, like that of pain, has its seat in the brain, not,
as people commonly suppose, in the limbs themselves;
hence motion induces sleep. On the other hand those
PHYSIOGNOMY. 257

motions which are not excited by the brain, that is, the
unconscious movements of organic life, of the heart, of
the lungs, etc., go on in their course without producing
fatigue. And as thought equally with motion is a func-
tion of the brain, the character of the brain’s activity is
expressed equally in both, according to the constitution
of the individual; stupid people move like lay-figures,
while every joint of an intelligent man is eloquent.
But gesture and movement are not nearly so good an
index of intellectual qualities as the face, the shape and
size of the brain, the contraction and movement of the
features, and above all the eye—from the small, dull,
dead-looking eye of a pig up through all gradations to the
irradiating, flashing eyes of a genius. The look of good
sense and prudence, even of the best kind, differs from
that of genius, in that the former bears the stamp of
subjection to the will, while the latter is free from it.
And therefore one can well believe the anecdote told by
Squarzafichi in his life of Petrach, and taken from Joseph
Brivius, a contemporary of the poet, how once at the
court of the Visconti, when Petrarch and other noblemen
and gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his
son, who was then a mere boy (he was afterward first
duke of Milan), to pick out the wisest of the company;
how the boy looked at them all for a little, and then took
Petrach by the hand and led him up to his father, to the
great admiration of all present. For so clearly does
nature set the mark of her dignity on the privileged
among mankind that even a child can discern it. There-
fore I should advise my sagacious countrymen, if ever
again they wish to trumpet about for thirty years a very
commonplace person as a great genius, not to choose for
the purpose such a beerhouse-keeper physiognomy as was
possessed by that philosopher, upon whose face nature had
written, in her clearest characters, the familiar inscrip-
tion, ‘‘commonplace person.”

But what applies to intellectual capacity will not apply
to moral qualities, to character. It is more difficult to
discern its physiognomy, because, being of a metaphysical
nature, it lies incomparably deeper. It is true that
moral character is also connected with the constitution,
with the organism, but not so immediately or in such
direct connection with definite parts of its system as is
258 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

intellectual capacity. Hence while every one makes a
show of his intelligence and endeavors to exhibit it at
every opportunity, as something with which he is in
general quite contented, few expose their moral qualities
freely, and most people intentionally cover them up; and
long practice makes the concealment perfect. In the
meantime, as I explained above, wicked thoughts and
worthless efforts gradually set their mark upon the face,
especially the eyes. So that, judging by physiognomy, it
is easy to warrant that a given man will never produce an
immortal work; but not that he will never commit a
great crime.

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

For EVERY animal, and more especially for man, a
certain conformity and proportion between the will and
the intellect is necessary for existing or making any prog-
ress in the world. ‘The more precise and correct the
proportion which nature establishes, the more easy, safe
and agreeable will be the passage through the world.
Still, if the right point is only approximately reached, it
will be enough to ward off destruction. There are, then,
certain limits within which the said proportion may vary,
and yet preserve a correct standard of conformity. The
normal standard is as follows. The object of the intellect
is to light and lead the will on its path, and therefore,
the greater the force, impetus and passion, which spurs
on the will from within, the more complete and luminous
must be the intellect which is attached to it, that the
vehement strife of the will, the glow of passion, and the
intensity of the emotions, may not lead man astray, or
urge him on to ill considered, false or ruinous action; this
will, inevitably, be the result, if the will is very violent
and the intellect very weak. On the other hand, a
phlegmatic character, a weak and languid will, can get on
and hold its own with a small amount of intellect; what
is naturally moderate needs only moderate support. The
general tendency of a want of proportion between the will
and the intellect, in other words, of any variation from
the normal proportion I have mentioned, is to produce
unhappiness, whether it be that the will is greater than
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 259

the intellect, or the intellect greater than the will,
Especially is this the case when the intellect is developed
to an abnormal degree of strength and superiority, so as
to be out of all proportion to the will, a condition which
is the essence of real genius; the intellect is then not
only more than enough for the needs and aims of life, it
is absolutely prejudicial to them. The result is that, in
youth, excessive energy in grasping the objective world,
accompanied by a vivid imagination and a total lack of ex-
perience, makes the mind susceptible, and an easy prey to
extravagant ideas, nay, even to chimeras; and this issues
in an eccentric and fantastic character. And when, in
later years, this state of mind yields and passes away
under the teaching of experience, still the genius never
feels himself at home in the common world of every day~
and the ordinary business of life; he will never take his
place in it, and accommodate himself to it as accurately as
the person of normal intellect; he will be more likely to
make curious mistakes. For the ordinary mind feels
itself so completely at home in the narrow circle of its
ideas and views of the world that no one can get the better
of it in that sphere; its faculties remain true to their
original purpose, viz., to promote the service of the will;
it devotes itself steadfastly to this end, and abjures ex-
travagantaims. The genius, on the other hand, is at bottom
anmonstrum per excessum just as, conversely, the passionate,
violent and unintelligent man, the brainless barbarian, is
a monstrum per defectum.

The will to live, which forms the inmost core of every
living being, exhibits itself most conspicuously in the
higher order of animals, that is, the cleverer ones; and so
in them the nature of the will may be seen and examined
most clearly. For in the lower orders its activity is not
so evident; it has a lower degree of objectivation; whereas,
in the class which stands above the higher order of animals,
that is, in men, reason enters in; and with reason comes
discretion, and with discretion, the capacity for dissimula-
tion, which throws a veil over the operations of the will.
And in mankind, consequently, the will appears without
its mask only in the affections and the passions. And
this is the reason why passion, when it speaks, always
260 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

wins credence, no matter what the passion may be; and
rightly so. For the same reason the passions are the mair
theme of poets and the stalking horse of actors. The
conspicuousness of the will in the lower order of animals
explains the delight we take in dogs, apes, cats, etc,; it is
the entirely naive way in which they express themselves
that gives us so much pleasure.

The sight of any free animal going about its business
undisturbed, seeking its food, or looking after its young,
or mixing in the company of its kind, all the time being
exactly what it ought to be and can be—what a strange
pleasure it gives us! Even if it is only a bird, I can
watch it for a long time with delight; ora water rat or a
hedgehog; or better still, a weasel, a deer or a_ stag.
The main reason why we take so much pleasure in looking
at animals is that we like to see our own nature in such a
simplified form. ‘There is only one mendacious being in
the world, and that is man. Every other is true and
sincere, and makes no attempt to conceal what it is, ex-
pressing its feelings just as they are.

Many things are put down to the force of habit which
are rather to be attributed to the constancy and immu-
tability of orginal, innate character, according to which
under like circumstances we always do the same thing:
whether it happens for the first or the hundredth time, it
is in virtue of the same necessity. Real force of habit, as
a matter of fact, rests upon that indolent, passive disposi-
tion which seeks to relieve the intellect and the will of a
fresh choice, and so makes us do what we did yesterday
and have done a hundred times before, and of which we
know that it will attain its object.

But the truth of the matter lies deeper, and a more
precise explanation of it can be given than appears at
first sight. Bodies which may be moved by mechanical
means only are subject to the power of inertia; and
applied to bodies which may be acted on by motives,
this power becomes the force of habit. The actions
which we perform hy mere habit come about, in fact,
without any individual separate motive brought into
play for the particular case: hence in performing them,
we really do not think about them. A motive was pres-
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 261

ent only on the first few occasions on which the action
happened, which has since become a habit: the secondary
after-effect of this motive is the present habit, and it is
sufficient to enable the action to continue: just as when a
body has been set in motion by a push, it requires no
more pushing in order to continue its motion; it will go
on to all eternity, if it meets with no friction. It is the
same in the case of animals: training is a habit which is
forced upon them. The horse goes on drawing his cart
quite contentedly, without having to be urged on: the
motion is the continued effect of those strokes of the whip
which urged him on at first: by the law of inertia they
have become perpetuated as habit. All this is really
more than a mere parable: it is the underlying identity of
the will at very different degrees of its objectivation, in
virtue of which the same law of motion takes such
different forms.

 

Vive muchos afos is the ordinary greeting in Spain,
and all over the earth it is quite customary to wish people
a long life. It is presumably not a knowledge of life
which directs such a wish; it is rather knowledge of what
man is in his inmost nature, the will to live.

The wish which every one has that he may be remem-
bered after his death—a wish which rises to the longing
for posthumous glory in the case of those whose aims are
high—seems to me to spring from this clinging to life.
When the time comes which cuts a man off from every
possibility of real existence, he strives after a life which is
still attainable, even though it be a shadowy and ideal
one.

The deep grief we feel at the loss of a friend arises
from the feeling that in every individual there is some-
thing which no words can express, something which is
peculiarly his own and therefore irreparable. Ommne
individuum ineffabile.

We may come to look upon the death of our enemies
and adversaries, even long after it has occurred, with
just as much regret as we feel for that of our friends,
262 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

viz., when we miss them as witnesses of our brilliant
success.

That the sudden announcement of a very happy event
may easily prove fatal rests upon the fact that happiness
and misery depend merely on the proportion which our
claims bear to what we get. Accordingly, the good things
we possess, or are‘certain of getting, are not felt to be
such; because all pleasure is in fact of a negative nature
and effects the relief of pain, while pain or evil is what is
really positive; it is the object of immediate sensation.
With the possession or certain expectation of good things
our demand rises, and increases our capacity for further
possessions and larger expectations. But if we are de-
pressed by continual misfortune, and our claims reduced
toa minimum, the sudden advent of happiness finds no
capacity for enjoying it. Neutralized by an absence of
pre-existing claims, its effects are apparently positive,
and so its whole force is brought into play; hence it may
possibly break our feelings, 7. e. be fatal to them. And
so, as is well known, one must be careful in announcing
great happiness. First, one must get the person to hope
for it, then open up the prospect of it, then communicate
part of it, and at last make it fully known. Every portion
of the good news loses its efficacy, because it is anticipated
by a demand, and room is left for an increase in it. In
view of all this, it may be said that our stomach for good
fortune is bottomless, but the entrance to it is narrow.
These remarks are not applicable to great misfortunes in
the same way. They are more seldom fatal, because hope
always sets itself against them. That an analogous part is
not played by fear in the case of happiness results from
the fact that we are instinctively more inclined to hope
than to fear; just as our eyes turn themselves toward light
rather than darkness.

 

Hope is the result of confusing the desire that some-
thing should take place with the probability that it will.
Perhaps no man is free from this folly of the heart, which
deranges the intellect’s correct appreciation of probability
to such an extent that, if the chances are a thousand to
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 263

one against it, yet the event is thought a likely one.
Still in spite of this, a sudden misfortune is like a death-
stroke, while a hope that is always disappointed and still
never dies, is like death by prolonged torture.

He who has lost all hope has also lost all fear; this is
the meaning of the expression ‘‘ desperate.” It is
natural to a man to believe what he wishes to be true, and
to believe it because he wishesit. If this characteristic
of our nature, at once beneficial and assuaging, is rooted
out by many hard blows of fate, and a man comes,
conversely, to a condition in which he believes a thing
must happen because he does not wish it, and what he
wishes to happen can never be, just because he wishes it,
this is in reality the state described as ‘‘ desperation.”

That we are so often deceived in others is not because
our judgment is at fault, but because in general, as Bacon
says, ‘‘ Inéellectus luminis siccr non est, sed recipit infu-
stonem a voluntate et affectibus:” that is to say, trifles
unconsciously bias us for or against a person from the
very beginning. It may also be explained by our not
abiding by the qualities which we really discover; we go
on to conclude the presence of others which we think
inseparable from them, or the absence of those which we
consider incompatible. For instance, when we perceive
generosity, we infer justice; from piety, we infer honesty;
from lying, deception; from deception, stealing, etc; a
procedure which opens the door to many false views,
partly because human nature is so strange, partly because
our stand-point is so one-sided. It is true, indeed, that
character always forms a consistent and connected whole;
but the roots of all its qualities lie too deep to allow of
our concluding from particular data in a given case
whether certain qualities can or cannot exist together.

 

We often happen to say things that may in some way
or other be prejudicial to us; but we keep silent about
things that might make us look ridiculous; because in this
case effect follows very quickly on cause.
264 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

The pain of an unfulfilled wish is small in compzrison
with that of repentance; for the one stands in the pres-
ence of the vast open future, while the other has the
irrevocable past closed behind it.

 

Geduld, patientia, patience, especially the Spanish
sufrimiento, is strongly connected with the notion of
suffering. It is therefore a passive state, just as the
opposite is an active state of the mind, with which, when
great, patience is incompatible. It is the innate virtue
of phlegmatic, indolent, and spiritless people, as also of
women. But that it is nevertheless so very useful and
necessary is asign that the world is very badly consti-
tuted.

Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then,
who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in
the concrete, devotes his heart entirely to money.

 

Obstinacy is the resuit of the will forcing itself into the
place of the intellect.

 

If you want to find out your real opinion of any one,
observe the impression made upon you by the first sight
of a letter from him.

The course of our individual life and the events in it,
as far as their true meaning and connection is concerned,
may be compared to a piece of rough mosaic. So long as
you stand close in front of it, you cannot get a right view
of the objects presented, nor perceive their significance or
beauty. Both come in sight only when you stand a little
way off. And in the same way you often uuderstand the
true connection of important events in your life not while
they are going on nor soon after they are past, but only
a considerable time afterward.

_ Is this so, because we require the magnifying effect of
imagination? or because we can get a general view only
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 265

from a distance? or because the school of experience
makes our judgment ripe? Perhaps all of these together:
but it is certain that we often view in the right light the
actions of others, and occasionally even our own, only
after the lapse of years. And as it is in one’s own life, so
it is in history.

Happy circumstances in life are like certain groups
of trees. Seen from a distance they look very well: but
go up to them and among them, and the beauty vanishes;
you don’t know where it can be; it is only trees you see.
And so it is that we often envy the lot of others.

 

The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind, the
lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the
stupidity.

 

A person of phlegmatic disposition who is a block head,
would with a sangnine nature, be a fool.

Now and then one learns something, but one forgets
the whole day long.

Moreover our memory is like a sieve, the holes of which
in time get larger and larger; the older we get, the
quicker anything intrusted to it slips from the memory,
whereas, what was fixed fast in it in early days is there
still. The memory ofan old man gets clearer and clearer,
the further it goes back, and less clear the nearer it
approaches the present time; so that his memory, like his
eyes, becomes long-sighted.

In the process of learning you may be apprehensive
about bewildering and confusing the memory, but not
about overloading it, in the strict sense of the word.
The faculty for remembering is not diminished in pro-
portion to what one has learned, just as little as the num-
ber of molds in which you castsand, lessens its capacity for
being cast in new molds. In this sense the memory is
bottomless. And yet the greater and more various any
266 PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

one’s knowledge, the longer he takes to find out anything
that may suddenly be asked him; because he is like a
shopkeeper who has to get the article wanted from a large
and multifarious store; or, more strictly speaking, because
out of many possible trains of thought he has to recall
exactly that one which, as a result of previous training,
leads to the matter in question. For the memory is not
a repository of things you wish to preserve, but a mere
dexterity of the intellectual powers; hence the mind
always contains its sum of knowledge only potentially,
never actually. é

It sometimes happens that my memory will not re-
produce some word in a foreign language, or a name, or
some artistic expression, although I know it very well.
After I have bothered myself in vain about it for a longer
or a shorter time, I give up thinking about it altogether.
An hour or two afterward, in rare cases even later still,
sometimes only after four or five weeks, the word I was
trying to recall occurs to me while I am thinking of some-
thing else, as suddenly as if some one had whispered it to
me. After noticing this phenomenon with wonder for
very many years, I have come to think that the probable
explanation of it is as follows. After the troublesome
and unsuccessful search, my will retains its craving to
know the word, and so sets a watch for it in the intellect.
Later on, in the course and play of thought, some word
by chance occurs having the same initial letters or some
other resemblance to the word which is sought; then the
sentinel springs forward and supplies what is wanting to
make up the word, seizes it, and suddenly brings it up in
triumph, without my knowing where and how he got it;
so it seems as if some one had whispered it to me. It is
the same process as that adopted by a teacher toward a
child who cannot repeat a word; the teacher just suggests
the first letter of the word, or even the second too; then
the child remembers it. Jn default of this process, you

can end by going methodically through all the letters of
the alphabet.

In the ordinary man, injustice rouses a passionate desire
for vengeance; and it has often been said that vengeance
is sweet. How many sacrifices have been made just to
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 267

enjoy the feeling of vengeance, without any intention of
causing an amount of injury equivalent to what one has
suffered. The bitter death of the centaur Nessus was
sweetened by the certainty that he had used his last
moments to work out an extremely clever vengeance.
Walter Scott expresses the same human inclination in
language as true as it is strong: ‘‘ Vengeance is the
sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell!”
I shall now attempt a psychological explanation of it.

Suffering which falls to our lot in the course of nature,
or by chance, or fate, does not, ceteris paribus, seem so
painful as suffering which is inflicted on us by the
arbitrary will of another. This is because we look upon
nature and chance as the fundamental masters of the
world; we see that the blow we received from them might
just as well have fallen on another. In the case of
suffering which springs from this source, we bewuil the
common lot of humanity rather than our own misfortune.
But that it is the arbitrary will of another which inflicts
the suffering, is a peculiarly bitter addition to the pain or
injury it causes, viz., the consciousness that some one else
is superior to us, whether by force or cunning, while we
lie helpless. If amends are possible, amends heal the
injury; but that bitter addition, ‘“‘and it was you who
did that to me,” which is often more painful than the
injury itself, is only to be neutralized by vengeance.
By ‘inflicting injury on the one who has injured us,
whether we do it by force or cunning, is to show our
superiority to him, and to annul the proof of his superiority
to us. That gives our hearts the satisfaction toward
which it yearns. So where there isa great deal of pride
or vanity, there also will there be a great desire of ven-
geance. But as the fulfillment of every wish brings with
it more or less of « sense of disappointment, so it is with
vengeance. The delight we hope to get from it is mostly
embittered by compassion. Vengeance taken will often
tear the heart and torment the conscience: the motive to
it is no longer active, and what remains is the evidence of
our malice.
208 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.
THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

Wuen the Church says that, in the dogmas of religion,
reason is totally incompetent and blind, and _ its use to
be reprehended, it is in reality attesting the fact that these
dogmas are allegorical in their nature, and are not to be
judged by the standard which reason, taking all things
sensu proprio, can alone apply. Now the absurdities of a
dogma are just the mark and sign of what is allegorical
and mythical in it. In the case under consideration,
however, the absurdities spring from the fact that two
such heterogeneous doctrines as those of the Old and New
‘Téstaments had to be combined. The great allegory was
of gradual growth. Suggested by external and adventi-
tious circumstances, it was developed by the interpretation
put upon them, an interpretation in quiet touch with,
certain deep-lying truths only half realized. The allegory
was finally completed by Augustine, who penetrated
deepest into its meaning, and so was able to conceive it as
asystematic whole and supply its defects. Hence the
Augustinian doctrine, confirmed by Luther, is the com-
plete form of Christianity; and the Protestants of to-day,
who take Revelation sensw proprio and confine it to a
single individual, are in error in looking upon the first
beginnings of Christianity as its most perfect expression.
But the bad thing about all religions is that, instead of
being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to
conceal it; accordingly, they parade their doctrines in all
seriousness as true sensu proprio, and as absurdities from
an essential part of these doctrines, you have the great
mischief of a continual fraud. And, what is worst, the
day arrives when they are no longer true sensu proprio,
and then there is an end of them; so that, in that respect,
it would be better to admit their allegorical nature at
once. But the difficulty is to teach the multitude that
something can be both true and untrue at the same time.
And as all religions are in a greater or less degree of this
nature, we must recognize the fact that mankind cannot
get on without a certain amount of absurdity, that absurd-
ity is an element in its existence, and illusion indispen-
sable; as indeed other aspects of life testify.

J have said that the combination of the Old Testament
with the New gives rise to absurdities. Among the ex-
THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 269

amples which illustrate what I mean, I may cite the
Christian doctrine of Predestination and Grace, as for-
mulated by Augustine and adopted from him by Luther;
according to which one man is endowed with grace and
another is not. Grace, then comes to be a privilege
received at birth and brought ready into the world; a
privilege, too, in a matter second to none in importance.
What is obnoxious and absurd in this doctrine may be
traced to the idea contained in the Old Testament, that
man is the creation of an external will, which called him
into existence ont of nothing. It is quite true that
genuine moral excellence is really innate; but the meaning
of the Christian doctrine is expressed in another and more
rational way by the theory of metempsychosis, common
to Brahmans and Buddhists. According to this theory,
the qualities which distinguish one man from another are
received at birth, are brought, that is to say, from another
world and a former life; these qualities are not an external
gift of grace, but are the fruits of the acts committed in
that other world. But Augustine’s dogma of Predestina-
tion is connected with another dogma, namely, that the
mass of humanity is corrupt and doomed to eternal
damnation, that very few will be found righteous and
attain salvation, and that only in consequence of the gift
of grace, and because they are predestined to be saved;
while the remainder will be overwhelmed by the perdition
they have deserved, viz., eternal torment in hell. Taken
in its ordinary meaning, the dogma is revolting, for it
comes to this; it coudemns a man, who may be, perhaps,
scarcely twenty years of age, to expiate his errors, or even
his unbelief, in everlasting torment; nay, more, it makes
this almost universal damnation the natural effect of
original sin, and therefore the necessary consequence of
the Fall. This is a result which must have been foreseen
by him who made mankind, and who, in the first place,
made them not better than they are, and secondly, set a
trap for them into which he must have known they would
fall; for he made the whole world, and nothing is hidden
from him. According to this doctrine, then, God created
out of nothing a weak race prone to sin, in order to give
them over to endless torment. And, as a last character-
istic, we are told that this God, who prescribes forbear-
wuce and forgiveness of every fault, exercises none himself,
270 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

but does the exact opposite; for a punishment which
comes at the end of all things, when the world is over and
done with, cannot have for its object either to improve or
deter, and is therefore pure vengeance. So that, on this
view, the whole race is actually destined to eternal torture
and damnation, and created expressly for this end, the
only exception being those few persons who are rescued
by election of grace, from what motive one does not
know.

Putting these aside, it looks as if the Blessed Lord had
created the world for the benefit of the devil! it would
have been so much better not have made it at all. So
much, then, for a dogma taken sensu proprio. But look
at it sensu allegorico, and the whole matter becomes
capable of a satisfactory interpretation. What is absurd
and revolting in this dogma is, in the main, as I said, the
simple outcome of Jewish theism, with its ‘‘creation out
of nothing,” and the really foolish and paradoxical denial
of the doctrine of metempsychosis which is involved in
that idea, a doctrine which is natural, to a certain extent
self-evident, and, with the exception of the Jews, accepted
by nearly the whole human race at all times. To remove
the enormous evil arising from Augustine’s dogma, and to
modify its revolting nature, Pope Gregory I., in the sixth
century, very prudently matured the doctrine of Purga-
tory, the essence of which already existed in Origen (cf.
Bayle’s article on Origen, note B.). The doctrine was
regularly incorporated into the faith of the church, so
that the original view was much modified, and a certain
substitute provided for: the doctrine of metempsychosis;
for both the one and the other admit a process of purifi-
cation. To the same end, the doctrine of “the Restora-
tion of all things” (dwoxararéraeis) was established,
according to which, in the last act of the Human Comedy,
the sinners one and all will be reinstated in integrum.
It is only Protestants, with their obstinate belief in the
Bible, who cannot be induced to give up eternal punish-
ment in hell. If one were spiteful, one might say,
“much good may it do them,” but it is consoling to think
that they really do not believe the doctrine; they leave it
rae thinking in their hearts, ‘It can’t be so bad as all

at.

The rigid and systematic character of his mind led
THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. a0

Augustine, in his austere dogmatism and his resolute
definition of doctrines only just indicated in the Bible
and, as a matter of fact, resting on very vague grounds,
to give hard outlines to these doctrines and to put a harsh
construction on Christianity: the result of which is that
his views offend us, and just as in his day Pelagianism
arose to combat them, so now in our day Rationalism does
the same. ‘Take, for example, the case as he states it
generally in the ‘‘De Civitate Dei.” Bk. xii. ch. 21. It
comes to this: God creates a being out of nothing, forbids
him some things, and enjoins others upon him; and
because these commands are not obeyed, he tortures him
to all eternity with every conceivable anguish; and for
this purpose, binds soul and body inseparably together, so
that, instead of the torment destroying this being by
splitting him up into his elements, and so setting him
free, he may live to eternal pain. This poor creature,
formed out of nothing! At least, he has a claim on his
original nothing: he should be assured, as a matter of
right, of this last retreat, which, in any case, cannot be a
very evil one: it is what he has inherited. I, at any rate,
cannot help sympathizing with him. If you add to this
Augustine’s remaining doctrines, that all this does not
depend on the man’s own sins and omissions, but was
already predestined to happen, one really is at a loss what
to think. Our highly educated Rationalists say, to be
sure, ‘‘ It’s all false, it’s a mere bugbear; we’re in a state
of constant progress, step by step raising ourselves to ever
greater perfection.” Ah! what a pity we didn’t begin
sooner; we should already be there.

In the Christian system the devil is a personage of the
greatest importance. God is described as absolutely good,
wise and powerful; and unless he were counterbalanced
by the devil, it would be impossible to see where the in-
numerable and measureless evils, which predominate in
the world, come from, if there were no devil to account
for them. And since the Rationalists have done away
with the devil, the damage inflicted on the other side has
gone on growing, and is becoming more and more
palpable; as might have been foreseen, and was foreseen,
by the orthodox. The fact is, you cannot take away one
pular from a building without endangering the rest of it,
272 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

And this confirms the view, which has been established on
other grounds, that Jehovah is a_ transformation of
Ormuzd, and Satan of the Ahriman who must be taken in
connection with him. Ormuzd himself is a transforma-
tion of Indra.

Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that, un-
like other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine:
its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a
series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the
actions and sufferings of individuals: it is this history
which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation.
Other religions, Buddhism, for instance, have, it is true,
historical appendages, the life, namely of their founders:
this, however, is not part and parcel of the dogma, but is
taken along with it. For example, the Lalitavistara may
be compared with the Gospel so far it contains the life of
Sakya-muni, the Buddha of the present period of the
world’s history: but this is something which is quite
separate and different from the dogma, from the system
itself: and for this reason; the lives of former Buddhas
were quite other, and those of the future will be quite
other, than the life of the Buddha of to-day. The dogma
is by no means one with the career of its founder; it does
not rest on individual persons or events; it is something
universal and equally valid at all times. The Lalitavistara
is not, then, a gospel in the Christian sense of the word;
it is not the joyful message of an act of redemption; it is
the career of him who has shown how each one may redeem
himself. The historical constitution of Christianity
makes the Chinese laugh at missionaries as story-tellers.

I may mention here another fundamental error of
Christianity, an error which cannot be explained away,
and the mischievous consequences of which are obvious
every day: I mean the unnatural distinction Christianity
makes between man and the animal world to which he
really belongs. It sets up man as all-important, and looks
upon animals as merely things. Brahmanism, and
Buddhism, on the other hand, true to the facts, recognize
In a positive way that man is related generally to the
whole of nature, and specially and principally to animal
nature; and in their systems man is always represented, by
the theory of metempsychosis and otherwise, as closely
THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 273

connected with the animal world. The important part
played by animals all through Buddhism and Brahmanism,
compared with the total disregard of them in Judaism and
Christianity, puts an end to any question as to which
system is nearer perfection, however much we in Europe
may have become accustomed to the absurdity of the
claim. Christianity contains, in fact, a great and
essential imperfection in limiting its precepts to man, and
in refusing rights to the entire animal world. As religion
fails to protect animals against the rough, unfeeling and
often more than bestial multitude, the duty falls to the
police; and as the police are unequal to the task, societies
for the protection of animals are now formed all over Europe
and America. In the whole of uncircumcised Asia, such a
procedure would be the most superfluous thing in the
world, because animals are there sufficiently protected by
religion, which even makes them objects of charity.
How such charitable feelings bear fruit may be seen, to
take an example, in the great hospital for animals at
Surat, whither Christians, Mohammedans and Jews can
send their sick beasts, which, if cured, are very rightly
not restored to their owners. In the same way, when a
Brahman or Buddhist has a slice of good luck a happy
issue in any affair, instead of mumbling a Te Deum, he
goes to the market place and buys birds and opens their
cages at the city gate; a thing which may be frequently
seen in Astrachan, where the adherents of every religion
meet together: and so on in a hundred similar ways.
On the other hand, look at the revolting ruffianism with
which our Christian public treats its animals; killing them
for no object at all, and laughing over it, or mutilating
or torturing them: even its horses, who form its most
direct means of livelihood, are strained to the utmost in
their old age, and the last strength worked out of their
poor bones until they succumb at last under the whip.
One might say with truth, Mankind are the devils of
the earth, and the animals the souls they torment. But
what can you expect from the masses, when there are men of
education, zodlogists even, who, instead of admitting what
is so familiar to them, the essential identity of man and
animal, are bigoted and stupid enough to offer a zealous
opposition to their honest and rational colleagues, when
they class man under the proper head as an animal, or
an4 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

demonstrate the resemblance between him and_ the
chimpanzee or ourang-outang. It is a revolting thing
that a writer who is so pious and Christian in his senti-
ments as Jung Stilling should use a simile like this, in his
“© Scenen aus dem Geisterreich.” (Bk. II. sc. i., p. 15.)
«Suddenly the skeleton shriveled up into an indescribably
hideous and dwarf-like form, just as when you bring a
large spider into the focus of a burning glass, and watch
the purulent blood hiss and bubble in the heat.” This
man of God then was guilty of such infamy! or looked on
quietly when another was committing it! in either case it
comes to the same thing here. So little harm did he
think of it that he tells us of it in passing, and without a
trace of emotion. Such are the effects of the first chapter
of Genesis, and, in fact, of the whole of the Jewish con-
ception of nature. The standard recognized by the
Hindus and Buddhists is the Mahavakya (the great word)
—‘‘ tat-twam-asi,”’ (this is thyself), which may always be
spoken of every animal, to keep us in mind of the identity
of his inmost being with ours. Perfection of morality,
indeed! Nonsense.

The fundamental characteristics of the Jewish religion
are realism and optimism, views of the world which are
closely allied; they form, in fact, the conditions of theism.
For theism looks upon the material world as absolutely
real, and regards life as a pleasant gift bestowed upon us.
On the other hand, the fundamental characteristics of the
Brahman and Buddhist religions are idealism and
pessimism, which look upon the existence of the world as
in the nature of a dream, and life as the result of our
sins. In the doctrines of the Zendavesta, from which, as
is well known, Judaism sprang, the pessimistic element is
represented by Ahriman. In Judaism, Ahriman has
as Satwun only a subordinate position; but, ike Ahriman,
he is the lord of snakes, scorpions, and vermin. But the
Jewish system forthwith employs Satan to correct its
fundamental error of optimism, and in the Fall introduces
the element of pessimism, a doctrine demanded by the
most obvious facts of the world. There is no truer idea
in Judaism than this, although it transfers to the course
of existence what must be represented as its foundation
and antecedent, _
THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 275

The New Testament, on the other hand, must be in
some way traceable to an Indian source: its ethical system,
its ascetic view of morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar,
are all thoroughly Indian. It is its morality which places
it in a position of such emphatic and essential antagon-
ism to the Old Testament, so that the story of the Fall is
the only possible point of connection between the two.
For when the [ndian doctrine was imported into the land
of promise, two very different things had to be combined:
on the one hand the consciousness of the corruption and
misery of the world, its need of deliverance and salvation
through an Avatar, together with a morality based on
self-denial and repentance; on the other hand the Jewish
doctrine of Monotheism, with its corollary that ‘all things
are very good” (xavraxnadadiay.) And the task
succeeded as far as it could, as far, that is, as it was
possible to combine two such heterogeneous and antago-
nistic creeds.

As ivy clings for the support and stay it wants to a
rough-hewn post, everywhere conforming to its irregulari-
ties and showing their outline, but at the same time
covering them with life and grace, and changing the
former aspect into one that is pleasing to the eye; so the
Christian faith, sprung from the wisdom of India, over-
spreads the old trunk of rude Judaism, a tree of alien
growth; the original form must in part remain, but it
suffers 2 complete change and becomes full of life and
truth, so that it appears to be the same tree, but is really
another.

Judaism had represented the Creator as separated from
the world, which he produced out of nothing. Chris-
tianity identifies this Creator with the Saviour, and
through him, with humanity: he stands as their represen-
tative; they are redeemed in him, just as they fell in
Adam, and have lain ever since in the bonds of iniquity,
corruption, suffering aud death. Such is the view taken
by Christianity in common with Buddhism: the world
can no longer be looked at in the light of Jewish optimism,
which found “all things very good:” nay, in the Chris-
tian scheme, the devilis named as its Prince or Ruler,
(6 dpywrvir rév xd6uov rovrov. John 12, 33). The world is
no longer an end, but a means; and the realm of ever-
lasting joy lies beyond it and the grave. Resignation in
276 THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM.

this world and direction of all our hopes to a better form
the spirit of Christianity. The way to this end is opened
by the Atonement, that is, the Redemption from this
world and its ways. And in the moral system, instead of
the law of vengeance, there is the command to love your
enemy; instead of the promise of innumerable posterity,
the assurance of eternal life; instead of visiting the sins
of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth
generations, the Holy Spirit which over-shadows all.

We see, then, that the doctrines of the Old Testament
are rectified and their meaning changed by those of the
New, so that, in the most important and essential matters,
an agreement is brought about between them and the old
religions of India. Everything which is true in Chris-
tianity may also be found in Brahmanism and Buddhism.
But in Hinduism and Buddhism you will look in vain for
any parallel to the Jewish doctrines of ‘‘a nothing quick-
ened into life,” or of ‘‘a world made in time,” which
cannot be humble enough in its thanks and praises to
Jehovah for an ephemeral existence full of misery, anguish
and need.

Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have
ever given our race information as to the aim of its
existence and that of the world, is still in his childhood.
There is no other revelation than the thoughts of the
wise, even though these thoughts, liable to error as is the
lot of everything human, are often clothed in strange
allegories and myths under the name of religion. So far,
then, it isa matter of indifference whether a man lives
and dies in reliance on his own or another’s thoughts; for
it is never more than human thought, human opinion,
which he trusts. Still, instead of trusting what their own
minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trust-
ing others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowl-
edge. And in view of the enormous intellectual
inequality between man and man, it is easy to see that the
thoughts of one mind might appear as in some sense a
revelation to another.
A BRIEF DIALOGUE. 277
THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY :

A BRIEF DIALOGUE,

A. PHILosopHy has hitherto been a failure. It could
not, indeed, have been otherwise; because, instead of
confining himself to the better understanding of the world
as given in eXperience, the philosopher has aspired to pass
at one bound beyond it, in the hope of discovering the
last foundation of all existence and the eternal relations
of things. Now these are matters which our intellect is
quite incapable of grasping. Its power of comprehension
never reaches beyond what philosophers call “ finite
things,” or, as they sometimes say, ‘‘phenomena;” in
short, just the fleeting shadows of this world, and the
interests of the individual, the furtherance of his aims
and the maintenance of his person. And since our
intellect is thus immanent, our philosophy should be
immanent too, and not soar to supramundane things, but
be content with gaining a thorough grasp of the world of
experience. It surely provides matter enough for such a
study.

B If that is so, intellect is a miserable present for
Nature to give us. According to your view, the mind
serves only to grasp the relations that constitute our
wretched existence as individuals—relations which cease
with the brief span of our temporal life; and is utterly
unsuited to face those problems which are alone worthy
to interest a thinking being—what our existence really is,
and what the world means as a whole; in short, how we
are to solve the riddle of this dream of life. If all this is
so, and our mind could never grasp these things even
though they were explained to it, then I cannot see that
it is worth my. while to educate my mind, or to pay any
attention to it at all; it is a thing unworthy of any
respect.

A. My dear sir, if we wraugle with Nature, we are
usually in the wrong. For Nature does nothing that
is useless or in vain—nihil facit frustra nec supervacan-
eum. We are only temporal, finite, fleeting beings
creatures of a dream: and our existence passes away like
ashadow. What do we want with an intellect to grasp
278 THE FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY.

things that are infinite, eternal, absolute? And how
should such an intellect ever leave the consideration of
these high matters to apply itself again to the small facts
of our ephemeral life—the facts that are the only realities
for us and our proper concern? How could it ever be of
any use for them again? If nature had bestowed this
intellect upon us, the gift would not only have been an
immense mistake and quite in vain; it would even have
conflicted with the very aims that nature has designed for
us. For what good do we do, as Shakespeare says,

“< We fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition
With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.” *

If we had this perfect, this all embracing, metaphysical
insight, should we be capable of any physical insight
at all, or of going about our proper business? Nay, it
might plunge us forever into a state of chill horror, like
that of one who has seen a ghost.

B. But surely in all this you are making a notorious
petitio principit. Insaying that we are merely temporal,
fleeting, finite beings, you beg the whole question. We
are also infinite, eternal, and the original principle of
nature itself. Is it not then well worth our while to go
on trying if we cannot fathom nature after all—ob nicht
Natur zuletzt sich doch ergrinde?

A. Yes; but according to your own philosophy we are
infinite and eternal, only ina certain sense. We are in-
finite and eternal not as phenomena, but as the original
principle of nature; not as individuals, but as the inmost
essence of the world; not because we are subjects of
knowledge, but merely as manifestations of the will to
live. The qualities of which you speak are qualities that
have to do with intelligence, not will. As intelligent
beings we are individual and finite. Our intellect, then,
is also of this character. The aim of our life, if I may
use a metaphorical expression, is a practical, not a
theoretical one; our actions, not our knowledge, appertain
to eternity. The use of the intellect is to guide our
actions, and at the same time to hold up the mirror to our
will; and this is, in effect, what it does. If the intellect

 

* © Hamlet,” I, Se. 4.
THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 279

had more to do, it would very probably become unfit even
for this. Think howa small superfluity of intellect is a
bar to the career of the man endowed with it. Take the
case of genius: while it may be an inward blessing to its
possessor, it may also make him very unhappy in his
relations with the world.*

B. Good, that you reminded me of genius. To some
extent it upsets the facts you are trying to vindicate.
A genius is a man whose theoretical side enormously out-
weighs his practical. Even though he cannot grasp
eternal relations, he can see a little deeper into the things
of this world; attamen est quodam prodire tenus. It is
quite true that this does render the intellect of genius less
fit to grasp the finite things of earth; just as a telescope
is a good thing, but not in a theater. Here we seem to
have reached a point where we agree, and we -need not
pursue the subject further.

THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

THE REAL problem in the philosophy of art may be
very simply stated thus: How is it possible to take
pleasure in something that does not come into any relation
with the will?

Let me put this more fully. It is commonly felt that
pleasure and enjoyment in a thing can arise only when it
comes into some relation with our will, or, as we prefer
to say, when it serves some end which we have in view.
If this were so, it would seem to be a contradiction to
talk of pleasure which did not involve bringing the will
into play. And yet it is quite obvious that we derive
pleasure and enjoyment from the beautiful as such, quite
apart from any connection it may have with our personal
aims, or, in other words, with our will.

This problem I have solved in the following way: by
the beautiful we mean the essential and original forms
of animate and inanimate nature—in Platonic language,

 

* Translator’s Note.—This is a favorite remark of Schopenhauer’s.
Some account of his interesting theory of Genius touched upon at
the conclusion of this dialogue may be found in the concluding
section of this volume emitted: ‘‘ The Art of Literature.”
280 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

the Ideas; and they can be apprehended only by their
essential correlate, a knowing subject free from will;
in other words, a pure intelligence without purpose or
ends in view. Hence in the act of esthetic perception the
will has absolutely no place in consciousness. But it is
the will alone which is the fount of all our sorrows and
sufferings, and if it thus vanishes from consciousness, the
whole possibility of suffering is taken away. This it is
that explains the feeling of pleasure which accompanies
the perception of the beautiful.

If it should be objected that to take away the possibility
of suffering is also to take away the possibility of enjoy-
ment, it should be remembered that, as I have often ex-
plained, happiness and satisfaction are negative, in
their nature; in other words, they are merely freedom
from suffering; while pain is the positive element of ex-
istence. So that, when will vanishes from consciousness,
there yet remains over the state of enjoyment: that is to
say, the state in which there is a complete absence, not
only of pain, but in this case, even of the very possibility
of it.

To be freed from one’s self is what is meant by becoming
a pure intelligence. It consists in forgetfulness of one’s
own aims and complete absorption in the object of con-
templation; so that all we are conscious of is this one
object. And since this is a state of mind unattainable by
most men, they are, as a rule, unfitted for an objective
attitude toward the world; and it is just this that con-
stitutes the artistic faculty.

To the will as it exists in the individual is superadded
an intellectual faculty, which enables the will to become
conscious of itself and of the objects about it. This
intellectual faculty came into being in order to perform
the service of the will. Now, let us suppose that the will
sets the intellect at liberty for awhile and grants it a full
release from its service, so that the intellect may for the
moment dismiss its concern for the will; in other words,
abandon the personal service which forms its only natural
task, and, therefore, its regular occupation. If, at the
same time that it is thus released, the intellect does not
cease to be active and energetic, and use every endeavor to
arrive at a clear apprehension of the world, it becomes
completely objective; that is to say, it becomes a faithful
mirror of the things about it.
THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 281

It is only in this way, with a pure intelligence as
subject, that the object, pure and simple, can come into
existence. For this postulated relation between subject
and object to arise at all, it is necessary that the intel-
lectual faculty should not only be withdrawn from its
original service and be left altogether to itself, but also
that, when released, it should nevertheless preserve its
whole energy of activity; in spite of the fact that the
stimulus of this activity, the impulse of the will, is now
absent.

