The simple Philistine believes that life is something infinite and
unconditioned, and tries to look upon it and live it as though it left
nothing to be desired. By method and principle the learned Philistine
does the same: he believes that his methods and his principles are
unconditionally perfect and objectively valid; so that as soon as he
has found them, he has nothing to do but apply them to circumstances,
and then approve or condemn. But happiness and truth are not to be
seized in this fashion. It is phantoms of them alone that are sent to
us here, to stir us to action; the average man pursues the shadow of
happiness with unwearied labour; and the thinker, the shadow of truth;
and both, though phantoms are all they have, possess in them as much
as they can grasp. Life is a language in which certain truths are
conveyed to us; could we learn them in some other way, we should not
live. Thus it is that wise sayings and prudential maxims will never
make up for the lack of experience, or be a substitute for life
itself. Still they are not to be despised; for they, too, are a part
of life; nay, they should be highly esteemed and regarded as the
loose pages which others have copied from the book of truth as it is
imparted by the spirit of the world. But they are pages which must
needs be imperfect, and can never replace the real living voice. Still
less can this be so when we reflect that life, or the book of truth,
speaks differently to us all; like the apostles who preached at
Pentecost, and instructed the multitude, appearing to each man to
speak in his own tongue.
* * * * *
Recognise the truth in yourself, recognise yourself in the truth; and
in the same moment you will find, to your astonishment, that the home
which you have long been looking for in vain, which has filled your
most ardent dreams, is there in its entirety, with every detail of it
true, in the very place where you stand. It is there that your heaven
touches your earth.
* * * * *
What makes us almost inevitably ridiculous is our serious way of
treating the passing moment, as though it necessarily had all the
importance which it seems to have. It is only a few great minds that
are above this weakness, and, instead of being laughed at, have come
to laugh themselves.
* * * * *
The bright and good moments of our life ought to teach us how to act
aright when we are melancholy and dull and stupid, by preserving the
memory of their results; and the melancholy, dull, and stupid moments
should teach us to be modest when we are bright. For we generally
value ourselves according to our best and brightest moments; and those
in which we are weak and dull and miserable, we regard as no proper
part of us. To remember them will teach us to be modest, humble, and
tolerant.
Mark my words once for all, my dear friend, and be clever. Men are
entirely self-centred, and incapable of looking at things objectively.
If you had a dog and wanted to make him fond of you, and fancied that
of your hundred rare and excellent characteristics the mongrel would
be sure to perceive one, and that that would be sufficient to make him
devoted to you body and soul--if, I say, you fancied that, you would
be a fool. Pat him, give him something to eat; and for the rest, be
what you please: he will not in the least care, but will be your
faithful and devoted dog. Now, believe me, it is just the same with
men--exactly the same. As Goethe says, man or dog, it is a miserable
wretch:
_Denn ein erbärmlicher Schuft, so wie der Mensch, ist der hund_.
If you ask why these contemptible fellows are so lucky, it is just
because, in themselves and for themselves and to themselves, they are
nothing at all. The value which they possess is merely comparative;
they exist only for others; they are never more than means; they are
never an end and object in themselves; they are mere bait, set to
catch others.[1] I do not admit that this rule is susceptible of any
exception, that is to say, complete exceptions. There are, it is true,
men--though they are sufficiently rare--who enjoy some subjective
moments; nay, there are perhaps some who for every hundred subjective
moments enjoy a few that are objective; but a higher state of
perfection scarcely ever occurs. But do not take yourself for an
exception: examine your love, your friendship, and consider if your
objective judgments are not mostly subjective judgments in disguise;
consider if you duly recognise the good qualities of a man who is not
fond of you. Then be tolerant: confound it! it's your duty. As you are
all so self-centred, recognise your own weakness. You know that you
cannot like a man who does not show himself friendly to you; you know
that he cannot do so for any length of time unless he likes you, and
that he cannot like you unless you show that you are friendly to him;
then do it: your false friendliness will gradually become a true one.
