Suttas on women

“Be patient, Venerable Kassapa, women are foolish.”
Ven Ananda SN 16 : 10

“If one could rightly say of anything that it is entirely a snare of Māra, it is precisely of women that one might say this.” AN 5 : 55

“Bhikkhus, women die unsatisfied and discontent in two things. What two? Sexual intercourse and giving birth. Women die unsatisfied and discontent in these two things.”
AN 2 : 62

Kamboja

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Kosambī in Ghosita’s Park. Then the Venerable Ānanda approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, sat down to one side, and said:
“Bhante, why is it that women do not sit in council, or engage in business, or go to Kamboja?”
“Ānanda, women are prone to anger; women are envious; women are miserly; women are unwise. This is why women do not sit in council, engage in business, or go to Kamboja.”
AN 2 : 62

Snake (1)

“Bhikkhus, there are these five dangers in a black snake. What five? It is impure, foul-smelling, frightening, dangerous, and it betrays friends. These are the five dangers in a black snake. So too, there are these five dangers in women. What five? They are impure, foul-smelling, frightening, dangerous, and they betray friends. These are the five dangers in women.”

230 (10) Snake (2)

“Bhikkhus, there are these five dangers in a black snake. What five? It is wrathful, hostile, of virulent venom, double-tongued, and it betrays friends. These are the five dangers in a black snake. So too, there are these five dangers in women. What five? They are wrathful, hostile, of virulent venom, double-tongued, and they betray friends.

“Bhikkhus, this is how women are of virulent venom: for the most part they have strong lust. This is how women are double-tongued: for the most part they utter divisive speech. This is how women betray friends: for the most part they are adulterous. These are the five dangers in women.” AN 5 : 229/30

The Blessed One then said to those girls:

(1) “So then, girls, you should train yourselves thus: ‘To whichever husband our parents give us—doing so out of a desire for our good, seeking our welfare, taking compassion on us, acting out of compassion for us—we will rise before him and retire after him, undertaking whatever needs to be done, agreeable in our conduct and pleasing in our speech.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(2) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will honor, respect, esteem, and venerate those whom our husband respects—his mother and father, ascetics and brahmins—and when they arrive we will offer them a seat and water.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(3) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will be skillful and diligent in attending to our husband’s domestic chores, whether knitting or weaving; we will possess sound judgment about them in order to carry out and arrange them properly.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(4) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will find out what our husband’s domestic helpers—whether slaves, messengers, or [38] workers—have done and left undone; we will find out the condition of those who are ill; and we will distribute to each an appropriate portion of food.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

(5) “And you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will guard and protect whatever income our husband brings home—whether money or grain, silver or gold—and we will not be spendthrifts, thieves, wastrels, or squanderers of his earnings.’ Thus should you train yourselves.

“When, girls, a woman possesses these five qualities, with the breakup of the body, after death, she is reborn in companionship with the agreeable-bodied devas.”

She does not despise her husband,
the man who constantly supports her,
who ardently and eagerly
always brings her whatever she wants.
Nor does a good woman scold her husband
with speech caused by jealousy;1010
the wise woman shows veneration
to all those whom her husband reveres.
She rises early, works diligently,
manages the domestic help;
she treats her husband in agreeable ways
and safeguards the wealth he earns.

2

The woman who fulfills her duties thus,
following her husband’s will and wishes,
is reborn among the devas
called “the agreeable ones.”
AN 5 : 33

“Visākhā, possessing four qualities, a woman is heading for victory in the present world and her life in this world succeeds.1724 What four? Here, a woman is capable at her work; she manages the domestic help; she behaves agreeably to her husband; and she safeguards his earnings.

(1) “And how, Visākhā, is a woman capable at her work? Here, a woman is skillful and diligent in attending to her husband’s domestic chores, whether knitting or weaving; she possesses sound judgment about them in order to carry out and arrange them properly. It is in this way that a woman [270] is capable at her work.

