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All the advantages of rank, birth, even royal birth, wealth, and so on, relate to genuine personal merits – such as a great mind or a great heart – as kings on the stage relate to kings in real life. Metrodorus, the first disciple of Epicurus, already titled a chapter: ‘The cause of happiness that arises from within ourselves is greater than that which[336] comes from things.’ – See Clement of Alexandria, Stromata II, 21, p. 362 of the Würzburg edn. of the Opera Polemica.a,1 And the principal element in the well-being of human beings, indeed, in the entire manner of their existence, is what exists or happens within themselves. For it is actually here that our inner satisfaction or dissatisfaction is immediately located, which is primarily the result of our sensing, willing, and thinking, whereas anything external only has an indirect influence on it. Hence the same external events or circumstances affect each one of us completely differently; and even in the same environment, everybody lives in a different world. For we are immediately concerned only with our own representations, feelings, and movements of the will; external things only influence us as far as they cause these. The world in which everybody lives depends first of all on our apprehension a of it; therefore, it conforms to the diversity of minds; accordingly, it will turn out poor, dull, and superficial, or rich, interesting, and full of meaning.
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In the same way the melancholic person sees tragedy in a scene, where the sanguine person has only an interesting conflict before him, and the phlegmatic one something without meaning. All this is due to the fact that each reality, i.e. each fulfilled present, consists of two halves, subject and object, albeit necessarily and closely connected, like oxygen and [337]hydrogen in water. Hence with the same objective half, but a different subjective one, the present reality is completely different, just as it is in the converse case: the most beautiful and best objective half combined with a dull, poor subjective one renders only a bad reality and present, like beautiful scenery in bad weather or in the reflection of a bad camera obscura. Or to put it more plainly: We all are stuck in our consciousness, as in our skin, and immediately live only inside of it; hence we cannot easily be helped from the outside.
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Since everything that exists and happens for human beings always exists only in, and happens for, their consciousness, obviously the constitution of consciousness itself is first of all essential, and in most cases more depends on this constitution than on the shapes that appear in consciousness. All luxuriance and pleasures, reflected in the dull consciousness of a dunce, are utterly poor when compared with the consciousness of Cervantes as he wrote Don Quixote in an uncomfortable prison. – The objective half of reality and the present is in the hands of fate and, consequently, is changeable; the subjective half is we ourselves, and so is essentially unchangeable. Accordingly, the life of every human being, despite all changes from the outside, bears the same character throughout and is comparable to a series of variations on one theme. No one can escape his individuality. And just as it is with animals, which in all the circumstances in which we place them remain limited to the narrow sphere that nature has irrevocably drawn around their essential being – which is why, for instance, our attempts to make a beloved animal happy must always remain within narrow bounds due to the limits of its being and consciousness – so it is with human beings: because of their individuality the measure of their possible happiness is determined in advance. In particular, the limits of their mental powers have once and for all established their capacity for higher pleasures. (See The World as Will and Representation, vol. 2, p. 73. a) If these limits are narrow, all efforts from the outside, everything that people, everything that good luck does for them, will not be able to raise them above ordinary, half-animal human happiness and comfort; they remain dependent on pleasures of the senses, homely and cheerful family life, base company, and vulgar pastimes. Even education, on the whole, cannot do much, just a little, to widen this horizon. For the highest, most diverse, and most permanent pleasures are those of the mind, as much as we may deceive ourselves about this when we are young; but these depend mainly on an inborn capacity.4 – This makes it clear how much our happiness depends on what we are, on our individuality; whereas for the most part we take into account only our fate, b only what we have, or what we represent. Fate, however, can improve; moreover, we will not ask much of it if we are inwardly rich.
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For what somebody is in himself, what accompanies him in solitude, and what nobody can give him or take away from him, is obviously more essential to him than anything that he possesses or that he may be in the eyes of others. A witty person, all alone, has excellent entertainment in his own thoughts and fantasies, whereas in a dullard the continuous diversion of parties, plays, excursions, and amusements cannot fend off the torments of boredom. A good, moderate, gentle character can be contented in meagre circumstances, whereas a greedy, envious, and malicious one is not in spite of all his wealth. Indeed, for the person who continuously enjoys an extraordinary, intellectually eminent personality, most of the generally desired pleasures are entirely superfluous, even just troublesome and annoying. Hence Horace says of himself:
Gems, marble, ivory,
Etruscan figurines, pictures,
Silver, clothes dyed in Gaetulian purple,
Many there are who own none, one who does not care to own.
