UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY ATURBANA-CHAMPAIGN STACKS CENTRAL CIRCULATION BOOKSTACKS The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its renewal or its return to the library from which it was borrowed on or before the Latest Date stamped below. You may be charged a minimum fee of $75.00 for each lost book. from Theft, mutilation -nd underlining of book* " for disciplinary action and may result In dismis TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 3M-84OO UNIVERSITY Of ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN NOV 3 1996 DEC 1 8 1996 When renewing by phone, write new due date below previous due date. UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME. Price 2s. 6d. each. 1. THE WISDOM OF LIFE : being the First Part of ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER'S Aphorismen zur Lebens- weisheit. Translated, with a Preface, by T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. Third Edition. PRESS NOTICES. " Schopenhauer is not simply a moralist writing in his study and applying abstract principles to the conduct of thought and action, but is also in a large measure a man of the world, with a firm grasp of the actual, and is therefore able to speak in a way which, to use Bacon's phrase, comes home to men's business arid bosoms. The essentially practical character of his ' Wisdom of Life 3 is evidenced by his frequent recourse to illustrations, and his singularly apt use of them .... This allusive, illus- trative method of treatment gives to his work a special charm in which similar treatises are, as a rule, deficient. Mr. Bailey Saunders' introductory essay adds much to the value and interest of a singularly suggestive volume." Manchester Examiner. "The new lights which Mr. Saunders' translations give us into the character of the great pessimist are of considerable value . . . The 'Wisdom of Life' is well worth reading .... and certainly Mr. Saunders has done his work well." Glasgow Herald. " Schopenhauer, as seen through the medium of Mr. Saunders' translation, might easily become a widely-read and popular preacher among us .... We are very much indebted to Mr. Saunders for his neat little essay as an introduction to an author interesting and easily understanded of the people." Cambridge Review. " This translation is well done and deserves a welcome." SCHOPENHAUER SERIES, Continued ' These sparkling Montaignesque essays .... We feel that we have learned more from the bitter half-truths here presented than from many a volume of goody respectability." Inquirer. ''From the point of view of the English reader there is a good deal to be said in favour of taking Schopenhauer in small doses, commencing with the less technical of the philosopher's writings, such as treat of subjects interesting to the human kind a course made easy by Mr. Bailey Saunders' fluent translations. ' ' Saturday Eeview. "Admirably translated .... Schopenhauer has his uses, and may well be employed to refine and chasten much of the hideous vulgarity of ordinary existence." Bookseller. 2. COUNSELS AND MAXIMS: being the Second Part of ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER'S Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit. Translated by T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. Second Edition. "Mr. Saunders has produced that rare thing, a translation which reads like a piece of original English .... We may admire, without fear of being led astray by our admiration, his (Schopenhauer's) homely thrusts, his felicity of illustration, his power of analysis." Scotsman. ; 'The tenderness of dealing with his brother man, the know- ledge of character, the wonderful terrestrial wisdom displayed in every department of life, has a fascination of its own that (were this world all) would be the perfection of human counsel." Bookseller. 1 ' The whole book is thoroughly readable. Nor need anyone attempt to deny that Schopenhauer, taken judiciously, is a very excellent soul-tonic .... The translation is exceptionally good." Manchester Guardian. " English readers may appreciate for themselves the immense shrewdness which Schopenhauer brought to bear on much of the practice of life." Graphic. 3. RELIGION : A Dialogue, and other Essays. By ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. Selected and Translated by T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. Third and Enlarged Edition. " In this modest volume we have a selection of very readable essays, from the writings of the famous pessimistic philosopher, clothed in good, intelligible English." Literary World. SCHOPENHAUER SERIES, Continued "Mr. Saunders' extracts from Schopenhauer's Parerga und Paralipomena make a most readable booklet. They do not deal with the more technical aspects of his philosophy .... but contain some of Schopenhauer's brilliant obiter dicta on matters of more immediate popular interest." Scots Observer. " Philalethes battles with Demopheles with a good deal of vigour, it is true, but the encounter is a bout with single-sticks." Saturday Review. " A vigorous translation of Schopenhauer's minor, but, at the same time, most popular writings .... The volume will be found excellent and suggestive reading." Scotsman. "The translation, on the whole, reads very smoothly .... One might almost have thought it had been originally composed in English." Inquirer. " Many who are unequal to the strain of prolonged study of Schopenhauer's works will greatly value this excellent little volume." Glasgow Herald. "The essays are eminently readable and full of clever things. To the translator we cannot pay a higher compliment than by saying that he never makes us aware of his existence." Jgdrasil. 4. THE ART OF LITERATURE. A Series of Essays. By ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. Selected and Translated by T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. " Schopenhauer is never more pleasant than when he is dis- cussing literature, the classics, and style ; he writes upon these fascinating matters with all the pungent wit and easy grace of the last century. And his views correspond with his manner. Perhaps there are few books more heartily to be recommended for students of literature, who wish to become good writers, than those short and lively essays." Anti-Jacobin. "The 'Art of Literature' contains much sound criticism ... it is lucidly written, and it bristles with epigram." National Observer. " These literary essays contain some of the most vigorous and suggestive criticisms we have met with for a long time." Literary World. "In these essays on the author's power and craft, Schopenhauer is at his best, although he has no radically new thought. But his learning, his wit, his fundamental good sense, play round the axioms of criticism with fine effect of instruction and of SCHOPENHAUER SERIES, Continued charm. A man who wishes to know how to write well will learn more from a thoughtful consideration of the doctrine of these essays than from most set systems of rhetoric, and any one who takes pleasure in literature will be refreshed by reading them. They are admirably translated, and the book cannot be too highly recommended. " Scotsman. " The translation is admirably done , and the crisp, epigramma- tic style in which Schopenhauer differs so remarkably from most German writers is well preserved in the English version." National Reformer. 5. STUDIES IN PESSIMISM: A Series of Essays. By ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER. Selected and Translated by T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. Second Edition. " We have once more to thank Mr. Saunders for a series of extracts from the ' Parerga. ' Like the former translations, this one is extremely well done, and the volume should be popular." Glasgow Herald. "If others have been the prophets of Schopenhauer to the mass of English readers, Mr. Saunders may fairly claim to have been the philosopher's interpreter. He has known how to make the pessimist not only intelligible, but attractive to the general reader by administrating Schopenhauer's wisdom in small doses, and in a form not too highly concentrated. The series of little books by which Mr. Saunders has done this still goes on. The latest number is by no means the least interesting of them all, and Mr. Saunders' version is again admirable. He w r rites read- able idiomatic English, untainted by any infection of Teutonism that might easily have weakened the style." Scotsman. "A reader may certainly get a good idea of what Schopenhauer thought from this little volume. In the space of a hundred and forty odd pages it gives us the cream of his philosophy." Spectator. "Mr. Saunders has preserved all the charm of the original. He gives us an English Schopenhauer. Point, sparkle, pungency, are all preserved in a version in which we have not detected one im- idiomatic sentence. Perhaps the most remarkable essay in the present volume, at least in its illustration of Schopenhauer's peculiar views, is that on ' Women.' " Guardian. