THE ESSAYS
OF
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
TRANSLATED BY
T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.
COUNSELS AND MAXIMS.
_Le bonheur n'est pas chose aisée: il est
très difficile de le trouver en nous, et impossible
de le trouver ailleurs_.
CHAMFORT.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
INTRODUCTION
I. GENERAL RULES
II. OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES
III. OUR RELATION TO OTHERS
IV. WORLDLY FORTUNE
V. THE AGES OF LIFE
INTRODUCTION.
If my object in these pages were to present a complete scheme of
counsels and maxims for the guidance of life, I should have to repeat
the numerous rules--some of them excellent--which have been drawn
up by thinkers of all ages, from Theognis and Solomon[1] down to La
Rochefoucauld; and, in so doing, I should inevitably entail upon the
reader a vast amount of well-worn commonplace. But the fact is that in
this work I make still less claim to exhaust my subject than in any
other of my writings.
[Footnote 1: I refer to the proverbs and maxims ascribed, in the Old
Testament, to the king of that name.]
An author who makes no claims to completeness must also, in a great
measure, abandon any attempt at systematic arrangement. For his double
loss in this respect, the reader may console himself by reflecting
that a complete and systematic treatment of such a subject as the
guidance of life could hardly fail to be a very wearisome business.
I have simply put down those of my thoughts which appear to be worth
communicating--thoughts which, as far as I know, have not been
uttered, or, at any rate, not just in the same form, by any one else;
so that my remarks may be taken as a supplement to what has been
already achieved in the immense field.
However, by way of introducing some sort of order into the great
variety of matters upon which advice will be given in the following
pages, I shall distribute what I have to say under the following
heads: (1) general rules; (2) our relation to ourselves; (3) our
relation to others; and finally, (4) rules which concern our manner of
life and our worldly circumstances. I shall conclude with some remarks
on the changes which the various periods of life produce in us.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL RULES.--SECTION 1.
The first and foremost rule for the wise conduct of life seems to me
to be contained in a view to which Aristotle parenthetically refers in
the _Nichomachean Ethics_:[1] [Greek: o phronimoz to alupon dioke e ou
to aedu] or, as it may be rendered, _not pleasure, but freedom from
pain, is what the wise man will aim at_.
[Footnote 1: vii. (12) 12.]
The truth of this remark turns upon the negative character of
happiness,--the fact that pleasure is only the negation of pain, and
that pain is the positive element in life. Though I have given a
detailed proof of this proposition in my chief work,[1] I may supply
one more illustration of it here, drawn from a circumstance of daily
occurrence. Suppose that, with the exception of some sore or painful
spot, we are physically in a sound and healthy condition: the sore of
this one spot, will completely absorb our attention, causing us to
lose the sense of general well-being, and destroying all our comfort
in life. In the same way, when all our affairs but one turn out as
we wish, the single instance in which our aims are frustrated is a
constant trouble to us, even though it be something quite trivial. We
think a great deal about it, and very little about those other and
more important matters in which we have been successful. In both these
cases what has met with resistance is _the will_; in the one case, as
it is objectified in the organism, in the other, as it presents
itself in the struggle of life; and in both, it is plain that the
satisfaction of the will consists in nothing else than that it meets
with no resistance. It is, therefore, a satisfaction which is not
directly felt; at most, we can become conscious of it only when we
reflect upon our condition. But that which checks or arrests the will
is something positive; it proclaims its own presence. All pleasure
consists in merely removing this check--in other words, in freeing us
from its action; and hence pleasure is a state which can never last
very long.
[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_. Vol. I., p. 58.]
This is the true basis of the above excellent rule quoted from
Aristotle, which bids us direct our aim, not toward securing what is
pleasurable and agreeable in life, but toward avoiding, as far as
possible, its innumerable evils. If this were not the right course to
take, that saying of Voltaire's, _Happiness is but a dream and sorrow
is real_, would be as false as it is, in fact, true. A man who desires
to make up the book of his life and determine where the balance of
happiness lies, must put down in his accounts, not the pleasures which
he has enjoyed, but the evils which he has escaped. That is the
true method of eudaemonology; for all eudaemonology must begin by
recognizing that its very name is a euphemism, and that _to live
happily_ only means _to live less unhappily_--to live a tolerable
life. There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed,
but to be overcome--to be got over. There are numerous expressions
illustrating this--such as _degere vitam, vita defungi_; or
in Italian, _si scampa cosi_; or in German, _man muss suchen
durchzukommen; er wird schon durch die Welt kommen_, and so on. In old
age it is indeed a consolation to think that the work of life is over
and done with. The happiest lot is not to have experienced the keenest
delights or the greatest pleasures, but to have brought life to a
close without any very great pain, bodily or mental. To measure the
happiness of a life by its delights or pleasures, is to apply a false
standard. For pleasures are and remain something negative; that
they produce happiness is a delusion, cherished by envy to its own
punishment. Pain is felt to be something positive, and hence its
absence is the true standard of happiness. And if, over and above
freedom from pain, there is also an absence of boredom, the essential
conditions of earthly happiness are attained; for all else is
chimerical.
It follows from this that a man should never try to purchase pleasure
at the cost of pain, or even at the risk of incurring it; to do so is
to pay what is positive and real, for what is negative and illusory;
while there is a net profit in sacrificing pleasure for the sake of
avoiding pain. In either case it is a matter of indifference whether
the pain follows the pleasure or precedes it. While it is a complete
inversion of the natural order to try and turn this scene of misery
into a garden of pleasure, to aim at joy and pleasure rather than
at the greatest possible freedom from pain--and yet how many do
it!--there is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the
world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one's efforts to securing
a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire. The fool rushes
after the pleasures of life and finds himself their dupe; the wise man
avoids its evils; and even if, notwithstanding his precautions, he
falls into misfortunes, that is the fault of fate, not of his own
folly. As far as he is successful in his endeavors, he cannot be said
to have lived a life of illusion; for the evils which he shuns are
very real. Even if he goes too far out of his way to avoid evils, and
makes an unnecessary sacrifice of pleasure, he is, in reality, not the
worse off for that; for all pleasures are chimerical, and to mourn
for having lost any of them is a frivolous, and even ridiculous
proceeding.
The failure to recognize this truth--a failure promoted by optimistic
ideas--is the source of much unhappiness. In moments free from pain,
our restless wishes present, as it were in a mirror, the image of a
happiness that has no counterpart in reality, seducing us to follow
it; in doing so we bring pain upon ourselves, and that is something
undeniably real. Afterwards, we come to look with regret upon that
lost state of painlessness; it is a paradise which we have gambled
away; it is no longer with us, and we long in vain to undo what has
been done.
One might well fancy that these visions of wishes fulfilled were the
work of some evil spirit, conjured up in order to entice us away from
that painless state which forms our highest happiness.
A careless youth may think that the world is meant to be enjoyed, as
though it were the abode of some real or positive happiness, which
only those fail to attain who are not clever enough to overcome the
difficulties that lie in the way. This false notion takes a stronger
hold on him when he comes to read poetry and romance, and to be
deceived by outward show--the hypocrisy that characterizes the
world from beginning to end; on which I shall have something to say
presently. The result is that his life is the more or less deliberate
pursuit of positive happiness; and happiness he takes to be equivalent
to a series of definite pleasures. In seeking for these pleasures he
encounters danger--a fact which should not be forgotten. He hunts for
game that does not exist; and so he ends by suffering some very
real and positive misfortune--pain, distress, sickness, loss, care,
poverty, shame, and all the thousand ills of life. Too late he
discovers the trick that has been played upon him.
But if the rule I have mentioned is observed, and a plan of life is
adopted which proceeds by avoiding pain--in other words, by taking
measures of precaution against want, sickness, and distress in all its
forms, the aim is a real one, and something may be achieved which will
be great in proportion as the plan is not disturbed by striving after
the chimera of positive happiness. This agrees with the opinion
expressed by Goethe in the _Elective Affinities_, and there put into
the mouth of Mittler--the man who is always trying to make other
people happy: _To desire to get rid of an evil is a definite object,
but to desire a better fortune than one has is blind folly_. The same
truth is contained in that fine French proverb: _le mieux est l'ennemi
du bien_--leave well alone. And, as I have remarked in my chief
work,[1] this is the leading thought underlying the philosophical
system of the Cynics. For what was it led the Cynics to repudiate
pleasure in every form, if it was not the fact that pain is, in a
greater or less degree, always bound up with pleasure? To go out of
the way of pain seemed to them so much easier than to secure pleasure.
Deeply impressed as they were by the negative nature of pleasure and
the positive nature of pain, they consistently devoted all their
efforts to the avoidance of pain. The first step to that end was, in
their opinion, a complete and deliberate repudiation of pleasure, as
something which served only to entrap the victim in order that he
might be delivered over to pain.
[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol. ii., ch. 16.]
We are all born, as Schiller says, in Arcadia. In other words, we
come into the world full of claims to happiness and pleasure, and we
cherish the fond hope of making them good. But, as a rule, Fate soon
teaches us, in a rough and ready way that we really possess nothing at
all, but that everything in the world is at its command, in virtue of
an unassailable right, not only to all we have or acquire, to wife or
child, but even to our very limbs, our arms, legs, _eyes_ and ears,
nay, even to the nose in the middle of our face. And in any case,
after some little time, we learn by experience that happiness and
pleasure are a _fata morgana_, which, visible from afar, vanish as we
approach; that, on the other hand, suffering and pain are a reality,
which makes its presence felt without any intermediary, and for its
effect, stands in no need of illusion or the play of false hope.
If the teaching of experience bears fruit in us, we soon give up the
pursuit of pleasure and happiness, and think much more about making
ourselves secure against the attacks of pain and suffering. We see
that the best the world has to offer is an existence free from pain--a
quiet, tolerable life; and we confine our claims to this, as to
something we can more surely hope to achieve. For the safest way of
not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy. Merck, the
friend of Goethe's youth, was conscious of this truth when he
wrote: _It is the wretched way people have of setting up a claim to
happiness_--_and, that to, in a measure corresponding with their
desires_--_that ruins everything in this world. A man will make
progress if he can get rid of this claim,[1] and desire nothing but
what he sees before him_. Accordingly it is advisable to put very
moderate limits upon our expectations of pleasure, possessions, rank,
honor and so on; because it is just this striving and struggling to
be happy, to dazzle the world, to lead a life full of pleasure, which
entail great misfortune. It is prudent and wise, I say, to reduce
one's claims, if only for the reason that it is extremely easy to be
very unhappy; while to be very happy is not indeed difficult, but
quite impossible. With justice sings the poet of life's wisdom:
_Auream quisquis mediocritatem
Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti
Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda
Sobrius aula.
