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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.

SECTION 22. It is astonishing how easily and how quickly similarity,
or difference of mind and disposition, makes itself felt between one
man and another as soon as they begin to talk: every little trifle
shows it. When two people of totally different natures are conversing,
almost everything said by the one will, in a greater or less degree,
displease the other, and in many cases produce positive annoyance;
even though the conversation turn upon the most out-of-the-way
subject, or one in which neither of the parties has any real interest.
People of similar nature, on the other hand, immediately come to feel
a kind of general agreement; and if they are cast very much in the
same mould, complete harmony or even unison will flow from their
intercourse.

This explain two circumstances. First of all, it shows why it is that
common, ordinary people are so sociable and find good company wherever
they go. Ah! those good, dear, brave people. It is just the contrary
with those who are not of the common run; and the less they are so,
the more unsociable they become; so that if, in their isolation, they
chance to come across some one in whose nature they can find even
a single sympathetic chord, be it never so minute, they show
extraordinary pleasure in his society. For one man can be to another
only so much as the other is to him. Great minds are like eagles, and
build their nest in some lofty solitude.

Secondly, we are enabled to understand how it is that people of like
disposition so quickly get on with one another, as though they were
drawn together by magnetic force--kindred souls greeting each other
from afar. Of course the most frequent opportunity of observing this
is afforded by people of vulgar tastes and inferior intellect, but
only because their name is legion; while those who are better off in
this respect and of a rarer nature, are not often to be met with: they
are called rare because you can seldom find them.

Take the case of a large number of people who have formed themselves
into a league for the purpose of carrying out some practical object;
if there be two rascals among them, they will recognize each other as
readily as if they bore a similar badge, and will at once conspire
for some misfeasance or treachery. In the same way, if you can
imagine--_per impossible_--a large company of very intelligent and
clever people, amongst whom there are only two blockheads, these two
will be sure to be drawn together by a feeling of sympathy, and each
of them will very soon secretly rejoice at having found at least one
intelligent person in the whole company. It is really quite curious
to see how two such men, especially if they are morally and
intellectually of an inferior type, will recognize each other at first
sight; with what zeal they will strive to become intimate; how affably
and cheerily they will run to greet each other, just as though they
were old friends;--it is all so striking that one is tempted to
embrace the Buddhist doctrine of metempsychosis and presume that they
were on familiar terms in some former state of existence.

Still, in spite of all this general agreement, men are kept apart who
might come together; or, in some cases, a passing discord springs up
between them. This is due to diversity of mood. You will hardly
ever see two people exactly in the same frame of mind; for that is
something which varies with their condition of life, occupation,
surroundings, health, the train of thought they are in at the moment,
and so on. These differences give rise to discord between persons of
the most harmonious disposition. To correct the balance properly, so
as to remove the disturbance--to introduce, as it were, a uniform
temperature,--is a work demanding a very high degree of culture. The
extent to which uniformity of mood is productive of good-fellowship
may be measured by its effects upon a large company. When, for
instance, a great many people are gathered together and presented with
some objective interest which works upon all alike and influences them
in a similar way, no matter what it be--a common danger or hope, some
great news, a spectacle, a play, a piece of music, or anything of that
kind--you will find them roused to a mutual expression of thought,
and a display of sincere interest. There will be a general feeling
of pleasure amongst them; for that which attracts their attention
produces a unity of mood by overpowering all private and personal
interests.

And in default of some objective interest of the kind I have
mentioned, recourse is usually had to something subjective. A bottle
of wine is not an uncommon means of introducing a mutual feeling of
fellowship; and even tea and coffee are used for a like end.

The discord which so easily finds its way into all society as an
effect of the different moods in which people happen to be for the
moment, also in part explains why it is that memory always idealizes,
and sometimes almost transfigures, the attitude we have taken up at
any period of the past--a change due to our inability to remember all
the fleeting influences which disturbed us on any given occasion.
Memory is in this respect like the lens of a _camera obscura_: it
contracts everything within its range, and so produces a much finer
picture than the actual landscape affords. And, in the case of a man,
absence always goes some way towards securing this advantageous light;
for though the idealizing tendency of the memory requires times to
complete its work, it begins it at once. Hence it is a prudent thing
to see your friends and acquaintances only at considerable intervals
of time; and on meeting them again, you will observe that memory has
been at work.

SECTION 23. No man can see _over his own height._ Let me explain what
I mean.

You cannot see in another man any more than you have in yourself; and
your own intelligence strictly determines the extent to which he comes
within its grasp. If your intelligence is of a very low order, mental
qualities in another, even though they be of the highest kind,
will have no effect at all upon you; you will see nothing in their
possessor except the meanest side of his individuality--in other
words, just those parts of his character and disposition which are
weak and defective. Your whole estimate of the man will be confined to
his defects, and his higher mental qualities will no more exist for
you than colors exist for those who cannot see.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none. In any attempt to
criticise another's work, the range of knowledge possessed by the
critic is as essential a part of his verdict as the claims of the work
itself.

Hence intercourse with others involves a process of leveling down. The
qualities which are present in one man, and absent in another, cannot
come into play when they meet; and the self-sacrifice which this
entails upon one of the parties, calls forth no recognition from the
other.

Consider how sordid, how stupid, in a word, how _vulgar_ most men
are, and you will see that it is impossible to talk to them without
becoming vulgar yourself for the time being. Vulgarity is in this
respect like electricity; it is easily distributed. You will then
fully appreciate the truth and propriety of the expression, _to make
yourself cheap_; and you will be glad to avoid the society of people
whose only possible point of contact with you is just that part of
your nature of which you have least reason to be proud. So you will
see that, in dealing with fools and blockheads, there is only one way
of showing your intelligence--by having nothing to do with them. That
means, of course, that when you go into society, you may now and then
feel like a good dancer who gets an invitation to a ball, and on
arriving, finds that everyone is lame:--with whom is he to dance?

SECTION 24. I feel respect for the man--and he is one in a
hundred--who, when he is waiting or sitting unoccupied, refrains from
rattling or beating time with anything that happens to be handy,--his
stick, or knife and fork, or whatever else it may be. The probability
is that he is thinking of something.

With a large number of people, it is quite evident that their power of
sight completely dominates over their power of thought; they seem to
be conscious of existence only when they are making a noise; unless
indeed they happen to be smoking, for this serves a similar end. It is
for the same reason that they never fail to be all eyes and ears for
what is going on around them.

SECTION 25. La Rochefoucauld makes the striking remark that it is
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.

SECTION 26. Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really
interests them but themselves. They always think of their own case
as soon as ever any remark is made, and their whole attention is
engrossed and absorbed by the merest chance reference to anything
which affects them personally, be it never so remote: with the result
that they have no power left for forming an objective view of things,
should the conversation take that turn; neither can they admit any
validity in arguments which tell against their interest or their
vanity. Hence their attention is easily distracted. They are so
readily offended, insulted or annoyed, that in discussing any
impersonal matter with them, no care is too great to avoid letting
your remarks bear the slightest possible reference to the very worthy
and sensitive individuals whom you have before you; for anything you
may say will perhaps hurt their feelings. People really care about
nothing that does not affect them personally. True and striking
observations, fine, subtle and witty things are lost upon them: they
cannot understand or feel them. But anything that disturbs their petty
vanity in the most remote and indirect way, or reflects prejudicially
upon their exceedingly precious selves--to that, they are most
tenderly sensitive. In this respect they are like the little dog whose
toes you are so apt to tread upon inadvertently--you know it by the
shrill bark it sets up: or, again, they resemble a sick man covered
with sores and boils, with whom the greatest care must be taken to
avoid unnecessary handling. And in some people this feeling reaches
such a pass that, if they are talking with anyone, and he exhibits, or
does not sufficiently conceal, his intelligence and discernment, they
look upon it as a downright insult; although for the moment they hide
their ill will, and the unsuspecting author of it afterwards ruminates
in vain upon their conduct, and racks his brain to discover what he
could possibly have done to excite their malice and hatred.

But it is just as easy to flatter and win them over; and this is why
their judgment is usually corrupt, and why their opinions are swayed,
not by what is really true and right, but by the favor of the party or
class to which they belong. And the ultimate reason of it all is, that
in such people force of will greatly predominates over knowledge; and
hence their meagre intellect is wholly given up to the service of the
will, and can never free itself from that service for a moment.

Astrology furnishes a magnificent proof of this miserable subjective
tendency in men, which leads them to see everything only as bearing
upon themselves, and to think of nothing that is not straightway made
into a personal matter. The aim of astrology is to bring the motions
of the celestial bodies into relation with the wretched _Ego_ and to
establish a connection between a comet in the sky and squabbles and
rascalities on earth.[1]

[Footnote 1: See, for instance, Stobasus, _Eclog. I_. xxii. 9.]

SECTION 27. When any wrong statement is made, whether in public or
in society, or in books, and well received--or, at any rate, not
refuted--that that is no reason why you should despair or think there
the matter will rest. You should comfort yourself with the reflection
that the question will be afterwards gradually subjected to
examination; light will be thrown upon it; it will be thought over,
considered, discussed, and generally in the end the correct view will
be reached; so that, after a time--the length of which will depend
upon the difficulty of the subject--everyone will come to understand
that which a clear head saw at once.

In the meantime, of course, you must have patience. He who can see
truly in the midst of general infatuation is like a man whose watch
keeps good time, when all clocks in the town in which he lives are
wrong. He alone knows the right time; but what use is that to him?
for everyone goes by the clocks which speak false, not even excepting
those who know that his watch is the only one that is right.

SECTION 28. Men are like children, in that, if you spoil them, they
become naughty.

Therefore it is well not to be too indulgent or charitable with
anyone. You may take it as a general rule that you will not lose a
friend by refusing him a loan, but that you are very likely to do
so by granting it; and, for similar reasons, you will not readily
alienate people by being somewhat proud and careless in your
behaviour; but if you are very kind and complaisant towards them, you
will often make them arrogant and intolerable, and so a breach will
ensue.

There is one thing that, more than any other, throws people absolutely
off their balance--the thought that you are dependent upon them. This
is sure to produce an insolent and domineering manner towards you.
There are some people, indeed, who become rude if you enter into any
kind of relation with them; for instance, if you have occasion to
converse with them frequently upon confidential matters, they soon
come to fancy that they can take liberties with you, and so they try
and transgress the laws of politeness. This is why there are so few
with whom you care to become more intimate, and why you should avoid
familiarity with vulgar people. If a man comes to think that I am more
dependent upon him than he is upon me, he at once feels as though I
had stolen something from him; and his endeavor will be to have his
vengeance and get it back. The only way to attain superiority in
dealing with men, is to let it be seen that you are independent of
them.

And in this view it is advisable to let everyone of your
acquaintance--whether man or woman--feel now and then that you
could very well dispense with their company. This will consolidate
friendship. Nay, with most people there will be no harm in
occasionally mixing a grain of disdain with your treatment of them;
that will make them value your friendship all the more. _Chi non
istima vien stimato_, as a subtle Italian proverb has it--to disregard
is to win regard. But if we really think very highly of a person, we
should conceal it from him like a crime. This is not a very gratifying
thing to do, but it is right. Why, a dog will not bear being treated
too kindly, let alone a man!

SECTION 29. It is often the case that people of noble character and
great mental gifts betray a strange lack of worldly wisdom and a
deficiency in the knowledge of men, more especially when they are
young; with the result that it is easy to deceive or mislead them; and
that, on the other hand, natures of the commoner sort are more ready
and successful in making their way in the world.

The reason of this is that, when a man has little or no experience,
he must judge by his own antecedent notions; and in matters demanding
judgment, an antecedent notion is never on the same level as
experience. For, with the commoner sort of people, an antecedent
notion means just their own selfish point of view. This is not the
case with those whose mind and character are above the ordinary; for
it is precisely in this respect--their unselfishness--that they differ
from the rest of mankind; and as they judge other people's thoughts
and actions by their own high standard, the result does not always
tally with their calculation.

But if, in the end, a man of noble character comes to see, as the
effect of his own experience, or by the lessons he learns from others,
what it is that may be expected of men in general,--namely, that
five-sixths of them are morally and intellectually so constituted
that, if circumstances do not place you in relation with them, you had
better get out of their way and keep as far as possible from having
anything to do with them,--still, he will scarcely ever attain an
adequate notion of their wretchedly mean and shabby nature: all his
life long he will have to be extending and adding to the inferior
estimate he forms of them; and in the meantime he will commit a great
many mistakes and do himself harm.

Then, again, after he has really taken to heart the lessons that have
been taught him, it will occasionally happen that, when he is in the
society of people whom he does not know, he will be surprised to
find how thoroughly reasonable they all appear to be, both in their
conversation and in their demeanor--in fact, quite honest, sincere,
virtuous and trustworthy people, and at the same time shrewd and
clever.

But that ought not to perplex him. Nature is not like those bad
poets, who, in setting a fool or a knave before us, do their work so
clumsily, and with such evident design, that you might almost
fancy you saw the poet standing behind each of his characters, and
continually disavowing their sentiments, and telling you in a tone of
warning: _This is a knave; that is a fool; do not mind what he says_.
But Nature goes to work like Shakespeare and Goethe, poets who
make every one of their characters--even if it is the devil
himself!--appear to be quite in the right for the moment that they
come before us in their several parts; the characters are described so
objectively that they excite our interest and compel us to sympathize
with their point of view; for, like the works of Nature, every one
of these characters is evolved as the result of some hidden law
or principle, which makes all they say and do appear natural and
therefore necessary. And you will always be the prey or the plaything
of the devils and fools in this world, if you expect to see them going
about with horns or jangling their bells.

