Hello Doc and all,

Has been awhile. Received a message from Above or Within to return
here, even if briefly.


(Doc, thank you....the seeds you planted are growing, slowly like a
Willow, yet they do grow. I wish not to forget this and your aid in
their sowing.)

"If a man's thoughts are to have truth and life in them, they must,
after all, be his own fundemental thoughts; for these are the only
ones that he can fully and wholly understand. To read another's
thoughts is like taking the leavings of a meal to which we have not
been invited, or putting on the clothes which some unknown visitor
has laid aside."


Your a Good cook Doc and I value the style of your clothes. Thanks for
the invite and you did find the robe I left for you? Don't want you
running around totally naked save it was in the spirit of Lalla and
her Dance, or even of David.


Regards to All,

PRAII

--------------------------


ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF

Turning it over one more time......


ON THINKING FOR ONE'S SELF

Arthur Schopenhauer

A library may be very large; but if it is in dis-order, it is not
so useful as one that is small but well arranged. In the same way, a
man may have a great mass of knowlegde, but if he has not worked it
up by thinking it over for himself, it has much less value than a far
smaller amount which he has thoroughly pondered. For it is only when
a man looks at his knowledge from all sides, and combines the things
he knows by comparing truth with truth, that he obtains a complete
hold over it and gets it into his power. A man cannot turn over
anything in his mind unless he knows it; he should, therefore, learn
something; but it is only when he has turned it over that he can be
said to know it.

Reading and learning are things that any one can do of his own
free will; but not so thinking. Thinking must be kindled, like a fire
by a draught; it must be sustained by some interest in the matter in
hand. This interest may be of a purely objective kind, or merely
subjective. The latter comes into play only in things that concern
us personally. Objective interest is confined to heads that think by
nature; to whom thinking is as natural as breathing; and they are
very rare. This is why most men of learning show so little of it.

It is incredible what a different effect is produced upon the mind
by thinking for one's self, as compared with reading. It carries on
and intensifies that original difference in the nature of two minds
which leads one to think and the other to read. What I mean is that
reading forces alien thoughts upon the mind--thoughts which are as
foreign to the drift and temper in which it may be for the moment, as
the seal is to the wax on which it stamps it imprint. The mind is
thus driven to think this or that, though for the moment it may not
have the slightest impulse or inclination to do so.

But when a man thinks for himself, he follows the impulse of his
own mind, which is determined for him at the time, either by his
environment or some particular recollection. The visible world of a
man's surroundings does not, as reading does, impress a single
definite thought upon his mind, but merely gives the matter and
occasion which lead him to think what is appropriate to his nature
and present temper. So it is, that much reading deprives the mind of
all elasticity; it is like keeping a spring continually under
pressure. The safest way of having no thoughts of one's own is to
take up a book every moment one has nothing else to do. It is this
practice which explains why erudition makes most men more stupid and
silly than they are by nature, and prevents their writings obtaining
any measure of success. They remain, in Pope's words:


'Forever reading, never to be read!'

Men of learning are those who have done their reading in the pages
of a book. Thinkers and men of genius are those who have gone
striaght to the book of nature; it is they who have enlightened and
the world and carried humanity further on its way.

If a man's thoughts are to have truth and life in them, they must,
after all, be his own fundemental thoughts; for these are the only
ones that he can fully and wholly understand. To read another's
thoughts is like taking the leavings of a meal to which we have not
been invited, or putting on the clothes which some unknown visitor
has laid aside.

The thought we read is related to the thought which springs up in
ourselves, as the fossil impress of some prehistoric plant to a plant
as it buds forth in springtime.

Reading is nothing more than a substitute for thought of one's own.
It means putting the mind into leading-strings. The multitude of
books serves only to show how many false paths there are, and how
widely astray a man may wander if he follows any of them. But he who
is guided by his genius, he who thinks for himself, who thinks
spontaneously and exactly, possesses the only compass by which he can
steer aright. A man should read only when his thoughts stagnate at
their source, which will happen often enough even with the best of
minds. On the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of
scaring away one's own original thoughts is sin against the Holy
Spirit. It is like running away from nature to look at a museum of
dried plants or gaze at landscape in copper-plate.

A man may have discovered some portion of truth or wisdom, after
spending a great deal of time and trouble in thinking it over for
himself and adding thought to thought; and it may sometimes happen
that he could have found it all ready to hand in a book and spared
himself the trouble. But even so, it is a hundred times more valuable
if he has acquired it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only
when we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as an integral
part, a living member into the whole system of our thought; that it
stands in complete and firm relation with what we know; that it is
understood with all that underlies it and follows from it; that it
wears the color, the precise shade, the distinguishing mark of our
own way of thinking; that it comes exactly at the right time; just as
we felt the neccessity for it; that it stands fast and cannot be
forgotten. This is the perfect application, nay, the interpretation,
of Goethe's advice to earn our inheritance for ourselves so that we
may really possess it;

"Was du ererbt von deinen Vatern hast, Erwirb es, um zu besitzen."


