The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life
Everything confirms the fact that the subjective element in life is
incomparably more important for our happiness and pleasure than the
objective, from such sayings as _Hunger is the best sauce_, and _Youth
and Age cannot live together_, up to the life of the Genius and the
Saint. Health outweighs all other blessings so much that one may
really say that a healthy beggar is happier than an ailing king. A
quiet and cheerful temperament, happy in the enjoyment of a perfectly
sound physique, an intellect clear, lively, penetrating and seeing
things as they are, a moderate and gentle will, and therefore a good
conscience--these are privileges which no rank or wealth can make up
for or replace. For what a man is in himself, what accompanies him
when he is alone, what no one can give or take away, is obviously more
essential to him than everything he has in the way of possessions, or
even what he may be in the eyes of the world. An intellectual man in
complete solitude has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts and
fancies, while no amount of diversity or social pleasure, theatres,
excursions and amusements, can ward off boredom from a dullard. A
good, temperate, gentle character can be happy in needy circumstances,
whilst a covetous, envious and malicious man, even if he be the
richest in the world, goes miserable. Nay more; to one who has the
constant delight of a special individuality, with a high degree of
intellect, most of the pleasures which are run after by mankind are
simply superfluous; they are even a trouble and a burden. And so
Horace says of himself, that, however many are deprived of the
fancy-goods of life, there is one at least who can live without
them:--
_Gemmas, marmor, ebur, Tyrrhena sigilla, tabellas,
Argentum, vestes, Gaetulo murice tinctas
Sunt qui non habeant, est qui non curat habere_;
and when Socrates saw various articles of luxury spread out for sale,
he exclaimed: _How much there is in the world I do not want_.
So the first and most essential element in our life's happiness is
what we are,--our personality, if for no other reason than that it is
a constant factor coming into play under all circumstances: besides,
unlike the blessings which are described under the other two heads, it
is not the sport of destiny and cannot be wrested from us;--and, so
far, it is endowed with an absolute value in contrast to the merely
relative worth of the other two. The consequence of this is that it is
much more difficult than people commonly suppose to get a hold on a
man from without. But here the all-powerful agent, Time, comes in
and claims its rights, and before its influence physical and mental
advantages gradually waste away. Moral character alone remains
inaccessible to it. In view of the destructive effect of time, it
seems, indeed, as if the blessings named under the other two heads,
of which time cannot directly rob us, were superior to those of the
first. Another advantage might be claimed for them, namely, that being
in their very nature objective and external, they are attainable, and
every one is presented with the possibility, at least, of coming into
possession of them; whilst what is subjective is not open to us to
acquire, but making its entry by a kind of _divine right_, it remains
for life, immutable, inalienable, an inexorable doom. Let me quote
those lines in which Goethe describes how an unalterable destiny is
assigned to every man at the hour of his birth, so that he can develop
only in the lines laid down for him, as it were, by the conjunctions
of the stars: and how the Sybil and the prophets declare that
_himself_ a man can never escape, nor any power of time avail to
change the path on which his life is cast:--
_Wie an dem Tag, der dich der Welt verliehen,
Dïe Sonne stand zum Grusse der Planeten,
Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen,
Nach dem Gesetz, wonach du angetreten.
So musst du sein, dir kannst du nicht entfliehen,
So tagten schon Sybillen und Propheten;
Und keine Zeit, und keine Macht zerstückelt
Geprägte Form, die lebend sich entwickelt_.
The only thing that stands in our power to achieve, is to make the
most advantageous use possible of the personal qualities we possess,
and accordingly to follow such pursuits only as will call them into
play, to strive after the kind of perfection of which they admit and
to avoid every other; consequently, to choose the position, occupation
and manner of life which are most suitable for their development.
Imagine a man endowed with herculean strength who is compelled by
circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, some minute exquisite
work of the hands, for example, or to engage in study and mental
labor demanding quite other powers, and just those which he has not
got,--compelled, that is, to leave unused the powers in which he is
pre-eminently strong; a man placed like this will never feel happy all
his life through. Even more miserable will be the lot of the man
with intellectual powers of a very high order, who has to leave them
undeveloped and unemployed, in the pursuit of a calling which does not
require them, some bodily labor, perhaps, for which his strength is
insufficient. Still, in a case of this kind, it should be our care,
especially in youth, to avoid the precipice of presumption, and not
ascribe to ourselves a superfluity of power which is not there.
