Not only does each species of animal consider, either explicitly and distinctly, or certainly implicitly and indistinctly, that it is the first and most perfect in nature, and in the order of things, and that everything is made for it, but so also by the same token does each individual. And so it happens among men, each of whom implicitly [823] and naturally persuades himself of the same thing.
Equally, there is no people so barbarous that it does not implicitly believe itself to be better, more perfect, and superior to any other, and judge itself to be a model for the nations.
Equally, there has never been an age so tainted and corrupted that it did not believe itself to stand at the pinnacle of civilization and social perfection, and to be an example to the other ages, and, in particular, superior in every respect to all past ages, and at the farthest point in space yet traveled by the human spirit.
With this difference, however, that although everything is relative in nature, it is relative in regard to the various species, so that the ideas a species has of perfection, etc., are more or less common to all the individuals in it (especially if they are ideas natural to the species). It is therefore natural and logical that although an individual is naturally inclined to believe that he is superior to the rest of his species and that the whole world is intended for his use [824] and benefit, he may nevertheless with just a little reflection readily grant the superiority of other individuals of the same species, and believe the world to have as its purpose his whole species, and the latter to be the most perfect of existing things, and the apex of nature. Hence by the same token a people, an age (I spoke and am speaking of men, and what I say can be applied proportionately to other living beings), or some individual in them may well grant the superiority of other peoples and ages. For ideas regarding the beautiful and the good are, to a great extent, anyway, general in each species, as long as they do not derive from prejudices, from particular circumstances, or from any alteration in one or another part of the species, as happened with men, when their nature altered, and altered in different ways, and natural ideas therefore altered, too, and opinions diversified, etc.
As I was saying, this may readily happen to the individual human being in relation to his own species. But not so in relation to another [825] species. (1) Because we (and likewise every species of living being) believe (and this because of our nature) that the ideas that are true relative to our own species are absolutely true: we believe what is good and perfect for us to be absolutely good and perfect; and so, measuring the other species by our own measure, we judge them all to be much inferior, nor are we ever capable of believing that in a species different from ours there is as much goodness and perfection as in ours, because we believe perfection, which is relative and particular, to be absolute, and a universal norm. (2) Because we can never put ourselves in the place and in the mind of another species (just as no animal can) in order to conceive the ideas it has of the good, the beautiful, and the perfect, and to measure that species in terms of those ideas, which are very different from our own, and which do not come within the scope of our nature, and within the compass of our faculties, whether intellectual, imaginative, rational, or conceptual, [826] etc. etc. (20 March 1821.)
“An censes (ut de me ipso aliquid more senum glorier) me tantos labores diurnos nocturnosque domi militiaeque suscepturum fuisse, si iisdem finibus gloriam meam, quibus vitam, essem terminaturus? nonne melius multo fuisset, otiosam aetatem, et quietam, sine ullo labore et contentione traducere? Sed, nescio quomodo, animus erigens se, posteritatem semper ita prospiciebat, quasi, cum excessisset e vita, tum denique victurus esset; quod quidem ni ita se haberet, ut animi immortales essent, haud optimi cuiusque animus maxime ad immortalitatem gloriae niteretur” [“Or (to boast a little, as the old tend to do), do you suppose that I should have undertaken such heavy labors by day and by night, at home and with the army, if I had believed that the term of my earthly life would mark the limits of my glory? Would it not have been far better for me to spend a leisured and quiet life, free from toil and strife? But my soul, I do not know how, seemed almost to have raised itself up, and was always looking ahead to posterity, as if it realized that when it had departed from life, then at last would it be alive. And, indeed, if it were not true that souls are immortal, it would not be the case that the souls of the best men strive most for immortal glory”]. Cato the Elder in Cicero, Cato Maior seu de senectute, last ch., 23. Since it is true that pleasure is always future, and never present, as I have said in other thoughts [→Z 532–35, 648]. This may serve to explain what Cicero is saying here, and what we see in men with a measure of fruitful ambition; I’m talking about that hope placed [827] in posterity, that looking, that setting as the goal of our actions, desires, and hopes the praise, etc., of those who will come after us. To start with, man desires the pleasure of