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The Wisdom of Life, by Arthur Schopenhauer

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Title: The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life

Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

Release Date: January 18, 2004 [EBook #10741]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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THE ESSAYS

OF

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

TRANSLATED BY

T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.



THE WISDOM OF LIFE.




CONTENTS.

  CHAPTER
  INTRODUCTION
  I. DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT
  II. PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS
  III. PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS
  IV. POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE IN THE ESTIMATION OF OTHERS--
    Sect. 1. Reputation
      "   2. Pride
      "   3. Rank
      "   4. Honor
      "   5. Fame




INTRODUCTION.


In these pages I shall speak of _The Wisdom of Life_ in the common
meaning of the term, as the art, namely, of ordering our lives so as
to obtain the greatest possible amount of pleasure and success; an art
the theory of which may be called _Eudaemonology_, for it teaches us
how to lead a happy existence. Such an existence might perhaps be
defined as one which, looked at from a purely objective point of
view, or, rather, after cool and mature reflection--for the question
necessarily involves subjective considerations,--would be decidedly
preferable to non-existence; implying that we should cling to it for
its own sake, and not merely from the fear of death; and further, that
we should never like it to come to an end.

Now whether human life corresponds, or could possibly correspond,
to this conception of existence, is a question to which, as is
well-known, my philosophical system returns a negative answer. On the
eudaemonistic hypothesis, however, the question must be answered in
the affirmative; and I have shown, in the second volume of my chief
work (ch. 49), that this hypothesis is based upon a fundamental
mistake. Accordingly, in elaborating the scheme of a happy existence,
I have had to make a complete surrender of the higher metaphysical and
ethical standpoint to which my own theories lead; and everything I
shall say here will to some extent rest upon a compromise; in so far,
that is, as I take the common standpoint of every day, and embrace
the error which is at the bottom of it. My remarks, therefore, will
possess only a qualified value, for the very word _eudaemonology_ is a
euphemism. Further, I make no claims to completeness; partly because
the subject is inexhaustible, and partly because I should otherwise
have to say over again what has been already said by others.

The only book composed, as far as I remember, with a like purpose to
that which animates this collection of aphorisms, is Cardan's _De
utilitate ex adversis capienda_, which is well worth reading, and may
be used to supplement the present work. Aristotle, it is true, has a
few words on eudaemonology in the fifth chapter of the first book
of his _Rhetoric_; but what he says does not come to very much.
As compilation is not my business, I have made no use of these
predecessors; more especially because in the process of compiling,
individuality of view is lost, and individuality of view is the kernel
of works of this kind. In general, indeed, the wise in all ages have
always said the same thing, and the fools, who at all times form the
immense majority, have in their way too acted alike, and done just the
opposite; and so it will continue. For, as Voltaire says, _we shall
leave this world as foolish and as wicked as we found it on our
arrival_.




THE WISDOM OF LIFE.




CHAPTER I.

DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.


Aristotle[1] divides the blessings of life into three classes--those
which come to us from without, those of the soul, and those of the
body. Keeping nothing of this division but the number, I observe that
the fundamental differences in human lot may be reduced to three
distinct classes:

[Footnote 1: _Eth. Nichom_., I. 8.]

(1) What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense
of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty,
temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.

(2) What a man has: that is, property and possessions of every kind.

(3) How a man stands in the estimation of others: by which is to be
understood, as everybody knows, what a man is in the eyes of his
fellowmen, or, more strictly, the light in which they regard him. This
is shown by their opinion of him; and their opinion is in its turn
manifested by the honor in which he is held, and by his rank and
reputation.

The differences which come under the first head are those which Nature
herself has set between man and man; and from this fact alone we may
at once infer that they influence the happiness or unhappiness of
mankind in a much more vital and radical way than those contained
under the two following heads, which are merely the effect of human
arrangements. Compared with _genuine personal advantages_, such as a
great mind or a great heart, all the privileges of rank or birth, even
of royal birth, are but as kings on the stage, to kings in real life.
The same thing was said long ago by Metrodorus, the earliest disciple
of Epicurus, who wrote as the title of one of his chapters, _The
happiness we receive from ourselves is greater than that which we
obtain from our surroundings_[1] And it is an obvious fact, which
cannot be called in question, that the principal element in a man's
well-being,--indeed, in the whole tenor of his existence,--is what he
is made of, his inner constitution. For this is the immediate source
of that inward satisfaction or dissatisfaction resulting from the
sum total of his sensations, desires and thoughts; whilst his
surroundings, on the other hand, exert only a mediate or indirect
influence upon him. This is why the same external events or
circumstances affect no two people alike; even with perfectly similar
surroundings every one lives in a world of his own. For a man has
immediate apprehension only of his own ideas, feelings and volitions;
the outer world can influence him only in so far as it brings these to
life. The world in which a man lives shapes itself chiefly by the way
in which he looks at it, and so it proves different to different
men; to one it is barren, dull, and superficial; to another rich,
interesting, and full of meaning. On hearing of the interesting events
which have happened in the course of a man's experience, many people
will wish that similar things had happened in their lives too,
completely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental
aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess when he
describes them; to a man of genius they were interesting adventures;
but to the dull perceptions of an ordinary individual they would have
been stale, everyday occurrences. This is in the highest degree the
case with many of Goethe's and Byron's poems, which are obviously
founded upon actual facts; where it is open to a foolish reader to
envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him,
instead of envying that mighty power of phantasy which was capable
of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and
beautiful.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Clemens Alex. Strom. II., 21.]

In the same way, a person of melancholy temperament will make a scene
in a tragedy out of what appears to the sanguine man only in the light
of an interesting conflict, and to a phlegmatic soul as something
without any meaning;--all of which rests upon the fact that every
event, in order to be realized and appreciated, requires the
co-operation of two factors, namely, a subject and an object, although
these are as closely and necessarily connected as oxygen and hydrogen
in water. When therefore the objective or external factor in an
experience is actually the same, but the subjective or personal
appreciation of it varies, the event is just as much a different one
in the eyes of different persons as if the objective factors had not
been alike; for to a blunt intelligence the fairest and best object in
the world presents only a poor reality, and is therefore only poorly
appreciated,--like a fine landscape in dull weather, or in the
reflection of a bad _camera obscura_. In plain language, every man
is pent up within the limits of his own consciousness, and cannot
directly get beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his
own skin; so external aid is not of much use to him. On the stage, one
man is a prince, another a minister, a third a servant or a soldier or
a general, and so on,--mere external differences: the inner reality,
the kernel of all these appearances is the same--a poor player, with
all the anxieties of his lot. In life it is just the same. Differences
of rank and wealth give every man his part to play, but this by no
means implies a difference of inward happiness and pleasure; here,
too, there is the same being in all--a poor mortal, with his hardships
and troubles. Though these may, indeed, in every case proceed from
dissimilar causes, they are in their essential nature much the same in
all their forms, with degrees of intensity which vary, no doubt, but
in no wise correspond to the part a man has to play, to the presence
or absence of position and wealth. Since everything which exists or
happens for a man exists only in his consciousness and happens for it
alone, the most essential thing for a man is the constitution of this
consciousness, which is in most cases far more important than the
circumstances which go to form its contents. All the pride and
pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool,
are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his
_Don Quixote_ in a miserable prison. The objective half of life and
reality is in the hand of fate, and accordingly takes various forms in
different cases: the subjective half is ourself, and in essentials is
always remains the same.

Hence the life of every man is stamped with the same character
throughout, however much his external circumstances may alter; it is
like a series of variations on a single theme. No one can get beyond
his own individuality. An animal, under whatever circumstances it
is placed, remains within the narrow limits to which nature has
irrevocably consigned it; so that our endeavors to make a pet happy
must always keep within the compass of its nature, and be restricted
to what it can feel. So it is with man; the measure of the happiness
he can attain is determined beforehand by his individuality. More
especially is this the case with the mental powers, which fix once for
all his capacity for the higher kinds of pleasure. If these powers are
small, no efforts from without, nothing that his fellowmen or that
fortune can do for him, will suffice to raise him above the ordinary
degree of human happiness and pleasure, half animal though it be; his
only resources are his sensual appetite,--a cozy and cheerful family
life at the most,--low company and vulgar pastime; even education, on
the whole, can avail little, if anything, for the enlargement of his
horizon. For the highest, most varied and lasting pleasures are those
of the mind, however much our youth may deceive us on this point; and
the pleasures of the mind turn chiefly on the powers of the mind. It
is clear, then, that our happiness depends in a great degree upon what
we _are_, upon our individuality, whilst lot or destiny is generally
taken to mean only what we _have_, or our _reputation_. Our lot,
in this sense, may improve; but we do not ask much of it if we are
inwardly rich: on the other hand, a fool remains a fool, a dull
blockhead, to his last hour, even though he were surrounded by houris
in paradise. This is why Goethe, in the _West-östliclien Divan_, says
that every man, whether he occupies a low position in life, or emerges
as its victor, testifies to personality as the greatest factor in
happiness:--

  _Volk und Knecht und Uberwinder
    Sie gestehen, zu jeder Zeit,
  Höchtes Glück der Erdenkinder
    Sei nur die Persönlichkeit_.

Everything confirms the fact that the subjective element in life is
incomparably more important for our happiness and pleasure than the
objective, from such sayings as _Hunger is the best sauce_, and _Youth
and Age cannot live together_, up to the life of the Genius and the
Saint. Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may
really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing king. A
quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the enjoyment of a perfectly
sound physique, an intellect clear, lively, penetrating and seeing
things as they are, a moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good
conscience--these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make up
for or replace. For what a man is in himself, what accompanies him
when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously more
essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions, or
even what he may be in the eyes of the world. An intellectual man in
complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts and
fancies, while no amount of diversity or social pleasure, theatres,
excursions and amusements, can ward off boredom from a dullard. A
good, temperate, gentle character can be happy in needy circumstances,
whilst a covetous, envious and malicious man, even if he be the
richest in the world, goes miserable. Nay more; to one who has the
constant delight of a special individuality, with a high degree of
intellect, most of the pleasures which are run after by mankind are
simply superfluous; they are even a trouble and a burden. And so
Horace says of himself, that, however many are deprived of the
fancy-goods of life, there is one at least who can live without
them:--

  _Gemmas, marmor, ebur, Tyrrhena sigilla, tabellas,
  Argentum, vestes, Gaetulo murice tinctas
  Sunt qui non habeant, est qui non curat habere_;

and when Socrates saw various articles of luxury spread out for sale,
he exclaimed: _How much there is in the world I do not want_.

So the first and most essential element in our life's happiness is
what we are,--our personality, if for no other reason than that it is
a constant factor coming into play under all circumstances: besides,
unlike the blessings which are described under the other two heads, it
is not the sport of destiny and cannot be wrested from us;--and, so
far, it is endowed with an absolute value in contrast to the merely
relative worth of the other two. The consequence of this is that it is
much more difficult than people commonly suppose to get a hold on a
man from without. But here the all-powerful agent, Time, comes in
and claims its rights, and before its influence physical and mental
advantages gradually waste away. Moral character alone remains
inaccessible to it. In view of the destructive effect of time, it
seems, indeed, as if the blessings named under the other two heads,
of which time cannot directly rob us, were superior to those of the
first. Another advantage might be claimed for them, namely, that being
in their very nature objective and external, they are attainable, and
every one is presented with the possibility, at least, of coming into
possession of them; whilst what is subjective is not open to us to
acquire, but making its entry by a kind of _divine right_, it remains
for life, immutable, inalienable, an inexorable doom. Let me quote
those lines in which Goethe describes how an unalterable destiny is
assigned to every man at the hour of his birth, so that he can develop
only in the lines laid down for him, as it were, by the conjunctions
of the stars: and how the Sybil and the prophets declare that
_himself_ a man can never escape, nor any power of time avail to
change the path on which his life is cast:--

  _Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen,
  Dïe Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten,
  Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen,
  Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten.
  So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen,
  So tagten schon Sybillen und Propheten;
  Und keine Zeit, und keine Macht zerstückelt
  Geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt_.

The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is to make the
most advantageous use possible of the personal qualities we possess,
and accordingly to follow such pursuits only as will call them into
play, to strive after the kind of perfection of which they admit and
to avoid every other; consequently, to choose the position, occupation
and manner of life which are most suitable for their development.

Imagine a man endowed with herculean strength who is compelled by
circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, some minute exquisite
work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental
labor demanding quite other powers, and just those which he has not
got,--compelled, that is, to leave unused the powers in which he is
pre-eminently strong; a man placed like this will never feel happy all
his life through. Even more miserable will be the lot of the man
with intellectual powers of a very high order, who has to leave them
undeveloped and unemployed, in the pursuit of a calling which does not
require them, some bodily labor, perhaps, for which his strength is
insufficient. Still, in a case of this kind, it should be our care,
especially in youth, to avoid the precipice of presumption, and not
ascribe to ourselves a superfluity of power which is not there.

Since the blessings described under the first head decidedly outweigh
those contained under the other two, it is manifestly a wiser course
to aim at the maintenance of our health and the cultivation of our
faculties, than at the amassing of wealth; but this must not be
mistaken as meaning that we should neglect to acquire an adequate
supply of the necessaries of life. Wealth, in the strict sense of the
word, that is, great superfluity, can do little for our happiness; and
many rich people feel unhappy just because they are without any true
mental culture or knowledge, and consequently have no objective
interests which would qualify them for intellectual occupations. For
beyond the satisfaction of some real and natural necessities, all that
the possession of wealth can achieve has a very small influence upon
our happiness, in the proper sense of the word; indeed, wealth rather
disturbs it, because the preservation of property entails a great many
unavoidable anxieties. And still men are a thousand times more intent
on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain
that what a man _is_ contributes much more to his happiness than
what he _has_. So you may see many a man, as industrious as an ant,
ceaselessly occupied from morning to night in the endeavor to increase
his heap of gold. Beyond the narrow horizon of means to this end, he
knows nothing; his mind is a blank, and consequently unsusceptible to
any other influence. The highest pleasures, those of the intellect,
are to him inaccessible, and he tries in vain to replace them by the
fleeting pleasures of sense in which he indulges, lasting but a brief
hour and at tremendous cost. And if he is lucky, his struggles result
in his having a really great pile of gold, which he leaves to
his heir, either to make it still larger, or to squander it in
extravagance. A life like this, though pursued with a sense of
earnestness and an air of importance, is just as silly as many another
which has a fool's cap for its symbol.

_What a man has in himself_ is, then, the chief element in his
happiness. Because this is, as a rule, so very little, most of those
who are placed beyond the struggle with penury feel at bottom quite as
unhappy as those who are still engaged in it. Their minds are vacant,
their imagination dull, their spirits poor, and so they are driven to
the company of those like them--for _similis simili gaudet_--where
they make common pursuit of pastime and entertainment, consisting
for the most part in sensual pleasure, amusement of every kind, and
finally, in excess and libertinism. A young man of rich family enters
upon life with a large patrimony, and often runs through it in an
incredibly short space of time, in vicious extravagance; and why?
Simply because, here too, the mind is empty and void, and so the man
is bored with existence. He was sent forth into the world outwardly
rich but inwardly poor, and his vain endeavor was to make his
external wealth compensate for his inner poverty, by trying to obtain
everything _from without_, like an old man who seeks to strengthen
himself as King David or Maréchal de Rex tried to do. And so in the
end one who is inwardly poor comes to be also poor outwardly.

I need not insist upon the importance of the other two kinds of
blessings which make up the happiness of human life; now-a-days the
value of possessing them is too well known to require advertisement.
The third class, it is true, may seem, compared with the second, of
a very ethereal character, as it consists only of other people's
opinions. Still every one has to strive for reputation, that is to
say, a good name. Rank, on the other hand, should be aspired to only
by those who serve the state, and fame by very few indeed. In any
case, reputation is looked upon as a priceless treasure, and fame as
the most precious of all the blessings a man can attain,--the Golden
Fleece, as it were, of the elect: whilst only fools will prefer rank
to property. The second and third classes, moreover, are reciprocally
cause and effect; so far, that is, as Petronius' maxim, _habes
habeberis_, is true; and conversely, the favor of others, in all its
forms, often puts us in the way of getting what we want.




CHAPTER II.

PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS.


We have already seen, in general, that what a man _is_ contributes
much more to his happiness than what he _has_, or how he is regarded
by others. What a man is, and so what he has in his own person, is
always the chief thing to consider; for his individuality accompanies
him always and everywhere, and gives its color to all his experiences.
In every kind of enjoyment, for instance, the pleasure depends
principally upon the man himself. Every one admits this in regard to
physical, and how much truer it is of intellectual, pleasure. When we
use that English expression, "to enjoy one's self," we are employing a
very striking and appropriate phrase; for observe--one says, not "he
enjoys Paris," but "he enjoys himself in Paris." To a man possessed of
an ill-conditioned individuality, all pleasure is like delicate wine
in a mouth made bitter with gall. Therefore, in the blessings as well
as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon
the way in which it is met, that is, upon the kind and degree of our
general susceptibility. What a man is and has in himself,--in a word
personality, with all it entails, is the only immediate and direct
factor in his happiness and welfare. All else is mediate and indirect,
and its influence can be neutralized and frustrated; but the influence
of personality never. This is why the envy which personal qualities
excite is the most implacable of all,--as it is also the most
carefully dissembled.

Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present
and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality is
persistently at work, more or less, at every moment of our life: all
other influences are temporal, incidental, fleeting, and subject to
every kind of chance and change. This is why Aristotle says: _It is
not wealth but character that lasts_.[1]

  [Greek: --hae gar phusis bebion ou ta chraemata]

[Footnote 1: Eth. Eud., vii. 2. 37:]

And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune
which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn
upon ourselves; for fortune may always change, but not character.
Therefore, subjective blessings,--a noble nature, a capable head, a
joyful temperament, bright spirits, a well-constituted, perfectly
sound physique, in a word, _mens sana in corpore sano_, are the first
and most important elements in happiness; so that we should be
more intent on promoting and preserving such qualities than on the
possession of external wealth and external honor.

And of all these, the one which makes us the most directly happy is
a genial flow of good spirits; for this excellent quality is its own
immediate reward. The man who is cheerful and merry has always a
good reason for being so,--the fact, namely, that he is so. There is
nothing which, like this quality, can so completely replace the loss
of every other blessing. If you know anyone who is young, handsome,
rich and esteemed, and you want to know, further, if he is happy, ask,
Is he cheerful and genial?--and if he is, what does it matter whether
he is young or old, straight or humpbacked, poor or rich?--he is
happy. In my early days I once opened an old book and found these
words: _If you laugh a great deal, you are happy; if you cry a great
deal, you are unhappy_;--a very simple remark, no doubt; but just
because it is so simple I have never been able to forget it, even
though it is in the last degree a truism. So if cheerfulness knocks
at our door, we should throw it wide open, for it never comes
inopportunely; instead of that, we often make scruples about letting
it in. We want to be quite sure that we have every reason to be
contented; then we are afraid that cheerfulness of spirits may
interfere with serious reflections or weighty cares. Cheerfulness is a
direct and immediate gain,--the very coin, as it were, of happiness,
and not, like all else, merely a cheque upon the bank; for it alone
makes us immediately happy in the present moment, and that is the
highest blessing for beings like us, whose existence is but an
infinitesimal moment between two eternities. To secure and promote
this feeling of cheerfulness should be the supreme aim of all our
endeavors after happiness.

Now it is certain that nothing contributes so little to cheerfulness
as riches, or so much, as health. Is it not in the lower classes, the
so-called working classes, more especially those of them who live in
the country, that we see cheerful and contented faces? and is it
not amongst the rich, the upper classes, that we find faces full of
ill-humor and vexation? Consequently we should try as much as possible
to maintain a high degree of health; for cheerfulness is the very
flower of it. I need hardly say what one must do to be healthy--avoid
every kind of excess, all violent and unpleasant emotion, all mental
overstrain, take daily exercise in the open air, cold baths and such
like hygienic measures. For without a proper amount of daily exercise
no one can remain healthy; all the processes of life demand exercise
for the due performance of their functions, exercise not only of the
parts more immediately concerned, but also of the whole body. For, as
Aristotle rightly says, _Life is movement_; it is its very essence.
Ceaseless and rapid motion goes on in every part of the organism.
The heart, with its complicated double systole and diastole, beats
strongly and untiringly; with twenty-eight beats it has to drive the
whole of the blood through arteries, veins and capillaries; the lungs
pump like a steam-engine, without intermission; the intestines are
always in peristaltic action; the glands are all constantly absorbing
and secreting; even the brain has a double motion of its own, with
every beat of the pulse and every breath we draw. When people can get
no exercise at all, as is the case with the countless numbers who
are condemned to a sedentary life, there is a glaring and fatal
disproportion between outward inactivity and inner tumult. For this
ceaseless internal motion requires some external counterpart, and the
want of it produces effects like those of emotion which we are obliged
to suppress. Even trees must be shaken by the wind, if they are to
thrive. The rule which finds its application here may be most briefly
expressed in Latin: _omnis motus, quo celerior, eo magis motus_.

