Essays of Schopenhauer
been said does not apply to sudden misfortunes in the same way. Since
hope always resists them, they are for this reason rarely fatal. That
fear does not perform an analogous office in cases of good fortune is
due to the fact that we are instinctively more inclined to hope than to
fear; just as our eyes turn of themselves to light in preference to
darkness.
* * * * *
_Hope_ is to confuse the desire that something should occur with the
probability that it will. Perhaps no man is free from this folly of the
heart, which deranges the intellect's correct estimation of probability
to such a degree as to make him think the event quite possible, even if
the chances are only a thousand to one. And still, an unexpected
misfortune is like a speedy death-stroke; while a hope that is always
frustrated, and yet springs into life again, is like death by slow
torture.
He who has given up hope has also given up fear; this is the meaning of
the expression _desperate_. It is natural for a man to have faith in
what he wishes, and to have faith in it because he wishes it. If this
peculiarity of his nature, which is both beneficial and comforting, is
eradicated by repeated hard blows of fate, and he is brought to a
converse condition, when he believes that something must happen because
he does not wish it, and what he wishes can never happen just because he
wishes it; this is, in reality, the state which has been called
_desperation_.
* * * * *
That we are so often mistaken in others is not always precisely due to
our faulty judgment, but springs, as a rule as Bacon says, from
_intellectus luminis sicci non est, sec recipit infusionem a voluntate
et affectibus_: for without knowing it, we are influenced for or against
them by trifles from the very beginning. It also often lies in the fact
that we do not adhere to the qualities which we really discover in them,
but conclude from these that there are others which we consider
inseparable from, or at any rate incompatible with, them. For instance,
when we discern generosity, we conclude there is honesty; from lying we
conclude there is deception; from deception, stealing, and so on; and
this opens the door to many errors, partly because of the peculiarity of
human nature, and partly because of the one-sidedness of our point of
view. It is true that character is always consistent and connected; but
the roots of all its qualities lies too deep to enable one to decide
from special data in a given case which qualities can, and which cannot
exist together.
* * * * *
The use of the word _person_ in every European language to signify a
human individual is unintentionally appropriate; _persona_ really means
a player's mask, and it is quite certain that no one shows himself as he
is, but that each wears a mask and plays a _r�le_. In general, the whole
of social life is a continual comedy, which the worthy find insipid,
whilst the stupid delight in it greatly.
* * * * *
It often happens that we blurt out things that may in some kind of way
be harmful to us, but we are silent about things that may make us look
ridiculous; because in this case effect follows very quickly on cause.
* * * * *
The ordinary man who has suffered injustice burns with a desire for
revenge; and it has often been said that revenge is sweet. This is
confirmed by the many sacrifices made merely for the sake of enjoying
revenge, without any intention of making good the injury that one has
suffered. The centaur Nessus utilised his last moments in devising an
extremely clever revenge, and the fact that it was certain to be
effective sweetened an otherwise bitter death. The same idea, presented
in a more modern and plausible way, occurs in Bertolotti's novel, _Le
due Sorelle_ which has been translated into three languages. Walter
Scott expresses mankind's proneness to revenge in words as powerful as
they are true: "Vengeance is the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever
was cooked in hell!" I shall now attempt a psychological explanation of
revenge. All the suffering that nature, chance, or fate have assigned to
us does not, _ceteris paribus_, pain us so much as suffering which is
brought upon us by the arbitrary will of another. This is due to the
fact that we regard nature and fate as the original rulers of the world;
we look upon what befalls us, through them, as something that might have
befallen every one else. Therefore in a case of suffering which arises
from this source, we bemoan the fate of mankind in general more than we
do our own. On the other hand, suffering inflicted on us through the
arbitrary will of another is a peculiarly bitter addition to the pain or
injury caused, as it involves the consciousness of another's
superiority, whether it be in strength or cunning, as opposed to our own
weakness. If compensation is possible, it wipes out the injury; but that
bitter addition, "I must submit to that from you," which often hurts
more than the injury itself, is only to be neutralised by vengeance. For
by injuring the man who has injured us, whether it be by force or
cunning, we show our superiority, and thereby annul the proof of his.
This gives that satisfaction to the mind for which it has been
thirsting. Accordingly, where there is much pride or vanity there will
be a great desire for revenge. But as the fulfilment of every wish
proves to be more or less a delusion, so is also the wish for revenge.
The expected enjoyment is mostly embittered by pity; nay, gratified
revenge will often lacerate the heart and torment the mind, for the
motive which prompts the feeling of it is no longer active, and what is
left is the testimony of our wickedness.
