Counsels and Maxims - Arthur Schopenhauer
This variation in the rate at which time appears to move, exercises a
most decided influence upon the whole nature of our existence at
every period of it. First of all, it causes childhood--even though it
embrace only a span of fifteen years--to seem the longest period of
life, and therefore the richest in reminiscences. Next, it brings it
about that a man is apt to be bored just in proportion as he is young.
Consider, for instance, that constant need of occupation--whether it
is work or play--that is shown by children: if they come to an end
of both work and play, a terrible feeling of boredom ensues. Even in
youth people are by no means free from this tendency, and dread the
hours when they have nothing to do. As manhood approaches, boredom
disappears; and old men find the time too short when their days fly
past them like arrows from a bow. Of course, I must be understood to
speak of _men_, not of decrepit _brutes_. With this increased rapidity
of time, boredom mostly passes away as we advance in life; and as
the passions with all their attendant pain are then laid asleep, the
burden of life is, on the whole, appreciably lighter in later years
than in youth, provided, of course, that health remains. So it is that
the period immediately preceding the weakness and troubles of old age,
receives the name of a man's _best years_.
That may be a true appellation, in view of the comfortable feeling
which those years bring; but for all that the years of youth, when our
consciousness is lively and open to every sort of impression, have
this privilege--that then the seeds are sown and the buds come forth;
it is the springtime of the mind. Deep truths may be perceived, but
can never be excogitated--that is to say, the first knowledge of
them is immediate, called forth by some momentary impression. This
knowledge is of such a kind as to be attainable only when the
impressions are strong, lively and deep; and if we are to be
acquainted with deep truths, everything depends upon a proper use of
our early years. In later life, we may be better able to work upon
other people,--upon the world, because our natures are then finished
and rounded off, and no more a prey to fresh views; but then the
world is less able to work upon us. These are the years of action
and achievement; while youth is the time for forming fundamental
conceptions, and laying down the ground-work of thought.
In youth it is the outward aspect of things that most engages us;
while in age, thought or reflection is the predominating quality
of the mind. Hence, youth is the time for poetry, and age is more
inclined to philosophy. In practical affairs it is the same: a man
shapes his resolutions in youth more by the impression that the
outward world makes upon him; whereas, when he is old, it is thought
that determines his actions. This is partly to be explained by the
fact that it is only when a man is old that the results of outward
observation are present in sufficient numbers to allow of their being
classified according to the ideas they represent,--a process which in
its turn causes those ideas to be more fully understood in all their
bearings, and the exact value and amount of trust to be placed in
them, fixed and determined; while at the same time he has grown
accustomed to the impressions produced by the various phenomena
of life, and their effects on him are no longer what they were.
Contrarily, in youth, the impressions that things make, that is to
say, the outward aspects of life, are so overpoweringly strong,
especially in the case of people of lively and imaginative
disposition, that they view the world like a picture; and their chief
concern is the figure they cut in it, the appearance they present;
nay, they are unaware of the extent to which this is the case. It is
a quality of mind that shows itself--if in no other way--in that
personal vanity, and that love of fine clothes, which distinguish
young people.
There can be no doubt that the intellectual powers are most capable
of enduring great and sustained efforts in youth, up to the age of
thirty-five at latest; from which period their strength begins to
decline, though very gradually. Still, the later years of life, and
even old age itself, are not without their intellectual compensation.
It is only then that a man can be said to be really rich in experience
or in learning; he has then had time and opportunity enough to enable
him to see and think over life from all its sides; he has been able to
compare one thing with another, and to discover points of contact and
connecting links, so that only then are the true relations of things
rightly understood. Further, in old age there comes an increased depth
in the knowledge that was acquired in youth; a man has now many more
illustrations of any ideas he may have attained; things which he
thought he knew when he was young, he now knows in reality. And
besides, his range of knowledge is wider; and in whatever direction it
extends, it is thorough, and therefore formed into a consistent and
connected whole; whereas in youth knowledge is always defective and
fragmentary.
