Chapter 2
Original German
Von dem, was einer ist.
Daß dieses zu seinem Glücke viel mehr beiträgt, als was er hat, oder was er vorstellt, haben wir bereits im allgemeinen erkannt. Immer kommt es darauf an, was einer sei und demnach an sich selber habe: denn seine Individualität begleitet ihn stets und überall, und von ihr ist alles tingirt, was er erlebt. In allem und bei allem genießt er zunächst nur sich selbst: Dies gilt schon von den physischen; wie viel mehr von den geistigen Genüssen. Daher ist das englische to enjoy one's self ein sehr treffender Ausdruck, mit welchem man z. B. sagt he enjoys himself at Paris, also nicht »er genießt Paris,« sondern »er genießt sich in Paris.« – Ist nun aber die Individualität von schlechter Beschaffenheit, so sind alle Genüsse wie köstliche Weine in einem mit Galle tingirten Munde. Demnach kommt, im Guten wie im Schlimmen, schwere Unglücksfälle beiseite gesetzt, weniger darauf an, was einem im Leben begegnet und widerfährt, als darauf, wie er es empfindet, also auf die Art und den Grad seiner Empfänglichkeit in jeder Hinsicht. Was einer in sich ist und an sich selber hat, kurz die Persönlichkeit und deren Wert, ist das alleinige Unmittelbare zu seinem Glück und Wohlsein. Alles andere ist mittelbar; daher auch dessen Wirkung vereitelt werden kann, aber die der Persönlichkeit nie. Darum eben ist der auf persönliche Vorzüge gerichtete Neid der unversöhnlichste, wie er auch der am sorgfältigsten verhehlte ist. Ferner ist allein die Beschaffenheit des Bewußtseins das Bleibende und Beharrende, und die Individualität wirkt fortdauernd, anhaltend, mehr oder minder in jedem Augenblick: alles andere hingegen wirkt immer nur zu Zeiten, gelegentlich, vorübergehend, und ist zudem auch noch selbst dem Wechsel und Wandel unterworfen: daher sagt Aristoteles: ἡ γαρ φυσις βεβαια, ου τα χρηματα (nam natura perennis est, non opes). Eth. Eud. VII, 2. Hierauf beruht es, daß wir ein ganz und gar von außen auf uns gekommenes Unglück mit mehr Fassung ertragen, als ein selbstverschuldetes: denn das Schicksal kann sich ändern; aber die eigene Beschaffenheit nimmer. Demnach also sind die subjektiven Güter, wie ein edler Charakter, ein fähiger Kopf, ein glückliches Temperament, ein heiterer Sinn und ein wohlbeschaffener, völlig gesunder Leib, also überhaupt mens sana in corpore sano (Juvenal. Sat. X, 356), zu unserm Glücke die ersten und wichtigsten; weshalb wir auf die Beförderung und Erhaltung derselben viel mehr bedacht sein sollten, als auf den Besitz äußerer Güter und äußerer Ehre.
Was nun aber, von jenen allen, uns am unmittelbarsten beglückt, ist die Heiterkeit des Sinnes: denn diese gute Eigenschaft belohnt sich augenblicklich selbst. Wer eben fröhlich ist, hat allemal Ursach, es zu sein: nämlich eben diese, daß er es ist. Nichts kann so sehr, wie diese Eigenschaft, jedes andere Gut vollkommen ersetzen; während sie selbst durch nichts zu ersetzen ist. Einer sei jung, schön, reich und geehrt; so frägt sich, wenn man sein Glück beurteilen will, ob er dabei heiter sei: ist er hingegen heiter, so ist es einerlei, ob er jung oder alt, gerade oder bucklig, arm oder reich sei; er ist glücklich. In früher Jugend machte ich einmal ein altes Buch auf, und da stand: »wer viel lacht, ist glücklich, und wer viel weint, ist unglücklich,« – eine sehr einfältige Bemerkung, die ich aber, wegen ihrer einfachen Wahrheit doch nicht habe vergessen können, so sehr sie auch der Superlativ eines truism's ist. Dieserwegen also sollen wir der Heiterkeit, wann immer sie sich einstellt, Tür und Tor öffnen: denn sie kommt nie zur unrechten Zeit; statt daß wir oft Bedenken tragen, ihr Eingang zu gestatten, indem wir erst wissen wollen, ob wir denn auch wohl in jeder Hinsicht Ursach haben, zufrieden zu sein; oder auch, weil wir fürchten, in unsern ernsthaften Überlegungen und wichtigen Sorgen dadurch gestört zu werden: allein, was wir durch diese bessern, ist sehr ungewiß; hingegen ist Heiterkeit unmittelbarer Gewinn. Sie allein ist gleichsam die bare Münze des Glückes und nicht, wie alles andere, bloß der Bankzettel; weil nur sie unmittelbar in der Gegenwart beglückt; weshalb sie das höchste Gut ist für Wesen, deren Wirklichkeit die Form einer unteilbaren Gegenwart zwischen zwei unendlichen Zeiten hat. Demnach sollten wir die Erwerbung und Beförderung dieses Gutes jedem anderen Trachten vorsetzen. Nun ist gewiß, daß zur Heiterkeit nichts weniger beiträgt als Reichtum, und nichts mehr als Gesundheit: in den niedrigen, arbeitenden, zumal das Land bestellenden Klassen sind die heiteren und zufriedenen Gesichter; in den reichen und vornehmen die verdrießlichen zu Hause. Folglich sollten wir vor allem bestrebt sein, uns den hohen Grad vollkommener Gesundheit zu erhalten, als dessen Blüte die Heiterkeit sich einstellt. Die Mittel hiezu sind bekanntlich Vermeidung aller Exzesse und Ausschweifungen, aller heftigen oder unangenehmen Gemütsbewegungen, auch aller zu großen oder zu anhaltenden Geistesanstrengung, täglich wenigstens zwei Stunden rascher Bewegung in freier Luft, viel kaltes Baden und ähnliche diätetische Maßregeln. Ohne tägliche gehörige Bewegung kann man nicht gesund bleiben; alle Lebensprozesse erfordern, um gehörig vollzogen zu werden, Bewegung sowohl der Teile, darin sie vorgehen, als des Ganzen. Daher sagt Aristoteles mit Recht: ὁ βιος ἐν τη κινησει εστι. Das Leben besteht in der Bewegung und hat sein Wesen in ihr. Im ganzen Innern des Organismus herrscht unaufhörliche, rasche Bewegung: das Herz, in seiner komplizierten doppelten Systole und Diastole, schlägt heftig und unermüdlich; mit 28 seiner Schläge hat es die gesamte Blutmasse durch den ganzen großen und kleinen Kreislauf hindurch getrieben; die Lunge pumpt ohne Unterlaß wie eine Dampfmaschine; die Gedärme winden sich stets im motus peristalticus; alle Drüsen saugen und sezernieren beständig, selbst das Gehirn hat eine doppelte Bewegung mit jedem Pulsschlag und jedem Atemzug. Wenn nun hiebei, wie es bei der ganz und gar sitzenden Lebensweise unzähliger Menschen der Fall ist, die äußere Bewegung so gut wie ganz fehlt, so entsteht ein schreiendes und verderbliches Mißverhältnis zwischen der äußern Ruhe und dem innern Tumult. Denn sogar will die beständige innere Bewegung durch die äußere etwas unterstützt sein: jenes Mißverhältnis aber wird dem analog, wenn, infolge irgend eines Affekts, es in unserm Innern kocht, wir aber nach außen nichts davon sehen lassen dürfen. Sogar die Bäume bedürfen, um zu gedeihen, der Bewegung durch den Wind. Dabei gilt eine Regel, die sich am kürzesten lateinisch ausdrücken läßt: omnis motus, quo celerior, eo magis motus. – Wie sehr unser Glück von der Heiterkeit der Stimmung und diese vom Gesundheitszustande abhängt, lehrt die Vergleichung des Eindrucks, den die nämlichen äußern Verhältnisse, oder Vorfälle, am gesunden und rüstigen Tage auf uns machen, mit dem, welchen sie hervorbringen, wann Kränklichkeit uns verdrießlich und ängstlich gestimmt hat. Nicht was die Dinge objektiv und wirklich sind, sondern was sie für uns, in unsrer Auffassung sind, macht uns glücklich oder unglücklich: Dies eben besagt Epiktets ταρασσει τους ανθρωπους ου τα πραγματα, αλλα τα περι των πραγματων δογματα (commovent homines non res, sed de rebus opiniones). Überhaupt aber beruhen 9/10 unseres Glückes allein auf der Gesundheit. Mit ihr wird alles eine Quelle des Genusses: hingegen ist ohne sie kein äußeres Gut, welcher Art es auch sei, genießbar, und selbst die übrigen subjektiven Güter, die Eigenschaften des Geistes, Gemütes, Temperaments, werden durch Kränklichkeit herabgestimmt und sehr verkümmert. Demnach geschieht es nicht ohne Grund, daß man vor allen Dingen sich gegenseitig nach dem Gesundheitszustande befragt und einander sich wohlzubefinden wünscht: denn wirklich ist dieses bei weitem die Hauptsache zum menschlichen Glück. Hieraus aber folgt, daß die größte aller Torheiten ist, seine Gesundheit aufzuopfern, für was es auch sei, für Erwerb, für Beförderung, für Gelehrsamkeit, für Ruhm, geschweige für Wollust und flüchtige Genüsse: vielmehr soll man ihr alles nachsetzen.
So viel nun aber auch zu der, für unser Glück so wesentlichen Heiterkeit die Gesundheit beiträgt, so hängt jene doch nicht von dieser allein ab: denn auch bei vollkommener Gesundheit kann ein melancholisches Temperament und eine vorherrschend trübe Stimmung bestehn. Der letzte Grund davon liegt ohne Zweifel in der ursprünglichen und daher unabänderlichen Beschaffenheit des Organismus, und zwar zumeist in dem mehr oder minder normalen Verhältnis der Sensibilität zur Irritabilität und Reproduktionskraft. Abnormes Übergewicht der Sensibilität wird Ungleichheit der Stimmung, periodische übermäßige Heiterkeit und vorwaltende Melancholie herbeiführen. Weil nun auch das Genie durch ein Übermaß der Nervenkraft, also der Sensibilität, bedingt ist, so hat Aristoteles ganz richtig bemerkt, daß alle ausgezeichnete und überlegene Menschen melancholisch seien: παντες ὁσοι περιττοι γεγονασιν ανδρες, η κατα φιλοσοφιαν, η πολιτικην, η ποιησιν η τεχνας, φαινονται μελαγχολικοι οντες (Probl. 30, 1). Ohne Zweifel ist dieses die Stelle, welche Cicero im Auge hatte bei seinem oft angeführten Bericht: Aristoteles ait, omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse (Tusc. I, 33). Die hier in Betrachtung genommene, angeborene, große Verschiedenheit der Grundstimmung überhaupt aber hat Shakespeare sehr artig geschildert:
Nature has fram'd strange fellows in her time:Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,And laugh, like parrots, at a bag-piper;And others of such vinegar aspect,That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable[A].
Merch. of Ven. Sc. I.
[A] Die Natur hat in ihren Tagen seltsame Käuze hervorgebracht, einige, die stets aus ihren Äuglein vergnügt hervorgucken, und, wie Papageien über einen Dudelsackspieler lachen, und andere von so sauertöpfischem Ansehn, daß sie ihre Zähne nicht durch ein Lächeln bloß legen, wenn auch Nestor selbst schwüre, der Spaß sei lachenswert.
Eben dieser Unterschied ist es, den Plato durch die Ausdrücke δυσκολος und ευκολος bezeichnet. Derselbe läßt sich zurückführen auf die bei verschiedenen Menschen sehr verschiedene Empfänglichkeit für angenehme und unangenehme Eindrücke, infolge welcher der eine noch lacht bei dem, was den andern fast zur Verzweiflung bringt: und zwar pflegt die Empfänglichkeit für angenehme Eindrücke desto schwächer zu sein, je stärker die für unangenehme ist, und umgekehrt. Nach gleicher Möglichkeit des glücklichen und des unglücklichen Ausgangs einer Angelegenheit wird der δυσκολος beim unglücklichen sich ärgern oder grämen, beim glücklichen aber sich nicht freuen; der ευκολος hingegen wird über den unglücklichen sich nicht ärgern, noch grämen, aber über den glücklichen sich freuen. Wenn dem δυσκολος von zehn Vorhaben neun gelingen, so freut er sich nicht über diese, sondern ärgert sich über das eine mißlungene: der εὐκολος weiß, im umgekehrten Fall, sich doch mit dem einen gelungenen zu trösten und aufzuheitern. – Wie nun aber nicht leicht ein Übel ohne alle Kompensation ist; so ergibt sich auch hier, daß die δυσκολοι, also die finstern und ängstlichen Charaktere, im ganzen, zwar mehr imaginäre, dafür aber weniger reale Unfälle und Leiden zu überstehn haben werden als die heitern und sorglosen: denn wer alles schwarz sieht, stets das Schlimmste befürchtet und demnach seine Vorkehrungen trifft, wird sich nicht so oft verrechnet haben, als wer stets den Dingen die heitere Farbe und Aussicht leiht. – Wann jedoch eine krankhafte Affektion des Nervensystems oder der Verdauungswerkzeuge, der angeborenen δυσκολια in die Hände arbeitet; dann kann diese den hohen Grad erreichen, wo dauerndes Mißbehagen Lebensüberdruß erzeugt und demnach Hang zum Selbstmord entsteht. Diesen vermögen alsdann selbst die geringsten Unannehmlichkeiten zu veranlassen; ja, bei den höchsten Graden des Übels bedarf es derselben nicht einmal; sondern bloß infolge des anhaltenden Mißbehagens wird der Selbstmord beschlossen und alsdann mit so kühler Überlegung und fester Entschlossenheit ausgeführt, daß der meistens schon unter Aufsicht gestellte Kranke, stets darauf gerichtet, den ersten unbewachten Augenblick benutzt, um, ohne Zaudern, Kampf und Zurückbeben, jenes ihm jetzt natürliche und willkommene Erleichterungsmittel zu ergreifen. Ausführliche Beschreibungen dieses Zustandes gibt Esquirol, des maladies mentales. Allerdings aber kann, nach Umständen, auch der gesundeste und vielleicht selbst der heiterste Mensch sich zum Selbstmord entschließen, wenn nämlich die Größe der Leiden, oder des unausweichbar herannahenden Unglücks, die Schrecken des Todes überwältigt. Der Unterschied liegt allein in der verschiedenen Größe des dazu erforderlichen Anlasses, als welche mit der δυσκολια in umgekehrtem Verhältnis steht. Je größer diese ist, desto geringer kann jener sein, ja am Ende auf Null herabsinken: je größer hingegen die ευκολια und die sie unterstützende Gesundheit, desto mehr muß im Anlaß liegen. Danach gibt es unzählige Abstufungen der Fälle, zwischen den beiden Extremen des Selbstmordes, nämlich dem des rein aus krankhafter Steigerung der angebornen δυσκολια entspringenden, und dem des Gesunden und Heiteren, ganz aus objektiven Gründen.
Der Gesundheit zum Teil verwandt ist die Schönheit. Wenngleich dieser subjektive Vorzug nicht eigentlich unmittelbar zu unserm Glücke beiträgt, sondern bloß mittelbar, durch den Eindruck auf Andere; so ist er doch von großer Wichtigkeit, auch im Manne. Schönheit ist ein offener Empfehlungsbrief, der die Herzen zum voraus für uns gewinnt: daher gilt besonders von ihr der Homerische Vers:
Ουτοι αποβλητ’ εστι θεων ερικυδεα δωρα,Ὁσσα κεν αυτοι δωσι, ἑκων δ’ ουκ αν τις ἑλοιτο.