glory in his own life, that is to say, in the eyes of his own contemporaries. Once he has obtained it, even if it is perfect and supreme, and once he has realized that what he thought to be pleasure not only is inferior to hope (even when the glory was in effect greater than the hope) but is not pleasure, and found that he is not only dissatisfied but feels as if he had obtained nothing, and as if his goal were yet to be attained (that is, pleasure, which has not in fact been obtained, because it is never other than future, and is never present): then his soul, erigens se [raising itself] almost above this life, posteritatem respicit [gazes at posterity], as if after death tum denique victurus sit [then at last it might be alive],1 that is to say, might attain its goal, the essential complement of life, which is happiness, namely, pleasure, not yet obtained, and already too obviously not obtainable by him in this life; then the hope for pleasure, no longer having [828] a place to settle, or an object to aim at within the bounds of this life, finally passes beyond, and settles on future generations, and man hopes for them, and after death, the pleasure that he sees always fleeing and always withdrawing, and that cannot be, or hope to be, gained or won in this life. Man is brought to this pass because, just as the goal of life is happiness, and happiness cannot be obtained here below, yet on the other hand a thing cannot help tending toward its necessary goal, and would fail if it lacked hope entirely, so hope, no longer finding any home in this life, finally finds a place beyond it, through the illusion of posterity. Indeed, this is an illusion that is more common in great men, because, while others, who know less about things or reason less and are less logical, and have countless partial disillusionments and disappointments, still continue to hope within the bounds of their life, great men are, on the contrary, firmly persuaded, and very quickly, that is, after only a few experiences, and despair of any actual and real pleasure in this life; and yet [829] needing a goal, and hence the hope of attaining it, and spurred also by their souls to noble deeds, they place their goal, and hope, beyond existence, and feed on this last illusion. Although after death either we will not be capable of any happiness or it will be completely different from what might come from our descendants, still, even if we were then as capable of enjoying our fame among future generations as we are now of enjoying our fame among our contemporaries, that fame (if the same circumstances with regard to our soul and to pleasure persist) would seem to us, as our present fame does, completely insipid, and empty, and unable to satisfy or procure any other than future pleasure; I mean an actual, present pleasure. (20 March 1821.) Apply these thoughts to the hope of future happiness in another world.
Offense arouses in all souls the desire to see it punished, but in lofty ones the desire to punish it. (20 March 1821.)
Desiring life, no matter what the circumstances, and in the full extent of that desire, [830] is in the end simply desiring unhappiness; desiring to live is the same as desiring to be unhappy. (20 March 1821.)
It is ridiculous to claim perfectibility for man not only in relation to mind or matters pertaining to mind, as I have said in another thought [→Z 371–73],a1 but also in relation to bodily comforts. The comforts in use today seem so necessary that witho
ut them human existence is believed to be almost impossible, or certainly more wretched, and the discovery of each comfort is regarded as another step toward the perfection and happiness of our species, and some comforts in particular, though very distant from nature, are regarded as essential and indispensable to mankind. Now, I am not going to ask the people who hold these views how men managed to live for so long despite being deprived of the indispensable; how so many savage peoples manage today; and how a fair number of our own people manage before our very eyes, day after day (also, in fact, people more than accustomed to these supposedly indispensable things who, for any number of reasons, happen to be without them, sometimes even voluntarily). All of whom, rather than being aware of their unhappiness, believed [831] and still believe and are much less aware that they are unhappy than we are in regard to ourselves: and they were much less unhappy, and are so, both because of this belief, and also independently of it. I will not summon up on my behalf the sect of the Cynics, and their example and practice, intended to show through evidence just how little, and just how few inventions and refinements, the natural life of man needs.1 I shall not repeat that, since habit is a second nature, we believe that the need arising from our corruption is primordial. And that many of our needs, in fact an infinite number, are real today, not only because of habituation, which as is well known may give or remove the capacity for one thing or another and for abstaining from one thing or another, but also without habituation, as human generations have become weaker and have changed in form, and now need specific aids, are subject to specific disadvantages, and therefore require specific