The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy

by Arthur Schopenhauer

The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy by Arthur Schopenhauer

THE ESSAYS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER: THE ART OF CONTROVERSY

TRANSLATED BY

T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.

CONTENTS.

THE ART OF CONTROVERSY--

1. PRELIMINARY: LOGIC AND DIALECTIC

2. THE BASIS OF ALL DIALECTIC

3. STRATAGEMS

ON THE COMPARATIVE PLACE OF INTEREST AND BEAUTY IN WORKS OF ART

PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS

ON THE WISDOM OF LIFE: APHORISMS

GENIUS AND VIRTUE

page 1 / 120
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The volume now before the reader is a tardy addition to a series in

which I have endeavoured to present Schopenhauer's minor writings in

an adequate form.

Its contents are drawn entirely from his posthumous papers. A

selection of them was given to the world some three of four years

after his death by his friend and literary executor, Julius

Frauenstaedt, who for this and other offices of piety, has received

less recognition than he deserves. The papers then published have

recently been issued afresh, with considerable additions and

corrections, by Dr. Eduard Grisebach, who is also entitled to

gratitude for the care with which he has followed the text of the

manuscripts, now in the Royal Library at Berlin, and for having drawn

attention--although in terms that are unnecessarily severe--to a

number of faults and failings on the part of the previous editor.

The fact that all Schopenhauer's works, together with a volume of his

correspondence, may now be obtained in a certain cheap collection of

the best national and foreign literature displayed in almost every

bookshop in Germany, is sufficient evidence that in his own country

the writer's popularity is still very great; nor does the demand for

translations indicate that his fame has at all diminished abroad. The

favour with which the new edition of his posthumous papers has been

received induces me, therefore, to resume a task which I thought, five

page 2 / 120
years ago, that I had finally completed; and it is my intention to

bring out one more volume, selected partly from these papers and

partly from his _Parerga_.

A small part of the essay on _The Art of Controversy_ was published in

Schopenhauer's lifetime, in the chapter of the _Parerga_ headed _Zur

Logik und Dialektik_. The intelligent reader will discover that a good

deal of its contents is of an ironical character. As regards the last

three essays I must observe that I have omitted such passages

as appear to be no longer of any general interest or otherwise

unsuitable. I must also confess to having taken one or two liberties

with the titles, in order that they may the more effectively fulfil

the purpose for which titles exist. In other respects I have adhered

to the original with the kind of fidelity which aims at producing

an impression as nearly as possible similar to that produced by the

original.

T.B.S.

February, 1896

THE ART OF CONTROVERSY.

PRELIMINARY: LOGIC AND DIALECTIC.

page 3 / 120
By the ancients, Logic and Dialectic were used as synonymous terms;

although [Greek: logizesthai], "to think over, to consider, to

calculate," and [Greek: dialegesthai], "to converse," are two very

different things.

The name Dialectic was, as we are informed by Diogenes Laertius, first

used by Plato; and in the _Phaedrus, Sophist, Republic_, bk. vii., and

elsewhere, we find that by Dialectic he means the regular employment

of the reason, and skill in the practice of it. Aristotle also uses

the word in this sense; but, according to Laurentius Valla, he was

the first to use Logic too in a similar way.[1] Dialectic, therefore,

seems to be an older word than Logic. Cicero and Quintilian use the

words in the same general signification.[2]

[Footnote 1: He speaks of [Greek: dyscherelai logicai], that is,

"difficult points," [Greek: protasis logicae aporia logicae]]

[Footnote 2: Cic. _in Lucullo: Dialecticam inventam esse, veri et

falsi quasi disceptatricem. Topica_, c. 2: _Stoici enim judicandi vias

diligenter persecuti sunt, ea scientia, quam_ Dialecticen _appellant_.

Quint., lib. ii., 12: _Itaque haec pars dialecticae, sive illam

disputatricem dicere malimus_; and with him this latter word appears

to be the Latin equivalent for Dialectic. (So far according to "Petri

Rami dialectica, Audomari Talaei praelectionibus illustrata." 1569.)]

page 4 / 120
This use of the words and synonymous terms lasted through the Middle

Ages into modern times; in fact, until the present day. But more

recently, and in particular by Kant, Dialectic has often been employed

in a bad sense, as meaning "the art of sophistical controversy";

and hence Logic has been preferred, as of the two the more innocent

designation. Nevertheless, both originally meant the same thing; and

in the last few years they have again been recognised as synonymous.

It is a pity that the words have thus been used from of old, and that

I am not quite at liberty to distinguish their meanings. Otherwise, I

should have preferred to define _Logic_ (from [Greek: logos], "word"

and "reason," which are inseparable) as "the science of the laws of

thought, that is, of the method of reason"; and _Dialectic_ (from

[Greek: dialegesthai], "to converse"--and every conversation

communicates either facts or opinions, that is to say, it is

historical or deliberative) as "the art of disputation," in the modern

sense of the word. It it clear, then, that Logic deals with a subject

of a purely _a priori_ character, separable in definition from

experience, namely, the laws of thought, the process of reason or the

[Greek: logos], the laws, that is, which reason follows when it is

left to itself and not hindered, as in the case of solitary thought on

the part of a rational being who is in no way misled. Dialectic, on

the other hand, would treat of the intercourse between two rational

beings who, because they are rational, ought to think in common, but

who, as soon as they cease to agree like two clocks keeping exactly

the same time, create a disputation, or intellectual contest. Regarded

as purely rational beings, the individuals would, I say, necessarily

page 5 / 120
be in agreement, and their variation springs from the difference

essential to individuality; in other words, it is drawn from

experience.

Logic, therefore, as the science of thought, or the science of the

process of pure reason, should be capable of being constructed _a

priori_. Dialectic, for the most part, can be constructed only _a

posteriori_; that is to say, we may learn its rules by an experiential

knowledge of the disturbance which pure thought suffers through the

difference of individuality manifested in the intercourse between

two rational beings, and also by acquaintance with the means which

disputants adopt in order to make good against one another their own

individual thought, and to show that it is pure and objective. For

human nature is such that if A. and B. are engaged in thinking in

common, and are communicating their opinions to one another on any

subject, so long as it is not a mere fact of history, and A. perceives

that B.'s thoughts on one and the same subject are not the same as his

own, he does not begin by revising his own process of thinking, so as

to discover any mistake which he may have made, but he assumes that

the mistake has occurred in B.'s. In other words, man is naturally

obstinate; and this quality in him is attended with certain results,

treated of in the branch of knowledge which I should like to call

Dialectic, but which, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I shall call

Controversial or Eristical Dialectic. Accordingly, it is the branch

of knowledge which treats of the obstinacy natural to man. Eristic is

only a harsher name for the same thing.

page 6 / 120
Controversial Dialectic is the art of disputing, and of disputing in

such a way as to hold one's own, whether one is in the right or the

wrong--_per fas et nefas_.[1] A man may be objectively in the right,

and nevertheless in the eyes of bystanders, and sometimes in his own,

he may come off worst. For example, I may advance a proof of some

assertion, and my adversary may refute the proof, and thus appear to

have refuted the assertion, for which there may, nevertheless, be

other proofs. In this case, of course, my adversary and I change

places: he comes off best, although, as a matter of fact, he is in the

wrong.

[Footnote 1: According to Diogenes Laertius, v., 28, Aristotle put

Rhetoric and Dialectic together, as aiming at persuasion, [Greek: to

pithanon]; and Analytic and Philosophy as aiming at truth. Aristotle

does, indeed, distinguish between (1) _Logic_, or Analytic, as the

theory or method of arriving at true or apodeictic conclusions; and

(2) _Dialectic_ as the method of arriving at conclusions that are

accepted or pass current as true, [Greek: endoxa] _probabilia_;

conclusions in regard to which it is not taken for granted that they

are false, and also not taken for granted that they are true in

themselves, since that is not the point. What is this but the art of

being in the right, whether one has any reason for being so or not, in

other words, the art of attaining the appearance of truth, regardless

of its substance? That is, then, as I put it above.

Aristotle divides all conclusions into logical and dialectical, in the

page 7 / 120
manner described, and then into eristical. (3) _Eristic_ is the method

by which the form of the conclusion is correct, but the premisses, the

materials from which it is drawn, are not true, but only appear to be

true. Finally (4) _Sophistic_ is the method in which the form of the

conclusion is false, although it seems correct. These three last

properly belong to the art of Controversial Dialectic, as they have

no objective truth in view, but only the appearance of it, and pay

no regard to truth itself; that is to say, they aim at victory.

Aristotle's book on _Sophistic Conclusions_ was edited apart from the

others, and at a later date. It was the last book of his _Dialectic_.]

If the reader asks how this is, I reply that it is simply the

natural baseness of human nature. If human nature were not base, but

thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim

than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether

the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by

expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should

regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary

consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our

innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our

intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first

position was wrong and our adversary's right. The way out of this

difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a

correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke.

But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and

innate dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they

may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert

page 8 / 120
is false, they want it to seem the contrary. The interest in truth,

which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated

the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of

vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false,

and what is false must seem true.

However, this very dishonesty, this persistence in a proposition which

seems false even to ourselves, has something to be said for it. It

often happens that we begin with the firm conviction of the truth

of our statement; but our opponent's argument appears to refute it.

Should we abandon our position at once, we may discover later on

that we were right after all; the proof we offered was false, but

nevertheless there was a proof for our statement which was true. The

argument which would have been our salvation did not occur to us at

the moment. Hence we make it a rule to attack a counter-argument, even

though to all appearances it is true and forcible, in the belief that

its truth is only superficial, and that in the course of the dispute

another argument will occur to us by which we may upset it, or succeed

in confirming the truth of our statement. In this way we are almost

compelled to become dishonest; or, at any rate, the temptation to do

so is very great. Thus it is that the weakness of our intellect and

the perversity of our will lend each other mutual support; and that,

generally, a disputant fights not for truth, but for his proposition,

as though it were a battle _pro aris et focis_. He sets to work _per

fas et nefas_; nay, as we have seen, he cannot easily do otherwise.

As a rule, then, every man will insist on maintaining whatever he

has said, even though for the moment he may consider it false or

page 9 / 120
doubtful.[1]

[Footnote 1: Machiavelli recommends his Prince to make use of every

moment that his neighbour is weak, in order to attack him; as

otherwise his neighbour may do the same. If honour and fidelity

prevailed in the world, it would be a different matter; but as these

are qualities not to be expected, a man must not practise them

himself, because he will meet with a bad return. It is just the same

in a dispute: if I allow that my opponent is right as soon as he seems

to be so, it is scarcely probable that he will do the same when the

position is reversed; and as he acts wrongly, I am compelled to act

wrongly too. It is easy to say that we must yield to truth, without

any prepossession in favour of our own statements; but we cannot

assume that our opponent will do it, and therefore we cannot do

it either. Nay, if I were to abandon the position on which I had

previously bestowed much thought, as soon as it appeared that he was

right, it might easily happen that I might be misled by a momentary

impression, and give up the truth in order to accept an error.]

To some extent every man is armed against such a procedure by his own

cunning and villainy. He learns by daily experience, and thus comes

to have his own _natural Dialectic_, just as he has his own _natural

Logic_. But his Dialectic is by no means as safe a guide as his Logic.

It is not so easy for any one to think or draw an inference contrary

to the laws of Logic; false judgments are frequent, false conclusions

very rare. A man cannot easily be deficient in natural Logic, but he

may very easily be deficient in natural Dialectic, which is a gift

page 10 / 120
apportioned in unequal measure. In so far natural Dialectic resembles

the faculty of judgment, which differs in degree with every man; while

reason, strictly speaking, is the same. For it often happens that in

a matter in which a man is really in the right, he is confounded or

refuted by merely superficial arguments; and if he emerges victorious

from a contest, he owes it very often not so much to the correctness

of his judgment in stating his proposition, as to the cunning and

address with which he defended it.

Here, as in all other cases, the best gifts are born with a man;

nevertheless, much may be done to make him a master of this art by

practice, and also by a consideration of the tactics which may be used

to defeat an opponent, or which he uses himself for a similar purpose.

Therefore, even though Logic may be of no very real, practical use,

Dialectic may certainly be so; and Aristotle, too, seems to me to

have drawn up his Logic proper, or Analytic, as a foundation and

preparation for his Dialectic, and to have made this his chief

business. Logic is concerned with the mere form of propositions;

Dialectic, with their contents or matter--in a word, with their

substance. It was proper, therefore, to consider the general form of

all propositions before proceeding to particulars.

Aristotle does not define the object of Dialectic as exactly as I

have done it here; for while he allows that its principal object

is disputation, he declares at the same time that it is also the

discovery of truth.[1] Again, he says, later on, that if, from the

philosophical point of view, propositions are dealt with according to

page 11 / 120
their truth, Dialectic regards them according to their plausibility,

or the measure in which they will win the approval and assent of

others.[2] He is aware that the objective truth of a proposition must

be distinguished and separated from the way in which it is pressed

home, and approbation won for it; but he fails to draw a sufficiently

sharp distinction between these two aspects of the matter, so as to

reserve Dialectic for the latter alone.[3] The rules which he often

gives for Dialectic contain some of those which properly belong to

Logic; and hence it appears to me that he has not provided a clear

solution of the problem.

[Footnote 1: _Topica_, bk. i., 2.]

[Footnote 2: _Ib_., 12.]

[Footnote 3: On the other hand, in his book _De Sophisticis Elenchis_,

he takes too much trouble to separate _Dialectic_ from _Sophistic_

and _Eristic_, where the distinction is said to consist in this, that

dialectical conclusions are true in their form and their contents,

while sophistical and eristical conclusions are false.

Eristic so far differs from Sophistic that, while the master of

Eristic aims at mere victory, the Sophist looks to the reputation,

and with it, the monetary rewards which he will gain. But whether a

proposition is true in respect of its contents is far too uncertain a

matter to form the foundation of the distinction in question; and

page 12 / 120
it is a matter on which the disputant least of all can arrive at

certainty; nor is it disclosed in any very sure form even by the

result of the disputation. Therefore, when Aristotle speaks of

_Dialectic_, we must include in it Sophistic, Eristic, and Peirastic,

and define it as "the art of getting the best of it in a dispute," in

which, unquestionably, the safest plan is to be in the right to begin

with; but this in itself is not enough in the existing disposition

of mankind, and, on the other hand, with the weakness of the human

intellect, it is not altogether necessary. Other expedients are

required, which, just because they are unnecessary to the attainment

of objective truth, may also be used when a man is objectively in the

wrong; and whether or not this is the case, is hardly ever a matter of

complete certainty.

I am of opinion, therefore, that a sharper distinction should be drawn

between Dialectic and Logic than Aristotle has given us; that to Logic

we should assign objective truth as far as it is merely formal, and

that Dialectic should be confined to the art of gaining one's point,

and contrarily, that Sophistic and Eristic should not be distinguished

from Dialectic in Aristotle's fashion, since the difference which he

draws rests on objective and material truth; and in regard to what

this is, we cannot attain any clear certainty before discussion; but

we are compelled, with Pilate, to ask, _What is truth_? For truth

is in the depths, [Greek: en butho hae halaetheia] (a saying of

Democritus, _Diog. Laert_., ix., 72). Two men often engage in a warm

dispute, and then return to their homes each of the other's opinion,

which he has exchanged for his own. It is easy to say that in every

page 13 / 120
dispute we should have no other aim than the advancement of truth; but

before dispute no one knows where it is, and through his opponent's

arguments and his own a man is misled.]

We must always keep the subject of one branch of knowledge quite

distinct from that of any other. To form a clear idea of the province

of Dialectic, we must pay no attention to objective truth, which is an

affair of Logic; we must regard it simply as _the art of getting the

best of it in a dispute_, which, as we have seen, is all the easier if

we are actually in the right. In itself Dialectic has nothing to do

but to show how a man may defend himself against attacks of every

kind, and especially against dishonest attacks; and, in the

same fashion, how he may attack another man's statement without

contradicting himself, or generally without being defeated. The

discovery of objective truth must be separated from the art of winning

acceptance for propositions; for objective truth is an entirely

different matter: it is the business of sound judgment, reflection and

experience, for which there is no special art.

Such, then, is the aim of Dialectic. It has been defined as the Logic

of appearance; but the definition is a wrong one, as in that case it

could only be used to repel false propositions. But even when a man

has the right on his side, he needs Dialectic in order to defend and

maintain it; he must know what the dishonest tricks are, in order to

meet them; nay, he must often make use of them himself, so as to beat

the enemy with his own weapons.

page 14 / 120
Accordingly, in a dialectical contest we must put objective truth

aside, or, rather, we must regard it as an accidental circumstance,

and look only to the defence of our own position and the refutation of

our opponent's.