Savius ventis agitatur ingens
Pinus: et celsae graviori casu
Decidunt turres; feriuntque summos
Fulgura monies.[2]_
--the golden mean is best--to live free from the squalor of a mean
abode, and yet not be a mark for envy. It is the tall pine which is
cruelly shaken by the wind, the highest summits that are struck in the
storm, and the lofty towers that fall so heavily.
[Footnote 1: Letters to and from Merck.]
[Footnote 2: Horace. Odes II. x.]
He who has taken to heart the teaching of my philosophy--who knows,
therefore, that our whole existence is something which had better
not have been, and that to disown and disclaim it is the highest
wisdom--he will have no great expectations from anything or any
condition in life: he will spend passion upon nothing in the world,
nor lament over-much if he fails in any of his undertakings. He
will feel the deep truth of what Plato[1] says: [Greek: oute ti ton
anthropinon haxion on megalaes spondaes]--nothing in human affairs is
worth any great anxiety; or, as the Persian poet has it,
_Though from thy grasp all worldly things should flee,
Grieve not for them, for they are nothing worth:
And though a world in thy possession be,
Joy not, for worthless are the things of earth.
Since to that better world 'tis given to thee
To pass, speed on, for this is nothing worth._[2]
[Footnote 1: _Republic_, x. 604.]
[Footnote 2: _Translator's Note_. From the Anvár-i Suhailí--_The
Lights of Canopus_--being the Persian version of the _Table of
Bidpai_. Translated by E.B. Eastwick, ch. iii. Story vi., p. 289.]
The chief obstacle to our arriving at these salutary views is that
hypocrisy of the world to which I have already alluded--an hypocrisy
which should be early revealed to the young. Most of the glories of
the world are mere outward show, like the scenes on a stage: there
is nothing real about them. Ships festooned and hung with pennants,
firing of cannon, illuminations, beating of drums and blowing of
trumpets, shouting and applauding--these are all the outward sign, the
pretence and suggestion,--as it were the hieroglyphic,--of _joy_: but
just there, joy is, as a rule, not to be found; it is the only guest
who has declined to be present at the festival. Where this guest may
really be found, he comes generally without invitation; he is not
formerly announced, but slips in quietly by himself _sans facon_;
often making his appearance under the most unimportant and trivial
circumstances, and in the commonest company--anywhere, in short, but
where the society is brilliant and distinguished. Joy is like the gold
in the Australian mines--found only now and then, as it were, by the
caprice of chance, and according to no rule or law; oftenest in very
little grains, and very seldom in heaps. All that outward show which I
have described, is only an attempt to make people believe that it
is really joy which has come to the festival; and to produce this
impression upon the spectators is, in fact, the whole object of it.
With _mourning_ it is just the same. That long funeral procession,
moving up so slowly; how melancholy it looks! what an endless row of
carriages! But look into them--they are all empty; the coachmen of the
whole town are the sole escort the dead man has to his grave. Eloquent
picture of the friendship and esteem of the world! This is the
falsehood, the hollowness, the hypocrisy of human affairs!
Take another example--a roomful of guests in full dress, being
received with great ceremony. You could almost believe that this is
a noble and distinguished company; but, as a matter of fact, it is
compulsion, pain and boredom who are the real guests. For where many
are invited, it is a rabble--even if they all wear stars. Really good
society is everywhere of necessity very small. In brilliant festivals
and noisy entertainments, there is always, at bottom, a sense of
emptiness prevalent. A false tone is there: such gatherings are in
strange contrast with the misery and barrenness of our existence. The
contrast brings the true condition into greater relief. Still, these
gatherings are effective from the outside; and that is just their
purpose. Chamfort[1] makes the excellent remark that _society_--_les
cercles, les salons, ce qu'on appelle le monde_--is like a miserable
play, or a bad opera, without any interest in itself, but supported
for a time by mechanical aid, costumes and scenery.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. Nicholas "Chamfort" (1741-94), a
French miscellaneous writer, whose brilliant conversation, power of
sarcasm, and epigrammic force, coupled with an extraordinary career,
render him one of the most interesting and remarkable men of his
time. Schopenhauer undoubtedly owed much to this writer, to whom he
constantly refers.]
And so, too, with academies and chairs of philosophy. You have a kind
of sign-board hung out to show the apparent abode of _wisdom_: but
wisdom is another guest who declines the invitation; she is to be
found elsewhere. The chiming of bells, ecclesiastical millinery,
attitudes of devotion, insane antics--these are the pretence, the
false show of _piety_. And so on. Everything in the world is like a
hollow nut; there is little kernel anywhere, and when it does exist,
it is still more rare to find it in the shell. You may look for it
elsewhere, and find it, as a rule, only by chance.
SECTION 2. To estimate a man's condition in regard to happiness, it is
necessary to ask, not what things please him, but what things trouble
him; and the more trivial these things are in themselves, the happier
the man will be. To be irritated by trifles, a man must be well off;
for in misfortunes trifles are unfelt.
SECTION 3. Care should be taken not to build the happiness of life
upon a _broad foundation_--not to require a great many things in order
to be happy. For happiness on such a foundation is the most easily
undermined; it offers many more opportunities for accidents; and
accidents are always happening. The architecture of happiness follows
a plan in this respect just the opposite of that adopted in every
other case, where the broadest foundation offers the greatest
security. Accordingly, to reduce your claims to the lowest possible
degree, in comparison with your means,--of whatever kind these may
be--is the surest way of avoiding extreme misfortune.
To make extensive preparations for life--no matter what form they
may take--is one of the greatest and commonest of follies. Such
preparations presuppose, in the first place, a long life, the full and
complete term of years appointed to man--and how few reach it! and
even if it be reached, it is still too short for all the plans that
have been made; for to carry them out requites more time than was
thought necessary at the beginning. And then how many mischances and
obstacles stand in the way! how seldom the goal is ever reached in
human affairs!
And lastly, even though the goal should be reached, the changes which
Time works in us have been left out of the reckoning: we forget that
the capacity whether for achievement or for enjoyment does not last a
whole lifetime. So we often toil for things which are no longer suited
to us when we attain them; and again, the years we spend in preparing
for some work, unconsciously rob us of the power for carrying it out.
How often it happens that a man is unable to enjoy the wealth which he
acquired at so much trouble and risk, and that the fruits of his
labor are reserved for others; or that he is incapable of filling the
position which he has won after so many years of toil and struggle.
Fortune has come too late for him; or, contrarily, he has come too
late for fortune,--when, for instance, he wants to achieve great
things, say, in art or literature: the popular taste has changed, it
may be; a new generation has grown up, which takes no interest in his
work; others have gone a shorter way and got the start of him. These
are the facts of life which Horace must have had in view, when he
lamented the uselessness of all advice:--
_quid eternis minorem
Consiliis animum fatigas?_[1]
[Footnote 1: Odes II. xi.]
The cause of this commonest of all follies is that optical illusion of
the mind from which everyone suffers, making life, at its beginning,
seem of long duration; and at its end, when one looks back over the
course of it, how short a time it seems! There is some advantage in
the illusion; but for it, no great work would ever be done.
Our life is like a journey on which, as we advance, the landscape
takes a different view from that which it presented at first,
and changes again, as we come nearer. This is just what
happens--especially with our wishes. We often find something else,
nay, something better than what we are looking for; and what we look
for, we often find on a very different path from that on which we
began a vain search. Instead of finding, as we expected, pleasure,
happiness, joy, we get experience, insight, knowledge--a real and
permanent blessing, instead of a fleeting and illusory one.
This is the thought that runs through _Wilkelm Meister_, like the bass
in a piece of music. In this work of Goethe's, we have a novel of the
_intellectual_ kind, and, therefore, superior to all others, even to
Sir Walter Scott's, which are, one and all, _ethical_; in other words,
they treat of human nature only from the side of the will. So, too,
in the _Zauberflöte_--that grotesque, but still significant, and even
hieroglyphic--the same thought is symbolized, but in great, coarse
lines, much in the way in which scenery is painted. Here the symbol
would be complete if Tamino were in the end to be cured of his desire
to possess Tainina, and received, in her stead, initiation into the
mysteries of the Temple of Wisdom. It is quite right for Papageno, his
necessary contrast, to succeed in getting his Papagena.
Men of any worth or value soon come to see that they are in the hands
of Fate, and gratefully submit to be moulded by its teachings. They
recognize that the fruit of life is experience, and not happiness;
they become accustomed and content to exchange hope for insight; and,
in the end, they can say, with Petrarch, that all they care for is to
learn:--
_Altro diletto che 'mparar, non provo_.
It may even be that they to some extent still follow their old wishes
and aims, trifling with them, as it were, for the sake of appearances;
all the while really and seriously looking for nothing but
instruction; a process which lends them an air of genius, a trait of
something contemplative and sublime.
In their search for gold, the alchemists discovered other
things--gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature. There is a
sense in which we are all alchemists.
CHAPTER II.
OUR RELATION TO OURSELVES.--SECTION 4.
The mason employed on the building of a house may be quite ignorant of
its general design; or at any rate, he may not keep it constantly in
mind. So it is with man: in working through the days and hours of his
life, he takes little thought of its character as a whole.
If there is any merit or importance attaching to a man's career, if he
lays himself out carefully for some special work, it is all the more
necessary and advisable for him to turn his attention now and then
to its _plan_, that is to say, the miniature sketch of its general
outlines. Of course, to do that, he must have applied the maxim
[Greek: Gnothi seauton]; he must have made some little progress in the
art of understanding himself. He must know what is his real, chief,
and foremost object in life,--what it is that he most wants in order
to be happy; and then, after that, what occupies the second and third
place in his thoughts; he must find out what, on the whole, his
vocation really is--the part he has to play, his general relation to
the world. If he maps out important work for himself on great lines,
a glance at this miniature plan of his life will, more than anything
else stimulate, rouse and ennoble him, urge him on to action and keep
him from false paths.
Again, just as the traveler, on reaching a height, gets a connected
view over the road he has taken, with its many turns and windings; so
it is only when we have completed a period in our life, or approach
the end of it altogether, that we recognize the true connection
between all our actions,--what it is we have achieved, what work we
have done. It is only then that we see the precise chain of cause and
effect, and the exact value of all our efforts. For as long as we are
actually engaged in the work of life, we always act in accordance with
the nature of our character, under the influence of motive, and within
the limits of our capacity,--in a word, from beginning to end, under
a law of _necessity_; at every moment we do just what appears to us
right and proper. It is only afterwards, when we come to look back at
the whole course of our life and its general result, that we see the
why and wherefore of it all.