And it should be borne in mind that, in their intercourse with others,
people are like the moon, or like hunchbacks; they show you only one
of their sides. Every man has an innate talent for mimicry,--for
making a mask out of his physiognomy, so that he can always look as
if he really were what he pretends to be; and since he makes his
calculations always within the lines of his individual nature, the
appearance he puts on suits him to a nicety, and its effect is
extremely deceptive. He dons his mask whenever his object is to
flatter himself into some one's good opinion; and you may pay just as
much attention to it as if it were made of wax or cardboard, never
forgetting that excellent Italian proverb: _non é si tristo cane che
non meni la coda_,--there is no dog so bad but that he will wag his
tail.

In any case it is well to take care not to form a highly favorable
opinion of a person whose acquaintance you have only recently made,
for otherwise you are very likely to be disappointed; and then you
will be ashamed of yourself and perhaps even suffer some injury.
And while I am on the subject, there is another fact that deserves
mention. It is this. A man shows his character just in the way in
which he deals with trifles,--for then he is off his guard. This will
often afford a good opportunity of observing the boundless egoism of
man's nature, and his total lack of consideration for others; and
if these defects show themselves in small things, or merely in his
general demeanor, you will find that they also underlie his action in
matters of importance, although he may disguise the fact. This is an
opportunity which should not be missed. If in the little affairs of
every day,--the trifles of life, those matters to which the rule _de
minimis non_ applies,--a man is inconsiderate and seeks only what is
advantageous or convenient to himself, to the prejudice of others'
rights; if he appropriates to himself that which belongs to all alike,
you may be sure there is no justice in his heart, and that he would be
a scoundrel on a wholesale scale, only that law and compulsion bind
his hands. Do not trust him beyond your door. He who is not afraid
to break the laws of his own private circle, will break those of the
State when he can do so with impunity.

If the average man were so constituted that the good in him outweighed
the bad, it would be more advisable to rely upon his sense of justice,
fairness, gratitude, fidelity, love or compassion, than to work upon
his fears; but as the contrary is the case, and it is the bad that
outweighs the good, the opposite course is the more prudent one.

If any person with whom we are associated or have to do, exhibits
unpleasant or annoying qualities, we have only to ask ourselves
whether or not this person is of so much value to us that we can put
up with frequent and repeated exhibitions of the same qualities in a
somewhat aggravated form.[1] In case of an affirmative answer to this
question, there will not be much to be said, because talking is very
little use. We must let the matter pass, with or without some notice;
but we should nevertheless remember that we are thereby exposing
ourselves to a repetition of the offence. If the answer is in the
negative, we must break with our worthy friend at once and forever; or
in the case of a servant, dismiss him. For he will inevitably repeat
the offence, or do something tantamount to it, should the occasion
return, even though for the moment he is deep and sincere in his
assurances of the contrary. There is nothing, absolutely nothing,
that a man cannot forget,--but not _himself, his own character_. For
character is incorrigible; because all a man's actions emanate from an
inward principle, in virtue of which he must always do the same thing
under like circumstances; and he cannot do otherwise. Let me refer to
my prize essay on the so-called _Freedom of the Will_, the perusal
of which will dissipate any delusions the reader may have on this
subject.

[Footnote 1: To _forgive and forget_ means to throw away dearly bought
experience.]

To become reconciled to a friend with whom you have broken, is a form
of weakness; and you pay the penalty of it when he takes the first
opportunity of doing precisely the very thing which brought about
the breach; nay, he does it the more boldly, because he is secretly
conscious that you cannot get on without him. This is also applicable
to servants whom you have dismissed, and then taken into your service
again.

For the same reason, you should just as little expect people to
continue to act in a similar way under altered circumstances. The
truth is that men alter their demeanor and sentiments just as fast as
their interest changes; and their resign in this respect is a bill
drawn for short payment that the man must be still more short-sighted
who accepts the bill without protesting it. Accordingly, suppose you
want to know how a man will behave in an office into which you think
of putting him; you should not build upon expectations, on his
promises or assurances. For, even allowing that he is quite sincere,
he is speaking about a matter of which he has no knowledge. The only
way to calculate how he will behave, is to consider the circumstances
in which he will be placed, and the extent to which they will conflict
with his character.

If you wish to get a clear and profound insight--and it is very
needful--into the true but melancholy elements of which most men are
made, you will find in a very instructive thing to take the way they
behave in the pages of literature as a commentary to their doings in
practical life, and _vice versa._ The experience thus gained will be
very useful in avoiding wrong ideas, whether about yourself or about
others. But if you come across any special trait of meanness or
stupidity--in life or in literature,--you must be careful not to let
it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to
your knowledge--a new fact to be considered in studying the character
of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist
who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral.

Of course there are some facts which are very exceptional, and it is
difficult to understand how they arise, and how it is that there come
to be such enormous differences between man and man; but, in general,
what was said long ago is quite true, and the world is in a very bad
way. In savage countries they eat one another, in civilized they
deceive one another; and that is what people call the way of the
world! What are States and all the elaborate systems of political
machinery, and the rule of force, whether in home or in foreign
affairs,--what are they but barriers against the boundless iniquity
of mankind? Does not all history show that whenever a king is firmly
planted on a throne, and his people reach some degree of prosperity,
he uses it to lead his army, like a band of robbers, against adjoining
countries? Are not almost all wars ultimately undertaken for purposes
of plunder? In the most remote antiquity, and to some extent also in
the Middle Ages, the conquered became slaves,--in other words, they
had to work for those who conquered them; and where is the difference
between that and paying war-taxes, which represent the product of our
previous work?

All war, says Voltaire, is a matter of robbery; and the Germans should
take that as a warning.

SECTION 30. No man is so formed that he can be left entirely to
himself, to go his own ways; everyone needs to be guided by a
preconceived plan, and to follow certain general rules. But if this is
carried too far, and a man tries to take on a character which is not
natural or innate in him, but it artificially acquired and evolved
merely by a process of reasoning, he will very soon discover that
Nature cannot be forced, and that if you drive it out, it will return
despite your efforts:--

_Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret_.

To understand a rule governing conduct towards others, even to
discover it for oneself and to express it neatly, is easy enough; and
still, very soon afterwards, the rule may be broken in practice. But
that is no reason for despair; and you need not fancy that as it is
impossible to regulate your life in accordance with abstract ideas
and maxims, it is better to live just as you please. Here, as in all
theoretical instruction that aims at a practical result, the first
thing to do is to understand the rule; the second thing is to learn
the practice of it. The theory may be understand at once by an effort
of reason, and yet the practice of it acquired only in course of time.

A pupil may lean the various notes on an instrument of music, or the
different position in fencing; and when he makes a mistake, as he
is sure to do, however hard he tries, he is apt to think it will be
impossible to observe the rules, when he is set to read music at sight
or challenged to a furious duel. But for all that, gradual practice
makes him perfect, through a long series of slips, blunders and fresh
efforts. It is just the same in other things; in learning to write and
speak Latin, a man will forget the grammatical rules; it is only
by long practice that a blockhead turns into a courtier, that a
passionate man becomes shrewd and worldly-wise, or a frank person
reserved, or a noble person ironical. But though self-discipline of
this kind is the result of long habit, it always works by a sort of
external compulsion, which Nature never ceases to resist and sometimes
unexpectedly overcomes. The difference between action in accordance
with abstract principles, and action as the result of original,
innate tendency, is the same as that between a work of art, say a
watch--where form and movement are impressed upon shapeless and inert
matter--and a living organism, where form and matter are one, and each
is inseparable from the other.

There is a maxim attributed to the Emperor Napoleon, which expresses
this relation between acquired and innate character, and confirms what
I have said: _everything that is unnatural is imperfect_;--a rule of
universal application, whether in the physical or in the moral sphere.
The only exception I can think of to this rule is aventurine,[1] a
substance known to mineralogists, which in its natural state cannot
compare with the artificial preparation of it.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. Aventurine is a rare kind of quartz;
and the same name is given to a brownish-colored glass much resembling
it, which is manufactured at Murano. It is so called from the fact
that the glass was discovered by chance _(arventura)_.]

And in this connection let me utter a word of protest against any and
every form of _affectation_. It always arouses contempt; in the first
place, because it argues deception, and the deception is cowardly,
for it is based on fear; and, secondly, it argues self-condemnation,
because it means that a man is trying to appear what he is not, and
therefore something which he things better than he actually is. To
affect a quality, and to plume yourself upon it, is just to confess
that you have not got it. Whether it is courage, or learning, or
intellect, or wit, or success with women, or riches, or social
position, or whatever else it may be that a man boasts of, you may
conclude by his boasting about it that that is precisely the direction
in which he is rather weak; for if a man really possesses any faculty
to the full, it will not occur to him to make a great show of
affecting it; he is quite content to know that he has it. That is the
application of the Spanish proverb: _herradura que chacolotea clavo le
falta_--a clattering hoof means a nail gone. To be sure, as I said at
first, no man ought to let the reins go quite loose, and show himself
just as he is; for there are many evil and bestial sides to our nature
which require to be hidden away out of sight; and this justifies the
negative attitude of dissimulation, but it does not justify a
positive feigning of qualities which are not there. It should also be
remembered that affectation is recognized at once, even before it is
clear what it is that is being affected. And, finally, affectation
cannot last very long, and one day the mask will fall off. _Nemo
potest personam diu ferre fictam_, says Seneca;[1] _ficta cito in
naturam suam recidunt_--no one can persevere long in a fictitious
character; for nature will soon reassert itself.

[Footnote 1: _De Clementia, I_. 1.]

SECTION 31. A man bears the weight of his own body without knowing it,
but he soon feels the weight of any other, if he tries to move it; in
the same way, a man can see other people's shortcoming's and vices,
but he is blind to his own. This arrangement has one advantage: it
turns other people into a kind of mirror, in which a man can see
clearly everything that is vicious, faulty, ill-bred and loathsome in
his own nature; only, it is generally the old story of the dog barking
at is own image; it is himself that he sees and not another dog, as he
fancies.

He who criticises others, works at the reformation of himself. Those
who form the secret habit of scrutinizing other people's general
behavior, and passing severe judgment upon what they do and leave
undone, thereby improve themselves, and work out their own perfection:
for they will have sufficient sense of justice, or at any rate enough
pride and vanity, to avoid in their own case that which they condemn
so harshly elsewhere. But tolerant people are just the opposite,
and claim for themselves the same indulgence that they extend to
others--_hanc veniam damus petimusque vicissim_. It is all very well
for the Bible to talk about the mote in another's eye and the beam in
one's own. The nature of the eye is to look not at itself but at other
things; and therefore to observe and blame faults in another is a
very suitable way of becoming conscious of one's own. We require a
looking-glass for the due dressing of our morals.

The same rule applies in the case of style and fine writing. If,
instead of condemning, you applaud some new folly in these matters,
you will imitate it. That is just why literary follies have such vogue
in Germany. The Germans are a very tolerant people--everybody can see
that! Their maxim is--_Hanc veniam damns petimusque vicissim._

SECTION 32. When he is young, a man of noble character fancies that
the relations prevailing amongst mankind, and the alliances to which
these relations lead, are at bottom and essentially, _ideal_ in their
nature; that is to say, that they rest upon similarity of disposition
or sentiment, or taste, or intellectual power, and so on.

But, later on, he finds out that it is a _real_ foundation which
underlies these alliances; that they are based upon some _material_
interest. This is the true foundation of almost all alliances: nay,
most men have no notion of an alliance resting upon any other basis.
Accordingly we find that a man is always measured by the office he
holds, or by his occupation, nationality, or family relations--in a
word, by the position and character which have been assigned him
in the conventional arrangements of life, where he is ticketed and
treated as so much goods. Reference to what he is in himself, as a
man--to the measure of his own personal qualities--is never made
unless for convenience' sake: and so that view of a man is something
exceptional, to be set aside and ignored, the moment that anyone finds
it disagreeable; and this is what usually happens. But the more of
personal worth a man has, the less pleasure he will take in these
conventional arrangements; and he will try to withdraw from the sphere
in which they apply. The reason why these arrangements exist at all,
is simply that in this world of ours misery and need are the chief
features: therefore it is everywhere the essential and paramount
business of life to devise the means of alleviating them.

SECTION 33. As paper-money circulates in the world instead of real
coin, so, is the place of true esteem and genuine friendship, you have
the outward appearance of it--a mimic show made to look as much like
the real thing as possible.

On the other hand, it may be asked whether there are any people who
really deserve the true coin. For my own part, I should certainly pay
more respect to an honest dog wagging his tail than to a hundred such
demonstrations of human regard.

True and genuine friendship presupposes a strong sympathy with the
weal and woe of another--purely objective in its character and quite
disinterested; and this in its turn means an absolute identification
of self with the object of friendship. The egoism of human nature is
so strongly antagonistic to any such sympathy, that true friendship
belongs to that class of things--the sea-serpent, for instance,--with
regard to which no one knows whether they are fabulous or really exist
somewhere or other.

Still, in many cases, there is a grain of true and genuine friendship
in the relation of man to man, though generally, of course, some
secret personal interest is at the bottom of them--some one among the
many forms that selfishness can take. But in a world where all is
imperfect, this grain of true feeling is such an ennobling influence
that it gives some warrant for calling those relations by the name of
friendship, for they stand far above the ordinary friendships that
prevail amongst mankind. The latter are so constituted that, were you
to hear how your dear friends speak of you behind your back, you would
never say another word to them.

Apart from the case where it would be a real help to you if your
friend were to make some great sacrifice to serve you, there is no
better means of testing the genuineness of his feelings than the way
in which he receives the news of a misfortune that has just happened
to you. At that moment the expression of his features will either show
that his one thought is that of true and sincere sympathy for you; or
else the absolute composure of his countenance, or the passing trace
of something other than sympathy, will confirm the well-known maxim
of La Rochefoucauld: _Dans l'adversite de nos meilleurs amis, nous
trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous deplait pas_. Indeed, at
such a moment, the ordinary so-called friend will find it hard to
suppress the signs of a slight smile of pleasure. There are few ways
by which you can make more certain of putting people into a good humor
than by telling them of some trouble that has recently befallen you,
or by unreservedly disclosing some personal weakness of yours. How
characteristic this is of humanity!