Therein lies the difficulty, and this is just why the
condition of mind necessary in artistic creation is so rare;
because all our thoughts and endeavors, our powers of
sight and hearing, are always naturally exerted, directly
or indirectly, in the service of our numerous personal
aims, great and small. It is the will that drives the
intellect to the fulfillment of its function, and the in-
tellect flags at once if the spur is withdrawn. Rendered
active in this way, the intellect is perfectly sufficient for
the needs of practical life, nay, even for the kind of
knowledge required in professional business. For there
the aim is to understand only the relations of things, not
the inner reality peculiar to them; and this kind of
knowledge proceeds by applying such principles of reason-
ing as govern the relation in which things may stand to one
another.

But though in the conception of a work of art the
intellect is all in all, in the execution of it, where the
aim is to communicate and represent what has been con-
ceived, the will may, nay, must become active again; just
because there is an aim to be carried out. Accordingly,
in this sphere, the principles of reasoning which govern
the relations of things again come into play. It is in
conformity with these principles that the means used by
art are so contrived as to produce artistic effects. Thus
we find the painter concerned with the accuracy of his
drawing and the manipulation of his colors, and the poet
looking first to the arrangement of his subject and then to
a right use of expression and the laws of metre.

In the selection of a theme, both poetry and the plastic
arts take some one individual person or thing and en-
deavor to present it as a separate ,entity, with all its
peculiarities, even down to the minutest, exhibited with
282 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

the most accurate precision. Science, on the other hand,
works by the treatment of abstract ideas, every one of
them representing innumerable individuals; and it pro-
ceeds to define and mark out the characteristics of these
ideas, so as to fix them once for all. A comparison
between these two methods might lead one to suppose
that art is an insignificant, petty, nay, almost childish
pursuit. But the nature of art is such that with it one
case holds good for a thousand; for by a careful and
detailed preservation of a single individual, person or thing,
it aims at revealing the idea of the genus to which that
person or thing belongs. Thus some one event or scene
in the life of a man, described with complete truth—
described, tnat is to say, so as to exhibit precisely all the
individuals which go to make it what it is—gives us a
clear and profound insight into the idea of humanity
itself, as seen from this particular point of view. But, in
spite of this difference of method between science and art,
there is some similarity in their treatment of single facts.
For just as the botanist picks a single flower from the
boundless realm of the vegetable world, and then takes it
to pieces in order to demonstrate, from the single specimen,
the nature of the plant itself; so the poet chooses out of
the endless turmoil of human life as it hurries incessantly
on its way, some one scene, nay, often only some one
mood, some one sensation, so that he may show us from it
what is the life and character of man.

And thus it is that the greatest minds, Shakespeare and
Goethe, Raphael and Rembrandt, do not think it un-
worthy of them to bring some quite ordinary person before
us—not even one that is anything beyond the common—
to delineate him with the greatest accuracy, in the en-
deavor to show him to us in the most minute particularity.
For it is only when they are put before us in this way
that we can apprehend individual and particular facts of
life; and that is why I have defined poetry as the art of
rousing the imagination by means of words.

If the reader wishes for a direct example of the advan-
tage which intuitive knowledge—the primary and funda-
mental kind—has over abstract thought, as showing that
art reveals to us more than we can gain from all the
sciences, let him look at a beautiful human face, full of
expressive emotion; and that too whether in nature itself
THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 2838

or as presented to us by the mediation of art. How much
deeper is the insight gained into the essential character
of man, nay, into nature in general, by this sight than by
all the words and abstract expressions which may be used
to describe it. When a beautiful face beams with
laughter, it is as though a fine landscape were suddenly
illuminated by a ray of light darting from the clouds.
Therefore ridete, puelle, ridete!

Let me here state the general reason why the idea, in
the Platonic meaning of the word, may be more easily
apprehended from a picture than from reality; in other
language, why a picture makes a nearer approach to the
idea. <A work of art is some objective reality as it appears
after it has passed through a subject. From this point
of view, it may be said to bear the same relation to the
mind as animal food, which is vegetable food already
assimilated, bears to the body.

But there is another and deeper reason for the fact in
question. The product of plastic and pictorial art does
not present us, as reality does, with something that exists
once only aud then is gone forever—the connection, I
mean, between this particular matter and this particular
form. It is this connection which is the essence of any
concrete individuality, in the strict sense of the word.
This kind of art shows us the form alone; and this, if it
were given in its whole entirety, would be the idea. The
picture, therefore leads us at once from the individual to
the mere form; and this separation of the form from the
matter brings the form very much nearer the idea. Now
every artistic representation, whether painting or statue,
is just such a separation; and hence this separation, this
disjunction of the form from the matter is part of the
character of a work of esthetic art, because it is just the
aim of such art to bring us to the knowledge of the idea.

It is, therefore, essential to a work of art that it should
give the form alone without the matter; and, further, that
it should do so without any possibility of mistake on the
part of the spectator. This is really the reason why wax fig-
ures produce no esthetic impression, and therefore are not,
in the esthetic sense, works of art at all; although if they
were well made, they produce an illusion a hundred times
greater than the best picture or statue could effect; so that
if deceptive imitation of reality were the object of art,
284 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

they would have to take the first place. For a wax figure
of a man appears to give not only the mere form but with
it the matter as well, so that it produces the illusion that
the man himself is standing before you. The true work of
art should lead us from the individual fact, in other words,
that which exists once only, and then is gone forever, to
the mere form or the idea—in other words, that which
always exists an infinite number of times in an infinite
number of ways. Instead of doing this, the wax figure
appears to present us with the individual himself—in other
words, with that which exists once only, and then never
again; and yet, at the same time, it fails to represent the
life which gives such a fleeting existence its value. This
is why a wax figure is repulsive; it is stiff and stark, and
reminds us of a corpse.

It might be thought that it is sculpture alone which
gives form without matter; and that painting gives matter
as well as form, by making color serve to imitate matter
and its composition. But this objection would imply that
form is to be taken in a purely geometrical sense; and that
is not what is here meant. Form must be taken in the
philosophical sense of the word, as the opposite of matter;
and therefore it includes color, surface, texture; in short,
quality, in whatever it may consist. It is quite true that
sculpture alone gives form in the purely geometrical sense,
exhibiting it on a matter which the eye can see to be
foreign to the form, namely, marble; and in this way the
form comes to stand by itself so as to strike the eye at
once.

But painting does not give matter at all, and it gives
only the mere appearance of the form, not in the geomet-
rical, but in the philosophical, sense just described.
Painting, I say, does not give even the form itself, but
only the mere appearance of it—that is to say, merely its
effect on one of our senses, the sense of sight; and that,
too, only in go far as a particular act of vision is concerned.
This is why a picture in oils does not really produce the
illusion that the thing represented is actually before us,
both in form and matter. The imitative truth of a picture
is always subordinated to certain admitted conditions of
this method of representation. Thus, by the unavoidable
suppression of the parallax of our two eyes, a picture
always makes things appear in the way in which a one-
THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART. 285

eyed person would see them. ‘Therefore painting, equally
with sculpture, gives the form alone; for it presents
nothing but the effect of the form—an effect confined to
one of the senses only, namely, that of sight.
“In connection with this subject it is to be observed that
copper-plates and monochromes answer to a more noble
and elevated taste than chromographs and water-colors;
while the latter are preferred by persons of little culture.
This is obviously due to the fact that pictures in black
and white give the form alone, the form, as it were, in
the abstract; and the apprehension of this is, as we know,
intellectual, in other words, a matter of the intuitive un-
derstanding. Color, on the other hand, is merely an affair
of sense, nay more, of a particular arrangment in the organ
of sight which depends upon the activity of the retina.
In respect of the taste to which they appeal, colored prints
may be likened to rhymed, and copper-plates to blank,
yerse.* The union of beauty and grace in the human
form is the clearest manifestation of the will on the top-
most stage of its objectivation, and for that very reason
the highest achievement of the plastic and pictorial arts.
But still, everything that is natural is beautiful. If there
are some animals of which we find a difficulty in believing
this to be true, the reason of it is that we are unable to
look at them in a purely objective light, so as to appre-
hend their idea. We are prevented from doing so by some
unavoidable association of thought, chiefly the result of
some similarity which forces itself upon our notice; as, for
instance, the similarity of the ape with man; so that in-
stead of apprehending the idea of an ape, what we seeis the
caricature of a man. ‘In the same way a toad appears to
produce an effect upon us similar to that of dirt and slime,
and yet this is not enough to explain the unbounded aver-
sion, nay, the feeling of dread and horror, which comes
over some people at the sight of this animal, as over others
when they see a spider. The feeling appears to be deeper
than any mere association can explain, and to be traceable
to some mysterious fact of a metaphysical nature,
The inorganic world, so far as it does not consist of
mere water, produces a very sad, nay, an oppressive effect
upon the feelings, whenever it is presented to us quite by

 

* Cf, Welt als und Vorstellung, Vol. II., p.488,
286 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ART.

itself. Examples of what I mean are afforded by districts
which offer to the eye nothing but a mass of bare crags;
that long valley of rocks, for instance, without a trace of
vegetation, near Toulon, on the way to Marseilles. The
same effect is produced on a large scale, and_ in a much
more striking degree, by the African desert. The melan-
choly impression which this kind of scenery makes is
mainly due to the fact that masses of inorganic matter
obey one law only, the law of gravity; and consequently
everything is disposed in accordance with it.

Contrarily, the sight of vegetation produces a feeling of
direct pleasure, and that too in a high degree; and the
pleasure is greater in proportion as the vegetation is rich,
various, luxuriant, and left to itself. The more immediate
reason of this is that, in the case of vegetation, the law of
gravity appears to be overcome, as the vegetable world
tends to move ina direction the exact contrary of that
taken by gravity. This is, indeed, the direct way in
which the phenomenon of life announces its presence, as a
new and higher order of things. It is an order to which
we ourselves belong; it is something akin to us and the
element of our being. And so at the sight of it, our heart
is moved. That straight upward direction is the source of
our pleasurable feeling. This is why a fine group of trees
looks so much better if a few tall tapering pines shoot out
from the middle of it. On the other hand, a tree that has
been cut down has lost all its effect upon us: and one that
grows obliquely has not so much as one that stands straight
up.

ah tree which bends over the earth with its branches
obedient to the law of gravity, makes us melancholy; and
and we call it the weeping willow.

Water neutralizes in a great measure the oppressive
effect of its inorganic composition by its exceeding mobil-
ity, which gives it an appearance of life, and also by its
constant interplay of light and shade. Besides, water is
absolutely indispensable for the existence of life.

But above and beyond this, the pleasurable feeling
which the sight of vegetable nature gives us, comes from
that look of rest, peace and satisfaction which it wears;
while the animal world is mostly presented to us in a
state of unrest, pain, even of struggle. This explains why
it is so easy for the sight of vegetation to put us into a
THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ARTS. 287

state where we become a pure intelligence, freed from
ourselves.

It is a very astonishing thing that vegetation, even
of the commonest and humblest kind, is no sooner with-
drawn from the capricious influence of man than it
straightway groups itself picturesquely and strikes the eye
as beautiful. This is true of every little spot of earth that
has been left wild and uncultivated, even though thistles,
thorns and the commonest flowers of the field were all it
bore. Where the ground is tilled—in cornfields, for
instance, and kitchen-gardens, the esthetic element in the
vegetable world sinks to a minimum.

It has long been observed that everything constructed
for the use of man, whether it is a building or only an
utensil, must, if it is to be beautiful, preserve a certain
similarity with the works of Nature. Buta mistake has
been made in thinking that the similarity must directly
strike the eye and have to do with the shape the thing
takes; as, for instance, that pillars should represent trees
or human limbs; that receptacles should be shaped like
mussels or snail-shells, or the calyx of a flower, and that
vegetable or animal forms should be met with everywhere
in Art.

The similarity should be indirect; that isto say, it should
lie not in the shape itself, but in its character. One shape
may differ from another in actual appearance aad yet be the
same in character. Accordingly, buildings and utensils
should not be imitated from Nature, but should be con-
structed in the spirit of Nature. This will show itself in a
perfect adaptation of means to ends, so that the thing itself
and every part of it may directly proclaim what its purpose
is. This will be effected when that purpose is attained in the
shortest way and in the simplest manner. It is just this
striking conformity to a certain end that stamps the
products of Nature.

In Nature the will works from within outward, after
completely dominating its material. But in Art it works
from without, by a process of intuition; it may be, by set-
ting up the abstract idea of the purpose which the object
of art is to serve; it then attains its end and delivers itself
of its meaning by impressing it upon some alien material;
that is to say, some material originally devoted to another
form of will, Yet for all that, the character I have de-
288 THE METAPHYSICS OF FINE ARTS.

scribed as belonging toa product of Nature may be pre-
served. ‘This is shown by the ancient style of architecture,
where every part or member is precisely suited to the pur-
pose it is immediately meant to serve—a purpose thus
naively brought into view, and where there isa total absence
of anything that does not serve some purpose.

To this is opposed that Gothic style, which owes its mys-
terious appearance just to the multitude of aimless orna-
ments and accessories it displays, where we are obliged to
ascribe to them some purpose which we cannot discern;
and again, that quite degenerate style of architecture
which affects originality by playing, in all sorts of unneces-
sary and roundabout ways, with the means used for pro-
ducing artistic effect, dallying capriciously with them, and
at the same time misunderstanding their aim.

The same remark holds good of ancient vessels and uten-
sils, the beauty of which is due to the fact that they so
naively express their nature, and the purpose they were
meant to serve, and so of all other receptacles made by the
ancients. You feel in looking at them that if Nature had
produced vases, amphore, lamps, tables, stools, helmets,
shields, armor and so on, they would be made in that
style.

As regards the birth of a work of art in a man’s mind,
if he is only in a susceptible mood, almost any object that
comes within his range of perception will begin to speak
to him, in other words, will generate in him some lively,
penetrating, original thought. So itis that a trivial event
may become the seed of a great and glorious work. Jacob
Bohme is said to have been enlightened upon some deep
point of natural science by the sudden sight of a tin can.

In the end it all depends upon the power a man has in
himself; and just as no food or medicine will bestow or
take the place of vital energy, so no book or study can give
a tana mind of his own.
THE ART OF LITERATURE.
THE ART OF LITERATURE.

ON AUTHORSHIP.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who
write for the subject’s sake, and those who write for writ-
ing’s sake. While the one have had thoughts or experi-
ences which seem to them worth communicating, the others
want money, and so they writefor money. Their thinking
is part of the business of writing. They may be recog-
nized by the way in which they spin out their thoughts to
the greatest possible length; then, too, by the very nature
of their thoughts, which are only half-true, perverse,
forced, vacillating; again, by the aversion they generally
show to saying anything straight out, so that they may
seem other than they are. Hence their writing is deficient
in clearness and definiteness, and it is not long before they
betray that their only object in writing at all is to cover
paper. This sometimes huppens with the best authors:
now and then, for example, with Lessing in his ‘“‘ Drama-
turgie,” and even in many of Jean Paul’s romances. As
soon as the reader perceives this, let him throw the book
away; for time is precious. The truth is that when an
author begins to write for the sake of covering paper he is
cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext
that he has something to say.

Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at
bottom, the ruin of literature. No one writes anything
that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake
of his subject. What an inestimable boon it would be, if
in every branch of literature there were only a few books,
but those excellent! ‘This can never happen, as long as
money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the
money lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as
soon as he begins to put pen to paper in any way for the
sake of gain. ‘The best works of the greatest men all come
292 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

from the time when they had to write for nothing or for
very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds
good, which declares that honor and money are not to be
found in the same purse—honray provecho no caben en un
saco. The reason why literature is in such a bad plight
nowadays is simply and solely that people write books to
make money. A man who is in want sits down and writes
a book, and the public is stupid enough to buy it. The
secondary effect of this is the ruin of language.

A great many bad writers make their whole living by
that foolish mania of the public for reading nothing but
what has just been printed—journalists, I mean. Truly,
a most appropriate name. In plain language it is jour-
neymen, day-laborers!

Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of
authors. First come those who write without thinking.
They write froma full memory, from reminiscences; it
may be, even straight out of other people’s books. This
class is the most numerous. Then come those who do
their thinking whilst they are writing. They think in
order to write; and there is no lack of them. Last of all
come those authors who think before they begin to write.
They are rare.

Authors of the second class, who put off their thinking
‘ until they come to write, are like a sportsman who goes
forth at random and is not likely to bring very much
home. On the other hand, when an author of the third
or rare class writes, it is like a battwe. Here the game has
been previously captured and shut up within a very small
space, from which it is afterward let out, so many at a
time, into another space, also confined. The game can-
not possibly escape the sportsman; he has nothing to do
but aim and fire—in other words, write down his thoughts.
This is akind of sport from which a man has something
to show.

But even though the number of those who really think
seriously before they begin to write is small, extremely few
of them think about the subject itself: the remainder
think only about the books that have been written on the
subject, and what has been said by others. In order to
think at all, such writers need the more direct and power-
ful stimulus of having other people’s thoughts before
them. These become their immediate theme, and the
ON AUTHORSHIP. 293

result is that they are always under their influence, and so
never, in any real sense of the word, original. But the
former are roused to thought by the subject itself, to
which their thinking is thus immediately directed. This
is the only class that produces writers of abiding fame.

It must, of course, be understood that Iam speaking
here of writers who treat of great subjects; not of writers
on the art of making brandy.

Unless an author takes the material on which he writes
out of his own head, that is to say, from his own observa-
tion, he is not worth reading. Book-manufacturers,
compilers, the common run of history-writers, and many
others of the same class, take their material immediately
out of books; and the material goes straight to their finger-
tips without even paying freight or undergoing examina-
tion as it passes through their heads, to say nothing of
elaboration or revision. How very learned many a man
would be if he knew everything that was in his own books!
The consequence of this is that these writers talk in such
a loose and vague manner, that the reader puzzles his
brains in vain to understand what it is of which they are
really thinking. They are thinking of nothing. It may
now and then be the case that the book from which they
copy has been composed exactly in the same way; so that
writing of this sort is like a plaster cast of a cast; and in
the end, the bare outline of the face, and that, too, hardly
recognizable, is all that is left of your Antinous. Let
compilations be read as seldom as possible. It is difficult
to avoid them altogether, since compilations also include
those text-books which contain in a small space the ac-
cumulated knowledge of centuries.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the
last work is always the more correct; that what is written
later on is in every case an improvement on what was
written before; and that change always means progress.
Real thinkers, men of right judgment, people who are in
earnest with their subject—these are all exceptions only.
Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always
on the alert, taking the mature opinions of the thinkers,
and industriously seeking to improve upon them (save
the mark!) in its own peculiar way.

If the reader wishes to study any subject, let him beware
of rushing to the newest books upon it, and confining his
294 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

attention to them alone, under the notion that science is
always advancing, and that the old books have been drawn
upon in the writing of the new. They have been drawn
upon, itis true; but how? The writer of the new book
often does not understand the old books thoroughly, and
yet he is unwilling to take their exact words; so he bungles
them, and says in his own bad way that which has been
said very much better and more clearly by the old writers,
who wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject.
The new writer frequently omits the best things they say,
their most striking illustrations, their happiest remarks;
because he does not see their value or feel how pregnant
they are. The only thing that appeals to him is what is
shallow and insipid.

It often happens that an old and excellent book is ousted
by new and bad ones, which, written for money, appear
with an air of great pretension and much puffing on the
part of friends. In science a man tries to make his mark
by bringing out something fresh. This often means noth-
ing more than that he attacks some received theory which
is quite correct, in order to make room for his own false
notions. Sometimes the effort is successful for a time; and
then a return is made to the old and true theory. These
innovators are serious about nothing but their own precious
self; it is this that they want to put forward, and the quick
way of doing so, as they think, is to start a paradox.
Their sterile heads take naturally to the path of negation;
so they begin to deny trutis that have long been admitted
—the vital power, for example, the sympathetic nervous
system, generatio equivoca, Bichat’s distinction between the
working of the passions and the working of intelligence; or
else they want us to return to crass atomism, and the like.
Hence it frequently happens that ‘‘ the course of science is
retrogressive.”

To this class of writers belong those translators who not
only translate their author but also correct and revise him;
a proceeding which always seems to me impertinent. To
such writers I say: Write books yourself which are worth
translating, and leave other people’s works as they are!

The reader should study, if he can, the real authors, the
men who have founded and discovered things; or, at any
rate, those who are recognized as the great masters in every
branch of knowledge. Let him buy second-hand books
ON AUTHORSHIP. 295

rather than read their contents in new ones. To be sure,
it is easy to acd to any new discovery—inventis aliquid
addere facile est; and, therefore, the student, after well
mastering the rudiments of his subject, will have to make
himself acquainted with the more recent additions to the
knowledge of it. And, in general, the following rule may
be laid down here as elsewhere; if a thing is new, it is
seldom good; because if it is good, it is only for a short
time new.

What the address is to a letter, the title should be to a
book; in other words, its main object should be to bring
the book to those among the public who will take an inter-
est in its contents. It should, therefore, be expressive;
and since by its very nature it must be short, it should be
concise, laconic, pregnant, and if possible give the con-
tentsin one word. A prolix title is bad; and so is one
that says nothing, or is obscure and ambiguous, or even, it
may be, false and misleading; this last may possibly in-
volve the book in the same fate as overtakes a wrongly ad-
dressed letter. The worst titles of all are those which
have been stolen, those, I mean, which have al-
ready been borne by other books; for they are in the
first place a plagiarism, and secondly the most convincing
proof of a total lack of originality in the author. A man
who has not enough originality to invent a new title for
his book, will be still less able to give it new contents.
Akin to these stolen titles are those which have been imi-
tated, that is to say, stolen to the extent of one half; for
instance, long after I had produced my treatise “On Will
in Nature,” Orested wrote a book entitled ‘On Mind in
Nature.”

A book can never be anything more than the impress of
its author’s thoughts; and the value of these will lie either
“‘in the matter about which he has thought,” or in the
form which his thoughts take, in other words, ‘‘ what it is
that he has thought about it.”

The matter of books is most various; and various also
are the several excellences attaching to books on the score
of their matter. By matter I mean everything that comes
within the domain of actual experience; that is to say, the
facts of history and the facts of nature, taken in and by
themselves and in their widest sense. Here itis the thing
treated of which gives its peculiar character to the book;
296 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

so that a book can be important, whoever it was that wrote
it.

But in regard to the form, the peculiar character of a
a book depends upon the person who wrote it. It may
treat of matters which are accessible to every une and well
known; but it is the way in which they are treated, what
it is that is thought about them, that gives the book its
value; and this comes from its author. If, then, from
this point of view a book is excellent and beyond compari-
gon, soisits author It follows that if a writer is worth
reading his merit rises just in proportion as he owes little
to his matter; therefore, the better known and the more
hackneyed this is, the greater he will be. The three great
tragedians of Greece, for example, all worked at the same
subject-matter.

So when a book is celebrated, care should be taken to
note whether it is so on account of its matter or its form;
and a distinction should be made accordingly.

Books of great importance on account of their matter
may proceed from very ordinary and shallow people, by
the fact that they alone have had access to this matter;
books, for instance, which describe journeys in distant
lands, rare natural phenomena, or experiments; or histor-
ical occurrences of which the writers were witnesses, or in
connection with which they have spent much time and
trouble in the rescarch and special study of original docu-
ments.

On the other hand where the matter is accessible to
every one or very well known, everything will depend upon
the form; and what it is that is thought about the matter
will give the book all the value it possesses. Here only a
really distinguished man will be able to produce anything
worth reading; for the others will think nothing but what
any one else can think. They will just produce an impress
of their own minds; but this is a print of which every one
possesses the original.

However, the public is very much more concerned to
have matter than form; and for this very reason it is
deficient in any high degree of culture. The public shows
its preference in this respect in the most laughable way
when it comes to deal with poetry; for there it devotes
much trouble to the task of tracking out the actual events
or personal circumstances in the life of the poet which
ON AUTHORSHIP. 297

served as the occasion of his varions works; nay, these
events and circumstances come in the end to be of greater
importance than the works themselves; and rather than
read Goethe himself, people prefer to read what has been
written about him, and to study the legend of Faust more
industriously than the drama of that name. And when
Birger declared that ‘‘ people would write learned dis-
quisitions on the question, who Leonora really was,” we
find this literally fulfilled in Goethe’s case; for we now
possess a great many learned disquisitions on Faust and
the legend attaching to him. Study of this kind is, and
remains, devoted to the material of the drama alone. To
give such preference to the matter over the form, is as
though a man were to take a fine Etruscan vase, not to
admire its shape or coloring, but to make a chemical
analysis of the clay and paint of which it is composed.

The attempt to produce an effect by means of the
material employed—an attempt which panders to this evil
tendency of the public—is most to be condemned in
branches of literature where any merit there may be lies
expressly in the form; J mean, in poetical work. For all
that, it is not rare to find bad dramatists trying to fill the
house by means of the matter about which they write.
For example, authors of this kind do not shrink from put-
ting on the stage any man who is in any way celebrated,
no matter whether his life may have been entirely devoid
of dramatic incident; and sometimes, even, they do not
wait until the persons immediately connected with him are
dead.

The distinction between matter and form to which I am
here alluding, also holds good of conversation. The chief
qualities which enable a man to converse well are intelli-
gence, discernment, wit and vivacity: these supply the
form of conversation. But it is not long before attention
has to be paid to the matter of which he speaks; in other
words, the subjects about which it is possible to converse
with him—his knowledge. If this is very small, his conver-
sation will not be worth anything, unless he possesses the
above named formal qualities in a very exceptional degree:
for he will have nothing to talk about but those facts of
life and nature which everybody knows. It will be just
the opposite, however, if a man is deficient in these formal
qualities, but has an amount of knowledge which lends
298 THER ART OF LITERATURE.

value to what he says. This value will then depend
entirely upon the matter of his conversation; for, as
the Spanish proverb has it, mas sabe el necio en su casa,
que el sabio en la ageno—a fool knows more of his own busi-
ness than a wise man of others’.

ON STYLE.

STYLE is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer
index to character than the face. To imitate another
man’s style is like wearing a mask, which, be it never so
fine, is not long in arousing disgust and abhorrence, be-
cause it is lifeless; so that even the ugliest living face is bet-
ter. Hence those who write in Latin and copy the man-
ner of ancient authors, may be said to speak through a
mask; the reader, it is true, hears what they say, but he
cannot observe their physiognomy too; he cannot see their
style. With the Latin works of writers who think for
themselves, the case is different, and their style is visible;
writers, I mean, who have not condescended to any sort of
imitation, such as Scotus Erigena, Petrarch, Bacon, Des-
cartes, Spinoza, and many others. And affectation in
style is like making grimaces. Further, the language in
which a man writes is the physiognomy of the nation to
which he belongs; and here there are many hard and fast
differences, beginning from the language of the Greeks,
down to that of the Caribbean islanders.

To form a provisional estimate of the value of a writer’s
productions, it is not directly necessary to know the subject
on which he has thought, or what it is that he has said
about it; that would imply a perusal of all his works. It
will be enough, in the main, to know how he has thought.
This, which means the essential temper or general quality
of his mind, may be precisely determined by his style. A
man’s style shows the formal nature of all his thoughts—
the formal nature which can never change, be the subject
or the character of his thoughts what it may: it is, as it
were, the dough out of which all the contents of his mind
are kneaded. When Eulenspicgel was asked how long it
would take to walk to the next village, he gave the seem-
ingly incongruous answer: Walk. He wanted to find out by
ON STYLE. 999

the man’s pace the distance he would cover in a given time.
In the same way, when I have read a few pages of an
author, I know fairly well how far he can bring me.

Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural
style, because in his heart he knows the truth of what I
am saying. He is thus forced, at the outset, to give up
any attempt at being frank or naive—a privilege which is
thereby reserved for superior minds, conscious of their own
worth, and therefore sure of themselves. What I mean is
that these everyday writers are absolutely unable to resolve
upon writing just as they think; because they have a
notion that, were they to do so, their work might possibly
look very childish and simple. For all that, it would not
be without its value. If they would only go honestly to
work, and say, quite simply, the things they have really
thought, and just as they have thought them, these writers’
would be readable, and, within their own proper sphere,
even instructive.

But instead of that, they try to make the reader believe
that their thoughts have gone much further and deeper
than is really the case. They say what they have to say
in long sentences that wind about in a forced and unnatural
way: they coin new words and write prolix periods which
go round and round the thought and wrap it up in a sort
of disguise. They tremble between the two separate
aims of communicating what they want to say and of con-
cealing it. Their object is to dress it up so that it may look
learned or deep, in order to give people the impression
that there is very much more in it than for the moment
meets the eye. They either jot down their thoughts bit
by bit, in short, ambiguous, and paradoxical sentences,
which apparently mean much more than they say, of this
kind of writing Schelling’s treatises on natural philosophy
are a splendid instance; or else they hold forth with a
deluge of words and the most intolerable diffusiveness, as
though no end of fuss were necessary to make the reader
understand the deep meaning of their sentences, whereas
it is some quite simple if not actually trivial idea—exam~
ples of which may be found in plenty in the popular works
of Fichte, and the philosophical manuals of a hundred other
miserable dunces not worth mentioning; or, again, they
try to write in some particular style which they have been
pleased to take up and think very grand, a style, for exam-
300 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

ple, par excellence profound and scientific, where the
reader is tormented to death by the narcotic effect of long-
spun periods without a single idea in them—such as are
furnished in a special measure by those most impudent of
all mortals, the Hegelians;* or it may be that it is an in-
tellectual style they have striven after, where it seems as
though their object were to go crazy altogether; and so on
in many other cases. All these endeavors to put off the
nascetur ridiculus mus—to avoid showing the funy little
creature that is born after such mighty throes—often make
it difficult to know what it is that they really mean. And
then, too, they write down words, nay, even whole sen-
tences, without attaching any meaning to them themselves
but in the hope that some one else will get sense out of
them.

And what is at the bottom of all this? Nothing but
the untiring effort to sell words for thoughts; a mode of
merchandise that is always trying to make fresh openings for
itself, and by means of odd expressions, turns of phrase,
and combinations of every sort, whether new or used ina
new sense, to produce the appearance of intellect in order
to make up for the very painfully felt lack of it.

It is amusing to see how writers with this object in view
will attempt firss one mannerism and then another, as
though they were putting on the mask of intellect! This
mask may possibly deceive the inexperienced for awhile,
until it is seen to be a dead thing, with no life in it at all:
it is then laughed at and exchanged foranother. Such an
author will at one moment write in a dithyrambic vein, as
though he were tipsy; at another, nay, on the very next
page, he will be pompous, severe, profoundly learned and
prolix, stumbling on in the most cumbrous way and chop-
ing up everything very small; like the late Christian Wolf,
only in a modern dress. Longest of all lasts the mask of
unintelligibility; but this is only in Germany, whither it
was introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and
carried to its highest pitch in Hegel—always with the
best results.

And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one
can understand; just as, contrarily, nothing is more diffi-

* In their Hegel-gazette, commonly known as Jahrbucher der
wissenschaftlichen Literatur.
ON STYLE. 301

cult than to express deep things in such a way that every
one must necessarily grasp them. All the arts and tricks
I have been mentioning are rendered superfluous if the au-
thor really has any brains; for that allows him to show
himself as he is, and confirms to all time Horace’s maxim
that good sense is the source and origin of good style:

“‘Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.”

But those authors I have named are like certain workers
in metal, who try a hundred different compounds to take
the place of gold—the only metal which can never have
any substitute. Rather than do that, there is nothing
against which a writer should be more upon his guard than
the manifest endeavor to exhibit more intellect than he
really has; because this makes the reader suspect that he
possesses very little; since it is always the case that if a
man affects anything, whatever it may be, it is just there
that he is deficient.

That is why it is praise to an author to say that he is
naive; it means that he need not shrink from showing
himself as he is. Generally speaking, to be naive is to be
attractive; while lack of naturalness is everywhere repulsive.
As a matter of fact we find that every really great writer
tries to express his thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely
and shortly as possible. Simplicity has always been held
to be a mark of truth: it is also a mark of genius. Style
receives its beauty from the thought it expresses; but with
sham thinkers the thoughts are supposed to be fine because
of the style. Style is nothing but the mere silhouette of
thought; and an obscure or bad style means a dull or con-
fused brain.

The first rule, then, for a good style is that the author
should have something to say; nay, this is in itself almost
all that is necessary. Ah, how much it means! The
neglect of this rule is a fundamental trait in the philoso-
phical writing, and, in fact, in all the reflective
literature of my country, more especially since Fichte.
These writers all let it be seen that they want to appear as
though they had something to say; whereas they have
nothing to say. Writing of this kind was brought in by
the pseudo-philosophers at the universities, and now it is
current everywhere, even among the first literary notabili-
302 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

ties of the age. It is the mother of that strained and
vague style, where there seem to be two or even more
meanings in the sentence; also of that prolix and cumbrous
manner of expression, called le stile empesé; again, of that
mere waste of words which consists in pouring them out
like a flood; finally, of that trick of concealing the direst
poverty of thought under a farrago of never-ending chatter,
which clacks away like a windmill and quite stupefies one
—stuff which a man may read for hours together without
getting hold of a single clearly expressed and definite idea. *
However, people are easy-going, and they have fcrmed the
habit of reading page upon page of all sorts of such verbi-
age, without having any particular idea of what the author
really means. They fancy it is all as it should be, and fail
to discover that he is writing simply for writing’s sake.

On the other hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, soon
wins his reader’s confidence that, when he writes, he has
really and truly something to say; and this gives the
intelligent reader patience to follow him with attention.
Such an author, just because he really has something to
say, will never fail to express himself in the simplest and
most straightforward manner: because his object is to
awake the very same thought in the reader that he has in
himself, and no other. So he will be able to affirm with
Boileau that his thoughts are everywhere open to the light
of day, and that his verse always says something, whether
it says it well or ill:

“‘ Ma pensée au grand jour partout s’offre et s’expose,

Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque chose. ”
while of the writers previously described it may be asserted,
in the words of the same poet, that they talk much and
never say anything at all—gui parlant beaucoup ne disent
jamais rien.

Another characteristic of such writers is that they always
avoid a positive assertion wherever they can possibly do so,
in order to leave a loophole for escape in case of need.
Hence they never fail to choose the more abstract way of
expressing themselves; whereas intelligent people use the
more concrete; because the latter brings things more within

* Select examples of the art of writing in this style are to be found
almost passim in the Jahrbiicher, published in Halle, afterward
called the Deutschen Jahrbiicher, ; :
ON STYLE. 303

the range of actual demonstration, which is the source of
all evidence.

There are many examples proving this preference for
abstract expression; and a particularly ridiculous one is
afforded by the use of the verb ‘‘to condition” in the
sense of to cause or to produce. People say “ to condition
something” instead of to cause it, because being abstract
and indefinite it says less; it affirms that A cannot happen
without B, instead of that A is caused by B. A back
door is always left open; and this suits people whose secret
knowledge of their own incapacity inspires them with a
perpetual terror of all positive assertion; while with other
people it is merely the effect of that tendency by which
everything that is stupid in literature or bad in life is
immediately imitated—a fact proved in either case by the
rapid way in which it spreads. The Englishman uses his
own judgment in what he writes as wellas in what he does;
but there is no nation of which this eulogy is less true than
of the Germans. The consequence of this state of things
is that the word cause has of late almost disappeared from
the language of literature, and people talk only of condi-
tion. The fact is worth mentioning because it is so charac-
teristically ridiculous.

The very fact that these commonplace authors are never
more than half-conscious when they write, would be enough
to account for their dullness of mind and the tedious things
they produce. I say they are only half-conscious, because
they really do not themselves understand the meaning of
the words they use; they take words ready-made and commit
them to memory. Hence when they write, it is not so
much words as whole phrases that they put together—
phrases banales. This is the explanation of that palpable
lack of clearly-expressed thought in what they say. The
fact is that they do not possess the die to give this stamp
to their writing; clear thought of their own is just what
they have not got. And what do we not find in its place?
—a vague, enigmatical intermixture of words, current
phrases, hackneyed terms, and fashionable expressions.
The result is that the foggy stuff they write is like a page
printed with very old type.

On the other hand, an intelligent author really speaks
to us when he writes, and that is why he is able to rouse
our interest and commune with us. Itis the intelligent
304 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

author alone who puts individual words together with a
full consciousness of their meaning, and chooses them
with deliberate design. Consequently, his discourse stands
to that of the writer described above, much as a picture
that has been really painted to one that has been produced
by the use of a stencil. In the one case, every word, every
touch of the brush, has a special purpose; in the other,
all is done mechanically. The same distinction may be
observed in music. For just as Lichtenberg says that
Garrick’s soul seemed to be in every muscle in his body, so
it is the omnipresence of intellect that always and every-
where characterizes the work of genius.

I have alluded to the tediousness which marks the works
of these writers; and in this connection it is to be observed
generally, that tediousness is of two kinds: objective and
subjective. A work is objectively tedious when it contains
the defect in question; that is to say, when its author has
no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to communicate.
For if a man has any clear thought or knowledge his aim
will be to communicate it, and he will direct his energies
to this end; so that the ideas he furnishes are everywhere
clearly expressed. The result is that he is neither diffuse,
nor unmeaning, nor confused, and consequently not tedious.
In such a case, even though the author is at bottom in
error, the error is at any rate clearly worked out and well
thought over, so that it is at least formally correct; and
thus some value always attaches to the work. But for
‘the same reason a work that is objectively tedious is at all
times devoid of any value whatever.

The other kind of tediousness is only relative: a reader
may find a work dull because he has no interest in the
question treated of in it, and this means that his intellect
is restricted. The best work may, therefore, be tedious
subjectively, tedious, I mean to this or that particular
person: just as, contrarily, the worst work may be sub-
jectively engrossing to this or that particular person who
has an interest in- the question treated of, or in the writer
of the book.

It would generally serve writers in good stead if they
would see that, while a man should, if possible, think like
a great genius, he should talk the same language as
every one else. Authors should use common words to say
uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We
ON STYLE. 805

find them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words,
and to clothe their very ordinary thoughts in the most ex-
traordinary phrases, the most far-fetched, unnatural, and
out-of-the-way expressions. Their sentences perpetually
stalk about on stilts. They take so much pleasure in bom-
bast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated, affected,
hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is
Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatient]

told to say what he had to say, “like a man of this world.”*

There is no expression in any other language exactly
answering to the French sale empesé; but the thing itself
exists all the more often. When associated with affec-
tation, it is in literature what assumption of dignity, grand
airs and primness are in society; and equally intolerable.
Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress; just as in
ordinary life it is stupid people who like being demure
and formal.

An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man
who dresses himself up in order to avoid being confounded
or put on the same level with the mob—a risk never run
by the gentleman, even in his worst clothes. The plebeian
may be known by a certain showiness of attire, and a wish
to have everything spick and span; and in the same way,
the commonplace person is betrayed by his style.

Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he tries to
write exactly as he speaks. There is no style of writing
but should have a certain trace of kinship with the
epigraphic or monumental style, which is, indeed, the
ancestor of all styles. For an author to write as he speaks
is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak
as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he
says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

An obscure and vague manner of expression -is always
and everywhere a very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred it comes from vagueness of thought; and
this again almost always means that there is something
radically wrong and incongruous about the thought itself—
in a word, that it is incorrect. When a right thought
springs up in the mind, it strives after expression and is
not long in reaching it; for clear thought easily finds
words to fit it. Ifa man is capable of thinking anything

 

* “King Henry IV., ” Part II. Act v, Se. 3,
306 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

at all, he is also always able to express it in clear, in-
telligible, and unambiguous terms. Those writers who
construct difficult, obscure, involved, and equivocal sen-
tences, most certainly do not know aright what it is that
they want to say: they have only a dull consciousness of it,
which is still in the stage of struggle to shape itself as
thought. Often, indeed, their desire is to conceal from
themselves and others that they really have nothing at all
to say. They wish to appear to know what they do not
know, to think what they do not think, to say what they
do not say. If a man has some real communication to
make, which will he choose—an indistinct or a clear way
of expressing himself? Even Quintilian remarks that
things which are said by a highly educated man are often
easier to understand and much clearer: and that the less
educated a man is, the more obscurely he will write—
“« plerumgque accidit ut faciliora sint ad intelligendum et
lucidiora muito que a doctissimo quoque dicuntur . .
Erit ergo etiam obscurior quo quisque detervor.”

An author should avoid enigmatical phrases: he should
know whether he wants to say a thing or does not want to
say it. Itis this indecision of style that makes so many
writers insipid. The only case that offers an exception to
this rule arises when it is necessary to make a remark that
is in some way improper.

As exaggeration generally produces an effect the opposite
of that aimed at, so words, it is true, serve to make thought
intelligible—but only up to a certain point. If words are
heaped up beyond it, the thought becomes more and more
obscure again. To find where the point lies is the problem
of style, and the business of the critical faculty; for a word
too much always defeats its purpose. This is what
Voltaire means when he says that ‘‘the adjective is the
enemy of the substantive.” But, as we have seen, many
people try to conceal their poverty of thought under a
flood of verbiage.

Accordingly, let all redundancy be avoided, all string-
ing together of remarks which have no meaning and are
not worth perusal. A writer must make a sparing use of
the reader’s time, patience and attention; so as to lead him
to believe that his author writes what is worth careful
study, and will reward the time spent upon it. It is
always better to omit something good than to add that
ON STYLR. 307

which is not worth saying at all. This is the right appli-
cation of Hesiod’s maxim, zAéor fyacy ravros*—the half is
more than the whole. Le secret pour étre ennuyeux, c’est
de tout dire. Therefore, if possible, the quintessence only!
mere leading thoughts! nothing that the reader would
think for himself. To use many words to communicate
few thoughts is everywhere the unmistakable sign of medi-
ocrity. ‘To gather much thought into few words stamps
the man of genius.

Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it
makes is deep in proportion as its expression has been
simple. This is so, partly because it then takes unob-
structed possession of the hearer’s whole soul, and leaves him
no by-thought to distract him: partly, also, because he
feels that here he is not being corrupted or cheated by the
arts of rhetoric, but that all the effect of what is said comes
from the thing itself. For instance, what declamation on
the vanity of human existence could ever be more telling
than the words of Job?—‘“‘ Man that is born of a woman
hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He
cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it
were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”

For the same reason Goethe’s naive poetry is incompar-
an greater than Schiller’s rhetoric. Itis this, again, that
makes many popular songsso affecting. As in architecture
an excess of decoration is to be avoided, so in the art of
literature a writer must guard against all rhetorical finery,
all useless amplification, and all superfluity of expression
in general: in a word, he must strive after chastity of
style. Every word that can be spared is hurtful if it
remains. The law of simplicity and naivety holds good of
all fine art; for it is quite possible to be at once simple and
sublime.

True brevity of expression consists in everywhere saying
only what is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail
about things which every one can supply for himself. This
involves correct discrimination between what is necessary
and what is superfluous. A writer should never be brief
at the expense of being clear, to say nothing of being
grammatical. It shows lamentable want of judgment to
weaken the expression of a thought or to stunt the mean-

 

* «“ Works and Days,” 40.
308 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

ing of a period for the sake of using a few words less.
But this is the precise endeavor of that false brevity now-
adays so much in vogue, which proceeds by leaving out
useful words and even by sacrificing grammar and logic.
It is not only that such writers spare a word by making a
single verb or adjective do duty for several different periods,
so that the reader, as it were, has to grope his way through
them in the dark; they also practice, in many other re-
spects, an unseemly economy of speech, in the effort to
effect what they foolishly take to be brevity of expression
and conciseness of style. By omitting something that
might have thrown a light over the whole sentence, they
turn it into a conundrum, which the reader tries to solve
by going over it again and again.*

It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else,
that gives brevity to style, and makes it concise and preg-
nant. If a writer’s ideas are important, luminous, and
generally worth communicating, they will necessarily fur-
nish matter and substance enough to fill out the periods
which give them expression, and make these in all their
parts both grammatically and verbally complete; and so
much will this be the case that no one will ever find them
hollow, empty or feeble. The diction will everywhere be
brief and pregnant, and allow the thought to find intelligi-
ble and easy expression, and even unfold and move about
with grace.

Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms of
speech, let a writer enlarge his thoughts. If a man has
been thinned by illness and finds his clothes too big, it is
not by cutting them down, but by recovering his usual
bodily condition, that he ought to make them fit him again.

Let me here mention an error of style very prevalent
nowadays, and, in the degraded state of literature and the
neglect of ancient languages, always on the increase; I

 

* Translator’s Note. In the original, Schopenhauer here enters
upon a lengthy examinaton of certain common errors in the writing
and speaking of German. His remarks are addressed to his own
countrymen, and would lose all point, even if they were intelligible,
in an English translation. But for those who practice their German
by conversing or corresponding with Germans, let me recommend
what he there says as a useful corrective to a slipshod style, such as
can easily be contracted if it is assumed that the natives of a country
always know their own language perfectly.
ON STYLE. 303

mean subjectivity. A writer commits this error when he
thinks it enough if he himself knows what he means and
wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is
left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as
though the author were holding a monologue, whereas it
ought to be a dialogue; and a dialogue, too, in which he
must express himself all the more clearly inasmuch as he
cannot hear the questions of his interlocutor.

Style should for this very reason never be subjective,
but objective; and it will not be objective unless the words
are so set down that they directly force the reader to think
precisely the same thing as the author thought when he
wrote them. Nor will this result be obtained unless the
author has always been careful to remember that thought
so far follows the law of gravity that it travels from head
to paper much more easily than from paper to head; so
that he must assist the latter passage by every means in his
power. If he does this, a writer’s words will have a purely
objective effect, like that of a finished picture in oils;
while the subjective style is not much more certain in its
working than spots on the wall, which look like figures
only to one whose fantasy has been accidentally aroused
by them; other people see nothing but spots and blurs.
The difference in question applies to literary method as a
a whole; but it is often established also in particular in-
stances. For example, in a recently published work I
found the following sentence: ‘‘I have not written in
order to increase the number of existing books.” This
means just the opposite of what the writer wanted to say,
and is nonsense as well.

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very
outset that he does not attach much importance to hisown
thoughts. For it is only where a man is convinced of the
truth and importance of his thoughts, that he feels the en-
thusiasm necessary for an untiring and assiduous effort to
find the clearest, finest, and strongest expression for them,
just as for sacred relics or priceless works of art there are
provided silvern or golden receptacles. It was this feeling
that led ancient authors, whose thoughts, expressed in
their own words, have lived thousands of years, and there-
fore bear the honored title of classics, always to write with
care. Plato, indeed, is said to have written the introduc-
810 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

tion to his ‘‘Republic” seven times over in different ways. *

As neglect of dress betrays want of respect for the com-
pany a man meets, so a hasty, careless, bad style shows
an outrageous lack of regard for the reader, who then
rightly punishes it by refusing to read the book. It is es-
pecially amusing to see reviewers criticising the works of
others in their own most careless style—the style of a hire-
ling. It is as though a judge were to come into court in
dressing-gown and slippers! If I see a man badly and
dirtily dressed, I feel some hesitation, at first, in entering
into conversation with him: and when, on taking up a
book, I am struck at once by the negligence of its style, I
put it away.

Good writing should be governed by the rule that a man
can think ouly one thing clearly at a time; and therefore,
that he should not be expected to think two or even more
things in one and the same moment. But this is what is
done when a writer breaks up his principal sentence into
little pieces, for the purpose of pushing into the gaps
thus made two or three other thoughts by way of parenthe-
sis; thereby unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the
reader. And here it is again my own countrymen whoare
chiefly in fault. That German lends itself to this way of
writing, makes the thing possible, but does not justify it.
No prose reads more easily or pleasantly than French, be-
cause, as a rule, it is free from the error in question. The
Frenchman strings his thoughts together, as far as he can,
in the most logical and natural order, and so lays them be-
fore his reader one after the other for convenient delibera-
tion, so that every one of them may receive undivided
attention. The German, on the other hand, weaves them to-
gether intoa sentence which he twists and crosses, and crosses
and twists again; because he wants to say six things all at
once, instead of advancing them one by one. His aim should
be to attract and hold the reader’s attention; but, above and
beyond neglect of this aim, he demands from the reader
that he shall set the above mentioned rule at defiance, and
think three or four different thoughts at one and the same
time; or since that is impossible, that his thoughts shall

 

* Translators Note.—It is a fact worth mentioning that the first
twelve words of the ‘‘ Republic” are placed in the exact order which
would be natural in English.
ON STYLE. 311

succeed each other as quickly as the vibrations of a cord.
In this way an author lays the foundation of his stile em-
pesé, which is then carried to perfection by the use of
high-flown, pompous expressions to communicate the
simplest things, and other artifices of the same kind.

In those long sentences rich in involved parentheses,
like a box of boxes one within another, and padded out
like roast geese stuffed with apples, it is really the memory
that is chiefly taxed; while it is the understanding and the
judgment which should be called into play, instead of hay-
ing their activity thereby actually hindered and weakened.*
This kind of sentence furnishes the reader with mere half-
phrases, which he is then called upon to collect carefully
and store up in his memory, as though they were the
pieces of a torn letter, afterward to be completed and made
sense of by the other halves to which they respectively
belong. He is expected to go on reading for a little with-
out exercising any thought, nay, exerting only his mem-
ory, in the hope that, when he comes to the end of the
sentence, he may see its meaning and so receive something
to think about; and he is thus given a great deal to learn
by heart before obtaining anything to understand. This
is manifestly wrong and an abuse of the reader’s
patience.

The ordinary writer has an unmistakable preference for
this style, because it causes the reader to spend time and
trouble in understanding that which he would have under-
stood in a moment without it; and this makes it look as
though the writer had more depth and intelligence than
the reader, This is, indeed, one of those artifices referred
to above, by means of which mediocre authors uncon-
sciously, and as it were by instinct, strive to conceal their
poverty of thought and give an appearance of the
opposite. Their ingenuity in this respect is really
astounding.

It is manifestly against all sound reason to put one
thought obliquely on top of another, as though both to-
gether formed a wooden cross. But this is what is done

 

* Translator’s Note.—This sentence in the original is obviously
meant to illustrate the fault of which it speaks. It does so by the
use of a construction very common in German, but happily unknown
in English ; where, however, the fault itself exists none the less,
though in a different form.
812 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

where a writer interrupts what he has begun to say, for the
purpose of inserting some quite alien matter; thus deposit-
ing with the reader a meaningless half-sentence, and
bidding him keep it until the completion comes. It is
much as though a man were to treat his guests by handing
them an empty plate, in the hope of something appearing
upon it. And commas used for a similar purpose belong
to the same family as notes at the foot of the page and
parentheses in the middle of the text; nay, all three differ
only in degree. If Demosthenes and Cicero occasionally
inserted words by way of parenthesis, they would have
done better to have refrained.

But this style of writing becomes the height of absurdity
when the parentheses are not even fitted into the frame of
the sentence, but wedged in so as directly to shatter it. If,
for instance, it is an impertinent thing to interrupt an-
other person when he is speaking, it is no less impertinent
to interrupt one’s self. But all bad, careless, and hasty
authors, who scribble with the bread actually before their
eyes, use this style of writing six times on a page, and re-
joice in it. It consists in—it is advisable to give rule and
example together, wherever it is possible—breaking up one
phrase in order to glue in another. Nor isit merely out
of laziness that they write thus. They do it out of stupid-
ity; they think there is a charming Jégéreté about it; that
it gives life to what they say. No doubt there are a
few rare cases where such a form of sentence may be
pardonable.

Few write in the way in which an architect builds; who,
before he sets to work, sketches out his plan, and thinks it
over down to its smallest details. Nay, most people write
only as though they were playing dominoes; and as in this
game the pieces are arranged half by design, half by
chance, so it is with the sequence and connection of their
sentences. They only just have an idea of what the
general shape of their work will be, and of the aim they set
before themselves. Many are ignorant even of this, and
write as the coral-insects build; period joins to period, and
Lord knows what the author means.

Life now a days goes at a gallop; and the way in which
this affects literature is to make it extremely superficial
and slovenly.
‘ON THE STUDY OF LATIN. 313

ON THE STUDY OF LATIN.

The abolition of Latin as the universal language of
learned men, together with the rise of that provincialism
which attaches to national literatures, has been a real mis-
fortune for the cause of knowledge in Europe. For it
was chiefly through the medium of the Latin language
that a learned public existed in Europe at all—a public to
which every book as it came out directly appealed. The
number of minds in the whole of Europe that are capable
of thinking and judging is small, as it is; but when the
audience is broken up and severed by differences of lan-
guage, the good these minds can do is very much weakened.
This is a great disadvantage; but a second and worse one
will follow, namely, that the ancient languages will cease
to be taught at all. The neglect of them is rapidly gain-
ing ground both in France and Germany.

If it should really come to this, then farewell, humanity!
farewell, noble taste and high thinking! The age of bar-
barism will return, in spite of railways, telegraphs and
balloons. We shall thus in the end lose one more advan-
tage possessed by all our ancestors. For Latin is not only
a key to the knowledge of Roman antiquity; it also directly
opens up to us the Middle Age in every country in Europe
and modern times as well, down to about the year 1750.
Erigena, for example, in the ninth century, John of Salis-
bury in the twelfth, Raimond Lully in the thirteenth, with
a hundred others, speak straight to us in the very language
that they naturally adopted in thinking of learned matters.
They thus come quite close to us even at this distance of
time: we are in direct contact with them, and really come
to know them. How would it have been if every one of
them spoke in the language that was peculiar to his time
and country? We should not understand even the half of
what they said. A real intellectual contact with them
would be impossible. We should see them like shadows
on the farthest horizon, or, maybe, through the translator’s
telescope.

It was with an eye to the advantage of writing in Latin
that Bacon, as he himself expressly states, proceeded to
translate his ‘‘ Essays ” into that language, under the title
314 THE ARV OF LITERATURE.

«‘ Sermones fideles; ” at which work Hobbes assisted him.*

Here let me observe, by way of parenthesis, that when
patriotism tries to urge its claims in the domain of knowl-
edge, it commits an offense which should not be tolerated.
For in those purely human questions which interest all
men alike, where truth, insight, beauty, should be of sole
account, what can be more impertinent than to let prefer-
ence for the nation to which a man’s precious self happens
to belong, affect the balance of judgment, and thus supply
a reason for doing violence to truth and being unjust to
the great minds of a foreign country in order to make
much of the smaller minds of one’s own! Still, there
are writers in every nation in Europe who afford examples
of this vulgar feeling. It is this which led Yriarte to
caricature them in the thirty-third of his charming
«« Literary Fables.” +

In learning a language, the chief difficulty consists in
making acquaintance with every idea which it expresses,
even though it should use words for which there is no
exact equivalent in the mother tongue; and this often
happens. In learning a new language a man has, as it
were, to mark out in his mind the boundaries of quite new
spheres of ideas, with the result that spheres of ideas arise
where none were before. Thus he not only learns words,
he gains ideas too.

This is nowhere so much the case as in learning ancient

 

* Cf. Thomas Hobbes vita: ‘‘Carolopoli apud Eleutherium Angli-
cum, 1681, p. 22.

+ Translator’s Note.—Tomas de Yriarte (1750-91,)a Spanish poet,
and keeper of archives in the war office at Madrid. His two best-known
works are a didactic poem, entitled ‘‘ La Musica ” and the ‘‘ Fables”
here quoted, which satirise the peculiar foibles of literary men.
They have been translated into many languages; into English by
Rockcliffe (8d edition, 1866). The fable in question describes how, at
a picnic of the animals,a discussion arose as to which of them carried
off the palm for superiority of talent. The praises of the ant, the
dog, the bee, and the parrot were sung in turn; but at last the
ostrich stood up and declared for the dromedary. Whereupon the
dromedary stood upand declared for the ostrich. No one could dis-
cover the reason for this mutual compliment. Was it because both
were such uncouth beasts, or had such long necks, or were neither
of them particularly clever or beautiful? or was it because each had
ahump? ‘‘ No!” said the fox,‘ you are all wrong. Don’t you see
they are both foreigners?” Cannot the same be said of many
men of learning?
ON THE STUDY OF LATIN, 315

languages, for the differences they present in their mode of
expression as compared with modern languages is greater
than can be found among modern languages as compared
with one another. This is shown by the fact that in trans-
lating into Latin, recourse must be had to quite other turns
of phrase than are in use in the original. The thought
that is to be translated has to be melted down and recast;
in other words, it must be analyzed and then recomposed.
It is just this process which makes the study of the ancient
eee contribute so much to the education of the
mind.

It follows from this that a man’s thought varies according
to the language in which he speaks. His ideas undergo a
fresh modification, a different shading, as it were, in the
study of every new language. Hence anacquaintance with
many languages is not only of much indirect advantage,
but it is also a direct means of mental culture, in that it
corrects and matures ideas by giving prominence to their
many-sided nature and their different varieties of meaning,
as also that it increases dexterity of thought; for in the
process of learning many languages ideas become more and
more independent of words. The ancient languages effect
this to an incomparably greater degree than the modern, in
virtue of the difference to which I have alluded.

From what I have said, it is obvious that te imitate the
style of the ancients in their own language, which is so
very much superior to ours in point of grammatical perfec-
tion, is the best way of preparing for a skillful and
finished expression of thoughtin the mother-tongue. Nay,
if a man wants to be a great writer, he must not omit todo
this; just as, in the case of sculpture or painting, the
student must educate himself by copying the great master-
pieces of the past, before proceeding to original work. It
is only by learning to write Latin that aman _ comes to
treat diction as an art. The material in this art is language,
which must therefore be handled with the greatest care and
delicacy.

The result of such study is that a writer will pay keen
attention to the meaning and value of words, their order
and connection, their grammatical forms. He will learn
how to weigh them with precision, and so become an ex-
pert in the use of that precious instrument which is meant
not only to express valuable thought, but to preserve it as
316 THE ART OF LITHKRATURE.

well. Further, he will learn to feel respect for the
language in which he writes, and thus be saved from any
attempt to remodel it by arbitrary and capricious treat-
ment. Without this schooling, a man’s writing may easily
degenerate into mere chatter. ;

To be entirely ignorant of the Latin language is like
being in a fine country on a misty day. The horizon is
extremely limited. Nothing can be seen clearly except
that which is quite close; a few steps beyond, everything is
buried in obscurity. But the Latinist has a wide view,
embracing modern times, the Middle Age and Antiquity;
and his mental horizon is still further enlarged if he studies
Greek or even Sanscrit.

Ifa man knows no Latin, he belongs to the vulgar,
even though he be a great virtuoso on the electrical
machine and have the base of hydrofluoric acid in his
crucible.

There is no better recreation for the mind than the study
of the ancient classics. Tuke any one of them into your
hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel your-
self refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened;
just as though you had quenched your thirst at some pure
spring. Is this the effect of the old language and its per-
fect expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose
works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of
a thousand years? Perhaps both together. But this I
know. If the threatened calamity should ever come, and
the ancient languages cease to be taught, a new literature
will arise, of such barbarous, shallow and worthless stuff
as never was seen before.

ON MEN OF LEARNING.

WHEN one sees the number and variety of institutions
which exist for the purposes of education, and the vast
throng of scholars and masters, one might fancy the human
race to be very much concerned about truth and wisdom.
But here, too, appearances are deceptive. The masters
teach in order to gain money, and strive, not after wisdom,
but the outward show and reputation of it ; and the schol-
ars learn, not for the sake of knowledge and insight, but
ON MEN OF LEARNING. 317

to be able to chatter and give themselves airs. Every
thirty years a new race comes into the world—a youngster
that knows nothing about anything, and after summarily
devouring in all haste the results of human knowledge as
they have been accumulated for thousands of years, aspires
to be thought cleverer than the whole of the past. For this
purpose he goes to the university, and takes to reading
books—new books, as being of his own age and standing.
Everything he reads must be briefly put, must be new!
he is new himself. Then he falls to and criticises. And
here I am not taking the slightest account of studies pur-
sued for the sole object of making a living.

Students, and learned persons of all sorts and every age,
aim as a rule at acquirivg information rather than insight.
They pique themselves upon knowing about everything—
stones, plants, battles, experiments, and all the books in
existence. It never occurs to them that information is
only a means of insight, and in itself of little or.no value;
that it is his way of thinking that makes a man a philoso-
pher. When I hear of these portents of learning and their
imposing erndition, I sometimes say to myself: Ah, how
little they must have had to think about, to have been
able to read so much! And when I actually find it re-
ported of the elder Pliny that he was continually reading
or being read to at table, on a journey, or in his bath, the
question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man was
so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have
alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he
were a consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself
alive. And neither his undiscerning credulity nor his in-
expressibly repulsive and barely intelligible style—which
seems like that of a man taking notes, and very econom-
ical of paper—is of a kind to give me a high opinion of his
power of independent thought.

We have seen that much reading and learning is prej-
udicial to thinking for one’s self; and, in the same way,
through much writing and teaching, a man loses the habit
of being quite clear, and therefore thorough in regard to
the things he knows and understands; simply because he
has left himself no time to acquire clearness or thorough-
ness. And so, when clear knowledge: fails him in his
utterances, he is forced to fill out the gaps with words and
phrases, Itis this, and not the dryness of the subject-
318 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

matter, that makes most books such tedious reading.
There is a saying that a good cook can make a palatable
dish even out of an old shoe; and a good writer can make
the dryest things interesting.

With by far the largest number of learned men, knowl-
edge is a means, not an end. That is why they will never
achieve any great work; because, to do that, he who pur-
sues knowledge must pursne it as an end, and treat every-
thing else, even existence itself, as only a means. For
everything which a man fails to pursue for its own sake is
but half pursued; and true excellence, no matter in what
sphere, can be attained only where the work has been pro-
duced for its own sake alone, and not as a means to
further ends.

And so, too, no one will ever succeed in doing anything
really great and original in the way of thought, who does
not seek to acquire knowledge for himself, and, making
this the immediate object of his studies, decline to trouble
himself about the knowledge of others. But the average
man of learning studies for the purpose of being able to
teach and write. His head is like a stomach and intestines
which let the food pass through them undigested, That is
just why his teaching and writing is of so little use. For
it is not upon undigested refuse that people can be nour-
ished, but solely upon the milk which secretes from the
very blood itself.

The wig is the appropriate symbol of the man of learn-
ing, pure and simple. It adorns the head with a copious
quantity of false hair, in lack of one’s own: just as erudi-
tion means endowing it with a great mass of alien thought.
This, to be sure, does not clothe the head so well and
naturally, nor is it so generally useful, nor so suited for all
purposes, nor so firmly rooted; nor when alien thought is
used up, can it be immediately replaced by more from the
same source, as is the case with that which springs from
soil of one’s own. So we find Sterne, in his ‘‘ Tristram
Shandy,” boldly asserting that “‘an ounce of a man’s own
wit is worth a ton of other people’s.”

And in fact the most profound erudition is no more akin
to genius than a collection of dried plants is like Nature,
with its constant flow of new life, ever fresh, ever young,
ever changing. There are no two things more opposed
than the childish naivety of an ancient author and the
learning of his commentator,
ON MEN OF LEARNING. 319

Dilettanti, dilettanti! This is the slighting way in
which those who pursue any branch of art or learning for
the love and enjoyment of the thing—per «7 loro diletto
are spoken of by those who have taken it up for the sake
of gain, attracted solely by the prospect of money. This
contempt of theirs comes from the base belief that no man
will seriously devote himself to a subject, unless he is
spurred on to it by want, hunger, or else some form of
greed. The public is of the same way of thinking; and
hence its general respect for professionals, and its distrust
of dilettanti. But the truth is that the dilettante treats
his subject as an end, whereas the professional, pure and
simple, treats it merely as a means. He alone will be
really in earnest about a matter, who has a direct interest
therein, takes to it because he likes it, and pursues it con
amore. It is these, and not hirelings, that have always
done the greatest work.

In the republic of letters it is as in other republics;
favor is shown to the plain man—he who goes on his way
in silence and does not set up to be cleverer than others.
But the abnormal man is looked upon as threatening
danger; people band together against him, and have, oh!
such a majority on their side.

The condition of this republic is much like that of a
small state in America, where every man is intent only
upon his own advantage, and seeks reputation and power
for himself, quite heedless of the general weal, which then
goes toruin. So it is in the republic of letters; it is him-
self, and himself alone, that a man puts forward, because
he wants to gain fame. The only thing in which all agree
is in trying to keep down a really eminent man, if he
should chance to show himself, as one who would bea
common peril. From this it is easy to see how it fares
with knowledge as a whole. :

Between professors and independent men of learning
there has always been from of olda certain antagonism,
which may perhaps be likened to that existing between
dogs and wolves. In virtue of their position, professors en-
joy great facilities for becoming known to their contempo-
raries. Contrarily, independent men of learning enjoy, by
their position, great facilities for becoming known to pos-
terity; to which it is necessary that, among other and
much rarer gifts, a man should have a certain leisure and
820 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

freedom. As mankind takes a long time in finding out on
whom to bestow its attention, they may both work to-
gether side by side. ;

He who holds a professorship may be said to receive his
food in the stall; and this is the best way with ruminant ani-
mals. But he who finds his food for himself at the hands
of nature is better off in the open field.

Of human knowledge as a whole and in every branch of
it, by far the largest part exists nowhere but on paper
—I mean, in books, that paper memory of mankind.
Only a small part of it is at any given period really active
in the minds of particular persons. This is due in the
main, to the brevity and uncertainty of life; but it also
comes from the fact that men are lazy and bent on pleas-
ure. Every generation attuins, in its hasty passage
through existence, just so much of human knowledge as it
needs, and then soon disappears. Most men of learning
are very superficial. Then follows a new generation, full
of hope, but ignorant, and with everything to learn from
the beginning. It seizes, in its turn, just so much as it
can grasp, or find useful on its brief journey, and then too
goes its way. How badly it would fare with human
knowledge if it were not for the art of writing and print-
ing! This it is that makes libraries the only sure and
lasting memory of the human race, for its individual mem-
bers have all of them but a very limited and imperfect one.
Hence most men of learning are as loth to have their
knowledge examined as merchants to lay bare their
books.

Human knowledge extends on all sides farther than the
eye can reach; and of that which would be generally
worth knowing, no one man can possess even the thous-
andth part.

All branches of learning have thus been so much en-
larged that he who would “do something ” has to pursue
no more than one subject and disregard all others. In his
own subject he will then, it is true, be superior to the vul-
gar; but in all else he will belong to it. If we add to this
that neglect of the ancient languages, which is now-a-days
on the increase and is doing away with all general educa-
tion in the humanities—for a mere smattering of Latin and
Greek is of no use—we shall come to have men of learning
wie outside their own subject display an ignorance truly

ovine.
ON THINKING FOR ONE’S SELF. 8321

An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par with
a workman in a factory, whose whole life is spent in
making one particular kind of screw, or catch, or handle,
for some particular instrument or machine, in which, in-
deed, he attains incredible dexterity. The specialist may
also be likened to a man who lives in his own house and
never leaves it. ‘There he is perfectly familiar with every-
thing, every little step, corner, or board; much as Quasi-
modo in Victor Hugo’s ‘‘ Notre Dame” knows the cathe-
dral; but outside it, all is strange and unknown.

For true culture in the humanities it is absolutely
necessary that a man should be many-sided and take large
views; and for a man of learning in the higher sense of
the word, an extensive acquaintance with history is need-
ful. He, however, who wishes to be a complete philoso-
pher, must gather into his head the remotest ends of
human knowledge: for where else could they ever come
together?

It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be
specialists. For their very nature is to make the whole of
existence their problem; and this is a subject upon which
they will every one of them in some form provide man-
kind with a new revelation. For he alone can deserve the
name of genius who takes the All, the Essential, the
Universal, for the theme of his achievements; not he who
spends his life in explaining some special relation of
things one to another.

ON THINKING FOR ONE’S SELF.

A LIBRARY may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it
is not so useful as one that is small but well arranged. In
the same way, a man may have a great mass of knowledge,
but if he has not worked it up by thinking it over for him-
self, it has much less value than a far smaller amount which
he has thoroughly pondered. For it is only when a man
looks at his knowledge from all sides, and combines the
things he knows by comparing truth with truth, that he
obtains a complete hold over it and gets it into his power.
A man cannot turn over anything in his mind unless he
knows it; he should, therefore, learn something; but it is
399 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

only when he has turned it over that he can be said to
know it.

Reading and learning are things that any one can do of
his own free will; but not so thinking. Thinking must
be kindled, like a fire by a draught; it must be sustained
by some interest in the matter in hand. Thisinterest may
be of purely objective kind, or merely subjective. The
latter comes into play only in things that concern us per-
sonally. Objective interest is confined to heads that think
by nature; to whom thinking is as natural as breathing;
and they are veryrare. This is why most men of learning
show so little of it.

It is incredible what a different effect is produced upon
the mind by thinking for one’s self, as compared with read-
ing. It carries on and intensifies that original difference in
the nature of two minds which leads the one to think and
the other to read. What I mean is that reading forces
alien thoughts upon the mind—thoughts which are as
foreign to the drift and temper in which it may be for the
moment, as the seal is to the wax on which it stamps its
imprint. The mind is thus entirely under compulsion
from without; it is driven to think this or that, though for
the moment it may not have the slightest impulse or
inclination to do so.

But when a man thinks for himself, he follows the
impulse of his own mind, which is determined for him at
the time, either by his environment or some particular recol-
lection. The visible world of a man’s surroundings does
not, as reading does, impress asingle definite thought upon
his mind, but merely gives the matter and occasion which
lead him to think what is appropriate to his nature and
present temper. So it is, that much reading deprives the
mind of all elasticity; it islike keeping a spring continually
under pressure. The safest way of having no thoughts of
one’s own is to take up a book every moment one has noth-
ing else todo. It is this practice which explains why erudi-
tion makes most men more stupid and silly than they are by
nature, and prevents their writings obtaining any measure
of success. ‘I'hey remain, in Pope’s words:

“« Forever reading, never to be read!” *

Men of learning are those who have done their reading

* “ Dunciad,” iii, 194,
ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SHLF. 323

in the pages of a book. Thinkers and men of genius are
those who have gone straight to the book of nature; it is
they who have enlightened the world and carried humanity
further on its way.

If a man’s thoughts are to have truth and life in them,
they must, after all be his own fundanental thoughts;
for these are the only ones that he can fully and wholly
understand. To read another’s thoughts is like taking
the leavings of a meal to which we have not been invited,
or putting on the clothes which some unknown visitor has
laid aside.

The thought we read is related to the thought which
springs up in ourselves, as the fossil-impress of some pre-
historic plant to a plant as it buds forth in springtime.

Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought
of one’s own. It means putting the mind into leading-
strings. The multitude of books serves only to show how
many false paths there are, and how widely astray a man
may wander if he follows any of them. But he who is
guided by his genius, he who thinks for himself, who thinks
spontaneously and exactly, possesses the only compass by
which he can steer aright. A man should read only when
his own thoughts stagnate at their source, which will
happen often enough even with the best of minds. On the
other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring
away one’s own original thoughts is sin against the Holy
Spirit. It is like running away from nature to look ata
museum of dried plants or gaze at a landscape in copper-

late.
i A man may have discovered some portion of truth or
wisdom, after spending a great deal of time and trouble in
thinking it over for himself and adding thought to thought;
and it may sometimes happen that he could have found it
all ready to hand in a book and spared himself the trouble.
But even so, it isa hundred times more valuable if he has
acquired it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only
when we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as
an integral part, a living member into the whole system of
our thought; that it stands in.complete and firm relation
with what we know; that it is understood with all that
underlies it and follows from it; that it wears the color,
the precise shade, the distinguishing mark of our own way
of thinking; that it comes exactly at the right time, just
324 THE ART OF LITHRATURE.

as we felt the necessity for it; that it stands fast and can-
not be forgotten. This is the perfect application, nay, the
interpretation, of Goethe’s advice to earn our inheritance
for ourselves so that we may really possess it:

‘« Was du ererbt von deinen Vitern hast,
Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen,’”’*

The man who thinks for himself, forms his own opin-
ions and learns theauthorities for them only later on, when
they serve but to strengthen his belief in them and in
himself. But the book-philosopher starts from the authori-
ties. He reads other people’s books, collects their opin-
ions, and so forms a whole for himself, which resembles an
automaton made up of anything, but flesh and blood.
Contrarily, he who thinks for himself creates a work like
a living man as made by Nature. For the work comes
into being asa man does; the thinking mind is impre:
nated from without and it then forms and bears its child!

Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial
limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made
out of another’s flesh; it adheres to us only because it is
put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like
a natural limb; it alone really belongs tous. This is the
fundamental difference between the thinker and the mere
man of learning. The intellectual attainments of a man
who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the
light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the color
eee harmonized; it is true to life. On the other
and, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learn-
ing are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colors, which
at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of
harmony, connection and meaning.

Reading is thinking with some one else’s head instead of
one’s own. ‘To think with one’s own head is always to aim
at developing a coherent whole—a system, even though it
be not a strictly complete one; and nothing hinders this
80 much as too strong a current of others’ thoughts, such
as comes of continual reading. These thoughts, springing
every one of them from different minds, belonging to dif-
ferent systems, and tinged with different colors, never of
themselves flow together into an intellectual whole;

 

*c Faust,” 1. 829,
ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF. 325

they never form a unity of knowledge, or insight, or con-
viction; but, rather, fill the head with a Babylonian con-
fusion of tongues. The mind that is over-loaded with
alien thought 1s thus deprived of all clear insight, and so
well-nigh disorganized, ‘This is a state of things observ-
able in many men of learning; and it makes them inferior
in sound sense, correct judgment and practical tact, to
many illiterate persons who, after obtaining a little knowl-
edge from without by means of experience, intercourse
with others, and a small amount of reading, have always
subordinated it to, and embodied it with, their own
thought.

The really scientific thinker does the same thing as
these illiterate persons, but on a larger scale. Although
he has need of much knowledge, and so must read a great
deal, his mind is nevertheless strong enough to master it
all, to assimilate and incorporate it with the system of his
thoughts, and so to make it fit in with the organic unity of
his insight, which, though vast, is always growing. And
in the process, his own thought, like the bass in an organ,
always dominates everything, and is never drowned by
other tones, as happens with’ minds which are full of mere
antiquarian lore; where shreds of music, as it were, in
every key, mingle confusedly, and no fundamental note
is heard at all.

Those who have spent their lives in reading, and taken
their wisdom from books, are like people who have ob-
tained precise information about a country from the
descriptions of many travelers. Such people can tell a
great deal about it; but, after all, they have no connected,
clear, and profound knowledge of its real condition. But
those who have spent their lives in thinking resemble the
travelers themselves; they alone really know what they
are talking about; they are acquainted with the actual
state of affairs, and are quite at home in the subject.

The thinker stands in the came relation to the ordinary
book-philosopher as an eyewitness does to the historian;
he speaks from direct knowledge of his own. That is why
all those who think for themselves come, at bottom, to
much the same conclusion. The differences they present
are due to their different points of view; and when these
do not affect the matter, they all speak alike. They
merely express the result of their own objective perception
326 THE ART OF LIVERATURE.

of things. There are many passages in my works which I
have given to the public only after some hesitation, be-
cause of their paradoxical nature; and afterward I have
experienced a pleasant surprise in finding the same opinion
recorded in the works of great men who lived long ago.

The book-philosopher merely reports what one person
has said and another meant, or the objections raised by a
third, and so on. He compares different opinions, ponders,
criticises, and tries to get at the truth of the matter; here-
in on a par with the critical historian. For instance, he
will set out to inquire whether Leibnitz was not for some
time a follower of Spinoza, and questions of a like nature.
The curious student of such matters may find conspicuous
examples of what I mean in Herbart’s “Analytical Eluci-
dation of Morality and Natural Right,” and in the same
author’s ‘‘Letters on Freedom.” Surprise may be felt that a
man of the kind should put himself to so much trouble;
for, on the face of it, if he would only examine the matter
for himself, he would speedily attain his object by the ex-
ercise of a little thought. But there is a small difficulty
in the way. It does not depend upon his own will. A
man can always sit down and read, but not—think. It is
with thoughts as with men: they cannot always be sum-
moned at pleasure; we must wait for them to come.
Thought about a subject must appear of itself, by a happy
and harmonious combination of external stimulus with
mental temper and attention; and it is just that which
never seems to come to these people.

This truth may be illustrated by what happens in the
case of matters affecting our own personal interest. When
it is necessary to come to some resolution in a matter of
that kind, we cannot well sit down at any given moment
and think over the merits of the case and make up our
mind; for, if we try to do so, we often find ourselves un-
able, at that particular moment, to keep our mind fixed
upon the subject; it wanders off to other things. Aversion
to the matter in question is sometimes to blame for this.
In such a case we should not use force, but wait for the
proper frame of mind to come of itself. It often comes
unexpectedly and returns again and again; and the variety
of temper in which we approach it at different moments
puts the matter always in a fresh light. It is this long
process which is understood by the term“ a ripe resolution. ”
ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF. 3347

For the work of coming to a resolution must be distrib-
uted; and in the process much that is overlooked at
one moment occurs to us at another; and the repugnance
vanishes when we find, as we usually do, on a closer in-
spection, that things are not so bad as they seemed.

This rule applies to the life of the intellect as well as to
matters of practice. A man must wait for the right mo-
ment. Not even the greatest mind is capable of thinking
for itself at all times. Hencea great mind does well to
spend its leisure in reading, which, as I have said, is a sub-
stitute for thought: it brings stuff to the mind by letting
another person do the thinking; although that is always
done ina manner not ourown. Therefore, a man should
not read too much, in order that his mind may not become
accustomed to the substitute and thereby forget the reality;
that it may not form the habit of walking in well-worn
paths; nor by following an alien course of thought grow a
stranger to its own. Least of all should a man quite with-
draw his gaze from the real world for the mere sake of
reading; as the impulse and the temper which prompt to
thought of one’s own come far oftener from the world of
reality than from the world of books. The real life that a
man sees before him is the natural subject of thought; and
in its strength as the primary element of existence, it can
more easily than anything else rouse and influence the think-
ing mind.

After these considerations, it will not be matter for sur-
prise that a man who thinks for himself can easily be dis-
tinguished from the book-philosopher by the very way in
which he talks, by his marked earnestness, and the origi-
nality, directness, and personal conviction that stamp all
his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on
the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is sec-
ond-hand; that his ideas are like the lumber and trash of
old furniture-shop, collected together from all quarters.
Mentally, he is dull and pointless—a copy of a copy. His
literary style is made up of conventional, nay, vulgar
phrases, and terms that happen to be current; in this re-
spect much like a small state where all the money that
circulates is foreign, because it has no coinage of its own.

Mere experience can as little as reading supply the place
of thought. It stands to thinking in the same relation in
which eating stands to digestion and assimilation. When
828 HR ART OF LITERATURE.

experience boasts that to its discoveries alone is due the
advancement of the human race, it is as though the mouth
were to claim the whole credit of maintaining the body in
health.

Tbe works of all truly capable minds are distinguished
by » character of decision and definiteness, which means
that they are clear and free from obscurity. A truly cap-
able mind always'knows definitely and clearly what it is
that it wants to express, whether its medium is prose,
verse, or music. Other minds are not decisive and not
definite; and by this they may be known for what they
are.

The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest order is
that it always judges at first hand. Everything it ad-
vances is the result of thinking for itself; and this is every-
where evident by the way in which it gives its thoughts
utterance. Such a mind is like a prince. In the realm of
intellect its authority is imperial, whereas the authority of
minds of a lower order is delegated only; as may be seen
in their style, which has no independent stamp of its own.

Every one who really thinks for himself is so far like a
monarch. His position is undelegated and supreme. His
judgments, like royal decrees, spring from his own sover-
eign power and proceed directly from himself. He ac-
knowledges authority as little as a monarch admits a com-
mand; he subscribes to nothing but what he has himself
authorized. The multitude of common minds, laboring
under all sorts of current opinions, authorities, prejudices,
is like the people, which silently obeys the law and accepts
orders from above.

Those who are so zealous and eager to settle debated
questions by citing authorities, are really glad when they
are able to put the understanding and the insight of others
into the field in place of their own, which are wanting.
Their number is legion. For, as Seneca says, there is no
man but prefers belief to the exercise of judgment—unus-
quisque mavult credere quam judicare. In their contro-
versies such people make a promiscuous use of the weapon
of authority, and strike out at one another with it. If any
one chances to become involved in such a contest, he will
do well not to try reason and argument as a mode of de-
fense; for against a weapon of that kind these people are
like Siegfrieds, with a skin of horn, and dipped in the flood
ON THINKING FOR ONES SELF. 329

of incapacity for thinking and judging. They will meet
his attack by bringing up their authorities as a way of
abashing him—argumentum ad verecundiam, and then cry
out that they have won the battle.

In the real world, be it never so fair, favorable and pleas-
ant, we always live subject to the law of gravity, which we
have to be constantly overcoming. But in the world of
intellect we are disembodied spirits, held in bondage to no
such law, and free from penury and distress. Thus it is
that there exists no happiness on earth like that which, at
the auspicious moment, a fine and fruitful mind finds in
itself.

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a
woman we love. We fancy we shall never forget the
thought nor become indifferent to the dear one. But out
of sight, out of mind! The finest thought runs the risk
of being irrevocably forgotten if we do not write it down,
and the darling of being deserted if we do not marry her.

There are plenty of thoughts which are valuable to the
man who thinks them; but only few of them which have
enough strength to produce repercussive or reflex action—
I mean, to win the reader’s sympathy after they have been
put on paper.

But still it must not be forgotten that a true value
attaches only to what a man has thought in the first in-
stance forhisown case. Thinkers may be classed according
as they think chiefly for their own case or for that of others.
The former are the genuine independent thinkers; they
really think and are really independent; they are the true
philosophers; they alone are in earnest. The pleasure and
the happiness of their existence consist in thinking. The
others are the sophists; they want to seem that which they
are not, and seek their happiness in what they hope to get
from the world. They are in earnest about nothing else.
To which of these two classes a man belongs may be seen
by his whole style and manner. Lichtenberg isan example
for the former class; Herder, there can be no doubt, be-
longs to the second.

When one considers how vast and how close to us is the
problem of existence—this equivocal, tortured, fleeting,
dream-like existence of ours—so vast and so close that a
man no sooner discovers it than it overshadows and obscures
all other problems and aims; and when one sees how all
330 THK ART OF LITERATURE.

men, with few and rare exceptions, have no clear conscious:
ness of the problem, nay, seem to be quite _unaware of its
presence, but busy themselves with everything rather than
with this, and live on, taking no thought but for the pass-
ing day and the hardly longer span of their own personal
future, either expressly discarding the problem or else
over-ready to come to terms with it by adopting some sys-
tem of popular metaphysics and letting it satisfy them;
when, I say, one takes all this to heart, one may come to the
opinion that man may be said to be a thinking being only
in a very remote sense, and henceforth feel no special sur-
prise at any trait of human thoughtlessnes or folly; but
know, rather, that the normal man’s intellectual range of
vision does indeed extend beyond that of the brute, whose
whole existence is, as it were, a continual present, with no
consciousness of the past or the future, but not such an
immeasurable distance as is generally supposed.

This is, in fact, corroborated by the way in which most
men converse; where their thoughts are found to be
chopped up fine, like chaff, so that for them to spin out a
discourse of any length is impossible.

