wisdom of life

Chapter 10 Recommendations and Maxims (1)
It is not my intention here to give a complete statement of how to achieve happiness in life, because to do so I would have to repeat what thinkers of all ages—from Thionis to King Solomon to La Rochefoucauld—have said Life maxims, of course some of these maxims are quite good advice.But in this way, I cannot avoid a lot of clichés.Of course, without comprehensive integrity, there is largely no systematic arrangement of these ideas.However, although completeness and systematicness are lacking, the consolation is that without these two, our discussions will inevitably become long and complicated.I only write down what comes to my mind and which seems worth conveying to the reader; and those ideas which, as far as I can remember, have not been said, or at least not quite said, and, moreover, adopted by others. Not the way I express it now.So now I am just adding to this vast field where people have done a lot.

Opinions and suggestions pertaining to this topic are varied.In order to put them in some order, I have divided them into four parts, the first being general; the second dealing with our attitudes to ourselves; the third dealing with our attitudes towards others; How to view the development of fate and world affairs.

General Theory
Section [-]

Aristotle casually said a sentence in "Ethics", I regard this sentence as the first law of wisdom in life, let me translate it into German [1]: "What rational people seek is not happiness. , but only the absence of pain.” The truth contained in this sentence is that all pleasures are negative in nature, while pain is positive in nature.For the detailed explanation and argument of this sentence, people can read Chapter 58 of the first volume of my "The World as Will and Appearance".Here I explain this truth with an everyday fact.If our whole body is healthy, but there is only a small injury or pain, then the overall health of our body will not enter our consciousness, and our attention will always be only on the painful injury.The general sense of comfort in our lives can be shattered by this small injury.In the same way, although everything goes and develops according to our ideas, if one thing goes against our will-even if it is only a trivial thing-this unpleasant thing enters our mind; We will always think about this one thing, instead of thinking about other more important things that have happened as we wished.In both cases, our will is hurt.In the first case, the will is objectified in the human organism; in the second case, the will is objectified in the human desire, desire.In both cases we see that the satisfaction of the will is always negative.The satisfaction we want is not directly felt by us, but at most it enters into our consciousness in a reflective, retrospective way.But the inhibition of the will is certain, and the state of affairs will therefore be clearly expressed.The occurrence of every pleasure is actually the removal of the inhibitions of the will and the liberation of the will.Therefore, each pleasure lasts for a relatively brief period of time.

Aristotle's brilliant rule, quoted above, is based on this principle.This rule teaches us not to fix our eyes upon the pleasures and pleasures of life;If this path is not correct, then what Voltaire said can only be false-he said that "pleasure is but a dream, but pain is real." (March 1774 Letter to the Marquis de Floin on the 3th), but in fact what Voltaire said was absolutely true.Therefore, whoever wants to measure whether he has lived a happy life from the perspective of happiness theory needs to list the scourges he has avoided, rather than the joys and pleasures he once enjoyed.Indeed, the theory of happiness has warned us from the very beginning: the name "theory of happiness" is just a euphemism; the so-called "happy life" should really be understood as "a life with fewer misfortunes", that is, a life that can be barely life endured.Indeed, life is not for us to enjoy, we have to live with it and get over it.This can be seen in expressions in various languages, such as the Latin "degere vitam", "vita defungi" (to get by, overcome life); Italian "si scampa cosi" (if you can survive live these days); in German "man muss suchen durchzukommen" (we have to try our best to live life smoothly) and "er wird schon durch die welt kommen" (to dawdle), etc.There is indeed a consolation in old age when the burdens of life are finally behind us.Therefore, the best luck a man can have is to live his whole life without suffering any great mental or physical pain, instead of enjoying great pleasures.Whoever judges by the latter whether a man has lived a happy life is using a wrong standard.For pleasure is and always is negative; and it is a mistake to think that pleasure can make a man happy, and envious people have this mistake--that is the punishment for their envy.In contrast, the pain we feel is affirmative.Therefore, the degree of lack of pain is the standard to measure whether a person's life is happy.If one can achieve a state where there is no pain and no boredom, then the happiness of the world is indeed obtained, and everything else is illusory.From this we can deduce that we should not buy pleasure at the expense of pain, or even risk suffering pain in doing so, for otherwise we would be paying affirmations and real things.But if we sacrifice pleasure to avoid pain, we are sure to gain.In either case it is not really important whether the pain waits until the pleasure has passed or whether the pleasure comes first.It is indeed putting the cart before the horse if one tries to turn the arena of pain in life into an ashram of joy, with the goal of having fun rather than getting the best possible escape from pain—as so many people are doing. , The most ridiculous thing.Whoever, with gloomy eyes, regards this world as a sort of hell, and contemplates building in it a chamber in which there is no fire[16]—he is not so wrong as to So absurd, outrageous.A fool seeks pleasure in life, only to find himself deceived; a wise man seeks to avoid evil.If a wise man fails to achieve his goal, it is only due to his luck, not to his stupidity.As long as he gets what he wants, he will definitely not feel cheated or cheated, because the evil he escaped really exists in this life.Even if a wise man goes too far in order to avoid evil, and sacrifices the pleasures and pleasures of life unnecessarily, he has nothing to lose in the final analysis, because all pleasures and pleasures are illusory.To lament a missed opportunity to enjoy something is superficial, narrow, even ridiculous.