Distance and long absence are always prejudicial to friendship,
however disinclined a man may be to admit. Our regard for people whom
we do not see--even though they be our dearest friends--gradually
dries up in the course of years, and they become abstract notions;
so that our interest in them grows to be more and more
intellectual,--nay, it is kept up only as a kind of tradition; whilst
we retain a lively and deep interest in those who are constantly
before our eyes, even if they be only pet animals. This shows how
much men are limited by their senses, and how true is the remark that
Goethe makes in _Tasso_ about the dominant influence of the present
moment:--

  _Die Gegenwart ist eine mächtige Göttin_[1]

[Footnote 1: Act iv., se. 4.]

_Friends of the house_ are very rightly so called; because they are
friends of the house rather than of its master; in other words, they
are more like cats than dogs.

Your friends will tell you that they are sincere; your enemies are
really so. Let your enemies' censure be like a bitter medicine, to be
used as a means of self-knowledge.

A friend in need, as the saying goes, is rare. Nay, it is just the
contrary; no sooner have you made a friend than he is in need, and
asks for a loan.

SECTION 34. A man must be still a greenhorn in the ways of the
world, if he imagines that he can make himself popular in society by
exhibiting intelligence and discernment. With the immense majority
of people, such qualities excite hatred and resentment, which are
rendered all the harder to bear by the fact that people are obliged to
suppress--even from themselves--the real reason of their anger.

What actually takes place is this. A man feels and perceives that the
person with whom he is conversing is intellectually very much his
superior.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. _Welt als Wills und Vorstellung_, Bk. II. p. 256 (4th
Edit.), where I quote from Dr. Johnson, and from Merck, the friend
of Goethe's youth. The former says: _There is nothing by which a man
exasperates most people more, than by displaying a superior ability of
brilliancy in conversation. They seem pleased at the time, but their
envy makes them curse him at their hearts._ (Boswells _Life of
Johnson_ aetat: 74).]

He thereupon secretly and half unconsciously concludes that his
interlocutor must form a proportionately low and limited estimate of
his abilities. That is a method of reasoning--an enthymeme--which
rouses the bitterest feelings of sullen and rancorous hatred. And so
Gracian is quite right in saying that the only way to win affection
from people is to show the most animal-like simplicity of
demeanor--_para ser bien quisto, el unico medio vestirse la piel del
mas simple de los brutos_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Balthazar Graeian, _Oraculo manual,
y arte de prudencia_, 240. Gracian (1584-1658) was a Spanish prose
writer and Jesuit, whose works deal chiefly with the observation
of character in the various phenomena of life. Schopenhauer, among
others, had a great admiration for his worldly philosophy, and
translated his _Oraculo manual_--a system of rules for the conduct of
life--into German. The same book was translated into English towards
the close of the seventeenth century.]

To show your intelligence and discernment is only an indirect way of
reproaching other people for being dull and incapable. And besides, it
is natural for a vulgar man to be violently agitated by the sight of
opposition in any form; and in this case envy comes in as the secret
cause of his hostility. For it is a matter of daily observation that
people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies their
vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without comparison with others.
Now, there is nothing of which a man is prouder than of intellectual
ability, for it is this that gives him his commanding place in the
animal world. It is an exceedingly rash thing to let any one see that
you are decidedly superior to him in this respect, and to let other
people see it too; because he will then thirst for vengeance, and
generally look about for an opportunity of taking it by means of
insult, because this is to pass from the sphere of _intellect_ to
that of _will_--and there, all are on an equal footing as regards the
feeling of hostility. Hence, while rank and riches may always reckon
upon deferential treatment in society, that is something which
intellectual ability can never expect; to be ignored is the greatest
favor shown to it; and if people notice it at all, it is because they
regard it as a piece of impertinence, or else as something to which
its possessor has no legitimate right, and upon which he dares to
pride himself; and in retaliation and revenge for his conduct, people
secretly try and humiliate him in some other way; and if they wait to
do this, it is only for a fitting opportunity. A man may be as humble
as possible in his demeanor, and yet hardly ever get people to
overlook his crime in standing intellectually above them. In the
_Garden of Roses_, Sadi makes the remark:--_You should know that
foolish people are a hundredfold more averse to meeting the wise than
the wise are indisposed for the company of the foolish_.

On the other hand, it is a real recommendation to be stupid. For just
as warmth is agreeable to the body, so it does the mind good to feel
its superiority; and a man will seek company likely to give him this
feeling, as instinctively as he will approach the fireplace or walk
in the sun if he wants to get warm. But this means that he will be
disliked on account of his superiority; and if a man is to be liked,
he must really be inferior in point of intellect; and the same thing
holds good of a woman in point of beauty. To give proof of real and
unfeigned inferiority to some of the people you meet--that is a very
difficult business indeed!

Consider how kindly and heartily a girl who is passably pretty will
welcome one who is downright ugly. Physical advantages are not thought
so much of in the case of man, though I suppose you would rather a
little man sat next to you than one who was bigger than yourself. This
is why, amongst men, it is the dull and ignorant, and amongst women,
the ugly, who are always popular and in request.[1] It is likely to
be said of such people that they are extremely good-natured, because
every one wants to find a pretext for caring about them--a pretext
which will blind both himself and other people to the real reason why
he likes them. This is also why mental superiority of any sort always
tends to isolate its possessor; people run away from him out of
pure hatred, and say all manner of bad things about him by way of
justifying their action. Beauty, in the case of women, has a similar
effect: very pretty girls have no friends of their own sex, and they
even find it hard to get another girl to keep them company. A handsome
woman should always avoid applying for a position as companion,
because the moment she enters the room, her prospective mistress will
scowl at her beauty, as a piece of folly with which, both for her own
and for her daughter's sake, she can very well dispense. But if the
girl has advantages of rank, the case is very different; because rank,
unlike personal qualities which work by the force of mere contrast,
produces its effect by a process of reflection; much in the same
way as the particular hue of a person's complexion depends upon the
prevailing tone of his immediate surroundings.

[Footnote 1: If you desire to get on in the world, friends and
acquaintances are by far the best passport to fortune. The possession
of a great deal of ability makes a man proud, and therefore not apt to
flatter those who have very little, and from whom, on that account,
the possession of great ability should be carefully concealed. The
consciousness of small intellectual power has just the opposite
effect, and is very compatible with a humble, affable and
companionable nature, and with respect for what is mean and wretched.
This is why an inferior sort of man has so many friends to befriend
and encourage him.

These remarks are applicable not only to advancement in political
life, but to all competition for places of honor and dignity, nay,
even for reputation in the world of science, literature and art. In
learned societies, for example, mediocrity--that very acceptable
quality--is always to the fore, whilst merit meets with tardy
recognition, or with none at all. So it is in everything.]

SECTION 35. Our trust in other people often consists in great measure
of pure laziness, selfishness and vanity on our own part: I say
_laziness_, because, instead of making inquiries ourselves, and
exercising an active care, we prefer to trust others; _selfishness_,
because we are led to confide in people by the pressure of our own
affairs; and _vanity_, when we ask confidence for a matter on which we
rather pride ourselves. And yet, for all that, we expect people to be
true to the trust we repose in them.

But we ought not to become angry if people put no trust in us: because
that really means that they pay honesty the sincere compliment of
regarding it as a very rare thing,--so rare, indeed, as to leave us in
doubt whether its existence is not merely fabulous.

SECTION 36. _Politeness_,--which the Chinese hold to be a cardinal
virtue,--is based upon two considerations of policy. I have explained
one of these considerations in my _Ethics_; the other is as
follows:--Politeness is a tacit agreement that people's miserable
defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be
ignored and not made the subject of reproach; and since these defects
are thus rendered somewhat less obtrusive, the result is mutually
advantageous.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--In the passage referred to
_(Grundlage der Moral_, collected works, Vol. IV., pp. 187 and 198),
Schopenhauer explains politeness as a conventional and systematic
attempt to mask the egoism of human nature in the small affairs of
life,--an egoism so repulsive that some such device is necessary for
the purpose of concealing its ugliness. The relation which politeness
bears to the true love of one's neighbor is analogous to that existing
between justice as an affair of legality, and justice as the real
integrity of the heart.]

It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing
to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility,
is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For
politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is
foolish to be stingy. A sensible man will be generous in the use
of it. It is customary in every country to end a letter with
the words:--_your most obedient servant_--_votre très-humble
serviteur_--_suo devotissimo servo_. (The Germans are the only people
who suppress the word _servant_--_Diener_--because, of course, it is
not true!) However, to carry politeness to such an extent as to damage
your prospects, is like giving money where only counters are expected.

Wax, a substance naturally hard and brittle, can be made soft by the
application of a little warmth, so that it will take any shape you
please. In the same way, by being polite and friendly, you can make
people pliable and obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed
and malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is to
wax.

Of course, it is no easy matter to be polite; in so far, I mean, as it
requires us to show great respect for everybody, whereas most people
deserve none at all; and again in so far as it demands that we should
feign the most lively interest in people, when we must be very glad
that we have nothing to do with them. To combine politeness with pride
is a masterpiece of wisdom.

We should be much less ready to lose our temper over an
insult,--which, in the strict sense of the word, means that we have
not been treated with respect,--if, on the one hand, we have not such
an exaggerated estimate of our value and dignity--that is to say, if
we were not so immensely proud of ourselves; and, on the other hand,
if we had arrived at any clear notion of the judgment which, in his
heart, one man generally passes upon another. If most people resent
the slightest hint that any blame attaches to them, you may imagine
their feelings if they were to overhear what their acquaintance say
about them. You should never lose sight of the fact that ordinary
politeness is only a grinning mask: if it shifts its place a little,
or is removed for a moment, there is no use raising a hue and cry.
When a man is downright rude, it is as though he had taken off all his
clothes, and stood before you in _puris naturalibus_. Like most men in
this condition, he does not present a very attractive appearance.

SECTION 37. You ought never to take any man as a model for what you
should do or leave undone; because position and circumstances are in
no two cases alike, and difference of character gives a peculiar,
individual tone to what a man does. Hence _duo cum faciunt idem, non
est idem_--two persons may do the same thing with a different result.
A man should act in accordance with his own character, as soon as he
has carefully deliberated on what he is about to do.

The outcome of this is that _originality_ cannot be dispensed with in
practical matters: otherwise, what a man does will not accord with
what he is.

SECTION 38. Never combat any man's opinion; for though you reached the
age of Methuselah, you would never have done setting him right upon
all the absurd things that he believes.

It is also well to avoid correcting people's mistakes in conversation,
however good your intentions may be; for it is easy to offend people,
and difficult, if not impossible, to mend them.

If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose
conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are
listening to a dialogue of two fools in a comedy. _Probatum est._

The man who comes into the world with the notion that he is really
going to instruct in matters of the highest importance, may thank his
stars if he escapes with a whole skin.

SECTION 39. If you want your judgment to be accepted, express it
coolly and without passion. All violence has its seat in the _will_;
and so, if your judgment is expressed with vehemence, people will
consider it an effort of will, and not the outcome of knowledge, which
is in its nature cold and unimpassioned. Since the will is the primary
and radical element in human nature, and _intellect_ merely supervenes
as something secondary, people are more likely to believe that the
opinion you express with so much vehemence is due to the excited state
of your will, rather than that the excitement of the will comes only
from the ardent nature of your opinion.

SECTION 40. Even when you are fully justified in praising yourself,
you should never be seduced into doing so. For vanity is so very
common, and merit so very uncommon, that even if a man appears to be
praising himself, though very indirectly, people will be ready to lay
a hundred to one that he is talking out of pure vanity, and that he
has not sense enough to see what a fool he is making of himself.

Still, for all that, there may be some truth in Bacon's remark that,
as in the case of calumny, if you throw enough dirt, some of it will
stick, so it it also in regard to self-praise; with the conclusion
that self-praise, in small doses, is to be recommended.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer alludes to the
following passage in Bacon's _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, Bk. viii.,
ch. 2: _Sicut enim dici solet de calumnia_, audacter calumniare,
semper aliquid haeret; _sic dici potest de jactantia, (nisi plane
deformis fuerit et ridicula_), audacter te vendita, semper aliquid
haeret. _Haerebit certe apud populum, licet prudentiores subrideant.
Itaque existimatio parta apud plurimos paucorum fastidium abunde
compensabit._]

SECTION 41. If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you
a lie, look as though you believed every word he said. This will give
him courage to go on; he will become more vehement in his assertions,
and in the end betray himself.

Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something
from you, but with only partial success, look as though you did not
believe him, This opposition on your part will provoke him into
leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to
bear upon your incredulity.

SECTION 42. You should regard all your private affairs as secrets,
and, in respect of them, treat your acquaintances, even though you
are on good terms with them, as perfect strangers, letting them know
nothing more than they can see for themselves. For in course of time,
and under altered circumstances, you may find it a disadvantage that
they know even the most harmless things about you.

And, as a general rule, it is more advisable to show your intelligence
by saying nothing than by speaking out; for silence is a matter
of prudence, whilst speech has something in it of vanity. The
opportunities for displaying the one or the other quality occur
equally often; but the fleeting satisfaction afforded by speech is
often preferred to the permanent advantage secured by silence.

The feeling of relief which lively people experience in speaking aloud
when no one is listening, should not be indulged, lest it grow into a
habit; for in this way thought establishes such very friendly terms
with speech, that conversation is apt to become a process of thinking
aloud. Prudence exacts that a wide gulf should be fixed between what
we think and what we say.