In following out the rules to this end, no respect should be paid to

objective truth, because we usually do not know where the truth lies.

As I have said, a man often does not himself know whether he is in the

right or not; he often believes it, and is mistaken: both sides often

believe it. Truth is in the depths. At the beginning of a contest each

man believes, as a rule, that right is on his side; in the course of

it, both become doubtful, and the truth is not determined or confirmed

until the close.

Dialectic, then, need have nothing to do with truth, as little as the

fencing master considers who is in the right when a dispute leads to a

duel. Thrust and parry is the whole business. Dialectic is the art of

intellectual fencing; and it is only when we so regard it that we can

erect it into a branch of knowledge. For if we take purely objective

truth as our aim, we are reduced to mere Logic; if we take the

maintenance of false propositions, it is mere Sophistic; and in either

case it would have to be assumed that we were aware of what was true

and what was false; and it is seldom that we have any clear idea of

the truth beforehand. The true conception of Dialectic is, then, that

which we have formed: it is the art of intellectual fencing used for

the purpose of getting the best of it in a dispute; and, although the

page 15 / 120
name _Eristic_ would be more suitable, it is more correct to call it

controversial Dialectic, _Dialectica eristica_.

Dialectic in this sense of the word has no other aim but to reduce

to a regular system and collect and exhibit the arts which most men

employ when they observe, in a dispute, that truth is not on their

side, and still attempt to gain the day. Hence, it would be very

inexpedient to pay any regard to objective truth or its advancement in

a science of Dialectic; since this is not done in that original and

natural Dialectic innate in men, where they strive for nothing but

victory. The science of Dialectic, in one sense of the word, is mainly

concerned to tabulate and analyse dishonest stratagems, in order that

in a real debate they may be at once recognised and defeated. It is

for this very reason that Dialectic must admittedly take victory, and

not objective truth, for its aim and purpose.

I am not aware that anything has been done in this direction,

although I have made inquiries far and wide.[1] It is, therefore, an

uncultivated soil. To accomplish our purpose, we must draw from our

experience; we must observe how in the debates which often arise in

our intercourse with our fellow-men this or that stratagem is employed

by one side or the other. By finding out the common elements in tricks

repeated in different forms, we shall be enabled to exhibit certain

general stratagems which may be advantageous, as well for our own use,

as for frustrating others if they use them.

page 16 / 120
[Footnote 1: Diogenes Laertes tells us that among the numerous

writings on Rhetoric by Theophrastus, all of which have been lost,

there was one entitled [Greek: Agonistikon taes peri tous eristikous

gogous theorias.] That would have been just what we want.]

What follows is to be regarded as a first attempt.

THE BASIS OF ALL DIALECTIC.

First of all, we must consider the essential nature of every dispute:

what it is that really takes place in it.

Our opponent has stated a thesis, or we ourselves,--it is all one.

There are two modes of refuting it, and two courses that we may

pursue.

I. The modes are (1) _ad rem_, (2) _ad hominem_ or _ex concessis_.

That is to say: We may show either that the proposition is not in

accordance with the nature of things, i.e., with absolute, objective

truth; or that it is inconsistent with other statements or admissions

of our opponent, i.e., with truth as it appears to him. The latter

mode of arguing a question produces only a relative conviction, and

makes no difference whatever to the objective truth of the matter.

II. The two courses that we may pursue are (1) the direct, and (2) the

page 17 / 120
indirect refutation. The direct attacks the reason for the thesis; the

indirect, its results. The direct refutation shows that the thesis is

not true; the indirect, that it cannot be true.

The direct course admits of a twofold procedure. Either we may

show that the reasons for the statement are false (_nego majorem,

minorem_); or we may admit the reasons or premisses, but show that the

statement does not follow from them (_nego consequentiam)_; that is,

we attack the conclusion or form of the syllogism.

The direct refutation makes use either of the _diversion_ or of the

_instance_.

_(a)_ The _diversion_.--We accept our opponent's proposition as true,

and then show what follows from it when we bring it into connection

with some other proposition acknowledged to be true. We use the two

propositions as the premisses of a syllogism giving a conclusion which

is manifestly false, as contradicting either the nature of things,[1]

or other statements of our opponent himself; that is to say, the

conclusion is false either _ad rem_ or _ad hominem_.[2] Consequently,

our opponent's proposition must have been false; for, while true

premisses can give only a true conclusion, false premisses need not

always give a false one.

[Footnote 1: If it is in direct contradiction with a perfectly

undoubted, truth, we have reduced our opponent's position _ad

page 18 / 120
absurdum_.]

[Footnote 2: Socrates, in _Hippia Maj. et alias_.]

_(b) The instance_, or the example to the contrary.--This consists in

refuting the general proposition by direct reference to particular

cases which are included in it in the way in which it is stated, but

to which it does not apply, and by which it is therefore shown to be

necessarily false.

Such is the framework or skeleton of all forms of disputation; for to

this every kind of controversy may be ultimately reduced. The whole of

a controversy may, however, actually proceed in the manner described,

or only appear to do so; and it may be supported by genuine or

spurious arguments. It is just because it is not easy to make out

the truth in regard to this matter, that debates are so long and so

obstinate.

Nor can we, in ordering the argument, separate actual from apparent

truth, since even the disputants are not certain about it beforehand.

Therefore I shall describe the various tricks or stratagems without

regard to questions of objective truth or falsity; for that is a

matter on which we have no assurance, and which cannot be determined

previously. Moreover, in every disputation or argument on any subject

we must agree about something; and by this, as a principle, we must be

willing to judge the matter in question. We cannot argue with those

page 19 / 120
who deny principles: _Contra negantem principia non est disputandum_.

STRATAGEMS.

I.

The _Extension_.--This consists in carrying your opponent's

proposition beyond its natural limits; in giving it as general a

signification and as wide a sense as possible, so as to exaggerate it;

and, on the other hand, in giving your own proposition as restricted

a sense and as narrow limits as you can, because the more general a

statement becomes, the more numerous are the objections to which it is

open. The defence consists in an accurate statement of the point or

essential question at issue.

Example 1.--I asserted that the English were supreme in drama. My

opponent attempted _to_ give an instance to the contrary, and replied

that it was a well-known fact that in music, and consequently in

opera, they could do nothing at all. I repelled the attack by

reminding him that music was not included in dramatic art, which

covered tragedy and comedy alone. This he knew very well. What he had

done was to try to generalise my proposition, so that it would apply

to all theatrical representations, and, consequently, to opera and

then to music, in order to make certain of defeating me. Contrarily,

we may save our proposition by reducing it within narrower limits

than we had first intended, if our way of expressing it favours this

page 20 / 120
expedient.

Example 2.--A. declares that the Peace of 1814 gave back their

independence to all the German towns of the Hanseatic League. B. gives

an instance to the contrary by reciting the fact that Dantzig, which

received its independence from Buonaparte, lost it by that Peace. A.

saves himself thus: "I said 'all German towns,' and Dantzig was in

Poland."

This trick was mentioned by Aristotle in the _Topica_ (bk. viii., cc.

11, 12).

Example 3.--Lamarck, in his _Philosophic Zoologique_ (vol. i., p.

208), states that the polype has no feeling, because it has no nerves.

It is certain, however, that it has some sort of perception; for it

advances towards light by moving in an ingenious fashion from branch

to branch, and it seizes its prey. Hence it has been assumed that its

nervous system is spread over the whole of its body in equal measure,

as though it were blended with it; for it is obvious that the polype

possesses some faculty of perception without having any separate

organs of sense. Since this assumption refutes Lamarck's position, he

argues thus: "In that case all parts of its body must be capable of

every kind of feeling, and also of motion, of will, of thought. The

polype would have all the organs of the most perfect animal in every

point of its body; every point could see, smell, taste, hear, and so

on; nay, it could think, judge, and draw conclusions; every particle

page 21 / 120
of its body would be a perfect animal and it would stand higher than

man, as every part of it would possess all the faculties which man

possesses only in the whole of him. Further, there would be no reason

for not extending what is true of the polype to all monads, the most

imperfect of all creatures, and ultimately to the plants, which are

also alive, etc., etc." By using dialectical tricks of this kind a

writer betrays that he is secretly conscious of being in the wrong.

Because it was said that the creature's whole body is sensitive to

light, and is therefore possessed of nerves, he makes out that its

whole body is capable of thought.

II.

The _Homonymy_.--This trick is to extend a proposition to something

which has little or nothing in common with the matter in question but

the similarity of the word; then to refute it triumphantly, and so

claim credit for having refuted the original statement.

It may be noted here that synonyms are two words for the same

conception; homonyms, two conceptions which are covered by the same

word. (See Aristotle, _Topica_, bk. i., c. 13.) "Deep," "cutting,"

"high," used at one moment of bodies at another of tones, are

homonyms; "honourable" and "honest" are synonyms.

This is a trick which may be regarded as identical with the sophism

_ex homonymia_; although, if the sophism is obvious, it will deceive

page 22 / 120
no one.

_Every light can be extinguished.

The intellect is a light.

Therefore it can be extinguished_.

Here it is at once clear that there are four terms in the syllogism,

"light" being used both in a real and in a metaphorical sense. But if

the sophism takes a subtle form, it is, of course, apt to mislead,

especially where the conceptions which are covered by the same word

are related, and inclined to be interchangeable. It is never subtle

enough to deceive, if it is used intentionally; and therefore cases of

it must be collected from actual and individual experience.

It would be a very good thing if every trick could receive some short

and obviously appropriate name, so that when a man used this or that

particular trick, he could be at once reproached for it.

I will give two examples of the homonymy.

Example 1.--A.: "You are not yet initiated into the mysteries of the

Kantian philosophy."

B.: "Oh, if it's mysteries you're talking of, I'll have nothing to do

with them."

page 23 / 120
Example 2.--I condemned the principle involved in the word _honour_

as a foolish one; for, according to it, a man loses his honour by

receiving an insult, which he cannot wipe out unless he replies with a

still greater insult, or by shedding his adversary's blood or his own.

I contended that a man's true honour cannot be outraged by what he

suffers, but only and alone by what he does; for there is no saying

what may befall any one of us. My opponent immediately attacked

the reason I had given, and triumphantly proved to me that when a

tradesman was falsely accused of misrepresentation, dishonesty, or

neglect in his business, it was an attack upon his honour, which in

this case was outraged solely by what he suffered, and that he could

only retrieve it by punishing his aggressor and making him retract.

Here, by a homonymy, he was foisting _civic honour_, which is

otherwise called _good name_, and which may be outraged by libel and

slander, on to the conception of _knightly honour_, also called _point

d'honneur_, which may be outraged by insult. And since an attack on

the former cannot be disregarded, but must be repelled by public

disproof, so, with the same justification, an attack on the latter

must not be disregarded either, but it must be defeated by still

greater insult and a duel. Here we have a confusion of two essentially

different things through the homonymy in the word _honour_, and a

consequent alteration of the point in dispute.

III.

page 24 / 120
Another trick is to take a proposition which is laid down relatively,

and in reference to some particular matter, as though it were uttered

with a general or absolute application; or, at least, to take it in

some quite different sense, and then refute it. Aristotle's example is

as follows:

A Moor is black; but in regard to his teeth he is white; therefore, he

is black and not black at the same moment. This is an obvious sophism,

which will deceive no one. Let us contrast it with one drawn from

actual experience.

In talking of philosophy, I admitted that my system upheld the

Quietists, and commended them. Shortly afterwards the conversation

turned upon Hegel, and I maintained that his writings were mostly

nonsense; or, at any rate, that there were many passages in them where

the author wrote the words, and it was left to the reader to find a

meaning for them. My opponent did not attempt to refute this assertion

_ad rem_, but contented himself by advancing the _argumentum ad

hominem_, and telling me that I had just been praising the Quietists,

and that they had written a good deal of nonsense too.

This I admitted; but, by way of correcting him, I said that I had

praised the Quietists, not as philosophers and writers, that is to

say, for their achievements in the sphere of _theory_, but only as

men, and for their conduct in mere matters of _practice_; and that in

page 25 / 120
Hegel's case we were talking of theories. In this way I parried the

attack.

The first three tricks are of a kindred character. They have this

in common, that something different is attacked from that which was

asserted. It would therefore be an _ignoratio elenchi_ to allow

oneself to be disposed of in such a manner.

For in all the examples that I have given, what the opponent says is

true, but it stands in apparent and not in real contradiction with the

thesis. All that the man whom he is attacking has to do is to deny the

validity of his syllogism; to deny, namely, the conclusion which he

draws, that because his proposition is true, ours is false. In this

way his refutation is itself directly refuted by a denial of his

conclusion, _per negationem consequentiae_. Another trick is to refuse

to admit true premisses because of a foreseen conclusion. There are

two ways of defeating it, incorporated in the next two sections.

IV.

If you want to draw a conclusion, you must not let it be foreseen, but

you must get the premisses admitted one by one, unobserved, mingling

them here and there in your talk; otherwise, your opponent will

attempt all sorts of chicanery. Or, if it is doubtful whether your

opponent will admit them, you must advance the premisses of these

premisses; that is to say, you must draw up pro-syllogisms, and get

page 26 / 120
the premisses of several of them admitted in no definite order.

In this way you conceal your game until you have obtained all the

admissions that are necessary, and so reach your goal by making a

circuit. These rules are given by Aristotle in his _Topica_, bk.

viii., c. 1. It is a trick which needs no illustration.

V.

To prove the truth of a proposition, you may also employ previous

propositions that are not true, should your opponent refuse to admit

the true ones, either because he fails to perceive their truth, or

because he sees that the thesis immediately follows from them. In that

case the plan is to take propositions which are false in themselves

but true for your opponent, and argue from the way in which he thinks,

that is to say, _ex concessis_. For a true conclusion may follow

from false premisses, but not _vice versa_. In the same fashion

your opponent's false propositions may be refuted by other false

propositions, which he, however, takes to be true; for it is with him

that you have to do, and you must use the thoughts that he uses. For

instance, if he is a member of some sect to which you do not belong,

you may employ the declared, opinions of this sect against him, as

principles.[1]

[Footnote 1: Aristotle, _Topica_ bk. viii., chap. 2.]

VI.

page 27 / 120
Another plan is to beg the question in disguise by postulating what

has to be proved, either (1) under another name; for instance, "good

repute" instead of "honour"; "virtue" instead of "virginity," etc.;

or by using such convertible terms as "red-blooded animals" and

"vertebrates"; or (2) by making a general assumption covering the

particular point in dispute; for instance, maintaining the uncertainty

of medicine by postulating the uncertainty of all human knowledge. (3)

If, _vice versa_, two things follow one from the other, and one is to

be proved, you may postulate the other. (4) If a general proposition

is to be proved, you may get your opponent to admit every one of the

particulars. This is the converse of the second.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Idem_, chap. 11. The last chapter of this work contains

some good rules for the practice of Dialectics.]

VII.

Should the disputation be conducted on somewhat strict and formal

lines, and there be a desire to arrive at a very clear understanding,

he who states the proposition and wants to prove it may proceed

against his opponent by question, in order to show the truth of the

statement from his admissions. The erotematic, or Socratic, method was

especially in use among the ancients; and this and some of the tricks

following later on are akin to it.[1]

page 28 / 120
[Footnote 1: They are all a free version of chap. 15 of Aristotle's

_De Sophistici Elenchis_.]

The plan is to ask a great many wide-reaching questions at once, so as

to hide what you want to get admitted, and, on the other hand, quickly

propound the argument resulting from the admissions; for those who are

slow of understanding cannot follow accurately, and do not notice any

mistakes or gaps there may be in the demonstration.

VIII.

This trick consists in making your opponent angry; for when he is

angry he is incapable of judging aright, and perceiving where

his advantage lies. You can make him angry by doing him repeated

injustice, or practising some kind of chicanery, and being generally

insolent.

IX.

Or you may put questions in an order different from that which the

conclusion to be drawn from them requires, and transpose them, so

as not to let him know at what you are aiming. He can then take no

precautions. You may also use his answers for different or even

opposite conclusions, according to their character. This is akin to

page 29 / 120
the trick of masking your procedure.

X.

If you observe that your opponent designedly returns a negative answer

to the questions which, for the sake of your proposition, you want

him to answer in the affirmative, you must ask the converse of the

proposition, as though it were that which you were anxious to see

affirmed; or, at any rate, you may give him his choice of both, so

that he may not perceive which of them you are asking him to affirm.