* * * * *
The pain of an ungratified desire is small compared with that of
repentance; for the former has to face the immeasurable, open future;
the latter the past, which is closed irrevocably.
* * * * *
Money is human happiness _in abstracto_; so that a man who is no longer
capable of enjoying it _in concrete_ gives up his whole heart to it.
* * * * *
Moroseness and melancholy are very opposite in nature; and melancholy is
more nearly related to happiness than to moroseness. Melancholy
attracts; moroseness repels. Hypochondria not only makes us unreasonably
cross and angry over things concerning the present; not only fills us
with groundless fears of imaginative mishaps for the future; but also
causes us to unjustly reproach ourselves concerning our actions in the
past.
Hypochondria causes a man to be always searching for and racking his
brain about things that either irritate or torment him. The cause of it
is an internal morbid depression, combined often with an inward
restlessness which is temperamental; when both are developed to their
utmost, suicide is the result.
* * * * *
What makes a man hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he
has, sufficient in his own troubles to bear. This is why people placed
in happier circumstances than they have been used to are sympathetic and
charitable. But people who have always been placed in happy
circumstances are often the reverse; they have become so estranged to
suffering that they have no longer any sympathy with it; and hence it
happens that the poor sometimes show themselves more benevolent than the
rich.
On the other hand, what makes a man so very _curious_, as may be seen in
the way he will spy into other people's affairs, is boredom, a condition
which is diametrically opposed to suffering;--though envy also often
helps in creating curiosity.
* * * * *
At times, it seems as though we wish for something, and at the same time
do not wish for it, so that we are at once both pleased and troubled
about it. For instance, if we have to undergo some decisive test in some
affair or other, in which to come off victorious is of great importance
to us; we both wish that the time to be tested were here, and yet dread
the idea of its coming. If it happens that the time, for once in a way,
is postponed, we are both pleased and sorry, for although the
postponement was unexpected, it, however, gives us momentary relief. We
have the same kind of feeling when we expect an important letter
containing some decision of moment, and it fails to come.
In cases like these we are really controlled by two different motives;
the stronger but more remote being the desire to stand the test, and to
have the decision given in our favour; the weaker, which is closer at
hand, the desire to be left in peace and undisturbed for the present,
and consequently in further enjoyment of the advantage that hoping on in
uncertainty has over what might possibly be an unhappy issue.
Consequently, in this case the same happens to our moral vision as to
our physical, when a smaller object near at hand conceals from view a
bigger object some distance away.
* * * * *
The course and affairs of our individual life, in view of their true
meaning and connection, are like a piece of crude work in mosaic. So
long as one stands close in front of it, one cannot correctly see the
objects presented, or perceive their importance and beauty; it is only
by standing some distance away that both come into view. And in the same
way one often understands the true connection of important events in
one's own life, not while they are happening, or even immediately after
they have happened, but only a long time afterwards.
Is this so, because we require the magnifying power of imagination, or
because a general view can only be got by looking from a distance? or
because one's emotions would otherwise carry one away? or because it is
only the school of experience that ripens our judgment? Perhaps all
these combined. But it is certain that it is only after many years that
we see the actions of others, and sometimes even our own, in their true
light. And as it is in one's own life, so it is in history.
* * * * *
Why is it, in spite of all the mirrors in existence, no man really knows
what he looks like, and, therefore, cannot picture in his mind his own
person as he pictures that of an acquaintance? This is a difficulty
which is thwarted at the very outset by _gnothi sauton--know thyself_.
This is undoubtedly partly due to the fact that a man can only see
himself in the glass by looking straight towards it and remaining quite
still; whereby the play of the eye, which is so important, and the real
characteristic of the face is, to a great extent, lost. But co-operating
with this physical impossibility, there appears to be an ethical
impossibility analogous to it. A man cannot regard the reflection of his
own face in the glass as if it were the face of _some one else_--which
is the condition of his seeing himself _objectively_. This objective
view rests with a profound feeling on the egoist's part, as a moral
being, that what he is looking at is _not himself_; which is requisite
for his perceiving all his defects as they really are from a purely
objective point of view; and not until, then can he see his face
reflected as it really and truly is. Instead of that, when a man sees
his own person in the glass the egoistic side of him always whispers,
_It is not somebody else, but I myself_, which has the effect of a _noli
me tangere_, and prevents his taking a purely objective view. Without
the leaven of a grain of malice, it does not seem possible to look at
oneself objectively.
* * * * *