Der allgemeinste Überblick zeigt uns, als die beiden Feinde des menschlichen Glückes, den Schmerz und die Langeweile. Dazu noch läßt sich bemerken, daß, in dem Maße, als es uns glückt, von einem derselben uns zu entfernen, wir dem andern uns nähern, und umgekehrt; so daß unser Leben wirklich eine stärkere oder schwächere Oszillation zwischen ihnen darstellt. Dies entspringt daraus, daß beide in einem doppelten Antagonismus zu einander stehn, einem äußern oder objektiven, und einem innern oder subjektiven. Äußerlich nämlich gebiert Not und Entbehrung den Schmerz; hingegen Sicherheit und Überfluß die Langeweile. Demgemäß sehen wir die niedere Volksklasse in einem beständigen Kampf gegen die Not, also den Schmerz; die reiche und vornehme Welt hingegen in einem anhaltenden oft wirklich verzweifelten Kampf gegen die Langeweile. Der innere oder subjektive Antagonismus derselben aber beruht darauf, daß, im einzelnen Menschen, die Empfänglichkeit für das eine in entgegengesetztem Verhältnis zu der für das andere steht, indem sie durch das Maß seiner Geisteskräfte bestimmt wird. Nämlich Stumpfheit des Geistes ist durchgängig im Verein mit Stumpfheit der Empfindung und Mangel an Reizbarkeit, welche Beschaffenheit für Schmerzen und Betrübnisse jeder Art und Größe weniger empfänglich macht: aus eben dieser Geistesstumpfheit aber geht andrerseits jene, auf zahllosen Gesichtern ausgeprägte, wie auch durch die beständig rege Aufmerksamkeit auf alle, selbst die kleinsten Vorgänge in der Außenwelt sich verratende innere Leerheit hervor, welche die wahre Quelle der Langeweile ist und stets nach äußerer Anregung lechzt, um Geist und Gemüt durch irgend etwas in Bewegung zu bringen. In der Wahl desselben ist sie daher nicht ekel; wie dies die Erbärmlichkeit der Zeitvertreibe bezeugt, zu denen man Menschen greifen sieht, imgleichen die Art ihrer Geselligkeit und Konversation, nicht weniger die vielen Türsteher und Fenstergucker. Hauptsächlich aus dieser inneren Leerheit entspringt die Sucht nach Gesellschaft, Zerstreuung, Vergnügen und Luxus jeder Art, welche viele zur Verschwendung und dann zum Elende führt. Vor diesem Elende bewahrt nichts so sicher, als der innere Reichtum, der Reichtum des Geistes: denn dieser läßt, je mehr er sich der Eminenz nähert, der Langenweile immer weniger Raum. Die unerschöpfliche Regsamkeit der Gedanken aber, ihr an den mannigfaltigen Erscheinungen der Innen- und Außenwelt sich stets erneuerndes Spiel, die Kraft und der Trieb zu immer andern Kombinationen derselben, setzen den eminenten Kopf, die Augenblicke der Abspannung abgerechnet, ganz außer den Bereich der Langenweile. Andrerseits nun aber hat die gesteigerte Intelligenz eine erhöhte Sensibilität zur unmittelbaren Bedingung, und größere Heftigkeit des Willens, also der Leidenschaftlichkeit, zur Wurzel: aus ihrem Verein mit diesen erwächst nun eine viel größere Stärke aller Affekte und eine gesteigerte Empfindlichkeit gegen die geistigen und selbst gegen körperliche Schmerzen, sogar größere Ungeduld bei allen Hindernissen oder auch nur Störungen; welches alles zu erhöhen die aus der Stärke der Phantasie entspringende Lebhaftigkeit sämtlicher Vorstellungen, also auch der widerwärtigen, mächtig beiträgt. Das Gesagte gilt nun verhältnismäßig von allen den Zwischenstufen, welche den weiten Raum vom stumpfesten Dummkopf bis zum größten Genie ausfüllen. Demzufolge steht jeder, wie objektiv, so auch subjektiv, der einen Quelle der Leiden des menschlichen Lebens um so näher, als er von der andern entfernter ist. Dem entsprechend wird sein natürlicher Hang ihn anleiten, in dieser Hinsicht das Objektive dem Subjektiven möglichst anzupassen, also gegen die Quelle der Leiden, für welche er die größere Empfänglichkeit hat, die größere Vorkehr zu treffen. Der geistreiche Mensch wird vor allem nach Schmerzlosigkeit, Ungehudeltsein, Ruhe und Muße streben, folglich ein stilles, bescheidenes, aber möglichst unangefochtenes Leben suchen und demgemäß, nach einiger Bekanntschaft mit den sogenannten Menschen, die Zurückgezogenheit und, bei großem Geiste, sogar die Einsamkeit wählen. Denn je mehr einer an sich selber hat, desto weniger bedarf er von außen und desto weniger können auch die übrigen ihm sein. Darum führt die Eminenz des Geistes zur Ungeselligkeit. Ja, wenn die Qualität der Gesellschaft sich durch die Quantität ersetzen ließe; da wäre es der Mühe wert, sogar in der großen Welt zu leben: aber leider geben hundert Narren, auf einem Haufen, noch keinen gescheuten Mann. – Der vom andern Extrem wird, sobald die Not ihn zu Atem kommen läßt, Kurzweil und Gesellschaft, um jeden Preis suchen und mit allem leicht vorlieb nehmen, nichts so sehr fliehend wie sich selbst. Denn in der Einsamkeit, als wo jeder auf sich selbst zurückgewiesen ist, da zeigt sich, was er an sich selber hat: da seufzt der Tropf im Purpur unter der unabwälzbaren Last seiner armseligen Individualität; während der Hochbegabte die ödeste Umgebung mit seinen Gedanken bevölkert und belebt. Daher ist sehr wahr, was Seneka sagt: omnes stultitia laborat fastidio sui (ep. 9); wie auch Jesus Sirachs Ausspruch: »des Narren Leben ist ärger denn der Tod.« Demgemäß wird man, im ganzen, finden, daß jeder in dem Maße gesellig ist, wie er geistig arm und überhaupt gemein ist. Denn man hat in der Welt nicht viel mehr, als die Wahl zwischen Einsamkeit und Gemeinheit. Die geselligsten aller Menschen sollen die Neger sein, wie sie eben auch intellektuell entschieden zurückstehn: nach Berichten aus Nord-Amerika, in Französischen Zeitungen (le Commerce, Octbr. 19, 1837), sperren die Schwarzen, Freie und Sklaven durcheinander, in großer Anzahl, sich in den engsten Raum zusammen, weil sie ihr schwarzes Stumpfnasengesicht nicht oft genug wiederholt erblicken können.
Dem entsprechend, daß das Gehirn als der Parasit oder Pensionär des ganzen Organismus auftritt, ist die errungene freie Muße eines jeden, indem sie ihm den freien Genuß seines Bewußtseins und seiner Individualität gibt, die Frucht und der Ertrag seines gesamten Daseins, welches im übrigen nur Mühe und Arbeit ist. Was nun aber wirft die freie Muße der meisten Menschen ab? Langeweile, und Dumpfheit, so oft nicht sinnliche Genüsse oder Albernheiten da sind, sie auszufüllen. Wie völlig wertlos sie ist, zeigt die Art, wie sie solche zubringen: sie ist eben das ozio lungo d'uomini ignoranti des Ariosto. Die gewöhnlichen Leute sind bloß darauf bedacht, die Zeit zuzubringen; wer irgend ein Talent hat, – sie zu benutzen. – Daß die beschränkten Köpfe der Langeweile so sehr ausgesetzt sind, kommt daher, daß ihr Intellekt durchaus nichts weiter, als das Medium der Motive für ihren Willen ist. Sind nun vor der Hand keine Motive aufzufassen da; so ruht der Wille und feiert der Intellekt; dieser, weil er so wenig wie jener auf eigene Hand in Tätigkeit gerät: das Resultat ist schreckliche Stagnation aller Kräfte im ganzen Menschen, – Langeweile. Dieser zu begegnen, schiebt man nun dem Willen kleine, bloß einstweilige und beliebig angenommene Motive vor, ihn zu erregen und dadurch auch den Intellekt, der sie aufzufassen hat, in Tätigkeit zu versetzen: diese verhalten sich demnach zu den wirklichen und natürlichen Motiven wie Papiergeld zu Silber; da ihre Geltung eine willkürlich angenommene ist. Solche Motive nun sind die Spiele, mit Karten usw., welche zu besagtem Zweck erfunden worden sind. Fehlt es daran, so hilft der beschränkte Mensch sich durch Klappern oder Trommeln, mit allem, was er in die Hand kriegt. Auch die Zigarre ist ihm ein willkommenes Surrogat der Gedanken. – Daher also ist, in allen Ländern, die Hauptbeschäftigung aller Gesellschaft das Kartenspiel geworden: es ist der Maßstab des Wertes derselben und der deklarierte Bankrott an allen Gedanken. Weil sie nämlich keine Gedanken auszutauschen haben, tauschen sie Karten aus und suchen einander Gulden abzunehmen. O, klägliches Geschlecht! Und indessen auch hier nicht ungerecht zu sein, will ich den Gedanken nicht unterdrücken, daß man zur Entschuldigung des Kartenspiels allenfalls anführen könnte, es sei eine Vorübung zum Welt- und Geschäftsleben, sofern man dadurch lernt, die vom Zufall unabänderlich gegebenen Umstände (Karten) klug zu benutzen, um daraus was immer angeht zu machen, zu welchem Zwecke man sich denn auch gewöhnt, Contenance zu halten, indem man zum schlechten Spiel eine heitere Miene aufsetzt. Aber eben deshalb hat andererseits das Kartenspiel einen demoralisierenden Einfluß. Der Geist des Spiels nämlich ist, daß man auf alle Weise, durch jeden Streich und jeden Schlich, dem andern das Seinige abgewinne. Aber die Gewohnheit, im Spiel so zu verfahren, wurzelt ein, greift über in das praktische Leben, und man kommt allmälig dahin, in den Angelegenheiten des Mein und Dein es ebenso zu machen und jeden Vorteil, den man eben in der Hand hält, für erlaubt zu halten, sobald man nur es gesetzlich darf. Belege hiezu gibt ja das bürgerliche Leben täglich. – Weil also, wie gesagt, die freie Muße die Blüte, oder vielmehr die Frucht des Daseins eines jeden ist, indem nur sie ihn in den Besitz seines eigenen Selbst einsetzt, so sind die glücklich zu preisen, welche dann auch etwas Rechtes an sich selber erhalten; während den Allermeisten die freie Muße nichts abwirft, als einen Kerl, mit dem nichts anzufangen ist, der sich schrecklich langweilt, sich selber zur Last. Demnach freuen wir uns, »ihr lieben Brüder, daß wir nicht sind der Magd Kinder, sondern der Freien.« (Gal. 4, 31.)
Ferner, wie das Land am glücklichsten ist, welches weniger oder keiner Einfuhr bedarf; so auch der Mensch, der an seinem innern Reichtum genug hat und zu seiner Unterhaltung wenig oder nichts von außen nötig hat; da dergleichen Zufuhr viel kostet, abhängig macht, Gefahr bringt, Verdruß verursacht und am Ende doch nur ein schlechter Ersatz ist für die Erzeugnisse des eigenen Bodens. Denn von andern, von außen überhaupt, darf man in keiner Hinsicht viel erwarten. Was einer dem andern sein kann, hat seine sehr engen Grenzen: am Ende bleibt doch jeder allein, und da kommt es darauf an, wer jetzt allein sei. Auch hier gilt demnach was Goethe (Dicht. u. Wahrh. Bd. 3, S. 474) im allgemeinen ausgesprochen hat, daß, in allen Dingen, jeder zuletzt auf sich selbst zurückgewiesen wird, oder, wie Oliver Goldsmith sagt:
Still to ourselves in ev'ry place consign'd,Our own felicity we make or find.
(The Traveller v. 431 sq.)
Das Beste und Meiste muß daher jeder sich selber sein und leisten. Je mehr nun dieses ist, und je mehr demzufolge er die Quellen seiner Genüsse in sich selbst findet, desto glücklicher wird er sein. Mit größtem Rechte also sagt Aristoteles: ἡ ευδαιμονια των αυταρκων εστι (Eth. Eud. VII, 2), zu deutsch: das Glück gehört denen, die sich selber genügen. Denn alle äußern Quellen des Glückes und Genusses sind, ihrer Natur nach, höchst unsicher, mißlich, vergänglich und dem Zufall unterworfen, dürften daher, selbst unter den günstigsten Umständen, leicht stocken; ja, dieses ist unvermeidlich, sofern sie doch nicht stets zur Hand sein können. Im Alter nun gar versiegen sie fast alle notwendig: denn da verläßt uns Liebe, Scherz, Reiselust, Pferdelust und Tauglichkeit für die Gesellschaft: sogar die Freunde und Verwandten entführt uns der Tod. Da kommt es denn, mehr als je, darauf an, was einer an sich selber habe. Denn dieses wird am längsten Stich halten. Aber auch in jedem Alter ist und bleibt es die echte und allein ausdauernde Quelle des Glücks. Ist doch in der Welt überall nicht viel zu holen: Not und Schmerz erfüllen sie, und auf die, welche diesen entronnen sind, lauert in allen Winkeln die Langeweile. Zudem hat in der Regel die Schlechtigkeit die Herrschaft darin und die Torheit das große Wort. Das Schicksal ist grausam und die Menschen sind erbärmlich. In einer so beschaffenen Welt gleicht der, welcher viel an sich selber hat, der hellen, warmen lustigen Weihnachtsstube, mitten im Schnee und Eise der Dezembernacht. Demnach ist eine vorzügliche, eine reiche Individualität und besonders sehr viel Geist zu haben ohne Zweifel das glücklichste Los auf Erden; so verschieden es etwan auch von dem glänzendesten ausgefallen sein mag. Daher war es ein weiser Ausspruch der erst 19jährigen Königin Christine von Schweden, über den ihr noch bloß durch einen Aufsatz und aus mündlichen Berichten bekannt gewordenen Kartesius, welcher damals seit 20 Jahren in der tiefsten Einsamkeit, in Holland, lebte: Mr. Descartes est le plus heureux de tous les hommes, et sa condition me semble digne d'envie. (Vie de Descartes par Baillet, Liv. VII, ch. 10.) Nur müssen, wie es eben auch der Fall des Kartesius war, die äußeren Umstände es so weit begünstigen, daß man auch sich selbst besitzen und seiner froh werden könne; weshalb schon Koheleth (7, 12) sagt: »Weisheit ist gut mit einem Erbgut, und hilft, daß einer sich der Sonne freuen kann.« Wem nun, durch Gunst der Natur und des Schicksals, dieses Los beschieden ist, der wird mit ängstlicher Sorgfalt darüber wachen, daß die innere Quelle seines Glückes ihm zugänglich bleibe; wozu Unabhängigkeit und Muße die Bedingungen sind. Diese wird er daher gern durch Mäßigkeit und Sparsamkeit erkaufen; um so mehr, als er nicht, gleich den andern, auf die äußern Quellen der Genüsse verwiesen ist. Darum wird die Aussicht auf Ämter, Geld, Gunst und Beifall der Welt, ihn nicht verleiten, sich selber aufzugeben, um den niedrigen Absichten oder dem schlechten Geschmacke der Menschen sich zu fügen. Vorkommenden Falls wird er es machen wie Horaz in der Epistel an den Mäcenas (Lib. I, ep. 7). Es ist eine große Torheit, um nach außen zu gewinnen, nach innen zu verlieren, d. h. für Glanz, Rang, Prunk, Titel und Ehre, seine Ruhe, Muße und Unabhängigkeit ganz oder großenteils hinzugeben. Dies hat aber Goethe getan. Mich hat mein Genius mit Entschiedenheit nach der andern Seite gezogen.
Die hier erörterte Wahrheit, daß die Hauptquelle des menschlichen Glückes im eigenen Innern entspringt, findet ihre Bestätigung auch an der sehr richtigen Bemerkung des Aristoteles, in der Nikomachäischen Ethik (I, 7; et VII, 13, 14), daß jeglicher Genuß irgendeine Aktivität, also die Anwendung irgendeiner Kraft voraussetzt und ohne solche nicht bestehn kann. Diese Aristotelische Lehre, daß das Glück eines Menschen in der ungehinderten Ausübung seiner hervorstechenden Fähigkeit bestehe, gibt auch Stobäos wieder in seiner Darstellung der peripatetischen Ethik (Ecl. eth. II, c. 7, p. 268-278), z. B. ἐνεργειαν εἰναι την εὐδαιμονιαν κατ’ ἀρετην, ἐν πραξεσι προηγουμεναις κατ’ εὐχην (felicitatem esse functionem secundum virtutem, per actiones successus compotes); auch mit der Erklärung, daß ἀρετη jede Virtuosität sei. Nun ist die ursprüngliche Bestimmung der Kräfte, mit welchen die Natur den Menschen ausgerüstet hat, der Kampf gegen die Not, die ihn von allen Seiten bedrängt. Wenn aber dieser Kampf einmal rastet, da werden ihm die unbeschäftigten Kräfte zur Last: er muß daher jetzt mit ihnen spielen, d. h. sie zwecklos gebrauchen: denn sonst fällt er der anderen Quelle des menschlichen Leidens, der Langeweile, sogleich anheim. Von dieser sind daher vor allem die Großen und Reichen gemartert, und hat von ihrem Elend schon Lukretius eine Schilderung gegeben, deren Treffendes zu erkennen man noch heute, in jeder großen Stadt, täglich Gelegenheit findet:
Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,Esse domi quem pertaesum est, subitoque reventat;Quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse.Currit, agens mannos, ad villam praecipitanter,Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans:Oscitat extemplo, tetigit quum limina villae;Aut abit in somnum gravis, atque oblivia quaerit;Aut etiam properans urbem petit, atque revisit.
III, 1073.
