In the moment when a great affliction overtakes us, we are hurt to
find that the world about us is unconcerned and goes its own way. As
Goethe says in _Tasso_, how easily it leaves us helpless and alone,
and continues its course like the sun and the moon and the other gods:
_... die Welt, wie sie so leicht,
Uns hülflos, einsam lässt, und ihren Weg,
Wie Sonn' und Mond und andre Götter geht_.
Nay more! it is something intolerable that even we ourselves have
to go on with the mechanical round of our daily business, and that
thousands of our own actions are and must be unaffected by the pain
that throbs within us. And so, to restore the harmony between our
outward doings and our inward feelings, we storm and shout, and tear
our hair, and stamp with pain or rage.
Our temperament is so _despotic_ that we are not satisfied unless
we draw everything into our own life, and force all the world to
sympathise with us. The only way of achieving this would be to win the
love of others, so that the afflictions which oppress our own hearts
might oppress theirs as well. Since that is attended with some
difficulty, we often choose the shorter way, and blab out our burden
of woe to people who do not care, and listen with curiosity, but
without sympathy, and much oftener with satisfaction.
Speech and the communication of thought, which, in their mutual
relations, are always attended by a slight impulse on the part of the
will, are almost a physical necessity. Sometimes, however, the lower
animals entertain me much more than the average man. For, in the first
place, what can such a man say? It is only conceptions, that is, the
driest of ideas, that can be communicated by means of words; and what
sort of conceptions has the average man to communicate, if he does
not merely tell a story or give a report, neither of which makes
conversation? The greatest charm of conversation is the mimetic part
of it,--the character that is manifested, be it never so little. Take
the best of men; how little he can _say_ of what goes on within
him, since it is only conceptions that are communicable; and yet a
conversation with a clever man is one of the greatest of pleasures.
It is not only that ordinary men have little to say, but what
intellect they have puts them in the way of concealing and distorting
it; and it is the necessity of practising this concealment that gives
them such a pitiable character; so that what they exhibit is not even
the little that they have, but a mask and disguise. The lower animals,
which have no reason, can conceal nothing; they are altogether
_naïve_, and therefore very entertaining, if we have only an eye for
the kind of communications which they make. They speak not with words,
but with shape and structure, and manner of life, and the things they
set about; they express themselves, to an intelligent observer, in a
very pleasing and entertaining fashion. It is a varied life that is
presented to him, and one that in its manifestation is very different
from his own; and yet essentially it is the same. He sees it in its
simple form, when reflection is excluded; for with the lower animals
life is lived wholly in and for the present moment: it is the present
that the animal grasps; it has no care, or at least no conscious care,
for the morrow, and no fear of death; and so it is wholly taken up
with life and living.
* * * * *
The conversation among ordinary people, when it does not relate to any
special matter of fact, but takes a more general character, mostly
consists in hackneyed commonplaces, which they alternately repeat to
each other with the utmost complacency.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--This observation is in
Schopenhauer's own English.]
* * * * *
Some men can despise any blessing as soon as they cease to possess
it; others only when they have obtained it. The latter are the more
unhappy, and the nobler, of the two.
* * * * *
When the aching heart grieves no more over any particular object,
but is oppressed by life as a whole, it withdraws, as it were, into
itself. There is here a retreat and gradual extinction of the will,
whereby the body, which is the manifestation of the will, is slowly
but surely undermined; and the individual experiences a steady
dissolution of his bonds,--a quiet presentiment of death. Hence the
heart which aches has a secret joy of its own; and it is this, I
fancy, which the English call "the joy of grief."
The pain that extends to life as a whole, and loosens our hold on
it, is the only pain that is really _tragic_. That which attaches to
particular objects is a will that is broken, but not resigned; it
exhibits the struggle and inner contradiction of the will and of life
itself; and it is comic, be it never so violent. It is like the pain
of the miser at the loss of his hoard. Even though pain of the tragic
kind proceeds from a single definite object, it does not remain there;
it takes the separate affliction only as a _symbol_ of life as a
whole, and transfers it thither.