Lack of awareness of this truth is the cause of much of our misfortune, fueled by optimism.When we are not in pain, our eager desires reflect to us all kinds of phantoms of pleasure and enjoyment that do not exist; these flowers in the mirror and the moon in the water tempt us to follow them.In this way, we invite pain that is unquestionable and real.At that point, we will lament the painlessness that has been lost—it is like a paradise we have dismissed rashly, and we can only hope in vain that it never happened and that it can all be started all over again.We always seem to be tempted by some demon who uses visions of desire to lead us away from a state of painlessness.In fact, the state of no pain is the real and greatest happiness.The unreflective young man thinks that this world is specially designed for people to have fun, and that this world is the home of real happiness.They believe that those who cannot achieve happiness are simply not smart enough or flexible enough to achieve it.This view is reinforced by novels, poems, and the falsities of the world, all the time and everywhere, for the sake of external prestige.I'll come back to this point soon.After forming this point of view, a person's life is a deliberate hunt for affirmative happiness from now on, and this kind of happiness is composed of affirmative pleasure and joy.In this chase one has to take many risks.As a rule, this pursuit of a prey that is not in existence brings real, certain misfortune.Misfortunes of all kinds are manifested in pain, disease, trouble, sorrow, loss, poverty, disgrace, and so on.The truth always comes late.But if people follow the rules I have here discussed, and aim the plan of life towards the goal of avoiding pain, that is, freedom from want, disease, and suffering of all kinds, then this goal is real, and we may be able to gain something. ; and the less our plans of life are disturbed by the pursuit of illusions of supposedly certain happiness, the more we benefit.What Goethe said by Mittler in "Affinity" coincides with what I say here.Mittler always does things for the happiness of others. He said: "If a person tries to get rid of some evil, he always knows his purpose clearly; but if a person always wants to get better than what he already has he is quite blind.” This brings to mind a wonderful French proverb: the better is the enemy of the good.Indeed, even the basic idea of ​​the Cynics derives from this truth.I have already analyzed this point in Chapter No.16 of the second volume of "The World as Will and Appearance".Is it not that the cynics reject all pleasures because they take into account the pain which is more or less entangled with them?To the Cynic philosopher, avoiding pain is more important than obtaining pleasure.They are well versed in the negative nature of pleasure and the positive nature of pain.Therefore, they are always working hard to avoid disaster.In order to achieve their goal, they believe that it is necessary to consciously abandon all pleasure and pleasure, because they know that pleasure hides a trap that makes people a prisoner of pain.

Of course, as Schiller said, we were all born on the Arcadian plateau[3]; The stupid hope of reality.Generally speaking, however, Fate comes very quickly, grabs us violently, and teaches us that nothing is ours but everything is Fate's, for Fate does not only treat our possessions, our wives and children, has indisputable rights; even our hands and feet, our eyes and ears, and the nose in the center of our faces belong to it.In any case, it will not be long before we gain experience and understand that happiness and joy are but a morning mist which we can only see from a distance and disappear as soon as we approach.Pain and suffering, by contrast, are both concrete and real.We feel them directly, without illusions and expectations.If our lessons bear fruit, then we will stop chasing happiness and pleasure and focus more on blocking as much pain and suffering as possible; we will realize what this world has to offer us. The best thing about life is a pain-free, serene, and barely bearable existence; we must limit our expectations and demands of this world so that we can be more sure of fulfilling them.And the safest way to avoid being very unhappy is not to demand being very happy.Meck, a friend of Goethe's youth, realized this, because he wrote: "Our excessive expectations for happiness destroy everything in this world to the same extent as our dreams. Whoever gets rid of excessive expectations , expecting no more than what he already has, then he will be able to live in safety" ("Meck Letters").Therefore, we should adjust our expectations of happiness, property, status, honor, etc. to a moderate and appropriate scale, because it is the desire and striving for happiness, glory and pomp that bring great misfortune.Therefore, it is wise and reasonable to lower our desires, because a relatively unhappy life is easy; by contrast, a relatively happy life is not only difficult, but even impossible.Poets who preach the wisdom of life have every reason to sing:
Those who choose the golden mean certainly stay away from the shabby caves,

It is also far away from the royal palace that everyone envies.

When a storm hits, the top of the giant pine tree sways in the wind,

Tall stone towers will fall heavily,

The top of the mountain will be struck by thunder.

— Horace
Whoever has fully accepted the teachings of my philosophy, and thus knows that our whole existence is nothing less than nothing, and that the highest wisdom of man is to deny and resist this existence, then he will not think about anything, We have huge expectations in any situation; we will not enthusiastically pursue everything in this world, nor will we strongly complain about the failure of our plans and the failure of our career.Instead, he will keep in mind Plato's teaching: "No one or anything is worth our undue concern." Or read Anwari's motto for "The Rose Garden":
If you lose a world,
Do not grieve over it, for it is trivial;

If you get a world,
Don't be happy about it, because it's trivial;

The joys and sorrows will pass
will leave this world, because it's all trivial.