XL.

If you make an induction, and your opponent grants you the particular

cases by which it is to be supported, you must refrain from asking him

if he also admits the general truth which issues from the particulars,

but introduce it afterwards as a settled and admitted fact; for, in

the meanwhile, he will himself come to believe that he has admitted

it, and the same impression will be received by the audience, because

they will remember the many questions as to the particulars, and

suppose that they must, of course, have attained their end.

XII.

If the conversation turns upon some general conception which has

page 30 / 120
no particular name, but requires some figurative or metaphorical

designation, you must begin by choosing a metaphor that is favourable

to your proposition. For instance, the names used to denote the two

political parties in Spain, _Serviles_ and _Liberates_, are obviously

chosen by the latter. The name _Protestants_ is chosen by themselves,

and also the name _Evangelicals_; but the Catholics call them

_heretics_. Similarly, in regard to the names of things which admit

of a more exact and definite meaning: for example, if your opponent

proposes an _alteration_, you can call it an _innovation_, as this is

an invidious word. If you yourself make the proposal, it will be the

converse. In the first case, you can call the antagonistic principle

"the existing order," in the second, "antiquated prejudice." What an

impartial man with no further purpose to serve would call "public

worship" or a "system of religion," is described by an adherent as

"piety," "godliness": and by an opponent as "bigotry," "superstition."

This is, at bottom, a subtle _petitio principii_. What is sought to be

proved is, first of all, inserted in the definition, whence it is then

taken by mere analysis. What one man calls "placing in safe custody,"

another calls "throwing into prison." A speaker often betrays his

purpose beforehand by the names which he gives to things. One man

talks of "the clergy"; another, of "the priests."

Of all the tricks of controversy, this is the most frequent, and it is

used instinctively. You hear of "religious zeal," or "fanaticism"; a

"_faux pas_" a "piece of gallantry," or "adultery"; an "equivocal," or

a "bawdy" story; "embarrassment," or "bankruptcy"; "through influence

and connection," or by "bribery and nepotism"; "sincere gratitude," or

page 31 / 120
"good pay."

XIII.

To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him the

counter-proposition as well, leaving him his choice of the two; and

you must render the contrast as glaring as you can, so that to avoid

being paradoxical he will accept the proposition, which is thus made

to look quite probable. For instance, if you want to make him admit

that a boy must do everything that his father tells him to do, ask him

"whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents." Or, if

a thing is said to occur "often," ask whether by "often" you are to

understand few or many cases; and he will say "many." It is as though

you were to put grey next black, and call it white; or next white, and

call it black.

XIV.

This, which is an impudent trick, is played as follows: When your

opponent has answered several of your questions without the answers

turning out favourable to the conclusion at which you are aiming,

advance the desired conclusion,--although it does not in the least

follow,--as though it had been proved, and proclaim it in a tone of

triumph. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess

a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the trick may easily

succeed. It is akin to the fallacy _non causae ut causae_.

page 32 / 120
XV.

If you have advanced a paradoxical proposition and find a difficulty

in proving it, you may submit for your opponent's acceptance or

rejection some true proposition, the truth of which, however, is not

quite palpable, as though you wished to draw your proof from it.

Should he reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your

triumph by showing how absurd he is; should he accept it>

you have got

reason on your side for the moment, and must now look about you; or

else you can employ the previous trick as well, and maintain that your

paradox is proved by the proposition which he has accepted. For this

an extreme degree of impudence is required; but experience shows cases

of it, and there are people who practise it by instinct.

XVI.

Another trick is to use arguments _ad hominem_, or _ex concessis_[1]

When your opponent makes a proposition, you must try to see whether it

is not in some way--if needs be, only apparently--inconsistent with

some other proposition which he has made or admitted, or with the

principles of a school or sect which he has commended and approved, or

with the actions of those who support the sect, or else of those who

give it only an apparent and spurious support, or with his own actions

or want of action. For example, should he defend suicide, you may at

page 33 / 120
once exclaim, "Why don't you hang yourself?" Should he maintain that

Berlin is an unpleasant place to live in, you may say, "Why don't you

leave by the first train?" Some such claptrap is always possible.

[Footnote 1: The truth from which I draw my proof may he either (1) of

an objective and universally valid character; in that case my proof is

veracious, _secundum veritatem_; and it is such proof alone that has

any genuine validity. Or (2) it may be valid only for the person to

whom I wish to prove my proposition, and with whom I am disputing. He

has, that is to say, either taken up some position once for all as a

prejudice, or hastily admitted it in the course of the dispute; and

on this I ground my proof. In that case, it is a proof valid only for

this particular man, _ad kominem. I_ compel my opponent to grant

my proposition, but I fail to establish it as a truth of universal

validity. My proof avails for my opponent alone, but for no one else.

For example, if my opponent is a devotee of Kant's, and I ground my

proof on some utterance of that philosopher, it is a proof which in

itself is only _ad hominem_. If he is a Mohammedan, I may prove my

point by reference to a passage in the Koran, and that is sufficient

for him; but here it is only a proof _ad hominem_,]

XVII.

If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be

able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction, which, it

is true, had not previously occurred to you; that is, if the matter

page 34 / 120
admits of a double application, or of being taken in any ambiguous

sense.

XVIII.

If you observe that your opponent has taken up a line of argument

which will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to

its conclusion, but interrupt the course of the dispute in time, or

break it off altogether, or lead him away from the subject, and bring

him to others. In short, you must effect the trick which will be

noticed later on, the _mutatio controversiae_. (See sec. xxix.)

XIX.

Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection

to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing much to

say, you must try to give the matter a general turn, and then talk

against that. If you are called upon to say why a particular physical

hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of

human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.

XX.

When you have elicited all your premisses, and your opponent has

admitted them, you must refrain from asking him for the conclusion,

page 35 / 120
but draw it at once for yourself; nay, even though one or other of the

premisses should be lacking, you may take it as though it too had been

admitted, and draw the conclusion. This trick is an application of the

fallacy _non causae ut causae_.

XXI.

When your opponent uses a merely superficial or sophistical argument

and you see through it, you can, it is true, refute it by setting

forth its captious and superficial character; but it is better to

meet him with a counter-argument which is just as superficial and

sophistical, and so dispose of him; for it is with victory that you

are concerned, and not with truth. If, for example, he adopts an

_argumentum ad hominem_, it is sufficient to take the force out of it

by a counter _argumentum ad hominem_ or _argumentum ex concessis_;

and, in general, instead of setting forth the true state of the case

at equal length, it is shorter to take this course if it lies open to

you.

XXII.

If your opponent requires you to admit something from which the

point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so,

declaring that it is a _petitio principii_ For he and the audience

will regard a proposition which is near akin to the point in dispute

as identical with it, and in this way you deprive him of his best

page 36 / 120
argument.

XXIII.

Contradiction and contention irritate a man into exaggerating his

statement. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into

extending beyond its proper limits a statement which, at all events

within those limits and in itself, is true; and when you refute this

exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had also refuted his

original statement. Contrarily, you must take care not to allow

yourself to be misled by contradictions into exaggerating or extending

a statement of your own. It will often happen that your opponent will

himself directly try to extend your statement further than you meant

it; here you must at once stop him, and bring him back to the limits

which you set up; "That's what I said, and no more."

XXIV.

This trick consists in stating a false syllogism. Your opponent makes

a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you

force from it other propositions which it does not contain and he does

not in the least mean; nay, which are absurd or dangerous. It then

looks as if his proposition gave rise to others which are inconsistent

either with themselves or with some acknowledged truth, and so it

appears to be indirectly refuted. This is the _diversion_, and it is

another application of the fallacy _non causae ut causae_.

page 37 / 120
XXV.

This is a case of the _diversion_ by means of an _instance to the

contrary_. With an induction ([Greek: epagogae]), a great number

of particular instances are required in order to establish it as a

universal proposition; but with the _diversion_ ([Greek: apagogae]) a

single instance, to which the proposition does not apply, is all that

is necessary to overthrow it. This is a controversial method known

as the _instance_--_instantia_, [Greek: enstasis]. For example, "all

ruminants are horned" is a proposition which may be upset by the

single instance of the camel. The _instance_ is a case in which a

universal truth is sought to be applied, and something is inserted in

the fundamental definition of it which is not universally true, and by

which it is upset. But there is room for mistake; and when this trick

is employed by your opponent, you must observe (1) whether the example

which he gives is really true; for there are problems of which the

only true solution is that the case in point is not true--for example,

many miracles, ghost stories, and so on; and (2) whether it really

comes under the conception of the truth thus stated; for it may only

appear to do so, and the matter is one to be settled by precise

distinctions; and (3) whether it is really inconsistent with this

conception; for this again may be only an apparent inconsistency.

XXVI.

page 38 / 120
A brilliant move is the _retorsio argumenti_, or turning of the

tables, by which your opponent's argument is turned against himself.

He declares, for instance, "So-and-so is a child, you must make

allowance for him." You retort, "Just because he is a child, I must

correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits."

XXVII.

Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an

argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal; not only because it

is a good thing to make him angry, but because it may be presumed that

you have here put your finger on the weak side of his case, and that

just here he is more open to attack than even for the moment you

perceive.

XXVIII.

This is chiefly practicable in a dispute between scholars in the

presence of the unlearned. If you have no argument _ad rem_, and none

either _ad hominem_, you can make one _ad auditores_; that is to say,

you can start some invalid objection, which, however, only an expert

sees to be invalid. Now your opponent is an expert, but those who form

your audience are not, and accordingly in their eyes he is defeated;

particularly if the objection which you make places him in any

ridiculous light. People are ready to laugh, and you have the laughers

page 39 / 120
on your side. To show that your objection is an idle one, would

require a long explanation on the part of your opponent, and a

reference to the principles of the branch of knowledge in question, or

to the elements of the matter which you are discussing; and people are

not disposed to listen to it.

For example, your opponent states that in the original formation of a

mountain-range the granite and other elements in its composition were,

by reason of their high temperature, in a fluid or molten state; that

the temperature must have amounted to some 480 deg. Fahrenheit; and that

when the mass took shape it was covered by the sea. You reply, by an

argument _ad auditores_, that at that temperature--nay, indeed, long

before it had been reached, namely, at 212 deg. Fahrenheit--the sea would

have been boiled away, and spread through the air in the form of

steam. At this the audience laughs. To refute the objection, your

opponent would have to show that the boiling-point depends not only on

the degree of warmth, but also on the atmospheric pressure; and that

as soon as about half the sea-water had gone off in the shape of

steam, this pressure would be so greatly increased that the rest of it

would fail to boil even at a temperature of 480 deg.. He is debarred from

giving this explanation, as it would require a treatise to demonstrate

the matter to those who had no acquaintance with physics.

XXIX.[1]

[Footnote 1: See sec. xviii.]

page 40 / 120
If you find that you are being worsted, you can make a

_diversion_--that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something

else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute, and

afforded an argument against your opponent. This may be done without

presumption if the diversion has, in fact, some general bearing on the

matter; but it is a piece of impudence if it has nothing to do with

the case, and is only brought in by way of attacking your opponent.

For example, I praised the system prevailing in China, where there is

no such thing as hereditary nobility, and offices are bestowed only on

those who succeed in competitive examinations. My opponent maintained

that learning, as little as the privilege of birth (of which he had a

high opinion) fits a man for office. We argued, and he got the worst

of it. Then he made a diversion, and declared that in China all

ranks were punished with the bastinado, which he connected with the

immoderate indulgence in tea, and proceeded to make both of them a

subject of reproach to the Chinese. To follow him into all this would

have been to allow oneself to be drawn into a surrender of the victory

which had already been won.

The diversion is mere impudence if it completely abandons the point in

dispute, and raises, for instance, some such objection as "Yes, and

you also said just now," and so on. For then the argument becomes to

some extent personal; of the kind which will be treated of in the last

section. Strictly speaking, it is half-way between the _argumentum

page 41 / 120
ad personam_, which will there be discussed, and the _argumentum ad

hominem_.

How very innate this trick is, may be seen in every quarrel between

common people. If one of the parties makes some personal reproach

against the other, the latter, instead of answering it by refuting it,

allows it to stand,--as it were, admits it; and replies by reproaching

his antagonist on some other ground. This is a stratagem like that

pursued by Scipio when he attacked the Carthaginians, not in Italy,

but in Africa. In war, diversions of this kind may be profitable; but

in a quarrel they are poor expedients, because the reproaches remain,

and those who look on hear the worst that can be said of both parties.

It is a trick that should be used only _faute de mieux_.

XXX.

This is the _argumentum ad verecundiam_. It consists in making an

appeal to authority rather than reason, and in using such an authority

as may suit the degree of knowledge possessed by your opponent.

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment, says Seneca; and

it is therefore an easy matter if you have an authority on your side

which your opponent respects. The more limited his capacity and

knowledge, the greater is the number of the authorities who weigh with

him. But if his capacity and knowledge are of a high order, there

are very few; indeed, hardly any at all. He may, perhaps, admit the

page 42 / 120
authority of professional men versed in a science or an art or a

handicraft of which he knows little or nothing; but even so he will

regard it with suspicion. Contrarily, ordinary folk have a deep

respect for professional men of every kind. They are unaware that

a man who makes a profession of a thing loves it not for the thing

itself, but for the money he makes by it; or that it is rare for a man

who teaches to know his subject thoroughly; for if he studies it as he

ought, he has in most cases no time left in which to teach it.

But there are very many authorities who find respect with the mob, and

if you have none that is quite suitable, you can take one that appears

to be so; you may quote what some said in another sense or in other

circumstances. Authorities which your opponent fails to understand are

those of which he generally thinks the most. The unlearned entertain a

peculiar respect for a Greek or a Latin flourish. You may also, should

it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify

them, or quote something which you have invented entirely yourself. As

a rule, your opponent has no books at hand, and could not use them if

he had. The finest illustration of this is furnished by the French

_cure_, who, to avoid being compelled, like other citizens, to pave

the street in front of his house, quoted a saying which he described

as biblical: _paveant illi, ego non pavebo_. That was quite enough for

the municipal officers. A universal prejudice may also be used as an

authority; for most people think with Aristotle that that may be said

to exist which many believe. There is no opinion, however absurd,

which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to

the conviction that it is generally adopted. Example affects their

page 43 / 120
thought just as it affects their action. They are like sheep following

the bell-wether just as he leads them. They would sooner die than

think. It is very curious that the universality of an opinion should

have so much weight with people, as their own experience might tell

them that its acceptance is an entirely thoughtless and merely

imitative process. But it tells them nothing of the kind, because they

possess no self-knowledge whatever. It is only the elect Who Say with

Plato: [Greek: tois pollois polla dokei] which means that the public

has a good many bees in its bonnet, and that it would be a long

business to get at them.

But to speak seriously, the universality of an opinion is no proof,

nay, it is not even a probability, that the opinion is right. Those

who maintain that it is so must assume (1) that length of time

deprives a universal opinion of its demonstrative force, as otherwise

all the old errors which were once universally held to be true would

have to be recalled; for instance, the Ptolemaic system would have

to be restored, or Catholicism re-established in all Protestant

countries. They must assume (2) that distance of space has the same

effect; otherwise the respective universality of opinion among the

adherents of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam will put them in a

difficulty.

When we come to look into the matter, so-called universal opinion is

the opinion of two or three persons; and we should be persuaded of

this if we could see the way in which it really arises.

page 44 / 120
We should find that it is two or three persons who, in the first

instance, accepted it, or advanced and maintained it; and of whom

people were so good as to believe that they had thoroughly tested it.

Then a few other persons, persuaded beforehand that the first were men

of the requisite capacity, also accepted the opinion. These, again,

were trusted by many others, whose laziness suggested to them that it

was better to believe at once, than to go through the troublesome task

of testing the matter for themselves. Thus the number of these lazy

and credulous adherents grew from day to day; for the opinion had no

sooner obtained a fair measure of support than its further supporters

attributed this to the fact that the opinion could only have obtained

it by the cogency of its arguments. The remainder were then compelled

to grant what was universally granted, so as not to pass for unruly

persons who resisted opinions which every one accepted, or pert

fellows who thought themselves cleverer than any one else.

