The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. - Arthur Schopenhauer
Still, I wish some one would attempt a _tragical_ history of literature,
giving the way in which the writers and artists, who form the proudest
possession of the various nations which have given them birth, have been
treated by them during their lives. Such a history would exhibit the
ceaseless warfare, which what was good and genuine in all times and
countries has had to wage with what was bad and perverse. It would tell
of the martyrdom of almost all those who truly enlightened humanity, of
almost all the great masters of every kind of art: it would show us how,
with few exceptions, they were tormented to death, without recognition,
without sympathy, without followers; how they lived in poverty and
misery, whilst fame, honor, and riches, were the lot of the unworthy;
how their fate was that of Esau, who while he was hunting and getting
venison for his father, was robbed of the blessing by Jacob, disguised
in his brother's clothes, how, in spite of all, they were kept up by the
love of their work, until at last the bitter fight of the teacher of
humanity is over, until the immortal laurel is held out to him, and the
hour strikes when it can be said:
Der sehwere Panzer wird zum Fluegelkleide
Kurz ist der Schmerz, unendlich ist die Freude.
PHYSIOGNOMY.
That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression
and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in
itself, and therefore a safe one to go by; evidenced as it is by the
fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself
famous by good or evil, or as the author of some extraordinary work; or
if they cannot get a sight of him, to hear at any rate from others what
he looks like. So people go to places where they may expect to see the
person who interests them; the press, especially in England, endeavors
to give a minute and striking description of his appearance; painters
and engravers lose no time in putting him visibly before us; and finally
photography, on that very account of such high value, affords the most
complete satisfaction of our curiosity. It is also a fact that in
private life everyone criticises the physiognomy of those he comes
across, first of all secretly trying to discern their intellectual and
moral character from their features. This would be a useless proceeding
if, as some foolish people fancy, the exterior of a man is a matter of
no account; if, as they think, the soul is one thing and the body
another, and the body related to the soul merely as the coat to the man
himself.
On the contrary, every human face is a hieroglyphic, and a hieroglyphic,
too, which admits of being deciphered, the alphabet of which we carry
about with us already perfected. As a matter of fact, the face of a man
gives us a fuller and more interesting information than his tongue; for
his face is the compendium of all he will ever say, as it is the one
record of all his thoughts and endeavors. And, moreover, the tongue
tells the thought of one man only, whereas the face expresses a thought
of nature itself: so that everyone is worth attentive observation, even
though everyone may not be worth talking to. And if every individual is
worth observation as a single thought of nature, how much more so is
beauty, since it is a higher and more general conception of nature, is,
in fact, her thought of a species. This is why beauty is so captivating:
it is a fundamental thought of nature: whereas the individual is only a
by-thought, a corollary.
In private, people always proceed upon the principle that a man is what
he looks; and the principle is a right one, only the difficulty lies in
its application. For though the art of applying the principle is partly
innate and may be partly gained by experience, no one is a master of it,
and even the most experienced is not infallible. But for all that,
whatever Figaro may say, it is not the face which deceives; it is we who
deceive ourselves in reading in it what is not there.
The deciphering of a face is certainly a great and difficult art, and
the principles of it can never be learnt in the abstract. The first
condition of success is to maintain a purely objective point of view,
which is no easy matter. For, as soon as the faintest trace of anything
subjective is present, whether dislike or favor, or fear or hope, or
even the thought of the impression we ourselves are making upon the
object of our attention the characters we are trying to decipher become
confused and corrupt. The sound of a language is really appreciated only
by one who does not understand it, and that because, in thinking of the
signification of a word, we pay no regard to the sign itself. So, in the
same way, a physiognomy is correctly gauged only by one to whom it is
still strange, who has not grown accustomed to the face by constantly
meeting and conversing with the man himself. It is, therefore, strictly
speaking, only the first sight of a man which affords that purely
objective view which is necessary for deciphering his features. An odor
affects us only when we first come in contact with it, and the first
glass of wine is the one which gives us its true taste: in the same way,
it is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression
upon us. Consequently the first impression should be carefully attended
to and noted, even written down if the subject of it is of personal
importance, provided, of course, that one can trust one's own sense of
physiognomy. Subsequent acquaintance and intercourse will obliterate the
impression, but time will one day prove whether it is true.