How much our happiness depends upon our spirits, and these again upon
our state of health, may be seen by comparing the influence which the
same external circumstances or events have upon us when we are well
and strong with the effects which they have when we are depressed and
troubled with ill-health. It is not what things are objectively and in
themselves, but what they are for us, in our way of looking at them,
that makes us happy or the reverse. As Epictetus says, _Men are not
influenced by things, but by their thoughts about things_. And, in
general, nine-tenths of our happiness depends upon health alone. With
health, everything is a source of pleasure; without it, nothing
else, whatever it may be, is enjoyable; even the other personal
blessings,--a great mind, a happy temperament--are degraded and
dwarfed for want of it. So it is really with good reason that, when
two people meet, the first thing they do is to inquire after each
other's health, and to express the hope that it is good; for good
health is by far the most important element in human happiness. It
follows from all this that the greatest of follies is to sacrifice
health for any other kind of happiness, whatever it may be, for gain,
advancement, learning or fame, let alone, then, for fleeting sensual
pleasures. Everything else should rather be postponed to it.

But however much health may contribute to that flow of good spirits
which is so essential to our happiness, good spirits do not entirely
depend upon health; for a man may be perfectly sound in his physique
and still possess a melancholy temperament and be generally given up
to sad thoughts. The ultimate cause of this is undoubtedly to be
found in innate, and therefore unalterable, physical constitution,
especially in the more or less normal relation of a man's
sensitiveness to his muscular and vital energy. Abnormal sensitiveness
produces inequality of spirits, a predominating melancholy, with
periodical fits of unrestrained liveliness. A genius is one whose
nervous power or sensitiveness is largely in excess; as Aristotle[1]
has very correctly observed, _Men distinguished in philosophy,
politics, poetry or art appear to be all of a melancholy temperament_.
This is doubtless the passage which Cicero has in his mind when
he says, as he often does, _Aristoteles ait omnes ingeniosos
melancholicos esse_.[2] Shakespeare has very neatly expressed this
radical and innate diversity of temperament in those lines in _The
Merchant of Venice_:

[Footnote 1: Probl. xxx., ep. 1]

[Footnote 2: Tusc. i., 33.]

  _Nature has framed strange fellows in her time;
  Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
  And laugh, like parrots at a bag-piper;
  And others of such vinegar aspect,
  That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,
  Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable_.

This is the difference which Plato draws between [Greek: eukolos]
and [Greek: dyskolos]--the man of _easy_, and the man of _difficult_
disposition--in proof of which he refers to the varying degrees of
susceptibility which different people show to pleasurable and painful
impressions; so that one man will laugh at what makes another despair.
As a rule, the stronger the susceptibility to unpleasant impressions,
the weaker is the susceptibility to pleasant ones, and _vice versa_.
If it is equally possible for an event to turn out well or ill,
the [Greek: dyskolos] will be annoyed or grieved if the issue is
unfavorable, and will not rejoice, should it be happy. On the other
hand, the [Greek: eukolos] will neither worry nor fret over an
unfavorable issue, but rejoice if it turns out well. If the one is
successful in nine out of ten undertakings, he will not be pleased,
but rather annoyed that one has miscarried; whilst the other, if only
a single one succeeds, will manage to find consolation in the fact
and remain cheerful. But here is another instance of the truth,
that hardly any evil is entirely without its compensation; for the
misfortunes and sufferings which the [Greek: auskoloi], that is,
people of gloomy and anxious character, have to overcome, are, on the
whole, more imaginary and therefore less real than those which befall
the gay and careless; for a man who paints everything black, who
constantly fears the worst and takes measures accordingly, will not be
disappointed so often in this world, as one who always looks upon the
bright side of things. And when a morbid affection of the nerves, or a
derangement of the digestive organs, plays into the hands of an
innate tendency to gloom, this tendency may reach such a height that
permanent discomfort produces a weariness of life. So arises an
inclination to suicide, which even the most trivial unpleasantness may
actually bring about; nay, when the tendency attains its worst form,
it may be occasioned by nothing in particular, but a man may resolve
to put an end to his existence, simply because he is permanently
unhappy, and then coolly and firmly carry out his determination;
as may be seen by the way in which the sufferer, when placed under
supervision, as he usually is, eagerly waits to seize the first
unguarded moment, when, without a shudder, without a struggle or
recoil, he may use the now natural and welcome means of effecting his
release.[1] Even the healthiest, perhaps even the most cheerful
man, may resolve upon death under certain circumstances; when, for
instance, his sufferings, or his fears of some inevitable misfortune,
reach such a pitch as to outweigh the terrors of death. The only
difference lies in the degree of suffering necessary to bring about
the fatal act, a degree which will be high in the case of a cheerful,
and low in that of a gloomy man. The greater the melancholy, the lower
need the degree be; in the end, it may even sink to zero. But if a man
is cheerful, and his spirits are supported by good health, it requires
a high degree of suffering to make him lay hands upon himself. There
are countless steps in the scale between the two extremes of suicide,
the suicide which springs merely from a morbid intensification of
innate gloom, and the suicide of the healthy and cheerful man, who has
entirely objective grounds for putting an end to his existence.

[Footnote 1: For a detailed description of this condition of mind _Cf_
Esquirol, _Des maladies mentales_.]

Beauty is partly an affair of health. It may be reckoned as a personal
advantage; though it does not, properly speaking, contribute directly
to our happiness. It does so indirectly, by impressing other people;
and it is no unimportant advantage, even in man. Beauty is an open
letter of recommendation, predisposing the heart to favor the person
who presents it. As is well said in these lines of Homer, the gift of
beauty is not lightly to be thrown away, that glorious gift which none
can bestow save the gods alone--

  [Greek: outoi hapoblaet erti theon erikuoea dora,
  ossa ken autoi dosin, ekon douk an tis eloito].[1]

[Footnote 1: _Iliad_ 3, 65.]

The most general survey shows us that the two foes of human happiness
are pain and boredom. We may go further, and say that in the degree in
which we are fortunate enough to get away from the one, we approach
the other. Life presents, in fact, a more or less violent oscillation
between the two. The reason of this is that each of these two poles
stands in a double antagonism to the other, external or objective,
and inner or subjective. Needy surroundings and poverty produce pain;
while, if a man is more than well off, he is bored. Accordingly, while
the lower classes are engaged in a ceaseless struggle with need,
in other words, with pain, the upper carry on a constant and often
desperate battle with boredom.[1] The inner or subjective antagonism
arises from the fact that, in the individual, susceptibility to
pain varies inversely with susceptibility to boredom, because
susceptibility is directly proportionate to mental power. Let
me explain. A dull mind is, as a rule, associated with dull
sensibilities, nerves which no stimulus can affect, a temperament, in
short, which does not feel pain or anxiety very much, however great
or terrible it may be. Now, intellectual dullness is at the bottom of
that _vacuity of soul_ which is stamped on so many faces, a state of
mind which betrays itself by a constant and lively attention to all
the trivial circumstances in the external world. This is the true
source of boredom--a continual panting after excitement, in order to
have a pretext for giving the mind and spirits something to occupy
them. The kind of things people choose for this purpose shows that
they are not very particular, as witness the miserable pastimes they
have recourse to, and their ideas of social pleasure and conversation:
or again, the number of people who gossip on the doorstep or gape out
of the window. It is mainly because of this inner vacuity of soul that
people go in quest of society, diversion, amusement, luxury of every
sort, which lead many to extravagance and misery. Nothing is so good
a protection against such misery as inward wealth, the wealth of
the mind, because the greater it grows, the less room it leaves for
boredom. The inexhaustible activity of thought! Finding ever new
material to work upon in the multifarious phenomena of self and
nature, and able and ready to form new combinations of them,--there
you have something that invigorates the mind, and apart from moments
of relaxation, sets it far above the reach of boredom.

[Footnote 1: And the extremes meet; for the lowest state of
civilization, a nomad or wandering life, finds its counterpart in the
highest, where everyone is at times a tourist. The earlier stage was a
case of necessity; the latter is a remedy for boredom.]

But, on the other hand, this high degree of intelligence is rooted in
a high degree of susceptibility, greater strength of will, greater
passionateness; and from the union of these qualities comes an
increased capacity for emotion, an enhanced sensibility to all mental
and even bodily pain, greater impatience of obstacles, greater
resentment of interruption;--all of which tendencies are augmented by
the power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole range
of thought, including what is disagreeable. This applies, in various
degrees, to every step in the long scale of mental power, from the
veriest dunce to the greatest genius that ever lived. Therefore the
nearer anyone is, either from a subjective or from an objective point
of view, to one of those sources of suffering in human life, the
farther he is from the other. And so a man's natural bent will lead
him to make his objective world conform to his subjective as much as
possible; that is to say, he will take the greatest measures against
that form of suffering to which he is most liable. The wise man will,
above all, strive after freedom from pain and annoyance, quiet and
leisure, consequently a tranquil, modest life, with as few encounters
as may be; and so, after a little experience of his so-called
fellowmen, he will elect to live in retirement, or even, if he is
a man of great intellect, in solitude. For the more a man has in
himself, the less he will want from other people,--the less, indeed,
other people can be to him. This is why a high degree of intellect
tends to make a man unsocial. True, if _quality_ of intellect could be
made up for by quantity, it might be worth while to live even in the
great world; but unfortunately, a hundred fools together will not make
one wise man.

But the individual who stands at the other end of the scale is no
sooner free from the pangs of need than he endeavors to get pastime
and society at any cost, taking up with the first person he meets, and
avoiding nothing so much as himself. For in solitude, where every one
is thrown upon his own resources, what a man has in himself comes
to light; the fool in fine raiment groans under the burden of his
miserable personality, a burden which he can never throw off, whilst
the man of talent peoples the waste places with his animating
thoughts. Seneca declares that folly is its own burden,--_omnis
stultitia laborat fastidio sui_,--a very true saying, with which may
be compared the words of Jesus, the son of Sirach, _The life of a fool
is worse than death_[1]. And, as a rule, it will be found that a man
is sociable just in the degree in which he is intellectually poor and
generally vulgar. For one's choice in this world does not go much
beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other. It is said
that the most sociable of all people are the negroes; and they are at
the bottom of the scale in intellect. I remember reading once in a
French paper[2] that the blacks in North America, whether free or
enslaved, are fond of shutting themselves up in large numbers in the
smallest space, because they cannot have too much of one another's
snub-nosed company.

[Footnote 1: Ecclesiasticus, xxii. 11.]

[Footnote 2: _Le Commerce_, Oct. 19th, 1837.]

The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a
pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body: and leisure, that
is, the time one has for the free enjoyment of one's consciousness or
individuality, is the fruit or produce of the rest of existence, which
is in general only labor and effort. But what does most people's
leisure yield?--boredom and dullness; except, of course, when it is
occupied with sensual pleasure or folly. How little such leisure is
worth may be seen in the way in which it is spent: and, as Ariosto
observes, how miserable are the idle hours of ignorant men!--_ozio
lungo d'uomini ignoranti_. Ordinary people think merely how they shall
_spend_ their time; a man of any talent tries to _use_ it. The reason
why people of limited intellect are apt to be bored is that their
intellect is absolutely nothing more than the means by which the
motive power of the will is put into force: and whenever there is
nothing particular to set the will in motion, it rests, and their
intellect takes a holiday, because, equally with the will, it requires
something external to bring it into play. The result is an awful
stagnation of whatever power a man has--in a word, boredom. To
counteract this miserable feeling, men run to trivialities which
please for the moment they are taken up, hoping thus to engage the
will in order to rouse it to action, and so set the intellect in
motion; for it is the latter which has to give effect to these motives
of the will. Compared with real and natural motives, these are but as
paper money to coin; for their value is only arbitrary--card games and
the like, which have been invented for this very purpose. And if there
is nothing else to be done, a man will twirl his thumbs or beat the
devil's tattoo; or a cigar may be a welcome substitute for exercising
his brains. Hence, in all countries the chief occupation of society is
card-playing,[1] and it is the gauge of its value, and an outward sign
that it is bankrupt in thought. Because people have no thoughts to
deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!
But I do not wish to be unjust; so let me remark that it may certainly
be said in defence of card-playing that it is a preparation for the
world and for business life, because one learns thereby how to make a
clever use of fortuitous but unalterable circumstances (cards, in this
case), and to get as much out of them as one can: and to do this a man
must learn a little dissimulation, and how to put a good face upon a
bad business. But, on the other hand, it is exactly for this reason
that card-playing is so demoralizing, since the whole object of it is
to employ every kind of trick and machination in order to win
what belongs to another. And a habit of this sort, learnt at the
card-table, strikes root and pushes its way into practical life; and
in the affairs of every day a man gradually comes to regard _meum_ and
_tuum_ in much the same light as cards, and to consider that he may
use to the utmost whatever advantages he possesses, so long as he does
not come within the arm of the law. Examples of what I mean are of
daily occurrence in mercantile life. Since, then, leisure is the
flower, or rather the fruit, of existence, as it puts a man into
possession of himself, those are happy indeed who possess something
real in themselves. But what do you get from most people's
leisure?--only a good-for-nothing fellow, who is terribly bored and a
burden to himself. Let us, therefore, rejoice, dear brethren, for _we
are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free_.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Card-playing to this extent is now,
no doubt, a thing of the past, at any rate amongst the nations
of northern Europe. The present fashion is rather in favor of a
dilettante interest in art or literature.]

Further, as no land is so well off as that which requires few imports,
or none at all, so the happiest man is one who has enough in his own
inner wealth, and requires little or nothing from outside for his
maintenance, for imports are expensive things, reveal dependence,
entail danger, occasion trouble, and when all is said and done, are
a poor substitute for home produce. No man ought to expect much from
others, or, in general, from the external world. What one human being
can be to another is not a very great deal: in the end every one
stands alone, and the important thing is _who_ it is that stands
alone. Here, then, is another application of the general truth which
Goethe recognizes in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ (Bk. III.), that in
everything a man has ultimately to appeal to himself; or, as Goldsmith
puts it in _The Traveller_:

  _Still to ourselves in every place consign'd
  Our own felicity we make or find_.

Himself is the source of the best and most a man can be or achieve.
The more this is so--the more a man finds his sources of pleasure in
himself--the happier he will be. Therefore, it is with great truth
that Aristotle[1] says, _To be happy means to be self-sufficient_. For
all other sources of happiness are in their nature most uncertain,
precarious, fleeting, the sport of chance; and so even under the most
favorable circumstances they can easily be exhausted; nay, this is
unavoidable, because they are not always within reach. And in old age
these sources of happiness must necessarily dry up:--love leaves us
then, and wit, desire to travel, delight in horses, aptitude for
social intercourse; friends and relations, too, are taken from us by
death. Then more than ever, it depends upon what a man has in himself;
for this will stick to him longest; and at any period of life it is
the only genuine and lasting source of happiness. There is not much to
be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; and
if a man escapes these, boredom lies in wait for him at every corner.
Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly
makes the most noise. Fate is cruel, and mankind is pitiable. In such
a world as this, a man who is rich in himself is like a bright, warm,
happy room at Christmastide, while without are the frost and snow of
a December night. Therefore, without doubt, the happiest destiny on
earth is to have the rare gift of a rich individuality, and, more
especially to be possessed of a good endowment of intellect; this
is the happiest destiny, though it may not be, after all, a very
brilliant one.

[Footnote 1: Eth. Eud, vii 2]

There was a great wisdom in that remark which Queen Christina of
Sweden made, in her nineteenth year, about Descartes, who had then
lived for twenty years in the deepest solitude in Holland, and, apart
from report, was known to her only by a single essay: _M. Descartes_,
she said, _is the happiest of men, and his condition seems to me much
to be envied.[1]_ Of course, as was the case with Descartes, external
circumstances must be favorable enough to allow a man to be master of
his life and happiness; or, as we read in _Ecclesiastes_[2]--_Wisdom
is good together with an inheritance, and profitable unto them that
see the sun_. The man to whom nature and fate have granted the
blessing of wisdom, will be most anxious and careful to keep open
the fountains of happiness which he has in himself; and for this,
independence and leisure are necessary. To obtain them, he will be
willing to moderate his desires and harbor his resources, all the more
because he is not, like others, restricted to the external world for
his pleasures. So he will not be misled by expectations of office, or
money, or the favor and applause of his fellowmen, into surrendering
himself in order to conform to low desires and vulgar tastes; nay, in
such a case he will follow the advice that Horace gives in his epistle
to Maecenas.[3]

[Footnote 1: _Vie de Descartes_, par Baillet. Liv. vii., ch. 10.]

[Footnote 2: vii. 12.]

[Footnote 3: Lib. 1., ep. 7.]

  _Nec somnum plebis laudo, satur altilium, nec
  Otia divitiis Arabum liberrima muto_.

It is a great piece of folly to sacrifice the inner for the outer man,
to give the whole or the greater part of one's quiet, leisure and
independence for splendor, rank, pomp, titles and honor. This is what
Goethe did. My good luck drew me quite in the other direction.

The truth which I am insisting upon here, the truth, namely, that the
chief source of human happiness is internal, is confirmed by that most
accurate observation of Aristotle in the _Nichomachean Ethics_[1] that
every pleasure presupposes some sort of activity, the application of
some sort of power, without which it cannot exist. The doctrine of
Aristotle's, that a man's happiness consists in the free exercise
of his highest faculties, is also enunciated by Stobaeus in his
exposition of the Peripatetic philosophy[2]: _happiness_, he says,
_means vigorous and successful activity in all your undertakings_; and
he explains that by _vigor [Greek: aretae]_ he means _mastery_ in any
thing, whatever it be. Now, the original purpose of those forces with
which nature has endowed man is to enable him to struggle against the
difficulties which beset him on all sides. But if this struggle comes
to an end, his unemployed forces become a burden to him; and he has to
set to work and play with them,--to use them, I mean, for no purpose
at all, beyond avoiding the other source of human suffering, boredom,
to which he is at once exposed. It is the upper classes, people of
wealth, who are the greatest victims of boredom. Lucretius long ago
described their miserable state, and the truth of his description may
be still recognized to-day, in the life of every great capital--where
the rich man is seldom in his own halls, because it bores him to be
there, and still he returns thither, because he is no better off
outside;--or else he is away in post-haste to his house in the
country, as if it were on fire; and he is no sooner arrived there,
than he is bored again, and seeks to forget everything in sleep, or
else hurries back to town once more.

[Footnote 1: i. 7 and vii. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 2: Ecl. eth. ii., ch 7.]

  _Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,
  Esse domi quem pertaesum est, subitoque reventat,
  Quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse.
  Currit, agens mannos, ad villam precipitanter,
  Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans:
  Oscitat extemplo, tetigit quum limina villae;
  Aut abit in somnum gravis, atque oblivia quaerit;
  Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit_.[1]

[Footnote 1: III 1073.]

In their youth, such people must have had a superfluity of muscular
and vital energy,--powers which, unlike those of the mind, cannot
maintain their full degree of vigor very long; and in later years they
either have no mental powers at all, or cannot develop any for want
of employment which would bring them into play; so that they are in a
wretched plight. _Will_, however, they still possess, for this is the
only power that is inexhaustible; and they try to stimulate their
will by passionate excitement, such as games of chance for high
stakes--undoubtedly a most degrading form of vice. And one may say
generally that if a man finds himself with nothing to do, he is sure
to choose some amusement suited to the kind of power in which he
excels,--bowls, it may be, or chess; hunting or painting; horse-racing
or music; cards, or poetry, heraldry, philosophy, or some other
dilettante interest. We might classify these interests methodically,
by reducing them to expressions of the three fundamental powers,
the factors, that is to say, which go to make up the physiological
constitution of man; and further, by considering these powers by
themselves, and apart from any of the definite aims which they may
subserve, and simply as affording three sources of possible pleasure,
out of which every man will choose what suits him, according as he
excels in one direction or another.