And Socrates, when looking at luxury articles displayed for sale, says: ‘How many things there are I do not need.’
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From this it follows that people can be much less influenced from the outside than we normally think. Only all-powerful time exercises its right even here; all bodily and intellectual advantages gradually succumb to her; the moral character alone cannot be touched by it. In this respect the goods[340] of the last two categories, of which time does not immediately rob us, have an advantage.
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For what wealth can accomplish beyond the satisfaction of actual and natural needs has little influence on our real well-being; on the contrary, our comfort is disturbed by the many inevitable worries created by preserving a large estate. Nevertheless, people are a thousand times more anxious to acquire wealth than culture of the mind; whereas what we aresurely contributes much more to our happiness than what we have. Hence we see quite a few people, in restless activity, industrious like ants, trying from morning to night to increase the wealth they already have. Beyond the narrow horizon of the means to this end they know nothing; their minds are empty and hence unreceptive to anything else. The highest pleasures, those of the mind, are inaccessible to them; and in vain do they try to replace them by the fleeting, sensuous ones, costing little time but a lot of money, which they indulge in now and then. At the end of their lives then, as a result, they really have a large pile of money, if they are lucky, which they leave to their heirs either to increase further or to squander. Such a life, though plainly lived with an air of great seriousness and importance, is as foolish as many another that wore a fool’s cap as its symbol.
Hence what somebody has in himself is most essential for his life’s happiness.
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The emptiness of their inner life, the dullness of their consciousness, the poverty of their mind make them seek company, which, however, consists of people just like them, because ‘like takes pleasure in like’. a So together they hunt for diversion and entertainment, which they initially seek in sensuous pleasures, in every kind of amusement, and finally in excesses. The source of the fatal extravagance with which many a son of a family entering life with riches squanders his large inheritance within an incredibly short period of time, is really nothing but the boredom that has its source in the poverty and emptiness of mind just described. Such a young man was sent into the world outwardly rich, but inwardly poor, and now tried in vain to supplant inner with external wealth by wanting to receive everything from outside – like old men who seek to strengthen themselves through the perspiration of young women. And so in the end, inner poverty also led to external poverty.
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However, if the individual character is badly constituted, all pleasures are like delicious wines in a mouth full of bile. Accordingly, in good times and bad times, leaving aside great calamities, it is less important what befalls us in life than how we feel about it, hence what is the nature and the degree of our receptivity in every respect. What someone is and has within himself, in short, personality and its worth, is the only thing that immediately counts for his happiness and well-being. Everything else is mediate; consequently, its effects can be frustrated, but those of personality never. For that reason, envy directed towards personal merits is the most unforgiving, as it is also the most carefully concealed.
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But since the genius too depends on an excess of nervous power and hence sensibility, Aristotle quite rightly remarked that all excellent and superior human beings are melancholic: ‘All men who have distinguished themselves – either in philosophy, or politics, or poetry, or arts – seem to have been melancholic.’a Undoubtedly, this is the passage that Cicero had in mind in his often quoted statement: ‘Aristotle said that all geniuses are melancholic.
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The most general overview shows us the two enemies of human happiness to be pain and boredom. In addition, we can observe that to the degree that we succeed in removing ourselves from the one, we come closer to the other, and vice versa, so that our life actually presents a stronger or weaker oscillation between them. This arises from the fact that both stand in a double antagonism to one another, an external or objective, and an internal or subjective antagonism. For externally, want and privation cause pain, but security and abundance cause boredom. Accordingly, we see the lower classes in a perpetual struggle against want, hence pain, and the rich and noble world in a persistent and often really desperate struggle against boredom.*,8 The inner or subjective antagonism rests on the fact that in the individual, susceptibility to one is inversely proportional to susceptibility to the other, in that this susceptibility is determined by the person’s mental powers. For intellectual obtuseness is always associated with dullness of sensation and lack of sensitivity, a constitution which makes one less susceptible to pain and sorrow of whatever sort and magnitude. This intellectual obtuseness gives rise to that inner emptiness, pronounced in innumerable faces and betraying itself through the constant lively attention to even the most trivial events in the external world, an emptiness that is the true source of boredom and constantly craves external stimulation in order to stir intellect and mind through anything at all. Hence it is not fastidious[350] in its choice, as attested by the pitiful pastimes that people resort to, and also by the nature of their sociability and conversation, and no less so by the people who stand around in doorways or gape out of windows. Mainly from this inner vacuity arises the craving for company, diversion, enjoyment, and luxury of any kind, which leads many to extravagance and then to squalor. Nothing prevents us so reliably from this aberration than inner wealth, the wealth of the mind; for the more closely it approaches eminence, the less room it leaves for boredom.