When opinion reaches this stage, adhesion becomes a duty; and

henceforward the few who are capable of forming a judgment hold their

peace. Those who venture to speak are such as are entirely incapable

of forming any opinions or any judgment of their own, being merely the

echo of others' opinions; and, nevertheless, they defend them with all

the greater zeal and intolerance. For what they hate in people who

think differently is not so much the different opinions which they

profess, as the presumption of wanting to form their own judgment; a

presumption of which they themselves are never guilty, as they are

very well aware. In short, there are very few who can think, but

page 45 / 120
every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it

ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

Since this is what happens, where is the value of the opinion even of

a hundred millions? It is no more established than an historical

fact reported by a hundred chroniclers who can be proved to have

plagiarised it from one another; the opinion in the end being

traceable to a single individual.[1] It is all what I say, what you

say, and, finally, what he says; and the whole of it is nothing but a

series of assertions:

[Footnote 1: See Bayle's _Pensees sur les Cometes_, i., p. 10.]

_Dico ego, tu dicis, sed denique dixit et ille;

Dictaque post toties, nil nisi dicta vides_.

Nevertheless, in a dispute with ordinary people, we may employ

universal opinion as an authority. For it will generally be found that

when two of them are fighting, that is the weapon which both of them

choose as a means of attack. If a man of the better sort has to deal

with them, it is most advisable for him to condescend to the use

of this weapon too, and to select such authorities as will make an

impression on his opponent's weak side. For, _ex hypoihesi_, he is as

insensible to all rational argument as a horny-hided Siegfried, dipped

in the flood of incapacity, and unable to think or judge. Before

a tribunal the dispute is one between authorities alone,--such

page 46 / 120
authoritative statements, I mean, as are laid down by legal experts;

and here the exercise of judgment consists in discovering what law or

authority applies to the case in question. There is, however, plenty

of room for Dialectic; for should the case in question and the law not

really fit each other, they can, if necessary, be twisted until they

appear to do so, or _vice versa_.

XXXI.

If you know that you have no reply to the arguments which your

opponent advances, you may, by a fine stroke of irony, declare

yourself to be an incompetent judge: "What you now say passes my

poor powers of comprehension; it may be all very true, but I can't

understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it." In

this way you insinuate to the bystanders, with whom you are in good

repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense. Thus, when Kant's

_Kritik_ appeared, or, rather, when it began to make a noise in the

world, many professors of the old ecclectic school declared that they

failed to understand it, in the belief that their failure settled the

business. But when the adherents of the new school proved to them that

they were quite right, and had really failed to understand it, they

were in a very bad humour.

This is a trick which may be used only when you are quite sure that

the audience thinks much better of you that of your opponent. A

professor, for instance may try it on a student.

page 47 / 120
Strictly, it is a case of the preceding trick: it is a particularly

malicious assertion of one's own authority, instead of giving reasons.

The counter-trick is to say: "I beg your pardon; but, with your

penetrating intellect, it must be very easy for you to understand

anything; and it can only be my poor statement of the matter that is

at fault"; and then go on to rub it into him until he understands it

_nolens volens_, and sees for himself that it was really his own fault

alone. In this way you parry his attack. With the greatest politeness

he wanted to insinuate that you were talking nonsense; and you, with

equal courtesy, prove to him that he is a fool.

XXXII.

If you are confronted with an assertion, there is a short way of

getting rid of it, or, at any rate, of throwing suspicion on it, by

putting it into some odious category; even though the connection

is only apparent, or else of a loose character. You can say,

for instance, "That is Manichasism," or "It is Arianism," or

"Pelagianism," or "Idealism," or "Spinozism," or "Pantheism," or

"Brownianism," or "Naturalism," or "Atheism," or "Rationalism,"

"Spiritualism," "Mysticism," and so on. In making an objection of this

kind, you take it for granted (1) that the assertion in question is

identical with, or is at least contained in, the category cited--that

is to say, you cry out, "Oh, I have heard that before"; and (2) that

the system referred to has been entirely refuted, and does not contain

page 48 / 120
a word of truth.

XXXIII.

"That's all very well in theory, but it won't do in practice." In

this sophism you admit the premisses but deny the conclusion, in

contradiction with a well-known rule of logic. The assertion is

based upon an impossibility: what is right in theory _must_ work

in practice; and if it does not, there is a mistake in the theory;

something has been overlooked and not allowed for; and, consequently,

what is wrong in practice is wrong in theory too.

XXXIV.

When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you

no direct answer or reply, but evades it by a counter-question or an

indirect answer, or some assertion which has no bearing on the matter,

and, generally, tries to turn the subject, it is a sure sign that you

have touched a weak spot, sometimes without knowing it. You have, as

it were, reduced him to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point

all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not

know where the weakness which you have hit upon really lies.

XXXV.

page 49 / 120
There is another trick which, as soon as it is practicable, makes all

others unnecessary. Instead of working on your opponent's intellect by

argument, work on his will by motive; and he, and also the audience if

they have similar interests, will at once be won over to your opinion,

even though you got it out of a lunatic asylum; for, as a general

rule, half an ounce of will is more effective than a hundredweight of

insight and intelligence. This, it is true, can be done only under

peculiar circumstances. If you succeed in making your opponent feel

that his opinion, should it prove true, will be distinctly prejudicial

to his interest, he will let it drop like a hot potato, and feel that

it was very imprudent to take it up.

A clergyman, for instance, is defending some philosophical dogma; you

make him sensible of the fact that it is in immediate contradiction

with one of the fundamental doctrines of his Church, and he abandons

it.

A landed proprietor maintains that the use of machinery in

agricultural operations, as practised in England, is an excellent

institution, since an engine does the work of many men. You give him

to understand that it will not be very long before carriages are also

worked by steam, and that the value of his large stud will be greatly

depreciated; and you will see what he will say.

In such cases every man feels how thoughtless it is to sanction a law

unjust to himself--_quam temere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam_! Nor

page 50 / 120
is it otherwise if the bystanders, but not your opponent, belong to

the same sect, guild, industry, club, etc., as yourself. Let his

thesis be never so true, as soon as you hint that it is prejudicial to

the common interests of the said society, all the bystanders will find

that your opponent's arguments, however excellent they be, are weak

and contemptible; and that yours, on the other hand, though they were

random conjecture, are correct and to the point; you will have a

chorus of loud approval on your side, and your opponent will be driven

out of the field with ignominy. Nay, the bystanders will believe, as a

rule, that they have agreed with you out of pure conviction. For what

is not to our interest mostly seems absurd to us; our intellect being

no _siccum lumen_. This trick might be called "taking the tree by its

root"; its usual name is the _argumentum ab utili_.

XXXVI.

You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast; and

the trick is possible, because a man generally supposes that there

must be some meaning in words:

_Gewoehnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hoert,

Es muesse sich dabei doch auch was denken lassen_.

If he is secretly conscious of his own weakness, and accustomed to

hear much that he does not understand, and to make as though he did,

you can easily impose upon him by some serious fooling that sounds

page 51 / 120
very deep or learned, and deprives him of hearing, sight, and thought;

and by giving out that it is the most indisputable proof of what you

assert. It is a well-known fact that in recent times some philosophers

have practised this trick on the whole of the public with the most

brilliant success. But since present examples are odious, we may refer

to _The Vicar of Wakefield_ for an old one.

XXXVII.

Should your opponent be in the right, but, luckily for your

contention, choose a faulty proof, you can easily manage to refute it,

and then claim that you have thus refuted his whole position. This

is a trick which ought to be one of the first; it is, at bottom, an

expedient by which an _argumentum ad hominem_ is put forward as an

_argumentum ad rem_. If no accurate proof occurs to him or to the

bystanders, you have won the day. For example, if a man advances the

ontological argument by way of proving God's existence, you can get

the best of him, for the ontological argument may easily be refuted.

This is the way in which bad advocates lose a good case, by trying to

justify it by an authority which does not fit it, when no fitting one

occurs to them.

XXXVIII.

A last trick is to become personal, insulting, rude, as soon as you

perceive that your opponent has the upper hand, and that you are going

page 52 / 120
to come off worst. It consists in passing from the subject of dispute,

as from a lost game, to the disputant himself, and in some way

attacking his person. It may be called the _argumentum ad personam_,

to distinguish it from the _argumentum ad hominem_, which passes

from the objective discussion of the subject pure and simple to the

statements or admissions which your opponent has made in regard to it.

But in becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn

your attack to his person, by remarks of an offensive and spiteful

character. It is an appeal from the virtues of the intellect to the

virtues of the body, or to mere animalism. This is a very popular

trick, because every one is able to carry it into effect; and so it

is of frequent application. Now the question is, What counter-trick

avails for the other party? for if he has recourse to the same rule,

there will be blows, or a duel, or an action for slander.

It would be a great mistake to suppose that it is sufficient not to

become personal yourself. For by showing a man quite quietly that he

is wrong, and that what he says and thinks is incorrect--a process

which occurs in every dialectical victory--you embitter him more than

if you used some rude or insulting expression. Why is this? Because,

as Hobbes observes,[1] all mental pleasure consists in being able to

compare oneself with others to one's own advantage. Nothing is of

greater moment to a man than the gratification of his vanity, and no

wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it. Hence such

phrases as "Death before dishonour," and so on. The gratification of

vanity arises mainly by comparison of oneself with others, in every

respect, but chiefly in respect of one's intellectual powers; and so

page 53 / 120
the most effective and the strongest gratification of it is to be

found in controversy. Hence the embitterment of defeat, apart from any

question of injustice; and hence recourse to that last weapon,

that last trick, which you cannot evade by mere politeness. A cool

demeanour may, however, help you here, if, as soon as your opponent

becomes personal, you quietly reply, "That has no bearing on the point

in dispute," and immediately bring the conversation back to it, and

continue to show him that he is wrong, without taking any notice of

his insults. Say, as Themistocles said to Eurybiades--_Strike, but

hear me_. But such demeanour is not given to every one.

[Footnote 1: _Elementa philosophica de Cive_.]

As a sharpening of wits, controversy is often, indeed, of mutual

advantage, in order to correct one's thoughts and awaken new views.

But in learning and in mental power both disputants must be tolerably

equal. If one of them lacks learning, he will fail to understand the

other, as he is not on the same level with his antagonist. If he lacks

mental power, he will be embittered, and led into dishonest tricks,

and end by being rude.

The only safe rule, therefore, is that which Aristotle mentions in the

last chapter of his _Topica_: not to dispute with the first person you

meet, but only with those of your acquaintance of whom you know that

they possess sufficient intelligence and self-respect not to advance

absurdities; to appeal to reason and not to authority, and to listen

page 54 / 120
to reason and yield to it; and, finally, to cherish truth, to be

willing to accept reason even from an opponent, and to be just enough

to bear being proved to be in the wrong, should truth lie with him.

From this it follows that scarcely one man in a hundred is worth your

disputing with him. You may let the remainder say what they please,

for every one is at liberty to be a fool--_desipere est jus gentium_.

Remember what Voltaire says: _La paix vaut encore mieux que la

verite_. Remember also an Arabian proverb which tells us that _on the

tree of silence there hangs its fruit, which is peace_.

ON THE COMPARATIVE PLACE OF INTEREST AND BEAUTY IN WORKS OF ART.

In the productions of poetic genius, especially of the epic and

dramatic kind, there is, apart from Beauty, another quality which is

attractive: I mean Interest.

The beauty of a work of art consists in the fact that it holds up a

clear mirror to certain _ideas_ inherent in the world in general; the

beauty of a work of poetic art in particular is that it renders the

ideas inherent in mankind, and thereby leads it to a knowledge

of these ideas. The means which poetry uses for this end are

the exhibition of significant characters and the invention of

circumstances which will bring about significant situations, giving

occasion to the characters to unfold their peculiarities and show what

is in them; so that by some such representation a clearer and fuller

knowledge of the many-sided idea of humanity may be attained. Beauty,

page 55 / 120
however, in its general aspect, is the inseparable characteristic

of the idea when it has become known. In other words, everything is

beautiful in which an idea is revealed; for to be beautiful means no

more than clearly to express an idea.

Thus we perceive that beauty is always an affair of _knowledge_, and

that it appeals to _the knowing subject_, and not to _the will_;

nay, it is a fact that the apprehension of beauty on the part of the

subject involves a complete suppression of the will.

On the other hand, we call drama or descriptive poetry interesting

when it represents events and actions of a kind which necessarily

arouse concern or sympathy, like that which we feel in real events

involving our own person. The fate of the person represented in them

is felt in just the same fashion as our own: we await the development

of events with anxiety; we eagerly follow their course; our hearts

quicken when the hero is threatened; our pulse falters as the danger

reaches its acme, and throbs again when he is suddenly rescued. Until

we reach the end of the story we cannot put the book aside; we lie

away far into the night sympathising with our hero's troubles as

though they were our own. Nay, instead of finding pleasure and

recreation in such representations, we should feel all the pain which

real life often inflicts upon us, or at least the kind which pursues

us in our uneasy dreams, if in the act of reading or looking at the

stage we had not the firm ground of reality always beneath our feet.

As it is, in the stress of a too violent feeling, we can find relief

from the illusion of the moment, and then give way to it again at

page 56 / 120
will. Moreover, we can gain this relief without any such violent

transition as occurs in a dream, when we rid ourselves of its terrors

only by the act of awaking.

It is obvious that what is affected by poetry of this character is our

_will_, and not merely our intellectual powers pure and simple. The

word _interest_ means, therefore, that which arouses the concern of

the individual will, _quod nostra interest_; and here it is that

beauty is clearly distinguished from interest. The one is an affair

of the intellect, and that, too, of the purest and simplest kind. The

other works upon the will. Beauty, then, consists in an apprehension

of ideas; and knowledge of this character is beyond the range of the

principle that nothing happens without a cause. Interest, on the other

hand, has its origin nowhere but in the course of events; that is to

say, in the complexities which are possible only through the action of

this principle in its different forms.

We have now obtained a clear conception of the essential difference

between the beauty and the interest of a work of art. We have

recognised that beauty is the true end of every art, and therefore,

also, of the poetic art. It now remains to raise the question whether

the interest of a work of art is a second end, or a means to the

exhibition of its beauty; or whether the interest of it is produced by

its beauty as an essential concomitant, and comes of itself as soon as

it is beautiful; or whether interest is at any rate compatible with

the main end of art; or, finally, whether it is a hindrance to it.

page 57 / 120
In the first place, it is to be observed that the interest of a work

of art is confined to works of poetic art. It does not exist in the

case of fine art, or of music or architecture. Nay, with these forms

of art it is not even conceivable, unless, indeed, the interest be of

an entirely personal character, and confined to one or two spectators;

as, for example, where a picture is a portrait of some one whom we

love or hate; the building, my house or my prison; the music, my

wedding dance, or the tune to which I marched to the war. Interest of

this kind is clearly quite foreign to the essence and purpose of art;

it disturbs our judgment in so far as it makes the purely artistic

attitude impossible. It may be, indeed, that to a smaller extent this

is true of all interest.

Now, since the interest of a work of art lies in the fact that we

have the same kind of sympathy with a poetic representation as with

reality, it is obvious that the representation must deceive us for the

moment; and this it can do only by its truth. But truth is an element

in perfect art. A picture, a poem, should be as true as nature itself;

but at the same time it should lay stress on whatever forms the

unique character of its subject by drawing out all its essential

manifestations, and by rejecting everything that is unessential and

accidental. The picture or the poem will thus emphasize its _idea_,

and give us that _ideal truth_ which is superior to nature.

_Truth_, then, forms the point that is common both to interest and

beauty in a work of art, as it is its truth which produces the

page 58 / 120
illusion. The fact that the truth of which I speak is _ideal truth_

might, indeed, be detrimental to the illusion, since it is just here

that we have the general difference between poetry and reality, art

and nature. But since it is possible for reality to coincide with

the ideal, it is not actually necessary that this difference should

destroy the illusion. In the case of fine arts there is, in the range

of the means which art adopts, a certain limit, and beyond it illusion

is impossible. Sculpture, that is to say, gives us mere colourless

form; its figures are without eyes and without movement; and painting

provides us with no more than a single view, enclosed within strict

limits, which separate the picture from the adjacent reality. Here,

then, there is no room for illusion, and consequently none for that

interest or sympathy which resembles the interest we have in reality;

the will is at once excluded, and the object alone is presented to us

in a manner that frees it from any personal concern.

