On the Wisdom of Life Aphorisms by Arthur SCHOPENHAUER | Psychology, Self-help | FULL AudioBook

section nine of the art of controversy this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by carl manchester 2010 the art of controversy by arthur schopenhauer on the wisdom of life aphorisms the simple Philistine believes that life is something infinite and unconditioned and tries to look upon it and live it as though it left nothing to be desired by method and principle the learned Philistine does the same he believes that his methods and his principles are unconditionally perfect and objectively valid so that as soon as he has found them he has nothing to do but apply them to circumstances and then approve or condemn but happiness and truth and not to be seized in this fashion it is phantoms of them alone that are sent to us here to stir us to action the average man pursues the shadow of happiness with unwearied labor and the thinker the shadow of truth and both though phantoms are all they have possess in them as much as they can grasp life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us could we learn them in some other way we should not live thus it is that wise sayings and Prudential Maxim's will never make up for the lack of experience or be a substitute for life itself still they are not to be despised for they too are a part of life nay they should be highly esteemed and regarded as the loose pages which others have copied from the book of truth as it is imparted by the spirits of the world but they are pages which must needs be imperfect and could never replace the real living voice still less can this be so when we reflect that life or the book of truth speaks differently to us all like the apostles who preached at Pentecost and instructed the multitude appearing to each man to speak in his own tongue recognize the truth in yourself recognize yourself in the true and in the same moment she will find to your astonishment that the home which you have long been looking for in vain which has filled your most ardent dreams is there in its entirety with every detail of it true in the very place where you stand it is there that your heaven touches your earth what makes us almost inevitably ridiculous is our serious way of treating the passing moment as though it necessarily had all the importance which it seems to have it is only a few great minds that are above this weakness and instead of being laughed at have come to laugh themselves the bright and good moments of our life or to teach us how to act or write when we are melancholy and dull and stupid by preserving the memory of their results and the melancholy dull and stupid moments should teach us to be modest when we are bright for we generally value ourselves according to our best and brightest moments and those in which we are weak and dull and miserable we regard as no proper part of us to remember them will teach us to be modest humble and tolerant mark my words once for all my dear friend and be clever men are entirely self-centered and incapable of looking at things objectively if you had a dog and wanted to make him fond of you and fancied that of your hundred rare and excellent characteristics the mongrel would be sure to perceive one and that that would be sufficient to make him devoted to you body and soul if I say you fancied that you would be a fool pass him give him something to eat and for the rest be what you please he will not in the least care but will be your faithful and devoted dog now believe me it is just the same with men exactly the same as Goethe says man or dog it is a miserable wretch den ein urbanely sure sure so v-day a mensch is stea hunt if you ask why these contemptible fellows are so lucky it is just because in themselves and for themselves and to themselves they nothing at all the value which they possess is merely comparative they exist only for others they are never more than means they are never an end and object in themselves they are mere bait set to catch others footnote all this is very euphemistically expressed in the sophoclean verse cherish cheran guests in ha tick tous IE n footnote i do not admit that this rule is susceptible of any exception that is to say complete exceptions there are it is true men though they are sufficiently rare who enjoy some subjective moments nay there are perhaps some who for every hundred subjective moments enjoy a few that are objective but a higher state of perfection scarcely ever occurs but do not take yourself for an exception examine your love your friendship and consider if your objective judgments are not mostly subjective judgments in disguise consider if you Julie recognize the good qualities of a man who is not fond of you then be tolerant confound it it is your duty as you are so self-centered recognize your own weakness you know that you cannot like a man who does not show himself friendly to you you know that he cannot do so for any length of time unless he likes you and that he cannot like you unless you show that you are friendly to him then do it your false friendliness will gradually become a true one your own weakness and subjectivity must have some illusion this is really an a priori justification of politeness but I could give a still deeper reason for it consider that chance which with error its brother and folly its arms and malice its grandmother rules in this world which every year and every day by blows great and small embitters the life of every son of earth and yours to consider I say that it is to this wicked power that you owe your prosperity and independence for it gave you what it refused to many thousands just to be able to give it to individuals like you remembering all this you will not behave as though you had a right to the possession of its gifts but you will perceive what a capricious mistress it is that gives you her favors and therefore when she takes it into our head to deprive you of some or all of them you will not make a great fuss about her injustice but you will recognize that what chance gave chance has taken away if needs be you will observe that this power is not quite so favorable to you as she seemed to be hitherto why she might have disposed