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN &> CO., LONDON. THE WISDOM OF LIFE. Le bonheur n'est pas dwse aisle : il est trks- difficile de le irouver en nous, ei impossible de le trouver ailleurs. CHAMFORT. THE WISDOM OF LIFE BEING THE FIRST PART OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER'S Hpborismen sur Xebensweisbeit Viictm impendere vero> JUVENAL. TRANSLATED WITH A PREFACE BY T. BAILEY S A U N D E R S, M. A. THIRD HiT EDITION. LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1891 /S>3 " TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. '. SCHOPENHAUER is one of the few philosophers who I can be generally understood without a commentary. All his theories claim to be drawn direct from the facts, to be suggested by observation, and to interpret the world as it is ; and whatever view he takes, he is con- stant in his appeal to the experience of common life. This characteristic endows his style with a freshness and vigour which would be difficult to match in the philosophical writing of any country, and impossible g in that of Germany. If it were asked whether there were any circumstances, apart from heredity, to which i 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 boyhood, his ardent pur- >J suit 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 original, forcible, clear, an enemy of all J philosophic indefiniteness and obscurity ; so that it * . may well be said of him, in the words of a writer in the " Revue Contemporaine," ce nest pas un philosophy ii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. comme les autres, c'est un philosophe qui a vu le monde. It is not my purpose, nor would it be possible with- in 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 is necessary in this direction. But the essays here presented 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 whatever point you take it up, wherever you make your entrance, you are on the road to the centre. 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 philosophers, 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 Wilfe 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 towards 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 fai * La Philosophic de Schopenhauer, par Th. Ribot. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. iii 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 them- selves, the tendency of many of them is towards the fundamental idea on which his system is based. It may therefore be convenient to summarise that idea in a couple of sentences ; more especially 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 endeavour 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 generalisations 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-consciousness 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 realise 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 iv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 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 intelli- gence, 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 experience, 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 preaching monotheism, polytheism or pantheism, but in so far as they recognise pessimism or optimism as the true descrip- tion of life. Hence any religion which looked upon the world as being radically evil appealed to him as con- taining an indestructible element of truth. I have endeavoured to present his view of two of the great religions of the world in the extract which comes TRANSLATORS PREFACE)* V in the third volume, and to which I have given the title of The Christian System. The tenor of it is to show that, however little he 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 resem- blance. 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, valuable 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 tech- nical 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 vi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 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 imparted 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 unnecessary or uncalled for, if one looks to the extent to which the lives of most men fall short of even a poor ideal, or, again, to the difficulty of reaching any definite and secure conclu- sion. 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 4>hose 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 conclusion to be reached, that a diffi- culty arises, a difficulty affecting the conduct 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. It is innate temperament, acting on a view of the facts necessarily incomplete, that has TRANSLATORS PREFACE. vil 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 accordance with his own nature : he elaborates a system containing, 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 the theory in its turn giving its own colour to the facts. Nor is this error, the manipulation of facts to suit a theory, avoided in the views of life which are pre- sented 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 extramundane 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 it as an unmixed evil. He calls oar present existence an in- finitesimal 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 ignor- ance, struggle and need, in the endless round of effort and failure. If you confine yourself, says Schopen- hauer, only to some of its small details, life may viii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. indeed appear to be a comedy, because of the ona 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 become invisible, and Life, seen from the distance 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 any- thing 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 everywhere 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 arc many TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. ix things in life which 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 pleasures 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, instead of trying to secure a happi- ness which always flies from them. It is a trite saying that happiness is a delusion, a chimeera, the/ata- 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 imagination to anything outside this present life as making it worth while to live at all ; his object is to b x TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. state the facts of existence as they immediately appear, and to draw conclusions as to what a 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 recommends, there is nothing that is not sub- stantially 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 than the conclusion of his argument which interest us as some- thing new. The whole world, he says, with all its phenomena of change, growth and development, 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 constant self-assertion of this will ; a long desire which is never fulfilled ; disillusion inevitably follow- ing upon attainment, because the will, the thing-in- itself in philosophical language, the noum-enon always remains as the permanent 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 TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. XI apprehension of Art we are raised out of our bondage, contemplating objects of thought as they are in them- selves, 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 instru- ment 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 endeavour 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 manifestations ; 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 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 forbid our doing wrong to our fellow-man, because, in injuring him, we xii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. are injuring ourselves our own nature, which is identical with his. On the other hand, the recogni- tion of this identity of the will must lead to com- miseration 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 phraseology, the human will, in other words, e/ows, the love of life, is in itself the root of all evil, and goodness lies in renouncing it. Theoreti- cally, 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 dycwny, 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 e/)ws, 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 travaileth in pain, 1 stand- ing 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. 