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But on the other hand, the immediate condition for increased intelligence is a heightened sensibility, and its root is a greater vehemence of the will, hence of passionateness. Out of their association grows a much greater strength of all affects and an increased sensitivity for mental and even physical pain, also greater impatience with all obstacles or even just disturbances. The vividness of all representations, hence also the repulsive ones, springing from the strength of imagination, greatly contributes to heightening all of this. What has been said applies proportionally at all the intermediate stages that fill the wide space between the dullest blockhead and the greatest genius.
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The ingenious person will above all strive for freedom from pain and annoyance, for tranquillity and leisure, and consequently seek a quiet, modest life, as undisturbed as possible, and accordingly, after some acquaintance with so-called human beings, choose seclusion and, if in [351]possession of a great mind, even solitude. For the more somebody has in himself, the less he needs from the outside and the less others can be to him. Therefore, intellectual distinction leads to unsociability. Indeed, if the quality of society could be substituted by quantity, then it would be worth the effort to live in the world at large; but unfortunately a hundred fools in a pile still do not make one intelligent person. – In contrast, the person at the other extreme, as soon as his needs let him regain his breath, will seek diversion and company at any price and readily make do with anything, trying to escape from nothing as much as from himself. For in solitude, where everybody is referred back to himself, it becomes apparent what he has in himself; there the dunce in purple garment groans under the inescapable burden of his pathetic individuality, while the highly talented person populates and animates the most dreary surroundings with his thoughts. Therefore, what Seneca says is very true: ‘All stupidity suffers from weariness with itself’, a as is Jesus ben Sirach’s statement: ‘The life of the fool is worse than death.’b Accordingly, we will find on the whole that people are sociable to the degree that they are intellectually poor and generally common.*,9 For in this world we have little more than the choice between solitude and vulgarity. The most sociable of all human beings are said to be the negroes, who indeed are intellectually definitely inferior; according to accounts from North America in French papers (Le Commerce, c 19 October 1837), black people, free ones and slaves all together, shut themselves up in large numbers in the smallest space, because they cannot look often enough at their black snubnosed faces.
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But what does leisure yield for most people? Boredom and apathy, as long as[352] sensuous pleasures or follies do not fill the time. How utterly worthless it is becomes apparent through the way in which they spend it – it is Ariosto’s ‘eternal leisure of ignorant men’.e Common people are merely intent on spending time – whoever has some talent, on making use of it. – That limited minds are so much subject to boredom is due to the fact that their intellect is nothing but the medium of motives for their will. Now if for the time being there are no motives to be grasped, the will rests and the intellect takes a holiday, the latter because, like the former, it does not become active by itself; the result is terrible stagnation of all powers in the whole human being – boredom.
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Lacking those, the dull-witted person makes do with rattles and drums, with anything he can lay his hands on. For him, even a cigar is a welcome substitute for thoughts.10 – Hence in countries everywhere card games have become the main occupation at all social gatherings; they are the measure of their worth and the declared bankruptcy of all thought. For, since they do not exchange ideas, they exchange cards and try to take each other’s money. Oh what a pitiful race!
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Furthermore, just as that country is happiest that needs little or no imports, so also human beings are happiest who are content with their inner riches and need little or nothing from the outside for their entertainment, since such influx is expensive, makes us dependent, creates dangers, causes annoyance, and in the end is still an inferior substitute for the products of one’s own soil. For from others, from the outside, we cannot expect much in any respect. What one can be to the other is strictly limited; in the end, everyone is alone, and then it all comes down to who is alone.
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Hence Aristotle is quite justified in saying: ‘Happiness belongs to those who are independent of others’, b in other words: Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient in[354] themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are by their nature utterly uncertain, precarious, transient and subject to chance and might, therefore, even under the most favourable conditions, easily dry up; indeed, this is inevitable, insofar as they cannot always be close at hand. In old age, they all, of necessity, stop almost completely; love, banter, wanderlust, delight in horses, and aptitude for social intercourse desert us; even friends and relatives are carried off by death. Hence what we have in ourselves is more than ever important, since this will hold up the longest. But at every age this is and remains the true and solely permanent source of happiness. There is nothing to be got in the world anywhere; privation and pain pervade it, and boredom lies in wait at every corner for those who have escaped them. Moreover, wickedness usually reigns, and folly does all the talking. Fate is cruel, and human beings are pathetic. In such a world, the people who have much within themselves resemble the bright, warm, merry drawing-room at Christmas in the middle of the snow and ice of a December night.