* * * * *
_Vexation_ is the attitude of the individual as intelligence towards
the check imposed upon a strong manifestation of the individual as
will. There are two ways of avoiding it: either by repressing the
violence of the will--in other words, by virtue; or by keeping
the intelligence from dwelling upon the check--in other words, by
Stoicism.
* * * * *
To win the favour of a very beautiful woman by one's personality alone
is perhaps a greater satisfaction to one's vanity than to anything
else; for it is an assurance that one's personality is an equivalent
for the person that is treasured and desired and defied above all
others. Hence it is that despised love is so great a pang, especially
when it is associated with well-founded jealousy.
With this joy and this pain, it is probable that vanity is more
largely concerned than the senses, because it is only the things
of the mind, and not mere sensuality, that produce such violent
convulsions. The lower animals are familiar with lust, but not with
the passionate pleasures and pains of love.
* * * * *
To be suddenly placed in a strange town or country where the manner of
life, possibly even the language, is very different from our own, is,
at the first moment, like stepping into cold water. We are brought
into sudden contact with a new temperature, and we feel a powerful and
superior influence from without which affects us uncomfortably. We
find ourselves in a strange element, where we cannot move with ease;
and, over and above that, we have the feeling that while everything
strikes us as strange, we ourselves strike others in the same way.
But as soon as we are a little composed and reconciled to our
surroundings, as soon as we have appropriated some of its temperature,
we feel an extraordinary sense of satisfaction, as in bathing in cool
water; we assimilate ourselves to the new element, and cease to have
any necessary pre-occupation with our person. We devote our attention
undisturbed to our environment, to which we now feel ourselves
superior by being able to view it in an objective and disinterested
fashion, instead of being oppressed by it, as before.
* * * * *
When we are on a journey, and all kinds of remarkable objects press
themselves on our attention, the intellectual food which we receive is
often so large in amount that we have no time for digestion; and we
regret that the impressions which succeed one another so quickly leave
no permanent trace. But at bottom it is the same with travelling as
with reading. How often do we complain that we cannot remember one
thousandth part of what we read! In both cases, however, we may
console ourselves with the reflection that the things we see and read
make an impression on the mind before they are forgotten, and so
contribute to its formation and nurture; while that which we only
remember does no more than stuff it and puff it out, filling up its
hollows with matter that will always be strange to it, and leaving it
in itself a blank.
* * * * *
It is the very many and varied forms in which human life is presented
to us on our travels that make them entertaining. But we never see
more than its outside, such as is everywhere open to public view and
accessible to strangers. On the other hand, human life on its
inside, the heart and centre, where it lives and moves and shows its
character, and in particular that part of the inner side which could
be seen at home amongst our relatives, is not seen; we have exchanged
it for the outer side. This is why on our travels we see the world
like a painted landscape, with a very wide horizon, but no foreground;
and why, in time, we get tired of it.
* * * * *
One man is more concerned with the impression which he makes upon
the rest of mankind; another, with the impression which the rest of
mankind makes upon him. The disposition of the one is subjective; of
the other, objective; the one is, in the whole of his existence, more
in the nature of an idea which is merely presented; the other, more of
the being who presents it.
* * * * *
A woman (with certain exceptions which need not be mentioned) will not
take the first step with a man; for in spite of all the beauty she may
have, she risks a refusal. A man may be ill in mind or body, or busy,
or gloomy, and so not care for advances; and a refusal would be a blow
to her vanity. But as soon as he takes the first step, and helps her
over this danger, he stands on a footing of equality with her, and
will generally find her quite tractable.
* * * * *
The praise with which many men speak of their wives is really given
to their own judgment in selecting them. This arises, perhaps, from a
feeling of the truth of the saying, that a man shows what he is by the
way in which he dies, and by the choice of his wife.
* * * * *
If education or warning were of any avail, how could Seneca's pupil be
a Nero?