It is a highly remarkable fact that a spurious kind of fine art

oversteps these limits, produces an illusion of reality, and arouses

our interest; but at the same time it destroys the effect which fine

art produces, and serves as nothing but a mere means of exhibiting the

beautiful, that is, of communicating a knowledge of the ideas which it

embodies. I refer to _waxwork_. Here, we might say, is the dividing

line which separates it from the province of fine art. When waxwork is

properly executed, it produces a perfect illusion; but for that very

reason we approach a wax figure as we approach a real man, who, as

such, is for the moment an object presented to our will. That is

to say, he is an object of interest; he arouses the will, and

page 59 / 120
consequently stills the intellect. We come up to a wax figure with the

same reserve and caution as a real man would inspire in us: our will

is excited; it waits to see whether he is going to be friendly to us,

or the reverse, fly from us, or attack us; in a word, it expects some

action of him. But as the figure, nevertheless, shows no sign of life,

it produces the impression which is so very disagreeable, namely, of

a corpse. This is a case where the interest is of the most complete

kind, and yet where there is no work of art at all. In other words,

interest is not in itself a real end of art.

The same truth is illustrated by the fact that even in poetry it is

only the dramatic and descriptive kind to which interest attaches; for

if interest were, with beauty, the aim of art, poetry of the lyrical

kind would, for that very reason, not take half so great a position as

the other two.

In the second place, if interest were a means in the production of

beauty, every interesting work would also be beautiful. That, however,

is by no means the case. A drama or a novel may often attract us by

its interest, and yet be so utterly deficient in any kind of beauty

that we are afterwards ashamed of having wasted our time on it. This

applies to many a drama which gives no true picture of the real life

of man; which contains characters very superficially drawn, or so

distorted as to be actual monstrosities, such as are not to be found

in nature; but the course of events and the play of the action are so

intricate, and we feel so much for the hero in the situation in which

he is placed, that we are not content until we see the knot untangled

page 60 / 120
and the hero rescued. The action is so cleverly governed and guided in

its course that we remain in a state of constant curiosity as to what

is going to happen, and we are utterly unable to form a guess; so that

between eagerness and surprise our interest is kept active; and as we

are pleasantly entertained, we do not notice the lapse of time. Most

of Kotzebue's plays are of this character. For the mob this is the

right thing: it looks for amusement, something to pass the time, not

for intellectual perception. Beauty is an affair of such perception;

hence sensibility to beauty varies as much as the intellectual

faculties themselves. For the inner truth of a representation, and its

correspondence with the real nature of humanity, the mob has no sense

at all. What is flat and superficial it can grasp, but the depths of

human nature are opened to it in vain.

It is also to be observed that dramatic representations which depend

for their value on their interest lose by repetition, because they are

no longer able to arouse curiosity as to their course, since it is

already known. To see them often, makes them stale and tedious. On

the other hand, works of which the value lies in their beauty gain by

repetition, as they are then more and more understood.

Most novels are on the same footing as dramatic representations of

this character. They are creatures of the same sort of imagination as

we see in the story-teller of Venice and Naples, who lays a hat on the

ground and waits until an audience is assembled. Then he spins a tale

which so captivates his hearers that, when he gets to the catastrophe,

he makes a round of the crowd, hat in hand, for contributions, without

page 61 / 120
the least fear that his hearers will slip away. Similar story-tellers

ply their trade in this country, though in a less direct fashion. They

do it through the agency of publishers and circulating libraries. Thus

they can avoid going about in rags, like their colleagues elsewhere;

they can offer the children of their imagination to the public under

the title of novels, short stories, romantic poems, fairy tales, and

so on; and the public, in a dressing-gown by the fireside, sits down

more at its ease, but also with a greater amount of patience, to the

enjoyment of the interest which they provide.

How very little aesthetic value there generally is in productions of

this sort is well known; and yet it cannot be denied that many of them

are interesting; or else how could they be so popular?

We see, then, in reply to our second question, that interest does not

necessarily involve beauty; and, conversely, it is true that beauty

does not necessarily involve interest. Significant characters may be

represented, that open up the depths of human nature, and it may all

be expressed in actions and sufferings of an exceptional kind, so

that the real nature of humanity and the world may stand forth in

the picture in the clearest and most forcible lines; and yet no high

degree of interest may be excited in the course of events by the

continued progress of the action, or by the complexity and unexpected

solution of the plot. The immortal masterpieces of Shakespeare contain

little that excites interest; the action does not go forward in one

straight line, but falters, as in _Hamlet_, all through the play;

or else it spreads out in breadth, as in _The Merchant of Venice_,

page 62 / 120
whereas length is the proper dimension of interest; or the scenes hang

loosely together, as in _Henry IV_. Thus it is that Shakespeare's

dramas produce no appreciable effect on the mob.

The dramatic requirement stated by Aristotle, and more particularly

the unity of action, have in view the interest of the piece rather

than its artistic beauty. It may be said, generally, that these

requirements are drawn up in accordance with the principle of

sufficient reason to which I have referred above. We know, however,

that the _idea_, and, consequently, the beauty of a work of art, exist

only for the perceptive intelligence which has freed itself from

the domination of that principle. It is just here that we find the

distinction between interest and beauty; as it is obvious that

interest is part and parcel of the mental attitude which is governed

by the principle, whereas beauty is always beyond its range. The best

and most striking refutation of the Aristotelian unities is Manzoni's.

It may be found in the preface to his dramas.

What is true of Shakespeare's dramatic works is true also of Goethe's.

Even _Egmont_ makes little effect on the public, because it contains

scarcely any complication or development; and if _Egmont_ fails, what

are we to say of _Tasso_ or _Iphigenia_? That the Greek tragedians did

not look to interest as a means of working upon the public, is clear

from the fact that the material of their masterpieces was almost

always known to every one: they selected events which had often been

treated dramatically before. This shows us how sensitive was the

Greek public to the beautiful, as it did not require the interest of

page 63 / 120
unexpected events and new stories to season its enjoyment.

Neither does the quality of interest often attach to masterpieces of

descriptive poetry. Father Homer lays the world and humanity before us

in its true nature, but he takes no trouble to attract our sympathy

by a complexity of circumstance, or to surprise us by unexpected

entanglements. His pace is lingering; he stops at every scene; he puts

one picture after another tranquilly before us, elaborating it

with care. We experience no passionate emotion in reading him; our

demeanour is one of pure perceptive intelligence; he does not arouse

our will, but sings it to rest; and it costs us no effort to break off

in our reading, for we are not in condition of eager curiosity. This

is all still more true of Dante, whose work is not, in the proper

sense of the word, an epic, but a descriptive poem. The same thing may

be said of the four immortal romances: _Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy,

La Nouvelle Heloise_, and _Wilhelm Meister_. To arouse our interest

is by no means the chief aim of these works; in _Tristram Shandy_ the

hero, even at the end of the book, is only eight years of age.

On the other hand, we must not venture to assert that the quality of

interest is not to be found in masterpieces of literature. We have it

in Schiller's dramas in an appreciable degree, and consequently

they are popular; also in the _Oedipus Rex_ of Sophocles. Amongst

masterpieces of description, we find it in Ariosto's _Orlando

Furioso_; nay, an example of a high degree of interest, bound up with

the beautiful, is afforded in an excellent novel by Walter Scott--_The

Heart of Midlothian_. This is the most interesting work of fiction

page 64 / 120
that I know, where all the effects due to interest, as I have given

them generally in the preceding remarks, may be most clearly observed.

At the same time it is a very beautiful romance throughout; it shows

the most varied pictures of life, drawn with striking truth; and it

exhibits highly different characters with great justice and fidelity.

Interest, then, is certainly compatible with beauty. That was our

third question. Nevertheless, a comparatively small admixture of the

element of interest may well be found to be most advantageous as far

as beauty is concerned; for beauty is and remains the end of art.

Beauty is in twofold opposition with interest; firstly, because it

lies in the perception of the idea, and such perception takes its

object entirely out of the range of the forms enunciated by the

principle of sufficient reason; whereas interest has its sphere mainly

in circumstance, and it is out of this principle that the complexity

of circumstance arises. Secondly, interest works by exciting the will;

whereas beauty exists only for the pure perceptive intelligence, which

has no will. However, with dramatic and descriptive literature an

admixture of interest is necessary, just as a volatile and gaseous

substance requires a material basis if it is to be preserved and

transferred. The admixture is necessary, partly, indeed, because

interest is itself created by the events which have to be devised in

order to set the characters in motion; partly because our minds would

be weary of watching scene after scene if they had no concern for us,

or of passing from one significant picture to another if we were not

drawn on by some secret thread. It is this that we call interest;

it is the sympathy which the event in itself forces us to feel, and

page 65 / 120
which, by riveting our attention, makes the mind obedient to the poet,

and able to follow him into all the parts of his story.

If the interest of a work of art is sufficient to achieve this result,

it does all that can be required of it; for its only service is to

connect the pictures by which the poet desires to communicate a

knowledge of the idea, as if they were pearls, and interest were the

thread that holds them together, and makes an ornament out of the

whole. But interest is prejudicial to beauty as soon as it oversteps

this limit; and this is the case if we are so led away by the interest

of a work that whenever we come to any detailed description in a

novel, or any lengthy reflection on the part of a character in a

drama, we grow impatient and want to put spurs to our author, so that

we may follow the development of events with greater speed. Epic and

dramatic writings, where beauty and interest are both present in a

high degree, may be compared to the working of a watch, where interest

is the spring which keeps all the wheels in motion. If it worked

unhindered, the watch would run down in a few minutes. Beauty, holding

us in the spell of description and reflection, is like the barrel

which checks its movement.

Or we may say that interest is the body of a poetic work, and beauty

the soul. In the epic and the drama, interest, as a necessary quality

of the action, is the matter; and beauty, the form that requires the

matter in order to be visible.

page 66 / 120
PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS.

In the moment when a great affliction overtakes us, we are hurt to

find that the world about us is unconcerned and goes its own way. As

Goethe says in _Tasso_, how easily it leaves us helpless and alone,

and continues its course like the sun and the moon and the other gods:

_... die Welt, wie sie so leicht,

Uns huelflos, einsam laesst, und ihren Weg,

Wie Sonn' und Mond und andre Goetter geht_.

Nay more! it is something intolerable that even we ourselves have

to go on with the mechanical round of our daily business, and that

thousands of our own actions are and must be unaffected by the pain

that throbs within us. And so, to restore the harmony between our

outward doings and our inward feelings, we storm and shout, and tear

our hair, and stamp with pain or rage.

Our temperament is so _despotic_ that we are not satisfied unless

we draw everything into our own life, and force all the world to

sympathise with us. The only way of achieving this would be to win the

love of others, so that the afflictions which oppress our own hearts

might oppress theirs as well. Since that is attended with some

difficulty, we often choose the shorter way, and blab out our burden

of woe to people who do not care, and listen with curiosity, but

without sympathy, and much oftener with satisfaction.

page 67 / 120
Speech and the communication of thought, which, in their mutual

relations, are always attended by a slight impulse on the part of the

will, are almost a physical necessity. Sometimes, however, the lower

animals entertain me much more than the average man. For, in the first

place, what can such a man say? It is only conceptions, that is, the

driest of ideas, that can be communicated by means of words; and what

sort of conceptions has the average man to communicate, if he does

not merely tell a story or give a report, neither of which makes

conversation? The greatest charm of conversation is the mimetic part

of it,--the character that is manifested, be it never so little. Take

the best of men; how little he can _say_ of what goes on within

him, since it is only conceptions that are communicable; and yet a

conversation with a clever man is one of the greatest of pleasures.

It is not only that ordinary men have little to say, but what

intellect they have puts them in the way of concealing and distorting

it; and it is the necessity of practising this concealment that gives

them such a pitiable character; so that what they exhibit is not even

the little that they have, but a mask and disguise. The lower animals,

which have no reason, can conceal nothing; they are altogether

_naive_, and therefore very entertaining, if we have only an eye for

the kind of communications which they make. They speak not with words,

but with shape and structure, and manner of life, and the things they

set about; they express themselves, to an intelligent observer, in a

very pleasing and entertaining fashion. It is a varied life that is

presented to him, and one that in its manifestation is very different

page 68 / 120
from his own; and yet essentially it is the same. He sees it in its

simple form, when reflection is excluded; for with the lower animals

life is lived wholly in and for the present moment: it is the present

that the animal grasps; it has no care, or at least no conscious care,

for the morrow, and no fear of death; and so it is wholly taken up

with life and living.

*****

The conversation among ordinary people, when it does not relate to any

special matter of fact, but takes a more general character, mostly

consists in hackneyed commonplaces, which they alternately repeat to

each other with the utmost complacency.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--This observation is in

Schopenhauer's own English.]

*****

Some men can despise any blessing as soon as they cease to possess

it; others only when they have obtained it. The latter are the more

unhappy, and the nobler, of the two.

*****

page 69 / 120
When the aching heart grieves no more over any particular object,

but is oppressed by life as a whole, it withdraws, as it were, into

itself. There is here a retreat and gradual extinction of the will,

whereby the body, which is the manifestation of the will, is slowly

but surely undermined; and the individual experiences a steady

dissolution of his bonds,--a quiet presentiment of death. Hence the

heart which aches has a secret joy of its own; and it is this, I

fancy, which the English call "the joy of grief."

The pain that extends to life as a whole, and loosens our hold on

it, is the only pain that is really _tragic_. That which attaches to

particular objects is a will that is broken, but not resigned; it

exhibits the struggle and inner contradiction of the will and of life

itself; and it is comic, be it never so violent. It is like the pain

of the miser at the loss of his hoard. Even though pain of the tragic

kind proceeds from a single definite object, it does not remain there;

it takes the separate affliction only as a _symbol_ of life as a

whole, and transfers it thither.

*****

_Vexation_ is the attitude of the individual as intelligence towards

the check imposed upon a strong manifestation of the individual as

will. There are two ways of avoiding it: either by repressing the

violence of the will--in other words, by virtue; or by keeping

page 70 / 120
the intelligence from dwelling upon the check--in other words, by

Stoicism.

*****

To win the favour of a very beautiful woman by one's personality alone

is perhaps a greater satisfaction to one's vanity than to anything

else; for it is an assurance that one's personality is an equivalent

for the person that is treasured and desired and defied above all

others. Hence it is that despised love is so great a pang, especially

when it is associated with well-founded jealousy.

With this joy and this pain, it is probable that vanity is more

largely concerned than the senses, because it is only the things

of the mind, and not mere sensuality, that produce such violent

convulsions. The lower animals are familiar with lust, but not with

the passionate pleasures and pains of love.

*****

To be suddenly placed in a strange town or country where the manner of

life, possibly even the language, is very different from our own, is,

at the first moment, like stepping into cold water. We are brought

into sudden contact with a new temperature, and we feel a powerful and

superior influence from without which affects us uncomfortably. We

page 71 / 120
find ourselves in a strange element, where we cannot move with ease;

and, over and above that, we have the feeling that while everything

strikes us as strange, we ourselves strike others in the same way.

But as soon as we are a little composed and reconciled to our

surroundings, as soon as we have appropriated some of its temperature,

we feel an extraordinary sense of satisfaction, as in bathing in cool

water; we assimilate ourselves to the new element, and cease to have

any necessary pre-occupation with our person. We devote our attention

undisturbed to our environment, to which we now feel ourselves

superior by being able to view it in an objective and disinterested

fashion, instead of being oppressed by it, as before.

*****

When we are on a journey, and all kinds of remarkable objects press

themselves on our attention, the intellectual food which we receive is

often so large in amount that we have no time for digestion; and we

regret that the impressions which succeed one another so quickly leave

no permanent trace. But at bottom it is the same with travelling as

with reading. How often do we complain that we cannot remember one

thousandth part of what we read! In both cases, however, we may

console ourselves with the reflection that the things we see and read

make an impression on the mind before they are forgotten, and so

contribute to its formation and nurture; while that which we only

remember does no more than stuff it and puff it out, filling up its

hollows with matter that will always be strange to it, and leaving it

in itself a blank.

page 72 / 120
*****

It is the very many and varied forms in which human life is presented

to us on our travels that make them entertaining. But we never see

more than its outside, such as is everywhere open to public view and

accessible to strangers. On the other hand, human life on its

inside, the heart and centre, where it lives and moves and shows its

character, and in particular that part of the inner side which could

be seen at home amongst our relatives, is not seen; we have exchanged

it for the outer side. This is why on our travels we see the world

like a painted landscape, with a very wide horizon, but no foreground;

and why, in time, we get tired of it.

*****

One man is more concerned with the impression which he makes upon

the rest of mankind; another, with the impression which the rest of

mankind makes upon him. The disposition of the one is subjective; of

the other, objective; the one is, in the whole of his existence, more

in the nature of an idea which is merely presented; the other, more of

the being who presents it.

