The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life
touched. Otherwise, a man is the slave of what other people are
pleased to think,--and how little it requires to disconcert or soothe
the mind that is greedy of praise:
_Sic leve, sic parvum est, animum quod laudis avarum
Subruit ac reficit_.[1]
[Footnote 1: Horace, Epist: II., 1, 180.]
Therefore it will very much conduce to our happiness if we duly
compare the value of what a man is in and for himself with what he is
in the eyes of others. Under the former conies everything that fills
up the span of our existence and makes it what it is, in short, all
the advantages already considered and summed up under the heads of
personality and property; and the sphere in which all this takes place
is the man's own consciousness. On the other hand, the sphere of what
we are for other people is their consciousness, not ours; it is the
kind of figure we make in their eyes, together with the thoughts
which this arouses.[1] But this is something which has no direct and
immediate existence for us, but can affect us only mediately and
indirectly, so far, that is, as other people's behavior towards us is
directed by it; and even then it ought to affect us only in so far as
it can move us to modify _what we are in and for ourselves_. Apart
from this, what goes on in other people's consciousness is, as such, a
matter of indifference to us; and in time we get really indifferent to
it, when we come to see how superficial and futile are most people's
thoughts, how narrow their ideas, how mean their sentiments, how
perverse their opinions, and how much of error there is in most of
them; when we learn by experience with what depreciation a man will
speak of his fellow, when he is not obliged to fear him, or thinks
that what he says will not come to his ears. And if ever we have
had an opportunity of seeing how the greatest of men will meet with
nothing but slight from half-a-dozen blockheads, we shall understand
that to lay great value upon what other people say is to pay them too
much honor.
[Footnote 1: Let me remark that people in the highest positions in
life, with all their brilliance, pomp, display, magnificence and
general show, may well say:--Our happiness lies entirely outside us;
for it exists only in the heads of others.]
At all events, a man is in a very bad way, who finds no source of
happiness in the first two classes of blessings already treated of,
but has to seek it in the third, in other words, not in what he is in
himself, but in what he is in the opinion of others. For, after all,
the foundation of our whole nature, and, therefore, of our happiness,
is our physique, and the most essential factor in happiness is
health, and, next in importance after health, the ability to maintain
ourselves in independence and freedom from care. There can be no
competition or compensation between these essential factors on the one
side, and honor, pomp, rank and reputation on the other, however much
value we may set upon the latter. No one would hesitate to sacrifice
the latter for the former, if it were necessary. We should add very
much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that
every man's chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in
other people's opinions; and, consequently, that the actual conditions
of our personal life,--health, temperament, capacity, income, wife,
children, friends, home, are a hundred times more important for our
happiness than what other people are pleased to think of us: otherwise
we shall be miserable. And if people insist that honor is dearer than
life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being
are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this
may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that
reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable
if we are to make any progress in the world; but I shall come back to
that presently. When we see that almost everything men devote their
lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils
and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than
to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that
not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even
knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate
goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen,--is not this
a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go? To set
much too high a value on other people's opinion is a common error
everywhere; an error, it may be, rooted in human nature itself, or
the result of civilization, and social arrangements generally; but,
whatever its source, it exercises a very immoderate influence on all
we do, and is very prejudicial to our happiness. We can trace it from
a timorous and slavish regard for what other people will say, up to
the feeling which made Virginius plunge the dagger into his daughter's
heart, or induces many a man to sacrifice quiet, riches, health and
even life itself, for posthumous glory. Undoubtedly this feeling is a
very convenient instrument in the hands of those who have the control
or direction of their fellowmen; and accordingly we find that in
every scheme for training up humanity in the way it should go, the
maintenance and strengthening of the feeling of honor occupies an
important place. But it is quite a different matter in its effect
on human happiness, of which it is here our object to treat; and we
should rather be careful to dissuade people from setting too much
store by what others think of them. Daily experience shows us,
however, that this is just the mistake people persist in making; most
men set the utmost value precisely on what other people think, and
are more concerned about it than about what goes on in their own
consciousness, which is the thing most immediately and directly
present to them. They reverse the natural order,--regarding the
opinions of others as real existence and their own consciousness
as something shadowy; making the derivative and secondary into the
principal, and considering the picture they present to the world of
more importance than their own selves. By thus trying to get a direct
and immediate result out of what has no really direct or immediate
existence, they fall into the kind of folly which is called
_vanity_--the appropriate term for that which has no solid or
instrinsic value. Like a miser, such people forget the end in their
eagerness to obtain the means.