The man who thinks for himself, forms his own opinions and learns
the authorities for them only later on, when they serve but to
strengthen his belief in them and in himself. But the book-
philosopher starts from the authorities. He reads other people's
books, collects their opinions, and so forms a whole for himself,
which resembles an automaton made up of anything but flesh and
blood. Contrarily, he who thinks for himself creates a work like a
living man as made by Nature. For the work comes into being as a man
does; the thinking mind is impregnated from without and it then forms
and bears its child!

Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a
false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made of another's
flesh; it adheres to us only because it has been put on. But truth
acquired by thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone
really belongs to us. This is the fundemental difference between the
thinker and the mere man of learning. The intellectual attainments of
a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the
light and the shade are correct, the tone sustained, the color
perfectly harmonized; it is true to life. On the other hand, the
intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large
palette, full of all sorts of colors, which at most are
systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and
meaning.

Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's
own. To think with one's own head head is always to aim at
developing a coherent whole--a system, even though it be not a
strictly complete one; and nothing hinders this so much as too strong
a current of others' thoughts, such as comes of continual reading.
These thoughts, springing every one of them from different minds,
belonging to different systems, and tinged with different colors,
never of themselves flow together into an intellectual whole; they
never form a unity of knowledge, or insight, or conviction; but
rather, fill the head with a Babylonian confusion of tongues. The
mind that is over-loaded with alien thought is thus deprived of all
clear insight, and so well-nigh disorganized. This is a state of
things observable in many men of learning; and it makes them inferior
in sound sense, correct judgement and practical tact, to many
illiterate persons who, after obtaining a little knowledge from
without by means of experience, intercourse with others, and a small
amount of reading, have always subordinated it to, and embodied it
with, their own thought.

The really scientific *thinker* (* = italicized) does the same
thing as these illiterate persons, but on a larger scale. Although he
has need of much knowledge, and so must read a great deal, his mind
is nevertheless strong enough to master it all, to assimilate and
incorporate it with the system of his own thoughts, and so to make it
fit in with the organic unity of his insight, which, though vast, is
always growing. And in the process, his own thoughts, like the bass
in an organ, always dominates everything, and is never drowned by
other tones, as happens with minds which are full of mere antiquarian
lore; where shreds of music, as it were, in every key, mingle
confusedly, and no fundemental note is heard at all.

Those who have spent their lives in reading, and taken their wisdom
from books, are like people who have obtained precise information
about a country from the descriptions of many travelers. Such people
can tell a great deal about it; but, after all, they have no
connected, clear, and profound knowledge of its real condition. But
those who have spent their lives in thinking resemble the travelers
themselves; they alone really know what they are talking about; they
are acquainted with the actual state of affairs, and are quite at
home in the subject.

The thinker stands in the same relation to the ordinary book-
philosopher as an eye-witness does to the historian; he speaks from
direct knowledge of his own. That is why all those who think for
themselves come, at bottom, to much the same conclusion. The
differences they present are due to their different points of view;
and when these do not affect the matter, they all speak alike. They
merely express the result of their own objective perception of
things. There are many passages in my works which I have given to the
public only after some hesitation, because of their paradoxical
nature; and afterward I have experienced a pleasant surprise in
finding the same opinion recorded in the works of great men who lived
long ago.

The book-philosopher merely reports what one person has said and
another meant, or the objections raised by a third, and so on. He
compares different opinions, ponders, criticises, and tries to get at
the truth of the matter; herein on a par with the critical historian.
For instance, he will set out to inquire whether Leibnitz was not for
some time a follower of Spinoza, and questions of a like nature. The
curious student of such matters may find conspicuous examples of what
I mean in Herbart's "Analytical Elucidation of Morality and Natural
Right," and in the same author's "Letters on Freedom." Surprise may
be felt that a man of the kind should put himself to so much trouble;
for, on the face of it, if he would only examine the matter for
himself, he would speedily attain his object by the exercise of a
little thought. But there is a small difficulty in the way. It does
not depend upon his own will. A man can always sit down and read, but
not---think. It is with thoughts as with men: they cannot always be
summoned at pleasure; we must wait for them to come. Thought about a
subject must appear of itself, by a happy and harmonious combination
of external stimulus with mental temper and attention; and it is just
that which never seems to come to these people.