When we are actually doing some great deed, or creating some immortal
work, we are not conscious of it as such; we think only of satisfying
present aims, of fulfilling the intentions we happen to have at the
time, of doing the right thing at the moment. It is only when we
come to view our life as a connected whole that our character and
capacities show themselves in their true light; that we see how, in
particular instances, some happy inspiration, as it were, led us to
choose the only true path out of a thousand which might have brought
us to ruin. It was our genius that guided us, a force felt in the
affairs of the intellectual as in those of the world; and working by
its defect just in the same way in regard to evil and disaster.
SECTION 5. Another important element in the wise conduct of life is to
preserve a proper proportion between our thought for the present and
our thought for the future; in order not to spoil the one by paying
over-great attention to the other. Many live too long in the
present--frivolous people, I mean; others, too much in the future,
ever anxious and full of care. It is seldom that a man holds the right
balance between the two extremes. Those who strive and hope and live
only in the future, always looking ahead and impatiently anticipating
what is coming, as something which will make them happy when they
get it, are, in spite of their very clever airs, exactly like those
donkeys one sees in Italy, whose pace may be hurried by fixing a stick
on their heads with a wisp of hay at the end of it; this is always
just in front of them, and they keep on trying to get it. Such people
are in a constant state of illusion as to their whole existence; they
go on living _ad interim_, until at last they die.
Instead, therefore, of always thinking about our plans and anxiously
looking to the future, or of giving ourselves up to regret for the
past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the
only certainty; that the future almost always turns out contrary to
our expectations; that the past, too, was very different from what
we suppose it to have been. But the past and the future are, on the
whole, of less consequence than we think. Distance, which makes
objects look small to the outward eye, makes them look big to the eye
of thought. The present alone is true and actual; it is the only
time which possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it
exclusively. Therefore we should always be glad of it, and give it
the welcome it deserves, and enjoy every hour that is bearable by
its freedom from pain and annoyance with a full consciousness of its
value. We shall hardly be able to do this if we make a wry face over
the failure of our hopes in the past or over our anxiety for the
future. It is the height of folly to refuse the present hour of
happiness, or wantonly to spoil it by vexation at by-gones or
uneasiness about what is to come. There is a time, of course, for
forethought, nay, even for repentance; but when it is over let us
think of what is past as of something to which we have said farewell,
of necessity subduing our hearts--
[Greek: alla ta men protuchthai easomen achnumenoi per
tumhon eni staethessi philon damasntes hanankae],[1]
and of the future as of that which lies beyond our power, in the lap
of the gods--
[Greek: all aetoi men tauta theon en gounasi keitai.][2]
[Footnote 1: _Iliad_, xix, 65.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_, xvii, 514]
But in regard to the present let us remember Seneca's advice, and live
each day as if it were our whole life,--_singulas dies singulas vitas
puta_: let us make it as agreeable as possible, it is the only real
time we have.
Only those evils which are sure to come at a definite date have
any right to disturb us; and how few there are which fulfill this
description. For evils are of two kinds; either they are possible
only, at most probable; or they are inevitable. Even in the case of
evils which are sure to happen, the time at which they will happen is
uncertain. A man who is always preparing for either class of evil will
not have a moment of peace left him. So, if we are not to lose all
comfort in life through the fear of evils, some of which are uncertain
in themselves, and others, in the time at which they will occur, we
should look upon the one kind as never likely to happen, and the other
as not likely to happen very soon.
Now, the less our peace of mind is disturbed by fear, the more likely
it is to be agitated by desire and expectation. This is the true
meaning of that song of Goethe's which is such a favorite with
everyone: _Ich hab' mein' Sach' auf nichts gestellt_. It is only
after a man has got rid of all pretension, and taken refuge in mere
unembellished existence, that he is able to attain that peace of mind
which is the foundation of human happiness. Peace of mind! that is
something essential to any enjoyment of the present moment; and unless
its separate moments are enjoyed, there is an end of life's happiness
as a whole. We should always collect that _To-day_ comes only once,
and never returns. We fancy that it will come again to-morrow; but
_To-morrow_ is another day, which, in its turn, comes once only.
We are apt to forget that every day is an integral, and therefore
irreplaceable portion of life, and to look upon life as though it
were a collective idea or name which does not suffer if one of the
individuals it covers is destroyed.
We should be more likely to appreciate and enjoy the present, if,
in those good days when we are well and strong, we did not fail to
reflect how, in sickness and sorrow, every past hour that was free
from pain and privation seemed in our memory so infinitely to be
envied--as it were, a lost paradise, or some one who was only then
seen to have acted as a friend. But we live through our days of
happiness without noticing them; it is only when evil comes upon us
that we wish them back. A thousand gay and pleasant hours are wasted
in ill-humor; we let them slip by unenjoyed, and sigh for them in vain
when the sky is overcast. Those present moments that are bearable, be
they never so trite and common,--passed by in indifference, or, it may
be, impatiently pushed away,--those are the moments we should honor;
never failing to remember that the ebbing tide is even how hurrying
them into the past, where memory will store them transfigured and
shining with an imperishable light,--in some after-time, and above
all, when our days are evil, to raise the veil and present them as the
object of our fondest regret.
SECTION 6. _Limitations always make for happiness_. We are happy in
proportion as our range of vision, our sphere of work, our points of
contact with the world, are restricted and circumscribed. We are more
likely to feel worried and anxious if these limits are wide; for
it means that our cares, desires and terrors are increased and
intensified. That is why the blind are not so unhappy as we might be
inclined to suppose; otherwise there would not be that gentle and
almost serene expression of peace in their faces.
Another reason why limitation makes for happiness is that the second
half of life proves even more dreary that the first. As the years wear
on, the horizon of our aims and our points of contact with the world
become more extended. In childhood our horizon is limited to
the narrowest sphere about us; in youth there is already a very
considerable widening of our view; in manhood it comprises the whole
range of our activity, often stretching out over a very distant
sphere,--the care, for instance, of a State or a nation; in old age it
embraces posterity.
But even in the affairs of the intellect, limitation is necessary if
we are to be happy. For the less the will is excited, the less we
suffer. We have seen that suffering is something positive, and that
happiness is only a negative condition. To limit the sphere of outward
activity is to relieve the will of external stimulus: to limit the
sphere of our intellectual efforts is to relieve the will of internal
sources of excitement. This latter kind of limitation is attended by
the disadvantage that it opens the door to boredom, which is a direct
source of countless sufferings; for to banish boredom, a man will
have recourse to any means that may be handy--dissipation, society,
extravagance, gaming, and drinking, and the like, which in their turn
bring mischief, ruin and misery in their train. _Difficiles in otio
quies_--it is difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do. That
limitation in the sphere of outward activity is conducive, nay, even
necessary to human happiness, such as it is, may be seen in the fact
that the only kind of poetry which depicts men in a happy state of
life--Idyllic poetry, I mean,--always aims, as an intrinsic part of
its treatment, at representing them in very simple and restricted
circumstances. It is this feeling, too, which is at the bottom of the
pleasure we take in what are called _genre_ pictures.
_Simplicity_, therefore, as far as it can be attained, and even
_monotony_, in our manner of life, if it does not mean that we
are bored, will contribute to happiness; just because, under such
circumstances, life, and consequently the burden which is the
essential concomitant of life, will be least felt. Our existence
will glide on peacefully like a stream which no waves or whirlpools
disturb.
SECTION 7. Whether we are in a pleasant or a painful state depends,
ultimately, upon the kind of matter that pervades and engrosses our
consciousness. In this respect, purely intellectual occupation, for
the mind that is capable of it, will, as a rule, do much more in the
way of happiness than any form of practical life, with its constant
alternations of success and failure, and all the shocks and torments
it produces. But it must be confessed that for such occupation a
pre-eminent amount of intellectual capacity is necessary. And in this
connection it may be noted that, just as a life devoted to outward
activity will distract and divert a man from study, and also deprive
him of that quiet concentration of mind which is necessary for such
work; so, on the other hand, a long course of thought will make
him more or less unfit for the noisy pursuits of real life. It
is advisable, therefore, to suspend mental work for a while, if
circumstances happen which demand any degree of energy in affairs of a
practical nature.
SECTION 8. To live a life that shall be entirely prudent and discreet,
and to draw from experience all the instruction it contains, it
is requisite to be constantly thinking back,--to make a kind
of recapitulation of what we have done, of our impressions and
sensations, to compare our former with our present judgments--what
we set before us and struggle to achieve, with the actual result and
satisfaction we have obtained. To do this is to get a repetition of
the private lessons of experience,--lessons which are given to every
one.
Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which
reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is great
deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge, and very little
experience, the result is like those books which have on each page two
lines of text to forty lines of commentary. A great deal of experience
with little reflection and scant knowledge, gives us books like those
of the _editio Bipontina_[1] where there are no notes and much that is
unintelligible.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. A series of Greek, Latin and French
classics published at Zweibräcken in the Palatinate, from and after
the year 1779. Cf. Butter, _Ueber die Bipontiner und die editiones
Bipontinae_.]
The advice here given is on a par with a rule recommended by
Pythagoras,--to review, every night before going to sleep, what we
have done during the day. To live at random, in the hurly-burly of
business or pleasure, without ever reflecting upon the past,--to go
on, as it were, pulling cotton off the reel of life,--is to have no
clear idea of what we are about; and a man who lives in this state
will have chaos in his emotions and certain confusion in his thoughts;
as is soon manifest by the abrupt and fragmentary character of his
conversation, which becomes a kind of mincemeat. A man will be all the
more exposed to this fate in proportion as he lives a restless life
in the world, amid a crowd of various impressions and with a
correspondingly small amount of activity on the part of his own mind.
And in this connection it will be in place to observe that, when
events and circumstances which have influenced us pass away in the
course of time, we are unable to bring back and renew the particular
mood or state of feeling which they aroused in us: but we can remember
what we were led to say and do in regard to them; and thus form, as it
were, the result, expression and measure of those events. We should,
therefore, be careful to preserve the memory of our thoughts at
important points in our life; and herein lies the great advantage of
keeping a journal.
SECTION 9. To be self-sufficient, to be all in all to oneself, to
want for nothing, to be able to say _omnia mea mecum porto_--that is
assuredly the chief qualification for happiness. Hence Aristotle's
remark, [Greek: hae eudaimonia ton autarchon esti][1]--to be happy
means to be self-sufficient--cannot be too often repeated. It is,
at bottom, the same thought as is present in the very well-turned
sentence from Chamfort:
_Le bonheur n'est pas chose aisée: il est très difficile de le trouver
en nous, et impossible de le trouver ailleurs_.
[Footnote 1: _Eudem. Eth_. VII. ii. 37.]
For while a man cannot reckon with certainty upon anyone but himself,
the burdens and disadvantages, the dangers and annoyances, which arise
from having to do with others, are not only countless but unavoidable.
