difficult to feel deep veneration and great affection for one and the
same person. If this is so, we shall have to choose whether it is
veneration or love that we want from our fellow-men.
Their love is always selfish, though in very different ways; and the
means used to gain it are not always of a kind to make us proud. A
man is loved by others mainly in the degree in which he moderates
his claim on their good feeling and intelligence: but he must act
genuinely in the matter and without dissimulation--not merely out of
forbearance, which is at bottom a kind of contempt. This calls to mind
a very true observation of Helvetius[1]: _the amount of intellect
necessary to please us, is a most accurate measure of the amount of
intellect we have ourselves_. With these remarks as premises, it is
easy to draw the conclusion.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. Helvetius, Claude-Adrien (1715-71),
a French philosophical writer much esteemed by Schopenhauer. His chief
work, _De l'Esprit_, excited great interest and opposition at the
time of its publication, on account of the author's pronounced
materialism.]
Now with veneration the case is just the opposite; it is wrung from
men reluctantly, and for that very reason mostly concealed. Hence, as
compared with love, veneration gives more real satisfaction; for it is
connected with personal value, and the same is not directly true
of love, which is subjective in its nature, whilst veneration is
objective. To be sure, it is more useful to be loved than to be
venerated.