——Anwari [4]: ​​"Suhari"

The reason why people have such a hard time accepting this view of health is precisely the hypocrisy of the world that I mentioned earlier.We should be aware of this falsehood from an early age.The luxury and splendor of many people is just a facade, like the decoration of an opera house, but the key core is lacking.For example, those pennants hoisted, ships decorated with wreaths, lights and festoons, cheers and shouts, horn salutes and gun salutes—these are just the guise and facade of people's joy, and the lively surface is the hieroglyph of joy.But it is difficult to find joy in such a lively scene.Joy refuses to show up on festive occasions.If it really wants to appear, it usually comes quietly and uninvited; wherever it goes, it is the most ordinary and ordinary environment and occasion, anyway, it does not go to those prominent and brilliant places. Occasion appearances.Joy is like the gold-sands of Australia: scattered here and there, without any rules or laws, to be found by sheer chance, and only a handful at a time, for they are seldom gathered together in great numbers.The purpose of all the lively and exaggerated pretense mentioned above is to create the illusion of joy in people's minds and make people believe that there is joy here.Joy is like this, so is sorrow.How sad and desolate the long, slow-moving funeral procession looked, with endless carriages.But look inside!It was all empty.The dead were actually carried to the cemetery by coachmen all over the city.This picture can tell us what is friendship and respect in the world!These are the falsehoods, hypocrisy, and emptiness of human affairs.Another example is the grand scene full of guests and rich clothes.On the surface, people are elated and immersed in a noble and pleasant atmosphere, but usually, restraint, embarrassment, and boredom are the real guests present.Where the crowd gathers, the scoundrels gather, even though their chests are covered with medals.Really good parties are bound to be fairly small wherever they are.Most of the brilliant, lively festive scenes have only a hollow core, and some kind of dissonance will always appear, because these festive atmospheres are really incompatible with our poor and miserable lives.This contrast reveals the truth of the matter more clearly.If one takes it at face value, these boisterous gatherings have an effect, and that's what they're about.So, as Chanfort puts it quite beautifully: "What we call society—a party, a salon—is a miserable play, a bad drama; dull, dull, sustained by machinery, dress, and packaging for the time being. "In the same way, the Academy and the Chairs of Philosophy are but facades, and they seem to be the embodiment of truth; but again, truth is usually rejected in these places and cast elsewhere.The bells of the church, the dress of the priest, the pious look, the antics—these are all ostentations, all the masks of piety.For this reason, we may as well regard almost everything in the world as a hollow pip, the pip itself being rare, and the pip hidden within a pip is even more rare.It can only be found elsewhere, and usually by luck.

Section [-]

To measure a person's happiness, we should not ask him about the things that make him happy, but about those things that bother him; because the fewer and less important things that bother him, the better he will live. The happier we are, because if we can feel the little troubles, it means that we are in a state of ease and comfort-in the unfortunate time, we will not feel these little things.

We have to remind ourselves not to demand too much from life, because in doing so, the foundation upon which our happiness rests becomes too broad.Happiness built on such a broad foundation is easily toppled, because the chances of encountering accidents increase, and accidents happen all the time.In terms of foundations, the buildings of our happiness are the exact opposite of building buildings, which are made strong by their vast foundations.The most effectual way of avoiding great evils, therefore, is to reduce the demands of our life as little as possible, taking into account our abilities, our conditions.

Section Three

In general, one of the great follies that people do is to plan too much for life—no matter how it is prepared.To make a detailed plan for the future must first be guaranteed by enjoying a good life, but only a few people can live to an advanced age.Even if a person enjoys a long life, the time is still too short compared to the plans made, because the implementation of these plans always takes more time than expected.In addition, these plans, like everything else, have too many chances for setbacks and failures, and very few actual successes.In the end, even when all of our goals are achieved, we fail to consider the changes that time has made in us.It never occurred to us that we cannot maintain the ability to create and enjoy throughout our lives.Therefore, it often happens that we work hard, and by the time the goal is achieved, the results we have achieved are no longer suitable for our needs; or that we spend years preparing for a certain job, but these preparations are not for us Knowingly drains our energies, and in the end we can no longer do the work we set out to do.So, after years of hard work and many risks, we finally acquire wealth, but at this point we are no longer able to enjoy it.In fact, we have worked hard for others.Or, after years of hard work, we finally climbed to a certain position as we wished, but we are no longer competent for the work of this position.Things like this happen all the time.This is because the results we are after come too late.Or, on the contrary, we are too late to do things, that is to say, the taste of the times has changed in terms of our achievements or contributions.A new generation grows up who isn't interested in what we've accomplished; others take shortcuts and get ahead of us, and so on.These words of Horace contain a sense of this:
Why waste your soul!

It falls far short of the eternal plans you have laid down.

What lures us into this constant mistake is an inescapable delusion created by our mental eye.Because of this illusion, life seems endless from the beginning of life, but when people come to the end of life journey and look back at life, life seems quite short.Of course, this delusion has its benefits: because without it, great things are hard to come by.

