existing everywhere, the _mere regulation_ of which is the problem to be
solved. Where are there, then, any real monogamists? We all live, at any
rate for a time, and the majority of us always, in polygamy.
Consequently, as each man needs many women, nothing is more just than to
let him, nay, make it incumbent upon him to provide for many women. By
this means woman will be brought back to her proper and natural place as
a subordinate being, and _the lady_, that monster of European
civilisation and Christian-Teutonic stupidity, with her ridiculous claim
to respect and veneration, will no longer exist; there will still be
_women_, but no _unhappy women_, of whom Europe is at present full. The
Mormons' standpoint is right.
* * * * *
In India no woman is ever independent, but each one stands under the
control of her father or her husband, or brother or son, in accordance
with the law of Manu.
It is certainly a revolting idea that widows should sacrifice themselves
on their husband's dead body; but it is also revolting that the money
which the husband has earned by working diligently for all his life, in
the hope that he was working for his children, should be wasted on her
paramours. _Medium tenuere beati_. The first love of a mother, as that
of animals and men, is purely _instinctive_, and consequently ceases
when the child is no longer physically helpless. After that, the first
love should be reinstated by a love based on habit and reason; but this
often does not appear, especially where the mother has not loved the
father. The love of a father for his children is of a different nature
and more sincere; it is founded on a recognition of his own inner self
in the child, and is therefore metaphysical in its origin.
In almost every nation, both of the new and old world, and even among
the Hottentots, property is inherited by the male descendants alone; it
is only in Europe that one has departed from this. That the property
which men have with difficulty acquired by long-continued struggling and
hard work should afterwards come into the hands of women, who, in their
want of reason, either squander it within a short time or otherwise
waste it, is an injustice as great as it is common, and it should be
prevented by limiting the right of women to inherit. It seems to me that
it would be a better arrangement if women, be they widows or daughters,
only inherited the money for life secured by mortgage, but not the
property itself or the capital, unless there lacked male descendants. It
is men who make the money, and not women; therefore women are neither
justified in having unconditional possession of it nor capable of
administrating it. Women should never have the free disposition of
wealth, strictly so-called, which they may inherit, such as capital,
houses, and estates. They need a guardian always; therefore they should
not have the guardianship of their children under any circumstances
whatever. The vanity of women, even if it should not be greater than
that of men, has this evil in it, that it is directed on material
things--that is to say, on their personal beauty and then on tinsel,
pomp, and show. This is why they are in their right element in society.
This it is which makes them inclined to be _extravagant_, especially
since they possess little reasoning power. Accordingly, an ancient
writer says, Γυνη το συνολον ἐστι δαπανηρον φυσει.[10] Men's vanity, on
the other hand, is often directed on non-material advantages, such as
intellect, learning, courage, and the like. Aristotle explains in the
_Politics_[11] the great disadvantages which the Spartans brought upon
themselves by granting too much to their women, by allowing them the
right of inheritance and dowry, and a great amount of freedom; and how
this contributed greatly to the fall of Sparta. May it not be that the
influence of women in France, which has been increasing since Louis
XIII.'s time, was to blame for that gradual corruption of the court and
government which led to the first Revolution, of which all subsequent
disturbances have been the result? In any case, the false position of
the female sex, so conspicuously exposed by the existence of the "lady,"
is a fundamental defect in our social condition, and this defect,
proceeding from the very heart of it, must extend its harmful influence
in every direction. That woman is by nature intended to obey is shown by
the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of
absolute independence at once attaches herself to some kind of man, by
whom she is controlled and governed; this is because she requires a
master. If she, is young, the man is a lover; if she is old, a priest.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Let me refer to what I have said in my treatise on _The Foundation
of Morals_, §71.
[10] Brunck's _Gnomici poetae graeci_ v. 115.
[11] Bk. I., ch. 9.
THINKING FOR ONESELF.
The largest library in disorder is not so useful as a smaller but
orderly one; in the same way the greatest amount of knowledge, if it has
not been worked out in one's own mind, is of less value than a much
smaller amount that has been fully considered. For it is only when a man
combines what he knows from all sides, and compares one truth with
another, that he completely realises his own knowledge and gets it into
his power. A man can only think over what he knows, therefore he should
learn something; but a man only knows what he has pondered.
A man can apply himself of his own free will to reading and learning,
while he cannot to thinking. Thinking must be kindled like a fire by a
draught and sustained by some kind of interest in the subject. This
interest may be either of a purely objective nature or it may be merely
subjective. The latter exists in matters concerning us personally, but
objective interest is only to be found in heads that think by nature,
and to whom thinking is as natural as breathing; but they are very rare.
This is why there is so little of it in most men of learning.