There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness, revelry,
_high life_: for the whole object of it is to transform our miserable
existence into a succession of joys, delights and pleasures,--a
process which cannot fail to result in disappointment and delusion;
on a par, in this respect, with its _obligato_ accompaniment, the
interchange of lies.[1]
[Footnote 1: As our body is concealed by the clothes we wear, so our
mind is veiled in lies. The veil is always there, and it is only
through it that we can sometimes guess at what a man really thinks;
just as from his clothes we arrive at the general shape of his body.]
All society necessarily involves, as the first condition of its
existence, mutual accommodation and restraint upon the part of its
members. This means that the larger it is, the more insipid will be
its tone. A man can be _himself_ only so long as he is alone; and if
he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only
when he is alone that he is really free. Constraint is always present
in society, like a companion of whom there is no riddance; and in
proportion to the greatness of a man's individuality, it will be hard
for him to bear the sacrifices which all intercourse with others
demands, Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as
a man's personal value is large or small,--the wretch feeling, when
he is alone, the whole burden of his misery; the great intellect
delighting in its greatness; and everyone, in short, being just what
he is.
Further, if a man stands high in Nature's lists, it is natural and
inevitable that he should feel solitary. It will be an advantage to
him if his surroundings do not interfere with this feeling; for if he
has to see a great deal of other people who are not of like character
with himself, they will exercise a disturbing influence upon him,
adverse to his peace of mind; they will rob him, in fact, of himself,
and give him nothing to compensate for the loss.
But while Nature sets very wide differences between man and man in
respect both of morality and of intellect, society disregards and
effaces them; or, rather, it sets up artificial differences in
their stead,--gradations of rank and position, which are very often
diametrically opposed to those which Nature establishes. The result of
this arrangement is to elevate those whom Nature has placed low,
and to depress the few who stand high. These latter, then, usually
withdraw from society, where, as soon as it is at all numerous,
vulgarity reigns supreme.
What offends a great intellect in society is the equality of rights,
leading to equality of pretensions, which everyone enjoys; while at
the same time, inequality of capacity means a corresponding disparity
of social power. So-called _good society_ recognizes every kind of
claim but that of intellect, which is a contraband article; and people
are expected to exhibit an unlimited amount of patience towards every
form of folly and stupidity, perversity and dullness; whilst personal
merit has to beg pardon, as it were, for being present, or else
conceal itself altogether. Intellectual superiority offends by its
very existence, without any desire to do so.
The worst of what is called good society is not only that it offers us
the companionship of people who are unable to win either our praise or
our affection, but that it does not allow of our being that which we
naturally are; it compels us, for the sake of harmony, to shrivel up,
or even alter our shape altogether. Intellectual conversation, whether
grave or humorous, is only fit for intellectual society; it is
downright abhorrent to ordinary people, to please whom it is
absolutely necessary to be commonplace and dull. This demands an act
of severe self-denial; we have to forfeit three-fourths of ourselves
in order to become like other people. No doubt their company may be
set down against our loss in this respect; but the more a man is
worth, the more he will find that what he gains does not cover what he
loses, and that the balance is on the debit side of the account; for
the people with whom he deals are generally bankrupt,--that is to say,
there is nothing to be got from their society which can compensate
either for its boredom, annoyance and disagreeableness, or for the
self-denial which it renders necessary. Accordingly, most society is
so constituted as to offer a good profit to anyone who will exchange
it for solitude.
Nor is this all. By way of providing a substitute for real--I mean
intellectual--superiority, which is seldom to be met with, and
intolerable when it is found, society has capriciously adopted a false
kind of superiority, conventional in its character, and resting upon
arbitrary principles,--a tradition, as it were, handed down in the
higher circles, and, like a password, subject to alteration; I refer
to _bon-ton_ fashion. Whenever this kind of superiority comes into
collision with the real kind, its weakness is manifest. Moreover, the
presence of _good tone_ means the absence of _good sense_.
No man can be in _perfect accord_ with any one but himself--not even
with a friend or the partner of his life; differences of individuality
and temperament are always bringing in some degree of discord, though
it may be a very slight one. That genuine, profound peace of mind,
that perfect tranquillity of soul, which, next to health, is the
highest blessing the earth can give, is to be attained only in
solitude, and, as a permanent mood, only in complete retirement; and
then, if there is anything great and rich in the man's own self, his
way of life is the happiest that may be found in this wretched world.
Let me speak plainly. However close the bond of friendship, love,
marriage--a man, ultimately, looks to himself, to his own welfare
alone; at most, to his child's too. The less necessity there is for
you to come into contact with mankind in general, in the relations
whether of business or of personal intimacy, the better off you are.
Loneliness and solitude have their evils, it is true; but if you
cannot feel them all at once, you can at least see where they lie; on
the other hand, society is _insidious_ in this respect; as in offering
you what appears to be the pastime of pleasing social intercourse, it
works great and often irreparable mischief. The young should early be
trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and
peace of mind.
It follows from this that a man is best off if he be thrown upon his
own resources and can be all in all to himself; and Cicero goes so far
as to say that a man who is in this condition cannot fail to be very
happy--_nemo potest non beatissimus esse qui est totus aptus ex sese,
quique in se uno ponit omnia._[1] The more a man has in himself, the
less others can be to him. The feeling of self-sufficiency! it is that
which restrains those whose personal value is in itself great riches,
from such considerable sacrifices as are demanded by intercourse with
the world, let alone, then, from actually practicing self-denial by
going out of their way to seek it. Ordinary people are sociable and
complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;--to bear others'
company is easier for them than to bear their own. Moreover, respect
is not paid in this world to that which has real merit; it is reserved
for that which has none. So retirement is at once a proof and a result
of being distinguished by the possession of meritorious qualities. It
will therefore show real wisdom on the part of any one who is worth
anything in himself, to limit his requirements as may be necessary, in
order to preserve or extend his freedom, and,--since a man must come
into some relations with his fellow-men--to admit them to his intimacy
as little as possible.
[Footnote 1: _Paradoxa Stoidorum_: II.]
I have said that people are rendered sociable by their ability to
endure solitude, that is to say, their own society. They become
sick of themselves. It is this vacuity of soul which drives them to
intercourse with others,--to travels in foreign countries. Their mind
is wanting in elasticity; it has no movement of its own, and so they
try to give it some,--by drink, for instance. How much drunkenness
is due to this cause alone! They are always looking for some form of
excitement, of the strongest kind they can bear--the excitement of
being with people of like nature with themselves; and if they fail
in this, their mind sinks by its own weight, and they fall into a
grievous lethargy.[1] Such people, it may be said, possess only a
small fraction of humanity in themselves; and it requires a great many
of them put together to make up a fair amount of it,--to attain any
degree of consciousness as men. A man, in the full sense of the
word,--a man _par excellence_--does not represent a fraction, but a
whole number: he is complete in himself.
[Footnote 1: It is a well-known fact, that we can more easily bear up
under evils which fall upon a great many people besides ourselves.
As boredom seems to be an evil of this kind, people band together to
offer it a common resistance. The love of life is at bottom only the
fear of death; and, in the same way, the social impulse does not rest
directly upon the love of society, but upon the fear of solitude; it
is not alone the charm of being in others' company that people seek,
it is the dreary oppression of being alone--the monotony of their own
consciousness--that they would avoid. They will do anything to escape
it,--even tolerate bad companions, and put up with the feeling of
constraint which all society involves, in this case a very burdensome
one. But if aversion to such society conquers the aversion to being
alone, they become accustomed to solitude and hardened to its
immediate effects. They no longer find solitude to be such a very bad
thing, and settle down comfortably to it without any hankering after
society;--and this, partly because it is only indirectly that they
need others' company, and partly because they have become accustomed
to the benefits of being alone.]
Ordinary society is, in this respect, very like the kind of music to
be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian horns. Each horn has
only one note; and the music is produced by each note coming in just
at the right moment. In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you
have a precise illustration of the effect of most people's minds. How
often there seems to be only one thought there! and no room for any
other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they
are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds--why mankind is so
_gregarious_. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man
find solitude intolerable. _Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui_:
folly is truly its own burden. Put a great many men together, and you
may get some result--some music from your horns!
A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any
help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument--a piano, say,
which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in
himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he
produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like
the piano, he has no place in a symphony: he is a soloist and performs
by himself,--in solitude, it may be; or, if in company with other
instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in
singing. However, those who are fond of society from time to time
may profit by this simile, and lay it down as a general rule that
deficiency of quality in those we meet may be to some extent
compensated by an increase in quantity. One man's company may be quite
enough, if he is clever; but where you have only ordinary people to
deal with, it is advisable to have a great many of them, so that
some advantage may accrue by letting them all work together,--on the
analogy of the horns; and may Heaven grant you patience for your task!
That mental vacuity and barrenness of soul to which I have alluded, is
responsible for another misfortune. When men of the better class form
a society for promoting some noble or ideal aim, the result almost
always is that the innumerable mob of humanity comes crowding in too,
as it always does everywhere, like vermin--their object being to try
and get rid of boredom, or some other defect of their nature; and
anything that will effect that, they seize upon at once, without the
slightest discrimination. Some of them will slip into that society,
or push themselves in, and then either soon destroy it altogether, or
alter it so much that in the end it comes to have a purpose the exact
opposite of that which it had at first.
This is not the only point of view from which the social impulse may
be regarded. On cold days people manage to get some warmth by crowding
together; and you can warm your mind in the same way--by bringing
it into contact with others. But a man who has a great deal of
intellectual warmth in himself will stand in no need of such
resources. I have written a little fable illustrating this: it may be
found elsewhere.[1] As a general rule, it may be said that a man's
sociability stands very nearly in inverse ratio to his intellectual
value: to say that "so and so" is very unsociable, is almost
tantamount to saying that he is a man of great capacity.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. The passage to which Schopenhauer
refers is _Parerga_: vol. ii. § 413 (4th edition). The fable is of
certain porcupines, who huddled together for warmth on a cold day;
but as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were
obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when
just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling
and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by
remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way,
the need of society drives the human porcupines together--only to be
mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of
their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be
the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness
and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told--in
the English phrase--_to keep their distance_. By this arrangement the
mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied,--but then
people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers
to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get
pricked himself.]
Solitude is doubly advantageous to such a man. Firstly, it allows
him to be with himself, and, secondly, it prevents him being with
others--an advantage of great moment; for how much constraint,
annoyance, and even danger there is in all intercourse with the world.
