The Art of Literature - Arthur Schopenhauer
We have seen that much reading and learning is prejudicial to thinking
for oneself; and, in the same way, through much writing and teaching,
a man loses the habit of being quite clear, and therefore thorough, in
regard to the things he knows and understands; simply because he has
left himself no time to acquire clearness or thoroughness. And so,
when clear knowledge fails him in his utterances, he is forced to fill
out the gaps with words and phrases. It is this, and not the dryness
of the subject-matter, that makes most books such tedious reading.
There is a saying that a good cook can make a palatable dish even
out of an old shoe; and a good writer can make the dryest things
interesting.
With by far the largest number of learned men, knowledge is a means,
not an end. That is why they will never achieve any great work;
because, to do that, he who pursues knowledge must pursue it as an
end, and treat everything else, even existence itself, as only a
means. For everything which a man fails to pursue for its own sake is
but half-pursued; and true excellence, no matter in what sphere, can
be attained only where the work has been produced for its own sake
alone, and not as a means to further ends.
And so, too, no one will ever succeed in doing anything really great
and original in the way of thought, who does not seek to acquire
knowledge for himself, and, making this the immediate object of his
studies, decline to trouble himself about the knowledge of others. But
the average man of learning studies for the purpose of being able to
teach and write. His head is like a stomach and intestines which let
the food pass through them undigested. That is just why his teaching
and writing is of so little use. For it is not upon undigested refuse
that people can be nourished, but solely upon the milk which secretes
from the very blood itself.
The wig is the appropriate symbol of the man of learning, pure and
simple. It adorns the head with a copious quantity of false hair, in
lack of one's own: just as erudition means endowing it with a great
mass of alien thought. This, to be sure, does not clothe the head so
well and naturally, nor is it so generally useful, nor so suited for
all purposes, nor so firmly rooted; nor when alien thought is used up,
can it be immediately replaced by more from the same source, as is
the case with that which springs from soil of one's own. So we find
Sterne, in his _Tristram Shandy_, boldly asserting that _an ounce of a
man's own wit is worth a ton of other people's_.
And in fact the most profound erudition is no more akin to genius than
a collection of dried plants in like Nature, with its constant flow
of new life, ever fresh, ever young, ever changing. There are no two
things more opposed than the childish naivete of an ancient author and
the learning of his commentator.
_Dilettanti, dilettanti!_ This is the slighting way in which those who
pursue any branch of art or learning for the love and enjoyment of the
thing,--_per il loro diletto_, are spoken of by those who have taken
it up for the sake of gain, attracted solely by the prospect of money.
This contempt of theirs comes from the base belief that no man will
seriously devote himself to a subject, unless he is spurred on to it
by want, hunger, or else some form of greed. The public is of the same
way of thinking; and hence its general respect for professionals and
its distrust of _dilettanti_. But the truth is that the _dilettante_
treats his subject as an end, whereas the professional, pure and
simple, treats it merely as a means. He alone will be really in
earnest about a matter, who has a direct interest therein, takes to it
because he likes it, and pursues it _con amore_. It is these, and not
hirelings, that have always done the greatest work.
In the republic of letters it is as in other republics; favor is shown
to the plain man--he who goes his way in silence and does not set up
to be cleverer than others. But the abnormal man is looked upon as
threatening danger; people band together against him, and have, oh!
such a majority on their side.
The condition of this republic is much like that of a small State in
America, where every man is intent only upon his own advantage, and
seeks reputation and power for himself, quite heedless of the general
weal, which then goes to ruin. So it is in the republic of letters;
it is himself, and himself alone, that a man puts forward, because he
wants to gain fame. The only thing in which all agree is in trying to
keep down a really eminent man, if he should chance to show himself,
as one who would be a common peril. From this it is easy to see how it
fares with knowledge as a whole.
Between professors and independent men of learning there has always
been from of old a certain antagonism, which may perhaps be likened
to that existing been dogs and wolves. In virtue of their position,
professors enjoy great facilities for becoming known to their
contemporaries. Contrarily, independent men of learning enjoy, by
their position, great facilities for becoming known to posterity; to
which it is necessary that, amongst other and much rarer gifts, a man
should have a certain leisure and freedom. As mankind takes a long
time in finding out on whom to bestow its attention, they may both
work together side by side.
He who holds a professorship may be said to receive his food in the
stall; and this is the best way with ruminant animals. But he who
finds his food for himself at the hands of Nature is better off in the
open field.