At times we fancy that people are utterly unable to believe in the
truth of some statement affecting us personally, whereas it never
occurs to them to doubt it; but if we give them the slightest
opportunity of doubting it, they find it absolutely impossible
to believe it any more. We often betray ourselves into revealing
something, simply because we suppose that people cannot help noticing
it,--just as a man will throw himself down from a great height because
he loses his head, in other words, because he fancies that he cannot
retain a firm footing any longer; the torment of his position is so
great, that he thinks it better to put an end to it at once. This is
the kind of insanity which is called _acrophobia_.

But it should not be forgotten how clever people are in regard
to affairs which do not concern them, even though they show no
particularly sign of acuteness in other matters. This is a kind of
algebra in which people are very proficient: give them a single fact
to go upon, and they will solve the most complicated problems. So,
if you wish to relate some event that happened long ago, without
mentioning any names, or otherwise indicating the persons to whom you
refer, you should be very careful not to introduce into your narrative
anything that might point, however distantly, to some definite fact,
whether it is a particular locality, or a date, or the name of some
one who was only to a small extent implicated, or anything else that
was even remotely connected with the event; for that at once gives
people something positive to go upon, and by the aid of their talent
for this sort of algebra, they will discover all the rest. Their
curiosity in these matters becomes a kind of enthusiasm: their will
spurs on their intellect, and drives it forward to the attainment
of the most remote results. For however unsusceptible and different
people may be to general and universal truths, they are very ardent in
the matter of particular details.

In keeping with what I have said, it will be found that all those
who profess to give instructions in the wisdom of life are specially
urgent in commending the practice of silence, and assign manifold
reasons why it should be observed; so it is not necessary for me to
enlarge upon the subject any further. However, I may just add one or
two little known Arabian proverbs, which occur to me as peculiarly
appropriate:--

_Do not tell a friend anything that you would conceal from an enemy_.

_A secret is in my custody, if I keep it; but should it escape me, it
is I who am the prisoner_.

_The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace_.

SECTION 43. Money is never spent to so much advantage as when you have
been cheated out of it; for at one stroke you have purchased prudence.

SECTION 44. If possible, no animosity should be felt for anyone. But
carefully observe and remember the manner in which a man conducts
himself, so that you may take the measure of his value,--at any
rate in regard to yourself,--and regulate your bearing towards
him accordingly; never losing sight of the fact that character
is unalterable, and that to forget the bad features in a man's
disposition is like throwing away hard-won money. Thus you will
protect yourself against the results of unwise intimacy and foolish
friendship.

_Give way neither to love nor to hate_, is one-half of worldly wisdom:
_say nothing and believe nothing_, the other half. Truly, a world
where there is need of such rules as this and the following, is one
upon which a man may well turn his back.

SECTION 45. To speak angrily to a person, to show your hatred by
what you say or by the way you look, is an unnecessary
proceeding--dangerous, foolish, ridiculous, and vulgar.

Anger and hatred should never be shown otherwise than in what you do;
and feelings will be all the more effective in action, in so far
as you avoid the exhibition of them in any other way. It is only
cold-blooded animals whose bite is poisonous.

SECTION 46. To speak without emphasizing your words--_parler sans
accent_--is an old rule with those who are wise in the world's ways.
It means that you should leave other people to discover what it is
that you have said; and as their minds are slow, you can make your
escape in time. On the other hand, to emphasize your meaning--_parler
avec accent_--is to address their feelings; and the result is always
the opposite of what you expect. If you are polite enough in your
manner and courteous in your tone there are many people whom you may
abuse outright, and yet run no immediate risk of offending them.




CHAPTER IV,

WORLDLY FORTUNE.--SECTION 47.


However varied the forms that human destiny may take, the same
elements are always present; and so life is everywhere much of a
piece, whether it passed in the cottage or in the palace, in the
barrack or in the cloister. Alter the circumstance as much as you
please! point to strange adventures, successes, failures! life is like
a sweet-shop, where there is a great variety of things, odd in shape
and diverse in color--one and all made from the same paste. And when
men speak of some one's success, the lot of the man who has failed is
not so very different as it seems. The inequalities in the world are
like the combinations in a kaleidoscope; at every turn a fresh picture
strikes the eye; and yet, in reality, you see only the same bits of
glass as you saw before.

SECTION 48. An ancient writer says, very truly, that there are three
great powers in the world; _Sagacity, Strength_, and _Luck_,--[Greek:
sunetos, kratos, tuchu.] I think the last is the most efficacious.

A man's life is like the voyage of a ship, where luck--_secunda aut
adversa fortuna_--acts the part of the wind, and speeds the vessel on
its way or drives it far out of its course. All that the man can do
for himself is of little avail; like the rudder, which, if worked hard
and continuously, may help in the navigation of the ship; and yet all
may be lost again by a sudden squall. But if the wind is only in the
right quarter, the ship will sail on so as not to need any steering.
The power of luck is nowhere better expressed than in a certain
Spanish proverb: _Da Ventura a tu hijo, y echa lo en el mar_--give
your son luck and throw him into the sea.

Still, chance, it may be said, is a malignant power, and as little
as possible should be left to its agency. And yet where is there any
giver who, in dispensing gifts, tells us quite clearly that we have no
right to them, and that we owe them not to any merit on our part,
but wholly to the goodness and grace of the giver--at the same time
allowing us to cherish the joyful hope of receiving, in all humility,
further undeserved gifts from the same hands--where is there any giver
like that, unless it be _Chance_? who understands the kingly art of
showing the recipient that all merit is powerless and unavailing
against the royal grace and favor.

On looking back over the course of his life,--that _labyrinthine way
of error_,--a man must see many points where luck failed him and
misfortune came; and then it is easy to carry self-reproach to an
unjust excess. For the course of a man's life is in no wise entirely
of his own making; it is the product of two factors--the series of
things that happened, and his own resolves in regard to them, and
these two are constantly interacting upon and modifying each other.
And besides these, another influence is at work in the very limited
extent of a man's horizon, whether it is that he cannot see very far
ahead in respect of the plans he will adopt, or that he is still less
able to predict the course of future events: his knowledge is strictly
confined to present plans and present events. Hence, as long as a
man's goal is far off, he cannot steer straight for it; he must be
content to make a course that is approximately right; and in following
the direction in which he thinks he ought to go, he will often have
occasion to tack.

All that a man can do is to form such resolves as from time to time
accord with the circumstances in which he is placed, in the hope of
thus managing to advance a step nearer towards the final goal. It is
usually the case that the position in which we stand, and the object
at which we aim, resemble two tendencies working with dissimilar
strength in different directions; and the course of our life is
represented by their diagonal, or resultant force.

Terence makes the remark that life is like a game at dice, where if
the number that turns up is not precisely the one you want, you can
still contrive to use it equally:--_in vita est hominum quasi cum
ludas tesseris; si illud quod maxime opus est jactu non cadit, illud
quod cecidit forte, id arte ut corrigas_.[1] Or, to put the matter
more shortly, life is a game of cards, when the cards are shuffled and
dealt by fate. But for my present purpose, the most suitable simile
would be that of a game of chess, where the plan we determined to
follow is conditioned by the play of our rival,--in life, by the
caprice of fate. We are compelled to modify our tactics, often to such
an extent that, as we carry them out, hardly a single feature of the
original plan can be recognized.

[Footnote 1: He seems to have been referring to a game something like
backgammon.]

But above and beyond all this, there is another influence that makes
itself felt in our lives. It is a trite saying--only too frequently
true--that we are often more foolish than we think. On the other hand,
we are often wiser than we fancy ourselves to be. This, however, is a
discovery which only those can make, of whom it is really true; and it
takes them a long time to make it. Our brains are not the wisest
part of us. In the great moments of life, when a man decides upon
an important step, his action is directed not so much by any clear
knowledge of the right thing to do, as by an inner impulse--you may
almost call it an instinct--proceeding from the deepest foundations of
his being. If, later on, he attempts to criticise his action by the
light of hard and fast ideas of what is right in the abstract--those
unprofitable ideas which are learnt by rote, or, it may be, borrowed
from other people; if he begins to apply general rules, the principles
which have guided others, to his own case, without sufficiently
weighing the maxim that one man's meat is another's poison, then he
will run great risk of doing himself an injustice. The result will
show where the right course lay. It is only when a man has reached
the happy age of wisdom that he is capable of just judgment in regard
either to his own actions or to those of others.

It may be that this impulse or instinct is the unconscious effect of a
kind of prophetic dream which is forgotten when we awake--lending
our life a uniformity of tone, a dramatic unity, such as could never
result from the unstable moments of consciousness, when we are so
easily led into error, so liable to strike a false note. It is in
virtue of some such prophetic dream that a man feels himself called to
great achievements in a special sphere, and works in that direction
from his youth up out of an inner and secret feeling that that is his
true path, just as by a similar instinct the bee is led to build up
its cells in the comb. This is the impulse which Balthazar Gracian
calls _la gran sindéresis_[1]--the great power of moral discernment:
it is something that a man instinctively feels to be his salvation
without which he were lost.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--This obscure word appears to be
derived from the Greek _sugtaereo_ (N.T. and Polyb.) meaning "to
observe strictly." It occurs in _The Doctor and Student_, a series of
dialogues between a doctor of divinity and a student on the laws of
England, first published in 1518; and is there (Dialog. I. ch. 13)
explained as "a natural power of the soule, set in the highest part
thereof, moving and stirring it to good, and abhoring evil." This
passage is copied into Milton's Commonplace Book, edit. _Horwood_, §
79. The word is also found in the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy
(vol. vi. of the year 1739) in the sense of an innate discernment
of moral principles, where a quotation is given from Madre Maria de
Jesus, abbess of the convent of the Conception at Agreda, a mystical
writer of the seventeenth century, frequently consulted by Philip
IV.,--and again in the Bolognese Dictionary of 1824, with a similar
meaning, illustrated from the writings of Salvini (1653-1729). For
these references I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Norman Maccoll.]

To act in accordance with abstract principles is a difficult matter,
and a great deal of practice will be required before you can be even
occasionally successful; it of tens happens that the principles do not
fit in with your particular case. But every man has certain innate
_concrete principles_--a part, as it were, of the very blood that
flows in his veins, the sum or result, in fact, of all his thoughts,
feelings and volitions. Usually he has no knowledge of them in any
abstract form; it is only when he looks back upon the course his life
has taken, that he becomes aware of having been always led on by
them--as though they formed an invisible clue which he had followed
unawares.

SECTION 49. That Time works great changes, and that all things are
in their nature fleeting--these are truths that should never be
forgotten. Hence, in whatever case you may be, it is well to picture
to yourself the opposite: in prosperity, to be mindful of misfortune;
in friendship, of enmity; in good weather, of days when the sky is
overcast; in love, of hatred; in moments of trust, to imagine the
betrayal that will make you regret your confidence; and so, too, when
you are in evil plight, to have a lively sense of happier times--what
a lasting source of true worldly wisdom were there! We should then
always reflect, and not be so very easily deceived; because, in
general, we should anticipate the very changes that the years will
bring.

Perhaps in no form of knowledge is personal experience so
indispensable as in learning to see that all things are unstable and
transitory in this world. There is nothing that, in its own place and
for the time it lasts, is not a product of necessity, and therefore
capable of being fully justified; and it is this fact that makes
circumstances of every year, every month, even of every day, seem as
though they might maintain their right to last to all eternity. But we
know that this can never be the case, and that in a world where all is
fleeting, change alone endures. He is a prudent man who is not only
undeceived by apparent stability, but is able to forecast the lines
upon which movement will take place.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Chance_ plays so great a part in all human affairs that
when a man tries to ward off a remote danger by present sacrifice, the
danger often vanishes under some new and unforeseen development of
events; and then the sacrifice, in addition to being a complete loss,
brings about such an altered state of things as to be in itself a
source of positive danger in the face of this new development. In
taking measures of precaution, then, it is well not to look too far
ahead, but to reckon with chance; and often to oppose a courageous
front to a danger, in the hope that, like many a dark thunder-cloud,
it may pass away without breaking.]

But people generally think that present circumstances will last, and
that matters will go on in the future as they have clone in the past.
Their mistakes arises from the fact that they do not understand the
cause of the things they see--causes which, unlike the effects they
produce, contain in themselves the germ of future change. The
effects are all that people know, and they hold fast to them on the
supposition that those unknown causes, which were sufficient to bring
them about, will also be able to maintain them as they are. This is a
very common error; and the fact that it is common is not without its
advantage, for it means that people always err in unison; and hence
the calamity which results from the error affects all alike, and is
therefore easy to bear; whereas, if a philosopher makes a mistake, he
is alone in his error, and so at a double disadvantage.[1]

[Footnote 1: I may remark, parenthetically, that all this is a
confirmation of the principle laid down in _Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung_ (Bk. I. p. 94: 4th edit.), that error always consists in
making _a wrong inference_, that is, in ascribing a given effect to
something that did not cause it.]

But in saying that we should anticipate the effects of time, I mean
that we should mentally forecast what they are likely to be; I do
not mean that we should practically forestall them, by demanding the
immediate performance of promises which time alone can fulfill. The
man who makes his demand will find out that there is no worse or more
exacting usurer than Time; and that, if you compel Time to give money
in advance, you will have to pay a rate of interest more ruinous than
any Jew would require. It is possible, for instance, to make a tree
burst forth into leaf, blossom, or even bear fruit within a few days,
by the application of unslaked lime and artificial heat; but after
that the tree will wither away. So a young man may abuse his
strength--it may be only for a few weeks--by trying to do at nineteen
what he could easily manage at thirty, and Time may give him the loan
for which he asks; but the interest he will have to pay comes out of
the strength of his later years; nay, it is part of his very life
itself.

