Essays of Schopenhauer
department of knowledge, to the exclusion of everything else. This
selection should be made by the most capable minds and masters in every
branch of knowledge after the most mature consideration, and the result
of it established. Such a selection must be based on a sifting of
matters which are necessary and important for a man to know in general,
and also for him to know in a particular profession or calling.
Knowledge of the first kind would have to be divided into graduated
courses, like an encyclopædia, corresponding to the degree of general
culture which each man has attained in his external circumstances; from
a course restricted to what is necessary for primary instruction up to
the matter contained in every branch of the philosophical faculty.
Knowledge of the second kind would, however, be reserved for him who had
really mastered the selection in all its branches. The whole would give
a canon specially devised for intellectual education, which naturally
would require revision every ten years. By such an arrangement the
youthful power of the memory would be put to the best advantage, and it
would furnish the faculty of judgment with excellent material when it
appeared later on.
* * * * *
What is meant by maturity of knowledge is that state of perfection to
which any one individual is able to bring it, when an exact
correspondence has been effected between the whole of his abstract ideas
and his own personal observations: whereby each of his ideas rests
directly or indirectly on a basis of observation, which alone gives it
any real value; and likewise he is able to place every observation that
he makes under the right idea corresponding to it.
_Maturity_ of knowledge is the work of experience alone, and
consequently of time. For the knowledge we acquire from our own
observation is, as a rule, distinct from that we get through abstract
ideas; the former is acquired in the natural way, while the latter comes
through good and bad instruction and what other people have told to us.
Consequently, in youth there is generally little harmony and connection
between our ideas, which mere expressions have fixed, and our real
knowledge, which has been acquired by observation. Later they both
gradually approach and correct each other; but maturity of knowledge
does not exist until they have become quite incorporated. This maturity
is quite independent of that other kind of perfection, the standard of
which may be high or low, I mean the perfection to which the capacities
of an individual may be brought; it is not based on a correspondence
between the abstract and intuitive knowledge, but on the degree of
intensity of each.
The most necessary thing for the practical man is the attainment of an
exact and thorough knowledge of _what is really going on in the world;_
but it is also the most irksome, for a man may continue studying until
old age without having learnt all that is to be learnt; while one can
master the most important things in the sciences in one's youth. In
getting such a knowledge of the world, it is as a novice that the boy
and youth have the first and most difficult lessons to learn; but
frequently even the matured man has still much to learn. The study is of
considerable difficulty in itself, but it is made doubly difficult by
_novels_, which depict the ways of the world and of men who do not exist
in real life. But these are accepted with the credulity of youth, and
become incorporated with the mind; so that now, in the place of purely
negative ignorance, a whole framework of wrong ideas, which are
positively wrong, crops up, subsequently confusing the schooling of
experience and representing the lesson it teaches in a false light. If
the youth was previously in the dark, he will now be led astray by a
will-o'-the-wisp: and with a girl this is still more frequently the
case. They have been deluded into an absolutely false view of life by
reading novels, and expectations have been raised that can never be
fulfilled. This generally has the most harmful effect on their whole
lives. Those men who had neither time nor opportunity to read novels in
their youth, such as those who work with their hands, have decided
advantage over them. Few of these novels are exempt from reproach--nay,
whose effect is contrary to bad. Before all others, for instance, _Gil
Blas_ and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their Spanish
originals); further, _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and to some extent the
novels of Walter Scott. _Don Quixote_ may be regarded as a satirical
presentation of the error in question.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] According to a notice from the Munich Society for the Protection of
Animals, the superfluous whipping and cracking were strictly forbidden
in Nuremberg in December 1858.
ON READING AND BOOKS.
Ignorance is degrading only when it is found in company with riches.
Want and penury restrain the poor man; his employment takes the place of
knowledge and occupies his thoughts: while rich men who are ignorant
live for their pleasure only, and resemble a beast; as may be seen
daily. They are to be reproached also for not having used wealth and
leisure for that which lends them their greatest value.