The difference between the effect that thinking for oneself and that
reading has on the mind is incredibly great; hence it is continually
developing that original difference in minds which induces one man to
think and another to read. Reading forces thoughts upon the mind which
are as foreign and heterogeneous to the bent and mood in which it may be
for the moment, as the seal is to the wax on which it stamps its
imprint. The mind thus suffers total compulsion from without; it has
first this and first that to think about, for which it has at the time
neither instinct nor liking.
On the other hand, when a man thinks for himself he follows his own
impulse, which either his external surroundings or some kind of
recollection has determined at the moment. His visible surroundings do
not leave upon his mind _one_ single definite thought as reading does,
but merely supply him with material and occasion to think over what is
in keeping with his nature and present mood. This is why _much_ reading
robs the mind of all elasticity; it is like keeping a spring under a
continuous, heavy weight. If a man does not want to think, the safest
plan is to take up a book directly he has a spare moment.
This practice accounts for the fact that learning makes most men more
stupid and foolish than they are by nature, and prevents their writings
from being a success; they remain, as Pope has said,
"For ever reading, never to be read."--_Dunciad_ iii. 194.
Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers,
geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the
race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the
world.
* * * * *
Indeed, it is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and
life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands.
To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of some one
else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.
The thought we read is related to the thought which rises in us, as the
fossilised impress of a prehistoric plant is to a plant budding out in
spring.
* * * * *
Reading is merely a substitute for one's own thoughts. A man allows his
thoughts to be put into leading-strings.
Further, many books serve only to show how many wrong paths there are,
and how widely a man may stray if he allows himself to be led by them.
But he who is guided by his genius, that is to say, he who thinks for
himself, who thinks voluntarily and rightly, possesses the compass
wherewith to find the right course. A man, therefore, should only read
when the source of his own thoughts stagnates; which is often the case
with the best of minds.
It is sin against the Holy Spirit to frighten away one's own original
thoughts by taking up a book. It is the same as a man flying from Nature
to look at a museum of dried plants, or to study a beautiful landscape
in copperplate. A man at times arrives at a truth or an idea after
spending much time in thinking it out for himself, linking together his
various thoughts, when he might have found the same thing in a book; it
is a hundred times more valuable if he has acquired it by thinking it
out for himself. For it is only by his thinking it out for himself that
it enters as an integral part, as a living member into the whole system
of his thought, and stands in complete and firm relation with it; that
it is fundamentally understood with all its consequences, and carries
the colour, the shade, the impress of his own way of thinking; and comes
at the very moment, just as the necessity for it is felt, and stands
fast and cannot be forgotten. This is the perfect application, nay,
interpretation of Goethe's
"Was du ererbt von deinen V�tern hast
Erwirb es um es zu besitzen."
The man who thinks for himself learns the authorities for his opinions
only later on, when they serve merely to strengthen both them and
himself; while the book-philosopher starts from the authorities and
other people's opinions, therefrom constructing a whole for himself; so
that he resembles an automaton, whose composition we do not understand.
The other man, the man who thinks for himself, on the other hand, is
like a living man as made by nature. His mind is impregnated from
without, which then bears and brings forth its child. Truth that has
been merely learned adheres to us like an artificial limb, a false
tooth, a waxen nose, or at best like one made out of another's flesh;
truth which is acquired by thinking for oneself is like a natural
member: it alone really belongs to us. Here we touch upon the difference
between the thinking man and the mere man of learning. Therefore the
intellectual acquirements of the man who thinks for himself are like a
fine painting that stands out full of life, that has its light and shade
correct, the tone sustained, and perfect harmony of colour. The
intellectual attainments of the merely learned man, on the contrary,
resemble a big palette covered with every colour, at most systematically
arranged, but without harmony, relation, and meaning.
* * * * *
_Reading_ is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own.
But to think for oneself is to endeavour to develop a coherent whole, a
system, even if it is not a strictly complete one. Nothing is more
harmful than, by dint of continual reading, to strengthen the current of
other people's thoughts. These thoughts, springing from different minds,
belonging to different systems, bearing different colours, never flow
together of themselves into a unity of thought, knowledge, insight, or
conviction, but rather cram the head with a Babylonian confusion of
tongues; consequently the mind becomes overcharged with them and is
deprived of all clear insight and almost disorganised. This condition of
things may often be discerned in many men of learning, and it makes them
inferior in sound understanding, correct judgment, and practical tact to
many illiterate men, who, by the aid of experience, conversation, and a
little reading, have acquired a little knowledge from without, and made
it always subordinate to and incorporated it with their own thoughts.
The scientific _thinker_ also does this to a much greater extent.