First of all come the pleasures of _vital energy_, of food, drink,
digestion, rest and sleep; and there are parts of the world where it
can be said that these are characteristic and national pleasures.
Secondly, there are the pleasures of _muscular energy_, such as
walking, running, wrestling, dancing, fencing, riding and similar
athletic pursuits, which sometimes take the form of sport, and
sometimes of a military life and real warfare. Thirdly, there are the
pleasures of sensibility, such as observation, thought, feeling, or
a taste for poetry or culture, music, learning, reading, meditation,
invention, philosophy and the like. As regards the value, relative
worth and duration of each of these kinds of pleasure, a great deal
might be said, which, however, I leave the reader to supply. But every
one will see that the nobler the power which is brought into play,
the greater will be the pleasure which it gives; for pleasure always
involves the use of one's own powers, and happiness consists in a
frequent repetition of pleasure. No one will deny that in this respect
the pleasures of sensibility occupy a higher place than either of
the other two fundamental kinds; which exist in an equal, nay, in
a greater degree in brutes; it is this preponderating amount of
sensibility which distinguishes man from other animals. Now, our
mental powers are forms of sensibility, and therefore a preponderating
amount of it makes us capable of that kind of pleasure which has to do
with mind, so-called intellectual pleasure; and the more sensibility
predominates, the greater the pleasure will be.[1]

[Footnote 1: Nature exhibits a continual progress, starting from the
mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world, proceeding
to the vegetable, with its dull enjoyment of self, from that to the
animal world, where intelligence and consciousness begin, at first
very weak, and only after many intermediate stages attaining its last
great development in man, whose intellect is Nature's crowning point,
the goal of all her efforts, the most perfect and difficult of all her
works. And even within the range of the human intellect, there are a
great many observable differences of degree, and it is very seldom
that intellect reaches its highest point, intelligence properly
so-called, which in this narrow and strict sense of the word, is
Nature's most consummate product, and so the rarest and most precious
thing of which the world can boast. The highest product of Nature
is the clearest degree of consciousness, in which the world mirrors
itself more plainly and completely than anywhere else. A man endowed
with this form of intelligence is in possession of what is noblest
and best on earth; and accordingly, he has a source of pleasure in
comparison with which all others are small. From his surroundings he
asks nothing but leisure for the free enjoyment of what he has got,
time, as it were, to polish his diamond. All other pleasures that are
not of the intellect are of a lower kind; for they are, one and all,
movements of will--desires, hopes, fears and ambitions, no matter to
what directed: they are always satisfied at the cost of pain, and in
the case of ambition, generally with more or less of illusion. With
intellectual pleasure, on the other hand, truth becomes clearer and
clearer. In the realm of intelligence pain has no power. Knowledge is
all in all. Further, intellectual pleasures are accessible entirely
and only through the medium of the intelligence, and are limited by
its capacity. _For all the wit there is in the world is useless to him
who has none_. Still this advantage is accompanied by a substantial
disadvantage; for the whole of Nature shows that with the growth of
intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with
the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme
point.]

The normal, ordinary man takes a vivid interest in anything only in so
far as it excites his will, that is to say, is a matter of personal
interest to him. But constant excitement of the will is never an
unmixed good, to say the least; in other words, it involves pain.
Card-playing, that universal occupation of "good society" everywhere,
is a device for providing this kind of excitement, and that, too,
by means of interests so small as to produce slight and momentary,
instead of real and permanent, pain. Card-playing is, in fact, a mere
tickling of the will.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Vulgarity_ is, at bottom, the kind of consciousness in
which the will completely predominates over the intellect, where the
latter does nothing more than perform the service of its master, the
will. Therefore, when the will makes no demands, supplies no motives,
strong or weak, the intellect entirely loses its power, and the result
is complete vacancy of mind. Now _will without intellect_ is the most
vulgar and common thing in the world, possessed by every blockhead,
who, in the gratification of his passions, shows the stuff of which he
is made. This is the condition of mind called _vulgarity_, in which
the only active elements are the organs of sense, and that small
amount of intellect which is necessary for apprehending the data of
sense. Accordingly, the vulgar man is constantly open to all sorts of
impressions, and immediately perceives all the little trifling things
that go on in his environment: the lightest whisper, the most trivial
circumstance, is sufficient to rouse his attention; he is just like an
animal. Such a man's mental condition reveals itself in his face, in
his whole exterior; and hence that vulgar, repulsive appearance, which
is all the more offensive, if, as is usually the case, his will--the
only factor in his consciousness--is a base, selfish and altogether
bad one.]

On the other hand, a man of powerful intellect is capable of taking
a vivid interest in things in the way of mere _knowledge_, with no
admixture of _will_; nay, such an interest is a necessity to him. It
places him in a sphere where pain is an alien,--a diviner air, where
the gods live serene.

  _[Greek: phusis bebion ou ta chraematatheoi reia xoontes][1]_

[Footnote 1: Odyssey IV., 805.]

Look on these two pictures--the life of the masses, one long, dull
record of struggle and effort entirely devoted to the petty interests
of personal welfare, to misery in all its forms, a life beset by
intolerable boredom as soon as ever those aims are satisfied and the
man is thrown back upon himself, whence he can be roused again to some
sort of movement only by the wild fire of passion. On the other side
you have a man endowed with a high degree of mental power, leading an
existence rich in thought and full of life and meaning, occupied by
worthy and interesting objects as soon as ever he is free to give
himself to them, bearing in himself a source of the noblest pleasure.
What external promptings he wants come from the works of nature, and
from the contemplation of human affairs and the achievements of the
great of all ages and countries, which are thoroughly appreciated by a
man of this type alone, as being the only one who can quite understand
and feel with them. And so it is for him alone that those great ones
have really lived; it is to him that they make their appeal; the rest
are but casual hearers who only half understand either them or their
followers. Of course, this characteristic of the intellectual man
implies that he has one more need than the others, the need of
reading, observing, studying, meditating, practising, the need, in
short, of undisturbed leisure. For, as Voltaire has very rightly said,
_there are no real pleasures without real needs_; and the need of them
is why to such a man pleasures are accessible which are denied to
others,--the varied beauties of nature and art and literature. To
heap these pleasures round people who do not want them and cannot
appreciate them, is like expecting gray hairs to fall in love. A man
who is privileged in this respect leads two lives, a personal and an
intellectual life; and the latter gradually comes to be looked upon
as the true one, and the former as merely a means to it. Other people
make this shallow, empty and troubled existence an end in itself. To
the life of the intellect such a man will give the preference over
all his other occupations: by the constant growth of insight and
knowledge, this intellectual life, like a slowly-forming work of art,
will acquire a consistency, a permanent intensity, a unity which
becomes ever more and more complete; compared with which, a life
devoted to the attainment of personal comfort, a life that may broaden
indeed, but can never be deepened, makes but a poor show: and yet,
as I have said, people make this baser sort of existence an end in
itself.

The ordinary life of every day, so far as it is not moved by passion,
is tedious and insipid; and if it is so moved, it soon becomes
painful. Those alone are happy whom nature has favored with some
superfluity of intellect, something beyond what is just necessary to
carry out the behests of their will; for it enables them to lead an
intellectual life as well, a life unattended by pain and full of vivid
interests. Mere leisure, that is to say, intellect unoccupied in the
service of the will, is not of itself sufficient: there must be a
real superfluity of power, set free from the service of the will and
devoted to that of the intellect; for, as Seneca says, _otium sine
litteris mors est et vivi hominis sepultura_--illiterate leisure is
a form of death, a living tomb. Varying with the amount of the
superfluity, there will be countless developments in this second life,
the life of the mind; it may be the mere collection and labelling of
insects, birds, minerals, coins, or the highest achievements of poetry
and philosophy. The life of the mind is not only a protection against
boredom; it also wards off the pernicious effects of boredom; it keeps
us from bad company, from the many dangers, misfortunes, losses and
extravagances which the man who places his happiness entirely in the
objective world is sure to encounter, My philosophy, for instance, has
never brought me in a six-pence; but it has spared me many an expense.

The ordinary man places his life's happiness in things external to
him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the
like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the
foundation of his happiness is destroyed. In other words, his centre
of gravity is not in himself; it is constantly changing its place,
with every wish and whim. If he is a man of means, one day it will
be his house in the country, another buying horses, or entertaining
friends, or traveling,--a life, in short, of general luxury, the
reason being that he seeks his pleasure in things outside him. Like
one whose health and strength are gone, he tries to regain by the use
of jellies and drugs, instead of by developing his own vital power,
the true source of what he has lost. Before proceeding to the
opposite, let us compare with this common type the man who comes
midway between the two, endowed, it may be, not exactly with
distinguished powers of mind, but with somewhat more than the ordinary
amount of intellect. He will take a dilettante interest in art, or
devote his attention to some branch of science--botany, for example,
or physics, astronomy, history, and find a great deal of pleasure in
such studies, and amuse himself with them when external forces of
happiness are exhausted or fail to satisfy him any more. Of a man like
this it may be said that his centre of gravity is partly in himself.
But a dilettante interest in art is a very different thing from
creative activity; and an amateur pursuit of science is apt to be
superficial and not to penetrate to the heart of the matter. A man
cannot entirely identify himself with such pursuits, or have his whole
existence so completely filled and permeated with them that he loses
all interest in everything else. It is only the highest intellectual
power, what we call _genius_, that attains to this degree of
intensity, making all time and existence its theme, and striving to
express its peculiar conception of the world, whether it contemplates
life as the subject of poetry or of philosophy. Hence, undisturbed
occupation with himself, his own thoughts and works, is a matter of
urgent necessity to such a man; solitude is welcome, leisure is
the highest good, and everything else is unnecessary, nay, even
burdensome.

This is the only type of man of whom it can be said that his centre of
gravity is entirely in himself; which explains why it is that people
of this sort--and they are very rare--no matter how excellent their
character may be, do not show that warm and unlimited interest in
friends, family, and the community in general, of which others are
so often capable; for if they have only themselves they are not
inconsolable for the loss of everything else. This gives an isolation
to their character, which is all the more effective since other
people never really quite satisfy them, as being, on the whole, of
a different nature: nay more, since this difference is constantly
forcing itself upon their notice they get accustomed to move about
amongst mankind as alien beings, and in thinking of humanity in
general, to say _they_ instead of _we_.

So the conclusion we come to is that the man whom nature has endowed
with intellectual wealth is the happiest; so true it is that the
subjective concerns us more than the objective; for whatever the
latter may be, it can work only indirectly, secondly, and through the
medium of the former--a truth finely expressed by Lucian:--

  [Greek: _Aeloutos ho taes psychaes ploutus monos estin alaethaes
  Talla dechei ataen pleiona ton kteanon_--][1]

[Footnote 1: Epigrammata, 12.]

the wealth of the soul is the only true wealth, for with all other
riches comes a bane even greater than they. The man of inner wealth
wants nothing from outside but the negative gift of undisturbed
leisure, to develop and mature his intellectual faculties, that is,
to enjoy his wealth; in short, he wants permission to be himself,
his whole life long, every day and every hour. If he is destined to
impress the character of his mind upon a whole race, he has only one
measure of happiness or unhappiness--to succeed or fail in perfecting
his powers and completing his work. All else is of small consequence.
Accordingly, the greatest minds of all ages have set the highest value
upon undisturbed leisure, as worth exactly as much as the man himself.
_Happiness appears to consist in leisure_, says Aristotle;[1] and
Diogenes Laertius reports that _Socrates praised leisure as the
fairest of all possessions_. So, in the _Nichomachean Ethics_,
Aristotle concludes that a life devoted to philosophy is the happiest;
or, as he says in the _Politics,[2] the free exercise of any power,
whatever it may be, is happiness_. This again, tallies with what
Goethe says in _Wilhelm Meister: The man who is born with a talent
which he is meant to use, finds his greatest happiness in using it_.

[Footnote 1: Eth. Nichom. x. 7.]

[Footnote 2: iv. 11.]

But to be in possession of undisturbed leisure, is far from being
the common lot; nay, it is something alien to human nature, for the
ordinary man's destiny is to spend life in procuring what is necessary
for the subsistence of himself and his family; he is a son of struggle
and need, not a free intelligence. So people as a rule soon get tired
of undisturbed leisure, and it becomes burdensome if there are no
fictitious and forced aims to occupy it, play, pastime and hobbies of
every kind. For this very reason it is full of possible danger, and
_difficilis in otio quies_ is a true saying,--it is difficult to keep
quiet if you have nothing to do. On the other hand, a measure of
intellect far surpassing the ordinary, is as unnatural as it is
abnormal. But if it exists, and the man endowed with it is to be
happy, he will want precisely that undisturbed leisure which the
others find burdensome or pernicious; for without it he is a Pegasus
in harness, and consequently unhappy. If these two unnatural
circumstances, external, and internal, undisturbed leisure and great
intellect, happen to coincide in the same person, it is a great piece
of fortune; and if the fate is so far favorable, a man can lead the
higher life, the life protected from the two opposite sources of human
suffering, pain and boredom, from the painful struggle for existence,
and the incapacity for enduring leisure (which is free existence
itself)--evils which may be escaped only by being mutually
neutralized.

But there is something to be said in opposition to this view. Great
intellectual gifts mean an activity pre-eminently nervous in its
character, and consequently a very high degree of susceptibility to
pain in every form. Further, such gifts imply an intense temperament,
larger and more vivid ideas, which, as the inseparable accompaniment
of great intellectual power, entail on its possessor a corresponding
intensity of the emotions, making them incomparably more violent than
those to which the ordinary man is a prey. Now, there are more things
in the world productive of pain than of pleasure. Again, a large
endowment of intellect tends to estrange the man who has it from other
people and their doings; for the more a man has in himself, the less
he will be able to find in them; and the hundred things in which they
take delight, he will think shallow and insipid. Here, then, perhaps,
is another instance of that law of compensation which makes itself
felt everywhere. How often one hears it said, and said, too, with some
plausibility, that the narrow-minded man is at bottom the happiest,
even though his fortune is unenviable. I shall make no attempt to
forestall the reader's own judgment on this point; more especially as
Sophocles himself has given utterance to two diametrically opposite
opinions:--

  [Greek: Pollo to phronein eudaimonias
  proton uparchei.][1]

he says in one place--wisdom is the greatest part of happiness;
and again, in another passage, he declares that the life of the
thoughtless is the most pleasant of all--

  [Greek: En ta phronein gar maeden aedistos bios.][2]

The philosophers of the _Old Testament_ find themselves in a like
contradiction.

_The life of a fool is worse than death_[3]

and--

_In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge
increaseth sorrow_.[4]

[Footnote 1: Antigone, 1347-8.]

[Footnote 2: Ajax, 554.]

[Footnote 3: Ecclesiasticus, xxii. 11.]

[Footnote 4: Ecclesiastes, i. 18.]

I may remark, however, that a man who has no mental needs, because his
intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense
of the word, what is called a _philistine_--an expression at first
peculiar to the German language, a kind of slang term at the
Universities, afterwards used, by analogy, in a higher sense, though
still in its original meaning, as denoting one who is not _a Son of
the Muses_. A philistine is and remains [Greek: amousos anaer]. I
should prefer to take a higher point of view, and apply the term
_philistine_ to people who are always seriously occupied with
realities which are no realities; but as such a definition would be a
transcendental one, and therefore not generally intelligible, it
would hardly be in place in the present treatise, which aims at
being popular. The other definition can be more easily elucidated,
indicating, as it does, satisfactorily enough, the essential nature of
all those qualities which distinguish the philistine. He is defined to
be _a man without mental needs_. From this is follows, firstly, _in
relation to himself_, that he has _no intellectual pleasures_; for, as
was remarked before, there are no real pleasures without real needs.
The philistine's life is animated by no desire to gain knowledge and
insight for their own sake, or to experience that true aeesthetic
pleasure which is so nearly akin to them. If pleasures of this kind
are fashionable, and the philistine finds himself compelled to pay
attention to them, he will force himself to do so, but he will take as
little interest in them as possible. His only real pleasures are of a
sensual kind, and he thinks that these indemnify him for the loss of
the others. To him oysters and champagne are the height of existence;
the aim of his life is to procure what will contribute to his bodily
welfare, and he is indeed in a happy way if this causes him some
trouble. If the luxuries of life are heaped upon him, he will
inevitably be bored, and against boredom he has a great many fancied
remedies, balls, theatres, parties, cards, gambling, horses, women,
drinking, traveling and so on; all of which can not protect a man
from being bored, for where there are no intellectual needs, no
intellectual pleasures are possible. The peculiar characteristic
of the philistine is a dull, dry kind of gravity, akin to that of
animals. Nothing really pleases, or excites, or interests him, for
sensual pleasure is quickly exhausted, and the society of philistines
soon becomes burdensome, and one may even get tired of playing cards.
True, the pleasures of vanity are left, pleasures which he enjoys in
his own way, either by feeling himself superior in point of wealth, or
rank, or influence and power to other people, who thereupon pay
him honor; or, at any rate, by going about with those who have a
superfluity of these blessings, sunning himself in the reflection of
their splendor--what the English call a _snob_.

From the essential nature of the philistine it follows, secondly, _in
regard to others_, that, as he possesses no intellectual, but only
physical need, he will seek the society of those who can satisfy the
latter, but not the former. The last thing he will expect from his
friends is the possession of any sort of intellectual capacity; nay,
if he chances to meet with it, it will rouse his antipathy and
even hatred; simply because in addition to an unpleasant sense of
inferiority, he experiences, in his heart, a dull kind of envy, which
has to be carefully concealed even from himself. Nevertheless, it
sometimes grows into a secret feeling of rancor. But for all that,
it will never occur to him to make his own ideas of worth or value
conform to the standard of such qualities; he will continue to give
the preference to rank and riches, power and influence, which in his
eyes seem to be the only genuine advantages in the world; and his wish
will be to excel in them himself. All this is the consequence of his
being a man _without intellectual needs_. The great affliction of all
philistines is that they have no interest in _ideas_, and that, to
escape being bored, they are in constant need of _realities_. But
realities are either unsatisfactory or dangerous; when they lose their
interest, they become fatiguing. But the ideal world is illimitable
and calm,

  _something afar
  From the sphere of our sorrow_.


NOTE.--In these remarks on the personal qualities which go to make
happiness, I have been mainly concerned with the physical and
intellectual nature of man. For an account of the direct and immediate
influence of _morality_ upon happiness, let me refer to my prize essay
on _The Foundation of Morals_ (Sec. 22.)




CHAPTER III.

PROPERTY, OR WHAT A MAN HAS.


Epicurus divides the needs of mankind into three classes, and the
division made by this great professor of happiness is a true and a
fine one. First come natural and necessary needs, such as, when not
satisfied, produce pain,--food and clothing, _victus et amictus_,
needs which can easily be satisfied. Secondly, there are those needs
which, though natural, are not necessary, such as the gratification of
certain of the senses. I may add, however, that in the report given by
Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus does not mention which of the senses he
means; so that on this point my account of his doctrine is somewhat
more definite and exact than the original. These are needs rather more
difficult to satisfy. The third class consists of needs which are
neither natural nor necessary, the need of luxury and prodigality,
show and splendor, which never come to an end, and are very hard to
satisfy.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Diogenes Laertius, Bk. x., ch. xxvii., pp. 127 and
149; also Cicero _de finibus_, i., 13.]

It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limits which reason
should impose on the desire for wealth; for there is no absolute or
definite amount of wealth which will satisfy a man. The amount is
always relative, that is to say, just so much as will maintain the
proportion between what he wants and what he gets; for to measure a
man's happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects
to get, is as futile as to try and express a fraction which shall have
a numerator but no denominator. A man never feels the loss of things
which it never occurs to him to ask for; he is just as happy without
them; whilst another, who may have a hundred times as much, feels
miserable because he has not got the one thing he wants. In fact, here
too, every man has an horizon of his own, and he will expect as much
as he thinks it is possible for him to get. If an object within his
horizon looks as though he could confidently reckon on getting it, he
is happy; but if difficulties come in the way, he is miserable. What
lies beyond his horizon has no effect at all upon him. So it is
that the vast possessions of the rich do not agitate the poor, and
conversely, that a wealthy man is not consoled by all his wealth for
the failure of his hopes. Riches, one may say, are like sea-water; the
more you drink the thirstier you become; and the same is true of fame.
The loss of wealth and prosperity leaves a man, as soon as the first
pangs of grief are over, in very much the same habitual temper as
before; and the reason of this is, that as soon as fate diminishes the
amount of his possessions, he himself immediately reduces the amount
of his claims. But when misfortune comes upon us, to reduce the amount
of our claims is just what is most painful; once that we have done so,
the pain becomes less and less, and is felt no more; like an old wound
which has healed. Conversely, when a piece of good fortune befalls us,
our claims mount higher and higher, as there is nothing to regulate
them; it is in this feeling of expansion that the delight of it lies.
But it lasts no longer than the process itself, and when the expansion
is complete, the delight ceases; we have become accustomed to the
increase in our claims, and consequently indifferent to the amount of
wealth which satisfies them. There is a passage in the _Odyssey_[1]
illustrating this truth, of which I may quote the last two lines:

  [Greek: Toios gar noos estin epichthonion anthropon
  Oion eth aemar agei pataer andron te theou te]

--the thoughts of man that dwells on the earth are as the day granted
him by the father of gods and men. Discontent springs from a constant
endeavor to increase the amount of our claims, when we are powerless
to increase the amount which will satisfy them.

[Footnote 1: xviii., 130-7.]

When we consider how full of needs the human race is, how its whole
existence is based upon them, it is not a matter for surprise that
_wealth_ is held in more sincere esteem, nay, in greater honor, than
anything else in the world; nor ought we to wonder that gain is made
the only good of life, and everything that does not lead to it pushed
aside or thrown overboard--philosophy, for instance, by those who
profess it. People are often reproached for wishing for money above
all things, and for loving it more than anything else; but it is
natural and even inevitable for people to love that which, like an
unwearied Proteus, is always ready to turn itself into whatever object
their wandering wishes or manifold desires may for the moment fix
upon. Everything else can satisfy only _one_ wish, _one_ need: food is
good only if you are hungry; wine, if you are able to enjoy it; drugs,
if you are sick; fur for the winter; love for youth, and so on. These
are all only relatively good, [Greek: agatha pros ti]. Money alone is
absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one
need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.