*****

page 73 / 120
A woman (with certain exceptions which need not be mentioned) will not

take the first step with a man; for in spite of all the beauty she may

have, she risks a refusal. A man may be ill in mind or body, or busy,

or gloomy, and so not care for advances; and a refusal would be a blow

to her vanity. But as soon as he takes the first step, and helps her

over this danger, he stands on a footing of equality with her, and

will generally find her quite tractable.

*****

The praise with which many men speak of their wives is really given

to their own judgment in selecting them. This arises, perhaps, from a

feeling of the truth of the saying, that a man shows what he is by the

way in which he dies, and by the choice of his wife.

*****

If education or warning were of any avail, how could Seneca's pupil be

a Nero?

*****

The Pythagorean[1] principle that _like is known only by like_ is

in many respects a true one. It explains how it is that every man

page 74 / 120
understands his fellow only in so far as he resembles him, or, at

least, is of a similar character. What one man is quite sure of

perceiving in another is that which is common to all, namely, the

vulgar, petty or mean elements of our nature; here every man has a

perfect understanding of his fellows; but the advantage which one man

has over another does not exist for the other, who, be the talents in

question as extraordinary as they may, will never see anything beyond

what he possesses himself, for the very good reason that this is all

he wants to see. If there is anything on which he is in doubt, it will

give him a vague sense of fear, mixed with pique; because it passes

his comprehension, and therefore is uncongenial to him.

[Footnote 1: See Porphyry, _de Vita Pythagorae_.]

This is why it is mind alone that understands mind; why works of

genius are wholly understood and valued only by a man of genius, and

why it must necessarily be a long time before they indirectly attract

attention at the hands of the crowd, for whom they will never, in any

true sense, exist. This, too, is why one man will look another in the

face, with the impudent assurance that he will never see anything but

a miserable resemblance of himself; and this is just what he will see,

as he cannot grasp anything beyond it. Hence the bold way in which one

man will contradict another. Finally, it is for the same reason that

great superiority of mind isolates a man, and that those of high gifts

keep themselves aloof from the vulgar (and that means every one); for

if they mingle with the crowd, they can communicate only such parts of

them as they share with the crowd, and so make themselves _common_.

page 75 / 120
Nay, even though they possess some well-founded and authoritative

reputation amongst the crowd, they are not long in losing it, together

with any personal weight it may give them, since all are blind to the

qualities on which it is based, but have their eyes open to anything

that is vulgar and common to themselves. They soon discover the truth

of the Arabian proverb: _Joke with a slave, and he'll show you his

heels_.

It also follows that a man of high gifts, in his intercourse with

others, must always reflect that the best part of him is out of sight

in the clouds; so that if he desires to know accurately how much he

can be to any one else, he has only to consider how much the man in

question is to him. This, as a rule, is precious little; and therefore

he is as uncongenial to the other, as the other to him.

*****

Goethe says somewhere that man is not without a vein of veneration. To

satisfy this impulse to venerate, even in those who have no sense

for what is really worthy, substitutes are provided in the shape of

princes and princely families, nobles, titles, orders, and money-bags.

*****

Vague longing and boredom are close akin.

page 76 / 120
*****

When a man is dead, we envy him no more; and we only half envy him

when he is old.

*****

Misanthropy and love of solitude are convertible ideas.

*****

In chess, the object of the game, namely, to checkmate one's opponent,

is of arbitrary adoption; of the possible means of attaining it, there

is a great number; and according as we make a prudent use of them, we

arrive at our goal. We enter on the game of our own choice.

Nor is it otherwise with human life, only that here the entrance is

not of our choosing, but is forced on us; and the object, which is to

live and exist, seems, indeed, at times as though it were of arbitrary

adoption, and that we could, if necessary, relinquish it. Nevertheless

it is, in the strict sense of the word, a natural object; that is to

say, we cannot relinquish it without giving up existence itself. If we

regard our existence as the work of some arbitrary power outside us,

page 77 / 120
we must, indeed, admire the cunning by which that creative mind has

succeeded in making us place so much value on an object which is only

momentary and must of necessity be laid aside very soon, and which we

see, moreover, on reflection, to be altogether vanity--in making, I

say, this object so dear to us that we eagerly exert all our strength

in working at it; although we knew that as soon as the game is over,

the object will exist for us no longer, and that, on the whole, we

cannot say what it is that makes it so attractive. Nay, it seems to be

an object as arbitrarily adopted as that of checkmating our opponent's

king; and, nevertheless, we are always intent on the means of

attaining it, and think and brood over nothing else. It is clear that

the reason of it is that our intellect is only capable of looking

outside, and has no power at all of looking within; and, since this is

so, we have come to the conclusion that we must make the best of it.

ON THE WISDOM OF LIFE: APHORISMS.

The simple Philistine believes that life is something infinite and

unconditioned, and tries to look upon it and live it as though it left

nothing to be desired. By method and principle the learned Philistine

does the same: he believes that his methods and his principles are

unconditionally perfect and objectively valid; so that as soon as he

has found them, he has nothing to do but apply them to circumstances,

and then approve or condemn. But happiness and truth are not to be

seized in this fashion. It is phantoms of them alone that are sent to

us here, to stir us to action; the average man pursues the shadow of

happiness with unwearied labour; and the thinker, the shadow of truth;

page 78 / 120
and both, though phantoms are all they have, possess in them as much

as they can grasp. Life is a language in which certain truths are

conveyed to us; could we learn them in some other way, we should not

live. Thus it is that wise sayings and prudential maxims will never

make up for the lack of experience, or be a substitute for life

itself. Still they are not to be despised; for they, too, are a part

of life; nay, they should be highly esteemed and regarded as the

loose pages which others have copied from the book of truth as it is

imparted by the spirit of the world. But they are pages which must

needs be imperfect, and can never replace the real living voice. Still

less can this be so when we reflect that life, or the book of truth,

speaks differently to us all; like the apostles who preached at

Pentecost, and instructed the multitude, appearing to each man to

speak in his own tongue.

*****

Recognise the truth in yourself, recognise yourself in the truth; and

in the same moment you will find, to your astonishment, that the home

which you have long been looking for in vain, which has filled your

most ardent dreams, is there in its entirety, with every detail of it

true, in the very place where you stand. It is there that your heaven

touches your earth.

*****

page 79 / 120
What makes us almost inevitably ridiculous is our serious way of

treating the passing moment, as though it necessarily had all the

importance which it seems to have. It is only a few great minds that

are above this weakness, and, instead of being laughed at, have come

to laugh themselves.

*****

The bright and good moments of our life ought to teach us how to act

aright when we are melancholy and dull and stupid, by preserving the

memory of their results; and the melancholy, dull, and stupid moments

should teach us to be modest when we are bright. For we generally

value ourselves according to our best and brightest moments; and those

in which we are weak and dull and miserable, we regard as no proper

part of us. To remember them will teach us to be modest, humble, and

tolerant.

Mark my words once for all, my dear friend, and be clever. Men are

entirely self-centred, and incapable of looking at things objectively.

If you had a dog and wanted to make him fond of you, and fancied that

of your hundred rare and excellent characteristics the mongrel would

be sure to perceive one, and that that would be sufficient to make him

devoted to you body and soul--if, I say, you fancied that, you would

be a fool. Pat him, give him something to eat; and for the rest, be

what you please: he will not in the least care, but will be your

faithful and devoted dog. Now, believe me, it is just the same with

page 80 / 120
men--exactly the same. As Goethe says, man or dog, it is a miserable

wretch:

_Denn ein erbaermlicher Schuft, so wie der Mensch, ist der hund_.

If you ask why these contemptible fellows are so lucky, it is just

because, in themselves and for themselves and to themselves, they are

nothing at all. The value which they possess is merely comparative;

they exist only for others; they are never more than means; they are

never an end and object in themselves; they are mere bait, set to

catch others.[1] I do not admit that this rule is susceptible of any

exception, that is to say, complete exceptions. There are, it is true,

men--though they are sufficiently rare--who enjoy some subjective

moments; nay, there are perhaps some who for every hundred subjective

moments enjoy a few that are objective; but a higher state of

perfection scarcely ever occurs. But do not take yourself for an

exception: examine your love, your friendship, and consider if your

objective judgments are not mostly subjective judgments in disguise;

consider if you duly recognise the good qualities of a man who is not

fond of you. Then be tolerant: confound it! it's your duty. As you are

all so self-centred, recognise your own weakness. You know that you

cannot like a man who does not show himself friendly to you; you know

that he cannot do so for any length of time unless he likes you, and

that he cannot like you unless you show that you are friendly to him;

then do it: your false friendliness will gradually become a true one.

Your own weakness and subjectivity must have some illusion.

page 81 / 120
[Footnote 1: All this is very euphemistically expressed in the

Sophoclean verse:

(Greek: _charis charin gar estin ha tiktous aei_)]

This is really an _a priori_ justification of politeness; but I could

give a still deeper reason for it.

*****

Consider that chance, which, with error, its brother, and folly, its

aunt, and malice, its grandmother, rules in this world; which every

year and every day, by blows great and small, embitters the life of

every son of earth, and yours too; consider, I say, that it is to this

wicked power that you owe your prosperity and independence; for it

gave you what it refused to many thousands, just to be able to give it

to individuals like you. Remembering all this, you will not behave as

though you had a right to the possession of its gifts; but you will

perceive what a capricious mistress it is that gives you her favours;

and therefore when she takes it into her head to deprive you of some

or all of them, you will not make a great fuss about her injustice;

but you will recognise that what chance gave, chance has taken

away; if needs be, you will observe that this power is not quite so

favourable to you as she seemed to be hitherto. Why, she might have

disposed not only of what she gave you, but also of your honest and

page 82 / 120
hard-earned gains.

But if chance still remains so favourable to you as to give you more

than almost all others whose path in life you may care to examine, oh!

be happy; do not struggle for the possession of her presents; employ

them properly; look upon them as property held from a capricious lord;

use them wisely and well.

*****

The Aristotelian principle of keeping the mean in all things is ill

suited to the moral law for which it was intended; but it may easily

be the best general rule of worldly wisdom, the best precept for a

happy life. For life is so full of uncertainty; there are on all sides

so many discomforts, burdens, sufferings, dangers, that a safe and

happy voyage can be accomplished only by steering carefully through

the rocks. As a rule, the fear of the ills we know drive us into the

contrary ills; the pain of solitude, for example, drives us into

society, and the first society that comes; the discomforts of society

drive us into solitude; we exchange a forbidding demeanour for

incautious confidence and so on. It is ever the mark of folly to avoid

one vice by rushing into its contrary:

_Stulti dum vitant vitia in contraria currunt_.

page 83 / 120
Or else we think that we shall find satisfaction in something, and

spend all our efforts on it; and thereby we omit to provide for the

satisfaction of a hundred other wishes which make themselves felt at

their own time. One loss and omission follows another, and there is no

end to the misery.

[Greek: Maeden agan] and _nil admirari_ are, therefore, excellent

rules of worldly wisdom.

*****

We often find that people of great experience are the most frank and

cordial in their intercourse with complete strangers, in whom

they have no interest whatever. The reason of this is that men of

experience know that it is almost impossible for people who stand in

any sort of mutual relation to be sincere and open with one another;

but that there is always more or less of a strain between them, due

to the fact that they are looking after their own interests, whether

immediate or remote. They regret the fact, but they know that it

is so; hence they leave their own people, rush into the arms of a

complete stranger, and in happy confidence open their hearts to him.

Thus it is that monks and the like, who have given up the world and

are strangers to it, are such good people to turn to for advice.

*****

page 84 / 120
It is only by practising mutual restraint and self-denial that we can

act and talk with other people; and, therefore, if we have to converse

at all, it can only be with a feeling of resignation. For if we seek

society, it is because we want fresh impressions: these come from

without, and are therefore foreign to ourselves. If a man fails to

perceive this, and, when he seeks the society of others, is unwilling

to practise resignation, and absolutely refuses to deny himself, nay,

demands that others, who are altogether different from himself,

shall nevertheless be just what he wants them to be for the moment,

according to the degree of education which he has reached, or

according to his intellectual powers or his mood--the man, I say, who

does this, is in contradiction with himself. For while he wants some

one who shall be different from himself, and wants him just because

he is different, for the sake of society and fresh influence, he

nevertheless demands that this other individual shall precisely

resemble the imaginary creature who accords with his mood, and have no

thoughts but those which he has himself.

Women are very liable to subjectivity of this kind; but men are not

free from it either.

I observed once to Goethe, in complaining of the illusion and vanity

of life, that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him

as when he is away. He replied: "Yes! because the absent friend is

yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is

present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws

page 85 / 120
of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you

form for yourself."

*****

A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing

for the journey of life. It is a supply which we shall have to extract

from disappointed hopes; and the sooner we do it, the better for the

rest of the journey.

*****

How should a man be content so long as he fails to obtain complete

unity in his inmost being? For as long as two voices alternately speak

in him, what is right for one must be wrong for the other. Thus he is

always complaining. But has any man ever been completely at one with

himself? Nay, is not the very thought a contradiction?

That a man shall attain this inner unity is the impossible and

inconsistent pretension put forward by almost all philosophers.[1] For

as a man it is natural to him to be at war with himself as long as

he lives. While he can be only one thing thoroughly, he has the

disposition to be everything else, and the inalienable possibility

of being it. If he has made his choice of one thing, all the other

possibilities are always open to him, and are constantly claiming to

page 86 / 120
be realised; and he has therefore to be continuously keeping them

back, and to be overpowering and killing them as long as he wants to

be that one thing. For example, if he wants to think only, and not

act and do business, the disposition to the latter is not thereby

destroyed all at once; but as long as the thinker lives, he has every

hour to keep on killing the acting and pushing man that is within him;

always battling with himself, as though he were a monster whose head

is no sooner struck off than it grows again. In the same way, if he is

resolved to be a saint, he must kill himself so far as he is a being

that enjoys and is given over to pleasure; for such he remains as long

as he lives. It is not once for all that he must kill himself: he

must keep on doing it all his life. If he has resolved upon pleasure,

whatever be the way in which it is to be obtained, his lifelong

struggle is with a being that desires to be pure and free and holy;

for the disposition remains, and he has to kill it every hour. And so

on in everything, with infinite modifications; it is now one side of

him, and now the other, that conquers; he himself is the battlefield.

If one side of him is continually conquering, the other is continually

struggling; for its life is bound up with his own, and, as a man, he

is the possibility of many contradictions.

[Footnote 1: _Audacter licet profitearis, summum bonum esse animi

concordian_.--Seneca.]

How is inner unity even possible under such circumstances? It exists

neither in the saint nor in the sinner; or rather, the truth is that

no man is wholly one or the other. For it is _men_ they have to be;

page 87 / 120
that is, luckless beings, fighters and gladiators in the arena of

life.

To be sure, the best thing he can do is to recognise which part of him

smarts the most under defeat, and let it always gain the victory. This

he will always be able to do by the use of his reason, which is an

ever-present fund of ideas. Let him resolve of his own free will to

undergo the pain which the defeat of the other part involves. This

is _character_. For the battle of life cannot be waged free from all

pain; it cannot come to an end without bloodshed; and in any case

a man must suffer pain, for he is the conquered as well as the

conqueror. _Haec est vivendi conditio_.

*****

The clever man, when he converses, will think less of what he is

saying that of the person with whom he is speaking; for then he is

sure to say nothing which he will afterwards regret; he is sure not to

lay himself open, nor to commit an indiscretion. But his conversation

will never be particularly interesting.

An intellectual man readily does the opposite, and with him the person

with whom he converses is often no more than the mere occasion of a

monologue; and it often happens that the other then makes up for his

subordinate _role_ by lying in wait for the man of intellect, and

drawing his secrets out of him.

page 88 / 120
*****

Nothing betrays less knowledge of humanity than to suppose that, if

a man has a great many friends, it is a proof of merit and intrinsic

value: as though men gave their friendship according to value and

merit! as though they were not, rather, just like dogs, which love the

person that pats them and gives them bits of meat, and never trouble

themselves about anything else! The man who understands how to pat his

fellows best, though they be the nastiest brutes,--that's the man who

has many friends.