Bei diesen Herren muß in der Jugend die Muskelkraft und die Zeugungskraft herhalten. Aber späterhin bleiben nur die Geisteskräfte: fehlt es dann an diesen, oder an ihrer Ausbildung und dem angesammelten Stoffe zu ihrer Tätigkeit, so ist der Jammer groß. Weil nun der Wille die einzige unerschöpfliche Kraft ist; so wird er jetzt angereizt durch Erregung der Leidenschaften, z. B. durch hohe Hasardspiele, dieses wahrhaft degradierende Laster. – Überhaupt aber wird jedes unbeschäftigte Individuum, je nach der Art der in ihm vorwaltenden Kräfte, sich ein Spiel zu ihrer Beschäftigung wählen: etwan Kegel oder Schach; Jagd oder Malerei; Wettrennen oder Musik; Kartenspiel oder Poesie; Heraldik oder Philosophie, usw. Wir können sogar die Sache methodisch untersuchen, indem wir auf die Wurzel aller menschlichen Kraftäußerungen zurückgehen, also auf die drei physiologischen Grundkräfte, welche wir demnach hier in ihrem zwecklosen Spiele zu betrachten haben, in welchem sie als die Quellen dreier Arten möglicher Genüsse auftreten, aus denen jeder Mensch, je nachdem die eine oder die andere jener Kräfte in ihm vorwaltet, die ihm angemessenen erwählen wird. Also zuerst, die Genüsse der Reproduktionskraft: sie bestehn im Essen, Trinken, Verdauen, Ruhen und Schlafen. Diese werden daher sogar ganzen Völkern als ihre Nationalvergnügungen von den andern nachgerühmt. Zweitens die Genüsse der Irritabilität: sie bestehen im Wandern, Springen, Ringen, Tanzen, Fechten, Reiten und athletischen Spielen jeder Art, wie auch in der Jagd und sogar in Kampf und Krieg. Drittens, die Genüsse der Sensibilität: sie bestehen im Beschauen, Denken, Empfinden, Dichten, Bilden, Musiziren, Lernen, Lesen, Meditieren, Erfinden, Philosophiren usw. – Über den Wert, den Grad, die Dauer jeder dieser Arten der Genüsse lassen sich mancherlei Betrachtungen anstellen, die dem Leser selbst überlassen bleiben. Jedem aber wird dabei einleuchten, daß unser allemal durch den Gebrauch der eigenen Kräfte bedingter Genuß und mithin unser in dessen häufiger Wiederkehr bestehendes Glück, um so größer sein wird, je edlerer Art die ihn bedingende Kraft ist. Den Vorrang, welchen in dieser Hinsicht die Sensibilität, deren entschiedenes Überwiegen das Auszeichnende des Menschen vor den übrigen Tiergeschlechtern ist, vor den beiden andern physiologischen Grundkräften hat, als welche in gleichem und sogar in höherem Grade den Tieren einwohnen, wird ebenfalls niemand ableugnen. Der Sensibilität gehören unsere Erkenntniskräfte an: daher befähigt das Überwiegen derselben zu den im Erkennen bestehenden, also den sogenannten geistigen Genüssen, und zwar zu um so größeren, je entschiedener jenes Überwiegen ist[B]. Dem normalen, gewöhnlichen Menschen kann eine Sache allein dadurch lebhafte Teilnahme abgewinnen, daß sie seinen Willen anregt, also ein persönliches Interesse für ihn hat. Nun ist aber jede anhaltende Erregung des Willens wenigstens gemischter Art, also mit Schmerz verknüpft. Ein absichtliches Erregungsmittel desselben und zwar mittels so kleiner Interessen, daß sie nur momentane und leichte, nicht bleibende und ernstliche Schmerzen verursachen können, sonach als ein bloßes Kitzeln des Willens zu betrachten sind, ist das Kartenspiel, diese durchgängige Beschäftigung der »guten Gesellschaft«, aller Orten[C]. – Der Mensch von überwiegenden Geisteskräften hingegen ist der lebhaftesten Teilnahme auf dem Wege bloßer Erkenntnis, ohne alle Einmischung des Willens, fähig, ja bedürftig. Diese Teilnahme aber versetzt ihn alsdann in eine Region, welcher der Schmerz wesentlich fremd ist, gleichsam in die Atmosphäre der leicht lebenden Götter, θεαων ῥεια ζωοντων. Während demnach das Leben der übrigen in Dumpfheit dahingeht, indem ihr Dichten und Trachten gänzlich auf die kleinlichen Interessen der persönlichen Wohlfahrt und dadurch auf Miseren aller Art gerichtet ist, weshalb unerträgliche Langeweile sie befällt, sobald die Beschäftigung mit jenen Zwecken stockt und sie auf sich selbst zurückgewiesen werden, indem nur das wilde Feuer der Leidenschaft einige Bewegung in die stockende Masse zu bringen vermag; so hat dagegen der mit überwiegenden Geisteskräften ausgestattete Mensch ein gedankenreiches, durchweg belebtes und bedeutsames Dasein: würdige und interessante Gegenstände beschäftigen ihn, sobald er sich ihnen überlassen darf und in sich selbst trägt er eine Quelle der edelsten Genüsse. Anregung von außen geben ihm die Werke der Natur und der Anblick des menschlichen Treibens, sodann die so verschiedenartigen Leistungen der Hochbegabten aller Zeiten und Länder, als welche eigentlich nur ihm ganz genießbar, weil nur ihm ganz verständlich und fühlbar sind. Für ihn demnach haben jene wirklich gelebt, an ihn haben sie sich eigentlich gewendet; während die übrigen nur als zufällige Zuhörer eines und das andere halb auffassen. Freilich aber hat er durch dieses alles ein Bedürfnis mehr als die andern, das Bedürfnis zu lernen, zu sehen, zu studiren, zu meditiren, zu üben, folglich auch das Bedürfnis freier Muße: aber eben weil, wie Voltaire richtig bemerkt, il n'est de vrais plaisirs qu'avec de vrais besoins, so ist dies Bedürfnis die Bedingung dazu, daß ihm Genüsse offen stehn, welche den andern versagt bleiben, als welchen Natur- und Kunstschönheiten und Geisteswerke jeder Art, selbst wenn sie solche um sich anhäufen, im Grunde doch nur das sind, was Hetären einem Greise. Ein so bevorzugter Mensch führt infolge davon neben seinem persönlichen Leben noch ein zweites, nämlich ein intellektuelles, welches ihm allmälig zum eigentlichen Zweck wird, zu welchem er jenes erstere nur noch als Mittel ansieht: während den übrigen dieses schale, leere und betrübte Dasein selbst als Zweck gelten muß. Jenes intellektuelle Leben wird daher ihn vorzugsweise beschäftigen und es erhält, durch den fortwährenden Zuwachs an Einsicht und Erkenntnis, einen Zusammenhang, eine beständige Steigerung, eine sich mehr und mehr abrundende Ganzheit und Vollendung, wie ein werdendes Kunstwerk; wogegen das bloß praktische, bloß auf persönliche Wohlfahrt gerichtete, bloß eines Zuwachses in der Länge, nicht in der Tiefe fähige Leben der andern traurig absticht, dennoch ihnen, wie gesagt, als Selbstzweck gelten muß; während es jenem bloßes Mittel ist.
[B] Die Natur steigert sich fortwährend, zunächst vom mechanischen und chemischen Wirken des unorganischen Reiches zum vegetabilischen und seinem dumpfen Selbstgenuß, von da zum Tierreich, mit welchem die Intelligenz und das Bewußtsein anbricht und nun von schwachen Anfängen stufenweise immer höher steigt und endlich durch den letzten und größten Schritt bis zum Menschen sich erhebt, in dessen Intellekt also die Natur den Gipfelpunkt und das Ziel ihrer Produktionen erreicht, also das Vollendetste und Schwierigste liefert, was sie hervorzubringen vermag. Selbst innerhalb der menschlichen Spezies aber stellt der Intellekt noch viele und merkliche Abstufungen dar und gelangt höchst selten zur obersten, der eigentlich hohen Intelligenz. Diese nun also ist im engeren und strengeren Sinne das schwierigste und höchste Produkt der Natur, mithin das Seltenste und Wertvollste, was die Welt aufzuweisen hat. In einer solchen Intelligenz tritt das klarste Bewußtsein ein und stellt demgemäß die Welt sich deutlicher und vollständiger als irgendwo dar. Der damit Ausgestattete besitzt demnach das Edelste und Köstlichste auf Erden und hat dementsprechend eine Quelle von Genüssen, gegen welche alle übrigen gering sind; so daß er von außen nichts weiter bedarf, als nur die Muße, sich dieses Besitzes ungestört zu erfreuen und seinen Diamanten auszuschleifen. Denn alle anderen, also nicht intellektuellen Genüsse sind niedrigerer Art: sie laufen sämtlich auf Willensbewegungen hinaus, also auf Wünschen, Hoffen, Fürchten und Erreichen, gleichviel auf was es gerichtet sei, wobei es nie ohne Schmerzen abgehen kann, und zudem mit dem Erreichen, in der Regel, mehr oder weniger Enttäuschung eintritt, statt daß bei den intellektuellen Genüssen die Wahrheit immer klarer wird. Im Reiche der Intelligenz waltet kein Schmerz, sondern alles ist Erkenntnis. Alle intellektuellen Genüsse sind nun aber jedem nur vermittels und also nach Maßgabe seiner eigenen Intelligenz zugänglich: denn tout l'esprit, qui est au monde, est inutile à celui qui n'en a point. Ein wirklicher, jenen Vorzug begleitender Nachteil aber ist, daß, in der ganzen Natur, mit dem Grad der Intelligenz die Fähigkeit zum Schmerze sich steigert, also ebenfalls erst hier ihre höchste Stufe erreicht.
[C] Die Vulgarität besteht im Grunde darin, daß im Bewußtsein das Wollen das Erkennen gänzlich überwiegt, womit es den Grad erreicht, daß durchaus nur zum Dienste des Willens das Erkennen eintritt, folglich wo dieser Dienst es nicht heischt, also eben keine Motive, weder große noch kleine, vorliegen, das Erkennen ganz zessiert, folglich völlige Gedankenleere eintritt. Nun ist aber erkenntnisloses Wollen das Gemeinste, was es gibt: jeder Klotz Holz hat es und zeigt es wenigstens, wenn er fällt. Daher macht jener Zustand die Vulgarität aus. In demselben bleiben bloß die Sinneswerkzeuge und die geringe, zur Apprehension ihrer Data erforderte Verstandestätigkeit aktiv, infolge wovon der vulgäre Mensch allen Eindrücken beständig offen steht, also alles, was um ihn herum vorgeht, augenblicklich wahrnimmt, so daß der leiseste Ton und jeder, auch noch so geringfügige Umstand seine Aufmerksamkeit sogleich erregt, eben wie bei den Tieren. Dieser ganze Zustand wird in seinem Gesicht und ganzen Äußeren sichtbar, – woraus dann das vulgäre Ansehen hervorgeht, dessen Eindruck um so widerlicher ist, wann, wie meistens, der hier das Bewußtsein allein erfüllende Wille ein niedriger, egoistischer und überhaupt schlechter ist.
Unser praktisches, reales Leben nämlich ist, wenn nicht die Leidenschaften es bewegen, langweilig und fade; wenn sie aber es bewegen, wird es bald schmerzlich: darum sind die allein beglückt, denen irgendein Überschuß des Intellekts über das zum Dienst ihres Willens erforderte Maß zuteil geworden. Denn damit führen sie, neben ihrem wirklichen, noch ein intellektuelles Leben, welches sie fortwährend auf eine schmerzlose Weise und doch lebhaft beschäftigt und unterhält. Bloße Muße, d. h. durch den Dienst des Willens unbeschäftigter Intellekt, reicht dazu nicht aus; sondern ein wirklicher Überschuß der Kraft ist erfordert: denn nur dieser befähigt zu einer dem Willen nicht dienenden, rein geistigen Beschäftigung: hingegen otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultura (Sen. ep. 82). Je nachdem nun aber dieser Überschuß klein oder groß ist, gibt es unzählige Abstufungen jenes, neben dem realen zu führenden intellektuellen Lebens, vom bloßen Insekten-, Vögel-, Mineralien-, Münzensammeln und Beschreiben bis zu den höchsten Leistungen der Poesie und Philosophie. Ein solches intellektuelles Leben schützt aber nicht nur gegen die Langeweile, sondern auch gegen die verderblichen Folgen derselben. Es wird nämlich zur Schutzwehr gegen schlechte Gesellschaft und gegen die vielen Gefahren, Unglücksfälle, Verluste und Verschwendungen, in die man gerät, wenn man sein Glück ganz in der realen Welt sucht. So hat z. B. mir meine Philosophie nie etwas eingebracht; aber sie hat mir sehr viel erspart.
Der normale Mensch hingegen ist, hinsichtlich des Genusses seines Lebens, auf Dinge außer ihm gewiesen, auf den Besitz, den Rang, auf Weib und Kinder, Freunde, Gesellschaft usw., auf diese stützt sich sein Lebensglück: darum fällt es dahin, wenn er sie verliert oder er sich in ihnen getäuscht sah. Dies Verhältnis auszudrücken, können wir sagen, daß sein Schwerpunkt außer ihm fällt. Eben deshalb hat er auch stets wechselnde Wünsche und Grillen: er wird, wenn seine Mittel es erlauben, bald Landhäuser, bald Pferde kaufen, bald Feste geben, bald Reisen machen, überhaupt aber großen Luxus treiben, weil er eben in Dingen aller Art ein Genüge von außen sucht; wie der Entkräftete aus Consommé's und Apothekerdrogen die Gesundheit und Stärke zu erlangen hofft, deren wahre Quelle die eigene Lebenskraft ist. Stellen wir nun, um nicht gleich zum anderen Extrem überzugehn, neben ihn einen Mann von nicht gerade eminenten, aber doch das gewöhnliche knappe Maß überschreitenden Geisteskräften, so sehn wir diesen etwa irgendeine schöne Kunst als Dilettant üben, oder aber eine Realwissenschaft, wie Botanik, Mineralogie, Physik, Astronomie, Geschichte u. dgl. betreiben und alsbald einen großen Teil seines Genusses darin finden, sich daran erholend, wenn jene äußeren Quellen stocken oder ihn nicht mehr befriedigen. Wir können insofern sagen, daß sein Schwerpunkt schon zum Teil in ihn selbst fällt. Weil jedoch bloßer Dilettantismus in der Kunst noch sehr weit von der hervorbringenden Fähigkeit liegt, und weil bloße Realwissenschaften bei den Verhältnissen der Erscheinungen zueinander stehn bleiben, so kann der ganze Mensch nicht darin aufgehen, sein ganzes Wesen kann nicht bis auf den Grund von ihnen erfüllt werden und daher sein Dasein sich nicht mit ihnen so verweben, daß er am übrigen alles Interesse verlöre. Dies nun bleibt der höchsten geistigen Eminenz allein vorbehalten, die man mit dem Namen des Genies zu bezeichnen pflegt: denn nur sie nimmt das Dasein und Wesen der Dinge im ganzen und absolut zu ihrem Thema, wonach sie dann ihr tiefe Auffassung desselben, gemäß ihrer individuellen Richtung, durch Kunst, Poesie oder Philosophie auszusprechen streben wird. Daher ist allein einem Menschen dieser Art die ungestörte Beschäftigung mit sich, mit seinen Gedanken und Werken dringendes Bedürfnis, Einsamkeit willkommen, freie Muße das höchste Gut, alles übrige entbehrlich, ja, wenn vorhanden, oft nur zur Last. Nur von einem solchen Menschen können wir demnach sagen, daß sein Schwerpunkt ganz in ihn fällt. Hieraus wird sogar erklärlich, daß die höchst seltenen Leute dieser Art, selbst beim besten Charakter, doch nicht jene innige und grenzenlose Teilnahme an Freunden, Familie und Gemeinwesen zeigen, deren manche der anderen fähig sind: denn sie können sich zuletzt über alles trösten; wenn sie nur sich selbst haben. Sonach liegt in ihnen ein isolirendes Element mehr, welches um so wirksamer ist, als die anderen ihnen eigentlich nie vollkommen genügen, weshalb sie in ihnen nicht ganz und gar ihresgleichen sehen können, ja, da das Heterogene in allem und jedem ihnen stets fühlbar wird, allmählich sich gewöhnen, unter den Menschen als verschiedenartige Wesen umherzugehen und, in ihren Gedanken über dieselben, sich der dritten nicht der ersten Person Pluralis zu bedienen. –
Von diesem Gesichtspunkt aus erscheint nun der, welchen die Natur in intellektueller Hinsicht sehr reich ausgestattet hat, als der Glücklichste; so gewiß das Subjektive uns näher liegt als das Objektive, dessen Wirkung, welcher Art sie auch sei, immer erst durch jenes vermittelt, also nur sekundär ist. Dies bezeugt auch der schöne Vers:
Πλουτος ὁ της ψυχης πλουτος μονος εστιν αληθης,Τ’ αλλα δ’ εχει ατην πλειονα των κτεανων.
Lucian in Anthol. I, 67.