_Tout notre mal_, says La Bruyère, _vient de ne pouvoir être seul_. It
is really a very risky, nay, a fatal thing, to be sociable; because
it means contact with natures, the great majority of which are bad
morally, and dull or perverse, intellectually. To be unsociable is not
to care about such people; and to have enough in oneself to dispense
with the necessity of their company is a great piece of good fortune;
because almost all our sufferings spring from having to do with other
people; and that destroys the peace of mind, which, as I have said,
comes next after health in the elements of happiness. Peace of mind
is impossible without a considerable amount of solitude. The Cynics
renounced all private property in order to attain the bliss of having
nothing to trouble them; and to renounce society with the same object
is the wisest thing a man can do. Bernardin de Saint Pierre has the
very excellent and pertinent remark that to be sparing in regard
to food is a means of health; in regard to society, a means of
tranquillity--_la diète des ailmens nous rend la santé du corps, et
celle des hommes la tranquillité de l'âme._ To be soon on friendly, or
even affectionate, terms with solitude is like winning a gold mine;
but this is not something which everybody can do. The prime reason for
social intercourse is mutual need; and as soon as that is satisfied,
boredom drives people together once more. If it were not for these two
reasons, a man would probably elect to remain alone; if only because
solitude is the sole condition of life which gives full play to
that feeling of exclusive importance which every man has in his own
eyes,--as if he were the only person in the world! a feeling which,
in the throng and press of real life, soon shrivels up to nothing,
getting, at every step, a painful _démenti_. From this point of view
it may be said that solitude is the original and natural state of man,
where, like another Adam, he is as happy as his nature will allow.
But still, had Adam no father or mother? There is another sense in
which solitude is not the natural state; for, at his entrance into the
world, a man finds himself with parents, brothers, sisters, that is to
say, in society, and not alone. Accordingly it cannot be said that the
love of solitude is an original characteristic of human nature; it is
rather the result of experience and reflection, and these in their
turn depend upon the development of intellectual power, and increase
with the years.
Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A
little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for
only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great
punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one
another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are
glad now and then to be alone;--but to spend the whole day thus would
be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble
to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he
advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is
either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper
element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency
to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to
intellectual capacity.
For this tendency is not, as I have said, a purely natural one; it
does not come into existence as a direct need of human nature; it is
rather the effect of the experience we go through, the product
of reflection upon what our needs really are; proceeding, more
especially, from the insight we attain into the wretched stuff of
which most people are made, whether you look at their morals or their
intellects. The worst of it all is that, in the individual, moral and
intellectual shortcomings are closely connected and play into each
other's hands, so that all manner of disagreeable results are
obtained, which make intercourse with most people not only unpleasant
but intolerable. Hence, though the world contains many things which
are thoroughly bad, the worst thing in it is society. Even Voltaire,
that sociable Frenchman, was obliged to admit that there are
everywhere crowds of people not worth talking to: _la terre est
couverte de gens qui ne méritent pas qu'on leur parle_. And Petrarch
gives a similar reason for wishing to be alone--that tender spirit! so
strong and constant in his love of seclusion. The streams, the plains
and woods know well, he says, how he has tried to escape the perverse
and stupid people who have missed the way to heaven:--
_Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita
(Le rive il sanno, e le campagne e i boschi)
Per fuggir quest' ingegni storti e loschi
Che la strada del ciel' hanno smarrita_.
He pursues the same strain in that delightful book of his, _DeVita
Solitaria_, which seems to have given Zimmerman the idea of his
celebrated work on _Solitude_. It is the secondary and indirect
character of the love of seclusion to which Chamfort alludes in the
following passage, couched in his sarcastic vein: _On dit quelquefois
d'un homme qui vit seul, il n'aime pas la société. C'est souvent
comme si on disait d'un homme qu'il n'aime pas la promenade, sous le
pretexte qu'il ne se promène pas volontiers le soir dans le forêt de
Bondy_.
You will find a similar sentiment expressed by the Persian poet Sadi,
in his _Garden of Roses. Since that time_, he says, _we have taken
leave of society, preferring the path of seclusion; for there is
safety in solitude_. Angelus Silesius,[1] a very gentle and Christian
writer, confesses to the same feeling, in his own mythical language.
Herod, he says, is the common enemy; and when, as with Joseph, God
warns us of danger, we fly from the world to solitude, from Bethlehem
to Egypt; or else suffering and death await us!--
_Herodes ist ein Feind; der Joseph der Verstand,
Dem machte Gott die Gefahr im Traum (in Geist) bekannt;
Die Welt ist Bethlehem, Aegypten Einsamkeit,
Fleuch, meine Seele! fleuch, sonst stirbest du vor Leid_.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. Angelus Silesius, pseudonym for
Johannes Scheffler, a physician and mystic poet of the seventeenth
century (1624-77).]
Giordano Bruno also declares himself a friend of seclusion. _Tanti
uomini_, he says, _che in terra hanno voluto gustare vita
celeste, dissero con una voce, "ecce elongavi fugiens et mansi in
solitudine_"--those who in this world have desired a foretaste of the
divine life, have always proclaimed with one voice:
_Lo! then would I wander far off;
I would lodge in the wilderness._[1]
[Footnote 1: Psalms, lv. 7.]
And in the work from which I have already quoted, Sadi says of
himself: _In disgust with my friends at Damascus, I withdrew into
the desert about Jerusalem, to seek the society of the beasts of the
field_. In short, the same thing has been said by all whom Prometheus
has formed out of better clay. What pleasure could they find in the
company of people with whom their only common ground is just what is
lowest and least noble in their own nature--the part of them that is
commonplace, trivial and vulgar? What do they want with people who
cannot rise to a higher level, and for whom nothing remains but to
drag others down to theirs? for this is what they aim at. It is an
aristocratic feeling that is at the bottom of this propensity to
seclusion and solitude.
Rascals are always sociable--more's the pity! and the chief sign that
a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he
takes in others' company. He prefers solitude more and more, and, in
course of time, comes to see that, with few exceptions, the world
offers no choice beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the
other. This may sound a hard thing to say; but even Angelus Silesius,
with all his Christian feelings of gentleness and love, was obliged to
admit the truth of it. However painful solitude may be, he says, be
careful not to be vulgar; for then you may find a desert everywhere:--
_Die Einsamkeit ist noth: doch sei nur nicht gemein,
So kannst du überall in einer Wüste sein_.
It is natural for great minds--the true teachers of humanity--to care
little about the constant company of others; just as little as the
schoolmaster cares for joining in the gambols of the noisy crowd of
boys which surround him. The mission of these great minds is to guide
mankind over the sea of error to the haven of truth--to draw it forth
from the dark abysses of a barbarous vulgarity up into the light of
culture and refinement. Men of great intellect live in the world
without really belonging to it; and so, from their earliest years,
they feel that there is a perceptible difference between them and
other people. But it is only gradually, with the lapse of years,
that they come to a clear understanding of their position. Their
intellectual isolation is then reinforced by actual seclusion in their
manner of life; they let no one approach who is not in some degree
emancipated from the prevailing vulgarity.
From what has been said it is obvious that the love of solitude is
not a direct, original impulse in human nature, but rather something
secondary and of gradual growth. It is the more distinguishing feature
of nobler minds, developed not without some conquest of natural
desires, and now and then in actual opposition to the promptings of
Mephistopheles--bidding you exchange a morose and soul-destroying
solitude for life amongst men, for society; even the worst, he says,
will give a sense of human fellowship:--
_Hör' auf mit deinem Gram zu spielen,
Der, wie ein Geier, dir am Leben frisst:
Die schlechteste Gesellschaft lässt dich fühlen
Dass du ein Mensch mit Menschen bist.[1]_
[Footnote 1: Goethe's _Faust_, Part I., 1281-5.]
To be alone is the fate of all great minds--a fate deplored at times,
but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils. As
the years increase, it always becomes easier to say, Dare to be
wise--_sapere aude_. And after sixty, the inclination to be alone
grows into a kind of real, natural instinct; for at that age
everything combines in favor of it. The strongest impulse--the love of
woman's society--has little or no effect; it is the sexless condition
of old age which lays the foundation of a certain self-sufficiency,
and that gradually absorbs all desire for others' company. A thousand
illusions and follies are overcome; the active years of life are
in most cases gone; a man has no more expectations or plans or
intentions. The generation to which he belonged has passed away, and a
new race has sprung up which looks upon him as essentially outside its
sphere of activity. And then the years pass more quickly as we become
older, and we want to devote our remaining time to the intellectual
rather than to the practical side of life. For, provided that the mind
retains its faculties, the amount of knowledge and experience we have
acquired, together with the facility we have gained in the use of our
powers, makes it then more than ever easy and interesting to us to
pursue the study of any subject. A thousand things become clear which
were formerly enveloped in obscurity, and results are obtained which
give a feeling of difficulties overcome. From long experience of men,
we cease to expect much from them; we find that, on the whole, people
do not gain by a nearer acquaintance; and that--apart from a few rare
and fortunate exceptions--we have come across none but defective
specimens of human nature which it is advisable to leave in peace.
We are no more subject to the ordinary illusions of life; and as, in
individual instances, we soon see what a man is made of, we seldom
feel any inclination to come into closer relations with him. Finally,
isolation--our own society--has become a habit, as it were a second
nature to us, more especially if we have been on friendly terms with
it from our youth up. The love of solitude which was formerly indulged
only at the expense of our desire for society, has now come to be the
simple quality of our natural disposition--the element proper to our
life, as water to a fish. This is why anyone who possesses a unique
individuality--unlike others and therefore necessarily isolated--feels
that, as he becomes older, his position is no longer so burdensome as
when he was young.
For, as a matter of fact, this very genuine privilege of old age is
one which can be enjoyed only if a man is possessed of a certain
amount of intellect; it will be appreciated most of all where there is
real mental power; but in some degree by every one. It is only people
of very barren and vulgar nature who will be just as sociable in their
old age as they were in their youth. But then they become troublesome
to a society to which they are no longer suited, and, at most, manage
to be tolerated; whereas, they were formerly in great request.
There is another aspect of this inverse proportion between age and
sociability--the way in which it conduces to education. The younger
that people are, the more in every respect they have to learn; and it
is just in youth that Nature provides a system of mutual education,
so that mere intercourse with others, at that time of life, carries
instruction with it. Human society, from this point of view, resembles
a huge academy of learning, on the Bell and Lancaster system, opposed
to the system of education by means of books and schools, as something
artificial and contrary to the institutions of Nature. It is therefore
a very suitable arrangement that, in his young days, a man should be
a very diligent student at the place of learning provided by Nature
herself.
But there is nothing in life which has not some drawback--_nihil est
ab omni parte beatum_, as Horace says; or, in the words of an Indian
proverb, _no lotus without a stalk_. Seclusion, which has so many
advantages, has also its little annoyances and drawbacks, which are
small, however, in comparison with those of society; hence anyone who
is worth much in himself will get on better without other people than
with them. But amongst the disadvantages of seclusion there is one
which is not so easy to see as the rest. It is this: when people
remain indoors all day, they become physically very sensitive to
atmospheric changes, so that every little draught is enough to make
them ill; so with our temper; a long course of seclusion makes it so
sensitive that the most trivial incidents, words, or even looks, are
sufficient to disturb or to vex and offend us--little things which are
unnoticed by those who live in the turmoil of life.