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental
process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following
with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher.
Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part,
done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to
reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our
head is, however, really only the arena of some one else's thoughts. And
so it happens that the person who reads a great deal--that is to say,
almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in
thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself;
just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such,
however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read
themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read
constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work,
which, at any rate, allows one to follow one's own thoughts. Just as a
spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses
its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person's thoughts
continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by
overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and
choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads
the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a
tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to
reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one
has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later,
what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.
Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the
fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off
in evaporation, respiration, and the like.
From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are
nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has
taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his
eyes.
* * * * *
No literary quality can be attained by reading writers who possess it:
be it, for example, persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing
comparisons, boldness or bitterness, brevity or grace, facility of
expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic manner, naïveté, and
the like. But if we are already gifted with these qualities--that is to
say, if we possess them _potentia_--we can call them forth and bring
them to consciousness; we can discern to what uses they are to be put;
we can be strengthened in our inclination, nay, may have courage, to use
them; we can judge by examples the effect of their application and so
learn the correct use of them; and it is only after we have accomplished
all this that we _actu_ possess these qualities. This is the only way in
which reading can form writing, since it teaches us the use to which we
can put our own natural gifts; and in order to do this it must be taken
for granted that these qualities are in us. Without them we learn
nothing from reading but cold, dead mannerisms, and we become mere
imitators.
* * * * *
The health officer should, in the interest of one's eyes, see that the
smallness of print has a fixed minimum, which must not be exceeded. When
I was in Venice in 1818, at which time the genuine Venetian chain was
still being made, a goldsmith told me that those who made the _catena
fina_ turned blind at thirty.
* * * * *
As the strata of the earth preserve in rows the beings which lived in
former times, so do the shelves of a library preserve in a like manner
the errors of the past and expositions concerning them. Like those
creatures, they too were full of life in their time and made a great
deal of noise; but now they are stiff and fossilised, and only of
interest to the literary palaeontologist.
* * * * *
According to Herodotus, Xerxes wept at the sight of his army, which was
too extensive for him to scan, at the thought that a hundred years hence
not one of all these would be alive. Who would not weep at the thought
in looking over a big catalogue that of all these books not one will be
in existence in ten years' time?
It is the same in literature as in life. Wherever one goes one
immediately comes upon the incorrigible mob of humanity. It exists
everywhere in legions; crowding, soiling everything, like flies in
summer. Hence the numberless bad books, those rank weeds of literature
which extract nourishment from the corn and choke it.
They monopolise the time, money, and attention which really belong to
good books and their noble aims; they are written merely with a view to
making money or procuring places. They are not only useless, but they do
positive harm. Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims
solely at taking a few shillings out of the public's pocket, and to
accomplish this, author, publisher, and reviewer have joined forces.
There is a more cunning and worse trick, albeit a profitable one.
_Littérateurs_, hack-writers, and productive authors have succeeded,
contrary to good taste and the true culture of the age, in bringing the
world _elegante_ into leading-strings, so that they have been taught to
read _a tempo_ and all the same thing--namely, _the newest books_ order
that they may have material for conversation in their social circles.
Bad novels and similar productions from the pen of writers who were once
famous, such as Spindler, Bulwer, Eugène Sue, and so on, serve this
purpose. But what can be more miserable than the fate of a reading
public of this kind, that feels always impelled to read the latest
writings of extremely commonplace authors who write for money only, and
therefore exist in numbers? And for the sake of this they merely know by
name the works of the rare and superior writers, of all ages and
countries.
Literary newspapers, since they print the daily smatterings of
commonplace people, are especially a cunning means for robbing from the
aesthetic public the time which should be devoted to the genuine
productions of art for the furtherance of culture.
Hence, in regard to our subject, the art of _not_ reading is highly
important. This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely
because it is interesting the great public at the time--such as