Ein solcher innerlich Reicher bedarf von außen nichts weiter als eines negativen Geschenks, nämlich freier Muße, um seine geistigen Fähigkeiten ausbilden und entwickeln und seinen innern Reichtum genießen zu können, also eigentlich nur der Erlaubnis, sein ganzes Leben hindurch, jeden Tag und jede Stunde, ganz er selbst sein zu dürfen. Wenn einer bestimmt ist, die Spur seines Geistes dem ganzen Menschengeschlechte aufzudrücken, so gibt es für ihn nur ein Glück oder Unglück, nämlich seine Anlagen vollkommen ausbilden und seine Werke vollenden zu können, – oder aber hieran verhindert zu sein. Alles andere ist für ihn geringfügig. Demgemäß sehen wir die großen Geister aller Zeiten auf freie Muße den allerhöchsten Wert legen. Denn die freie Muße eines jeden ist so viel wert, wie er selbst wert ist. Δοκει δε ἡ ευδαιμονια εν τῃ σχολῃ ειναι (videtur beatitudo in otio esse sita) sagt Aristoteles (Eth. Nic. X, 7), und Diogenes Laertius (II, 5, 31) berichtet, daß Σωκρατης επῃνει σχολην, ὡς καλλιστον κτηματων (Socrates otium ut possessionum omnium pulcherrimam laudabat). Dem entspricht auch, daß Aristoteles (Eth. Nic. X, 7, 8, 9) das philosophische Leben für das glücklichste erklärt. Sogar gehört hierher, was er in der Politik (IV, 11) sagt: τον ευδαιμονα βιον ειναι τον κατ’ αρετην ανεμποδιστον, welches, gründlich übersetzt, besagt: »seine Trefflichkeit, welcher Art sie auch sei, ungehindert üben zu können, ist das eigentliche Glück,« und also zusammentrifft mit Goethes Ausspruch im Wilhelm Meister: »wer mit einem Talent, zu einem Talent geboren ist, findet in demselben sein schönstes Dasein.« – Nun aber ist freie Muße zu besitzen nicht nur dem gewöhnlichen Schicksal, sondern auch der gewöhnlichen Natur des Menschen fremd; denn seine natürliche Bestimmung ist, daß er seine Zeit mit Herbeischaffung des zu seiner und seiner Familie Existenz Notwendigen zubringe. Er ist ein Sohn der Not, nicht eine freie Intelligenz. Dementsprechend wird freie Muße dem gewöhnlichen Menschen bald zur Last, ja endlich zur Qual, wenn er sie nicht, mittels allerlei erkünstelter und fingirter Zwecke, durch Spiel, Zeitvertreib und Steckenpferde jeder Gestalt auszufüllen vermag: auch bringt sie ihm aus dem selben Grunde Gefahr, da es mit Recht heißt difficilis in otio quies. Andrerseits jedoch ist ein über das normale Maß weit hinausgehender Intellekt ebenfalls abnorm, also unnatürlich. Ist er dennoch einmal vorhanden, so bedarf es, für das Glück des damit Begabten, eben jener den andern bald lästigen, bald verderblichen freien Muße; da er ohne diese ein Pegasus im Joche, mithin unglücklich sein wird. Treffen nun aber beide Unnatürlichkeiten, die äußere und die innere, zusammen, so ist es ein großer Glücksfall: denn jetzt wird der so Begünstigte ein Leben höherer Art führen, nämlich das eines Eximirten von den beiden entgegengesetzten Quellen des menschlichen Leidens, der Not und der Langenweile, oder dem sorglichen Treiben für die Existenz und der Unfähigkeit, die Muße (d. i. die freie Existenz selbst) zu ertragen, welchen beiden Übeln der Mensch sonst nur dadurch entgeht, daß sie selbst sich wechselseitig neutralisiren und aufheben.
Gegen dieses alles jedoch kommt andererseits in Betracht, daß die großen Geistesgaben infolge der überwiegenden Nerventätigkeit eine überaus gesteigerte Empfindlichkeit für den Schmerz, in jeglicher Gestalt, herbeiführen, daß ferner das sie bedingende leidenschaftliche Temperament und zugleich die von ihnen unzertrennliche größere Lebhaftigkeit und Vollkommenheit aller Vorstellungen eine ungleich größere Heftigkeit der durch diese erregten Affekte herbeiführt, während es doch überhaupt mehr peinliche als angenehme Affekte gibt; endlich auch, daß die großen Geistesgaben ihren Besitzer den übrigen Menschen und ihrem Treiben entfremden, da, je mehr er an sich selber hat, desto weniger er an ihnen finden kann. Hundert Dinge, an welchen sie großes Genüge haben, sind ihm schal und ungenießbar, wodurch denn das überall sich geltend machende Gesetz der Kompensation vielleicht auch hier in Kraft bleibt; ist doch sogar oft genug, und nicht ohne Schein, behauptet worden, der geistig beschränkteste Mensch sei im Grunde der glücklichste, wenn gleich keiner ihn um dieses Glück beneiden mag. In der definitiven Entscheidung der Sache will ich umsoweniger dem Leser vorgreifen, als selbst Sophokles hierüber zwei einander diametral entgegengesetzte Aussprüche getan hat:
Πολλω το φρονειν ευδαιμονιας πρωτον ὑπαρχει.(Sapere longe prima felicitatis pars est.)
Antig. 1328.
und wieder:
Εν τω φρονειν γαρ μηδεν ἡδιστος βιος.(Nihil cogitantium jucundissima vita est.)
Ajax. 550.
Eben so uneinig miteinander sind die Philosophen des A. T.
»Des Narren Leben ist ärger denn der Tod!«(του γαρ μωρου ὑπερ θανατου ζωη πονηρα.)
Jes. Sir. 22, 12.
und
»Wo viel Weisheit ist, da ist viel Grämens.«(ὁ προστιθεις γνωσιν, προσθησει ἀλγημα.)
Kohel. 1, 18.
Inzwischen will ich hier doch nicht unerwähnt lassen, daß der Mensch, welcher, infolge des streng und knapp normalen Maßes seiner intellektuellen Kräfte, keine geistige Bedürfnisse hat, es eigentlich ist, den ein der deutschen Sprache ausschließlich eigener, vom Studentenleben ausgegangener, nachmals aber in einem höheren, wiewohl dem ursprünglichen, durch den Gegensatz zum Musensohne, immer noch analogen Sinne gebrauchter Ausdruck als den Philister bezeichnet. Dieser nämlich ist und bleibt der ἀμουσος ἀνηρ. Nun würde ich zwar, von einem höheren Standpunkt aus, die Definition der Philister so aussprechen, daß sie Leute wären, die immerfort auf das ernstlichste beschäftigt sind mit einer Realität, die keine ist. Allein eine solche schon transzendentale Definition würde dem populären Standpunkt, auf welchen ich mich in dieser Abhandlung gestellt habe, nicht angemessen, daher auch vielleicht nicht durchaus jedem Leser faßlich sein. Jene erstere hingegen läßt leichter eine spezielle Erläuterung zu und bezeichnet hinreichend das Wesentliche der Sache, die Wurzel aller der Eigenschaften, die den Philister charakterisieren. Er ist demnach ein Mensch ohne geistige Bedürfnisse. Hieraus nun folgt gar mancherlei: erstlich, in Hinsicht auf ihn selbst, daß er ohne geistige Genüsse bleibt; nach dem schon erwähnten Grundsatz: il n'est de vrais plaisirs qu'avec de vrais besoins. Kein Drang nach Erkenntnis und Einsicht, um ihrer selbst willen, belebt sein Dasein, auch keiner nach eigentlich ästhetischen Genüssen, als welcher dem ersteren durchaus verwandt ist. Was dennoch von Genüssen solcher Art etwa Mode oder Autorität ihm aufdringt, wird er als eine Art Zwangsarbeit möglichst kurz abtun. Wirkliche Genüsse für ihn sind allein die sinnlichen: durch diese hält er sich schadlos. Demnach sind Austern und Champagner der Höhepunkt seines Daseins, und sich alles, was zum leiblichen Wohlsein beiträgt, zu verschaffen, ist der Zweck seines Lebens. Glücklich genug, wenn dieser ihm viel zu schaffen macht! Denn, sind jene Güter ihm schon zum voraus oktroyirt, so fällt er unausbleiblich der Langenweile anheim, gegen welche dann alles Ersinnliche versucht wird: Ball, Theater, Gesellschaft, Kartenspiel, Hasardspiel, Pferde, Weiber, Trinken, Reisen usw. Und doch reicht dies alles gegen die Langeweile nicht aus, wo Mangel an geistigen Bedürfnissen die geistigen Genüsse unmöglich macht. Daher auch ist dem Philister ein dumpfer, trockener Ernst, der sich dem tierischen nähert, eigen und charakteristisch. Nichts freut ihn, nichts erregt ihn, nichts gewinnt ihm Anteil ab. Denn die sinnlichen Genüsse sind bald erschöpft; die Gesellschaft, aus eben solchen Philistern bestehend, wird bald langweilig, das Kartenspiel zuletzt ermüdend. Allenfalls bleiben ihm noch die Genüsse der Eitelkeit, nach seiner Weise, welche denn darin bestehen, daß er an Reichtum oder Rang, oder Einfluß und Macht andere übertrifft, von welchen er dann deshalb geehrt wird; oder aber auch darin, daß er wenigstens mit solchen, die in dergleichen eminiren, Umgang hat und so sich im Reflex ihres Glanzes sonnt (a snob). – Aus der aufgestellten Grundeigenschaft des Philisters folgt zweitens, in Hinsicht auf andere, daß, da er keine geistige sondern nur physische Bedürfnisse hat, er den suchen wird, der diese, nicht den, der jene zu befriedigen imstande ist. Am allerwenigsten wird daher unter den Anforderungen, die er an andere macht, die irgend überwiegender geistiger Fähigkeiten sein: vielmehr werden diese, wenn sie ihm aufstoßen, seinen Widerwillen, ja, seinen Haß erregen; weil er dabei nur ein lästiges Gefühl von Inferiorität und dazu einen dumpfen, heimlichen Neid verspürt, den er aufs sorgfältigste versteckt, indem er ihn sogar sich selber zu verhehlen sucht, wodurch aber gerade solcher bisweilen bis zu einem stillen Ingrimm anwächst. Nimmermehr demnach wird es ihm einfallen, nach dergleichen Eigenschaften seine Wertschätzung oder Hochachtung abzumessen; sondern diese wird ausschließlich dem Range und Reichtum, der Macht und dem Einfluß vorbehalten bleiben, als welche in seinen Augen die allein wahren Vorzüge sind, in denen zu exzelliren auch sein Wunsch wäre. – Alles dieses aber folgt daraus, daß er ein Mensch ohne geistige Bedürfnisse ist. Das große Leiden aller Philister ist, daß Idealitäten ihnen keine Unterhaltung gewähren, sondern sie, um der Langenweile zu entgehen, stets der Realitäten bedürfen. Diese nämlich sind teils bald erschöpft, wo sie, statt zu unterhalten, ermüden; teils führen sie Unheil jeder Art herbei; während hingegen die Idealitäten unerschöpflich und an sich unschuldig und unschädlich sind.
Ich habe in dieser ganzen Betrachtung der persönlichen Eigenschaften, welche zu unserem Glücke beitragen, nächst den physischen, hauptsächlich die intellektuellen berücksichtigt. Auf welche Weise nun aber auch die moralische Trefflichkeit unmittelbar beglückt, habe ich früher in meiner Preisschrift über das Fundament der Moral § 22, S. 275 (2. Aufl. 272) dargelegt, wohin ich also von hier verweise.
Musean translation
Machine-assisted translation from the German, following the 1913 Ernst Ohle edition.
What a Person Is.
We have already recognized in general that this contributes far more to happiness than what a person has or represents. Everything always depends on what someone is, and consequently possesses in himself: individuality accompanies him always and everywhere, and colors everything he experiences. In everything and through everything, what he immediately enjoys is only himself. This is true even of physical pleasures; how much more of intellectual ones. The English expression to enjoy one's self is therefore very apt: one says, for example, he enjoys himself at Paris, not "he enjoys Paris" but "he enjoys himself in Paris."—But if the individuality is poorly constituted, all pleasures are like exquisite wines in a mouth tainted with bile. Accordingly, in good fortune as in bad, apart from grave calamities, what matters less is what meets and befalls us in life than how we feel it: the kind and degree of our receptivity in every respect. What someone is inwardly and possesses in himself—in short, personality and its worth—is the sole immediate condition of happiness and well-being. Everything else is indirect; its effect can therefore be frustrated, while the effect of personality never can. For this very reason, envy directed at personal advantages is the most implacable, as well as the most carefully concealed. Moreover, only the constitution of consciousness endures and persists, and individuality acts continuously, constantly, more or less at every moment. Everything else, by contrast, acts only at certain times, occasionally and temporarily, and is itself also subject to change and alteration. Hence Aristotle says: nature is steadfast, not possessions (for nature endures, not wealth). Eth. Eud. VII, 2. This is why we bear a misfortune that comes wholly from outside with greater composure than one of our own making: fate may change, but our own constitution never does. Subjective goods, then—a noble character, an able mind, a fortunate temperament, a cheerful disposition, and a well-formed, entirely healthy body; in general, a sound mind in a sound body (Juvenal. Sat. X, 356)—are the first and most important conditions of happiness. We should therefore take much more care to foster and preserve them than to possess external goods and external honor.
Of all these things, however, what makes us happy most immediately is cheerfulness of mind, for this good quality rewards itself on the spot. Whoever is cheerful always has a reason to be so: precisely the fact of being cheerful. Nothing can so completely replace every other good as this quality, while nothing can replace it. Someone may be young, beautiful, rich, and honored; if we wish to judge his happiness, the question is whether he is cheerful as well. If, on the other hand, he is cheerful, it makes no difference whether he is young or old, straight or hunchbacked, poor or rich: he is happy. In early youth I once opened an old book and found: "Whoever laughs much is happy, and whoever weeps much is unhappy"—a very simple-minded observation, which I nevertheless could not forget because of its simple truth, however much it may be the superlative of a truism. We should therefore open every door to cheerfulness whenever it appears, for it never comes at the wrong time. Instead we often hesitate to admit it, first wanting to know whether we really have reason to be content in every respect, or fearing that it will interrupt our serious reflections and important cares. Yet what we shall improve through these is very uncertain, whereas cheerfulness is an immediate gain. It alone is, so to speak, the ready coin of happiness, and not, like everything else, merely a banknote, because it alone makes us happy immediately in the present. It is therefore the highest good for beings whose reality takes the form of an indivisible present between two infinite stretches of time. We should accordingly place the acquisition and fostering of this good before every other endeavor. Now nothing contributes less to cheerfulness than wealth, and nothing more than health: cheerful and contented faces are at home among the lower, working classes, especially those who cultivate the soil; discontented faces among the rich and distinguished. Above all, therefore, we should strive to preserve that high degree of perfect health whose blossom is cheerfulness. The means are familiar: avoiding all excess and dissipation, all violent or unpleasant emotions, and all excessive or prolonged intellectual exertion; at least two hours of brisk movement in the open air every day, frequent cold bathing, and similar rules of physical regimen. Without sufficient daily movement one cannot remain healthy: to be properly performed, all processes of life require movement both of the parts in which they occur and of the whole. Hence Aristotle rightly says: life consists in movement. Life consists in movement and has its essence in it. Throughout the interior of the organism there is incessant, rapid motion: the heart, in its complicated double systole and diastole, beats vigorously and tirelessly; in 28 beats it has driven the entire mass of blood through the whole greater and lesser circulation. The lungs pump continually like a steam engine; the intestines constantly writhe in peristaltic motion; all glands continuously absorb and secrete; even the brain has a double movement with every pulse and every breath. If, amid all this, external movement is almost entirely absent, as it is in the wholly sedentary lives of countless people, a glaring and destructive disproportion arises between outward stillness and inward tumult. Indeed, constant inward movement needs some support from outward movement; that disproportion becomes analogous to the state in which some emotion makes us boil within while we must show no outward sign. Even trees need the movement of the wind to flourish. Here a rule holds that can be expressed most briefly in Latin: every movement, the swifter it is, is all the more movement.—How greatly our happiness depends on cheerfulness of mood, and this on the state of our health, is shown by comparing the impression the same external circumstances or events make on us on a healthy, vigorous day with the impression they produce when ill health has made us irritable and anxious. It is not what things objectively and actually are, but what they are for us, in our apprehension, that makes us happy or unhappy. This is precisely the meaning of Epictetus's saying: it is not things that disturb people, but their opinions about things (people are moved not by things, but by opinions about things). In general, 9/10 of our happiness rests on health alone. With it, everything becomes a source of pleasure; without it, no external good, of whatever kind, can be enjoyed, and even the other subjective goods—the qualities of intellect, disposition, and temperament—are subdued and greatly impaired by ill health. It is therefore not without reason that people first ask after one another's health and wish one another well: this really is by far the chief condition of human happiness. It follows, however, that the greatest of all follies is to sacrifice health for anything whatever: for gain, advancement, learning, fame, much less for sensuality and fleeting pleasures. Everything, rather, should come second to it.