(2) “And how does a woman manage the domestic help? Here, a woman finds out what her husband’s domestic helpers—whether slaves, messengers, or workers—have done and left undone; she finds out the condition of those who are ill; and she distributes to each an appropriate portion of food. It is in this way that a woman manages the domestic help.

(3) “And how does a woman behave agreeably to her husband? Here, a woman would not commit any misdeed that her husband would consider disagreeable, even at the cost of her life. It is in this way that a woman behaves agreeably to her husband.

(4) “And how does a woman safeguard his earnings? Here, a woman guards and protects whatever income her husband brings home—whether money or grain, silver or gold—and she is not a spendthrift, thief, wastrel, or squanderer of his earnings. It is in this way that a woman safeguards his earnings.

“Possessing these four qualities, a woman is heading for victory in the present world and her life in this world succeeds.

“Possessing four [other] qualities, Visākhā, a woman is heading for victory in the other world and her life in the other world succeeds. What four? Here, a woman is accomplished in faith, accomplished in virtuous behavior, accomplished in generosity, and accomplished in wisdom.

(5) “And how, Visākhā, is a woman accomplished in faith? Here, a woman is endowed with faith. She places faith in the enlightenment of the Tathāgata thus: ‘The Blessed One is an arahant, perfectly enlightened, accomplished in true knowledge and conduct, fortunate, knower of the world, unsurpassed trainer of persons to be tamed, teacher of devas and humans, the Enlightened One, the Blessed One.’ It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in faith.

(6) “And how is a woman accomplished in virtuous behavior? [271] Here, a woman abstains from the destruction of life … from liquor, wine, and intoxicants, the basis for heedlessness. It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in virtuous behavior.

(7) “And how is a woman accomplished in generosity? Here, a woman dwells at home with a heart devoid of the stain of miserliness, freely generous, openhanded, delighting in relinquishment, devoted to charity, delighting in giving and sharing. It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in generosity.

(8) “And how is a woman accomplished in wisdom? Here, a woman is wise; she possesses the wisdom that discerns arising and passing away, which is noble and penetrative and leads to the complete destruction of suffering. It is in this way that a woman is accomplished in wisdom.

“Possessing these four qualities, Visākhā, a woman is heading for victory in the other world and her life in the other world succeeds.”

Capable in attending to her work,
managing the domestic help,
she treats her husband in agreeable ways
and safeguards the wealth he earns.
Rich in faith, possessed of virtue,
charitable and devoid of miserliness,
she constantly purifies the path
that leads to safety in the future life.
They call any woman
who has these eight qualities,
virtuous, firm in Dhamma,
a speaker of truth.
Accomplished in sixteen aspects,1726
complete in eight factors,
such a virtuous female lay follower
is reborn in an agreeable deva world.
AN 8: 49

Peculiar

“Bhikkhus, there are five kinds of suffering peculiar to women, which women experience but not men. What five?

“Here, bhikkhus, even when young, a woman goes to live with her husband’s family and is separated from her relatives. This is the first kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman is subject to menstruation. This is the second kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman becomes pregnant. This is the third kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman gives birth. This is the fourth kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“Again, a woman is made to serve a man. This is the fifth kind of suffering peculiar to women….
“These, bhikkhus, are the five kinds of suffering peculiar to women, which women experience but not men.”

Three Qualities

“Bhikkhus, when a woman possesses three qualities, with the breakup of the body, after death, she is generally reborn in a state of misery, in a bad destination, in the nether world, in hell. What are the three? Here, bhikkhus, in the morning a woman dwells at home with her heart obsessed by the taint of selfishness; at noon she dwells at home with her heart obsessed by envy; in the evening she dwells at home with her heart obsessed by sensual lust. When a woman possesses these three qualities … she is generally reborn in a state of misery … in hell.”

SN 37 : 3/4

Confident

“Bhikkhus, there are five powers of a woman. What are the five? The power of beauty, the power of wealth, the power of relatives, the power of sons, the power of virtue. These are the five powers of a woman. When a woman possesses these five powers, she dwells confident at home.”