If a man has an independent fortune, he should regard it as a bulwark
against the many evils and misfortunes which he may encounter; he
should not look upon it as giving him leave to get what pleasure he
can out of the world, or as rendering it incumbent upon him to spend
it in this way. People who are not born with a fortune, but end by
making a large one through the exercise of whatever talents they
possess, almost always come to think that their talents are their
capital, and that the money they have gained is merely the interest
upon it; they do not lay by a part of their earnings to form a
permanent capital, but spend their money much as they have earned it.
Accordingly, they often fall into poverty; their earnings decreased,
or come to an end altogether, either because their talent is exhausted
by becoming antiquated,--as, for instance, very often happens in
the case of fine art; or else it was valid only under a special
conjunction of circumstances which has now passed away. There is
nothing to prevent those who live on the common labor of their hands
from treating their earnings in that way if they like; because their
kind of skill is not likely to disappear, or, if it does, it can be
replaced by that of their fellow-workmen; morever, the kind of work
they do is always in demand; so that what the proverb says is quite
true, _a useful trade is a mine of gold_. But with artists and
professionals of every kind the case is quite different, and that is
the reason why they are well paid. They ought to build up a capital
out of their earnings; but they recklessly look upon them as merely
interest, and end in ruin. On the other hand, people who inherit money
know, at least, how to distinguish between capital and interest, and
most of them try to make their capital secure and not encroach
upon it; nay, if they can, they put by at least an eighth of their
interests in order to meet future contingencies. So most of them
maintain their position. These few remarks about capital and interest
are not applicable to commercial life, for merchants look upon money
only as a means of further gain, just as a workman regards his tools;
so even if their capital has been entirely the result of their
own efforts, they try to preserve and increase it by using it.
Accordingly, wealth is nowhere so much at home as in the merchant
class.

It will generally be found that those who know what it is to have
been in need and destitution are very much less afraid of it, and
consequently more inclined to extravagance, than those who know
poverty only by hearsay. People who have been born and bred in good
circumstances are as a rule much more careful about the future, more
economical, in fact, than those who, by a piece of good luck, have
suddenly passed from poverty to wealth. This looks as if poverty were
not really such a very wretched thing as it appears from a distance.
The true reason, however, is rather the fact that the man who has been
born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it as something
without which he could no more live than he could live without air; he
guards it as he does his very life; and so he is generally a lover of
order, prudent and economical. But the man who has been born into a
poor position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any chance
he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something
to be enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can get on
just as well as before, with one anxiety the less; or, as Shakespeare
says in Henry VI.,[1]

        .... _the adage must be verified
  That beggars mounted run their horse to death_.

[Footnote 1: Part III., Act 1., Sc. 4.]

But it should be said that people of this kind have a firm and
excessive trust, partly in fate, partly in the peculiar means which
have already raised them out of need and poverty,--a trust not only of
the head, but of the heart also; and so they do not, like the man born
rich, look upon the shallows of poverty as bottomless, but console
themselves with the thought that once they have touched ground again,
they can take another upward flight. It is this trait in human
character which explains the fact that women who were poor before
their marriage often make greater claims, and are more extravagant,
than those who have brought their husbands a rich dowry; because, as
a rule, rich girls bring with them, not only a fortune, but also more
eagerness, nay, more of the inherited instinct, to preserve it, than
poor girls do. If anyone doubts the truth of this, and thinks that it
is just the opposite, he will find authority for his view in Ariosto's
first Satire; but, on the other hand, Dr. Johnson agrees with my
opinion. _A woman of fortune_, he says, _being used to the handling
of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command
of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gusto in
spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion_.[1] And in
any case let me advise anyone who marries a poor girl not to leave her
the capital but only the interest, and to take especial care that she
has not the management of the children's fortune.

[Footnote 1: Boswell's Life of Johnson: ann: 1776, aetat: 67.]

I do not by any means think that I am touching upon a subject which is
not worth my while to mention when I recommend people to be careful to
preserve what they have earned or inherited. For to start life with
just as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one to live
comfortably without having to work--even if one has only just enough
for oneself, not to speak of a family--is an advantage which cannot be
over-estimated; for it means exemption and immunity from that chronic
disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a plague; it
is emancipation from that forced labor which is the natural lot of
every mortal. Only under a favorable fate like this can a man be said
to be born free, to be, in the proper sense of the word, _sui juris_,
master of his own time and powers, and able to say every morning,
_This day is my own_. And just for the same reason the difference
between the man who has a hundred a year and the man who has a
thousand, is infinitely smaller than the difference between the former
and a man who has nothing at all. But inherited wealth reaches its
utmost value when it falls to the individual endowed with mental
powers of a high order, who is resolved to pursue a line of life not
compatible with the making of money; for he is then doubly endowed by
fate and can live for his genius; and he will pay his debt to mankind
a hundred times, by achieving what no other could achieve, by
producing some work which contributes to the general good, and
redounds to the honor of humanity at large. Another, again, may
use his wealth to further philanthropic schemes, and make himself
well-deserving of his fellowmen. But a man who does none of these
things, who does not even try to do them, who never attempts to learn
the rudiments of any branch of knowledge so that he may at least do
what he can towards promoting it--such a one, born as he is into
riches, is a mere idler and thief of time, a contemptible fellow. He
will not even be happy, because, in his case, exemption from need
delivers him up to the other extreme of human suffering, boredom,
which is such martyrdom to him, that he would have been better off if
poverty had given him something to do. And as he is bored he is apt to
be extravagant, and so lose the advantage of which he showed himself
unworthy. Countless numbers of people find themselves in want, simply
because, when they had money, they spent it only to get momentary
relief from the feeling of boredom which oppressed them.

It is quite another matter if one's object is success in political
life, where favor, friends and connections are all-important, in order
to mount by their aid step by step on the ladder of promotion, and
perhaps gain the topmost rung. In this kind of life, it is much better
to be cast upon the world without a penny; and if the aspirant is not
of noble family, but is a man of some talent, it will redound to his
advantage to be an absolute pauper. For what every one most aims at
in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to
himself; and how much more is this the case in politics. Now, it is
only an absolute pauper who has such a thorough conviction of his own
complete, profound and positive inferiority from every point of view,
of his own utter insignificance and worthlessness, that he can take
his place quietly in the political machine.[1] He is the only one who
can keep on bowing low enough, and even go right down upon his face if
necessary; he alone can submit to everything and laugh at it; he alone
knows the entire worthlessness of merit; he alone uses his loudest
voice and his boldest type whenever he has to speak or write of those
who are placed over his head, or occupy any position of influence;
and if they do a little scribbling, he is ready to applaud it as a
masterwork. He alone understands how to beg, and so betimes, when he
is hardly out of his boyhood, he becomes a high priest of that hidden
mystery which Goethe brings to light.

  _Uber's Niederträchtige
  Niemand sich beklage:
  Denn es ist das Machtige
  Was man dir auch sage_:

--it is no use to complain of low aims; for, whatever people may say,
they rule the world.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer is probably here
making one of his most virulent attacks upon Hegel; in this case on
account of what he thought to be the philosopher's abject servility
to the government of his day. Though the Hegelian system has been the
fruitful mother of many liberal ideas, there can be no doubt that
Hegel's influence, in his own lifetime, was an effective support of
Prussian bureaucracy.]

On the other hand, the man who is born with enough to live upon is
generally of a somewhat independent turn of mind; he is accustomed
to keep his head up; he has not learned all the arts of the beggar;
perhaps he even presumes a little upon the possession of talents
which, as he ought to know, can never compete with cringing
mediocrity; in the long run he comes to recognize the inferiority of
those who are placed over his head, and when they try to put insults
upon him, he becomes refractory and shy. This is not the way to get
on in the world. Nay, such a man may at least incline to the opinion
freely expressed by Voltaire: _We have only two days to live; it
is not worth our while to spend them_ in cringing to contemptible
rascals. But alas! let me observe by the way, that _contemptible
rascal_ is an attribute which may be predicated of an abominable
number of people. What Juvenal says--it is difficult to rise if your
poverty is greater than your talent--

  _Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat
  Res angusta domi_--

is more applicable to a career of art and literature than to a
political and social ambition.

Wife and children I have not reckoned amongst a man's possessions: he
is rather in their possession. It would be easier to include friends
under that head; but a man's friends belong to him not a whit more
than he belongs to them.




CHAPTER IV.

POSITION, OR A MAN'S PLACE IN THE ESTIMATION OF OTHERS.


_Section 1.--Reputation_.


By a peculiar weakness of human nature, people generally think too
much about the opinion which others form of them; although the
slightest reflection will show that this opinion, whatever it may
be, is not in itself essential to happiness. Therefore it is hard to
understand why everybody feels so very pleased when he sees that other
people have a good opinion of him, or say anything flattering to his
vanity. If you stroke a cat, it will purr; and, as inevitably, if you
praise a man, a sweet expression of delight will appear on his face;
and even though the praise is a palpable lie, it will be welcome, if
the matter is one on which he prides himself. If only other people
will applaud him, a man may console himself for downright misfortune
or for the pittance he gets from the two sources of human happiness
already discussed: and conversely, it is astonishing how infallibly
a man will be annoyed, and in some cases deeply pained, by any wrong
done to his feeling of self-importance, whatever be the nature,
degree, or circumstances of the injury, or by any depreciation,
slight, or disregard.

If the feeling of honor rests upon this peculiarity of human nature,
it may have a very salutary effect upon the welfare of a great many
people, as a substitute for morality; but upon their happiness, more
especially upon that peace of mind and independence which are so
essential to happiness, its effect will be disturbing and prejudicial
rather than salutary. Therefore it is advisable, from our point of
view, to set limits to this weakness, and duly to consider and rightly
to estimate the relative value of advantages, and thus temper, as far
as possible, this great susceptibility to other people's opinion,
whether the opinion be one flattering to our vanity, or whether it
causes us pain; for in either case it is the same feeling which is
touched. Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other people are
pleased to think,--and how little it requires to disconcert or soothe
the mind that is greedy of praise:

  _Sic leve, sic parvum est, animum quod laudis avarum
  Subruit ac reficit_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Horace, Epist: II., 1, 180.]

Therefore it will very much conduce to our happiness if we duly
compare the value of what a man is in and for himself with what he is
in the eyes of others. Under the former conies everything that fills
up the span of our existence and makes it what it is, in short, all
the advantages already considered and summed up under the heads of
personality and property; and the sphere in which all this takes place
is the man's own consciousness. On the other hand, the sphere of what
we are for other people is their consciousness, not ours; it is the
kind of figure we make in their eyes, together with the thoughts
which this arouses.[1] But this is something which has no direct and
immediate existence for us, but can affect us only mediately and
indirectly, so far, that is, as other people's behavior towards us is
directed by it; and even then it ought to affect us only in so far as
it can move us to modify _what we are in and for ourselves_. Apart
from this, what goes on in other people's consciousness is, as such, a
matter of indifference to us; and in time we get really indifferent to
it, when we come to see how superficial and futile are most people's
thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how
perverse their opinions, and how much of error there is in most of
them; when we learn by experience with what depreciation a man will
speak of his fellow, when he is not obliged to fear him, or thinks
that what he says will not come to his ears. And if ever we have
had an opportunity of seeing how the greatest of men will meet with
nothing but slight from half-a-dozen blockheads, we shall understand
that to lay great value upon what other people say is to pay them too
much honor.

[Footnote 1: Let me remark that people in the highest positions in
life, with all their brilliance, pomp, display, magnificence and
general show, may well say:--Our happiness lies entirely outside us;
for it exists only in the heads of others.]

At all events, a man is in a very bad way, who finds no source of
happiness in the first two classes of blessings already treated of,
but has to seek it in the third, in other words, not in what he is in
himself, but in what he is in the opinion of others. For, after all,
the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness,
is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is
health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain
ourselves in independence and freedom from care. There can be no
competition or compensation between these essential factors on the one
side, and honor, pomp, rank and reputation on the other, however much
value we may set upon the latter. No one would hesitate to sacrifice
the latter for the former, if it were necessary. We should add very
much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that
every man's chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in
other people's opinions; and, consequently, that the actual conditions
of our personal life,--health, temperament, capacity, income, wife,
children, friends, home, are a hundred times more important for our
happiness than what other people are pleased to think of us: otherwise
we shall be miserable. And if people insist that honor is dearer than
life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being
are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this
may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that
reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable
if we are to make any progress in the world; but I shall come back to
that presently. When we see that almost everything men devote their
lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils
and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than
to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that
not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even
knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate
goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen,--is not this
a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go? To set
much too high a value on other people's opinion is a common error
everywhere; an error, it may be, rooted in human nature itself, or
the result of civilization, and social arrangements generally; but,
whatever its source, it exercises a very immoderate influence on all
we do, and is very prejudicial to our happiness. We can trace it from
a timorous and slavish regard for what other people will say, up to
the feeling which made Virginius plunge the dagger into his daughter's
heart, or induces many a man to sacrifice quiet, riches, health and
even life itself, for posthumous glory. Undoubtedly this feeling is a
very convenient instrument in the hands of those who have the control
or direction of their fellowmen; and accordingly we find that in
every scheme for training up humanity in the way it should go, the
maintenance and strengthening of the feeling of honor occupies an
important place. But it is quite a different matter in its effect
on human happiness, of which it is here our object to treat; and we
should rather be careful to dissuade people from setting too much
store by what others think of them. Daily experience shows us,
however, that this is just the mistake people persist in making; most
men set the utmost value precisely on what other people think, and
are more concerned about it than about what goes on in their own
consciousness, which is the thing most immediately and directly
present to them. They reverse the natural order,--regarding the
opinions of others as real existence and their own consciousness
as something shadowy; making the derivative and secondary into the
principal, and considering the picture they present to the world of
more importance than their own selves. By thus trying to get a direct
and immediate result out of what has no really direct or immediate
existence, they fall into the kind of folly which is called
_vanity_--the appropriate term for that which has no solid or
instrinsic value. Like a miser, such people forget the end in their
eagerness to obtain the means.

[Footnote 1: _Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter_,
(Persins i, 27)--knowledge is no use unless others know that you have
it.]

The truth is that the value we set upon the opinion of others, and our
constant endeavor in respect of it, are each quite out of proportion
to any result we may reasonably hope to attain; so that this attention
to other people's attitude may be regarded as a kind of universal
mania which every one inherits. In all we do, almost the first thing
we think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the troubles
and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score; it
is the anxiety which is at the bottom of all that feeling of
self-importance, which is so often mortified because it is so very
morbidly sensitive. It is solicitude about what others will say that
underlies all our vanity and pretension, yes, and all our show and
swagger too. Without it, there would not be a tenth part of the luxury
which exists. Pride in every form, _point d'honneur_ and _punctilio_,
however varied their kind or sphere, are at bottom nothing but
this--anxiety about what others will say--and what sacrifices it
costs! One can see it even in a child; and though it exists at every
period of life, it is strongest in age; because, when the capacity for
sensual pleasure fails, vanity and pride have only avarice to share
their dominion. Frenchmen, perhaps, afford the best example of
this feeling, and amongst them it is a regular epidemic, appearing
sometimes in the most absurd ambition, or in a ridiculous kind of
national vanity and the most shameless boasting. However, they
frustrate their own gains, for other people make fun of them and call
them _la grande nation_.

By way of specially illustrating this perverse and exuberant respect
for other people's opinion, let me take passage from the _Times_ of
March 31st, 1846, giving a detailed account of the execution of one
Thomas Wix, an apprentice who, from motives of vengeance, had
murdered his master. Here we have very unusual circumstances and an
extraordinary character, though one very suitable for our purpose; and
these combine to give a striking picture of this folly, which is so
deeply rooted in human nature, and allow us to form an accurate notion
of the extent to which it will go. On the morning of the execution,
says the report, _the rev. ordinary was early in attendance upon
him, but Wix, beyond a quiet demeanor, betrayed no interest in his
ministrations, appearing to feel anxious only to acquit himself
"bravely" before the spectators of his ignomininous end.... In the
procession Wix fell into his proper place with alacrity, and, as he
entered the Chapel-yard, remarked, sufficiently loud to be heard by
several persons near him, "Now, then, as Dr. Dodd said, I shall soon
know the grand secret." On reaching the scaffold, the miserable wretch
mounted the drop without the slightest assistance, and when he got
to the centre, he bowed to the spectators twice, a proceeding which
called forth a tremendous cheer from the degraded crowd beneath_.

This is an admirable example of the way in which a man, with death in
the most dreadful form before his very eyes, and eternity beyond it,
will care for nothing but the impression he makes upon a crowd of
gapers, and the opinion he leaves behind him in their heads. There was
much the same kind of thing in the case of Lecompte, who was executed
at Frankfurt, also in 1846, for an attempt on the king's life. At the
trial he was very much annoyed that he was not allowed to appear, in
decent attire, before the Upper House; and on the day of the execution
it was a special grief to him that he was not permitted to shave. It
is not only in recent times that this kind of thing has been known to
happen. Mateo Aleman tells us, in the Introduction to his celebrated
romance, _Juzman de Alfarache_, that many infatuated criminals,
instead of devoting their last hours to the welfare of their souls,
as they ought to have done, neglect this duty for the purpose of
preparing and committing to memory a speech to be made from the
scaffold.

I take these extreme cases as being the best illustrations to what I
mean; for they give us a magnified reflection of our own nature. The
anxieties of all of us, our worries, vexations, bothers, troubles,
uneasy apprehensions and strenuous efforts are due, in perhaps the
large majority of instances, to what other people will say; and we are
just as foolish in this respect as those miserable criminals. Envy and
hatred are very often traceable to a similar source.

Now, it is obvious that happiness, which consists for the most part in
peace of mind and contentment, would be served by nothing so much
as by reducing this impulse of human nature within reasonable
limits,--which would perhaps make it one fiftieth part of what it is
now. By doing so, we should get rid of a thorn in the flesh which is
always causing us pain. But it is a very difficult task, because
the impulse in question is a natural and innate perversity of human
nature. Tacitus says, _The lust of fame is the last that a wise man
shakes off_[1] The only way of putting an end to this universal
folly is to see clearly that it is a folly; and this may be done by
recognizing the fact that most of the opinions in men's heads are apt
to be false, perverse, erroneous and absurd, and so in themselves
unworthy of attention; further, that other people's opinions can
have very little real and positive influence upon us in most of the
circumstances and affairs of life. Again, this opinion is generally of
such an unfavorable character that it would worry a man to death to
hear everything that was said of him, or the tone in which he was
spoken of. And finally, among other things, we should be clear about
the fact that honor itself has no really direct, but only an indirect,
value. If people were generally converted from this universal folly,
the result would be such an addition to our piece of mind and
cheerfulness as at present seems inconceivable; people would present
a firmer and more confident front to the world, and generally behave
with less embarrassment and restraint. It is observable that a retired
mode of life has an exceedingly beneficial influence on our peace
of mind, and this is mainly because we thus escape having to live
constantly in the sight of others, and pay everlasting regard to their
casual opinions; in a word, we are able to return upon ourselves. At
the same time a good deal of positive misfortune might be avoided,
which we are now drawn into by striving after shadows, or, to speak
more correctly, by indulging a mischievous piece of folly; and we
should consequently have more attention to give to solid realities and
enjoy them with less interruption that at present. But [Greek: chalepa
ga kala]--what is worth doing is hard to do.

[Footnote 1: Hist., iv., 6.]


_Section 2.--Pride_.


The folly of our nature which we are discussing puts forth three
shoots, ambition, vanity and pride. The difference between the last
two is this: _pride_ is an established conviction of one's own
paramount worth in some particular respect; while _vanity_ is the
desire of rousing such a conviction in others, and it is generally
accompanied by the secret hope of ultimately coming to the same
conviction oneself. Pride works _from within_; it is the direct
appreciation of oneself. Vanity is the desire to arrive at this
appreciation indirectly, _from without_. So we find that vain people
are talkative, proud, and taciturn. But the vain person ought to be
aware that the good opinion of others, which he strives for, may be
obtained much more easily and certainly by persistent silence than by
speech, even though he has very good things to say. Anyone who wishes
to affect pride is not therefore a proud man; but he will soon have to
drop this, as every other, assumed character.

It is only a firm, unshakeable conviction of pre-eminent worth and
special value which makes a man proud in the true sense of the
word,--a conviction which may, no doubt, be a mistaken one or rest on
advantages which are of an adventitious and conventional character:
still pride is not the less pride for all that, so long as it be
present in real earnest. And since pride is thus rooted in conviction,
it resembles every other form of knowledge in not being within our own
arbitrament. Pride's worst foe,--I mean its greatest obstacle,--is
vanity, which courts the applause of the world in order to gain the
necessary foundation for a high opinion of one's own worth, whilst
pride is based upon a pre-existing conviction of it.