1 Romans viii. , 22. 's PREFACE. Xlii In his opinion the foremost truth which Christianity proclaimed to the world lay in its recognition of pessimism, its view that the world was essentially corrupt, and that the devil was its prince or ruler. 1 It would be out of place here to inquire into the exact meaning of this statement, or to determine the pre- cise form of compensation provided for the ills of life under any scheme of doctrine which passes for Chris- tian : 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 con- cerns 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 civilised world. What Schopenhauer does is to attempt a meta- physical explanation of the evil of life, without any reference to anything outside it. Philosophy, he urges, should be cosmology, not theology ; an explana- 1 Johnxii., 31. xiv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. tion 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. Scho- penhauer 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 endeav- ours to account for the sin, 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 as a continual progress towards 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 Schopenhauer 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 radical change for the TRANSLATORS PREFACE. XV better, he is therefore outside the pale of civilisation, an alien from the commonwealth of ordered know- ledge 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 Christi- anity 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 Buddhism. With those great religions of the world which mankind has hitherto professed to revere as the most ennobling of all in- fluences, 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 stand- point. 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 modem habits of thought are different. We look askance at the doctrines, and we have no great enthusiasm for the heroes. The system which is in vogue amongst us just now objects to the identification of nature with evil, and, in fact, abandons ethical dualism alto- gether. And if nature is not evil, where, it will be asked, is the necessity or the benefit of renunciation xvi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. question which may even come to bo 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 doctrine seems little but a mockery, a hopelessly unworkable plan, inapplicable to the con- ditions 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 Schopenhauer for what he proclaimed him- self 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 disinclined 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 humanity of its rights. How seldom an appeal to the facts within our reach is really made ! Whether the evil of life actually out- TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xvii 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 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 every- where 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 perfection. Hope for the future is a tacit admission of evil in the present ; for if a 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 in- dividual ; at most, only relief; he breaks the idol of the world, and sets up nothing in its place ; and like xviii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 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 colour 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. 1 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 ; because they are extreme views where only a very partial judgment is possible. And in view of the great uncertainty 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 pressing affair of existence. But the fact that the final pro- blems of the world are still open, makes in favour of an honest attempt to think them out, in spite of all previous failure or still existing difficulty ; and how- 1 Omar Khayyam ; translated by E. Fitzgerald. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xix ever old these problems may be, the endeavour 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 form- ing a complete scheme is to attempt the impossible. It must be recognised that the data are insufficient for Jarge 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 aperpus, rough guesses at the undiscovered ; of the same nature, indeed, as all our possessions in the way of knowledge little tracts of solid land reclaimed from the mysterious ocean of the unknown. 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 dogmatise from partial views, he is a very suggestive writer, and eminently readable. His style is brilliant, animated, forcible, pungent; although it is also dis- x TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. cursive, irresponsible, and with a tendency to super- ficial generalisation. 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 noteworthy ; for it extends beyond mere isolated sentences, and sometimes applies to whole passages, which must be read cum grano satis. And if 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 un- pleasant 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, unappreciated life. He was naturally more disposed to coerce than to natter the world into accepting his views ; he was above all things un esprit fort, and at times brutal in the use of his strength. If it 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 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xxi errasset fecerat ille minus, 1 a truth which is seldom without application, whatever be the form of human effort. Schopenhauer cannot be neglected because he takes an unpleasant view of existence, for it is a view which must present itself, at some time, to every thoughtful person. To be outraged by Schopenhauer means to be ignorant of many of the facts of life. In this one of his smaller works, Aplwrismen 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, intel- lectual riches. And when, as in this little work, he conies 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 ob- servations 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 1 Slightly altered from Martial. Epigram : I. xxii. xxii TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 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 metaphy- sical 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 recommended universal benevolence as the highest ethical 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 compromise. 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. L'art de vivre, he wrote in his preface to Amiel's Journal, c'est de se faire une raison, de souscrire au compromis, de se prefer aux fictions. Schopenhauer conceives his mis- sion to be, rather, to dispel illusion, to tear the mask from life ; a violent operation, not always productive TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xxiii of good. Some illusion, he urges, may profitably be dispelled by recognising that no amount of external aid will make up for inward deficiency ; and that if a man has nob 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 happi- ness, to assert and emphasize 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 regard for these pleasures there is no disagreement between the optimist and the pessimist. But a characteristic difference 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 xxiv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 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 connection, depends much more on what is within than without us. Yet a rigid 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 recognised 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 amongst 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 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. xxv popular writer like Sir John Lubbock, and by con- trasting the appeals they severally make to the outer and the inner world as a source of happiness ; Schopenhauer's view of life itself will stand out more clearly if we remember the opinion so boldly ex- pressed by the same English writer. If we resolutely look, observes Sir John Lubbock, / do not say at the bright side of things, but at things as they really are ; if we avail ourselves of the manifold blessings which surround us; we cannot but feel that life is indeed a glorious inheritance. 