Having Won Over /
“Bhikkhus, there are five powers of a woman…. (as above ) ... When a woman possesses these five powers, she dwells at home having won over her husband.” / with her husband under her control.

One

“Bhikkhus, when a man possesses one power, he abides with a woman under his control. What is that one power? The power of authority. When a woman has been overcome by the power of authority, neither the power of beauty can rescue her, nor the power of wealth, nor the power of relatives, nor the power of sons, nor the power of virtue.”

“Bhikkhus, it is not because of the power of beauty, or the power of wealth, or the power of relatives, or the power of sons, that with the breakup of the body, after death, a woman is reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world. It is because of the power of virtue that a woman is reborn in a good destination, in a heavenly world.
SN 37 : 25 - 28 ; 31

Eight capital points for bhikkhunis

These are the eight points. A bhikkhuni who has been admitted even a hundred years must pay homage to, get up for, reverentially salute, and respectfully greet, a bhikkhu admitted that day. A bhikkhuni must not spend the rains in a place where there are no bhikkhus. Every half-month a bhik-khuni should expect two things from the Sangha of bhikkhus; the appointment of the Uposatha day of observance each half-month, and a visit for exhortation. At the end of the rains a bhikkhuni must invite criticism of both Sanghas in the three instances, that is, whether anything improper in her conduct has been seen, heard or suspected. When a bhikkhuni has committed a grave offence, she must do the penance before both Sanghas. A probationer who seeks admission must do so from both Sanghas and after training in the six things for two years. A bhikkhuni must not find fault with or abuse a bhikkhu in any manner at all. From today onwards it is not allowed for bhikkhunis to address discourses to bhikkhus, but it is allowed for bhikkhus to address bhikkhunis. These eight things are to be honoured, respected, revered and venerated, and they are not to be transgressed as long as life lasts. If Mahāpajāpati Gotami accepts these eight capital points, that will count as her full admission.’

(...)

Ānanda, if women had not obtained the going forth from the house life into homelessness in the Dhamma and Discipline declared by the Perfect One, the holy life would have lasted long, the holy life would have lasted a thousand years. But now, since women have obtained it, the holy life will not last long, the holy life will last only five hundred years.

“Just as clans with many women and few men are easily ruined by robbers and bandits, so too in the Dhamma and Discipline in which women obtain the going forth the holy life does not last long. Just as when the blight called gray mildew falls on a field of ripening rice, that field of ripening rice does not last long—just as when the blight called red rust falls on a field of ripening sug-arcane, that field of ripening sugarcane does not last long—so too in the Dhamma and Discipline in which women obtain the going forth the holy life does not last long. As a man might construct in advance an embankment so that the waters of a great reservoir should not cause a flood, so I too have made known in advance these eight capital points for bhikkhunis not to be transgressed as long as life lasts.”

Vin. Cv. 10:1; A. 8:51

Aphorisms from Lichtenberg Philosophical Writings

When we teach men how they should think and not always what they should think, we avoid much misunderstanding. It is a kind of initiation into the mysteries of mankind. Whoever stumbles upon a peculiar proposition in his own thinking will readily depart with it if it is false. A peculiar proposition taught by a respected man, however, may mislead thousands who do not examine it. One cannot be cautious enough in disclosing one's own opinions in matters of life and felicity and not diligent enough in inculcating understanding and doubt. To this belongs Bolingbroke's statement, “Every man's reason is every man's oracle.”
Doubt must be no more than vigilance; otherwise it can become dangerous.

Man has an irresistible instinct to believe he is not seen when he himself sees nothing, like children who shut their eyes in order not to be seen.

A clever child raised with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectible and corruptible that he can become a fool through reason.

In past times, when the soul was still immortal.

All impartiality is artificial. Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial. He belonged to the party of the impartial.

We must not believe if we make a few discoveries here and there that things will go on like this forever. An acrobat may leap higher than a plowboy, and one acrobat may leap higher than another, yet the height over which no human can leap is still very low. Just as we find water when we dig in the earth, sooner or later we discover the incomprehensible everywhere.