It is quite true that pride is something which is generally found
fault with, and cried down; but usually, I imagine, by those who have
nothing upon which they can pride themselves. In view of the impudence
and foolhardiness of most people, anyone who possesses any kind of
superiority or merit will do well to keep his eyes fixed on it, if
he does not want it to be entirely forgotten; for if a man is
good-natured enough to ignore his own privileges, and hob-nob with the
generality of other people, as if he were quite on their level, they
will be sure to treat him, frankly and candidly, as one of themselves.
This is a piece of advice I would specially offer to those whose
superiority is of the highest kind--real superiority, I mean, of a
purely personal nature--which cannot, like orders and titles, appeal
to the eye or ear at every moment; as, otherwise, they will find that
familiarity breeds contempt, or, as the Romans used to say, _sus
Minervam. Joke with a slave, and he'll soon show his heels_, is an
excellent Arabian proverb; nor ought we to despise what Horace says,

    _Sume superbiam
  Quaesitam meritis_.

--usurp the fame you have deserved. No doubt, when modesty was made a
virtue, it was a very advantageous thing for the fools; for everybody
is expected to speak of himself as if he were one. This is leveling
down indeed; for it comes to look as if there were nothing but fools
in the world.

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of
his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which
he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which
he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is
endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to
see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their
failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool
who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last
resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and
glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus
reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. For example, if you speak
of the stupid and degrading bigotry of the English nation with the
contempt it deserves, you will hardly find one Englishman in fifty to
agree with you; but if there should be one, he will generally happen
to be an intelligent man.

The Germans have no national pride, which shows how honest they are,
as everybody knows! and how dishonest are those who, by a piece
of ridiculous affectation, pretend that they are proud of their
country--the _Deutsche Bruder_ and the demagogues who flatter the
mob in order to mislead it. I have heard it said that gunpowder was
invented by a German. I doubt it. Lichtenberg asks, _Why is it that a
man who is not a German does not care about pretending that he is one;
and that if he makes any pretence at all, it is to be a Frenchman or
an Englishman_?[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--It should be remembered that these
remarks were written in the earlier part of the present century, and
that a German philosopher now-a-days, even though he were as apt to
say bitter things as Schopenhauer, could hardly write in a similar
strain.]

However that may be, individuality is a far more important thing
than nationality, and in any given man deserves a thousand-fold more
consideration. And since you cannot speak of national character
without referring to large masses of people, it is impossible to be
loud in your praises and at the same time honest. National character
is only another name for the particular form which the littleness,
perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. If we become
disgusted with one, we praise another, until we get disgusted with
this too. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

The contents of this chapter, which treats, as I have said, of what we
represent in the world, or what we are in the eyes of others, may be
further distributed under three heads: honor rank and fame.


_Section 3.--Rank_.


Let us take rank first, as it may be dismissed in a few words,
although it plays an important part in the eyes of the masses and of
the philistines, and is a most useful wheel in the machinery of the
State.

It has a purely conventional value. Strictly speaking, it is a sham;
its method is to exact an artificial respect, and, as a matter of
fact, the whole thing is a mere farce.

Orders, it may be said, are bills of exchange drawn on public opinion,
and the measure of their value is the credit of the drawer. Of course,
as a substitute for pensions, they save the State a good deal of
money; and, besides, they serve a very useful purpose, if they are
distributed with discrimination and judgment. For people in general
have eyes and ears, it is true; but not much else, very little
judgment indeed, or even memory. There are many services of the State
quite beyond the range of their understanding; others, again, are
appreciated and made much of for a time, and then soon forgotten. It
seems to me, therefore, very proper, that a cross or a star should
proclaim to the mass of people always and everywhere, _This man is not
like you; he has done something_. But orders lose their value when
they are distributed unjustly, or without due selection, or in too
great numbers: a prince should be as careful in conferring them as a
man of business is in signing a bill. It is a pleonasm to inscribe on
any order _for distinguished service_; for every order ought to be for
distinguished service. That stands to reason.


_Section 4.--Honor_.


Honor is a much larger question than rank, and more difficult to
discuss. Let us begin by trying to define it.

If I were to say _Honor is external conscience, and conscience is
inward honor_, no doubt a good many people would assent; but there
would be more show than reality about such a definition, and it would
hardly go to the root of the matter. I prefer to say, _Honor is, on
its objective side, other people's opinion of what we are worth; on
its subjective side, it is the respect we pay to this opinion_. From
the latter point of view, to be _a man of honor_ is to exercise what
is often a very wholesome, but by no means a purely moral, influence.

The feelings of honor and shame exist in every man who is not utterly
depraved, and honor is everywhere recognized as something particularly
valuable. The reason of this is as follows. By and in himself a man
can accomplish very little; he is like Robinson Crusoe on a desert
island. It is only in society that a man's powers can be called into
full activity. He very soon finds this out when his consciousness
begins to develop, and there arises in him the desire to be looked
upon as a useful member of society, as one, that is, who is capable
of playing his part as a man--_pro parte virili_--thereby acquiring a
right to the benefits of social life. Now, to be a useful member of
society, one must do two things: firstly, what everyone is expected to
do everywhere; and, secondly, what one's own particular position in
the world demands and requires.

But a man soon discovers that everything depends upon his being
useful, not in his own opinion, but in the opinion of others; and so
he tries his best to make that favorable impression upon the world, to
which he attaches such a high value. Hence, this primitive and innate
characteristic of human nature, which is called the feeling of honor,
or, under another aspect, the feeling of shame--_verecundia_. It is
this which brings a blush to his cheeks at the thought of having
suddenly to fall in the estimation of others, even when he knows that
he is innocent, nay, even if his remissness extends to no absolute
obligation, but only to one which he has taken upon himself of his own
free will. Conversely, nothing in life gives a man so much courage as
the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard
him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help
and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the
ills of life than anything he can do himself.

The variety of relations in which a man can stand to other people so
as to obtain their confidence, that is, their good opinion, gives rise
to a distinction between several kinds of honor, resting chiefly on
the different bearings that _meum_ may take to _tuum_; or, again, on
the performance of various pledges; or finally, on the relation of the
sexes. Hence, there are three main kinds of honor, each of which takes
various forms--civic honor, official honor, and sexual honor.

_Civic honor_ has the widest sphere of all. It consists in the
assumption that we shall pay unconditional respect to the rights of
others, and, therefore, never use any unjust or unlawful means of
getting what we want. It is the condition of all peaceable intercourse
between man and man; and it is destroyed by anything that openly and
manifestly militates against this peaceable intercourse, anything,
accordingly, which entails punishment at the hands of the law, always
supposing that the punishment is a just one.

The ultimate foundation of honor is the conviction that moral
character is unalterable: a single bad action implies that future
actions of the same kind will, under similar circumstances, also be
bad. This is well expressed by the English use of the word _character_
as meaning credit, reputation, honor. Hence honor, once lost, can
never be recovered; unless the loss rested on some mistake, such as
may occur if a man is slandered or his actions viewed in a false
light. So the law provides remedies against slander, libel, and even
insult; for insult though it amounts to no more than mere abuse, is a
kind of summary slander with a suppression of the reasons. What I
mean may be well put in the Greek phrase--not quoted from any
author--[Greek: estin hae loidoria diabolae]. It is true that if a
man abuses another, he is simply showing that he has no real or true
causes of complaint against him; as, otherwise, he would bring these
forward as the premises, and rely upon his hearers to draw the
conclusion themselves: instead of which, he gives the conclusion and
leaves out the premises, trusting that people will suppose that he has
done so only for the sake of being brief.

Civic honor draws its existence and name from the middle classes;
but it applies equally to all, not excepting the highest. No man can
disregard it, and it is a very serious thing, of which every one
should be careful not to make light. The man who breaks confidence has
for ever forfeited confidence, whatever he may do, and whoever he may
be; and the bitter consequences of the loss of confidence can never be
averted.

There is a sense in which honor may be said to have a _negative_
character in opposition to the _positive_ character of fame. For honor
is not the opinion people have of particular qualities which a man may
happen to possess exclusively: it is rather the opinion they have of
the qualities which a man may be expected to exhibit, and to which
he should not prove false. Honor, therefore, means that a man is not
exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won;
honor, only something which must not be lost. The absence of fame is
obscurity, which is only a negative; but loss of honor is shame, which
is a positive quality. This negative character of honor must not be
confused with anything _passive_; for honor is above all things active
in its working. It is the only quality which proceeds _directly_ from
the man who exhibits it; it is concerned entirely with what he does
and leaves undone, and has nothing to do with the actions of others or
the obstacles they place in his way. It is something entirely in our
own power--[Greek: ton ephaemon]. This distinction, as we shall see
presently, marks off true honor from the sham honor of chivalry.

Slander is the only weapon by which honor can be attacked from
without; and the only way to repel the attack is to confute the
slander with the proper amount of publicity, and a due unmasking of
him who utters it.

The reason why respect is paid to age is that old people have
necessarily shown in the course of their lives whether or not they
have been able to maintain their honor unblemished; while that of
young people has not been put to the proof, though they are credited
with the possession of it. For neither length of years,--equalled,
as it is, and even excelled, in the case of the lower animals,--nor,
again, experience, which is only a closer knowledge of the world's
ways, can be any sufficient reason for the respect which the young are
everywhere required to show towards the old: for if it were merely a
matter of years, the weakness which attends on age would call rather
for consideration than for respect. It is, however, a remarkable fact
that white hair always commands reverence--a reverence really innate
and instinctive. Wrinkles--a much surer sign of old age--command
no reverence at all; you never hear any one speak of _venerable
wrinkles_; but _venerable white hair_ is a common expression.

Honor has only an indirect value. For, as I explained at the beginning
of this chapter, what other people think of us, if it affects us at
all, can affect us only in so far as it governs their behavior towards
us, and only just so long as we live with, or have to do with, them.
But it is to society alone that we owe that safety which we and our
possessions enjoy in a state of civilization; in all we do we need the
help of others, and they, in their turn, must have confidence in
us before they can have anything to do with us. Accordingly, their
opinion of us is, indirectly, a matter of great importance; though I
cannot see how it can have a direct or immediate value. This is an
opinion also held by Cicero. I _quite agree_, he writes, _with what
Chrysippus and Diogenes used to say, that a good reputation is not
worth raising a finger to obtain, if it were not that it is so
useful_.[1] This truth has been insisted upon at great length by
Helvetius in his chief work _De l'Esprit_,[2] the conclusion of which
is that _we love esteem not for its own sake, but solely for the
advantages which it brings_. And as the means can never be more than
the end, that saying, of which so much is made, _Honor is dearer than
life itself_, is, as I have remarked, a very exaggerated statement. So
much then, for civic honor.

[Footnote 1: _De finilus_ iii., 17.]

[Footnote 2: _Disc_: iii. 17.]

_Official honor_ is the general opinion of other people that a man who
fills any office really has the necessary qualities for the proper
discharge of all the duties which appertain to it. The greater and
more important the duties a man has to discharge in the State, and the
higher and more influential the office which he fills, the stronger
must be the opinion which people have of the moral and intellectual
qualities which render him fit for his post. Therefore, the higher
his position, the greater must be the degree of honor paid to him,
expressed, as it is, in titles, orders and the generally subservient
behavior of others towards him. As a rule, a man's official rank
implies the particular degree of honor which ought to be paid to him,
however much this degree may be modified by the capacity of the masses
to form any notion of its importance. Still, as a matter of fact,
greater honor is paid to a man who fulfills special duties than to
the common citizen, whose honor mainly consists in keeping clear of
dishonor.

Official honor demands, further, that the man who occupies an office
must maintain respect for it, for the sake both of his colleagues
and of those who will come after him. This respect an official can
maintain by a proper observance of his duties, and by repelling any
attack that may be made upon the office itself or upon its occupant:
he must not, for instance, pass over unheeded any statement to the
effect that the duties of the office are not properly discharged, or
that the office itself does not conduce to the public welfare. He must
prove the unwarrantable nature of such attacks by enforcing the legal
penalty for them.

Subordinate to the honor of official personages comes that of those
who serve the State in any other capacity, as doctors, lawyers,
teachers, anyone, in short, who, by graduating in any subject, or by
any other public declaration that he is qualified to exercise some
special skill, claims to practice it; in a word, the honor of all
those who take any public pledges whatever. Under this head comes
military honor, in the true sense of the word, the opinion that people
who have bound themselves to defend their country really possess
the requisite qualities which will enable them to do so, especially
courage, personal bravery and strength, and that they are perfectly
ready to defend their country to the death, and never and under
any circumstances desert the flag to which they have once sworn
allegiance. I have here taken official honor in a wider sense than
that in which it is generally used, namely, the respect due by
citizens to an office itself.

In treating of _sexual honor_ and the principles on which it rests, a
little more attention and analysis are necessary; and what I shall
say will support my contention that all honor really rests upon a
utilitarian basis. There are two natural divisions of the subject--the
honor of women and the honor of men, in either side issuing in a
well-understood _esprit de corps_. The former is by far the more
important of the two, because the most essential feature in woman's
life is her relation to man.

Female honor is the general opinion in regard to a girl that she is
pure, and in regard to a wife that she is faithful. The importance of
this opinion rests upon the following considerations. Women depend
upon men in all the relations of life; men upon women, it might
be said, in one only. So an arrangement is made for mutual
interdependence--man undertaking responsibility for all woman's needs
and also for the children that spring from their union--an arrangement
on which is based the welfare of the whole female race. To carry out
this plan, women have to band together with a show of _esprit de
corps_, and present one undivided front to their common enemy,
man,--who possesses all the good things of the earth, in virtue of his
superior physical and intellectual power,--in order to lay siege to
and conquer him, and so get possession of him and a share of those
good things. To this end the honor of all women depends upon the
enforcement of the rule that no woman should give herself to a man
except in marriage, in order that every man may be forced, as it
were, to surrender and ally himself with a woman; by this arrangement
provision is made for the whole of the female race. This is a result,
however, which can be obtained only by a strict observance of the
rule; and, accordingly, women everywhere show true _esprit de corps_
in carefully insisting upon its maintenance. Any girl who commits a
breach of the rule betrays the whole female race, because its welfare
would be destroyed if every woman were to do likewise; so she is cast
out with shame as one who has lost her honor. No woman will have
anything more to do with her; she is avoided like the plague. The same
doom is awarded to a woman who breaks the marriage tie; for in so
doing she is false to the terms upon which the man capitulated; and
as her conduct is such as to frighten other men from making a similar
surrender, it imperils the welfare of all her sisters. Nay, more; this
deception and coarse breach of troth is a crime punishable by the
loss, not only of personal, but also of civic honor. This is why we
minimize the shame of a girl, but not of a wife; because, in the
former case, marriage can restore honor, while in the latter, no
atonement can be made for the breach of contract.

Once this _esprit de corps_ is acknowledged to be the foundation
of female honor, and is seen to be a wholesome, nay, a necessary
arrangement, as at bottom a matter of prudence and interest, its
extreme importance for the welfare of women will be recognized. But
it does not possess anything more than a relative value. It is no
absolute end, lying beyond all other aims of existence and valued
above life itself. In this view, there will be nothing to applaud
in the forced and extravagant conduct of a Lucretia or a
Virginius--conduct which can easily degenerate into tragic farce, and
produce a terrible feeling of revulsion. The conclusion of _Emilia
Galotti_, for instance, makes one leave the theatre completely ill at
ease; and, on the other hand, all the rules of female honor cannot
prevent a certain sympathy with Clara in _Egmont_. To carry this
principle of female honor too far is to forget the end in thinking
of the means--and this is just what people often do; for such
exaggeration suggests that the value of sexual honor is absolute;
while the truth is that it is more relative than any other kind. One
might go so far as to say that its value is purely conventional, when
one sees from Thomasius how in all ages and countries, up to the time
of the Reformation, irregularities were permitted and recognized by
law, with no derogation to female honor,--not to speak of the temple
of Mylitta at Babylon.[1]

[Footnote 1: Heroditus, i. 199.]

There are also of course certain circumstances in civil life which
make external forms of marriage impossible, especially in Catholic
countries, where there is no such thing as divorce. Ruling princes
everywhere, would, in my opinion, do much better, from a moral point
of view, to dispense with forms altogether rather than contract a
morganatic marriage, the descendants of which might raise claims to
the throne if the legitimate stock happened to die out; so that there
is a possibility, though, perhaps, a remote one, that a morganatic
marriage might produce a civil war. And, besides, such a marriage,
concluded in defiance of all outward ceremony, is a concession made to
women and priests--two classes of persons to whom one should be most
careful to give as little tether as possible. It is further to be
remarked that every man in a country can marry the woman of his
choice, except one poor individual, namely, the prince. His hand
belongs to his country, and can be given in marriage only for reasons
of State, that is, for the good of the country. Still, for all that,
he is a man; and, as a man, he likes to follow whither his heart
leads. It is an unjust, ungrateful and priggish thing to forbid, or
to desire to forbid, a prince from following his inclinations in this
matter; of course, as long as the lady has no influence upon the
Government of the country. From her point of view she occupies an
exceptional position, and does not come under the ordinary rules of
sexual honor; for she has merely given herself to a man who loves her,
and whom she loves but cannot marry. And in general, the fact that the
principle of female honor has no origin in nature, is shown by the
many bloody sacrifices which have been offered to it,--the murder of
children and the mother's suicide. No doubt a girl who contravenes the
code commits a breach of faith against her whole sex; but this faith
is one which is only secretly taken for granted, and not sworn to. And
since, in most cases, her own prospects suffer most immediately, her
folly is infinitely greater than her crime.

The corresponding virtue in men is a product of the one I have been
discussing. It is their _esprit de corps_, which demands that, once
a man has made that surrender of himself in marriage which is so
advantageous to his conqueror, he shall take care that the terms of
the treaty are maintained; both in order that the agreement itself
may lose none of its force by the permission of any laxity in its
observance, and that men, having given up everything, may, at
least, be assured of their bargain, namely, exclusive possession.
Accordingly, it is part of a man's honor to resent a breach of the
marriage tie on the part of his wife, and to punish it, at the
very least by separating from her. If he condones the offence, his
fellowmen cry shame upon him; but the shame in this case is not nearly
so foul as that of the woman who has lost her honor; the stain is by
no means of so deep a dye--_levioris notae macula_;--because a man's
relation to woman is subordinate to many other and more important
affairs in his life. The two great dramatic poets of modern times
have each taken man's honor as the theme of two plays; Shakespeare in
_Othello_ and _The Winter's Tale_, and Calderon in _El medico de su
honra_, (The Physician of his Honor), and _A secreto agravio secreta
venganza_, (for Secret Insult Secret Vengeance). It should be said,
however, that honor demands the punishment of the wife only; to punish
her paramour too, is a work of supererogation. This confirms the view
I have taken, that a man's honor originates in _esprit de corps_.

The kind of honor which I have been discussing hitherto has always
existed in its various forms and principles amongst all nations and
at all times; although the history of female honor shows that its
principles have undergone certain local modifications at different
periods. But there is another species of honor which differs from this
entirely, a species of honor of which the Greeks and Romans had
no conception, and up to this day it is perfectly unknown amongst
Chinese, Hindoos or Mohammedans. It is a kind of honor which arose
only in the Middle Age, and is indigenous only to Christian Europe,
nay, only to an extremely small portion of the population, that is
to say, the higher classes of society and those who ape them. It is
_knightly honor_, or _point d'honneur_. Its principles are quite
different from those which underlie the kind of honor I have been
treating until now, and in some respects are even opposed to them. The
sort I am referring to produces the _cavalier_; while the other kind
creates the _man of honor_. As this is so, I shall proceed to give an
explanation of its principles, as a kind of code or mirror of knightly
courtesy.

(1.) To begin with, honor of this sort consists, not in other people's
opinion of what we are worth, but wholly and entirely in whether they
express it or not, no matter whether they really have any opinion at
all, let alone whether they know of reasons for having one. Other
people may entertain the worst opinion of us in consequence of what we
do, and may despise us as much as they like; so long as no one dares
to give expression to his opinion, our honor remains untarnished. So
if our actions and qualities compel the highest respect from other
people, and they have no option but to give this respect,--as soon as
anyone, no matter how wicked or foolish he may be, utters something
depreciatory of us, our honor is offended, nay, gone for ever, unless
we can manage to restore it. A superfluous proof of what I say,
namely, that knightly honor depends, not upon what people think, but
upon what they say, is furnished by the fact that insults can be
withdrawn, or, if necessary, form the subject of an apology, which
makes them as though they had never been uttered. Whether the opinion
which underlays the expression has also been rectified, and why
the expression should ever have been used, are questions which are
perfectly unimportant: so long as the statement is withdrawn, all is
well. The truth is that conduct of this kind aims, not at earning
respect, but at extorting it.