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People with superior intellectual powers, on the other hand, are capable, and in fact, in need of the most lively interest by way of mere cognition, without any interference of the will. But this interest then transports them to a region where pain is essentially alien, into the atmosphere of the lightly living gods, ‘of the gods who live at ease’. a In contrast, the life of the others passes in apathy, in that their thoughts[359] and aspirations are entirely directed towards the petty interests of personal welfare and hence to miseries of all kind, which causes unbearable boredom to befall them as soon as occupation with these purposes comes to an end and they are thrown back onto themselves, since only the fierce fire of passion is able to move the stagnating mass. On the other hand, the existence of people with predominantly intellectual powers is rich in ideas and full of life and meaning; worthy and interesting subject matters occupy them as soon as they can devote themselves to them, and they have within themselves a source of the noblest pleasures.
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Because of all this, they naturally have one need more than the others, the need to learn, to see, to study, to meditate, to practise, and thus also the need for leisure. But since, as Voltaire rightly observed, ‘there are no real pleasures without real needs’,b this need is the condition for their having access to pleasures that others are denied, for whom beauty of nature and in art and intellectual works of all kinds, even if they accumulate these around them, at bottom are only what mistressesa are to an old man. As a result, such privileged people, aside from their personal life, lead a second, namely an intellectual life, which gradually becomes their real purpose and for which they see the first only as a mere means, whereas for the rest this stale, empty, and sad existence must itself be regarded as the end. Consequently, the former are primarily occupied with the intellectual life, which attains, through continuous increase in insight and knowledge, cohesion, steady augmentation, and wholeness and perfection, completing itself more and more, like a slowly maturing work of art. On the other hand, the life of the rest, which is merely practical, merely aimed at personal welfare, [360]merely capable of growing in length, not in depth, stands in sad contrast to it, but must nevertheless count as an end in itself, whereas it is a mere means for the former sort of people.
Our practical, real life, if not moved by passions, is boring and stale; but when moved by them, it soon becomes painful; for that reason only those are lucky who have been meted out some excess of intellect, beyond the measure required for service of the will.
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leisure without literature is death and is like being buried alive for a human being’. (Seneca, Epistles, 82.
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And such an intellectual life protects not only against boredom, but also against its pernicious consequences.19 For it becomes a bulwark against bad company and the many dangers, misadventures, losses, and dissipations into which we stumble when seeking our luck entirely in the actual world. For example, my philosophy has never earned me anything, but it has spared me a lot.
An ordinary human being, on the other hand, depends on things outside of him in regard to enjoying life, on property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like; these prop up his life’s happiness, and this is the reason it is destroyed if he loses these things, or when he sees himself deceived by them. In order to express this relation, we can say that his centre of gravity falls outside of himself. Consequently, he has constantly changing desires and whimsies; when his means permit it, he will now buy country-houses, now horses, now give parties, travel, and in general live in great extravagance, since he seeks satisfaction from the outside in all kinds of[361] things, just as the debilitated person hopes through broths and medicines to regain the health and strength whose true source lies in his own vital force.
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Hence it is only for this kind of human being that undisturbed occupation with himself, his thoughts and works, is an urgent need, that solitude is welcome, leisure the highest good, and everything else expendable, indeed, when present, often merely a burden. Only of such a human being, therefore, can we say that his centre of gravity falls entirely within himself. This explains why the exceedingly rare people of this nature, even when possessing the best character, nonetheless do not show that intimate and unlimited sympathy for friends, family, and community of which some others are capable; for in the end they can console themselves about anything if only they have themselves. Therefore, they possess one more isolating element that is all the more effective, as others never really satisfy them completely. For that[362]reason, they cannot look at them as quite their equals, and indeed, since they always feel the heterogeneous in everything, they gradually get accustomed to walking among people as different beings and, in their thoughts about them, to using the third, not the first person plural. – Our moral virtues mainly benefit others, whereas the intellectual ones benefit primarily ourselves; consequently, the former make us universally popular, the latter, objects of hate.