A complete and adequate notion of life can never be attained by any
one who does not reach old age; for it is only the old man who
sees life whole and knows its natural course; it is only he who is
acquainted--and this is most important--not only with its entrance,
like the rest of mankind, but with its exit too; so that he alone has
a full sense of its utter vanity; whilst the others never cease to
labor under the false notion that everything will come right in the
end.
On the other hand, there is more conceptive power in youth, and at
that time of life a man can make more out of the little that he knows.
In age, judgment, penetration and thoroughness predominate. Youth is
the time for amassing the material for a knowledge of the world that
shall be distinctive and peculiar,--for an original view of life, in
other words, the legacy that a man of genius leaves to his fellow-men;
it is, however, only in later years that he becomes master of his
material. Accordingly it will be found that, as a rule, a great writer
gives his best work to the world when he is about fifty years of age.
But though the tree of knowledge must reach its full height before it
can bear fruit, the roots of it lie in youth.
Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, thinks itself
much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that
are more remote. It is just the same with the different periods in a
man's life; and yet often, in the one case no less than in the other,
it is a mistaken opinion. In the years of physical growth, when
our powers of mind and our stores of knowledge are receiving daily
additions, it becomes a habit for to-day to look down with contempt
upon yesterday. The habit strikes root, and remains even after the
intellectual powers have begun to decline,--when to-day should rather
look up with respect to yesterday. So it is that we often unduly
depreciate the achievements as well as the judgments of our youth.
This seems the place for making the general observation, that,
although in its main qualities a man's _intellect_ or _head_, as well
as his _character_ or _heart_, is innate, yet the former is by no
means so unalterable in its nature as the latter. The fact is that the
intellect is subject to very many transformations, which, as a rule,
do not fail to make their actual appearance; and this is so, partly
because the intellect has a deep foundation in the physique,
and partly because the material with which it deals is given in
experience. And so, from a physical point of view, we find that if a
man has any peculiar power, it first gradually increases in strength
until it reaches its acme, after which it enters upon a path of slow
decadence, until it ends in imbecility. But, on the other hand,
we must not lose sight of the fact that the material which gives
employment to a man's powers and keeps them in activity,--the
subject-matter of thought and knowledge, experience, intellectual
attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom of things, and so a
perfect mental vision, form in themselves a mass which continues to
increase in size, until the time comes when weakness shows itself,
and the man's powers suddenly fail. The way in which these two
distinguishable elements combine in the same nature,--the one
absolutely unalterable, and the other subject to change in two
directions opposed to each other--explains the variety of mental
attitude and the dissimilarity of value which attach to a man at
different periods of life.
The same truth may be more broadly expressed by saying that the first
forty years of life furnish the text, while the remaining thirty
supply the commentary; and that without the commentary we are unable
to understand aright the true sense and coherence of the text,
together with the moral it contains and all the subtle application of
which it admits.
Towards the close of life, much the same thing happens as at the end
of a _bal masque_--the masks are taken off. Then you can see who
the people really are, with whom you have come into contact in your
passage through the world. For by the end of life characters have come
out in their true light, actions have borne fruit, achievements have
been rightly appreciated, and all shams have fallen to pieces. For
this, Time was in every case requisite.
But the most curious fact is that it is also only towards the close
of life than a man really recognizes and understands his own true
self,--the aims and objects he has followed in life, more especially
the kind of relation in which he has stood to other people and to the
world. It will often happen that as a result of this knowledge, a man
will have to assign himself a lower place than he formerly thought
was his due. But there are exceptions to this rule; and it will
occasionally be the case that he will take a higher position than he
had before. This will be owing to the fact that he had no adequate
notion of the _baseness_ of the world, and that he set up a higher aim
for himself than was followed by the rest of mankind.
The progress of life shows a man the stuff of which he is made.
It is customary to call youth the happy, and age the sad part of life.
This would be true if it were the passions that made a man happy.
Youth is swayed to and fro by them; and they give a great deal of pain
and little pleasure. In age the passions cool and leave a man at rest,
and then forthwith his mind takes a contemplative tone; the intellect
is set free and attains the upper hand. And since, in itself,
intellect is beyond the range of pain, and man feels happy just in so
far as his intellect is the predominating part of him.