(2.) In the second place, this sort of honor rests, not on what a man
does, but on what he suffers, the obstacles he encounters; differing
from the honor which prevails in all else, in consisting, not in what
he says or does himself, but in what another man says or does. His
honor is thus at the mercy of every man who can talk it away on the
tip of his tongue; and if he attacks it, in a moment it is gone for
ever,--unless the man who is attacked manages to wrest it back again
by a process which I shall mention presently, a process which involves
danger to his life, health, freedom, property and peace of mind. A
man's whole conduct may be in accordance with the most righteous and
noble principles, his spirit may be the purest that ever breathed, his
intellect of the very highest order; and yet his honor may disappear
the moment that anyone is pleased to insult him, anyone at all who has
not offended against this code of honor himself, let him be the most
worthless rascal or the most stupid beast, an idler, gambler, debtor,
a man, in short, of no account at all. It is usually this sort of
fellow who likes to insult people; for, as Seneca[1] rightly remarks,
_ut quisque contemtissimus et ludibrio est, ita solutissimae est_, the
more contemptible and ridiculous a man is,--the readier he is with his
tongue. His insults are most likely to be directed against the very
kind of man I have described, because people of different tastes can
never be friends, and the sight of pre-eminent merit is apt to
raise the secret ire of a ne'er-do-well. What Goethe says in the
_Westöstlicher Divan_ is quite true, that it is useless to complain
against your enemies; for they can never become your friends, if your
whole being is a standing reproach to them:--

  _Was klagst du über Feinde?
  Sollten Solche je warden Freunde
  Denen das Wesen, wie du bist,
  Im stillen ein ewiger Vorwurf ist_?

[Footnote 1: _De Constantia_, 11.]

It is obvious that people of this worthless description have good
cause to be thankful to the principle of honor, because it puts them
on a level with people who in every other respect stand far above
them. If a fellow likes to insult any one, attribute to him,
for example, some bad quality, this is taken _prima facie_ as a
well-founded opinion, true in fact; a decree, as it were, with all the
force of law; nay, if it is not at once wiped out in blood, it is a
judgment which holds good and valid to all time. In other words,
the man who is insulted remains--in the eyes of all _honorable
people_--what the man who uttered the insult--even though he were the
greatest wretch on earth--was pleased to call him; for he has _put
up with_ the insult--the technical term, I believe. Accordingly, all
_honorable people_ will have nothing more to do with him, and treat
him like a leper, and, it may be, refuse to go into any company where
he may be found, and so on.

This wise proceeding may, I think, be traced back to the fact that in
the Middle Age, up to the fifteenth century, it was not the accuser in
any criminal process who had to prove the guilt of the accused, but
the accused who had to prove his innocence.[1] This he could do by
swearing he was not guilty; and his backers--_consacramentales_--had
to come and swear that in their opinion he was incapable of perjury.
If he could find no one to help him in this way, or the accuser took
objection to his backers, recourse was had to trial by _the Judgment
of God_, which generally meant a duel. For the accused was now _in
disgrace_,[2] and had to clear himself. Here, then, is the origin
of the notion of disgrace, and of that whole system which prevails
now-a-days amongst _honorable people_--only that the oath is omitted.
This is also the explanation of that deep feeling of indignation which
_honorable people_ are called upon to show if they are given the lie;
it is a reproach which they say must be wiped out in blood. It seldom
comes to this pass, however, though lies are of common occurrence; but
in England, more than elsewhere, it is a superstition which has taken
very deep root. As a matter of order, a man who threatens to kill
another for telling a lie should never have told one himself. The
fact is, that the criminal trial of the Middle Age also admitted of a
shorter form. In reply to the charge, the accused answered: _That is
a lie_; whereupon it was left to be decided by _the Judgment of God_.
Hence, the code of knightly honor prescribes that, when the lie is
given, an appeal to arms follows as a matter of course. So much, then,
for the theory of insult.

[Footnote 1: See C.G. von Waehter's _Beiträge zur deutschen
Geschichte_, especially the chapter on criminal law.]

[Footnote 2: _Translator's Note_.--It is true that this expression has
another special meaning in the technical terminology of Chivalry,
but it is the nearest English equivalent which I can find for the
German--_ein Bescholtener_]

But there is something even worse than insult, something so dreadful
that I must beg pardon of all _honorable people_ for so much as
mentioning it in this code of knightly honor; for I know they will
shiver, and their hair will stand on end, at the very thought of
it--the _summum malum_, the greatest evil on earth, worse than death
and damnation. A man may give another--_horrible dictu_!--a slap or a
blow. This is such an awful thing, and so utterly fatal to all
honor, that, while any other species of insult may be healed by
blood-letting, this can be cured only by the _coup-de-grace_.

(3.) In the third place, this kind of honor has absolutely nothing
to do with what a man may be in and for himself; or, again, with the
question whether his moral character can ever become better or worse,
and all such pedantic inquiries. If your honor happens to be attacked,
or to all appearances gone, it can very soon be restored in its
entirety if you are only quick enough in having recourse to the one
universal remedy--_a duel_. But if the aggressor does not belong to
the classes which recognize the code of knightly honor, or has himself
once offended against it, there is a safer way of meeting any attack
upon your honor, whether it consists in blows, or merely in words.
If you are armed, you can strike down your opponent on the spot, or
perhaps an hour later. This will restore your honor.

But if you wish to avoid such an extreme step, from fear of any
unpleasant consequences arising therefrom, or from uncertainty as to
whether the aggressor is subject to the laws of knightly honor or
not, there is another means of making your position good, namely, the
_Avantage_. This consists in returning rudeness with still greater
rudeness; and if insults are no use, you can try a blow, which forms a
sort of climax in the redemption of your honor; for instance, a box on
the ear may be cured by a blow with a stick, and a blow with a stick
by a thrashing with a horsewhip; and, as the approved remedy for this
last, some people recommend you to spit at your opponent.[1] If all
these means are of no avail, you must not shrink from drawing blood.
And the reason for these methods of wiping out insult is, in this
code, as follows:

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. It must be remembered that
Schopenhauer is here describing, or perhaps caricaturing the manners
and customs of the German aristocracy of half a century ago. Now, of
course, _nous avons change tout cela_!]

(4.) To receive an insult is disgraceful; to give one, honorable. Let
me take an example. My opponent has truth, right and reason on his
side. Very well. I insult him. Thereupon right and honor leave him and
come to me, and, for the time being, he has lost them--until he gets
them back, not by the exercise of right or reason, but by shooting and
sticking me. Accordingly, rudeness is a quality which, in point of
honor, is a substitute for any other and outweighs them all. The
rudest is always right. What more do you want? However stupid, bad or
wicked a man may have been, if he is only rude into the bargain, he
condones and legitimizes all his faults. If in any discussion or
conversation, another man shows more knowledge, greater love of
truth, a sounder judgment, better understanding than we, or generally
exhibits intellectual qualities which cast ours into the shade, we can
at once annul his superiority and our own shallowness, and in our turn
be superior to him, by being insulting and offensive. For rudeness
is better than any argument; it totally eclipses intellect. If our
opponent does not care for our mode of attack, and will not answer
still more rudely, so as to plunge us into the ignoble rivalry of
the _Avantage_, we are the victors and honor is on our side. Truth,
knowledge, understanding, intellect, wit, must beat a retreat and
leave the field to this almighty insolence.

_Honorable people_ immediately make a show of mounting their
war-horse, if anyone utters an opinion adverse to theirs, or shows
more intelligence than they can muster; and if in any controversy
they are at a loss for a reply, they look about for some weapon of
rudeness, which will serve as well and come readier to hand; so they
retire masters of the position. It must now be obvious that people are
quite right in applauding this principle of honor as having ennobled
the tone of society. This principle springs from another, which forms
the heart and soul of the entire code.

(5.) Fifthly, the code implies that the highest court to which a man
can appeal in any differences he may have with another on a point of
honor is the court of physical force, that is, of brutality. Every
piece of rudeness is, strictly speaking, an appeal to brutality; for
it is a declaration that intellectual strength and moral insight are
incompetent to decide, and that the battle must be fought out by
physical force--a struggle which, in the case of man, whom Franklin
defines as _a tool-making animal_, is decided by the weapons peculiar
to the species; and the decision is irrevocable. This is the
well-known principle of _right of might_--irony, of course, like _the
wit of a fool_, a parallel phrase. The honor of a knight may be called
the glory of might.

(6.) Lastly, if, as we saw above, civic honor is very scrupulous in
the matter of _meum_ and _tuum_, paying great respect to obligations
and a promise once made, the code we are here discussing displays, on
the other hand, the noblest liberality. There is only one word which
may not be broken, _the word of honor_--upon my _honor_, as people
say--the presumption being, of course, that every other form of
promise may be broken. Nay, if the worst comes to the worst, it
is easy to break even one's word of honor, and still remain
honorable--again by adopting that universal remedy, the duel, and
fighting with those who maintain that we pledged our word. Further,
there is one debt, and one alone, that under no circumstances must be
left unpaid--a gambling debt, which has accordingly been called _a
debt of honor_. In all other kinds of debt you may cheat Jews and
Christians as much as you like; and your knightly honor remains
without a stain.

The unprejudiced reader will see at once that such a strange, savage
and ridiculous code of honor as this has no foundation in human
nature, nor any warrant in a healthy view of human affairs. The
extremely narrow sphere of its operation serves only to intensify the
feeling, which is exclusively confined to Europe since the Middle Age,
and then only to the upper classes, officers and soldiers, and people
who imitate them. Neither Greeks nor Romans knew anything of this code
of honor or of its principles; nor the highly civilized nations of
Asia, ancient or modern. Amongst them no other kind of honor is
recognized but that which I discussed first, in virtue of which a man
is what he shows himself to be by his actions, not what any wagging
tongue is pleased to say of him. They thought that what a man said or
did might perhaps affect his own honor, but not any other man's. To
them, a blow was but a blow--and any horse or donkey could give a
harder one--a blow which under certain circumstances might make a man
angry and demand immediate vengeance; but it had nothing to do with
honor. No one kept account of blows or insulting words, or of the
_satisfaction_ which was demanded or omitted to be demanded. Yet in
personal bravery and contempt of death, the ancients were certainly
not inferior to the nations of Christian Europe. The Greeks and Romans
were thorough heroes, if you like; but they knew nothing about
_point d'honneur_. If _they_ had any idea of a duel, it was totally
unconnected with the life of the nobles; it was merely the exhibition
of mercenary gladiators, slaves devoted to slaughter, condemned
criminals, who, alternately with wild beasts, were set to butcher one
another to make a Roman holiday. When Christianity was introduced,
gladiatorial shows were done away with, and their place taken, in
Christian times, by the duel, which was a way of settling difficulties
by _the Judgment of God_.

If the gladiatorial fight was a cruel sacrifice to the prevailing
desire for great spectacles, dueling is a cruel sacrifice to existing
prejudices--a sacrifice, not of criminals, slaves and prisoners, but
of the noble and the free.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. These and other remarks on dueling
will no doubt wear a belated look to English readers; but they are
hardly yet antiquated for most parts of the Continent.]

There are a great many traits in the character of the ancients which
show that they were entirely free from these prejudices. When, for
instance, Marius was summoned to a duel by a Teutonic chief, he
returned answer to the effect that, if the chief were tired of his
life, he might go and hang himself; at the same time he offered him a
veteran gladiator for a round or two. Plutarch relates in his life of
Themistocles that Eurybiades, who was in command of the fleet, once
raised his stick to strike him; whereupon Themistocles, instead of
drawing his sword, simply said: _Strike, but hear me_. How sorry the
reader must be, if he is an _honorable_ man, to find that we have no
information that the Athenian officers refused in a body to serve any
longer under Themistocles, if he acted like that! There is a modern
French writer who declares that if anyone considers Demosthenes a man
of honor, his ignorance will excite a smile of pity; and that Cicero
was not a man of honor either![1] In a certain passage in Plato's
_Laws_[2] the philosopher speaks at length of [Greek: aikia] or
_assault_, showing us clearly enough that the ancients had no notion
of any feeling of honor in connection with such matters. Socrates'
frequent discussions were often followed by his being severely
handled, and he bore it all mildly. Once, for instance, when somebody
kicked him, the patience with which he took the insult surprised
one of his friends. _Do you think_, said Socrates, _that if an ass
happened to kick me, I should resent it_?[3] On another occasion, when
he was asked, _Has not that fellow abused and insulted you? No_, was
his answer, _what he says is not addressed to me_[4] Stobaeus has
preserved a long passage from Musonius, from which we can see how the
ancients treated insults. They knew no other form of satisfaction than
that which the law provided, and wise people despised even this. If a
Greek received a box on the ear, he could get satisfaction by the aid
of the law; as is evident from Plato's _Gorgias_, where Socrates'
opinion may be found. The same thing may be seen in the account given
by Gellius of one Lucius Veratius, who had the audacity to give some
Roman citizens whom he met on the road a box on the ear, without any
provocation whatever; but to avoid any ulterior consequences, he
told a slave to bring a bag of small money, and on the spot paid
the trivial legal penalty to the men whom he had astonished by his
conduct.

[Footnote 1:_litteraires_: par C. Durand. Rouen, 1828.]

[Footnote 2: Bk. IX.].

[Footnote 3: Diogenes Laertius, ii., 21.]

[Footnote 4: _Ibid_ 36.]

Crates, the celebrated Cynic philosopher, got such a box on the ear
from Nicodromus, the musician, that his face swelled up and became
black and blue; whereupon he put a label on his forehead, with the
inscription, _Nicodromus fecit_, which brought much disgrace to the
fluteplayer who had committed such a piece of brutality upon the man
whom all Athens honored as a household god.[1] And in a letter to
Melesippus, Diogenes of Sinope tells us that he got a beating from the
drunken sons of the Athenians; but he adds that it was a matter of no
importance.[2] And Seneca devotes the last few chapters of his _De
Constantia_ to a lengthy discussion on insult--_contumelia_; in order
to show that a wise man will take no notice of it. In Chapter XIV, he
says, _What shall a wise man do, if he is given a blow? What Cato did,
when some one struck him on the mouth;--not fire up or avenge the
insult, or even return the blow, but simply ignore it_.

[Footnote 1: Diogenes Laertius, vi. 87, and Apul: Flor: p. 126.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. Casaubon's Note, Diog. Laert., vi. 33.]

_Yes_, you say, _but these men were philosophers_.--And you are fools,
eh? Precisely.

It is clear that the whole code of knightly honor was utterly unknown
to the ancients; for the simple reason that they always took a natural
and unprejudiced view of human affairs, and did not allow themselves
to be influenced by any such vicious and abominable folly. A blow
in the face was to them a blow and nothing more, a trivial physical
injury; whereas the moderns make a catastrophe out of it, a theme for
a tragedy; as, for instance, in the _Cid_ of Corneille, or in a
recent German comedy of middle-class life, called _The Power of
Circumstance_, which should have been entitled _The Power of
Prejudice_. If a member of the National Assembly at Paris got a blow
on the ear, it would resound from one end of Europe to the other. The
examples which I have given of the way in which such an occurrence
would have been treated in classic times may not suit the ideas of
_honorable people_; so let me recommend to their notice, as a kind of
antidote, the story of Monsieur Desglands in Diderot's masterpiece,
_Jacques le fataliste_. It is an excellent specimen of modern knightly
honor, which, no doubt, they will find enjoyable and edifying.[1]

[Footnote: 1: _Translator's Note_. The story to which Schopenhauer
here refers is briefly as follows: Two gentlemen, one of whom was
named Desglands, were paying court to the same lady. As they sat at
table side by side, with the lady opposite, Desglands did his best to
charm her with his conversation; but she pretended not to hear him,
and kept looking at his rival. In the agony of jealousy, Desglands, as
he was holding a fresh egg in his hand, involuntarily crushed it; the
shell broke, and its contents bespattered his rival's face. Seeing him
raise his hand, Desglands seized it and whispered: _Sir, I take it as
given_. The next day Desglands appeared with a large piece of black
sticking-plaster upon his right cheek. In the duel which followed,
Desglands severely wounded his rival; upon which he reduced the size
of the plaster. When his rival recovered, they had another duel;
Desglands drew blood again, and again made his plaster a little
smaller; and so on for five or six times. After every duel Desglands'
plaster grew less and less, until at last his rival.]

From what I have said it must be quite evident that the principle
of knightly honor has no essential and spontaneous origin in human
nature. It is an artificial product, and its source is not hard to
find. Its existence obviously dates from the time when people used
their fists more than their heads, when priestcraft had enchained the
human intellect, the much bepraised Middle Age, with its system of
chivalry. That was the time when people let the Almighty not only care
for them but judge for them too; when difficult cases were decided by
an ordeal, a _Judgment of God_; which, with few exceptions, meant
a duel, not only where nobles were concerned, but in the case of
ordinary citizens as well. There is a neat illustration of this in
Shakespeare's Henry VI.[1] Every judicial sentence was subject to an
appeal to arms--a court, as it were, of higher instance, namely, _the
Judgment of God_: and this really meant that physical strength and
activity, that is, our animal nature, usurped the place of reason on
the judgment seat, deciding in matters of right and wrong, not by what
a man had done, but by the force with which he was opposed, the same
system, in fact, as prevails to-day under the principles of knightly
honor. If any one doubts that such is really the origin of our modern
duel, let him read an excellent work by J.B. Millingen, _The History
of Dueling_.[2] Nay, you may still find amongst the supporters of
the system,--who, by the way are not usually the most educated or
thoughtful of men,--some who look upon the result of a duel as really
constituting a divine judgment in the matter in dispute; no doubt in
consequence of the traditional feeling on the subject.

But leaving aside the question of origin, it must now be clear to us
that the main tendency of the principle is to use physical menace for
the purpose of extorting an appearance of respect which is deemed too
difficult or superfluous to acquire in reality; a proceeding which
comes to much the same thing as if you were to prove the warmth of
your room by holding your hand on the thermometer and so make it rise.
In fact, the kernel of the matter is this: whereas civic honor aims
at peaceable intercourse, and consists in the opinion of other people
that _we deserve full confidence_, because we pay unconditional
respect to their rights; knightly honor, on the other hand, lays
down that _we are to be feared_, as being determined at all costs to
maintain our own.

As not much reliance can be placed upon human integrity, the principle
that it is more essential to arouse fear than to invite confidence
would not, perhaps, be a false one, if we were living in a state of
nature, where every man would have to protect himself and directly
maintain his own rights. But in civilized life, where the State
undertakes the protection of our person and property, the principle is
no longer applicable: it stands, like the castles and watch-towers of
the age when might was right, a useless and forlorn object, amidst
well-tilled fields and frequented roads, or even railways.

Accordingly, the application of knightly honor, which still recognizes
this principle, is confined to those small cases of personal assault
which meet with but slight punishment at the hands of the law, or even
none at all, for _de minimis non_,--mere trivial wrongs, committed
sometimes only in jest. The consequence of this limited application of
the principle is that it has forced itself into an exaggerated respect
for the value of the person,--a respect utterly alien to the nature,
constitution or destiny of man--which it has elated into a species
of sanctity: and as it considers that the State has imposed a very
insufficient penalty on the commission of such trivial injuries, it
takes upon itself to punish them by attacking the aggressor in life
or limb. The whole thing manifestly rests upon an excessive degree
of arrogant pride, which, completely forgetting what man really is,
claims that he shall be absolutely free from all attack or even
censure. Those who determine to carry out this principle by main
force, and announce, as their rule of action, _whoever insults or
strikes me shall die_! ought for their pains to be banished the
country.[1]

[Footnote 1: Knightly honor is the child of pride and folly, and it is
_needy_ not pride, which is the heritage of the human race. It is a
very remarkable fact that this extreme form of pride should be found
exclusively amongst the adherents of the religion which teaches the
deepest humility. Still, this pride must not be put down to religion,
but, rather, to the feudal system, which made every nobleman a petty
sovereign who recognized no human judge, and learned to regard his
person as sacred and inviolable, and any attack upon it, or any blow
or insulting word, as an offence punishable with death. The principle
of knightly honor and of the duel were at first confined to the
nobles, and, later on, also to officers in the army, who, enjoying a
kind of off-and-on relationship with the upper classes, though they
were never incorporated with them, were anxious not to be behind them.
It is true that duels were the product of the old ordeals; but
the latter are not the foundation, but rather the consequence and
application of the principle of honor: the man who recognized no human
judge appealed to the divine. Ordeals, however, are not peculiar to
Christendom: they may be found in great force among the Hindoos,
especially of ancient times; and there are traces of them even now.]

