 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer. Chapter 5 Psychological Observations There is an unconscious propriety in the way in which, in all European languages, the word person is commonly used to denote a human being. The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage. And it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy, and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid. While a blockhead is quite at home in it, reason deserves to be called a prophet, for in showing us the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be? This is precisely why reason is such an excellent power of restraint in moments when we are possessed by some base passion, some fit of anger, some covetous desire that will lead us to do things, whereof we must presently repent. Hatred comes from the heart, contempt from the head, and neither feeling is quite within our control. For we cannot alter our heart, its basis is determined by motives, and our head deals with objective facts and applies to them rules which are immutable. Any given individual is the union of a particular heart with a particular head. Hatred and contempt are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive. There are even not a few cases where hatred of a person is rooted in nothing but forced esteem for his qualities. And besides, if a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else, whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease. True genuine contempt is just the reverse of true genuine pride. It keeps quiet and gives no sign of its existence. For if a man shows that he despises you, he signifies at least this much regard for you, that he wants to let you know how little he appreciates you, and his wish is dictated by hatred, which cannot exist with real contempt. On the contrary, if it is genuine, it is simply the conviction that the object of it is a man of no value at all. Contempt is not incompatible with indulgent and kindly treatment, and for the sake of one's own peace and safety, this should not be omitted, it will prevent irritation, and there is no one who cannot do harm if he is roused to it. But if this pure, cold, sincere contempt ever shows itself, it will be met with the most truculent hatred, for the despised person is not in a position to fight contempt with its own weapons. Melancholy is a very different thing from bad humor, and of the two it is not nearly so far removed from a gay and happy temperament. Melancholy attracts, while bad humor repels. Hypocondria is a species of torment which not only makes us unreasonably cross with the things of the present, not only fills us with groundless anxiety on the score of future misfortunes entirely of our own manufacture, but also leads to unmerited self-reproach for what we have done in the past. Hypocondria shows itself in a perpetual hunting after things that vex and annoy and then brooding over them. The cause of it is an inward morbid discontent, often coexisting with a naturally rustless temperament. In their extreme form, this discontent and this unrest lead to suicide. Any incident, however trivial, that rouses disagreeable emotion, leaves an after effect in our mind, which for the time it lasts, prevents our taking a clear, objective view of the things about us, and tinges all our thoughts. Just as a small object held close to the eye limits and distorts our field of vision, what makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles, hence. If a man suddenly finds himself in an unusually happy position, it will in most cases result in his being sympathetic and kind, but if he has never been in any other than a happy position, or this becomes his permanent state, the effect of it is often just the contrary. It so far removes him from suffering that he is incapable of feeling any more sympathy with it, so it is that the poor often show themselves more ready to help than the rich. At times it seems as though we both wanted and did not want the same thing, and felt at once glad and sorry about it. For instance, if on some fixed date we are going to be put to a decisive test about anything in which it would be a great advantage to us to come off victorious, we shall be anxious for it to take place at once, and at the same time we shall tremble at the thought of its approach. And if in the meantime we hear that, for once in a way, the date has been postponed, we shall experience a feeling both of pleasure and of annoyance, for the news is disappointing, but nevertheless it affords us a momentary relief. It is just the same thing if we are expecting some important letter carrying a definite decision, and it fails to arrive. In such cases there are really two different motives that work in us, the stronger but more distant of the two being the desire to stand the test and to have the decision given in our favour, and the weaker, which touches us more nearly, the wish to be left for the present in peace and quiet, and accordingly in further enjoyment of the advantage which at any rate attaches to a state of hopeful uncertainty, compared with the possibility that the issue may be unfavourable. In my head there is a permanent opposition party, and whenever I take any step or come to any decision, though I may have given the matter mature consideration, it afterwards attacks what I have done, without however being each time necessarily in the right. This is, I suppose, only a form of rectification on the part of the spirit of scrutiny, but it often reproaches me when I do not deserve it. The same thing, no doubt, happens to many others as well, for where is the man who can help thinking that, after all, it were better not to have done something that he did with great deliberation? Why is it that common is an expression of contempt, and that uncommon, extraordinary, distinguished? Denote approbation. Why is everything that is common contemptible? Common, in its original meaning, denotes that which is peculiar to all men, i.e., shared equally by the whole species, and therefore an inherent part of its nature. Accordingly, if an individual possesses no qualities beyond those which attach to mankind in general, he is a common man. Ordinary is a much milder word, and refers rather to intellectual character, whereas common has more of a moral application. What value can a creature have that is not a wit different from millions of its kind? Millions, do I say? Nay, an infiniture of creatures which, century after century, in never-ending flow, nature sends bubbling up from her inexhaustible springs. As generous with them as the smith with the useless sparks that fly around his anvil, it is obviously quite right that a creature which has no qualities except those of the species should have to confine its claim to an existence entirely within the limits of the species, and live a life conditioned by those limits. In various passages of my works, I have argued that, whilst a lower animal possesses nothing more than the generic character of its species, man is the only being which can lay claim to possess an individual character, but in most men, this individual character comes to very little in reality, and they may be almost all ranged under certain classes. Their thoughts and desires, like their faces, are those of the species, or at any rate, those of the class to which they belong, and accordingly, they are of a trivial everyday common character and exist by the thousand. You can usually tell beforehand what they are likely to do and say, they have no special stamp or mark to distinguish them, they are like manufactured goods, all of a piece. If then, their nature is merged in that of the species. How shall their existence go beyond it? The curse of vulgarity puts men on a par with the lower animals by allowing them none but a generic nature, a generic form of existence. Something that is high or great or noble must then, as a matter of course, and by its very nature, stand alone in a world where no better expression can be found to denote what is base and contemptible, than that which I have mentioned has in general use, namely, common. Will, as the thing in itself, is the foundation of all being, it is part and parcel of every creature and the permanent element in everything. Will then, is that which we possess in common with all men, nay, with all animals and even with lower forms of existence, and in so far we are akin to everything, so far that is, as everything is filled to a reflowing with will. On the other hand, that which places one being over another and sets differences between man and man is intellect and knowledge. Therefore, in every manifestation of self we should, as far as possible, give play to the intellect alone, for as we have seen, the will is the common part of us. Every violent exhibition of will is common and vulgar, in other words, it reduces us to the level of the species, makes us a mere type and example of it, in that it is just the character of the species that we are showing. So every great fit of anger is something common, every unrestrained display of joy or of hate or fear. In short, every form of emotion, in other words, every movement of the will, if it so strong as decidedly to outweigh the intellectual element in consciousness, and to make the man appear as a being that wills rather than knows. In giving way to emotion of this violent kind, the greatest genius puts himself on a level with the commonest son of earth. Contrarily, if a man desires to be absolutely uncommon, in other words, great, he should never allow his consciousness to be taken possession of and dominated by the movement of his will, however much he may be solicited there to. For example, he must be able to observe that other people are badly disposed towards him, without feeling any hatred towards them himself. Nay, there is no sure sign of a great mind than that it refuses to notice annoying and insulting expressions. That straightaway ascribes them, as it ascribes countless other mistakes, to the defective knowledge of the speaker, and so merely observes without feeling them. This is the meaning of that remark of gration, that nothing is more unworthy of a man than to let it be seen that he is one. And even in the drama, which is the peculiar province of the passions and emotions, it is easy for them to appear common and vulgar, and this is especially observable in the works of the French tragic writers, who set no other aim before themselves but the delineation of the passions. And by indulging at one moment, in a vaporous kind of pathos which makes them ridiculous, at another in epigrammatic witticisms, endeavour to conceal the vulgarity of their subject, I remember seeing the celebrated Mademoiselle Rachel as Maria Stewart, and when she burst out in fury against Elizabeth, though she did it very well, I could not help thinking of a washerwoman. She played the final parting in such a way as to deprive it of all true tragic feeling, of which indeed the French had no notion at all. The same part was incomparably better played by the Italian restory, and in fact the Italian nature, though in many respects very different from the German, shares its appreciation for what is deep, serious, and true in art. Herein opposed to the French, which everywhere betrays that it possesses none of this feeling whatever. The noble, in other words, the uncommon element in the drama, nay, what is sublime in it, is not reached until the intellect is set to work as opposed to the will, until it takes a free flight over all those passionate movements of the will and makes them subject of its contemplation. Shakespeare in particular shows that this is his general method, more especially in Hamlet, and only when intellect rises to the point where the vanity of all effort is manifest and the will proceeds to an act of self-enolment is the drama tragic in the true sense of the word. It is then that it reaches its highest aim in becoming really sublime. Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. This is an error of the intellect as inevitable as that error of the eye which lets us fancy that on the horizon heaven and earth meet. This explains many things, and among them the fact that everyone measures us with his own standard, generally about as long as a tailor's tape, and we have to put up with it. That's also that no one will allow us to be taller than himself, a supposition which is once for all taken for granted. There is no doubt that many a man owes his good fortune in life solely to the circumstance that he has a pleasant way of smiling, and so wins the heart in his favor. However, the heart would do better to be careful, and remember what Hamlet put down in his tablets, that one may smile and smile, and be a villain, everything that is really fundamental in a man, and therefore genuine works as such unconsciously in this respect like the power of nature. That which is passed through the domain of consciousness is thereby transformed into an idea or picture and so, if it comes to be uttered, it is only an idea or picture which passes from one person to another. Accordingly, any quality of mind or character that is genuine and lasting is originally unconscious, and it is only one unconsciously brought into play that it makes a profound impression. If any like quality is consciously exercised, it means that it has been worked up, it becomes intentional, and therefore matter of affectation, in other words, of deception. If a man does a thing unconsciously, it costs him no trouble, but if he tries to do it by taking trouble, he fails. This applies to the origin of those fundamental ideas which form the pith and marrow of all genuine work. Only that which is innate is genuine and will hold water, and every man who wants to achieve something, whether in practical life, in literature, or in art, must follow the rules without knowing them. Men of very great capacity will, as a rule, find the company of very stupid people preferable to that of the common run, for the same reason that the tyrant and the mob, the grandfather and the grandchildren, are natural allies. That line of ovids, pranakwe conspectant animalia cetra taram, can be applied in its true physical sense to the lower animals alone, but in metaphorical and spiritual sense it is, alas, true of nearly all men as well. All their plans and projects are merged in the desire of physical enjoyment, physical well-being. They may indeed have personal interests, often embracing a very varied sphere, but still these latter receive their importance entirely from the relation in which they stand to the former. This is not only proved by their manner of life and the things they say, but it even shows itself in the way they look, the expression of their physiognomy, their gait and gesticulations. Everything about them cries out in taram prona. It is not to them, it is only to the nobler and more highly endowed natures, men who really think and look about them in the world and form exceptional specimens of humanity, that the next lines are applicable. Os homine sublime dedit qualum qu'e tueri, yusit et iractos, ad sidera tolere vultus. No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity, just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice and yet remain what it is. Or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it. Why is it that, in spite of all the mirrors in the world, no one really knows what he looks like? A man may call to mind the face of his friend, but not his own. Here, then, is an initial difficulty in the way of applying the maxim, know thyself. This is partly no doubt to be explained by the fact that it is physically impossible for a man to see himself in the glass, except with face turned straight towards it and perfectly motionless. Where the expression of the eye, which cuts with so much and really gives its whole character to the face, is to a great extent lost. But coexisting with this physical impossibility there seems to me to be an ethical impossibility, other analogous nature and producing the same effect. A man cannot look upon his own reflection as though the person presented there were a stranger to him, and yet this is necessary if he is to take an objective view. In the last resort, an objective view means a deep-rooted feeling on the part of the individual as a moral being, that that which he is contemplating is not himself. And unless he can take this point of view, he will not see things in a really true light, which is possible only if he is alive to their actual defects, exactly as they are. Instead of that, when a man sees himself in the glass, something out of his own egotistic nature whispers to him to take care to remember that it is no stranger but himself that he is looking at. And this operates as a noli me tongue ere, and prevents him from taking an objective view. It seems indeed as if without the leaven of a grain of malice, such a view were impossible. According as a man's mental energy is exerted or relaxed, will life appear to him either so short and petty and fleeting that nothing can possibly matter over which it is worth his while to spend emotion, that nothing really matters, whether it is pleasure or riches or even fame, and that in whatever way a man may have failed, he cannot have lost much. Or, on the other hand, life will sing so long, so important, so all in all, so momentous, and so full of difficulty, that we have to plunge into it with our whole soul, if we are to obtain a share of its goods, make sure of its prizes, and carry out our plans. This latter is the imminent and common view of life. It is what Gratian means when he speaks of the serious way of looking at things. Tamar moe de veras el viver. The former is the transcendental view, which is well expressed in Ovid's non astanti. It is not worth so much trouble. Still better, however, by Plato's remark, that nothing in human affairs is worth any great anxiety. This condition of mind is due to the intellect having got the upper hand in the domain of consciousness, where, freed from the mere service of the will, it looks upon the phenomena of life objectively, and so cannot fail to gain a clear insight into its vain and futile character. But, in the other condition of mind, will predominates, and the intellect exists only to light it on its way to the attainment of its desires. A man is great or small, according as he leans to the one or to the other of these views of life. People of very brilliant ability think little of admitting their errors and weaknesses, or of letting others see them. They look upon them as something for which they have duly paid, and instead of fancying that these weaknesses are a disgrace to them, they consider that they are doing them an honour. This is especially the case when the errors are of the kind that hang together with their qualities. Condicionis sine qui plus non. Or as George Sand said, le default de ces vertus. Contrarily, there are people of good character and irreproachable intellectual capacity, who, far from admitting the few little weaknesses they have, conceal them with care, and show themselves very sensitive to any suggestion of their existence. And this, just because their whole merit consists in being free from error and infirmity. If these people are found to have done anything wrong, their reputation immediately suffers. With people of only moderate ability, modesty is mere honesty. But with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy. Hence, it is just as becoming in the latter to make no secret of the respect they bear themselves and no disguise of the fact that they are conscious of unusual power, as it is in the former to be modest. Valerious Maximus gives some very neat examples of this in his chapter on self-confidence. De fiduci sui. Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror, but it is still worse to take a decision without consulting a friend. For a man may have the most excellent judgement in all other matters, and yet go wrong in those which concern himself, because here the will comes in and deranges the intellect at once. Therefore let a man take counsel of a friend. A doctor can cure everyone but himself. If he falls ill, he sends for a colleague. In all that we do, we wish, more or less, to come to the end. We are impatient to finish and glad to be done. But the last thing of all, the general end, is something that as a rule we wish as far off as may be. Every parting gives a foretaste of death. Every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection. This is why even people who were indifferent to each other rejoiced so much if they come together again after twenty or thirty years separation. Intellects differ from one another in a very real and fundamental way, but no comparison can well be made by merely general observations. It is necessary to come close and to go into details. For the difference that exists cannot be seen from afar, and it is not easy to judge by outward appearances, as in the several cases of education, leisure, and occupation. But even judging by these alone, it must be admitted that many a man has a degree of existence at least ten times as high as another. In other words, exists ten times as much. I am not speaking here of savages whose life is often only one degree above that of the apes in their woods. Consider for instance a porter in Naples or Venice in the north of Europe solitude for the winter months makes people more thoughtful and therefore reflective. Look at the life he leads from its beginning to its end. Driven by poverty, living on his physical strength, meeting the needs of every day, nave every hour by hard work, great effort, constant tumult, want in all its forms, no care for the morrow, his only comfort rest after exhaustion, continuous quarreling, not a moment free for reflection. Such sensual delights as a mild climate and only just sufficient food will permit of. And then, finally, as the metaphysical element, the crass superstition of his church, the whole forming a matter of life with only a low degree of consciousness, where a man hustles or rather is hustled through his existence. This restless and confused dream forms the life of how many millions? Such men think only just so much as is necessary to carry out their will for the moment. They never reflect upon their life as a connected whole, let alone then upon existence in general. To a certain extent they may be said to exist without really knowing it. The existence of the mobsman or the slave who lives on in this unthinking way stands very much nearer than ours to that of the brute, which is confined entirely to the present moment. But, for that very reason, it has also less of pain in it than ours. Nay, since all pleasure is in its nature negative, that is to say, consists in freedom from some form of misery or need. The constant and rapid interchange between setting about something and getting it done, which is the permanent accompaniment of the work they do, and then again the augmented form which this takes when they go from work to rest and the satisfaction of their needs. All this gives them a constant source of enjoyment. The fact that it is