To think this causes such confusion in my head, almost as though I tried to think that Poland lies to the west of us.

That men so often make false judgments is certainly not due solely to a lack of insight and ideas but primarily to the fact that they do not put every element of the proposition under the microscope and examine it.

Thousands can see that a proposition is nonsense without possessing the capacity to refute it formally.

What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I do not deny they are sometimes correct, but are they not just as often incorrect? Is that not what I intended to say? A game of chance.

An ass was obliged to carry an image of Isis, and when the people kneeled to worship the image, he thought they were honoring him.

How perfectible man is and how necessary education can be seen from the fact that he now appropriates in sixty years a culture that the whole race has taken five thousand years to create. A youth of eighteen can contain within himself the wisdom of whole ages. If I learn the proposition, the force that attracts in polished amber is the same as that which thunders in the clouds, I have learned something quite quickly, the discovery of which cost mankind several thousand years.

First there is a time when we believe everything without reasons; then for a short time we believe with discrimination; then we believe nothing at all; and then we believe everything again and indeed give reasons for believing everything.

You have discovered these traits together ten times, but have you also counted the cases in which you have not found them together?

An amusing thought: a scholar weeping because he cannot understand his own writings. […]

When something bites us in the dark, we can usually locate the spot with the point of a needle. What an exact plan the soul must have of its body.

There are few people who are not obliged to believe many things that upon closer examination they would not understand. They do this simply on the authority of others, or they think they lack the additional knowledge necessary to abolish all doubt. In this regard, it is possible for a proposition, whose truth has not yet been verified, to be universally believed.
I have long known, dear sir, that here and everywhere observations must be our primary concern and that a profound theory always allows enough room for two heads of equal size to distance themselves nearly to the point of being pro and contra. Only I assumed we are consistent, and what you have taken to be mere theory was a probable explanation of my numerous errors.

That people who read so astonishingly much are often such bad thinkers may also have its origin in the constitution of our brain. It is certainly not all the same whether I learn a proposition without effort or if I finally arrive at it myself through my own system of thought. In the latter everything has its roots; in the former it is merely superficial.

Let us take Sir Isaac Newton. All discoveries belong to chance, whether they come at the end or the beginning of the process, for otherwise reasonable people could sit down and make discoveries like they write letters. Wit spots a similarity, and reason tests it and finds it to be true: that is discovery.

One rule in reading is to condense the intention and main thoughts of the author into a few words and in this way to make them one's own. Whoever reads in this way is occupied and gains something. When one reads without comparison with one's own inventory of knowledge or without synthesizing it with one's own system of thought, the mind gains nothing and loses much.

It is almost impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone's beard.

What people call a subtle knowledge of human nature is for the most part nothing other than one's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

Whoever knows himself properly can very soon know all other men. It is all reflection.

Men who know well how to observe themselves, and thus secretly know a great deal, often are pleased to discover a weakness in themselves, where such a discovery would normally disappoint. For many, the professor is much more esteemed than the man.

It is certainly quite true that most people who are not capable of love are also worth little in friendship. Still, one often sees the opposite.

It is a fault common to all people of little talent and more erudition than understanding that they discover artificial rather than natural explanations.

It has always been true that most men live more according to fashion than reason.

There is in my opinion a great difference between teaching reasoning and being rational. There may be people who possess anything but common sense and yet who speculate admirably upon the rules it must observe, just as a physiologist can have knowledge of the constitution of the body and yet be quite unhealthy.

What can be the reason for man's terrible aversion to showing himself as he is, whether in his bedroom or in his most private thoughts? In the material world, everything is both what it can be and at the same time very forthright. According to our concepts, things are all that they can possibly be with respect to one another, but man is not. He appears rather to be that which he should not be. The art of concealing ourselves, or our aversion to letting ourselves be seen naked, intellectually or morally, is carried astonishingly far.

Words must occasionally be investigated, for the world can move on while words remain behind. Thus always things not words! For even the words infinite, eternal, and always have lost their meaning.