If this world were peopled by really thinking beings, it
could never be that the noise of every kind would be
allowed such generous limits, as in the case with the most
horrible and at the same time aimless form of it.* Jf na-
ture had meant man to think, she would not have given
him ears: or, at any rate, she would have furnished them
with air-tight flaps, such as are the enviable possession of the
bat. But, in truth, man isa poor animal like the rest, and
his powers are meant only to maintain him in the struggle
for existence; so he must needs keep his ears always open,
to announce of themselves, by night as by day, the ap-
proach of the pursuer.

ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE.

 

In THE drama which is the most perfect reflection of
human existence, there are three stages in the presentation
of the subject, with a corresponding variety in the design
and scope of the piece.

 

* Translator’s note.—Schopenhauer refers to the cracking of
whips. See the essay ‘' On Noise” in ‘‘ Studies in Pessimism,”
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 331

At the first, which is also the most common stage, the
drama is never anything more than merely interesting.
The persons gain our attention by following their own aims
which resemble ours; the action advances by means of in-
trigue and the play of character and incident; while wit
and raillery season the whole.

At the second stage, the drama becomes sentimental.
Sympathy is roused with the hero, and, indirectly, with
ourselves. The action takes a pathetic turn; but the end is
peaceful and satisfactory.

The climax is reached with the third stage, which is the
most difficult. There the drama aimsat being tragic. We
are brought face to face with great suffering and the storm
and stress of existence; and the outcome of it is to show
the vanity of all human effort. Deeply moved, we are
either directly prompted to disengage our will from the
struggle of life, or else a chord is struck in us which echoes
a similar feeling.

The beginning, it is said, is always difficult. In the
drama it is just the contrary; for there the difficulty always
lies in the end. This is proved by countless plays which
promise very well for the first act or two, and then become
muddled, stick or falter—notoriously soin the fourth act—
and finally conclude in a way that is either forced or
unsatisfactory or else long foreseen by every one. Some-
times, too, the end is positively revolting, as in Les-
sing’s ‘ Emilia Galotti,” which sends the spectators home
in a temper.

This difficulty in regard to the end of a play arises
partly because it is everywhere easier to get things into a
tangle than to get them out again; partly also because at
the beginning we give the author carte blanche to do as he
likes, but, at the end, make certain definite demands upon
him. Thus we ask fora conclusion that shall be either
quite happy or else quite tragic; whereas human affairs do
not easily take so decided a turn; and then we expect that
it shall be natural, fit and proper, unlabored, and at the
same time foreseen by no one.

These remarks are also applicable to an epic and to a
novel; but the more compact nature of the drama makes
the difficulty plainer by increasing it.

E nihilo nihil fit. ‘That nothing can come from nothing
332 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

is a maxim true in fine art as elsewhere. In composing an
historical picture, a good artist will use living men as a
model, and take the ground work of the faces from life; and
then proceed to idealize them in point of beauty or ex-
pression. A similar method, I fancy, is adopted by good
novelists. In drawing a character they take the general
outline of it from some real person of their acquaint-
ance, and then idealize and complete it to suit their
purpose.

A novel will be of a high and noble order, the more it
represents of inner, and the less it represents of outer, life;
and the ratio between the two will supply a means of judg-
ing any novel, of whatever kind, from‘‘ ‘Tristram Shandy ”
down to the crudest and most sensational tale of knight or
robber. ‘‘ Tristram Shandy ” has, indeed,as good as no action
at all; and there is not much in ‘‘ La Nouvelle Heloise” and
<‘ Wilhelm Meister.” Even ‘‘ Don Quixote” has relatively
little; and that there is, is very unimportant, and intro-
duced merely for the sake of fun. And these four are the
best of all existing novels.

Consider, further, the wonderful romancesof Jean Paul,
and how much inner life is shown on the narrowest basis
of actual event. Even in Walter Scott’s novels there is a
great preponderance of inner over outer life, and incident
is never brought in except for the purpose of giving play
to thought and emotion; whereas, in bad novels, incident
is there on its own account. Skill consists in setting the
inner life in motion with the smallest possible array of cir-
cumstances, for it is this inner life that really excites our
interest.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events,
but to make small ones interesting.

History, which I like to think of as the contrary of
poetry (é6ropovuerov—nenxomnuer or), 18 for time what geogra-
phy is for space; and it is no more to be called a science,
in any strict sense of the word, than is geography, because
it does not deal with universal truths, but only with par-
ticular details.* History has always been the favorite

 

* Translator’s Note.—This line of argument is not likely to be
popular nowadays; but if the reader is interested by it, he will find
e er ees stated in ‘‘ Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” Vol,
IL, ¢. 38.

4
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 333

study of those who wish to learn something, without hav-
ing to face the effort demanded by any branch of real knowl-
edge, which taxes the intelligence. In our time history is
a favorite pursuit; as witness the numerous books upon
the subject which appear every year.

If the reader cannot help thinking, with me, that history
is merely the constant recurrence of similar things, just as
in a kaleidoscope the same bits of glass are presented, but
in different combinations, he will not be able to share all
this lively interest; nor, however, will he censure it. But
there is a ridiculous and absurd claim, made by many peo-
ple, to regard history as a part of philosophy, nay, as phi-
losophy itself; they imagine that history can take its place.

The preference shown for history by the greater public
in all ages may be illustrated by the kind of conversation
which is so much in vogue everywhere in society. It gen-
erally consists in one person relating something aud then
another person relating something else; so that in this way
every one is sure of receiving attention. Both here and in
the case of history it is plain that the mind is occupied
with particular details. But as in science, so also in every
worthy conversation, the mind rises to the consideration
of some general truth.

This objection does not, however, deprive history of its
value. Human life is short and fleeting, and many mil-
lions of individuals share in it, who are swallowed by that
monséer of oblivion which is waiting for them with ever-
open jaws. It is thus avery thankworthy task to try to
rescue something—the memory of interesting and import-
tant events, of the leading features and personages of some
epoch—from the general shipwreck of the world.

From another point of view, we might look upon history
as the sequel to zoology; for while with all other animals
it is enough ‘to observe the species, with man individuals,
and therefore individual events, have to be studied; be-
cause every man possesses a character of an individual.
And since individuals and events are without number or
end, an essential imperfection attaches to history. In the
study of it, all that a man learns never contributes to
lessen that which he has still to learn. With any real
science, a perfection of knowledge is, at any rate, conceiv-
able.

When we gain access to the histories of China and of
334 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

India, the endlessness of the subject-matter will reveal to
us the defects in the study, and force our historians to see
that the object of science is to recognize the many in the
one, to perceive the rules in any given example, and to
apply to the life of nations a knowledge of mankind; not
to go on counting up facts ad infinitum.

There are two kinds of history; the history of politics
and the history of literature and art. The one is the his-
tory of the will; the other, that of theintellect. The first
is a tale of woe, even of terror: it is a record of agony,
struggle, fraud, and horrible murder en masse. The
second is everywhere pleasing and serene, like the intellect
when left to itself, even though its path be one of error.
Its chief branch is the history of philosophy. This is, in
fact, its fundamental bass, and the notes of itfare heard even
in the other kind of history. These deep tones guide the
formation of opinion, and opinion rules the world. Hence
philosophy, rightly understood, is a material force of the
most powerful kind, though very slow in its working.
The philosophy of a period is thus the fundamental bass of
its history.

The newspaper is the second-hand in the clock of his-
tory; and it is not only made of baser metal than those
which point to the minute and the hour, but it seldom
goes right.

The so-called leading article is the chorus to the drama
of passing events.

Hxaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism
as it is to the dramatic art; for the object of journalism is
to make events go as far as possible. ‘hus it is that all
journalists are, in the very nature of their cailing, alarm-
ists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they
write. Herein they are like little dogs; if anything stirs,
they immediately set up a shrill bark.

Therefore, let us carefully regulate the attention to be
paid to this trumpet of danger, so that it may not disturb
our digestion. Let us recognize that a newspaper is at
best but a magnifying-glass, and very often merely a
shadow on the wall.

The pen is to thought what the stick is to walking; but
you walk most easily when you have no stick, and you
ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE. 335

think with the oe perfection when you have no pen
in your hand. It is only when a man begins to be old that
he likes to use a stick and is glad to take up his pen.

When an hypothesis has once come to birth in the mind,
or gained a footing there, it leads a life so far comparable
with the life of an organism, as that it assimilates matter
from the outer world only when it is like in kind with it
and beneficial; and when, contrarily, such matter is not
like in kind but hurtful, the hypothesis, equally with the
organism, throws it off, or, if forced to take it, gets rid of
it again entire.

To gain immortality an author must possess so many
excellences that, while it will not be easy to find any one
to understand and appreciate them all, there will be men
in every age who are able to recognize and value some of
them. In this way the credit of his book will be main-
tained throughout the long course of centuries, in spite of
the fact that human interests are always changing.

An author like this, who has a claim to the continuance
of his life even with posterity, can only be a man who,
over the wide earth, will seek his like in vain, and offer a
palpable contrast with every one else in virtue of his un-
mistakuble distinction. Nay more: were he, like the wan-
dering Jew, to live through several generations, he would
still remain in the same superior position. If this were
not so, it would be difficult to see why his thoughts should
not perish like those of other men.

Metaphors and similes are of great value, in so far as
they explain an unknown relation by a known one. Even
the more detailed smile which grows into a parable or an
allegory, is nothing more than the exhibition of some re-
lation in its simplest, most visible and palpable form.
The growth of ideas rests, at bottom, upon similes; be-
cause ideas arise by a process of combining the similarities
and neglecting the differences between things. Further,
intelligence, in the strict sense of the word, ultimately
consists in a seizing of relations; and a clear end pure
grasp of relations is all the more often attained when the
comparison is made between cases that lie wide apart from
one another, and between things of quite different nature.
As long asa relation is known to me as existing only in a
536 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

single case, I have none but an individual idea of it—in
other words, only an intuitive or perceptive knowledge of
it; but as soon as I see the same relation in two different
cases, I have a general idea of its whole nature, and this is
a deeper and more perfect knowledge.

Since, then, similes and metaphors are such a powerful
engine of knowledge, it is a sign of great intelligence in a
writer if his similes are unusual and, at the same time, to
the point. Aristotle also observes that by far the most
important thing to a writer is to have this power of meta-
phor; for it is a gift which cannot be acquired, and it is a
mark of genius.*

As regards reading, to require that a man shall retain
everything he has ever read, is like asking him to carry
about with him all he has ever eaten. The one kind of
food has given him bodily, and the other mental nourish-
ment; and it is through these two meaus that he has grown
to be what he is. Thc body assimilates only that which is
like it; and so a man retains in his mind only that which
interests him, in other words, that which suits his system
of thought or his purposes in life. Every one has pur-
poses, no doubt; but very few have anything like a system
of thought. Few people take an objective interest in any-
thing, and so their reading does them no good; they retain
nothing.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make
a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time
and energy limited.

Repetitio est mater studiorum. Any book that is at
all important ought to be at once read through twice;
partly because, on a second reading, the connection of the
different portions of the book will be better understood,
and the beginning comprehended only when the end is
known; and partly because we are not in the same
temper and disposition on both readings. On the second
perusal we get a new view of every passage and a different
impression of the whole book, which then appears in
another light. .

It would be a good thing to buy books if one could also
buy the time in which to read them; but generally the pur-

*« Poetics,” ¢. 22.
ON CRITICISM. 337

ome of a book is mistaken for the acquisition of its con-
tents.

A man’s works are the quintessence of his mind,
and even though he may possess very great capacity they
will always be incomparably more valuable than his con-
versation. Nay, in all essential matters his works will not
only make up for the lack of personal intercourse with
him, but they will far surpass it in solid advantages. The
writings even of a man of moderate genius may be edify-
ing, worth reading and instructive, because they are his
quintessence—the result and fruit of all his thought and
study; while conversation with him may be unsatis-
factory.

So it is that we can read books by men in whose company
we find nothing to please, and that a high degree of cul-
ture leads us to seek entertainment almost wholly from
books and not from men.

ON CRITICISM.

THE following brief remarks on the critical faculty are
chiefly intended to show that, for the most part, there is
no such thing. It is arara avis; almost as rare, indeed,
as the phoenix, which appears only once in five hundred

ears.

: When we speak of taste—an expression not chosen
with any regard for it—we mean the discovery, or, it may
be only the recognition, of what is right sxsthetically,
apart from the guidance of any rule; and this, either
because no rule has as yet been extended to the matter in
question, or else becausc, if existing, it is unknown to the
artist, or the critic, as the case may be. Instead of taste,
we might use the expression esthetic sense, if this were not
tautological.

The perceptive critical taste is, so to speak, the female
analogue to the male quality of productive talent or genius.
Not capable of begetting great work itself, it consists in a
capacity of reception, that is to say, of recognizing as such
what is right, fit, beautiful, or the reverse; in other words,
of discriminating the good from the bad, of discovering
and appreciating the one and condemning the other.

In appreciating a genius, criticism should not deal with
338 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

the errors in his productions or with the poorer of his
works, and then proceed to rate him low; it should atteud
only to the qualities in which he most excels. For in the
sphere of intellect, as in other spheres, weakness and per-
versity cleave so firmly to human nature that even the
most brilliant mind is not wholly and at all times free from
them. Hence the great errors to be found even in the
works of the greatest men; or as Horace puts it, guandoque
bonus dormitat Homerus.

That which distinguishes genius, and should be the
standard for judging it, is the height to which it is able to
soar when it is in the proper mood and finds a fitting
occasion—a height always out of the reach of ordinary
talent. And, in like manner, it is a very dangerous thing
to compare two great men of the same class; for instance,
two great poets, or musicians, or philosophers, or artists;
because injustice to the one or the other, at least for the
moment, can hardly be avoided. For in making a com-
parison of the kind the critic looks to some particular
merit of the one and at once discovers that it is absent in
the other, who is thereby disparaged. And then if the
process is reversed, and the critic begins with the latter
and discovers his peculiar merit, which is quite of a differ-
ent order from that presented by the former, with whom
it may be looked for in vain, the resultis that both of them
suffer undue depreciation.

There are critics who severally think that it rests with
each one of them what shall be accounted good, and what
bad. They all mistake their own toy-trumpets for the
trombones of fame.

A drug does not effect its purpose if the dose is too large;
and it is the same with censure and adverse criticism when
it exceeds the measure of justice.

The disastrous thing for intellectual merit is that it
must wa.é for those to praise the good who have them-
selves produced nothing but what is bad; nay, it is a
primary misfortune that it has to receive its crown at the
hands of the critical power of mankind—a quality of
which most men possess only the weak and impotent sem-
blance, so that the reality may be numbered among the
rarest gifts of nature. Hence La Bruyére’s remark is, un-
happily, as true as it is neat. ‘“Apres esprit de discerne-
ment,” he says, ‘‘ ce qwil ya au monde de plus rare, ce sont
ON CRITICISM. 339

les diamans et les perles.”” The spirit of discernment! the
critical faculty! it is these that are lacking. Men do not
know how to distinguish the genuine from the false, the
corn from the chaff, gold from copper; or to perceive the
wide gulf that separates a genius from an ordinary man.
Thus we have that bad state of things described in an old-
fashioned verse, which gives it as the lot of the great ones
here on earth to be recognized only when they are gone:

“Es ist num das Geschick der Grossen hier auf Erden,
Erst wann sie nicht mehr sind, von uns erkannt zu werden.”

When any genuine and excellent work makes its ap-
pearance, the chief difficulty in its way is the amount of
bad work it finds already in possession of the field, and
accepted as though it were good. And then if, after a
long time, the new-comer really succeeds, by a hard
struggle, in vindicating his place for himself and winning
reputation, he will soon encounter fresh difficulty from
some affected, dull, awkward imitator, whom people drag
in, with the object of calmly setting him up on the altar
beside the genius, not seeing the difference and really
thinking that here they have to do with another great man.
This is what Yriarte means by the first lines of his 28th
Fable, where he declares that the ignorant rabble always
sets equal value on the good and the bad:

“Siempre acostumbra hacer el vulgo necio
De lo bueno y lo malo igual aprecio.”

So even Shakespeare’s dramas had, immediately after his
death, to give place to those of Ben Jonson, Massinger,
Beaumont and Fletcher, and to yield the supremacy for a
hundred years. So Kant’s serious philosophy was crowded
out by the nonsense of Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, Hegel.
And even in a sphere accessible to all, we have seen un-
worthy imitators quickly diverting public attention from
the incomparable Walter Scott., For, say what you will,
the public has no sense for excellence, and therefore no
notion how very rare it is to find men really capable of
doing anything great in poetry, philosophy, or art, or that
their works are alone worthy of exclusive attention. The
dabblers, whether in verse or in any other high sphere,
340 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

should be every day unsparingly reminded that neither
gods, nor men, nor booksellers have pardoned their me-
diocrity:

“‘Mediocribus esse poetis
Non homines, non Di, non concessere columne.” *

Are they not the weeds that prevent the corn coming up,
so that they may cover all the ground themselves? And
then there happens that which has been well and freshly
described by the lamented Feuchtersleben,t who died so
young: how people cry out in their haste that nothing is
being done, while all the while great work is quietly
growing to maturity; and then, when it appears, it is not
seen or heard in the clamor, but goes its way silently, in
modest grief: ,

“‘Tst doch’”’—rufun sie vermessen—
“Nichts im Werke, nichts gethan! ”
Und das Grosse, reift indessen
Still heran.

‘« Bs erscheint nun; niemand sieht es,
Niemand hort es im Geschrei.
Mit bescheid’ner Trauer zieht es
Still vorbei.”

This lamentable dearth of the critical faculty is not less
obvious in the case of science, as isshown by the tenacious
life of false and disproved theories. If they are once ac-
cepted, they may go on bidding defiance to truth for fifty
or even a hundred years and more, as stable as an iron pier
in the midst of the waves. The Ptolemaic system was
still held a century after Copernicus had promulgated his
theory. Bacon, Descartes and Locke made their way ex-
tremely slowly and only after a long time; as the reader
may see by D’Alembert’s celebrated Preface to the ‘‘ En-
cyclopeedia.” Newton was not more ‘successful; and this
is sufficiently proved by the bitterness and contempt with

* Horace, ‘‘Ars Poetica,” 372.

+ Translator’s Note. Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben (1806-49),
an Austrian physician, philosopher, and poet, and a specialist
in medical psychology. The best known of his songs is that
beginning ‘Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath,” to which Mendelssohn
composed one of his finest melodies.
ON ORITICISM. 341

which Leibnitz attacked his theory of gravitation in the
controversy with Clarke.* Although Newton lived for
almost forty years after the appearance of the ‘‘ Principia,”
his teaching was, when he died, only to some extent ac-
cepted in his own country, while outside England he
counted scarcely twenty adherents; if we may believe the
introductory note to Voltaire’s exposition of his theory.
It was, indeed, chiefly owing to this treatise of Voltaire’s
that the system became known in France nearly twenty
years after Newton’s death. Until then a firm, resolute,
and patriotic stand was made by the Cartesian ‘‘ Vortices; ”
while only forty years previously, this same Cartesian phi-
losophy had been forbidden in the French schools; and
now in turn d’Agnesseau, the chancellor, refused Voltaire
the “ Imprimatur ” for his treatise on the Newtonian doc-
trine. On the other hand, in our day Newton’s absurd
theory of color still completely holds the field, forty years
after the publication of Goethe’s. Hume, too, was disre-
garded up to his fiftieth year, though he began very early
and wrote in a thoroughly popular style. And Kant, in
spite of having written and talked all his life long, did not
become a famous man until he was sixty.

Artists and poets have, to be sure, more chance than
thinkers, because their public is at least a hundred times as
large. Still, what was thought of Beethoven and Mozart
during their lives? what of Dante? what even of Shake-
speare? If the latter’s contemporaries had in any way recog-
nized his worth, at least one good and accredited portrait
of him would have come down to us from an age when the
art of painting flourished; whereas we possess only some
very doubtful pictures, a bad copperplate, and a still
worse bust on his tomb.* And in like manner, if he had
been duly honored, specimens of his handwriting would
have been preserved to us by the hundred, instead of being
confined, as is the case, to the signatures to a few legal
documents. The Portuguese are still proud of their only
poet Camoéns. He lived, however, on alms collected every
evening in the street by a black slave whom he had

 

* See especially §§ 35, 113, 118, 120, 122, 128.

* A. Wivell: ‘‘An Inquiry into the History, Authenticity, and
Characteristics of Shakespeare’s Portraits;” with 21 engravings.
London, 1836.
342 THE ART O# LITERATURE.

brought with him from the Indies. In time, no donbt,
justice will be done to every one, tempo é galant? womo;
but it as late and slow in arriving as in a court of law, and
the secret condition of it is that the recipient shall be no
longer alive. ‘The precept of Jesus the son of Sirach is
faithfully followed: ‘(Judge none blessed before his
death.” * He, then, who has produced immortal works,
must find comfort by applying to them the words of
the Indian myth, that the minutes of life among the im-
mortals seem like years of earthly existence; and so, too,
that years upon earth are only as the minutes of the im-
mortals.

This lack of critical insight is also shown by the fact
that, while in every century the excellent work of earlier
time is held in honor, that of its own is misunderstood,
and the attention which is its due is given to bad work,
such as every decade carries with it only to be the sport of
the next. That men are slow to recognize genuine merit
when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do
not understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowl-
edged works of genius, which they honor only on the score
of authority. The crucial test is the fact that bad work—
Fichte’s philosophy, for example—if it wins any reputation,
also maintains it for one or two generations; and only when
its public is very large does its fall follow sooner.

Now, just as the sun cannot shed its light but to the eye
that sees it, nor music sound but to the hearing ear, so the
value of all masterly work in art and science is conditioned
by the kinship and capacity of the mind to which it speaks.
It is only such a mind as this that possesses the magic word
to stir and call forth the spirits that lie hidden in great
work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is a sealed
cabinet of mystery, an unfamiliar musical instrument from
which the player, however much he may flatter himself,
can draw none but confused tones. Howdifferent a paint-
ing looks when seen in a good light, instead of in some
dark corner! Just in the same way, the impression made
by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind to
understand it.

A fine work, then, requires a mind sensitive to its beauty;
a thoughtful work, a mind that can really think, if it is to

* Ecclesiasticus, xi. 28,
ON CRITICISM. 343
exist and live at all. But alas! it may happen only too
often that he who gives a fine work to the world afterward
feels like a maker of fireworks, who displays with enthu-
siasm the wonders that have taken him so much time and
trouble to prepare, and then learns that lhe has come to the
wrong place, and that the fancied spectators were one and
all inmates of an asylum for the blind. Still, even that is
better than if his public had consisted entirely of men who
made fireworks themselves; as in this case, if his display
had been extraordinarily good, it might possibly have cost
him his head.

The source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling of
kinship. Even with the sense of beauty it is unquestion-
ably our own species in the animal world, and then again
our own race, that appears to us the fairest. So too in
intercourse with others, every man shows a decided prefer-
ence for those who resemble him: and a blockhead will
find the society of another blockhead incomparably more
pleasant than that of any number of great minds put
together. Every man must necessarily take his chief
pleasure in his own work, because it is the mirror of his
own mind, theecho of his own thought; and next in order
will come the work of people like him; that is to say, a
dull, shallow and perverse man, a dealer in mere words,
will give his sincere and hearty applause only to that which
is dull, shallow, perverse or merely verbose. On the other
hand, he will allow merit to the work of great minds only
on the score of authority, in other words because he is
ashamed to speak his opinion; for in reality they give him
no pleasure at all. They do not appeal to him; nay, they
repel him; and he will not confess this even to himself.
The works of genius cannot be fully enjoyed except by
those who are themselves of the privileged order. The
first recognition of them, however, when they exist without
authority to support them, demands considerable superiority
of mind.

When the reader takes all this into consideration, he
should be surprised, not that great work is so late in win-
ning reputation but that it wins it at all. And as a matter
of fact, fame comes only by a slow and complex process.
The stupid person is by degrees forced, and as it were
tamed, into recognizing the superiority of one who stands
immediately above him: this one in his turn bows before
344 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

some one else; and so it goes on until the weight of the
votes gradually prevail over their number; and this is just
the condition of all genuine, in other words, deserved
fame. But untilthen,the greatest genius, even after he has
passed his time of trial, stands like a king amid a crowd of
his own subjects, who do not know him by sight and
therefore will not do his behests; unless, indeed, his chief
ministers of state are in his train. For no subordinate
official can be the direct recipient of the royal commands,
as he knows only the signature of his immediate superior;
and this is repeated all the way up into the highest ranks,
where the under-secretary attests the minister’s signature,
and the minister that of the king. There are analogous
stages to be passed before a genius can attain widespread
fame. This is why his reputation most easily comes to a
standstill at the very outset; because the highest authorities
of whom there can be but few, are most frequently not to
be found; but the further down he goes in the scale the
more numerous are those who take the word from above,
so that his fameis no more arrested.

We must console ourselves for this state of things by re-
flecting that it is really fortunate that the greater number
of men do not form a judgment on their own responsibility
but merely take it on authority. For what sort of criti-
cism should we have on Plato and Kant, Homer, Shake-
speare and Goethe, if every man were to form his opinion
by what he really has and enjoys of thesc writers, instead
of being forced by authority to cpeak of them in a fit and
proper way, however littie he may really feel what he says.
Unless something of this kind took place, it would be im-
possible for true merit, in any high sphere, to attain fame
at all. At the same time it is also fortunate that every
man has just so much critical power of his own as is ne-
cessary for recognizing the superiority of those who are
placed immediately over him, and for following their lead.
This means that the many come in the end to submit to
the authority of the few; and there results that hierarchy
of critical judgments on which is based the possibility of a
steady, and eventually wide-reaching fame.

The lowest class in the community is quite impervious
to the merits of a great genius; and for these people there
is nothing left but the monument raised to him, which, by
the impression it produces on their senses, awakes in them
a dim idea of the man’s greatness.
ON CRITICISM. 345

Literary journals should be a dam against the uncon-
scionable scribbling of the age, and the ever-increasing
deluge of bad and useless books. ‘Their judgments should
be uncorrupted, just and rigorous; and every piece of bad
work done by an incapable person; every device by which
the empty head tries to come to the assistance of the empty
purse, that is to say, about nine-tenths of all existing
books, should be mercilessly scourged. Literary journals
would then perform their duty, which is to keep down the
craving for writing and put a check upon the deception of
the public, instead of furthering these evils by a
miserable toleration, which plays into the hands of author
and publisher, and robs the reader of his time and his
money.

If there was such a paper as I mean, every bad writer,
every brainless compiler, every plagiarist from others’
books, every hollow and incapable place-hunter, every
sham-philosopher, every vain and languishing poetaster,
would shudder at the prospect of the pillory in which his
bad work would inevitably have to stand soon after publi-
cation. This would paralyze his twitching fingers, to the
true welfare of literature, 1n which what is bad is not only
useless but positively pernicious. Now, most books are
bad and ought to have remained unwritten. Consequently
praise should be as rare as is now the case with blame,
which is withheld under the influence of personal consider-
ations, coupled with the maxim ‘‘accedas socius, laudes
lauderis ut absens.”

It is quite wrong to try to introduce into literature the
same toleration as must necessarily prevail in society
toward those stupid, brainless people who everywhere
swarm init. In literature such people are impudent in-
truders; and to disparage the bad is here duty toward the
good; for he who thinks nothing bad will think nothing
good either. Politeness, which has its source in social
relations, is in literature an alien, and often injurious,
element; because it exacts that bad work shall be called
good. In this way the very aim of science and art is
directly frustrated. :

This ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only by
people who joined incorruptible honesty with rare knowl-
edge and still rarer power of judgment; so that perhaps
there could, at the very most, be one, and even hardly one,
346 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

in the whole country; but there it would stand, like a just
Areopagus, every member of which would have to be
elected by all the others. Under the system that prevails
at present literary journals are carried on by a clique, and
secretly perhaps also by booksellers for the good of the
trade; and they are often nothing but coalitions of bad
heads to prevent the good ones succeeding. As Goethe
once remarked to me, nowhere is there so much dishonesty
as in literature.

But, above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary
rascality, would have to disappear It was introduced
under the pretext of protecting the honest critic, who
warned the public, against the resentment of the author
and his friends. But where there is one case of this sort,
there will be a hundred where it merely serves to take all
responsibility from the man who cannot stand by what he
has said, or possibly to conceal the shame of one who has
been cowardly and base enough to recommend a book to
the public for the purpose of putting money into his own
pocket. Often enough it is only a cloak for covering the
obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the critic.
It is incredible what impudence these fellows will show,
and what literary trickery they will venture to commit, as
soon as they know they are safe under the shadow of
anonymity. Let me recommend a general anticriticism, a
universal medicine or panacea, to put a stop to all anony-
mous reviewing, whether it praises the bad or blames the
good: Rascal ! yourname! For aman to wrap himself up
and draw his hat over his facc, and then fall upon people
who are walking about without any disguise—this is not
He part of a gentleman, it is the part of ascoundrel and a

nave.

An anonymous review has no more authority than an
anonymous letter: and one should be received with the
same mistrust as the other. Or shall we take the name of
the man who consents to preside over what is, in the
strict sense of the word, une société anonyme asa guarantee
for the veracity of his colleagues.

Even Rousseau, in the preface to the Nouvelle ‘‘ Heloise”
declares tout honnéte homme doit avouer les livres qu’il
publie; whichin plain language means that every honorable
man ought to sign his articles, and that no one is honorable
who does not do so. How much truer this is of polemical
ON REPUTATION. 347

writing, which is the general character of reviews! Riemer
was quite right in the opinion he gives in his ‘“‘ Reminis-
scences of Goethe:” * “ An overt enemy,” he says, ‘an en-
emy who meets you face to face, isan honorable man, who
will treat you fairly, and with whom you can cometo terms
and be reconciled: but an enemy who conceals himself ” is a
base, cowardly scoundrel, ‘* who has not courage enough to
avow his own judgment: it is not his opinion that he cares
about, but only the secret pleasure of wreaking his anger
without being found out or punished.” This will also have
been Goethe’s opinion, as he was generally the source from
which Riemer drew his observations. And, indeed,
Rousseau’s maxim applies to every line that is printed.
Would a man ina mask ever be allowed to harangue a
mob, or speak in any assembly: and that, too, when he
was going to attack others and overwhelm them with
abuse?

Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and journalistic
rascality. It is a practice which must be completely
stopped. very article, even in a newspaper, should be
accompanied by the name of its author; and the editor
should be made strictly responsible for the accuracy of the
signature. The freedom of the press should be thus far
restricted; so that what a man publicly proclaims through
the far sounding trumpet of the newspaper, he should be
answerable for, at any rate with his honor, if he has any;
and if he has none, let his name neutralize the effect of
his words. And since even the most insignificant person
igs known in his own circle, the result of such a measure
would be to put an end to two-thirds of the newspaper lies,
and to restrain the audacity of many a poisonous tongue.

ON REPUTATION.

Writers may be classified as meteors, planets and fixed
stars. A meteor makesa striking effect for a moment.
You look up and cry There! and it is gone forever.
Planets and wandering stars Jast a much longer time.
They often outshine the fixed stars and are confounded
with them by the inexperienced; but this is only because they

 

* Preface, D. xxix,
348 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

are near. It is not long before they too must yield their
place; nay, the light they give is reflected only, and the
sphere of their influence is confined to their own orbit—
their contemporaries. Their path is one of change and
movement, and with the circuit of a few years their tale is
told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant;
their position in the firmament is secure; they shine witha
light of their own; their effect to-day is the same as it was
yesterday, because, having no parallax, their appearance
does not alter with a difference in our standpoint. They
belong not to one system, one nation only, but to the uni-
verse. And just because they are so very far away, it is
usually many years before their light is visible to the in-
habitants of this earth.

We have seen in the previous chapter that where a man’s
merits are of a high order, it is difficult for him to win rep-
utation, because the public is uncritical and lacks dis-
cernment. But another and no less serions hindrance to
fame comes from the envy it has to encounter. For even
in the lowest kind of work, envy balks even the beginnings
of a reputation, and never ceases to cleave to it up to the
last. How great a part is played by envy in the wicked
ways of the world! Ariosto is right in saying that the
dark side of our mortal life predominates, so full it is of
this evil:

“questa assai pit oscura che serena
Vita mortal, tutta d’invidia piena.”

For envy is the moving spirit of that secret and informal,
though flourishing, alliance everywhere made by medioc-
rity against individual eminence, no matter of what kind.
In his own sphere of work no one will allow another to be
distinguished: he is an intruder who cannot be tolerated.
Sti quelgwun excelle parmt nous, qu'il atile exceller ailleurs!
this is the universal password of the second-rate. In addi-
tion, then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it
has in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of
thousands to be reckoned with, all of them bent on surpress-
ing, nay, on smothering it altogether. No one is taken
for what he is, but for what others make of him; and this
is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down distinction,

by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly be
prevented.
ON REPUTATION. 349

There are two ways of behaving in regard to merit:
either to have fume of one’s own, or torefuse any to others.
The latter method is more convenient, and so it is gener-
ally adopted. As envy isa mere sign of of deficiency, so
to envy merit argues the lack of it. My excellent Baltha-
zar Gracian has given a very fine account of this relation
between envy and merit in a lengthy fable, which may be
found in his ‘‘ Discreto ” under the heading ‘¢ Hombre de os-
tentation.” He describes all the birds as meeting together
and conspiring against the peacock, because of his magnifi-
cent feathers: ‘‘If,” said the magpie, “‘we could only man-
age to put a stop to the cursed parading of his tail, there
would soon be an end of his beauty; for what is not seen
is as good as what does not exist.”

This explains how modesty came to be a virtue. It was
invented only as a protection against envy. That there
have always been rascals to urge this virtue, and to rejoice
heartily over the bashfulness of a man of merit, has been
shown at length in my chief work.* In Lichtenberg’s
“Miscellaneous Writings,” I find this senteuce quoted:
“Modesty should be the virtue of those who possess no
other.” Goethe has a well-known saying, which offends
many people: ‘It is only knaves who are modest! "—Nur
die Lumpen sind bescheiden! but it has its prototype in
Cervantes, who includes in his ‘‘ Journey up Parnassus,”
certain rules of conduct for poets, and among them the
following: ‘‘ Every one whose verse shows him to be a poet
should have a high opinion of himself, relying on the
proverb that he is a knave who thinks himself one.” And
Shakespeare, in many of his Sonnets, which gave him the
only opportunity he had of speaking of himself, declares,
with a confidence equal to his ingenuousness, that what he
writes is immortal. +

 

® «Welt als Wille,” Vol. II. ¢. 37.

+ Collier, one of his critical editors, in his ‘Introduction to the
Sonnets,” remarks upon this point: ‘‘In many of them are be found
most remarkable indications of self-confidence and of assurance in
the immortality of his verses, and in this respect the author’s opinion
was constant and uniform. He never scruples to expressit . . .
and perhaps there is no writer of ancient or modern times who, for
the quantity of such writings left behind him, has so frequently or
so strongly declared that what he had produced in this department,
of poetry ‘the world would not willingly let die.’”
350 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

A method of underrating good work often used by envy
—in reality, however, only the obverse side of it—consists
in the dishonorable and unscrupulous laudation of the bad;
for no sooner does bad work gain currency than it draws
attention from the good. But however effective this
method may be for awhile, especially if it is applied on a
large scale, the day of reckoning comes at last, and the
fleeting credit given to bad work is paid off by the lasting
discredit which overtakes those who abjectly praised it.
Hence these critics prefer to remain anonymous,

A like fate threatens, though more remotely, those who
depreciate and censure good work: and consequently many
are too prudent to attempt it. But there is another way;
and when a man of eminent merit appears, the first effect
he produces is often only to pique all bis rivals, just as the
peacock’s tail offended the birds. This reduces them toa
deep silence; and their silence is so unanimous that it
savors of preconcertion. Their tongues are all paralyzed.
It is the selentiwm livoris described by Seneca. This ma-
licious silence, which is technically known as ignoring, may
for a long time interfere with the growth of reputation; if,
as happens in the higher walks of learning, where a man’s
immediate audience is wholly composed of rival workers
and professed students, who then form the channel of his
fame, the greater public is obliged to use its suffrage with-
out being able to examine the matter for itself. And if, in
the end, that malicious silence is broken in upon by the
voice of praise, it will be but seldom that this happens
entirely apart from some ulterior aim, pursued by those
who thus manipulate justice. For, as Goethe says in the
“* West-dstlicher Divan,” a man can get no recognition,
either from many persons or from only one, unless it is to
publish abroad the critic’s own discernment:

“« Denn es ist kein Anerkennen,
Weder Vieler, noch des Einen,
Wenn es nicht am Tagoe frdert,
‘Wo man selbst was mochte scheinen.”

The credit you allow to another man engaged in work
similar to your own or akin to it, must at bottom be with-
drawn from yourself; and you can praise him only at the
expense of your own claims.

Accordingly, mankind is in itself not at all inclined to
ON REPUTATION. . 351

award praise and reputation; it is more disposed to blame
and find fault, whereby it indirectly praises itself. If,
notwithstanding this, praise is won from mankind, some
extraneous motive must prevail. Iam not here referring
to the disgraceful way in which mutual friends will puff
one another into a reputation; outside of that, an effectual
motive is supplied by the feeling that next to the merit of
doing something one’s self, comes that of correctly appre-
ciating and recognizing what others have done. This ac-
cords with the three-fold division of heads drawn up by
Hesiod,* and afterward by Machiavelli. ‘*Thereare,” says
the latter,” in the capacities of mankind, three varieties:
one man will understand a thing by himself; another so
far as it is explained to him:;a third, neither of himself
nor when itis put clearly before him.” He, then, who
abandons hope of making good his claims to the first class,
will be glad to seize the opportunity of taking a place in
the second. It is almost wholly owing to this state of
things that merit may always rest assured of ultimately
meeting with recognition,

To this also is due the fact that when the value ofa
work has once been recognized and may no longer be con-
cealed or denied, all men vie in praising and honoring it;
simply because they are conscious of thereby doing them-
selves an honor. They act in the spirit of Xenophon’s
remark: ‘“‘he must be a wise man who knows what is wise.”
So when they see that the prize of original merit is forever
out of their reach, they hasten to possess themselves of
that which comes second best—the correct appreciation of
it. Here it happens as with an army which has been
forced to yield; when, just as previously every man wanted
to be foremost in the fight, so now every man tries to be
foremost in running away. They all hurry forward to
offer their applause to one who is now recognized to be
worthy of praise, in virtue of a recognition, asa rule un-
conscious, of that law of homogeneity which I mentioned
in the last chapter; so that it may seem as though their
way of thinking and looking at things were homogeneous
with that of the celebrated man, and that they may at
least save the honor of their literary taste, since nothing
else is left them.

 

* “Works and Days, 293”, t ‘The Prince, ch. 22,”
352s 1HE ART OF LITERATURE.

From this it is plain that, whereas it is very difficult to
win fame, it is not hard to keep it when once attained;
and also that a reputation which comes quickly does not
last very long; for here too, quod cito fit, cito pertt. It is
obvious that if the ordinary, average man can easily
recognize, and the rival workers willingly acknowledge,
the value of any performance, it will not stand very much
above the capacity of either of them to achieve it for them-
selves. Tantuwm guisque laudat, quantum se posse sperat
imitari—a man will praise a thing only so far as he hopes
to be able to imitate it himself. Further, it is a
suspicious sign if a reputation comes quickly; for an
application of the laws of homogeneity will show that such
a reputation is nothing but the direct applause of the multi-
tude. What this means may be seen by a remark once made
by Phocion, when he was interrupted in a speech by the
loud cheers of the mob. Turning to his friends who were
standing close by, he asked: ‘*‘ Have I made a mistake and
said something stupid? ” *

Contrarily, a reputation that is to last a long time must
be slow in maturing, and the centuries of its duration have
generally to be bought at the cost of contemporary praise.
For that which is to keep its position so long, must be of a
perfection difficult to attain; and even to recognize this
perfection requires men who are not always to be found,
and never in numbers sufficiently great to make themselves
heard; whereas envy is always on the watch and doing its
best to smother their voice. But with moderate talent,
which soon meets with recognition, there is the danger
that those who possessit will outlive both it and themselves;
so that a youth of fame may be followed by an old age of
obscurity. In the case of great merit, on the other hand,
a man may remain unknown for many years, but make up
for it later on by attaining a brilliant reputation. And if
it should be that this comes only after he is no more, well!
he is to be reckoned among those of whom Jean Paul says
that extreme unction is their baptism. He may console
himself by thinking of the saints, who also are canonized
only after they are dead.

Thus what Mahlmannt has said so well in “ Herodes ”

* Plutarch; ‘‘ Apothegms.”
t Translator's Note.—August Mahlmann (1771-1826), journalist,
ON REPUTATION. 353

holds good; in this world truly great work never pleases at
once, and the god set up by the multitude keeps his place
on the altar but a short time:

“‘TIch denke, das wahre Grosse in der Welt
Ist immer nur Das was nicht gleich gefillt
Und wen der Pobel zum Gotte weiht
Der steht auf dem Altar nur kurze Zeit.”

It is worth mention that this rule is most directly con-
firmed in the case of pictures, where, as connoisseurs well
know, the greatest masterpieces are not the first to attract
attention. If they make a deep impression, it is not after
one, but only after repeated, inspections; but then they
excite more and more admiration every time they are
seen,

Moreover, the chances that any given work will be
quickly and rightly appreciated, depend upon two condi-
tions: firstly, the character of the work, whether high or
low, in other words, easy or difficult to understand; and,
secondly, the kind of public it attracts, whether large or
small. This latter condition is, no doubt, in most instances
a corollary of the former; but it also partly depends upon
whether the work in question admits, like books and
musieal compositions, of being reproduced in great num-
bers. By the compound action of these two conditions,
achievements which serve no materially useful end—and
these alone are under consideration here—will vary in re-
gard to the chances they have of meeting with timely recog-
nition and due appreciation; and the order of precedence,
beginning with those who have the greatest chance, will
be somewhat as follows: acrobats, circus-riders, ballet-
dancers, jugglers, actors, singers, musicians, composers,
poets (both the last on account of the multiplication of
their works), architects, painters, sculptors, philosophers.

