Title: The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Literature
Author: Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1788-1860
Language: English
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THE ESSAYS

OF

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

TRANSLATED BY

T. BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A.



THE ART OF LITERATURE.



CONTENTS.

  PREFACE
  ON AUTHORSHIP
  ON STYLE
  ON THE STUDY OF LATIN
  ON MEN OF LEARNING
  ON THINKING FOR ONESELF
  ON SOME FORMS OF LITERATURE
  ON CRITICISM
  ON REPUTATION
  ON GENIUS



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.


The contents of this, as of the other volumes in the series, have been
drawn from Schopenhauer's _Parerga_, and amongst the various subjects
dealt with in that famous collection of essays, Literature holds an
important place. Nor can Schopenhauer's opinions fail to be of special
value when he treats of literary form and method. For, quite apart
from his philosophical pretensions, he claims recognition as a great
writer; he is, indeed, one of the best of the few really excellent
prose-writers of whom Germany can boast. While he is thus particularly
qualified to speak of Literature as an Art, he has also something to
say upon those influences which, outside of his own merits, contribute
so much to an author's success, and are so often undervalued when he
obtains immediate popularity. Schopenhauer's own sore experiences in
the matter of reputation lend an interest to his remarks upon that
subject, although it is too much to ask of human nature that he should
approach it in any dispassionate spirit.

In the following pages we have observations upon style by one who
was a stylist in the best sense of the word, not affected, nor yet a
phrasemonger; on thinking for oneself by a philosopher who never did
anything else; on criticism by a writer who suffered much from the
inability of others to understand him; on reputation by a candidate
who, during the greater part of his life, deserved without obtaining
it; and on genius by one who was incontestably of the privileged
order himself. And whatever may be thought of some of his opinions
on matters of detail--on anonymity, for instance, or on the question
whether good work is never done for money--there can be no doubt that
his general view of literature, and the conditions under which it
flourishes, is perfectly sound.

It might be thought, perhaps, that remarks which were meant to apply
to the German language would have but little bearing upon one so
different from it as English. This would be a just objection if
Schopenhauer treated literature in a petty spirit, and confined
himself to pedantic inquiries into matters of grammar and etymology,
or mere niceties of phrase. But this is not so. He deals with his
subject broadly, and takes large and general views; nor can anyone
who knows anything of the philosopher suppose this to mean that he is
vague and feeble. It is true that now and again in the course of these
essays he makes remarks which are obviously meant to apply to the
failings of certain writers of his own age and country; but in such a
case I have generally given his sentences a turn, which, while keeping
them faithful to the spirit of the original, secures for them a less
restricted range, and makes Schopenhauer a critic of similar faults in
whatever age or country they may appear. This has been done in spite
of a sharp word on page seventeen of this volume, addressed to
translators who dare to revise their author; but the change is one
with which not even Schopenhauer could quarrel.

It is thus a significant fact--a testimony to the depth of his
insight and, in the main, the justice of his opinions--that views of
literature which appealed to his own immediate contemporaries, should
be found to hold good elsewhere and at a distance of fifty years.
It means that what he had to say was worth saying; and since it is
adapted thus equally to diverse times and audiences, it is probably of
permanent interest.

The intelligent reader will observe that much of the charm of
Schopenhauer's writing comes from its strongly personal character, and
that here he has to do, not with a mere maker of books, but with a
man who thinks for himself and has no false scruples in putting his
meaning plainly upon the page, or in unmasking sham wherever he finds
it. This is nowhere so true as when he deals with literature; and just
as in his treatment of life, he is no flatterer to men in general, so
here he is free and outspoken on the peculiar failings of authors. At
the same time he gives them good advice. He is particularly happy in
recommending restraint in regard to reading the works of others, and
the cultivation of independent thought; and herein he recalls a saying
attributed to Hobbes, who was not less distinguished as a writer than
as a philosopher, to the effect that "_if he had read as much as other
men, he should have been as ignorant as they_."

Schopenhauer also utters a warning, which we shall do well to take to
heart in these days, against mingling the pursuit of literature with
vulgar aims. If we follow him here, we shall carefully distinguish
between literature as an object of life and literature as a means of
living, between the real love of truth and beauty, and that detestable
false love which looks to the price it will fetch in the market. I am
not referring to those who, while they follow a useful and honorable
calling in bringing literature before the public, are content to be
known as men of business. If, by the help of some second witch
of Endor, we could raise the ghost of Schopenhauer, it would be
interesting to hear his opinion of a certain kind of literary
enterprise which has come into vogue since his day, and now receives
an amount of attention very much beyond its due. We may hazard a guess
at the direction his opinion would take. He would doubtless show us
how this enterprise, which is carried on by self-styled _literary
men_, ends by making literature into a form of merchandise, and
treating it as though it were so much goods to be bought and sold at a
profit, and most likely to produce quick returns if the maker's name
is well known. Nor would it be the ghost of the real Schopenhauer
unless we heard a vigorous denunciation of men who claim a connection
with literature by a servile flattery of successful living
authors--the dead cannot be made to pay--in the hope of appearing to
advantage in their reflected light and turning that advantage into
money.

In order to present the contents of this book in a convenient form, I
have not scrupled to make an arrangement with the chapters somewhat
different from that which exists in the original; so that two or more
subjects which are there dealt with successively in one and the same
chapter, here stand by themselves. In consequence of this, some of
the titles of the sections are not to be found in the original. I may
state, however, that the essays on _Authorship_ and _Style_ and the
latter part of that on _Criticism_ are taken direct from the chapter
headed _Ueber Schriftstellerei und Stil_; and that the remainder of
the essay on _Criticism_, with that of _Reputation_, is supplied by
the remarks _Ueber Urtheil, Kritik, Beifall und Ruhm_. The essays on
_The Study of Latin_, on _Men of Learning_, and on _Some Forms
of Literature_, are taken chiefly from the four sections _Ueber
Gelehrsamkeit und Gelehrte, Ueber Sprache und Worte, Ueber Lesen
und Bücher: Anhang_, and _Zur Metaphysik des Schönen_. The essay on
_Thinking for Oneself_ is a rendering of certain remarks under the
heading _Selbstdenken. Genius_ was a favorite subject of speculation
with Schopenhauer, and he often touches upon it in the course of his
works; always, however, to put forth the same theory in regard to it
as may be found in the concluding section of this volume. Though the
essay has little or nothing to do with literary method, the subject of
which it treats is the most needful element of success in literature;
and I have introduced it on that ground. It forms part of a chapter in
the _Parerga_ entitled _Den Intellekt überhaupt und in jeder Beziehung
betreffende Gedanken: Anhang verwandter Stellen._

It has also been part of my duty to invent a title for this volume;
and I am well aware that objection may be made to the one I have
chosen, on the ground that in common language it is unusual to speak
of literature as an art, and that to do so is unduly to narrow its
meaning and to leave out of sight its main function as the record of
thought. But there is no reason why the word _Literature_ should
not be employed in that double sense which is allowed to attach to
_Painting, Music, Sculpture_, as signifying either the objective
outcome of a certain mental activity, seeking to express itself in
outward form; or else the particular kind of mental activity in
question, and the methods it follows. And we do, in fact, use it in
this latter sense, when we say of a writer that he pursues literature
as a calling. If, then, literature can be taken to mean a process as
well as a result of mental activity, there can be no error in speaking
of it as Art. I use that term in its broad sense, as meaning skill in
the display of thought; or, more fully, a right use of the rules
of applying to the practical exhibition of thought, with whatever
material it may deal. In connection with literature, this is a
sense and an application of the term which have been sufficiently
established by the example of the great writers of antiquity.

It may be asked, of course, whether the true thinker, who will always
form the soul of the true author, will not be so much occupied with
what he has to say, that it will appear to him a trivial thing to
spend great effort on embellishing the form in which he delivers it.
Literature, to be worthy of the name, must, it is true, deal with
noble matter--the riddle of our existence, the great facts of life,
the changing passions of the human heart, the discernment of some deep
moral truth. It is easy to lay too much stress upon the mere garment
of thought; to be too precise; to give to the arrangement of words an
attention that should rather be paid to the promotion of fresh ideas.
A writer who makes this mistake is like a fop who spends his little
mind in adorning his person. In short, it may be charged against the
view of literature which is taken in calling it an Art, that, instead
of making truth and insight the author's aim, it favors sciolism and a
fantastic and affected style. There is, no doubt, some justice in the
objection; nor have we in our own day, and especially amongst younger
men, any lack of writers who endeavor to win confidence, not by adding
to the stock of ideas in the world, but by despising the use of plain
language. Their faults are not new in the history of literature; and
it is a pleasing sign of Schopenhauer's insight that a merciless
exposure of them, as they existed half a century ago, is still quite
applicable to their modern form.

And since these writers, who may, in the slang of the hour, be called
"impressionists" in literature, follow their own bad taste in the
manufacture of dainty phrases, devoid of all nerve, and generally
with some quite commonplace meaning, it is all the more necessary to
discriminate carefully between artifice and art.

But although they may learn something from Schopenhauer's advice, it
is not chiefly to them that it is offered. It is to that great mass of
writers, whose business is to fill the columns of the newspapers and
the pages of the review, and to produce the ton of novels that appear
every year. Now that almost everyone who can hold a pen aspires to be
called an author, it is well to emphasize the fact that literature is
an art in some respects more important than any other. The problem of
this art is the discovery of those qualities of style and treatment
which entitled any work to be called good literature.

It will be safe to warn the reader at the very outset that, if he
wishes to avoid being led astray, he should in his search for these
qualities turn to books that have stood the test of time.

For such an amount of hasty writing is done in these days that it is
really difficult for anyone who reads much of it to avoid contracting
its faults, and thus gradually coming to terms of dangerous
familiarity with bad methods. This advice will be especially needful
if things that have little or no claim to be called literature at
all--the newspapers, the monthly magazine, and the last new tale of
intrigue or adventure--fill a large measure, if not the whole, of the
time given to reading. Nor are those who are sincerely anxious to have
the best thought in the best language quite free from danger if they
give too much attention to the contemporary authors, even though these
seem to think and write excellently. For one generation alone is
incompetent to decide upon the merits of any author whatever; and as
literature, like all art, is a thing of human invention, so it can be
pronounced good only if it obtains lasting admiration, by establishing
a permanent appeal to mankind's deepest feeling for truth and beauty.

It is in this sense that Schopenhauer is perfectly right in holding
that neglect of the ancient classics, which are the best of all models
in the art of writing, will infallibly lead to a degeneration of
literature.

And the method of discovering the best qualities of style, and of
forming a theory of writing, is not to follow some trick or mannerism
that happens to please for the moment, but to study the way in which
great authors have done their best work.

It will be said that Schopenhauer tells us nothing we did not know
before. Perhaps so; as he himself says, the best things are seldom
new. But he puts the old truths in a fresh and forcible way; and no
one who knows anything of good literature will deny that these truths
are just now of very fit application.

It was probably to meet a real want that, a year or two ago, an
ingenious person succeeded in drawing a great number of English and
American writers into a confession of their literary creed and the art
they adopted in authorship; and the interesting volume in which he
gave these confessions to the world contained some very good advice,
although most of it had been said before in different forms. More
recently a new departure, of very doubtful use, has taken place; and
two books have been issued, which aim, the one at being an author's
manual, the other at giving hints on essays and how to write them.

A glance at these books will probably show that their authors have
still something to learn.

Both of these ventures seem, unhappily, to be popular; and, although
they may claim a position next-door to that of the present volume I
beg to say that it has no connection with them whatever. Schopenhauer
does not attempt to teach the art of making bricks without straw.

I wish to take this opportunity of tendering my thanks to a large
number of reviewers for the very gratifying reception given to
the earlier volumes of this series. And I have great pleasure in
expressing my obligations to my friend Mr. W.G. Collingwood, who has
looked over most of my proofs and often given me excellent advice in
my effort to turn Schopenhauer into readable English.

T.B.S.



ON AUTHORSHIP.


There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the
subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. While the
one have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth
communicating, the others want money; and so they write, for money.
Their thinking is part of the business of writing. They may be
recognized by the way in which they spin out their thoughts to the
greatest possible length; then, too, by the very nature of their
thoughts, which are only half-true, perverse, forced, vacillating;
again, by the aversion they generally show to saying anything straight
out, so that they may seem other than they are. Hence their writing
is deficient in clearness and definiteness, and it is not long before
they betray that their only object in writing at all is to cover
paper. This sometimes happens with the best authors; now and then, for
example, with Lessing in his _Dramaturgie_, and even in many of Jean
Paul's romances. As soon as the reader perceives this, let him throw
the book away; for time is precious. The truth is that when an author
begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the
reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to
say.

Writing for money and reservation of copyright are, at bottom, the
ruin of literature. No one writes anything that is worth writing,
unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. What an
inestimable boon it would be, if in every branch of literature there
were only a few books, but those excellent! This can never happen, as
long as money is to be made by writing. It seems as though the money
lay under a curse; for every author degenerates as soon as he begins
to put pen to paper in any way for the sake of gain. The best works
of the greatest men all come from the time when they had to write for
nothing or for very little. And here, too, that Spanish proverb holds
good, which declares that honor and money are not to be found in the
same purse--_honora y provecho no caben en un saco_. The reason why
Literature is in such a bad plight nowadays is simply and solely that
people write books to make money. A man who is in want sits down
and writes a book, and the public is stupid enough to buy it. The
secondary effect of this is the ruin of language.

A great many bad writers make their whole living by that foolish
mania of the public for reading nothing but what has just been
printed,--journalists, I mean. Truly, a most appropriate name. In
plain language it is _journeymen, day-laborers_!

Again, it may be said that there are three kinds of authors. First
come those who write without thinking. They write from a full memory,
from reminiscences; it may be, even straight out of other people's
books. This class is the most numerous. Then come those who do their
thinking whilst they are writing. They think in order to write; and
there is no lack of them. Last of all come those authors who think
before they begin to write. They are rare.

Authors of the second class, who put off their thinking until they
come to write, are like a sportsman who goes forth at random and is
not likely to bring very much home. On the other hand, when an author
of the third or rare class writes, it is like a _battue_. Here the
game has been previously captured and shut up within a very small
space; from which it is afterwards let out, so many at a time, into
another space, also confined. The game cannot possibly escape the
sportsman; he has nothing to do but aim and fire--in other words,
write down his thoughts. This is a kind of sport from which a man has
something to show.

But even though the number of those who really think seriously before
they begin to write is small, extremely few of them think about _the
subject itself_: the remainder think only about the books that have
been written on the subject, and what has been said by others. In
order to think at all, such writers need the more direct and powerful
stimulus of having other people's thoughts before them. These become
their immediate theme; and the result is that they are always under
their influence, and so never, in any real sense of the word, are
original. But the former are roused to thought by the subject itself,
to which their thinking is thus immediately directed. This is the only
class that produces writers of abiding fame.

It must, of course, be understood that I am speaking here of writers
who treat of great subjects; not of writers on the art of making
brandy.

Unless an author takes the material on which he writes out of his
own head, that is to say, from his own observation, he is not
worth reading. Book-manufacturers, compilers, the common run of
history-writers, and many others of the same class, take their
material immediately out of books; and the material goes straight
to their finger-tips without even paying freight or undergoing
examination as it passes through their heads, to say nothing of
elaboration or revision. How very learned many a man would be if he
knew everything that was in his own books! The consequence of this is
that these writers talk in such a loose and vague manner, that the
reader puzzles his brain in vain to understand what it is of which
they are really thinking. They are thinking of nothing. It may now and
then be the case that the book from which they copy has been composed
exactly in the same way: so that writing of this sort is like a
plaster cast of a cast; and in the end, the bare outline of the face,
and that, too, hardly recognizable, is all that is left to your
Antinous. Let compilations be read as seldom as possible. It is
difficult to avoid them altogether; since compilations also include
those text-books which contain in a small space the accumulated
knowledge of centuries.

There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the last work is
always the more correct; that what is written later on is in every
case an improvement on what was written before; and that change always
means progress. Real thinkers, men of right judgment, people who are
in earnest with their subject,--these are all exceptions only. Vermin
is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always on the alert, taking
the mature opinions of the thinkers, and industriously seeking to
improve upon them (save the mark!) in its own peculiar way.

If the reader wishes to study any subject, let him beware of rushing
to the newest books upon it, and confining his attention to them
alone, under the notion that science is always advancing, and that the
old books have been drawn upon in the writing of the new. They have
been drawn upon, it is true; but how? The writer of the new book often
does not understand the old books thoroughly, and yet he is unwilling
to take their exact words; so he bungles them, and says in his own bad
way that which has been said very much better and more clearly by the
old writers, who wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject.
The new writer frequently omits the best things they say, their most
striking illustrations, their happiest remarks; because he does not
see their value or feel how pregnant they are. The only thing that
appeals to him is what is shallow and insipid.

It often happens that an old and excellent book is ousted by new
and bad ones, which, written for money, appear with an air of great
pretension and much puffing on the part of friends. In science a man
tries to make his mark by bringing out something fresh. This often
means nothing more than that he attacks some received theory which
is quite correct, in order to make room for his own false notions.
Sometimes the effort is successful for a time; and then a return is
made to the old and true theory. These innovators are serious about
nothing but their own precious self: it is this that they want to put
forward, and the quick way of doing so, as they think, is to start a
paradox. Their sterile heads take naturally to the path of negation;
so they begin to deny truths that have long been admitted--the vital
power, for example, the sympathetic nervous system, _generatio
equivoca_, Bichat's distinction between the working of the passions
and the working of intelligence; or else they want us to return to
crass atomism, and the like. Hence it frequently happens that _the
course of science is retrogressive._

To this class of writers belong those translators who not only
translate their author but also correct and revise him; a proceeding
which always seems to me impertinent. To such writers I say: Write
books yourself which are worth translating, and leave other people's
works as they are!

The reader should study, if he can, the real authors, the men who
have founded and discovered things; or, at any rate, those who are
recognized as the great masters in every branch of knowledge. Let him
buy second-hand books rather than read their contents in new ones. To
be sure, it is easy to add to any new discovery--_inventis aliquid
addere facile est_; and, therefore, the student, after well mastering
the rudiments of his subject, will have to make himself acquainted
with the more recent additions to the knowledge of it. And, in
general, the following rule may be laid down here as elsewhere: if a
thing is new, it is seldom good; because if it is good, it is only for
a short time new.

What the address is to a letter, the title should be to a book; in
other words, its main object should be to bring the book to those
amongst the public who will take an interest in its contents. It
should, therefore, be expressive; and since by its very nature it must
be short, it should be concise, laconic, pregnant, and if possible
give the contents in one word. A prolix title is bad; and so is one
that says nothing, or is obscure and ambiguous, or even, it may be,
false and misleading; this last may possibly involve the book in the
same fate as overtakes a wrongly addressed letter. The worst titles
of all are those which have been stolen, those, I mean, which have
already been borne by other books; for they are in the first place a
plagiarism, and secondly the most convincing proof of a total lack of
originality in the author. A man who has not enough originality to
invent a new title for his book, will be still less able to give it
new contents. Akin to these stolen titles are those which have been
imitated, that is to say, stolen to the extent of one half; for
instance, long after I had produced my treatise _On Will in Nature_,
Oersted wrote a book entitled _On Mind in Nature_.

A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's
thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in _the matter about
which he has thought_, or in the _form_ which his thoughts take, in
other words, _what it is that he has thought about it._

The matter of books is most various; and various also are the several
excellences attaching to books on the score of their matter. By matter
I mean everything that comes within the domain of actual experience;
that is to say, the facts of history and the facts of nature, taken in
and by themselves and in their widest sense. Here it is the _thing_
treated of, which gives its peculiar character to the book; so that a
book can be important, whoever it was that wrote it.