much commoner to see happy faces amongst the poor than amongst the rich is a sure proof that it is used to good advantage, passing from this kind of man. Consider next the sober, sensible merchant who leads a life of speculation, thinks long over his plans and carries them out with great care, founds a house and provides for his wife, his children, and descendants. Takes his share too in the life of a community. It is obvious that a man like this has a much higher degree of consciousness than the former, and so his existence has a higher degree of reality. Then look at the man of learning, who investigates it may be the history of the past. He will have reached the point at which a man becomes conscious of existence as a whole. Sees beyond the period of his own life, beyond his own personal interests, taking over the whole course of the world's history. Then, finally, look at the poet or the philosopher, in whom reflection has reached such a height that instead of being drawn on to investigate any one particular phenomenon of existence, he stands in amazement before existence itself. This great sphinx and makes it his problem. In him, consciousness has reached the degree of clearness at which it embraces the world itself. His intellect has completely abandoned its function as the servant of his will, and now holds the world before him, and the world calls upon him much more to examine and consider it than to play a part in it himself. If then, the degree of consciousness is the degree of reality, such a man will be said to exist most of all, and there will be sense and significance in so describing him. Between the two extremes here sketched and the intervening stages, everyone will be able to find the place at which he himself stands. We know that man is in general superior to all other animals, and this is also the case in his capacity for being trained. Mohammedans are trained to pray with their faces turned towards Mecca five times a day, and they never fail to do it. Christians are trained to cross themselves on certain occasions to bow and so on. Indeed, it may be said that religion is the chef-duv of the art of training, because it trains people in the way they shall think, and as is well known, you cannot begin the process too early. There is no absurdity so palpable, but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. For as in the case of animals, so in that of men. Training is successful only when you begin in early youth. Noblemen and gentlemen are trained to hold nothing sacred but their word of honour, to maintain a zealous, rigid, and unshaken belief in the ridiculous code of chivalry. And if they are called upon to do so, to seal their belief by dying for it, and seriously to regard a king as a being of a higher order. Again, our expressions of politeness, the compliments we make in particular, the respectful attentions we pay to ladies, are a matter of training, as also our esteem for good birth, rank, titles, and so on. Of the same character, the resentment we feel at any insult directed against us, and the measure of this resentment may be exactly determined by the nature of the insult. An Englishman, for instance, thinks it a deadly insult to be told that he is no gentleman, or still worse, that he is a liar. A Frenchman has the same feeling if you call him a coward, and a German if you say he is stupid. There are many persons who are trained to be strictly honourable in regard to one particular matter, while they have little honour to boast of in anything else. Many a man, for instance, will not steal your money, but he will lay hands on everything of yours that he can enjoy without having to pay for it. A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft. Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the senses. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our senses are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room, quiet, twilight, darkness. These are the things that promote its activity, and under their influence it comes into play of itself. On the other hand, when a great deal of material is presented to our faculties of observation, as happens on a journey or in the hurly-burly of the world or again in broad daylight, the imagination is idle, and even though call may be made upon it, refuses to become active, as though it understood that that was not its proper time. However, if the imagination is to yield any real product, it must have received a great deal of material from the external world. This is the only way in which its storehouse can be filled. The fantasy is nourished much in the same way as the body, which is least capable of any work and enjoys doing nothing just in the very moment when it receives its food which it has to digest. And yet, it is to this very food that it owes the power which it afterwards puts forth at the right time. Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the center of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other, and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest. By a process of contradiction, distance in space makes things look small, and therefore free from defect. This is why landscape looks so much better in a contracting mirror or in a camera obscura than it is in reality. The same effect is produced by distance in time. The scenes and events of long ago and the persons who took part in them were a charming aspect to the eye of memory, which sees only the outlines and takes no note of disagreeable details. The present enjoys no such advantage, and so it always seems defective. And again, as regards space, small objects close to us look big, and if they are very close, we may be able to see nothing else. But when we go a little way off, they become minute and invisible. It is the same way again as regards time. The little incidents and accidents of every day fill us with emotion, anxiety, annoyance, passion, as long as they are close to us, when they appear so big, so important, so serious. But as soon as they are born down the restless stream of time, they lose what significance they had. We think no more of them, and soon forget them all together. They were big, only because they were near. Joy and sorrow are not ideas of the mind that affectations of the will. And so they do not lie in the domain of memory. We cannot recall our joys and sorrows, by which I mean that we cannot renew them. We can recall only the ideas that accompanied them, and in particular, the things we were led to say, and these form a gauge of our feelings at the time. Hence, our memory of joys and sorrows is always imperfect, and they become a matter of indifference to us as soon as they are over. This explains the vanity of the attempt, which we sometimes make, to revive the pleasures and the pains of the past. Pleasure and pain are essentially an affair of the will, and the will, as such, is not possessed of memory, which is a function of the intellect. And this, in its turn, gives out and takes in nothing but thoughts and ideas, which are not here in question. It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more. But that in good days we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad. We have a much better memory of actual objects or pictures than from mere ideas. Hence a good imagination makes it easier to learn languages, foreby its aid. The new word is at once united with the actual object to which it refers. Whereas, if there is no imagination, it is simply put on a parallel with the equivalent word in the mother tongue. Pneumonics should not only mean the art of keeping something indirectly in the memory by the use of some direct pun or witticism. It should rather be applied to a systematic theory of memory and explain its several attributes by reference both to its real nature and to the relation in which these attributes stand to one another. There are moments in life when our senses obtain a higher and rarer degree of clearness, apart from any particular occasion for it in the nature of our surroundings. An explicable rather on physiological grounds alone as a result of some enhanced state of susceptibility working from within outwards. Such moments remain indelibly impressed upon the memory and preserve themselves in their individuality entire. We can't assign no reason for it, nor explain why this, among so many thousand moments like it, should be especially remembered. It seems as much a matter of chance as when single specimens of a whole race of animals now extinct are discovered in the layers of a rock, or when, on opening a book, we light upon an insect accidentally crushed within the leaves. Memories of this kind are always sweet and pleasant. It occasionally happens that, for no particular reason, long forgotten scenes suddenly start up in the memory. This may in many cases be due to the action of some hardly perceptible odor which accompanied those scenes and now recurs exactly same as before. Fort is well known that the sense of smell is especially effective in awakening memories, and that in general it does not require much to rouse a train of ideas. And I may say, in passing, that the sense of sight is connected with the understanding, the sense of hearing, with the reason, and as we see in the present case, the sense of smell with the memory. Touch and taste are more material and dependent upon contact. They have no ideal side. It must also be reckoned among the peculiar attributes of memory that a slight state of intoxication often so greatly enhances the recollection of past times and scenes. That all the circumstances connected with them come back much more clearly than would be possible in a state of sobriety. But that, on the other hand, the recollection of what one said or did while the intoxication lasted, is more than usually imperfect. Nay, that if one has been absolutely tipsy, it has gone altogether. We may say, then, that whilst intoxication enhances the memory for what is past, it allows it to remember a little of the present. Men need some kind of external activity because they are inactive within. Contrarily, if they are active within, they do not care to be dragged out of themselves. It disturbs and impedes their thoughts in a way that is often most ruinous to them. I am not surprised that some people are bored when they find themselves alone, or they cannot laugh if they are quite by themselves. The very idea of it seems folly to them. Are we, then, to look upon laughter as merely a signal for others, a mere sign, like a word? What makes it impossible for people to laugh when they are alone is nothing but want of imagination, dullness of mind generally, anaesthesia kaibradutesukes, as theophrastus has it. The lower animals never laugh, either alone or in company. Mison, the misanthropist, was once surprised by one of these people as he was laughing to himself. Why do you laugh? he asked. There is no one with you. That is just why I am laughing, said Mison. Natural gesticulation, such as commonly accompanies any lively talk, is a language of its own. More widespread even than the language of words, so far, I mean, as it is independent of words and alike in all nations. It is true that nations make use of it in proportion as they are vivacious. And that, in particular cases, amongst the Italians, for instance, it is supplemented by certain peculiar gestures which are merely conventional, and therefore possessive, nothing more than a local value. In the universal use made of it, gesticulation has some analogy with logic and grammar, in that it has to do with the form rather than with the matter of