In life, we encounter situations like this: When the traveler steps closer to see the scene, the shape of the scene is not the same as that he saw from a distance; Approaching and changing shape.Our wishes are especially similar to this situation.Often, what we end up with is not what we were after—even better than what we were after.What's more, we chose a certain path to pursue a certain thing at the beginning, but found nothing, but found it in another path.Moreover, it often happens that in our pursuit of pleasure, luck, and joy, we end up with lessons, ideas, and realizations—real, permanent benefits that supersede those earlier, hasty, apparent ones.This idea runs through Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister, and it forms the basic bass of this work.Therefore, this novel is a work of thought; and precisely because of this, this novel ranks far above all other novels, even Walter Scott's works, which are only ethical works and also That is to say, Scott's novels describe and explain human nature purely from the perspective of desire.This, too, is at the heart of The Magic Flute [5], a weird but meaningful hieroglyphic work.This central idea is symbolically expressed through heavy musical lines and stage decorations.If, at the end of the opera, Tamino's desire to possess Tamina subsides, and instead asks to enter and finally enter the universe of wisdom, then this central idea will be perfectly expressed.In contrast, Papageno - Tamino's necessary foil - gets his Papagena as a matter of course.The noble and eminent man soon learns what fate has taught him, and is able to resign himself to it and be grateful.They will understand: what we can get in this world is teaching, not happiness.They are therefore accustomed and content to exchange hope for ideas and knowledge.At last they say, with the poet Petrarch[6]: "I feel no pleasure in any other than learning." , that is just a superficial effort and a joke.In fact, deep down in their hearts, they are just looking forward to getting ideological education.This endows them with a certain brooding, genius, and nobility.In this sense, we can also say that it is the same situation that happened to those alchemists: in the process of only looking for gold, they discovered gunpowder, porcelain, medicine, and even the laws of nature.

Part Two: Our Attitude Towards Ourselves
Section [-]

Workers involved in the construction of a building do not know the building's master plan; or, they do not keep it in their minds.Likewise, a person goes through each hour and day of his life with little awareness of his overall life course and its characteristics.The more unique, valuable, and meaningful a man's personality is, the more it is necessary and beneficial for him to be aware from time to time of the general outlines of his life and his own plans.To this end, of course, he takes the first step of "knowing himself,"[7] that is, knowing his first and true wills—those which are of the utmost importance to his happiness; and then, You must know which ones are in the second and third positions.At the same time, he should also have a general understanding of what kind of occupation he should be engaged in, what role he needs to play, and his relationship with the world.If a person has an extraordinary personality, then, having a general understanding of his own life plan can more effectively strengthen his courage, cheer up, inspire confidence, motivate himself to act, and avoid detours than anything else.

Just as a traveler can look back in totality and coherence on the winding road he has traveled only after he has reached a high place, so it is only when we have passed a period of our lives, or When the overall life ends, we can truly connect what we did, our performance and the works we created, including the exact causal connection, and even understand their value.As long as we remain in it, we can only act in accordance with our fixed constitution of character, conditioned by our motives and conditioned by our abilities.From this it can be seen that we act with necessity from beginning to end, and we do at every moment what we think is reasonable and proper at that moment.It is only the aftermath that allows us to see what happened; the review of the whole of the matter allows us to understand the how and why.Therefore, when we are busy doing great things or writing immortal works, we don't realize it clearly. We just feel that completing these tasks is in line with our goals and intentions at that time, and they are reasonable and should be done at that time. things.It is only when life is coherent as a whole that our character and abilities will reveal their true colors.We can see that when encountering a specific thing, we rely on the guidance of our patron saint to choose the only correct path among the messy and divergent paths, as if the inspiration flashed at that moment.This is the case both in theory and in real life.The same holds true in reverse for the worthless and failed things we do.The importance of the present moment is seldom realized in the moment, but only after a long time.

Section Five

An important aspect of life wisdom is to strike the right balance between focusing on the present and planning for the future, so that the present and the future do not interfere with each other.Many people are too preoccupied with the present, and these are carefree, careless people; there are also people who live more in the future, and they are cautious, worried bastards.People are rarely able to grasp a just right scale between dealing with the present and the future.Those who live in hope and effort in the future have their eyes fixed on the future, impatiently awaiting what is to come, as if it would bring them true happiness.In the meantime, they ignore the present, ignore it, and let it pass by.These men, shrewd as they may seem, are like a kind of ass in Italy: on the head of the donkey they stick a stick with a bundle of hay on it, and this quickens the donkey's pace, because the donkey sees the hay approaching. In front of me, I always hope to get this bundle of hay.The above-mentioned people have been deceiving themselves all their lives, because until they die, they live only temporarily.We should not just plan and think about the future, or dwell on reminiscing about the past.Never forget that the present is the only real and certain; by contrast, the future will almost always develop differently from what we imagine, and even the past from what we think of it.In general, neither the future nor the past is as important as it appears on the surface.When the distance is far away, the object shrinks in people's vision, but it enlarges in the mind.Only the present is real and realistic.The present time contains the content of reality, and we exist only in this time.We should therefore welcome the present moment with joy, and thereby consciously enjoy every bearable brief moment free from immediate trouble and pain, that is, not to become melancholy now because our hopes have been thwarted in the past, or to Worrying about the future corrupts the present.It is utter folly for us to reject the good present, or to squander it as we please, because we worry about the past and worry about the future.A certain time can be used for worrying and even regretting; but after this specific time has passed, we should contemplate what has happened as follows:

No matter how sad things are, we must let the past be past, and it may be difficult for us to do this, but we must subdue our eccentricity.

and the future

In God's arrangement.

should
- Homer

—— "The Iliad"

Treat each day as a special life.

- Seneca
We can only worry about disasters that are certain—the timing of which is even certain.But there are very few misfortunes of this class, since future misfortunes are either at best very probable, or certain to occur, but the timing of their arrival is entirely uncertain.If we allow ourselves to be subject to these two evils, we shall never have a moment's peace.In order to secure the tranquility of our lives against misfortunes which are not certain, or certain to occur at a certain time, we must form the habit of treating uncertain misfortunes as never occurring, and not Disasters that are sure to happen at a certain time will certainly not happen in a short time.