As a palliative to this rash arrogance, people are in the habit of
giving way on everything. If two intrepid persons meet, and neither
will give way, the slightest difference may cause a shower of abuse,
then fisticuffs, and, finally, a fatal blow: so that it would really
be a more decorous proceeding to omit the intermediate steps and
appeal to arms at once. An appeal to arms has its own special
formalities; and these have developed into a rigid and precise system
of laws and regulations, together forming the most solemn farce there
is--a regular temple of honor dedicated to folly! For if two intrepid
persons dispute over some trivial matter, (more important affairs are
dealt with by law), one of them, the cleverer of the two, will of
course yield; and they will agree to differ. That this is so is proved
by the fact that common people,--or, rather, the numerous classes of
the community who do not acknowledge the principle of knightly honor,
let any dispute run its natural course. Amongst these classes homicide
is a hundredfold rarer than amongst those--and they amount, perhaps,
in all, to hardly one in a thousand,--who pay homage to the principle:
and even blows are of no very frequent occurrence.

Then it has been said that the manners and tone of good society are
ultimately based upon this principle of honor, which, with its system
of duels, is made out to be a bulwark against the assaults of savagery
and rudeness. But Athens, Corinth and Rome could assuredly boast of
good, nay, excellent society, and manners and tone of a high order,
without any support from the bogey of knightly honor. It is true that
women did not occupy that prominent place in ancient society which
they hold now, when conversation has taken on a frivolous and
trifling character, to the exclusion of that weighty discourse which
distinguished the ancients.

This change has certainly contributed a great deal to bring about the
tendency, which is observable in good society now-a-days, to prefer
personal courage to the possession of any other quality. The fact is
that personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue,--merely the
distinguishing mark of a subaltern,--a virtue, indeed, in which we are
surpassed by the lower animals; or else you would not hear people say,
_as brave as a lion_. Far from being the pillar of society, knightly
honor affords a sure asylum, in general for dishonesty and wickedness,
and also for small incivilities, want of consideration and
unmannerliness. Rude behavior is often passed over in silence because
no one cares to risk his neck in correcting it.

After what I have said, it will not appear strange that the dueling
system is carried to the highest pitch of sanguinary zeal precisely in
that nation whose political and financial records show that they
are not too honorable. What that nation is like in its private and
domestic life, is a question which may be best put to those who are
experienced in the matter. Their urbanity and social culture have long
been conspicuous by their absence.

There is no truth, then, in such pretexts. It can be urged with more
justice that as, when you snarl at a dog, he snarls in return, and
when you pet him, he fawns; so it lies in the nature of men to return
hostility by hostility, and to be embittered and irritated at any
signs of depreciatory treatment or hatred: and, as Cicero says, _there
is something so penetrating in the shaft of envy that even men of
wisdom and worth find its wound a painful one_; and nowhere in the
world, except, perhaps, in a few religious sects, is an insult or a
blow taken with equanimity. And yet a natural view of either would
in no case demand anything more than a requital proportionate to the
offence, and would never go to the length of assigning _death_ as the
proper penalty for anyone who accuses another of lying or stupidity or
cowardice. The old German theory of _blood for a blow_ is a revolting
superstition of the age of chivalry. And in any case the return or
requital of an insult is dictated by anger, and not by any such
obligation of honor and duty as the advocates of chivalry seek to
attach to it. The fact is that, the greater the truth, the greater
the slander; and it is clear that the slightest hint of some real
delinquency will give much greater offence than a most terrible
accusation which is perfectly baseless: so that a man who is quite
sure that he has done nothing to deserve a reproach may treat it with
contempt, and will be safe in doing so. The theory of honor demands
that he shall show a susceptibility which he does not possess, and
take bloody vengeance for insults which he cannot feel. A man must
himself have but a poor opinion of his own worth who hastens to
prevent the utterance of an unfavorable opinion by giving his enemy a
black eye.

True appreciation of his own value will make a man really indifferent
to insult; but if he cannot help resenting it, a little shrewdness and
culture will enable him to save appearances and dissemble his anger.
If he could only get rid of this superstition about honor--the idea, I
mean, that it disappears when you are insulted, and can be restored by
returning the insult; if we could only stop people from thinking
that wrong, brutality and insolence can be legalized by expressing
readiness to give satisfaction, that is, to fight in defence of it,
we should all soon come to the general opinion that insult and
depreciation are like a battle in which the loser wins; and that, as
Vincenzo Monti says, abuse resembles a church-procession, because it
always returns to the point from which it set out. If we could only
get people to look upon insult in this light, we should no longer have
to say something rude in order to prove that we are in the right. Now,
unfortunately, if we want to take a serious view of any question, we
have first of all to consider whether it will not give offence in some
way or other to the dullard, who generally shows alarm and resentment
at the merest sign of intelligence; and it may easily happen that the
head which contains the intelligent view has to be pitted against the
noodle which is empty of everything but narrowness and stupidity. If
all this were done away with, intellectual superiority could take
the leading place in society which is its due--a place now occupied,
though people do not like to confess it, by excellence of physique,
mere fighting pluck, in fact; and the natural effect of such a change
would be that the best kind of people would have one reason the
less for withdrawing from society. This would pave the way for the
introduction of real courtesy and genuinely good society, such as
undoubtedly existed in Athens, Corinth and Rome. If anyone wants
to see a good example of what I mean, I should like him to read
Xenophon's _Banquet_.

The last argument in defence of knightly honor no doubt is, that,
but for its existence, the world--awful thought!--would be a regular
bear-garden. To which I may briefly reply that nine hundred and
ninety-nine people out of a thousand who do not recognize the code,
have often given and received a blow without any fatal consequences:
whereas amongst the adherents of the code a blow usually means death
to one of the parties. But let me examine this argument more closely.

I have often tried to find some tenable, or at any rate, plausible
basis--other than a merely conventional one--some positive reasons,
that is to say, for the rooted conviction which a portion of mankind
entertains, that a blow is a very dreadful thing; but I have looked
for it in vain, either in the animal or in the rational side of human
nature. A blow is, and always will be, a trivial physical injury which
one man can do to another; proving, thereby, nothing more than his
superiority in strength or skill, or that his enemy was off his guard.
Analysis will carry us no further. The same knight who regards a blow
from the human hand as the greatest of evils, if he gets a ten times
harder blow from his horse, will give you the assurance, as he limps
away in suppressed pain, that it is a matter of no consequence
whatever. So I have come to think that it is the human hand which is
at the bottom of the mischief. And yet in a battle the knight may get
cuts and thrusts from the same hand, and still assure you that his
wounds are not worth mentioning. Now, I hear that a blow from the flat
of a sword is not by any means so bad as a blow from a stick; and
that, a short time ago, cadets were liable to be punished by the one
but not the other, and that the very greatest honor of all is the
_accolade_. This is all the psychological or moral basis that I can
find; and so there is nothing left me but to pronounce the whole thing
an antiquated superstition that has taken deep root, and one more
of the many examples which show the force of tradition. My view is
confirmed by the well-known fact that in China a beating with a bamboo
is a very frequent punishment for the common people, and even for
officials of every class; which shows that human nature, even in a
highly civilized state, does not run in the same groove here and in
China.

On the contrary, an unprejudiced view of human nature shows that it is
just as natural for a man to beat as it is for savage animals to bite
and rend in pieces, or for horned beasts to butt or push. Man may be
said to be the animal that beats. Hence it is revolting to our sense
of the fitness of things to hear, as we sometimes do, that one man
bitten another; on the other hand, it is a natural and everyday
occurrence for him to get blows or give them. It is intelligible
enough that, as we become educated, we are glad to dispense with blows
by a system of mutual restraint. But it is a cruel thing to compel a
nation or a single class to regard a blow as an awful misfortune which
must have death and murder for its consequences. There are too
many genuine evils in the world to allow of our increasing them by
imaginary misfortunes, which brings real ones in their train: and yet
this is the precise effect of the superstition, which thus proves
itself at once stupid and malign.

It does not seem to me wise of governments and legislative bodies to
promote any such folly by attempting to do away with flogging as a
punishment in civil or military life. Their idea is that they are
acting in the interests of humanity; but, in point of fact, they are
doing just the opposite; for the abolition of flogging will serve only
to strengthen this inhuman and abominable superstition, to which so
many sacrifices have already been made. For all offences, except the
worst, a beating is the obvious, and therefore the natural penalty;
and a man who will not listen to reason will yield to blows. It seems
to me right and proper to administer corporal punishment to the man
who possesses nothing and therefore cannot be fined, or cannot be put
in prison because his master's interests would suffer by the loss of
his service. There are really no arguments against it: only mere talk
about _the dignity of man_--talk which proceeds, not from any clear
notions on the subject, but from the pernicious superstition I have
been describing. That it is a superstition which lies at the bottom of
the whole business is proved by an almost laughable example. Not
long ago, in the military discipline of many countries, the cat was
replaced by the stick. In either case the object was to produce
physical pain; but the latter method involved no disgrace, and was not
derogatory to honor.

By promoting this superstition, the State is playing into the hands of
the principle of knightly honor, and therefore of the duel; while at
the same time it is trying, or at any rate it pretends it is trying,
to abolish the duel by legislative enactment. As a natural consequence
we find that this fragment of the theory that _might is right_, which
has come down to us from the most savage days of the Middle Age, has
still in this nineteenth century a good deal of life left in it--more
shame to us! It is high time for the principle to be driven out bag
and baggage. Now-a-days no one is allowed to set dogs or cocks to
fight each other,--at any rate, in England it is a penal offence,--but
men are plunged into deadly strife, against their will, by the
operation of this ridiculous, superstitious and absurd principle,
which imposes upon us the obligation, as its narrow-minded supporters
and advocates declare, of fighting with one another like gladiators,
for any little trifle. Let me recommend our purists to adopt the
expression _baiting_[1] instead of _duel_, which probably comes to us,
not from the Latin _duellum_, but from the Spanish _duelo_,--meaning
suffering, nuisance, annoyance.

[Footnote 1: _Ritterhetze_]

In any case, we may well laugh at the pedantic excess to which this
foolish system has been carried. It is really revolting that this
principle, with its absurd code, can form a power within the
State--_imperium in imperio_--a power too easily put in motion, which,
recognizing no right but might, tyrannizes over the classes which come
within its range, by keeping up a sort of inquisition, before which
any one may be haled on the most flimsy pretext, and there and then be
tried on an issue of life and death between himself and his opponent.
This is the lurking place from which every rascal, if he only belongs
to the classes in question, may menace and even exterminate the
noblest and best of men, who, as such, must of course be an object of
hatred to him. Our system of justice and police-protection has made it
impossible in these days for any scoundrel in the street to attack us
with--_Your money or your life_! An end should be put to the burden
which weighs upon the higher classes--the burden, I mean, of having to
be ready every moment to expose life and limb to the mercy of anyone
who takes it into his rascally head to be coarse, rude, foolish or
malicious. It is perfectly atrocious that a pair of silly, passionate
boys should be wounded, maimed or even killed, simply because they
have had a few words.

The strength of this tyrannical power within the State, and the force
of the superstition, may be measured by the fact that people who are
prevented from restoring their knightly honor by the superior or
inferior rank of their aggressor, or anything else that puts the
persons on a different level, often come to a tragic-comic end by
committing suicide in sheer despair. You may generally know a thing
to be false and ridiculous by finding that, if it is carried to its
logical conclusion, it results in a contradiction; and here, too, we
have a very glaring absurdity. For an officer is forbidden to take
part in a duel; but if he is challenged and declines to come out, he
is punished by being dismissed the service.

As I am on the matter, let me be more frank still. The important
distinction, which is often insisted upon, between killing your enemy
in a fair fight with equal weapons, and lying in ambush for him, is
entirely a corollary of the fact that the power within the State, of
which I have spoken, recognizes no other right than might, that is,
the right of the stronger, and appeals to a _Judgment of God_ as the
basis of the whole code. For to kill a man in a fair fight, is to
prove that you are superior to him in strength or skill; and to
justify the deed, _you must assume that the right of the stronger is
really a right_.

But the truth is that, if my opponent is unable to defend himself, it
gives me the possibility, but not by any means the right, of killing
him. The _right_, the _moral justification_, must depend entirely upon
the _motives_ which I have for taking his life. Even supposing that I
have sufficient motive for taking a man's life, there is no reason
why I should make his death depend upon whether I can shoot or fence
better than he. In such a case, it is immaterial in what way I kill
him, whether I attack him from the front or the rear. From a moral
point of view, the right of the stronger is no more convincing than
the right of the more skillful; and it is skill which is employed if
you murder a a man treacherously. Might and skill are in this case
equally right; in a duel, for instance, both the one and the other
come into play; for a feint is only another name for treachery. If I
consider myself morally justified in taking a man's life, it is stupid
of me to try first of all whether he can shoot or fence better than
I; as, if he can, he will not only have wronged me, but have taken my
life into the bargain.

It is Rousseau's opinion that the proper way to avenge an insult is,
not to fight a duel with your aggressor, but to assassinate him,--an
opinion, however, which he is cautious enough only to barely indicate
in a mysterious note to one of the books of his _Emile_. This shows
the philosopher so completely under the influence of the mediaeval
superstition of knightly honor that he considers it justifiable to
murder a man who accuses you of lying: whilst he must have known that
every man, and himself especially, has deserved to have the lie given
him times without number.

The prejudice which justifies the killing of your adversary, so long
as it is done in an open contest and with equal weapons, obviously
looks upon might as really right, and a duel as the interference of
God. The Italian who, in a fit of rage, falls upon his aggressor
wherever he finds him, and despatches him without any ceremony, acts,
at any rate, consistently and naturally: he may be cleverer, but he is
not worse, than the duelist. If you say, I am justified in killing my
adversary in a duel, because he is at the moment doing his best to
kill me; I can reply that it is your challenge which has placed him
under the necessity of defending himself; and that by mutually putting
it on the ground of self-defence, the combatants are seeking a
plausible pretext for committing murder. I should rather justify the
deed by the legal maxim _Volenti non fit injuria_; because the parties
mutually agree to set their life upon the issue.

This argument may, however, be rebutted by showing that the injured
party is not injured _volens_; because it is this tyrannical principle
of knightly honor, with its absurd code, which forcibly drags one at
least of the combatants before a bloody inquisition.

I have been rather prolix on the subject of knightly honor, but I
had good reason for being so, because the Augean stable of moral and
intellectual enormity in this world can be cleaned out only with the
besom of philosophy. There are two things which more than all
else serve to make the social arrangements of modern life compare
unfavorably with those of antiquity, by giving our age a gloomy, dark
and sinister aspect, from which antiquity, fresh, natural and, as it
were, in the morning of life, is completely free; I mean modern honor
and modern disease,--_par nobile fratrum_!--which have combined to
poison all the relations of life, whether public or private. The
second of this noble pair extends its influence much farther than at
first appears to be the case, as being not merely a physical, but also
a moral disease. From the time that poisoned arrows have been found
in Cupid's quiver, an estranging, hostile, nay, devilish element has
entered into the relations of men and women, like a sinister thread
of fear and mistrust in the warp and woof of their intercourse;
indirectly shaking the foundations of human fellowship, and so more or
less affecting the whole tenor of existence. But it would be beside my
present purpose to pursue the subject further.

An influence analogous to this, though working on other lines, is
exerted by the principle of knightly honor,--that solemn farce,
unknown to the ancient world, which makes modern society stiff, gloomy
and timid, forcing us to keep the strictest watch on every word that
falls. Nor is this all. The principle is a universal Minotaur; and the
goodly company of the sons of noble houses which it demands in yearly
tribute, comes, not from one country alone, as of old, but from every
land in Europe. It is high time to make a regular attack upon this
foolish system; and this is what I am trying to do now. Would that
these two monsters of the modern world might disappear before the end
of the century!

Let us hope that medicine may be able to find some means of preventing
the one, and that, by clearing our ideals, philosophy may put an end
to the other: for it is only by clearing our ideas that the evil can
be eradicated. Governments have tried to do so by legislation, and
failed.

Still, if they are really concerned to stop the dueling system; and if
the small success that has attended their efforts is really due only
to their inability to cope with the evil, I do not mind proposing a
law the success of which I am prepared to guarantee. It will involve
no sanguinary measures, and can be put into operation without recourse
either to the scaffold or the gallows, or to imprisonment for life. It
is a small homeopathic pilule, with no serious after effects. If any
man send or accept a challenge, let the corporal take him before the
guard house, and there give him, in broad daylight, twelve strokes
with a stick _a la Chinoise_; a non-commissioned officer or a private
to receive six. If a duel has actually taken place, the usual criminal
proceedings should be instituted.

A person with knightly notions might, perhaps, object that, if such
a punishment were carried out, a man of honor would possibly shoot
himself; to which I should answer that it is better for a fool like
that to shoot himself rather than other people. However, I know very
well that governments are not really in earnest about putting down
dueling. Civil officials, and much more so, officers in the army,
(except those in the highest positions), are paid most inadequately
for the services they perform; and the deficiency is made up by honor,
which is represented by titles and orders, and, in general, by the
system of rank and distinction. The duel is, so to speak, a very
serviceable extra-horse for people of rank: so they are trained in the
knowledge of it at the universities. The accidents which happen to
those who use it make up in blood for the deficiency of the pay.

Just to complete the discussion, let me here mention the subject
of _national honor_. It is the honor of a nation as a unit in the
aggregate of nations. And as there is no court to appeal to but the
court of force; and as every nation must be prepared to defend its own
interests, the honor of a nation consists in establishing the opinion,
not only that it may be trusted (its credit), but also that it is to
be feared. An attack upon its rights must never be allowed to pass
unheeded. It is a combination of civic and knightly honor.


_Section 5.--Fame_.


Under the heading of place in the estimation of the world we have put
_Fame_; and this we must now proceed to consider.

Fame and honor are twins; and twins, too, like Castor and Pollux, of
whom the one was mortal and the other was not. Fame is the undying
brother of ephemeral honor. I speak, of course, of the highest kind of
fame, that is, of fame in the true and genuine sense of the word; for,
to be sure, there are many sorts of fame, some of which last but a
day. Honor is concerned merely with such qualities as everyone may be
expected to show under similar circumstances; fame only of those which
cannot be required of any man. Honor is of qualities which everyone
has a right to attribute to himself; fame only of those which should
be left to others to attribute. Whilst our honor extends as far as
people have knowledge of us; fame runs in advance, and makes us known
wherever it finds its way. Everyone can make a claim to honor; very
few to fame, as being attainable only in virtue of extraordinary
achievements.

These achievements may be of two kinds, either _actions_ or _works_;
and so to fame there are two paths open. On the path of actions, a
great heart is the chief recommendation; on that of works, a great
head. Each of the two paths has its own peculiar advantages and
detriments; and the chief difference between them is that actions are
fleeting, while works remain. The influence of an action, be it never
so noble, can last but a short time; but a work of genius is a living
influence, beneficial and ennobling throughout the ages. All that can
remain of actions is a memory, and that becomes weak and disfigured by
time--a matter of indifference to us, until at last it is extinguished
altogether; unless, indeed, history takes it up, and presents it,
fossilized, to posterity. Works are immortal in themselves, and once
committed to writing, may live for ever. Of Alexander the Great we
have but the name and the record; but Plato and Aristotle, Homer and
Horace are alive, and as directly at work to-day as they were in their
own lifetime. The _Vedas_, and their _Upanishads_, are still with us:
but of all contemporaneous actions not a trace has come down to us.[1]

[Footnote 1: Accordingly it is a poor compliment, though sometimes
a fashionable one, to try to pay honor to a work by calling it an
action. For a work is something essentially higher in its nature.
An action is always something based on motive, and, therefore,
fragmentary and fleeting--a part, in fact, of that Will which is the
universal and original element in the constitution of the world. But
a great and beautiful work has a permanent character, as being of
universal significance, and sprung from the Intellect, which rises,
like a perfume, above the faults and follies of the world of Will.

The fame of a great action has this advantage, that it generally
starts with a loud explosion; so loud, indeed, as to be heard all over
Europe: whereas the fame of a great work is slow and gradual in its
beginnings; the noise it makes is at first slight, but it goes on
growing greater, until at last, after a hundred years perhaps, it
attains its full force; but then it remains, because the works
remain, for thousands of years. But in the other case, when the first
explosion is over, the noise it makes grows less and less, and is
heard by fewer and fewer persons; until it ends by the action having
only a shadowy existence in the pages of history.]

Another disadvantage under which actions labor is that they depend
upon chance for the possibility of coming into existence; and hence,
the fame they win does not flow entirely from their intrinsic value,
but also from the circumstances which happened to lend them importance
and lustre. Again, the fame of actions, if, as in war, they are purely
personal, depends upon the testimony of fewer witnesses; and these
are not always present, and even if present, are not always just or
unbiased observers. This disadvantage, however, is counterbalanced
by the fact that actions have the advantage of being of a practical
character, and, therefore, within the range of general human
intelligence; so that once the facts have been correctly reported,
justice is immediately done; unless, indeed, the motive underlying the
action is not at first properly understood or appreciated. No action
can be really understood apart from the motive which prompted it.