Although he requires much knowledge and must read a great deal, his mind
is nevertheless strong enough to overcome it all, to assimilate it, to
incorporate it with the system of his thoughts, and to subordinate it to
the organic relative unity of his insight, which is vast and
ever-growing. By this means his own thought, like the bass in an organ,
always takes the lead in everything, and is never deadened by other
sounds, as is the case with purely antiquarian minds; where all sorts of
musical passages, as it were, run into each other, and the fundamental
tone is entirely lost.
* * * * *
The people who have spent their lives in reading and acquired their
wisdom out of books resemble those who have acquired exact information
of a country from the descriptions of many travellers. These people can
relate a great deal about many things; but at heart they have no
connected, clear, sound knowledge of the condition of the country. While
those who have spent their life in thinking are like the people who have
been to that country themselves; they alone really know what it is they
are saying, know the subject in its entirety, and are quite at home in
it.
* * * * *
The ordinary book-philosopher stands in the same relation to a man who
thinks for himself as an eye-witness does to the historian; he speaks
from his own direct comprehension of the subject.
Therefore all who think for themselves hold at bottom much the same
views; when they differ it is because they hold different points of
view, but when these do not alter the matter they all say the same
thing. They merely express what they have grasped from an objective
point of view. I have frequently hesitated to give passages to the
public because of their paradoxical nature, and afterwards to my joyful
surprise have found the same thoughts expressed in the works of great
men of long ago.
The book-philosopher, on the other hand, relates what one man has said
and another man meant, and what a third has objected to, and so on. He
compares, weighs, criticises, and endeavours to get at the truth of the
thing, and in this way resembles the critical historian. For instance,
he will try to find out whether Leibnitz was not for some time in his
life a follower of Spinoza, etc. The curious student will find striking
examples of what I mean in Herbart's _Analytical Elucidation of Morality
and Natural Right_, and in his _Letters on Freedom_. It surprises us
that such a man should give himself so much trouble; for it is evident
that if he had fixed his attention on the matter he would soon have
attained his object by thinking a little for himself.
But there is a small difficulty to overcome; a thing of this kind does
not depend upon our own will. One can sit down at any time and read, but
not--think. It is with thoughts as with men: we cannot always summon
them at pleasure, but must wait until they come. Thought about a subject
must come of its own accord by a happy and harmonious union of external
motive with mental temper and application; and it is precisely that
which never seems to come to these people.
One has an illustration of this in matters that concern our personal
interest. If we have to come to a decision on a thing of this kind we
cannot sit down at any particular moment and thrash out the reasons and
arrive at a decision; for often at such a time our thoughts cannot be
fixed, but will wander off to other things; a dislike to the subject is
sometimes responsible for this. We should not use force, but wait until
the mood appears of itself; it frequently comes unexpectedly and even
repeats itself; the different moods which possess us at the different
times throwing another light on the matter. It is this long process
which is understood by _a ripe resolution_. For the task of making up
our mind must be distributed; much that has been previously overlooked
occurs to us; the aversion also disappears, for, after examining the
matter closer, it seems much more tolerable than it was at first sight.
And in theory it is just the same: a man must wait for the right moment;
even the greatest mind is not always able to think for itself at all
times. Therefore it is advisable for it to use its spare moments in
reading, which, as has been said, is a substitute for one's own thought;
in this way material is imported to the mind by letting another think
for us, although it is always in a way which is different from our own.
For this reason a man should not read too much, in order that his mind
does not become accustomed to the substitute, and consequently even
forget the matter in question; that it may not get used to walking in
paths that have already been trodden, and by following a foreign course
of thought forget its own. Least of all should a man for the sake of
reading entirely withdraw his attention from the real world: as the
impulse and temper which lead one to think for oneself proceed oftener
from it than from reading; for it is the visible and real world in its
primitiveness and strength that is the natural subject of the thinking
mind, and is able more easily than anything else to rouse it. After
these considerations it will not surprise us to find that the thinking
man can easily be distinguished from the book-philosopher by his marked
earnestness, directness, and originality, the personal conviction of all
his thoughts and expressions: the book-philosopher, on the other hand,
has everything second-hand; his ideas are like a collection of old rags
obtained anyhow; he is dull and pointless, resembling a copy of a copy.
His style, which is full of conventional, nay, vulgar phrases and
current terms, resembles a small state where there is a circulation of
foreign money because it coins none of its own.
* * * * *
Mere experience can as little as reading take the place of thought. Mere
empiricism bears the same relation to thinking as eating to digestion
and assimilation. When experience boasts that it alone, by its
discoveries, has advanced human knowledge, it is as though the mouth
boasted that it was its work alone to maintain the body.
The works of all really capable minds are distinguished from all other
works by a character of decision and definiteness, and, in consequence,
of lucidity and clearness. This is because minds like these know
definitely and clearly what they wish to express--whether it be in
prose, in verse, or in music. Other minds are wanting in this decision
and clearness, and therefore may be instantly recognised.