He was astonished that cats have two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes are.

Through our excessive reading we learn not only to take things for true that are not, but our proofs also acquire a form that is often demanded not so much by the nature of the case as by our unnoticed adherence to fashion. Using familiar examples, we demonstrate things that we could as convincingly support with examples from our own experience; and we even cite as support sentences that prove nothing and propositions that are mere tautologies. It is quite difficult to regard something in a new way and not mediated by fashion or determined by our accepted paradigm. When we should offer reasons and arguments, we instead offer our reputation; where we should teach, we instead threaten; and where humans would have been sufficient, we enlist gods for support.

Many people claim philosophical objectivity about certain things because they understand nothing of them.

A great way of attaining common sense is to strive constantly for clear concepts—not merely by relying on the definitions of others, but as far as possible by personal inquiry. We should repeatedly scrutinize things with the intention of discovering something others have not yet observed. For every word, we should at least once give ourselves an explanation and never use any word we do not understand.

It is not easy to think too much, but it is easy to read too much. The more things I think about, the more I endeavor to associate them with my experiences and my own system of thought, the stronger I become. With reading it is the contrary; I extend myself without increasing my strength. When I notice in my thinking gaps I cannot fill or difficulties I cannot overcome, I must consult a book and read. Either this is how one becomes useful, or there is no way.

It would be a blessing if we could shut our ears and other senses like we shut our eyes.

That it is so easy to shut our eyes and so difficult to shut our ears, except by covering them with our hands, shows undeniably that heaven was more concerned with the maintenance of our sensible apparatus than with the pleasure of our soul. Our ears are our most alert sentinels in sleep. What a blessing it would be if we could close and open our ears as easily as our eyes!

The noble simplicity in the works of nature has its origin only too often in the noble shortsightedness of the one who observes it.

There is a great difference between believing something and not being able to believe the contrary. I can often believe things without being able to prove them, just as I disbelieve others without being able to disprove them. The position I take is determined not strictly by logic but by the preponderance of evidence.

Anyone who reflects on the history of philosophy and natural science will find that the greatest discoveries were made by people who regarded as merely probable what others advanced as certain. They might be described as adherents of the New Academy—a school that maintained a balance between the rigorous certainty of the Stoics and the uncertainty and indifference of the Skeptics. Such a philosophy is all the more to be recommended in that we accumulate our ideas and opinions at a time when our understanding is at its weakest.

In all sciences, it can be advantageous to posit cases that as far as we know do not occur in nature, just as mathematicians posit alternative laws of gravity. It is always heuristic and may sometimes provoke insights.

If only I could dishabituate myself from everything, so I could see anew, hear anew, and feel anew. Habit corrupts our philosophy.

We can do good in as many ways as we can sin, in thought, word, and deed.

There are truths that go about so garishly attired that we should take them for lies, but they are pure truths nonetheless.

Premeditated virtue is not worth much; feeling or habit is the thing.

If only children could be educated so that all things unclear were entirely incomprehensible to them.

It is very good to read once again the books others have read already a hundred times, for though the object remains the same, the subject is different.

Shortsighted and farsighted are used incorrectly as metaphors of mental capacity. Here shortsighted means blind; but it is clear that shortsighted people also see things others do not.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

The human tendency to regard little things as significant has produced much that is great.

It is a great trick of rhetoric merely to persuade people when one could have convinced them; they often think themselves convinced when merely persuaded.

With prophecies, the interpreter is often a more important man than the prophet.

Nothing is more agreeable to me than instances where my sympathy or antipathy precedes reason to discover how these are related, in other words, to become aware of what I am in this world and why I am this way.—Our entire philosophy, I believe, consists in becoming distinctly aware of what we already are mechanically.

The mind of man is no less provided for than is the body of an animal; what in the latter is called appetite and instinct is in the former called common sense. Both can suffocate; the only difference being that for an animal the cause must be external, but for man it can also be internal. An animal is for itself always a subject, while man is for himself also an object.