But in regard to the form, the peculiar character of a book depends
upon the _person_ who wrote it. It may treat of matters which are
accessible to everyone and well known; but it is the way in which they
are treated, what it is that is thought about them, that gives the
book its value; and this comes from its author. If, then, from this
point of view a book is excellent and beyond comparison, so is its
author. It follows that if a writer is worth reading, his merit rises
just in proportion as he owes little to his matter; therefore, the
better known and the more hackneyed this is, the greater he will be.
The three great tragedians of Greece, for example, all worked at the
same subject-matter.

So when a book is celebrated, care should be taken to note whether it
is so on account of its matter or its form; and a distinction should
be made accordingly.

Books of great importance on account of their matter may proceed from
very ordinary and shallow people, by the fact that they alone have had
access to this matter; books, for instance, which describe journeys in
distant lands, rare natural phenomena, or experiments; or historical
occurrences of which the writers were witnesses, or in connection
with which they have spent much time and trouble in the research and
special study of original documents.

On the other hand, where the matter is accessible to everyone or very
well known, everything will depend upon the form; and what it is
that is thought about the matter will give the book all the value
it possesses. Here only a really distinguished man will be able to
produce anything worth reading; for the others will think nothing but
what anyone else can think. They will just produce an impress of
their own minds; but this is a print of which everyone possesses the
original.

However, the public is very much more concerned to have matter than
form; and for this very reason it is deficient in any high degree of
culture. The public shows its preference in this respect in the most
laughable way when it comes to deal with poetry; for there it devotes
much trouble to the task of tracking out the actual events or personal
circumstances in the life of the poet which served as the occasion of
his various works; nay, these events and circumstances come in the end
to be of greater importance than the works themselves; and rather than
read Goethe himself, people prefer to read what has been written about
him, and to study the legend of Faust more industriously than the
drama of that name. And when Bürger declared that "people would write
learned disquisitions on the question, Who Leonora really was," we
find this literally fulfilled in Goethe's case; for we now possess a
great many learned disquisitions on Faust and the legend attaching to
him. Study of this kind is, and remains, devoted to the material of
the drama alone. To give such preference to the matter over the form,
is as though a man were to take a fine Etruscan vase, not to admire
its shape or coloring, but to make a chemical analysis of the clay and
paint of which it is composed.

The attempt to produce an effect by means of the material employed--an
attempt which panders to this evil tendency of the public--is most to
be condemned in branches of literature where any merit there may be
lies expressly in the form; I mean, in poetical work. For all that, it
is not rare to find bad dramatists trying to fill the house by means
of the matter about which they write. For example, authors of this
kind do not shrink from putting on the stage any man who is in any way
celebrated, no matter whether his life may have been entirely devoid
of dramatic incident; and sometimes, even, they do not wait until the
persons immediately connected with him are dead.

The distinction between matter and form to which I am here alluding
also holds good of conversation. The chief qualities which enable a
man to converse well are intelligence, discernment, wit and vivacity:
these supply the form of conversation. But it is not long before
attention has to be paid to the matter of which he speaks; in other
words, the subjects about which it is possible to converse with
him--his knowledge. If this is very small, his conversation will
not be worth anything, unless he possesses the above-named formal
qualities in a very exceptional degree; for he will have nothing to
talk about but those facts of life and nature which everybody knows.
It will be just the opposite, however, if a man is deficient in these
formal qualities, but has an amount of knowledge which lends value to
what he says. This value will then depend entirely upon the matter of
his conversation; for, as the Spanish proverb has it, _mas sabe el
necio en su casa, que el sabio en la agena_--a fool knows more of his
own business than a wise man does of others.



ON STYLE.


Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character
than the face. To imitate another man's style is like wearing a mask,
which, be it never so fine, is not long in arousing disgust and
abhorrence, because it is lifeless; so that even the ugliest living
face is better. Hence those who write in Latin and copy the manner of
ancient authors, may be said to speak through a mask; the reader, it
is true, hears what they say, but he cannot observe their physiognomy
too; he cannot see their _style_. With the Latin works of writers
who think for themselves, the case is different, and their style is
visible; writers, I mean, who have not condescended to any sort
of imitation, such as Scotus Erigena, Petrarch, Bacon, Descartes,
Spinoza, and many others. An affectation in style is like making
grimaces. Further, the language in which a man writes is the
physiognomy of the nation to which he belongs; and here there are many
hard and fast differences, beginning from the language of the Greeks,
down to that of the Caribbean islanders.

To form a provincial estimate of the value of a writer's productions,
it is not directly necessary to know the subject on which he has
thought, or what it is that he has said about it; that would imply
a perusal of all his works. It will be enough, in the main, to know
_how_ he has thought. This, which means the essential temper or
general quality of his mind, may be precisely determined by his style.
A man's style shows the _formal_ nature of all his thoughts--the
formal nature which can never change, be the subject or the character
of his thoughts what it may: it is, as it were, the dough out of which
all the contents of his mind are kneaded. When Eulenspiegel was asked
how long it would take to walk to the next village, he gave the
seemingly incongruous answer: _Walk_. He wanted to find out by the
man's pace the distance he would cover in a given time. In the same
way, when I have read a few pages of an author, I know fairly well how
far he can bring me.

Every mediocre writer tries to mask his own natural style, because in
his heart he knows the truth of what I am saying. He is thus forced,
at the outset, to give up any attempt at being frank or naïve--a
privilege which is thereby reserved for superior minds, conscious of
their own worth, and therefore sure of themselves. What I mean is that
these everyday writers are absolutely unable to resolve upon writing
just as they think; because they have a notion that, were they to do
so, their work might possibly look very childish and simple. For
all that, it would not be without its value. If they would only go
honestly to work, and say, quite simply, the things they have really
thought, and just as they have thought them, these writers would be
readable and, within their own proper sphere, even instructive.

But instead of that, they try to make the reader believe that their
thoughts have gone much further and deeper than is really the case.
They say what they have to say in long sentences that wind about in a
forced and unnatural way; they coin new words and write prolix periods
which go round and round the thought and wrap it up in a sort of
disguise. They tremble between the two separate aims of communicating
what they want to say and of concealing it. Their object is to dress
it up so that it may look learned or deep, in order to give people
the impression that there is very much more in it than for the moment
meets the eye. They either jot down their thoughts bit by bit, in
short, ambiguous, and paradoxical sentences, which apparently mean
much more than they say,--of this kind of writing Schelling's
treatises on natural philosophy are a splendid instance; or else
they hold forth with a deluge of words and the most intolerable
diffusiveness, as though no end of fuss were necessary to make the
reader understand the deep meaning of their sentences, whereas it is
some quite simple if not actually trivial idea,--examples of which
may be found in plenty in the popular works of Fichte, and the
philosophical manuals of a hundred other miserable dunces not worth
mentioning; or, again, they try to write in some particular style
which they have been pleased to take up and think very grand, a style,
for example, _par excellence_ profound and scientific, where the
reader is tormented to death by the narcotic effect of longspun
periods without a single idea in them,--such as are furnished in
a special measure by those most impudent of all mortals, the
Hegelians[1]; or it may be that it is an intellectual style they have
striven after, where it seems as though their object were to go crazy
altogether; and so on in many other cases. All these endeavors to put
off the _nascetur ridiculus mus_--to avoid showing the funny little
creature that is born after such mighty throes--often make it
difficult to know what it is that they really mean. And then, too,
they write down words, nay, even whole sentences, without attaching
any meaning to them themselves, but in the hope that someone else will
get sense out of them.

[Footnote 1: In their Hegel-gazette, commonly known as _Jahrbücher der
wissenschaftlichen Literatur_.]

And what is at the bottom of all this? Nothing but the untiring effort
to sell words for thoughts; a mode of merchandise that is always
trying to make fresh openings for itself, and by means of odd
expressions, turns of phrase, and combinations of every sort, whether
new or used in a new sense, to produce the appearence of intellect in
order to make up for the very painfully felt lack of it.

It is amusing to see how writers with this object in view will attempt
first one mannerism and then another, as though they were putting
on the mask of intellect! This mask may possibly deceive the
inexperienced for a while, until it is seen to be a dead thing, with
no life in it at all; it is then laughed at and exchanged for another.
Such an author will at one moment write in a dithyrambic vein, as
though he were tipsy; at another, nay, on the very next page, he will
be pompous, severe, profoundly learned and prolix, stumbling on in the
most cumbrous way and chopping up everything very small; like the late
Christian Wolf, only in a modern dress. Longest of all lasts the mask
of unintelligibility; but this is only in Germany, whither it was
introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and carried to its
highest pitch in Hegel--always with the best results.

And yet nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand;
just as contrarily, nothing is more difficult than to express deep
things in such a way that every one must necessarily grasp them. All
the arts and tricks I have been mentioning are rendered superfluous if
the author really has any brains; for that allows him to show himself
as he is, and confirms to all time Horace's maxim that good sense is
the source and origin of good style:

  _Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons_.

But those authors I have named are like certain workers in metal, who
try a hundred different compounds to take the place of gold--the only
metal which can never have any substitute. Rather than do that, there
is nothing against which a writer should be more upon his guard than
the manifest endeavor to exhibit more intellect than he really has;
because this makes the reader suspect that he possesses very little;
since it is always the case that if a man affects anything, whatever
it may be, it is just there that he is deficient.

That is why it is praise to an author to say that he is _naïve_; it
means that he need not shrink from showing himself as he is. Generally
speaking, to be _naïve_ is to be attractive; while lack of naturalness
is everywhere repulsive. As a matter of fact we find that every
really great writer tries to express his thoughts as purely, clearly,
definitely and shortly as possible. Simplicity has always been held to
be a mark of truth; it is also a mark of genius. Style receives its
beauty from the thought it expresses; but with sham-thinkers the
thoughts are supposed to be fine because of the style. Style is
nothing but the mere silhouette of thought; and an obscure or bad
style means a dull or confused brain.

The first rule, then, for a good style is that _the author should
have something to say_; nay, this is in itself almost all that is
necessary. Ah, how much it means! The neglect of this rule is a
fundamental trait in the philosophical writing, and, in fact, in
all the reflective literature, of my country, more especially since
Fichte. These writers all let it be seen that they want to appear as
though they had something to say; whereas they have nothing to say.
Writing of this kind was brought in by the pseudo-philosophers at the
Universities, and now it is current everywhere, even among the first
literary notabilities of the age. It is the mother of that strained
and vague style, where there seem to be two or even more meanings in
the sentence; also of that prolix and cumbrous manner of expression,
called _le stile empesé_; again, of that mere waste of words which
consists in pouring them out like a flood; finally, of that trick
of concealing the direst poverty of thought under a farrago of
never-ending chatter, which clacks away like a windmill and quite
stupefies one--stuff which a man may read for hours together without
getting hold of a single clearly expressed and definite idea.[1]
However, people are easy-going, and they have formed the habit of
reading page upon page of all sorts of such verbiage, without having
any particular idea of what the author really means. They fancy it is
all as it should be, and fail to discover that he is writing simply
for writing's sake.

[Footnote 1: Select examples of the art of writing in this style are
to be found almost _passim_ in the _Jahrbücher_ published at Halle,
afterwards called the _Deutschen Jahrbücher_.]

On the other hand, a good author, fertile in ideas, soon wins his
reader's confidence that, when he writes, he has really and truly
_something to say_; and this gives the intelligent reader patience to
follow him with attention. Such an author, just because he really has
something to say, will never fail to express himself in the simplest
and most straightforward manner; because his object is to awake the
very same thought in the reader that he has in himself, and no other.
So he will be able to affirm with Boileau that his thoughts are
everywhere open to the light of the day, and that his verse always
says something, whether it says it well or ill:

  _Ma pensée au grand jour partout s'offre et s'expose,
  Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours quelque chose_:

while of the writers previously described it may be asserted, in the
words of the same poet, that they talk much and never say anything at
all--_quiparlant beaucoup ne disent jamais rien_.

Another characteristic of such writers is that they always avoid a
positive assertion wherever they can possibly do so, in order to leave
a loophole for escape in case of need. Hence they never fail to choose
the more _abstract_ way of expressing themselves; whereas intelligent
people use the more _concrete_; because the latter brings things more
within the range of actual demonstration, which is the source of all
evidence.

There are many examples proving this preference for abstract
expression; and a particularly ridiculous one is afforded by the use
of the verb _to condition_ in the sense of _to cause_ or _to produce_.
People say _to condition something_ instead of _to cause it_, because
being abstract and indefinite it says less; it affirms that _A_ cannot
happen without _B_, instead of that _A_ is caused by _B_. A back door
is always left open; and this suits people whose secret knowledge of
their own incapacity inspires them with a perpetual terror of all
positive assertion; while with other people it is merely the effect of
that tendency by which everything that is stupid in literature or bad
in life is immediately imitated--a fact proved in either case by the
rapid way in which it spreads. The Englishman uses his own judgment in
what he writes as well as in what he does; but there is no nation of
which this eulogy is less true than of the Germans. The consequence
of this state of things is that the word _cause_ has of late almost
disappeared from the language of literature, and people talk only
of _condition_. The fact is worth mentioning because it is so
characteristically ridiculous.

The very fact that these commonplace authors are never more than
half-conscious when they write, would be enough to account for their
dullness of mind and the tedious things they produce. I say they are
only half-conscious, because they really do not themselves understand
the meaning of the words they use: they take words ready-made and
commit them to memory. Hence when they write, it is not so much words
as whole phrases that they put together--_phrases banales_. This is
the explanation of that palpable lack of clearly-expressed thought in
what they say. The fact is that they do not possess the die to give
this stamp to their writing; clear thought of their own is just
what they have not got. And what do we find in its place?--a vague,
enigmatical intermixture of words, current phrases, hackneyed terms,
and fashionable expressions. The result is that the foggy stuff they
write is like a page printed with very old type.

On the other hand, an intelligent author really speaks to us when he
writes, and that is why he is able to rouse our interest and commune
with us. It is the intelligent author alone who puts individual words
together with a full consciousness of their meaning, and chooses them
with deliberate design. Consequently, his discourse stands to that of
the writer described above, much as a picture that has been really
painted, to one that has been produced by the use of a stencil. In the
one case, every word, every touch of the brush, has a special purpose;
in the other, all is done mechanically. The same distinction may be
observed in music. For just as Lichtenberg says that Garrick's soul
seemed to be in every muscle in his body, so it is the omnipresence of
intellect that always and everywhere characterizes the work of genius.

I have alluded to the tediousness which marks the works of these
writers; and in this connection it is to be observed, generally, that
tediousness is of two kinds; objective and subjective. A work is
objectively tedious when it contains the defect in question; that is
to say, when its author has no perfectly clear thought or knowledge to
communicate. For if a man has any clear thought or knowledge in him,
his aim will be to communicate it, and he will direct his energies
to this end; so that the ideas he furnishes are everywhere clearly
expressed. The result is that he is neither diffuse, nor unmeaning,
nor confused, and consequently not tedious. In such a case, even
though the author is at bottom in error, the error is at any rate
clearly worked out and well thought over, so that it is at least
formally correct; and thus some value always attaches to the work. But
for the same reason a work that is objectively tedious is at all times
devoid of any value whatever.

The other kind of tediousness is only relative: a reader may find a
work dull because he has no interest in the question treated of in it,
and this means that his intellect is restricted. The best work may,
therefore, be tedious subjectively, tedious, I mean, to this or
that particular person; just as, contrarity, the worst work may be
subjectively engrossing to this or that particular person who has an
interest in the question treated of, or in the writer of the book.

It would generally serve writers in good stead if they would see that,
whilst a man should, if possible, think like a great genius, he should
talk the same language as everyone else. Authors should use common
words to say uncommon things. But they do just the opposite. We find
them trying to wrap up trivial ideas in grand words, and to clothe
their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary phrases, the
most far-fetched, unnatural, and out-of-the-way expressions. Their
sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts. They take so much
pleasure in bombast, and write in such a high-flown, bloated,
affected, hyperbolical and acrobatic style that their prototype is
Ancient Pistol, whom his friend Falstaff once impatiently told to say
what he had to say _like a man of this world._[1]

[Footnote 1: _King Henry IV_., Part II. Act v. Sc. 3.]

There is no expression in any other language exactly answering to the
French _stile empesé_; but the thing itself exists all the more often.
When associated with affectation, it is in literature what assumption
of dignity, grand airs and primeness are in society; and equally
intolerable. Dullness of mind is fond of donning this dress; just as
an ordinary life it is stupid people who like being demure and formal.

An author who writes in the prim style resembles a man who dresses
himself up in order to avoid being confounded or put on the same level
with a mob--a risk never run by the _gentleman_, even in his worst
clothes. The plebeian may be known by a certain showiness of attire
and a wish to have everything spick and span; and in the same way, the
commonplace person is betrayed by his style.

Nevertheless, an author follows a false aim if he tries to write
exactly as he speaks. There is no style of writing but should have a
certain trace of kinship with the _epigraphic_ or _monumental_ style,
which is, indeed, the ancestor of all styles. For an author to write
as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak
as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at
the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

An obscure and vague manner of expression is always and everywhere a
very bad sign. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it comes from
vagueness of thought; and this again almost always means that there is
something radically wrong and incongruous about the thought itself--in
a word, that it is incorrect. When a right thought springs up in the
mind, it strives after expression and is not long in reaching it; for
clear thought easily finds words to fit it. If a man is capable of
thinking anything at all, he is also always able to express it
in clear, intelligible, and unambiguous terms. Those writers who
construct difficult, obscure, involved, and equivocal sentences, most
certainly do not know aright what it is that they want to say: they
have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still in the stage of
struggle to shape itself as thought. Often, indeed, their desire is to
conceal from themselves and others that they really have nothing at
all to say. They wish to appear to know what they do not know, to
think what they do not think, to say what they do not say. If a
man has some real communication to make, which will he choose--an
indistinct or a clear way of expressing himself? Even Quintilian
remarks that things which are said by a highly educated man are often
easier to understand and much clearer; and that the less educated
a man is, the more obscurely he will write--_plerumque accidit ut
faciliora sint ad intelligendum et lucidiora multo que a doctissimo
quoque dicuntur_.... _Erit ergo etiam obscurior quo quisque deterior_.

An author should avoid enigmatical phrases; he should know whether he
wants to say a thing or does not want to say it. It is this indecision
of style that makes so many writers insipid. The only case that offers
an exception to this rule arises when it is necessary to make a remark
that is in some way improper.

As exaggeration generally produces an effect the opposite of
that aimed at; so words, it is true, serve to make thought
intelligible--but only up to a certain point. If words are heaped up
beyond it, the thought becomes more and more obscure again. To find
where the point lies is the problem of style, and the business of the
critical faculty; for a word too much always defeats its purpose. This
is what Voltaire means when he says that _the adjective is the enemy
of the substantive_. But, as we have seen, many people try to conceal
their poverty of thought under a flood of verbiage.

Accordingly let all redundancy be avoided, all stringing together of
remarks which have no meaning and are not worth perusal. A writer must
make a sparing use of the reader's time, patience and attention; so as
to lead him to believe that his author writes what is worth careful
study, and will reward the time spent upon it. It is always better to
omit something good than to add that which is not worth saying at all.
This is the right application of Hesiod's maxim, [Greek: pleon aemisu
pantos][1]--the half is more than the whole. _Le secret pour
être ennuyeux, c'est de tout dire_. Therefore, if possible, the
quintessence only! mere leading thoughts! nothing that the reader
would think for himself. To use many words to communicate few thoughts
is everywhere the unmistakable sign of mediocrity. To gather much
thought into few words stamps the man of genius.

[Footnote 1: _Works and Days_, 40.]

Truth is most beautiful undraped; and the impression it makes is deep
in proportion as its expression has been simple. This is so, partly
because it then takes unobstructed possession of the hearer's whole
soul, and leaves him no by-thought to distract him; partly, also,
because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or cheated by the
arts of rhetoric, but that all the effect of what is said comes from
the thing itself. For instance, what declamation on the vanity of
human existence could ever be more telling than the words of Job? _Man
that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of
misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it
were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay_.