1 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 Schopenhauer's picture of the world is gloomy and sombre, 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 hochste was der Mensch erlangen Jcann ist ein heroischer Lebenslauf. A noble character will never complain at misfortune ; for if a man 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 himself. And the ideal of nobility is to deserve the praise 1 The Pleasures of Life. Part I., p. 5. B xxvi TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. which Hamlet in Shakespeare's Tragedy of Pessim- ism gave to his friend : Thou hast been As mie, 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 happiness. Life itself reveals our destiny. It is not the struggle which produces misery, it is the mistaken aims and the low ideals was uns alle bdndigt, das Geineine ! 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 un verifiable, a,nd 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. X. B. SL CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE INTRODUCTION ..... i i. DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT .... 3 n. PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN is . . . 15 in. PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS . . .48 iv. POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE IN THE ESTIMATION OF OTHERS Sect. i. Reputation . . % -59 2. Pride 68 ,, 3. Rank . . . . .72 4. Honour . . 73 5. Fame . . . , .116 INTRODUCTION. IN these pages I shall speak 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 Eudcemonology, for it teaches us how to lead a happy existence. Such an existence might perhaps 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 philoso- phical system returns a negative answer. On the eudsemonistic hypothesis, however, 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 INTRODUCTION. 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 eudcemono- logy is a euphemism. Further, I make no claims to completeness ; partly because the subject is inex- haustible, and partly because I should otherwise 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 capienda, which is well worth reading, and may be used to supplement the present work. Aristotle, it is true, has a few words on eudsemono- logy 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 j List 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 amvaL THE WISDOM OF LIFE. CHAPTER I. DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. ARISTOTLE l divides the blessings of life into three classes 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 differences 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 in- cluded health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence and education. (2) What a man has : that is, property and posses- sions 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 of him; and their opinion is in its turn manifested by the honour in which he is held, and by his rank and reputation. 1 Eth. Nichom,.. I. 8. 4 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 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 once 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. Com- pared with genuine personal advantages, such as a great mind or a 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 disciple 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. 1 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 resulting from the sum total of his sensations, desires and thoughts ; whilst his surround- ings, 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 surroundings every one lives in a world of his own. 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 way in * Cf. Clemens Alex. Strom. II., 21. DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 5 which he looks at it, and so it proves different to different men ; to one it is barren, dull, and super- ficial ; to another rich, interesting, and full of meaning. On hearing of the interesting events which have hap- pened in the course of a man's experience, many people will wish that similar things had happened in their lives too, completely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess when he describes them ; to a man of genius they were interesting adventures ; but to the dull perceptions 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 tempera- ment 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 some- thing without any meaning; all of which rests upon the fact that every event, in order to be realised and appreciated, requires the co-operation of two factors, namely, a subject and an object ; although these are as closely and necessarily connected as oxygen and hydrogen in water. When therefore the objective or external factor in an experience is actually the same, but the subjective or personal appreciation of it varies, 6 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 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 differ- ences : the inner reality, the kernel of all these appear- ances 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 happi- ness and pleasure ; here, too, there is the same being in all a poor mortal, with hi < hardships and troubles. Though these may, indeed, in every case proceed fivin dissimilar causes, they are in their essential nature much the same in all their forms, with degrees of intensity which vary, no doubt, but in no wise corre- spond to the part a man has to play, to the presence or absence of position and wealth. Since everything which exists or happens for a man exists only in his consciousness and happens for it alone, the most essen- tial thing for a man is the constitution of this con- sciousness, which is in most cises far more important than the circumstances which go to form its contents. -All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 7 the dull consciousness of a fool, is poor indeed com- pared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison. The objective half of life and reality is in the hand of fate, and accord- ingly 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 exter- nal circumstances may alter ; it is like a series of variations on a single theme. No one can get beyond his own individuality. An animal, under whatever circumstances it is placed, remains within the narrow limits to which nature has irrevocably consigned it; so that our endeavours 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 before- hand by his individuality. More especially 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 fellow- men or that fortune can do for him, will suffice to raise him above the ordinary degree of human happi- ness and pleasure, half animal though it be ; his only resources are his sensual appetite, a cosy 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 8 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. mind turn 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, whilst lot or destiny is generally taken to mean only what we have, or our reputation. Our 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 surrounded by honris in paradise. This is why Goethe, in the West-ostlicher 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 Uebertmnder Sie gestehen, zu jeder Zeit, Hochstes Gluek der Erdenkinder Sei nur die Personlichkeit. 