Let us, however, not conceal from ourselves the fact that this first
impression is for the most part extremely unedifying. How poor most
faces are! With the exception of those that are beautiful, good-natured,
or intellectual, that is to say, the very few and far between, I believe
a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a
sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and
surprising combination of unedifying elements. To tell the truth, it is,
as a rule, a sorry sight. There are some people whose faces bear the
stamp of such artless vulgarity and baseness of character, such an
animal limitation of intelligence, that one wonders how they can appear
in public with such a countenance, instead of wearing a mask. There are
faces, indeed, the very sight of which produces a feeling of pollution.
One cannot, therefore, take it amiss of people, whose privileged
position admits of it, if they manage to live in retirement and
completely free from the painful sensation of "seeing new faces." The
metaphysical explanation of this circumstance rests upon the
consideration that the individuality of a man is precisely that by the
very existence of which he should be reclaimed and corrected. If, on the
other hand, a psychological explanation is satisfactory, let any one ask
himself what kind of physiognomy he may expect in those who have all
their life long, except on the rarest occasions, harbored nothing but
petty, base and miserable thoughts, and vulgar, selfish, envious, wicked
and malicious desires. Every one of these thoughts and desires has set
its mark upon the face during the time it lasted, and by constant
repetition, all these marks have in course of time become furrows and
blotches, so to speak. Consequently, most people's appearance is such as
to produce a shock at first sight; and it is only gradually that one
gets accustomed to it, that is to say, becomes so deadened to the
impression that it has no more effect on one.
And that the prevailing facial expression is the result of a long
process of innumerable, fleeting and characteristic contractions of the
features is just the reason why intellectual countenances are of gradual
formation. It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain
their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show
only the first traces of it. But on the other hand, what I have just
said about the shock which the first sight of a face generally produces,
is in keeping with the remark that it is only at that first sight that
it makes its true and full impression. For to get a purely objective and
uncorrupted impression of it, we must stand in no kind of relation to
the person; if possible, we must not yet have spoken with him. For every
conversation places us to some extent upon a friendly footing,
establishes a certain _rapport_, a mutual subjective relation, which is
at once unfavorable to an objective point of view. And as everyone's
endeavor is to win esteem or friendship for himself, the man who is
under observation will at once employ all those arts of dissimulation in
which he is already versed, and corrupt us with his airs, hypocrisies
and flatteries; so that what the first look clearly showed will soon be
seen by us no more.
This fact is at the bottom of the saying that "most people gain by
further acquaintance"; it ought, however, to run, "delude us by it." It
is only when, later on, the bad qualities manifest themselves, that our
first judgment as a rule receives its justification and makes good its
scornful verdict. It may be that "a further acquaintance" is an
unfriendly one, and if that is so, we do not find in this case either
that people gain by it. Another reason why people apparently gain on a
nearer acquaintance is that the man whose first aspect warns us from
him, as soon as we converse with him, no longer shows his own being and
character, but also his education; that is, not only what he really is
by nature, but also what he has appropriated to himself out of the
common wealth of mankind. Three-fourths of what he says belongs not to
him, but to the sources from which he obtained it; so that we are often
surprised to hear a minotaur speak so humanly. If we make a still closer
acquaintance, the animal nature, of which his face gave promise, will
manifest itself "in all its splendor." If one is gifted with an acute
sense for physiognomy, one should take special note of those verdicts
which preceded a closer acquaintance and were therefore genuine. For the
face of a man is the exact impression of what he is; and if he deceives
us, that is our fault, not his. What a man says, on the other hand, is
what he thinks, more often what he has learned, or it may be even, what
he pretends to think. And besides this, when we talk to him, or even
hear him talking to others, we pay no attention to his physiognomy
proper. It is the underlying substance, the fundamental _datum_, and we
disregard it; what interests us is its pathognomy, its play of feature
during conversation. This, however, is so arranged as to turn the good
side upwards.