It is just the contrary with works. Their inception does not depend
upon chance, but wholly and entirely upon their author; and whoever
they are in and for themselves, that they remain as long as they live.
Further, there is a difficulty in properly judging them, which becomes
all the harder, the higher their character; often there are no persons
competent to understand the work, and often no unbiased or honest
critics. Their fame, however, does not depend upon one judge only;
they can enter an appeal to another. In the case of actions, as I have
said, it is only their memory which comes down to posterity, and then
only in the traditional form; but works are handed down themselves,
and, except when parts of them have been lost, in the form in
which they first appeared. In this case there is no room for any
disfigurement of the facts; and any circumstance which may have
prejudiced them in their origin, fall away with the lapse of time.
Nay, it is often only after the lapse of time that the persons really
competent to judge them appear--exceptional critics sitting in
judgment on exceptional works, and giving their weighty verdicts in
succession. These collectively form a perfectly just appreciation; and
though there are cases where it has taken some hundreds of years to
form it, no further lapse of time is able to reverse the verdict;--so
secure and inevitable is the fame of a great work.

Whether authors ever live to see the dawn of their fame depends upon
the chance of circumstance; and the higher and more important their
works are, the less likelihood there is of their doing so. That was
an incomparable fine saying of Seneca's, that fame follows merit as
surely as the body casts a shadow; sometimes falling in front, and
sometimes behind. And he goes on to remark that _though the envy of
contemporaries be shown by universal silence, there will come those
who will judge without enmity or favor_. From this remark it is
manifest that even in Seneca's age there were rascals who understood
the art of suppressing merit by maliciously ignoring its existence,
and of concealing good work from the public in order to favor the bad:
it is an art well understood in our day, too, manifesting itself, both
then and now, in _an envious conspiracy of silence_.

As a general rule, the longer a man's fame is likely to last, the
later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time
for their development. The fame which lasts to posterity is like an
oak, of very slow growth; and that which endures but a little while,
like plants which spring up in a year and then die; whilst false fame
is like a fungus, shooting up in a night and perishing as soon.

And why? For this reason; the more a man belongs to posterity, in
other words, to humanity in general, the more of an alien he is to his
contemporaries; since his work is not meant for them as such, but only
for them in so far as they form part of mankind at large; there is
none of that familiar local color about his productions which would
appeal to them; and so what he does, fails of recognition because it
is strange.

People are more likely to appreciate the man who serves the
circumstances of his own brief hour, or the temper of the
moment,--belonging to it, living and dying with it.

The general history of art and literature shows that the highest
achievements of the human mind are, as a rule, not favorably received
at first; but remain in obscurity until they win notice from
intelligence of a high order, by whose influence they are brought into
a position which they then maintain, in virtue of the authority thus
given them.

If the reason of this should be asked, it will be found that
ultimately, a man can really understand and appreciate those things
only which are of like nature with himself. The dull person will like
what is dull, and the common person what is common; a man whose ideas
are mixed will be attracted by confusion of thought; and folly will
appeal to him who has no brains at all; but best of all, a man will
like his own works, as being of a character thoroughly at one with
himself. This is a truth as old as Epicharmus of fabulous memory--

  [Greek: Thaumaston ouden esti me tauth outo legein
  Kal andanein autoisin autous kal dokein
  Kalos pethukenai kal gar ho kuon kuni
  Kalloton eimen phainetai koi bous boi
  Onos dono kalliston [estin], us dut.]

The sense of this passage--for it should not be lost--is that we
should not be surprised if people are pleased with themselves, and
fancy that they are in good case; for to a dog the best thing in the
world is a dog; to an ox, an ox; to an ass, an ass; and to a sow, a
sow.

The strongest arm is unavailing to give impetus to a featherweight;
for, instead of speeding on its way and hitting its mark with effect,
it will soon fall to the ground, having expended what little energy
was given to it, and possessing no mass of its own to be the vehicle
of momentum. So it is with great and noble thoughts, nay, with the
very masterpieces of genius, when there are none but little, weak, and
perverse minds to appreciate them,--a fact which has been deplored
by a chorus of the wise in all ages. Jesus, the son of Sirach, for
instance, declares that _He that telleth a tale to a fool speaketh to
one in slumber: when he hath told his tale, he will say, What is the
matter_?[1] And Hamlet says, _A knavish speech sleeps in a fool's
ear_.[2] And Goethe is of the same opinion, that a dull ear mocks at
the wisest word,

  _Das glücktichste Wort es wird verhöhnt,
  Wenn der Hörer ein Schiefohr ist_:

and again, that we should not be discouraged if people are stupid, for
you can make no rings if you throw your stone into a marsh.

  _Du iwirkest nicht, Alles bleibt so stumpf:
    Sei guter Dinge!
  Der Stein in Sumpf
    Macht keine Ringe_.

[Footnote 1: Ecclesiasticus, xxii., 8.]

[Footnote 2: Act iv., Sc. 2.]

Lichtenberg asks: _When a head and a book come into collision, and one
sounds hollow, is it always the book_? And in another place: _Works
like this are as a mirror; if an ass looks in, you cannot expect an
apostle to look out_. We should do well to remember old Gellert's
fine and touching lament, that the best gifts of all find the fewest
admirers, and that most men mistake the bad for the good,--a daily
evil that nothing can prevent, like a plague which no remedy can cure.
There is but one thing to be done, though how difficult!--the foolish
must become wise,--and that they can never be. The value of life they
never know; they see with the outer eye but never with the mind, and
praise the trivial because the good is strange to them:--

  _Nie kennen sie den Werth der Dinge,
    Ihr Auge schliesst, nicht ihr Verstand;
  Sie loben ewig das Geringe
    Weil sie das Gute nie gekannt_.

To the intellectual incapacity which, as Goethe says, fails to
recognize and appreciate the good which exists, must be added
something which comes into play everywhere, the moral baseness of
mankind, here taking the form of envy. The new fame that a man wins
raises him afresh over the heads of his fellows, who are thus degraded
in proportion. All conspicuous merit is obtained at the cost of those
who possess none; or, as Goethe has it in the _Westöstlicher Divan_,
another's praise is one's own depreciation--

  _Wenn wir Andern Ehre geben
  Müssen wir uns selbst entadeln_.

We see, then, how it is that, whatever be the form which excellence
takes, mediocrity, the common lot of by far the greatest number, is
leagued against it in a conspiracy to resist, and if possible, to
suppress it. The pass-word of this league is _à bas le mérite_. Nay
more; those who have done something themselves, and enjoy a certain
amount of fame, do not care about the appearance of a new reputation,
because its success is apt to throw theirs into the shade. Hence,
Goethe declares that if we had to depend for our life upon the favor
of others, we should never have lived at all; from their desire
to appear important themselves, people gladly ignore our very
existence:--

  _Hätte ich gezaudert zu werden,
  Bis man mir's Leben geögnut,
  Ich wäre noch nicht auf Erden,
  Wie ihr begreifen könnt,
  Wenn ihr seht, wie sie sich geberden,
  Die, um etwas zu scheinen,
  Mich gerne mochten verneinen_.

Honor, on the contrary, generally meets with fair appreciation, and is
not exposed to the onslaught of envy; nay, every man is credited with
the possession of it until the contrary is proved. But fame has to be
won in despite of envy, and the tribunal which awards the laurel is
composed of judges biased against the applicant from the very first.
Honor is something which we are able and ready to share with everyone;
fame suffers encroachment and is rendered more unattainable in
proportion as more people come by it. Further, the difficulty of
winning fame by any given work stands in reverse ratio to the number
of people who are likely to read it; and hence it is so much harder
to become famous as the author of a learned work than as a writer
who aspires only to amuse. It is hardest of all in the case of
philosophical works, because the result at which they aim is rather
vague, and, at the same time, useless from a material point of view;
they appeal chiefly to readers who are working on the same lines
themselves.

It is clear, then, from what I have said as to the difficulty of
winning fame, that those who labor, not out of love for their subject,
nor from pleasure in pursuing it, but under the stimulus of ambition,
rarely or never leave mankind a legacy of immortal works. The man who
seeks to do what is good and genuine, must avoid what is bad, and be
ready to defy the opinions of the mob, nay, even to despise it and its
misleaders. Hence the truth of the remark, (especially insisted upon
by Osorius _de Gloria_), that fame shuns those who seek it, and seeks
those who shun it; for the one adapt themselves to the taste of their
contemporaries, and the others work in defiance of it.

But, difficult though it be to acquire fame, it is an easy thing to
keep when once acquired. Here, again, fame is in direct opposition to
honor, with which everyone is presumably to be accredited. Honor
has not to be won; it must only not be lost. But there lies the
difficulty! For by a single unworthy action, it is gone irretrievably.
But fame, in the proper sense of the word, can never disappear; for
the action or work by which it was acquired can never be undone; and
fame attaches to its author, even though he does nothing to deserve it
anew. The fame which vanishes, or is outlived, proves itself thereby
to be spurious, in other words, unmerited, and due to a momentary
overestimate of a man's work; not to speak of the kind of fame which
Hegel enjoyed, and which Lichtenberg describes as _trumpeted forth by
a clique of admiring undergraduates_--_the resounding echo of empty
heads_;--_such a fame as will make posterity smile when it lights upon
a grotesque architecture of words, a fine nest with the birds long
ago flown; it will knock at the door of this decayed structure of
conventionalities and find it utterly empty_!--_not even a trace of
thought there to invite the passer-by_.

The truth is that fame means nothing but what a man is in comparison
with others. It is essentially relative in character, and therefore
only indirectly valuable; for it vanishes the moment other people
become what the famous man is. Absolute value can be predicated only
of what a man possesses under any and all circumstances,--here, what a
man is directly and in himself. It is the possession of a great heart
or a great head, and not the mere fame of it, which is worth having,
and conducive to happiness. Not fame, but that which deserves to be
famous, is what a man should hold in esteem. This is, as it were, the
true underlying substance, and fame is only an accident, affecting its
subject chiefly as a kind of external symptom, which serves to confirm
his own opinion of himself. Light is not visible unless it meets with
something to reflect it; and talent is sure of itself only when its
fame is noised abroad. But fame is not a certain symptom of merit;
because you can have the one without the other; or, as Lessing nicely
puts it, _Some people obtain fame, and others deserve it_.

It would be a miserable existence which should make its value or want
of value depend upon what other people think; but such would be the
life of a hero or a genius if its worth consisted in fame, that is,
in the applause of the world. Every man lives and exists on his own
account, and, therefore, mainly in and for himself; and what he is and
the whole manner of his being concern himself more than anyone else;
so if he is not worth much in this respect, he cannot be worth much
otherwise. The idea which other people form of his existence is
something secondary, derivative, exposed to all the chances of fate,
and in the end affecting him but very indirectly. Besides, other
people's heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man's true
happiness--a fanciful happiness perhaps, but not a real one.

And what a mixed company inhabits the Temple of Universal
Fame!--generals, ministers, charlatans, jugglers, dancers, singers,
millionaires and Jews! It is a temple in which more sincere
recognition, more genuine esteem, is given to the several excellencies
of such folk, than to superiority of mind, even of a high order, which
obtains from the great majority only a verbal acknowledgment.

From the point of view of human happiness, fame is, surely, nothing
but a very rare and delicate morsel for the appetite that feeds on
pride and vanity--an appetite which, however carefully concealed,
exists to an immoderate degree in every man, and is, perhaps strongest
of all in those who set their hearts on becoming famous at any cost.
Such people generally have to wait some time in uncertainty as to
their own value, before the opportunity comes which will put it to the
proof and let other people see what they are made of; but until then,
they feel as if they were suffering secret injustice.[1]

[Footnote 1: Our greatest pleasure consists in being admired; but
those who admire us, even if they have every reason to do so, are slow
to express their sentiments. Hence he is the happiest man who, no
matter how, manages sincerely to admire himself--so long as other
people leave him alone.]

But, as I explained at the beginning of this chapter, an
unreasonable value is set upon other people's opinion, and one quite
disproportionate to its real worth. Hobbes has some strong remarks on
this subject; and no doubt he is quite right. _Mental pleasure_, he
writes, _and ecstacy of any kind, arise when, on comparing ourselves
with others, we come to the conclusion that we may think well of
ourselves_. So we can easily understand the great value which is
always attached to fame, as worth any sacrifices if there is the
slightest hope of attaining it.

  _Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise_
  _(That hath infirmity of noble mind)_
  _To scorn delights and live laborious days_[1]

And again:

        _How hard it is to climb
  The heights where Fame's proud temple shines afar_!

[Footnote 1: Milton. _Lycidas_.]

We can thus understand how it is that the vainest people in the world
are always talking about _la gloire_, with the most implicit faith in
it as a stimulus to great actions and great works. But there can he no
doubt that fame is something secondary in its character, a mere echo
or reflection--as it were, a shadow or symptom--of merit: and, in
any case, what excites admiration must be of more value than the
admiration itself. The truth is that a man is made happy, not by fame,
but by that which brings him fame, by his merits, or to speak more
correctly, by the disposition and capacity from which his merits
proceed, whether they be moral or intellectual. The best side of a
man's nature must of necessity be more important for him than for
anyone else: the reflection of it, the opinion which exists in the
heads of others, is a matter that can affect him only in a very
subordinate degree. He who deserves fame without getting it possesses
by far the more important element of happiness, which should console
him for the loss of the other. It is not that a man is thought to be
great by masses of incompetent and often infatuated people, but that
he really is great, which should move us to envy his position; and his
happiness lies, not in the fact that posterity will hear of him, but
that he is the creator of thoughts worthy to be treasured up and
studied for hundreds of years.

Besides, if a man has done this, he possesses something which cannot
be wrested from him; and, unlike fame, it is a possession dependent
entirely upon himself. If admiration were his chief aim, there would
be nothing in him to admire. This is just what happens in the case
of false, that is, unmerited, fame; for its recipient lives upon it
without actually possessing the solid substratum of which fame is the
outward and visible sign. False fame must often put its possessor out
of conceit with himself; for the time may come when, in spite of the
illusions borne of self-love, he will feel giddy on the heights which
he was never meant to climb, or look upon himself as spurious
coin; and in the anguish of threatened discovery and well-merited
degradation, he will read the sentence of posterity on the foreheads
of the wise--like a man who owes his property to a forged will.

The truest fame, the fame that comes after death, is never heard of by
its recipient; and yet he is called a happy man.

His happiness lay both in the possession of those great qualities
which won him fame, and in the opportunity that was granted him of
developing them--the leisure he had to act as he pleased, to dedicate
himself to his favorite pursuits. It is only work done from the heart
that ever gains the laurel.

Greatness of soul, or wealth of intellect, is what makes a man
happy--intellect, such as, when stamped on its productions, will
receive the admiration of centuries to come,--thoughts which make him
happy at the time, and will in their turn be a source of study and
delight to the noblest minds of the most remote posterity. The value
of posthumous fame lies in deserving it; and this is its own reward.
Whether works destined to fame attain it in the lifetime of their
author is a chance affair, of no very great importance. For the
average man has no critical power of his own, and is absolutely
incapable of appreciating the difficulty of a great work. People are
always swayed by authority; and where fame is widespread, it means
that ninety-nine out of a hundred take it on faith alone. If a man is
famed far and wide in his own lifetime, he will, if he is wise, not
set too much value upon it, because it is no more than the echo of a
few voices, which the chance of a day has touched in his favor.

Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of an audience
if he knew that they were nearly all deaf, and that, to conceal their
infirmity, they set to work to clap vigorously as soon as ever they
saw one or two persons applauding? And what would he say if he got to
know that those one or two persons had often taken bribes to secure
the loudest applause for the poorest player!

It is easy to see why contemporary praise so seldom develops into
posthumous fame. D'Alembert, in an extremely fine description of the
temple of literary fame, remarks that the sanctuary of the temple is
inhabited by the great dead, who during their life had no place there,
and by a very few living persons, who are nearly all ejected on their
death. Let me remark, in passing, that to erect a monument to a man
in his lifetime is as much as declaring that posterity is not to be
trusted in its judgment of him. If a man does happen to see his own
true fame, it can very rarely be before he is old, though there have
been artists and musicians who have been exceptions to this rule, but
very few philosophers. This is confirmed by the portraits of people
celebrated by their works; for most of them are taken only after their
subjects have attained celebrity, generally depicting them as old and
grey; more especially if philosophy has been the work of their lives.
From the eudaemonistic standpoint, this is a very proper arrangement;
as fame and youth are too much for a mortal at one and the same time.
Life is such a poor business that the strictest economy must be
exercised in its good things. Youth has enough and to spare in itself,
and must rest content with what it has. But when the delights and joys
of life fall away in old age, as the leaves from a tree in autumn,
fame buds forth opportunely, like a plant that is green in winter.
Fame is, as it were, the fruit that must grow all the summer before it
can be enjoyed at Yule. There is no greater consolation in age than
the feeling of having put the whole force of one's youth into works
which still remain young.

Finally, let us examine a little more closely the kinds of fame which
attach to various intellectual pursuits; for it is with fame of this
sort that my remarks are more immediately concerned.

I think it may be said broadly that the intellectual superiority it
denotes consists in forming theories, that is, new combinations of
certain facts. These facts may be of very different kinds; but
the better they are known, and the more they come within everyday
experience, the greater and wider will be the fame which is to be won
by theorizing about them.

For instance, if the facts in question are numbers or lines or special
branches of science, such as physics, zoology, botany, anatomy, or
corrupt passages in ancient authors, or undecipherable inscriptions,
written, it may be, in some unknown alphabet, or obscure points
in history; the kind of fame that may be obtained by correctly
manipulating such facts will not extend much beyond those who make a
study of them--a small number of persons, most of whom live retired
lives and are envious of others who become famous in their special
branch of knowledge.

But if the facts be such as are known to everyone, for example, the
fundamental characteristics of the human mind or the human heart,
which are shared by all alike; or the great physical agencies which
are constantly in operation before our eyes, or the general course of
natural laws; the kind of fame which is to be won by spreading the
light of a new and manifestly true theory in regard to them, is such
as in time will extend almost all over the civilized world: for if the
facts be such as everyone can grasp, the theory also will be generally
intelligible. But the extent of the fame will depend upon the
difficulties overcome; and the more generally known the facts are, the
harder it will be to form a theory that shall be both new and true:
because a great many heads will have been occupied with them, and
there will be little or no possibility of saying anything that has not
been said before.

On the other hand, facts which are not accessible to everybody, and
can be got at only after much difficulty and labor, nearly
always admit of new combinations and theories; so that, if sound
understanding and judgment are brought to bear upon them--qualities
which do not involve very high intellectual power--a man may easily be
so fortunate as to light upon some new theory in regard to them which
shall be also true. But fame won on such paths does not extend much
beyond those who possess a knowledge of the facts in question. To
solve problems of this sort requires, no doubt, a great ideal of study
and labor, if only to get at the facts; whilst on the path where the
greatest and most widespread fame is to be won, the facts may be
grasped without any labor at all. But just in proportion as less labor
is necessary, more talent or genius is required; and between such
qualities and the drudgery of research no comparison is possible, in
respect either of their intrinsic value, or of the estimation in which
they are held.

And so people who feel that they possess solid intellectual capacity
and a sound judgment, and yet cannot claim the highest mental powers,
should not be afraid of laborious study; for by its aid they may
work themselves above the great mob of humanity who have the facts
constantly before their eyes, and reach those secluded spots which are
accessible to learned toil.

For this is a sphere where there are infinitely fewer rivals, and
a man of only moderate capacity may soon find an opportunity of
proclaiming a theory which shall be both new and true; nay, the merit
of his discovery will partly rest upon the difficulty of coming at
the facts. But applause from one's fellow-students, who are the only
persons with a knowledge of the subject, sounds very faint to the
far-off multitude. And if we follow up this sort of fame far enough,
we shall at last come to a point where facts very difficult to get at
are in themselves sufficient to lay a foundation of fame, without any
necessity for forming a theory;--travels, for instance, in remote and
little-known countries, which make a man famous by what he has seen,
not by what he has thought. The great advantage of this kind of fame
is that to relate what one has seen, is much easier than to impart
one's thoughts, and people are apt to understand descriptions better
than ideas, reading the one more readily than the other: for, as Asmus
says,

  _When one goes forth a-voyaging
  He has a tale to tell_.

And yet for all that, a personal acquaintance with celebrated
travelers often remind us of a line from Horace--new scenes do not
always mean new ideas--

  _Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Epist. I. II.]

But if a man finds himself in possession of great mental faculties,
such as alone should venture on the solution of the hardest of all
problems--those which concern nature as a whole and humanity in its
widest range, he will do well to extend his view equally in all
directions, without ever straying too far amid the intricacies of
various by-paths, or invading regions little known; in other words,
without occupying himself with special branches of knowledge, to say
nothing of their petty details. There is no necessity for him to
seek out subjects difficult of access, in order to escape a crowd of
rivals; the common objects of life will give him material for new
theories at once serious and true; and the service he renders will be
appreciated by all those--and they form a great part of mankind--who
know the facts of which he treats. What a vast distinction there is
between students of physics, chemistry, anatomy, mineralogy, zoology,
philology, history, and the men who deal with the great facts of human
life, the poet and the philosopher!





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