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 enjoy- ment 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 con- science these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make up for or replace. For what a man is in DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 9 himself, what accompanies him when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously 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, whilst no amount or diversity of social pleasure, theatres, excursions and amusements, can ward off boredom from a dullard. A good, temperate, gentle character can be happy in needy circumstances, whilst 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 individuality, 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 Gcetulo murice tinctas Sunt qui iion habeant, est qui non curat habere ; and when Socrates saw various articles of luxury spread out for sale, he exclaimed : How much tliere 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 10 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. heads, it is not the sport of destiny and cannot be wrested from us ; and, so far, it is endowed with a n absolute value in contrast to the merely relative worth of the other two. The consequence 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 advantage might be claimed for them, namely, that being in their very nature objective and external, they are attainable, and every one is presented with the possibility, at least, of coming into possession of them ; whilst what is subjective is not open to us to acquire, but making its entry by a 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 develope 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 znm Grnsse der Planeten, Bist alsobald undfort undfort gediehen t DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. 11 Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten. So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entflieheH) So sagten schon Sibyllen und Propheten ; Und keine Zeit und keine Macht zerstiickeli Gepragte Fotin, die lebend sich entwickelt. The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is to make the most advantageous use possible of the personal qualities we possess, and accordingly to follow such pursuits 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 seden- tary occupation, some 1 minute exquisite work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental labour demanding quite other powers, and just those which he has not gut, 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 labour, 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 precipice of presumption, and not ascribe to ourselves a superfluity of power which is not there. Since the blessings described under the first head decidedly outweigh those contained under the other 12 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 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 dis- turbs it, because the preservation 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 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 endeavour to increase his heap of gold. Beyond the narrow horizon of means to this end, he knows nothing ; his mind is a blank, and consequently unsusceptible to any other influence. The highest pleasures, those of the in- tellect, 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 DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT. IS 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 un- happy as those who ar^ still engaged in it. Their minds are vacant, their imagination 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 entertainment, 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, arid his vain endeavour was to make bis external wealth compensate for his inner poverty, by trying to obtain every thing from without, like an old man who seeks to strengthen himself as King David or Marechal de Retz tried to do. And so in the end one who is in- wardly 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; now-a-days the value of possessing 14 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. them is too well known to require advertisement. The third class, it is true, may seem, compared with the second, of a very ethereal character, as it consists only of other people's opinions. Still everyone has to strive for reputation, that is to say, 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 attainf the Golden Fleece, as it were, of the elect : whilst only fools will prefer rank to property. The second and third classes, moreover, are reciprocally cause and effect ; so far that is, as Petronius' maxim, habes habeberis, is true ; and con- versely, the favour of others, in all its forms, often puts us in the way of getting what we want. CHAPTER II PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. WE have already seen, in general, that what a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has, or how he is regarded by others. What a man is, and so what he has in his own person, is always the chief thing to consider ; for his individuality accom- panies him always and everywhere, and gives its colour to all his experiences. In every kind of enjoy- ment, for instance, the pleasure depends principally upon the man himself. Every one admits this in regard to physical, and how much truer it is of intel- lectual, pleasure. When we use that English expres- sion, " to enjoy oneself," 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 bless- ings 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 im- mediate and direct factor in his happiness and welfare. All else is mediate and indirect, and its influence can be neutralised and frustrated ; but the influence of personality never. This is why the envy which per- sonal qualities excite is the most implacable of aM, as it is also the most carefully dissembled. 16 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality 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. 1 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 character. 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 elements in happiness ; so that we should be more intent on promoting and preserving such qualities than on the possession of external wealth and external honour. 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 is so. There is nothing which, like this quality, can so com- pletely replace the loss of every other blessing. If you know anyone 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, 1 Eth. EuJ , vii. 2. 37 : f) yap povLv he says in one place wisdom is the greatest part of happiness ; and again, in another passage, he declares that the life of the thoughtless is the most pleasant of all yap fJLTjSev The philosophers of the Old Testament find them- selves in a like contradiction. The life of a fool is worse than death 3 and In much wisdom is much grief', and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. 4 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, afterwards used, by analogy, in a 1 Antigone, 1347-8. 3 Ecclesiasticus, xxii. 11. 2 Ajax, 554. 4 Ecclesiasies, i. 18. PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 45 higher sense, though still in its original meaning, as denoting one who is not a Son of the Muses. A philistine is and remains a/^owos avrjp. I should 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 there- fore not generally intelligible, it would hardly be in place in the present treatise, which aims at being popular. The other definition can be more easily elucidated, indicating, as it does, satisfactorily enough, the essential nature of all those qualities which dis- tinguish 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 intel- lectual pleasures ; for, as was remarked before, there are no real pleasures without real needs. The philis- tine's life is animated by no desire to gain knowledge and insight for their own sake, or to experience that true aesthetic 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 inthemas possible. His onlyreal pleasures are of a sensual kind, and he thinks that these indemnify him for the loss of the others. To him oysters and cham- pagne are the height of existence ; the aim of his life is to procure what will contribute to his bodily welfare, and he is indeed in a happy way if 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, theatres. 