conversation. But on the other hand, it is distinguishable from them by the fact that it has more of a moral than of an intellectual bearing. In other words, it reflects the movements of the will. As an accompaniment of conversation, it is like the base of a melody, and if, as in music, it keeps true to the progress of the treble, it serves to heighten the effect. In a conversation, the gesture depends upon the form in which the subject matter is conveyed. And it is interesting to observe that whatever that subject matter may be, with a recurrence of the form, the very same gesture is repeated. So if I happen to see, from my window say, two persons carrying on a lively conversation without my being able to catch a word, I can nevertheless understand the general nature of it perfectly well. I mean, the kind of thing that is being said in the form it takes. There is no mistake about it. The speaker is arguing about something, advancing his reasons, then limiting their application, then driving them home, and drawing the conclusion in triumph. Or he is recounting his experiences, proving, perhaps, beyond the shadow of a doubt, how much he has been injured, but bringing the clearest and most damning evidence to show that his opponents were foolish and obstinate people who would not be convinced. Or else he is telling of the splendid plan he laid, and how he carried it to a successful issue, or perhaps failed because the luck was against him. Or it may be he is saying that he was completely at a loss to know what to do, or that he was quick in seeing some traps set for him, and that by insisting on his rights, or by applying a low force, he succeeded in frustrating and punishing his enemies, and so on, in hundreds of cases of a similar kind. Strictly speaking, however, what I get from gesticulation alone is an abstract notion of the essential drift of what is being said, and that too, whether I judge from a moral or an intellectual point of view, it is the quintessence, the true substance of the conversation, and this remains identical, no matter what may have given rise to the conversation or what it may be about. The relation between the two being that of a general idea or a class name to the individuals which it covers. As I have said, the most interesting and amusing part of the matter is the complete identity and solidarity of the gestures used to denote the same set of circumstances, even though by people of very different temperament, so that the gestures become exactly like words of a language, alike for everyone, and subject only to such small modifications as depend upon variety of accent and education. And yet, there can be no doubt, but that these standing gestures, which everyone uses, are the result of no convention or collusion. They are original and innate, a true language of nature. Consolidated it may be by imitation and the influence of custom. It is well known that it is part of an actor's duty to make a careful study of gesture, and the same thing is true to a somewhat smaller degree of a public speaker. This study must consist chiefly in watching others and imitating their movements, for there are no abstract rules fairly applicable to the matter, with the exception of some very general leading principles, such as, to take an example, that the gesture must not follow the word but rather come immediately before it, by way of announcing its approach and attracting the hearer's attention. Englishmen entertain a peculiar contempt for gesticulation, and look upon it as something vulgar and undignified. This seems to me a silly prejudice on their part, any outcome of their general prudery. For here we have a language which nature has given to everyone, and which everyone understands, and to do away with and forbid it for no better reason than that it is opposed to that much lauded thing, gentlemanly feeling, is a very questionable proceeding. End Chapter 5 This recording is in the public domain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer. Chapter 6 On Education The human intellect is said to be so constituted that general ideas arise by abstraction from particular observations, and therefore come after them in point of time. If this is what actually occurs, as happens in the case of a man who has to depend solely upon his own experience for what he learns, who has no teacher and no book, such a man knows quite well which of his particular observations belong to and are represented by each of his general ideas. He has a perfect acquaintance with both sides of his experience, and accordingly he treats everything that comes in his way from a right standpoint. This might be called the natural method of education. Contrarily, the artificial method is to hear what other people say, to learn and to read, and so to get your head crammed full of general ideas before you have any sort of extended acquaintance with the world as it is, and as you may see it for yourself. You will be told that the particular observations which go to make these general ideas will come to you later on in the course of experience. But until that time arrives, you apply your ideas wrongly. You judge men and things from a wrong standpoint, you see them in a wrong light, and treat them in a wrong way. So it is that education perverts the mind. This explains why it so frequently happens that, after a long course of learning and reading, we enter upon the world in our youth, partly with an artless ignorance of things, partly with wrong notions about them, so that our demeanors save us at one moment of a nervous anxiety, and another of a mistaken confidence. The reason of this is simply that our head is full of general ideas which we are now trying to turn to some use, but which we hardly ever apply rightly. This is the result of acting in direct opposition to the natural development of the mind by obtaining general ideas first, and particular observations last. It is putting the cart before the horse. Instead of developing the child's own faculties of discernment and teaching it to judge and think for itself, the teacher uses all his energies to stuff its head full of the ready-made thoughts of other people. The mistaken views of life, which spring from a false application of general ideas, have afterwards to be corrected by long years of experience, and it is seldom that they are wholly corrected. This is why so few men of learning are possessed of common sense, such as is often to be met with in people who have had no instruction at all. To acquire a knowledge of the world might be defined as the aim of all education, and it follows from what I have said that special stress should be laid upon beginning to acquire this knowledge at the right end. As I have shown, this means in the main, that the particular observation of a thing shall precede the general idea of it. Further, that narrow and circumscribed ideas shall come before ideas of a wide range. It means, therefore, that the whole system of education shall follow in the steps that must have been taken by the ideas themselves in the course of their formation. But whenever any of these steps are skipped or left out, the instruction is defective, and the ideas obtained are false. And finally, a distorted view of the world arises, peculiar to the individual himself. A view such as almost everyone entertains for some time, and most men for as long as they live. No one could look into his own mind without seeing that it was only after reaching a very mature age, and in some cases when he least expected it, that he came to a right understanding, or a clear view of many matters in his life, that, after all, were not very difficult or complicated. Up till then, there were points in his knowledge of the world which were still obscure, due to his having skipped some particular lesson in those early days of his education, whatever it may have been like, whether artificial or conventional, or of that natural kind which is based upon individual experience. It follows that an attempt should be made to find out the strictly natural course of knowledge, so that education may proceed methodically by keeping to it, and that children may become acquainted with the ways of the world without getting wrong ideas into their head, which very often cannot be got out again. If this plan were adopted, special care would have to be taken to prevent children from using words without clearly understanding their meaning and application, the fatal tendency to be satisfied with words instead of trying to understand things, to learn phrases by heart, so that they may prove a refuge in time of need, exist as a rule, even in children, and the tendency lasts on into manhood, making the knowledge of many learned persons to consist in mere verbiage. However, the main endeavor must always be to let particular observations precede general ideas, and not vice versa, as is usually and unfortunately the case. As though a child should come feet foremost into the world, or a verse be begun by writing down the rhyme, the ordinary method is to imprint ideas and opinions in the strict sense of the word prejudices on the mind of the child, before it has had any but very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be. A man sees a great many things when he looks at the world for himself, and he sees them for many signs, but this method of learning is not nearly so short or so quick as the method which employs abstract ideas and makes hasty generalizations about everything. Experience, therefore, will be a long time in correcting preconceived ideas, or perhaps never bring its task to an end, for wherever a man finds the aspect of things seems to contradict the general ideas he has formed, he will begin by rejecting the evidence it offers as partial and one-sided. Nay, he will shut his eyes to it all together and deny that it stands in any contradiction at all with his preconceived notions, in order that he may thus preserve them uninjured. So it is that many a man carries about a burden of wrong notions all his life long, crotchets, whims, fancies, prejudices, which at last become fixed ideas. The fact is that he has never tried to form his fundamental ideas for himself out of his own experience of life, his own way of looking at the world, because he has taken over his ideas ready made from other people, and this it is that makes him, as it makes many others, so shallow and superficial. Instead of that method of instruction, care should be taken to educate children on the natural lines. No idea should ever be established in a child's mind, otherwise then by what the child can see for itself, or at any rate, it should be verified by the same means, and the result of this would be that the child's ideas, if few, would be well grounded and accurate. It would learn how to measure things by its own standard rather than by another's, and so it would escape a thousand strange fancies and prejudices, and not need to have them eradicated by the lessons it will subsequently be taught in the school of life. The child would, in this way, have its mind once for all habituated to clear views and thoroughgoing knowledge. It would use its own judgment and take an unbiased estimate of things. And, in general, children should not form their notions of what life is like from the copy before they have learned it from the original, to whatever aspect of it their attention may be directed. Instead, therefore, of hastening to place books and books alone in their hands. Let them be made acquainted step by step with things, with the actual circumstances of human life, and above