But the less our peace is disturbed by worries and fears, the more it will be stimulated by our wishes, desires, and expectations.Goethe's beautiful line "I never hope in anything" actually means: only when one breaks away from all possible expectations and returns to the naked and cold existence itself, can one appreciate the peace of mind, and the spirit Peace of mind is the foundation of happiness.Peace of mind is essential if one is to enjoy the present, and indeed the entire life.To achieve this goal, we should always remember that today is only once and it will never come again.But in our imaginations, today will reappear tomorrow.In fact, tomorrow is another day, and it comes only once.We forget that each day is an integral and therefore irreplaceable part of life; we simply see the day as something included under the heading of life, as under a collective concept each single thing contained.When we are sick and struggling, whenever we think of the time without illness and pain before this, it suddenly makes people envious-those good days are like friends that we have never cherished, they are simply lost Heaven.On healthy, good days, this should be kept in our minds, so that we can cherish and enjoy the good times of the moment.But we go through our good days unnoticed, and only when the bad days actually come do we miss and yearn for the good days we had.We look sad, and many a good time passes unsavored and chewed, until later, when the days become hard and discouraging, we sigh in vain for the good days gone.We cannot do this.We should cherish every bearable moment of the present, including the most mundane of days that we let pass by with indifference, or even eagerly to get rid of them.We should always remember that time has now passed away into a magical past, and since then it has remained in our memory, shining with immortal light.In the future, especially when it comes to bad days, our memory will draw a curtain: this moment will become the object of our hearts and thoughts.

Section VI

All limitations and abstinences contribute to our happiness.The narrower the circle of our vision, activities and contacts, the happier we are; the larger the circle, the more anxiety or worry we feel.Because as the circle of this range expands, so do our wishes, fears, and concerns.So even the blind are not so unfortunate as they a priori show, as evidenced by their soft, almost cheerful serenity.At the same time, partly because of this law, the second half of our lives is more miserable than the first half.Because throughout our lives, the scope of our relationships and goals is always expanding.In childhood, our vision is limited to our surroundings and narrow relationships.In adolescence, the field of vision expands significantly; in adulthood, our entire life trajectory, even the most distant connections, other countries and peoples are brought into our field of vision; in old age, people's eyesight includes For generations to come.All limitations—even mental ones—serve to enhance our well-being.The reason is that the less the will is stimulated, the less we suffer.Pain, as we know, is positive, and happiness is purely negative.Restricting our range of activity removes the external motives that stimulate our desires, and mental conditioning eliminates the internal ones.Mental conditioning, however, has this deficiency: it opens the door to the boredom which is the indirect source of innumerable sufferings.To drive away boredom, people seek entertainment, society, luxury, gambling, alcoholism, etc. by any means, and these bring nothing but misery, unhappiness, and loss of money of every kind. "People have trouble keeping calm when they have nothing to do." In contrast, people's happiness is better promoted by as many external restrictions as possible, and these restrictions are even necessary for happiness.This can be seen from the example that the pastoral poems—the only poems concerned with depicting human happiness—mainly and invariably represent those who lead a simple life in cramped surroundings.This is also the reason for the certain pleasure we feel in looking at those so-called genre paintings.Therefore, the relations in which we live should be as simple as possible, and even monotonous living, as long as this does not produce boredom, contributes to our happiness, because then we feel less of life, and therefore feel less of it. Feel the burden of life, and the burden is the essence of life.In this way, life flows like a stream that is calm and eddy.

Section Seven

Whether we experience joy or pain depends ultimately on the content of our consciousness.Generally speaking, purely ideological and intellectual activities can bring more joy to people who have the ability to think in this area compared with actual life; success and failure in actual life are always variable, and closely related to this is People's hearts are shaken and their spirits are tortured.Of course, engaging in purely spiritual activities requires excellent and outstanding mental abilities.It is worth noting, however, that just as being busy with our outer life can interrupt our research and rob us of the tranquility and concentration we need in our mental life, so the constant pursuit of mental activities can more or less impair our ability to cope with noisy, busy life. real-life capabilities.So every once in a while, when we need to get our hands dirty in our practical lives, it can be beneficial to take a complete break from mental activity for a while.

Section [-]

To live a deliberate life, and to learn all the good lessons from life experience, we must be diligent in reflection, often reviewing what we have done and how we have felt and experienced; The judgment of the matter is compared with the current view, the plan and pursuit made before, and the final result and satisfaction obtained in the end.This is a single rehearsal for life lessons.A person's life experience can be regarded as the text of a book, and the chewing and understanding of life experience is the interpretation of the text.If a person has too much reflection and knowledge but little life experience, it is like having two lines of text and forty lines of notes.If one has a lot of experience, but seldom reflects on it and acquires little knowledge, then it is like a Bundy series-there are no notes in it, and many meanings of the text are not very clear.

The laws drawn up by Pythagoras coincide with the advice I give to you here: Before going to bed at night, a person should examine in detail what he has done during the day, one by one.If a person indulges in worldly affairs or indulging in sensual pleasures, does not think about the past, but just lives with the current, then he lacks clear and careful thinking about life, his emotions will be chaotic, and his thoughts will be mixed. A certain degree of confusion.This is evident in the short, broken, abrupt words the man utters.The more severe the external turmoil, the more impressions the external world gives, and the smaller the internal activities of the human spirit, the more obvious this situation will be.