For the same reason Goethe's naïve poetry is incomparably greater than
Schiller's rhetoric. It is this, again, that makes many popular songs
so affecting. As in architecture an excess of decoration is to be
avoided, so in the art of literature a writer must guard against all
rhetorical finery, all useless amplification, and all superfluity of
expression in general; in a word, he must strive after _chastity_ of
style. Every word that can be spared is hurtful if it remains. The law
of simplicity and naïveté holds good of all fine art; for it is quite
possible to be at once simple and sublime.

True brevity of expression consists in everywhere saying only what
is worth saying, and in avoiding tedious detail about things which
everyone can supply for himself. This involves correct discrimination
between what it necessary and what is superfluous. A writer should
never be brief at the expense of being clear, to say nothing of being
grammatical. It shows lamentable want of judgment to weaken the
expression of a thought, or to stunt the meaning of a period for the
sake of using a few words less. But this is the precise endeavor
of that false brevity nowadays so much in vogue, which proceeds by
leaving out useful words and even by sacrificing grammar and logic. It
is not only that such writers spare a word by making a single verb or
adjective do duty for several different periods, so that the reader,
as it were, has to grope his way through them in the dark; they also
practice, in many other respects, an unseemingly economy of speech,
in the effort to effect what they foolishly take to be brevity of
expression and conciseness of style. By omitting something that might
have thrown a light over the whole sentence, they turn it into a
conundrum, which the reader tries to solve by going over it again and
again.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--In the original, Schopenhauer here
enters upon a lengthy examination of certain common errors in the
writing and speaking of German. His remarks are addressed to his own
countrymen, and would lose all point, even if they were intelligible,
in an English translation. But for those who practice their German by
conversing or corresponding with Germans, let me recommend what he
there says as a useful corrective to a slipshod style, such as can
easily be contracted if it is assumed that the natives of a country
always know their own language perfectly.]

It is wealth and weight of thought, and nothing else, that gives
brevity to style, and makes it concise and pregnant. If a writer's
ideas are important, luminous, and generally worth communicating, they
will necessarily furnish matter and substance enough to fill out the
periods which give them expression, and make these in all their parts
both grammatically and verbally complete; and so much will this be
the case that no one will ever find them hollow, empty or feeble. The
diction will everywhere be brief and pregnant, and allow the thought
to find intelligible and easy expression, and even unfold and move
about with grace.

Therefore instead of contracting his words and forms of speech, let a
writer enlarge his thoughts. If a man has been thinned by illness and
finds his clothes too big, it is not by cutting them down, but by
recovering his usual bodily condition, that he ought to make them fit
him again.

Let me here mention an error of style, very prevalent nowadays,
and, in the degraded state of literature and the neglect of ancient
languages, always on the increase; I mean _subjectivity_. A writer
commits this error when he thinks it enough if he himself knows what
he means and wants to say, and takes no thought for the reader, who is
left to get at the bottom of it as best he can. This is as though the
author were holding a monologue; whereas, it ought to be a dialogue;
and a dialogue, too, in which he must express himself all the more
clearly inasmuch as he cannot hear the questions of his interlocutor.

Style should for this very reason never be subjective, but
_objective_; and it will not be objective unless the words are so set
down that they directly force the reader to think precisely the same
thing as the author thought when he wrote them. Nor will this result
be obtained unless the author has always been careful to remember that
thought so far follows the law of gravity that it travels from head to
paper much more easily than from paper to head; so that he must assist
the latter passage by every means in his power. If he does this, a
writer's words will have a purely objective effect, like that of a
finished picture in oils; whilst the subjective style is not much more
certain in its working than spots on the wall, which look like figures
only to one whose phantasy has been accidentally aroused by them;
other people see nothing but spots and blurs. The difference in
question applies to literary method as a whole; but it is often
established also in particular instances. For example, in a recently
published work I found the following sentence: _I have not written in
order to increase the number of existing books._ This means just the
opposite of what the writer wanted to say, and is nonsense as well.

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he
does not attach much importance to his own thoughts. For it is only
where a man is convinced of the truth and importance of his thoughts,
that he feels the enthusiasm necessary for an untiring and assiduous
effort to find the clearest, finest, and strongest expression for
them,--just as for sacred relics or priceless works of art there are
provided silvern or golden receptacles. It was this feeling that led
ancient authors, whose thoughts, expressed in their own words, have
lived thousands of years, and therefore bear the honored title of
_classics_, always to write with care. Plato, indeed, is said to
have written the introduction to his _Republic_ seven times over in
different ways.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--It is a fact worth mentioning that
the first twelve words of the _Republic_ are placed in the exact order
which would be natural in English.]

As neglect of dress betrays want of respect for the company a man
meets, so a hasty, careless, bad style shows an outrageous lack of
regard for the reader, who then rightly punishes it by refusing to
read the book. It is especially amusing to see reviewers criticising
the works of others in their own most careless style--the style of
a hireling. It is as though a judge were to come into court in
dressing-gown and slippers! If I see a man badly and dirtily dressed,
I feel some hesitation, at first, in entering into conversation
with him: and when, on taking up a book, I am struck at once by the
negligence of its style, I put it away.

Good writing should be governed by the rule that a man can think only
one thing clearly at a time; and, therefore, that he should not be
expected to think two or even more things in one and the same moment.
But this is what is done when a writer breaks up his principal
sentence into little pieces, for the purpose of pushing into the gaps
thus made two or three other thoughts by way of parenthesis; thereby
unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the reader. And here it is again
my own countrymen who are chiefly in fault. That German lends itself
to this way of writing, makes the thing possible, but does not justify
it. No prose reads more easily or pleasantly than French, because, as
a rule, it is free from the error in question. The Frenchman strings
his thoughts together, as far as he can, in the most logical and
natural order, and so lays them before his reader one after the other
for convenient deliberation, so that every one of them may receive
undivided attention. The German, on the other hand, weaves them
together into a sentence which he twists and crosses, and crosses and
twists again; because he wants to say six things all at once, instead
of advancing them one by one. His aim should be to attract and hold
the reader's attention; but, above and beyond neglect of this aim, he
demands from the reader that he shall set the above mentioned rule at
defiance, and think three or four different thoughts at one and the
same time; or since that is impossible, that his thoughts shall
succeed each other as quickly as the vibrations of a cord. In this way
an author lays the foundation of his _stile empesé_, which is then
carried to perfection by the use of high-flown, pompous expressions to
communicate the simplest things, and other artifices of the same kind.

In those long sentences rich in involved parenthesis, like a box of
boxes one within another, and padded out like roast geese stuffed with
apples, it is really the _memory_ that is chiefly taxed; while it is
the understanding and the judgment which should be called into play,
instead of having their activity thereby actually hindered and
weakened.[1] This kind of sentence furnishes the reader with mere
half-phrases, which he is then called upon to collect carefully and
store up in his memory, as though they were the pieces of a torn
letter, afterwards to be completed and made sense of by the other
halves to which they respectively belong. He is expected to go on
reading for a little without exercising any thought, nay, exerting
only his memory, in the hope that, when he comes to the end of the
sentence, he may see its meaning and so receive something to think
about; and he is thus given a great deal to learn by heart before
obtaining anything to understand. This is manifestly wrong and an
abuse of the reader's patience.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--This sentence in the original is
obviously meant to illustrate the fault of which it speaks. It does
so by the use of a construction very common in German, but happily
unknown in English; where, however, the fault itself exists none the
less, though in different form.]

The ordinary writer has an unmistakable preference for this
style, because it causes the reader to spend time and trouble in
understanding that which he would have understood in a moment without
it; and this makes it look as though the writer had more depth and
intelligence than the reader. This is, indeed, one of those artifices
referred to above, by means of which mediocre authors unconsciously,
and as it were by instinct, strive to conceal their poverty of thought
and give an appearance of the opposite. Their ingenuity in this
respect is really astounding.

It is manifestly against all sound reason to put one thought obliquely
on top of another, as though both together formed a wooden cross. But
this is what is done where a writer interrupts what he has begun
to say, for the purpose of inserting some quite alien matter; thus
depositing with the reader a meaningless half-sentence, and bidding
him keep it until the completion comes. It is much as though a man
were to treat his guests by handing them an empty plate, in the hope
of something appearing upon it. And commas used for a similar purpose
belong to the same family as notes at the foot of the page and
parenthesis in the middle of the text; nay, all three differ only in
degree. If Demosthenes and Cicero occasionally inserted words by ways
of parenthesis, they would have done better to have refrained.

But this style of writing becomes the height of absurdity when the
parenthesis are not even fitted into the frame of the sentence, but
wedged in so as directly to shatter it. If, for instance, it is an
impertinent thing to interrupt another person when he is speaking, it
is no less impertinent to interrupt oneself. But all bad, careless,
and hasty authors, who scribble with the bread actually before their
eyes, use this style of writing six times on a page, and rejoice in
it. It consists in--it is advisable to give rule and example together,
wherever it is possible--breaking up one phrase in order to glue in
another. Nor is it merely out of laziness that they write thus. They
do it out of stupidity; they think there is a charming _légèreté_
about it; that it gives life to what they say. No doubt there are a
few rare cases where such a form of sentence may be pardonable.

Few write in the way in which an architect builds; who, before he
sets to work, sketches out his plan, and thinks it over down to its
smallest details. Nay, most people write only as though they were
playing dominoes; and, as in this game, the pieces are arranged half
by design, half by chance, so it is with the sequence and connection
of their sentences. They only have an idea of what the general shape
of their work will be, and of the aim they set before themselves.
Many are ignorant even of this, and write as the coral-insects build;
period joins to period, and the Lord only knows what the author means.

Life now-a-days goes at a gallop; and the way in which this affects
literature is to make it extremely superficial and slovenly.



ON THE STUDY OF LATIN.


The abolition of Latin as the universal language of learned men,
together with the rise of that provincialism which attaches to
national literatures, has been a real misfortune for the cause of
knowledge in Europe. For it was chiefly through the medium of the
Latin language that a learned public existed in Europe at all--a
public to which every book as it came out directly appealed. The
number of minds in the whole of Europe that are capable of thinking
and judging is small, as it is; but when the audience is broken up and
severed by differences of language, the good these minds can do is
very much weakened. This is a great disadvantage; but a second and
worse one will follow, namely, that the ancient languages will cease
to be taught at all. The neglect of them is rapidly gaining ground
both in France and Germany.

If it should really come to this, then farewell, humanity! farewell,
noble taste and high thinking! The age of barbarism will return, in
spite of railways, telegraphs and balloons. We shall thus in the end
lose one more advantage possessed by all our ancestors. For Latin is
not only a key to the knowledge of Roman antiquity; its also directly
opens up to us the Middle Age in every country in Europe, and modern
times as well, down to about the year 1750. Erigena, for example, in
the ninth century, John of Salisbury in the twelfth, Raimond Lully in
the thirteenth, with a hundred others, speak straight to us in the
very language that they naturally adopted in thinking of learned
matters.

They thus come quite close to us even at this distance of time: we are
in direct contact with them, and really come to know them. How would
it have been if every one of them spoke in the language that was
peculiar to his time and country? We should not understand even the
half of what they said. A real intellectual contact with them would be
impossible. We should see them like shadows on the farthest horizon,
or, may be, through the translator's telescope.

It was with an eye to the advantage of writing in Latin that Bacon, as
he himself expressly states, proceeded to translate his _Essays_ into
that language, under the title _Sermones fideles_; at which work
Hobbes assisted him.[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Thomae Hobbes vita: _Carolopoli apud Eleutherium
Anglicum_, 1681, p. 22.]

Here let me observe, by way of parenthesis, that when patriotism tries
to urge its claims in the domain of knowledge, it commits an offence
which should not be tolerated. For in those purely human questions
which interest all men alike, where truth, insight, beauty, should be
of sole account, what can be more impertinent than to let preference
for the nation to which a man's precious self happens to belong,
affect the balance of judgment, and thus supply a reason for doing
violence to truth and being unjust to the great minds of a foreign
country in order to make much of the smaller minds of one's own!
Still, there are writers in every nation in Europe, who afford
examples of this vulgar feeling. It is this which led Yriarte to
caricature them in the thirty-third of his charming _Literary
Fables_.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--Tomas de Yriarte (1750-91), a
Spanish poet, and keeper of archives in the War Office at Madrid. His
two best known works are a didactic poem, entitled _La Musica_, and
the _Fables_ here quoted, which satirize the peculiar foibles of
literary men. They have been translated into many languages; into
English by Rockliffe (3rd edition, 1866). The fable in question
describes how, at a picnic of the animals, a discussion arose as to
which of them carried off the palm for superiority of talent. The
praises of the ant, the dog, the bee, and the parrot were sung in
turn; but at last the ostrich stood up and declared for the dromedary.
Whereupon the dromedary stood up and declared for the ostrich. No one
could discover the reason for this mutual compliment. Was it because
both were such uncouth beasts, or had such long necks, or were neither
of them particularly clever or beautiful? or was it because each had a
hump? _No_! said the fox, _you are all wrong. Don't you see they are
both foreigners_? Cannot the same be said of many men of learning?]

In learning a language, the chief difficulty consists in making
acquaintance with every idea which it expresses, even though it should
use words for which there is no exact equivalent in the mother tongue;
and this often happens. In learning a new language a man has, as it
were, to mark out in his mind the boundaries of quite new spheres of
ideas, with the result that spheres of ideas arise where none were
before. Thus he not only learns words, he gains ideas too.

This is nowhere so much the case as in learning ancient languages, for
the differences they present in their mode of expression as compared
with modern languages is greater than can be found amongst modern
languages as compared with one another. This is shown by the fact that
in translating into Latin, recourse must be had to quite other turns
of phrase than are used in the original. The thought that is to be
translated has to be melted down and recast; in other words, it must
be analyzed and then recomposed. It is just this process which makes
the study of the ancient languages contribute so much to the education
of the mind.

It follows from this that a man's thought varies according to the
language in which he speaks. His ideas undergo a fresh modification,
a different shading, as it were, in the study of every new language.
Hence an acquaintance with many languages is not only of much indirect
advantage, but it is also a direct means of mental culture, in that it
corrects and matures ideas by giving prominence to their many-sided
nature and their different varieties of meaning, as also that it
increases dexterity of thought; for in the process of learning many
languages, ideas become more and more independent of words. The
ancient languages effect this to a greater degree than the modern, in
virtue of the difference to which I have alluded.

From what I have said, it is obvious that to imitate the style of the
ancients in their own language, which is so very much superior to ours
in point of grammatical perfection, is the best way of preparing for a
skillful and finished expression of thought in the mother-tongue. Nay,
if a man wants to be a great writer, he must not omit to do this: just
as, in the case of sculpture or painting, the student must educate
himself by copying the great masterpieces of the past, before
proceeding to original work. It is only by learning to write Latin
that a man comes to treat diction as an art. The material in this art
is language, which must therefore be handled with the greatest care
and delicacy.

The result of such study is that a writer will pay keen attention to
the meaning and value of words, their order and connection, their
grammatical forms. He will learn how to weigh them with precision, and
so become an expert in the use of that precious instrument which is
meant not only to express valuable thought, but to preserve it as
well. Further, he will learn to feel respect for the language in
which he writes and thus be saved from any attempt to remodel it by
arbitrary and capricious treatment. Without this schooling, a man's
writing may easily degenerate into mere chatter.

To be entirely ignorant of the Latin language is like being in a fine
country on a misty day. The horizon is extremely limited. Nothing can
be seen clearly except that which is quite close; a few steps beyond,
everything is buried in obscurity. But the Latinist has a wide view,
embracing modern times, the Middle Age and Antiquity; and his mental
horizon is still further enlarged if he studies Greek or even
Sanscrit.

If a man knows no Latin, he belongs to the vulgar, even though he be
a great virtuoso on the electrical machine and have the base of
hydrofluoric acid in his crucible.

There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of the
ancient classics. Take any one of them into your hand, be it only
for half an hour, and you will feel yourself refreshed, relieved,
purified, ennobled, strengthened; just as though you had quenched your
thirst at some pure spring. Is this the effect of the old language
and its perfect expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose
works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of a thousand years?
Perhaps both together. But this I know. If the threatened calamity
should ever come, and the ancient languages cease to be taught, a new
literature will arise, of such barbarous, shallow and worthless stuff
as never was seen before.



ON MEN OF LEARNING.


When one sees the number and variety of institutions which exist
for the purposes of education, and the vast throng of scholars and
masters, one might fancy the human race to be very much concerned
about truth and wisdom. But here, too, appearances are deceptive. The
masters teach in order to gain money, and strive, not after wisdom,
but the outward show and reputation of it; and the scholars learn, not
for the sake of knowledge and insight, but to be able to chatter and
give themselves airs. Every thirty years a new race comes into the
world--a youngster that knows nothing about anything, and after
summarily devouring in all haste the results of human knowledge as
they have been accumulated for thousands of years, aspires to be
thought cleverer than the whole of the past. For this purpose he goes
to the University, and takes to reading books--new books, as being of
his own age and standing. Everything he reads must be briefly put,
must be new! he is new himself. Then he falls to and criticises. And
here I am not taking the slightest account of studies pursued for the
sole object of making a living.

Students, and learned persons of all sorts and every age, aim as
a rule at acquiring _information_ rather than insight. They pique
themselves upon knowing about everything--stones, plants, battles,
experiments, and all the books in existence. It never occurs to them
that information is only a means of insight, and in itself of little
or no value; that it is his way of _thinking_ that makes a man a
philosopher. When I hear of these portents of learning and their
imposing erudition, I sometimes say to myself: Ah, how little they
must have had to think about, to have been able to read so much!
And when I actually find it reported of the elder Pliny that he was
continually reading or being read to, at table, on a journey, or in
his bath, the question forces itself upon my mind, whether the man
was so very lacking in thought of his own that he had to have
alien thought incessantly instilled into him; as though he were a
consumptive patient taking jellies to keep himself alive. And neither
his undiscerning credulity nor his inexpressibly repulsive and barely
intelligible style--which seems like of a man taking notes, and very
economical of paper--is of a kind to give me a high opinion of his
power of independent thought.

We have seen that much reading and learning is prejudicial to thinking
for oneself; and, in the same way, through much writing and teaching,
a man loses the habit of being quite clear, and therefore thorough, in
regard to the things he knows and understands; simply because he has
left himself no time to acquire clearness or thoroughness. And so,
when clear knowledge fails him in his utterances, he is forced to fill
out the gaps with words and phrases. It is this, and not the dryness
of the subject-matter, that makes most books such tedious reading.
There is a saying that a good cook can make a palatable dish even
out of an old shoe; and a good writer can make the dryest things
interesting.

With by far the largest number of learned men, knowledge is a means,
not an end. That is why they will never achieve any great work;
because, to do that, he who pursues knowledge must pursue it as an
end, and treat everything else, even existence itself, as only a
means. For everything which a man fails to pursue for its own sake is
but half-pursued; and true excellence, no matter in what sphere, can
be attained only where the work has been produced for its own sake
alone, and not as a means to further ends.

And so, too, no one will ever succeed in doing anything really great
and original in the way of thought, who does not seek to acquire
knowledge for himself, and, making this the immediate object of his
studies, decline to trouble himself about the knowledge of others. But
the average man of learning studies for the purpose of being able to
teach and write. His head is like a stomach and intestines which let
the food pass through them undigested. That is just why his teaching
and writing is of so little use. For it is not upon undigested refuse
that people can be nourished, but solely upon the milk which secretes
from the very blood itself.

The wig is the appropriate symbol of the man of learning, pure and
simple. It adorns the head with a copious quantity of false hair, in
lack of one's own: just as erudition means endowing it with a great
mass of alien thought. This, to be sure, does not clothe the head so
well and naturally, nor is it so generally useful, nor so suited for
all purposes, nor so firmly rooted; nor when alien thought is used up,
can it be immediately replaced by more from the same source, as is
the case with that which springs from soil of one's own. So we find
Sterne, in his _Tristram Shandy_, boldly asserting that _an ounce of a
man's own wit is worth a ton of other people's_.