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When somebody is destined to impress the trace of his intellect on the whole of humanity, there is for him only one kind of happiness and unhappiness, namely to be able to perfect his talents and to complete his works – or to be prevented from doing so. Everything else is insignificant for him. Accordingly we see the great minds of all times attach the greatest value to leisure. For the leisure of each person is worth as much as he himself is worth.21 ‘Happiness seems to exist in leisure’, says Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics X, 7), b and Diogenes Laertius (II, 5, 31) reports that ‘Socrates praised leisure as the best of all possessions.’c In keeping with this, [363]Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics X, 7, 8, 9) declares the philosophical life to be the happiest. Also what he says in the Politics (IV, 11) belongs here: ‘The happy life is that lived without impediment in accordance with virtue’,d which, properly translated, means: ‘Real happiness is the ability to exercise one’s excellence, whatever its nature, without hindrance’, which coincides with Goethe’s words in Wilhelm Meister: ‘Whoever is born with a talent and can realize it, finds in it his most beautiful existence.’a – However, possessing leisure is alien not only to ordinary fate, but also ordinary human nature; for the natural destiny of a human being is to spend his time procuring what is necessary for his own and his family’s existence. He is the son of need, not of free intelligence.
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On the other hand, we must consider against all this that the great intellectual gifts, as a result of a predominant nervous activity, lead to a greatly enhanced sensitivity for every form of pain and, further, that the passionate temperament that is the condition for these gifts and at the same time the greater vividness and completeness of all representations that is[364] inseparable from them, leads to an incomparably greater intensity of the affects stirred by them – however, in general there are more painful than pleasant affects. Finally, these great intellectual gifts alienate their possessor from other human beings and their activities, since, the more he has in himself, the less he is able to find in others, and a hundred things that greatly please them are to him insipid and unpalatable, so that the law of compensation, which asserts itself everywhere, may perhaps remain in force here too. For it has been maintained often enough, and not without evidence,c that the intellectually most limited person is, to all intents and purposes, the happiest, even if no one may envy him this happiness.
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According to it, he is a human being without intellectual needs. Several things follow from this: first, in respect of himself, that he remains without intellectual pleasures, according to the already mentioned principle: ‘There are no true pleasures without true needs.’h No keen urgei towards knowledge and insight for their own sake animate his existence, nor one towards actual aesthetic pleasures, which are definitely related to the first urge. Such pleasures as are imposed on him by fashion or authority, he will dispose of as quickly as possible as a kind of forced labour. Real pleasures for him are the sensuous ones alone; in them he finds compensation. Accordingly, oysters and champagne are the highpoint of his existence, and the purpose of his life is to acquire everything that contributes to bodily well-being. And he is lucky enough if this purpose keeps him busy! For if those goods are already conferred on him in advance, he will inevitably fall prey to boredom, against which all possible means are tried: ballet, theatre, society, card games, gambling, horses, women, drinking, travelling, and so on. But all of these are not sufficient to ward off boredom, when a lack of intellectual needs makes intellectual pleasures impossible. Hence a dull, dry seriousness, close to that of animals, is characteristic of the philistine. Nothing delights him, nothing excites him, nothing rouses his interest. For sensuous pleasures are soon exhausted; a society made up of philistines just like him soon becomes boring; card games finally become tiresome. At most, he is left to enjoy the pleasures of vanity in his own way, consisting in his exceeding others in regard to wealth, or rank, or influence and power, by whom he is then honoured, or in associating with people who excel in such things and thus basking in[366] the reflection of their splendour (a snoba). – From the fundamental qualities of a philistine we have described it follows secondly, in respect to others, that, since he has no intellectual, but only physical needs, he will seek out the person who is able to satisfy the latter, not the one who can satisfy the former. Hence among the demands he makes on others, the least will be that of predominant intellectual abilities; on the contrary, if he encounters these, they will arouse his dislike, even his hatred, because in reaction to them he has only an annoying feeling of inferiority and, in addition, one of dull, secret envy. This he carefully hides by trying to conceal it even from himself, which is why it sometimes grows into a secret rage. Therefore, it will never occur to him to measure his appreciation, or deep respect, in accordance with such qualities; this is exclusively reserved for rank and wealth, and power and influence, which in his eyes are the only true merits in which he wishes to excel. – But all this follows from the fact that he is a human being without intellectual needs.
Arthur Schopenhauer
Parerga and Paralipomena
(The Cambridge Edition)
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