It is worth mentioning here that after a long period of time, or after the events have changed, although these events affected us at the time, we can no longer arouse and relive the emotions and feelings aroused by these events at that time; but But it is possible to recall the opinions and perceptions that were aroused by these circumstances at the time.The latter is the result and expression of the situation at that time, and it is the yardstick for measuring those things and situations.Therefore, the memory and record of those memorable moments should be carefully preserved.In this regard our diary will be very helpful.

Section [-]

To be able to enjoy myself, to feel that everything is in me, and to be able to say that what I have is in me—this is the most important thing that constitutes happiness.Therefore, it is worth repeating what Aristotle once said: Happiness belongs to those who are easily satisfied beginning).One of the reasons for this is that people cannot depend on others with certainty except themselves; the other reason is that the difficulties and inconveniences, troubles and dangers that society brings to people are countless and inevitable.

The wrong way to achieve happiness is to pursue a life of excess and debauchery, because we try to turn a miserable life into a continuous flow of pleasure, joy and enjoyment.In this way, disillusionment will follow; and with this kind of life, there will be mutual lying and deception between people. 【8】

First of all, living in a social crowd necessarily requires mutual accommodation and accommodation; therefore, the larger the gathering of people, the more likely it is to become dull.Only when a man is alone can he be fully himself.Whoever does not love solitude does not love freedom, for he is free only when he is alone.Restraint and restraint inevitably accompany social gatherings.Social gatherings demand sacrifices, and the more individual a person is, the harder it is for him to make those sacrifices.Therefore, whether a person avoids, endures, or loves being alone is exactly proportional to the value of this person himself.For in solitude a poor wretch feels all his wretchedness, and a man of rich thoughts feels only his rich thoughts.In a word: one feels only one's own self.Furthermore, it is fundamental and inevitable that the higher a person is in the hierarchy of nature, the more lonely he will be.It is good for a man if his physical solitude corresponds to his spiritual solitude.Otherwise, frequent association with people different from himself disturbs the mind and robs him of himself for which he receives no compensation.Nature has established great moral and intellectual differences between men, but society is blind to these differences and treats everyone equally.What is more, artificial distinctions of social status and rank supersede those of nature, and the former often run counter to the latter.The few who are favored by nature are degraded by this arrangement of social life.Therefore, the latter kind of people always avoid social gatherings.And when every social gathering becomes crowded, mediocrity reigns supreme.The reason why social gatherings do harm to highly intelligent people is because everyone is given equal rights, which in turn leads to equal rights and demands on everything, regardless of their talents.The ensuing result is that people demand recognition from others for their equal achievements and contributions to society.The so-called high society recognizes a man's superiority in other respects, but refuses to recognize one's spiritual superiority alone; they even resist it.Society constrains us to show endless patience with stupidity, stupidity, and perversity, but the man of a superior personality must ask forgiveness for himself; The very existence of a spiritual thought constitutes a detriment to another, even though it has no intention of doing so.The disadvantage of so-called "high" social gatherings, therefore, is not only that it supplies us with persons whom we cannot praise and love, but that it does not allow us to be ourselves in our natural way; Distorting and shrinking oneself to cater to others.Deep conversations and thoughtful words belong only to gatherings of thoughtful people.In general and mediocre social gatherings, people have an absolute abhorrence for thoughtful conversation.So, to please others in this social situation, it is absolutely necessary to make yourself mediocre and narrow.Therefore, in order to achieve the purpose of being similar and speculative with others, we can only reject most of ourselves.For this, of course, we gain the goodwill of others.But the more valuable a person is, the more he will find that the gain outweighs the gain in doing so. This is simply a loss-making business.People are generally insolvent; they impose on us boredom, annoyance, unhappiness, and a negative self without being able to compensate for it.This is the essence of most social gatherings.By giving up this kind of social gathering in exchange for solitude, we're doing shrewd business.Moreover, since genuine, spiritual superiority is not tolerated at social gatherings, and indeed is rarely seen, in its place a false, worldly routine, founded on rather arbitrary principles, is adopted. Stuff as a sign of superiority—it is traditionally passed on in high social circles, and it can be changed at any time like a code word.This is what people call fashion or fashion.However, as soon as this advantage collides with a person's real advantage, it immediately shows its weakness.And, "When fashion enters, common sense recedes." [9]