Of human knowledge as a whole and in every branch of it, by far the
largest part exists nowhere but on paper,--I mean, in books, that
paper memory of mankind. Only a small part of it is at any given
period really active in the minds of particular persons. This is due,
in the main, to the brevity and uncertainty of life; but it also comes
from the fact that men are lazy and bent on pleasure. Every generation
attains, on its hasty passage through existence, just so much of human
knowledge as it needs, and then soon disappears. Most men of learning
are very superficial. Then follows a new generation, full of hope, but
ignorant, and with everything to learn from the beginning. It seizes,
in its turn, just so much as it can grasp or find useful on its brief
journey and then too goes its way. How badly it would fare with human
knowledge if it were not for the art of writing and printing! This it
is that makes libraries the only sure and lasting memory of the human
race, for its individual members have all of them but a very limited
and imperfect one. Hence most men of learning as are loth to have
their knowledge examined as merchants to lay bare their books.
Human knowledge extends on all sides farther than the eye can reach;
and of that which would be generally worth knowing, no one man can
possess even the thousandth part.
All branches of learning have thus been so much enlarged that he
who would "do something" has to pursue no more than one subject and
disregard all others. In his own subject he will then, it is true, be
superior to the vulgar; but in all else he will belong to it. If we
add to this that neglect of the ancient languages, which is now-a-days
on the increase and is doing away with all general education in the
humanities--for a mere smattering of Latin and Greek is of no use--we
shall come to have men of learning who outside their own subject
display an ignorance truly bovine.
An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par with a workman in
a factory, whose whole life is spent in making one particular kind of
screw, or catch, or handle, for some particular instrument or machine,
in which, indeed, he attains incredible dexterity. The specialist may
also be likened to a man who lives in his own house and never leaves
it. There he is perfectly familiar with everything, every little step,
corner, or board; much as Quasimodo in Victor Hugo's _Notre Dame_
knows the cathedral; but outside it, all is strange and unknown.
For true culture in the humanities it is absolutely necessary that
a man should be many-sided and take large views; and for a man of
learning in the higher sense of the word, an extensive acquaintance
with history is needful. He, however, who wishes to be a complete
philosopher, must gather into his head the remotest ends of human
knowledge: for where else could they ever come together?
It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be
specialists. For their very nature is to make the whole of existence
their problem; and this is a subject upon which they will every one of
them in some form provide mankind with a new revelation. For he alone
can deserve the name of genius who takes the All, the Essential, the
Universal, for the theme of his achievements; not he who spends his
life in explaining some special relation of things one to another.
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF.
A library may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it is not so
useful as one that is small but well arranged. In the same way, a man
may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up
by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far
smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered. For it is only when a
man looks at his knowledge from all sides, and combines the things he
knows by comparing truth with truth, that he obtains a complete hold
over it and gets it into his power. A man cannot turn over anything in
his mind unless he knows it; he should, therefore, learn something;
but it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know
it.
Reading and learning are things that anyone can do of his own free
will; but not so _thinking_. Thinking must be kindled, like a fire
by a draught; it must be sustained by some interest in the matter
in hand. This interest may be of purely objective kind, or merely
subjective. The latter comes into play only in things that concern
us personally. Objective interest is confined to heads that think by
nature; to whom thinking is as natural as breathing; and they are very
rare. This is why most men of learning show so little of it.
It is incredible what a different effect is produced upon the mind
by thinking for oneself, as compared with reading. It carries on and
intensifies that original difference in the nature of two minds which
leads the one to think and the other to read. What I mean is that
reading forces alien thoughts upon the mind--thoughts which are as
foreign to the drift and temper in which it may be for the moment, as
the seal is to the wax on which it stamps its imprint. The mind is
thus entirely under compulsion from without; it is driven to think
this or that, though for the moment it may not have the slightest
impulse or inclination to do so.
But when a man thinks for himself, he follows the impulse of his
own mind, which is determined for him at the time, either by his
environment or some particular recollection. The visible world of
a man's surroundings does not, as reading does, impress a _single_
definite thought upon his mind, but merely gives the matter and
occasion which lead him to think what is appropriate to his nature and
present temper. So it is, that much reading deprives the mind of all
elasticity; it is like keeping a spring continually under pressure.
The safest way of having no thoughts of one's own is to take up a book
every moment one has nothing else to do. It is this practice which
explains why erudition makes most men more stupid and silly than they
are by nature, and prevents their writings obtaining any measure of
success. They remain, in Pope's words:
_For ever reading, never to be read!_[1]
[Footnote 1: _Dunciad_, iii, 194.]
Men of learning are those who have done their reading in the pages of
a book. Thinkers and men of genius are those who have gone straight
to the book of Nature; it is they who have enlightened the world and
carried humanity further on its way. If a man's thoughts are to have
truth and life in them, they must, after all, be his own fundamental
thoughts; for these are the only ones that he can fully and wholly
understand. To read another's thoughts is like taking the leavings of
a meal to which we have not been invited, or putting on the clothes
which some unknown visitor has laid aside. The thought we read
is related to the thought which springs up in ourselves, as the
fossil-impress of some prehistoric plant to a plant as it buds forth
in spring-time.
Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought of one's own. It
means putting the mind into leading-strings. The multitude of books
serves only to show how many false paths there are, and how widely
astray a man may wander if he follows any of them. But he who
is guided by his genius, he who thinks for himself, who thinks
spontaneously and exactly, possesses the only compass by which he can
steer aright. A man should read only when his own thoughts stagnate
at their source, which will happen often enough even with the best of
minds. On the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring
away one's own original thoughts is sin against the Holy Spirit. It is
like running away from Nature to look at a museum of dried plants or
gaze at a landscape in copperplate.
A man may have discovered some portion of truth or wisdom, after
spending a great deal of time and trouble in thinking it over for
himself and adding thought to thought; and it may sometimes happen
that he could have found it all ready to hand in a book and spared
himself the trouble. But even so, it is a hundred times more valuable
if he has acquired it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only
when we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as an integral
part, a living member, into the whole system of our thought; that it
stands in complete and firm relation with what we know; that it is
understood with all that underlies it and follows from it; that it
wears the color, the precise shade, the distinguishing mark, of our
own way of thinking; that it comes exactly at the right time, just
as we felt the necessity for it; that it stands fast and cannot be
forgotten. This is the perfect application, nay, the interpretation,
of Goethe's advice to earn our inheritance for ourselves so that we
may really possess it:
_Was due ererbt von deinen Vaelern hast,
Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen._[1]
[Footnote 1: _Faust_, I. 329.]
The man who thinks for himself, forms his own opinions and learns the
authorities for them only later on, when they serve but to strengthen
his belief in them and in himself. But the book-philosopher starts
from the authorities. He reads other people's books, collects their
opinions, and so forms a whole for himself, which resembles an
automaton made up of anything but flesh and blood. Contrarily, he who
thinks for himself creates a work like a living man as made by Nature.
For the work comes into being as a man does; the thinking mind is
impregnated from without, and it then forms and bears its child.
Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false
tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another's flesh;
it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by
thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs
to us. This is the fundamental difference between the thinker and the
mere man of learning. The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks
for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are
correct, the tone sustained, the color perfectly harmonized; it is
true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the
mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of
colors, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of
harmony, connection and meaning.
Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. To
think with one's own head is always to aim at developing a coherent
whole--a system, even though it be not a strictly complete one; and
nothing hinders this so much as too strong a current of others'
thoughts, such as comes of continual reading. These thoughts,
springing every one of them from different minds, belonging to
different systems, and tinged with different colors, never of
themselves flow together into an intellectual whole; they never form a
unity of knowledge, or insight, or conviction; but, rather, fill
the head with a Babylonian confusion of tongues. The mind that is
over-loaded with alien thought is thus deprived of all clear insight,
and is well-nigh disorganized. This is a state of things observable
in many men of learning; and it makes them inferior in sound sense,
correct judgment and practical tact, to many illiterate persons,
who, after obtaining a little knowledge from without, by means of
experience, intercourse with others, and a small amount of reading,
have always subordinated it to, and embodied it with, their own
thought.
The really scientific _thinker_ does the same thing as these
illiterate persons, but on a larger scale. Although he has need
of much knowledge, and so must read a great deal, his mind is
nevertheless strong enough to master it all, to assimilate and
incorporate it with the system of his thoughts, and so to make it
fit in with the organic unity of his insight, which, though vast, is
always growing. And in the process, his own thought, like the bass in
an organ, always dominates everything and is never drowned by other
tones, as happens with minds which are full of mere antiquarian lore;
where shreds of music, as it were, in every key, mingle confusedly,
and no fundamental note is heard at all.
Those who have spent their lives in reading, and taken their wisdom
from books, are like people who have obtained precise information
about a country from the descriptions of many travellers. Such
people can tell a great deal about it; but, after all, they have no
connected, clear, and profound knowledge of its real condition. But
those who have spent their lives in thinking, resemble the travellers
themselves; they alone really know what they are talking about; they
are acquainted with the actual state of affairs, and are quite at home
in the subject.
The thinker stands in the same relation to the ordinary
book-philosopher as an eye-witness does to the historian; he speaks
from direct knowledge of his own. That is why all those who think
for themselves come, at bottom, to much the same conclusion. The
differences they present are due to their different points of view;
and when these do not affect the matter, they all speak alike. They
merely express the result of their own objective perception of things.
There are many passages in my works which I have given to the public
only after some hesitation, because of their paradoxical nature; and
afterwards I have experienced a pleasant surprise in finding the same
opinion recorded in the works of great men who lived long ago.