46 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. parties, cards, gambling, horses, women, drinking, travelling and so on ; all of which can not protect a man from being bored, for where there are no intel- lectual 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 honour ; or, at any rate, by going about with those who have a super- fluity of these blessings, sunning himself in the reflection of their splendour 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 intellectual, 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 rancour. But for all that, it will never occur to him to make his own ideas of worth or value conform PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS. 47 to the standard of such qualities ; he will continue to give the preference to rank and riches, power and influence, which in his eyes seem to be the only genuine advantages in the world ; and his wish will be to excel in them himself. All this is the conse- quence 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 are in 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, something afar From the sphere of our sorrow. NOTE. In these remarks on the personal qualities winch go to make happiness, I have been mainly con- cerned 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 oa The Foundation of Morals (Sec. 22.) CHAPTER III PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. EPICURUS 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 satis- fied, produce pain, food and clothing, victus et amictus, needs which can easily be satisfied. Secondly, there are those needs which, though natural, are not necessary, such as the gratification of certain of the senses. I may add, however, that in the report given by Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus does not mention which of the senses he means ; so that on this point my account 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 splendour, which never come to an end, and are veiy hard to satisfy. 1 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 a man. The amount is always relative, that is to say, just so much as will maintain 1 Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Bk. x., ch, xxvii., pp. 127 and 149 also Cicero definibus, i. 3 13. PROPERTY, OR WHAt A MAtt HAS. 49 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 feels the loss of things which it never occurs to him to ask for ; he is just as happy without them ; whilst an- other, 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 3 and he will expect just as much as he thinks it possible for him to get. If an object within his horizon looks as though he could confidently reckon on getting it, he is 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 sea-water; 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 this is, that as soon as fate diminishes the amount of his possessions, he himself immediately reduces the amount of his claims. But when misfor- tune comes upon us, to reduce the amount of our claims is just what is most painful; once that we have done so, the pain becomes less and less, and is felt no more ; like an old wound which has healed. Con- versely, when a piece of good fortune befalls us, our 50 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. claims mount higher and higher, as there is nothing to regulate them ; it is in this feeling of expansion that the delight of it lies. But it lasts no longer than the process itself, and when the expansion is complete, 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 l illustrating this truth, of which I may quote the last two lines : Toios yap voo? IOTIV tTriyfloviwv dvOpu-jrcov Olov fjfJiap ayet Trarrjp avSpuv re Oea>v re. the thoughts of man that dwells on the earth are as the day granted him by the father of gods and men. Discontent springs from a constant endeavour to in- crease the amount of our claims, when we are power- less to increase the amount which will satisfy them. When we consider how full of needs the human race is, how its whole existence is based upon tliem, it is not a matter for surprise that wealth is held in more sincere esteem, nay, in greater honour, 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 over- board philosophy, for instance, by those who profess it. People are often reproached for wishing for money above all things, and for loving it more than anything 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 1 xviii., 130-7. PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 51 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 are all only relatively good, ayada Trpos . 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 plea- sure he can out of the world, or as rendering it incumbent upon him to spend 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. Accordingly, 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 labour of their hands from treat- ing their earnings in that way if they like ; because their kind of skill is not likely to disappear, or, if it does, it can be replaced by that of their fellow- work- UBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 52 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. men ; moreover, the kind of work they do is always in demand ; so that what the proverb says is quite true, a useful trade is a mine of gold. But with artists and professionals 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 encroach 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 commercial life, for merchants look upon money only as a means of farther 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 extravagance, 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 sud- denly passed from poverty to wealth. This looks as if poverty were not really such a very wretched thing PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 53 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 conies in for a fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can get on just as well as before, with one anxiety the less ; or, as Shakespeare says in Henry VI., 1 . . . . the adage must be verified That beggars mounted run their horse to death. But it should be said that people of this kind have a 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 ground again, they can take another upward flight. It is this trait in human character which explains the fact that women who were poor before their marriage often make greater claims, 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 1 Part III., Act 1, Sc. 4. 54 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. inherited instinct, to preserve it, than poor girls do. If anyone 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 mar- riage, has such a gusto in spending it. that she throws it away with great profusion*- And in any case let me advise anyone 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 inde- pendent, that is, allow one to live comfortably with- out having to work even if one has only just enough for oneself, not to speak of a family is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated ; for it means exemp- tion and immunity from that chronic disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a plague ; it is emancipation from that forced labour which is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favourable fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be, in the proper sense of the word, sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and able to say every morning, This day is my own. And just 1 Boswell's Life of Johnson : ann : 1776, setat : 67. PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 55 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 be- tween 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 to the honour of humanity at large. Another, again, may use his wealth to further philanthropic schemes, and make himself well-deserving of his fellow-men. But a man who does none of these things, who does not even try to do them, who never attempts to study thoroughly some one branch of knowledge so that he may at least do what he can towards 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. And as he is bored he is apt to be extravagant, and so lose the ad vantage, of whichhe 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 feeling of boredom which oppressed them. 66 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. It is quite another matter if one's object is success in political life, where favour, friends and connections are all- important, in order to mount by their aid step by step on the ladder of promotion, and perhaps gain the topmost rung. In this kind 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 advantage 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, 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. 