The last place of all is unquestionably taken by philoso-

- phers, because their works are meant not for entertainment
but for instruction, and because they presume some knowl-
edge on the part of the reader, and require him to make
an effort of his own to understand them. This makes
their public extremely small and causes their fame to be

 

poet and story-writer. His ‘‘ Herodes vor Bethlehem,” is a parody
of Kotzebue’s ‘‘ Hussiten vor Naumburg.”
354 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

more remarkable for its length than for its breadth. And,
in general, it may be said that the possibility of a man’s
fame lasting a long time, stands in almost inverse ratio
with the chance that it will be early in making its appear-
ance; so that, as regards length of fame, the above order
of precedence may be reversed. But, then, the poet and
the composer will come in the end to stand on the same
level as the philosopher; since, when once a work is com-
mitted to writing, it is possible to preserve it to all time.
However, the first place still belongs by right to the philoso-
pher, because of the much greater scarcity of good work
in this sphere, and the high importance of it; and also be-
cause of the possibility it offers of an almost perfect trans-
lation into any language. Sometimes, indeed it happens
that a philosopher’s fame outlives even his works them-
selves; as has happened with Thales, Empedocles, Hera-
clitus, Democitus, Parmenides, Epicurus, and many others.

My remarks are, as I have said, confined to achievements
that are not of any material use. Work that serves some
practical end, or ministers directly to some pleasure of the
senses; will never have any difficulty in being duly appre-
ciated. No first-rate pastry-cook could long remain ob-
scurein any town, to say nothing of having to appeal to
posterity.

Under fame of rapid growth is also to be reckoned fame
of a false and artificial kind; where, for instance, a book
is worked into a reputation by means of unjust praise, the
help of friends, corrupt criticism, prompting from above
and collusion from below. All this tells upon the multi-
tude, which is rightly presumed to have no power of judg-
ing for itself. This sort of fame is like a swimming-
bladder; by its aid a heavy body may keep afloat. It
bears up for a certain time, long or short according as the
bladder is well sewed up and blown; but still the air comes
out gradually, and the body sinks. This is the inevitable
fate of all works which are famous by reason of something
outside of themselves. False praise dies away; collusion
comes to an end; critics declare the reputation ungrounded;
it vanishes, and is replaced by so much the greater con-
tempt. Contrarily, a genuine work, which, having the
source of its fame in itself, can kindle admiration afresh in
every age, resembles a body of low specific gravity, which
ON REPUTATION. 355

always keeps up of its own accord, and so goes floating
down the stream of time.*

Men of great genius, whether their work be in poetry,
peep hy or art, stand in all ages like isolated heroes,

eeping up single-handed a desperate struggle against the
onslaught of an army of opponents. Is uot this character-
istic of the miserable nature of mankind? The dullness,
grossness, perversity, silliness and brutality of by far the
greater part of the race, are always an obstacle to the
efforts of the genius, whatever be the method of his art;
they so form that hostile army to which at last he has to
succumb. Let the isolated champion achieve what he may:
it is slow to be acknowledged; it is late in being appreci-
ated, and then only on the score of authority; it may easily
fall into neglect again, at any rate for awhile. Ever
afresh it finds itself opposed by false, shallow, and insipid
ideas, which are better suited to that large majority, and
so generally hold the field. Though the critic may step
forth and say, like Hamlet when he held up the two
portraits to his wretched mother, ‘‘ Have you eyes? Have
you eyes?” alas! they have none. -When I watch the be-
haviour of a crowd of people in the presence of some great
master’s work, and mark the manner of their applause,
they often remind me of trained monkeys in a show. The
monkeys’ gestures are, no doubt, much like those of men;
but now and again they betray that the real inward spirit
of those gestures is not in them. Their irrational nature
peeps out. :

It is often said of a man that ‘he is in advance of his
age;” and it follows from the above remarks that this must
be taken to mean that he is in advance of humanity in
general. Just because of this fact, a genius makes no
direct appeal except to those who are themselves counsid-
erably above the average in capacity; and these are too
rare to allow of their ever forming a numerous body at any
one period. If he is in this respect not particularly fa-

 

* Translator’s note.—At this point Schopenhauer interrupts the
thread of his discourse to speak at length upon an example of false
fame. Those who are at all acquainted with the philosopher's views
will not be surprised to find that the writer thus held up to scorn is
Hegel; and readers of the other volumes in this series will, with the
translator, have had by now quite enough of the subject. The pas-
sage is therefore omitted.
356 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

vored by fortune, he will be misunderstood by his own
age; in other words, he will remain unaccepted until time
gradually brings together the voices of those few persons
who are capable of judging a work of such high character.
Then posterity will say: ‘* This man was in advance of his
age,” instead of “in advance of humanity;” because hu-
manity will be glad to lay the burden of its own faults
upon a single epoch.

Hence if a man has been superior to his own age, he
would also have been superior to any other; provided that,
in that age, by some rare and happy chance, a few just
men, capable of judging in the sphere of his achievements,
had been born at the same time with him; just as when,
according to a beautiful Indian myth, Vishnu becomes
incarnate as a hero, so, too, Brahma at the same time ap-
pears as the singer of his deeds; and hence Valmiki, Vyasa
and Kalidasa are incarnations of Brahma.

In this sense, then, it may be said that every
immortal work puts its age to the proof, whether or
no it will be able to recognize the merit of it. Asa rule,
the men of any age stand such a test no better than neigh-
bors of Philemon and Buucis, who expelled the deities they
failed to recognize. Accordingly, the right’ standard for
judging the intellectual worth of any generation is sup-
plied, not by the great minds that make their appearance
in it—for their capacities are the work of Nature, and the
possibility of cultivating them a matter of chance circum-
stance—but by the way in which contemporaries receive
their works; whether, I mean, they give their applause
soon and with a will, or late and in niggardly fashion, or
leave it to be bestowed altogether by posterity. :

This last fate will be specially reserved for works of a
high character. For the happy chance mentioned above
will be all the more certain not to come, in proportion as
there are few to appreciate the kind of work done by great
minds. Herein lies the immeasurable advantage possessed
by poets in respect of reputation; because their work is ac-
cessible to almost every one. Ifit had been possible for Sir
Walter Scott to be read and criticised by only some
hundred persons, perhaps in his lifetime any common
scribbler would have been preferred to him; and afterward,
when he had taken his proper place, it would also have
been said in his honor that he was ‘in advance of his age.”
ON REPUTATION. 357

But if envy, dishonesty and the pursuit of personal aims
are added to the incapacity of those hundred persons who,
in the name of their generation, are called upon to pass
judgment on a work, then indeed it mects with the same
sad fate as attends a suitor who pleads before a tribunal of
judges one and all corrupt.

In corroboration of this, we find that the history of
literature generally shows all those who made knowledge
and insight their goal to have remained unrecognized and
neglected, while those who paraded with the vain show of
it received the admiration of their contemporaries, together
with the emoluments.

The effectiveness of an author turns chiefly upon his get-
ting the reputation that he should be read. But by prac-
ticing various arts, by the operation of chance, and by
certain natural affinities, this reputation is quickly won by
a hundred worthless people; while a worthy writer may
come by it very slowly and tardily. The former possess
friends to help them; for the rabble is always a numerous
body which holds well together. The latter has nothing
but euemies; because intellectual superiority is everywhere
and under all circumstances the most hateful thing in the
world, and especially to bunglers in the same line of work,
who want to pass for something themselves.*

This being so, it is a prime condition for doing any
great work--any work which is to outlive its own age, that
aman pay no heed to his contemporaries, their views and
Opinions, and the praise or blame which they bestow.
This condition is, however, fulfilled of itself when a man
really does anything great, and it is fortunate that it is so.
For if, in producing such a work, he were to look to the
general opinion or the judgment of his colleagues, they
would lead him astray at every step. Hence, if a man
wants to go down to posterity, he must withdraw from the
influence of his own age. This will, of course generally
mean that he must also renounce any influence upon it, and
be ready to buy centuries of fame by foregoing the ap-
plause of his contemporaries.

For when any new and wide-reaching truth comes into

 

* If the professors of philosophy should chance to think that I
am here hinting at them and the tactics they have for more than
thirty years pursued toward my works, they have hit the nail upon
the head.
358 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

the world—and if it is new, it must be paradoxical—an
obstinate stand will be made against it as long as possible;
nay, people will continue to deny it even after they slacken
their opposition and are almost convinced of its truth.
Meanwhile it goes on quietly working its way, and, like an
acid, undermining everything around it. From time to
time a crash is heard; the old error comes tottering to the
ground, and suddenly the new fabric of thought stands
revealed, as though it were a monument just uncovered.
Every one recognizes and admires it. To be sure, this all
comes to pass for the most part very slowly. As a rule.
people discover a man to be worth listening to only after
he is gone; their ‘‘ hear, hear!’ resounds when the orator
has left the platform.

Works of the ordinary type meet with a better fate.
Arising as they do in the course of, and in connection
with, the general advance in contemporary calture, they
are in close alliance with the spirit of their age—in other
words, just those opinions which happen to be prevalent at
the time. They aim at suiting the needs of the moment.
If they have any merit, it issoon recognized; and they gain
currency as books which reflect the latest ideas. Justice,
nay, more than justice, is done to them. They afford
little scope for envy; since, as was said above, a man will
praise a thing only so far as he hopes to be able to imitate
it himself.

But those rare works which are destined to become the
property of all mankind and to live for centuries, are, at
their origin, too far in advance of the point at which
culture happens to stand, and on that very account foreign
to it and the spirit of their own time. They neither
belong to it nor are they in any connection with it, and
hence they excite no interest in those who are dominated
by it. They belong to another, a higher stage of culture,
and a time that is still far off. Their course is related to
that of ordinary works as the orbit of Uranus to the orbit
of Mercury. For the moment they get no justice done to
them. People are at aloss how to treat them; so they
leave them alone, and go their own snails’ pace for them-
selves. Does the worm see the eagle as it soars aloft?

Of the number of books written in any language, about
one in 100,000 forms a part of its real and permanent lit-
erature. What a fate this one book has to endure before it
ON REPUTATION. 359

outstrips those 100,000 and gains its due place of honor!
Such a book is the work of an extraordinary and eminent
mind, and therefore it is specifically different from the
others; a fact which sooner or later becomes manifest.

Let no one fancy that things will ever improve in this
respect. No! the miserable constitution of humanity
never changes, though it may, to be sure, take somewhat
varying forms with every generation. A distinguished
mind seldom has its full effect in the lifetime of its posses-
sor; because, at bottom, it is completely and properly un-
derstood only by minds already akin to it.

As it is a rare thing for even one man out of many mil-
liong to tread the path that leads to immortality, he must
of necessity be very lonely. The journey to posterity lies
through a horribly dreary region, like the Lybian desert.
of which, as is well known, no one has any idea who has
not seen it himself. Meanwhile let me before all things
recommend the traveler to take light baggage with him;
otherwise he will have to throw away too much on the
road. Let him never forget the wordsof Balthazar Gracian;
lo bueno, st breve, dos vezes bueno—good work is doubly
good if itis short. This advice is specially applicable to
my own countrymen.

Compared with the short span of time they live, men of
great intellect are like huge buildings, standing on a small
plot of ground. The size of the building cannot be seen
by anyone just in front of it; nor, for an analogous reason,
can the greatness ot a genius be estimated while he lives.
But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it and
wishes him back again.

If the perishable son of time has produced an imperish-
ble work, how short his own life seems compared with that
of his child! He is like Semele or Maia—a mortal mother
who gave birth to an immortal son; or, contrarily, like
Achilles in regard to Thetis. What a contrast there is
between what is fleeting and what is permanent! The
short span of man’s life, bis necessitous, afflicted, unstable
existence, will seldom allow of his seeing even the begin-
ning of his immortal child’s brilliant career: nor will the
father himself be taken for that which he really is. It
may be said, indeed, that a man whose fame comes after
him is the reverse of a nobleman, who is preceded by it.

However, the only difference that it ultimately makes toa

*
360 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

man to receive his fame at the hands of contemporaries
rather than from posterity is that in the former case his
admirers are separated from him by space, and in the latter
by time. For even in the case of contemporary fame, a
man does not, asa rule, see his admirers actually before
him.  Reverence cannot endure close proximity; it almost
always dwells at some distance from its object; and in the
presence of the person revered it melts like butter in the
sun, Accordingly, if a man is celebrated with his con-
temporaries, nine-tenths of those among whom he lives
will let their esteem be guided by his rank and fortune;
and the remaining tenth may perhaps have a dull conscious-
ness of his high qualities, because they have heard about
him from remote quarters. There is a fine Latin letter of
Petrarch’s on this incompatibility between reverence and
the presence of the person, and between fame and life. It
comes second in his ‘‘ Epistole familiares” * and it is
addressed to Thomas Messanensis. He there observes,
among other things, that the learned men of his age all
made it arule to think little of a man’s writings if they
had even once seen him.

Since distance, then, is essential if afamous man is to be
recognized and revered, it does not matter whether it is
distance of space or of time _It is true that he may some-
times hear of his fame in the one case, but never in the
other; but still, genuine and great merit may make up for
this by confidently anticipating its posthumous fame.
Nay, he who produces some really great thought is con-
scious of his connection with coming generations at the
very moment he conceives it; so that he feels the extension
of his existence through centuries and thus lives with pos-
terity as well as for it. And when, after enjoying a great
man’s work, we are seized with admiration for him, and
wish him back, so that we might see and speak with him,
and have him in our possession, this desire of ours is not un-
requited; for he, too, has had his longing for that posterity
which will grant the recognition, honor, gratitude and love
denied by envious contemporaries.

If intellectual works of the highest order are not allowed
their due until they come before the tribunal of posterity,
a contrary fate is prepared for certain brilliant errors which

 

* In the Venetian edition of 1492.
ON REPUTATION. 361

proceed from men of talent, and appear with an air of
being well grounded. These errors are defended with so
much acumen and learning that they actually become
famous with their own age, and maintain their position at
least during their author’s lifetime. Of thissort are many
false theories and wrong criticisms; also poems and works
of art, which exhibit some false taste or mannerism favored
by contemporary prejudice. They gain reputation and
currency simply because no one is yet forthcoming who
knows how to refute them or otherwise prove their falsity;
and when he appears, as he usually does, in the next gener-
ation, the glory of these works is brought to anend. Post-
humous judges, be their decision favorable to the appel-
lant or not, form the proper court for quashing the verdict
of contemporaries. That is why it is so difficult and so
rare to be victorious alike in both tribunals.

The unfailing tendency of time to correct knowledge and
judgment should always be kept in view asa means of
allaying anxiety, whenever any grievous error appears,
whether in art, or science, or practical life, and gains
ground; or when some false and thoroughly perverse policy
or movement is undertaken and receives applause at the
hands of men. No one should be angry, or, still less,
despondent; but simply imagine that the world has already
abandoned the error in question, and now only requires
time and experience to recognize of its own accord that
which a clear vision detected at the first glance.

When the facts themselves are eloquent of a truth, there
is po need to rush to its aid with words: for time will give
it a thousand tongues. How long it may be before they
speak, will of course depend upon the difficulty of the sub-
ject and the plausibility of the error; but come they will,
and often it would be of no avail to try to anticipate them.
In the worst cases it will happen with theories as it hap-
pens with affairs in practical life; where sham and deception
emboldened by success, advance to greater and greater
lengths, until discovery is made almost inevitable. It is
just so with theories; through the blind confidence of the
blockheads who broach them, their absurdity reaches such
a pitch that at last it is obviouseven to the dullesteye. We
may thus say to such people: ‘‘ the wilder your statements
the better.”

There is also some comfort to be found in reflecting upon
362 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

all the whims and crotchets which had their day and have
now utterly vanished. In style, in grammar, in spelling,
there are false notions of this sort which last only three or
four years. But when the errors are on a large scale, while
we lament the brevity of human life, we shall, in any case
do well to lag behind our own age when we see it on a
downward path. For there are two ways of not keeping on
a level with the times. A man may be below it; or he may
be above it.

ON GENIUS.

No DIFFERENCE of rank, position, or birth, is so great
as the gulf that separates the countless millions who use
their head only in the service of their belly, in other words
look upon it as an instrument of the will, and those very few
and rare persons who have the courage to say: No it is
too good for that; my head shall be active only in its own
service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and varied
spectacle of this world, and then reproduce it in some form
whether as art or as literature, that may answer to my
character as an-individual. These are the truly noble, the
real noblesse of the worlc. The others are serfs and go
with the soil—glebe adscripti. Of course, I am here re-
ferring to those who have not only the courage, but also
the call, and therefore the right, to order the head to quit
the service of the will; with a result that proves the sacri-
fice to have been worth the making. In the case of those
to whom all this can only partially apply, the gulfis not so
wide; but even though their talent be small, so long as it
is real, there will always be a sharp line of demarcation
between them and the millions.*

 

* The correct scale for adjusting the hierarchy of intelligences is
furnished by the degree in which the mind takes merely individual
or approaches universal views of things. The brute recognizes only
the individual as such ; its comprehension does not extend beyond the
limits of the individual. But man reduces the individual to the gen-
eral; herein lies the exercise of his reason; and the higher his intelli-
gence reaches, the nearer do his general ideas approach the point at
which they become universal. If his grasp of the universal is so
deep as to be intuitive, and to apply not only to general ideas, but to
an individual object by itself, then there arises a knowledge of
ON GENIUS. 363

The works of fine art, poetry and philosophy produced
by a nation are the outcome of the superfluous intellect ex-
isting in it.

For him who can understand aright—cwm grano salis—
the relation between the genius and the normal man may,
perhaps, be best expressed as follows: A genius hasa double
intellect, one for himself and the service of his will; the
other for the world, of which he becomes the mirror, in
virtue of his purely objective attitude toward it. The
work of art or poetry or philosophy produced by the genius
is simply the result, or quintessence, of this contem-
pee attitude, elaborated according to certain technical
rules.

The normal man, on the other hand, has only a single
intellect, which may be called subjective by contrast with
the objective intellect of genius. However acute this sub-
jective intellect may be—and it exists in very various
degrees of perfection—it is never on the same level with
the double intellect of genius; just as the open chest notes
of the human voice, however high, are essentially different

‘from the falsetto notes. These, like the two upper octaves
of the flute and the harmonics of the violin, are produced
by the column of air dividing itself into two vibrating
halves, with a node between them: while the open chest
notes of the human voice and the lower octave of the flute
are produced by the undivided column of air vibrating as a
whole. This illustration may help the reader to under-
stand that specific peculiarity of genius which is unmis-
takably stamped on the works, and even on the physiog-
nomy, of him who is gifted with it. At the same time it
is obvious that a double intellect like this must, as a rule,
obstruct the service of the will; and this explains the poor
capacity often shown by genius in the conduct of life.
And what specially characterizes genius is that it has none

 

the Ideas in the sense used by Plato. This knowledge is of an
esthetic character; when it is self-active, it rises to genius, and
reaches the highest degree of intensity when it becomes philosophic;
for then the whole of life and existence as it passes away, the world
and all it contains, are grasped in their true nature by an act of in-
tuition, and appear in a form which forces itself upon consciousness
as an object of meditation. Here reflection attains its highest point.
Between it and the merely animal perception there are countless
stages, which differ according to the approach made to a universal
view of things.
364 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

of that sobriety of temper which is always to be found in
the ordinary simple intellect, be it acute or dull.

The brain may be likened to a parasite which is nour-
ished as a part of the human frame without contributing
directly to its inner economy; it is securely housed in the
topmost story, and there leads a self-sufficient and inde-
pendent life. In the same way it may be said that a man
endowed with great mental gifts leads, apart from the indi-
vidual life common to all, a second life, purely of the
intellect. He devotes himself to the constant increase,
rectification and extension, not of mere learning, but of
real systematic knowledge and insight; and remains un-
touched by the fate that overtakes him personally, so long
as it does not disturb him in his work. It is thus a life
which raises a man and sets him above fate and its changes.
Always thinking, learning, experimenting, practicing his
knowledge, the man soon comes to look upon this second
life as the chief mode of existence, and his merely personal
life as something subordinate, serving only to advance
ends higher than itself.

An example of this independent, separate existence is
furnished by Goethe. During the war in the Champagne,
and amid all the bustle of the camp, he made observations
for his theory of color; and as soon as the numberless
calamities of that war allowed of his retiring for a short
time to the fortress of Luxembourg, he took up the manu-
script of his ‘‘ Farbenlehre.” This1s an example which we,
the salt of the earth, should endeavor to follow, by never let-
ting anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual
life, however much the storm of the world may invade and
agitate our personal environment; always remembering that
we are the sons, not of the bondwoman, but of the free.
As ouremblem and coat of arms, I propose a tree mightily
shaken by the wind, but still bearing its ruddy fruit on
every branch; with the motto Dum convellor mitescunt,
or Conquassata sed ferax.

That purely intellectual life of the individual has its
counterpart in humanity asa whole. For there, too, the
real life is the life of the will, both in the empirical and in
the transcendental meaning of the word. The purely in-
tellectual life of humanity lies in its effort to increase
knowledge by means of the sciences, and its desire to per-
fect the arts. Both science and art thus advance slowly
ON GENIUS. 365

from one generation to another, and grow with the cen-
turies, every race as it hurries by furnishing its contribu-
tion. This intellectual life, like some gift from heaven,
hovers over the stir and movement of the world; or it is,
as it were, a sweet-scented air developed out of the ferment
itself—the real life of mankind, dominated by will; and
side by side with the history of nations, the history of phi-
losophy, science and art takes its innocent and bloodless
way.

The difference between the genius and the ordinary man
is, no dcubt, a quantitative one, in so far asitisa differ-
ence of degree; but Iam tempted to regard it also as qual-
itative, in view of the fact that ordinary minds, notwith-
standing individual variation, have a certain tendency to
think alike. Thus on similar occasions their thoughts at
once all take a similar direction, and run on the same lines;
and this explains why their judgments constantly agree—
not, however, because they are based on truth. To such
lengths does this go that certain fundamental views obtain
among mankind at all times, and are always being re-
peated and brought forward anew, while the great minds
of all ages are in open or secret opposition to them.

A genius is a man in whose mind the world is presented
as an object is presented in a mirror, but with a degree
more of clearness and a greater distinction of outline than
is attained by ordinary people. It is from him that human-
ity may look for most instruction; for the deepest insight
into the most important matters is to be acquired, not by
an observant attention to detail, but by a close study of
things as a whole. And if his mind reaches maturity, the
instruction he gives will be conveyed now in one form,
now in another. Thus genius may be defined as an emi-
nently clear consciousness of things in general, and there-
fore, also of that which is opposed to them, namely, one’s
own self.

The world looks up to a man thus endowed, and expects
to learn something about life and its realnature. But sev-
eral highly favorable circumstances must combine to pro-
duce genius, and this isa veryrareevent. It happens only
now and then, let us say once in a century, that a man is
born whose intellect so perceptibly surpasses the normal
measure as to amount to that second faculty which seems
to be accidental, as it is out of all relation to the will. He
366 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

may remain along time without being recognized or ap-
preciated, stupidity preventing the one and envy the other.
But should this once come to pass, mankind will crowd
round him and his works, in the hope that he may be able
to enlighten some of the darkness of their existence or in-
form them about it. His message is, to some extent, a
revelation, and he himself a higher being, even though he
may be but little above the ordinary standard.

Like the ordinary man, the genius is what he is chiefly
for himself. This is essential to his nature, a fact which
cau neither be avoided nor altered. What he may be for
others remains a matter of chance and secondary impor-
tance. In no case can people receivefrom his mind more
than a reflection, and then only when he joins with them
in the attempt to get his thought into their heads; where,
however, it is never anything but an exotic plant, stunted
and frail.

In order to have original, uncommon, and perhaps even
immortal thoughts, it is enough to estrange one’s self so
fully from the world of things for a few moments, thet the
most ordinary objects and events appear quite new and un-
familiar. In this way their true nature is disclosed. What
is here demanded cannot, perhaps, be said to be difficult;
it Is notin our power at all, but is just the province of
genius.

By itself, genius can produce original thoughts just as
little as a woman by herself can bear children. Outward
circumstances must come to fructify genius, and be, as it
were, a father to its progeny.

The mind of genius is among other minds what the car-
bunele is among precious stones: it sends forth light of its
own, while the others reflect only that which they have
received. The relation of the genius to the ordinary mind
may also be described as that of an idio-electrical body
to one which merely is a conductor of electricity.

The mere man of learning, who spends his life in teach-
ing what he has learned, is not strictly to be called a man
of genius; just as idio-electrical bodies are not conductors.
Nay, genius stands to mere learning as the words to the
music inasong. A man of learning is a man who has
learned a great deal; a man of genius, one from whom we
learn something which the genius has learned from no-
ON GENIUS. 36%

body. Great minds, of which there is scarcely one in a
hundred millions, are thus the lighthouses of humanity;
and without them mankind would lose itself in the bound-
less sea of monstrous error and bewilderment.

And so the simple man of learning, in the strict sense of
the word—the ordinary professor, for instance—looks
upon the genius much as we look upon a hare, which is
good to eat after it has been killed and dressed up. So
long as it is alive, it is only good to shoot at.

He who wishes to experience gratitude from his contem-
poraries, must adjust his pace to theirs. But great things are
never produced in this way. And he who wants to do
great things must direct his gaze to posterity, and in firm
confidence elaborate his work for coming generations.
No doubt, the result may be that he will quite remain quite
unknown to his contemporaries, and comparable to a man
who, compelled to spend his life upon a lonely island, with
great effort sets up a monument there, to transmit to fu-
ture seafarers the knowledge of his existence. If he thinks
it a hard fate, let him console himself with the reflection
that the ordinary man who lives for practical aims only,
often suffers a like fate, without having any compensation
to hope for; inasmuch as he may,under favorable conditions,
spend a life of material production, earning, buying, build-
ing fertilizing, laying out, founding, establishing, beautify-
ing, with daily effort and unflagging zeal, and all the time
think that he is working for himself; and yet in the end
itis his descendants who reap the benefit of it all, and
sometimes not even his descendants. It is the same with
the man of genius; he, too hopes for his reward and for
honor at least; and at last finds that he has worked for
posterity alone. Both, to be sure, have inherited a great
deal from their ancestors. a

The compensation I have mentioned as the privilege of
genius lies, not in what it is to others, but in what it is to
itself. What man has in any real sense lived more than he
whose moments of thought make their echoes heard
through the tumult of centuries? Perhaps, after all, it
would be the best thing for a genius to attain undisturbed
possession of himself, by spending his life in enjoying the
pleasure of his own thoughts, his own works, and by
admitting the world only as the heir of his ample existence,
368 1HE ART OF LITERATURE.

Then the world would find the mark of his existence only
after his death, like the marks in the Ichnolith.*

Nor is it only in the activity of his highest powers that
the genius surpasses ordinary people. A man who is
unusually well-knit, supple and agile, will perform ali his
movements with exceptional ease, even with comfort,
because he takes a direct pleasure in an activity for which
he is particularly well-equipped, and therefore often exer-
cises it witbout any object. Further, if he is an acrobat
or a dancer, not only does he take leaps which other people
cannot execute, but he also betrays rare elasticity and
agility in those easier steps which others can also perform,
and even in ordinary walking. In the same way a man of
superior mind will not only produce thoughts and works
which could never have come from another; it will not be
here alone that he will show his greatness; but as knowl-
edge and thought form a mode of activity natural and easy
to him, he will also delight himself in them at all times,
and so apprehend small matters which are within the
range of other minds, more easily, quickly and correctly
than they. Thus he will take a direct and lively pleasure
in every increase of knowledge, every problem solved,
every witty thought, whether of his own or another’s; and
so his mind will have no further aim than to be constantly
active. This will be an inexhaustible spring of delight;
and boredom, that specter which haunts the ordinary man,
can never come near him.

_ Then, too, the masterpieces of past and contemporary
men of genius exist in their fullness for him alone. If a
great product of genius is recommended to the ordinary,
simple mind, it will take as much pleasure in it as the
victim of gout receives in being invited to a ball. The
one goes for the sake of formality, and the other reads the
book so as not to be in arrear. For La Bruyére was quite
right when he said: ‘‘ All the wit in the world is lost upon
him who has none.” The whole range of thought of a
man of talent, or of a genius, compared with the thoughts
of the common man, is, even when directed to objects
essentially the same, like a brilliant oil-painting, full of

 

* Translator’s Note.—For an illustration of this feeling in poetry,
Schopenhauer refers the reader to Byron's ‘‘ Prophecy of Dante:”
introd. to C, 4,
ON GENIUS. 369

life, compared with a mere outline or a weak sketch in
water-color.

All this is part of the reward of genius, and compensates
him for a lonely existence in a world with which he has
nothing in common and no sympathies. But since size is
relative, it comes to the same thing whether I say, Caius
was a great man, or Caius has to live among wretchedly
small people; for Brobdingnag and Lilliput vary only in
the point from which they start. However great, then,
however admirable and instructive, a long posterity may
think the author of immortal works, during his lifetime he
will appear to his contemporaries small, wretched, and
insipid in proportion. This is what I mean by saying that
as there are three hundred degrees from the base of a tower
to the summit, so there are exactly three hundred from the
summit to the base. Great minds thus owe little ones
some indulgence; for it is only in virtue of these little
minds that they themselves are great.

Let us, then, not be surprised if we find men of genius
generally unsociable and repellent. It is not their want of
sociability that is to blame. Their path through the
world is like that of a man who goes for a walk on a bright
summer morning. He gazes with delight on the beauty
and freshness of nature, but he has to rely wholly on that
for entertainment; for he can find no society but the peas-
ants as they bend over the earth and cultivate the soil. It
is often the case that a great mind prefers soliloquy to the
dialogue he may have in this world. If he condescends to
it now and then, the hollowness of it may possibly drive
him back to his soliloquy; for in forgetfulness of his inter-
locutor, or caring little whether he understands or not, he
talks to him as a child talks to a doll.

Modesty in a great mind would, no doubt, be pleasing to
the world; but, unluckily, it isa contradictio in adjecto. It
would compel a genius to give the thoughts and opinions,
nay, even the method and style, of the million preference
over his own; to set a higher value upon them; and, wide
apart as they are, to bring his views into harmony with
theirs, or even suppress them altogether, so as to let the
others hold the field. In that case, however, he would
either produce nothing at all, or else his achievements
would be just upon a level with theirs. Great, genuine
and extraordinary work can be done only in so far
370 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

as its author disregards the method, the thoughts, the
opinions of his contemporaries, and quietly works on, in
spite of their criticism, on his side despising what they
raise. No one becomes great without arrogance of this
sort. Should his life and work fall upon a time which
cannot recognize and appreciate him, he is at any rate true
to himself; like some noble traveler forced to pass the night
ina miserable inn; when morning comes, he contentedly
goes his way. .

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with
his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed
in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted
him allows of his following his vocation without having to
think about other people.

For the brain to be a mere laboror in the service of the
belly, is indeed the common lot of almost all those who do
not live on the work of their hands; and they are far from
being discontented with their lot. But it strikes despair
into a man of great mind, whose brain-power goes beyond
the measure necessary for the service of the will; and he
prefers, if need be, to live in the narrowest circumstances,
so long as they afford him the free use of his time for the
development and application of his faculties; in other
words, if they give him the leisure which is invaluable to
him. Itis otherwise with ordinary people; for them leisure
has no value in itself, nor is it, indeed, without its dangers,
as these people seem to know. The technical work of our
time, which is done to an unprecedented perfection, has,
by increasing and multiplying objects of luxury, given the
favorites of fortune a choice between more leisure and cul-
ture upon one side, and additional Iuxury and good living,
but with increased activity, upon the other; and, true to
their character, they choose the latter, and prefer cham-
pagne to freedom. And they are consistent in their
choice; for, to them, every exertion of the mind which
does not serve the aims of the will is folly. Intellectual
effort for its own sake, they call eccentricity. Therefore,
persistence in the aims of the will and the belly will be
concentricity; and, to be sure, the will is the center, the
kernel of the world.

But in general it is very seldom that any such alterna-
tive is presented. For as with money, most men have no
superfluity, but only just enough for their needs, so with
ON GENIUS. 371

intelligence; they possess just what will suffice for the
service of the will, that is, for the carrying on of their
business. Having made their fortune, they are content to
gape or to indulge in sensual pleasures or childish amuse-
ments, cards or dice; or they will talk in the dullest way,
or dress up and make obeisance to one another. And how
few are those who have even a little superfluity of intellect-
ual power! Like the others they too make themselves a
pleasure; but it is a pleasure of the intellect. Either they
will pursue some liberal study which brings them in noth-
ing, or they will practice some art; and, in general,
they will be capable of taking an objective interest in
things, so that it will be possible to converse with them.
But with the others it is better not to enter into any rela-
tions at all; for, except when they tell the results of their
own experience or give an account of their special vocation,
or at any rate impart what they have learned from some-
one else, their conversation will not be worth listening to;
and if anything is said to them, they will rarely grasp or
understand it aright, and it will in most cases be opposed
to their own opinions. Balthazar Gracian describes them
very strikingly as men who are not men—hombres che non
lo son. And Giordano Bruno says the same thing: ‘‘ What
a difference there isin having to do with men compared
with those who are only made in their image and like-
ness!* And how wonderfully this passage agrees with that
remark inthe Kurral: The common people look like men,
but I have never seen anything quite like them.” If the
reader will consider the extent to which these ideas agree
in thought and even in expression, and the wide difference
between them in point of date and nationality, he cannot
doubt but that they are at one with the facts of life. It
was certainly not under the influence of those passages
that, about twenty years ago, I tried to get a snuff-box
made the lid of which should have two fine chestnuts rep-
resented upon it, if possible in mosaic; together with a
leaf which was to show that they were horse-chestnuts.
This symbul was meant to keep the thought constantly be-
fore my mind. Ifany one wishes for entertainment, such
as will prevent him feeling solitary even when he is alone,
let. me recommend the company of dogs, whose moral and

 

* Opera: ed. Wagner, I. 224,
372 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

intellectual qualities may almost always afford delight and
gratification.

Still, we should always be careful to avoid being unjust.
T am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again
by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experi-
ences with mankind. Countless times, in indignation at
their incapacity, their total lack of discernment, their
bestiality, I have been forced to echo the old complaint
that folly is the mother and the nurse of the human
race:

“Humani generis mater nutrixque profecto
Stultitia est.”

But at other times I have been astounded that from such a
race there could have gone forth so many arts and sciences,
abounding in so much use and beauty, even though it has
always been the few that produce them. Yet these arts
and sciences have struck root, established and perfected
themselves; and the race has with persistent fidelity pre-
served Homer, Plato, Horace and others for thousands of
years, by copying and treasuring their writings, thus sav-
ing them from oblivion, in spite of all the evils and
atrocities that have happened in the world. Thus the
race has proved that it appreciates the value of these things,
and at the same time it can form a correct view of special
achievements or estimate signs of judgment and intelli-
gence. When this takes place among those who belong
to the great multitude, it is by a kind of inspiration.
Sometimes a correct opinion will be formed by the multi-
tude itself; but this is only when the chorus of praise has
grown full and complete. It is then like the sound of un-
trained voices; where there are enough of them, it is
always harmonious.

Those who emerge from the multitude, those who are
called men of genius, are merely the lucida intervalla of
the whole human race. They achieve that which others
could not possibly achieve. Their originality is so great
that not only is their divergence from others obvious, but
their individuality is expressed with such force, that all
the men of genius who have ever existed show, every one of
them, peculiarities of character and mind; so that the
gift of his works is one which he alone of all men could
ever have presented to the world. This is what makes.
ON GENIUS. 393

that simile of Ariosto’s so true and so justly celebrated:
Natura lo fece e poi ruppelostampo. After Nature stamps
a man of genius, she breaks the die.

But there is always a limit to human capacity; and no
one can be a great genius without having some decidedly
weak side, it may even be some intellectual narrowness.
In other words, there will be some faculty in which he is
now and then inferior to men of moderate endowments.
It will be a faculty which, if strong, might have been an
obstacle to the exercise of the qualities in which he excels.
What this weak point is, it will always be hard to define
with any accuracy even in a given case. It may be better
expressed indirectly; thus Plato’s weak point is exactly
that in which Aristotle is strong, and vice versd; and so,
too, Kant is deficient just where Goethe is great.

Now, mankind is fond of venerating something; but its
veneration is generally directed to the wrong object, and it
remains so directed until posterity comes to set it right.
But the educated public is no sooner set right in this, than
the honor which is due to genius degenerates; just as the
honor which the faithful pay to their saints easily passes
into a frivolous worship of relics. Thousands of Christians
adore the relics of a saint whose life and doctrine are un-
known to them; and the religion of thousands of Buddhists
lies more in veneration of the Holy Tooth or some such
object, or the vessel that contains it, or the Holy Bowl,
or the fossil foosteps, or the Holy Tree which Buddha
planted, than in the thorough knowledge and faithful
practice of his high teaching. Petrarch’s house in’ Arqua;
Tasso’s supposed prison in Ferrara; Shakespeare’s house in
Stratford, with his chair; Goethe’s house in Weimar, with
its furniture; Kant’s old hat; the autographs of great
men; these things are gaped at with interest and awe by
many who have never read their works. They cannot do
anything more than just gape.

The intelligent among them are moved by the wish to
see the objects which the great man habitually had before
his eyes; and by a strange illusion, these produce the mis-
taken notion that with the objects they are bringing back
the man himself, or that something of him must cling to
them. Akin to such people are those who earnestly strive
to acquaint themselves with the subject matter of a poet’s
works, or to unravel the personal circumstances and events
374 THE AR1 OF LITERATURE.

in his life which have suggested particular passages. This
is as though the audience in a theater were to admire a fine
scene, and then rush upon the stage to look at the scaffold-
ing that supports it. There are in our day enough instances
of these critical investigators, and they prove the truth of
the saying that mankind is interested, not in the form of a
work, that is, in its manner of treatment, but in its actual
matter. All it cares for is the theme. To read a philoso-
pher’s biography, instead of studying his thoughts, is like
neglecting a picture and attending only to the style of its
frame, debating whether it is carved well or ill, and how
much it cost to gild it.

This is all very well. However, there is another class of
persons whose interest is also directed to material and 'per-
sonal considerations, but they go much further and carry
it to a point where it becomes absolutely futile. Because
a great man has opened up to them the treasures of his in-
most being, and, by a supreme effort of his faculties, pro-
duced works which not only redound to their elevation and
enlightenment, but will also benefit their posterity to the
tenth and twentieth generation; because he has presented
mankind with a matchless gift, these varlets think them-
selves justified in sitting in judgment upon his personal
morality, and trying if they cannot discover here or there
some spot in him which will soothe the pain they feel at the
sight of so great a mind, compared with the overwhelming
feeling of their own nothingness.

This is the real source of all those prolix discussions,
earried‘on in countless books and reviews, on the moral as-
pect of Goethe’s life and whether he ought not to have
married one or other of the girls with whom he fell in love
in his young days; whether, again, instead of honestly de-
voting himself to the service of his master, he should not
have been a man of the people, a German patriot, worthy
of a seat in the Paulskirche, and so on. Such crying in-
gratitude and malicious detraction prove that these self-
constituted judges are as great knaves morally as they are
intellectually, which is saying a great deal.

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation;
but the spring that moves genius to the production of its
works is not so easy to name. Wealth is seldom its re-
ward. Nor is it reputation or glory; only a Frenchman
could mean that. Glory is such an uncertain thing, and,
ON GENIUS. 345

if you look at it closely, of so little value. Besides it never
corresponds to the effort you have made:

“ Responsura tuo nunquam est par fama labori.”

Nor, again, is it exactly the pleasure it gives you; for this
is almost outweighed by the greatness of the effort. It is
rather a peculiar kind of instinct, which drives the man of
genius to give permanent form to what he sees and feels,
without being conscious of any further motive. It works,
in the main, by a necessity similar to that which makes a
tree bear its fruit; and no external condition is needed but
the ground upon which it is to thrive.

On a closer examination, it seems as though, in the case
of a genius, the will to live, which is the spirit of the hu-
man species, were conscious of having by some rare chance,
and for a brief period, attained a greater clearness of vi-
sion, and were now trying to secure it, or at least the out-
come of it, for the whole species, to which the individual
genius in his inmost being belongs; so that the light which
hesheds about him may pierce the darkness and dullness of
ordinary human consciousness and there produce some
good effect.

Arising in some such way, this instinct drives the genius
to carry his work to completion, without thinking of re-
ward or applause or sympathy; to leave all care for his
own personal welfare; to make his life one of industrious
solitude, and to strain his faculties to the utmost. He
thus comes to think more about posterity than about con-
temporaries; because, while the latter can only lead him
astray, posterity forms the majority of the species, and
time will gradually bring the discerning few who can ap-
preciate him. Meanwhile it is with him as with the artist
described by Goethe; he has no princely patron to prize his
talents, no friend to rejoice with him:

“Bin First der die Talente schitzt,
Ein Freund der sich mit mir ergétzt,
Die haben leider mir gefehlt.”

His work is, as it were, a sacred object and the true fruit
of his life, and his aim in storing it away for a more dis-
cerning posterity will be to make it the property of man-
kind. An aim like this far surpasses all others, and for it
he wears the crown of thorns which is one day to bloom
376 THE ART OF LITERATURE.

into a wreath of laurel. All his powers are concentrated
in the effort to complete and secure his work; just as the
insect, in the last stage of its development, uses its whole
strength on behalf of a brood it will never live to see; it
puts its eggs in some place of safety, where, as it well
knows, the young will one day find life and nourishment,
and then dies in confidence.
STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.
NOTE.