When you find human society disagreeable and feel yourself justified
in flying to solitude, you can be so constituted as to be unable to
bear the depression of it for any length of time, which will probably
be the case if you are young. Let me advise you, then, to form the
habit of taking some of your solitude with you into society, to learn
to be to some extent alone even though you are in company; not to say
at once what you think, and, on the other hand, not to attach too
precise a meaning to what others say; rather, not to expect much of
them, either morally or intellectually, and to strengthen yourself in
the feeling of indifference to their opinion, which is the surest way
of always practicing a praiseworthy toleration. If you do that, you
will not live so much with other people, though you may appear to move
amongst them: your relation to them will be of a purely objective
character. This precaution will keep you from too close contact with
society, and therefore secure you against being contaminated or even
outraged by it.[1] Society is in this respect like a fire--the wise
man warming himself at a proper distance from it; not coming too
close, like the fool, who, on getting scorched, runs away and shivers
in solitude, loud in his complaint that the fire burns.
[Footnote 1: This restricted, or, as it were, entrenched kind of
sociability has been dramatically illustrated in a play--well worth
reading--of Moratin's, entitled _El Café o sea la Comedia Nuova_ (The
Cafe or the New Comedy), chiefly by one of the characters, Don Pedro
and especially in the second and third scenes of the first act.]
SECTION 10. _Envy_ is natural to man; and still, it is at once a vice
and a source of misery.[1] We should treat it as the enemy of our
happiness, and stifle it like an evil thought. This is the advice
given by Seneca; as he well puts it, we shall be pleased with what we
have, if we avoid the self-torture of comparing our own lot with
some other and happier one--_nostra nos sine comparatione delectent;
nunquam erit felix quem torquebit felicior.[2]_ And again, _quum
adspexeris quot te antecedent, cogita quot sequantur_[3]--if a great
many people appear to be better off than yourself, think how many
there are in a worse position. It is a fact that if real calamity
comes upon us, the most effective consolation--though it springs from
the same source as envy--is just the thought of greater misfortunes
than ours; and the next best is the society of those who are in the
same luck as we--the partners of our sorrows.
[Footnote 1: Envy shows how unhappy people are; and their constant
attention to what others do and leave undone, how much they are
bored.]
[Footnote 2: _De Ira_: iii., 30.]
[Footnote 3: Epist. xv.]
So much for the envy which we may feel towards others. As regards the
envy which we may excite in them, it should always be remembered that
no form of hatred is so implacable as the hatred that comes from envy;
and therefore we should always carefully refrain from doing anything
to rouse it; nay, as with many another form of vice, it is better
altogether to renounce any pleasure there may be in it, because of the
serious nature of its consequences.
Aristocracies are of three kinds: (1) of birth and rank; (2)
of wealth; and (3) of intellect. The last is really the most
distinguished of the three, and its claim to occupy the first position
comes to be recognized, if it is only allowed time to work. So eminent
a king as Frederick the Great admitted it--_les âmes privilegiées
rangent à l'égal des souverains_, as he said to his chamberlain, when
the latter expressed his surprise that Voltaire should have a seat
at the table reserved for kings and princes, whilst ministers and
generals were relegated to the chamberlain's.
Every one of these aristocracies is surrounded by a host of envious
persons. If you belong to one of them, they will be secretly
embittered against you; and unless they are restrained by fear, they
will always be anxious to let you understand that _you are no better
than they_. It is by their anxiety to let you know this, that they
betray how greatly they are conscious that the opposite is the truth.
The line of conduct to be pursued if you are exposed to envy, is to
keep the envious persons at a distance, and, as far as possible, avoid
all contact with them, so that there may be a wide gulf fixed between
you and them; if this cannot be done, to bear their attacks with the
greatest composure. In the latter case, the very thing that provokes
the attack will also neutralize it. This is what appears to be
generally done.
The members of one of these aristocracies usually get on very well
with those of another, and there is no call for envy between them,
because their several privileges effect an equipoise.
SECTION 11. Give mature and repeated consideration to any plan before
you proceed to carry it out; and even after you have thoroughly turned
it over in your mind, make some concession to the incompetency of
human judgment; for it may always happen that circumstances which
cannot be investigated or foreseen, will come in and upset the whole
of your calculation. This is a reflection that will always influence
the negative side of the balance--a kind of warning to refrain from
unnecessary action in matters of importance--_quieta non movere._ But
having once made up your mind and begun your work, you must let it
run its course and abide the result--not worry yourself by fresh
reflections on what is already accomplished, or by a renewal of your
scruples on the score of possible danger: free your mind from the
subject altogether, and refuse to go into it again, secure in the
thought that you gave it mature attention at the proper time. This is
the same advice as is given by an Italian proverb--_legala bene e poi
lascia la andare_--which Goethe has translated thus: See well to your
girths, and then ride on boldly.[1]
[Footnote 1: It may be observed, in passing, that a great many of
the maxims which Goethe puts under the head of _Proverbial_, are
translations from the Italian.]
And if, notwithstanding that, you fail, it is because human affairs
are the sport of chance and error. Socrates, the wisest of men, needed
the warning voice of his good genius, or [Greek: daimonion], to enable
him to do what was right in regard to his own personal affairs, or at
any rate, to avoid mistakes; which argues that the human intellect is
incompetent for the purpose. There is a saying--which is reported to
have originated with one of the Popes--that when misfortune happens to
us, the blame of it, at least in some degree, attaches to ourselves.
If this is not true absolutely and in every instance, it is certainly
true in the great majority of cases. It even looks as if this truth
had a great deal to do with the effort people make as far as possible
to conceal their misfortunes, and to put the best face they can upon
them, for fear lest their misfortunes may show how much they are to
blame.
SECTION 12.
In the case of a misfortune which has already happened and therefore
cannot be altered, you should not allow yourself to think that it
might have been otherwise; still less, that it might have been avoided
by such and such means; for reflections of this kind will only add
to your distress and make it intolerable, so that you will become a
tormentor to yourself--[Greek: heautontimoroumeaeos]. It is better to
follow the example of King David; who, as long as his son lay on the
bed of sickness, assailed Jehovah with unceasing supplications and
entreaties for his recovery; but when he was dead, snapped his fingers
and thought no more of it. If you are not light-hearted enough for
that, you can take refuge in fatalism, and have the great truth
revealed to you that everything which happens is the result of
necessity, and therefore inevitable.
However good this advice may be, it is one-sided and partial. In
relieving and quieting us for the moment, it is no doubt effective
enough; but when our misfortunes have resulted--as is usually the
case--from our own carelessness or folly, or, at any rate, partly by
our own fault, it is a good thing to consider how they might have
been avoided, and to consider it often in spite of its being a tender
subject--a salutary form of self-discipline, which will make us wiser
and better men for the future. If we have made obvious mistakes, we
should not try, as we generally do, to gloss them over, or to find
something to excuse or extenuate them; we should admit to ourselves
that we have committed faults, and open our eyes wide to all their
enormity, in order that we may firmly resolve to avoid them in time to
come. To be sure, that means a great deal of self-inflicted pain, in
the shape of discontent, but it should be remembered that to spare
the rod is to spoil the child--[Greek: ho mae dareis anthropos ou
paideuetai].[1]
[Footnote 1: Menander. Monost: 422.]
SECTION 13. In all matters affecting our weal or woe, we should be
careful not to let our imagination run away with us, and build no
castles in the air. In the first place, they are expensive to build,
because we have to pull them down again immediately, and that is
a source of grief. We should be still more on our guard against
distressing our hearts by depicting possible misfortunes. If these
were misfortunes of a purely imaginary kind, or very remote and
unlikely, we should at once see, on awaking from our dream, that the
whole thing was mere illusion; we should rejoice all the more in
a reality better than our dreams, or at most, be warned against
misfortunes which, though very remote, were still possible. These,
however, are not the sort of playthings in which imagination delights;
it is only in idle hours that we build castles in the air, and they
are always of a pleasing description. The matter which goes to form
gloomy dreams are mischances which to some extent really threaten us,
though it be from some distance; imagination makes us look larger and
nearer and more terrible than they are in reality. This is a kind of
dream which cannot be so readily shaken off on awaking as a pleasant
one; for a pleasant dream is soon dispelled by reality, leaving, at
most, a feeble hope lying in the lap of possibility. Once we have
abandoned ourselves to a fit of the blues, visions are conjured up
which do not so easily vanish again; for it is always just possible
that the visions may be realized. But we are not always able to
estimate the exact degree of possibility: possibility may easily
pass into probability; and thus we deliver ourselves up to torture.
Therefore we should be careful not to be over-anxious on any
matter affecting our weal or our woe, not to carry our anxiety to
unreasonable or injudicious limits; but coolly and dispassionately to
deliberate upon the matter, as though it were an abstract question
which did not touch us in particular. We should give no play to
imagination here; for imagination is not judgment--it only conjures up
visions, inducing an unprofitable and often very painful mood.
The rule on which I am here insisting should be most carefully
observed towards evening. For as darkness makes us timid and apt to
see terrifying shapes everywhere, there is something similar in the
effect of indistinct thought; and uncertainty always brings with it a
sense of danger. Hence, towards evening, when our powers of thought
and judgment are relaxed,--at the hour, as it were, of subjective
darkness,--the intellect becomes tired, easily confused, and unable
to get at the bottom of things; and if, in that state, we meditate
on matters of personal interest to ourselves, they soon assume a
dangerous and terrifying aspect. This is mostly the case at night,
when we are in bed; for then the mind is fully relaxed, and the power
of judgment quite unequal to its duties; but imagination is still
awake. Night gives a black look to everything, whatever it may be.
This is why our thoughts, just before we go to sleep, or as we lie
awake through the hours of the night, are usually such confusions and
perversions of facts as dreams themselves; and when our thoughts at
that time are concentrated upon our own concerns, they are generally
as black and monstrous as possible. In the morning all such nightmares
vanish like dreams: as the Spanish proverb has it, _noche tinta,
bianco el dia_--the night is colored, the day is white. But even
towards nightfall, as soon as the candles are lit, the mind, like the
eye, no longer sees things so clearly as by day: it is a time unsuited
to serious meditation, especially on unpleasant subjects. The morning
is the proper time for that--as indeed for all efforts without
exception, whether mental or bodily. For the morning is the youth of
the day, when everything is bright, fresh, and easy of attainment;
we feel strong then, and all our faculties are completely at our
disposal. Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it
in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence
of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we
are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking
and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every
going to rest and sleep a little death.
But condition of health, sleep, nourishment, temperature, weather,
surroundings, and much else that is purely external, have, in general,
an important influence upon our mood and therefore upon our thoughts.