There are some kinds of illness in which entire restoration to health
is possible only by letting the complaint run its natural course;
after which it disappears without leaving any trace of its existence.
But if the sufferer is very impatient, and, while he is still
affected, insists that he is completely well, in this case, too,
Time will grant the loan, and the complaint may be shaken off; but
life-long weakness and chronic mischief will be the interest paid upon
it.

Again, in time of war or general disturbance, a man may require ready
money at once, and have to sell out his investments in land or consols
for a third or even a still smaller fraction of the sum he would have
received from them, if he could have waited for the market to right
itself, which would have happened in due course; but he compels Time
to grant him a loan, and his loss is the interest he has to pay. Or
perhaps he wants to go on a long journey and requires the money: in
one or two years he could lay by a sufficient sum out of his income,
but he cannot afford to wait; and so he either borrows it or deducts
it from his capital; in other words, he gets Time to lend him the
money in advance. The interest he pays is a disordered state of his
accounts, and permanent and increasing deficits, which he can never
make good.

Such is Time's usury; and all who cannot wait are its victims. There
is no more thriftless proceeding than to try and mend the measured
pace of Time. Be careful, then, not to become its debtor.

SECTION 50. In the daily affairs of life, you will have very many
opportunities of recognizing a characteristic difference between
ordinary people of prudence and discretion. In estimating the
possibility of danger in connection with any undertaking, an ordinary
man will confine his inquiries to the kind of risk that has already
attended such undertakings in the past; whereas a prudent person will
look ahead, and consider everything that might possibly happen in the
future, having regard to a certain Spanish maxim: _lo que no acaece en
un ano, acaece en un rato_--a thing may not happen in a year, and yet
may happen within two minutes.

The difference in question is, of course, quite natural; for it
requires some amount of discernment to calculate possibilities; but
a man need only have his senses about him to see what has already
happened.

Do not omit to sacrifice to evil spirits. What I mean is, that a man
should not hesitate about spending time, trouble, and money, or giving
up his comfort, or restricting his aims and denying himself, if he
can thereby shut the door on the possibility of misfortune. The most
terrible misfortunes are also the most improbable and remote--the
least likely to occur. The rule I am giving is best exemplified in
the practice of insurance,--a public sacrifice made on the altar of
anxiety. Therefore take out your policy of insurance!

SECTION 51. Whatever fate befalls you, do not give way to great
rejoicings or great lamentations; partly because all things are full
of change, and your fortune may turn at any moment; partly because men
are so apt to be deceived in their judgment as to what is good or bad
for them.

Almost every one in his turn has lamented over something which
afterwards turned out to be the very best thing for him that could
have happened--or rejoiced at an event which became the source of his
greatest sufferings. The right state of mind has been finely portrayed
by Shakespeare:

_I have felt so many quirks of joy and grief That the first face of
neither, on the start, Can woman me unto't_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _All's Well that Ends Well, Act. ii. Sc. 2_.]

And, in general, it may be said that, if a man takes misfortunes
quietly, it is because he knows that very many dreadful things may
happen in the course of life; and so he looks upon the trouble of the
moment as only a very small part of that which might come. This is
the Stoic temper--never to be unmindful of the sad fate of
humanity--_condicionis humanoe oblitus_; but always to remember that
our existence is full of woe and misery: and that the ills to which we
are exposed are innumerable. Wherever he be, a man need only cast a
look around, to revive the sense of human misery: there before his
eyes he can see mankind struggling and floundering in torment,--all
for the sake of a wretched existence, barren and unprofitable!

If he remembers this, a man will not expect very much from life, but
learn to accommodate himself to a world where all is relative and no
perfect state exists;--always looking misfortune in the face, and if
he cannot avoid it, meeting it with courage.

It should never be forgotten that misfortune, be it great or small, is
the element in which we live. But that is no reason why a man should
indulge in fretful complaints, and, like Beresford,[1] pull a long
face over the _Miseries of Human Life_,--and not a single hour is free
from them; or still less, call upon the Deity at every flea-bite--_in
pulicis morsu Deum invocare_. Our aim should be to look well about us,
to ward off misfortune by going to meet it, to attain such perfection
and refinement in averting the disagreeable things of life,--whether
they come from our fellow-men or from the physical world,--that, like
a clever fox, we may slip out of the way of every mishap, great or
small; remembering that a mishap is generally only our own awkwardness
in disguise.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Rev. James Beresford (1764-1840),
miscellaneous writer. The full title of this, his chief work, is "The
Miseries of Human Life; or the last groans of Timothy Testy and Samuel
Sensitive, with a few supplementary sighs from Mrs. Testy."]

The main reason why misfortune falls less heavily upon us, if we have
looked upon its occurrence as not impossible, and, as the saying is,
prepared ourselves for it, may be this: if, before this misfortune
comes, we have quietly thought over it as something which may or may
not happen, the whole of its extent and range is known to us, and we
can, at least, determine how far it will affect us; so that, if it
really arrives, it does not depress us unduly--its weight is not felt
to be greater than it actually is. But if no preparation has been
made to meet it, and it comes unexpectedly, the mind is in a state of
terror for the moment and unable to measure the full extent of the
calamity; it seems so far-reaching in its effects that the victim
might well think there was no limit to them; in any case, its range is
exaggerated. In the same way, darkness and uncertainty always increase
the sense of danger. And, of course, if we have thought over the
possibility of misfortune, we have also at the same time considered
the sources to which we shall look for help and consolation; or, at
any rate, we have accustomed ourselves to the idea of it.

There is nothing that better fits us to endure the misfortunes of
life with composure, than to know for certain that _everything
that happens--from the smallest up to the greatest facts of
existence--happens of necessity._[1] A man soon accommodates himself
to the inevitable--to something that must be; and if he knows that
nothing can happen except of necessity, he will see that things cannot
be other that they are, and that even the strangest chances in the
world are just as much a product of necessity as phenomena which obey
well-known rules and turn out exactly in accordance with expectation.
Let me here refer to what I have said elsewhere on the soothing effect
of the knowledge that all things are inevitable and a product of
necessity.[2]

[Footnote 1: This is a truth which I have firmly established in my
prize-essay on the _Freedom of the Will_, where the reader will find a
detailed explanation of the grounds on which it rests. Cf. especially
p. 60. [Schopenhauer's Works, 4th Edit., vol. iv.--_Tr_.]]

[Footnote 2: Cf. _Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, Bk. I. p. 361 (4th
edit.).]

If a man is steeped in the knowledge of this truth, he will, first of
all, do what he can, and then readily endure what he must.

We may regard the petty vexations of life that are constantly
happening, as designed to keep us in practice for bearing great
misfortunes, so that we may not become completely enervated by a
career of prosperity. A man should be as Siegfried, armed _cap-à-pie_,
towards the small troubles of every day--those little differences we
have with our fellow-men, insignificant disputes, unbecoming conduct
in other people, petty gossip, and many other similar annoyances of
life; he should not feel them at all, much less take them to heart and
brood over them, but hold them at arm's length and push them out of
his way, like stones that lie in the road, and upon no account think
about them and give them a place in his reflections.

SECTION 52. What people commonly call _Fate_ is, as a general rule,
nothing but their own stupid and foolish conduct. There is a fine
passage in Homer,[1] illustrating the truth of this remark, where
the poet praises [GREEK: maetis]--shrewd council; and his advice
is worthy of all attention. For if wickedness is atoned for only in
another world, stupidity gets its reward here--although, now and then,
mercy may be shown to the offender.

[Footnote 1: _Iliad_, xxiii. 313, sqq.]

It is not ferocity but cunning that strikes fear into the heart
and forebodes danger; so true it is that the human brain is a more
terrible weapon than the lion's paw.

The most finished man of the world would be one who was never
irresolute and never in a hurry.

SECTION 53. _Courage_ comes next to prudence as a quality of mind very
essential to happiness. It is quite true that no one can endow himself
with either, since a man inherits prudence from his mother and courage
from his father; still, if he has these qualities, he can do much to
develop them by means of resolute exercise.

In this world, _where the game is played with loaded dice_, a man must
have a temper of iron, with armor proof to the blows of fate, and
weapons to make his way against men. Life is one long battle; we have
to fight at every step; and Voltaire very rightly says that if we
succeed, it is at the point of the sword, and that we die with the
weapon in our hand--on _ne réussit dans ce monde qua la pointe de
l'épee, et on meurt les armes à la main_. It is a cowardly soul that
shrinks or grows faint and despondent as soon as the storm begins to
gather, or even when the first cloud appears on the horizon. Our motto
should be _No Surrender_; and far from yielding to the ills of life,
let us take fresh courage from misfortune:--

_Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Virgil, _Aeneid_, vi. 95.]

As long as the issue of any matter fraught with peril is still in
doubt, and there is yet some possibility left that all may come right,
no one should ever tremble or think of anything but resistance,--just
as a man should not despair of the weather if he can see a bit of blue
sky anywhere. Let our attitude be such that we should not quake even
if the world fell in ruins about us:--

  _Si fractus illabatur orbis
  Impavidum ferient ruinae_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Horace, Odes iii. 3.]

Our whole life itself--let alone its blessings--would not be worth
such a cowardly trembling and shrinking of the heart. Therefore, let
us face life courageously and show a firm front to every ill:--

_Quocirca vivite fortes Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus_.

Still, it is possible for courage to be carried to an excess and to
degenerate into rashness. It may even be said that some amount of fear
is necessary, if we are to exist at all in the world, and cowardice
is only the exaggerated form of it. This truth has been very well
expressed by Bacon, in his account of _Terror Panicus_; and the
etymological account which he gives of its meaning, is very superior
to the ancient explanation preserved for us by Plutarch.[1] He
connects the expression with _Pan_ the personification of Nature;[2]
and observes that fear is innate in every living thing, and, in fact,
tends to its preservation, but that it is apt to come into play
without due cause, and that man is especially exposed to it. The chief
feature of this _Panie Terror_ is that there is no clear notion of any
definite danger bound up with it; that it presumes rather than knows
that danger exists; and that, in case of need, it pleads fright itself
as the reason for being afraid.

[Footnote 1: _De Iside et Osiride_ ch. 14.]

[Footnote 2: _De Sapientia Veterum_, C. 6. _Natura enim rerum omnibus
viventibus indidit mentum ac formidinem, vitae atque essentiae suae
conservatricem, ac mala ingruentia vitantem et depellentem. Verumtamen
eaden natura modum tenere nescia est: sed timoribus salutaribus semper
vanos et innanes admiscet; adeo ut omnia (si intus conspici darentur)
Panicis terroribus plenissima sint praesertim humana_.]




CHAPTER V.

THE AGES OF LIFE.


There is a very fine saying of Voltaire's to the effect that every age
of life has its own peculiar mental character, and that a man will
feel completely unhappy if his mind is not in accordance with his
years:--

  _Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son âge,
  De son âge atout le malheur_.

It will, therefore, be a fitting close to our speculations upon the
nature of happiness, if we glance at the chances which the various
periods of life produce in us.

Our whole life long it is _the present_, and the present alone, that
we actually possess: the only difference is that at the beginning of
life we look forward to a long future, and that towards the end we
look back upon a long past; also that our temperament, but not our
character, undergoes certain well-known changes, which make _the
present_ wear a different color at each period of life.

I have elsewhere stated that in childhood we are more given to using
our _intellect_ than our _will_; and I have explained why this is
so.[1] It is just for this reason that the first quarter of life is so
happy: as we look back upon it in after years, it seems a sort of lost
paradise. In childhood our relations with others are limited, our
wants are few,--in a word, there is little stimulus for the will;
and so our chief concern is the extension of our knowledge. The
intellect--like the brain, which attains its full size in the seventh
year,[2] is developed early, though it takes time to mature; and it
explores the whole world of its surroundings in its constant search
for nutriment: it is then that existence is in itself an ever fresh
delight, and all things sparkle with the charm of novelty.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer refers to _Die Welt
als Wille und Vorstellung_, Bk. II. c, 31, p. 451 (4th edit.), where
he explains that this is due to the fact that at that period of life
the brain and nervous system are much more developed than any other
part of the organism.]

[Footnote 2: _Translator's Note_.--This statement is not quite
correct. The weight of the brain increases rapidly up to the seventh
year, more slowly between the sixteenth and the twentieth year, still
more slowly till between thirty and forty years of age, when it
attains its maximum. At each decennial period after this, it is
supposed to decrease in weight on the average, an ounce for every ten
years.]

This is why the years of childhood are like a long poem. For the
function of poetry, as of all art, is to grasp the _Idea_--in the
Platonic sense; in other words, to apprehend a particular object in
such a way as to perceive its essential nature, the characteristics
it has in common with all other objects of the same kind; so that
a single object appears as the representative of a class, and the
results of one experience hold good for a thousand.

It may be thought that my remarks are opposed to fact, and that the
child is never occupied with anything beyond the individual objects or
events which are presented to it from time to time, and then only in
so far as they interest and excite its will for the moment; but this
is not really the case. In those early years, life--in the full
meaning of the word, is something so new and fresh, and its sensations
are so keen and unblunted by repetition, that, in the midst of all its
pursuits and without any clear consciousness of what it is doing,
the child is always silently occupied in grasping the nature of life
itself,--in arriving at its fundamental character and general outline
by means of separate scenes and experiences; or, to use Spinoza's
phraseology, the child is learning to see the things and persons
about it _sub specie aeternitatis_,--as particular manifestations of
universal law.

The younger we are, then, the more does every individual object
represent for us the whole class to which it belongs; but as the years
increase, this becomes less and less the case. That is the reason why
youthful impressions are so different from those of old age. And that
it also why the slight knowledge and experience gained in childhood
and youth afterwards come to stand as the permanent rubric, or
heading, for all the knowledge acquired in later life,--those early
forms of knowledge passing into categories, as it were, under which
the results of subsequent experience are classified; though a clear
consciousness of what is being done, does not always attend upon the
process.

