Human, All Too Human Volume I Part 5

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=The Martyr Against His Will.=--In a certain movement there was a man who was too cowardly and vacillating ever to contradict his comrades. He was made use of in each emergency, every sacrifice was demanded of him because he feared the disfavor of his comrades more than he feared death: he was a petty, abject spirit. They perceived this and upon the foundation of the qualities just mentioned they elevated him to the alt.i.tude of a hero, and finally even of a martyr. Although the cowardly creature always inwardly said No, he always said Yes with his lips, even upon the scaffold, where he died for the tenets of his party: for beside him stood one of his old a.s.sociates who so domineered him with look and word that he actually went to his death with the utmost fort.i.tude and has ever since been celebrated as a martyr and exalted character.

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=General Standard.=--One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit and mean actions to fear.

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=Misunderstanding of Virtue.=--Whoever has obtained his experience of vice in connection with pleasure as in the case of one with a youth of wild oats behind him, comes to the conclusion that virtue must be connected with self denial. Whoever, on the other hand, has been very much plagued by his pa.s.sions and vices, longs to find in virtue the rest and peace of the soul. That is why it is possible for two virtuous people to misunderstand one another wholly.

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=The Ascetic.=--The ascetic makes out of virtue a slavery.

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=Honor Transferred from Persons to Things.=--Actions prompted by love or by the spirit of self sacrifice for others are universally honored wherever they are manifest. Hence is magnified the value set upon whatever things may be loved or whatever things conduce to self sacrifice: although in themselves they may be worth nothing much. A valiant army is evidence of the value of the thing it fights for.

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=Ambition a Subst.i.tute for Moral Feeling.=--Moral feeling should never become extinct in natures that are dest.i.tute of ambition. The ambitious can get along without moral feeling just as well as with it.--Hence the sons of retired, ambitionless families, generally become by a series of rapid gradations, when they lose moral feeling, the most absolute lunkheads.

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=Vanity Enriches.=--How poor the human mind would be without vanity! As it is, it resembles a well stacked and ever renewed ware-emporium that attracts buyers of every cla.s.s: they can find almost everything, have almost everything, provided they bring with them the right kind of money--admiration.

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=Senility and Death.=--Apart from the demands made by religion, it may well be asked why it is more honorable in an aged man, who feels the decline of his powers, to await slow extinction than to fix a term to his existence himself? Suicide in such a case is a quite natural and due proceeding that ought to command respect as a triumph of reason: and did in fact command respect during the times of the masters of Greek philosophy and the bravest Roman patriots, who usually died by their own hand. Eagerness, on the other hand, to keep alive from day to day with the anxious counsel of physicians, without capacity to attain any nearer to one's ideal of life, is far less worthy of respect.--Religions are very rich in refuges from the mandate of suicide: hence they ingratiate themselves with those who cling to life.

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=Delusions Regarding Victim and Regarding Evil Doer.=--When the rich man takes a possession away from the poor man (for example, a prince who deprives a plebeian of his beloved) there arises in the mind of the poor man a delusion: he thinks the rich man must be wholly perverted to take from him the little that he has. But the rich man appreciates the value of a single possession much less because he is accustomed to many possessions, so that he cannot put himself in the place of the poor man and does not act by any means as ill as the latter supposes. Both have a totally false idea of each other. The iniquities of the mighty which bulk most largely in history are not nearly so monstrous as they seem.

The hereditary consciousness of being a superior being with superior environment renders one very callous and lulls the conscience to rest.

We all feel, when the difference between ourselves and some other being is exceedingly great, that no element of injustice can be involved, and we kill a fly with no qualms of conscience whatever. So, too, it is no indication of wickedness in Xerxes (whom even the Greeks represent as exceptionally n.o.ble) that he deprived a father of his son and had him drawn and quartered because the latter had manifested a troublesome, ominous distrust of an entire expedition: the individual was in this case brushed aside as a pestiferous insect. He was too low and mean to justify continued sentiments of compunction in the ruler of the world.

Indeed no cruel man is ever as cruel, in the main, as his victim thinks.

The idea of pain is never the same as the sensation. The rule is precisely a.n.a.logous in the case of the unjust judge, and of the journalist who by means of devious rhetorical methods, leads public opinion astray. Cause and effect are in all these instances entwined with totally different series of feeling and thoughts, whereas it is unconsciously a.s.sumed that princ.i.p.al and victim feel and think exactly alike, and because of this a.s.sumption the guilt of the one is based upon the pain of the other.

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=The Soul's Skin.=--As the bones, flesh, entrails and blood vessels are enclosed by a skin that renders the aspect of men endurable, so the impulses and pa.s.sions of the soul are enclosed by vanity: it is the skin of the soul.

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=Sleep of Virtue.=--If virtue goes to sleep, it will be more vigorous when it awakes.

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=Subtlety of Shame.=--Men are not ashamed of obscene thoughts, but they are ashamed when they suspect that obscene thoughts are attributed to them.

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=Naughtiness Is Rare.=--Most people are too much absorbed in themselves to be bad.

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=The Mite in the Balance.=--We are praised or blamed, as the one or the other may be expedient, for displaying to advantage our power of discernment.

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=Luke 18:14 Improved.=--He that humbleth himself wisheth to be exalted.

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=Prevention of Suicide.=--There is a justice according to which we may deprive a man of life, but none that permits us to deprive him of death: this is merely cruelty.

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=Vanity.=--We set store by the good opinion of men, first because it is of use to us and next because we wish to give them pleasure (children their parents, pupils their teacher, and well disposed persons all others generally). Only when the good opinion of men is important to somebody, apart from personal advantage or the desire to give pleasure, do we speak of vanity. In this last case, a man wants to give himself pleasure, but at the expense of his fellow creatures, inasmuch as he inspires them with a false opinion of himself or else inspires "good opinion" in such a way that it is a source of pain to others (by arousing envy). The individual generally seeks, through the opinion of others, to attest and fortify the opinion he has of himself; but the potent influence of authority--an influence as old as man himself--leads many, also, to strengthen their own opinion of themselves by means of authority, that is, to borrow from others the expedient of relying more upon the judgment of their fellow men than upon their own.--Interest in oneself, the wish to please oneself attains, with the vain man, such proportions that he first misleads others into a false, unduly exalted estimate of himself and then relies upon the authority of others for his self estimate; he thus creates the delusion that he pins his faith to.--It must, however, be admitted that the vain man does not desire to please others so much as himself and he will often go so far, on this account, as to overlook his own interests: for he often inspires his fellow creatures with malicious envy and renders them ill disposed in order that he may thus increase his own delight in himself.

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=Limits of the Love of Mankind.=--Every man who has declared that some other man is an a.s.s or a scoundrel, gets angry when the other man conclusively shows that the a.s.sertion was erroneous.

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=Weeping Morality.=--How much delight morality occasions! Think of the ocean of pleasing tears that has flowed from the narration of n.o.ble, great-hearted deeds!--This charm of life would disappear if the belief in complete irresponsibility gained the upper hand.

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