Hence both our view of any matter and our capacity for any work are
very much subject to time and place. So it is best to profit by a good
mood--for how seldom it comes!--
_Nehmt die gute Stimmung wahr,
Denn sie kommt so selten_.[1]
[Footnote 1: Goethe.]
We are not always able to form new ideas about; our surroundings, or
to command original thoughts: they come if they will, and when they
will. And so, too, we cannot always succeed in completely considering
some personal matter at the precise time at which we have determined
beforehand to consider it, and just when we set ourselves to do
so. For the peculiar train of thought which is favorable to it may
suddenly become active without any special call being made upon
it, and we may then follow it up with keen interest. In this way
reflection, too, chooses its own time.
This reining-in of the imagination which I am recommending, will also
forbid us to summon up the memory of the past misfortune, to paint
a dark picture of the injustice or harm that has been done us, the
losses we have sustained, the insults, slights and annoyances to which
we have been exposed: for to do that is to rouse into fresh life all
those hateful passions long laid asleep--the anger and resentment
which disturb and pollute our nature. In an excellent parable,
Proclus, the Neoplatonist, points out how in every town the mob dwells
side by side with those who are rich and distinguished: so, too, in
every man, be he never so noble and dignified, there is, in the depth
of his nature, a mob of low and vulgar desires which constitute him an
animal. It will not do to let this mob revolt or even so much as peep
forth from its hiding-place; it is hideous of mien, and its rebel
leaders are those flights of imagination which I have been describing.
The smallest annoyance, whether it comes from our fellow-men or from
the things around us, may swell up into a monster of dreadful aspect,
putting us at our wits' end--and all because we go on brooding over
our troubles and painting them in the most glaring colors and on the
largest scale. It is much better to take a very calm and prosaic view
of what is disagreeable; for that is the easiest way of bearing it.
If you hold small objects close to your eyes, you limit your field of
vision and shut out the world. And, in the same way, the people or the
things which stand nearest, even though they are of the very smallest
consequence, are apt to claim an amount of attention much beyond
their due, occupying us disagreeably, and leaving no room for serious
thoughts and affairs of importance. We ought to work against this
tendency.
SECTION 14. The sight of things which do not belong to us is very apt
to raise the thought: _Ah, if that were only mine_! making us sensible
of our privation. Instead of that we should do better by more
frequently putting to ourselves the opposite case: _Ah, if that were
not mine_. What I mean is that we should sometimes try to look upon
our possessions in the light in which they would appear if we had lost
them; whatever they may be, property, health, friends, a wife or child
or someone else we love, our horse or our dog--it is usually only when
we have lost them that we begin to find out their value. But if we
come to look at things in the way I recommend, we shall be doubly the
gainers; we shall at once get more pleasure out of them than we did
before, and we shall do everything in our power to prevent the loss
of them; for instance, by not risking our property, or angering our
friends, or exposing our wives to temptation, or being careless about
our children's health, and so on.
We often try to banish the gloom and despondency of the present by
speculating upon our chances of success in the future; a process which
leads us to invent a great many chimerical hopes. Every one of them
contains the germ of illusion, and disappointment is inevitable when
our hopes are shattered by the hard facts of life.
It is less hurtful to take the chances of misfortune as a theme for
speculation; because, in doing so, we provide ourselves at once with
measures of precaution against it, and a pleasant surprise when it
fails to make its appearance. Is it not a fact that we always feel a
marked improvement in our spirits when we begin to get over a period
of anxiety? I may go further and say that there is some use in
occasionally looking upon terrible misfortunes--such as might happen
to us--as though they had actually happened, for then the trivial
reverses which subsequently come in reality, are much easier to
bear. It is a source of consolation to look back upon those great
misfortunes which never happened. But in following out this rule,
care must be taken not to neglect what I have said in the preceding
section.
SECTION 15. The things which engage our attention--whether they are
matters of business or ordinary events--are of such diverse kinds,
that, if taken quite separately and in no fixed order or relation,
they present a medley of the most glaring contrasts, with nothing in
common, except that they one and all affect us in particular. There
must be a corresponding abruptness in the thoughts and anxieties which
these various matters arouse in us, if our thoughts are to be in
keeping with their various subjects. Therefore, in setting about
anything, the first step is to withdraw our attention from everything
else: this will enable us to attend to each matter at its own time,
and to enjoy or put up with it, quite apart from any thought of our
remaining interests. Our thoughts must be arranged, as it were, in
little drawers, so that we may open one without disturbing any of the
others.
In this way we can keep the heavy burden of anxiety from weighing upon
us so much as to spoil the little pleasures of the present, or from
robbing us of our rest; otherwise the consideration of one matter will
interfere with every other, and attention to some important business
may lead us to neglect many affairs which happen to be of less moment.
It is most important for everyone who is capable of higher and nobler
thoughts to keep their mind from being so completely engrossed with
private affairs and vulgar troubles as to let them take up all his
attention and crowd out worthier matter; for that is, in a very real
sense, to lose sight of the true end of life--_propter vitam vivendi
perdere causas_.
Of course for this--as for so much else--self-control is necessary;
without it, we cannot manage ourselves in the way I have described.
And self-control may not appear so very difficult, if we consider that
every man has to submit to a great deal of very severe control on the
part of his surroundings, and that without it no form of existence
is possible. Further, a little self-control at the right moment may
prevent much subsequent compulsion at the hands of others; just as a
very small section of a circle close to the centre may correspond to
a part near the circumference a hundred times as large. Nothing
will protect us from external compulsion so much as the control of
ourselves; and, as Seneca says, to submit yourself to reason is
the way to make everything else submit to you--_si tibi vis omnia
subjicere, te subjice rationi_. Self-control, too, is something which
we have in our own power; and if the worst comes to the worst, and it
touches us in a very sensitive part, we can always relax its severity.
But other people will pay no regard to our feelings, if they have
to use compulsion, and we shall be treated without pity or mercy.
Therefore it will be prudent to anticipate compulsion by self-control.
SECTION 16. We must set limits to our wishes, curb our desires,
moderate our anger, always remembering that an individual can attain
only an infinitesimal share in anything that is worth having; and
that, on the other hand, everyone must incur many of the ills of life;
in a word, we must bear and forbear--_abstinere et sustinere_; and
if we fail to observe this rule, no position of wealth or power will
prevent us from feeling wretched. This is what Horace means when he
recommends us to study carefully and inquire diligently what will
best promote a tranquil life--not to be always agitated by fruitless
desires and fears and hopes for things, which, after all, are not
worth very much:--
_Inter cuncta leges et percontabere doctos
Qua ratione queas traducere leniter aevum;
Ne te semper inops agitet vexetque cupido,
Ne pavor, et rerum mediocriter utilium spes.[1]_
[Footnote 1: Epist. I. xviii. 97.]
SECTION 17. Life consists in movement, says Aristotle; and he is
obviously right. We exist, physically, because our organism is the
seat of constant motion; and if we are to exist intellectually, it can
only be by means of continual occupation--no matter with what so long
as it is some form of practical or mental activity. You may see that
this is so by the way in which people who have no work or nothing to
think about, immediately begin to beat the devil's tattoo with their
knuckles or a stick or anything that comes handy. The truth is, that
our nature is essentially _restless_ in its character: we very soon
get tired of having nothing to do; it is intolerable boredom. This
impulse to activity should be regulated, and some sort of method
introduced into it, which of itself will enhance the satisfaction we
obtain. Activity!--doing something, if possible creating something, at
any rate learning something--how fortunate it is that men cannot exist
without that! A man wants to use his strength, to see, if he can, what
effect it will produce; and he will get the most complete satisfaction
of this desire if he can make or construct something--be it a book or
a basket. There is a direct pleasure in seeing work grow under one's
hands day by day, until at last it is finished. This is the pleasure
attaching to a work of art or a manuscript, or even mere manual labor;
and, of course, the higher the work, the greater pleasure it will
give.
From this point of view, those are happiest of all who are conscious
of the power to produce great works animated by some significant
purpose: it gives a higher kind of interest--a sort of rare flavor--to
the whole of their life, which, by its absence from the life of the
ordinary man, makes it, in comparison, something very insipid. For
richly endowed natures, life and the world have a special interest
beyond the mere everyday personal interest which so many others share;
and something higher than that--a formal interest. It is from life and
the world that they get the material for their works; and as soon
as they are freed from the pressure of personal needs, it is to
the diligent collection of material that they devote their whole
existence. So with their intellect: it is to some extent of a two-fold
character, and devoted partly to the ordinary affairs of every
day--those matters of will which are common to them and the rest of
mankind, and partly to their peculiar work--the pure and objective
contemplation of existence. And while, on the stage of the world, most
men play their little part and then pass away, the genius lives a
double life, at once an actor and a spectator.
Let everyone, then, do something, according to the measure of his
capacities. To have no regular work, no set sphere of activity--what a
miserable thing it is! How often long travels undertaken for pleasure
make a man downright unhappy; because the absence of anything that can
be called occupation forces him, as it were, out of his right element.
Effort, struggles with difficulties! that is as natural to a man as
grubbing in the ground is to a mole. To have all his wants satisfied
is something intolerable--the feeling of stagnation which comes
from pleasures that last too long. To overcome difficulties is
to experience the full delight of existence, no matter where the
obstacles are encountered; whether in the affairs of life, in commerce
or business; or in mental effort--the spirit of inquiry that tries
to master its subject. There is always something pleasurable in the
struggle and the victory. And if a man has no opportunity to excite
himself, he will do what he can to create one, and according to his
individual bent, he will hunt or play Cup and Ball: or led on by this
unsuspected element in his nature, he will pick a quarrel with some
one, or hatch a plot or intrigue, or take to swindling and rascally
courses generally--all to put an end to a state of repose which is
intolerable. As I have remarked, _difficilis in otio quies_--it is
difficult to keep quiet if you have nothing to do.
SECTION 18. A man should avoid being led on by the phantoms of his
imagination. This is not the same thing as to submit to the guidance
of ideas clearly thought out: and yet these are rules of life which
most people pervert. If you examine closely into the circumstances
which, in any deliberation, ultimately turn the scale in favor of
some particular course, you will generally find that the decision is
influenced, not by any clear arrangement of ideas leading to a formal
judgment, but by some fanciful picture which seems to stand for one of
the alternatives in question.