The book-philosopher merely reports what one person has said and
another meant, or the objections raised by a third, and so on. He
compares different opinions, ponders, criticises, and tries to get at
the truth of the matter; herein on a par with the critical historian.
For instance, he will set out to inquire whether Leibnitz was not for
some time a follower of Spinoza, and questions of a like nature. The
curious student of such matters may find conspicuous examples of what
I mean in Herbart's _Analytical Elucidation of Morality and Natural
Right_, and in the same author's _Letters on Freedom_. Surprise may
be felt that a man of the kind should put himself to so much trouble;
for, on the face of it, if he would only examine the matter for
himself, he would speedily attain his object by the exercise of a
little thought. But there is a small difficulty in the way. It does
not depend upon his own will. A man can always sit down and read, but
not--think. It is with thoughts as with men; they cannot always be
summoned at pleasure; we must wait for them to come. Thought about a
subject must appear of itself, by a happy and harmonious combination
of external stimulus with mental temper and attention; and it is just
that which never seems to come to these people.
This truth may be illustrated by what happens in the case of matters
affecting our own personal interest. When it is necessary to come to
some resolution in a matter of that kind, we cannot well sit down at
any given moment and think over the merits of the case and make up our
mind; for, if we try to do so, we often find ourselves unable, at that
particular moment, to keep our mind fixed upon the subject; it wanders
off to other things. Aversion to the matter in question is sometimes
to blame for this. In such a case we should not use force, but wait
for the proper frame of mind to come of itself. It often comes
unexpectedly and returns again and again; and the variety of temper in
which we approach it at different moments puts the matter always in a
fresh light. It is this long process which is understood by the term
_a ripe resolution._ For the work of coming to a resolution must be
distributed; and in the process much that is overlooked at one moment
occurs to us at another; and the repugnance vanishes when we find, as
we usually do, on a closer inspection, that things are not so bad as
they seemed.
This rule applies to the life of the intellect as well as to matters
of practice. A man must wait for the right moment. Not even the
greatest mind is capable of thinking for itself at all times. Hence a
great mind does well to spend its leisure in reading, which, as I have
said, is a substitute for thought; it brings stuff to the mind by
letting another person do the thinking; although that is always done
in a manner not our own. Therefore, a man should not read too much, in
order that his mind may not become accustomed to the substitute and
thereby forget the reality; that it may not form the habit of walking
in well-worn paths; nor by following an alien course of thought grow a
stranger to its own. Least of all should a man quite withdraw his gaze
from the real world for the mere sake of reading; as the impulse and
the temper which prompt to thought of one's own come far oftener from
the world of reality than from the world of books. The real life that
a man sees before him is the natural subject of thought; and in its
strength as the primary element of existence, it can more easily than
anything else rouse and influence the thinking mind.
After these considerations, it will not be matter for surprise that
a man who thinks for himself can easily be distinguished from the
book-philosopher by the very way in which he talks, by his marked
earnestness, and the originality, directness, and personal conviction
that stamp all his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on
the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is second-hand;
that his ideas are like the number and trash of an old furniture-shop,
collected together from all quarters. Mentally, he is dull and
pointless--a copy of a copy. His literary style is made up of
conventional, nay, vulgar phrases, and terms that happen to be
current; in this respect much like a small State where all the money
that circulates is foreign, because it has no coinage of its own.
Mere experience can as little as reading supply the place of thought.
It stands to thinking in the same relation in which eating stands
to digestion and assimilation. When experience boasts that to its
discoveries alone is due the advancement of the human race, it is as
though the mouth were to claim the whole credit of maintaining the
body in health.
The works of all truly capable minds are distinguished by a character
of _decision_ and _definiteness_, which means they are clear and free
from obscurity. A truly capable mind always knows definitely and
clearly what it is that it wants to express, whether its medium is
prose, verse, or music. Other minds are not decisive and not definite;
and by this they may be known for what they are.
The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest order is that it
always judges at first hand. Everything it advances is the result of
thinking for itself; and this is everywhere evident by the way in
which it gives its thoughts utterance. Such a mind is like a Prince.
In the realm of intellect its authority is imperial, whereas the
authority of minds of a lower order is delegated only; as may be seen
in their style, which has no independent stamp of its own.
Every one who really thinks for himself is so far like a monarch.
His position is undelegated and supreme. His judgments, like royal
decrees, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from
himself. He acknowledges authority as little as a monarch admits a
command; he subscribes to nothing but what he has himself authorized.
The multitude of common minds, laboring under all sorts of current
opinions, authorities, prejudices, is like the people, which silently
obeys the law and accepts orders from above.