It need only be remembered that all pleasure is negative, and that
pain is positive in its nature, in order to see that the passions can
never be a source of happiness, and that age is not the less to be
envied on the ground that many pleasures are denied it. For every sort
of pleasure is never anything more than the quietive of some need or
longing; and that pleasure should come to an end as soon as the need
ceases, is no more a subject of complaint than that a man cannot go on
eating after he has had his dinner, or fall asleep again after a good
night's rest.
So far from youth being the happiest period of life, there is much
more truth in the remark made by Plato, at the beginning of the
_Republic_, that the prize should rather be given to old age, because
then at last a man is freed from the animal passion which has hitherto
never ceased to disquiet him. Nay, it may even be said that the
countless and manifold humors which have their source in this passion,
and the emotions that spring from it, produce a mild state of madness;
and this lasts as long as the man is subject to the spell of
the impulse--this evil spirit, as it were, of which there is no
riddance--so that he never really becomes a reasonable being until the
passion is extinguished.
There is no doubt that, in general, and apart from individual
circumstances and particular dispositions, youth is marked by a
certain melancholy and sadness, while genial sentiments attach to old
age; and the reason for this is nothing but the fact that the young
man is still under the service, nay, the forced labor, imposed by that
evil spirit, which scarcely ever leaves him a moment to himself. To
this source may be traced, directly or indirectly, almost all and
every ill that befalls or menaces mankind. The old man is genial and
cheerful because, after long lying in the bonds of passion, he can now
move about in freedom.
Still, it should not be forgotten that, when this passion is
extinguished, the true kernel of life is gone, and nothing remains but
the hollow shell; or, from another point of view, life then becomes
like a comedy, which, begun by real actors, is continued and brought
to an end by automata dressed in their clothes.
However that may be, youth is the period of unrest, and age of repose;
and from that very circumstance, the relative degree of pleasure
belonging to each may be inferred. The child stretches out its little
hands in the eager desire to seize all the pretty things that meet its
sight, charmed by the world because all its senses are still so young
and fresh. Much the same thing happens with the youth, and he displays
greater energy in his quest. He, too, is charmed by all the pretty
things and the many pleasing shapes that surround him; and forthwith
his imagination conjures up pleasures which the world can never
realize. So he is filled with an ardent desire for he knows not what
delights--robbing him of all rest and making happiness impossible.
But when old age is reached, all this is over and done with, partly
because the blood runs cooler and the senses are no longer so easily
allured; partly because experience has shown the true value of things
and the futility of pleasure, whereby illusion has been gradually
dispelled, and the strange fancies and prejudices which previously
concealed or distorted a free and true view of the world, have been
dissipated and put to flight; with the result that a man can now get
a juster and clearer view, and see things as they are, and also in a
measure attain more or less insight into the nullity of all things on
this earth.
It is this that gives almost every old man, no matter how ordinary his
faculties may be, a certain tincture of wisdom, which distinguishes
him from the young. But the chief result of all this change is the
peace of mind that ensues--a great element in happiness, and, in fact,
the condition and essence of it. While the young man fancies that
there is a vast amount of good things in the world, if he could only
come at them, the old man is steeped in the truth of the Preacher's
words, that _all things are vanity_--knowing that, however gilded the
shell, the nut is hollow.
In these later years, and not before, a man comes to a true
appreciation of Horace's maxim: _Nil admirari._ He is directly and
sincerely convinced of the vanity of everything and that all the
glories of the world are as nothing: his illusions are gone. He is
no more beset with the idea that there is any particular amount of
happiness anywhere, in the palace or in the cottage, any more than he
himself enjoys when he is free from bodily or mental pain. The worldly
distinctions of great and small, high and low, exist for him no
longer; and in this blissful state of mind the old man may look down
with a smile upon all false notions. He is completely undeceived, and
knows that whatever may be done to adorn human life and deck it out in
finery, its paltry character will soon show through the glitter of its
surroundings; and that, paint and be jewel it as one may, it remains
everywhere much the same,--an existence which has no true value except
in freedom from pain, and is never to be estimated by the presence of
pleasure, let alone, then, of display.[1]
[Footnote 1: Cf. Horace, _Epist_. I. 12, I-4.]
