For p. 2402. Whatever inferiority or disadvantage a man has either with respect to others or with respect to someone in particular, the only recourse is to conceal it boldly, constantly, and stubbornly. And this is still the only means—if the disadvantage and the adversity inspires compassion, and if compassion can be found in anyone—to find compassion for it. He who for any reason confesses it, either because he believes he cannot hide it (which is untrue, even if it’s visible, or known, or in some aspect manifest), or for some other reason, and thinks that by confessing he will gain compassion, and that if he denies it or tries to hide it, and shows that he is not aware of it, others will despise and mock him even more, and feel no sympathy, he is totally deceived, for on the contrary this is the surest way of being despised and mocked. Man does not for any reason stop exploiting the advantage he has over other [2486] men, or over a particular man, if the latter does not make a great effort so that others, as far as possible, do not realize or remember his disadvantage, or cannot exploit it. And therefore he should always act and behave as if that disadvantage did not exist, or as if he were not aware of it, and show that he doesn’t feel it at all; and should also try to do those things that, to his peers, most contradict, etc., that disadvantage. The greater his disadvantages are, the greater the need for the individual to stand up for himself. Because other men will never stand up for him, and what they principally desire and wish is that he should confess himself their inferior. Which he must always firmly reject. (21 June 1822.)
I have said elsewhere [→Z 64–65, 112] about how the Greeks’ καλὸς κᾀγαθὸς [the beautiful and the good] demonstrates the feeling and the power that beauty had in that nation and the sublimity they attributed to it, considering beauty to be a part and name of virtue. Add the custom in their language of calling all good, honest, virtuous, useful things καλὰ. See, among others, Xenophon ᾿Απομνημονɛύματα [Memorabilia], bk. 3, ch. 8.1 To the imagination of the Italians should be attributed (as the above-mentioned things to that of the Greeks), under the same guise, the use that they make [2487] of the words signifying external grazia [grace] to denote probity, honesty, kindness, etc., of habits: uomo DI GARBO [well-mannered man], GALANTuomo [gentleman]. (21 June 1822.)
It is said, very truly, that men for the most part let themselves be governed by names, and where does that come from if not from the fact that ideas and names are so closely bound in our mind that they make a single whole, and if the name is changed the idea changes decisively, even though the new name means the same thing? The Romans were a shining example of this. They detested the royal name, would not have tolerated a king called a king, and tolerated him if he was called emperor, dictator, etc., and declared him inviolable (something new) with the old name of tribunitial power. And you can see that they would not have tolerated a king so called, for Caesar—who, although he had the supreme command, still longed for that name, because it did not seem to him that he was a king if he was not so called (this too on account of that quality of our mind, even though he was very free-minded)—once he had had [2488] the crown offered him by Antony during the Lupercalia, was himself forced to reject it by the uproar and curses of that conquered and enslaved people, who then, called again to freedom, did not respond.1 And the emperors who came afterward, and who from the beginning (that is, as long as the name of emperor did not become in their imagination and that of the people the same as, and more than, king) had the same desire as Caesar, did not believe that that subdued people could be safely made to accept the name of king, although they did not hesitate to make them have a king and make them tolerate and even love the thing signified by this word. (22 June 1822.)
For p. 2414, end. All men and all animals love themselves precisely according to the degree and energy of their vitality. Hence what I’ve said elsewhere [→Z 2153–55] no longer seems to me true, that the quantity of self love is exactly the same in each living creature.2 Because the different species of living creatures, and the various individuals of the same species, and these same individuals in various times and circumstances [2489] have relatively different amounts of vitality. As some species have more spirit, others less. And among these the human has the most of all. But among men some have more, others less: and also naturally one person is born with more talent, another with less.
In addition, since self-love is a quality of the living creature, and since these qualities, as I have shown in several places, are dispositions, and these dispositions are adaptable and can be fruitful and produce faculties, especially in man, it follows that self-love, especially in man, can adapt and be cultivated like the other qualities. In fact all the more so the more fully it embraces all the qualities of the mind of the living creature. Hence self-love also advances, as does the human spirit, and it is greater not only in a livelier and more sensitive species or individual but also in an individual who is cultured compared to one who is uncultured, in a period that is cultured compared [2490] with one that is less cultured, in a civilized nation compared with a barbarous one, and in a single individual it is greater after his qualities or the inclinations of his senses, feeling, vitality, character have developed: is greater, I mean, than it was before.
And as I’ve shown [→Z 1382, 2410–14] that the unhappiness of the animal is always in direct proportion to the activity of its self-love, so it remains clear, both why man is naturally less happy than the other animals, and why, in proportion as he becomes civilized, and the activity of self-love gradually increases, he becomes more unhappy every day, necessarily, and as if by mathematical law.
It will become clear that self-love is adaptable, modifiable, capable of being cultivated and developed, subject to growth, and to greater or lesser activity and influence, if we consider self-love as a passion. And in fact it is. Rather, there is no passion that is not self-love, and all are an effect of it [2491] not distinct from the cause, and not existing outside of that cause, which operates now like this, and is called pride, now like that, and is called anger, and is always a single, primitive, essential passion.1 And so the passions are rather actions than effects of self-love, that is, they are not its offspring in the sense that they receive from it their own existence, separate and separable from it.