When Socrates said to a young man who was introduced to him to have his
capabilities tested, "Talk in order that I may see you," if indeed by
"seeing" he did not simply mean "hearing," he was right, so far as it is
only in conversation that the features and especially the eyes become
animated, and the intellectual resources and capacities set their mark
upon the countenance. This puts us in a position to form a provisional
notion of the degree and capacity of intelligence; which was in that
case Socrates' aim. But in this connection it is to be observed,
firstly, that the rule does not apply to moral qualities, which lie
deeper, and in the second place, that what from an objective point of
view we gain by the clearer development of the countenance in
conversation, we lose from a subjective standpoint on account of the
personal relation into which the speaker at once enters in regard to us,
and which produces a slight fascination, so that, as explained above, we
are not left impartial observers. Consequently from the last point of
view we might say with greater accuracy, "Do not speak in order that I
may see you."
For to get a pure and fundamental conception of a man's physiognomy, we
must observe him when he is alone and left to himself. Society of any
kind and conversation throw a reflection upon him which is not his own,
generally to his advantage; as he is thereby placed in a state of action
and reaction which sets him off. But alone and left to himself, plunged
in the depths of his own thoughts and sensations, he is wholly himself,
and a penetrating eye for physiognomy can at one glance take a general
view of his entire character. For his face, looked at by and in itself,
expresses the keynote of all his thoughts and endeavors, the _arret
irrevocable_, the irrevocable decree of his destiny, the consciousness
of which only comes to him when he is alone.
The study of physiognomy is one of the chief means of a knowledge of
mankind, because the cast of a man's face is the only sphere in which
his arts of dissimulation are of no avail, since these arts extended
only to that play of feature which is akin to mimicry. And that is why I
recommend such a study to be undertaken when the subject of it is alone
and given up to his own thoughts, and before he is spoken to: and this
partly for the reason that it is only in such a condition that
inspection of the physiognomy pure and simple is possible, because
conversation at once lets in a pathognomical element, in which a man can
apply the arts of dissimulation which he has learned: partly again
because personal contact, even of the very slightest kind, gives a
certain bias and so corrupts the judgment of the observer.
And in regard to the study of physiognomy in general, it is further to
be observed that intellectual capacity is much easier of discernment
than moral character. The former naturally takes a much more outward
direction, and expresses itself not only in the face and the play of
feature, but also in the gait, down even to the very slightest movement.
One could perhaps discriminate from behind between a blockhead, a fool
and a man of genius. The blockhead would be discerned by the torpidity
and sluggishness of all his movements: folly sets its mark upon every
gesture, and so does intellect and a studious nature. Hence that remark
of La Bruyere that there is nothing so slight, so simple or
imperceptible but that our way of doing it enters in and betrays us: a
fool neither comes nor goes, nor sits down, nor gets up, nor holds his
tongue, nor moves about in the same way as an intelligent man. (And this
is, be it observed by way of parenthesis, the explanation of that sure
and certain instinct which, according to Helvetius, ordinary folk
possess of discerning people of genius, and of getting out of their
way.)
The chief reason for this is that, the larger and more developed the
brain, and the thinner, in relation to it, the spine and nerves, the
greater is the intellect; and not the intellect alone, but at the same
time the mobility and pliancy of all the limbs; because the brain
controls them more immediately and resolutely; so that everything hangs
more upon a single thread, every movement of which gives a precise
expression to its purpose.
This is analogous to, nay, is immediately connected with the fact that
the higher an animal stands in the scale of development, the easier it
becomes to kill it by wounding a single spot. Take, for example,
batrachia: they are slow, cumbrous and sluggish in their movements; they
are unintelligent, and, at the same time, extremely tenacious of life;
the reason of which is that, with a very small brain, their spine and
nerves are very thick. Now gait and movement of the arms are mainly
functions of the brain; our limbs receive their motion and every little
modification of it from the brain through the medium of the spine.