remedies, which had no place in primitive humanity. Thus medicine, the use of specific foods, clothing varied according to the seasons, [832] protections against heat, cold, etc., surgery, etc. etc. I’ll leave aside all these things, because they have been said by others, and also because I might be scoffed at for wanting man to go about on all fours.1 I will simply repeat the argument I have used in relation to mental perfectibility. So, if all the above was necessary and suited to the perfection and happiness of man, how on earth did nature, so thorough and accomplished a teacher in all things, not only leave him in ignorance but even hide everything that was within itself? Some will say that, having given a living being the necessary faculties, nature left it to him to use these faculties to find and procure what he needed, and that it left more to man than to the animals, because it gave him more powerful faculties, and likewise arranged things in proportion to the greater or lesser faculties in the other animals. This is one thing, but it would be quite another to place a species at an infinite distance from what one supposes to be necessary to its well-being and to the perfecting of its existence. It is quite another to allow, indeed to will and to arrange that an infinite [833] number, a great many generations of these beings should remain deprived either actually or in large part of the things needed for their perfection. It is quite another to place this creature in the world, utterly naked, utterly poor, utterly unhappy and wretched, with its sole compensation being certain faculties, thanks to which, only after a great number of centuries, it would manage to acquire some part of what it needed in order to reduce the unhappiness of a life whose goal is simply its happiness. It is quite another to arrange things in such a way that a large part of this species (like so many savages discovered not long ago, or still to be discovered) should remain until our own time, and until who knows when, more or less in the same original imperfection and unhappiness (this argument can also be applied to the supposed perfectibility of the mind and of the various faculties of man). And all this in a privileged species that is supposed to be the first in the order of all beings. What a fine privilege indeed, to see all the other creatures immediately attain their relative perfection [834] and happiness, without either hardships or mistakes, while this species, meanwhile, to attain its happiness, must suffer hardship, try a thousand different paths, go astray a thousand times and retrace its steps, and must in the end wait through a very long series of centuries in order to attain, in part, this goal. Let us consider how many studies, inventions, investigations, and journeys by land and sea to the most remote parts, and the innumerable obstacles that had to be overcome, those due to fortune and especially (which is more noteworthy) those due to nature, were needed to get us, as far as the body is concerned, to our present state, and to procure for us those very things which are now held to be essential to our lives. Let us consider how many of these, even though already discovered, still require the same infinite labors in order to be made available to us. Let us consider how much we still lack, how much has been discovered only very recently, whether absolutely or in relation to the age of the human species, how much is discovered every day, and how much knowledge deemed useful for life, even of the most essential kind (as in surgery, medicine, etc.), is increasing, how many things will be discovered and will then come into use that we will have missed, and which our [835] descendants will judge to be as indispensable as the things that we have and judge to be indispensable. My question is whether this whole series of very difficult means leading to the primary end of nature, which is the happiness and perfection of existing things and their well-being, and especially of living beings, and of the first among living beings, formed part of the system, the design, the plan of nature, in the order of things, in the primordial provision and calculation relating to the human species. My question is whether chance also entered into the plan, the order, the calculation of the means leading to the essential and primary end, which is happiness and perfection, means that were themselves therefore also necessary. Now, it is well known how many of the most important discoveries of this kind, and most often in everyday use, and most important in their impact and application, man owes to pure and simple chance. Pure and simple chance therefore played a part in the primordial system of nature, which therefore counted on it as a necessary means, and therefore [836] caused the primary and essential end to depend upon it. Nature was therefore content that, if such and such an eventuality didn’t occur, or didn’t occur in a particular fashion, etc. etc., or indeed that but not this occurred, etc., the human species, its most important creation, should remain imperfect and unhappy, and deprived of the goal of its existence, and likewise all those parts of the order of things that depend upon or have a close connection with the human species.