Now, e.g., isn’t anger or impatience with one’s own misfortune very changeable and different not only in different species or individuals but in a single individual, according to circumstances? Place him in adversity and get him used to it. Even if he is very impatient by nature, over time as he is habituated he becomes very patient. (I bear witness to every part of this proposition.)2 Say that this same person has never felt adversity, or get him used again to prosperity, or imagine in one of these two situations another individual, of a very mild nature. The slightest misfortune makes him impatient. Now, what more substantive effect of self-love than the impatience with misfortune of this self 3 that loves itself? And yet this [2492] impatience is greater and less according to natures, species, individuals, and the circumstances of a single individual and what he is accustomed to. So, therefore, is the self-love whose product it is. (22 June 1822.)
Concerning suicide. It is absurd that according to the philosophers and theologians we can and must live against nature (indeed we are not permitted to live in accord with nature) and we cannot die against nature. And that we are allowed against nature (which did not make man unhappy) to be unhappy and not allowed to free ourselves from unhappiness in a way that is against nature, since this is the only way possible, after we have been led so far from that nature, and irremediably so.1 (23 June 1822.)
This is the fact, and it cannot be denied. The height of practical morality was and is as greater among the ancients, the pagans, the savages than among the moderns, the Christians, the civilized, as the height of theoretical morality, and the perfect knowledge, definition, analysis, and propagation of it is greater among the latter than among the former. And in the same [2493] proportion the same should be said today, too, of the most unr
efined Christians, those who are least (or in a more confused fashion) educated in social and human duties, compared to the people who are most cultured and learned in the same duties.1 (24 June, Feast of St. John the Baptist, 1822.)
Man should not be valued, even in himself, because he has the title of philosopher or any other similar one. The only title appropriate for man, and by which he should be valued, is that of man. And this title should imply that he who deserved to bear it has to be a true man, that is, according to nature. In this way and with this condition the name of man is truly to be prized, since he is the principal work of earthly nature, or of our planet, etc. (24 June, Feast of St. John the Baptist, 1822.)
Self-love, which, as I have many times demonstrated [→Z 646–48, 1382, 2410–14, 2490], is necessarily or almost necessarily a source of unhappiness, was however (besides being an essential consequence and part [2494] of existence as experienced and known by the one who exists) still necessary and indispensable to happiness. How can you have love of happiness without love of self? In fact these two loves are precisely one single thing with two names. And how could you have happiness without love of happiness? For the animal cannot enjoy and delight in what it does not love. So if it did not love happiness, it could not enjoy it or take pleasure in it. So that would not be happiness, and he could not feel it. So the animal, if it did not love itself, could not be happy, and would in essence be incapable of happiness, and in inclination contradictory to the nature of happiness. Hence one must forgive nature, and recognize that although self-love necessarily produces unhappiness (greater or lesser), nature has nevertheless not erred in generating it in living creatures, since it is necessary to happiness, and so this [2495] drawback was, like many others, inevitable and derives, like many others, from something that is a good, and intended for good. (24 June 1822.)
Daily experience shows how true it is that self-love is a cause of unhappiness, and that the greater and more active it is the greater the unhappiness. Because the youth is not only subject to a thousand sorrows of mind but is incapable of enjoying the greater goods of the world, and enjoying them and desfrutarlos1 as much as possible, and in the best way possible, until his self-love, by dint of suffering, is humiliated, hardened, numbed. Then he enjoys a little. Something observed. As it can also be easily observed that the more numerous and intense man’s desires are, the unhappier he is, and that the art of happiness consists in having desires that are few and not intense, etc.2 (Which is precisely the reason that the youth in the above state—with [2496] an incredible ardor that carries him toward happiness, with the greatest possible power to taste and sustain pleasures and also fabricate them in his imagination, gaining them for himself through activity, etc.; at an age on which everything smiles, and offers pleasures almost spontaneously; although he is without disillusion, and therefore sees things in the best possible light, and, further, being new and inexperienced in pleasures, is still far and well protected from satiety, and capable of giving weight to every pleasure—this youth never enjoys anything, and suffers more than anyone else, and is sated more quickly; and the more so the livelier (as Della Casa often says),1 and the more sensitive, etc., he is, and so necessarily more loving of himself.) Now the measure of desires, their abundance, intensity, etc., is always in proportion to the measure, intensity, energy, activity of self-love. For desire is only for pleasure, and love of happiness is nothing other than the desire for pleasure, and love of happiness is nothing other than self-love. (24 June 1822.) See p. 2528.
Hence observe that everything that is said about self-love should also be understood [2497] about love of happiness, which is the same (see p. 2494). And therefore the degree, the force, the range, the vicissitudes, the increases, the reductions, both individual and general, of one of these loves are shared by the other. (24 June 1822.)