This is why conscious movements fatigue us: the sensation of fatigue,
like that of pain, has its seat in the brain, not, as people commonly
suppose, in the limbs themselves; hence motion induces sleep.
On the other hand those motions which are not excited by the brain, that
is, the unconscious movements of organic life, of the heart, of the
lungs, etc., go on in their course without producing fatigue. And as
thought, equally with motion, is a function of the brain, the character
of the brain's activity is expressed equally in both, according to the
constitution of the individual; stupid people move like lay-figures,
while every joint of an intelligent man is eloquent.
But gesture and movement are not nearly so good an index of intellectual
qualities as the face, the shape and size of the brain, the contraction
and movement of the features, and above all the eye,--from the small,
dull, dead-looking eye of a pig up through all gradations to the
irradiating, flashing eyes of a genius.
The look of good sense and prudence, even of the best kind, differs from
that of genius, in that the former bears the stamp of subjection to the
will, while the latter is free from it.
And therefore one can well believe the anecdote told by Squarzafichi in
his life of Petrarch, and taken from Joseph Brivius, a contemporary of
the poet, how once at the court of the Visconti, when Petrarch and other
noblemen and gentlemen were present, Galeazzo Visconti told his son, who
was then a mere boy (he was afterwards first Duke of Milan), to pick out
the wisest of the company; how the boy looked at them all for a little,
and then took Petrarch by the hand and led him up to his father, to the
great admiration of all present. For so clearly does nature set the mark
of her dignity on the privileged among mankind that even a child can
discern it.
Therefore, I should advise my sagacious countrymen, if ever again they
wish to trumpet about for thirty years a very commonplace person as a
great genius, not to choose for the purpose such a beerhouse-keeper
physiognomy as was possessed by that philosopher, upon whose face nature
had written, in her clearest characters, the familiar inscription,
"commonplace person."
But what applies to intellectual capacity will not apply to moral
qualities, to character. It is more difficult to discern its
physiognomy, because, being of a metaphysical nature, it lies
incomparably deeper.
It is true that moral character is also connected with the constitution,
with the organism, but not so immediately or in such direct connection
with definite parts of its system as is intellectual capacity.
Hence while everyone makes a show of his intelligence and endeavors to
exhibit it at every opportunity, as something with which he is in
general quite contented, few expose their moral qualities freely, and
most people intentionally cover them up; and long practice makes the
concealment perfect. In the meantime, as I explained above, wicked
thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mask upon the face,
especially the eyes. So that, judging by physiognomy, it is easy to
warrant that a given man will never produce an immortal work; but not
that he will never commit a great crime.
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.
For every animal, and more especially for man, a certain conformity and
proportion between the will and the intellect is necessary for existing
or making any progress in the world. The more precise and correct the
proportion which nature establishes, the more easy, safe and agreeable
will be the passage through the world. Still, if the right point is only
approximately reached, it will be enough to ward off destruction. There
are, then, certain limits within which the said proportion may vary, and
yet preserve a correct standard of conformity. The normal standard is as
follows. The object of the intellect is to light and lead the will on
its path, and therefore, the greater the force, impetus and passion,
which spurs on the will from within, the more complete and luminous must
be the intellect which is attached to it, that the vehement strife of
the will, the glow of passion, and the intensity of the emotions, may
not lead man astray, or urge him on to ill considered, false or ruinous
action; this will, inevitably, be the result, if the will is very
violent and the intellect very weak. On the other hand, a phlegmatic
character, a weak and languid will, can get on and hold its own with a
small amount of intellect; what is naturally moderate needs only
moderate support. The general tendency of a want of proportion between
the will and the intellect, in other words, of any variation from the
normal proportion I have mentioned, is to produce unhappiness, whether
it be that the will is greater than the intellect, or the intellect
greater than the will. Especially is this the case when the intellect is
developed to an abnormal degree of strength and superiority, so as to be
out of all proportion to the will, a condition which is the essence of
real genius; the intellect is then not only more than enough for the
needs and aims of life, it is absolutely prejudicial to them. The result
is that, in youth, excessive energy in grasping the objective world,
accompanied by a vivid imagination and a total lack of experience, makes
the mind susceptible, and an easy prey to extravagant ideas, nay, even
to chimeras; and the result is an eccentric and phantastic character.
