It could be said that human passions and feelings were at first on the surface, then they huddled deep in the darkest depths of the soul, and finally they arrived at the halfway point and stayed there. Because natural man, although very sensitive, can nevertheless be said to have his passions on the surface, giving vent to them with all manner of external actions suggested and intended by nature to provide an escape for the overwhelming rush and power of his feelings, which, manifesting themselves so violently and being immediately summoned forth, after a great outburst, quickly evaporated, even if they occurred much more frequently. The man who is no longer natural but who nevertheless retains a little bit of nature, while still feeling all or almost all the force of his passions, like primitive man, keeps them all inside and gives only slight and equivocal signs of them, and so his feelings, huddled deep inside, acquire greater force and resilience. And because they do not find the release intended by nature, if they are painful they become capable of killing or tormenting him to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the quality of the feelings and of the individual. Such persons still exist today [267] because, apart from some of the common people, no one retains so much of nature as to allow all his feelings to rush to the surface (except in some extreme instances where nature triumphs), but many have enough to be acutely aware of them and to feel them contained and closed in the depths of their soul. Nevertheless, it’s clear that such people belong to an age of half-nature, to a time when true feelings were neither so frequently spoken about nor so rarely experienced as they are today. The perfectly modern man hardly ever feels passions or emotions that either burst out or huddle inside; instead, nearly all his passions are contained in what we might call the middle of his spirit, which is to say they do not move him too much but, rather, leave him free to exercise all his natural abilities, habits, etc. In such a way that most of his life is passed in indifference and consequently boredom, untouched by any powerful or extraordinary impressions. An example. A friend or much longed-for person who returns after a long absence or that you see for the first time. A child or a savage will embrace and caress him and jump for joy, and give a thousand different signs of the true and lively joy that animates him. These signs are not deceptive, but are genuine [268] and very natural. The man of feeling, with no conspicuous gestures or movements, will take him by the hand or, at most, embrace him slowly, and remain for some time in that embrace, or in some other posture, giving no sign of the joy he is feeling except the immobility of his person and his gaze, and perhaps a tear, and while inside he feels very differently, outside he remains almost the same as before. The average man, or the man whose feelings have been dulled and enfeebled by his experience of the world and wretched knowledge of things, in other words modern man, will maintain his everyday state inside and out, he will feel only slight emotion, even less than he perhaps expects. And whether he foresaw it or not, that will be for him just an ordinary event in life, one of those pleasures which you sample with indifference, and which, as soon as they arrive, even if you had been anxiously awaiting them, seem ordinary and unable to satisfy you or stir you. See p. 270, paragraph 1.
Without a purpose, people almost never find pleasure in any activity. Apart from those which are enjoyable in themselves, and while you are engaged in them (and they are very few, and the pleasure they give is greatly inferior to the anticipation), all the others are enjoyable only if they are undertaken with a purpose, and a hope, and a prospect [269] of something not present but to follow. Although many of these, either because the aim is achieved at every step, as in studying, or because the aim is so intrinsically bound up with the activity that it is difficult to distinguish it, are often confused with activities that are enjoyable in themselves, whereas they are only pleasurable insofar as they are directed toward some end or hope, without which they would be inconsequential or boring, as can be seen from considering the same action performed by two different individuals.
Pure beauty resulting from exact and regular propriety rarely inspires great passions (as Montesquieu says),1 in the same way that reason is infinitely less powerful and effective than nature. Such beauty is like a kind of reason, and so it does not presuppose life or warmth either in itself or in those who look at it. On the other hand, a face or person that is flawed but lively, graceful, etc., or furnished with a teasing, sensitive spirit, etc., surprises, warms, affects, and touches the fancy of those who look at it, without rule, without precision, without reason, etc. etc. And thus most great passions are born of a whim, of something extraordinary, etc., and cannot be justified by reason. (10 Oct. 1820.)
[270] What I said on pp. 266–68 should serve as a rule for dramatists in the molding and expression of characters from different periods. (10 Oct. 1820.)
Pure beauty with respect to grace, etc., is, in the category of the beautiful, what reason is to nature in the system of human things. This consideration could be used to explain the mysterious nature and effects of grace.
Reason is very weak and is inactive, unlike nature. Hence those people and those times more or less dominated by reason must have been and always will be inactive in proportion to the influence of reason. Just the opposite, as I say, of nature. A completely rational or philosophical society could not survive because of the lack of action and of people willing to undertake the reciprocal duties necessary to life, etc. etc. Observe, in fact, those men (not rare today) who are tired of the world and, through long experience, disenchanted, and so, we might say, totally rational. They are incapable of engaging in any action or even any desire. They are like the Marquis D’Argens, of whom Frederick II in his letters said that he was so lazy he would have chosen not to breathe if he could.1 The consequence of their weariness, experience, and knowledge of the world is a perfect indifference, which allows them to follow other people’s moves without moving themselves, even in those matters that concern them. Hence if this indifference should become universal [271] in a society, if other people didn’t move, there would be no movement of any sort.