Yet however much health contributes to the cheerfulness so essential to our happiness, cheerfulness does not depend on health alone: even in perfect health a melancholy temperament and a predominantly gloomy mood can persist. The ultimate cause undoubtedly lies in the original, and therefore unalterable, constitution of the organism, and chiefly in the more or less normal relation of sensibility to irritability and reproductive power. An abnormal predominance of sensibility will produce uneven moods, periodic excessive cheerfulness, and prevailing melancholy. Since genius, too, depends on a surplus of nervous power, and thus of sensibility, Aristotle quite rightly observed that all distinguished and superior people are melancholic: all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts appear to be melancholic (Probl. 30, 1). This is doubtless the passage Cicero had in mind in his often-quoted report: Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholic (Tusc. I, 33). The great inborn differences of fundamental mood considered here in general have been very charmingly portrayed by Shakespeare:
Nature has fram'd strange fellows in her time:Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,And laugh, like parrots, at a bag-piper;And others of such vinegar aspect,That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile,Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable[A].
Merch. of Ven. Sc. I.
[A] Nature has produced strange fellows in her time: some who always peer cheerfully out of their little eyes and laugh like parrots at a bagpiper, and others with such sour expressions that they will not bare their teeth in a smile, even if Nestor himself should swear the joke was worth laughing at.
This is the very difference Plato designates by the expressions difficult-tempered and easy-tempered. It can be traced to the very different receptivity to pleasant and unpleasant impressions in different people, as a result of which one still laughs at what almost drives another to despair. Receptivity to pleasant impressions generally grows weaker as receptivity to unpleasant ones grows stronger, and conversely. When an undertaking has equal chances of a happy and an unhappy outcome, the difficult-tempered person will be irritated or grieve at the unhappy outcome but take no joy in the happy one; the easy-tempered person, by contrast, will neither be irritated nor grieve at the unhappy outcome but will rejoice at the happy one. If nine of the difficult-tempered person's ten undertakings succeed, he takes no pleasure in these but is vexed by the one failure; in the reverse case, the easy-tempered person still knows how to console and cheer himself with the one success.—But since hardly any evil is wholly without compensation, here too it follows that difficult-tempered people—gloomy and anxious characters—will generally have to endure more imaginary misfortunes and sufferings, but fewer real ones, than cheerful and carefree people. For someone who sees everything in black, always fears the worst, and takes precautions accordingly will not so often have miscalculated as someone who always gives things a cheerful color and prospect.—If, however, a morbid condition of the nervous system or the organs of digestion reinforces an inborn difficult temperament, this can rise to a degree at which persistent discomfort produces weariness of life and consequently an inclination to suicide. The slightest unpleasantness can then occasion it; indeed, at the highest degrees of the disorder, even this is unnecessary. The persistent discomfort alone leads to a decision to commit suicide, which is then carried out with such cool deliberation and firm resolve that the patient, usually already under supervision and constantly intent on it, seizes the first unguarded moment to take, without hesitation, struggle, or shrinking back, this means of relief, now natural and welcome to him. Esquirol, On Mental Illness, gives detailed descriptions of this state. Certainly, however, even the healthiest and perhaps the most cheerful person may, under certain circumstances, decide on suicide, namely when the magnitude of suffering or of an inescapably approaching calamity overcomes the terrors of death. The difference lies only in the magnitude of the occasion required, which stands in inverse proportion to the difficult temperament. The stronger this is, the slighter the occasion may be, ultimately sinking to zero; conversely, the stronger the easy temperament and the health supporting it, the more the occasion must contain. There are therefore countless gradations between the two extremes of suicide: that arising purely from a morbid intensification of an inborn difficult temperament, and that of a healthy and cheerful person on entirely objective grounds.
Beauty is in part akin to health. Although this subjective advantage contributes to our happiness not properly directly but only indirectly, through its impression on others, it is nevertheless of great importance, even in a man. Beauty is an open letter of recommendation that wins hearts for us in advance; hence Homer's verses apply especially to it:
Not to be cast aside are the gods' glorious gifts,Whatever they themselves bestow: no one could take them at will.
The broadest survey shows us the two enemies of human happiness: pain and boredom. We may further observe that as we succeed in distancing ourselves from one, we approach the other, and conversely; so that life really presents a stronger or weaker oscillation between them. This arises because they stand in a double opposition to one another, outward or objective, and inward or subjective. Outwardly, want and privation produce pain, while security and abundance produce boredom. We accordingly see the lower classes in a constant struggle against want, and thus pain, while the wealthy and distinguished world struggles continually, often quite desperately, against boredom. Their inward or subjective opposition rests on the fact that in each individual receptivity to one is inversely related to receptivity to the other, being determined by the measure of intellectual powers. Dullness of mind is generally joined to dullness of feeling and a lack of excitability, a constitution less receptive to pains and sorrows of every kind and degree. Yet from this very dullness of mind arises, on the other side, that inward emptiness stamped on countless faces, and betrayed by a constantly alert attention to every event in the external world, even the smallest. This is the true source of boredom, always thirsting for outward stimulation to set mind and disposition in motion with something. It is therefore not fastidious in its choice, as witness the wretched pastimes to which people resort, the nature of their society and conversation, and no less the many people standing in doorways and gazing from windows. It is chiefly this inward emptiness that breeds the craving for society, distraction, amusement, and luxury of every kind, leading many to extravagance and then to misery. Nothing guards against this misery so surely as inward wealth, the wealth of the mind; for the nearer it approaches eminence, the less room it leaves for boredom. The inexhaustible activity of thoughts, their ever-renewed play over the manifold appearances of the inner and outer world, the power and impulse to make ever-new combinations of them, place the eminent mind entirely beyond boredom's reach, apart from moments of exhaustion. On the other hand, heightened intelligence has increased sensibility as its immediate condition and greater vehemence of will, and thus of passion, as its root. Its union with these gives rise to much stronger emotions of every kind and a heightened sensitivity to mental and even physical pain, as well as greater impatience with every obstacle or even disturbance. All this is powerfully intensified by the vividness of all representations, including disagreeable ones, arising from a strong imagination. What has been said applies proportionately to every intermediate degree filling the wide interval between the dullest fool and the greatest genius. Consequently, subjectively as well as objectively, everyone stands nearer to one source of the sufferings of human life in proportion as he is farther from the other. His natural inclination will accordingly guide him to adapt the objective as closely as possible to the subjective in this respect, taking greater precautions against the source of suffering to which he is more receptive. The gifted person will strive above all for freedom from pain and harassment, for peace and leisure; he will therefore seek a quiet, modest life, but as undisturbed as possible, and accordingly, after some acquaintance with so-called people, will choose retirement and, if his mind is great, even solitude. For the more someone possesses in himself, the less he needs from outside and the less other people can be to him. Hence eminence of mind leads to unsociability. Indeed, if the quality of society could be replaced by quantity, living even in the great world would be worth the trouble; unfortunately, a hundred fools in a heap still do not make one sensible man.—Someone at the opposite extreme, as soon as want gives him breathing room, will seek diversion and company at any price, readily content with anything and fleeing nothing so much as himself. For in solitude, where everyone is thrown back upon himself, what he possesses in himself is revealed: there the fool in purple groans under the inescapable burden of his wretched individuality, while the highly gifted person peoples and animates the most desolate surroundings with his thoughts. Thus Seneca says very truly: all folly suffers from weariness of itself (ep. 9); as does the saying of Jesus Sirach: "The fool's life is worse than death." Accordingly, in general, everyone will be found sociable in proportion to his poverty of mind and general commonness. For in this world one has little more than a choice between solitude and vulgarity. Negroes are said to be the most sociable of all people, just as they are decidedly backward intellectually: according to reports from North America in French newspapers (le Commerce, Octbr. 19, 1837), Black people, free and enslaved together, crowd in large numbers into the narrowest space because they cannot see their black, snub-nosed faces repeated often enough.
Since the brain appears as the parasite or pensioner of the whole organism, the free leisure anyone has won, granting free enjoyment of consciousness and individuality, is the fruit and yield of the whole of existence, which otherwise is nothing but toil and labor. What, then, does most people's free leisure yield? Boredom and dullness, whenever sensual pleasures or foolishness are not there to fill it. How utterly worthless it is appears in the way they spend it: it is precisely Ariosto's long idleness of ignorant men. Ordinary people think only of passing time; anyone with a talent, of using it.—Limited minds are so exposed to boredom because their intellect is nothing more than the medium of motives for their will. If there are no motives to apprehend for the moment, the will rests and the intellect takes a holiday, since neither sets itself to work on its own account. The result is a terrible stagnation of all powers throughout the person: boredom. To meet this, little motives, merely temporary and arbitrarily assumed, are placed before the will to stir it and thereby activate the intellect that must apprehend them. They stand to real, natural motives as paper money to silver, since their validity is arbitrarily assumed. Such motives are games, with cards and so forth, invented for this very purpose. If these are lacking, the limited person helps himself by rattling or drumming with whatever he can lay hands on. A cigar, too, is a welcome substitute for thoughts.—Hence card-playing has become the chief occupation of all society in every country: it is the measure of its worth and a declaration of complete bankruptcy in thought. Having no thoughts to exchange, they exchange cards and try to take one another's guilders. O pitiable race! Yet to avoid being unjust even here, I will not suppress the thought that in defense of card-playing one might perhaps say it is a preliminary exercise for life in society and business: one learns to use wisely circumstances unalterably given by chance—the cards—to make whatever one can of them, and in doing so grows accustomed to maintaining composure by putting a cheerful face on a bad hand. Yet precisely for this reason card-playing also has a demoralizing influence. The spirit of the game is to win away another's possessions by every means, every trick, and every stratagem. But the habit of acting this way in play takes root and extends into practical life; little by little one comes to act in just the same way in matters of mine and yours, regarding every advantage in hand as permissible so long as the law allows it. Civil life provides evidence of this daily.—Since, then, as I have said, free leisure is the blossom, or rather the fruit, of everyone's existence, because it alone puts us in possession of our own selves, those should be called happy who then find something worthwhile in themselves; whereas for the great majority free leisure yields nothing but a fellow who is good for nothing, terribly bored and a burden to himself. Let us therefore rejoice, "dear brothers, that we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free." (Gal. 4, 31.)
Further, just as the happiest country is the one needing few imports or none, so is the person who finds enough in inward wealth and needs little or nothing from outside for entertainment. Such supplies are costly, create dependence, bring danger, cause annoyance, and in the end are only a poor substitute for the produce of one's own soil. For one must not expect much in any respect from others, or from outside generally. What one person can be to another has very narrow limits: in the end everyone remains alone, and then what matters is who is alone. Here too, then, applies what Goethe said in general (Dicht. u. Wahrh. Bd. 3, S. 474): in all things everyone is ultimately thrown back upon himself; or, as Oliver Goldsmith says:
Still to ourselves in ev'ry place consign'd,Our own felicity we make or find.
(The Traveller v. 431 sq.)
The best and greatest part, therefore, everyone must be and provide for himself. The more this amounts to, and the more he consequently finds the sources of enjoyment within himself, the happier he will be. Aristotle therefore says with the greatest justice: happiness belongs to the self-sufficient (Eth. Eud. VII, 2); in other words, happiness belongs to those who suffice for themselves. For all external sources of happiness and enjoyment are by their nature exceedingly uncertain, precarious, transient, and subject to chance; even under the most favorable circumstances they may easily fail, and indeed this is inevitable, since they cannot always be at hand. In old age almost all of them necessarily dry up: love, jest, the desire for travel, delight in horses, and fitness for society then desert us; death even carries off friends and relatives. More than ever, then, what matters is what a person possesses in himself, for this will hold out longest. Yet at every age it is and remains the genuine and only enduring source of happiness. There is not much to be gained anywhere in the world: want and pain fill it, and boredom lies in wait in every corner for those who have escaped them. Moreover, wickedness generally rules it, and folly has the loudest voice. Fate is cruel and people are pitiable. In a world so constituted, someone who possesses much in himself resembles the bright, warm, cheerful Christmas room amid the snow and ice of a December night. An excellent, rich individuality, and especially a great deal of intelligence, is therefore undoubtedly the happiest lot on earth, however different it may prove from the most brilliant one. Thus Queen Christina of Sweden, only 19 years old, spoke wisely of Descartes, whom she knew as yet only through one essay and oral reports, and who had then been living in the deepest solitude in Holland for 20 years: Mr. Descartes is the happiest of all men, and his condition seems to me worthy of envy. (Vie de Descartes par Baillet, Liv. VII, ch. 10.) Only external circumstances, as in Descartes's case, must be favorable enough to allow one to possess oneself and take pleasure in it; hence Ecclesiastes (7, 12) already says: "Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and helps a person enjoy the sun." Whoever is granted this lot by the favor of nature and fate will watch with anxious care that the inward source of happiness remains accessible; independence and leisure are its conditions. He will therefore gladly buy these through moderation and thrift, all the more because, unlike others, he is not dependent on external sources of pleasure. The prospect of offices, money, favor, and the world's applause will consequently not tempt him to abandon himself in order to accommodate people's low purposes or bad taste. If the occasion arises, he will act like Horace in the epistle to Maecenas (Lib. I, ep. 7). It is a great folly to lose inwardly in order to gain outwardly—that is, to surrender all or most of one's peace, leisure, and independence for brilliance, rank, pomp, titles, and honor. Yet Goethe did this. My genius has drawn me decisively in the other direction.
The truth discussed here—that the chief source of human happiness springs from within ourselves—is also confirmed by Aristotle's very sound observation in the Nicomachean Ethics (I, 7; et VII, 13, 14), that every pleasure presupposes some activity, and thus the exercise of some power, and cannot exist without it. Stobaeus likewise reproduces this Aristotelian teaching, that a person's happiness consists in the unimpeded exercise of his outstanding ability, in his account of Peripatetic ethics (Ecl. eth. II, c. 7, p. 268-278); for example, happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, in actions proceeding according to one's wish (happiness is the exercise of virtue through actions crowned with success); he also explains that excellence means mastery of any kind. Now the original purpose of the powers with which nature has equipped human beings is the struggle against the want that presses upon them from every side. But when this struggle pauses, the unoccupied powers become a burden: one must now play with them, that is, use them without a purpose; otherwise one immediately falls prey to the other source of human suffering, boredom. This therefore torments the great and wealthy above all, and Lucretius already gave a description of their misery whose aptness can still be recognized daily in every large city:
Often he leaves his spacious house,The man weary of being home, and suddenly returns,Finding things outside no better.He races his ponies headlong to his country house,As though hurrying to rescue a roof in flames;At once he yawns when he has crossed its threshold,Or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks oblivion,Or hastens back to town and visits it again.
III, 1073.
In youth these gentlemen must make do with muscular and sexual powers. Later, however, only the intellectual powers remain; if these are lacking, or if their cultivation and the accumulated material for their activity are lacking, the misery is great. Since the will is the only inexhaustible power, it is now stimulated by arousing the passions—for example through high-stakes gambling, that truly degrading vice.—In general, every unoccupied individual will choose, according to the powers predominating within him, some play to occupy them: perhaps bowling or chess, hunting or painting, racing or music, cards or poetry, heraldry or philosophy, and so on. We can even investigate the matter systematically by going back to the root of all manifestations of human power, namely the three fundamental physiological powers, which we must therefore consider here in their purposeless play. In this they appear as the sources of three kinds of possible enjoyment, from which everyone will choose what suits him according as one or another of these powers predominates. First, then, the pleasures of reproductive power: these consist in eating, drinking, digesting, resting, and sleeping. Other peoples even celebrate these as the national pleasures of whole nations. Second, the pleasures of irritability: walking, jumping, wrestling, dancing, fencing, riding, and athletic games of every kind, as well as hunting and even combat and war. Third, the pleasures of sensibility: contemplating, thinking, feeling, composing poetry, creating visual art, making music, learning, reading, meditating, inventing, philosophizing, and so on.—Many reflections might be made on the value, degree, and duration of each kind of pleasure; these are left to the reader. But everyone will see that our pleasure, always dependent on the use of our own powers, and consequently our happiness, consisting in its frequent recurrence, will be greater the nobler the power on which it depends. Nor will anyone deny the precedence in this respect of sensibility, whose decided predominance distinguishes human beings from the other animal species, over the other two fundamental physiological powers, which animals possess in an equal or even higher degree. Our powers of cognition belong to sensibility; its predominance therefore equips us for pleasures consisting in knowing, the so-called intellectual pleasures, and for greater pleasures the more decided that predominance is[B]. An ordinary, normal person can take a lively interest in something only when it stirs his will, and thus concerns him personally. Every lasting excitement of the will, however, is at least mixed in character, and therefore linked with pain. Card-playing, the universal occupation of "good society" everywhere[C], deliberately stimulates it through interests so small that they can cause only momentary, slight pains, not lasting and serious ones, and may thus be regarded as a mere tickling of the will.—A person whose intellectual powers predominate, by contrast, is capable of the liveliest interest through knowledge alone, without any involvement of the will, and indeed needs such interest. It then transports him into a region to which pain is essentially foreign, as though into the atmosphere of the gods who live at ease, the gods who live lightly. Thus while the lives of others pass in dullness, their every thought and endeavor directed entirely toward the petty interests of personal welfare and hence toward miseries of every kind, so that unbearable boredom overtakes them as soon as their occupation with those ends ceases and they are thrown back upon themselves, and only the wild fire of passion can stir this stagnant mass—the person endowed with predominant intellectual powers has, by contrast, an existence rich in thought, thoroughly animated and meaningful. Worthy and interesting objects occupy him as soon as he may give himself over to them, and within himself he carries a source of the noblest pleasures. Outward stimulation comes from the works of nature and the spectacle of human activity, and then from the varied achievements of the highly gifted of all ages and countries, which he alone can fully enjoy because he alone can fully understand and feel them. It was therefore really for him that they lived, and to him that they truly addressed themselves, while others, merely accidental listeners, half-understand one thing or another. To be sure, all this gives him one need more than others: the need to learn, see, study, meditate, and practice, and consequently the need for free leisure. But precisely because, as Voltaire rightly observes, there are no true pleasures without true needs, this need is the condition that opens to him enjoyments denied to others, for whom the beauties of nature and art and intellectual works of every kind, even if they heap them up around themselves, are at bottom only what courtesans are to an old man. Such a favored person consequently leads, beside his personal life, a second, intellectual life, which gradually becomes his true purpose, to which he regards the first merely as a means; while for others this insipid, empty, sorrowful existence must itself count as the purpose. That intellectual life will therefore chiefly occupy him, and through the continual increase of insight and knowledge it acquires coherence, a steady development, a wholeness and perfection growing ever more complete, like a work of art coming into being. Against this, the merely practical life of others, directed only toward personal welfare and capable of increasing only in length, not depth, stands in sad contrast; yet, as I have said, they must regard it as an end in itself, while to him it is merely a means.