not only of what she gave you but also of your honest and hard-earned gains but if chance still remains so favourable to you as to give you more than almost all others whose path in life you may care to examine I'll be happy do not struggle for the possession of her presence employ them properly look upon them as property held from a capricious Lord use them wisely and well the Aristotelian principle of keeping the mean in all things is ill-suited to the moral law for which it was intended but it may easily be the best general rule of worldly wisdom the best precept for a happy life for life is so full of uncertainty there are on all sides so many discomforts burdens sufferings dangers that a safe and happy voyage can be accomplished only by steering carefully through the rocks as a rule the fear of the ills we know drivers in to the contrary ills the pain of solitude for example Dreiser's into society and the first society that comes the discomforts of society drivers into solitude we exchange a forbidding demeanor for in cautious confidence and so on it is ever the mark of folly to avoid one vice by rushing into its contrary Stolte Dom vite and vitia in contrary occurrence or else we think that we shall find satisfaction in something and spend all our efforts on it thereby we are met to provide for the satisfaction of a hundred other wishes which make themselves felt at their own time one loss and omission follows another and there is no end to the misery Maidan again and nil ad murari are therefore excellent rules of worldly wisdom we often find that people of great experience are the most frank and cordial in their intercourse with complete strangers in whom they have no interest whatever the reason of this is that men of experience know that it is almost impossible for people who stand in any source of mutual relation to be sincere and open with one another but that there is always more or less of a strain between them due to the fact that they are looking after their own interests whether immediate or remote they regret the fact but they know that it is so hence they leave their own people rush into the arms of a complete stranger and in happy confidence open their hearts to him thus it is that monks and the like who have given up the world and are strangers to it of such good people to turn to for advice it is only by practicing mutual restraint in self-denial that we can act and talk with other people and therefore if we have to converse at all it can only be with a feeling of resignation for if we seek society it is because we want fresh impressions these come from without and are therefore foreign to ourselves if a man fails to perceive this and when he seeks the Society of others is unwilling to practice resignation and absolutely refuses to deny himself nay demands that others who are altogether different from himself shall nevertheless be just what he wants them to be for the moments according to the degree of education which he has reached or according to his intellectual powers or his mood the man I say who does this is in contradiction with himself for while he wants someone who shall be different from himself and wants him just because he is different for the sake of society and fresh influence he nevertheless demands that this other individual shall precisely resembled the imaginary creature who records with his mood and have no thoughts but those which he has himself women are very liable to subjectivity of this kind but men are not free from it either I observed once to Goethe in complaining of the illusion and vanity of life that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away he replied yes because the absent friend is yourself and he exists only in your head where is the friend who is present has an individuality of his own and moves according to laws of his own which cannot always be in accordance with those which you formed for yourself a good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life it is a supply which we shall have to extract from disappointed hopes and as sooner we do it the better for the rest of the journey how should a man be content so long as he fails to obtain complete unity in his inmost being for as long as two voices alternately speak to him what is right for one must be wrong for the other thus he is always complaining but has any man ever been completely at one with himself nay is not the very thought a contradiction for that a man shall attain this inner unity is the impossible and inconsistent pretension put forward by almost all philosophers footnote or dactyl I set profit ers Summum bonum sa anomie Concord e'en Seneca and footnote for as a man it is natural to him to be at war with himself as long as he lives while he can be only one thing thoroughly he has all the disposition to be everything else and the inalienable possibility of being it he has made his choice of one thing and the other possibilities are always open to him and are constantly claiming to be realized and he has therefore to be continuously keeping them back and to be overpowering and killing them as long as he wants to be that one thing for example if he wants to think only and not act and do business the disposition to the latter is not thereby destroyed all at once but as long as the thinker lives he has every hour to keep on killing the acting and pushing man that is within him always battling with himself as though he were a monster whose head is no soon as struck often it grows again in the same way if he is resolved to be a saint he must kill himself so far as he is a being that enjoys and is given over to pleasure for such he remains as long as he lives it is not once for all that he must kill himself he must keep doing it all his life if he has resolved upon pleasure whatever be the way in which it is to be obtained his lifelong struggle is with a being that desires to be pure and free and holy for the disposition remains and he has to kill it every hour and so on in everything with infinite modifications it is now one side of him and now the other that conquers he himself is the battlefield if one side of him is continually conquering the other is continually struggling for its life is