[Footnote 1: _Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter_,
(Persins i, 27)--knowledge is no use unless others know that you have
it.]
The truth is that the value we set upon the opinion of others, and our
constant endeavor in respect of it, are each quite out of proportion
to any result we may reasonably hope to attain; so that this attention
to other people's attitude may be regarded as a kind of universal
mania which every one inherits. In all we do, almost the first thing
we think about is, what will people say; and nearly half the troubles
and bothers of life may be traced to our anxiety on this score; it
is the anxiety which is at the bottom of all that feeling of
self-importance, which is so often mortified because it is so very
morbidly sensitive. It is solicitude about what others will say that
underlies all our vanity and pretension, yes, and all our show and
swagger too. Without it, there would not be a tenth part of the luxury
which exists. Pride in every form, _point d'honneur_ and _punctilio_,
however varied their kind or sphere, are at bottom nothing but
this--anxiety about what others will say--and what sacrifices it
costs! One can see it even in a child; and though it exists at every
period of life, it is strongest in age; because, when the capacity for
sensual pleasure fails, vanity and pride have only avarice to share
their dominion. Frenchmen, perhaps, afford the best example of
this feeling, and amongst them it is a regular epidemic, appearing
sometimes in the most absurd ambition, or in a ridiculous kind of
national vanity and the most shameless boasting. However, they
frustrate their own gains, for other people make fun of them and call
them _la grande nation_.
By way of specially illustrating this perverse and exuberant respect
for other people's opinion, let me take passage from the _Times_ of
March 31st, 1846, giving a detailed account of the execution of one
Thomas Wix, an apprentice who, from motives of vengeance, had
murdered his master. Here we have very unusual circumstances and an
extraordinary character, though one very suitable for our purpose; and
these combine to give a striking picture of this folly, which is so
deeply rooted in human nature, and allow us to form an accurate notion
of the extent to which it will go. On the morning of the execution,
says the report, _the rev. ordinary was early in attendance upon
him, but Wix, beyond a quiet demeanor, betrayed no interest in his
ministrations, appearing to feel anxious only to acquit himself
"bravely" before the spectators of his ignomininous end.... In the
procession Wix fell into his proper place with alacrity, and, as he
entered the Chapel-yard, remarked, sufficiently loud to be heard by
several persons near him, "Now, then, as Dr. Dodd said, I shall soon
know the grand secret." On reaching the scaffold, the miserable wretch
mounted the drop without the slightest assistance, and when he got
to the centre, he bowed to the spectators twice, a proceeding which
called forth a tremendous cheer from the degraded crowd beneath_.
This is an admirable example of the way in which a man, with death in
the most dreadful form before his very eyes, and eternity beyond it,
will care for nothing but the impression he makes upon a crowd of
gapers, and the opinion he leaves behind him in their heads. There was
much the same kind of thing in the case of Lecompte, who was executed
at Frankfurt, also in 1846, for an attempt on the king's life. At the
trial he was very much annoyed that he was not allowed to appear, in
decent attire, before the Upper House; and on the day of the execution
it was a special grief to him that he was not permitted to shave. It
is not only in recent times that this kind of thing has been known to
happen. Mateo Aleman tells us, in the Introduction to his celebrated
romance, _Juzman de Alfarache_, that many infatuated criminals,
instead of devoting their last hours to the welfare of their souls,
as they ought to have done, neglect this duty for the purpose of
preparing and committing to memory a speech to be made from the
scaffold.
I take these extreme cases as being the best illustrations to what I
mean; for they give us a magnified reflection of our own nature. The
anxieties of all of us, our worries, vexations, bothers, troubles,
uneasy apprehensions and strenuous efforts are due, in perhaps the
large majority of instances, to what other people will say; and we are
just as foolish in this respect as those miserable criminals. Envy and
hatred are very often traceable to a similar source.
Now, it is obvious that happiness, which consists for the most part in
peace of mind and contentment, would be served by nothing so much
as by reducing this impulse of human nature within reasonable
limits,--which would perhaps make it one fiftieth part of what it is
now. By doing so, we should get rid of a thorn in the flesh which is
always causing us pain. But it is a very difficult task, because
the impulse in question is a natural and innate perversity of human
nature. Tacitus says, _The lust of fame is the last that a wise man
shakes off_[1] The only way of putting an end to this universal
folly is to see clearly that it is a folly; and this may be done by
recognizing the fact that most of the opinions in men's heads are apt