[B] Nature continually rises higher: first from the mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic realm to the vegetable realm and its dim self-enjoyment; from there to the animal kingdom, with which intelligence and consciousness dawn, rising step by step from weak beginnings until, with the last and greatest step, they reach the human being. In the human intellect, then, nature attains the summit and goal of its productions, providing the most perfect and difficult thing it can bring forth. Yet even within the human species the intellect displays many marked gradations and very rarely reaches the highest, that of truly elevated intelligence. This, then, in the narrower and stricter sense, is nature's most difficult and highest product, and consequently the rarest and most valuable thing the world has to show. In such an intelligence the clearest consciousness emerges, and the world accordingly presents itself more distinctly and completely than anywhere else. The person endowed with it therefore possesses the noblest and most precious thing on earth and has a corresponding source of pleasures beside which all others are slight. From outside he needs nothing further than leisure to enjoy this possession undisturbed and polish his diamond. For all other, nonintellectual pleasures are of a lower kind: they all amount to movements of will—to wishing, hoping, fearing, and attaining, whatever their object—which can never occur without pain; moreover, attainment generally brings more or less disappointment, whereas in intellectual pleasures truth grows ever clearer. In the realm of intelligence no pain rules: everything is knowledge. All intellectual pleasures, however, are accessible to everyone only through, and thus in proportion to, his own intelligence; for all the intelligence in the world is useless to someone who has none. Yet a real disadvantage accompanying this privilege is that throughout nature the capacity for pain increases with the degree of intelligence, and therefore likewise reaches its highest degree only here.
[C] Vulgarity consists, at bottom, in willing wholly predominating over knowing in consciousness, to the point that knowledge occurs solely in the service of the will. Wherever this service does not require it—where there are no motives, great or small—knowledge therefore ceases entirely, and complete emptiness of thought ensues. Now willing without knowledge is the commonest thing there is: every block of wood possesses it and shows it at least when it falls. Hence that state constitutes vulgarity. Only the sense organs and the slight activity of understanding needed to apprehend their data remain active in it. Consequently the vulgar person is continually open to every impression and immediately notices everything happening around him, so that the faintest sound and every circumstance, however trifling, at once arouse his attention, just as with animals. This whole state becomes visible in his face and entire outward appearance, producing the vulgar look, whose impression is all the more repellent when, as is usually the case, the will alone filling consciousness here is low, selfish, and generally bad.
Our practical, actual life is boring and insipid when the passions do not stir it; when they do, it soon becomes painful. Hence only those are fortunate who have received some surplus of intellect beyond the measure required to serve their will. With it they lead, beside their actual life, an intellectual one that continually occupies and entertains them vividly yet painlessly. Mere leisure—that is, an intellect unoccupied in the service of the will—is not enough: a real surplus of power is required, for this alone enables a purely intellectual occupation that does not serve the will. Otherwise, leisure without learning is death and the burial of a living person (Sen. ep. 82). According as this surplus is small or great, there are countless gradations of the intellectual life that can be led beside the actual one, from merely collecting and describing insects, birds, minerals, or coins to the highest achievements of poetry and philosophy. Such an intellectual life, however, guards not only against boredom but also against its ruinous consequences. It becomes a defense against bad company and the many dangers, misfortunes, losses, and extravagances into which one falls when seeking happiness entirely in the actual world. My philosophy, for example, has never brought me anything in, but it has saved me a great deal.
The normal person, by contrast, depends for enjoyment of life on things outside himself: possessions, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and so on. On these his happiness rests, and therefore it collapses when he loses them or finds himself deceived in them. To express this relation we may say that his center of gravity lies outside himself. For this very reason his wishes and whims are always changing: if his means permit, he will buy country houses, then horses, give parties, then travel, and generally indulge in great luxury, because he seeks satisfaction from outside in things of every kind—like an enfeebled person hoping to gain from consommés and apothecaries' drugs the health and strength whose true source is his own vital power. Now, rather than going straight to the opposite extreme, let us place beside him a man whose intellectual powers are not exactly eminent but still exceed the usual scant measure. We see him perhaps practicing a fine art as an amateur, or pursuing an empirical discipline such as botany, mineralogy, physics, astronomy, history, or the like, and soon finding a great part of his enjoyment there, taking refuge in it when those external sources fail or no longer satisfy him. We can say that his center of gravity already lies partly within himself. Yet mere amateur practice of art is still far from creative ability, and mere empirical disciplines remain with the relations of appearances to one another. Thus the whole person cannot be absorbed in them, his entire being cannot be filled to its depths by them, and his existence cannot become so interwoven with them that he loses interest in everything else. This remains reserved for the highest intellectual eminence, generally called genius. It alone takes the existence and essence of things as a whole and absolutely for its theme, and then strives, according to its individual direction, to express its profound apprehension of them through art, poetry, or philosophy. Only a person of this kind therefore urgently needs undisturbed occupation with himself, his thoughts and works; solitude is welcome, free leisure the highest good, everything else dispensable, and often merely burdensome when present. Of such a person alone can we say that his center of gravity lies wholly within himself. This even explains why the exceedingly rare people of this kind, despite the best of characters, do not show the intimate and boundless concern for friends, family, and community of which some others are capable: for they can ultimately console themselves for everything, so long as they have themselves. They thus contain one more isolating element, all the more effective because others never really satisfy them completely; hence they cannot see others as entirely their equals. Indeed, since they constantly feel something unlike themselves in everyone and everything, they gradually grow accustomed to moving among human beings as creatures of another kind, and, in their thoughts about them, to using the third rather than the first person plural.—
From this standpoint, someone whom nature has endowed very richly in intellect appears the happiest, as surely as the subjective lies closer to us than the objective, whose influence, whatever it may be, is always mediated through the subjective and is therefore only secondary. The beautiful verses also attest this:
The soul's wealth alone is true wealth;The rest holds more ruin than riches.
Lucian in Anthol. I, 67.
Someone inwardly rich in this way needs nothing more from outside than a negative gift: free leisure, so that he may cultivate and develop his intellectual abilities and enjoy his inward wealth—in truth, merely permission to be entirely himself, every day and every hour throughout his life. If someone is destined to impress the mark of his mind upon the whole human race, he has only one happiness or unhappiness: being able to develop his gifts completely and finish his works—or being prevented from doing so. Everything else is trivial to him. Accordingly we see the great minds of all ages place the very highest value on free leisure, for everyone's free leisure is worth as much as he himself is worth. Happiness seems to lie in leisure (bliss appears to be situated in leisure), says Aristotle (Eth. Nic. X, 7), and Diogenes Laertius (II, 5, 31) reports that Socrates praised leisure as the finest of possessions (Socrates praised leisure as the most beautiful of all possessions). Correspondingly, Aristotle (Eth. Nic. X, 7, 8, 9) declares the philosophical life the happiest. Even what he says in the Politics (IV, 11) belongs here: the happy life is the unimpeded life in accordance with excellence; which, thoroughly translated, means: "To be able to exercise one's excellence, of whatever kind, without hindrance is true happiness." It thus agrees with Goethe's saying in Wilhelm Meister: "Whoever is born with a talent and for a talent finds his finest existence in it."—But possessing free leisure is foreign not only to the ordinary lot of humanity but also to ordinary human nature. Our natural destination is to spend our time procuring what is necessary for our own and our family's existence. A human being is a child of want, not a free intelligence. Accordingly free leisure soon becomes a burden to the ordinary person, and finally a torment, unless he can fill it with all manner of artificially devised and imaginary purposes, with games, pastimes, and hobbies of every kind. For the same reason it also brings danger, since it is rightly said that peace is difficult in idleness. On the other hand, an intellect far exceeding the normal measure is likewise abnormal, and thus unnatural. Yet if it does exist, the happiness of its possessor requires precisely that free leisure which is sometimes burdensome and sometimes ruinous to others; without it he will be a Pegasus in harness, and therefore unhappy. If the two departures from nature, the outward and the inward, coincide, it is a great stroke of luck: the person so favored will now lead a higher kind of life, exempt from the two opposed sources of human suffering, want and boredom—the anxious striving for existence and the inability to endure leisure, that is, free existence itself. Ordinarily a person escapes these two evils only through their mutually neutralizing and canceling one another.
Against all this, however, one must consider that great intellectual gifts, owing to predominant nervous activity, bring an extraordinarily heightened sensitivity to pain in every form. Further, the passionate temperament conditioning them, together with the greater vividness and completeness of all representations inseparable from them, produces incomparably greater vehemence in the emotions those representations arouse; yet painful emotions in general outnumber pleasant ones. Finally, great intellectual gifts estrange their possessor from other people and their activities: the more he possesses in himself, the less he can find in them. A hundred things that give them great satisfaction are insipid and unenjoyable to him; thus the law of compensation, which asserts itself everywhere, may perhaps remain in force here too. Indeed, it has often enough been maintained, not without plausibility, that the most intellectually limited person is at bottom the happiest, although no one would envy him this happiness. I am all the less inclined to anticipate the reader's final decision on the matter because even Sophocles made two diametrically opposed pronouncements about it:
Wisdom is by far the foremost part of happiness.(To be wise is by far the first part of happiness.)
Antig. 1328.
and again:
For those who think nothing, life is sweetest.(Those who think nothing have the most pleasant life.)
Ajax. 550.
The philosophers of the Old Testament are just as much at odds with one another.
"The fool's life is worse than death!"(For the fool's life is worse than death.)
Jes. Sir. 22, 12.
and
"Where there is much wisdom, there is much sorrow."(Whoever increases knowledge will increase pain.)
Kohel. 1, 18.
Yet I do not wish to leave unmentioned here that the person who, owing to the strictly and scantily normal measure of his intellectual powers, has no intellectual needs is precisely the one designated by an expression peculiar to German: the philistine. Originating in student life, it was later used in a higher sense, though still analogous to its original meaning through its opposition to the son of the Muses. Such a person is and remains the man without the Muses. From a higher standpoint, I would define philistines as people continually occupied in the utmost seriousness with a reality that is no reality. But such an already transcendental definition would not suit the popular standpoint I have adopted in this treatise and might therefore not be fully intelligible to every reader. The first definition, by contrast, more readily permits a detailed explanation and sufficiently identifies the essence of the matter, the root of all the qualities characterizing the philistine. He is, then, a person without intellectual needs. Many things follow from this. First, regarding himself, he remains without intellectual pleasures, according to the principle already mentioned: there are no true pleasures without true needs. No impulse toward knowledge and insight for their own sake animates his existence, nor any toward properly aesthetic pleasures, which are closely related to the former. Whatever pleasures of this kind fashion or authority nevertheless forces upon him, he will dispose of as quickly as possible, like a kind of forced labor. His only real pleasures are sensual ones, and with these he compensates himself. Oysters and champagne are accordingly the high point of his existence, and procuring everything that contributes to bodily well-being is his life's purpose. Fortunate enough if this gives him much to do! For if those goods have already been bestowed on him in advance, he inevitably falls prey to boredom, against which everything imaginable is tried: balls, theater, company, cards, gambling, horses, women, drinking, travel, and so forth. Yet none of this suffices against boredom where the absence of intellectual needs makes intellectual pleasures impossible. Hence a dull, dry seriousness approaching that of an animal is characteristic of the philistine. Nothing delights him, nothing stirs him, nothing wins his interest. Sensual pleasures are soon exhausted; society consisting of fellow philistines soon grows boring; cards finally become wearisome. At most the pleasures of vanity remain, in his own fashion: surpassing others in wealth, rank, influence, and power, for which they then honor him; or at least associating with those eminent in such things and basking in their reflected splendor (a snob).—From the philistine's fundamental quality as stated it follows, second, regarding others, that since he has no intellectual but only physical needs, he will seek the person able to satisfy the latter, not the former. Outstanding intellectual abilities will therefore be the very last thing he demands of others. Rather, if he encounters them, they will arouse his aversion, indeed his hatred, for they give him only an oppressive feeling of inferiority and a dull, secret envy, which he conceals most carefully, even trying to hide it from himself; precisely for this reason it sometimes grows into a silent fury. It will therefore never occur to him to measure his esteem or respect by such qualities; these will be reserved exclusively for rank and wealth, power and influence, which in his eyes are the only true advantages, in which he too would wish to excel.—All this, however, follows from his being a person without intellectual needs. The great suffering of all philistines is that ideal things give them no entertainment; to escape boredom they constantly need real things. These are partly soon exhausted, when they weary instead of entertaining, and partly bring about mischief of every kind, whereas ideal things are inexhaustible and in themselves innocent and harmless.
Throughout this consideration of the personal qualities contributing to our happiness, I have chiefly considered intellectual qualities alongside physical ones. How moral excellence too brings immediate happiness I have already explained in my prize essay On the Basis of Morality, § 22, S. 275 (2. Aufl. 272), to which I therefore refer the reader.
Plain English translation
Independent machine-assisted translation from the German, following the 1913 Ernst Ohle edition.
What a person is.
We have already seen in general that this contributes much more to happiness than what a person has or what they represent. What always matters is what someone is, and therefore what they have in themselves. Their individuality accompanies them always and everywhere and colors everything they experience. In everything and through everything, what they immediately enjoy is only themselves. This is true even of physical pleasures, and still more of intellectual ones. So the English expression to enjoy one's self is very apt. For example, people say he enjoys himself at Paris—not "he enjoys Paris," but "he enjoys himself in Paris."—But if someone's individuality is of poor quality, all pleasures are like fine wines in a mouth tainted with bile. So, in good times as in bad, apart from serious disasters, what matters less is what meets and befalls a person in life than how they feel it. It depends on the kind and degree of their receptiveness in every respect. What someone is within and has in themselves—in short, their personality and its value—is the only thing that directly affects their happiness and well-being. Everything else works indirectly, so its effect can be thwarted; the effect of personality never can. That is precisely why envy directed at personal advantages is the most implacable kind, as well as the most carefully concealed. Further, the nature of consciousness alone is lasting and persistent. Individuality works continually, steadily, more or less at every moment. Everything else works only at particular times, occasionally and temporarily, and is itself subject to change as well. That is why Aristotle says: Nature is lasting, not possessions (for nature endures, not wealth). Eth. Eud. VII, 2. This is why we bear a misfortune that has come to us entirely from outside with more composure than one we caused ourselves. Fate can change, but our own nature never can. The subjective goods, then—a noble character, an able mind, a happy temperament, a cheerful spirit, and a well-formed, entirely healthy body, or generally a sound mind in a sound body (Juvenal. Sat. X, 356)—are the first and most important things for our happiness. We should therefore take much more care to develop and preserve them than to possess external goods and external honor.