1 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 sub- mit 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 understands how to beg, and so 1 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 government of his day. Though the Hegelian system has been the fruitful mother of many liberal ideas, there can be 110 doubt that Hegel's influence, in his own life-time, was an effective support of Prussian bureaucracy. PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS. 57 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 Niedertrachtige Niemand sich beldage : Denn es ist das Machtige Was man dir auch sage : 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 inde- pendent 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, as he ought to know, can never compete with cringing mediocrity ; in the long run he comes to recognise 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 freely expressed by Voltaire : We have only two days to live ; it is 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 attribute which may be predicated of an abominable number of people. What Juvenal says it is difficult to rise if your poverty is greater than your talent Hand facile emerguut quorum mrtutibus obstat Res angusta domi is more applicable to a oareer of art and literature than to political aud social ambition. 58 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. Wife and children I have not reckoned amongst 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 a whit 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 is hard to under- stand why everybody feels so very pleased when he sees that other people have a good opinion of him, or say anything flattering to his vanity. If you stroke a cat, it will purr ; and, as inevitably, if you praise a man, a sweet expression of delight will appear on his face ; and even though the praise is a palpable lie, 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 mis- fortune, or for the pittance he gets from the two sources of human happiness already discussed : and conversely, it is astonishing how infallibly a 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 circumstances of the injury, or by any depreciation, slight, or disregard. 60 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. If the feeling of honour rests upon this peculiarity of human nature, it may have a very salutary effect upon the welfare of a great many people, as a substi- tute for morality ; but upon their happiness, more especially upon that peace of mind and independence which are so essential to happiness, its effect will be disturbing and prejudicial rather than salutary. Therefore it is 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 feel- ing 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. 1 - Therefore it will very much conduce to our happi- ness if we duly compare the value of what a man is in and for himself with what he is in the eyes of others. Under the former comes everything that fills up the span of our existence and makes it what it is, in short, all the advantages already considered and summed up under the heads of personality and pro- perty ; and the sphere in which all this takes place is the man's own consciousness. On the other hand, the 1 Horace, Epist : II, 1, 180. REPUTATION. 61 sphere of what we are for other people is their con- sciousness, not ours ; it is the kind of figure we make in their eyes, together with the thoughts which this arouses. 1 But this is something which has no direct and immediate existence for us, but can affect us only mediately and indirectly, so far, that is, as other people's behaviour towards 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 goes on in other people's con- sciousness 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 thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how perverse their opinions, and how much of error there is in 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 his ears. And if ever we have had an opportunity 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 honour. At all events, a man is in a very bad way, who finds no source of happiness in the first two classes of bless- ings already treated of, but has to seek it in the third. in other words, not in what he is in himself, but in 1 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. F 62 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. what he is in 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 ourselves in inde- pendence and freedom from care. There can be no competition or compensation between these essential factors on the one side, and honour, pomp, rank and reputation on the other, however much value we may set upon the latter. No one would hesitate to sacri- fice the latter for the former, if it were necessary. We should add very much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that every man's chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people's opinions; and, consequently, that the actual conditions of our personal life, health, temperament, 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 honour is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stat- ing 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 everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others \ when DEPUTATION. 63 we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge l 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, rooted in human nature itself, or the result of civilisation and social arrangements gener- ally ; but, whatever its source, it exercises a very immoderate influence on all we do, and is very preju- dicial 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 Virginius plunge the dagger into his daughter's heart, or induces many a man to sacrifice quiet, riches, health arid 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 accordingly we find that in every scheme for training up humanity in the way it should go, the maintenance and strengthening of the feeling of honour occupies an important place. But it is 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 what others think of them. Daily ex- perience shows us, however, that this is just the mis- take people persist in making ; most men set the utmost value precisely on what other people think, 1 Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter, (Persius i. 27) knowledge is no use unless others know that you have it. 64 THE WISDOM OP LIFE. and are more concerned about it than about what goes on in their own consciousness, 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 picture they present to the world of more importance than their own selves. By thus trying to get a direct and immediate 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. The truth is that the value we set upon the opinion of others, and our constant endeavour 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 attitude may be regarded as a kind of universal mania which everyone 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 because it is so very morbidly sensitive. It is solici- tude about what others will say that underlies all our vanity and pretension, yes, and all our show and swagger too. Without it, there would not be a tenth part of the luxury which exists. Pride in every form, point d'honneur and punctilio, however varied their REPUTATION. 65 kind or sphere, are at bottom nothing but this anxiety about what others will say and what sacri- fices it often costs ! One can see it even in a child ; 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 feeling, and amongst 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 la grande nation. By way of specially illustrating this perverse and exuberant respect for other people's opinion, let me take a passage from the Times of March 31st, 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 demeanour, betrayed no interest in his ministrations, appearing to feel anxious only to acquit himself " bravely " before the spectators of his ignominious end In the procession Wix fell into his. 66 THE WISDOM OF LIFE 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 reach- ing the scaffold, the miserable wretch mounted the drop without the slightest assistance, and when he got to the centre, he bowed to the spectators twice, a proceeding which 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 veiy 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 deAlfarache, 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 illus- trations of what I mean ; for they give us a magnified reflection of our own nature. The anxieties of all of REPUTATION. 