* * * * *
The Pythagorean[1] principle that _like is known only by like_ is
in many respects a true one. It explains how it is that every man
understands his fellow only in so far as he resembles him, or, at
least, is of a similar character. What one man is quite sure of
perceiving in another is that which is common to all, namely, the
vulgar, petty or mean elements of our nature; here every man has a
perfect understanding of his fellows; but the advantage which one man
has over another does not exist for the other, who, be the talents in
question as extraordinary as they may, will never see anything beyond
what he possesses himself, for the very good reason that this is all
he wants to see. If there is anything on which he is in doubt, it will
give him a vague sense of fear, mixed with pique; because it passes
his comprehension, and therefore is uncongenial to him.
[Footnote 1: See Porphyry, _de Vita Pythagorae_.]
This is why it is mind alone that understands mind; why works of
genius are wholly understood and valued only by a man of genius, and
why it must necessarily be a long time before they indirectly attract
attention at the hands of the crowd, for whom they will never, in any
true sense, exist. This, too, is why one man will look another in the
face, with the impudent assurance that he will never see anything but
a miserable resemblance of himself; and this is just what he will see,
as he cannot grasp anything beyond it. Hence the bold way in which one
man will contradict another. Finally, it is for the same reason that
great superiority of mind isolates a man, and that those of high gifts
keep themselves aloof from the vulgar (and that means every one); for
if they mingle with the crowd, they can communicate only such parts of
them as they share with the crowd, and so make themselves _common_.
Nay, even though they possess some well-founded and authoritative
reputation amongst the crowd, they are not long in losing it, together
with any personal weight it may give them, since all are blind to the
qualities on which it is based, but have their eyes open to anything
that is vulgar and common to themselves. They soon discover the truth
of the Arabian proverb: _Joke with a slave, and he'll show you his
heels_.
It also follows that a man of high gifts, in his intercourse with
others, must always reflect that the best part of him is out of sight
in the clouds; so that if he desires to know accurately how much he
can be to any one else, he has only to consider how much the man in
question is to him. This, as a rule, is precious little; and therefore
he is as uncongenial to the other, as the other to him.
* * * * *
Goethe says somewhere that man is not without a vein of veneration. To
satisfy this impulse to venerate, even in those who have no sense
for what is really worthy, substitutes are provided in the shape of
princes and princely families, nobles, titles, orders, and money-bags.
* * * * *
Vague longing and boredom are close akin.
* * * * *
When a man is dead, we envy him no more; and we only half envy him
when he is old.
* * * * *
Misanthropy and love of solitude are convertible ideas.
* * * * *
In chess, the object of the game, namely, to checkmate one's opponent,
is of arbitrary adoption; of the possible means of attaining it, there
is a great number; and according as we make a prudent use of them, we
arrive at our goal. We enter on the game of our own choice.
Nor is it otherwise with human life, only that here the entrance is
not of our choosing, but is forced on us; and the object, which is to
live and exist, seems, indeed, at times as though it were of arbitrary
adoption, and that we could, if necessary, relinquish it. Nevertheless
it is, in the strict sense of the word, a natural object; that is to
say, we cannot relinquish it without giving up existence itself. If we
regard our existence as the work of some arbitrary power outside us,
we must, indeed, admire the cunning by which that creative mind has
succeeded in making us place so much value on an object which is only
momentary and must of necessity be laid aside very soon, and which we
see, moreover, on reflection, to be altogether vanity--in making, I
say, this object so dear to us that we eagerly exert all our strength
in working at it; although we knew that as soon as the game is over,
the object will exist for us no longer, and that, on the whole, we
cannot say what it is that makes it so attractive. Nay, it seems to be
an object as arbitrarily adopted as that of checkmating our opponent's
king; and, nevertheless, we are always intent on the means of
attaining it, and think and brood over nothing else. It is clear that
the reason of it is that our intellect is only capable of looking
outside, and has no power at all of looking within; and, since this is
so, we have come to the conclusion that we must make the best of it.