Of all these qualities, the one that makes us happy most directly is cheerfulness. This good quality is its own immediate reward. Anyone who is cheerful always has a reason to be so: the very fact that they are cheerful. Nothing can replace every other good as completely as this quality can, while nothing can replace it. Suppose someone is young, beautiful, rich, and respected. To judge their happiness, we must ask whether they are cheerful as well. But if they are cheerful, it makes no difference whether they are young or old, straight-backed or hunchbacked, poor or rich: they are happy. In my early youth I once opened an old book and found these words: “Someone who laughs a lot is happy, and someone who cries a lot is unhappy.” This is a very simple-minded remark. Yet its simple truth has kept me from forgetting it, though it is the most extreme example of a truism. For this reason we should open every door to cheerfulness whenever it appears: it never comes at the wrong time. Instead, we often hesitate to let it in. First we want to know whether we really have reason to be satisfied in every respect. Or we fear it will interrupt our serious reflections and important worries. Yet it is very uncertain what these will improve, whereas cheerfulness is an immediate gain. It alone is, so to speak, the ready cash of happiness; everything else is merely a banknote. Only cheerfulness makes us happy directly in the present. That makes it the highest good for beings whose reality takes the form of an indivisible present between two infinite stretches of time. We should therefore put acquiring and fostering this good before every other aim. Now it is certain that nothing contributes less to cheerfulness than wealth, and nothing more than health. Cheerful, contented faces are at home among the lower, working classes, especially those who work the land; disgruntled faces among the rich and distinguished. So above all we should try to preserve that high degree of perfect health of which cheerfulness is the bloom. The means are well known: avoid all excesses and indulgences, all violent or unpleasant emotions, and all excessive or prolonged mental effort; get at least two hours of brisk exercise in the open air every day; take plenty of cold baths, and adopt similar measures in your way of life. Without proper daily exercise, no one can stay healthy. To be performed properly, all life processes require movement, both of the parts in which they take place and of the whole. So Aristotle rightly says: Life consists in movement. Life consists in movement and has its being in it. Throughout the organism's interior, rapid movement goes on without stopping. The heart beats vigorously and tirelessly in its complicated double contraction and expansion. In 28 beats it has driven the entire mass of blood through the whole greater and lesser circulation. The lungs pump without pause like a steam engine. The intestines keep twisting in peristaltic movement. All the glands constantly absorb and secrete. Even the brain has a double movement with every heartbeat and every breath. If outward movement is almost entirely lacking, as it is in the completely sedentary lives of countless people, a glaring and harmful imbalance arises between outward rest and inward turmoil. The continual inward movement actually wants some support from outward movement. This imbalance becomes like the state in which some emotion makes us boil inside, but we are not allowed to show any of it outwardly. Even trees need the movement caused by wind if they are to thrive. Here a rule applies that can be put most briefly in Latin: Every movement is more of a movement the faster it is.—To see how much our happiness depends on a cheerful mood, and that mood on our health, compare the impression the same external conditions or events make on us on a day when we are healthy and vigorous with their effect when ill health has made us irritable and anxious. It is not what things objectively and really are, but what they are for us, in our understanding of them, that makes us happy or unhappy. This is just what Epictetus says: People are disturbed not by things, but by their judgments about things (people are troubled not by things, but by their opinions about things). In general, 9/10 of our happiness rests on health alone. With health, everything becomes a source of pleasure. Without it, no external good of any kind can be enjoyed. Even the other subjective goods—qualities of mind, disposition, and temperament—are subdued and badly impaired by ill health. So it is with good reason that, before anything else, people ask about one another's health and wish one another well. This really is by far the main thing in human happiness. It follows that the greatest of all follies is to sacrifice health for anything whatever: money, advancement, learning, fame, let alone sensual indulgence and fleeting pleasures. Rather, everything should come second to health.
But however much health contributes to the cheerfulness so essential to our happiness, cheerfulness does not depend on health alone. Even with perfect health, a melancholic temperament and a mainly gloomy mood can exist. Their ultimate cause undoubtedly lies in the original and therefore unchangeable constitution of the organism, especially in the more or less normal relation between sensitivity, muscular responsiveness, and the power of replenishing the body. An abnormal excess of sensitivity will produce uneven moods, periods of excessive cheerfulness, and predominant melancholy. Genius too depends on an excess of nervous energy, and thus of sensitivity. So Aristotle quite rightly remarked that all outstanding and superior people are melancholic: All men who have become exceptional in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts appear to be melancholic (Probl. 30, 1). This is undoubtedly the passage Cicero had in mind in his often-quoted statement: Aristotle says that all people of genius are melancholic (Tusc. I, 33). Shakespeare described very nicely the great inborn differences in basic mood that we are considering here:
Nature has made strange people in her time:Some always peer out through their eyes,And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper;Others look so sourThat they will not show their teeth in a smile,Even if Nestor swears the joke deserves a laugh[A].
Merch. of Ven. Sc. I.
[A] Nature has produced strange characters in her time: some who always look cheerfully out of their little eyes and laugh like parrots at a bagpiper, and others with such sour faces that they will not bare their teeth in a smile, even if Nestor himself swore that the joke deserved a laugh.
This is the very difference Plato means by the terms ill-tempered and good-tempered. It can be traced to the very different degrees of receptiveness to pleasant and unpleasant impressions in different people. As a result, one person still laughs at something that drives another almost to despair. As a rule, the stronger the receptiveness to unpleasant impressions, the weaker the receptiveness to pleasant ones, and vice versa. Suppose an undertaking has an equal chance of turning out well or badly. An ill-tempered person will be annoyed or grieved if it turns out badly, but will not be glad if it turns out well. A good-tempered person, on the other hand, will not be annoyed or grieved by the bad outcome, but will be pleased by the good one. If nine out of ten plans succeed for an ill-tempered person, they are not pleased about those nine but annoyed about the one that failed. In the reverse case, a good-tempered person still knows how to find comfort and encouragement in the one success.—But hardly any evil is entirely without compensation. Here too, gloomy and anxious characters will on the whole have more imaginary accidents and sufferings to get through than cheerful, carefree people, but fewer real ones. Someone who sees everything in black, always fears the worst, and takes precautions accordingly, will not have miscalculated as often as someone who always paints things in cheerful colors and sees bright prospects.—When, however, a disorder of the nervous system or digestive organs reinforces an inborn gloomy disposition, it may reach the point where lasting discomfort produces weariness of life and thus a tendency to suicide. The slightest unpleasantness can then bring it about. Indeed, in the worst stages of the condition, even that is unnecessary. Continued discomfort alone leads to a decision to commit suicide. It is then carried out with such cool deliberation and firm resolve that the patient, usually already under supervision, remains intent on it and uses the first unguarded moment to seize this means of relief, now natural and welcome to them, without hesitation, struggle, or shrinking back. Esquirol, On Mental Illnesses, gives detailed descriptions of this condition. Depending on the circumstances, however, even the healthiest and perhaps the most cheerful person may decide to commit suicide: namely, when the magnitude of suffering, or of an inescapably approaching misfortune, overcomes the terrors of death. The difference lies only in the size of the occasion needed to bring it about, which stands in inverse proportion to the gloomy disposition. The greater this disposition, the smaller the occasion can be, until it dwindles to nothing. The greater the good-tempered disposition and the health supporting it, the more the occasion must contain. There are therefore countless gradations between the two extremes of suicide: one arising purely from a diseased intensification of inborn gloom, the other committed by a healthy, cheerful person for wholly objective reasons.
Beauty is partly related to health. This subjective advantage does not really contribute directly to our happiness, but only indirectly, through its impression on others. Still, it is very important, in a man as well. Beauty is an open letter of recommendation that wins people's hearts for us in advance. So Homer's lines apply especially to it:
The gods' glorious gifts are not to be thrown aside,Whatever they themselves give; no one could win them by choice.
The broadest view shows us two enemies of human happiness: pain and boredom. We can also observe that the more successfully we move away from one, the closer we come to the other, and vice versa. Our life really is a more or less vigorous swing between them. This happens because they stand in a double opposition to one another, an outward or objective one and an inward or subjective one. Outwardly, need and deprivation produce pain, while security and abundance produce boredom. Accordingly, we see the lower classes in a constant struggle against need, and thus against pain, while the rich and distinguished are in a continual, often genuinely desperate struggle against boredom. Their inward or subjective opposition rests on this: in an individual, receptiveness to one stands in inverse proportion to receptiveness to the other, since it is determined by the extent of their mental powers. Dullness of mind is consistently joined with dullness of feeling and a lack of sensitivity. This makes someone less receptive to pain and grief of every kind and degree. But the same mental dullness also produces that inner emptiness stamped on countless faces and betrayed by their constantly alert attention to every event, however tiny, in the outside world. This is the real source of boredom, and it always thirsts for outward stimulation to set mind and feelings in motion somehow. It is therefore not choosy about its means. Witness the miserable pastimes people resort to, their manner of socializing and conversation, and the many people standing in doorways or staring out of windows. This inner emptiness is the main source of the craving for company, distraction, amusement, and luxury of every kind that leads many people to extravagance and then misery. Nothing protects against this misery as surely as inner wealth, wealth of mind. The closer this comes to excellence, the less room it leaves for boredom. The inexhaustible activity of thought, its constantly renewed play with the varied appearances of the inner and outer worlds, and the power and drive to make ever-new combinations of them place an outstanding mind entirely beyond the reach of boredom, except in moments of exhaustion. On the other hand, heightened intelligence directly requires heightened sensitivity and is rooted in a greater intensity of will, and thus of passion. Its connection with these produces much stronger emotions of every kind, greater sensitivity to mental and even physical pain, and greater impatience with every obstacle or even mere interruption. The vividness of all ideas, including disagreeable ones, that comes from a powerful imagination contributes greatly to intensifying all this. What has been said applies proportionately to every intermediate stage in the wide space between the dullest fool and the greatest genius. Consequently, subjectively as well as objectively, everyone stands closer to one source of life's sufferings the farther they are from the other. Their natural inclination will accordingly guide them to adapt the objective to the subjective as far as possible in this respect: to take greater precautions against the source of suffering to which they are more receptive. A person with a rich mind will strive above all for freedom from pain and harassment, for peace and leisure. They will therefore seek a quiet, modest life, but one as undisturbed as possible. After some acquaintance with so-called human beings, they will choose retirement, and with a great mind, even solitude. For the more someone has in themselves, the less they need from outside, and the less other people can mean to them. That is why intellectual excellence leads to unsociability. Indeed, if quantity could replace quality in company, it would be worth living even in high society. But unfortunately a hundred fools in a heap still do not make one sensible person.—Someone at the other extreme will seek amusement and company at any price as soon as need allows them to catch their breath. They will readily settle for anything, fleeing nothing so much as themselves. For in solitude, where everyone is thrown back on themselves, it becomes clear what they have in themselves. There the fool in royal purple groans under the unshakable burden of his pitiful individuality, while a highly gifted person peoples and enlivens the most desolate surroundings with thoughts. So Seneca is very right to say: All foolishness suffers from disgust with itself (ep. 9). So is Jesus Sirach when he says: “The fool's life is worse than death.” Accordingly, we will generally find that someone is sociable in proportion to their mental poverty and their overall commonness. For in this world there is little more to choose between than solitude and commonness. Black people are said to be the most sociable of all, just as they are also decidedly inferior intellectually. According to reports from North America in French newspapers (le Commerce, Octbr. 19, 1837), Black people, free people and slaves mixed together, crowd in large numbers into the narrowest space because they cannot see their black, snub-nosed faces repeated often enough.
The brain acts as the parasite or pensioner of the whole organism. Accordingly, the free leisure each person has earned is the fruit and yield of their entire existence, which otherwise consists only of effort and work. It gives them the free enjoyment of their consciousness and individuality. But what does free leisure yield for most people? Boredom and dullness, whenever sensual pleasures or foolish activities are not there to fill it. Their way of spending it shows how utterly worthless it is: it is precisely Ariosto's long idleness of ignorant men. Ordinary people think only of passing the time; anyone with some talent thinks of using it.—Limited minds are so exposed to boredom because their intellect is nothing more than the medium that supplies motives for their will. If for the moment there are no motives to grasp, the will rests and the intellect takes a holiday. Neither becomes active on its own. The result is a dreadful stagnation of every power in the whole person—boredom. To counter this, people put small motives before the will, merely temporary ones adopted at choice. These are meant to excite it and thereby activate the intellect, which has to grasp them. These motives relate to real, natural motives as paper money relates to silver, since their value is arbitrarily agreed on. Such motives are games, with cards and so on, invented for this purpose. If these are unavailable, a limited person helps themselves by rattling or drumming on whatever comes to hand. A cigar too is a welcome substitute for thoughts.—That is why card playing has become the chief occupation of every social gathering in every country. It measures their worth and declares their complete bankruptcy of thought. Having no thoughts to exchange, they exchange cards and try to take each other's guilders. What a miserable race! Yet, so as not to be unjust even here, I will not suppress the thought that one might perhaps offer this excuse for card playing: it is preliminary training for life in the world and in business. It teaches people to make clever use of circumstances unchangeably given by chance—the cards—to get whatever can be got from them. For this purpose, people also learn to keep their composure by putting a cheerful face on a bad hand. But precisely for that reason card playing also has a corrupting effect. The spirit of the game is to win away what belongs to another person by every means, every trick and maneuver. The habit of doing this in play takes root and spreads into practical life. Gradually people come to act in the same way in matters of mine and yours, and to regard every advantage they happen to hold as permissible so long as the law allows it. Civil life supplies examples every day.—As I said, then, free leisure is the flower, or rather the fruit, of each person's existence, since it alone puts them in possession of their own self. Those who then also receive something worthwhile in themselves must be called happy. For the vast majority, by contrast, free leisure yields nothing but a fellow no one can do anything with, terribly bored and a burden to himself. Let us therefore rejoice, “dear brothers, that we are not children of the servant woman, but of the free woman.” (Gal. 4, 31.)
Further, just as the happiest country is the one that needs few or no imports, so the happiest person is one who has enough in their inner wealth and needs little or nothing from outside for entertainment. Such imports cost a great deal, create dependence, bring danger, cause annoyance, and in the end are still only a poor replacement for what grows on one's own soil. We should not expect much in any respect from others, or from outside in general. There are very narrow limits to what one person can be to another. In the end everyone remains alone, and what matters then is who is alone. So Goethe's general observation applies here too (Dicht. u. Wahrh. Bd. 3, S. 474): in all things, each person is finally thrown back on themselves. Or, as Oliver Goldsmith says:
Wherever we are, we are left to ourselves,And make or find our own happiness.
(The Traveller v. 431 sq.)
Everyone must therefore be and provide the best and the greatest part for themselves. The more this amounts to, and the more they consequently find the sources of their pleasure within themselves, the happier they will be. So Aristotle says with perfect justice: Happiness belongs to the self-sufficient (Eth. Eud. VII, 2); in other words, happiness belongs to those who are enough for themselves. All external sources of happiness and pleasure are by their nature extremely uncertain, precarious, passing, and subject to chance. Even under the most favorable circumstances, they can easily fail. Indeed, this is inevitable, since they cannot always be at hand. In old age, almost all of them necessarily dry up. Love, joking, the desire to travel, delight in horses, and fitness for society then leave us. Death even carries off our friends and relatives. More than ever, it then matters what a person has in themselves, for that will hold out the longest. But at every age, too, it is and remains the genuine and only lasting source of happiness. There is not much to be had anywhere in the world. Need and pain fill it, while boredom lurks in every corner for those who have escaped them. Besides, as a rule, wickedness rules it and foolishness does the loudest talking. Fate is cruel and people are pitiful. In a world like this, someone who has much in themselves is like a bright, warm, cheerful Christmas room amid the snow and ice of a December night. So having an excellent, rich individuality, and especially a great deal of intelligence, is undoubtedly the happiest lot on earth, however different it may be from the most dazzling one. That is why Queen Christina of Sweden, at only 19, spoke wisely about Descartes. She then knew him only through one essay and spoken reports, while he had been living in the deepest solitude in Holland for 20 years: Mr. Descartes is the happiest of all men, and his situation seems enviable to me. (Vie de Descartes par Baillet, Liv. VII, ch. 10.) Only, as was also the case with Descartes, outward circumstances must favor a person enough to let them possess themselves and take pleasure in themselves. So even Ecclesiastes (7, 12) says: “Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and helps a person enjoy the sun.” Anyone granted this lot by the favor of nature and fate will guard with anxious care the access to this inner source of happiness. Its conditions are independence and leisure. They will therefore gladly buy these through moderation and thrift, all the more because, unlike others, they do not depend on external sources of pleasure. So the prospect of offices, money, favor, and worldly applause will not tempt them to give themselves up to suit people's low aims or bad taste. If the case arises, they will act like Horace in the letter to Maecenas (Lib. I, ep. 7). It is very foolish to lose inwardly in order to gain outwardly: to give up all or most of one's peace, leisure, and independence for brilliance, rank, splendor, titles, and honor. Yet Goethe did this. My guiding genius has firmly drawn me in the other direction.
The truth discussed here—that the main source of human happiness springs from within—is also confirmed by Aristotle's very sound observation in the Nicomachean Ethics (I, 7; et VII, 13, 14). Every pleasure presupposes some activity, and thus the exercise of some power, and cannot exist without it. Stobaeus too repeats this Aristotelian teaching, that a person's happiness consists in the unobstructed exercise of their outstanding ability, in his account of Peripatetic ethics (Ecl. eth. II, c. 7, p. 268-278). For example: Happiness is activity in accordance with excellence, in actions that proceed as desired (happiness is the exercise of excellence through successful actions). He also explains that excellence means mastery of any kind. Now the original purpose of the powers with which nature has equipped human beings is the struggle against need, which presses on them from every side. But when this struggle pauses, their unoccupied powers become a burden. They must now play with them, that is, use them without a purpose. Otherwise they immediately fall prey to the other source of human suffering, boredom. It therefore torments the great and rich above all. Lucretius already gave a description of their misery whose accuracy we still have daily opportunities to recognize in every large city:
Often he goes out from his great house,Weary of being home, then suddenly returns,Since he finds things no better outside.He races his ponies headlong to his country house,As if rushing to help put out a house fire:At once he yawns as he reaches its doorway,Or falls heavily asleep and seeks oblivion,Or hurries back to visit the city again.
III, 1073.