It is the converse that is true. Men of great intellectual worth, or,

still more, men of genius, can have only very few friends; for their

clear eye soon discovers all defects, and their sense of rectitude is

always being outraged afresh by the extent and the horror of them. It

is only extreme necessity that can compel such men not to betray their

feelings, or even to stroke the defects as if they were beautiful

additions. Personal love (for we are not speaking of the reverence

which is gained by authority) cannot be won by a man of genius, unless

the gods have endowed him with an indestructible cheerfulness of

temper, a glance that makes the world look beautiful, or unless he has

succeeded by degrees in taking men exactly as they are; that is to

say, in making a fool of the fools, as is right and proper. On the

heights we must expect to be solitary.

page 89 / 120
*****

Our constant discontent is for the most part rooted in the impulse of

self-preservation. This passes into a kind of selfishness, and makes a

duty out of the maxim that we should always fix our minds upon what we

lack, so that we may endeavour to procure it. Thus it is that we are

always intent on finding out what we want, and on thinking of it;

but that maxim allows us to overlook undisturbed the things which we

already possess; and so, as soon as we have obtained anything, we give

it much less attention than before. We seldom think of what we have,

but always of what we lack.

This maxim of egoism, which has, indeed, its advantages in procuring

the means to the end in view, itself concurrently destroys the

ultimate end, namely, contentment; like the bear in the fable that

throws a stone at the hermit to kill the fly on his nose. We ought to

wait until need and privation announce themselves, instead of

looking for them. Minds that are naturally content do this, while

hypochondrists do the reverse.

*****

A man's nature is in harmony with itself when he desires to be nothing

but what he is; that is to say, when he has attained by experience a

knowledge of his strength and of his weakness, and makes use of the

page 90 / 120
one and conceals the other, instead of playing with false coin, and

trying to show a strength which he does not possess. It is a harmony

which produces an agreeable and rational character; and for the simple

reason that everything which makes the man and gives him his mental

and physical qualities is nothing but the manifestation of his will;

is, in fact, what he _wills_. Therefore it is the greatest of all

inconsistencies to wish to be other than we are.

*****

People of a strange and curious temperament can be happy only under

strange circumstances, such as suit their nature, in the same way as

ordinary circumstances suit the ordinary man; and such circumstances

can arise only if, in some extraordinary way, they happen to meet with

strange people of a character different indeed, but still exactly

suited to their own. That is why men of rare or strange qualities are

seldom happy.

*****

All this pleasure is derived from the use and consciousness of power;

and the greatest of pains that a man can feel is to perceive that

his powers fail just when he wants to use them. Therefore it will be

advantageous for every man to discover what powers he possesses, and

what powers he lacks. Let him, then, develop the powers in which he is

pre-eminent, and make a strong use of them; let him pursue the path

page 91 / 120
where they will avail him; and even though he has to conquer his

inclinations, let him avoid the path where such powers are requisite

as he possesses only in a low degree. In this way he will often have a

pleasant consciousness of strength, and seldom a painful consciousness

of weakness; and it will go well with him. But if he lets himself be

drawn into efforts demanding a kind of strength quite different from

that in which he is pre-eminent, he will experience humiliation; and

this is perhaps the most painful feeling with which a man can be

afflicted.

Yet there are two sides to everything. The man who has insufficient

self-confidence in a sphere where he has little power, and is never

ready to make a venture, will on the one hand not even learn how to

use the little power that he has; and on the other, in a sphere in

which he would at least be able to achieve something, there will be

a complete absence of effort, and consequently of pleasure. This is

always hard to bear; for a man can never draw a complete blank in any

department of human welfare without feeling some pain.

*****

As a child, one has no conception of the inexorable character of the

laws of nature, and of the stubborn way in which everything persists

in remaining what it is. The child believes that even lifeless things

are disposed to yield to it; perhaps because it feels itself one with

nature, or, from mere unacquaintance with the world, believes that

page 92 / 120
nature is disposed to be friendly. Thus it was that when I was a

child, and had thrown my shoe into a large vessel full of milk, I was

discovered entreating the shoe to jump out. Nor is a child on its

guard against animals until it learns that they are ill-natured and

spiteful. But not before we have gained mature experience do we

recognise that human character is unalterable; that no entreaty, or

representation, or example, or benefit, will bring a man to give up

his ways; but that, on the contrary, every man is compelled to follow

his own mode of acting and thinking, with the necessity of a law of

nature; and that, however we take him, he always remains the same. It

is only after we have obtained a clear and profound knowledge of this

fact that we give up trying to persuade people, or to alter them

and bring them round to our way of thinking. We try to accommodate

ourselves to theirs instead, so far as they are indispensable to us,

and to keep away from them so far as we cannot possibly agree.

Ultimately we come to perceive that even in matters of mere

intellect--although its laws are the same for all, and the subject

as opposed to the object of thought does not really enter into

individuality--there is, nevertheless, no certainty that the whole

truth of any matter can be communicated to any one, or that any one

can be persuaded or compelled to assent to it; because, as Bacon says,

_intellectus humanus luminis sicci non est_: the light of the human

intellect is coloured by interest and passion.

*****

page 93 / 120
It is just because _all happiness is of a negative character_ that,

when we succeed in being perfectly at our ease, we are not properly

conscious of it. Everything seems to pass us softly and gently, and

hardly to touch us until the moment is over; and then it is the

positive feeling of something lacking that tells us of the happiness

which has vanished; it is then that we observe that we have failed to

hold it fast, and we suffer the pangs of self-reproach as well as of

privation.

*****

Every happiness that a man enjoys, and almost every friendship that

he cherishes, rest upon illusion; for, as a rule, with increase of

knowledge they are bound to vanish. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, a

man should courageously pursue truth, and never weary of striving to

settle accounts with himself and the world. No matter what happens to

the right or to the left of him,--be it a chimaera or fancy that makes

him happy, let him take heart and go on, with no fear of the desert

which widens to his view. Of one thing only must he be quite certain:

that under no circumstances will he discover any lack of worth in

himself when the veil is raised; the sight of it would be the Gorgon

that would kill him. Therefore, if he wants to remain undeceived, let

him in his inmost being feel his own worth. For to feel the lack of

it is not merely the greatest, but also the only true affliction;

all other sufferings of the mind may not only be healed, but may be

immediately relieved, by the secure consciousness of worth. The man

page 94 / 120
who is assured of it can sit down quietly under sufferings that would

otherwise bring him to despair; and though he has no pleasures, no

joys and no friends, he can rest in and on himself; so powerful is the

comfort to be derived from a vivid consciousness of this advantage; a

comfort to be preferred to every other earthly blessing. Contrarily,

nothing in the world can relieve a man who knows his own

worthlessness; all that he can do is to conceal it by deceiving people

or deafening them with his noise; but neither expedient will serve him

very long.

*****

We must always try to preserve large views. If we are arrested by

details we shall get confused, and see things awry. The success or the

failure of the moment, and the impression that they make, should count

for nothing.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer, for some reason that

is not apparent, wrote this remark in French.]

*****

How difficult it is to learn to understand oneself, and clearly to

recognise what it is that one wants before anything else; what it is,

therefore, that is most immediately necessary to our happiness; then

page 95 / 120
what comes next; and what takes the third and the fourth place, and so

on.

Yet, without this knowledge, our life is planless, like a captain

without a compass.

*****

The sublime melancholy which leads us to cherish a lively conviction

of the worthlessness of everything of all pleasures and of all

mankind, and therefore to long for nothing, but to feel that life is

merely a burden which must be borne to an end that cannot be very

distant, is a much happier state of mind than any condition of desire,

which, be it never so cheerful, would have us place a value on the

illusions of the world, and strive to attain them.

This is a fact which we learn from experience; and it is clear, _a

priori_, that one of these is a condition of illusion, and the other

of knowledge.

Whether it is better to marry or not to marry is a question which in

very many cases amounts to this: Are the cares of love more endurable

than the anxieties of a livelihood?

*****

page 96 / 120
Marriage is a trap which nature sets for us. [1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Also in French.]

*****

Poets and philosophers who are married men incur by that very fact the

suspicion that they are looking to their own welfare, and not to the

interests of science and art.

*****

Habit is everything. Hence to be calm and unruffled is merely to

anticipate a habit; and it is a great advantage not to need to form

it.

*****

"Personality is the element of the greatest happiness." Since _pain_

and _boredom_ are the two chief enemies of human happiness, nature has

provided our personality with a protection against both. We can

ward off pain, which is more often of the mind than of the body, by

_cheerfulness_; and boredom by _intelligence_. But neither of these

page 97 / 120
is akin to the other; nay, in any high degree they are perhaps

incompatible. As Aristotle remarks, genius is allied to melancholy;

and people of very cheerful disposition are only intelligent on the

surface. The better, therefore, anyone is by nature armed against one

of these evils, the worse, as a rule, is he armed against the other.

There is no human life that is free from pain and boredom; and it is a

special favour on the part of fate if a man is chiefly exposed to the

evil against which nature has armed him the better; if fate, that is,

sends a great deal of pain where there is a very cheerful temper in

which to bear it, and much leisure where there is much intelligence,

but not _vice versa_. For if a man is intelligent, he feels pain

doubly or trebly; and a cheerful but unintellectual temper finds

solitude and unoccupied leisure altogether unendurable.

*****

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters

of this world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

Nor is it otherwise in art; for there genuine work, seldom found

and still more seldom appreciated, is again and again driven out by

dullness, insipidity, and affectation.

It is just the same in the sphere of action. Most men, says Bias, are

bad. Virtue is a stranger in this world; and boundless egoism, cunning

and malice, are always the order of the day. It is wrong to deceive

page 98 / 120
the young on this point, for it will only make them feel later on that

their teachers were the first to deceive them. If the object is

to render the pupil a better man by telling him that others are

excellent, it fails; and it would be more to the purpose to say: Most

men are bad, it is for you to be better. In this way he would, at

least, be sent out into the world armed with a shrewd foresight,

instead of having to be convinced by bitter experience that his

teachers were wrong.

All ignorance is dangerous, and most errors must be dearly paid. And

good luck must he have that carries unchastised an error in his head

unto his death.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--This, again, is Schopenhauer's own

English.]

*****

Every piece of success has a doubly beneficial effect upon us when,

apart from the special and material advantage which it brings it is

accompanied by the enlivening assurance that the world, fate, or the

daemon within, does not mean so badly with us, nor is so opposed to

our prosperity as we had fancied; when, in fine, it restores our

courage to live.

page 99 / 120
Similarly, every misfortune or defeat has, in the contrary sense, an

effect that is doubly depressing.

*****

If we were not all of us exaggeratedly interested in ourselves, life

would be so uninteresting that no one could endure it.

*****

Everywhere in the world, and under all circumstances, it is only by

force that anything can be done; but power is mostly in bad hands,

because baseness is everywhere in a fearful majority.

*****

Why should it be folly to be always intent on getting the greatest

possible enjoyment out of the moment, which is our only sure

possession? Our whole life is no more than a magnified present, and in

itself as fleeting.

*****

As a consequence of his individuality and the position in which he

page 100 / 120

is placed, everyone without exception lives in a certain state of

limitation, both as regards his ideas and the opinions which he forms.

Another man is also limited, though not in the same way; but should

he succeed in comprehending the other's limitation he can confuse

and abash him, and put him to shame, by making him feel what his

limitation is, even though the other be far and away his superior.

Shrewd people often employ this circumstance to obtain a false and

momentary advantage.

*****

The only genuine superiority is that of the mind and character; all

other kinds are fictitious, affected, false; and it is good to

make them feel that it is so when they try to show off before the

superiority that is true.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--In the original this also is in

French.]

*****

_All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players_.

Exactly! Independently of what a man really is in himself, he has

page 101 / 120

a part to play, which fate has imposed upon him from without, by

determining his rank, education, and circumstances. The most immediate

application of this truth appears to me to be that in life, as on

the stage, we must distinguish between the actor and his part;

distinguish, that is, the man in himself from his position and

reputation--- from the part which rank and circumstances have imposed

upon him. How often it is that the worst actor plays the king, and the

best the beggar! This may happen in life, too; and a man must be very

_crude_ to confuse the actor with his part.

*****

Our life is so poor that none of the treasures of the world can make

it rich; for the sources of enjoyment are soon found to be all very

scanty, and it is in vain that we look for one that will always flow.

Therefore, as regards our own welfare, there are only two ways in

which we can use wealth. We can either spend it in ostentatious pomp,

and feed on the cheap respect which our imaginary glory will bring us

from the infatuated crowd; or, by avoiding all expenditure that will

do us no good, we can let our wealth grow, so that we may have a

bulwark against misfortune and want that shall be stronger and better

every day; in view of the fact that life, though it has few delights,

is rich in evils.

*****

page 102 / 120

It is just because our real and inmost being is _will_ that it is only

by its exercise that we can attain a vivid consciousness of existence,

although this is almost always attended by pain. Hence it is that

existence is essentially painful, and that many persons for whose

wants full provision is made arrange their day in accordance with

extremely regular, monotonous, and definite habits. By this means they

avoid all the pain which the movement of the will produces; but, on

the other hand, their whole existence becomes a series of scenes and

pictures that mean nothing. They are hardly aware that they exist.

Nevertheless, it is the best way of settling accounts with life, so

long as there is sufficient change to prevent an excessive feeling of

boredom. It is much better still if the Muses give a man some worthy

occupation, so that the pictures which fill his consciousness have

some meaning, and yet not a meaning that can be brought into any

relation with his will.

*****

A man is _wise_ only on condition of living in a world full of fools.

GENIUS AND VIRTUE.

When I think, it is the spirit of the world which is striving to

express its thought; it is nature which is trying to know and fathom

itself. It is not the thoughts of some other mind, which I am

page 103 / 120

endeavouring to trace; but it is I who transform that which exists

into something which is known and thought, and would otherwise neither

come into being nor continue in it.

In the realm of physics it was held for thousands of years to be a

fact beyond question that water was a simple and consequently an

original element. In the same way in the realm of metaphysics it

was held for a still longer period that the _ego_ was a simple and

consequently an indestructible entity. I have shown, however, that it

is composed of two heterogeneous parts, namely, the _Will_, which is

metaphysical in its character, a thing in itself, and the _knowing

subject_, which is physical and a mere phenomenon.

Let me illustrate what I mean. Take any large, massive, heavy

building: this hard, ponderous body that fills so much space exists,

I tell you, only in the soft pulp of the brain. There alone, in the

human brain, has it any being. Unless you understand this, you can go

no further.

Truly it is the world itself that is a miracle; the world of material

bodies. I looked at two of them. Both were heavy, symmetrical, and

beautiful. One was a jasper vase with golden rim and golden handles;

the other was an organism, an animal, a man. When I had sufficiently

admired their exterior, I asked my attendant genius to allow me to

examine the inside of them; and I did so. In the vase I found nothing

but the force of gravity and a certain obscure desire, which took the

page 104 / 120

form of chemical affinity. But when I entered into the other--how

shall I express my astonishment at what I saw? It is more incredible

than all the fairy tales and fables that were ever conceived.

Nevertheless, I shall try to describe it, even at the risk of finding

no credence for my tale.

In this second thing, or rather in the upper end of it, called the

head, which on its exterior side looks like anything else--a body in

space, heavy, and so on--I found no less an object than the whole

world itself, together with the whole of the space in which all of

it exists, and the whole of the time in which all of it moves,

and finally everything that fills both time and space in all its

variegated and infinite character; nay, strangest sight of all, I

found myself walking about in it! It was no picture that I saw; it was

no peep-show, but reality itself. This it is that is really and truly

to be found in a thing which is no bigger than a cabbage, and which,

on occasion, an executioner might strike off at a blow, and suddenly

smother that world in darkness and night. The world, I say, would

vanish, did not heads grow like mushrooms, and were there not always

plenty of them ready to snatch it up as it is sinking down into

nothing, and keep it going like a ball. This world is an idea which

they all have in common, and they express the community of their

thought by the word "objectivity."

In the face of this vision I felt as if I were Ardschuna when Krishna

appeared to him in his true majesty, with his hundred thousand arms

and eyes and mouths.

page 105 / 120

When I see a wide landscape, and realise that it arises by the

operation of the functions of my brain, that is to say, of time,

space, and casuality, on certain spots which have gathered on my

retina, I feel that I carry it within me. I have an extraordinarily

clear consciousness of the identity of my own being with that of the

external world.

Nothing provides so vivid an illustration of this identity as a

_dream_. For in a dream other people appear to be totally distinct

from us, and to possess the most perfect objectivity, and a nature

which is quite different from ours, and which often puzzles,

surprises, astonishes, or terrifies us; and yet it is all our own

self. It is even so with the will, which sustains the whole of the

external world and gives it life; it is the same will that is in

ourselves, and it is there alone that we are immediately conscious of

it. But it is the intellect, in ourselves and in others, which makes

all these miracles possible; for it is the intellect which everywhere

divides actual being into subject and object; it is a hall of

phantasmagorical mystery, inexpressibly marvellous, incomparably

magical.