In one of Voltaire's or Diderot's romances,--I forget the precise
reference,--the hero, standing like a young Hercules at the parting
of ways, can see no other representation of Virtue than his old tutor
holding a snuff-box in his left hand, from which he takes a pinch
and moralizes; whilst Vice appears in the shape of his mother's
chambermaid. It is in youth, more especially, that the goal of our
efforts comes to be a fanciful picture of happiness, which continues
to hover before our eyes sometimes for half and even for the whole of
our life--a sort of mocking spirit; for when we think our dream is to
be realized, the picture fades away, leaving us the knowledge that
nothing of what it promised is actually accomplished. How often this
is so with the visions of domesticity--the detailed picture of what
our home will be like; or, of life among our fellow-citizens or in
society; or, again, of living in the country--the kind of house we
shall have, its surroundings, the marks of honor and respect that will
be paid to us, and so on,--whatever our hobby may be; _chaque fou a
sa marotte_. It is often the same, too, with our dreams about one we
love. And this is all quite natural; for the visions we conjure up
affect us directly, as though they were real objects; and so they
exercise a more immediate influence upon our will than an abstract
idea, which gives merely a vague, general outline, devoid of details;
and the details are just the real part of it. We can be only
indirectly affected by an abstract idea, and yet it is the abstract
idea alone which will do as much as it promises; and it is the
function of education to teach us to put our trust in it. Of course
the abstract idea must be occasionally explained--paraphrased, as it
were--by the aid of pictures; but discreetly, _cum grano salis_.
SECTION 19. The preceding rule may be taken as a special case of the
more general maxim, that a man should never let himself be mastered
by the impressions of the moment, or indeed by outward appearances at
all, which are incomparably more powerful in their effects than the
mere play of thought or a train of ideas; not because these momentary
impressions are rich in virtue of the data they supply,--it is often
just the contrary,--but because they are something palpable to the
senses and direct in their working; they forcibly invade our mind,
disturbing our repose and shattering our resolutions.
It is easy to understand that the thing which lies before our very
eyes will produce the whole of its effect at once, but that time and
leisure are necessary for the working of thought and the appreciation
of argument, as it is impossible to think of everything at one and the
same moment. This is why we are so allured by pleasure, in spite of
all our determination to resist it; or so much annoyed by a criticism,
even though we know that its author it totally incompetent to
judge; or so irritated by an insult, though it comes from some very
contemptible quarter. In the same way, to mention no other instances,
ten reasons for thinking that there is no danger may be outweighed by
one mistaken notion that it is actually at hand. All this shows the
radical unreason of human nature. Women frequently succumb altogether
to this predominating influence of present impressions, and there are
few men so overweighted with reason as to escape suffering from a
similar cause.
If it is impossible to resist the effects of some external influence
by the mere play of thought, the best thing to do is to neutralize it
by some contrary influence; for example, the effect of an insult may
be overcome by seeking the society of those who have a good opinion of
us; and the unpleasant sensation of imminent danger may be avoided by
fixing our attention on the means of warding it off.
Leibnitz[1] tells of an Italian who managed to bear up under the
tortures of the rack by never for a moment ceasing to think of the
gallows which would have awaited him, had he revealed his secret; he
kept on crying out: _I see it! I see it_!--afterwards explaining that
this was part of his plan.
[Footnote 1: _Nouveaux Essais_. Liv. I. ch. 2. Sec. 11.]
It is from some such reason as this, that we find it so difficult to
stand alone in a matter of opinion,--not to be made irresolute by the
fact that everyone else disagrees with us and acts accordingly, even
though we are quite sure that they are in the wrong. Take the case of
a fugitive king who is trying to avoid capture; how much consolation
he must find in the ceremonious and submissive attitude of a faithful
follower, exhibited secretly so as not to betray his master's strict
_incognito_; it must be almost necessary to prevent him doubting his
own existence.
SECTION 20. In the first part of this work I have insisted upon the
great value of _health_ as the chief and most important element in
happiness. Let me emphasize and confirm what I have there said by
giving a few general rules as to its preservation.
The way to harden the body is to impose a great deal of labor and
effort upon it in the days of good health,--to exercise it, both as a
whole and in its several parts, and to habituate it to withstand all
kinds of noxious influences. But on the appearance of an illness or
disorder, either in the body as a whole or in many of its parts, a
contrary course should be taken, and every means used to nurse the
body, or the part of it which is affected, and to spare it any effort;
for what is ailing and debilitated cannot be hardened.
The muscles may be strengthened by a vigorous use of them; but not so
the nerves; they are weakened by it. Therefore, while exercising the
muscles in every way that is suitable, care should be taken to spare
the nerves as much as possible. The eyes, for instance, should be
protected from too strong a light,--especially when it is reflected
light,--from any straining of them in the dark, or from the
long-continued examination of minute objects; and the ears from too
loud sounds. Above all, the brain should never be forced, or used too
much, or at the wrong time; let it have a rest during digestion; for
then the same vital energy which forms thoughts in the brain has a
great deal of work to do elsewhere,--I mean in the digestive organs,
where it prepares chyme and chyle. For similar reasons, the brain
should never be used during, or immediately after, violent muscular
exercise. For the motor nerves are in this respect on a par with the
sensory nerves; the pain felt when a limb is wounded has its seat in
the brain; and, in the same way, it is not really our legs and arms
which work and move,--it is the brain, or, more strictly, that part of
it which, through the medium of the spine, excites the nerves in the
limbs and sets them in motion. Accordingly, when our arms and legs
feel tired, the true seat of this feeling is in the brain. This is why
it is only in connection with those muscles which are set in motion
consciously and voluntarily,--in other words, depend for their action
upon the brain,--that any feeling of fatigue can arise; this is not
the case with those muscles which work involuntarily, like the heart.
It is obvious, then, that injury is done to the brain if violent
muscular exercise and intellectual exertion are forced upon it at the
same moment, or at very short intervals.
What I say stands in no contradiction with the fact that at the
beginning of a walk, or at any period of a short stroll, there often
comes a feeling of enhanced intellectual vigor. The parts of the brain
that come into play have had no time to become tired; and besides,
slight muscular exercise conduces to activity of the respiratory
organs, and causes a purer and more oxydated supply of arterial blood
to mount to the brain.
It is most important to allow the brain the full measure of sleep
which is required to restore it; for sleep is to a man's whole nature
what winding up is to a clock.[1] This measure will vary directly with
the development and activity of the brain; to overstep the measure is
mere waste of time, because if that is done, sleep gains only so much
in length as it loses in depth.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Of. Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, 4th Edition. Bk.
II. pp. 236-40.]
[Footnote: 2: _Cf. loc: cit_: p. 275. Sleep is a morsel of death
borrowed to keep up and renew the part of life which is exhausted by
the day--_le sommeil est un emprunt fait à la mort_. Or it might be
said that sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is
called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the
more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is
postponed.]
It should be clearly understood that thought is nothing but the
organic function of the brain; and it has to obey the same laws in
regard to exertion and repose as any other organic function. The brain
can be ruined by overstrain, just like the eyes. As the function of
the stomach is to digest, so it is that of the brain to think. The
notion of a _soul_,--as something elementary and immaterial, merely
lodging in the brain and needing nothing at all for the performance
of its essential function, which consists in always and unweariedly
_thinking_--has undoubtedly driven many people to foolish practices,
leading to a deadening of the intellectual powers; Frederick the
Great, even, once tried to form the habit of doing without sleep
altogether. It would be well if professors of philosophy refrained
from giving currency to a notion which is attended by practical
results of a pernicious character; but then this is just what
professorial philosophy does, in its old-womanish endeavor to keep on
good terms with the catechism. A man should accustom himself to
view his intellectual capacities in no other light than that of
physiological functions, and to manage them accordingly--nursing or
exercising them as the case may be; remembering that every kind of
physical suffering, malady or disorder, in whatever part of the body
it occurs, has its effect upon the mind. The best advice that I know
on this subject is given by Cabanis in his _Rapports du physique et du
moral de l'homme_.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. The work to which Schopenhauer
here refers is a series of essays by Cabanis, a French philosopher
(1757-1808), treating of mental and moral phenomena on a physiological
basis. In his later days, Cabanis completely abandoned his
materialistic standpoint.]
Through neglect of this rule, many men of genius and great scholars
have become weak-minded and childish, or even gone quite mad, as they
grew old. To take no other instances, there can be no doubt that the
celebrated English poets of the early part of this century, Scott,
Wordsworth, Southey, became intellectually dull and incapable towards
the end of their days, nay, soon after passing their sixtieth year;
and that their imbecility can be traced to the fact that, at that
period of life, they were all led on? by the promise of high pay, to
treat literature as a trade and to write for money. This seduced them
into an unnatural abuse of their intellectual powers; and a man who
puts his Pegasus into harness, and urges on his Muse with the whip,
will have to pay a penalty similar to that which is exacted by the
abuse of other kinds of power.
And even in the case of Kant, I suspect that the second childhood of
his last four years was due to overwork in later life, and after he
had succeeded in becoming a famous man.
Every month of the year has its own peculiar and direct influence upon
health and bodily condition generally; nay, even upon the state of the
mind. It is an influence dependent upon the weather.
CHAPTER III.
OUR RELATION TO OTHERS.--SECTION 21.
In making his way through life, a man will find it useful to be ready
and able to do two things: to look ahead and to overlook: the one
will protect him from loss and injury, the other from disputes and
squabbles.
No one who has to live amongst men should absolutely discard any
person who has his due place in the order of nature, even though he is
very wicked or contemptible or ridiculous. He must accept him as an
unalterable fact--unalterable, because the necessary outcome of an
eternal, fundamental principle; and in bad cases he should
remember the words of Mephistopheles: _es muss auch solche Käuze
geben[1]_--there must be fools and rogues in the world. If he acts
otherwise, he will be committing an injustice, and giving a challenge
of life and death to the man he discards. No one can alter his
own peculiar individuality, his moral character, his intellectual
capacity, his temperament or physique; and if we go so far as to
condemn a man from every point of view, there will be nothing left him
but to engage us in deadly conflict; for we are practically allowing
him the right to exist only on condition that he becomes another
man--which is impossible; his nature forbids it.
[Footnote 1: Goethe's _Faust_, Part I.]
So if you have to live amongst men, you must allow everyone the right
to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns
out to be: and all you should strive to do is to make use of this
character in such a way as its kind and nature permit, rather than to
hope for any alteration in it, or to condemn it off-hand for what it
is. This is the true sense of the maxim--Live and let live. That,
however, is a task which is difficult in proportion as it is right;
and he is a happy man who can once for all avoid having to do with a
great many of his fellow creatures.
The art of putting up with people may be learned by practicing
patience on inanimate objects, which, in virtue of some mechanical
or general physical necessity, oppose a stubborn resistance to our
freedom of action--a form of patience which is required every day.
The patience thus gained may be applied to our dealings with men,
by accustoming ourselves to regard their opposition, wherever we
encounter it, as the inevitable outcome of their nature, which sets
itself up against us in virtue of the same rigid law of necessity as
governs the resistance of inanimate objects. To become indignant at
their conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it
rolls into your path. And with many people the wisest thing you can
do, is to resolve to make use of those whom you cannot alter.