In youth these gentlemen must rely on muscular and sexual powers. Later, however, only mental powers remain. If these are lacking, or have not been developed and supplied with accumulated material to work on, their misery is great. Since the will is the only inexhaustible power, they now stimulate it by exciting the passions, for example through high-stakes gambling, that truly degrading vice.—In general, every unoccupied individual will choose a game to employ the kind of powers that predominate in them: perhaps bowling or chess, hunting or painting, horse racing or music, card playing or poetry, heraldry or philosophy, and so on. We can even examine the matter systematically by going back to the root of all expressions of human power: the three basic physiological powers. Here we must consider them in their purposeless play. They appear as the sources of three kinds of possible enjoyment, from which each person will choose what suits them according to which of these powers predominates. First, then, the pleasures of the power of bodily replenishment: eating, drinking, digesting, resting, and sleeping. Other peoples even give whole nations credit for these as their national enjoyments. Second, the pleasures of muscular responsiveness: walking, jumping, wrestling, dancing, fencing, riding, and athletic games of every kind, as well as hunting and even combat and war. Third, the pleasures of sensitivity: looking, thinking, feeling, writing poetry, creating visual art, making music, learning, reading, meditating, inventing, philosophizing, and so on.—Many reflections could be made on the value, degree, and duration of each kind of pleasure; I leave them to the reader. But everyone will see that our enjoyment, which always depends on using our own powers, and therefore our happiness, which consists in the frequent return of that enjoyment, will be greater the nobler the power on which it depends. Nor will anyone deny the superiority in this respect of sensitivity over the other two basic physiological powers. Its decisive predominance is what distinguishes human beings from the other animal species, whereas animals possess the other two powers to an equal or even greater degree. Our powers of knowledge belong to sensitivity. Its predominance therefore enables us to enjoy pleasures consisting in knowing, the so-called intellectual pleasures, and these will be greater the more decisive that predominance is[B]. An ordinary, normal person can take a lively interest in something only if it excites their will, and thus has a personal interest for them. But every lasting excitement of the will is at least mixed in character, and thus involves pain. A deliberate means of exciting it is card playing, the universal occupation of “good society” everywhere. It does so through interests so small that they can cause only momentary, slight pain, not lasting, serious pain. They can therefore be regarded as a mere tickling of the will[C].—Someone whose mental powers predominate, on the other hand, is capable of the liveliest interest through knowledge alone, without any involvement of the will. Indeed, they need it. This interest then places them in a region where pain is essentially unknown, as if in the atmosphere of the gods who live at ease, the gods who live easily. The lives of others, meanwhile, pass in dullness. All their thoughts and efforts are directed at the petty interests of their personal welfare, and through these at miseries of every kind. So intolerable boredom overtakes them as soon as their occupation with those aims comes to a halt and they are thrown back on themselves. Only the wild fire of passion can bring some movement into the stagnant mass. By contrast, someone equipped with predominant mental powers has an existence rich in thought, lively and meaningful throughout. Worthy and interesting subjects occupy them as soon as they can give themselves over to them, and they carry within themselves a source of the noblest pleasures. External stimulation comes from the works of nature and the sight of human activity, and then from the very varied achievements of the highly gifted in every age and country. Only they can really enjoy these fully, because only they can fully understand and feel them. It was therefore really for them that those people lived; it was really to them that they spoke. The rest, merely accidental listeners, half-grasp one thing or another. Admittedly, all this gives such a person one more need than other people: the need to learn, see, study, meditate, and practice, and consequently the need for free leisure. But, as Voltaire rightly remarks, there are no real pleasures without real needs. This need is therefore the condition that opens pleasures to them that remain closed to others. For those others, the beauties of nature and art and intellectual works of every kind, even if they heap them up around themselves, are fundamentally only what courtesans are to an old man. As a result, a person so favored leads a second, intellectual life alongside their personal life. Gradually this becomes their real purpose, and they see the first life only as a means to it. Others must regard their dull, empty, and troubled existence itself as their purpose. The intellectual life will therefore occupy such a person above all. Through the continual growth of insight and knowledge, it acquires coherence, a steady development, a wholeness and perfection becoming more and more rounded, like a work of art taking shape. The merely practical lives of others, aimed only at personal welfare and capable only of increasing in length, not in depth, stand in sad contrast. Yet, as I said, these lives must count for them as ends in themselves, while for the intellectual person such a life is only a means.
[B] Nature continually rises higher: first from the mechanical and chemical activity of the inorganic world to plant life and its dim enjoyment of itself; from there to the animal kingdom, where intelligence and consciousness dawn. These then rise step by step from weak beginnings until, through the last and greatest step, nature reaches the human being. In the human intellect, then, nature reaches the highest point and goal of its productions. It supplies the most perfect and difficult thing it can bring forth. But even within the human species, the intellect has many marked gradations, and very rarely reaches the highest, truly great intelligence. In the narrower and stricter sense, this is therefore nature's most difficult and highest product, and thus the rarest and most valuable thing the world has to show. In such an intelligence, the clearest consciousness appears, and the world is accordingly presented more distinctly and completely than anywhere else. A person endowed with it therefore possesses the noblest and most precious thing on earth, and with it a source of pleasures beside which all the others are small. They need nothing further from outside but the leisure to enjoy this possession undisturbed and to polish their diamond. For all other, nonintellectual pleasures are of a lower kind. They all come down to movements of the will: wishing, hoping, fearing, and attaining, whatever the object may be. These can never occur without pain. Besides, attainment generally brings more or less disappointment, whereas in intellectual pleasures truth becomes ever clearer. No pain rules in the realm of intelligence; everything there is knowledge. But all intellectual pleasures are accessible to each person only through, and thus in proportion to, their own intelligence. For all the intelligence in the world is useless to someone who has none. One real disadvantage that accompanies this superiority is that throughout nature the capacity for pain increases with the degree of intelligence. So here too it reaches its highest level.
[C] Vulgarity consists basically in willing completely outweighing knowing in consciousness. This reaches the point where knowing occurs only in the service of the will. Where that service does not call for it—where no motives, large or small, are present—knowing stops entirely, and a complete emptiness of thought results. But willing without knowing is the commonest thing there is. Every block of wood has it and shows it at least when it falls. That is why this condition constitutes vulgarity. In it, only the sense organs and the slight activity of understanding needed to grasp their data remain active. As a result, a vulgar person is constantly open to all impressions and instantly notices everything happening around them. The faintest sound and every circumstance, however trivial, immediately catch their attention, just as with animals. This whole state becomes visible in their face and entire appearance. It produces the vulgar look, whose impression is all the more repulsive when, as is usually the case, the will that alone fills consciousness here is low, selfish, and generally bad.
Our practical, actual life is boring and dull when passions do not move it. But when they do move it, it soon becomes painful. So only those are happy who have received some surplus of intellect beyond what is needed to serve their will. With it, they lead an intellectual life alongside their actual one. This constantly occupies and entertains them in a painless yet lively way. Mere leisure—an intellect unoccupied in the service of the will—is not enough for this. A real surplus of power is required. Only this enables a purely intellectual activity that does not serve the will. Otherwise, leisure without learning is death and the burial of a living person (Sen. ep. 82). Depending on whether this surplus is small or large, there are countless gradations of the intellectual life that can be led alongside actual life. They range from merely collecting and describing insects, birds, minerals, and coins to the highest achievements of poetry and philosophy. Such an intellectual life protects not only against boredom but against its destructive consequences too. It becomes a defense against bad company and the many dangers, misfortunes, losses, and extravagances that people fall into when they seek their happiness entirely in the actual world. For example, my philosophy has never earned me anything, but it has saved me a great deal.
The ordinary person, on the other hand, depends for enjoyment of life on things outside themselves: possessions, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and so on. Their happiness in life rests on these. So it collapses when they lose them or find themselves deceived in them. To express this relationship, we can say that their center of gravity lies outside themselves. This is also why their wishes and whims constantly change. If their means allow it, they will buy country houses one time and horses another, give parties at one time and travel at another. In general, they will indulge in great luxury, precisely because they seek satisfaction from outside in things of every kind. They are like a weakened person hoping to gain health and strength from consommés and drugs from the pharmacy, when their true source is the body's own vitality. Now, without going straight to the other extreme, let us place beside them someone whose mental powers are not exactly outstanding, but do exceed the ordinary scant measure. We may see this person practicing some fine art as an amateur, or pursuing an empirical science such as botany, mineralogy, physics, astronomy, history, and the like. They soon find a large part of their enjoyment in this, refreshing themselves with it when those external sources fail or no longer satisfy. To that extent we can say that their center of gravity already lies partly within themselves. But mere amateur practice in art is still very far from creative ability. And purely empirical sciences stop at the relations of appearances to one another. So the whole person cannot be absorbed in them; they cannot fill the person's whole being down to its depths. Their existence therefore cannot become so interwoven with these pursuits that they lose interest in everything else. This is reserved for the highest intellectual excellence alone, which people usually call genius. Only genius takes the existence and nature of things as a whole and in an absolute sense for its subject. According to its individual direction, it will then try to express its deep understanding of this through art, poetry, or philosophy. So only for a person of this kind is undisturbed occupation with themselves, their thoughts, and their works an urgent need. Solitude is welcome, free leisure the highest good, and everything else dispensable—indeed, when present, often merely a burden. Only of such a person, therefore, can we say that their center of gravity lies entirely within them. This even explains why the extremely rare people of this kind, despite the best of characters, still do not show that intimate and boundless concern for friends, family, and community of which some others are capable. Ultimately, they can find consolation for everything, as long as they still have themselves. So they have one more isolating element within them. It is all the more effective because others can never really satisfy them completely. They therefore cannot see others as wholly their equals. Indeed, since they always feel the difference in every detail, they gradually get used to moving among people as beings of another kind, and in their thoughts about them to using the third-person plural rather than the first.—
From this point of view, someone whom nature has richly endowed intellectually now appears the happiest. For the subjective is certainly closer to us than the objective, whose effect, whatever it may be, is always mediated by the subjective and is thus only secondary. This is also confirmed by the fine lines:
The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth;Other riches bring more trouble than they are worth.
Lucian in Anthol. I, 67.
A person with such inner wealth needs nothing more from outside than a negative gift: free leisure, so they can cultivate and develop their mental abilities and enjoy their inner wealth. Really, then, they need only permission to be wholly themselves every day and every hour throughout their life. If someone is destined to leave the imprint of their mind on the entire human race, only one thing means happiness or unhappiness to them: being able to develop their abilities fully and complete their works—or being prevented from doing so. Everything else is trivial to them. Accordingly, we see the great minds of every age place the very highest value on free leisure. For each person's free leisure is worth as much as they themselves are worth. Happiness seems to lie in leisure (happiness appears to be situated in leisure), says Aristotle (Eth. Nic. X, 7). And Diogenes Laertius (II, 5, 31) reports that Socrates praised leisure as the finest of possessions (Socrates praised leisure as the finest of all possessions). It also fits with this that Aristotle (Eth. Nic. X, 7, 8, 9) declares the philosophical life the happiest. Even his statement in the Politics (IV, 11) belongs here: The happy life is one of unimpeded excellence. Translated fully, this means: “To be able to exercise one's excellence without hindrance, whatever kind it may be, is true happiness.” This therefore agrees with Goethe's statement in Wilhelm Meister: “Whoever is born with a talent, for a talent, finds their finest existence in it.”—But possessing free leisure is foreign not only to the ordinary human lot but also to ordinary human nature. Our natural calling is to spend our time obtaining what is necessary for our own and our family's existence. We are children of need, not free intelligences. Accordingly, free leisure soon becomes a burden, and finally a torment, to the ordinary person, unless they can fill it with all kinds of artificial and invented aims: games, pastimes, and hobbies of every sort. For the same reason it also brings danger, since it is rightly said that it is difficult to stay quiet in leisure. On the other hand, an intellect far exceeding the normal measure is likewise abnormal, and thus unnatural. Yet if one does occur, the happiness of the person endowed with it requires precisely that free leisure which is sometimes burdensome and sometimes harmful to others. Without it, they will be a Pegasus in harness, and therefore unhappy. But when both unnatural conditions, the outer and the inner, come together, it is a great stroke of luck. The person so favored will now lead a higher kind of life, exempt from the two opposing sources of human suffering: need and boredom, or anxious labor for existence and the inability to bear leisure—that is, free existence itself. Otherwise, people escape these two evils only because the evils themselves neutralize and cancel one another.
Against all this, however, we must consider the other side. Great mental gifts, through the predominance of nervous activity, produce an enormously heightened sensitivity to pain in every form. Further, the passionate temperament on which they depend, together with the greater vividness and completeness of all ideas inseparable from them, makes the emotions aroused by these ideas incomparably more intense. Yet in general there are more painful emotions than pleasant ones. Finally, great mental gifts estrange their owner from other people and their activities: the more someone has in themselves, the less they can find in others. A hundred things that give others great satisfaction are dull and unenjoyable to them. So perhaps the law of compensation, which asserts itself everywhere, remains in force here as well. It has even been claimed often enough, and not without apparent grounds, that the most intellectually limited person is fundamentally the happiest, though no one would envy them this happiness. I am all the less willing to anticipate the reader's final decision on the question because even Sophocles made two directly opposite statements about it:
Wisdom is by far the foremost part of happiness.(Being wise is by far the first part of happiness.)
Antig. 1328.
and again:
Life is sweetest when you think of nothing.(The life of those who think nothing is the most pleasant.)
Ajax. 550.
The philosophers of the Old Testament disagree just as much.
“The fool's life is worse than death!”(For the fool's life is more wretched than death.)
Jes. Sir. 22, 12.
and
“Where there is much wisdom, there is much grief.”(Whoever adds knowledge will add pain.)
Kohel. 1, 18.
Still, I do not want to leave unmentioned here that the person who has no intellectual needs because their mental powers are strictly and barely of the normal measure is precisely what a term unique to German calls a philistine. The expression originated in student life. Later it was used in a higher sense, though still one resembling its original meaning through its contrast with a follower of the Muses. For this person is and remains a man without the Muses. From a higher standpoint, I would indeed define philistines as people who are continually and most seriously occupied with a reality that is not real. But such a definition, already transcendental, would not suit the popular standpoint I have adopted in this essay. Perhaps not every reader would fully understand it either. The first definition, by contrast, is easier to explain in detail and sufficiently identifies the essential point, the root of all the qualities that characterize the philistine. He is, then, a person without intellectual needs. Many things follow from this. First, as regards himself, he has no intellectual pleasures, according to the principle already mentioned: there are no real pleasures without real needs. No drive toward knowledge and insight for their own sake gives life to his existence. Nor does a drive toward truly aesthetic pleasures, which is closely related to the first. If fashion or authority nevertheless forces any pleasures of this kind on him, he will get them over with as quickly as possible, like forced labor. Only sensual pleasures are real pleasures for him; he compensates himself with these. So oysters and champagne are the high point of his existence, and the purpose of his life is to obtain everything that contributes to bodily comfort. Lucky for him if that takes plenty of work! For if these goods have already been bestowed on him, he inevitably falls prey to boredom. Against it, he then tries everything imaginable: balls, theater, company, card playing, gambling, horses, women, drinking, travel, and so on. Yet all this is not enough to combat boredom where the lack of intellectual needs makes intellectual pleasures impossible. That is why a dull, dry seriousness, approaching that of an animal, is a distinctive characteristic of the philistine. Nothing delights him, nothing excites him, nothing wins his interest. Sensual pleasures are soon exhausted; company, consisting of just such philistines, soon becomes boring; card playing finally becomes tiring. At most, he still has the pleasures of vanity in his own way. These consist in surpassing others in wealth or rank, or in influence and power, for which they then honor him. Or at least he associates with those who excel in these things and so basks in their reflected brilliance (a snob).—Second, as regards others, the basic quality of the philistine just established has this consequence: since he has no intellectual needs, only physical ones, he will seek someone capable of satisfying the latter, not the former. Outstanding mental abilities will therefore be the very last thing he demands of others. Rather, if he encounters such abilities, they will arouse his aversion, even his hatred. He feels only an unpleasant sense of inferiority, along with a dull, secret envy. He hides this most carefully, even trying to conceal it from himself, but precisely for that reason it sometimes grows into a quiet fury. So it will never occur to him to measure his esteem or respect by such qualities. He reserves these exclusively for rank and wealth, power and influence, which in his eyes are the only true advantages, and the ones in which he too would like to excel.—But all this follows from his being a person without intellectual needs. The great suffering of all philistines is that things of the mind give them no entertainment. To escape boredom, they always need actual things. These, however, are in part soon exhausted, and then tire rather than entertain; in part they bring misfortune of every kind. Things of the mind, by contrast, are inexhaustible and in themselves innocent and harmless.
Throughout this discussion of the personal qualities that contribute to our happiness, I have chiefly considered the intellectual ones after the physical ones. As for how moral excellence too makes us happy directly, I have already explained this in my prize essay on the foundation of morality, § 22, S. 275 (2. Aufl. 272), to which I therefore refer the reader.
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Chapter 2 is part of Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life by Arthur Schopenhauer. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is chapter 3 of 7 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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