In this way the earliest years of a man's life lay the foundation of
his view of the world, whether it be shallow or deep; and although
this view may be extended and perfected later on, it is not materially
altered. It is an effect of this purely objective and therefore
poetical view of the world,--essential to the period of childhood
and promoted by the as yet undeveloped state of the volitional
energy--that, as children, we are concerned much more with the
acquisition of pure knowledge than with exercising the power of will.
Hence that grave, fixed look observable in so many children, of which
Raphael makes such a happy use in his depiction of cherubs, especially
in the picture of the _Sistine Madonna_. The years of childhood are
thus rendered so full of bliss that the memory of them is always
coupled with longing and regret.

While we thus eagerly apply ourselves to learning the outward aspect
of things, as the primitive method of understanding the objects about
us, education aims at instilling into us _ideas_. But ideas furnish no
information as to the real and essential nature of objects, which, as
the foundation and true content of all knowledge, can be reached only
by the process called _intuition_. This is a kind of knowledge which
can in no wise be instilled into us from without; we must arrive at it
by and for ourselves.

Hence a man's intellectual as well as his moral qualities proceed
from the depths of his own nature, and are not the result of external
influences; and no educational scheme--of Pestalozzi, or of any one
else--can turn a born simpleton into a man of sense. The thing is
impossible! He was born a simpleton, and a simpleton he will die.

It is the depth and intensity of this early intuitive knowledge of the
external world that explain why the experiences of childhood take such
a firm hold on the memory. When we were young, we were completely
absorbed in our immediate surroundings; there was nothing to distract
our attention from them; we looked upon the objects about us as though
they were the only ones of their kind, as though, indeed, nothing else
existed at all. Later on, when we come to find out how many things
there are in the world, this primitive state of mind vanishes, and
with it our patience.

I have said elsewhere[1] that the world, considered as _object_,--in
other words, as it is _presented_ to us objectively,--wears in
general a pleasing aspect; but that in the world, considered as
_subject_,--that is, in regard to its inner nature, which is
_will_,--pain and trouble predominate. I may be allowed to express the
matter, briefly, thus: _the world is glorious to look at, but dreadful
in reality_.

[Footnote 1: _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, Bk. II. c. 31, p.
426-7 (4th Edit.), to which the reader is referred for a detailed
explanation of my meaning.]

Accordingly, we find that, in the years of childhood, the world is
much better known to us on its outer or objective side, namely, as the
presentation of will, than on the side of its inner nature, namely, as
the will itself. Since the objective side wears a pleasing aspect, and
the inner or subjective side, with its tale of horror, remains as yet
unknown, the youth, as his intelligence develops, takes all the forms
of beauty that he sees, in nature and in art, for so many objects of
blissful existence; they are so beautiful to the outward eye that, on
their inner side, they must, he thinks, be much more beautiful still.
So the world lies before him like another Eden; and this is the
Arcadia in which we are all born.

A little later, this state of mind gives birth to a thirst for real
life--the impulse to do and suffer--which drives a man forth into
the hurly-burly of the world. There he learns the other side of
existence--the inner side, the will, which is thwarted at every step.
Then comes the great period of disillusion, a period of very gradual
growth; but once it has fairly begun, a man will tell you that he has
got over all his false notions--_l'âge des illusions est passé_; and
yet the process is only beginning, and it goes on extending its sway
and applying more and more to the whole of life.

So it may be said that in childhood, life looks like the scenery in
a theatre, as you view it from a distance; and that in old age it is
like the same scenery when you come up quite close to it.

And, lastly, there is another circumstance that contributes to the
happiness of childhood. As spring commences, the young leaves on the
trees are similar in color and much the same in shape; and in the
first years of life we all resemble one another and harmonize very
well. But with puberty divergence begins; and, like the radii of a
circle, we go further and further apart.

The period of youth, which forms the remainder of this earlier half of
our existence--and how many advantages it has over the later half!--is
troubled and made miserable by the pursuit of happiness, as though
there were no doubt that it can be met with somewhere in life,--a hope
that always ends in failure and leads to discontent. An illusory
image of some vague future bliss--born of a dream and shaped by
fancy--floats before our eyes; and we search for the reality in
vain. So it is that the young man is generally dissatisfied with the
position in which he finds himself, whatever it may be; he ascribes
his disappointment solely to the state of things that meets him on
his first introduction to life, when he had expected something very
different; whereas it is only the vanity and wretchedness of human
life everywhere that he is now for the first time experiencing.

It would be a great advantage to a young man if his early training
could eradicate the idea that the world has a great deal to offer him.
But the usual result of education is to strengthen this delusion; and
our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than
from fact.

In the bright dawn of our youthful days, the poetry of life spreads
out a gorgeous vision before us, and we torture ourselves by longing
to see it realized. We might as well wish to grasp the rainbow! The
youth expects his career to be like an interesting romance; and there
lies the germ of that disappointment which I have been describing.[1]
What lends a charm to all these visions is just the fact that they are
visionary and not real, and that in contemplating them we are in the
sphere of pure knowledge, which is sufficient in itself and free from
the noise and struggle of life. To try and realize those visions is
to make them an object of _will_--a process which always involves
pain.[2]

[Footnote 1: Cf. loc. cit., p. 428.]

[Footnote 2: Let me refer the reader, if he is interested in the
subject, to the volume already cited, chapter 37.]

If the chief feature of the earlier half of life is a never-satisfied
longing after happiness, the later half is characterized by the dread
of misfortune. For, as we advance in years, it becomes in a greater or
less degree clear that all happiness is chimerical in its nature,
and that pain alone is real. Accordingly, in later years, we, or, at
least, the more prudent amongst us, are more intent upon eliminating
what is painful from our lives and making our position secure, than on
the pursuit of positive pleasure. I may observe, by the way, that in
old age, we are better able to prevent misfortunes from coming, and in
youth better able to bear them when they come.

In my young days, I was always pleased to hear a ring at my door: ah!
thought I, now for something pleasant. But in later life my feelings
on such occasions were rather akin to dismay than to pleasure: heaven
help me! thought I, what am I to do? A similar revulsion of feeling in
regard to the world of men takes place in all persons of any talent
or distinction. For that very reason they cannot be said properly to
belong to the world; in a greater or less degree, according to the
extent of their superiority, they stand alone. In their youth they
have a sense of being abandoned by the world; but later on, they feel
as though they had escaped it. The earlier feeling is an unpleasant
one, and rests upon ignorance; the second is pleasurable--for in the
meantime they have come to know what the world is.

The consequence of this is that, as compared with the earlier, the
later half of life, like the second part of a musical period, has less
of passionate longing and more restfulness about it. And why is this
the case Simply because, in youth, a man fancies that there is a
prodigious amount of happiness and pleasure to be had in the world,
only that it is difficult to come by it; whereas, when he becomes
old, he knows that there is nothing of the kind; he makes his mind
completely at ease on the matter, enjoys the present hour as well as
he can, and even takes a pleasure in trifles.

The chief result gained by experience of life is _clearness of view_.
This is what distinguishes the man of mature age, and makes the world
wear such a different aspect from that which it presented in his youth
or boyhood. It is only then that he sees things quite plain, and takes
them for that which they really are: while in earlier years he saw a
phantom-world, put together out of the whims and crotchets of his own
mind, inherited prejudice and strange delusion: the real world was
hidden from him, or the vision of it distorted. The first thing
that experience finds to do is to free us from the phantoms of the
brain--those false notions that have been put into us in youth.

To prevent their entrance at all would, of course, be the best form of
education, even though it were only negative in aim: but it would be a
task full of difficulty. At first the child's horizon would have to be
limited as much as possible, and yet within that limited sphere none
but clear and correct notions would have to be given; only after the
child had properly appreciated everything within it, might the sphere
be gradually enlarged; care being always taken that nothing was left
obscure, or half or wrongly understood. The consequence of this
training would be that the child's notions of men and things would
always be limited and simple in their character; but, on the other
hand, they would be clear and correct, and only need to be extended,
not to be rectified. The same line might be pursued on into the period
of youth. This method of education would lay special stress upon the
prohibition of novel reading; and the place of novels would be taken
by suitable biographical literature--the life of Franklin, for
instance, or Moritz' _Anton Reiser_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Moritz was a miscellaneous writer
of the last century (1757-93). His _Anton Reiser_, composed in the
form of a novel, is practically an autobiography.]

In our early days we fancy that the leading events in our life, and
the persons who are going to play an important part in it, will make
their entrance to the sound of drums and trumpets; but when, in old
age, we look back, we find that they all came in quite quietly,
slipped in, as it were, by the side-door, almost unnoticed.

From the point of view we have been taking up until now, life may be
compared to a piece of embroidery, of which, during the first half of
his time, a man gets a sight of the right side, and during the second
half, of the wrong. The wrong side is not so pretty as the right, but
it is more instructive; it shows the way in which the threads have
been worked together.

Intellectual superiority, even if it is of the highest kind, will not
secure for a man a preponderating place in conversation until after he
is forty years of age. For age and experience, though they can never
be a substitute for intellectual talent, may far outweigh it; and even
in a person of the meanest capacity, they give a certain counterpoise
to the power of an extremely intellectual man, so long as the latter
is young. Of course I allude here to personal superiority, not to the
place a man may gain by his works.

And on passing his fortieth year, any man of the slightest power of
mind--any man, that is, who has more than the sorry share of intellect
with which Nature has endowed five-sixths of mankind--will hardly fail
to show some trace of misanthropy. For, as is natural, he has by that
time inferred other people's character from an examination of his own;
with the result that he has been gradually disappointed to find that
in the qualities of the head or in those of the heart--and usually in
both--he reaches a level to which they do not attain; so he gladly
avoids having anything more to do with them. For it may be said, in
general, that every man will love or hate solitude--in other Words,
his own society--just in proportion as he is worth anything in
himself. Kant has some remarks upon this kind of misanthropy in his
_Critique of the Faculty of Judgment_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_, Part I, §29, Note ad fin.]

In a young man, it is a bad sign, as well from an intellectual as from
a moral point of view, if he is precocious in understanding the ways
of the world, and in adapting himself to its pursuits; if he at once
knows how to deal with men, and enters upon life, as it were, fully
prepared. It argues a vulgar nature. On the other hand, to be
surprised and astonished at the way people act, and to be clumsy and
cross-grained in having to do with them, indicates a character of the
nobler sort.

The cheerfulness and vivacity of youth are partly due to the fact
that, when we are ascending the hill of life, death is not visible: it
lies down at the bottom of the other side. But once we have crossed
the top of the hill, death comes in view--death--which, until then,
was known to us only by hearsay. This makes our spirits droop, for at
the same time we begin to feel that our vital powers are on the ebb.
A grave seriousness now takes the place of that early extravagance of
spirit; and the change is noticeable even in the expression of a man's
face. As long as we are young, people may tell us what they please! we
look upon life as endless and use our time recklessly; but the older
we become, the more we practice economy. For towards the close of
life, every day we live gives us the same kind of sensation as the
criminal experiences at every step on his way to be tried.

From the standpoint of youth, life seems to stretch away into an
endless future; from the standpoint of old age, to go back but a
little way into the past; so that, at the beginning, life presents us
with a picture in which the objects appear a great way off, as though
we had reversed our telescope; while in the end everything seems so
close. To see how short life is, a man must have grown old, that is to
say, he must have lived long.

On the other hand, as the years increase, things look smaller, one and
all; and Life, which had so firm and stable a base in the days of our
youth, now seems nothing but a rapid flight of moments, every one of
them illusory: we have come to see that the whole world is vanity!

Time itself seems to go at a much slower pace when we are young; so
that not only is the first quarter of life the happiest, it is also
the longest of all; it leaves more memories behind it. If a man were
put to it, he could tell you more out of the first quarter of his life
than out of two of the remaining periods. Nay, in the spring of
life, as in the spring of the year, the days reach a length that is
positively tiresome; but in the autumn, whether of the year or of
life, though they are short, they are more genial and uniform.

But why is it that to an old man his past life appears so short? For
this reason: his memory is short; and so he fancies that his life has
been short too. He no longer remembers the insignificant parts of it,
and much that was unpleasant is now forgotten; how little, then,
there is left! For, in general, a man's memory is as imperfect as his
intellect; and he must make a practice of reflecting upon the lessons
he has learned and the events he has experienced, if he does not want
them both to sink gradually into the gulf of oblivion. Now, we are
unaccustomed to reflect upon matters of no importance, or, as a rule,
upon things that we have found disagreeable, and yet that is necessary
if the memory of them is to be preserved. But the class of things that
may be called insignificant is continually receiving fresh additions:
much that wears an air of importance at first, gradually becomes of no
consequence at all from the fact of its frequent repetition; so that
in the end we actually lose count of the number of times it happens.
Hence we are better able to remember the events of our early than of
our later years. The longer we live, the fewer are the things that
we can call important or significant enough to deserve further
consideration, and by this alone can they be fixed in the memory; in
other words, they are forgotten as soon as they are past. Thus it is
that time runs on, leaving always fewer traces of its passage.

Further, if disagreeable things have happened to us, we do not care
to ruminate upon them, least of all when they touch our vanity, as is
usually the case; for few misfortunes fall upon us for which we can
be held entirely blameless. So people are very ready to forget many
things that are disagreeable, as well as many that are unimportant.

It is from this double cause that our memory is so short; and a man's
recollection of what has happened always becomes proportionately
shorter, the more things that have occupied him in life. The things
we did in years gone by, the events that happened long ago, are like
those objects on the coast which, to the seafarer on his outward
voyage, become smaller every minute, more unrecognizable and harder to
distinguish.

