Schopenhauer - On noise and sounds

 

§378

Kant wrote an essay on the living forces,a but I would like to write a dirge and a threnody on them, because their all too excessive use in knocking, hammering and ramming has been a daily pain to me my whole life through. Of course there are people, indeed quite a few who smile at this, because they are insensitive to sounds; but these are the same ones who are also insensitive to reasons, thoughts, poetry and works of art, in brief, to spiritual impressions of any kind, due to the tough and unyielding texture of their brain matter. On the other hand, in the biographies or other accounts of personal utterances of almost all great writers, for instance Kant, Goethe, Lichtenberg,1 Jean Paul, I find complaints about the anguish caused to thinking men by noise; indeed, if such information is missing in any one case, then it is merely because the context did not lead to it. I interpret the matter as follows: just as a large diamond cut into pieces is equal in value only to so many small ones, or an army shattered to pieces and dissolved into small units is no longer capable of anything, so too a great mind is no more capable than an ordinary one as soon as it is interrupted, disturbed, distracted and diverted, because its superiority is conditioned by concentrating all its powers on one point and object, as a concave mirror does all of its rays, and precisely this is prevented by the noisy interruption. This is why eminent minds have always abhorred every kind of disturbance, interruption and diversion, especially those of a 680 violent nature through noise, whereas others are not especially bothered by this. The most sensible and intelligent of all European nations has even called the rule ‘never interrupt’b its eleventh commandment. But noise is the most impertinent of all interruptions, since it breaks up and indeed breaks down even our own thoughts. But where there is nothing to interrupt, noise is of course not particularly sensed. – Occasionally I am tormented and bothered by a moderate and constant noise before I am clearly aware of it, in that I sense it merely as a constant hindrance to my thinking, like dragging a weight with my foot, until I realize what it is. –

But transitioning now from the genus to the species, I have to denounce as the most irresponsible and scandalous noise the truly infernal whip-cracking in the echoing streets of the cities, which robs life of all peace and all pensiveness. Nothing provides me with a clearer notion of the obtuseness and thoughtlessness of mankind than the condoning of this whip-cracking.2 This sudden, sharp, brain-numbing crack, which cuts to pieces all contemplation and murders every thought, has to be painfully felt by everyone who bears anything resembling a thought in his head; therefore each of those cracks must disturb hundreds in their mental activity, however inferior it may be in quality, but they chop through a thinker’s meditations as painfully and disastrously as the executioner’s blade severs the head from the body. No sound cuts through the brain as sharply as this damned whip-cracking; the very tip of the lash can be felt in the brain, affecting it like a mimosa when it is touched, and lasting just as long. With all due respect for most sacred utility, I still do not see why a fellow who hauls off a load of sand or manure should therefore be granted the privilege of nipping in the bud every successively emerging thought in the heads of ten thousand people (for a half hour along a city route). Hammer blows, dogs barking and the screaming of children are appalling, but only the crack of a whip is the real murderer of thoughts. It is designed to crush 681 every good and pensive moment that someone might have here and there, and as the most horrific of all sounds it would only be excusable if no other means were available to drive draft animals.3 But quite the contrary: this damned whip-cracking is not only unnecessary but even useless. For the intended psychic effect on horses is completely blunted and missing because they have become desensitized by the constant misuse of the whip; they do not quicken their pace in response, as can be seen especially in the case of coachmen looking for fares and whipping constantly even though driving at the slowest pace, and the slightest touch of the whip is more effective. But assuming that it would be unavoidably necessary to remind the horses of the presence of the whip by using this sound, then a sound a hundred times weaker would suffice, since it is well known that animals notice even the slightest, indeed scarcely noticeable signs, audible as well as visible, of which trained dogs and canaries provide the most amazing examples.4 Accordingly this situation turns out to be nothing but a case of pure impudence, indeed5 of insolent scorn on the part of society that works with its arms directed against those who work with their heads. That such an infamy is tolerated in cities is a crude barbarism and an injustice, all the more so as it would be very easy to prevent by a police-mandated knot at the tip of every whip cord. It cannot hurt for the proletarians to be reminded of the mental work of the class standing above them, for they have a boundless fear of all mental work. But now a fellow who rides through the narrow streets of a populous city with free post horses or on a free cart horse, or for that matter walking along beside the animals6 and incessantly cracking his fathoms-long whip with all his might, clearly deserves to stand down immediately in order to receive five earnestly delivered blows with a stick – all the philanthropists in the world, along with the legislatures that for good reasons abolish all corporal punishment will not persuade me otherwise. But we can often enough see something even more egregious than this, namely a coachman walking 682 the streets alone and without horses, yet incessantly cracking his whip; so habituated has this man become to whip-cracking, as a result of irresponsible coddling.7 With all this universal tenderness for the body and all its gratifications, is the thinking mind the only thing that never gets the least consideration, nor protection, let alone respect? Coachmen, porters, errand boys and so on are the beasts of burden of human society; they should by all means be treated humanely with justice, fairness, consideration and care, but they should not be allowed to obstruct the higher endeavours of the human race through impudent noise. I would like to know how many great and beautiful thoughts these whips have already cracked out of the world. If it were mine to command, then an indestructible association of ideasa would be created in the minds of coachmen between whip-cracking and getting a beating.8 – We would hope that the more intelligent and finely sensitive nations will make a start on this as well, and then by way of example the Germans could also be brought along.*,9 Meanwhile, Thomas Hood (Up the Rhine) says of them: ‘For a musical people, they are the most noisy I ever met with.’b But that they are so is not based on the fact that they are more inclined to noise-making than others, but on the insensitivity stemming from the obtuseness of those who have to hear it, who are not disturbed in any thinking or reading simply because they are not thinking, but merely smoking instead, which is their surrogate for thinking. The universal toleration of unnecessary noise, for instance of the extremely ill-mannered and vulgar slamming of doors, is nothing short of a sign of the general obtuseness and thought vacuum of their minds. In Germany it is positively as though the plan were for no one to come to their senses on account of noise, such as pointless drumming, for instance.10Finally now as regards the literature dealing with the subject treated in 683 this chapter, I have only one work to recommend, but it is a beautiful one, namely a poetic epistle in terza rima by the famous painter Bronzino, entitled On Noises.a For here the anguish one has to endure from the many kinds of noise of an Italian city is described in detail, with both humour and wit, in a tragic-comical style. This epistle can be found on page 258 of the second volume of Burlesque Works of Berni, Aretino and othersb apparently published in Utrecht in 1771.

a [Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces), 1747]

b [Schopenhauer’s English]

anexus idearum

b [Quoted in English]

aDe’ romori, a Messer Luca Martini

bOpere burlesche del Berni, Aretino ed altri

* According to a ‘Bulletin of the Munich Animal Protection Society’ of December 1858, in Nuremberg superfluous whipping and whip-cracking are most strictly forbidden.

Parerga and Paralipomena II