Your own weakness and subjectivity must have some illusion.
[Footnote 1: All this is very euphemistically expressed in the
Sophoclean verse:
(Greek: _charis charin gar estin ha tiktous aei_)]
This is really an _à priori_ justification of politeness; but I could
give a still deeper reason for it.
* * * * *
Consider that chance, which, with error, its brother, and folly, its
aunt, and malice, its grandmother, rules in this world; which every
year and every day, by blows great and small, embitters the life of
every son of earth, and yours too; consider, I say, that it is to this
wicked power that you owe your prosperity and independence; for it
gave you what it refused to many thousands, just to be able to give it
to individuals like you. Remembering all this, you will not behave as
though you had a right to the possession of its gifts; but you will
perceive what a capricious mistress it is that gives you her favours;
and therefore when she takes it into her head to deprive you of some
or all of them, you will not make a great fuss about her injustice;
but you will recognise that what chance gave, chance has taken
away; if needs be, you will observe that this power is not quite so
favourable to you as she seemed to be hitherto. Why, she might have
disposed not only of what she gave you, but also of your honest and
hard-earned gains.
But if chance still remains so favourable to you as to give you more
than almost all others whose path in life you may care to examine, oh!
be happy; do not struggle for the possession of her presents; employ
them properly; look upon them as property held from a capricious lord;
use them wisely and well.
* * * * *
The Aristotelian principle of keeping the mean in all things is ill
suited to the moral law for which it was intended; but it may easily
be the best general rule of worldly wisdom, the best precept for a
happy life. For life is so full of uncertainty; there are on all sides
so many discomforts, burdens, sufferings, dangers, that a safe and
happy voyage can be accomplished only by steering carefully through
the rocks. As a rule, the fear of the ills we know drive us into the
contrary ills; the pain of solitude, for example, drives us into
society, and the first society that comes; the discomforts of society
drive us into solitude; we exchange a forbidding demeanour for
incautious confidence and so on. It is ever the mark of folly to avoid
one vice by rushing into its contrary:
_Stulti dum vitant vitia in contraria currunt_.
Or else we think that we shall find satisfaction in something, and
spend all our efforts on it; and thereby we omit to provide for the
satisfaction of a hundred other wishes which make themselves felt at
their own time. One loss and omission follows another, and there is no
end to the misery.
[Greek: Maeden agan] and _nil admirari_ are, therefore, excellent
rules of worldly wisdom.
* * * * *
We often find that people of great experience are the most frank and
cordial in their intercourse with complete strangers, in whom
they have no interest whatever. The reason of this is that men of
experience know that it is almost impossible for people who stand in
any sort of mutual relation to be sincere and open with one another;
but that there is always more or less of a strain between them, due
to the fact that they are looking after their own interests, whether
immediate or remote. They regret the fact, but they know that it
is so; hence they leave their own people, rush into the arms of a
complete stranger, and in happy confidence open their hearts to him.
Thus it is that monks and the like, who have given up the world and
are strangers to it, are such good people to turn to for advice.
* * * * *
It is only by practising mutual restraint and self-denial that we can
act and talk with other people; and, therefore, if we have to converse
at all, it can only be with a feeling of resignation. For if we seek
society, it is because we want fresh impressions: these come from
without, and are therefore foreign to ourselves. If a man fails to
perceive this, and, when he seeks the society of others, is unwilling
to practise resignation, and absolutely refuses to deny himself, nay,
demands that others, who are altogether different from himself,
shall nevertheless be just what he wants them to be for the moment,
according to the degree of education which he has reached, or
according to his intellectual powers or his mood--the man, I say, who
does this, is in contradiction with himself. For while he wants some
one who shall be different from himself, and wants him just because
he is different, for the sake of society and fresh influence, he
nevertheless demands that this other individual shall precisely
resemble the imaginary creature who accords with his mood, and have no
thoughts but those which he has himself.
Women are very liable to subjectivity of this kind; but men are not
free from it either.