Glory, on the whole, especially the literary sort, is sweet when a man can savor it in the silence of his study and use it as a spur to further glorious endeavors and as a foundation for renewed hope. Because then it conserves the power of illusion, the only power it has. But enjoyed in the world and society, it turns out to be nothing or very small or incapable, in short, of filling the spirit and satisfying it. As all pleasures from a distance are great, but close up are minuscule, dry, empty, and nothing at all.
Those people who, to console someone deprived of some great advantage in life, say, “Do not torment yourself, remember it’s only an illusion,” are talking nonsense. Because that person can and should respond, “But all pleasures are illusions or based on illusion, and life is formed and consists of such illusions. So if I cannot have any, what pleasure is left to me? What is the point of living?” I say the same about those ancient customs, etc., that encouraged enthusiasm, illusions, courage, action, movement, life. They were illusions, but take them away, [272] as they have been taken away. What pleasure remains? What does life become? Similarly, I say: virtue, generosity, sensibility, genuine mutual love, faithfulness, constancy, justice, magnanimity, etc., are, humanly speaking, imaginary entities. Nevertheless, if a sensitive man were to encounter them frequently in the world, he would be less unhappy, and if the world followed these imaginary entities more closely (leaving aside any future life) it, too, would be much less unhappy. It would be following illusions, because nothing is capable of satisfying the human spirit, but isn’t a life with many illusory pleasures better than one with no pleasure at all? Wouldn’t life be better if these illusions could be better realized in the world, and if a good man did not have to persuade himself not only that they are imaginary entities but that even imaginary things like those no longer exist in the world, so that even the pasturage and sustenance of illusion are lacking? And on the other hand, there is no greater illusion or appearance of pleasure than that which derives from bea
uty, tenderness, greatness, sublimity, honesty. Hence the more abundant such things are, however illusory, the less unhappy people would be. (11 Oct. 1820.) See p. 338, paragraph 2.
[273] Someone said about a rich miser who had a very small sum of money stolen from a little room full of money, “He proved his meanness (He was mean) even when he was being robbed.” (13 Oct. 1820.)
The majority of people live according to habit, without pleasure or real hopes, without sufficient reason for continuing to live or doing what is necessary to stay alive. If they thought about it, apart from religion they would find no reason for living and, though unnatural, it would be rational to conclude that their life was absurd, because although having begun life is, according to nature, justification for continuing it, according to reason it is not.
Add to p. 263, thought 2. Very often people who are incapable of judging someone’s merit will form a much grander impression of it than they should, thinking it absolutely superior, and yet their estimation of it will be much less than the person deserves, so that in relative terms they will regard such merit as much less. In my hometown, where people knew that I was devoted to studying, they believed that I knew every language, and they would question me at random about any of them. They thought I was a poet, rhetorician, physicist, politician, doctor, theologian, etc., in short, super-encyclopedic. But they did not on that account believe I was anyone special and, in their ignorance of what it meant to be a man of letters, they didn’t think I was comparable to men of letters from other places, despite having the opinion of me [274] I have described. One of them, wanting to flatter me, even told me one day, “It would not be out of order for you to spend some time in a good town, for we can very nearly say that you are a man of letters.” But if I ever showed that my knowledge was a little less than they assumed, their opinion of me fell even further, and no small distance, and in the end they took me for someone at their level. It is true, however, that the opposite can sometimes happen and, with opinion of that kind in an ignorant time or place, small men or small merits may be accorded great esteem.
For p. 252, paragraph 1. See also p. 114, last thought, and consider how opposed Cato was to the development of scholarship among the Romans, which is a very clear example of what I was saying about learning—however agreeable or serious and philosophical it is—being favorable to tyranny. See also Montesquieu Grandeur, etc., the beginnning of ch. 10.1 Clearly, the profound philosophy of Seneca, Lucan, Paetus Thrasea, Herennius Senecio, Helvidius Priscus, Arulenus Rusticus, Tacitus, etc., did not prevent tyranny, and, in fact, whereas the Romans had been free without philosophers, when they had them in vast numbers, and as profound as these and unlike any they had had before, they were slaves.2 And just as such learning favors tyranny, although it might appear to be its enemy, similarly, [275] tyranny serves learning: (1) because a tyrant prefers and ensures that people amuse themselves or think (when he cannot prevent it) rather than act; (2) because the inactivity of his subjects naturally induces a life of thinking, if the opportunity for action is denied; (3) because when a man becomes soft and enervated, he is more inclined to think or to amuse himself with the pleasure, etc., of elegant study than to act; (4) because the oppression, unhappiness, monotony, and sombre [gloom]1 of a tyranny encourages, foments, and brings about reflection, deep thinking, sensitivity, melancholic writing, eloquence that is no longer lively and energetic but lugubrious, profound, philosophical, etc.; (5) because a lack of lively, grand illusions, having extinguished the joyful, airy, brilliant, and, in brief, natural imagination of ancient times, leads people to think about truth, to recognize the reality of things, to meditate, etc., and gives rise to an imagination that is dark, abstract, metaphysical, based more on truths, philosophy, reason than on nature or the vague ideas naturally typical of the primitive imagination. As is that of northerners, especially today, among whom the limited life of nature gives rise to an imagination based on thought, [276] metaphysics, abstractions, philosophy, science, the knowledge of facts, exact measurements, etc. An imagination that has more to do with infinitesimal calculation than with poetry. (14 Oct. 1820.)