However we imagine representing to ourselves the things outside of us, these representations will and must invariably carry some trace of the subject in them. It seems to me a very unphilosophical idea to regard our soul as merely passive; no, it also contributes something to the objects. Thus there can be no being in the world that recognizes the world as it really is. I would like to call this the affinities of the mental and physical worlds, and I can very well imagine there might be beings for whom the order of the universe would be music to which they dance while heaven plays accompaniment.

Just as the highest law is the greatest injustice, so too is the greatest injustice often the highest law.

What am I? What shall I do? What may I hope and believe? All things in philosophy can be reduced to this.

It is actually evidence for the great limitation of our sensibilities that we do not see the essence of things. We see the color, feel the weight, impenetrability, and density of a magnet; but these properties are not—whether taken separately or together—that by virtue of which the magnet attracts iron, for other objects also possesses all of these properties.

It is necessary to agitate all of our knowledge and then let it settle again in order to see how everything is arranged. […]

To discover between things relationships and similarities that no one else sees. In this way, wit can lead to invention.

Writing is an excellent means of awakening the system sleeping within each of us; anyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something that, though it lay within us, we did not previously clearly recognize.

When he attends church and reads his bible, the ordinary man confuses the means with the end—a very common error.

“Ah!” he exclaimed at his mishap, “if only I had done something delightfully sinful this morning, I would know why I am suffering now!”

That a false hypothesis is at times to be preferred to the correct one can be seen in the doctrine of the freedom of man. Man is certainly not free, but a quite profound study of philosophy is required not to be misled by this idea. Among a thousand people, none has the time and patience for such study, and among the hundred that do, not one has the mind or spirit for it. Freedom is thus really the most convenient way of thinking about the matter for oneself and, since it has appearance on its side, will always remain the most conventional one.

We must have hypotheses and theories in order to organize our knowledge, otherwise everything remains merely detritus—and we already have a great deal of scholars who produce this.

An autopsy cannot uncover those faults that end with death.

An excellent motto: “Opinions are continually varying, where we cannot have mathematical evidence of the nature of things; and they must vary. Nor is that variation without its use, since it occasions a more thorough discussion, whereby error is often dissipated true knowledge is encreased and its principles become better understood and more firmly established” (Franklin's Letters on Philosophical Subjects, Letter 38)

Those who think a great deal for themselves will find much wisdom recorded in language. We probably do not add it all ourselves

Just as the followers of Herr Kant always accuse their opponents of not understanding him, I suspect there are many who believe he is correct simply because they understand him. His way of representing things is novel and differs considerably from the usual, and once we finally gain some insight into it, we are inclined to regard it as true, especially since it has so many zealous adherents. We should always remember, however, that understanding something is no reason for believing that it is true. I believe the satisfaction in having understood an extremely abstract and obscure system leads many to believe that its truth has thereby been demonstrated.

Nothing is more common than for people to consider themselves convinced of the truth of something as soon as they have understood the opinion a great man has held about the matter. These are, however, very different things. It has often happened to me. I believe that many people, once they have labored their way through the difficulties of the Tychonian system and all its epicycles, have thought: “Praise the Lord, I have finally figured it all out."

He learned to play a few pieces on the metaphysic.

Anyone who plunders the ideas of an ancient writer could defend himself by appealing to metempsychosis and say: “Prove I was not also that writer.”

We cannot really know whether we are not at this moment sitting in a madhouse.

Most teachers of faith defend their propositions, not because they are convinced of their truth, but because they once claimed they were true.

Nothing more clearly proves to me how matters stand in the world of learning than the fact that Spinoza was for so long regarded as an evil, disreputable man and his opinions as dangerous; the reputations of so many others have suffered a similar fate.

A character: everyone forms an incorrect idea of him and hates and persecutes him according to this image.

It is astonishing how often the word infinite is misused: everything is infinitely more beautiful, infinitely better, and so on. There must be something agreeable about the concept, or its misuse could not have become so widespread. What have the ancients to gain from this?