Since the blessings described under the first head decidedly outweigh
those contained under the other two, it is manifestly a wiser course
to aim at the maintenance of our health and the cultivation of our
faculties, than at the amassing of wealth; but this must not be
mistaken as meaning that we should neglect to acquire an adequate
supply of the necessaries of life. Wealth, in the strict sense of the
word, that is, great superfluity, can do little for our happiness; and
many rich people feel unhappy just because they are without any true
mental culture or knowledge, and consequently have no objective
interests which would qualify them for intellectual occupations. For
beyond the satisfaction of some real and natural necessities, all that
the possession of wealth can achieve has a very small influence upon
our happiness, in the proper sense of the word; indeed, wealth rather
disturbs it, because the preservation of property entails a great many
unavoidable anxieties. And still men are a thousand times more intent
on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain
that what a man _is_ contributes much more to his happiness than
what he _has_. So you may see many a man, as industrious as an ant,
ceaselessly occupied from morning to night in the endeavor to increase
his heap of gold. Beyond the narrow horizon of means to this end, he
knows nothing; his mind is a blank, and consequently unsusceptible to
any other influence. The highest pleasures, those of the intellect,
are to him inaccessible, and he tries in vain to replace them by the
fleeting pleasures of sense in which he indulges, lasting but a brief
hour and at tremendous cost. And if he is lucky, his struggles result
in his having a really great pile of gold, which he leaves to
his heir, either to make it still larger, or to squander it in
extravagance. A life like this, though pursued with a sense of
earnestness and an air of importance, is just as silly as many another
which has a fool's cap for its symbol.
_What a man has in himself_ is, then, the chief element in his
happiness. Because this is, as a rule, so very little, most of those
who are placed beyond the struggle with penury feel at bottom quite as
unhappy as those who are still engaged in it. Their minds are vacant,
their imagination dull, their spirits poor, and so they are driven to
the company of those like them--for _similis simili gaudet_--where
they make common pursuit of pastime and entertainment, consisting
for the most part in sensual pleasure, amusement of every kind, and
finally, in excess and libertinism. A young man of rich family enters
upon life with a large patrimony, and often runs through it in an
incredibly short space of time, in vicious extravagance; and why?
Simply because, here too, the mind is empty and void, and so the man
is bored with existence. He was sent forth into the world outwardly
rich but inwardly poor, and his vain endeavor was to make his
external wealth compensate for his inner poverty, by trying to obtain
everything _from without_, like an old man who seeks to strengthen
himself as King David or Maréchal de Rex tried to do. And so in the
end one who is inwardly poor comes to be also poor outwardly.
I need not insist upon the importance of the other two kinds of
blessings which make up the happiness of human life; now-a-days the
value of possessing them is too well known to require advertisement.
The third class, it is true, may seem, compared with the second, of
a very ethereal character, as it consists only of other people's
opinions. Still every one has to strive for reputation, that is to
say, a good name. Rank, on the other hand, should be aspired to only
by those who serve the state, and fame by very few indeed. In any
case, reputation is looked upon as a priceless treasure, and fame as
the most precious of all the blessings a man can attain,--the Golden
Fleece, as it were, of the elect: whilst only fools will prefer rank
to property. The second and third classes, moreover, are reciprocally
cause and effect; so far, that is, as Petronius' maxim, _habes
habeberis_, is true; and conversely, the favor of others, in all its
forms, often puts us in the way of getting what we want.
CHAPTER II.
PERSONALITY, OR WHAT A MAN IS.
We have already seen, in general, that what a man _is_ contributes
much more to his happiness than what he _has_, or how he is regarded
by others. What a man is, and so what he has in his own person, is
always the chief thing to consider; for his individuality accompanies
him always and everywhere, and gives its color to all his experiences.
In every kind of enjoyment, for instance, the pleasure depends
principally upon the man himself. Every one admits this in regard to
physical, and how much truer it is of intellectual, pleasure. When we
use that English expression, "to enjoy one's self," we are employing a
very striking and appropriate phrase; for observe--one says, not "he
enjoys Paris," but "he enjoys himself in Paris." To a man possessed of
an ill-conditioned individuality, all pleasure is like delicate wine
in a mouth made bitter with gall. Therefore, in the blessings as well
as in the ills of life, less depends upon what befalls us than upon
the way in which it is met, that is, upon the kind and degree of our
general susceptibility. What a man is and has in himself,--in a word
personality, with all it entails, is the only immediate and direct
factor in his happiness and welfare. All else is mediate and indirect,
and its influence can be neutralized and frustrated; but the influence
of personality never. This is why the envy which personal qualities
excite is the most implacable of all,--as it is also the most
carefully dissembled.
Further, the constitution of our consciousness is the ever present
and lasting element in all we do or suffer; our individuality is
persistently at work, more or less, at every moment of our life: all
other influences are temporal, incidental, fleeting, and subject to
every kind of chance and change. This is why Aristotle says: _It is
not wealth but character that lasts_.[1]
[Greek: --hae gar phusis bebion ou ta chraemata]
[Footnote 1: Eth. Eud., vii. 2. 37:]
And just for the same reason we can more easily bear a misfortune
which comes to us entirely from without, than one which we have drawn