And in fact the most profound erudition is no more akin to genius than
a collection of dried plants in like Nature, with its constant flow
of new life, ever fresh, ever young, ever changing. There are no two
things more opposed than the childish naïveté of an ancient author and
the learning of his commentator.

_Dilettanti, dilettanti!_ This is the slighting way in which those who
pursue any branch of art or learning for the love and enjoyment of the
thing,--_per il loro diletto_, are spoken of by those who have taken
it up for the sake of gain, attracted solely by the prospect of money.
This contempt of theirs comes from the base belief that no man will
seriously devote himself to a subject, unless he is spurred on to it
by want, hunger, or else some form of greed. The public is of the same
way of thinking; and hence its general respect for professionals and
its distrust of _dilettanti_. But the truth is that the _dilettante_
treats his subject as an end, whereas the professional, pure and
simple, treats it merely as a means. He alone will be really in
earnest about a matter, who has a direct interest therein, takes to it
because he likes it, and pursues it _con amore_. It is these, and not
hirelings, that have always done the greatest work.

In the republic of letters it is as in other republics; favor is shown
to the plain man--he who goes his way in silence and does not set up
to be cleverer than others. But the abnormal man is looked upon as
threatening danger; people band together against him, and have, oh!
such a majority on their side.

The condition of this republic is much like that of a small State in
America, where every man is intent only upon his own advantage, and
seeks reputation and power for himself, quite heedless of the general
weal, which then goes to ruin. So it is in the republic of letters;
it is himself, and himself alone, that a man puts forward, because he
wants to gain fame. The only thing in which all agree is in trying to
keep down a really eminent man, if he should chance to show himself,
as one who would be a common peril. From this it is easy to see how it
fares with knowledge as a whole.

Between professors and independent men of learning there has always
been from of old a certain antagonism, which may perhaps be likened
to that existing been dogs and wolves. In virtue of their position,
professors enjoy great facilities for becoming known to their
contemporaries. Contrarily, independent men of learning enjoy, by
their position, great facilities for becoming known to posterity; to
which it is necessary that, amongst other and much rarer gifts, a man
should have a certain leisure and freedom. As mankind takes a long
time in finding out on whom to bestow its attention, they may both
work together side by side.

He who holds a professorship may be said to receive his food in the
stall; and this is the best way with ruminant animals. But he who
finds his food for himself at the hands of Nature is better off in the
open field.

Of human knowledge as a whole and in every branch of it, by far the
largest part exists nowhere but on paper,--I mean, in books, that
paper memory of mankind. Only a small part of it is at any given
period really active in the minds of particular persons. This is due,
in the main, to the brevity and uncertainty of life; but it also comes
from the fact that men are lazy and bent on pleasure. Every generation
attains, on its hasty passage through existence, just so much of human
knowledge as it needs, and then soon disappears. Most men of learning
are very superficial. Then follows a new generation, full of hope, but
ignorant, and with everything to learn from the beginning. It seizes,
in its turn, just so much as it can grasp or find useful on its brief
journey and then too goes its way. How badly it would fare with human
knowledge if it were not for the art of writing and printing! This it
is that makes libraries the only sure and lasting memory of the human
race, for its individual members have all of them but a very limited
and imperfect one. Hence most men of learning as are loth to have
their knowledge examined as merchants to lay bare their books.

Human knowledge extends on all sides farther than the eye can reach;
and of that which would be generally worth knowing, no one man can
possess even the thousandth part.

All branches of learning have thus been so much enlarged that he
who would "do something" has to pursue no more than one subject and
disregard all others. In his own subject he will then, it is true, be
superior to the vulgar; but in all else he will belong to it. If we
add to this that neglect of the ancient languages, which is now-a-days
on the increase and is doing away with all general education in the
humanities--for a mere smattering of Latin and Greek is of no use--we
shall come to have men of learning who outside their own subject
display an ignorance truly bovine.

An exclusive specialist of this kind stands on a par with a workman in
a factory, whose whole life is spent in making one particular kind of
screw, or catch, or handle, for some particular instrument or machine,
in which, indeed, he attains incredible dexterity. The specialist may
also be likened to a man who lives in his own house and never leaves
it. There he is perfectly familiar with everything, every little step,
corner, or board; much as Quasimodo in Victor Hugo's _Nôtre Dame_
knows the cathedral; but outside it, all is strange and unknown.

For true culture in the humanities it is absolutely necessary that
a man should be many-sided and take large views; and for a man of
learning in the higher sense of the word, an extensive acquaintance
with history is needful. He, however, who wishes to be a complete
philosopher, must gather into his head the remotest ends of human
knowledge: for where else could they ever come together?

It is precisely minds of the first order that will never be
specialists. For their very nature is to make the whole of existence
their problem; and this is a subject upon which they will every one of
them in some form provide mankind with a new revelation. For he alone
can deserve the name of genius who takes the All, the Essential, the
Universal, for the theme of his achievements; not he who spends his
life in explaining some special relation of things one to another.



ON THINKING FOR ONESELF.


A library may be very large; but if it is in disorder, it is not so
useful as one that is small but well arranged. In the same way, a man
may have a great mass of knowledge, but if he has not worked it up
by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far
smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered. For it is only when a
man looks at his knowledge from all sides, and combines the things he
knows by comparing truth with truth, that he obtains a complete hold
over it and gets it into his power. A man cannot turn over anything in
his mind unless he knows it; he should, therefore, learn something;
but it is only when he has turned it over that he can be said to know
it.

Reading and learning are things that anyone can do of his own free
will; but not so _thinking_. Thinking must be kindled, like a fire
by a draught; it must be sustained by some interest in the matter
in hand. This interest may be of purely objective kind, or merely
subjective. The latter comes into play only in things that concern
us personally. Objective interest is confined to heads that think by
nature; to whom thinking is as natural as breathing; and they are very
rare. This is why most men of learning show so little of it.

It is incredible what a different effect is produced upon the mind
by thinking for oneself, as compared with reading. It carries on and
intensifies that original difference in the nature of two minds which
leads the one to think and the other to read. What I mean is that
reading forces alien thoughts upon the mind--thoughts which are as
foreign to the drift and temper in which it may be for the moment, as
the seal is to the wax on which it stamps its imprint. The mind is
thus entirely under compulsion from without; it is driven to think
this or that, though for the moment it may not have the slightest
impulse or inclination to do so.

But when a man thinks for himself, he follows the impulse of his
own mind, which is determined for him at the time, either by his
environment or some particular recollection. The visible world of
a man's surroundings does not, as reading does, impress a _single_
definite thought upon his mind, but merely gives the matter and
occasion which lead him to think what is appropriate to his nature and
present temper. So it is, that much reading deprives the mind of all
elasticity; it is like keeping a spring continually under pressure.
The safest way of having no thoughts of one's own is to take up a book
every moment one has nothing else to do. It is this practice which
explains why erudition makes most men more stupid and silly than they
are by nature, and prevents their writings obtaining any measure of
success. They remain, in Pope's words:

  _For ever reading, never to be read!_[1]

[Footnote 1: _Dunciad_, iii, 194.]

Men of learning are those who have done their reading in the pages of
a book. Thinkers and men of genius are those who have gone straight
to the book of Nature; it is they who have enlightened the world and
carried humanity further on its way. If a man's thoughts are to have
truth and life in them, they must, after all, be his own fundamental
thoughts; for these are the only ones that he can fully and wholly
understand. To read another's thoughts is like taking the leavings of
a meal to which we have not been invited, or putting on the clothes
which some unknown visitor has laid aside. The thought we read
is related to the thought which springs up in ourselves, as the
fossil-impress of some prehistoric plant to a plant as it buds forth
in spring-time.

Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought of one's own. It
means putting the mind into leading-strings. The multitude of books
serves only to show how many false paths there are, and how widely
astray a man may wander if he follows any of them. But he who
is guided by his genius, he who thinks for himself, who thinks
spontaneously and exactly, possesses the only compass by which he can
steer aright. A man should read only when his own thoughts stagnate
at their source, which will happen often enough even with the best of
minds. On the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring
away one's own original thoughts is sin against the Holy Spirit. It is
like running away from Nature to look at a museum of dried plants or
gaze at a landscape in copperplate.

A man may have discovered some portion of truth or wisdom, after
spending a great deal of time and trouble in thinking it over for
himself and adding thought to thought; and it may sometimes happen
that he could have found it all ready to hand in a book and spared
himself the trouble. But even so, it is a hundred times more valuable
if he has acquired it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only
when we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as an integral
part, a living member, into the whole system of our thought; that it
stands in complete and firm relation with what we know; that it is
understood with all that underlies it and follows from it; that it
wears the color, the precise shade, the distinguishing mark, of our
own way of thinking; that it comes exactly at the right time, just
as we felt the necessity for it; that it stands fast and cannot be
forgotten. This is the perfect application, nay, the interpretation,
of Goethe's advice to earn our inheritance for ourselves so that we
may really possess it:

  _Was due ererbt von deinen Välern hast,
  Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen._[1]

[Footnote 1: _Faust_, I. 329.]

The man who thinks for himself, forms his own opinions and learns the
authorities for them only later on, when they serve but to strengthen
his belief in them and in himself. But the book-philosopher starts
from the authorities. He reads other people's books, collects their
opinions, and so forms a whole for himself, which resembles an
automaton made up of anything but flesh and blood. Contrarily, he who
thinks for himself creates a work like a living man as made by Nature.
For the work comes into being as a man does; the thinking mind is
impregnated from without, and it then forms and bears its child.

Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false
tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another's flesh;
it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by
thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs
to us. This is the fundamental difference between the thinker and the
mere man of learning. The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks
for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are
correct, the tone sustained, the color perfectly harmonized; it is
true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the
mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of
colors, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of
harmony, connection and meaning.

Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. To
think with one's own head is always to aim at developing a coherent
whole--a system, even though it be not a strictly complete one; and
nothing hinders this so much as too strong a current of others'
thoughts, such as comes of continual reading. These thoughts,
springing every one of them from different minds, belonging to
different systems, and tinged with different colors, never of
themselves flow together into an intellectual whole; they never form a
unity of knowledge, or insight, or conviction; but, rather, fill
the head with a Babylonian confusion of tongues. The mind that is
over-loaded with alien thought is thus deprived of all clear insight,
and is well-nigh disorganized. This is a state of things observable
in many men of learning; and it makes them inferior in sound sense,
correct judgment and practical tact, to many illiterate persons,
who, after obtaining a little knowledge from without, by means of
experience, intercourse with others, and a small amount of reading,
have always subordinated it to, and embodied it with, their own
thought.

The really scientific _thinker_ does the same thing as these
illiterate persons, but on a larger scale. Although he has need
of much knowledge, and so must read a great deal, his mind is
nevertheless strong enough to master it all, to assimilate and
incorporate it with the system of his thoughts, and so to make it
fit in with the organic unity of his insight, which, though vast, is
always growing. And in the process, his own thought, like the bass in
an organ, always dominates everything and is never drowned by other
tones, as happens with minds which are full of mere antiquarian lore;
where shreds of music, as it were, in every key, mingle confusedly,
and no fundamental note is heard at all.

Those who have spent their lives in reading, and taken their wisdom
from books, are like people who have obtained precise information
about a country from the descriptions of many travellers. Such
people can tell a great deal about it; but, after all, they have no
connected, clear, and profound knowledge of its real condition. But
those who have spent their lives in thinking, resemble the travellers
themselves; they alone really know what they are talking about; they
are acquainted with the actual state of affairs, and are quite at home
in the subject.

The thinker stands in the same relation to the ordinary
book-philosopher as an eye-witness does to the historian; he speaks
from direct knowledge of his own. That is why all those who think
for themselves come, at bottom, to much the same conclusion. The
differences they present are due to their different points of view;
and when these do not affect the matter, they all speak alike. They
merely express the result of their own objective perception of things.
There are many passages in my works which I have given to the public
only after some hesitation, because of their paradoxical nature; and
afterwards I have experienced a pleasant surprise in finding the same
opinion recorded in the works of great men who lived long ago.

The book-philosopher merely reports what one person has said and
another meant, or the objections raised by a third, and so on. He
compares different opinions, ponders, criticises, and tries to get at
the truth of the matter; herein on a par with the critical historian.
For instance, he will set out to inquire whether Leibnitz was not for
some time a follower of Spinoza, and questions of a like nature. The
curious student of such matters may find conspicuous examples of what
I mean in Herbart's _Analytical Elucidation of Morality and Natural
Right_, and in the same author's _Letters on Freedom_. Surprise may
be felt that a man of the kind should put himself to so much trouble;
for, on the face of it, if he would only examine the matter for
himself, he would speedily attain his object by the exercise of a
little thought. But there is a small difficulty in the way. It does
not depend upon his own will. A man can always sit down and read, but
not--think. It is with thoughts as with men; they cannot always be
summoned at pleasure; we must wait for them to come. Thought about a
subject must appear of itself, by a happy and harmonious combination
of external stimulus with mental temper and attention; and it is just
that which never seems to come to these people.

This truth may be illustrated by what happens in the case of matters
affecting our own personal interest. When it is necessary to come to
some resolution in a matter of that kind, we cannot well sit down at
any given moment and think over the merits of the case and make up our
mind; for, if we try to do so, we often find ourselves unable, at that
particular moment, to keep our mind fixed upon the subject; it wanders
off to other things. Aversion to the matter in question is sometimes
to blame for this. In such a case we should not use force, but wait
for the proper frame of mind to come of itself. It often comes
unexpectedly and returns again and again; and the variety of temper in
which we approach it at different moments puts the matter always in a
fresh light. It is this long process which is understood by the term
_a ripe resolution._ For the work of coming to a resolution must be
distributed; and in the process much that is overlooked at one moment
occurs to us at another; and the repugnance vanishes when we find, as
we usually do, on a closer inspection, that things are not so bad as
they seemed.

This rule applies to the life of the intellect as well as to matters
of practice. A man must wait for the right moment. Not even the
greatest mind is capable of thinking for itself at all times. Hence a
great mind does well to spend its leisure in reading, which, as I have
said, is a substitute for thought; it brings stuff to the mind by
letting another person do the thinking; although that is always done
in a manner not our own. Therefore, a man should not read too much, in
order that his mind may not become accustomed to the substitute and
thereby forget the reality; that it may not form the habit of walking
in well-worn paths; nor by following an alien course of thought grow a
stranger to its own. Least of all should a man quite withdraw his gaze
from the real world for the mere sake of reading; as the impulse and
the temper which prompt to thought of one's own come far oftener from
the world of reality than from the world of books. The real life that
a man sees before him is the natural subject of thought; and in its
strength as the primary element of existence, it can more easily than
anything else rouse and influence the thinking mind.

After these considerations, it will not be matter for surprise that
a man who thinks for himself can easily be distinguished from the
book-philosopher by the very way in which he talks, by his marked
earnestness, and the originality, directness, and personal conviction
that stamp all his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on
the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is second-hand;
that his ideas are like the number and trash of an old furniture-shop,
collected together from all quarters. Mentally, he is dull and
pointless--a copy of a copy. His literary style is made up of
conventional, nay, vulgar phrases, and terms that happen to be
current; in this respect much like a small State where all the money
that circulates is foreign, because it has no coinage of its own.

Mere experience can as little as reading supply the place of thought.
It stands to thinking in the same relation in which eating stands
to digestion and assimilation. When experience boasts that to its
discoveries alone is due the advancement of the human race, it is as
though the mouth were to claim the whole credit of maintaining the
body in health.

The works of all truly capable minds are distinguished by a character
of _decision_ and _definiteness_, which means they are clear and free
from obscurity. A truly capable mind always knows definitely and
clearly what it is that it wants to express, whether its medium is
prose, verse, or music. Other minds are not decisive and not definite;
and by this they may be known for what they are.

The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest order is that it
always judges at first hand. Everything it advances is the result of
thinking for itself; and this is everywhere evident by the way in
which it gives its thoughts utterance. Such a mind is like a Prince.
In the realm of intellect its authority is imperial, whereas the
authority of minds of a lower order is delegated only; as may be seen
in their style, which has no independent stamp of its own.

Every one who really thinks for himself is so far like a monarch.
His position is undelegated and supreme. His judgments, like royal
decrees, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from
himself. He acknowledges authority as little as a monarch admits a
command; he subscribes to nothing but what he has himself authorized.
The multitude of common minds, laboring under all sorts of current
opinions, authorities, prejudices, is like the people, which silently
obeys the law and accepts orders from above.

Those who are so zealous and eager to settle debated questions by
citing authorities, are really glad when they are able to put the
understanding and the insight of others into the field in place of
their own, which are wanting. Their number is legion. For, as
Seneca says, there is no man but prefers belief to the exercise
of judgment--_unusquisque mavult credere quam judicare_. In their
controversies such people make a promiscuous use of the weapon of
authority, and strike out at one another with it. If any one chances
to become involved in such a contest, he will do well not to try
reason and argument as a mode of defence; for against a weapon of that
kind these people are like Siegfrieds, with a skin of horn, and dipped
in the flood of incapacity for thinking and judging. They will meet
his attack by bringing up their authorities as a way of abashing
him--_argumentum ad verecundiam_, and then cry out that they have won
the battle.

In the real world, be it never so fair, favorable and pleasant,
we always live subject to the law of gravity which we have to
be constantly overcoming. But in the world of intellect we are
disembodied spirits, held in bondage to no such law, and free from
penury and distress. Thus it is that there exists no happiness on
earth like that which, at the auspicious moment, a fine and fruitful
mind finds in itself.

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a woman we love. We
fancy we shall never forget the thought nor become indifferent to the
dear one. But out of sight, out of mind! The finest thought runs the
risk of being irrevocably forgotten if we do not write it down, and
the darling of being deserted if we do not marry her.

There are plenty of thoughts which are valuable to the man who thinks
them; but only few of them which have enough strength to produce
repercussive or reflect action--I mean, to win the reader's sympathy
after they have been put on paper.

But still it must not be forgotten that a true value attaches only
to what a man has thought in the first instance _for his own case_.
Thinkers may be classed according as they think chiefly for their own
case or for that of others. The former are the genuine independent
thinkers; they really think and are really independent; they are the
true _philosophers_; they alone are in earnest. The pleasure and the
happiness of their existence consists in thinking. The others are the
_sophists_; they want to seem that which they are not, and seek their
happiness in what they hope to get from the world. They are in earnest
about nothing else. To which of these two classes a man belongs may be
seen by his whole style and manner. Lichtenberg is an example for the
former class; Herder, there can be no doubt, belongs to the second.

When one considers how vast and how close to us is _the problem of
existence_--this equivocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence
of ours--so vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it than
it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims; and when
one sees how all men, with few and rare exceptions, have no clear
consciousness of the problem, nay, seem to be quite unaware of its
presence, but busy themselves with everything rather than with this,
and live on, taking no thought but for the passing day and the hardly
longer span of their own personal future, either expressly discarding
the problem or else over-ready to come to terms with it by adopting
some system of popular metaphysics and letting it satisfy them; when,
I say, one takes all this to heart, one may come to the opinion that
man may be said to be _a thinking being_ only in a very remote
sense, and henceforth feel no special surprise at any trait of human
thoughtlessness or folly; but know, rather, that the normal man's
intellectual range of vision does indeed extend beyond that of the
brute, whose whole existence is, as it were, a continual present,
with no consciousness of the past or the future, but not such an
immeasurable distance as is generally supposed.

This is, in fact, corroborated by the way in which most men converse;
where their thoughts are found to be chopped up fine, like chaff, so
that for them to spin out a discourse of any length is impossible.

