The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life - Arthur Schopenhauer
[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.)