The essays here presented form a further selection from
Schopenhauer’s ‘‘Parerga,” brought together under a title
which is not to be found in the original, and does not
claim to apply to every chapter in the volume. The first
essay is, in the main, a rendering of the philosopher’s re-
marks under the heading of ‘‘ Nachtrige zur Lehre vom
Leiden der Welt,” together with certain parts of another
section entitled ‘* Nachtrage zur Lehre von der Bejahung
und Verneinung des Willens zum Leben.” Such omissions
as I have made are directed chiefly by the desire to avoid
repeating arguments already familiar to the readers of the
other volumes in this series. The ‘ Dialogue on Immor-
tality” sums up views expressed at length in the philoso-
pher’s chief work, and treated again in the “‘ Parerga.” The
psychological observations in this and the previous volume
practically exhaust the chapter of the original which bears
this title.

The essay on ‘‘ Women ” must not be taken in jest. It ex-
presses Schopenhauer’s serious convictions; and, as a pene-
trating observer of the faults of humanity, he may be
allowed a hearing on a question whichis just now receiving
a good deal of attention among us. sacs
 
STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD.

Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of
life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is ab-
surd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that
abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs
and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no
purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each sepa-
ate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be some-
thing exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.

I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by
most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative
in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes
its own existence felt. Leibnitz is particularly concerned
to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his
position by using a palpable and paltry sophism.* It is
the good which is negative: in other words, happiness and
satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state
of pain brought to an end.

This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to
be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very
much more painful,

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs
the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between
the two. Ifthe reader wishes to see shortly whether this

 

Translator’s Note cf. Théod, $153 Leibnitz argued that evil isa neg.
ative quality—z.e., the absence of good: and that its active and seem-
ingly positive character is an incidental and not an essential part of
its nature. Cold, he said, is only the absence of the power of heat,
and the active power of expansion in freezing water is an incidental
and not an essential part of the nature of cold. The fact is, that the
power of expansion in freezing water is really an increase of repul-
sion among its molecules; and Schopenhauer is quite right in calling
the whole argument a sophism,
Be2 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings
of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the
other.

The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any
kind will be thought of other people who are in a still
worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consola-
tion open to every one. But what an awful fate this
means for mankind as a whole!

We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under
the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then
another for his prey. So it is that in our good days we are
all unconscious of the evil fate may have presently in store
for us—sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or
reason.

No little part of the torment of existence lies in this,
that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us
take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster
with a whip. If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is
only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom.

But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame
would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were
removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need,
hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand
were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance
that, though they might not burst, they would present the
spectacle of unbridled folly—nay, they would gomad. And
I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain
or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. <A ship
without ballast is unstable and will not go straight.

Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form
the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all
wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men
occupy their lives? what would they do with their time?
If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land
flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained
his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would
either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would
be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end man-
kind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now
to accept at the hands of Nature.

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we
are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised,
sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the
ON THE SUFFERINGS OF (HE WORLD. 383

play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what
is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are
times when children might seem like innocent prisoners,
condemned not to death, but to life, and as yet all uncon-
scious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every
man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state
of life of which it may be said: ‘It is bad to-day, and
it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of
all.”

If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an
amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun
shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be
much better if on the earth as little as on the moon the
sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and
if, here as there the surface were still in a crystalline
state.

Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable epi-
sode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence. And,
in any case, even though things have gone with you toler-
ably well, the longer you live the more clearly you will
feel that, on the whole, life is a disappointment, nay, a
cheat.

If two men who were friends in their youth meet again
when they are old, after being separated for a lifetime,
the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other
will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole;
because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier
time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before
them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much—and
then performed so little. This feeling will so completely
predominate over every other that they will not even con-
sider it necessary to give it words; but on either side it will
be silently assumed, and form the ground-work of all they
have to talk about.

He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man
who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair, and
witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession.
The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they
are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is

one.
While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are
countless numbers whose fate is to be deplored.

Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say de-
functus est; it means that the man has done his task.
384 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

If children were brought into the world by an act of
pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist?
Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the
coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?
or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that bur-
den upon it in cold blood.

I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is com-
fortless—because I speak the truth; and people prefer to
be assured that everything the Lord has made is good.
Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace.
At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines
to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those
rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them
for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. Your
University professors are bound to preach optimism; and
it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their theories.

I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare,
every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character;
that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is
the positive element of existence. It follows, therefore,
that the happiness of any given life is to be measured, not
by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has
been free from suffering—from positive evil. If this is the
true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a hap-
pier destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a lit-
tle more closely.

However varied the forms that human happiness and
misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and
shun the other, the material basis of it all is bodily
pleasure or bodily pain. This basis is very restricted:
it is simply health, food, protection from wet and cold,.
the satisfaction of the sexual instinct; or else the ab-
sence of these things. Consequently, as far as real phys-
ical pleasure is concerned, the man is not better off than
the brute, except in so far as the higher possibilities of his
nervous system make him more sensitive to every kind of
pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind
of pain. But then compared with the brute, how much
stronger are the passions aroused in him! what an immeas-
urable difference there isin the depth and vehemence of
his emotions!—and yet, in the one case, as in the other, all
to produce the same result in the end: namely, health,
food, clothing, and so on,
ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 385

The chief source of all this passion is that thought for
what is absent and future, which, with man, exercises such
a powerful influence upon all he does. It is this that is
the real origin of his cares, his hopes, his fears—emotions
which affect him more deeply than could ever be the case
with those present joys and sufferings to which the brute
is confined. In his powers of reflection, memory and fore-
sight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing
and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows. But the
brute has nothing of the kind; whenever it is in pain, it is
as though it were suffering for the first time, even though
the same thing should have previously happened to it tines
out of number. It has no power of summing up its feel-
ings. Hence its careless and placid temper, how much it
is to be envied. But in man reflection comes in, with all
the emotions to which it gives rise; and taking up the
same elements of pleasure and pain which are common to
him and the brute, it develops his susceptibility to happi-
ness and misery to such a degree that, at one moment the
man is brought in an instant to a state of delight that may
even prove fatal, at another to the depths of despair and
suicide.

If we carry our analysis a step farther, we shall find that,
in order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally
added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in
their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy
than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all its forms;
delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous
liquors, fine clothes and the thousand and one things that
he considers necessary to his existence.

And above and beyond all this, there is a separate and

peculiar source of pleasure, and consequently of pain,
which man has established for himself, also as the result of
using his powers of reflection; and this occupies him out
of all proportion to its value, nay, almost more than all
his other interests put together—I mean ambition and the
feeling of honor and shame; in plain words, what he
thinks about the opinion other people have of him. ‘ Tak-
ing a thousand forms, often very strange ones, this becomes
the goal of almost all the efforts he makes that are nct
rooted in physical pleasure or pain. It is true that besides
the sources of pleasure which he has in common with the
brute, man has the pleasures of the mind as well. ‘These
386 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

admit of many gradations, from the most innocent trifling
or the merest talk up to the highest intellectual achieve-
ments; but there is the accompanying boredom to be set
against them on the side of suffering. Boredom is a form
of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural
state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint
traces of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the
case of man it has become a downright scourge. The
crowd of miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to fill
their purses but never to put anything into their heads,
offers a singular instance of this torment of boredom. Their
wealth becomes a punishment by delivering them up to the
misery of having nothing to do; for, to escape it, they will
rush about in all directions, traveling here, there and
everywhere. No sooner do they arrive ina place than they
are anxious to know what amusements it affords: just as
though they were beggars asking where they could receive
adole! Ofa truth, need and boredom are the two poles of
human life. Finally, I may mention that as regards the
sexual relation, man is committed to a peculiar arrange-
ment which drives him obstinately to choose one person.
This feeling grows, now and then, into a more or less pas-
sionate love, * which is the source of little pleasure and
much suffering.

It is, however, a wonderful thing that the mere addition
of thought should serve to raise such a vast and lofty
structure of human happiness and misery: resting, too, on
the same narrow basis of joy and sorrow as man holds in
common with the brute, and exposing him to such violent
emotions, to so many storms of passion, so much convul-
sion of feeling, that what he has suffered stands written
and may be read in the lines on his face. And yet, when
all is told, he has been struggling ultimately for the very
same things as the brute has attained, and with an incom-
parably smaller expenditure of passion and pain.

But all this contributes to increase the measure of suf-
fering in human life out of all proportion to its pleasures;
and the pains of life are made much worse for man by the
fact that death is something very real to him. The brute
flies from death instinctively without really knowing what

 

* T have treated this subject at length in a special chapter of the
second volume of my chief work,
ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 387

it is, and therefore without ever contemplating it in the
way natural to a man, who has this prospect always before
his eyes. So that even if only a few brutes die a natural
death, and most of them live only just long enough to
transmit their species, and then, if not earlier, become the
prey of some other animal—while man, on the other hand,
manages to make so-called natural death the rule, to
which, however, there are a good many exceptions—the
advantage is on the side of the brute, for the reason stated
above. But the fact is that man attains the natural term
of years just as seldom as the brute; because the unnatural
way in which he lives, and the strain of work and emotion,
lead to a degeneration of the race; and so his goal is not
often reached.

The brute is much more content with mere existence
than man; the plant is wholly so; and man finds satisfac-
tion in it just in proportion as he is duli and obtuse. Ac-
cordingly, the life of the brute carries less of sorrow with
it, but also less of joy, when compared with the life of man;
and while this may be traced, on the one side, to freedom
from the torment of care and anxiety, it is also due to the
fact that hope, in any real sense, is unknown to the brute.
It is thus deprived of any share in that which gives us the
most and the best of our joys and pleasures, the mental
anticipation of a happy future, and the inspiriting play of
fantasy, both of which we owe to our power of imagina-
tion. If the brute is free from care, it is also, in this
sense, without hope; in either case because its conscious-
ness is limited to the present moment, to what it can
actually see before it. The brute is an embodiment of
present impulses, and hence what elements of fear and
hope exist in its nature—an/ they do not go very far—
arise only in relation to objects that lie before it and with-
in reach of those impulses: whereas a man’s range of
vision embraces the whole of his life, and extends far into
the past and the future. : :

Following upon this, there is one respect in which brutes
show real wisdom when compared with us—I mean, their
quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment. The
tranquillity of mind which this seems to give them often
puts us to shame for the many times we allow our thoughts
and our cares to make us restless and discontented. And,
in fact, those pleasures of hope and anticipation which I
388 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM:

have been mentioning are not to be had for nothing. The
delight which a man has in hoping for and looking for-
ward to some special satisfaction is a part of the real pleas-
ure attaching to it enjoyed in advance. This is after-
ward deducted; for the more we look forward to anything,
the less satisfaction we find in it when it comes. But the
brute’s enjoyment is not anticipated and therefore suffers
no deduction; so that the actual pleasure of the moment
comes to it whole and unimpaired. In the same way, too,
evil presses upon the brute only with its own intrinsic
weight; whereas with us the fear of its coming often
makes its burden ten times more grievous.

It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives
itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes
so much to the delight we take in our domestic pets.
They are the present moment personified, and in some re-
spects they make us feel the value of every hour that is
free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our
thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard. But man,
that selfish and heartless creature, misuses this quality of
the brute to be more content than we are with mere exist-
ence, and often works it to such an extent that he allows
the brute absolutely nothing more than mere, bare life.
The bird which was made so that it might rove over half
the world, he shuts up into the space of a cubic foot, there
to die a slow death in longing and crying for freedom; for
in a cage it does not sing for the pleasure of it. And when
I see how man misuses the dog, his best friend; how he
ties up this intelligent animal with a chain, I feel the
deepest sympathy with the brute and burning indignation
against its master.

We shall see later that by taking a very high standpoint
it is possible to justify the sufferings of mankind. But
this justification cannot apply to animals, whose sufferings,
while in a great measure brought about by men, are often
considerable even apart from their agency.* And so we
are forced to ask, Why and for what purpose does all this
torment and agony exist? There is nothing here to give
the will pause; it is not free to deny itself and so obtain
redemption. There is only one consideration that may
serve to explain the sufferings of animals. It is this: that

 

* Cf. “Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,” vol. ii. p. 404,
ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 389

the will to live, which underlies the whole world of phe-
nomena, must in their case satisfy its cravings by feeding
upon itself. This it does by forming a gradation of phe-
nomena, every one of which exists at the expense of another.
I have shown, however, that the capacity for suffering is
less in animals than in man. Any further explanation
that may be given of their fate will be in the nature of
hypothesis, if not actuallv mythical in its character; and
I may leave the reader to speculate upon the matter for
himself. :

Brahma is said to have produced the world by a kind of
fall or mistake; and in order to atone for his folly, he is
bound to remain in it himself until he works out his re-
demption. As an account of the origin of things, that is
admirable! According to the doctrines of Buddhism, the
world came into being as the result of some inexplicable
disturbance in the heavenly calm of Nirvana, that blessed
state obtained by expiation, which had endured so long a
time—the change taking place by a kind of fatality. This
explanation must be understood as having at bottom some
moral bearing; although it is illustrated by an exactly paral-
lel theory in the domain of physical science, which places
the origin of the sun in a primitive streak of mist, formed
one knows not how. Subsequently, by a series of moral
errors, the world became gradually worse and worse—true
of the physical orders as well—until it assumed the dismal
aspect it wears to-day. Excellent! ‘The Greeks looked
upon the world and the gods as the work of an inscrutable
necessity. A passable explanation: we may be content
with it until we can geta better. Again, Ormuzd and
Ahriman are rival powers, continually at war. That is
not bad. But that a God like Jehovah should have created
this world of misery and woe, out of pure caprice, and be-
cause he enjoyed doing it, and should then have clapped
his hands in praise of his own work, and declared every-
thing to be very good—that will not do at all! In its ex-
planation of the origin of the world, Judaism is inferior to
any other form of religious doctrine professed by a civi-
lized nation; and it is quite in keeping with this that it is
the only one which presents no trace whatever of any be-
lief in the immortality of the soul.*

 

* See ‘‘ Parerga,” vol. i. pp. 186 et seq.
390 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

Even though Leibnitz’ contention, that this is the best
of all possible worlds, were correct, that would not justify
God in having created it. For he is the Creator not of the
world only, but of possibility itself; and, therefore, he
ought to have so ordered possibility as that it would admit
of something better.

There are two things which make it impossible to believe
that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-
good, and, at the same time, all-powerful being; firstly, the
misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly the
obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a
burlesque of what he should be. These things cannot be
reconciled with any such belief. On the contrary, they are
just the facts which support what I have been saying; they
are our authority for viewing the world as the outcome of
our own misdeeds, and therefore, as something that had
better not have been. While, under the former hypothesis,
they amount toa bitter accusation against the Creator, and
supply material for sarcasm; under the latter they form an
indictment against our own nature, our own will, and
teach us a lesson of humility. They lead us to see that,
like the children of a libertine, we come into the world
with the burden of sin upon us; and that it is only through
having continually to atone for this sin that our existence
is so miserable, and that its end is death.

There is nothing more certain than the general truth
that it is the grievous sin of the world which has produced
the grievous suffering of the world. I am not referring
here to the physical connection between these two things
lying in the realm of experience; my meaning is meta-
physical. Accordingly, the sole thing that reconciles me
to the Old Testament is the story of the fall. In my eyes,
it is the only metaphysical truth in that book, even though
it appears in the form of an allegory. There seems to me
no better explanation of our existence than that it is the
result of some false step, some sin of which we are paying
the penalty. I cannot refrain from recommending the
thoughtful reader a popular, but, at the same time, pro-
found treatise on this subject by Claudius * which exhibits

 

* Transtator’s Note.—Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), a popular
poet, and friend of Klopstock, Herder and Lessing. He edited the
‘“Wandsbecker Bote,” in the fourth part of which appeared the
treatise mentioned above. He generally wrote under the pseudonym
of ‘‘ Asmus,” and Schopenhauer often refers to him by this name,
ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 391

the essentially pessimistic spirit of Christianity. It is
entitled: ‘Cursed is the ground for thy sake.”

Between the ethics of the Greeks and the ethics of the
Hindoos, there is a glaring contrast. In the one case (with
the exception, it must be confessed, of Plato), the object
of ethics is to enable a man to lead a happy life; in the
other, it is to free and redeem him from life altogether—as
is directly stated in the very first words of the “ Sankhya
Karika.”

Allied with this is the contrast between the Greek and
the Christian idea of death. It is strikingly presented in
a visible form on a fine antique sarcophagus in the gallery
at Florence, which exhibits, in relief, the whole series of
ceremonies attending a wedding in ancient times, from the
formal offer to the evening when Hymen’s torch lights the
happy couple home. Compare with that the Christian
coffin, draped in a mournful black and surmounted with a
crucifix! How much significance there is in these two
ways of finding comfort in death. They are opposed to
each other, but each is right. The one points to the
affirmation of the will to live, which remains sure of life
for all time, however rapidly its forms may change. The
other, in the symbol of suffering and death, points to the
denial of the will to live, to redemption from this world,
the domain of death and devil. And in the question
between the affirmation and the denial of the will to live,
Christianity is in the last resort right.

The contrast which the New Testament presents when
compared with the Old, according to the ecclesiastical view
of the matter, is just that existing between my ethical
system and the moral philosophy of Europe. ‘The Old
Testament represents man as under the dominion of law,
in which, however, there is no redemption. ‘The New
Testament declares law to have failed, frees man from its
dominion,* and in its stead preaches the kingdom of grace,
to be won by faith, love of neighbor and entire sacrifice of
self. -‘I'his is the path of redemption from the evil of the
world. ‘he spirit of the New ‘l'estament is undoubtedly
asceticism, however your protestants and rationalists may
twist it to suit their purpose. Asceticism: is the denial of
the will to live; and the transition from the Old ‘Testament

 
392 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

to the New, from the dominion of law to that of faith, from
justification by works to redemption through the mediator,
from the domain of sin and death to eternal life in Christ,
means, when taken in its real sense, the transition from
the merely moral virtues to the denial of the will to live.
My philosophy shows the metaphysical foundation of justice
and the love of mankind, and points to the goal to which
these virtues necessarily lead, if they are practiced in per-
fection. At the same time it is candid in confessing that
a man must turn his back upon the world, and that the
denial of the will to live is the way of redemption. It is
therefore really at one with the spirit of the New Testament,
while all other systems are couched in the spirit of the
Old; that is to say, theoretically as well as practically,
their result is Judaism— mere despotic theism. In this
sense, then, my doctrine might be called the only true
Christian philosophy—however paradoxical a statement
this may seem to people who take superficial views instead
of penetrating to the heart of the matter.

If you want a safe compass to guide you through life,
and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at
it, you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard
this world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony or
épy aorypioy, as the earliest philosophers called it.* Among
the Christian Fathers, Origen, with praiseworthy courage,
took this view,t which is further justified by certain ob-
jective theories of life. I refer, not to my own philosophy
alone, but to the wisdom of all ages, as expressed in Brah-
manism and Buddhism, and in the sayings of Greek philo-
sophers like Empedocles and Pythagoras; as also by Cicero,
in his remark that the wise men of old used to teach that
we come into this world to pay the penalty of crime com-
mitted in another state of existence—a doctrine which
formed part of the initiation into the mysteries.{ And
Vanini—whom his contemporaries burned, finding that an
easier task than to confute him—puts the same thing in a
very forcible way. ‘‘ Man,” he says, “is so full of every
kind of misery that, were it not repugnant to the Christian
religion, I should venture to affirm that if evil spirits exist

* Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. L. iii., c. 8, p. 399.
+ Augustine de civitate Dei., L. xi. c. 23.
¢ Cf. ‘‘Fragmenta de philosophia.”

 
ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 393

at all, they have passed into human form and are now
atoning for their crimes.” * And true Christianity—using
the word in its right sense—also regards our existence as
the consequence of sin and error.

If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will
regulate your expectations accordingly, and cease to look
upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its suf-
ferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or ir-
regular ; nay, you will find that everything is as it should
be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of exist-
ence in his own peculiar way. Among the evils ofa penal
colony is the society of those who form it; and if the reader
is worthy of better company, he will need no words from
me to remind him of what he has to put up with at pres-
ent. If he has a soul above the common, or if he is a man
of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble prisoner
of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common
criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate
himself.

Tn general, however, it should be said that this view of
life will enable us tocontemplate the so-called imperfections
of the great majority of men, their moral and intellectual
deficiencies, and the resulting base type of countenance,
without any surprise, to say nothing of indignation; for we
shall never cease to reflect where we are, and that the men
about us are beings conceived and born in sin, and living
to atone for it. That is what Christianity means in speak-
ing of the sinful nature of men.

‘* Pardon’s the word toall.” + Whatever folly men com-
mit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let
us exercise forbearance; remembering that when these faults
appear in others, it is our follies and vices that we behold.
They are the shortcomings of humanity, to which we be-
long; whose faults, one and all, we share; yes, even
those very faults at which we now wax so indignant,
merely because they have not yet appeared in ourselves.
They are faults that do not lie on the surface. But they
exist down there in the depths of our nature; and should
anything call them forth, they will come and show them-

 

* «De admirandis nature arcanis; ” dial L. p. 35.
t ‘‘Cymbeline,” Act v. Sc. 5.
394 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

selves, just as we now see them in others. One man, it is
true, may have faults that are absent in his fellow; and it
is undeniable that the sum total of bad qualities is in some
cases very large; for the difference of individuality between
man and man passes all measure.

In fact, the conviction that the world and man is
something that had better not have been, is of a kind
to fill us with indulgence toward one another.
Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the
proper form of address to be, not ‘‘ Monsieur, Sir, mein
Herr,” but ‘‘my fellow-sufferer,” Soci malorum, compagnon
de miséres! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in
keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and
it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary
thing in life—the tolerance, patience, regard and love of
neighbor, of which every one stands in need, and which,
therefore, every man owes to his fellow.

THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE.

THIs vanity finds expression in the whole way in which
things exist: in the infinite nature of Time and Space, as
opposed to the finite nature of the individual in both; in
the ever-passing present moment as the only mode of actual
existence; in the intercependence and relativity of all
things; in continual becoming without ever being; in
constant wishing and never being satisfied; in the long
battle which forms the history of life, where every effort is
checked by difficulties, and stopped until they are overcome.
Time is that in which all things pass away; it is merely
the form under which the will to live—the thing in itself
and therefore imperishable—has revealed to it that its
efforts are in vain; it is that agent by which at every
moment all things in our hands become as nothing, and
lose any real value they possess.

That which has been exists no more; it exists as little as
that which has never been. But of everything that exists
you must say, in the next moment, that it has been.
Hence something of great importance now past is inferior
to something of little importance now present, in that the
latter is a reality, and related to the former as something
to nothing.
THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE. 595

A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly
existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-
existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again,
comes an equally long period when he must exist no more.
The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be
true. The crudest intellect cannot speculate on such a
subject without having a presentiment that Time is some-
thing idealin its nature. This ideality of Time and Space
is the key to every true system of metaphysics; because it
provides for quite another order of things than is to be met
with in the domain of nature. This is why Kant is so
great.

Of every event in our life we can say only for one
moment that it is; forever after, that it was. Every even-
ing we are poorer by a day. It might, perhaps, make us
mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away,
if it were not that in the furthest depths of our being we
are secretly conscious of our share in the inexhaustible’
spring of eternity, so that we can always hope to find life
in it again.

Considerations of the kind touched on above might,
indeed, lead us to embrace the belief that the greatest
wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the
supreme object of life; because that is the only reality, all
else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand,
such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly:
for that which in the next moment exists no more, and
vanishes utterly, likea dream, can never be worth a serious
effort.

The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the
present—the ever-fleeting present. It lies, then, in the
very nature of our existence to take the form of constant
motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the
rest for which we are always Striving. We are like a man
ranning downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he
runs on, and will inevitably fall if he stops; or, again, like
a pole balanced on the tip of one’s finger: or like a planet,
which would fall into its sun the moment it ceased to
hurry forward on its way. Unrest is the mark of
existence.

In a world where all is unstable, and nought can endure,
but is swept onward at once in the hurrying whirlpool of
change; where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must
396 STUDIES IN PHKSSIMISM.

always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope
—in such a world, happiness is inconceivable. How can
it dwell where, as Plato says, “continual Becoming and
never Being ” is the sole form of existence? In the first
place, a man never is happy, but spends his whole life in
striving after something which he thinks will make him
so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only
to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end,
and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And
then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable;
for his life was never anything more than a present mo-
ment always vanishing;’ and now it is over.

At the same time it is a wonderful thing that, in the
world of human beings as in that of animals in general,
this manifold restless motion is produced and kept up by
the agency of two simple impulses—hunger and the sex-
ual instinct; aided a little, perhaps, by the influence of
‘boredom, but by nothing else; and that, in the theater of
life, these suffice to form the primum ntobile of how com-
plicated a machinery, setting in motion how strange and
varied a scene!

On looking a little closer, we find that inorganic matter
presents a constant conflict between chemical forces, which
eventually works dissolution; and on the other hand, that
organic life is impossible without continual change of
matter, and cannot exist if it does not receive perpetual
help from without. This is the realm of finality; and its
opposite would be an infinite existence, exposed to no at-
tack from without, and needing nothing to support it;
dei Soavrs ov, the realm of eternal peace; odre y1yvopuevor
ovre dmodAumevor. Some timeless changeless state, one and
undiversified; the negative knowledge of which forms the
dominant note of the Platonic philosophy. It is to some
such state as this that the denial of the will to live opens
up the way.

The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough
mosaic. Looked at close, they produce no effect. There
is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand
some distance off. So, to gain anything we have longed
for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; and even
though we are always living in expectation of better
things, at the same time we often repent and long to have
the past back again. We look upon the present as some-
THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE. 397

thing to be put up with while it lasts, and serving only as
the way toward our goal. Hence most people, if they
glance back when they come to the end of life, will find
that all along they have been living ad interim: they will
be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded
and let slip by unenjoyed, was just the life in the expecta-
tion of which they passed all their time. Of how many a
man may it not be said that hope made a fool of him until
he danced into the arms of death!

Then again, how insatiable a creature is man. Every
satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire,
so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual
will. And why is this? The real reason is simply that,
taken in itself, Will is the lord of all worlds; everything
belongs to it, and therefore no one single thing can ever
give it satisfaction, but only the whole, which is endless.
For all that, it must rouse our sympathy to think how very
little the Will, this lord of the world, really gets when it
takes the form of an individual; usually only just enough
to keep the body together. This is why man is so very
miserable.

Life presents itself chiefly as a task—the task, I mean,
of subsisting at all, ganger sa vie. If this is accomplished,
life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of
doing something with that which has been won—of ward-
ing off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, hovers over
us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need.
The first task is to win something; the second, to banish
the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden.

Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth
of this will be sufficiently obviousif we only remember that
man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy;
and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a
state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but
abandonment to boredom. ‘This is direct proof that exist-
ence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but
the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving
for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed
of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such
thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in
itself, and we should want for nothing. But as it is, we
take no delight in existence except when we are struggling
for something; and then distance and difficulties to be
398 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us
—an illusion which vanishes when we reach it; or else
when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest
—where in reality we have stepped forth from life to look
upon it from the outside, much after the manner of spec-
tators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means
nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment
its aim is attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one
of these ways, but cast upon existence itself, its vain and
worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is what
we mean by boredom. The hankering after what is strange
and uncommon—an innate and ineradicable tendency of
human nature—shows how glad we are at any interruption
of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious.

That this most perfect manifestation of the will to live,
the human organism, with the cunning and complex work-
ing of its machinery, must fall to dust and yield up itself
and all its strivings to extinction—this is the naive way in
which Nature, who is always so true and sincere in what
she says, proclaims the whole struggle of this will as in its
very essence barren and unprofitable. Were it of any value
in itself, anything unconditioned and absolute, it could
not thus end in mere nothing.

If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole,
and, in particular, the generations of men asthey live their
little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in
rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in
its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridic-
ulous it all seems! It is like a drop of water seen through
a microscope, a single drop teeming with infwsorza or a
speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye.
How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle
with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here,
or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity
produces a comic effect.

It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big.
It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the
powerful lenses of Time and Space,
ON SUICIDE. 399
ON SUICIDE.

As FAR as I know, none but the votaries of monotheistic,
that is to say, Jewish religions, look upon suicide as a
crime. This is all the more striking, inasmuch as neither
in the Old nor in the New Testament is there to be found
any prohibition or positive disapproval of it; so that. reli-
gious teachers are forced to base their condemnation of sui-
cide on philosophical grounds of their own invention.
These are so very bad that writers of this kind endeavor to
make up for the weakness of their arguments by the strong
terms in which they express their abhorrence of the prac-
tice; in other words, they declaim against it. They tell
us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice; that only
a madman could be guilty of it; and other insipidities of
the same kind; or else they make the nonsensical remark
that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there
is nothing in the world to which every man has a more un-
assailable title than to his own life and person.

Suicide, as I have said, is actually accounted a crime;
and a crime which, especially under the vulgar bigotry
that prevails in England, is followed by an ignominious
burial and the seizure of the man’s property; and for that
reason, in a case of suicide, the jury almost always bring in
a verdict of insanity. Now let the reader’s own moral
feelings decide as to whether or not suicide is a criminal
act. Think of the impression that would be made upon
you by the news that some one you know had committed
the crime, say, of murder or theft, or been guilty of some
act of cruelty or deception; and compare it with your feel-
ings when you hear that he has meta voluntary death.
While in the one case a lively sense of indignation and ex-
treme resentment will be aroused, and you will call loudly
for punishment or revenge, in the other you will be moved
to grief and sympathy; and mingled with your thoughts
will be admiration for his courage, rather than the moral
disapproval which follows upon a wicked action. Who has
not had acquaintances, friends, relations, who of their own
free will have left this world; and are these to be thought
of with horror as criminals? Most emphatically, No! I
am rather of opinion that the clergy should be challenged
to explain what right they have to go into the pulpit, or
take up their pens, and stamp as a crime an action which
400 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

many men whom we hold in affection and honor have
committed: and to refuse an honorable burial to those
who relinquish this world voluntarily. They have no
Biblical authority to boast of, as justifying their condem-
nation of suicide; nay, not even any philosophical argu-
ments that will hold water; and it must be understood
that it is arguments we want, aud that we will not be put
off with mere phrases or words of abuse. If the criminal
law forbids suicide, that is not an argument valid in the
Church; and besides, the prohibition is ridiculous; for
what penalty can frighten a man who is not afraid of death
itself? Ifthe law punishes people for trying to commit
suicide, it is punishing the want of skill that makes the
attempt a failure.

The ancients, moreover, were very far from regarding
the matter in that light. Pliny says: ‘‘ Life is not so desir-
able a thing as to be protracted at any cost. Whoever you
are, you are sure to die, even though your life has been full
of abomination and crime. The chief of all remedies for
a troubled mind is the feeling that among the blessings
which Nature gives to man, there is none greater than an
opportune death; and the best of it is that every one
can avail himself of it.”* And elsewhere the same writer
declares: ‘* Not even to God are all things possible; for
he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die,
and yet in all the miseries of our earthly life, this is the
best of his gifts to man.”+ Nay, in Messilia and on the
isle of Ceos, the man who could give valid reasons for re-
linquishing his life, was handed the cup of hemlock by the
magistrate; and that, too, in public.[ And in ancient
times, how many heroes and wise men died a voluntary
death. Aristotle,§ it is true, declared suicide to be an
offense against the state, although not against the person;
but in Stobeus’ exposition of the Peripatetic philosophy
there is the following remark: ‘The good man should
flee life when his misfortunes become too great; the bad

 

* Hist. Nat. Lib. xxviii., 1.
t Loe. cit. Lib. ii ¢. 7.
} Valerius Maximus; hist. Lib. ii., c. 6,8 7 et 8. Heraclides Pon-

ticus; fragmenta de rebus publicus, ix, Aeliani varie historie, iii.,
36. Scrabo; Lib. x., ¢. 5, 6,

§ Eth. Nichom., v. 15,
ON SUICIDE. 401

man, also, when he is too prosperous. And similarly: So
he will marry and beget children and take part in the
affairs of the state, and generally, practice virtue and
continue to live; and then, again, if need be, at any time ne-
cessity compels him, he will depart to his place of refuge in
the tomb.”* And we find that the Stoics actually praised
suicide as a noble, and heroic action, as hundreds of pas-
sages show; above all in the works of Seneca, who expresses
the strongest approval of it. As is well known, the Hindoos
look upon suicide asa religious act, especially when it
takes the form of self-immolation by widows; but also
when it consists in casting one’s self under the wheels of the
chariot of the god at Juggernaut, or being eaten by croco-
diles in the Ganges, or ae drowned in the holy tanks in
the temples, and soou. The same thing occurs on the
stage—that mirror of life. For example, in “ L’orphelin
de la Chine,”’+ a celebrated Chinese play, almost all the
noble characters end by suicide; without the slightest hint
anywhere, or any impression being produced on the specta-
tor, that they are committing a crime. And in our own
theater it is much the same—Palmira, for instance, in
‘‘Mahomet,” or Mortimer in ‘‘ Maria Stuart,’’ Othello,
Countess Terzky.{ Is Hamlet’s monologue the meditation
of a criminal? He merely declares that if we had any cer-
tainty of being annihilated by it, death would be infinitely
preferable to the world as it is. But there lies the rub!
The reasons advanced against suicide by the clergy of
monotheistic, that is to say, Jewish religions, and by those
philosophers who adapt themselves hitherto, are weak
sophisms which can eusily be refuted.§ The most thorough-
going refutation of them is given by Hume in his ‘‘ Essay
on Suicide.” This did not appear until after his death,
when it was immediately suppressed, owing to the scandal-
ous bigotry and outrageous ecclesiastical tyranny that pre-
vailed in England; and hence only a very few copies of it

 

* Stobeus. Hel. Eth. ii., c. 7, pp. 286, 312,
+/Traduit par St. Julien, 1834.

{ Zranslator’s Note—Palmira: a female slave in Geethe’s play of
“Mahomet.” Mortimer: a would-be lover and rescuer of Mary in
Schiller’s ‘‘ Maria Stuart.” Countess Terzky. a leading character
in Schiller’s ‘‘ Wallenstein’s Tod.”

§ See my treatise on the ‘‘ Foundation of Morals,” § 5,
402 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

were sold under cover of secrecy and at a high price. This
and another treatise by that great man have come to us
from Basle, and we may be thankful for the reprint.* It
is a great disgrace to the English nation that a purely
philosophical treatise, which, proceeding from one of the
first thinkers and writers in England, aimed at refuting
the current arguments against suicide by the light of cold
reason, should be forced to sneak about in that country, as
though it were some rascally production, until at last it
found refuge on the continent. At the same time it shows
what a good conscience the Church has in such matters.

In my chief work I have explained the only valid reason
existing against suicide on the score of morality. It is
this: that suicide thwarts the attainment of the highest
moral aim by the fact that, for a real release from this
world of misery, it substitutes one that ismerely apparent. +
But from a mistake to a crime is a far cry; and it is as a
crime that the clergy of Christendom wish us to regard
suicide.

The inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suf-
fering—the Cross—is the real end and object of life. Hence
Christianity condemns suicide as thwarting this end;
while the ancient world, taking a lower point of view, held
it in approval, nay, in honor. butif that is to be accounted
a valid reason against suicide, it involves the recognition
of asceticism; that is to say, it is valid only from a much
higher ethical stand point than has ever been adopted by moral
philosophers in Europe. If we abandon that high stand-
point, there is no tenable reason left,on the score of morality,
for condemning suicide. The extraordinary energy and

 

* « Essays on Suicide” and the ‘‘ Immortality of the Soul,” by the
late David Hume, Basle, 1799, sold by James Decker.

+ Translator’s Note.—Schopenhauer refers to ‘‘ Die Welt als Wille
und Vorstellung,” vol. i., § 69, where the reader may find the same
argument stated at somewhat greater length. According to Schopen-
hauer, moral freedom—the highest ethical aim—is to be obtained only
by a denial of the will to live. Far from being a denial, suicide is an
emphatic assertion of this will. For it is in fleeing from the pleas-
ures, not from the sufferings of life, that this denial consists. Whena
man destroys his existence as an individual, he is not by any means
destroying his will to live. On the contrary, he would like to live if
he could do so with satisfaction to himself; if he could assert his will
nee the power of circumstance; but circumstance is too strong for

im, :
ON SUICIDE. 403

zeal with which the clergy of monotheistic religions attack
suicide is not supported either by any passages in the
Bible or by any considerations of weight; so that it looks
as though they must have some secret reason for their con-
tention. May it not be this—that the voluntary surrender
of life is a bad compliment for him who said that «all
things were very good?” If this is so, it offers another
instance of the crass optimism of these religions, denounc-
ing suicide to escape being denounced by it.

It will generally be found that, as soon as the terrors of
life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of
death, a man will put an end to his life. But the terrors
of death offer considerable resistance; they stand like a
sentinel at the gate leading out of this world. Perhaps
there is no man alive who would not have already put an
end to his life, if this end had been of a purely negative
character, a sudden stoppage of existence. There is some-
thing positive abont it; it is the destruction of the body;
and a man shrinks from that because his body is the mani-
festation of the will to live.

However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule,
not so hard as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in
consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body
and the ills of the mind. If we are in great bodily pain,
or the pain lasts a long time, we become indifferent to
other troubles; all we think about is to get well. Jn the
same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to
bodily pain; we despise it; pay, if it should outweigh the
other, it distracts our thoughts, and we welcome it as a
pause in mental suffering. It is this feeling that makes
suicide easy; for the bodily pain that accompanies it
loses all significance in the eyes of one who is tortured by
an excess of mental suffering. This is especially evident
in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some
purely morbid and exaggerated ill-humor. No special ef-
fort to overcome their feelings is necessary, nor do such
people require to be worked up in order to take the step;
but as soon as the keeper into whose charge they are given
leaves them for a couple of minutes, they quickly bring
their life to an end.

When, in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach
the moment of greatest horror, it awakes us; thereby
banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of
404 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

the night. And life is a dream: when the moment of
greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing
happens. ;

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment—a ques-
tion which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to an
answer. The question is this: What change will death
produce in a man’s existence and in his insight into the
nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for
it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which
puts the question and awaits the answer.

IMMORTALITY: * A DIALOGUE.
THRASYMACHOS—PHILALETHES.

THRASYMACHOS.—Tell me now, in one word, what
shall I be after my death? And mind you be clear and
precise.

PHILALETHES.—All and nothing.

TurasymMacuus.—I thought so! I gave youa problem
and you solve it by a contradiction. That’s a very stale
trick.

PHILALETHES. Yes, but you raise transcendental ques-
tions, and you expect me to answer them in language that
is only made for immanent knowledge. It’s no wonder
that a contradiction ensues.

THRASYMACHOS.—What do you mean by transcendental
questions aud immanent knowledge? I’ve heard these ex-
pressions before, of course; they are not new to me. The
professor was fond of using them, but only as predicates of
the Deity, and he never talked of anything else; which was
all quite right and proper. He argued thus: if the Deity

 

* Translator’s Note.—The word immortality—‘‘ Unsterblichkeit ”
—does not occur in the original; nor would it, in its usual application
find a place in Schopenhauer’s vocabulary. The word he uses is
‘‘ Unzerstorbarkeit ”—indestructibility. But I have preferred immor-
tality, because that word is commonly associated with the subject
touched upon in this little debate. If any critic doubts the wisdom
of this preference, let me ask him to try his hand at a short, concise,
and, at the same time, popularly intelligible rendering of the Ger-
man original, which runs thus: ‘‘ Zur Lehre von der Unzerstérbar-
keit unseres wahren Wesens durch den Tod: kleine dialogische
Schlussbelustigung.”
IMMOR@ ALITY. 405

was in the world itself, he was immanent; if he was some-
where outside it, he was transcendent. Nothing could be
clearer and more obvious. You. knew where you were.
But this Kantian rigmarole won’t do any more: it’s anti-
quated and no longer applicable to modern ideas. Why,
we've had a whole row of eminent men in the metropolis of
German learning——

PHILALETHES (aside).—German humbug, he means.

THRASyMacHOS.—The mighty Schleiermacher, for in-
stance, and that gigantic intellect, Hegel; and at this time
of day we’ve abandoned that nonsense. I should rather
say we're so far beyond it that we can’t put up with it any
more. What’s the use of it then? What does it all
mean?

PHILALETHES.—Transcendental knowledge is knowledge
which passes beyond the bounds of possible experience, and
strives to determine the nature of things as they are in
themselves. Immanent knowledge, on the other hand, is
knowledge which confines itself entirely within those
bounds; so that it cannot apply to anything but actual
phenomena. As far as you are an individual, death will
be the end of you. But your individuality is not your true
and inmost being: it is only the outward manifestation of
it. Itis not the thing in-itself, but only the phenomenon
presented in the form of time; and therefore with a begin-
ning and an end. But your real being knows neither time
nor beginning nor end, nor yet the limits of any given in-
dividual. It is everywhere present in every individual, and
noindividual can exist apart from it. So when death comes,
on the one hand you are annihilated as an individual; on the
other, you are and remain everything. That is what I
meant when I said that after your death you would be all
and nothing. It is difficult to find a more precise answer
to your question and at the same time be brief. The
answer is contradictory, I admit; but itis sosimply because
your life is in time, and the immortal part of you in eter-
nity. You may put the matter thus: Your immortal part
is something that does not last in time and yet is inde-
structible; but there you have another contradiction. You
see what happened by trying to ae the transcendental
within the limits of immanent knowledge. It is in some
sort doing violence to the latter by misusing it for ends it
was never meant to serve.
406 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

THRASyMACHOS.—Look here, I sha’n’t give twopence
for your immortality unless I’m to remain an individual.