And when, in later years, this state of mind yields and passes away
under the teaching of experience, still the genius never feels himself
at home in the common world of every day and the ordinary business of
life; he will never take his place in it, and accommodate himself to it
as accurately as the person of moral intellect; he will be much more
likely to make curious mistakes. For the ordinary mind feels itself so
completely at home in the narrow circle of its ideas and views of the
world that no one can get the better of it in that sphere; its faculties
remain true to their original purpose, viz., to promote the service of
the will; it devotes itself steadfastly to this end, and abjures
extravagant aims. The genius, on the other hand, is at bottom a
_monstrum per excessum_; just as, conversely, the passionate, violent
and unintelligent man, the brainless barbarian, is a _monstrum per
defectum_.
* * * * *
_The will to live_, which forms the inmost core of every living being,
exhibits itself most conspicuously in the higher order of animals, that
is, the cleverer ones; and so in them the nature of the will may be seen
and examined most clearly. For in the lower orders its activity is not
so evident; it has a lower degree of objectivation; whereas, in the
class which stands above the higher order of animals, that is, in men,
reason enters in; and with reason comes discretion, and with discretion,
the capacity of dissimulation, which throws a veil over the operations
of the will. And in mankind, consequently, the will appears without its
mask only in the affections and the passions. And this is the reason why
passion, when it speaks, always wins credence, no matter what the
passion may be; and rightly so. For the same reason the passions are the
main theme of poets and the stalking horse of actors. The
conspicuousness of the will in the lower order of animals explains the
delight we take in dogs, apes, cats, etc.; it is the entirely naive way
in which they express themselves that gives us so much pleasure.
The sight of any free animal going about its business undisturbed,
seeking its food, or looking after its young, or mixing in the company
of its kind, all the time being exactly what it ought to be and can
be,--what a strange pleasure it gives us! Even if it is only a bird, I
can watch it for a long time with delight; or a water rat or a hedgehog;
or better still, a weasel, a deer, or a stag. The main reason why we
take so much pleasure in looking at animals is that we like to see our
own nature in such a simplified form. There is only one mendacious being
in the world, and that is man. Every other is true and sincere, and
makes no attempt to conceal what it is, expressing its feelings just as
they are.
* * * * *
Many things are put down to the force of habit which are rather to be
attributed to the constancy and immutability of original, innate
character, according to which under like circumstances we always do the
same thing: whether it happens for the first or the hundredth time, it
is in virtue of the same necessity. Real force of habit, as a matter of
fact, rests upon that indolent, passive disposition which seeks to
relieve the intellect and the will of a fresh choice, and so makes us do
what we did yesterday and have done a hundred times before, and of which
we know that it will attain its object. But the truth of the matter lies
deeper, and a more precise explanation of it can be given than appears
at first sight. Bodies which may be moved by mechanical means only are
subject to the power of inertia; and applied to bodies which may be
acted on by motives, this power becomes the force of habit. The actions
which we perform by mere habit come about, in fact, without any
individual separate motive brought into play for the particular case:
hence, in performing them, we really do not think about them. A motive
was present only on the first few occasions on which the action
happened, which has since become a habit: the secondary after-effect of
this motive is the present habit, and it is sufficient to enable the
action to continue: just as when a body had been set in motion by a
push, it requires no more pushing in order to continue its motion; it
will go on to all eternity, if it meets with no friction. It is the same
in the case of animals: training is a habit which is forced upon them.
The horse goes on drawing his cart quite contentedly, without having to
be urged on: the motion is the continued effect of those strokes of the
whip, which urged him on at first: by the law of inertia they have
become perpetuated as habit. All this is really more than a mere
parable: it is the underlying identity of the will at very different
degrees of its objectivation, in virtue of which the same law of motion
takes such different forms.