Disillusion is the chief characteristic of old age; for by that time
the fictions are gone which gave life its charm and spurred on the
mind to activity; the splendors of the world have been proved null and
vain; its pomp, grandeur and magnificence are faded. A man has then
found out that behind most of the things he wants, and most of the
pleasures he longs for, there is very little after all; and so he
comes by degrees to see that our existence is all empty and void. It
is only when he is seventy years old that he quite understands the
first words of the Preacher; and this again explains why it is that
old men are sometimes fretful and morose.
It is often said that the common lot of old age is disease and
weariness of life. Disease is by no means essential to old age;
especially where a really long span of years is to be attained; for
as life goes on, the conditions of health and disorder tend to
increase--_crescente vita, crescit sanitas et morbus_. And as far as
weariness or boredom is concerned, I have stated above why old age is
even less exposed to that form of evil than youth. Nor is boredom by
any means to be taken as a necessary accompaniment of that solitude,
which, for reasons that do not require to be explained, old age
certainly cannot escape; it is rather the fate that awaits those who
have never known any other pleasures but the gratification of the
senses and the delights of society--who have left their minds
unenlightened and their faculties unused. It is quite true that the
intellectual faculties decline with the approach of old age; but where
they were originally strong, there will always be enough left to
combat the onslaught of boredom. And then again, as I have said,
experience, knowledge, reflection, and skill in dealing with men,
combine to give an old man an increasingly accurate insight into the
ways of the world; his judgment becomes keen and he attains a coherent
view of life: his mental vision embraces a wider range. Constantly
finding new uses for his stores of knowledge and adding to them at
every opportunity, he maintains uninterrupted that inward process of
self-education, which gives employment and satisfaction to the mind,
and thus forms the due reward of all its efforts.
All this serves in some measure as a compensation for decreased
intellectual power. And besides, Time, as I have remarked, seems to go
much more quickly when we are advanced in years; and this is in itself
a preventive of boredom. There is no great harm in the fact that
a man's bodily strength decreases in old age, unless, indeed, he
requires it to make a living. To be poor when one is old, is a great
misfortune. If a man is secure from that, and retains his health, old
age may be a very passable time of life. Its chief necessity is to be
comfortable and well off; and, in consequence, money is then prized
more than ever, because it is a substitute for failing strength.
Deserted by Venus, the old man likes to turn to Bacchus to make him
merry. In the place of wanting to see things, to travel and learn,
comes the desire to speak and teach. It is a piece of good fortune if
the old man retains some of his love of study or of music or of the
theatre,--if, in general, he is still somewhat susceptible to the
things about him; as is, indeed, the case with some people to a very
late age. At that time of life, _what a man has in himself_ is of
greater advantage to him that ever it was before.
There can be no doubt that most people who have never been anything
but dull and stupid, become more and more of automata as they grow
old. They have always thought, said and done the same things as their
neighbors; and nothing that happens now can change their disposition,
or make them act otherwise. To talk to old people of this kind is like
writing on the sand; if you produce any impression at all, it is gone
almost immediately; old age is here nothing but the _caput mortuum_
of life--all that is essential to manhood is gone. There are cases
in which nature supplies a third set of teeth in old age, thereby
apparently demonstrating the fact that that period of life is a second
childhood.
It is certainly a very melancholy thing that all a man's faculties
tend to waste away as he grows old, and at a rate that increases
in rapidity: but still, this is a necessary, nay, a beneficial
arrangement, as otherwise death, for which it is a preparation, would
be too hard to bear. So the greatest boon that follows the attainment
of extreme old age is _euthanasia_,--an easy death, not ushered in by
disease, and free from all pain and struggle.[1] For let a man live as
long as he may, he is never conscious of any moment but the present,
one and indivisible; and in those late years the mind loses more every
day by sheer forgetfulness than ever it gains anew.