If this world were peopled by really thinking beings, it could not be
that noise of every kind would be allowed such generous limits, as is
the case with the most horrible and at the same time aimless form of
it.[1] If Nature had meant man to think, she would not have given him
ears; or, at any rate, she would have furnished them with airtight
flaps, such as are the enviable possession of the bat. But, in truth,
man is a poor animal like the rest, and his powers are meant only to
maintain him in the struggle for existence; so he must need keep his
ears always open, to announce of themselves, by night as by day, the
approach of the pursuer.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Schopenhauer refers to the cracking
of whips. See the Essay _On Noise_ in _Studies in Pessimism_.]

In the drama, which is the most perfect reflection of human existence,
there are three stages in the presentation of the subject, with a
corresponding variety in the design and scope of the piece.

At the first, which is also the most common, stage, the drama is
never anything more than merely _interesting_. The persons gain our
attention by following their own aims, which resemble ours; the action
advances by means of intrigue and the play of character and incident;
while wit and raillery season the whole.

At the second stage, the drama becomes _sentimental_. Sympathy is
roused with the hero and, indirectly, with ourselves. The action takes
a pathetic turn; but the end is peaceful and satisfactory.

The climax is reached with the third stage, which is the most
difficult. There the drama aims at being _tragic_. We are brought face
to face with great suffering and the storm and stress of existence;
and the outcome of it is to show the vanity of all human effort.
Deeply moved, we are either directly prompted to disengage our will
from the struggle of life, or else a chord is struck in us which
echoes a similar feeling.

The beginning, it is said, is always difficult. In the drama it is
just the contrary; for these the difficulty always lies in the end.
This is proved by countless plays which promise very well for
the first act or two, and then become muddled, stick or
falter--notoriously so in the fourth act--and finally conclude in a
way that is either forced or unsatisfactory or else long foreseen by
every one. Sometimes, too, the end is positively revolting, as in
Lessing's _Emilia Galotti_, which sends the spectators home in a
temper.

This difficulty in regard to the end of a play arises partly because
it is everywhere easier to get things into a tangle than to get them
out again; partly also because at the beginning we give the author
_carte blanche_ to do as he likes, but, at the end, make certain
definite demands upon him. Thus we ask for a conclusion that shall be
either quite happy or else quite tragic; whereas human affairs do not
easily take so decided a turn; and then we expect that it shall be
natural, fit and proper, unlabored, and at the same time foreseen by
no one.

These remarks are also applicable to an epic and to a novel; but the
more compact nature of the drama makes the difficulty plainer by
increasing it.

_E nihilo nihil fit_. That nothing can come from nothing is a maxim
true in fine art as elsewhere. In composing an historical picture, a
good artist will use living men as a model, and take the groundwork
of the faces from life; and then proceed to idealize them in point of
beauty or expression. A similar method, I fancy, is adopted by good
novelists. In drawing a character they take a general outline of it
from some real person of their acquaintance, and then idealize and
complete it to suit their purpose.

A novel will be of a high and noble order, the more it represents
of inner, and the less it represents of outer, life; and the ratio
between the two will supply a means of judging any novel, of whatever
kind, from _Tristram Shandy_ down to the crudest and most sensational
tale of knight or robber. _Tristram Shandy_ has, indeed, as good as
no action at all; and there is not much in _La Nouvelle Heloïse_ and
_Wilhelm Meister_. Even _Don Quixote_ has relatively little; and what
there is, very unimportant, and introduced merely for the sake of fun.
And these four are the best of all existing novels.

Consider, further, the wonderful romances of Jean Paul, and how much
inner life is shown on the narrowest basis of actual event. Even in
Walter Scott's novels there is a great preponderance of inner over
outer life, and incident is never brought in except for the purpose of
giving play to thought and emotion; whereas, in bad novels, incident
is there on its own account. Skill consists in setting the inner life
in motion with the smallest possible array of circumstance; for it is
this inner life that really excites our interest.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to
make small ones interesting.

History, which I like to think of as the contrary of poetry [Greek:
istoroumenon--pepoiaemenon], is for time what geography is for space;
and it is no more to be called a science, in any strict sense of the
word, than is geography, because it does not deal with universal
truths, but only with particular details. History has always been the
favorite study of those who wish to learn something, without having to
face the effort demanded by any branch of real knowledge, which taxes
the intelligence. In our time history is a favorite pursuit; as
witness the numerous books upon the subject which appear every year.

If the reader cannot help thinking, with me, that history is merely
the constant recurrence of similar things, just as in a kaleidoscope
the same bits of glass are represented, but in different combinations,
he will not be able to share all this lively interest; nor, however,
will he censure it. But there is a ridiculous and absurd claim, made
by many people, to regard history as a part of philosophy, nay, as
philosophy itself; they imagine that history can take its place.

The preference shown for history by the greater public in all ages may
be illustrated by the kind of conversation which is so much in vogue
everywhere in society. It generally consists in one person relating
something and then another person relating something else; so that in
this way everyone is sure of receiving attention. Both here and in the
case of history it is plain that the mind is occupied with particular
details. But as in science, so also in every worthy conversation, the
mind rises to the consideration of some general truth.

This objection does not, however, deprive history of its value. Human
life is short and fleeting, and many millions of individuals share in
it, who are swallowed by that monster of oblivion which is waiting for
them with ever-open jaws. It is thus a very thankworthy task to try to
rescue something--the memory of interesting and important events, or
the leading features and personages of some epoch--from the general
shipwreck of the world.

From another point of view, we might look upon history as the sequel
to zoology; for while with all other animals it is enough to observe
the species, with man individuals, and therefore individual events
have to be studied; because every man possesses a character as an
individual. And since individuals and events are without number or
end, an essential imperfection attaches to history. In the study of
it, all that a man learns never contributes to lessen that which he
has still to learn. With any real science, a perfection of knowledge
is, at any rate, conceivable.

When we gain access to the histories of China and of India, the
endlessness of the subject-matter will reveal to us the defects in the
study, and force our historians to see that the object of science is
to recognize the many in the one, to perceive the rules in any given
example, and to apply to the life of nations a knowledge of mankind;
not to go on counting up facts _ad infinitum_.

There are two kinds of history; the history of politics and the
history of literature and art. The one is the history of the will;
the other, that of the intellect. The first is a tale of woe, even of
terror: it is a record of agony, struggle, fraud, and horrible murder
_en masse_. The second is everywhere pleasing and serene, like the
intellect when left to itself, even though its path be one of error.
Its chief branch is the history of philosophy. This is, in fact, its
fundamental bass, and the notes of it are heard even in the other
kind of history. These deep tones guide the formation of opinion, and
opinion rules the world. Hence philosophy, rightly understood, is a
material force of the most powerful kind, though very slow in its
working. The philosophy of a period is thus the fundamental bass of
its history.

The NEWSPAPER, is the second-hand in the clock of history; and it is
not only made of baser metal than those which point to the minute and
the hour, but it seldom goes right.

The so-called leading article is the chorus to the drama of passing
events.

Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to
the dramatic art; for the object of journalism is to make events go
as far as possible. Thus it is that all journalists are, in the very
nature of their calling, alarmists; and this is their way of giving
interest to what they write. Herein they are like little dogs; if
anything stirs, they immediately set up a shrill bark.

Therefore, let us carefully regulate the attention to be paid to this
trumpet of danger, so that it may not disturb our digestion. Let us
recognize that a newspaper is at best but a magnifying-glass, and very
often merely a shadow on the wall.

The _pen_ is to thought what the stick is to walking; but you walk
most easily when you have no stick, and you think with the greatest
perfection when you have no pen in your hand. It is only when a man
begins to be old that he likes to use a stick and is glad to take up
his pen.

When an _hypothesis_ has once come to birth in the mind, or gained a
footing there, it leads a life so far comparable with the life of an
organism, as that it assimilates matter from the outer world only when
it is like in kind with it and beneficial; and when, contrarily, such
matter is not like in kind but hurtful, the hypothesis, equally with
the organism, throws it off, or, if forced to take it, gets rid of it
again entire.

To gain _immortality_ an author must possess so many excellences that
while it will not be easy to find anyone to understand and appreciate
them all, there will be men in every age who are able to recognize
and value some of them. In this way the credit of his book will be
maintained throughout the long course of centuries, in spite of the
fact that human interests are always changing.

An author like this, who has a claim to the continuance of his life
even with posterity, can only be a man who, over the wide earth, will
seek his like in vain, and offer a palpable contrast with everyone
else in virtue of his unmistakable distinction. Nay, more: were he,
like the wandering Jew, to live through several generations, he would
still remain in the same superior position. If this were not so, it
would be difficult to see why his thoughts should not perish like
those of other men.

_Metaphors_ and _similes_ are of great value, in so far as they
explain an unknown relation by a known one. Even the more detailed
simile which grows into a parable or an allegory, is nothing more than
the exhibition of some relation in its simplest, most visible and
palpable form. The growth of ideas rests, at bottom, upon similes;
because ideas arise by a process of combining the similarities and
neglecting the differences between things. Further, intelligence, in
the strict sense of the word, ultimately consists in a seizing of
relations; and a clear and pure grasp of relations is all the more
often attained when the comparison is made between cases that lie wide
apart from one another, and between things of quite different nature.
As long as a relation is known to me as existing only in a single
case, I have but an _individual_ idea of it--in other words, only an
intuitive knowledge of it; but as soon as I see the same relation in
two different cases, I have a _general_ idea of its whole nature, and
this is a deeper and more perfect knowledge.

Since, then, similes and metaphors are such a powerful engine of
knowledge, it is a sign of great intelligence in a writer if his
similes are unusual and, at the same time, to the point. Aristotle
also observes that by far the most important thing to a writer is
to have this power of metaphor; for it is a gift which cannot be
acquired, and it is a mark of genius.

As regards _reading_, to require that a man shall retain everything he
has ever read, is like asking him to carry about with him all he has
ever eaten. The one kind of food has given him bodily, and the other
mental, nourishment; and it is through these two means that he has
grown to be what he is. The body assimilates only that which is like
it; and so a man retains in his mind only that which interests him, in
other words, that which suits his system of thought or his purposes in
life.

If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding
bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.

_Repetitio est mater studiorum_. Any book that is at all important
ought to be at once read through twice; partly because, on a second
reading, the connection of the different portions of the book will be
better understood, and the beginning comprehended only when the end
is known; and partly because we are not in the same temper and
disposition on both readings. On the second perusal we get a new view
of every passage and a different impression of the whole book, which
then appears in another light.

A man's works are the quintessence of his mind, and even though he may
possess very great capacity, they will always be incomparably more
valuable than his conversation. Nay, in all essential matters his
works will not only make up for the lack of personal intercourse with
him, but they will far surpass it in solid advantages. The writings
even of a man of moderate genius may be edifying, worth reading and
instructive, because they are his quintessence--the result and fruit
of all his thought and study; whilst conversation with him may be
unsatisfactory.

So it is that we can read books by men in whose company we find
nothing to please, and that a high degree of culture leads us to seek
entertainment almost wholly from books and not from men.



ON CRITICISM.


The following brief remarks on the critical faculty are chiefly
intended to show that, for the most part, there is no such thing.
It is a _rara avis_; almost as rare, indeed, as the phoenix, which
appears only once in five hundred years.

When we speak of _taste_--an expression not chosen with any regard for
it--we mean the discovery, or, it may be only the recognition, of what
is _right aesthetically_, apart from the guidance of any rule; and
this, either because no rule has as yet been extended to the matter in
question, or else because, if existing, it is unknown to the artist,
or the critic, as the case may be. Instead of _taste_, we might use
the expression _aesthetic sense_, if this were not tautological.

The perceptive critical taste is, so to speak, the female analogue
to the male quality of productive talent or genius. Not capable
of _begetting_ great work itself, it consists in a capacity of
_reception_, that is to say, of recognizing as such what is right,
fit, beautiful, or the reverse; in other words, of discriminating
the good from the bad, of discovering and appreciating the one and
condemning the other.

In appreciating a genius, criticism should not deal with the errors in
his productions or with the poorer of his works, and then proceed to
rate him low; it should attend only to the qualities in which he most
excels. For in the sphere of intellect, as in other spheres, weakness
and perversity cleave so firmly to human nature that even the most
brilliant mind is not wholly and at all times free from them. Hence
the great errors to be found even in the works of the greatest men; or
as Horace puts it, _quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus_.

That which distinguishes genius, and should be the standard for
judging it, is the height to which it is able to soar when it is in
the proper mood and finds a fitting occasion--a height always out
of the reach of ordinary talent. And, in like manner, it is a very
dangerous thing to compare two great men of the same class; for
instance, two great poets, or musicians, or philosophers, or artists;
because injustice to the one or the other, at least for the moment,
can hardly be avoided. For in making a comparison of the kind the
critic looks to some particular merit of the one and at once discovers
that it is absent in the other, who is thereby disparaged. And then
if the process is reversed, and the critic begins with the latter and
discovers his peculiar merit, which is quite of a different order from
that presented by the former, with whom it may be looked for in vain,
the result is that both of them suffer undue depreciation.

There are critics who severally think that it rests with each one of
them what shall be accounted good, and what bad. They all mistake
their own toy-trumpets for the trombones of fame.

A drug does not effect its purpose if the dose is too large; and it
is the same with censure and adverse criticism when it exceeds the
measure of justice.

The disastrous thing for intellectual merit is that it must wait for
those to praise the good who have themselves produced nothing but what
is bad; nay, it is a primary misfortune that it has to receive its
crown at the hands of the critical power of mankind--a quality of
which most men possess only the weak and impotent semblance, so that
the reality may be numbered amongst the rarest gifts of nature. Hence
La Bruyère's remark is, unhappily, as true as it is neat. _Après
l'esprit de discernement_, he says, _ce qu'il y a au monde de plus
rare, ce sont les diamans et les perles_. The spirit of discernment!
the critical faculty! it is these that are lacking. Men do not know
how to distinguish the genuine from the false, the corn from the
chaff, gold from copper; or to perceive the wide gulf that separates
a genius from an ordinary man. Thus we have that bad state of things
described in an old-fashioned verse, which gives it as the lot of the
great ones here on earth to be recognized only when they are gone:

  _Es ist nun das Geschick der Grossen fiier auf Erden,
  Erst wann sie nicht mehr sind; von uns erkannt zu werden._

When any genuine and excellent work makes its appearance, the chief
difficulty in its way is the amount of bad work it finds already in
possession of the field, and accepted as though it were good. And
then if, after a long time, the new comer really succeeds, by a hard
struggle, in vindicating his place for himself and winning reputation,
he will soon encounter fresh difficulty from some affected, dull,
awkward imitator, whom people drag in, with the object of calmly
setting him up on the altar beside the genius; not seeing the
difference and really thinking that here they have to do with another
great man. This is what Yriarte means by the first lines of his
twenty-eighth Fable, where he declares that the ignorant rabble always
sets equal value on the good and the bad:

  _Siempre acostumbra hacer el vulgo necio
  De lo bueno y lo malo igual aprecio_.

So even Shakespeare's dramas had, immediately after his death, to give
place to those of Ben Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and to
yield the supremacy for a hundred years. So Kant's serious philosophy
was crowded out by the nonsense of Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, Hegel.
And even in a sphere accessible to all, we have seen unworthy
imitators quickly diverting public attention from the incomparable
Walter Scott. For, say what you will, the public has no sense for
excellence, and therefore no notion how very rare it is to find men
really capable of doing anything great in poetry, philosophy, or art,
or that their works are alone worthy of exclusive attention. The
dabblers, whether in verse or in any other high sphere, should be
every day unsparingly reminded that neither gods, nor men, nor
booksellers have pardoned their mediocrity:

      _mediocribus esse poetis
  Non homines, non Dî, non concessere columnae_.[1]

[Footnote 1: Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 372.]

Are they not the weeds that prevent the corn coming up, so that they
may cover all the ground themselves? And then there happens that which
has been well and freshly described by the lamented Feuchtersleben,[1]
who died so young: how people cry out in their haste that nothing
is being done, while all the while great work is quietly growing to
maturity; and then, when it appears, it is not seen or heard in the
clamor, but goes its way silently, in modest grief:

  "_Ist doch"--rufen sie vermessen--
  Nichts im Werke, nichts gethan!"
  Und das Grosse, reift indessen
  Still heran_.

  _Es ersheint nun: niemand sieht es,
  Niemand hört es im Geschrei
  Mit bescheid'ner Trauer zieht es
  Still vorbei_.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben
(1806-49), an Austrian physician, philosopher, and poet, and a
specialist in medical psychology. The best known of his songs is that
beginning "_Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath_" to which Mendelssohn
composed one of his finest melodies.]

This lamentable death of the critical faculty is not less obvious in
the case of science, as is shown by the tenacious life of false and
disproved theories. If they are once accepted, they may go on bidding
defiance to truth for fifty or even a hundred years and more, as
stable as an iron pier in the midst of the waves. The Ptolemaic system
was still held a century after Copernicus had promulgated his theory.
Bacon, Descartes and Locke made their way extremely slowly and only
after a long time; as the reader may see by d'Alembert's celebrated
Preface to the _Encyclopedia_. Newton was not more successful; and
this is sufficiently proved by the bitterness and contempt with which
Leibnitz attacked his theory of gravitation in the controversy with
Clarke.[1] Although Newton lived for almost forty years after the
appearance of the _Principia_, his teaching was, when he died, only
to some extent accepted in his own country, whilst outside England he
counted scarcely twenty adherents; if we may believe the introductory
note to Voltaire's exposition of his theory. It was, indeed, chiefly
owing to this treatise of Voltaire's that the system became known in
France nearly twenty years after Newton's death. Until then a firm,
resolute, and patriotic stand was made by the Cartesian _Vortices_;
whilst only forty years previously, this same Cartesian philosophy had
been forbidden in the French schools; and now in turn d'Agnesseau, the
Chancellor, refused Voltaire the _Imprimatur_ for his treatise on the
Newtonian doctrine. On the other hand, in our day Newton's absurd
theory of color still completely holds the field, forty years after
the publication of Goethe's. Hume, too, was disregarded up to his
fiftieth year, though he began very early and wrote in a thoroughly
popular style. And Kant, in spite of having written and talked all his
life long, did not become a famous man until he was sixty.

[Footnote 1: See especially §§ 35, 113, 118, 120, 122, 128.]

Artists and poets have, to be sure, more chance than thinkers, because
their public is at least a hundred times as large. Still, what was
thought of Beethoven and Mozart during their lives? what of Dante?
what even of Shakespeare? If the latter's contemporaries had in any
way recognized his worth, at least one good and accredited portrait of
him would have come down to us from an age when the art of painting
flourished; whereas we possess only some very doubtful pictures, a
bad copperplate, and a still worse bust on his tomb.[1] And in like
manner, if he had been duly honored, specimens of his handwriting
would have been preserved to us by the hundred, instead of being
confined, as is the case, to the signatures to a few legal documents.
The Portuguese are still proud of their only poet Camoëns. He lived,
however, on alms collected every evening in the street by a black
slave whom he had brought with him from the Indies. In time, no doubt,
justice will be done everyone; _tempo è galant uomo_; but it is
as late and slow in arriving as in a court of law, and the secret
condition of it is that the recipient shall be no longer alive. The
precept of Jesus the son of Sirach is faithfully followed: _Judge none
blessed before his death._[2] He, then, who has produced immortal
works, must find comfort by applying to them the words of the Indian
myth, that the minutes of life amongst the immortals seem like years
of earthly existence; and so, too, that years upon earth are only as
the minutes of the immortals.

[Footnote 1: A. Wivell: _An Inquiry into the History, Authenticity,
and Characteristics of Shakespeare's Portraits_; with 21 engravings.
London, 1836.]

[Footnote 2: _Ecclesiasticus_, xi. 28.]

This lack of critical insight is also shown by the fact that, while
in every century the excellent work of earlier time is held in honor,
that of its own is misunderstood, and the attention which is its due
is given to bad work, such as every decade carries with it only to be
the sport of the next. That men are slow to recognize genuine merit
when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do not
understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowledged works of
genius, which they honor only on the score of authority. The crucial
test is the fact that bad work--Fichte's philosophy, for example--if
it wins any reputation, also maintains it for one or two generations;
and only when its public is very large does its fall follow sooner.