Again, it sometimes happens that memory and imagination will call up
some long past scene as vividly as if it had occurred only yesterday;
so that the event in question seems to stand very near to the present
time. The reason of this is that it is impossible to call up all the
intervening period in the same vivid way, as there is no one figure
pervading it which can be taken in at a glance; and besides, most of
the things that happened in that period are forgotten, and all that
remains of it is the general knowledge that we have lived through
it--a mere notion of abstract existence, not a direct vision of some
particular experience. It is this that causes some single event
of long ago to appear as though it took place but yesterday: the
intervening time vanishes, and the whole of life looks incredibly
short. Nay, there are occasional moments in old age when we can
scarcely believe that we are so advanced in years, or that the long
past lying behind us has had any real existence--a feeling which is
mainly due to the circumstance that the present always seems fixed and
immovable as we look at it. These and similar mental phenomena are
ultimately to be traced to the fact that it is not our nature in
itself, but only the outward presentation of it, that lies in time,
and that the present is the point of contact between the world as
subject and the world as object.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--By this remark Schopenhauer means
that _will_, which, as he argues, forms the inner reality underlying
all the phenomena of life and nature, is not in itself affected
by time; but that, on the other hand, time is necessary for the
objectification of the will, for the will as presented in the passing
phenomena of the world. Time is thus definable as the condition of
change, and the present time as the only point of contact between
reality and appearance.]

Again, why is it that in youth we can see no end to the years that
seem to lie before us? Because we are obliged to find room for all
the things we hope to attain in life. We cram the years so full of
projects that if we were to try and carry them all out, death would
come prematurely though we reached the age of Methuselah.

Another reason why life looks so long when we are young, is that we
are apt to measure its length by the few years we have already
lived. In those early years things are new to us, and so they appear
important; we dwell upon them after they have happened and often call
them to mind; and thus in youth life seems replete with incident, and
therefore of long duration.

Sometimes we credit ourselves with a longing to be in some distant
spot, whereas, in truth, we are only longing to have the time back
again which we spent there--days when we were younger and fresher than
we are now. In those moments Time mocks us by wearing the mask of
space; and if we travel to the spot, we can see how much we have been
deceived.

There are two ways of reaching a great age, both of which presuppose
a sound constitution as a _conditio sine quâ non_. They may be
illustrated by two lamps, one of which burns a long time with very
little oil, because it has a very thin wick; and the other just as
long, though it has a very thick one, because there is plenty of oil
to feed it. Here, the oil is the vital energy, and the difference in
the wick is the manifold way in which the vital energy is used.

Up to our thirty-sixth year, we may be compared, in respect of the way
in which we use our vital energy, to people who live on the interest
of their money: what they spend to-day, they have again to-morrow. But
from the age of thirty-six onwards, our position is like that of the
investor who begins to entrench upon his capital. At first he hardly
notices any difference at all, as the greater part of his expenses is
covered by the interest of his securities; and if the deficit is
but slight, he pays no attention to it. But the deficit goes on
increasing, until he awakes to the fact that it is becoming more
serious every day: his position becomes less and less secure, and he
feels himself growing poorer and poorer, while he has no expectation
of this drain upon his resources coming to an end. His fall from
wealth to poverty becomes faster every moment--like the fall of a
solid body in space, until at last he has absolutely nothing left.
A man is truly in a woeful plight if both the terms of this
comparison--his vital energy and his wealth--really begin to melt away
at one and the same time. It is the dread of this calamity that makes
love of possession increase with age.

On the other hand, at the beginning of life, in the years before we
attain majority, and for some little time afterwards--the state of our
vital energy puts us on a level with those who each year lay by a part
of their interest and add it to their capital: in other words, not
only does their interest come in regularly, but the capital is
constantly receiving additions. This happy condition of affairs is
sometimes brought about--with health as with money--under the watchful
care of some honest guardian. O happy youth, and sad old age!

Nevertheless, a man should economize his strength even when he is
young. Aristotle[1] observes that amongst those who were victors at
Olympia only two or three gained a prize at two different periods,
once in boyhood and then again when they came to be men; and the
reason of this was that the premature efforts which the training
involved, so completely exhausted their powers that they failed to
last on into manhood. As this is true of muscular, so it is still more
true of nervous energy, of which all intellectual achievements are the
manifestation. Hence, those infant prodigies--_ingenia praecoda_--the
fruit of a hot-house education, who surprise us by their cleverness as
children, afterwards turn out very ordinary folk. Nay, the manner in
which boys are forced into an early acquaintance with the ancient
tongues may, perhaps, be to blame for the dullness and lack of
judgment which distinguish so many learned persons.

[Footnote 1: _Politics_.]

I have said that almost every man's character seems to be specially
suited to some one period of life, so that on reaching it the man is
at his best. Some people are charming so long as they are young, and
afterwards there is nothing attractive about them; others are vigorous
and active in manhood, and then lose all the value they possess as
they advance in years; many appear to best advantage in old age, when
their character assumes a gentler tone, as becomes men who have seen
the world and take life easily. This is often the case with the
French.

This peculiarity must be due to the fact that the man's character
has something in it akin to the qualities of youth or manhood or old
age--something which accords with one or another of these periods of
life, or perhaps acts as a corrective to its special failings.

The mariner observes the progress he makes only by the way in which
objects on the coast fade away into the distance and apparently
decrease in size. In the same way a man becomes conscious that he is
advancing in years when he finds that people older than himself begin
to seem young to him.

It has already been remarked that the older a man becomes, the
fewer are the traces left in his mind by all that he sees, does or
experiences, and the cause of this has been explained. There is thus
a sense in which it may be said that it is only in youth that a man
lives with a full degree of consciousness, and that he is only half
alive when he is old. As the years advance, his consciousness of what
goes on about him dwindles, and the things of life hurry by without
making any impression upon him, just as none is made by a work of art
seen for the thousandth time. A man does what his hand finds to do,
and afterwards he does not know whether he has done it or not.

As life becomes more and more unconscious, the nearer it approaches
the point at which all consciousness ceases, the course of time
itself seems to increase in rapidity. In childhood all the things and
circumstances of life are novel; and that is sufficient to awake us to
the full consciousness of existence: hence, at that age, the day seems
of such immense length. The same thing happens when we are traveling:
one month seems longer then than four spent at home. Still, though
time seems to last longer when we are young or on a journey, the sense
of novelty does not prevent it from now and then in reality hanging
heavily upon our hands under both these circumstances, at any rate
more than is the case when we are old or staying at home. But the
intellect gradually becomes so rubbed down and blunted by long
habituation to such impressions that things have a constant tendency
to produce less and less impression upon us as they pass by; and this
makes time seem increasingly less important, and therefore shorter in
duration: the hours of the boy are longer than the days of the old
man. Accordingly, time goes faster and faster the longer we live,
like a ball rolling down a hill. Or, to take another example: as in
a revolving disc, the further a point lies from the centre, the more
rapid is its rate of progression, so it is in the wheel of life; the
further you stand from the beginning, the faster time moves for you.
Hence it may be said that as far as concerns the immediate sensation
that time makes upon our minds, the length of any given year is in
direct proportion to the number of times it will divide our whole
life: for instance, at the age of fifty the year appears to us only
one-tenth as long as it did at the age of five.

This variation in the rate at which time appears to move, exercises a
most decided influence upon the whole nature of our existence at
every period of it. First of all, it causes childhood--even though it
embrace only a span of fifteen years--to seem the longest period of
life, and therefore the richest in reminiscences. Next, it brings it
about that a man is apt to be bored just in proportion as he is young.
Consider, for instance, that constant need of occupation--whether it
is work or play--that is shown by children: if they come to an end
of both work and play, a terrible feeling of boredom ensues. Even in
youth people are by no means free from this tendency, and dread the
hours when they have nothing to do. As manhood approaches, boredom
disappears; and old men find the time too short when their days fly
past them like arrows from a bow. Of course, I must be understood to
speak of _men_, not of decrepit _brutes_. With this increased rapidity
of time, boredom mostly passes away as we advance in life; and as
the passions with all their attendant pain are then laid asleep, the
burden of life is, on the whole, appreciably lighter in later years
than in youth, provided, of course, that health remains. So it is that
the period immediately preceding the weakness and troubles of old age,
receives the name of a man's _best years_.

That may be a true appellation, in view of the comfortable feeling
which those years bring; but for all that the years of youth, when our
consciousness is lively and open to every sort of impression, have
this privilege--that then the seeds are sown and the buds come forth;
it is the springtime of the mind. Deep truths may be perceived, but
can never be excogitated--that is to say, the first knowledge of
them is immediate, called forth by some momentary impression. This
knowledge is of such a kind as to be attainable only when the
impressions are strong, lively and deep; and if we are to be
acquainted with deep truths, everything depends upon a proper use of
our early years. In later life, we may be better able to work upon
other people,--upon the world, because our natures are then finished
and rounded off, and no more a prey to fresh views; but then the
world is less able to work upon us. These are the years of action
and achievement; while youth is the time for forming fundamental
conceptions, and laying down the ground-work of thought.

In youth it is the outward aspect of things that most engages us;
while in age, thought or reflection is the predominating quality
of the mind. Hence, youth is the time for poetry, and age is more
inclined to philosophy. In practical affairs it is the same: a man
shapes his resolutions in youth more by the impression that the
outward world makes upon him; whereas, when he is old, it is thought
that determines his actions. This is partly to be explained by the
fact that it is only when a man is old that the results of outward
observation are present in sufficient numbers to allow of their being
classified according to the ideas they represent,--a process which in
its turn causes those ideas to be more fully understood in all their
bearings, and the exact value and amount of trust to be placed in
them, fixed and determined; while at the same time he has grown
accustomed to the impressions produced by the various phenomena
of life, and their effects on him are no longer what they were.
Contrarily, in youth, the impressions that things make, that is to
say, the outward aspects of life, are so overpoweringly strong,
especially in the case of people of lively and imaginative
disposition, that they view the world like a picture; and their chief
concern is the figure they cut in it, the appearance they present;
nay, they are unaware of the extent to which this is the case. It is
a quality of mind that shows itself--if in no other way--in that
personal vanity, and that love of fine clothes, which distinguish
young people.

There can be no doubt that the intellectual powers are most capable
of enduring great and sustained efforts in youth, up to the age of
thirty-five at latest; from which period their strength begins to
decline, though very gradually. Still, the later years of life, and
even old age itself, are not without their intellectual compensation.
It is only then that a man can be said to be really rich in experience
or in learning; he has then had time and opportunity enough to enable
him to see and think over life from all its sides; he has been able to
compare one thing with another, and to discover points of contact and
connecting links, so that only then are the true relations of things
rightly understood. Further, in old age there comes an increased depth
in the knowledge that was acquired in youth; a man has now many more
illustrations of any ideas he may have attained; things which he
thought he knew when he was young, he now knows in reality. And
besides, his range of knowledge is wider; and in whatever direction it
extends, it is thorough, and therefore formed into a consistent and
connected whole; whereas in youth knowledge is always defective and
fragmentary.

A complete and adequate notion of life can never be attained by any
one who does not reach old age; for it is only the old man who
sees life whole and knows its natural course; it is only he who is
acquainted--and this is most important--not only with its entrance,
like the rest of mankind, but with its exit too; so that he alone has
a full sense of its utter vanity; whilst the others never cease to
labor under the false notion that everything will come right in the
end.

On the other hand, there is more conceptive power in youth, and at
that time of life a man can make more out of the little that he knows.
In age, judgment, penetration and thoroughness predominate. Youth is
the time for amassing the material for a knowledge of the world that
shall be distinctive and peculiar,--for an original view of life, in
other words, the legacy that a man of genius leaves to his fellow-men;
it is, however, only in later years that he becomes master of his
material. Accordingly it will be found that, as a rule, a great writer
gives his best work to the world when he is about fifty years of age.
But though the tree of knowledge must reach its full height before it
can bear fruit, the roots of it lie in youth.

Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself
much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that
are more remote. It is just the same with the different periods in a
man's life; and yet often, in the one case no less than in the other,
it is a mistaken opinion. In the years of physical growth, when
our powers of mind and our stores of knowledge are receiving daily
additions, it becomes a habit for to-day to look down with contempt
upon yesterday. The habit strikes root, and remains even after the
intellectual powers have begun to decline,--when to-day should rather
look up with respect to yesterday. So it is that we often unduly
depreciate the achievements as well as the judgments of our youth.
This seems the place for making the general observation, that,
although in its main qualities a man's _intellect_ or _head_, as well
as his _character_ or _heart_, is innate, yet the former is by no
means so unalterable in its nature as the latter. The fact is that the
intellect is subject to very many transformations, which, as a rule,
do not fail to make their actual appearance; and this is so, partly
because the intellect has a deep foundation in the physique,
and partly because the material with which it deals is given in
experience. And so, from a physical point of view, we find that if a
man has any peculiar power, it first gradually increases in strength
until it reaches its acme, after which it enters upon a path of slow
decadence, until it ends in imbecility. But, on the other hand,
we must not lose sight of the fact that the material which gives
employment to a man's powers and keeps them in activity,--the
subject-matter of thought and knowledge, experience, intellectual
attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom of things, and so a
perfect mental vision, form in themselves a mass which continues to
increase in size, until the time comes when weakness shows itself,
and the man's powers suddenly fail. The way in which these two
distinguishable elements combine in the same nature,--the one
absolutely unalterable, and the other subject to change in two
directions opposed to each other--explains the variety of mental
attitude and the dissimilarity of value which attach to a man at
different periods of life.

The same truth may be more broadly expressed by saying that the first
forty years of life furnish the text, while the remaining thirty
supply the commentary; and that without the commentary we are unable
to understand aright the true sense and coherence of the text,
together with the moral it contains and all the subtle application of
which it admits.