all, let care be taken to bring them to a clear and objective view of the world as it is to educate them always to derive their ideas directly from real life and to shape them in conformity with it, not to fetch them from other sources, such as books, fairytales, or what people say, then to apply them ready-made to real life. For this will mean that their heads are full of wrong notions, and that they will either see things in a false light or try in vain to remodel the world to suit their views. And so enter upon false paths. And that, too, whether they are only constructing theories of life or engaged in the actual business of it, it is incredible how much harm is done when the seeds of wrong notion are laid in the mind in those early years, later on to bear a crop of prejudice. For the subsequent lessons, which are learned from real life in the world, have to be devoted mainly to their extirpation. To unlearn the evil was the answer, according to Diogenes Laertius, and Tisthenes gave, when he was asked what branch of knowledge was most necessary. And we can see what he meant. No child under the age of 15 should receive instruction in subjects which may possibly be the vehicle of serious error, such as philosophy, religion, or any other branch of knowledge where it is necessary to take large views. Because wrong notions imbibed early can seldom be rooted out, and of all the intellectual faculties, judgment is the last one to arrive at maturity. The child should give its attention either to subjects where no error is possible at all, such as mathematics, or to those in which there is no particular danger in making a mistake, such as languages, natural science, history, and so on. And in general, the branches of knowledge which are to be studied at any period of life should be such as the mind is equal to at that period and can perfectly understand. Childhood and youth form the time for collecting materials for getting a special and thorough knowledge of the individual and particular things. In those years it is too early to form views on a large scale, and ultimate explanations must be put off to a later date. The faculty of judgment, which cannot come into play without mature experience, should be left to itself, and care should be taken not to anticipate its action by inculcating prejudice, which will paralyze it forever. On the other hand, the memory should be specially taxed in youth, since it is then that is strongest and most tenacious. But in choosing the things that should be committed to memory, the utmost care and forethought must be exercised, as lessons well learnt in youth are never forgotten. This precious soil must therefore be cultivated so as to bear as much fruit as possible. If you think how deeply rooted in your memory are those persons whom you knew in the first twelve years of your life, how indelible the impression made upon you by the events of those years. How clear your recollection of most of the things that happened to you then, most of what was told or taught you, it will seem a natural thing to take the susceptibility and tenacity of the mind at that period as the groundwork of education. This may be done by a strict observance of method, and a systematic regulation of the impressions which the mind is to receive. But the years of youth allotted to a man are short, and memory is in general bound within narrow limits, still more so, the memory of any one individual. Since this is the case, it is all important to fill the memory with what is essential and material in any branch of knowledge to the exclusion of everything else. The decision as to what is essential and material should rest with the masterminds in every department of thought. Their choice should be made after the most mature deliberation and the outcome of it fixed and determined. Such a choice would have to proceed by sifting the things which it is necessary and important for a man to know in general, and then necessary and important for him to know in any particular business or calling. Knowledge of the first kind would have to be classified after an encyclopedic fashion and graduated courses adapted to the degree of general culture which a man may be expected to have in the circumstances in which he is placed, beginning with a course limited to the necessary requirements of primary education and extending upwards to the subjects treated in all of the branches of philosophical thought. The regulation of the second kind of knowledge would be left to those who had shown genuine mastery in the several departments into which it is divided. And the whole system would provide an elaborate rule or canon for intellectual education, which would of course have to be revised every 10 years. Some such arrangement as this would employ the youthful power of the memory to best advantage and supply excellent working material to the faculty of judgment when it made its appearance later on. A man's knowledge may be said to be mature, in other words, it has reached the most complete state of perfection to which he, as an individual, is capable of bringing it. When an exact correspondence is established between the whole of his abstract ideas and the things he has actually perceived for himself. This will mean that each of his abstract ideas rests directly or indirectly upon a basis of observation, which alone endows it with any real value. And also, that he is able to place every observation he makes under the right abstract idea which belongs to it. Maturity is the work of experience alone, and therefore it requires time. The knowledge we derive from our own observation is usually distinct from that which we acquire through the medium of abstract ideas. The one coming to us in the natural way, the other by what people tell us, and the course of instruction we receive, whether it is good or bad. The result is that in youth there is generally very little agreement or correspondence between our abstract ideas, which are merely phrases in the mind, and that real knowledge which we have obtained by our own observation. It is only later on that a gradual approach takes place between these two kinds of knowledge, accompanied by a mutual correction of error, and knowledge is not mature until this coalition is accomplished. This maturity or perfection of knowledge is something quite independent of another kind of perfection, which may be of a high or a low order. The perfection, I mean, to which a man may bring his own individual faculties, which is measured not by any correspondence between the two kinds of knowledge, but by the degree of intensity which each kind attains. For the practical man the most needful thing is to acquire an accurate and profound knowledge of the ways of the world. But this, though the most needful, is also the most weary sum of all studies, as a man may reach a great age without coming to the end of his task. Whereas in the domain of the sciences he masters the more important facts when he is still young. In acquiring that knowledge of the world, it is while he is a novice, namely in boyhood and in youth, that the first and hardest lessons are put before him. But it often happens that even in later years there is still a great deal to be learned. The study is difficult enough in itself, but the difficulty is doubled by novels, which represent a state of things and life and the world, such as, in fact, does not exist. Youth is credulous and accepts these views of life which then become part and parcel of the mind so that instead of merely negative condition of ignorance you have positive error, a whole tissue of false notions to start with. And at a later date, these actually spoil the schooling of experience and put a wrong construction on the lessons it teaches. If before this the youth had no light at all to guide him, he is now misled by a willow the wisp. Still more often is this the case with a girl. They have both had a false view of things foisted on them by reading novels, and expectations have been aroused which can never be fulfilled. This generally exercises a baneful influence on their whole life. In this respect, those whose youth has allowed them no time or opportunity for reading novels, those who work with their hands and the like, are in a position of decided advantage. There are a few novels to which this reproach cannot be addressed, nay, which have an effect with the contrary of bad. First and foremost, to give an example, Shilblah and the other works of Le Seige, or rather, their Spanish originals. Further, The Vicar of Wakefield, and to some extent, Sir Walter Scott's novels. Don Quixote may be regarded as a satirical exhibition of the error to which I am referring. End Chapter 6 This recording is in the public domain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer Chapter 7 Of Women Shilblah's poem in honour of women, Verde de Fraun, is the result of much careful thought, and it appeals to the reader by its antithetic style and its use of contrast. But as an expression of the true praise which should be according to them, it is, I think, inferior to these few words of joys. Without women, the beginning of our life would be helpless, the middle devoid of pleasure, and the end of consolation. The same thing is more feelingly expressed by Byron in Sardinia Pallas. The very first of human life must spring for a woman's breast. Your first small words are taught to you from her lips. Your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs, too often, breathed out in a woman's hearing, when men have shrunk from the ignoble care of watching the last hour of him who led them. Act 1, Scene 2 These two passages indicate the right standpoint for the appreciation of women. You need only look at the way in which she is formed to see that a woman is not meant to undergo great labour, whether a woman is not meant whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does but by what she suffers by the pains of child-bearing and the care for the child and by submission to her husband to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion. The keenest sorrows and joys are not for her, nor is she called upon to display a great deal of strength. The current of her life should be more gentle, peaceful, and trivial than man's, without being essentially happier or unhappier. Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted. In a word they are big children, all their life long, a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown man who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it, and sing to it, and then think what a man, with the best will in the world, could do if he were put in her place. With young girls, nature seems to have had in view what, in the language of drama, is called a striking effect. As for a few years, she dours them with a wealth of beauty and is lavish in her gift of chime, at the expense of all the rest of their life, so that during those years they may capture the fantasy of some man to such a degree that he is hurried away into undertaking the honorable care of them, in some form or another, as long as they live. A step for which there would not appear to be any sufficient warranty of reason alone directed his thoughts. Accordingly, nature has equipped woman, as she does all her creatures, with the weapons and implements requisite for the safeguarding of her existence, and for just as long as it is necessary for her to have them. Here, as elsewhere, nature proceeds with her usual economy, for just as the female aunt, after a fecundation, loses her wings, which are then superfluous, nay, actually a danger to the business of breeding. So, after giving birth to one or two children, a woman generally loses her beauty, probably indeed for similar reasons. And so we find that young girls, in their hearts, look upon domestic affairs or work of any kind, as of secondary importance, if not actually as a mere jest. The only business that really claims their earnest attention is love, making conquests, and everything connected with this, dress, dancing, and so on. A nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later, and slower it is, in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight. A woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason of a sort. They're a-niggered in its dimensions. That is why women remain children their whole life long, never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first importance. For it is only reason of his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only like the brute, but looks about him, and considers the past and the future. And this is the origin of prudence, as well as of that care and anxiety which so many people exhibit. Both the advantages and the disadvantages which this involves are shared in by the woman to a smaller extent, because of her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually short-sighted, because while she has an intuitive understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of vision is narrow and does not reach to what is remote, so that things which are absent or past or to come have much less effect on women than upon men. This is the reason why women are more often inclined to be extravagant, and sometimes carry their inclination to a length that borders upon madness In their hearts women think that it is men's business to earn money and theirs to spend it, if possible during their husband's life but at any rate, after his death. The very fact that their husband hands them over his earnings for purposes of housekeeping strengthens them in this belief. However many disadvantages all this may involve, there is at least this to be said in its favor, that the women are more likely to live more in the present than the man, and that, if the present is at all tolerable, she enjoys it more eagerly. This is the main source of that cheerfulness which is peculiar to women, fitting her to amuse men in his hours of recreation and, in case of need, to console him when he is born down by the weight of his cares. It is by no means a bad plan to consult women in matters of difficulty, as the Germans used to do in ancient times. For their way of looking at things is quite different from ours. Chiefly, in the fact that they like to take the shortest way to their goal, and in general, manage to fix their eyes upon what lies before them, while we, as a rule, see far beyond it, just because it is in front of our noses. In cases like this we need to be brought back to the right standpoint so as to recover the near view. Then, again, women are decidedly more sober in their judgment than we are, so that they do not see more in things than is really there, whilst, if our passions are aroused, we are apt to see things in an exaggerated way or imagine what does not exist. The weakness of their reasoning faculty also explains why it is that women show more sympathy for the unfortunate than men do, and so treat them with more kindness and interest. And why it is that, on the contrary, they are inferior to men in point of justice and less honorable and conscientious. For it is just because their reasoning power is weak that present circumstances have such a hold over them. And those concrete things which lie directly before their eyes exercise a power which is seldom counteracted to any extent by abstract principles of thought, by fixed principles of conduct, firm resolutions, or, in general, by consideration for the past and the future or regard for what is absent and remote. Accordingly, they possess the first and main elements that go to make a virtuous character, but they are deficient in those secondary qualities which are often a necessary instrument in the formation of it. Footnote In this respect they may be compared to an animal organism which contains a liver but no gallbladder. Here, let me refer to what I have said in my treatise on the Foundations of Morals, section 17. And footnote. Hence it will be found that the fundamental fault of the female character is that it has no sense of justice. This is mainly due to the fact, already mentioned, that women are defective in the powers of reasoning and deliberation. But it is also traceable to the position which nature has assigned to them as the weaker sex. They are dependent not upon strength, but upon craft. And hence their instinctive capacity for cunning and their ineradicable tendency to say what is not true. For, as lions are provided with claws and teeth and elephants and boars with tusks and horns and cuttlefish with its clouds of inky fluid so nature has equipped women for her defence and protection with the arts of dissimulation and all the power which nature has conferred upon man in the shape of physical strength and reason has been bestowed upon women in this form. Hence, dissimulation is innate in women and almost as much a quality of the stupidest of the clever. It is as natural for them to make use of it on every occasion as it is for those animals to employ their means of defence when they are attacked. They have a feeling that in doing so they are only within their rights. Therefore, a woman who is perfectly truthful and not given to dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility and for this very reason they are so quick at seeing through dissimulation in others that it is not a wise thing to attempt it with them. But this fundamental defect which I have stated with all that it entails gives rise to falsity faithlessness, treachery and so on. Perjury in a court of justice is more often committed by women than by men. It may indeed be generally questioned whether women ought to be sworn in at all. From time to time one finds repeated cases everywhere of ladies who want for nothing taking things from shop counters when no one is looking and making off with them. Nature has appointed that the propagation of the species shall be the business of men who are young, strong and handsome so that the race may not degenerate. This is the firm will and purpose of nature in regard to the species and it finds its expression in the passions of women. There is no law that is older than woe then to the man who sets up claims and interests that will conflict with it. Whatever he may say and do they will be unmercifully crushed at the first serious encounter. For the innate rule that governs women's conduct though it is secret and unformulated, nay, unconscious in its working, is this. We are justified in deceiving those who think they have acquired rights over the species by paying little attention to the individual. That is, to us. The constitution and therefore the welfare of the species have been placed in our hands and committed to our care through the control we obtain over the next generation which proceeds from us. Let us discharge our duties conscientiously. But women have no abstract knowledge of this leading principle. They are conscious of it as a great fact. And they have no other method of giving expression to it than the way in which they act when the opportunity arrives. And then their conscience does not trouble them so much as we fancy. For in the darkest recesses of their heart they are aware that in committing a breach of their duty towards the individual they have all the better fulfilled their duty towards the species which is infinitely greater. They remain solely for the propagation of the species and are not destined for anything else. They live as a rule more for the species than for the individual. And in their hearts take the affairs of the species more seriously than those of the individual. This gives their whole life and being a certain levity the general bent of their character is in a direction fundamentally different from that of man. And it is this which produces a great life which is so frequent and almost the normal state. The natural feeling between man is mere indifference but between women it is actual enmity. The reason for this is that trade jealousy odium figurinum which in the case of men does not go beyond the confines of their own particular pursuit but with women embraces the whole sex since they have only one kind of business. Even when they meet in the street women look at one another like gulfs and gibbalines. And it is a patent fact that when two women first make acquaintance with each other they behave with more constraint and dissimulation than two men would show in a light case. And hence it is that an exchange of compliments between two women is a much more ridiculous proceeding than between two men. Further whilst a man will as a general rule always preserve a certain amount of consideration and humanity in speaking to others even to those who are in a very inferior position it is intolerable to see how proudly and disdainfully a fine lady will generally behave towards one who is in a lower social rank. I do not mean a woman who is in her service whenever she speaks to her. The reason of this may be that with women differences of rank are much more precarious than with us because while a hundred considerations carry weight in our case in theirs there is only one namely with which man they have found favor as also that they stand in much nearer relations with one another than men do in consequence of the one-sided nature of their calling. This makes them endeavour to lay stress on differences of rank. It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by sexual impulses that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged race for the whole beauty of the sex is bound up with this impulse. Instead of calling them beautiful there would be more warrant for describing women as the un-aesthetic sex neither for music nor for poetry nor for fine art have they really and truly any sense or susceptibility it is a mere mockery if they make a pretense of it in order to assist their endeavour to please. Hence, as a result of this they are incapable of taking a purely objective interest in anything and the reason of it seems to me to be as follows the man tries to acquire direct mastery over things either by understanding them or by forcing them to do his will but a woman is always and everywhere reduced to obtaining this mastery indirectly namely through a man and whatever direct mastery she may have is entirely confined to him and so it lies in women's nature to look upon everything only as a means for conquering a man and if she takes an interest in anything else it is simulated a mere roundabout way of gaining her ends by coquetry and feigning what she does not feel hence, even Rousseau declared women have in general no love for any art they have no proper knowledge of any and they have no genius no one who sees it all below the surface can have failed to remark the same thing you need only observe attention women bestow upon a concert an opera or a play the childish simplicity for example with which they keep on chattering during the finest passages in the greatest masterpieces if it is true that the Greeks excluded women from their theaters they were quite right in what they did at any rate you would have been able to hear what was set upon the stage in our day besides or in lieu of saying let a woman keep silence in the church it would be much