PHILALETHES.— Well, perhaps I may be able to satisfy
you on this point. Suppose I guarantee that after death
you shall remain an individual, but only on condition that
you first spend three months of complete unconsciousness.

THRASYMACHOS.—I shall have no objection to that.

PHILALETHES.—But remember, if people are completely
unconscious, they take no account of time. So, when you
are dead, it’s all the same to you whether three months
passin the world of unconsciousness, or ten thousand years.
In one case as in the other, it is simply a matter of believ-
ing what is told you when you awake. So far, then you
can afford to be indifferent whether it is three months or
ten thousand years that pass before you recover your indi-
viduality.

THRASYMACHOS.—Yes, if it comes to that, I suppose
you're right.

PHILALETHES.—And if by chance, after those ten thou-
sand years have gone by, no one ever thinks of awaking
you, I fancy it would be no great misfortune. You would
have become quite accustomed to non-existence after so
long a spell of it—following upon such a very few years of
life. At any rate you may be sure you would be perfectly
ignorant of the whole thing. Further, if you knew that
the mysterious power which keeps you in your present
state of life had never once ceased in those ten thousand
years to bring forth other phenomena like yourself, and to
endow them with life, it would fully console you.

THRASYMACHOS.—Indeed! So you think you’re quietly
going to do me out of my individuality with all this fine
talk. But I’m up to your tricks. I tell you I won’t exist
unless I can have my individuality. I’m not going to put
off with ‘* mysterious powers,” and what you call ‘* pheno-
mena.” I can’t do without my individuality, and I won’t
give it up.

PHILALETHES.—You mean, I suppose, that your indivi-
duality is such a delightful thing—so splendid, so perfect,
and beyond compare—that you can’t imagine anything
better. Aren’t you ready to exchange your present state
for one which, if we can judge by what is told us, may
possibly be superior and more endurable?

THRASYMACHOS.—Don’t you see that my individuality,
IMMORTALITY. 40%

be it what it may, is my very self? To me it is the most
important thing in the world,

“For God is God and I am I.”

I want to exist, J, J. That’s the main thing. I don’t
care about an existence which has to be proved to be mine,
before I can believe it.

PHILALETHES.—Think what you’re doing! When you
say I, J, { want to exist, it is not you alone that says this.
Everything says it, absolutely everything that has the
faintest trace of consciousness. It follows then, that this
desire of yours is just the part of you that is not individ-
ual—the part that is common to all things without dis-
tinction. It is the cry, not of the individual, but of
existence itself; it is the intrinsic element in everything
that exists, nay, it is the cause of anything existing at all.
This desire craves for and so is satisfied with nothing less
than existence in general—not any definite individual ex-
istence. No! that is not itsaim. It seems to be so only
because this desire—this will—attains consciousness only
in the individual, and therefore looks as though it were
concerned with nothing but the individual. There lies the
illusion, an illusion it is true, in which the individual is
held fast: but, if he reflects, he can break the fctters and
set himself free. It is only indirectly, I say, that the in-
dividual has this violent craving for existence. It is the
will to live which is the real and direct aspirant—alike
and identical in all things. Since then, existence is the
free work, nay, the mere reflection of the will, where ex-
istence is, there too, must be will: and for the moment,
the will finds its satisfaction in existence itself; so far, I
mean, as that which never rests, but presses forward
eternally, can ever find any satisfaction at all. The will is
careless of the individual: the individual is not its business;
although, as I have said, this seems to be the case, because
the individual has no direct consciousness of will except in
himself. ‘Che effect of this is to make the individual care-
ful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so,
there would be no surety for the preservation of the species.
From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of
perfection, but rather of limitation: and so to be freed
from it is not loss but gain. ‘Trouble yourself no more
408 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

about the matter. Once thoroughly recognize what you
are, what your existence really is, namely, the universal
will to live and the whole question will seem to you childish
and most ridiculous!

THRASYMACHOS.—Yow’re childish yourself and most
ridiculous, like all philosophers! and if aman of my age
lets himself in for a quarter-of-an-hour’s talk with such
fools, it is only because it amuses me and passes the time.
I’ve more important business to attend to, so good-by.

FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

THERE is an unconscious propriety in the way in which,
in all European languages, the word person is commonly
used to denote a human being. The real meaning of per-
sona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on
the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows
himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part.
Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be
likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who
is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a block-
head is quite at home in it.

 

Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing us
the consequence and effect of our actions in the present,
does it not tell us what the future will be? This is pre-
cisely why reason is such an excellent power of restraint in
moments when we are possessed by some base passion, some
fit of anger, some covetous desire, that will lead us to do
things whereof we must presently repent.

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head;
and neither féeling is quite within our control. For we
cannot alter our heart; its bias is determined by motives;
and our head deals with objective facts and applies to
them rules which are immutable. Any given individual is
the union of a particular heart with a particular head.

Hatred and contempt are diametrically opposed and
mutually exclusive. There are even not a few cases where
hatred of a person is rooted in nothing but forced esteem
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 409

for his qualities. And besides, if a man sets out to hate
all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much
energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them,
one and all, with the greatest ease. True, genuine contempt
is just the reverse of true, genuine pride; it keeps quite
quiet and gives no sign of its existence. For if a man
shows that he despises you, he signifies at least this much
regard for you, that he wants to let you know how little
he appreciates you; and his wish is dictated by hatred,
which cannot exist with real contempt. On the contrary,
if it is genuine, it is simply the conviction that the object
of it is a man of no value at all. Contempt is not incom-
patible with indulgent and kindly treatment, and for the
sake of one’s own peace and safety, this should not be
omitted; it will prevent irritation; and there is no one who
cannot do harm if he is roused to it. But if this pure,
cold, sincere contempt ever shows itself, it will be met
with the most truculent hatred; for the despised person is
not in a position to fight contempt with its own weapons.

Melancholy is a very different thing from bad humor,
and of the two, it is not nearly so far removed from a gay
and happy temperament. Melancholy attracts, while bad
humor repels. :

Hypochondria is a species of torment which not only
makes us unreasonably cross with the things of the present;
not only fills us with groundless anxiety on the score of
future misfortunes entirely of our own manufacture; but
also leads to unmerited self-reproach for what we havedone
in the past. : .

Hypochondria shows itself in a perpetual hunting after
things that vex and annoy, and then brooding over them.
The cause of it is an inward morbid discontent, often co-
existing with a naturally restless temperament. In their
extreme form, this discontent and this unrest lead to
suicide.

Any incident, however trivial, that rouses disagreeable
emotion, leaves an after-effect in our mind, which, for the
time it lasts, prevents our taking a clear objective view of
the things about us, and tinges all our thoughts: just as a
410 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

small object held close to the eye limits and distorts our
field of vision.

 

What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man
has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own
troubles. Hence if a man suddenly finds himself in an
unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his
being sympathetic and kind. But if he has never been in
any other than a happy position, or this becomes his per-
manent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary: it
so far removes him from suffering that he is incapable of
feeling any more sympathy with it. So itis that the poor
often show themselves more ready to help than the rich.

At times it seems as though we both wanted and did not
want the same thing, and felt at once glad and sorry about
it. For instance, if on some fixed date we are going to be
put to a decisive test about anything in which it would be
a great advantage to us to come off victorious, we shall be
anxious for it to take place at once, and at the same time
we shall tremble at the thought of its approach. And if,
in the meantime, we hear that, for once in a way, the date
has been postponed, we shall experience a feeling both of
pleasure and of annoyance; for the news is disappointing,
but nevertheless it affords us momentary relief. It is just
the same thing if we are expecting some important letter
carrying a definite decision, and it fails to arrive.

In such cases there are really two different motives at
work in us; the stronger but more distant of the two being
the desire to stand the test and to have the decision given
in our favor; and the weaker, which touches us more
nearly, the wish to be left for the present in peace and
quiet, and accordingly in further enjoyment of the
advantage which at any rate attaches to a state of hopeful
uncertainty, compared with the possibility that the issue
may be unfavorable.

 

In my head there is a permanent opposition party; and
whenever I take any step or come to any decision—though
I may have given the matter mature consideration—it
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 411

afterward attacks what I have done, without, however,
being each time necessarily in the right. This is, I sup-
pose, only a form of rectification on the part of the spirit
of scrutiny; but it often reproaches me when I do not
deserveit. The same thing, no doubt, happens to many
others as well; for where is the man who can help thinking
that, after all, it were better not to have done something
that he did with every hope of success:

‘Quid tam dextro pede concipis ut te
Conatus non poeniteat votique peracti?”

Why is it that common is an expression of contempt? and
that uncommon, extraordinary, distinguished, ~denote
approbation? Why is everything that is common con-
temptible?

Common in its original meaning denotes that which is
peculiar to all men, ¢. e., shared equally by the whole
species, and therefore an inherent part of its nature.
Accordingly, if an individual possesses no qualities beyond
those which attach to mankind in general, he is a common
man. Ordinary is a much milder word, and refers rather
to intellectual character; whereas common has more of a
moral application.

What value can a creature have that is not a whit different
from millions of its kind? Millions, do I.say? nay, an
infinitude of creatures which, century after century, in
never-ending flow, nature sends bubbling up from her in-
exhaustible springs; as generous with them as the smith
with the useless sparks that fly around his anvil.

It is obviously quite right that a creature which has no
qualities except those of the species, should have to confine
its claim to an existence entirely within the limits of the
species, and live a life conditioned by those limits.

In various passages of my works,* I have argued that
while a lower animal possesses nothing more than the
generic character of its species, man is the only being
which can lay claim to possess an individual character.
But in most men this individual character comes to very
little in reality; and they may be almost all ranged under

 

* « Grundprobleme der Ethik,” p. 48; ‘‘ Welt als Wille und Vor-
stellung,” vol. i. p. 388,
412 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

certain classes: ce sont des espéces. Their thoughts and
desires, like their faces, are those of the species, or at any
rate, those of the class to which they belong: and accord-
ingly, they are of a trivial, every-day, common character,
and exist by the thousand. You can usually tell before-
hand what they are likely to do and say. They have no
special stamp or mark to distinguish them; they are like
manufactured goods, all of a piece.

If, then, their nature is merged in that of the species,
how shall their existence go beyond it? The curse of vul-
garity puts men on a par with the lower animals, by allow-
ing them none but a generic nature, a generic form of
existence.

Anything that is high or great or noble must then, as a
matter of course, and by its very nature, stand alone in a
world where no betier expression can be found to denote
what is base and contemptible than that which I have
mentioned as in general use, namely, common.

Will, as the thing-in-itself, is the foundation of all
being; it is part and parcel of every creature, and the per-
manent element in everything. Will, then, is that which
we possess in common with all men, nay, with all animals,
and even with lower forms of existence; and in so far we
are akin to everything—so far, that is, as everything is
filled to overflowing with will. On the other hand, that
which places one being over another, and sets differences
between man and man, is intellect and knowledge; there-
fore in every manifestation of self we should, as far as
possible, give play to the intellect alone; for, as we have
seen, the will is the common part of us. Every violent
exhibition of will is common and vulgar; in other words, it
reduces us to the level of the species, and makes us a mere
type and example of it; in that it is just the character of
the species that we are showing. So every fit of anger is
something common—every unrestrained display of joy, or
of hate, or fear—in short, every form of emotion; in other
words, every movement of the will, if it is so strong as
decidedly to outweigh the intellectual element in conscious-
ness, and to make the man appear as a being that wills
rather than knows.

In giving way to emotion of this violent kind, the
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 413

greatest genius puts himself on a level with the commonest
son of earth. Contrarily, if a man desires to be absolutely
uncommon, in other words, great, he should never allow
his consciousness to be taken possession of and dominated
by the movement of his will, however much he may be
solicited thereto. For example, he must be able to observe
that other people are badly disposed toward him, without
feeling any hatred toward them himself; nay, there is no
surer sign of a great mind than that it refuses to notice
annoying and insultiug expressions, but straightway
ascribes them, as it ascribes countless other mistakes, to
the defective knowledge of the speaker, and so merely
observes without feeling them. This is the meaning of
that remark of Gracian, that nothing is more unworthy of
aman than to let it be seen that he is one—el mayor des-
doro de un hombre es dar muestras de que es hombre.

Aud even in the drama, which is the peculiar province
of the passions and emotions, it is easy for them to appear
common and vulgar. And this is specially observable in
the works of the French tragic writers, who set no other
aim before themseives but the delineation of the passions;
and by indulging at one moment in a vaporous kind of
pathos which makes them ridiculous, at another in epigram-
matic witticisms, endeavor to conceal the vulgarity of their
subject. JI remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle
Rachel as Maria Stuart; aud when she burst out in fury
against Elizabeth—though she did it very well—I could
not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played the
final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true
tragic feelmg, of which, indeed, the French have no notion
at all. The same part was incomparably better played by
the Italian Ristori; and, in fact, the Italian nature, though
in many respects very different from the German, shares
its appreciation for what is deep, serious, and true in Art;
herein opposed to the French, which everywhere betrays
that it possesses none of this feeling whatever.

The noble, in other words, the uncommon, element in
the drama—nay, what is sublime in it—is not reached
until the intellect is set to work, as opposed to the will;
until it takes a free flight over all those passionate move-
ments of that will, and makes them the subject of its con-
templation. Shakespeare, in particular, shows that this
is his general method, more especially in Hamlet, And
414 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

only when intellect rises to the point where the vanity of
all effort is manifest, and the will proceeds to an act of
self-annulment, is the drama tragic in the true sense of the
word: it is then that it reaches its highest aim in becom-
ing really sublime.

 

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for
the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect
as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy
that on the horizon heaven and earth meet. This explains
many things, and among them the fact that every one
measures us with his own standard—generally about as
long as a tailor’s tape, and we have to put up with it: as
also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself—a
supposition which is once for all taken for granted.

 

There is no doubt that many a man owes his good
fortune in life solely to the circumstance that he has a
pleasant way of smiling, and so wins the heart in his
favor.

However, the heart would do better to be careful, and to
remember what Hamlet put down in his tablets—“ that
one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

 

Everything that is really fundamental in a man, and
therefore genuine, works, as such, urconsciously; in this
respect like the power of nature. That which has passed
through the domain of consciousness is thereby trans-
formed into an idea or picture; and so if it comes to be
uttered, it is only an idea or picture which passes from one
person to another.

Accordingly, any quality of mind or character that is
genuine and lasting, is originally unconscious; and it is
only when unconsciously brought into play that it makes a
profound impression. If any like quality is consciously
exercised, it means that it has been worked up; it becomes
intentional, and therefore a matter of affectation, in other
words, of deception.

If a man does a thing unconsciously, it costs him no
trouble; but if he tries to do it by taking trouble, he fails,
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 415

This applies to the origin of those fundamental ideas
which form the pith and marrow of all genuine work.
Only that which is innate is genuine and will hold water;
and every man who wants to achieve something, whether
in practical life, in literature, or in art, must “follow the
rules without knowing them.”

Men of very great capacity will, as a rule, find the com-
pany of very stupid people preferable to that of the com-
mon run; for the same reason that the tyrant and the mob,
the grandfather and the grandchildren, are natural allies.

 

That line of Ovid’s,

“‘Pronague cum spectent animalia cetera terram,”

can be applied in its true physical sense to the lower
animals alone; but in a metaphorical and spiritual sense it
is, alas! true of nearly all men as well. All their plans
and projects are merged in the desire of physical enjoy-
ment, physical well-being. They may, indeed, have per-
sonal interests, often embracing a very varied sphere; but
still these latter receive their importance entirely from the
relation in which they stand to the former. ‘This is not
only proved by their manner of life and the things they
say, but it even shows itself in the way they look, the
expression of their physiognomy, their gait and gesticula-
tions. Everything about them cries out: in terram prona!

It is not to them, it is only to the nobler and more highly
endowed natures—men who really think and look about
them in the world, and form exceptional specimens of hu-
manity—that the next lines are applicable:

‘Os homini sublime dedit coelumque tueri
Jussit et erectos ad sidera tollere voltus.”

No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering
he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to
activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a
mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which
it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is;
416 STUDIES 1N PESSIMISM.

or again, rise high in the air usa fountain. When water
is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth
contained in it.

 

Why is it that in spite of all the mirrors in the world,
no one really knows what he looks like?

A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not
his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of
applying the maxim, ‘‘ Know thyself.”

This is partly, no doubt, to be explained by the fact
that it is physically impossible for a man to see himself in
the glass except with face turned straight toward it and
perfectly motionless; where the expression of the eve,
which counts for so much, and really gives its whole char-
acter to the face, is to a great extent lost. But co-existing
with this physical impossibility, there seems to me to be an
ethical impossibility of an analogous nature, and produc-
ing the same effect. A man cannot look upon his own re-
flection as though the person presented there were a
stranger to him; and yet this is necessary if he is to take
an objective view. In the last resort, an objective view
means a deep-rooted feeling on the part of the individual,
asa moral being, that that which he is contemplating is
not himself; * and unless he can take this point of view,
he will not see things in a really true light, which is possi-
ble only if he is alive to their actual defects, exactly as
they are. Instead of that, when a man sees himself in the
glass, something out of his own egoistic nature whispers to
him to take care to remember that it is no stranger,
but himself, that he is looking at; and this operates as a
noli me tangere, and preveuts him taking an objective view.
It seems, indeed, as if, without the leaven of a grain of
malice, such a view were impossible.

 

According as a man’s mental energy is exerted or re-
laxed, will life appear to him either so short, and petty,
and fleeting, that nothing can possibly happen over which
it is worth his while to spend emotion; that nothing really

 

* Cf. ““Grundprobleme der Ethik.” p. 275,
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 41%

matters, whether it is pleasure or riches, or even fame, and
that in whatever way a man may have failed, he cannot
have lost much—or, on the other hand, life will seem so
long, so important, so all in all, so momentous and so full
of difficulty that we have to plunge into it with our whole
soul if we are to obtain a share of its goods, make sure of
its prizes, and carry out our plans. This latter is the im-
manent and common view of life; it is what Gracian
means when he speaks of the serious way of looking at
things—tomar muy de veras el vivir. The former is the
transcendental view, which is well expressed in Ovid’s
non est tanti—it is not worth so much trouble; still
better, however, by Plato’s remark that nothing in human
affairs is worth any great anxiety—ovre rz rdv dvépwniver
akiov é6ri wey dans oxoveys. This condition of mind isdue to
the intellect having got the upper hand in the domain of con-
sciousness, where, freed from the mere service of the will, it
looks upon the phenomena of life objectively, and so can-
not fail to gain a clear insight into its vain and futile char-
acter. But in the other condition of mind, will predom-
inates; and the intellect exists only to light it on its way
to the attainment of its desires.

A man is great or small according as he leans to the one
or the other of these views of life.

People of very brilliant ability think little of admitting
their errors and weaknesses, or of letting others see them.
They look upon them as something for which they have
duly paid; and instead of fancying that these weaknesses
are a disgrace to them, they consider they are doing them
an honor. This is especially the case when the errors are
of the kind that hang together with their qualities—con-
ditiones sine quibus non—or as George Sand said, les défauts
de ses vertus.

Contrarily, these are people of good character and irre-
proachable intellectual capacity, who, far from admitting
the few little weaknesses they have, conceal them with
care, and show themselves very sensitive to any suggestion
of their existence; and this, just because their whole merit
consists in being free from error and infirmity. If these
418 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

people are found to have done anything wrong, their repu-
tation immediately suffers.

 

With people of only moderate ability, medesty is mere
honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hy-
pocrisy. Hence it is just as becoming in the latter to
make no secret of the respect they bear themselves and no
disguise of the fact that they are conscious of unusual
power, as it is in the former to be modest. Valerius
Maximus gives some very neat examples of this in his
chapter on self-confidence, de fiducia sut.

Not to go to the theater is like making one’s toilet with-
outa mirror. But it is still worse to take a decision with-
out consulting a friend. For a man may have the
most excellent judgment in all other matters, and yet go
wrong in those which concern himself; because here the
will comes in and deranges the intellect at once. There-
fore leta man take counsel of a friend. A doctor can
cure every one but himself; if he falls ill, he sends for a
colleague.

In all that we do, we wish, more or less, to come to the
end; we are impatient to finish and glad to be done. But
the last scene of all, the general end, is something that, as
a rule, we wish as far off as may be.

 

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming
together again a foretaste of the resurrection. This is
why even people who were indifferent to each other, rejoice
so much if they come together again after twenty or thirty
years’ separation.

Intellects differ from one another in a very real and
fundamental way; but no comparison can well be made by
merely general observations. It is necessary to come close,
and to go into details; for the difference that exists cannot
be seen from afar; and it is not easy to judge by outward
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 419

appearances, as in the several cases of education, leisure
and occupation. But even judging by these alone, it must
be admitted that many a man has a degree of existence at
least ten times as high as another—in other words, exists
ten times as much.

Iam not speaking here of savages whose life is often
only one degree above that of the apes in their woods.
Consider, for instance, a porter in Naples or Venice (in
the north of Europe solicitude for the winter months
makes people more thoughtful and therefore reflective) ;
look at the life he leads, from its beginning to its end—
driven by poverty; living on his physical strength; meeting
the needs of every day, nay, of every hour, by hard work,
great effort, constant tumult, want in all its forms, no care
for the morrow; his only comfort, rest after exhaustion;
continuous quarreling; not a moment free for reflection;
such sensual delights as a mild climate and only just suf-
ficient food will permit of; and then, finally, as the
metaphysical element, the crass superstition of his church;
the whole forming a manner of life with only a low degree
of consciousness, where a man hustles, or rather is hustled,
through his existence. This restless and confused dream
forms the life of how many millions!

Such men think only just so much as is necessary to
carry out their will for the moment. They never reflect
upon their life as a connected whole, let alone, then, upon
existence in general; to a certain extent they may be said
to exist without really knowing it. The existence of the
mobsman or the slave who lives on in this unthinking way,
stands very much nearer than ours to that of the brute,
which is confined entirely to the present moment; but, for
that very reason, it has also less of pain in it than ours.
Nay, since all pleasure is in its nature negative, that is to
say, consists in freedom from some form of misery or need,
the constant and rapid interchange between setting about
something and getting it done, which is the permanent ac-
companiment of the work they do, and then again the
augmented form which this takes when they go from work
to rest and the satisfaction of their needs—all this gives
them a constant source of enjoyment; and the fuct that it
is much commoner to see happy faces among the poor
420 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

than among the rich, is a sure proof that it is used to
good advantage. :

Passing from this kind of man, consider, next, the
sober, sensible merchant, who leads a life of speculation,
thinks long over his plans and carries them out with great
care, founds a house, and provides for his wife, his children
and descendants; takes his share, too, in the life of the
community. It is obvious that a man like this has a much
higher degree of consciousness than the former, and so his
existence has a higher degree of reality.

Then look at the man of learning, who investigates, it
may be, the history of the past. He will have reached the
point at which a man becomes conscious of existence as a
whole, sees beyond the period of his own life, beyond his
own personal interests, thinking over the whole course of
the world’s history.

Then, finally, look at the poet or the philosopher, in
whom reflection has reached such a height, that, instead
of being drawn on to investigate any one particular phe-
nomenon of existence, he stands in amazement before
existence itself, this great sphinx, and makes it his prob-
lem. In him consciousness has reached the degree of
clearness at which it embraces the world itself: his intellect
has completely abandoned its function as the servant of his
will, and now holds the world before him; and the world
calls upon him much more to examine and consider it,
than to play a part in it himself. If, then, the degree of
consciousness is the degree of reality, such a man will be
sure to exist most of all, and there will be sense and signi-
ficance in so describing him.

Between the two extremes here sketched, and the inter-
vening stages, every one will be able to find the place at
which he himself stands.

We know that man is in general superior to all other
animals, and this is also the case in his capacity for being
trained. Mohammedans are trained to pray with their
faces turned toward Mecca, five times a day; and they
never fail to do it. Christians are trained to cross them-
selves on certain occasions, to bow, and so on. Indeed, it
may be said that religion is the chef d’euvre of the art of
training, because it trains people in the way they shall
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 491

think: and, as is well known, you cannot begin the process
too early. There is no absurdity so palpable but that it
may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin
to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeat-
ing it with an air of great solemnity. For as in the case of
animals, so in that of men, training is successsful only
when you begin in early youth.

Noblemen and gentlemen are trained to hold nothing
sacred but their word of honor—to maintain a zealous,
rigid, and unshaken belief in the ridiculous code of chiv-
alry; and if they are called upon todo so, to seal their
belief by dying for it, and seriously to regard a king as a
being of a higher order.

Again, our expressions of politeness, the compliments
we make, in particular, the respectful attentions we pay to
ladies, are a matter of training; as also our esteem for good
birth, rank, titles, and so on. Of the same character is
the resentment we feel at any insult directed against us;
and the measure of this resentment may be exactly deter-
mined by the nature of the insult. An Englishman, for
instance, thinks it a deadly insult to be told that he is no
gentleman, or, still worse, that he isa liar; a Frenchman
has the same feeling if you call him a coward, and a Ger-
man if you say he is stupid.

There are many persons who are trained to be strictly
honorable in regard to one particular matter, while they
have little honor to boast of in anything else. Many a
man, for instance, will not steal your money; but he will
lay hands on everything of yours that he can enjoy without
having to pay for it. A man of business will often deceive
you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely re-
fuse to commit a theft.

 

Imagination is strong in a man when that particular
function of the brain which enables him to observe is
roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the
senses. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active
just in proportion as our senses are not excited by external
objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or
in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness—these are the
things that promote its activity; and under their influence
it comes into play of itself. On the other hand, when a
422 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

great deal of material is presented to our faculties of obser-
vation, as happens on a journey, or in the hurly-burly of
the world, or, again, in broad daylight, the imagination 1s
idle, and, even though call may be made upon it, refuses
to become active, as though it understood that that was not
its proper time.

However, if the imagination is to yield any real product,
it must have received a great deal of material from the
external world. This is the only way in which its store-
house can be filled. The fantasy is nourished much in
the same way as the body, which is least capable of any
work and enjoys doing nothing, just in the very moment
when it receives its food, which it has to digest. And yet
it is to this very food that it owes the power which it aftcr-
ward puts forth at the right time.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If
it goes past the center of gravity on one side, it must go a
like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain
time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at
rest.

By a process of contraction, distance in space makes
things look small, and therefore free from defect. This is
why w landscape looks so much better in a contracting
mirror or in a camera obscura, than it isin reality. The
same effect is produced by distance in time. The scenes
and events of long ago and the persons who took part in
them, wear a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which
sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable
details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it
always seems defective.

And again as regards space, small objects close to us look
big. and if they are very close, we may be able to see noth-
ing else, but when we go a little way off, they become
minute and invisible. It is the same again, as regards
time. ‘T'he little incidents and accidents of every day fill
us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as
they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important,
80 serious; but as soon as they are borne down the restless
stream of time, they lose what significance they had; we
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS, 4255

think no more of them and soon forget them altogether.
‘They were big only because they were near.

Joy and sorrow are not ideas of the mind, but affections
of the will, and so they do not lie in the domain of mem-
ory. We cannot recall our joys and sorrows; by which I
moan that we cannot renew them. We can recall only the
ideas that accompanied them; and, in particular, the things
we wore lod to suy; und these form a gauge of our feelings
at tho time. Hence our memory of joys and sorrows is
always imperfect, and they become a matter of indifference
to us as soon as they are over. This explains the vanity
of the attempt, which we sometimes make, to revive the
pleasures and the pains of the past. Pleasure and pain are
essentially an affair of the will, and the will, as such, is
not possessed of memory, which is a function of the intel-
lect; and this in its turn gives ont and tukes in nothing
but thoughts and ideas, which are not here in question,

Tt isa curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly
recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good
days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of
the bad. :

 

We have a much better memory for actual objects or pic-
tures than for mere ideas. TLenee a good imagination
makes it easier to learn languages; for by its aid, the new
word is at once united with the actual object to which it
refers; whereas, if there is no imagination, 1t is simply put
on a parallel with the equivalent word in the mother
tongue.

Mnemonics should not only mean the art of keeping
something indirectly in the memory by the use of some
direet. pun or witticism; it should, rather, be applied to a
systematic theory of memory, and explain its several at-
tributes by reference both to its real nature, and to the
relation in which these attributes stand to one another.

Thore are moments in life when our sonses obtain a
higher and rarer degree of clearness, apart from) any par-
ticular occasion for it in the nature of our surroundings;
424 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

and explicable, rather, on physiological grounds alone, as
the result of some enhanced state of susceptibility, working
from within oatward. Such moments remain indelibly
impressed upon the memory and preserve themselves in
their individuality entire. We can assign no reason for it,
nor explain why this among so many thousand moments
like it should be specially remembered. It seems as much
a matter of chance as when single specimens of a whole
race of animals now extinct are discovered in the layers of
a rock; or when, on opening a book, we light upon an in-
sect accidentally crushed within the leaves. Memories of
that kind are always sweet and pleasant.

It occasionally happens that, for no particular reason,
long-forgotten scenes suddenly start up in the memory.
This may in many cases be due to the action of some hardly
perceptible odor, which accompanied those scenes and now
recurs exactly the same as before. For it is well known
that the sense of smell is specially effective in awaking
memories, and that in general it does not require much to
rouse a train of ideas. And I may say, in passing, that the
sense of sight is connected with the understanding,* the
sense of hearing with the reason, + and, as we see in the
present case, the sense of smell with the memory. Touch
and taste are more material and dependent upon contact.
They have no ideal side.

 

It must also be reckoned among the peculiar attributes
of memory that a slight state of intoxication often so
greatly enhances the recollection of past times and scenes,
that all the circumstances connected with them come back
much more clearly than would be possible in a state of
sobriety; but that, on the other hand, the recollection of
what one said or did while the intoxication lasted, is more
than usually imperfect; nay, that if one has been absolutely
tipsy, it is gone altogether. We may say, then, that while
intoxication enhances the memory for what is past, it
allows it to remember little of the present.

 

* « Vierfache Wurzel,” § 21,
{ ‘‘ Parerga,” vol. ii., § 311.
FURTHER PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 425

Men need some kind of external activity, because they
are inactive within. Contrarily, if they are active within,
they do not care to be dragged out of themselves; it dis-
turbs and impedes their thoughts in a way that is often
most ruinous to them.

I am not surprised that some people are bored when they
find themselves alone; for they cannot laugh if they are
ne by themselves. ‘The very idea of it seems folly to
them.

Are we, then to look upon laughter as merely a signal
for others—a mere sign, ike a word? What makes it
impossible for people to laugh when they are alone is noth-
ing but want of imagination, dullness of mind generally—
avawbnoia nai Boadvrns wvyis, a8 Theophrastus has it.*
The lower animals never laugh, either alone or in
company. Myson, the misanthropist, was once sur-
prised by one of these people as he was laughing to himself.
‘*Why do you laugh?” he asked; ‘‘ there is no one with
you.” That is just why I am laughing,” said Myson.

 

Natural gesticulation, such as commonly accompanies
any lively talk, is a language of its own, more widespread,
even, than the language of words—so far, 1 mean, as it is
independent of words and alike in all nations. It is true
that nations make use of it in proportion as they are viva-
cious, and that in particular cases, among the Italians, for,
instance, it is supplemented by certain peculiar gestures
which are merely conventional, and therefore possessed of
nothing more than a local value.

In the universal use made of it, gesticulation has some
analogy with logic and grammar, in that it has to do with the
form, rather than with the matter, of conversation; but
on the other hand it is distinguishable from them by the
fact that it has more of a moral than of an intellectual
bearing; in other words, it reflects the movements of the
will. As an accompaniment of conversation it is like the
bass of a melody; and if, as in music, it keeps true to the
progress of the treble, it serves to heighten the effect.

* “ Characters,” ¢. 27.
A26 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

In a conversation, the gesture depends upon the form in
which the subject-matter is conveyed; and it is interest-
ing to observe that, whatever that subject-matter may be,
with a recurrence of the form, the very same gesture is re-
peated. So if [ happen to see—from my window, say—
two persons carrying on a lively conversation, without my
being able to catch a word, I can, nevertheless, understand
the general nature of it perfectly well; I mean, the kind of
thing that is being said and the form it takes. There is
no mistake about it. The speaker is arguing about some-
thing, advancing his reasons, then limiting their applica-
tion, then driving them home and drawing the conclusion
in triumph; or he is recounting his experiences, proving
perhaps, beyond the shadow of adoubt, how much he has
been injured, but bringing the clearest and most damning
evidence to show that his opponents were foolish and ob-
stinate people who would not be convinced or else he is
telling of the splendid plan he laid, and how he carried it to
a successful issue, or perhaps failed because the luck was
against him; or, it may be, he is saying that he was com-
pletely at a loss to know what to do, or that he was quick
in seeing through some trap set for him, and that by in-
sisting on his rights or by applying a little force, he suc-
ceeded in frustrating and punishing his enemies; and so
on in hundreds of cases of a similar kind.

Strictly speaking, however, what I get from gesticula-
tion alone is an abstract notion of the essential drift of
what is being said, and that, too, whether I judge from a
moral or an intellectual point of view. It is the quintes-
sence, the true substance of the conversation, and this re-
mains identical, no matter what may have given rise tothe
conversation, or what it may be about; the relation between
the two being that of a general idea or class-name to the
individuals which it covers.

As I have said, the most interesting and amusing part
of the matter is the complete identity and solidarity of
the gestures used to denote the same set of circumstances,
even though by people of every different temperament; so
that the gestures become exactly like words of a language,
alike for every one, and subject only to such sinall modi-
fications as depend upon variety of accent and education.
And yet there can be no doubt but that these standing
gestures which every one uses are the result of no conven-
ON EDUCATION. 427

tion or collusion. They are original and innate—a true
lunguage of nature; consolidated, it may be, by imitation
and the influence of custom.

It is well known thatit is part of an actor’s duty to make
a careful study of gesture; and the same thing is true, toa
somewhat smaller degree, of a public speaker. This study
must consist chiefly in watching others and imitating their
movemente, for there are uo abstract rules fairly applicable
to the matter, with the exception of some very general
leading principles, such as—to take an example—that the
gesture must not follow the word, but rather come imme-
diately before it, by way of announcing its approach and
attracting the hearer’s attention.

Englishmen entertain a peculiar contempt for gesticnla-
tion, and look upon it as something vulgar and undignified.
This seems to me a silly prejudice on their part, and the
outcome of their general prudery. For here we have a
language which nature has given to every one, and which
every one understands; and to do away with and forbid it
for no better reason than that it is opposed to that much-
lauded thing, gentlemanly feeling, is a very questionable
proceeding.

ON EDUCATION.

THE human intellect is said to be so constituted that
general ideas arise by abstraction from particular observa-
tions, and therefore come after them in point of time. If
this is what actually occurs, as happens in the case of a
man who has to depend solely upon his own experience for
what he learns—who has no teacher and no book—such a
man knows quite well which of his particular observations
belong to and are represented by each of his general ideas.
He has a perfect acquaintance with both sides of his ex-
perience, and accordingly, he treats everything that comes
in his way from aright standpoint. This might be called
the natural method of education.

' Contrarily, the artificial method is to hear what other
people say, to learn and to read, and so to get your head
crammed full of general ideas before you have any sort of
extended acquaintance with the world asit is, and as you may
428 SI1UDIES IN PESSIMISM.

see it for yourself. You will be told that the particular
observations which go to make these general ideas will
come to you later on in the course of experience; but until
that time arrives, you apply your general ideas wrongly,
you judge men and things from a wrong standpoint, you
see them in a wrong light, and treat them in a
wrong way. So it is that education perverts the
mind. :

This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a
long course of learning and reading, we enter upon the
world in our youth, partly with an artless ignorance of
things, partly with wrong notions about them; so that our
demeanor savors at one moment of a nervous anxiety, at
another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is
simply that our head is full of general ideas which we are
now trying to turn to some use, but which we hardly ever
apply rightly. This is the result of acting in direct oppo-
sition to the natural development of the mind by obtaining
general ideas first, and particular observations last: it is
putting the cart before the horse. Instead of developing
the child’s own faculties of discernment, and teaching it to
judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies
to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other
people. The mistaken views of life, which spring from a
false application of general ideas, have afterward to be cor-
rected by long years of experience; and it is seldom that
they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of
learning are possessed of common-sense, such as is
eae to be met with in people who have had no instruction
at all.

To acquire a knowledge of the world might be defined as
the aim of all education; and it follows from what I have
said that special stress should be laid upon beginning to
acquire this knowledge at theright end. AsI have shown,
this means, in the main, that the particular observation of
a thing shall precede the general idea of it; further, that
narrow and circumscribed ideas shall come before ideas of
a wide range. It means, therefore, that the whole system
of education shall follow in the steps that must have been
taken by the ideas themselves in the course of their for-
mation. But whenever any of these steps are skipped or left
out, the instruction is defective, and the ideas obtained are
false; and, finally, a distorted view of the world arises,
ON EDUCATION. 429

peculiar to the individual himself—a view such as almost
every one entertains for some time, and most men for as
long as they live. No one can look into his own mind
without seeing that it was only after reaching a very
mature age, and in some cases when he Jeast expected it,
that he came to a right understanding ora clear view of
many matters in his life that, after all, were not very diffi-
cult or complicated. Up till then, they were points in his
knowledge of the world which were still obscure, due to
his having skipped some particular lesson in those early
days of his education, whatever it may have been like—
whether artificial and conventional or of that natural
kind which is based upon individual experience.

It follows that an attempt should be made to find out
the strictly natural course of knowledge, so that education
may proceed methodically by keeping to it, and that
children may become acquainted with the ways of the
world, without getting wrong ideas into their heads, which
very often cannot be got outagain. If this plan were
adopted, special care would have to be taken to prevent
children from using words without clearly understanding
their meaning and application. The fatal tendency to be
‘satisfied with words instead of trying to understand things
—to learn phrases by heart, so that they may prove a
refuge in time of need, exists, as a rule, even in ehildren;
and the tendency lasts on into manhood, making the know-
edge of many learned persons to consist in mere verbiage.

However, the main endeavor must always be to let par-
ticular observations precede general ideas, and not vice
versd, as is usually and unfortunately the case; as though
a child should come feet foremost into the world, or a
verse be begun by writing down the rhyme! The ordinary
method is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense
of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it
has had any buta very few particular observations. It
is thus that he afterward comes to view the world and
gather experience through the medium of those ready-
made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him
out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

A man sees a great many things when he looks at the
world for himself, and he sees them from many sides;
but this method of learning is not nearly so short
or so quick as the method which employs abstract ideas
430 SI1UDIES IN PESSIMISM.

and makes hasty generalizations about everything.
Experience, therefore, will be a long time in correcting
preconceived ideas, or perhaps never bring its task to an
end: for wherever a man finds that the aspect of things
seems to contradict the general ideas he has formed, he
will begin by rejecting the evidence it offers as partial and
one-sided; nay, he will shut his eyes to it altogether and
deny that it stands in any contradiction at all with his
preconceived notions, in order that he may thus preserve
them uninjured. So it is that many a man carries about a
burden of wrong notions all his life long—crotchets, whims,
fancies, prejudices, which at last become fixed ideas.
The fact is that he has never tried to form his fundamental
ideas for himself out of his own experience of life, his own
way of looking at the world, because. he has taken over his
ideas ready-made from other people; and this it is that
makes him—as it makes how many others!—so shallow
and superficial.

Instead of that method of instruction, care should be
taken to educate children on the natural lines. No idea
should ever be established in a child’s mind otherwise than
by what the child can see for itself, or at any rate it should
be verified by the same means; and the result of this would
be that the child’s ideas, if few, would be well-grounded
and accurate. It would learn how to measure things by
its own standard rather than by another’s; and so it would
escape a thousand strange fancies and prejudices, and not
need to have them eradicated by the lessons it will subse-
quently be taught in the school of life. The child would,
in this way, have its mind once for all habituated to
clear views and thorough-going knowledge: it would use
its own judgment and take an unbiassed estimate of things.

And, in general, children should not form their notions
of what life is like from the copy before they have learned
it from the original, to whatever aspect of it their attention
may be directed. Instead, therefore, of hastening to place
books, and books alone, in their hands, let them be made
acquainted, step by step, with things—with the actual cir-
cumstances of human life. And above all let care be
taken to bring them toa clear and objective view of the
world as it is, to educate them always to derive their ideas
directly from real life, and to shape them in conformity
with it—not to fetch them from other sources, such as
ON EDUVATION 431

books, fairy tales, or what people say—than to apply them
ready-made to real life. For this will mean that their
heads are full of wrong notions, and that they will either
see things in a false light or try in vain to remodel the
world to suit their views, and so enter upon false paths;
and that, too, whether they are only constructing theories
of life or engaged in the actual business of it. It is in-
credible how much harm is done when the seeds of wrong
notions are laid in the mind in those early years, later on
to bear a crop of prejudice; for the subsequent lessons
which are learned from real life in the world have to be
devoted mainly to their extirpation. ‘To unlearn the evil”
was the answer which, according to Diogenes Laertius,*
Antisthenes gave, when he was asked what branch of
knowledge was most necessary; and we can see what he
meant.

No child under the age of fifteen should receive instruc-
tion in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of seri-
ous error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch
of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views; be-
cause wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted
out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last
to arrive at maturity. The child should give its attention
either to subjects where no error is possible at all, such as
mathematics, or to those in which there is no particular
danger in making a mistake, such as languages, natural
science, history, and soon. And in general, the branches
of knowledge which are to be studied at any period of life
should be such as the mind is equal to at that period and
can perfectly understand. Childhood and youth form the
time for collecting materials, for getting a special and
thorough knowledge of individual and particular things.
In those years it is too early to form views on a large
scale; and ultimate explanations must be put off toa later
date. The faculty of judgment, which cannot come into
play without mature experience, should be left to itself;
and care should be taken not to anticipate its action by
inculeating prejudice, which will paralyze it forever.