I observed once to Goethe, in complaining of the illusion and vanity
of life, that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him
as when he is away. He replied: "Yes! because the absent friend is
yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is
present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws
of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you
form for yourself."
* * * * *
A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing
for the journey of life. It is a supply which we shall have to extract
from disappointed hopes; and the sooner we do it, the better for the
rest of the journey.
* * * * *
How should a man be content so long as he fails to obtain complete
unity in his inmost being? For as long as two voices alternately speak
in him, what is right for one must be wrong for the other. Thus he is
always complaining. But has any man ever been completely at one with
himself? Nay, is not the very thought a contradiction?
That a man shall attain this inner unity is the impossible and
inconsistent pretension put forward by almost all philosophers.[1] For
as a man it is natural to him to be at war with himself as long as
he lives. While he can be only one thing thoroughly, he has the
disposition to be everything else, and the inalienable possibility
of being it. If he has made his choice of one thing, all the other
possibilities are always open to him, and are constantly claiming to
be realised; and he has therefore to be continuously keeping them
back, and to be overpowering and killing them as long as he wants to
be that one thing. For example, if he wants to think only, and not
act and do business, the disposition to the latter is not thereby
destroyed all at once; but as long as the thinker lives, he has every
hour to keep on killing the acting and pushing man that is within him;
always battling with himself, as though he were a monster whose head
is no sooner struck off than it grows again. In the same way, if he is
resolved to be a saint, he must kill himself so far as he is a being
that enjoys and is given over to pleasure; for such he remains as long
as he lives. It is not once for all that he must kill himself: he
must keep on doing it all his life. If he has resolved upon pleasure,
whatever be the way in which it is to be obtained, his lifelong
struggle is with a being that desires to be pure and free and holy;
for the disposition remains, and he has to kill it every hour. And so
on in everything, with infinite modifications; it is now one side of
him, and now the other, that conquers; he himself is the battlefield.
If one side of him is continually conquering, the other is continually
struggling; for its life is bound up with his own, and, as a man, he
is the possibility of many contradictions.
[Footnote 1: _Audacter licet profitearis, summum bonum esse anímí
concordian_.--Seneca.]
How is inner unity even possible under such circumstances? It exists
neither in the saint nor in the sinner; or rather, the truth is that
no man is wholly one or the other. For it is _men_ they have to be;
that is, luckless beings, fighters and gladiators in the arena of
life.
To be sure, the best thing he can do is to recognise which part of him
smarts the most under defeat, and let it always gain the victory. This
he will always be able to do by the use of his reason, which is an
ever-present fund of ideas. Let him resolve of his own free will to
undergo the pain which the defeat of the other part involves. This
is _character_. For the battle of life cannot be waged free from all
pain; it cannot come to an end without bloodshed; and in any case
a man must suffer pain, for he is the conquered as well as the
conqueror. _Haec est vivendi conditio_.
* * * * *
The clever man, when he converses, will think less of what he is
saying that of the person with whom he is speaking; for then he is
sure to say nothing which he will afterwards regret; he is sure not to
lay himself open, nor to commit an indiscretion. But his conversation
will never be particularly interesting.
An intellectual man readily does the opposite, and with him the person
with whom he converses is often no more than the mere occasion of a
monologue; and it often happens that the other then makes up for his
subordinate _rôle_ by lying in wait for the man of intellect, and
drawing his secrets out of him.
* * * * *
Nothing betrays less knowledge of humanity than to suppose that, if
a man has a great many friends, it is a proof of merit and intrinsic
value: as though men gave their friendship according to value and
merit! as though they were not, rather, just like dogs, which love the
person that pats them and gives them bits of meat, and never trouble
themselves about anything else! The man who understands how to pat his
fellows best, though they be the nastiest brutes,--that's the man who
has many friends.