bound up with his own and as a man he is the possibility of many contradictions how is in a unity even possible under such circumstances it exists neither in the saint nor in the sinner or rather the truth is that no man is wholly one or the other for it is men that they have to be that is luckless beings fighters and gladiators in the arena of life to be sure the best thing he can do is to recognize which part of him smarts the most and to defeat and let it always gain the victory this he will always be able to do by the use of his reason which is an ever-present fund of ideas let him resolve of his own free will to undergo the pain which the defeat of the other part involves this is character for the battle of life cannot be waged free from all pain it cannot come to an end without bloodshed and in any case a man must suffer pain for he is the conquered as well as the Conqueror Hayek asked the vendee conditi oh the clever man when he converses will think less of what he is saying that of the person with whom he is speaking for then he is sure to say nothing which he will afterwards regret he is sure not to lay himself open nor to commit an indiscretion but his conversation will never be particularly interesting an intellectual man readily does the opposite and with him the person with whom he converses is often no more than the mere occasion of a monologue and it often happens that the other then makes up for his subordinate role by lying in wait for the man of intellect and drawing his secrets out of him nothing betrays less knowledge of humanity than to support that if a man has a great many friends it is a proof of merit and intrinsic value as though men gave their friendship according to value and merit as though they were not rather just like dogs which love the person that pats them and gives them bits of meat and never trouble themselves about anything else the man who understands how to pat his fellows best though they be the nastiest brutes that's the man who has many friends it is the converse that is true men of great intellectual worth or still more men of genius can only have very few friends for their clear I soon discovers all defects and their sense of rectitude is always being outraged afresh by the extent and horror of them it is only extreme necessity that compels such men not to betray their feelings or even to stroke the defects as if they were beautiful additions personal love for we're not speaking of the reverence which is gained by Authority cannot be won by a man of genius unless the gods have endowed him with an indestructible cheerfulness of temper a glance that makes the world look beautiful or unless he has succeeded by degrees in taking men exactly as they are that is to say in making a fool of the fools as is right and proper on the heights we must expect to be solitary our constant discontent is for the most part rooted in the impulse of self-preservation this passes into a kind of selfishness and makes a duty out of the maxim that we should always fix our minds upon what we'd lack so that we may endeavour to procure it thus it is that we are always intent on finding out what we want and on thinking of it but that Maxim allows us to overlook undisturbed the things which we already possess and so as soon as we have obtained anything we give it much less attention than before we seldom think of what we have but always of what we'd lack this maxim of egoism which has indeed its advantages in procuring the means to the end in view itself concurrently destroys the ultimate end namely contentment like the bear in the fable that throws a stone the hermit's are killed a fly on his nose we ought to wait until need and privation announced themselves instead of looking for them minds that are naturally content do this while hyper Congress do the reverse a man's nature is in harmony with itself when he desires to be nothing but what he is that is to say when he has attained by experience and knowledge of his strength and of his weakness instead of playing with false coin and trying to show a strength which he does not possess it is a harmony which produces an agreeable and rational character and for the simple reason that everything which makes the man and gives him his mental and physical qualities is nothing but the manifestation of his will is in fact what He wills therefore it is the greatest of all inconsistencies to wish to be other than we are people of a strange and curious temperament can be happy only under strange circumstances such as suit their nature in the same way as ordinary circumstances suit the ordinary man and such circumstances can arise only in some extraordinary way they happen to meet with strange people of a character difference indeed but still exactly suited to their own that is why men of rare or strange qualities are seldom happy all this pleasure is derived from the use and consciousness of power and the greatest of pains that a man can feel is to perceive that his powers fail just when he wants to use them therefore it will be advantageous for every man to discover what powers he possesses and what powers he lacks let him then develop the powers in which he is preeminent and make a strong use of them let him pursue the path where they will avail him and even though he has to conquer his inclinations let him avoid the path where such powers are requisite as he possesses only in a low degree in this way he will often have a pleasant consciousness of strength and seldom a painful consciousness of weakness and it will go well with him but if he lets himself be drawn into efforts demanding a kind of strength quite different from that in which he is preeminent he will experience humiliation and this is perhaps the most painful feeling with which a man can be afflicted yet there are two sides to everything the man who has insufficient self-confidence in a sphere where he has little power and is never ready to make a venture where on the one hand not even learned how to use the little power that he has and on the other in a sphere in which he would at least be able to achieve something there will be a complete absence of effort and consequently of pleasure this is always hard to bear for