On the other hand, the memory should be specially taxed
in youth, since it is then that it is strongest and most te-
nacious. But in choosing the things that should be com-

 

* yi. 7,
4
432 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

mitted to memory the utmost care and forethought must
be exercised; as lessons well learned in vouth are never for-
gotten. This precious soil must therefore be cultivated so
as to bear as much fruit as possible. If you think how
deeply rooted in your memory are those persons whom you
knew in the first twelve years of your life, how indelible the
impression made upon you by the events of those years,
how clear your recollection of most of the things that
happened to you then, most of what was toldor taught you,
it will seem a natural thing to take the susceptibility and
tenacity of the mind at that period as the groundwork of
education. This may be done by a strict observance of
method, and a systematic regulation of the impressions
which the mind is to receive.

But the years of youth alloted to man are short, and
memory is, in general, bound within narrow limits; still more
so, the memory of any one individual. Since this is the
case, it is all-important to fill the memory with what. is
essential and material in any branch of knowledge, to the
exclusion of everything else. This decision as to what is
essential and material should rest with the master-minds in
every department of thought; their choice should be made
after the most mature deliberation, and the outcome of it
fixed and determined. Such a choice would have to pro-
ceed by sifting the things which it is necessary and impor-
tant for a man to know in general, and then, necessary and
important for him to know in any particular business or
calling. Knowledge of the first kind would have to be
classified, after an encyclopedic fashion, in graduated
courses; adapted to the degree of general culture which a
man may be expected to have in the circumstances in
which he is placed; beginning with a course limited to the
necessary requirements of primary education, and extend-
ing upward to the subjects treated of in all the branches
of philosophical thought. The regulation of the second
kind of knowledge would be left to those who had shown
genuine mastery in the several departments into which it
is divided; and the whole system would provide an elabo-
ate rule or canon for intellectual education, which would,
of course, have to be revised every ten years. Some such
arrangement as this would employ the youthful power of
the memory to best advantage, and supply excellent work-
ing material to the faculty of judgment, when it made its
appearance later on,
ON EDUCATION. 433

A man’s knowledge may be said to be mature, in other
words, it has reached the most complete state of perfection
to which he, as an individual, is capable of bringing it,
when an exact correspondence is established between the
whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually
perceived for himself. This will mean that each of his
abstract ideas rests, directly or indirectly, upon a basis of
observation, which alone endows it with any real value;
and also that he is able to place every observation he makes
under the right abstract idea which belongs to it. Matur-
ity is the work of experience alone; and therefore it re-'
quires time. The knowledge we derive from our own ob-
servation is usually distinct from that which we acquire
through the medium of abstract ideas; the one coming to
us in the natural way, the other by what people tell us,
and the course of instruction we receive, whether it is
good or bad. The result is, that in youth there is generally
very little agreement or correspondence between our
abstract ideas, which are merely phrases fixed in the mind,
and that real knowledge which we have obtained by our
own observation. It is only later on that a gradual ap-
proach takes place between these two kinds of knowledge,
accompanied by a mutual correction of error; and knowl-
edge is not mature until this coalition is accomplished.
This maturity or perfection of knowledge is something
quite independent of another kind of perfection, which
may be of a high or a low order—the perfection, | mean,
to which a man may bring his own individual faculties;
which is measured, not by any correspondence between the
two kinds of knowledge, but by the degree of intensity
which each kind attains.

For the practical man the most needful thing is to ac-
quire an accurate and profound knowledge of the ways of
the world. But this, though the most needful, is also the
most wearisome of all studies, as a man may reach a great
age without coming to the end of his task; whereas, in the
domain of the sciences, he masters the more important
facts when he isstill young. In acquiring that knowledge
of the world, it is while he is a novice, namely, in boyhood
and in youth, that the first and hardest lessons are put be-
fore him; but it often happens that even in later years
there is still a great deal to be learned.

The study is difficult enough in itself; but the difficulty
434 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

is doubled by novels, which represent a state of things in
life and the world, such as, in fact, does notexist. Youth
is credulous, and accepts these views of life, which then
become part and parcel of the mind; so that, instead of a
merely negative condition of ignorance, you have positive
error—a whole tissue of false notions to start with; and at
a later date these actually spoil the schooling of experience,
and put a wrong construction on the lessons it teaches. If,
‘before this, the youth had no light at all to guide him, he
is now misled by a will-o-the-wisp; still more often is this
the case with a girl. They have both had a false view of
things foisted on to them by reading novels; and expecta-
tions have been aroused which can never be fulfilled. This
generally exercises a baneful influence on their whole life.
In this respect those whose youth has allowed them no
time or opportunity for reading novels—those who work
with their hands and the like—are in a position of decided
advantage. There are a few novels to which this reproach
cannot be addressed—nay, which have an effect the con-
trary of bad. First and foremost, to give an example, ‘Gil
Blas,” and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their
Spanish originals); further, “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and,
to some extent, Sir Walter Scott’s novels. ‘‘Don Quixote”
may be regarded as a satirical exhibition of the error to
which I am referring.

ON WOMEN.

SCHILLER’S poem in honor of women, ‘ Wiirde der
Frauen,” is the result of much. careful thought, and it
uppeals to the reader by its antithetic style and its use of
contrast; but as an expression of the true praise which
should be accorded to them, it is, I think, inferior to these
few words of Jouy’s: ‘‘ Without women, the beginning of
our life would be helpless; the middle, devoid of pleasure;
and the end, of consolation.” The same thing is more
feelingly expressed by Byron in ‘‘ Sardanapalus: ”

‘«The very first
Of human life must spring from woman’s breast,
Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quench’d by her, and your last sighs
ON WOMEN. 435

Too often breathed out in a woman’s hearing,

When men have shrunk from the ignoble care

Of watching the last hour of him who led them.”
(Act I. Scene 2.)

These two passages indicate the right standpoint for the
appreciation of women. 5

You need only look at the way in which she is formed,
to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor,
whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of
life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the
pains of child-bearing and care for the child, and by sub-
mission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient
and cheering companion. The keenest sorrows and joys
are not for her, nor is she called upon to display a great
deal of strength. The current of her life should be more
gentle, peaceful and trivial than man’s, without being
essentially happier or unhappier.

Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and
teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are
themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word,
they are big children all their life long—«a kind of inter-
mediate stage between the child and the full-grown man,
who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a
girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and
sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will
in the world, could do if he were put in her place.

With young girls nature seems to have had in view what,
in the language of the drama, is called a striking effect;
as for a few years she dowers them with a wealth of beauty
and is lavish in her gift of charm, at the expense of all
the rest of their life; so that during those years they may
capture the fantasy of some man to such a degree, that he
is hurried away into undertaking the honorable care of
them, in some form or other, as long as they live—a step
for which there would not appear to be any sufficient war-
ranty if reason only directed his thoughts. Accordingly,
Nature has equipped woman, as she does all her creatures,
with the weapons and implements requisite for the safe-
guarding of her existence, and for just as long as it is
necessary for her to have them. Here, as elsewhere, Nature
proceeds with her usual economy; for just as the female
ant, after fecundation, loses her wings, which are then
superfluous, nay, actually a danger to the business of breed-
436 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

ing; so, after giving birth to one or two children, a woman
generally loses her beauty; probably, indeed, for similar
reasons.

And so we find that young girls, in their hearts, look
upon domestic affairs or work of any kind as of secondary
importance, if not actually as a mere jest. The only
business that really claims their earnest attention 1s love,
making conquests, and everything connected with this—
dress, dancing, and so on.

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and
slower it isin arriving at maturity. A man reaches the
maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties
hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman, at eight-
een. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason
of a sort—very niggard in its dimensions. That is why
women remain children their whole life long; never seeing
anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the
present moment, taking appearance for reality, and pre-
ferring trifles to matters of the first importance. For it is
by virtue of his reasoning faculty that man does not live in
the present only, like the brute, but looks about him and
considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of
prudence, as well as of that care and anxiety which so
many people exhibit. Both the advantages and the dis-
advantages which this involves, are shared in by the
woman to a smaller extent because of her weaker power of
reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectu-
ally shortsighted, because, while she has an intuitive
understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of
vision is narrow and does not reach to what is remote: so
that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have
much less effect upon women than upon men. This is
the reason why women are more often inclined to be extrava-
gant, and sometimes carry their inclination to a length that
borders upon madness. In their hearts women think that
it is men’s business to earn money and theirs to spend it—
if possible during their husband’s life, but, at any rate,
after his death. The very fact that their husband hands
them over his earnings for purposes of housekeeping,
strengthens them in this belief.

However many disadvantages all this may involve,
there is at least this to be said in its favor; that the
woman lives more in the present than the man,and that, if
ON WOMEN. 437

the present is at all tolerable, she enjoys it more eagerly.
This is the source of that cheerfulness which is peculiar to
woman, fitting her to amuse man in his hours of recrea-
tion, and, in case of need, to console him when he is
borne down by the weight of his cares.

It is by no means a bad plan to consult women in mat-
ters of difficulty, as the Germans used to do in ancient
times; for their way of looking at things is quite different
from ours, chiefly in the fact that they like to take the
shortest way to their goal, and, in general, manage to fix
their eyes upon what lies before them; while we, as a rule,
see far beyond it, just because it is in front of our noses.
In cases like this, we need to be brought back to the right
standpoint, so as to recover the near and simple view.

Then, again, women are decidedly more sober in their
judgment than we are, so that they do not see more in
things than is really there; while, if our passions are
aroused, we are apt to see things in an exaggerated way, or
imagine what does not exist.

The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains
why it is that women show more sympathy for the unfor-
tunate than men do, and sotreat them with more kindness
and interest; and why it is that, on the contrary, they are
inferior to men in point of justice, and less honorable and
conscientious. For it is just because their reasoning power
is weak that present circumstances have such a hold over
them, and those concrete things which lie directly before
their eyes exercise a power which is seldom counteracted to
any extent by abstract principles of thought, by fixed rules
of conduct, firm resolutions, or, in general, by consideration
for the past and the future, or regard for what is absent
and remote. Accordingly, they possess the first and main
elements that go to make a virtuous character, but they
are deficient in those secondary qualities which are often a
necessary instrument in the formation of it. *

Hence it will be found that the fundamental fault of the
female character is that it has no sense of justice.
This is mainly due to the fact, already mentioned, that
women are defective in the powers of reasoning and

 

*In this respect they may be compared to an animal organism
which contains a liver but no gall-bladder. Here let me refer to
what I have said in my treatise on ‘‘ The Foundation of Morals,” § 17,
438 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

deliberation; but it is also traceable to the position which
Nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are
dependent, not upon strength, but upon craft; and hence
their instinctive capacity for cunning, and their ineradi-
cable tendency to say what is not true. For as lions are
provided with claws and teeth, and elephants and boars
with tusks, bulls with horns, and the cuttle fish with its
cloud of inky fluid, so Nature has equipped woman, for
her defense and protection, with the arts of dissimulation;
and all the power which Nature has conferred upon man
in the shape of physical strength and reason, bas been
bestowed upon women in this form. Hence dissimulation
is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the
stupid as of the clever. Itis as natural for them to make
use of it on every occasion as it is for those animals to
employ their means of defense when they are attacked;
they have a feeling that in doing so they are only within
their rights. Thereforea woman who is perfectly truthful
and not given to dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility,
and for this very reason they are so quick at seeing through
dissimulation in others that it is not a wise thing to
attempt it with them. But this fundamental defect
which I have stated, with all that it entails, gives rise to
falsity, faithlessness, treachery, ingratitude, and so on.
Perjury in a court of justice is more often committed] by
women than by men. It may, indeed, be generally ques-
tioned whether women ought to be sworn atall. From
time to time one finds repeated cases everywhere of ladies,
who want for nothing, taking things from shop-counters,
when no one is looking, and making off with them.
Nature has appointed that the propagation of the species
shall be the business of men who are young, strong and
handsome; so that the race may not degenerate. This is
the firm will and purpose of Nature in regard to the species,
and it finds its expression in the passions of women.
There is no law that is older or more powerful than this.
Woe, then, to the man who sets up claims and interests
that will conflict with it; whatever he may say and do,
they will be unmercifully crushed at the first serious en-
counter. For the innate rule that governs women’s con-
duct, though it is secret and unformulated, nay, uncon-
scious in its working, is this: ‘* We are justified in deceiv-
ing those who think they have acquired rights over the
ON WOMEN. 439

species by paying little attention to the individual, that is,
tous. The constitution and, therefore, the welfare of the
species have been placed in our hands and committed to
our care, through the control we obtain over the next gen-
eration, which proceeds from us; let us discharge our
duties conscientiously.” But women have no abstract
knowledge of this leading principle; they are conscious of
it only as a concrete fact; and they have no other method
of giving expression to it than the way im which they act
when the opportunity arrives. And then their conscience
does not trouble them so much as we fancy; for in the
darkest recesses of their heart, they are aware that in com-
mitting a breach of their duty toward the individual, they
have all the better fulfilled their duty towards the species,
which is infinitely greater.*

And since women exist in the main solely for the propa-
gation of the species, and are not destined for anything
else, they live, as a rule, more for the species than for the
individual, and in their ‘hearts take the affairs of the
species more seriously than those of the individual. This
gives their whole life and being a certain levity; the gen-
eral bent of their character is in a direction fundamentally
different from that of man; and it is this which produces
that discord in married life which is so frequent, and almost
the normal state.

The natural feeling between men is mere indifference,
but between women it is actual enmity. The reason of
this is that trade-jealousy—odium figulimwn—which, in
the case of men, does not go beyond the confines of their
own particular pursuit; but, with women, embraces the
whole sex; since they have only one kind of business.
Even when they meet in the street, women look at one an-
other like Guelphs and Ghibellines. And it isa patent
fact that when two women make | first acquaintance with
each other, they behave with more constraint and dissimu-
lation than two men would show in a like case; and hence
it is that an exchange of compliments between two women
isa much more ridiculous proceeding than between two
men. Further, while a man will, as a general rule, always

 

* A more detailed discussion of the matter in question may be
found in my chief work, *‘Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, ”
vol, ii., ch. 44.
440 STUDIES LN PESSIMISM.

preserve a certain amount of consideration and humanity
in speaking to others, even to those who are in a very
inferior position, it is intolerable to see how proudly and
disdainfully a fine lady will generally behave toward one
who is in a lower social rank (I do not mean a woman who
is in her service), whenever she speaks to her. The reason
of this may be that, with women, differences of rank are
much more precarious than with us; because, while a hun-
dred considerations carry weight in our case, in theirs there
is only one, namely, with which man they have found
favor; as also that they stand in much nearer relations
with one another than men do, in consequence of the one-
sided nature of their calling. This makes them endeavor
to lay stress upon differences of rank.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his
sexual impulses that could give the name of the fair sex to
that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and
short-legged race; for the whole beauty of the sex is bound
up with this impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful,
there would be more warrant for describing women as the
unesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for
fine art, have they really and truly any sense or suscepti-
bility; it isa mere mockery if they make a pretense of it
in order to assist their endeavor to please. Hence, as a
result of this, they are incapable of taking a purely objective
interest in everything; and the reason of it seems to me to
be as follows. A man tries to acquire direct mastery over
things, either by understanding them, or by forcing them
to do his will. But a woman is always and everywhere
reduced to obtaining this mastery indirectly, namely
through a man; and whatever direct mastery she may have
is entirely confined to him. And so it hes in woman’s
nature to look upon everything only as a means for con-
quering man; and if she takes an interest in anything else,
it is simulated—a mere roundabout way of gaining her
ends by coquetry, and feigning what she does not feel.
Hence even Rousseau declared: ‘‘ Women have, in general,
no love of any art; they have no proper knowledge of any;
and they have no genius.” *

No one who sees at all below the surface can have failed
to remark the same thing. You need only observe the

 

* Lettre a d’Alembert, Note xx.
ON WOMEN. 441

kind of attention women bestow upon a concert, ah opera,
or a play—the childish simplicity, for example, with which
they keep on chattering during the finest passages in the
greatest masterpieces. If it is true that the Greeks
excluded women from their theaters, they were quite right
in what they did; at any rate you would have been able to
hear what was said upon the stage. In our day, besides,
or in lieu of saying, ‘‘ Leta woman keep silence in the
church,” it would be much to the point to say, ‘‘ Let a
woman keep silence in the theater.” This might, perhaps,
be put up in big letters on the curtain.

And you cannot expect anything else of women if you
consider that the most distinguished intellects among the
whole sex have never managed to produce a single achieve-
ment in the fine arts that is really great, genuine, and
original, or given to the world any work of permanent
value in any sphere. This is most strikingly shown in
regard to painting, where mastery of technique is at least
as much within their power as within ours—and hence
they are diligent in cultivating it; but still, they
have not a single great painting to boast of, just because
they are deficient in that objectivity of mind which is so
directly indispensable in painting. They never get beyond
a subjective point of view. It is quite in keeping with
this that ordinary women have no real susceptibility for art
at all; for nature proceeds in strict sequence—non facit
saltum. And Huarte* in his ‘‘ Examen de ingenios para
las scienzias’” —a book which has been famous for three
hundred years—denies women the possession of all the
higher faculties. The case is not altered by particular and
partial exceptions; taken as a whole, women are, and
remain, thorough-going Philistines, and quite incurable.
Hence, with that absurd arrangement which allows them
to share the rank and title of their husbands, they are a
constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions. And, further,
it is just because they are Philistines that modern society,
where they take the lead and set the tone, is in such a bad
way. Napoleon’s saying—that ‘‘ women have no rank ”—
should be adopted as the right standpoint in determining

 

* Translator’s Note.—Juan Huarte (15207-1590) practiced as a
physician at Madrid. The work cited by Schopenhauer is well known,
and has been translated into many languages.
442 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

their position in society; andas regards their other qualities,
Chamfort * makes the very true remark: ‘‘ They are made
to trade with our own weaknesses and our follies, but not
with our reason. ‘The sympathies that exist between them
and men are skin-deep only, and do not touch the mind
or the feelings or the character.”

They form the sexus sequior—the second sex, inferior in
every respect to the first; their infirmities should be
treated with consideration; but to show them great rever-
ence is extremely ridiculous, and lowers us in their eyes.
When nature made two divisions of the human race, she
did not draw the line exactly through the middle. These
divisions are polar and opposed to each other, it is true;
but the difference between them is not qualitative merely,
it is also quantitative.

This is just the view which the ancients took of woman,
and the view which people in the East take now; and their
judgment as to her proper position is much more correct
than ours, with our old French notions of gallantry and
our preposterous system of reverence—that highest product
of Teutonico-Christian stupidity. These notions have
served only to make women more arrogant and overbearing:
so that one is occasionally reminded of the holy apes in
Benares, who in the consciousness of their sanctity
sie inviolable position, think they can do exactly as they

ease.

But in the West, the wemen, and especially the ‘ lady,”
finds herself in a false position; for woman, rightly called
by the ancients sexus seqgutor is by no means fit to be the
object of our honor and veneration, or to hold her head
higher than man and be on equal terms with him. The
consequences of this false position are sufficiently obvious.
Accordingly, it would be a very desirable thing if this
Number Two of the human race were in Europe also rele-
gated to her natural place, and an end put to that lady-
nuisance, which not only moves all Asia to laughter, but
would have been ridiculed by Greece and Romeas well. It
is impossible to calculate the good effects which such a
change would bring about in our social, civil and political
arrangements. There would be no necessity for the Salic
law: it would be a superfluous truism. In Europe the “ lady”

 

* Translator’s Note.—See ‘‘ Counsels and Maxims,” p. 12, note,
ON WOMEN. 443

strictly so-called, is a being who should not exist all all;
she should bo either a housewife or a girl who hopes to
become one; and she should be brought up, not to be arro-
gant, but to be thrifty and submissive. It is just because
there are such people as “ ladies "in Europe that the women
of the lowor classes, that is to say, the great majority of
the sox, are much more unhappy than they are in the East.
And even Lord Byron says: ‘* Thought of the state of
women under the ancient Greeks—convenient enough.
Present state, a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalric
and the feudal ages-—artificial and unnatural. They ought
to mind home—and be well fed and clothed—but not
mixed in society. Well educated, too, in religion—but to
read neither poetry nor politics—nothing but books of
piety and cookery. Music—drawing—dancing—also a
little gardening and plowing now and then. I have seen
them mending the roads in Epirus with good success.
Why not, as well as hay-making and milking?”

The laws of marriage prevailing in Europe consider the
woman as the equivalent of the man—start, that is to say,
from a wrong position. In our part of the world where
monogamy is the rule, to marry means to have one’s rights
and double one’s duties. Now, when the laws gave women
equal rights with man, they ought to have also endowed
her with a masculine intellect. But the fact is, that just
in proportion as the honors and privileges which the laws
accord to women, exceed the amount which Nature gives,
is there a diminution in the number of women who really
participate in these privileges; and all the remainder are
deprived of their natural rights by just so much as is given
to the others over and above their share. For the institu-
tion of monogamy, and the laws of marriage which it en-
tails. bestow upon the woman an unnatural position of
privilege, by considering her throughout as the full equiv-
went of the man, which is by no means the case; and see-
ing this, men who are shrewd and prudent very often
scruplo to make so great a sacrifice and to acquiesce in so
unfair an arrangement. ;

Consequently, while among polygamous nations every
woman is provided for, where monogamy prevails the num-
ber of married women is limited; and there remains over a
large number of women without stay or support, who, in
the upper classes, vegetate as useless old maids and in the

 
444 STUDIES IN PHSSIMISM.

lower succumb to hard work for which they are not suited;
or else become filles de joie, whose life is as destitute of joy
as it is of honor. But under the circumstances they be-
come a necessity; and their position is openly recognized
as serving the special end of warding off temptation from
those women favored by fate, who have found, or may
hope to find, husbands. In London alone there are
eighty thousand prostitutes. What are they but the women,
who, under the institution of monogamy, have come off
worst? Theirs is wu direful fate: they are human sacrifices
offered up on the altar of monogamy. ‘he women whose
wretched position is here described are the inevitable set-
off to the European lady with her arrogance and preten-
sion. Polygamy is therefore a real benefit to the female
sex if it is taken as a whole. And, from another point of
view, there is no true reason why a man whose wife suffers
from chronic illness, or remains barren, or has gradually
become too old for him, should not take a second. The
motives which induce so many people to become converts
to Mormonism* appear to be just those which militate
against the unnatural institution of monogamy.

Moreover, the bestowal of unnatural rights upon women
has imposed upon them unnatural duties, and, neverthe-
less, a breach of these duties makes them unhappy. Let
me explain. A man may often think that his social or
financial position will suffer if he marries, unless he makes
some brilliant alliance. His desire will then be to win a
woman of his own choice under conditions other than those
of marriage, such as will secure her position and that of
the children. However fair, reasonable, fit and proper
these conditions may be, and the woman consents by fore-
going that undue amount of privilege which marriage
alone can bestow, she to some extent loses her honor, be-
cause marriage is the basis of civic society; and she will
lead an unhappy life, since human nature is so constituted
that we pay an attention to the opinion of other people
which is out of all proportionate to its value. On the other
hand, if she does not consent, she runs the risk either of
having to be given in marriage to a man whom she does
not like, or of being landed high and dry as an old maid;

 

* Translator’s Note.—The Mormons have recently given up
polygamy, and received the American franchise in its stead.
/

ON WOMEN. 445

for the period during which she has a chance of being set-
tled for life is very short. And in view of this aspect of
the institution of monogamy, Thomasius’ profoundly
learned treatise, ‘de Concubinatu,” is well worth reading;
for it shows that, among all nations and in all ages, down
to the Lutheran Reformation, concubinage was permitted;
nay, that it was an institution which was to a certain
extent actually recognized by law, and attended with no
dishonor. It was only the Lutheran Reformation that
degraded it from this position. It was seen to be a further
justification for the marriage of the clergy; and then, after
that the Catholic Church did not dare to remain behind-
hand in the matter.

There is no use arguing about polygamy; it must be taken
as de facto existing everywhere, and the only question is as
to how it shall be regulated. Where are there, then,
any real monogamists? We all live, at any rate, for a time,
and most of us, always, in polygamy. And so, since every
man needs many women, there is nothing fairer than to
allow him, nay, to make it incumbent upon him, to pro-
vide for many women. This will reduce woman to her
true and natural position as a subordinate being; and the
lady—that monster of European civilization and Teutonico-
Christian stupidity— will disappear from the world, leaving
only women, but no more unhappy women, of whom
Europe is now full.

In India no woman is ever independent, but in accord-
ance with the law of Manu,* she stands under the control
of her father, her husband, her brother or her son. It is,
to be sure, a revolting thing that a widow should immolate
herself upon her husband’s funeral pyre; but it is also
revolting that she should spend her husband s money with
her paramours—the money for which he toiled his whole
life long, in the consoling belief that he was providing for
his children. Happy are those who have kept the middle
course—medium tenuere beati.

The first love of a mother for her child is, with the
lower animalsas with men, ofa purely instinctive character,
and so it ceases when the child is no longer in a physically
helpless condition. After that, the first love should give
way to one that is based on habit and reason; but this

 

* Ch. V., v. 148.
446 STUDIES [N PESSIMISM.

often fails to make its appearance, especially where -the
mother did not love the father. The love of a father for
his child is of a different order, and more likely to last;
because it has its foundation in the fact that in the child
he recognizes his own inner self; that is to say, his love for
it is metaphysical in its origin.

In almost all nations, whether of the ancient or the
modern world, even among the Hottentots, * property is
inherited by the male descendants alone; it is only in
Europe that a departure has taken place, but not among
the nobility, however. That the property which has cost
men long years of toil and effort, and been won with so
much difficulty, should afterward come into the hands of
women, who then, in their lack of reason, squander it ina
short time, or otherwise fool it away, is a grievance and a
wrong, as serious as it is common, which should be pre-
vented by limiting the right of women to inherit. In my
opinion, the best arrangement would be that by which
women, whether widows or daughters, should never receive
anything beyond the interest for life on property secured
by mortgage, and in no case the property itself, or the
capital, except where all male descendants fail. The
people who make money are men, not women; and it fol-
lows from this that women are neither justified in having
unconditional possession of it, nor fit persons to be en-
trusted with its admiration. When wealth, in any true sense
of the word, that is to say, funds, houses or land, is to go
to them as an inheritance, they should never be allowed the
free disposition of it. In their case a guardian should
always be appointed; and hence they should never be given
the free control of their own children, wherever it can be
avoided. The vanity of women, even though it should
not prove to be greater than that of men, has this much
danger in it, that it takes an entirely material direction.
They are vain, I mean, of their personal beauty, and then
of finery, show and magnificence. That is just why they
are so much in their element in society. It is this, too
which makes them so inclined to be extravagant, all the
more as their reasoning power is low. Accordingly we find

 

: ‘ Leroy, “ Lettres philosophiques sur Virtelligence et la perfecti-
en des animaux, avec quelques lettres sur |’homme,” p, 298, Paris,
ON NOISE. 44%

an ancient writer describing women as in general of an ex-
travagant nature—ury r6 ovvodor ort danavynpoy puGer*
But with men vanity often takes the direction of non-
material advantages, such as intellect, learning, courage.

In the Politics + Aristotle explains the great disadvan-
tage which accrued to the Spartans from the fact that they
conceded too much to their women, by giving them the
right of inheritance and dower, and a great amount of in-
dependence; and he shows how much this contributed to
Sparta’s fall. May it not be the case in France that the
influence of women, which went on increasing steadily
from the time of Louis XIII., was to blame for that grad-
ual corruption of the court and the government, which
brought about the revolution of 178%, of which all subse-
quent disturbances have been the fruit? However that
may be, the false position which women occupy, demon-
strated as it is, in the most glaring way, by the institution
of the lady, is a fundamental defect in our social scheme,
and this defect, proceeding from the very heart of it, must
spread its baneful influence in all directions.

That woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by
the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural
position of complete independence, immediately attaches
herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be
guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and
master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is old, a
priest. :

ON NOISE.

Kant wrote a treatise on ““The Vital Powers.” I should
prefer to write adirgefor them. ‘The superabundant dis-
play of vitality, which takes the form of knocking, ham-
mering, and tumbling things about, bas proved a daily
torment to me all my life long. There are people, it is
true—nay, a great many people—who smile at such things,
because they are not sensitive to noise; but they are just
the very people who are also not sensitive to argument, or
thought, or poetry, or art, in a word, to any kind of intel-

 

* Brunck’s ‘‘ Gnomici poetae graeci,” y, 115.
-} BE, L, ch. 9.
448 STUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

lectual influence. The reason of it is that the tissue of
their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality. On the
other hand, noise is a torture to intellectual people. In
the biographies of almost all great writers, or wherever
else their personal utterances are recorded, I find complaints
about it; in the case of Kant, for instance, Goethe, Lich-
tenberg, Jean Paul; and if it should happen that any
writer has omitted to express himself on the matter, it is
only for want of an opportunity.

This aversion to noise I should explain as follows: If
you cut up a large diamond into little bits, it will entirely
lose the valueit had as a whole; and an army divided up
into small bodies of soldiers, loses allits strength. Soagreat
intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one, as soon as
it is interrupted and disturbed, its attention distracted and
drawn off from the matter in hand; for its superiority de-
pends upon its power of concentration—of bringing all its
strength to bear upon one theme, in the same way asa
concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light
that strike upon it. Noisy interruption is a hindrance to
this concentration. That is why distinguished minds have
always shown such an extreme dislike to disturbance in
any form, as something that breaks in upon and distracts
their thoughts. Above all have they been averse to that
violent interruption that comes from noise. Ordinary
people are not much put out by anything of the sort. The
most sensible and intelligent of all the nations in Europe
lays down the rule, ‘“‘Never interrupt!” asthe eleventh com-
mandment. -Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of
interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a
disruption of thought. Of course, where there is nothing
to interrupt, noise will not be so particularly painful.
Occasionally it happens that some slight but constant
noise, coutinues to bother, and distract me for atime be-
fore I become distinctly conscious of it. All I feel is a
steady increase in the labor of thinking—just as though I
were trying to walk with a weight on my foot. At last I
find out what it is.

Let me now, however, pass from genus to species. The
most inexcusable and disgraceful of all noises is the crack-
ing of whips—a truly infernal thing when it is done in the
narrow resounding streets of atown. I denounce it as
making a peaceful life impossible; it puts an end to all
ON NOISE. 449

quiet thought. That this cracking of whips should be
allowed at all seems to me to show in the clearest way how
senseless and thoughtless is the nature of mankind. No
one with anything like an idea in his head can avoid a feel-
ing of actual pain at this sudden, sharp crack, which par-
alyzes the brain, rends the thread of reflection, and mur-
ders thought. Every time this noise is made, it must
disturb a hundred people who are applying their minds to
business of some sort, no matter how trivial it may be;
while on the thinker its effect is woeful and disastrous,
cutting his thoughts asunder, much as the executioner’s
axe severs the head from the body. No sound, be it ever
so shrill, cuts so sharply into the brain as this cursed
cracking of whips; you feel the sting of the lash right
inside your head; and it affects the brain in the same way
as touch affects a sensitive plant, and for the same length
of time.

With all due respect for the most holy doctrine of
utility, I really cannot see why a fellow who is taking
away a wagon-load of gravel or dung should thereby obtain
the right to kill in the bud the thoughts which may happen
to be springing up in ten thousand heads—the number he
will disturb one after another in half an hour’s drive
through the town. Hammering, the barking of dogs, and
the crying of children are horrible to hear; but your only
genuine assassin of thought is the crack of a whip; it ex-
ists for the purpose of destroying every pleasant moment
of quiet thought that any one may now and then enjoy.
If the driver had no other way of urging on his horse than
by making this most abominable of all noises, it would be ex-
cusable; but quite the contrary is the case. This cursed
cracking of whips is not only unnecessary, but even use-
less. Its aim is to produce an effect upon the intelligence
of the horse; but through the cunstant abuse of it, the
animal becomes habituated to the sound, which falls upon
blunted feelings and produces no effect at all. The horse
does not go any the faster for it. You have a remarkable
example of this in the ceaseless cracking of his whip on the
part of a cab-driver, while he is proceeding at a slow pace
on the look-out for a fare. If he were to give his horse the
slightest touch with the whip, it would have much more
effect. Supposing, however, that it were absolutely neces-
sary to crack the whip in order to keep the horse constantly
450 SUUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

in mind of its presence, it would be enough to make the
hundredth part of the noise. For it is a well-known fact
that, in regard to sight and hearing, animals are sensitive
to even the faintest indications; they are alive to things
that we can scarcely perceive. The most surprising
instances of this are furnished by trained dogs and canary-
birds.

It is obvious, therefore, that here we have to do with an
act of pure wantonness; nay, with an impudent defiance
offered to those members of the community who work with
their heads by those who work with their hands. That
such infamy should be tolerated in a town is a piece of
barbarity and iniquity, all the more as it could easily be
remedied by a police-notice to the effect that every lash
shall have a knot at the end of it. There can be no harm
in drawing the attention of the mob to the fact that the
classes above them work with their heads, for any kind of
headwork is mortal anguish to the man in the street. A
fellow who rides through the narrow alleys of a populous
town with unemployed post-horses or cart-horses, and keeps
on cracking a whip several yards long with all his might,
deserves there and then to stand down and receive five
really good blows with a stick. All the philanthropists in
the world, and all the legislators, meeting to advocate and
decree the total abolition of corporal punishment, will
never persuade me to the contrary. There is something
even more disgraceful than what I have just mentioned.
Often enough you may see a carter walking along the street
quite alone, without any horses, and still cracking away
incessantly; so accustomed has the wretch become to it in
consequence of the unwarrantable toleration of this prac-
tice. A man’s body and the needs of his body are now
everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the think-
ing mind then, to be the only thing that is never to ob-
tain the slightest measure of consideration or protection,
to say nothing of respect? Carters, porters, messengers—
these are the beasts of burden among mankind; by all
means let them be treated justly, fairly, indulgently, and
with forethought; but they must not be permitted to stand
in the way of the higher endeavors of humanity by wan-
tonly making a noise. How many great and splendid
thoughts, I should like to know, have been lost to the
world by the crack of a whip? If I had the upper hand,
ON NOISE. ani

I should soon produce in the heads of these people an in-
dissoluble association of ideas between cracking a whip and
getting a whipping.

Let us hope that the more intelligent and refined among
the nations will make a beginning in this matter, and then
that the Germans may take example by it and follow suit.*
Meanwhile, [ may quote what Thomas Hood says of them: +
“For a musical nation, they are the most noisy I ever met
with”. That they are so is due to the fact, not that they
are more fond of making a noise than other people—they
would deny it if you asked them—but that their senses are
obtuse; consequently, when they hear a noise, it does not
affect them much. It does not disturb them in reading or
thinking, simply because they do not think; they only
smoke, which is their substitute for thought. The gen-
eral toleration of unnecessary noise—the slamming of
doors, for instance, a very unmannerly and ill-bred thing—
is direct evidence that the prevailing habit of mind is dull-
ness and lack of thought. In Germany it seems as though
care were taken that no one should ever think for mere
noise—to mention one form of it, the way in which drum-
ming goes on for no purpose at all.

Finally, as regards the literature of the subject treated
of in this chapter, I have only one work to recommend, but
it is a good one. I refer to a poetical epistle in ¢erzo rimo by
the famous painter Bronzino: entitled ‘‘ De Romori, a Messer
Luca Martini.” It gives a detailed description of the torture
to which people are put by the various noises of a small
Italian town. Written in a tragi-comic style, it is very
amusing. The epistle may be found in ‘‘ Opere burlesche
del Berni, Aretino et altri,” Vol. II. p. 258; apparently
published in Utrecht in 1771.

 

* According to a notice issued by the Society for the Protection of
Animals in Munich the superfluous whipping and the cracking of
whips were, in December, 1858, positively forbidden in Nuremburg.

+ In ‘‘ Up the Rhine.”
452 STUDIES IN PHSSIMISM.

A FEW PARABLES.

In A FIELD of ripening corn J came to a place which had
been trampled down by some ruthless foot; and as J glanced
among the countless stalks, every one of them alike, stand-
ing there so crect and bearing the full weight of the ear, I
saw a multitude of different flowers, red and blue and
violet. How pretty they looked as they grew there so
naturally with their little foliage! But, thought I, they
are quite useless; they beur no fruit; they are mere weeds,
suffered to remain only because there is no getting rid of
them. And yet, but for these flowers, there would be
nothing to charm the eyein that wilderness of stalks. They
are emblematic of poetry and art, which, in civic life—so
severe, but still useful and not without its fruit—play the
game part as flowers in the corn.

 

There are some really beautiful landscapes in the world,
but the human figures in them are poor, and you had not
better look at them.

The fly should be used as the symbol of impertinence
and audacity; for while al] other animals shun man more
than anything else, and run away even before he comes
near them, the fly lights upon hig very nose.

Two Chinamen traveling in Enrope went to the theater
for the first time. One of them did nothing but study the
machinery, and he sueceeded in finding out how it was
worked. The other tried to get at the meaning of the
piece in spite of his ignorance of the language. Were you
have the astronomer and the philosopher.

 

Wisdom which is only theoretical and never put into
practice, is like a donble rose; its color and its perfume are
delightful, but it withers away and Jeaves no xeed,

No rose without a thorn. Yes, but many a thorn with-
out a rose,
A FEW PARABLES. 453

A widespreading apple tree stood in fall bloom, and
behind it a straight fir raised its dark and tapering head.
* Look at the thousands of gay blossoms which cover me
everywhere.” said the apple tree; ‘ what have you to show
in comparison? Dark green needles!" + That is true,”
replied the fir, ** but when winter comes, vou will be bared
of your glory: and I shall be as Iam now.”

Onee, as I was botanizing under an oak, I found among
a uumber of other plants of similar height one that was
dark in color, with tightly closed leaves and a stalk that
was very straight and stiff. When I touched it, it said to
me in drm tones: ** Let me alone; Tam not for your col-
lection, like these plants to which Nature has given only a
single vear of life. Iam _a little oak.”

So itis with a man whose influence is to last for hun-
dreds of years. As a child, as ayouth, often even asa full-
grown man, nay. his whole life long, he goes about among
his fellows. looking like them and seemingly as unimpor-
tant. But let him alone; he will not die. Time will
come and bring those whe know how to value him.

The mau who goes up in a balloon does not feel as
though he were ascending; he only sees the earth sinking
deeper and deeper under him.

This is a mystery which only those will understand who
feel the truth of it.

Your estimation of a man’s size will be affected by the
distanee at which you stand from him, but in two entirely
opposite ways according as it is his physical or his mental
stature that you are considering. The one will seem
smaller, the farther off you move: the other, greater.

Nature covers all her works with a varnish of beauty.
like the tender bloom that is breathed, as it were, on the
surface of a peach or plum. — Painters and poets lay them-
selves out to take off this varnish, to store it up, and give
it us to be enjoyed at our leisure. We drink deep of this
beauty long before we enter upon life itself; and when
454 SLUDIES IN PESSIMISM.

afterward wecome to see the works of nature for our-
selves, the varnish is gone: the artists have used it up and
we have enjoyed it in advance. Thus it is that the world
so often appears harsh and devoid of charm, nay, actually
repulsive. It were better to leave us to discover the var-
nish for ourselves. This would mean that we should not
enjoy it all at once and in large quantities; we should have
no finished pictures, no perfect poems; but we should
look at all things in the genial and pleasing light in which
even now a child of nature sometimes sees them—some one
who has not anticipated his esthetic pleasures by the help
of art, or taken the charms of life too early.

 

The cathedral in Mayence is so shut in by the houses
that are built round about it, that there is noonespot from
which you can see itas a whole. This is symbolic of
everything great or beautiful in the world. It ought to
exist for its own sake alone, but before very long it is mis-
used to serve alien ends. People come from all directions
wanting to find in it support and maintenance for them-
selves; they stand in the way and spoil its effect. To be
gure, there is nothing surprising in this, for in a world of
need and imperfection everything is seized upon which
can be used to satisfy want. Nothing is exempt from this
service, no, not even those very things which arise only
when need and want are fora moment lost sight of—the
beautiful and the true, sought for their own sakes.

This is especially illustrated and corroborated in the
case of institutions—whether great or small, wealthy or
poor, founded, no matter in what century or in what land,
to maintain and advance human knowledge, and _ generally
to afford help to those intellectual efforts which ennoble
the race. Wherever these institutions may be, it is not
long before people sneak up to them under the pretense of
wishing to further those special ends, while they are really
led on by the desire to secure the emoluments which have
been left for their furtherance, and thus to satisfy certain
coarse and brutal instincts of their own. Thus it is that
we come to have so many charlatans in every branch of
knowledgé. The charlatan takes very different shapes ac-
cording to circumstances; but at bottom he is a man who
cares nothing about knowledge for his own sake, and only
A FEW PARABLES. 4n5

od

strives to gain the semblance of it that he may use it for his
own personal ends, which are always selfish and material.

 

 

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to
the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he
loses all patience he crushes both them and himself. Or
he is like Gulliver at Lilliput, overwhelmed by an enormous
number of little men.

A mother gave her children sop’s fables to read, in
the hope of educating and improving their minds; but
they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise
beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: ‘‘ This
is no book for us; it’s much too childish and stupid. You
can’t make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are
able to talk; we’ve got beyond stories of that kind!”

In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Ra-
tionalists of the future.

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth
on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one
another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse.
However the cold drove them together again, whenjust the
same thing happened. At last, after many turns of hud-
dling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be
best off by remaining at a little distance from one another.
In the same way the need of society drives the human por-
cupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the
many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature.
The moderate distance which they at last discover to be
the only tolerable condition of intercourse, in the code of
politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are
roughly told—in the English phrase—“ to keep their dis-
tance.” By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth
is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not
get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers
to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people
nor get pricked himself.

THE END.
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