The oldest and proper meaning of the verb pareo [to appear], whose compounds adpareo, compareo, etc., later came into use in place of it, is preserved in the familiar and frequent usage by the Italians and the Spanish (parere, parecer, si pare [to appear, to seem], etc.). By what means, if not through Vulgar Latin? See Forcellini and the Glossary. Similarly the French paroître, or paraître, etc. (25 June 1822.)
I have said elsewhere [→Z 2206–208, 2387–89] that fear is the most egoistic passion of both natural and civilized man. The same is true of the other animals as well. And it’s right, because the object of fear places in (real or perceived) danger the existence or well-being of that self which the living creature loves for its own essence [2498] above all else. If the man most sensitive by habit and nature, the noblest, most affectionate, most virtuous man, absorbed at present, let’s say, by a deep and tender love, yet still susceptible to violent fear, finds himself in grave danger (real or imagined), he abandons the loved object, prefers (both in himself and by his action) his own safety to that of this object, and is even capable, in extreme danger, of sacrificing this object to his own safety, given the case that this sacrifice (however it’s understood) was, or seemed to him to be, needed for him to escape it. With fear, all the ties that bind the animal to other objects, whether of his kind or not, are broken. (26 June 1822.)
The greatest possible simplicity or naturalness of style, in writing or speaking civilized French, is always of that kind which they themselves (on other occasions) call maniéré [mannered]. Salvini, too, calls it ammanierato.1 See the definition of maniéré in the French dictionaries, which define it as a corrupt habit that distorts everything, and makes my point precisely. See, e.g., The Temple of Gnide,2 and La Fontaine’s Fables. (26 June 1822.)
[2499] I have elsewhere [→Z 2017–18, 2433–34] attributed the beginning of infinite and very varied qualities of the human spirit (e.g., love of keen sensations) to love of life. This love, however, is not only a necessary consequence but a part, or natural action, of self-love, which has to be love of one’s existence, except when existence has become suffering. But not as existence, because existence as existence is by nature eternally loved above all else by the one who exists. Because to love one’s own existence as existence is to love oneself. And it would be a contradiction almost impossible to conceive that existence was not loved by the one who exists, and hence that in a certain sense existence was hated by existence, and battled by existence, and opposed to existence, or simply not cherished by and not pleasing to itself, not even as itself. (26 June 1822.)
[2500] For p. 2405. A corollary can easily be drawn from the observation that Oriental writing for the most part lacks vowels. And it is that those languages may be supposed to be the first to be cultivated, Oriental writing the first to be invented (which is precisely why it is more imperfect, and the same could be said of the structure, etc., of their languages), Oriental literatures the first to arise, and in short the Orient the first place to be civilized, and hence probably the first to be populated, and adapted to society, etc. This confirms the other proofs of those propositions that already exist, and that the human race has its origin in the Orient.1 (26 June 1822.)
Why is barbarism so plainly contrary to elegance in writing, inevitably resulting in such a flavor of triteness? By barbarism I mean the use of foreign words or idioms that are not completely alien to or discordant with the character of their own language, and their national ear, and habits, etc. For [2501] if we used, e.g., German constructions or words with Arabic or Indian endings, or Hebrew conjugations or other such things, there would be no need to examine why these barbarisms are contrary to elegance, since they would be contradictory and inappropriate to the rest of the language, and to national habits. But I mean barbarisms such as, e.g., Gallicisms in Italian (that is, French words or idioms that are Italianized and not introduced, e.g., with the French forms and endings and pronunciations, because that would be outside the matter and the question). And I ask why barbarism, thus defined and understood, completely destroys the elegance of writings.
Certainly it is not incompatible with the nature of either languages or men or th
ings, and is not contrary to the eternal and essential principles of elegance, beauty, etc., that men of one nation should express some greater or lesser number of ideas [2502] with words and idioms learned and received from another nation, which has close and frequent dealings with them, as is precisely the case of France with respect to us (and also to the other Europeans) in literature, fashion, and trade, and generally because of the influence that the society and spirit of that nation has on all of cultivated Europe. I say again that this is not naturally contrary to the beautiful, if the form of those words and idioms is not utterly contradictory and contrary to the forms of their own language. And that is precisely our case. So we have to look outside general and immutable nature for the reason that this barbarism noticeably destroys elegance, and cannot exist alongside it. Certainly, though, and all the masters of the art teach and recommend this, and I have explained and demonstrated it elsewhere [→Z 1324, 1337, 1806–807, 1917–20], that not only does the unfamiliar contribute to elegance but elegance cannot [2503] do without it, and has to originate in a speech somewhat (more or less) apart from ordinary usage, both in words, and in their meanings, and in their combination, in metaphors, in additions, in phrases, in constructions, in the entire form of the discourse, etc. Now, how, then, is it that barbarism, which is an unfamiliar form of speech, barbarism, I repeat, even when it is not directly, or at all, contrary to the general character and essence of a language, or to the ear or usage of the nation’s inhabitants, instead of seeming elegant, seems to us precisely the opposite, and incompatible with elegance? This is the way that I see it.
Zibaldone Page 182