to the point to say let a woman keep silence in the theater this might perhaps be put up in big letters on the curtain and you cannot expect anything else of women if you consider that the most distinguished intellects among the whole sex have never managed to produce a single achievement in the fine arts that is really great genuine and original or given to the world any work of permanent value in any sphere this is most strikingly shown in regard to painting where mastery of technique is at least as much within their power as within ours and hence they are diligent in cultivating it but still they have not a single great painting to boast of just because they are deficient in that objectivity of mind which is so directly indispensable in painting they never get beyond a subjective point of view it is quite in keeping with this that ordinary women have no real susceptibility for art at all for nature precedes in strict sequence non facit saltum entuarte in his examant de ingenios para las ciencias a book which has been famous for 300 years denies women the possession of all the higher faculties the case is not altered by particular and partial exceptions taken as a whole women are and remain thoroughgoing philistines and quite incurable hence with that absurd arrangement which allows them to share the rank and title of their husbands they are a constant stimulus to his ignoble ambitions and further it is just because they are philistines that modern society where they take the lead and set the tone is in such a bad way that women have no rank should be adopted as the right standpoint in determining their position in society and as regards their other qualities champhor makes the very true remark they are made to trade with our own weaknesses and our follies but not with our reason the sympathies that exist between them and men are skin deep only and do not touch the mind or the feelings or the character they form the sexus sequior the second sex inferior in every respect to the first their infirmities should be treated with consideration but to show them great reverence is extremely ridiculous and lowers us in their eyes when nature made two divisions of the human race she did not draw the line exactly through the middle these divisions are polar and opposed to each other it is true but the difference between them is not qualitative merely it is also quantitative this is just the view which the ancients took of women and the view which people in the east take now and their judgment as to her proper position is much more correct than ours with our old French notions of gallantry and our preposterous system of reverence that highest product of Teutonico Christian stupidity these notions these notions have served only to make women more arrogant and overbearing so that one is occasionally reminded of the holy apes and Benares who in the consciousness of their sanctity and inviolable position think they can do exactly as they please but in the west the woman and especially the lady finds herself in a false position for woman, rightly called by the ancients sex of sequior is by no means fit to be the object of our honor and veneration or to hold her head higher than man and be on equal terms with him the consequences of this false position are sufficiently obvious accordingly it would be a very desirable thing if this number two of the human race were in Europe also relegated to a more natural place and an end put to that lady nuisance which not only moves all Asia to laughter but would have been ridiculed by Greece and Rome as well it is impossible to calculate the good effects which such a change would bring about in our social civil and political arrangements there would be no necessity for the salic law it would be a superfluous truism in Europe the lady, strictly so called is a being who should not exist at all she should be either a housewife or a girl who hopes to become one and she should be brought up not to be arrogant but to be thrifty and submissive it is just because there are such people as ladies in Europe that the women of the lower classes that is to say the great majority of the sex are much more unhappy than they are in the East and even Lord Byron says thought of the state of women under the ancient Greeks, convenient enough present state a remnant of the barbarism of the chivalric and the feudal ages artificial and unnatural they ought to mind home and be well fed and clothed but not mixed in society well educated too in religion but to read neither poetry nor politics nothing but books of piety and cookery music, drawing, dancing also a little gardening and plowing now and then I've seen them mending the roads in Epirus with good success why not as well, hay making and milking the laws of marriage prevailing in Europe consider the woman as the equivalent of the man start that is to say from a wrong position in our part of the world where monogamy is the rule to marry means to have one's rights and double one's duties now when the laws gave women equal rights with man they ought to have also endowed her with a masculine intellect but the fact is that just in proportion as the honors and privileges which the laws accord to women exceed the amount which nature gives is there a diminution in the number of women who really participate in these privileges and all the remainder are deprived of their natural rights by just so much as is given to the others over and above their share for the institution of monogamy and the laws of marriage which it entails bestow upon the woman an unnatural position of privilege by considering her throughout as the full equivalent of the man which is by no means the case and seeing this men who are shrewd and prudent very often scruple to make so great a sacrifice and to acquiesce in so unfair an arrangement consequently whilst among polygamous nations every woman is provided for where monogamy prevails the number of married women is limited and there remains over a large number of women without stay or support who in the upper classes vegetate as useless old maids and in the lower succumb to hard work for which they are not suited or else become fil du joie whose life is as destitute of joy as it is of honor but under the circumstances they become a necessity and their position is openly recognized as serving the special end of warding off temptation from those women favored by fate who have found or may hope to find husbands in London alone there are eighty thousand prostitutes what are they but the women who under the institution of monogamy have come off worse theirs is a dreadful fate their human sacrifices offered up on the altar of monogamy the women whose wretched position is here described are the inevitable set off to the European lady with her arrogance and pretension polygamy is therefore a real benefit to the female sex if it is taken as a whole and from another point of view there is no true reason why a man whose wife suffers from chronic illness or remains barren or has gradually become too old for him should not take a second the motives which induce so many people to become converts to Mormonism appear to be just those which militate against the unnatural institution of monogamy translators note the Mormons have recently given up polygamy and received the American franchise in its stead and note moreover the bestowal of unnatural rights upon women has imposed upon them unnatural duties and nevertheless each of these duties makes them unhappy let me explain a man may often think that his social or financial position will suffer if he marries unless he makes some brilliant alliance his desire will then be to win a woman of his own choice under conditions other than those of marriage such as will secure her position and that of the children however fair reasonable fit proper these conditions may be and the woman consents by foregoing that undue amount of privilege which marriage alone can bestow she to some extent loses her honour because marriage is the basis of civic society and she will lead an unhappy life since human nature is so constituted that we pay an attention to the opinion of other people which is out of all proportion to its value on the other hand if she does not consent she runs the risk either of having to be given in marriage to a man whom she does not like or of being landed high and dry as an old maid for the period during which she has a chance of being settled for life is very short and in view of this aspect of the institution of monogamy Tomasius' profoundly learned treatise de concubinatum is well worth reading for it shows that amongst all nations and in all ages down to the Lutheran Reformation concubinage was permitted that it was an institution which was to a certain extent actually recognized by law and attended with no dishonour it was only the Lutheran Reformation that degraded it from this position it was seen to be a further justification for the marriage of the clergy that the Catholic Church did not dare to remain behind hand in the matter there is no use arguing about polygamy it must be taken as de facto existing everywhere and the only question is as to how it shall be regulated where are there than any real monogamists we all live at any rate for a time and most of us always have polygamy and so since every man needs many women there is nothing fairer than to allow him, nay, to make it incumbent upon him to provide for many women this will reduce woman to her true and natural position as a subordinate being and the lady that monster of European civilization and Teutonico Christian stupidity will disappear from the world leaving only women but no more unhappy women of which Europe is now full in India no woman is ever independent but in accordance with the law of Mamu she stands under the control of her father her husband her brother or her son it is to be sure a revolting thing that a widow should emulate herself upon her husband's funeral pyre but it is also revolting that she should spend her husband's money with her paramours the money for which he toiled his whole life long in the consoling belief that he was providing for his children happier those who have kept the middle course medium tenuere viati the first love of a mother for her child is with the lower animals as with men of a purely instinctive character and so it ceases when the child is no longer in a physically helpless condition after that the first love should give way to one that is based on habit and reason but this often fails to make its appearance especially where the mother did not love the father the love of a father for his child is of a different order and more likely to last because it has its foundation in the fact that in the child it recognizes his own inner self that is to say his love for it is metaphysical in origin in almost all nations whether of the ancient or the modern world even amongst the hoten tots property is inherited by the male descendants alone it is only in Europe that a departure is taken place but not amongst the nobility however that the property which has cost men long years of toil and effort and been one with so much difficulty should afterwards come into the hands of women who then, in their lack of reason squander it in a short time or otherwise fool it away is a grievance and a wrong as serious as it is common which should be prevented by limiting the right of women to inherit in my opinion the best arrangement would be that by which women or widows or daughters should never receive anything beyond the interest of life on property secured by mortgage