Category: Reflections

Intuition

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Towards the Sun!

In this keen and clear element, however, he has his entire power: here he can fly! Why should he again go down into those muddy waters where he has to swim and wade and soil his wings! No! There it is too hard for us to live! We cannot help it that we are born for the atmosphere, the pure atmosphere, we rivals of the ray of light; and that we should like best to ride like it on the atoms of ether, not away from the sun, but towards the sun! That, however, we cannot do- so we want to do the only thing that is in our power: namely, to bring light to the earth, we want to be “the light of the earth!” And for that purpose we have our wings and our swiftness and our severity, on that account we are manly, and even terrible like the fire. Let those fear us, who do not know how to warm and brighten themselves by our influence!

Nietzsche, The Gay Science

In the Face of the Sun

Solitude has but few sacrifices to make, and may be innocent, but can hardly be greatly virtuous like Abraham, like Job, like the Roman Regulus or the Apostle Paul. Great actions, from their nature, are not done in the closet; they are performed in the face of the sun, and in behalf of the world…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Woman and Child

378
Friendship and marriage. – The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship.

379
Continuance of the parent. – The unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents continue to resound in the nature of the child and constitute the history of his inner sufferings.

380
From the mother. – Everyone bears within him a picture of woman derived from his mother; it is this which determines whether, in his dealings with women, he respects them or despises them or is in general indifferent to them.

381
Correcting nature. – If one does not have a good father one should furnish oneself with one.

382
Fathers and sons. – Fathers have much to do to make amends for having sons.

384
A male sickness. – For the male sickness of self-contempt the surest cure is to be loved by a clever woman.

386
Rational irrationality. – In the maturity of his life and understanding a man is overcome by the feeling his father was wrong to beget him.

389
Love-matches. – Marriages contracted from love (so-called love-matches) have error for their father and need for their mother.

390
Friendship with women. – Women are quite able to make friends with a man; but to preserve such a friendship – that no doubt requires the assistance of a slight physical antipathy.

406
Marriage as a long conversation. – When entering into a marriage one ought to ask oneself: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman up into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation

415
Love. – The idealization of love practiced by women is fundamentally and originally an invention of their shrewdness, inasmuch as it enhances their power and makes them seem ever more desirable in the eyes of men. But through centuries-long habituation to this exaggerated evaluation of love it has come to pass that they have become entangled in their own net and forgotten how it originated. They themselves are now more deceived than men are and consequently suffer more from disillusionment that is almost certain to come into the life of every woman – insofar as she has sufficient intelligence and imagination to be deceived and disillusioned at all.

422
Tragedy of childhood. – It is perhaps no rare occurrence that noble-minded and aspiring people have to undergo their severest trials in their childhood; perhaps through having to assert themselves against a low-minded father absorbed in appearance and deception, or, like Lord Byron, to live in continual conflict with a childish and irritable mother. If one has experienced such a thing one will, one’s whole life long, never get over the knowledge of who one’s greatest and most dangerous foe has actually been.

437
Finally. – There are many kinds of hemlock, and fate usually finds an opportunity of setting a cup of this poison draught to the lips of the free spirit – so as to ‘punish’ him, as all the world then says. What will the women around him then do? They will lament and cry out and perhaps disturb the repose of the thinker’s sunset hours; as they did in the prison at Athens. ‘O Criton, do tell someone to take those women away!’, Socrates finally said.

Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Virtue Alone

Recommend Virtue to your children; that alone, and not wealth, can ensure happiness. I speak from experience. It was Virtue alone which sustained me in my misery; I have to thank her and Art for not having ended my life by suicide.

Beethoven

Keep Quiet, Jean-Jacques

I had gone to spend a few days in the country at the home of a good mother of a family who took great care of her children and their edu­cation. One morning when I was present at the lessons of the eldest, his governor, who had instructed him very well in ancient history, was reviewing the history of Alexander. He took up the famous story about Philip, the physician, which has been a subject of painting, and which was surely well worth the effort. The governor, a man of merit, made several reflections on Alexander’s intrepidity, which did not please me at all, but which I avoided disputing so as not to discredit him in his pupil’s mind. At table they did not fail, according to the French method, to make the little gentleman babble a great deal. The vivacity natural to his age, along with the expectation of certain applause, made him reel off countless stupidities, in the midst of which from time to time there came a few lucky words which caused the rest to be forgotten. Finally came the story of Philip, the physician. He told it quite clearly and with much grace. After the ordinary tribute of praises exacted by the mother and expected by the son, there was discussion about what he had said. The greater number blamed the temerity of Alexander; some, after the governor’s example, admired his firmness and his courage—which made me understand that none of those present saw wherein lay the true beauty of this story. “As for me,” I said to them, “it seems that if there is the least courage, the least firmness, in Alexander’s action, it is foolhardy.” Then everyone joined in and agreed that it was foolhardy. I was going to respond and was getting heated when a woman sitting beside me, who had not opened her mouth, leaned toward my ear and said softly to me, “Keep quiet, Jean-Jacques, they won’t understand you.” I looked at her; I was struck; and I kept quiet.