Now, just as the sun cannot shed its light but to the eye that sees
it, nor music sound but to the hearing ear, so the value of all
masterly work in art and science is conditioned by the kinship and
capacity of the mind to which it speaks. It is only such a mind as
this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits
that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is
a sealed cabinet of mystery,--an unfamiliar musical instrument from
which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none
but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good
light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same way, the
impression made by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind
to understand it.

A fine work, then, requires a mind sensitive to its beauty; a
thoughtful work, a mind that can really think, if it is to exist and
live at all. But alas! it may happen only too often that he who gives
a fine work to the world afterwards feels like a maker of fireworks,
who displays with enthusiasm the wonders that have taken him so much
time and trouble to prepare, and then learns that he has come to the
wrong place, and that the fancied spectators were one and all inmates
of an asylum for the blind. Still even that is better than if his
public had consisted entirely of men who made fireworks themselves; as
in this case, if his display had been extraordinarily good, it might
possibly have cost him his head.

The source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling of kinship. Even
with the sense of beauty it is unquestionably our own species in the
animal world, and then again our own race, that appears to us the
fairest. So, too, in intercourse with others, every man shows a
decided preference for those who resemble him; and a blockhead will
find the society of another blockhead incomparably more pleasant
than that of any number of great minds put together. Every man must
necessarily take his chief pleasure in his own work, because it is the
mirror of his own mind, the echo of his own thought; and next in order
will come the work of people like him; that is to say, a dull, shallow
and perverse man, a dealer in mere words, will give his sincere and
hearty applause only to that which is dull, shallow, perverse or
merely verbose. On the other hand, he will allow merit to the work of
great minds only on the score of authority, in other words, because
he is ashamed to speak his opinion; for in reality they give him no
pleasure at all. They do not appeal to him; nay, they repel him; and
he will not confess this even to himself. The works of genius cannot
be fully enjoyed except by those who are themselves of the privileged
order. The first recognition of them, however, when they exist without
authority to support them, demands considerable superiority of mind.

When the reader takes all this into consideration, he should be
surprised, not that great work is so late in winning reputation, but
that it wins it at all. And as a matter of fact, fame comes only by a
slow and complex process. The stupid person is by degrees forced, and
as it were, tamed, into recognizing the superiority of one who stands
immediately above him; this one in his turn bows before some one else;
and so it goes on until the weight of the votes gradually prevail over
their number; and this is just the condition of all genuine, in other
words, deserved fame. But until then, the greatest genius, even after
he has passed his time of trial, stands like a king amidst a crowd of
his own subjects, who do not know him by sight and therefore will not
do his behests; unless, indeed, his chief ministers of state are in
his train. For no subordinate official can be the direct recipient of
the royal commands, as he knows only the signature of his immediate
superior; and this is repeated all the way up into the highest ranks,
where the under-secretary attests the minister's signature, and the
minister that of the king. There are analogous stages to be passed
before a genius can attain widespread fame. This is why his reputation
most easily comes to a standstill at the very outset; because the
highest authorities, of whom there can be but few, are most frequently
not to be found; but the further down he goes in the scale the more
numerous are those who take the word from above, so that his fame is
no more arrested.

We must console ourselves for this state of things by reflecting that
it is really fortunate that the greater number of men do not form a
judgment on their own responsibility, but merely take it on authority.
For what sort of criticism should we have on Plato and Kant, Homer,
Shakespeare and Goethe, if every man were to form his opinion by what
he really has and enjoys of these writers, instead of being forced by
authority to speak of them in a fit and proper way, however little
he may really feel what he says. Unless something of this kind took
place, it would be impossible for true merit, in any high sphere, to
attain fame at all. At the same time it is also fortunate that every
man has just so much critical power of his own as is necessary for
recognizing the superiority of those who are placed immediately over
him, and for following their lead. This means that the many come in
the end to submit to the authority of the few; and there results that
hierarchy of critical judgments on which is based the possibility of a
steady, and eventually wide-reaching, fame.

The lowest class in the community is quite impervious to the merits
of a great genius; and for these people there is nothing left but the
monument raised to him, which, by the impression it produces on their
senses, awakes in them a dim idea of the man's greatness.

Literary journals should be a dam against the unconscionable
scribbling of the age, and the ever-increasing deluge of bad and
useless books. Their judgments should be uncorrupted, just and
rigorous; and every piece of bad work done by an incapable person;
every device by which the empty head tries to come to the assistance
of the empty purse, that is to say, about nine-tenths of all existing
books, should be mercilessly scourged. Literary journals would then
perform their duty, which is to keep down the craving for writing and
put a check upon the deception of the public, instead of furthering
these evils by a miserable toleration, which plays into the hands of
author and publisher, and robs the reader of his time and his money.

If there were such a paper as I mean, every bad writer, every
brainless compiler, every plagiarist from other's books, every hollow
and incapable place-hunter, every sham-philosopher, every vain and
languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect of the pillory
in which his bad work would inevitably have to stand soon after
publication. This would paralyze his twitching fingers, to the true
welfare of literature, in which what is bad is not only useless but
positively pernicious. Now, most books are bad and ought to have
remained unwritten. Consequently praise should be as rare as is now
the case with blame, which is withheld under the influence of personal
considerations, coupled with the maxim _accedas socius, laudes
lauderis ut absens_.

It is quite wrong to try to introduce into literature the same
toleration as must necessarily prevail in society towards those
stupid, brainless people who everywhere swarm in it. In literature
such people are impudent intruders; and to disparage the bad is here
duty towards the good; for he who thinks nothing bad will think
nothing good either. Politeness, which has its source in social
relations, is in literature an alien, and often injurious, element;
because it exacts that bad work shall be called good. In this way the
very aim of science and art is directly frustrated.

The ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only by people who
joined incorruptible honesty with rare knowledge and still rarer power
of judgment; so that perhaps there could, at the very most, be one,
and even hardly one, in the whole country; but there it would stand,
like a just Aeropagus, every member of which would have to be elected
by all the others. Under the system that prevails at present, literary
journals are carried on by a clique, and secretly perhaps also by
booksellers for the good of the trade; and they are often nothing but
coalitions of bad heads to prevent the good ones succeeding. As
Goethe once remarked to me, nowhere is there so much dishonesty as in
literature.

But, above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary rascality,
would have to disappear. It was introduced under the pretext of
protecting the honest critic, who warned the public, against the
resentment of the author and his friends. But where there is one case
of this sort, there will be a hundred where it merely serves to take
all responsibility from the man who cannot stand by what he has said,
or possibly to conceal the shame of one who has been cowardly and base
enough to recommend a book to the public for the purpose of putting
money into his own pocket. Often enough it is only a cloak for
covering the obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the critic.
It is incredible what impudence these fellows will show, and what
literary trickery they will venture to commit, as soon as they know
they are safe under the shadow of anonymity. Let me recommend a
general _Anti-criticism_, a universal medicine or panacea, to put a
stop to all anonymous reviewing, whether it praises the bad or blames
the good: _Rascal! your name_! For a man to wrap himself up and draw
his hat over his face, and then fall upon people who are walking about
without any disguise--this is not the part of a gentleman, it is the
part of a scoundrel and a knave.

An anonymous review has no more authority than an anonymous letter;
and one should be received with the same mistrust as the other. Or
shall we take the name of the man who consents to preside over what
is, in the strict sense of the word, _une société anonyme_ as a
guarantee for the veracity of his colleagues?

Even Rousseau, in the preface to the _Nouvelle Heloïse_, declares
_tout honnête homme doit avouer les livres qu'il public_; which in
plain language means that every honorable man ought to sign his
articles, and that no one is honorable who does not do so. How much
truer this is of polemical writing, which is the general character
of reviews! Riemer was quite right in the opinion he gives in his
_Reminiscences of Goethe:[1] An overt enemy_, he says, _an enemy
who meets you face to face, is an honorable man, who will treat you
fairly, and with whom you can come to terms and be reconciled: but an
enemy who conceals himself_ is a base, cowardly scoundrel, _who has
not courage enough to avow his own judgment; it is not his opinion
that he cares about, but only the secret pleasures of wreaking his
anger without being found out or punished._ This will also have been
Goethe's opinion, as he was generally the source from which Riemer
drew his observations. And, indeed, Rousseau's maxim applies to
every line that is printed. Would a man in a mask ever be allowed to
harangue a mob, or speak in any assembly; and that, too, when he was
going to attack others and overwhelm them with abuse?

[Footnote 1: Preface, p. xxix.]

Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and journalistic rascality.
It is a practice which must be completely stopped. Every article, even
in a newspaper, should be accompanied by the name of its author; and
the editor should be made strictly responsible for the accuracy of the
signature. The freedom of the press should be thus far restricted; so
that when a man publicly proclaims through the far-sounding trumpet of
the newspaper, he should be answerable for it, at any rate with his
honor, if he has any; and if he has none, let his name neutralize the
effect of his words. And since even the most insignificant person is
known in his own circle, the result of such a measure would be to
put an end to two-thirds of the newspaper lies, and to restrain the
audacity of many a poisonous tongue.



ON REPUTATION.


Writers may be classified as meteors, planets and fixed stars. A
meteor makes a striking effect for a moment. You look up and cry
_There!_ and it is gone for ever. Planets and wandering stars last
a much longer time. They often outshine the fixed stars and are
confounded with them by the inexperienced; but this only because they
are near. It is not long before they must yield their place; nay, the
light they give is reflected only, and the sphere of their influence
is confined to their own orbit--their contemporaries. Their path is
one of change and movement, and with the circuit of a few years their
tale is told. Fixed stars are the only ones that are constant; their
position in the firmament is secure; they shine with a light of their
own; their effect to-day is the same as it was yesterday, because,
having no parallax, their appearance does not alter with a difference
in our standpoint. They belong not to _one_ system, _one_ nation only,
but to the universe. And just because they are so very far away, it is
usually many years before their light is visible to the inhabitants of
this earth.

We have seen in the previous chapter that where a man's merits are of
a high order, it is difficult for him to win reputation, because the
public is uncritical and lacks discernment. But another and no less
serious hindrance to fame comes from the envy it has to encounter. For
even in the lowest kinds of work, envy balks even the beginnings of a
reputation, and never ceases to cleave to it up to the last. How great
a part is played by envy in the wicked ways of the world! Ariosto is
right in saying that the dark side of our mortal life predominates, so
full it is of this evil:

    _questa assai più oscura che serena
  Vita mortal, tutta d'invidia piena_.

For envy is the moving spirit of that secret and informal, though
flourishing, alliance everywhere made by mediocrity against individual
eminence, no matter of what kind. In his own sphere of work no one
will allow another to be distinguished: he is an intruder who cannot
be tolerated. _Si quelq'un excelle parmi nous, qu'il aille exceller
ailleurs_! this is the universal password of the second-rate. In
addition, then, to the rarity of true merit and the difficulty it has
in being understood and recognized, there is the envy of thousands to
be reckoned with, all of them bent on suppressing, nay, on smothering
it altogether. No one is taken for what he is, but for what others
make of him; and this is the handle used by mediocrity to keep down
distinction, by not letting it come up as long as that can possibly be
prevented.

There are two ways of behaving in regard to merit: either to have some
of one's own, or to refuse any to others. The latter method is more
convenient, and so it is generally adopted. As envy is a mere sign
of deficiency, so to envy merit argues the lack of it. My excellent
Balthazar Gracian has given a very fine account of this relation
between envy and merit in a lengthy fable, which may be found in his
_Discreto_ under the heading _Hombre de ostentacion_. He describes
all the birds as meeting together and conspiring against the peacock,
because of his magnificent feathers. _If_, said the magpie, _we could
only manage to put a stop to the cursed parading of his tail, there
would soon be an end of his beauty; for what is not seen is as good as
what does not exist_.

This explains how modesty came to be a virtue. It was invented only as
a protection against envy. That there have always been rascals to urge
this virtue, and to rejoice heartily over the bashfulness of a man of
merit, has been shown at length in my chief work.[1] In Lichtenberg's
_Miscellaneous Writings_ I find this sentence quoted: _Modesty should
be the virtue of those who possess no other_. Goethe has a well-known
saying, which offends many people: _It is only knaves who are
modest_!--_Nur die Lumpen sind bescheiden_! but it has its prototype
in Cervantes, who includes in his _Journey up Parnassus_ certain rules
of conduct for poets, and amongst them the following: _Everyone whose
verse shows him to be a poet should have a high opinion of himself,
relying on the proverb that he is a knave who thinks himself one_.
And Shakespeare, in many of his Sonnets, which gave him the only
opportunity he had of speaking of himself, declares, with a confidence
equal to his ingenuousness, that what he writes is immortal.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille_, Vol. II. c. 37.]

[Footnote 2: Collier, one of his critical editors, in his Introduction
to the Sonettes, remarks upon this point: "In many of them are to be
found most remarkable indications of self-confidence and of assurance
in the immortality of his verses, and in this respect the author's
opinion was constant and uniform. He never scruples to express it,...
and perhaps there is no writer of ancient or modern times who, for the
quantity of such writings left behind him, has so frequently or so
strongly declared that what he had produced in this department of
poetry 'the world would not willingly let die.'"]

A method of underrating good work often used by envy--in reality,
however, only the obverse side of it--consists in the dishonorable and
unscrupulous laudation of the bad; for no sooner does bad work gain
currency than it draws attention from the good. But however effective
this method may be for a while, especially if it is applied on a large
scale, the day of reckoning comes at last, and the fleeting credit
given to bad work is paid off by the lasting discredit which overtakes
those who abjectly praised it. Hence these critics prefer to remain
anonymous.

A like fate threatens, though more remotely, those who depreciate and
censure good work; and consequently many are too prudent to attempt
it. But there is another way; and when a man of eminent merit appears,
the first effect he produces is often only to pique all his rivals,
just as the peacock's tail offended the birds. This reduces them to
a deep silence; and their silence is so unanimous that it savors of
preconcertion. Their tongues are all paralyzed. It is the _silentium
livoris_ described by Seneca. This malicious silence, which is
technically known as _ignoring_, may for a long time interfere with
the growth of reputation; if, as happens in the higher walks of
learning, where a man's immediate audience is wholly composed of rival
workers and professed students, who then form the channel of his fame,
the greater public is obliged to use its suffrage without being able
to examine the matter for itself. And if, in the end, that malicious
silence is broken in upon by the voice of praise, it will be but
seldom that this happens entirely apart from some ulterior aim,
pursued by those who thus manipulate justice. For, as Goethe says in
the _West-östlicher Divan_, a man can get no recognition, either from
many persons or from only one, unless it is to publish abroad the
critic's own discernment:

  _Denn es ist kein Anerkenen,
  Weder Vieler, noch des Einen,
  Wenn es nicht am Tage fördert,
  Wo man selbst was möchte scheinen_.

The credit you allow to another man engaged in work similar to your
own or akin to it, must at bottom be withdrawn from yourself; and you
can praise him only at the expense of your own claims.

Accordingly, mankind is in itself not at all inclined to award praise
and reputation; it is more disposed to blame and find fault, whereby
it indirectly praises itself. If, notwithstanding this, praise is
won from mankind, some extraneous motive must prevail. I am not here
referring to the disgraceful way in which mutual friends will puff one
another into a reputation; outside of that, an effectual motive is
supplied by the feeling that next to the merit of doing something
oneself, comes that of correctly appreciating and recognizing what
others have done. This accords with the threefold division of heads
drawn up by Hesiod[1] and afterwards by Machiavelli[2] _There are_,
says the latter, _in the capacities of mankind, three varieties:
one man will understand a thing by himself; another so far as it is
explained to him; a third, neither of himself nor when it is put
clearly before him_. He, then, who abandons hope of making good his
claims to the first class, will be glad to seize the opportunity of
taking a place in the second. It is almost wholly owing to this state
of things that merit may always rest assured of ultimately meeting
with recognition.

[Footnote 1: _Works and Days_, 293.]

[Footnote 2: _The Prince_, ch. 22.]

To this also is due the fact that when the value of a work has once
been recognized and may no longer be concealed or denied, all men vie
in praising and honoring it; simply because they are conscious
of thereby doing themselves an honor. They act in the spirit of
Xenophon's remark: _he must be a wise man who knows what is wise_.
So when they see that the prize of original merit is for ever out of
their reach, they hasten to possess themselves of that which comes
second best--the correct appreciation of it. Here it happens as with
an army which has been forced to yield; when, just as previously every
man wanted to be foremost in the fight, so now every man tries to
be foremost in running away. They all hurry forward to offer their
applause to one who is now recognized to be worthy of praise, in
virtue of a recognition, as a rule unconscious, of that law of
homogeneity which I mentioned in the last chapter; so that it may seem
as though their way of thinking and looking at things were homogeneous
with that of the celebrated man, and that they may at least save the
honor of their literary taste, since nothing else is left them.

From this it is plain that, whereas it is very difficult to win
fame, it is not hard to keep it when once attained; and also that a
reputation which comes quickly does not last very long; for here
too, _quod cito fit, cito perit_. It is obvious that if the ordinary
average man can easily recognize, and the rival workers willingly
acknowledge, the value of any performance, it will not stand very much
above the capacity of either of them to achieve it for themselves.
_Tantum quisque laudat, quantum se posse sperat imitari_--a man will
praise a thing only so far as he hopes to be able to imitate it
himself. Further, it is a suspicious sign if a reputation comes
quickly; for an application of the laws of homogeneity will show that
such a reputation is nothing but the direct applause of the multitude.
What this means may be seen by a remark once made by Phocion, when he
was interrupted in a speech by the loud cheers of the mob. Turning
to his friends who were standing close by, he asked: _Have I made a
mistake and said something stupid?_[1]

[Footnote 1: Plutarch, _Apophthegms_.]

Contrarily, a reputation that is to last a long time must be slow
in maturing, and the centuries of its duration have generally to be
bought at the cost of contemporary praise. For that which is to keep
its position so long, must be of a perfection difficult to attain; and
even to recognize this perfection requires men who are not always to
be found, and never in numbers sufficiently great to make themselves
heard; whereas envy is always on the watch and doing its best to
smother their voice. But with moderate talent, which soon meets with
recognition, there is the danger that those who possess it will
outlive both it and themselves; so that a youth of fame may be
followed by an old age of obscurity. In the case of great merit, on
the other hand, a man may remain unknown for many years, but make up
for it later on by attaining a brilliant reputation. And if it should
be that this comes only after he is no more, well! he is to be
reckoned amongst those of whom Jean Paul says that extreme unction is
their baptism. He may console himself by thinking of the Saints, who
also are canonized only after they are dead.

Thus what Mahlmann[1] has said so well in _Herodes_ holds good; in
this world truly great work never pleases at once, and the god set up
by the multitude keeps his place on the altar but a short time:

  _Ich denke, das wahre Grosse in der Welt
  Ist immer nur Das was nicht gleich gefällt
  Und wen der Pöbel zum Gotte weiht,
  Der steht auf dem Altar nur kurze Zeit_.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--August Mahlmann (1771-1826),
journalist, poet and story-writer. His _Herodes vor Bethlehem_ is a
parody of Kotzebue's _Hussiten vor Naumburg_.]

It is worth mention that this rule is most directly confirmed in the
case of pictures, where, as connoisseurs well know, the greatest
masterpieces are not the first to attract attention. If they make
a deep impression, it is not after one, but only after repeated,
inspection; but then they excite more and more admiration every time
they are seen.