and in no case the property itself or the capital except where all male descendants fail the people who make money are men not women and it follows from this that women are neither justified in having unconditional possession of it nor fit persons to be entrusted in when wealth in any true sense of the word that is to say funds, houses or land is to go to them as an inheritance they should never be allowed the free disposition of it in their case a guardian should always be appointed and hence they should never be given the free control of their children whenever it can be avoided the vanity of women although it should not prove to be greater than that of men has this much danger in it that it takes an entirely material direction they are vain I mean of their personal beauty and then of finery, show and magnificence that is just why they are so much in their element in society it is this too which makes them so inclined to be extravagant all the more as their reasoning power is low accordingly we find an ancient writer describing woman as in general of an extravagant nature gune to sinolon esti de paneron fuzi but with men vanity often takes the direction of non-material advantages such as intellect learning, courage in the politics explains the great disadvantage which accrued to the Spartans from the fact that they conceded too much power to their women by giving them the right of inheritance and dour and a great amount of independence and he shows how much this contributed to Sparta's fall may it not be the case in France that the influence of women which went on increasing steadily from the time of Louis XIII was to blame for that gradual corruption of the court and the government which brought about the revolution of 1789 of which all subsequent disturbances have been the fruit however that may be the false position which women occupy demonstrated as it is in the most glaring way by the institution of the lady is a fundamental defect in our social scheme and this defect from the very heart of it must spread its baneful influence in all directions that woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete independence immediately attaches herself to some man by whom she allows herself to be guided and ruled it is because she needs a lord and master if she is young it will be a lover if she is old a priest and chapter 7 this recording is in the public domain this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org studies in pessimism chapter 8 on noise Kant wrote a treatise on the vital powers I should prefer to write a dirage for them the super abundant display of vitality which takes the form of knocking, hammering and tumbling things about has proved a daily torment to me all my life long there are people it is true nay, a great many people who smile at such things because they are not sensitive to noise but they are just the people who are also not sensitive to argument or thought or poetry or art in a word to any kind of intellectual influence the reason of it is that the tissue of their brains is of a very rough and coarse quality on the other hand noise is a torture to intellectual people in the biographies of almost all great writers or wherever else their personal utterances are recorded I find complaints about it in the case of Kant for instance Goethe Lichtenberg John Paul and if it should happen that any writer has omitted to express himself on the matter it is only for want of an opportunity the subversion to noise I should explain as follows if you cut up a large diamond into little bits it will entirely lose the value it had as a whole and an army divided up into small bodies of soldiers loses all its strength so the great intellect sinks to the level of an ordinary one as soon as it is interrupted and disturbed its attention distracted and drawn off from the matter in hand for its superiority depends upon its power of concentration of bringing all its strength to bear upon one theme in the same way as a concave mirror collects into one point all the rays of light that strike upon it noisy interruption is a hindrance to this concentration that is why distinguished minds have always shown such an extreme dislike to disturbance in any form as something that breaks in upon and distracts their thoughts above all have they been averse to that violent interruption that comes from noise ordinary people are not much put out by anything of the sort the most sensible and intelligent of all nations in Europe lays down the rule never interrupt as the 11th commandment noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption it is not only an interruption but also a disruption of thought of course where there's nothing to interrupt noise will not be so particularly painful occasionally it happens that some slight but constant noise continues to bother and distract me for a time before I become distinctly conscious of it all I feel is steady increase in the labor of thinking just as though I were trying to walk with a weight on my foot at last I find out what it is let me now however pass from genus to species the most inexcusable and disgraceful of all noises is the cracking of whips a truly infernal thing when it is done in the narrow resounding streets of a town I denounce it as making a peaceful life impossible it puts an end to all quiet thought that this cracking of whips should be allowed at all seems to me to show in the clearest way how senseless and thoughtless is the nature of mankind no one with anything like an idea in his head can avoid a feeling of actual pain at this sudden sharp crack which paralyzes the brain rends the thread of reflection and murders thought every time this noise is made it must disturb a hundred people who are applying their minds to business of some sort no matter how trivial it may be while on the thinker its effect is woeful and disastrous cutting his thoughts asunder much as the executioner's acts severs the head from the body no sound be it ever so shrill cuts so sharply into the brain as this cursed cracking of whips you feel the sting of the lash right inside your head and it affects the brain in the same way as touch affects a sensitive plant and for the same length of time with all due respect for the most holy doctrine of utility I really cannot see why a fellow who is taking away a wagonload of gravel or dung should thereby obtain the right to kill in the bud the thoughts which may happen to be springing up in ten thousand heads will disturb one after another in half an hour's drive through the town hammering the barking of dogs and the crying of children are horrible to bear but your only genuine assassin of thought is the crack of a whip it exists for the purpose of destroying every pleasant moment of quiet thought that anyone may now and then enjoy if the driver had no other way of urging on his horse than by making this most abominable of all noises but quite the contrary is the case this cursed cracking of whips is not only unnecessary but even useless its aim is to produce an effect upon the intelligence of the horse but through the constant abuse of it the animal becomes habituated to the sound which falls upon blunted feelings and produces no effect at all the horse does not go any faster for it you have a remarkable example of this in the ceaseless cracking of his whip on a part of a cab driver while he is proceeding in a slow pace on the lookout for a fare if he were to give his horse the slightest touch with the whip it would have much more effect supposing however that it were absolutely necessary to crack the whip in order to keep the horse constantly in mind of its presence it would be enough to make the hundredth part of the noise for it is a well-known fact that in regard to sight and hearing animals are sensitive to even the faintest indications they are alive to things that we can scarcely perceive the most surprising instances of this are furnished by trained dogs and canary birds it is obvious therefore that here we have to do with an act of pure wanton with an impudent defiance offered to those members of the community who may work with their heads by those who work with their hands that such infamy should be tolerated in a town is a piece of barbarity and inequity all the more as it could easily be remedied by a police notice to the effect that every lash shall have a knot at the end of it there can be no harm in drawing the attention of the mob to the fact that the classes above them work with their heads for any kind of headwork is mortal anguished to the man in the street a fellow who rides through the narrow alleys of a populous town with unemployed post horses or cart horses and keeps on cracking a whip several yards long with all his might deserves there and then to stand down and receive five really good blows with a stick all the philanthropists in the world and all the legislators meeting to advocate and decree the total abolition of corporal punishment will never persuade me to the contrary there is something even more disgraceful than what I have just mentioned often enough you may see a carter walking along the street quite alone without any horses and still cracking away incessantly so accustomed has the wretch become to it in consequence of the unwarrantable toleration of this practice a man's body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence is the thinking mind then to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or protection to say nothing of respect carters, porters, messengers these are the beasts of burden among mankind by all means let them be treated justly, fairly indulgently and with force thought but they must not be permitted to stand in the way of the higher endeavors of humanity by wantonly making a noise how many great and splendid thoughts I should like to know have been lost to the world by the crack of a whip if I had the upper hand I should soon produce of these people an indissoluble association of ideas between cracking a whip and getting a whipping let us hope that the more intelligent and refined among the nations will make a beginning in this matter and then that the Germans may take example by it and follow suit meanwhile I may quote what Thomas Hood says of them for a musical nation noisy I ever met with that they are so is due to the fact not that they are more fond of making a noise than other people they would deny it if you ask them but that their senses are obtuse consequently when they hear a noise it does not affect them much it does not disturb them in reading or thinking simply because they do not think they only smoke which is their substitute for thought the general toleration of unnecessary noise the slamming of doors for instance a very unmanorly and ill-bred thing is direct evidence that the prevailing habit of mind is dullness and lack of thought in Germany it seems as though care were taken that no one should ever think for mere noise to mention one form of it the way in which drumming goes on for no purpose at all finally as regards the literature of the subject treated of in this chapter I have only one work to recommend but it is good one I refer to a poetical epistle in Terzo Rimo by the famous painter Bronzino entitled De Romore Amma Saluca Martini it gives a detailed description of the torture to which people are put by the various noises of a small Italian town written in a tragic comic style it is very amusing the epistle may be found in Opere Berlesce Del Berni Arretino ed Altri volume 2 page 258 apparently published in Utrecht in 1771 and chapter 7 this recording is in the public domain