After the dinner, suspecting, on the basis of several bits of evidence, that my young doctor had understood nothing at all of the story he had told so well, I took him by the hand and went for a turn in the park with him. Having questioned him at my ease, I found that more than anyone he admired Alexander’s much-vaunted courage. But do you know in what he found this courage to consist? Solely in having swallowed at a single gulp a bad-tasting potion, without hesitation, without the least sign of repugnance. The poor child, who had been made to take medi­cine not two weeks before, and who had taken it only after a mighty effort, still had its aftertaste in his mouth. Death and poisoning stood in his mind only for disagreeable sensations; and he did not conceive, for his part, of any other poison than senna. Nevertheless, it must admitted that the hero’s firmness had made a great impression on the boy’s young heart, and that, at the next medicine he would have to swallow, he had resolved to be an Alexander. Without going into clarifications which were evidently out of his reach, I confirmed him in these laudable dispositions; and I went back laughing to myself at the lofty wisdom of fathers and masters who think they teach history to children.

It is easy to put into their mouths the words kings, empires, wars, conquests, revolutions, laws. But if it is a question of attaching distinct ideas to these words, there is a long way from the conversation with Robert the gardener to all these explanations.

Some readers, discontented with the “Keep quiet, Jean-Jacques,” will, I foresee, ask what, after all, do I find so fair in Alexander’s action? Un­fortunate people! If you have to be told, how will you understand it? It is that Alexander believed in virtue; it is that he staked his head, his own life on that belief; it is that his great soul was made for believing in it. Oh, what a fair profession of faith was the swallowing of that medicine! No, never did a mortal make so sublime a one. If there is some modern Alexander, let him be showed to me by like deeds.

Rousseau, Emile – Book II

He Keeps Quite

Generally people who know little speak a great deal, and people who know a great deal speak little. It is easy for an ignoramus to find everything he knows important and to tell it to everyone. But a well-informed man does not easily open up his repertoire. He would have too much to say, and he sees yet more to be said after he has spoken. He keeps quite.

Rousseau, Emile – Book, IV

The French Language

The French language is said to be the chastest of languages. For my part, I believe it to be the most obscene. For it seems to me that the chasteness of a language consists not in the careful avoidance of indecent meanings but in not having them. In fact, to avoid them, one must think of them, and there is no language in which it is more difficult to speak purely, in every sense, than in French. The reader, always more clever at finding obscene meanings than the author is at keeping them out, is scandalized and shocked by everything. How could what passes through impure ears not be stained by them? A people with good morals, on the other hand, has appropriate terms for all things, and these terms are always decent because they are always used decently. It is impossible to imagine a language more modest than that of the Bible, precisely because there everything is said with naiveté. To render the same things immodest, it suffices to translate them into French.

Rousseau, Emile – Book IV

The Child’s Judgment

I heard the late Lord Hyde tell the story of one of his friends who, returning from Italy after three-years absence, wanted to examine his nine- or ten-year-old son’s progress. They went for a walk one evening with the boy and his governor in a field where schoolboys were playing at flying kites. The father asked his son, in passing, “Where is the kite whose shadow is here?” Without hesitation, without lifting his head, the child said, “Over the highway.” “And, indeed,” added Lord Hyde, “the highway was between us and the sun.” The father at this response kissed his son and, leaving his examination at that, went away without saying anything. The next day he sent the governor the title to a lifetime pension in addition to his salary.

What a man that father was, and what a son was promised him! The question suits his age precisely; the response is quite simple. But see what it implies about the incisiveness of the child’s judgment! It is thus that Aristotle’s pupil tamed that famous steed which no horseman had been able to break.

Rousseau, Emile – Book II