a man can never draw a complete blank in any department of human welfare without feeling some pain as a child one has no conception of the inexorable character of the laws of nature and the stubborn way in which everything persists in remaining what it is the child believes that even lifeless things are disposed to yield to it perhaps because it feels itself one with nature or from the mere acquaintance with the world believes that nature is disposed to be friendly thus it was that when I was a child and had thrown my shoe into a large vessel full of milk I was discovered in treating the shoe to jump out nor is a child on its guard against animals until it learns that they are ill natured and spiteful but not before we have gained mature experience did we recognize that human character is unalterable that no end treaty or representation or example or benefit will bring a man to give up his ways but that on the contrary every man is compelled to follow his own mode of acting and thinking with the necessity of a law of nature and that however we take him he always remains the same it is only after we have obtained a clear and profound knowledge of this fact that we give up trying to persuade people also alter them and bring them round to our way of thinking we try to accommodate ourselves to theirs instead so far as they are indispensable to us and to keep away from them so far as we cannot possibly agree ultimately we come to perceive that even in matters of mere intellect although its laws are the same for all and the subject as opposed to the object of thought does not really enter into individuality there is nevertheless no certainty that the whole truth of any matter can be communicated to anyone or that anyone can be persuaded or compelled to assent to it because as bacon says intellectus humanness luminous sickie na nest the light of human intellect is colored by interest and passion it is just because all happiness is of a negative character that when we succeed in being perfectly at our ease we are not properly conscious of it everything seems to pass us softly and gently and hardly to touch us until the moment is over and then it is the positive feeling of something lacking that tells us of the happiness which has vanished it is then that we observe that we have failed to hold it fast and we suffer the pangs of self-reproach as well as of privation every happiness that a man enjoys and almost every friendship that he cherishes rest upon illusion for his a rule with increase of knowledge they are bound to vanish nevertheless here as everywhere a man should courageously pursue truth and never weary of striving to settle accounts with himself in the world no matter what happens to the right or to the left of him be it a shy Meera or fancy that makes him happy let him take heart and go on with no fear of the desert which widens to his view of one thing only must he be quite certain that under no circumstances will he discover any lack of worth in himself when the veil is raised the sight of it would be the Gorgon that would kill him therefore if he wants to remain undeceived let him in his inmost being feel his own worth for to feel the lack of it is not merely the greatest but also the only true affliction all other sufferings of the mind may not only be healed but may be immediately relieved by the secure consciousness of worth the man who is assured of it can sit down quietly under sufferings that would otherwise bring him to despair and though he has no pleasures no joys and no friends he can rest in and on himself so powerful is the comfort to be derived from a vivid consciousness of this advantage a comfort to be preferred to every other earthly blessing contrarily nothing in the world can relieve a man who knows his own worthlessness all that he can do is to conceal it by deceiving people or deafening them with his noise but neither expedient will serve him very long we must always try to preserve large views if we are arrested by details we shall get confused and see things awry the success or the failures of the moment and the impression that they make should count for nothing translators note Schopenhauer for some reason that is not apparent wrote this remarking and note how difficult it is to learn to understand oneself and clearly to recognize what it is that one wants before anything else what it is therefore that is most immediately necessary to our happiness then what comes next and what takes the third and the fourth place and so on yet without this knowledge our life is plan 'less like a captain without a compass the sublime melancholy which leads us to cherish a lively conviction of the worthlessness of everything of all pleasures and of all mankind and therefore to long for nothing but to feel that life is merely a burden which must be borne to an end that cannot be very distant is a much happier state of mind than any condition of desire which be it never so cheerful would have as place a value on the illusions of the world and strive to attain them this is a fact which we learn from experience and it is clear a priori that one of these is a condition of illusion and the other of knowledge whether it is better to marry or not to marry is a question which in very many cases amounts to this are the cares of love more endurable than the anxieties of a livelihood marriage is a trap which nature sets for us translators note also in French and Note poets and philosophers who are married men incurred by that very fact the suspicion that they are looking to their own welfare and not to the interests of science and art habit is everything hence to be calm and unruffled is merely to anticipate a habit and it is a great advantage not to need to form it quote personality is the element of the greatest happiness end quote since pain and boredom are the two chief enemies of human happiness Nature has provided our personality with a protection against both we can ward off pain which is more often of the mind than of the body by cheerfulness and boredom by intelligence but neither of these is akin to the other nay in any high degree they are perhaps incompatible as Aristotle remarks genius is allied to melancholy and people