It is the converse that is true. Men of great intellectual worth, or,
still more, men of genius, can have only very few friends; for their
clear eye soon discovers all defects, and their sense of rectitude is
always being outraged afresh by the extent and the horror of them. It
is only extreme necessity that can compel such men not to betray their
feelings, or even to stroke the defects as if they were beautiful
additions. Personal love (for we are not speaking of the reverence
which is gained by authority) cannot be won by a man of genius, unless
the gods have endowed him with an indestructible cheerfulness of
temper, a glance that makes the world look beautiful, or unless he has
succeeded by degrees in taking men exactly as they are; that is to
say, in making a fool of the fools, as is right and proper. On the
heights we must expect to be solitary.
* * * * *
Our constant discontent is for the most part rooted in the impulse of
self-preservation. This passes into a kind of selfishness, and makes a
duty out of the maxim that we should always fix our minds upon what we
lack, so that we may endeavour to procure it. Thus it is that we are
always intent on finding out what we want, and on thinking of it;
but that maxim allows us to overlook undisturbed the things which we
already possess; and so, as soon as we have obtained anything, we give
it much less attention than before. We seldom think of what we have,
but always of what we lack.
This maxim of egoism, which has, indeed, its advantages in procuring
the means to the end in view, itself concurrently destroys the
ultimate end, namely, contentment; like the bear in the fable that
throws a stone at the hermit to kill the fly on his nose. We ought to
wait until need and privation announce themselves, instead of
looking for them. Minds that are naturally content do this, while
hypochondrists do the reverse.
* * * * *
A man's nature is in harmony with itself when he desires to be nothing
but what he is; that is to say, when he has attained by experience a
knowledge of his strength and of his weakness, and makes use of the
one and conceals the other, instead of playing with false coin, and
trying to show a strength which he does not possess. It is a harmony
which produces an agreeable and rational character; and for the simple
reason that everything which makes the man and gives him his mental
and physical qualities is nothing but the manifestation of his will;
is, in fact, what he _wills_. Therefore it is the greatest of all
inconsistencies to wish to be other than we are.
* * * * *
People of a strange and curious temperament can be happy only under
strange circumstances, such as suit their nature, in the same way as
ordinary circumstances suit the ordinary man; and such circumstances
can arise only if, in some extraordinary way, they happen to meet with
strange people of a character different indeed, but still exactly
suited to their own. That is why men of rare or strange qualities are
seldom happy.
* * * * *
All this pleasure is derived from the use and consciousness of power;
and the greatest of pains that a man can feel is to perceive that
his powers fail just when he wants to use them. Therefore it will be
advantageous for every man to discover what powers he possesses, and
what powers he lacks. Let him, then, develop the powers in which he is
pre-eminent, and make a strong use of them; let him pursue the path
where they will avail him; and even though he has to conquer his
inclinations, let him avoid the path where such powers are requisite
as he possesses only in a low degree. In this way he will often have a
pleasant consciousness of strength, and seldom a painful consciousness
of weakness; and it will go well with him. But if he lets himself be
drawn into efforts demanding a kind of strength quite different from
that in which he is pre-eminent, he will experience humiliation; and
this is perhaps the most painful feeling with which a man can be
afflicted.
Yet there are two sides to everything. The man who has insufficient
self-confidence in a sphere where he has little power, and is never
ready to make a venture, will on the one hand not even learn how to
use the little power that he has; and on the other, in a sphere in
which he would at least be able to achieve something, there will be
a complete absence of effort, and consequently of pleasure. This is
always hard to bear; for a man can never draw a complete blank in any
department of human welfare without feeling some pain.