In order to find something, many, if not most, people must first know that it is there.

I believe that in comparison with the English, the German suppresses more with reason, which really should never happen. On many occasions, for instance, on which it would never occur to the Englishman to laugh, a German does not laugh because he knows it would be improper.

He was no “slave to his word,” as they say; on the contrary, he exercised such despotism over his promises that he could do with them whatever he wished.

In this world, you can live well from soothsaying but not from truthsaying.

One of the strangest delusions man would be capable of is to believe he is insane and sitting in a madhouse but actually be acting completely rational. If someone once became convinced of this, I really do not see how one could convince him otherwise.

A golden rule: we must judge people, not by their opinions, but by what these opinions make of them.

Certainly happiness cannot be the first principle of morality, for it shows me only the direction but not the way. Furthermore, happiness must be subordinated to reason, for otherwise, as Pütter once demonstrated quite well in collegio, perfice te could lead to the devil.*
*This ethical principle is attributed to the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–1762): Perfice te ut finem, perfice te ut medium (“Perfect yourself as an ends, perfect yourself as a means”). Kant discusses this principle in section 4 of the Metaphysik der Sitten (Metaphysics of Morals) (1797) regarding the duties owed by persons to themselves. The translation is from Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals

If a war has lasted twenty years, it may well last for a hundred. For war has now become a status. Polemocracy. People who have tasted peace die out.

To doubt things that are now believed without any investigation, that is everywhere the essential thing.

Why do I believe this? Is it actually this way?

It really deserves sincerely to be investigated, for my own housekeeping, why most discoveries happen by chance. The principle reason is really that people learn to regard things as their teachers and acquaintances do. That is why it would be quite useful for once to give instructions on how one can deviate from the rule according to certain laws.

Whenever I arrive at a new thought or theory, always to ask: Is this really as new as you believe it to be? This is also in general the best reminder never to be amazed at anything in the world (nil admirari).

My body is that particular part of the world that my thoughts are able to alter. Even imaginary illnesses may become real ones. In the rest of the world, my hypotheses cannot disturb the order of things.

To ask in everything the question: is this true? and then to seek reasons for why one believes it is not true.

It is strange that only extraordinary people make the discoveries that afterward seem so easy and simple; this presupposes that to perceive the most simple but true conditions of things requires very profound knowledge.

How do we arrive at the concept outside us? Why do we not believe that everything is within us and occurs within us? How is it that we arrive at the concept of distance at all? This seems quite difficult to resolve. We go as far as to locate that which is in us and occurs within us, namely, the changes of the images on our retina, outside ourselves, and yet when we are pricked or feel a pain in the eye, we immediately locate it in the eye itself.

A man of spirit must not think of the word difficulty as even existing. Away with it!

Outside us. It is certainly difficult to say how we arrived at this concept, for we actually merely sense things within us. To sense something outside oneself is a contradiction; we sense things only within ourselves, and what we sense is a mere modification of our self and thus within us. Because these alterations are not dependent upon us, we ascribe them to other things that are outside us and say that there are things we should call “praeter nos”; but for praeter we substitute the preposition extra, which is something entirely different. That we think of these things as being in a space outside us is clearly not a matter of sensation; it seems to be something that is most intimately interwoven with the nature of our sensible faculty of cognition; it is the form in which the representation of something praeter nos is given to us. The form of sensibility.

Man is a creature who searches for causes; in a hierarchy of minds, he could be called a “cause-seeker.” Other minds perhaps conceive of things according to different relations that to us are incomprehensible.

To invent an inventor for all things.

Is this really the only way of explaining this?

Seeing black is not the same as seeing nothing. Someone who has no eyes does not see everything around himself as black but does not see at all. We do not see black with our ears but do not see at all. Black then is seen or sensed to a certain degree; it is the feeling of tranquility for a sense engaged by light.

A good method of discovery is to imagine certain members of a system removed and then see how the rest would behave: for example, if the world were without iron, where would we be? This is an old example.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Philosophical Writings
Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by
Steven Tester