We should note that the sphere of chance extends much farther than is generally believed. An invention stemming from the talent and reflection of a profound man is not considered accidental. But how many completely accidental circumstances are needed for a man to achieve that competence. Circumstances regarding the cultivation of his talent, his birth, his studies, the extrinsic means of countless kinds that in combination have made him what he is, and which if they were wanting would have made him quite different (and so it has been said that man is a work of chance);1 regarding discoveries and knowledge that were acquired by others before [837] him, acquired in the same accidental fashion, but without which he would not have reached that goal; regarding the specific application of his mind to such and such an object, etc. etc. etc. Discuss in exactly the same way a discovery made as the result of, e.g., a journey, an Academy, a public or royal enterprise, etc., the kind of discovery that is customarily put wholly outside the sphere of accidents. And you will see that, just as on the one hand the sphere of chance, in all things, especially human things, extends much farther than is generally believed, so, too, on the other, all or most inventions, etc., that are now habitually believed to be absolutely necessary and essential to human life are really the result of chance. Now compare this unbelievable negligence of nature in abandoning the primary goal of the primary species of living beings, namely, the happiness of man, to so uncertain a means, with the certainty and unfailingness of the means that nature employs for all its other ends, even though of lesser importance, and judge whether one may ever suppose [838] it to be true. (21 March 1821.) See p. 870, end.
The more the nature, structure, and deve
lopment of a language is in accordance with natural rules, the more simple, direct, etc., it is, the more suited it is to universality. And, conversely, the more figurative, composite, and contorted it is, and the more features its form has that are arbitrary, particular to, and characteristic of that language or of its writers, etc., rather than characteristic of the common nature of things, the less suited it is to universality. The former qualities are the province par excellence of French, and even though Italian possesses them to a much greater degree than Latin does—indeed, there is no comparison—nonetheless it yields in this regard to French (and does so readily), as do all the modern European languages. But none of them yield as far as these qualities are concerned to Latin, indeed they outstrip it by a wide margin, or to Greek, either.
The way in which these qualities serve the universality of a language is self-evident, but it will be even more so for the following reasons. A natural result of the said qualities is that the language used by writers differs either not at all [839] or very little from the familiar, common language of the nation. So it is in France, while it is the opposite in Italy, and very much the opposite in Latin. This result means that when the same language that is spoken comes to be written (1) the difficulty is as it were halved; (2) the common people, or any conversation, whether high or low, of the speakers of that language, are just as good teachers and propagators of it among foreigners, outside or inside the country, as writers are; (3) conversely writers are just as good teachers as are merchants, travelers, and anyone who speaks that language with foreigners, both in their own country and outside it; (4) hence both speakers and writers together propagate one and the same language. Or what I mean is that they are two languages so minimally different that if one or other of the two is understood, there will be no difficulty in understanding and speaking the other as well. This is a very noteworthy consequence, because the influence of writers is paramount in propagating a language, but the language can never become [840] universal through the medium of writers if they do not learn to speak it, that is, to use it, and then it might well be spread abroad for study and ornament alone, as Italian once was. The influence of speakers is supreme, but much less so if it is not combined with that of writers, if it does not help to establish a link with the rest of the nation, with so to speak its totality, and this cannot be done except through the medium of writers, and all the more so the more they are made known to, understood, and read by the whole nation, and not by the lettered class alone. The combination of these two influences, therefore, has a vast impact. The foreigner of whatever rank—whatever his circumstances, proclivity, profession, means, or purpose—who has to or wants to learn that language or happens to have done so, is master of the whole of that language, speaking it and understanding anyone who speaks it, reading it, writing it, and using it however he pleases, in conversation, in business, and at the table, communicating with the whole [841] nation that speaks it or writes it, and with all those foreigners who use it, in whatever fashion and for whatever reason. The man of letters who has learned it for his own edification, and to study its literature, the merchant who has learned it for use in the marketplace, those who have learned it without studying and simply by practice with native speakers or foreigners, etc. etc.—all of them are more or less at the same level, and enjoy the same advantages.
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