Roughly speaking, one can only achieve the most perfect harmony with oneself, not with friends or spouse, because differences in personality and temper between people will certainly bring some dissonance, even if these differences Coordination is only fairly slight.Therefore, complete and true peace of mind and serenity of feeling - the next greatest boon in this world after health - can only be found in solitude; State of mind, you can only live in seclusion.Thus, if a man is great and rich in himself, he enjoys the happiest condition that can be sought in this poor world.Indeed, we can say this: friendship, love, and honor bind men together, but in the end men can honestly look only to themselves, and at most to their children.The less a man needs to deal with people, either because of objective or subjective conditions, the better off he is.The disadvantages of solitude are obvious, if not immediately felt, by contrast, the disadvantages of a social life are hidden: the pastimes, gossip, and other pleasures of fellowship hide enormous, often An irreparable scourge.The first lesson for young people is to learn to bear loneliness, because loneliness is the source of happiness and well-being.From this it follows that only those who are on their own, who can experience themselves in all things, are the best.Therefore, Cicero said, "It is impossible for a person to be completely dependent on himself, and everything that can be called his own exists in himself." In addition, the more a person owns, the more , then others can give him less.It is this sense of self-sufficiency that makes people of inner richness reluctant to make the necessary and obvious sacrifices for intercourse with others; it is even less likely that they will actively seek these intercourses without denying themselves.Mediocre people are just the opposite. They like to communicate with people and like to accommodate others.This is because it is easier for them to put up with others than themselves.Besides, in this world, what is really valuable is not noticed, and what is noticed is often worthless.Every worthwhile and distinguished person prefers to remain alone--this is the proof and consequence of the above facts.Accordingly, for a man of his own worth, if he knows how to reduce his needs as much as possible in order to preserve or expand his freedom, he should minimize contact with his own kind—because in this world people cannot avoid dealing with their own kind , Then, this person also has the real wisdom of life.

What drives people's love for human society is their inability to bear and be alone.Their inner boredom and emptiness also drive them to travel and sightseeing in other places.Their spiritual thoughts lack a kind of elasticity and cannot move spontaneously; therefore, they try to obtain stimulation through drinking, and many people become alcoholics through this method.It is for this reason that such persons need constant, external stimuli—or, to be more exact, they receive their strongest stimuli through contact with others of their own kind.Once this stimulation is lacking, their spiritual thoughts will sink under the burden, and finally fall into a miserable muddle [10].We can also say that such people each possess only a small part of the idea of ​​humanity.Therefore, they need a lot of complements from others.Only in this way can they attain to some extent the full consciousness of man.A complete, typical human being, by contrast, is an independent unity, not a small part of the human unity.Therefore, the person himself is sufficient and complete.In this sense we can compare mediocrity to those Russian horn instruments.Each horn can only produce a single tone, and the required horns are properly put together to make music.The spirit and temperament of the masses are monotonous and dull, like those horn instruments that can only produce a single note.It is true that not a few people seem to live their lives with a certain fixed opinion, beyond which they are incapable of any other thoughts and thoughts.This not only explains why these people are so boring, but also explains why they are so keen on company, especially in groups.This is the gregarious characteristic of human beings [11].The monotony of men makes them intolerable to themselves, and "the stupid suffer from the weariness of their stupidity."People can only make a difference when they come together and unite.This situation is the same as the combination of Russian animal horn instruments to play music.However, a man with a rich mind can be compared with a musician who can play music alone; or, we can compare him to a piano.The piano itself is a small orchestra.Again, such a person is a miniature world.Others need to complement each other, but the individual mind consciousness of such a person is already a unity in itself.Just like the piano, he is not a member of a symphony orchestra, he is more suitable to play alone.If he really needs to play with others, then he can only be the lead vocalist, and get the accompaniment of other instruments, just like the piano in the orchestra.Or, he sets the tone of the vocals like a piano.Those who love social intercourse can draw a rule from this metaphor of mine: what is lacking in the quality of the intercourse crowd can only be compensated to some extent by the number of the crowd.It is enough to have a thinking companion.But if it is difficult to find anyone but the mediocre, it is good to round up a certain number of these, for through their respective differences and complementarities—to use the analogy of the horn instrument—we It will still be rewarding.May God grant us patience!Similarly, due to the poverty and emptiness in people's hearts, when those better people form a group for some noble ideal goals, almost without exception, they finally encounter such a result: Among the huge crowd-they are Like an all-covering, pervasive bacterium, ready to seize any opportunity to drive out boredom—there are always those who infiltrate or force their way into the group.It doesn't take long before the group is either undermined or altered from what it was originally formed for.

In addition, people's living in groups can be regarded as spiritual heating between people, which is similar to people huddling together in cold weather to keep warm physically.However, people who have their own extraordinary heat of thought do not need to be crowded with others.In the last chapter of the second volume of the Appendices and Supplements, the reader will find a fable written by me [12] expressing this meaning.A person's enthusiasm for social intercourse is roughly inversely proportional to the value of his spiritual thoughts.The statement, "He doesn't like human society," is almost equivalent to saying, "He is a man of great qualities."

Solitude brings double benefits to a spiritually endowed person: first, he can be himself; second, he does not need to be with others.The second point is precious, especially when we remember the bondage, annoyance and even danger that social interaction means. La Bouille said: "We suffer all misfortunes because we cannot be alone."Being social is actually a pretty dangerous inclination, because most of the people we deal with are immoral, mentally retarded, or abnormal.Being unsociable is actually not paying attention to these people.It is indeed a great blessing for a man to have enough content within himself that he has no need of human society at all; for almost all suffering comes from it, and our peace of mind—its importance to our happiness Second only to health - it can be destroyed by human contact at any time.Without enough solitude, it is impossible to achieve peace of mind.Cynic philosophers give up their possessions and objects in order to enjoy the joy of peace of mind.Whoever gives up dealing with people for the same purpose has made the wisest choice.Bernardin de Saint-Pierre said it right and beautifully: "Abstinence from human society gives us peace of mind." Therefore, whoever is accustomed to solitude at an early age and likes it, he It's like getting a gold mine.Of course, not everyone can do this.Just as people are driven together by scarcity in the first place, so boredom will drive people together once scarcity is resolved.If not driven by want and boredom, people might be alone, though only because everyone thinks he is important, even unique, and solitary life is just for those who think of themselves as such; for living in Among the crowded and complicated world, it will become difficult to walk, and the left and right will be constrained, and the importance and uniqueness of oneself in the mind will be greatly reduced.In this sense, solitude is even a natural and suitable state of life for everyone: it enables everyone, like Adam, to re-enjoy the original happiness that is in line with his own nature.