67 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 always causing us pain. But it is a very difficult task, because the impulse in question is a natural and innate perversity of human nature. Tacitus says, The lust of fame is the last that a wise man shakes off. 1 The only way of putting an end to this universal folly is to see clearly that it is a folly ; and this may be done by recognising the fact that most of the opinions in men's heads are apt to be false, perverse, erroneous and absurd, and so in them- selves unworthy of any attention ; further, that other people's opinions can have very little real and positive influence upon us in most of the circumstances and affairs of life. Again, this opinion is generally of such " an unfavourable character that it 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 honour itself has no really direct, but only an indirect, value. If people were generally converted 1 Hist., iv., 6. 68 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. from this universal folly, the result would be such an addition to our peace of mind and cheerfulness as at present seems inconceivable ; people would present a firmer and more confident front to the world, and generally behave with less embarrassment and re- straint. It is 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 indulg- ing a mischievous piece of folly ; and we should con- sequently have more attention to give to solid realities and enjoy them with less interruption than at present. But x a ^ 7I *d KaAa what is worth doing is hard to do. Section 8. Pride. The folly of our nature which we are discussing puts forth three shoots, ambition, vanity and pride- The difference between the last two is this : pride is an established conviction of one's own paramount worth in some particular respect ; while vanity is the desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally accompanied by the secret hope of ulti- mately coming to the same conviction oneself. Pride works from within ; it is the direct appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this appre- ciation indirectly,/row without. So we find that vain PRIDE. 69 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. Anyone who wishes to affect pride is not therefore a proud man ; but he will soon have to drop this, as every other, assumed character. 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 conven- tional 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 ap- plause of the world in order to gain the necessary foundation for a high opinion of one's own worth, whilst pride is based upon a pre-existing conviction of it. It. is quite true that pride is something which is generally 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 foolhardiness of most people, anyone 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 YO THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 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 cannot, like orders and titles, appeal to the eye or ear at every moment ; as, otherwise, they will find that familiarity breeds contempt, or, as the Romans used to say, sus Minervam. Joke with a slave, and he'll soon show his heels, is an excellent Arabian proverb ; nor ought we to despise what Horace says, Sume superbiam Qucesitam meritis. usurp the fame you have deserved. No doubt, when modesty was niaie a virtue, it was a very ad- vantageous thing for the fools ; for everybody is expected to speak of himself as if he were one. This is levelling 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 miser- able fool who has nothing at all of which he can be PRIDE. 71 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-im- bursing himself for his own inferiority. For example, if you speak of the stupid and degrading bigotry of the English nation with the contempt it deserves, you will hardly find one Englishman in fifty to agree with you ; but if there should 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, by a piece of ridiculous affectation, pretend that they are proud of their coun- try the Deutsche Briider and the demagogues who natter the mob in order to mislead it. I have heard it said that gunpowder was invented by a German. I doubt it. Lichtenberg asks, Why is it that a man who is not a German does not care about pretending that he is one; and that if he makes any pretence at all, it is to be a Frenchman or an Englishman ? l However that may be, individuality is a far more important thing than nationality, and in any given man deserves a thousand-fold more consideration. And since you cannot speak of national character without referring to large masses of people, it is im- possible to be loud in your praises and at the same time honest. National character is only another 1 Translator's Note. It should be remembered that these remarks were written in the earlier part of the present century, and that a German philosopher now-a-days, even though he were as apt to say bitter things as Schopenhauer, could hardly write in a similar strain 72 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 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 distri- buted under three heads : honour, 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 is a 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 bills of 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 discrimination and judg- ment. 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, there- HONOUR. 73 fore, very proper, that a cross or a star should proclaim to the mass of people always and every- where, 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 conferring them as a man of business is in signing a bill. It is a pleonasm to inscribe on any order for distinguished service ; for every order ought to be for distinguished service. That stands to reason. Section 4- Honour. Honour is a much larger question than rank, and more difficult to discuss. Let us begin by trying to define it. If I were to say Honour is external conscience, and conscience is inward honour, no doubt a 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, Honour 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 honour is to exercise what is often a very wholesome, but by no means a purely moral, influence. The feelings of honour and sbame exist in every man who is not utterly depraved, and honour is everywhere recognised as something particularly valuable. The reason of this is as follows. By and in himself a man can accomplish very little ; he 74 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. is like Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. It is only in society that a man's powers can be called into full activity. He very soon finds this out when his consciousness 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 acquir- ing a right to the benefits of social life. Now, to be a useful member of society, one must do two things : firstly, what everyone is expected to do everywhere ; and, secondly, what one's own particular position in the world demands and requires. But a man soon, discovers that everything de- pends upon his being useful, not in his own opinion, but in the opinion of others ; and so he tries his best to make that favourable 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 honour, or, under . another aspect, the feeling of shame verecundia. It is this which brings a blush to his cheek 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. Conversely, nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favour ; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself. HONOUR. 75 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 honour, resting chiefly on the different bearings that meum may take to tuum ; or, again, on the performance of various pledges; or finally, on tbe relation of the sexes. Hence, there are three main kinds of honour, each of which takes various forms civic honour, official honour, and sexual honour. Civic honour has the widest sphere of all. It con- sists in the assumption that we shall pay uncondi- tional 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 it is destroyed by anything that openly and manifestly militates against this peaceable intercourse, anything, accord- ingly, which entails punishment at the hands of the law, always supposing that the punishment is a just one. The ultimate foundation of honour 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, honour. Hence honour, once lost, can never be recovered ; un- less 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 76 THE WISDOM OF LIFE. 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 KaAtos TTVKvaL' Kal yap 6 KVWV KVVL l, KCU j3oV