of very cheerful disposition are only intelligent on the surface the better therefore anyone is by nature armed against one of these evils the worse as a rule is he armed against the other there is no human life that is free from pain and boredom and it is a special favor on the part of fate if a man is chiefly exposed to the evil against which Nature has armed him the better if fate that is sends a great deal of pain where there is a very cheerful temper in which to bear it and much leisure where there is much intelligence but not vice-versa for if a man is intelligent he feels pain ee or trebly and a cheerful but unintellectual temper find solitude and unoccupied leisure altogether unendurable in the sphere of thought absurdity and perversity remain the masters of this world and their Dominion is suspended only for brief periods nor is it otherwise in art for their genuine work seldom found and still more seldom appreciated is again and again driven out by dullness insipidity and affectation it is just the same in the sphere of action most men says bias are bad virtue is a stranger in this world and boundless egoism cunning and malice were always the order of the day it is wrong to deceive the young on this point fruit will only make them feel later on that their teachers were the first to deceive them if the object is to render the pupil a better man by telling him that others are excellent it fails and it would be more to the purpose to say most men are bad it is for you to be better in this way he would at least be sent out into the world armed with a shrewd foresight instead of having to be convinced by bitter experience that hissed teachers were wrong all ignorance is dangerous and most errors must be daily paid and good-look must he have that carries unchaste eyes an error in his head unto his death translators note this again is in Schopenhauer zone English and note every piece of success has a doubly beneficial effect upon us when apart from the special and material advantage which it brings it is accompanied by the enlivening assurance of the world fate or the demon within does not mean so badly with us nor is so opposed to our prosperity as we had fancied when in fine it restores our courage to live similarly every misfortune or defeat has in the country sense an effect that is doubly depressing if we were not all of us exaggeratedly interested in ourselves life would be so uninteresting that no one could endure it everywhere in the world and under all circumstances it is only by force that anything can be done but power is mostly in bad hands because baseness is everywhere in a fearful majority why should it be folly to be always intent on getting the greatest possible enjoyment out of the moment which is our only sure possession our whole life is no more than a magnified present and in itself as fleeting as a consequence of his individuality and the position in which he is placed everyone without exception lives in a certain state of limitation both as regards his ideas and the opinions which he forms another man is also limited though not in the same way but should he succeed in comprehending the others limitation he can confuse and abash him and put him to shame by making him feel what his limitation is even though the other be far and away his superior shrewd people often employ this circumstance to obtain a false and momentary advantage the only genuine superiority is that of the mind and character all of the kinds are fictitious affected false and it is good to make them feel that it is so when they try to show off before the superiority that is true translators note in the original this also is in French and note all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players exactly independently of what a man really is in himself he has a part to play which fate has imposed upon him from without by determining his rank education and circumstances the most immediate application of this truth appears to me to be that in life as on the stage we must distinguish between the actor and his part distinguished that is the man in himself from his position and reputation from the part which rankin circumstances have imposed upon him how often it is that the worst actor plays the king and the best the beggar this may happen in life too and a man must be very crude to confuse the actor with his part our life is so poor that none of the treasures of the world can make it rich for the sources of enjoyment are soon found to be all very scanty and it is in vain that we look for one that will always flow therefore as regards our own welfare there are only two ways in which we can use wealth we can either spend it in ostentatious pomp and feed on the cheap respect which our imaginary glory will bring us from the infatuated crowd or by avoiding all expenditure that will do as no good we can let our wealth grow so that we may have a bulwark against misfortune and want that shall be stronger and better every day in view of the fact that life though it has few delights is rich in Evil's it is just because our real and inmost being is will that it is only by its exercise that we can attain a vivid consciousness of existence although this is almost always attended by pain hence it is that existence is essentially painful and that many persons for whose wants full provision is made arranged their day in accordance with extremely regular monotonous and definite habits by this means they avoid all the pain which the movement of the will produces but on the other hand their whole existence becomes a series of scenes and pictures that mean nothing they are hardly aware that they exist nevertheless it is the best way of settling accounts with life so long as there is sufficient chance to prevent an excessive feeling of boredom it is much better still if the muses give a man something worthy of occupation so that the pictures which fill his consciousness have some meaning and yet not a meaning that can be brought into any relation with his will a man is wise only on condition of living in a world of fools end of section 9

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Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Sun May 03 2015