Add the following to p. 51, paragraph 4. In the same way, I do not consider someone wicked just because he does wrong (many people do not do wrong because of cowardice, ignorance, inexperience, lack of skill and the knowledge to carry it out, physical or moral weakness, or weakness brought on by circumstance because of laziness, habit, shame, vested interest, politics, and a hundred other such motives), but one who does or would do wrong without remorse.1 (14 Oct. 1820.)
The propriety that brings about beauty does not apply just to the parts of a thing. Many things are so simple that they are almost without parts. And moral beauty and any beauty that does not pertain to the senses do not have parts. But the propriety of something is also considered in terms of the relation of the whole or the parts to what is extrinsic. To custom, for example, purpose, utility, place, time, every sort of circumstance, to the effect it produces or ought to produce, etc. A sword with a jewel at its [277] tip, a jewel that matches perfectly the decoration, proportions, design, and material of the whole thing, in any event would be ugly. This ugliness is not an impropriety of parts, or of one part in relation to the others, but of one part in relation to its purpose or use. There are innumerable examples of ugliness and beauty of this type, whether sensual, intellectual, moral, literary, etc. (14 Oct. 1820.)
The old person who has no present or future is no less alive on account of this. If he has never been a man, he needs no more than the trifles his situation will provide him with, and everything is enough for him to live. If he has been a man, he has a past, and lives in that. The lack of a present is not the most serious problem for people; indeed, given the nothingness of everything that we see in reality and close up, it could be said of everyone that the present means nothing, that every man lacks a present.1 The emptiness of the future is no great concern for him: (1) because he has already had enough of life, which he has experienced, enjoyed, made use of, etc.; (2) because his desires, passions, affections, feelings are blunted, [278] wearied, and confined, and no longer demand any great goods, pleasures, movements, or actions in the present or any great hopes or great life present or future; (3) because the remainder of his life is short, and this brief period of emptiness cannot alarm him unduly. But a young person with neither a present nor a future, that is, without means, occupation, pleasures, life, etc., and no hopes or prospects for the future, must be very unhappy and desperate, lack life altogether, and be appalled and afraid for his fate and the future. (1) A young person does not have a past. What little he has serves only to sadden him and make his heart ache. Memories of childhood and early adolescence, the delights of that age now irreparably lost, the flowering of hopes, imagined joys, flights of fancy about future prosperity, action, life, glory, pleasure, all vanished. (2) His desires and passions are fervent and demanding in the extreme. A little is not enough, much is needed to satisfy them. The greater his inner life, the greater the need and extent and intensity of the outward life he desires. And, lacking this, the more intense is his inner life, and the greater will be the sense of [279] deadness, nullity, boredom he experiences. Thus, the less he lives in such circumstances, the more vigorous is his internal life. (3) A young person has seen and experienced nothing. He cannot be satisfied. His desires and passions are more fervent and needier, as I said, not simply because of his age but because on a material level there is nothing with which he can nourish and sustain himself. He cannot be disillusioned in the inner depth of his being and in nature, even if he is in the whole expanse of his reason. (4) His future existence is materially very long and the vast empty space that he still has to cross horrifies him,1 especially if he compares it with the little way he has come with such difficulty. Faced with this consideration, a young man can become excessively afraid and desperate, and the future seems longer and more terrible than an eternity. What’s more, his whole life consists in the future. His early years w
ere no more than an introduction to life. So he was born without being meant to live. The young man feels mortal despair at the thought that he will pass this way only once, and that in his time on earth he will not enjoy life, will not live, and his unique existence will have been wasted and useless. Every moment of his youth that passes in this way seems [280] an irreparable loss inflicted on an age that can never return. (16 Oct. 1820.)
His amusement was to count the stars as he walked (and the like).1 (16 Oct. 1820.)
Also, simply the lack of the present is more painful to the young person than to anyone else. The illusions he has are livelier, and so hopes are more able to nourish him. But youthful ardor cannot withstand the total absence of a present life, it is not satisfied with living only in the future but needs its energy now, and monotony and inactivity in the present are more painful, heavier, more boring than at any other age, because habituation will alleviate any ill, and with enough practice man can become accustomed to absolute, total boredom and find it much less unbearable than he did at first. I myself am proof of this. At first boredom drove me to despair, but then, as it increased instead of diminishing, habit little by little made it less frightening to me and more susceptible to patience. My patience with boredom finally became really heroic.2 The example of prisoners, who sometimes have even grown to like that life.
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