The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest standard is the
directness of its judgment. Everything it utters is the result of
thinking for itself; this is shown everywhere in the way it gives
expression to its thoughts. Therefore it is, like a prince, an imperial
director in the realm of intellect. All other minds are mere delegates,
as may be seen by their style, which has no stamp of its own.
Hence every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is
absolute, and recognises nobody above him. His judgments, like the
decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed
directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a
monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself
authorised it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed
by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like
the people which in silence obey the law and commands.
* * * * *
The people who are so eager and impatient to settle disputed questions,
by bringing forward authorities, are really glad when they can place the
understanding and insight of some one else in the field in place of
their own, which are deficient. Their number is legion. For, as Seneca
says, "_Unusquisque mavult credere, quam judicare._"
The weapon they commonly use in their controversies is that of
authorities: they strike each other with it, and whoever is drawn into
the fray will do well not to defend himself with reason and arguments;
for against a weapon of this kind they are like horned Siegfrieds,
immersed in a flood of incapacity for thinking and judging. They will
bring forward their authorities as an _argumentum ad verecundiam_ and
then cry _victoria_.
* * * * *
In the realm of reality, however fair, happy, and pleasant it may prove
to be, we always move controlled by the law of gravity, which we must be
unceasingly overcoming. While in the realm of thought we are disembodied
spirits, uncontrolled by the law of gravity and free from penury.
This is why there is no happiness on earth like that which at the
propitious moment a fine and fruitful mind finds in itself.
* * * * *
The presence of a thought is like the presence of our beloved. We
imagine we shall never forget this thought, and that this loved one
could never be indifferent to us. But out of sight out of mind! The
finest thought runs the risk of being irrevocably forgotten if it is not
written down, and the dear one of being forsaken if we do not marry her.
* * * * *
There are many thoughts which are valuable to the man who thinks them;
but out of them only a few which possess strength to produce either
repercussion or reflex action, that is, to win the reader's sympathy
after they have been written down. It is what a man has thought out
directly _for himself_ that alone has true value. Thinkers may be
classed as follows: those who, in the first place, think for themselves,
and those who think directly for others. The former thinkers are the
genuine, _they think for themselves_ in both senses of the word; they
are the true _philosophers_; they alone are in earnest. Moreover, the
enjoyment and happiness of their existence consist in thinking. The
others are the _sophists_; they wish to _seem_, and seek their happiness
in what they hope to get from other people; their earnestness consists
in this. To which of these two classes a man belongs is soon seen by his
whole method and manner. Lichtenberg is an example of the first class,
while Herder obviously belongs to the second.
* * * * *
When one considers how great and how close to us the _problem of
existence_ is,--this equivocal, tormented, fleeting, dream-like
existence--so great and so close that as soon as one perceives it, it
overshadows and conceals all other problems and aims;--and when one sees
how all men--with a few and rare exceptions--are not clearly conscious
of the problem, nay, do not even seem to see it, but trouble themselves
about everything else rather than this, and live on taking thought only
for the present day and the scarcely longer span of their own personal
future, while they either expressly give the problem up or are ready to
agree with it, by the aid of some system of popular metaphysics, and are
satisfied with this;--when one, I say, reflects upon this, so may one be
of the opinion that man is a _thinking being_ only in a very remote
sense, and not feel any special surprise at any trait of thoughtlessness
or folly; but know, rather, that the intellectual outlook of the normal
man indeed surpasses that of the brute,--whose whole existence resembles
a continual present without any consciousness of the future or the
past--but, however, not to such an extent as one is wont to suppose.
And corresponding to this, we find in the conversation of most men that
their thoughts are cut up as small as chaff, making it impossible for
them to spin out the thread of their discourse to any length. If this
world were peopled by really thinking beings, noise of every kind would
not be so universally tolerated, as indeed the most horrible and aimless
form of it is.[12] If Nature had intended man to think she would not
have given him ears, or, at any rate, she would have furnished them with
air-tight flaps like the bat, which for this reason is to be envied.
But, in truth, man is like the rest, a poor animal, whose powers are
calculated only to maintain him during his existence; therefore he
requires to have his ears always open to announce of themselves, by
night as by day, the approach of the pursuer.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] See Essay on Noise, p. 28.
SHORT DIALOGUE ON
THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR TRUE BEING BY DEATH.
_Thrasymachos._ Tell me briefly, what shall I be after my death? Be
clear and precise.
_Philalethes._ Everything and nothing.
_Thras._ That is what I expected. You solve the problem by a
contradiction. That trick is played out.
_Phil._ To answer transcendental questions in language that is made for
immanent knowledge must assuredly lead to a contradiction.