The difference in degree of mental power which sets so wide a gulf

between the genius and the ordinary mortal rests, it is true, upon

nothing else than a more or less perfect development of the cerebral

system. But it is this very difference which is so important, because

page 106 / 120

the whole of the real world in which we live and move possesses an

existence only in relation to this cerebral system. Accordingly, the

difference between a genius and an ordinary man is a total diversity

of world and existence. The difference between man and the lower

animals may be similarly explained.

When Momus was said to ask for a window in the breast, it was an

allegorical joke, and we cannot even imagine such a contrivance to

be a possibility; but it would be quite possible to imagine that the

skull and its integuments were transparent, and then, good heavens!

what differences should we see in the size, the form, the quality,

the movement of the brain! what degrees of value! A great mind would

inspire as much respect at first sight as three stars on a man's

breast, and what a miserable figure would be cut by many a one who

wore them!

Men of genius and intellect, and all those whose mental and

theoretical qualities are far more developed than their moral

and practical qualities--men, in a word, who have more mind than

character--are often not only awkward and ridiculous in matters of

daily life, as has been observed by Plato in the seventh book of the

_Republic_, and portrayed by Goethe in his _Tasso_; but they are

often, from a moral point of view, weak and contemptible creatures as

well; nay, they might almost be called bad men. Of this Rousseau has

given us genuine examples. Nevertheless, that better consciousness

which is the source of all virtue is often stronger in them than in

many of those whose actions are nobler than their thoughts; nay, it

page 107 / 120

may be said that those who think nobly have a better acquaintance with

virtue, while the others make a better practice of it. Full of zeal

for the good and for the beautiful, they would fain fly up to heaven

in a straight line; but the grosser elements of this earth oppose

their flight, and they sink back again. They are like born artists,

who have no knowledge of technique, or find that the marble is too

hard for their fingers. Many a man who has much less enthusiasm for

the good, and a far shallower acquaintance with its depths, makes a

better thing of it in practice; he looks down upon the noble thinkers

with contempt, and he has a right to do it; nevertheless, he does not

understand them, and they despise him in their turn, and not unjustly.

They are to blame; for every living man has, by the fact of his

living, signed the conditions of life; but they are still more to be

pitied. They achieve their redemption, not on the way of virtue, but

on a path of their own; and they are saved, not by works, but by

faith.

Men of no genius whatever cannot bear solitude: they take no pleasure

in the contemplation of nature and the world. This arises from the

fact that they never lose sight of their own will, and therefore

they see nothing of the objects of the world but the bearing of such

objects upon their will and person. With objects which have no such

bearing there sounds within them a constant note: _It is nothing to

me_, which is the fundamental base in all their music. Thus all things

seem to them to wear a bleak, gloomy, strange, hostile aspect. It is

only for their will that they seem to have any perceptive faculties at

all; and it is, in fact, only a moral and not a theoretical tendency,

page 108 / 120

only a moral and not an intellectual value, that their life possesses.

The lower animals bend their heads to the ground, because all that

they want to see is what touches their welfare, and they can never

come to contemplate things from a really objective point of view. It

is very seldom that unintellectual men make a true use of their erect

position, and then it is only when they are moved by some intellectual

influence outside them.

The man of intellect or genius, on the other hand, has more of the

character of the eternal subject that knows, than of the finite

subject that wills; his knowledge is not quite engrossed and

captivated by his will, but passes beyond it; he is the son, _not of

the bondwoman, but of the free_. It is not only a moral but also

a theoretical tendency that is evinced in his life; nay, it might

perhaps be said that to a certain extent he is beyond morality. Of

great villainy he is totally incapable; and his conscience is less

oppressed by ordinary sin than the conscience of the ordinary man,

because life, as it were, is a game, and he sees through it.

The relation between _genius_ and _virtue_ is determined by the

following considerations. Vice is an impulse of the will so violent

in its demands that it affirms its own life by denying the life of

others. The only kind of knowledge that is useful to the will is the

knowledge that a given effect is produced by a certain cause. Genius

itself is a kind of knowledge, namely, of ideas; and it is a knowledge

which is unconcerned with any principle of causation. The man who is

devoted to knowledge of this character is not employed in the business

page 109 / 120

of the will. Nay, every man who is devoted to the purely objective

contemplation of the world (and it is this that is meant by the

knowledge of ideas) completely loses sight of his will and its

objects, and pays no further regard to the interests of his own

person, but becomes a pure intelligence free of any admixture of will.

Where, then, devotion to the intellect predominates over concern for

the will and its objects, it shows that the man's will is not the

principal element in his being, but that in proportion to his

intelligence it is weak. Violent desire, which is the root of all

vice, never allows a man to arrive at the pure and disinterested

contemplation of the world, free from any relation to the will, such

as constitutes the quality of genius; but here the intelligence

remains the constant slave of the will.

Since genius consists in the perception of ideas, and men of genius

_contemplate_ their object, it may be said that it is only the eye

which is any real evidence of genius. For the contemplative gaze has

something steady and vivid about it; and with the eye of genius it is

often the case, as with Goethe, that the white membrane over the pupil

is visible. With violent, passionate men the same thing may also

happen, but it arises from a different cause, and may be easily

distinguished by the fact that the eyes roll. Men of no genius at all

have no interest in the idea expressed by an object, but only in the

relations in which that object stands to others, and finally to their

own person. Thus it is that they never indulge in contemplation, or

are soon done with it, and rarely fix their eyes long upon any

page 110 / 120

object; and so their eyes do not wear the mark of genius which I have

described. Nay, the regular Philistine does the direct opposite of

contemplating--he spies. If he looks at anything it is to pry into

it; as may be specially observed when he screws up his eyes, which he

frequently does, in order to see the clearer. Certainly, no real man

of genius ever does this, at least habitually, even though he is

short-sighted.

What I have said will sufficiently illustrate the conflict between

genius and vice. It may be, however, nay, it is often the case, that

genius is attended by a strong will; and as little as men of genius

were ever consummate rascals, were they ever perhaps perfect saints

either.

Let me explain. Virtue is not exactly a positive weakness of the will;

it is, rather, an intentional restraint imposed upon its violence

through a knowledge of it in its inmost being as manifested in the

world. This knowledge of the world, the inmost being of which is

communicable only in _ideas_, is common both to the genius and to the

saint. The distinction between the two is that the genius reveals his

knowledge by rendering it in some form of his own choice, and the

product is Art. For this the saint, as such, possesses no direct

faculty; he makes an immediate application of his knowledge to his own

will, which is thus led into a denial of the world. With the saint

knowledge is only a means to an end, whereas the genius remains at

the stage of knowledge, and has his pleasure in it, and reveals it by

rendering what he knows in his art.

page 111 / 120

In the hierarchy of physical organisation, strength of will is

attended by a corresponding growth in the intelligent faculties. A

high degree of knowledge, such as exists in the genius, presupposes a

powerful will, though, at the same time, a will that is subordinate

to the intellect. In other words, both the intellect and the will

are strong, but the intellect is the stronger of the two. Unless, as

happens in the case of the saint, the intellect is at once applied to

the will, or, as in the case of the artist, it finds its pleasures in

a reproduction of itself, the will remains untamed. Any strength that

it may lose is due to the predominance of pure objective intelligence

which is concerned with the contemplation of ideas, and is not, as

in the case of the common or the bad man, wholly occupied with the

objects of the will. In the interval, when the genius is no longer

engaged in the contemplation of ideas, and his intelligence is again

applied to the will and its objects, the will is re-awakened in all

its strength. Thus it is that men of genius often have very violent

desires, and are addicted to sensual pleasure and to anger. Great

crimes, however, they do not commit; because, when the opportunity of

them offers, they recognise their idea, and see it very vividly and

clearly. Their intelligence is thus directed to the idea, and so gains

the predominance over the will, and turns its course, as with the

saint; and the crime is uncommitted.

The genius, then, always participates to some degree in the

characteristics of the saint, as he is a man of the same

qualification; and, contrarily, the saint always participates to some

page 112 / 120

degree in the characteristics of the genius.

The good-natured character, which is common, is to be distinguished

from the saintly by the fact that it consists in a weakness of will,

with a somewhat less marked weakness of intellect. A lower degree of

the knowledge of the world as revealed in ideas here suffices to check

and control a will that is weak in itself. Genius and sanctity are

far removed from good-nature, which is essentially weak in all its

manifestations.

Apart from all that I have said, so much at least is clear. What

appears under the forms of time, space, and casuality, and vanishes

again, and in reality is nothing, and reveals its nothingness by

death--this vicious and fatal appearance is the will. But what does

not appear, and is no phenomenon, but rather the noumenon; what

makes appearance possible; what is not subject to the principle of

causation, and therefore has no vain or vanishing existence, but

abides for ever unchanged in the midst of a world full of suffering,

like a ray of light in a storm,--free, therefore, from all pain and

fatality,--this, I say, is the intelligence. The man who is more

intelligence than will, is thereby delivered, in respect of the

greatest part of him, from nothingness and death; and such a man is in

his nature a genius.

By the very fact that he lives and works, the man who is endowed

with genius makes an entire sacrifice of himself in the interests

page 113 / 120

of everyone. Accordingly, he is free from the obligation to make a

particular sacrifice for individuals; and thus he can refuse many

demands which others are rightly required to meet. He suffers and

achieves more than all the others.

The spring which moves the genius to elaborate his works is not fame,

for that is too uncertain a quality, and when it is seen at close

quarters, of little worth. No amount of fame will make up for the

labour of attaining it:

_Nulla est fama tuum par oequiparare laborem_.

Nor is it the delight that a man has in his work; for that too is

outweighed by the effort which he has to make. It is, rather, an

instinct _sui generis_; in virtue of which the genius is driven to

express what he sees and feels in some permanent shape, without being

conscious of any further motive.

It is manifest that in so far as it leads an individual to sacrifice

himself for his species, and to live more in the species than in

himself, this impulse is possessed of a certain resemblance with

such modifications of the sexual impulse as are peculiar to man. The

modifications to which I refer are those that confine this impulse to

certain individuals of the other sex, whereby the interests of the

species are attained. The individuals who are actively affected by

this impulse may be said to sacrifice themselves for the species,

page 114 / 120

by their passion for each other, and the disadvantageous conditions

thereby imposed upon them,--in a word, by the institution of marriage.

They may be said to be serving the interests of the species rather

than the interests of the individual.

The instinct of the genius does, in a higher fashion, for the idea,

what passionate love does for the will. In both cases there are

peculiar pleasures and peculiar pains reserved for the individuals who

in this way serve the interests of the species; and they live in a

state of enhanced power.

The genius who decides once for all to live for the interests of the

species in the way which he chooses is neither fitted nor called upon

to do it in the other. It is a curious fact that the perpetuation of a

man's name is effected in both ways.

In music the finest compositions are the most difficult to understand.

They are only for the trained intelligence. They consist of long

movements, where it is only after a labyrinthine maze that the

fundamental note is recovered. It is just so with genius; it is only

after a course of struggle, and doubt, and error, and much reflection

and vacillation, that great minds attain their equilibrium. It is the

longest pendulum that makes the greatest swing. Little minds soon come

to terms with themselves and the world, and then fossilise; but the

others flourish, and are always alive and in motion.

page 115 / 120

The essence of genius is a measure of intellectual power far beyond

that which is required to serve the individual's will. But it is a

measure of a merely relative character, and it may be reached by

lowering the degree of the will, as well as by raising that of the

intellect. There are men whose intellect predominates over their

will, and are yet not possessed of genius in any proper sense. Their

intellectual powers do, indeed, exceed the ordinary, though not to any

great extent, but their will is weak. They have no violent desires;

and therefore they are more concerned with mere knowledge than with

the satisfaction of any aims. Such men possess talent; they are

intelligent, and at the same time very contented and cheerful.

A clear, cheerful and reasonable mind, such as brings a man happiness,

is dependent on the relation established between his intellect and his

will--a relation in which the intellect is predominant. But genius and

a great mind depend on the relation between a man's intellect and that

of other people--a relation in which his intellect must exceed theirs,

and at the same time his will may also be proportionately stronger.

That is the reason why genius and happiness need not necessarily exist

together.

When the individual is distraught by cares or pleasantry, or tortured

by the violence of his wishes and desires, the genius in him is

enchained and cannot move. It is only when care and desire are silent

that the air is free enough for genius to live in it. It is then that

the bonds of matter are cast aside, and the pure spirit--the pure,

page 116 / 120

knowing subject--remains. Hence, if a man has any genius, let him

guard himself from pain, keep care at a distance, and limit his

desires; but those of them which he cannot suppress let him satisfy to

the full. This is the only way in which he will make the best use of

his rare existence, to his own pleasure and the world's profit.

To fight with need and care or desires, the satisfaction of which is

refused and forbidden, is good enough work for those who, were

they free of would have to fight with boredom, and so take to bad

practices; but not for the man whose time, if well used, will bear

fruit for centuries to come. As Diderot says, he is not merely a moral

being.

Mechanical laws do not apply in the sphere of chemistry, nor do

chemical laws in the sphere in which organic life is kindled. In the

same way, the rules which avail for ordinary men will not do for the

exceptions, nor will their pleasures either.

It is a persistent, uninterrupted activity that constitutes the

superior mind. The object to which this activity is directed is a

matter of subordinate importance; it has no essential bearing on the

superiority in question, but only on the individual who possesses it.

All that education can do is to determine the direction which this

activity shall take; and that is the reason why a man's nature is so

much more important than his education. For education is to natural

faculty what a wax nose is to a real one; or what the moon and the

page 117 / 120

planets are to the sun. In virtue of his education a man says, not

what he thinks himself, but what others have thought and he has

learned as a matter of training; and what he does is not what he

wants, but what he has been accustomed to do.

The lower animals perform many intelligent functions much better than

man; for instance, the finding of their way back to the place from

which they came, the recognition of individuals, and so on. In the

same way, there are many occasions in real life to which the genius is

incomparably less equal and fitted than the ordinary man. Nay more:

just as animals never commit a folly in the strict sense of the word,

so the average man is not exposed to folly in the same degree as the

genius.

The average man is wholly relegated to the sphere of _being_; the

genius, on the other hand, lives and moves chiefly in the sphere of

_knowledge_. This gives rise to a twofold distinction. In the first

place, a man can be one thing only, but he may _know_ countless

things, and thereby, to some extent, identify himself with them, by

participating in what Spinoza calls their _esse objectivum_. In the

second place, the world, as I have elsewhere observed, is fine enough

in appearance, but in reality dreadful; for torment is the condition

of all life.

It follows from the first of these distinctions that the life of the

average man is essentially one of the greatest boredom; and thus we

page 118 / 120

see the rich warring against boredom with as much effort and as little

respite as fall to the poor in their struggle with need and adversity.

And from the second of them it follows that the life of the average

man is overspread with a dull, turbid, uniform gravity; whilst the

brow of genius glows with mirth of a unique character, which, although

he has sorrows of his own more poignant than those of the average man,

nevertheless breaks out afresh, like the sun through clouds. It is

when the genius is overtaken by an affliction which affects others as

well as himself, that this quality in him is most in evidence; for

then he is seen to be like man, who alone can laugh, in comparison

with the beast of the field, which lives out its life grave and dull.

It is the curse of the genius that in the same measure in which others

think him great and worthy of admiration, he thinks them small and

miserable creatures. His whole life long he has to suppress this

opinion; and, as a rule, they suppress theirs as well. Meanwhile, he

is condemned to live in a bleak world, where he meets no equal, as it

were an island where there are no inhabitants but monkeys and parrots.

Moreover, he is always troubled by the illusion that from a distance a

monkey looks like a man.

Vulgar people take a huge delight in the faults and follies of great

men; and great men are equally annoyed at being thus reminded of their

kinship with them.

The real dignity of a man of genius or great intellect, the trait

page 119 / 120

 which raises him over others and makes him worthy of respect, is at

bottom the fact, that the only unsullied and innocent part of human

nature, namely, the intellect, has the upper hand in him? and

prevails; whereas, in the other there is nothing but sinful will,

and just as much intellect as is requisite for guiding his steps,---

rarely any more, very often somewhat less,--and of what use is it?

It seems to me that genius might have its root in a certain perfection

and vividness of the memory as it stretches back over the events of

past life. For it is only by dint of memory, which makes our life in

the strict sense a complete whole, that we attain a more profound and
comprehensive understanding of it.

page 120 / 120

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)