* * * * *
As a child, one has no conception of the inexorable character of the
laws of nature, and of the stubborn way in which everything persists
in remaining what it is. The child believes that even lifeless things
are disposed to yield to it; perhaps because it feels itself one with
nature, or, from mere unacquaintance with the world, believes that
nature is disposed to be friendly. Thus it was that when I was a
child, and had thrown my shoe into a large vessel full of milk, I was
discovered entreating the shoe to jump out. Nor is a child on its
guard against animals until it learns that they are ill-natured and
spiteful. But not before we have gained mature experience do we
recognise that human character is unalterable; that no entreaty, or
representation, or example, or benefit, will bring a man to give up
his ways; but that, on the contrary, every man is compelled to follow
his own mode of acting and thinking, with the necessity of a law of
nature; and that, however we take him, he always remains the same. It
is only after we have obtained a clear and profound knowledge of this
fact that we give up trying to persuade people, or to alter them
and bring them round to our way of thinking. We try to accommodate
ourselves to theirs instead, so far as they are indispensable to us,
and to keep away from them so far as we cannot possibly agree.
Ultimately we come to perceive that even in matters of mere
intellect--although its laws are the same for all, and the subject
as opposed to the object of thought does not really enter into
individuality--there is, nevertheless, no certainty that the whole
truth of any matter can be communicated to any one, or that any one
can be persuaded or compelled to assent to it; because, as Bacon says,
_intellectus humanus luminis sicci non est_: the light of the human
intellect is coloured by interest and passion.
* * * * *
It is just because _all happiness is of a negative character_ that,
when we succeed in being perfectly at our ease, we are not properly
conscious of it. Everything seems to pass us softly and gently, and
hardly to touch us until the moment is over; and then it is the
positive feeling of something lacking that tells us of the happiness
which has vanished; it is then that we observe that we have failed to
hold it fast, and we suffer the pangs of self-reproach as well as of
privation.
* * * * *
Every happiness that a man enjoys, and almost every friendship that
he cherishes, rest upon illusion; for, as a rule, with increase of
knowledge they are bound to vanish. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, a
man should courageously pursue truth, and never weary of striving to
settle accounts with himself and the world. No matter what happens to
the right or to the left of him,--be it a chimaera or fancy that makes
him happy, let him take heart and go on, with no fear of the desert
which widens to his view. Of one thing only must he be quite certain:
that under no circumstances will he discover any lack of worth in
himself when the veil is raised; the sight of it would be the Gorgon
that would kill him. Therefore, if he wants to remain undeceived, let
him in his inmost being feel his own worth. For to feel the lack of
it is not merely the greatest, but also the only true affliction;
all other sufferings of the mind may not only be healed, but may be
immediately relieved, by the secure consciousness of worth. The man
who is assured of it can sit down quietly under sufferings that would
otherwise bring him to despair; and though he has no pleasures, no
joys and no friends, he can rest in and on himself; so powerful is the
comfort to be derived from a vivid consciousness of this advantage; a
comfort to be preferred to every other earthly blessing. Contrarily,
nothing in the world can relieve a man who knows his own
worthlessness; all that he can do is to conceal it by deceiving people
or deafening them with his noise; but neither expedient will serve him
very long.
* * * * *
We must always try to preserve large views. If we are arrested by
details we shall get confused, and see things awry. The success or the
failure of the moment, and the impression that they make, should count
for nothing.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer, for some reason that
is not apparent, wrote this remark in French.]
* * * * *
How difficult it is to learn to understand oneself, and clearly to
recognise what it is that one wants before anything else; what it is,
therefore, that is most immediately necessary to our happiness; then
what comes next; and what takes the third and the fourth place, and so
on.
Yet, without this knowledge, our life is planless, like a captain
without a compass.
* * * * *
The sublime melancholy which leads us to cherish a lively conviction
of the worthlessness of everything of all pleasures and of all
mankind, and therefore to long for nothing, but to feel that life is
merely a burden which must be borne to an end that cannot be very
distant, is a much happier state of mind than any condition of desire,
which, be it never so cheerful, would have us place a value on the
illusions of the world, and strive to attain them.
This is a fact which we learn from experience; and it is clear, _à
priori_, that one of these is a condition of illusion, and the other
of knowledge.
Whether it is better to marry or not to marry is a question which in
very many cases amounts to this: Are the cares of love more endurable
than the anxieties of a livelihood?
* * * * *