But of course, Adam didn't have a father and a mother!So, in another sense, being alone is unnatural to man, at least, when man comes into this world, he finds that he is not alone.He has parents, brothers, sisters, so he is part of the group.Accordingly, the love of solitude is not an original inclination, but a product of experience and consideration; and it develops as our mental faculties develop and at the same time grows older.Therefore, generally speaking, a person's desire for social interaction is inversely proportional to his age.Young children cry out in terror and distress when left alone for a while.To leave a boy alone is severe punishment for him.It is easy for young people to get together, and it is only the noble young who sometimes try to be alone, but it is still difficult to be alone for a day.But adults can do this easily, they can already be alone for a long time; and, the older he is, the more he can be alone.Finally, the elderly who have reached the age of seventy either no longer need or are completely indifferent to the pleasures and entertainments of life, and their contemporaries have passed away one by one. For such elderly people, solitude is just right for them.But on an individual level, the tendency to be lonely, to withdraw from others, is always directly related to one's spiritual worth.This tendency, as I have said, is not purely natural and directly out of our needs, it is only the result of our living experience and thinking about this experience, it is our understanding of the vast majority of people in the moral and ideological It is the product of some awareness of the miserable, pitiful nature of life.The worst thing that can happen to us is to find in people a combination of moral and intellectual inadequacy, and all sorts of extremely unpleasant things can happen.This is why we find it unpleasant, even intolerable, to interact with most people.So while there are plenty of bad things in the world, party crowds are the worst.Even Voltaire, the well-connected Frenchman, had to admit: "There are many people in this world who are not worth talking to." The gentle Petrarch had a strong and unchanging love for solitude .He also gave the same reason for his preference:
I've been looking for a lonely life

Rivers, fields and forests can tell you,

I'm running from those small, unexamined souls
I cannot find the way of light through them.

Petrarch discusses the problem of solitude at length in his beautiful Essay on the Solitary Life.His book seems to be a copy of Zinmaman's famous "On Solitude".Shangfu speaks with his usual sarcasm about this indirect and secondary cause of his dislike.He said: Sometimes when people talk about a person who is alone, they say that this person does not like human society. Not like walking.Even the meek Christian Angelus [13] expresses exactly the same meaning in his peculiar, mystical language:
Herod was the enemy, God was in Joseph's sleep

Make him aware of the danger.

Bethlehem is the secular world, Egypt is the land of solitude.

My soul flee!Otherwise pain and death await you.

Similarly, Bruno also expressed this opinion: "In this world, those who want to live a holy life have said with one voice: Oh, then I will go far away and live in the wild." The Persian poet Saadi said: "Since then, we bid farewell to the crowd and chose the road of solitude, because safety belongs to those who are alone." He described himself as saying: "I hate my friends in Damascus, I live in seclusion in the desert near Jerusalem, and seek peace with animals." Companion." In a word, the same opinion was expressed by all those Prometheus fashioned out of better clay.The common ground between such excellent and distinguished persons is only the ugliest, the lowest, that is, the most vulgar and the most petty elements in human nature; Ability to climb to the height of the former, so there is no choice but to pull excellent people to their own level.This is what they most desire to do.Let me ask, what joy and pleasure can be gained from associating with these people?Therefore, the noble temperament and emotion can breed the love of solitude.Scoundrels are gregarious; they are indeed pathetic.In contrast, a man's noble nature is reflected in his inability to enjoy the company of others, preferring to be alone to the company of others.Then, as the years wore on, he would come to the insight that in this world, with rare exceptions, we really have only two choices: to be alone or to be vulgar.It was uncomfortable to say this, but Anginus—with all his Christian love and tenderness—had to say this:
Loneliness is hard;

But don't be vulgar;

Because of this, you will find
There is a desert everywhere.

It is quite natural for men of great minds--they are the true teachers of mankind--to dislike frequent company with other people, just as schoolmasters and educators would not like to be with loud, shouting children. Games and play are the same.The mission of these people who came to this world is to guide mankind across the ocean of error and into the blessed land of truth.They lifted mankind from the dark abyss of brutishness and vulgarity, and lifted them into the light of civilization and enlightenment.Of course, they had to live among worldly men and women, but they never really belonged to these worldly people.They already feel distinctly different from others from an early age, but it is only over time that their situation becomes clearer.Their inherent spiritual separation from the masses is deliberately supplemented by physical separation; no one can approach them unless these people do not belong to the general mediocrity.

From this we can see that the love of solitude is not an original desire, it is not formed directly, but gradually develops in an indirect way, mainly in people with noble spiritual thoughts.In the process, we inevitably have to surrender our natural desire to be in touch with people, and we also have to resist the whispered suggestion of the devil Mephistopheles from time to time:
Stop soothing your pain,
It devours your chest like a vicious eagle!

The worst crowd ever makes you feel
You are just one of the human beings.

——"Faust"

(End of this chapter)