Moreover, the chances that any given work will be quickly and rightly
appreciated, depend upon two conditions: firstly, the character of
the work, whether high or low, in other words, easy or difficult to
understand; and, secondly, the kind of public it attracts, whether
large or small. This latter condition is, no doubt, in most instances
a, corollary of the former; but it also partly depends upon whether
the work in question admits, like books and musical compositions, of
being produced in great numbers. By the compound action of these two
conditions, achievements which serve no materially useful end--and
these alone are under consideration here--will vary in regard to
the chances they have of meeting with timely recognition and due
appreciation; and the order of precedence, beginning with those who
have the greatest chance, will be somewhat as follows: acrobats,
circus riders, ballet-dancers, jugglers, actors, singers, musicians,
composers, poets (both the last on account of the multiplication of
their works), architects, painters, sculptors, philosophers.

The last place of all is unquestionably taken by philosophers because
their works are meant not for entertainment, but for instruction, and
because they presume some knowledge on the part of the reader, and
require him to make an effort of his own to understand them. This
makes their public extremely small, and causes their fame to be more
remarkable for its length than for its breadth. And, in general, it
may be said that the possibility of a man's fame lasting a long time,
stands in almost inverse ratio with the chance that it will be early
in making its appearance; so that, as regards length of fame, the
above order of precedence may be reversed. But, then, the poet and
the composer will come in the end to stand on the same level as the
philosopher; since, when once a work is committed to writing, it is
possible to preserve it to all time. However, the first place still
belongs by right to the philosopher, because of the much greater
scarcity of good work in this sphere, and the high importance of it;
and also because of the possibility it offers of an almost perfect
translation into any language. Sometimes, indeed, it happens that a
philosopher's fame outlives even his works themselves; as has happened
with Thales, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Democritus, Parmenides, Epicurus
and many others.

My remarks are, as I have said, confined to achievements that are not
of any material use. Work that serves some practical end, or ministers
directly to some pleasure of the senses, will never have any
difficulty in being duly appreciated. No first-rate pastry-cook could
long remain obscure in any town, to say nothing of having to appeal to
posterity.

Under fame of rapid growth is also to be reckoned fame of a false
and artificial kind; where, for instance, a book is worked into a
reputation by means of unjust praise, the help of friends, corrupt
criticism, prompting from above and collusion from below. All this
tells upon the multitude, which is rightly presumed to have no power
of judging for itself. This sort of fame is like a swimming bladder,
by its aid a heavy body may keep afloat. It bears up for a certain
time, long or short according as the bladder is well sewed up and
blown; but still the air comes out gradually, and the body sinks. This
is the inevitable fate of all works which are famous by reason of
something outside of themselves. False praise dies away; collusion
comes to an end; critics declare the reputation ungrounded; it
vanishes, and is replaced by so much the greater contempt. Contrarily,
a genuine work, which, having the source of its fame in itself,
can kindle admiration afresh in every age, resembles a body of low
specific gravity, which always keeps up of its own accord, and so goes
floating down the stream of time.

Men of great genius, whether their work be in poetry, philosophy or
art, stand in all ages like isolated heroes, keeping up single-handed
a desperate struggling against the onslaught of an army of
opponents.[1] Is not this characteristic of the miserable nature of
mankind? The dullness, grossness, perversity, silliness and brutality
of by far the greater part of the race, are always an obstacle to the
efforts of the genius, whatever be the method of his art; they so form
that hostile army to which at last he has to succumb. Let the isolated
champion achieve what he may: it is slow to be acknowledged; it is
late in being appreciated, and then only on the score of authority;
it may easily fall into neglect again, at any rate for a while. Ever
afresh it finds itself opposed by false, shallow, and insipid ideas,
which are better suited to that large majority, that so generally hold
the field. Though the critic may step forth and say, like Hamlet when
he held up the two portraits to his wretched mother, _Have you eyes?
Have you eyes_? alas! they have none. When I watch the behavior of a
crowd of people in the presence of some great master's work, and mark
the manner of their applause, they often remind me of trained monkeys
in a show. The monkey's gestures are, no doubt, much like those of
men; but now and again they betray that the real inward spirit of
these gestures is not in them. Their irrational nature peeps out.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--At this point Schopenhauer
interrupts the thread of his discourse to speak at length upon an
example of false fame. Those who are at all acquainted with the
philosopher's views will not be surprised to find that the writer thus
held up to scorn is Hegel; and readers of the other volumes in this
series will, with the translator, have had by now quite enough of the
subject. The passage is therefore omitted.]

It is often said of a man that _he is in advance of his age_; and it
follows from the above remarks that this must be taken to mean that
he is in advance of humanity in general. Just because of this fact,
a genius makes no direct appeal except to those who are too rare to
allow of their ever forming a numerous body at any one period. If he
is in this respect not particularly favored by fortune, he will
be _misunderstood by his own age_; in other words, he will remain
unaccepted until time gradually brings together the voices of those
few persons who are capable of judging a work of such high character.
Then posterity will say: _This man was in advance of his age_, instead
of _in advance of humanity_; because humanity will be glad to lay the
burden of its own faults upon a single epoch.

Hence, if a man has been superior to his own age, he would also have
been superior to any other; provided that, in that age, by some rare
and happy chance, a few just men, capable of judging in the sphere of
his achievements, had been born at the same time with him; just as
when, according to a beautiful Indian myth, Vischnu becomes incarnate
as a hero, so, too, Brahma at the same time appears as the singer of
his deeds; and hence Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are incarnations of
Brahma.

In this sense, then, it may be said that every immortal work puts its
age to the proof, whether or no it will be able to recognize the merit
of it. As a rule, the men of any age stand such a test no better than
the neighbors of Philemon and Baucis, who expelled the deities they
failed to recognize. Accordingly, the right standard for judging the
intellectual worth of any generation is supplied, not by the great
minds that make their appearance in it--for their capacities are the
work of Nature, and the possibility of cultivating them a matter of
chance circumstance--but by the way in which contemporaries receive
their works; whether, I mean, they give their applause soon and with
a will, or late and in niggardly fashion, or leave it to be bestowed
altogether by posterity.

This last fate will be especially reserved for works of a high
character. For the happy chance mentioned above will be all the more
certain not to come, in proportion as there are few to appreciate
the kind of work done by great minds. Herein lies the immeasurable
advantage possessed by poets in respect of reputation; because their
work is accessible to almost everyone. If it had been possible for Sir
Walter Scott to be read and criticised by only some hundred persons,
perhaps in his life-time any common scribbler would have been
preferred to him; and afterwards, when he had taken his proper place,
it would also have been said in his honor that he was _in advance of
his age_. But if envy, dishonesty and the pursuit of personal aims are
added to the incapacity of those hundred persons who, in the name of
their generation, are called upon to pass judgment on a work, then
indeed it meets with the same sad fate as attends a suitor who pleads
before a tribunal of judges one and all corrupt.

In corroboration of this, we find that the history of literature
generally shows all those who made knowledge and insight their goal
to have remained unrecognized and neglected, whilst those who
paraded with the vain show of it received the admiration of their
contemporaries, together with the emoluments.

The effectiveness of an author turns chiefly upon his getting the
reputation that he should be read. But by practicing various arts,
by the operation of chance, and by certain natural affinities, this
reputation is quickly won by a hundred worthless people: while a
worthy writer may come by it very slowly and tardily. The former
possess friends to help them; for the rabble is always a numerous body
which holds well together. The latter has nothing but enemies; because
intellectual superiority is everywhere and under all circumstances the
most hateful thing in the world, and especially to bunglers in the
same line of work, who want to pass for something themselves.[1]

[Footnote 1: If the professors of philosophy should chance to think
that I am here hinting at them and the tactics they have for more than
thirty years pursued toward my works, they have hit the nail upon the
head.]

This being so, it is a prime condition for doing any great work--any
work which is to outlive its own age, that a man pay no heed to his
contemporaries, their views and opinions, and the praise or blame
which they bestow. This condition is, however, fulfilled of itself
when a man really does anything great, and it is fortunate that it is
so. For if, in producing such a work, he were to look to the general
opinion or the judgment of his colleagues, they would lead him astray
at every step. Hence, if a man wants to go down to posterity, he must
withdraw from the influence of his own age. This will, of course,
generally mean that he must also renounce any influence upon it, and
be ready to buy centuries of fame by foregoing the applause of his
contemporaries.

For when any new and wide-reaching truth comes into the world--and if
it is new, it must be paradoxical--an obstinate stand will be made
against it as long as possible; nay, people will continue to deny it
even after they slacken their opposition and are almost convinced of
its truth. Meanwhile it goes on quietly working its way, and, like an
acid, undermining everything around it. From time to time a crash is
heard; the old error comes tottering to the ground, and suddenly the
new fabric of thought stands revealed, as though it were a monument
just uncovered. Everyone recognizes and admires it. To be sure, this
all comes to pass for the most part very slowly. As a rule, people
discover a man to be worth listening to only after he is gone; their
_hear, hear_, resounds when the orator has left the platform.

Works of the ordinary type meet with a better fate. Arising as they
do in the course of, and in connection with, the general advance in
contemporary culture, they are in close alliance with the spirit of
their age--in other words, just those opinions which happen to be
prevalent at the time. They aim at suiting the needs of the moment. If
they have any merit, it is soon recognized; and they gain currency as
books which reflect the latest ideas. Justice, nay, more than justice,
is done to them. They afford little scope for envy; since, as was said
above, a man will praise a thing only so far as he hopes to be able to
imitate it himself.

But those rare works which are destined to become the property of all
mankind and to live for centuries, are, at their origin, too far in
advance of the point at which culture happens to stand, and on that
very account foreign to it and the spirit of their own time. They
neither belong to it nor are they in any connection with it, and hence
they excite no interest in those who are dominated by it. They belong
to another, a higher stage of culture, and a time that is still far
off. Their course is related to that of ordinary works as the orbit
of Uranus to the orbit of Mercury. For the moment they get no justice
done to them. People are at a loss how to treat them; so they leave
them alone, and go their own snail's pace for themselves. Does the
worm see the eagle as it soars aloft?

Of the number of books written in any language about one in 100,000
forms a part of its real and permanent literature. What a fate this
one book has to endure before it outstrips those 100,000 and gains its
due place of honor! Such a book is the work of an extraordinary and
eminent mind, and therefore it is specifically different from the
others; a fact which sooner or later becomes manifest.

Let no one fancy that things will ever improve in this respect. No!
the miserable constitution of humanity never changes, though it may,
to be sure, take somewhat varying forms with every generation. A
distinguished mind seldom has its full effect in the life-time of
its possessor; because, at bottom, it is completely and properly
understood only by minds already akin to it.

As it is a rare thing for even one man out of many millions to tread
the path that leads to immortality, he must of necessity be very
lonely. The journey to posterity lies through a horribly dreary
region, like the Lybian desert, of which, as is well known, no one has
any idea who has not seen it for himself. Meanwhile let me before
all things recommend the traveler to take light baggage with him;
otherwise he will have to throw away too much on the road. Let him
never forget the words of Balthazar Gracian: _lo bueno si breve, dos
vezes bueno_--good work is doubly good if it is short. This advice is
specially applicable to my own countrymen.

Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect
are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size
of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor,
for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated
while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it
and wishes him back again.

If the perishable son of time has produced an imperishable work, how
short his own life seems compared with that of his child! He is like
Semela or Maia--a mortal mother who gave birth to an immortal son; or,
contrarily, he is like Achilles in regard to Thetis. What a contrast
there is between what is fleeting and what is permanent! The short
span of a man's life, his necessitous, afflicted, unstable existence,
will seldom allow of his seeing even the beginning of his immortal
child's brilliant career; nor will the father himself be taken for
that which he really is. It may be said, indeed, that a man whose fame
comes after him is the reverse of a nobleman, who is preceded by it.

However, the only difference that it ultimately makes to a man to
receive his fame at the hands of contemporaries rather than from
posterity is that, in the former case, his admirers are separated
from him by space, and in the latter by time. For even in the case
of contemporary fame, a man does not, as a rule, see his admirers
actually before him. Reverence cannot endure close proximity; it
almost always dwells at some distance from its object; and in the
presence of the person revered it melts like butter in the sun.
Accordingly, if a man is celebrated with his contemporaries,
nine-tenths of those amongst whom he lives will let their esteem be
guided by his rank and fortune; and the remaining tenth may perhaps
have a dull consciousness of his high qualities, because they have
heard about him from remote quarters. There is a fine Latin letter of
Petrarch's on this incompatibility between reverence and the presence
of the person, and between fame and life. It comes second in his
_Epistolae familiares?_[1] and it is addressed to Thomas Messanensis.
He there observes, amongst other things, that the learned men of his
age all made it a rule to think little of a man's writings if they had
even once seen him.

[Footnote 1: In the Venetian edition of 1492.]

Since distance, then, is essential if a famous man is to be recognized
and revered, it does not matter whether it is distance of space or of
time. It is true that he may sometimes hear of his fame in the one
case, but never in the other; but still, genuine and great merit may
make up for this by confidently anticipating its posthumous fame.
Nay, he who produces some really great thought is conscious of his
connection with coming generations at the very moment he conceives it;
so that he feels the extension of his existence through centuries
and thus lives _with_ posterity as well as _for_ it. And when, after
enjoying a great man's work, we are seized with admiration for him,
and wish him back, so that we might see and speak with him, and have
him in our possession, this desire of ours is not unrequited; for
he, too, has had his longing for that posterity which will grant
the recognition, honor, gratitude and love denied by envious
contemporaries.

If intellectual works of the highest order are not allowed their due
until they come before the tribunal of posterity, a contrary fate
is prepared for certain brilliant errors which proceed from men of
talent, and appear with an air of being well grounded. These errors
are defended with so much acumen and learning that they actually
become famous with their own age, and maintain their position at least
during their author's lifetime. Of this sort are many false theories
and wrong criticisms; also poems and works of art, which exhibit some
false taste or mannerism favored by contemporary prejudice. They gain
reputation and currency simply because no one is yet forthcoming who
knows how to refute them or otherwise prove their falsity; and when
he appears, as he usually does, in the next generation, the glory of
these works is brought to an end. Posthumous judges, be their decision
favorable to the appellant or not, form the proper court for quashing
the verdict of contemporaries. That is why it is so difficult and so
rare to be victorious alike in both tribunals.

The unfailing tendency of time to correct knowledge and judgment
should always be kept in view as a means of allaying anxiety, whenever
any grievous error appears, whether in art, or science, or practical
life, and gains ground; or when some false and thoroughly perverse
policy of movement is undertaken and receives applause at the hands of
men. No one should be angry, or, still less, despondent; but simply
imagine that the world has already abandoned the error in question,
and now only requires time and experience to recognize of its own
accord that which a clear vision detected at the first glance.

When the facts themselves are eloquent of a truth, there is no need to
rush to its aid with words: for time will give it a thousand tongues.
How long it may be before they speak, will of course depend upon the
difficulty of the subject and the plausibility of the error; but come
they will, and often it would be of no avail to try to anticipate
them. In the worst cases it will happen with theories as it happens
with affairs in practical life; where sham and deception, emboldened
by success, advance to greater and greater lengths, until discovery is
made almost inevitable. It is just so with theories; through the blind
confidence of the blockheads who broach them, their absurdity reaches
such a pitch that at last it is obvious even to the dullest eye. We
may thus say to such people: _the wilder your statements, the better_.

There is also some comfort to be found in reflecting upon all the
whims and crotchets which had their day and have now utterly vanished.
In style, in grammar, in spelling, there are false notions of this
sort which last only three or four years. But when the errors are on
a large scale, while we lament the brevity of human life, we shall
in any case, do well to lag behind our own age when we see it on a
downward path. For there are two ways of not keeping on a level with
the times. A man may be below it; or he may be above it.



ON GENIUS.


No difference of rank, position, or birth, is so great as the gulf
that separates the countless millions who use their head only in the
service of their belly, in other words, look upon it as an instrument
of the will, and those very few and rare persons who have the courage
to say: No! it is too good for that; my head shall be active only in
its own service; it shall try to comprehend the wondrous and varied
spectacle of this world, and then reproduce it in some form, whether
as art or as literature, that may answer to my character as an
individual. These are the truly noble, the real _noblesse_ of the
world. The others are serfs and go with the soil--_glebae adscripti_.
Of course, I am here referring to those who have not only the courage,
but also the call, and therefore the right, to order the head to quit
the service of the will; with a result that proves the sacrifice to
have been worth the making. In the case of those to whom all this can
only partially apply, the gulf is not so wide; but even though their
talent be small, so long as it is real, there will always be a sharp
line of demarcation between them and the millions.[1]

[Footnote 1: The correct scale for adjusting the hierarchy of
intelligences is furnished by the degree in which the mind takes
merely individual or approaches universal views of things. The brute
recognizes only the individual as such: its comprehension does not
extend beyond the limits of the individual. But man reduces the
individual to the general; herein lies the exercise of his reason; and
the higher his intelligence reaches, the nearer do his general ideas
approach the point at which they become universal.]

The works of fine art, poetry and philosophy produced by a nation are
the outcome of the superfluous intellect existing in it.

For him who can understand aright--_cum grano salis_--the relation
between the genius and the normal man may, perhaps, be best expressed
as follows: A genius has a double intellect, one for himself and the
service of his will; the other for the world, of which he becomes the
mirror, in virtue of his purely objective attitude towards it. The
work of art or poetry or philosophy produced by the genius is
simply the result, or quintessence, of this contemplative attitude,
elaborated according to certain technical rules.

The normal man, on the other hand, has only a single intellect, which
may be called _subjective_ by contrast with the _objective_ intellect
of genius. However acute this subjective intellect may be--and it
exists in very various degrees of perfection--it is never on the same
level with the double intellect of genius; just as the open chest
notes of the human voice, however high, are essentially different from
the falsetto notes. These, like the two upper octaves of the flute
and the harmonics of the violin, are produced by the column of air
dividing itself into two vibrating halves, with a node between them;
while the open chest notes of the human voice and the lower octave of
the flute are produced by the undivided column of air vibrating as
a whole. This illustration may help the reader to understand that
specific peculiarity of genius which is unmistakably stamped on the
works, and even on the physiognomy, of him who is gifted with it. At
the same time it is obvious that a double intellect like this must, as
a rule, obstruct the service of the will; and this explains the poor
capacity often shown by genius in the conduct of life. And what
specially characterizes genius is that it has none of that sobriety of
temper which is always to be found in the ordinary simple intellect,
be it acute or dull.

The brain may be likened to a parasite which is nourished as a part of
the human frame without contributing directly to its inner economy;
it is securely housed in the topmost story, and there leads a
self-sufficient and independent life. In the same way it may be said
that a man endowed with great mental gifts leads, apart from the
individual life common to all, a second life, purely of the intellect.
He devotes himself to the constant increase, rectification and
extension, not of mere learning, but of real systematic knowledge
and insight; and remains untouched by the fate that overtakes him
personally, so long as it does not disturb him in his work. It is thus
a life which raises a man and sets him above fate and its changes.
Always thinking, learning, experimenting, practicing his knowledge,
the man soon comes to look upon this second life as the chief mode
of existence, and his merely personal life as something subordinate,
serving only to advance ends higher than itself.

An example of this independent, separate existence is furnished by
Goethe. During the war in the Champagne, and amid all the bustle of
the camp, he made observations for his theory of color; and as soon as
the numberless calamities of that war allowed of his retiring for a
short time to the fortress of Luxembourg, he took up the manuscript of
his _Farbenlehre_. This is an example which we, the salt of the earth,
should endeavor to follow, by never letting anything disturb us in the
pursuit of our intellectual life, however much the storm of the world
may invade and agitate our personal environment; always remembering
that we are the sons, not of the bondwoman, but of the free. As our
emblem and coat of arms, I propose a tree mightily shaken by the wind,
but still bearing its ruddy fruit on every branch; with the motto _Dum
convellor mitescunt_, or _Conquassata sed ferax._

That purely intellectual life of the individual has its counterpart in
humanity as a whole. For there, too, the real life is the life of the
_will_, both in the empirical and in the transcendental meaning of the
word. The purely intellectual life of humanity lies in its effort to
increase knowledge by means of the sciences, and its desire to perfect
the arts. Both science and art thus advance slowly from one generation
to another, and grow with the centuries, every race as it hurries by
furnishing its contribution. This intellectual life, like some gift
from heaven, hovers over the stir and movement of the world; or it
is, as it were, a sweet-scented air developed out of the ferment
itself--the real life of mankind, dominated by will; and side by side
with the history of nations, the history of philosophy, science and
art takes its innocent and bloodless way.