[Footnote 1: See _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, Bk. II. ch. 41,
for a further description of this happy end to life.]
The main difference between youth and age will always be that youth
looks forward to life, and old age to death; and that while the one
has a short past and a long future before it, the case is just the
opposite with the other. It is quite true that when a man is old, to
die is the only thing that awaits him; while if he is young, he may
expect to live; and the question arises which of the two fates is the
more hazardous, and if life is not a matter which, on the whole, it is
better to have behind one than before? Does not the Preacher say:
_the day of death [is better] than the day of one's birth_.[1] It is
certainly a rash thing to wish for long life;[2] for as the Spanish
proverb has it, it means to see much evil,--_Quien larga vida vive
mucho mal vide_.
[Footnote 1: Ecclesiastes vii. 1.]
[Footnote 2: The life of man cannot, strictly speaking, be called
either _long_ or _short_, since it is the ultimate standard by which
duration of time in regard to all other things is measured.
In one of the Vedic _Upanishads (Oupnekhat_, II.) _the natural length_
of human life is put down at one hundred years. And I believe this to
be right. I have observed, as a matter of fact, that it is only people
who exceed the age of ninety who attain _euthanasia_,--who die, that
is to say, of no disease, apoplexy or convulsion, and pass away
without agony of any sort; nay, who sometimes even show no pallor, but
expire generally in a sitting attitude, and often after a meal,--or,
I may say, simply cease to live rather than die. To come to one's end
before the age of ninety, means to die of disease, in other words,
prematurely.
Now the Old Testament (Psalms xc. 10) puts the limit of human life at
seventy, and if it is very long, at eighty years; and what is more
noticeable still, Herodotus (i. 32 and iii. 22) says the same thing.
But this is wrong; and the error is due simply to a rough and
superficial estimate of the results of daily experience. For if the
natural length of life were from seventy to eighty years, people would
die, about that time, of mere old age. Now this is certainly not the
case. If they die then, they die, like younger people, _of disease_;
and disease is something abnormal. Therefore it is not natural to die
at that age. It is only when they are between ninety and a hundred
that people die of old age; die, I mean, without suffering from any
disease, or showing any special signs of their condition, such as a
struggle, death-rattle, convulsion, pallor,--the absence of all which
constitutes _euthanasia_. The natural length of human life is a
hundred years; and in assigning that limit the Upanishads are right
once more.]
A man's individual career is not, as Astrology wishes to make out, to
be predicted from observation of the planets; but the course of human
life in general, as far as the various periods of it are concerned,
may be likened to the succession of the planets: so that we may be
said to pass under the influence of each one of them in turn.
At ten, _Mercury_ is in the ascendant; and at that age, a youth, like
this planet, is characterized by extreme mobility within a narrow
sphere, where trifles have a great effect upon him; but under the
guidance of so crafty and eloquent a god, he easily makes great
progress. _Venus_ begins her sway during his twentieth year, and then
a man is wholly given up to the love of women. At thirty, _Mars_
comes to the front, and he is now all energy and strength,--daring,
pugnacious and arrogant.
When a man reaches the age of forty, he is under the rule of the
four _Asteroids_; that is to say, his life has gained something in
extension. He is frugal; in other words, by the help of _Ceres_, he
favors what is useful; he has his own hearth, by the influence of
_Vesta_; _Pallas_ has taught him that which is necessary for him to
know; and his wife--his _Juno_--rules as the mistress of his house.
But at the age of fifty, _Jupiter_ is the dominant influence. At that
period a man has outlived most of his contemporaries, and he can feel
himself superior to the generation about him. He is still in the full
enjoyment of his strength, and rich in experience and knowledge;
and if he has any power and position of his own, he is endowed with
authority over all who stand in his immediate surroundings. He is no
more inclined to receive orders from others; he wants to take command
himself. The work most suitable to him now is to guide and rule within
his own sphere. This is the point where Jupiter culminates, and where
the man of fifty years is at his best.