Towards the close of life, much the same thing happens as at the end
of a _bal masqué_--the masks are taken off. Then you can see who
the people really are, with whom you have come into contact in your
passage through the world. For by the end of life characters have come
out in their true light, actions have borne fruit, achievements have
been rightly appreciated, and all shams have fallen to pieces. For
this, Time was in every case requisite.

But the most curious fact is that it is also only towards the close
of life than a man really recognizes and understands his own true
self,--the aims and objects he has followed in life, more especially
the kind of relation in which he has stood to other people and to the
world. It will often happen that as a result of this knowledge, a man
will have to assign himself a lower place than he formerly thought
was his due. But there are exceptions to this rule; and it will
occasionally be the case that he will take a higher position than he
had before. This will be owing to the fact that he had no adequate
notion of the _baseness_ of the world, and that he set up a higher aim
for himself than was followed by the rest of mankind.

The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.

It is customary to call youth the happy, and age the sad part of life.
This would be true if it were the passions that made a man happy.
Youth is swayed to and fro by them; and they give a great deal of pain
and little pleasure. In age the passions cool and leave a man at rest,
and then forthwith his mind takes a contemplative tone; the intellect
is set free and attains the upper hand. And since, in itself,
intellect is beyond the range of pain, and man feels happy just in so
far as his intellect is the predominating part of him.

It need only be remembered that all pleasure is negative, and that
pain is positive in its nature, in order to see that the passions can
never be a source of happiness, and that age is not the less to be
envied on the ground that many pleasures are denied it. For every sort
of pleasure is never anything more than the quietive of some need or
longing; and that pleasure should come to an end as soon as the need
ceases, is no more a subject of complaint than that a man cannot go on
eating after he has had his dinner, or fall asleep again after a good
night's rest.

So far from youth being the happiest period of life, there is much
more truth in the remark made by Plato, at the beginning of the
_Republic_, that the prize should rather be given to old age, because
then at last a man is freed from the animal passion which has hitherto
never ceased to disquiet him. Nay, it may even be said that the
countless and manifold humors which have their source in this passion,
and the emotions that spring from it, produce a mild state of madness;
and this lasts as long as the man is subject to the spell of
the impulse--this evil spirit, as it were, of which there is no
riddance--so that he never really becomes a reasonable being until the
passion is extinguished.

There is no doubt that, in general, and apart from individual
circumstances and particular dispositions, youth is marked by a
certain melancholy and sadness, while genial sentiments attach to old
age; and the reason for this is nothing but the fact that the young
man is still under the service, nay, the forced labor, imposed by that
evil spirit, which scarcely ever leaves him a moment to himself. To
this source may be traced, directly or indirectly, almost all and
every ill that befalls or menaces mankind. The old man is genial and
cheerful because, after long lying in the bonds of passion, he can now
move about in freedom.

Still, it should not be forgotten that, when this passion is
extinguished, the true kernel of life is gone, and nothing remains but
the hollow shell; or, from another point of view, life then becomes
like a comedy, which, begun by real actors, is continued and brought
to an end by automata dressed in their clothes.

However that may be, youth is the period of unrest, and age of repose;
and from that very circumstance, the relative degree of pleasure
belonging to each may be inferred. The child stretches out its little
hands in the eager desire to seize all the pretty things that meet its
sight, charmed by the world because all its senses are still so young
and fresh. Much the same thing happens with the youth, and he displays
greater energy in his quest. He, too, is charmed by all the pretty
things and the many pleasing shapes that surround him; and forthwith
his imagination conjures up pleasures which the world can never
realize. So he is filled with an ardent desire for he knows not what
delights--robbing him of all rest and making happiness impossible.
But when old age is reached, all this is over and done with, partly
because the blood runs cooler and the senses are no longer so easily
allured; partly because experience has shown the true value of things
and the futility of pleasure, whereby illusion has been gradually
dispelled, and the strange fancies and prejudices which previously
concealed or distorted a free and true view of the world, have been
dissipated and put to flight; with the result that a man can now get
a juster and clearer view, and see things as they are, and also in a
measure attain more or less insight into the nullity of all things on
this earth.

It is this that gives almost every old man, no matter how ordinary his
faculties may be, a certain tincture of wisdom, which distinguishes
him from the young. But the chief result of all this change is the
peace of mind that ensues--a great element in happiness, and, in fact,
the condition and essence of it. While the young man fancies that
there is a vast amount of good things in the world, if he could only
come at them, the old man is steeped in the truth of the Preacher's
words, that _all things are vanity_--knowing that, however gilded the
shell, the nut is hollow.

In these later years, and not before, a man comes to a true
appreciation of Horace's maxim: _Nil admirari._ He is directly and
sincerely convinced of the vanity of everything and that all the
glories of the world are as nothing: his illusions are gone. He is
no more beset with the idea that there is any particular amount of
happiness anywhere, in the palace or in the cottage, any more than he
himself enjoys when he is free from bodily or mental pain. The worldly
distinctions of great and small, high and low, exist for him no
longer; and in this blissful state of mind the old man may look down
with a smile upon all false notions. He is completely undeceived, and
knows that whatever may be done to adorn human life and deck it out in
finery, its paltry character will soon show through the glitter of its
surroundings; and that, paint and be jewel it as one may, it remains
everywhere much the same,--an existence which has no true value except
in freedom from pain, and is never to be estimated by the presence of
pleasure, let alone, then, of display.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Horace, _Epist_. I. 12, I-4.]

Disillusion is the chief characteristic of old age; for by that time
the fictions are gone which gave life its charm and spurred on the
mind to activity; the splendors of the world have been proved null and
vain; its pomp, grandeur and magnificence are faded. A man has then
found out that behind most of the things he wants, and most of the
pleasures he longs for, there is very little after all; and so he
comes by degrees to see that our existence is all empty and void. It
is only when he is seventy years old that he quite understands the
first words of the Preacher; and this again explains why it is that
old men are sometimes fretful and morose.

It is often said that the common lot of old age is disease and
weariness of life. Disease is by no means essential to old age;
especially where a really long span of years is to be attained; for
as life goes on, the conditions of health and disorder tend to
increase--_crescente vita, crescit sanitas et morbus_. And as far as
weariness or boredom is concerned, I have stated above why old age is
even less exposed to that form of evil than youth. Nor is boredom by
any means to be taken as a necessary accompaniment of that solitude,
which, for reasons that do not require to be explained, old age
certainly cannot escape; it is rather the fate that awaits those who
have never known any other pleasures but the gratification of the
senses and the delights of society--who have left their minds
unenlightened and their faculties unused. It is quite true that the
intellectual faculties decline with the approach of old age; but where
they were originally strong, there will always be enough left to
combat the onslaught of boredom. And then again, as I have said,
experience, knowledge, reflection, and skill in dealing with men,
combine to give an old man an increasingly accurate insight into the
ways of the world; his judgment becomes keen and he attains a coherent
view of life: his mental vision embraces a wider range. Constantly
finding new uses for his stores of knowledge and adding to them at
every opportunity, he maintains uninterrupted that inward process of
self-education, which gives employment and satisfaction to the mind,
and thus forms the due reward of all its efforts.

All this serves in some measure as a compensation for decreased
intellectual power. And besides, Time, as I have remarked, seems to go
much more quickly when we are advanced in years; and this is in itself
a preventive of boredom. There is no great harm in the fact that
a man's bodily strength decreases in old age, unless, indeed, he
requires it to make a living. To be poor when one is old, is a great
misfortune. If a man is secure from that, and retains his health, old
age may be a very passable time of life. Its chief necessity is to be
comfortable and well off; and, in consequence, money is then prized
more than ever, because it is a substitute for failing strength.
Deserted by Venus, the old man likes to turn to Bacchus to make him
merry. In the place of wanting to see things, to travel and learn,
comes the desire to speak and teach. It is a piece of good fortune if
the old man retains some of his love of study or of music or of the
theatre,--if, in general, he is still somewhat susceptible to the
things about him; as is, indeed, the case with some people to a very
late age. At that time of life, _what a man has in himself_ is of
greater advantage to him that ever it was before.

There can be no doubt that most people who have never been anything
but dull and stupid, become more and more of automata as they grow
old. They have always thought, said and done the same things as their
neighbors; and nothing that happens now can change their disposition,
or make them act otherwise. To talk to old people of this kind is like
writing on the sand; if you produce any impression at all, it is gone
almost immediately; old age is here nothing but the _caput mortuum_
of life--all that is essential to manhood is gone. There are cases
in which nature supplies a third set of teeth in old age, thereby
apparently demonstrating the fact that that period of life is a second
childhood.

It is certainly a very melancholy thing that all a man's faculties
tend to waste away as he grows old, and at a rate that increases
in rapidity: but still, this is a necessary, nay, a beneficial
arrangement, as otherwise death, for which it is a preparation, would
be too hard to bear. So the greatest boon that follows the attainment
of extreme old age is _euthanasia_,--an easy death, not ushered in by
disease, and free from all pain and struggle.[1] For let a man live as
long as he may, he is never conscious of any moment but the present,
one and indivisible; and in those late years the mind loses more every
day by sheer forgetfulness than ever it gains anew.

[Footnote 1: See _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, Bk. II. ch. 41,
for a further description of this happy end to life.]

The main difference between youth and age will always be that youth
looks forward to life, and old age to death; and that while the one
has a short past and a long future before it, the case is just the
opposite with the other. It is quite true that when a man is old, to
die is the only thing that awaits him; while if he is young, he may
expect to live; and the question arises which of the two fates is the
more hazardous, and if life is not a matter which, on the whole, it is
better to have behind one than before? Does not the Preacher say:
_the day of death [is better] than the day of one's birth_.[1] It is
certainly a rash thing to wish for long life;[2] for as the Spanish
proverb has it, it means to see much evil,--_Quien larga vida vive
mucho mal vide_.

[Footnote 1: Ecclesiastes vii. 1.]

[Footnote 2: The life of man cannot, strictly speaking, be called
either _long_ or _short_, since it is the ultimate standard by which
duration of time in regard to all other things is measured.

In one of the Vedic _Upanishads (Oupnekhat_, II.) _the natural length_
of human life is put down at one hundred years. And I believe this to
be right. I have observed, as a matter of fact, that it is only people
who exceed the age of ninety who attain _euthanasia_,--who die, that
is to say, of no disease, apoplexy or convulsion, and pass away
without agony of any sort; nay, who sometimes even show no pallor, but
expire generally in a sitting attitude, and often after a meal,--or,
I may say, simply cease to live rather than die. To come to one's end
before the age of ninety, means to die of disease, in other words,
prematurely.

Now the Old Testament (Psalms xc. 10) puts the limit of human life at
seventy, and if it is very long, at eighty years; and what is more
noticeable still, Herodotus (i. 32 and iii. 22) says the same thing.
But this is wrong; and the error is due simply to a rough and
superficial estimate of the results of daily experience. For if the
natural length of life were from seventy to eighty years, people would
die, about that time, of mere old age. Now this is certainly not the
case. If they die then, they die, like younger people, _of disease_;
and disease is something abnormal. Therefore it is not natural to die
at that age. It is only when they are between ninety and a hundred
that people die of old age; die, I mean, without suffering from any
disease, or showing any special signs of their condition, such as a
struggle, death-rattle, convulsion, pallor,--the absence of all which
constitutes _euthanasia_. The natural length of human life is a
hundred years; and in assigning that limit the Upanishads are right
once more.]

A man's individual career is not, as Astrology wishes to make out, to
be predicted from observation of the planets; but the course of human
life in general, as far as the various periods of it are concerned,
may be likened to the succession of the planets: so that we may be
said to pass under the influence of each one of them in turn.

At ten, _Mercury_ is in the ascendant; and at that age, a youth, like
this planet, is characterized by extreme mobility within a narrow
sphere, where trifles have a great effect upon him; but under the
guidance of so crafty and eloquent a god, he easily makes great
progress. _Venus_ begins her sway during his twentieth year, and then
a man is wholly given up to the love of women. At thirty, _Mars_
comes to the front, and he is now all energy and strength,--daring,
pugnacious and arrogant.

When a man reaches the age of forty, he is under the rule of the
four _Asteroids_; that is to say, his life has gained something in
extension. He is frugal; in other words, by the help of _Ceres_, he
favors what is useful; he has his own hearth, by the influence of
_Vesta_; _Pallas_ has taught him that which is necessary for him to
know; and his wife--his _Juno_--rules as the mistress of his house.

But at the age of fifty, _Jupiter_ is the dominant influence. At that
period a man has outlived most of his contemporaries, and he can feel
himself superior to the generation about him. He is still in the full
enjoyment of his strength, and rich in experience and knowledge;
and if he has any power and position of his own, he is endowed with
authority over all who stand in his immediate surroundings. He is no
more inclined to receive orders from others; he wants to take command
himself. The work most suitable to him now is to guide and rule within
his own sphere. This is the point where Jupiter culminates, and where
the man of fifty years is at his best.

Then comes _Saturn_, at about the age of sixty, a weight as of _lead_,
dull and slow:--

  _But old folks, many feign as they were dead;
  Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead_.
Last of all, _Uranus_; or, as the saying is, a man goes to heaven.

I cannot find a place for _Neptune_, as this planet has been very
thoughtlessly named; because I may not call it as it should be
called--_Eros_. Otherwise I should point out how Beginning and End
meet together, and how closely and intimately Eros is connected with
Death: how Orcus, or Amenthes, as the Egyptians called him, is not
only the receiver but the giver of all things--[Greek: lambanon kai
didous]. Death is the great reservoir of Life. Everything comes from
Orcus; everything that is alive now was once there. Could we but
understand the great trick by which that is done, all would be clear!





End of Project Gutenberg's Counsels and Maxims, by Arthur Schopenhauer