The difference between the genius and the ordinary man is, no doubt, a
_quantitative_ one, in so far as it is a difference of degree; but I
am tempted to regard it also as _qualitative_, in view of the fact
that ordinary minds, notwithstanding individual variation, have a
certain tendency to think alike. Thus on similar occasions their
thoughts at once all take a similar direction, and run on the same
lines; and this explains why their judgments constantly agree--not,
however, because they are based on truth. To such lengths does this go
that certain fundamental views obtain amongst mankind at all times,
and are always being repeated and brought forward anew, whilst the
great minds of all ages are in open or secret opposition to them.

A genius is a man in whose mind the world is presented as an object
is presented in a mirror, but with a degree more of clearness and a
greater distinction of outline than is attained by ordinary people.
It is from him that humanity may look for most instruction; for the
deepest insight into the most important matters is to be acquired, not
by an observant attention to detail, but by a close study of things as
a whole. And if his mind reaches maturity, the instruction he gives
will be conveyed now in one form, now in another. Thus genius may be
defined as an eminently clear consciousness of things in general, and
therefore, also of that which is opposed to them, namely, one's own
self.

The world looks up to a man thus endowed, and expects to learn
something about life and its real nature. But several highly favorable
circumstances must combine to produce genius, and this is a very rare
event. It happens only now and then, let us say once in a century,
that a man is born whose intellect so perceptibly surpasses the
normal measure as to amount to that second faculty which seems to be
accidental, as it is out of all relation to the will. He may remain
a long time without being recognized or appreciated, stupidity
preventing the one and envy the other. But should this once come to
pass, mankind will crowd round him and his works, in the hope that he
may be able to enlighten some of the darkness of their existence or
inform them about it. His message is, to some extent, a revelation,
and he himself a higher being, even though he may be but little above
the ordinary standard.

Like the ordinary man, the genius is what he is chiefly for himself.
This is essential to his nature: a fact which can neither be avoided
nor altered, he may be for others remains a matter of chance and of
secondary importance. In no case can people receive from his mind
more than a reflection, and then only when he joins with them in the
attempt to get his thought into their heads; where, however, it is
never anything but an exotic plant, stunted and frail.

In order to have original, uncommon, and perhaps even immortal
thoughts, it is enough to estrange oneself so fully from the world of
things for a few moments, that the most ordinary objects and events
appear quite new and unfamiliar. In this way their true nature is
disclosed. What is here demanded cannot, perhaps, be said to be
difficult; it is not in our power at all, but is just the province of
genius.

By itself, genius can produce original thoughts just as little as a
woman by herself can bear children. Outward circumstances must come to
fructify genius, and be, as it were, a father to its progeny.

The mind of genius is among other minds what the carbuncle is among
precious stones: it sends forth light of its own, while the others
reflect only that which they have received. The relation of the
genius to the ordinary mind may also be described as that of
an idio-electrical body to one which merely is a conductor of
electricity.

The mere man of learning, who spends his life in teaching what he
has learned, is not strictly to be called a man of genius; just as
idio-electrical bodies are not conductors. Nay, genius stands to mere
learning as the words to the music in a song. A man of learning is a
man who has learned a great deal; a man of genius, one from whom we
learn something which the genius has learned from nobody. Great minds,
of which there is scarcely one in a hundred millions, are thus the
lighthouses of humanity; and without them mankind would lose itself in
the boundless sea of monstrous error and bewilderment.

And so the simple man of learning, in the strict sense of the
word--the ordinary professor, for instance--looks upon the genius much
as we look upon a hare, which is good to eat after it has been killed
and dressed up. So long as it is alive, it is only good to shoot at.

He who wishes to experience gratitude from his contemporaries, must
adjust his pace to theirs. But great things are never produced in
this way. And he who wants to do great things must direct his gaze
to posterity, and in firm confidence elaborate his work for coming
generations. No doubt, the result may be that he will remain quite
unknown to his contemporaries, and comparable to a man who, compelled
to spend his life upon a lonely island, with great effort sets up a
monument there, to transmit to future sea-farers the knowledge of his
existence. If he thinks it a hard fate, let him console himself with
the reflection that the ordinary man who lives for practical aims
only, often suffers a like fate, without having any compensation to
hope for; inasmuch as he may, under favorable conditions, spend a life
of material production, earning, buying, building, fertilizing,
laying out, founding, establishing, beautifying with daily effort
and unflagging zeal, and all the time think that he is working for
himself; and yet in the end it is his descendants who reap the benefit
of it all, and sometimes not even his descendants. It is the same with
the man of genius; he, too, hopes for his reward and for honor at
least; and at last finds that he has worked for posterity alone. Both,
to be sure, have inherited a great deal from their ancestors.

The compensation I have mentioned as the privilege of genius lies, not
in what it is to others, but in what it is to itself. What man has in
any real sense lived more than he whose moments of thought make their
echoes heard through the tumult of centuries? Perhaps, after all, it
would be the best thing for a genius to attain undisturbed possession
of himself, by spending his life in enjoying the pleasure of his own
thoughts, his own works, and by admitting the world only as the heir
of his ample existence. Then the world would find the mark of his
existence only after his death, as it finds that of the Ichnolith.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note._--For an illustration of this feeling
in poetry, Schopenhauer refers the reader to Byron's _Prophecy of
Dante_: introd. to C. 4.]

It is not only in the activity of his highest powers that the genius
surpasses ordinary people. A man who is unusually well-knit, supple
and agile, will perform all his movements with exceptional ease, even
with comfort, because he takes a direct pleasure in an activity for
which he is particularly well-equipped, and therefore often exercises
it without any object. Further, if he is an acrobat or a dancer, not
only does he take leaps which other people cannot execute, but he also
betrays rare elasticity and agility in those easier steps which others
can also perform, and even in ordinary walking. In the same way a man
of superior mind will not only produce thoughts and works which could
never have come from another; it will not be here alone that he will
show his greatness; but as knowledge and thought form a mode of
activity natural and easy to him, he will also delight himself in them
at all times, and so apprehend small matters which are within the
range of other minds, more easily, quickly and correctly than they.
Thus he will take a direct and lively pleasure in every increase of
Knowledge, every problem solved, every witty thought, whether of his
own or another's; and so his mind will have no further aim than to be
constantly active. This will be an inexhaustible spring of delight;
and boredom, that spectre which haunts the ordinary man, can never
come near him.

Then, too, the masterpieces of past and contemporary men of genius
exist in their fullness for him alone. If a great product of genius
is recommended to the ordinary, simple mind, it will take as much
pleasure in it as the victim of gout receives in being invited to a
ball. The one goes for the sake of formality, and the other reads the
book so as not to be in arrear. For La Bruyère was quite right when he
said: _All the wit in the world is lost upon him who has none_. The
whole range of thought of a man of talent, or of a genius, compared
with the thoughts of the common man, is, even when directed to objects
essentially the same, like a brilliant oil-painting, full of life,
compared with a mere outline or a weak sketch in water-color.

All this is part of the reward of genius, and compensates him for a
lonely existence in a world with which he has nothing in common and
no sympathies. But since size is relative, it comes to the same thing
whether I say, Caius was a great man, or Caius has to live amongst
wretchedly small people: for Brobdingnack and Lilliput vary only
in the point from which they start. However great, then, however
admirable or instructive, a long posterity may think the author
of immortal works, during his lifetime he will appear to his
contemporaries small, wretched, and insipid in proportion. This is
what I mean by saying that as there are three hundred degrees from the
base of a tower to the summit, so there are exactly three hundred
from the summit to the base. Great minds thus owe little ones some
indulgence; for it is only in virtue of these little minds that they
themselves are great.

Let us, then, not be surprised if we find men of genius generally
unsociable and repellent. It is not their want of sociability that is
to blame. Their path through the world is like that of a man who goes
for a walk on a bright summer morning. He gazes with delight on the
beauty and freshness of nature, but he has to rely wholly on that for
entertainment; for he can find no society but the peasants as they
bend over the earth and cultivate the soil. It is often the case that
a great mind prefers soliloquy to the dialogue he may have in this
world. If he condescends to it now and then, the hollowness of it may
possibly drive him back to his soliloquy; for in forgetfulness of his
interlocutor, or caring little whether he understands or not, he talks
to him as a child talks to a doll.

Modesty in a great mind would, no doubt, be pleasing to the world;
but, unluckily, it is a _contradictio in adjecto_. It would compel a
genius to give the thoughts and opinions, nay, even the method and
style, of the million preference over his own; to set a higher value
upon them; and, wide apart as they are, to bring his views into
harmony with theirs, or even suppress them altogether, so as to let
the others hold the field. In that case, however, he would either
produce nothing at all, or else his achievements would be just upon a
level with theirs. Great, genuine and extraordinary work can be done
only in so far as its author disregards the method, the thoughts, the
opinions of his contemporaries, and quietly works on, in spite of
their criticism, on his side despising what they praise. No one
becomes great without arrogance of this sort. Should his life and work
fall upon a time which cannot recognize and appreciate him, he is at
any rate true to himself; like some noble traveler forced to pass the
night in a miserable inn; when morning comes, he contentedly goes his
way.

A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it
only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor
with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his
vocation without having to think about other people.

For the brain to be a mere laborer in the service of the belly, is
indeed the common lot of almost all those who do not live on the work
of their hands; and they are far from being discontented with
their lot. But it strikes despair into a man of great mind, whose
brain-power goes beyond the measure necessary for the service of
the will; and he prefers, if need be, to live in the narrowest
circumstances, so long as they afford him the free use of his time for
the development and application of his faculties; in other words, if
they give him the leisure which is invaluable to him.

It is otherwise with ordinary people: for them leisure has no value in
itself, nor is it, indeed, without its dangers, as these people
seem to know. The technical work of our time, which is done to an
unprecedented perfection, has, by increasing and multiplying objects
of luxury, given the favorites of fortune a choice between more
leisure and culture upon the one side, and additional luxury and good
living, but with increased activity, upon the other; and, true to
their character, they choose the latter, and prefer champagne to
freedom. And they are consistent in their choice; for, to them, every
exertion of the mind which does not serve the aims of the will is
folly. Intellectual effort for its own sake, they call eccentricity.
Therefore, persistence in the aims of the will and the belly will be
concentricity; and, to be sure, the will is the centre, the kernel of
the world.

But in general it is very seldom that any such alternative is
presented. For as with money, most men have no superfluity, but only
just enough for their needs, so with intelligence; they possess just
what will suffice for the service of the will, that is, for the
carrying on of their business. Having made their fortune, they are
content to gape or to indulge in sensual pleasures or childish
amusements, cards or dice; or they will talk in the dullest way, or
dress up and make obeisance to one another. And how few are those who
have even a little superfluity of intellectual power! Like the others
they too make themselves a pleasure; but it is a pleasure of the
intellect. Either they will pursue some liberal study which brings
them in nothing, or they will practice some art; and in general, they
will be capable of taking an objective interest in things, so that
it will be possible to converse with them. But with the others it is
better not to enter into any relations at all; for, except when they
tell the results of their own experience or give an account of their
special vocation, or at any rate impart what they have learned from
some one else, their conversation will not be worth listening to; and
if anything is said to them, they will rarely grasp or understand it
aright, and it will in most cases be opposed to their own opinions.
Balthazar Gracian describes them very strikingly as men who are not
men--_hombres che non lo son_. And Giordano Bruno _says_ the same
thing: _What a difference there is in having to do with men compared
with those who are only made in their image and likeness_![1] And how
wonderfully this passage agrees with that remark in the Kurral: _The
common people look like men but I have never seen anything quite like
them_. If the reader will consider the extent to which these ideas
agree in thought and even in expression, and in the wide difference
between them in point of date and nationality, he cannot doubt but
that they are at one with the facts of life. It was certainly not
under the influence of those passages that, about twenty years ago, I
tried to get a snuff-box made, the lid of which should have two fine
chestnuts represented upon it, if possible in mosaic; together with a
leaf which was to show that they were horse-chestnuts. This symbol was
meant to keep the thought constantly before my mind. If anyone wishes
for entertainment, such as will prevent him feeling solitary even when
he is alone, let me recommend the company of dogs, whose moral and
intellectual qualities may almost afford delight and gratification.

[Footnote 1: Opera: ed. Wagner, 1. 224.]

Still, we should always be careful to avoid being unjust. I am often
surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity of my
dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind. Countless times,
in indignation at their incapacity, their total lack of discernment,
their bestiality, I have been forced to echo the old complaint that
folly is the mother and the nurse of the human race:

  _Humani generis mater nutrixque profecto
  Stultitia est_.

But at other times I have been astounded that from such a race there
could have gone forth so many arts and sciences, abounding in so much
use and beauty, even though it has always been the few that produce
them. Yet these arts and sciences have struck root, established and
perfected themselves: and the race has with persistent fidelity
preserved Homer, Plato, Horace and others for thousands of years, by
copying and treasuring their writings, thus saving them from oblivion,
in spite of all the evils and atrocities that have happened in the
world. Thus the race has proved that it appreciates the value of these
things, and at the same time it can form a correct view of special
achievements or estimate signs of judgment and intelligence. When this
takes place amongst those who belong to the great multitude, it is by
a kind of inspiration. Sometimes a correct opinion will be formed by
the multitude itself; but this is only when the chorus of praise
has grown full and complete. It is then like the sound of untrained
voices; where there are enough of them, it is always harmonious.

Those who emerge from the multitude, those who are called men of
genius, are merely the _lucida intervalla_ of the whole human race.
They achieve that which others could not possibly achieve. Their
originality is so great that not only is their divergence from others
obvious, but their individuality is expressed with such force, that
all the men of genius who have ever existed show, every one of them,
peculiarities of character and mind; so that the gift of his works is
one which he alone of all men could ever have presented to the world.
This is what makes that simile of Ariosto's so true and so justly
celebrated: _Natura lo fece e poi ruppe lo stampo._ After Nature
stamps a man of genius, she breaks the die.

But there is always a limit to human capacity; and no one can be a
great genius without having some decidedly weak side, it may even be,
some intellectual narrowness. In other words, there will foe some
faculty in which he is now and then inferior to men of moderate
endowments. It will be a faculty which, if strong, might have been an
obstacle to the exercise of the qualities in which he excels. What
this weak point is, it will always be hard to define with any accuracy
even in a given case. It may be better expressed indirectly; thus
Plato's weak point is exactly that in which Aristotle is strong, and
_vice versa_; and so, too, Kant is deficient just where Goethe is
great.

Now, mankind is fond of venerating something; but its veneration is
generally directed to the wrong object, and it remains so directed
until posterity comes to set it right. But the educated public is
no sooner set right in this, than the honor which is due to genius
degenerates; just as the honor which the faithful pay to their saints
easily passes into a frivolous worship of relics. Thousands of
Christians adore the relics of a saint whose life and doctrine are
unknown to them; and the religion of thousands of Buddhists lies more
in veneration of the Holy Tooth or some such object, or the vessel
that contains it, or the Holy Bowl, or the fossil footstep, or the
Holy Tree which Buddha planted, than in the thorough knowledge and
faithful practice of his high teaching. Petrarch's house in Arqua;
Tasso's supposed prison in Ferrara; Shakespeare's house in Stratford,
with his chair; Goethe's house in Weimar, with its furniture; Kant's
old hat; the autographs of great men; these things are gaped at with
interest and awe by many who have never read their works. They cannot
do anything more than just gape.

The intelligent amongst them are moved by the wish to see the objects
which the great man habitually had before his eyes; and by a strange
illusion, these produce the mistaken notion that with the objects they
are bringing back the man himself, or that something of him must
cling to them. Akin to such people are those who earnestly strive to
acquaint themselves with the subject-matter of a poet's works, or to
unravel the personal circumstances and events in his life which have
suggested particular passages. This is as though the audience in a
theatre were to admire a fine scene and then rush upon the stage to
look at the scaffolding that supports it. There are in our day enough
instances of these critical investigators, and they prove the truth of
the saying that mankind is interested, not in the _form_ of a work,
that is, in its manner of treatment, but in its actual matter. All it
cares for is the theme. To read a philosopher's biography, instead of
studying his thoughts, is like neglecting a picture and attending only
to the style of its frame, debating whether it is carved well or ill,
and how much it cost to gild it.

This is all very well. However, there is another class of
persons whose interest is also directed to material and personal
considerations, but they go much further and carry it to a point where
it becomes absolutely futile. Because a great man has opened up to
them the treasures of his inmost being, and, by a supreme effort
of his faculties, produced works which not only redound to their
elevation and enlightenment, but will also benefit their posterity to
the tenth and twentieth generation; because he has presented mankind
with a matchless gift, these varlets think themselves justified in
sitting in judgment upon his personal morality, and trying if they
cannot discover here or there some spot in him which will soothe the
pain they feel at the sight of so great a mind, compared with the
overwhelming feeling of their own nothingness.

This is the real source of all those prolix discussions, carried on in
countless books and reviews, on the moral aspect of Goethe's life, and
whether he ought not to have married one or other of the girls with
whom he fell in love in his young days; whether, again, instead of
honestly devoting himself to the service of his master, he should not
have been a man of the people, a German patriot, worthy of a seat in
the _Paulskirche_, and so on. Such crying ingratitude and malicious
detraction prove that these self-constituted judges are as great
knaves morally as they are intellectually, which is saying a great
deal.

A man of talent will strive for money and reputation; but the spring
that moves genius to the production of its works is not as easy to
name. Wealth is seldom its reward. Nor is it reputation or glory; only
a Frenchman could mean that. Glory is such an uncertain thing, and,
if you look at it closely, of so little value. Besides it never
corresponds to the effort you have made:

  _Responsura tuo nunquam est par fama labori._

Nor, again, is it exactly the pleasure it gives you; for this is
almost outweighed by the greatness of the effort. It is rather a
peculiar kind of instinct, which drives the man of genius to give
permanent form to what he sees and feels, without being conscious of
any further motive. It works, in the main, by a necessity similar to
that which makes a tree bear its fruit; and no external condition is
needed but the ground upon which it is to thrive.

On a closer examination, it seems as though, in the case of a genius,
the will to live, which is the spirit of the human species, were
conscious of having, by some rare chance, and for a brief period,
attained a greater clearness of vision, and were now trying to secure
it, or at least the outcome of it, for the whole species, to which the
individual genius in his inmost being belongs; so that the light which
he sheds about him may pierce the darkness and dullness of ordinary
human consciousness and there produce some good effect.

Arising in some such way, this instinct drives the genius to carry
his work to completion, without thinking of reward or applause or
sympathy; to leave all care for his own personal welfare; to make his
life one of industrious solitude, and to strain his faculties to
the utmost. He thus comes to think more about posterity than about
contemporaries; because, while the latter can only lead him astray,
posterity forms the majority of the species, and time will gradually
bring the discerning few who can appreciate him. Meanwhile it is with
him as with the artist described by Goethe; he has no princely patron
to prize his talents, no friend to rejoice with him:

  _Ein Fürst der die Talente schätzt,
  Ein Freund, der sich mit mir ergötzt,
  Die haben leider mir gefehlt_.

His work is, as it were, a sacred object and the true fruit of his
life, and his aim in storing it away for a more discerning posterity
will be to make it the property of mankind. An aim like this far
surpasses all others, and for it he wears the crown of thorns which
is one day to bloom into a wreath of laurel. All his powers are
concentrated in the effort to complete and secure his work; just as
the insect, in the last stage of its development, uses its whole
strength on behalf of a brood it will never live to see; it puts its
eggs in some place of safety, where, as it well knows, the young will
one day find life and nourishment, and then dies in confidence.





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