This truth may be illustrated by what happens in the case of
matters affecting our own personal interest. When it is neccessary to
come to some resolution in a matter, we cannot well sit down at any
given moment and think over the merits of the case and make up our
mind; for; if we try to do so, we often find ourselves unable, at
that particular moment, to keep our mind fixed upon the subject; it
wanders off to other things. Aversion to the matter in question is
sometimes to blame for this. In such a case we should not use force,
but wait for the proper frame of mind to come of itself. It often
comes unexpectedly and returns again and again; and the variety of
temper in which we approach it at different moments puts the matter
always in a fresh light. It is this long process which is understood
by the term *a ripe resolution*. For the work of coming to a
resolution must be distributed; and in the process much that is
overlooked at one moment occurs to us at another; and the repugnance
vanishes when we find, as we usually do, on closer inspection, that
things are not so bad as they seemed.

This rule applies to the life of the intellect as well as to
matters of practice. A man must wait for the right moment. Not even
the greatest mind is capable of thinking for itself at all times.
Hence a great mind does well to spend its leisure in reading, which,
as I have said, is a substitute for thought; it brings stuff to the
mind by letting another person do the thinking; although that is
always done in a manner not our own. Therefore, a man should not read
to much, in order that his mind may not become accustomed to the
substitute and thereby forget the reality; that it may not form the
habit of walking in well-worn paths; nor by following an alien course
of thought grow a stranger to its own. Least of all should a man
quite withdraw his gaze from the real world for the mere sake of
reading; as the impulse and the temper which prompt to thought of
one's own come far oftener from the world of reality than from the
world of books. The real life that a man sees before him is the
natural subject of thought; and in its strength as the primary
element of existence, it can more easily than anything else rouse and
influence the thinking mind.

After these considerations, it will not be matter for surprise that
a man who thinks for himself can easily be distinguished from the
book-philosopher by the very way in which he talks, by his marked
earnestness, and the originality, directness, and personal conviction
that stamp all his thought and expressions. The book-philosopher, on
the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is second-
hand; that his ideas are like the lumber and trash of an old
furniture-shop, collected together from all quarters. Mentally, he is
dull and pointless---a copy of a copy. His literary style is made up
of conventional, nay, vulgar phrases, and terms that happen to be
current; in this respect much like a small state where all the money
that circulates is foreign, because it has no coinage of its own.

Mere experience can as little as reading supply the place of
thought. It stands to thinking in the same relation in which eating
stands to digestion and assimilation. When experience boasts that to
its discoveries alone is due the advancement of the human race, it is
as though the mouth were to claim the whole credit of maintaining the
body in health.

The works of all truly capable minds are distinguished by a
character of *decision* and *definiteness*, which means that they are
clear and free from obscurity. A truly capable mind always knows
definitely and clearly what it is that it wants to express, whether
its medium is prose, verse, or music. Other minds are not decisive
and not definite; and by this they may be known for what they are.

The characteristic sign of a mind of the highest order is that it
always judges at first hand. Everything it advances is the result of
thinking for itself; and this is everywhere evident by the way in
which it gives its thoughts utterance. Such a mind is like a prince.
In the realm of intellect its authority is imperial, whereas the
authority of minds of a lower order is delegated only; as may be seen
in their style, which has no independent stamp of its own.

Every one who really thinks for himself is so far like a monarch.
His position is undelegated and supreme. His judgments, like royal
decrees, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly
from himself. He acknowledges authority as little as a monarch admits
a command; he subscribes to nothing but what he has himself
authorized. The multitude of common minds, laboring under all sorts
of current opinions, authorities, prejudices, is like the people,
which silently obey the law and accepts orders from above.

Those who are so zealous and eager to settle debated questions by
citing authorities, are really glad when they are able to put the
understanding and the insight of others into the field in place of
their own, which are wanting. Their number is legion. For, as Seneca
says, there is no man but prefers belief to the exercise of judgment-
-
-*unusquisque mavult credere quam judicare*. In their contoverversies
such people make a promiscuous use of the weapon of authority, and
strike out at one another with it. If any one chances to become
involved in such a contest, he will do well not to try reason and
argument as a mode of defense; for against a weapon of that kind
these people are like Siegfrieds, with a skin of horn, and dipped in
the flood of incapacity for thinking and judging. They will meet his
attack by bringing up their authorities as a way of abashing him---
*argumentum ad verecundiam*, and then cry out that they have won the
battle.

In the real world, be it never so fair, favorable and pleasant, we
always live subject to the law of gravity, which we have to be
constantly overcoming. But in the world of intellect we are
disembodied spirits, held in bondage to no such law, and free from
penury and distress. Thus it is that there exists no happiness on
earth like that which, at the auspicious moment, a fine and fruitful
mind finds in itself.

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a woman we love.
We fancy we shall never forget the thought nor become indifferent to
the dear one. But out of sight, out of mind! The finest thought runs
the risk of being irrevocably forgotten if we do not write it down,
and the darling of being deserted if we do not marry her.

There are plenty of thoughts which are valuable to the man who
thinks them; but only a few of them which have enough strength to
produce repercussive or reflex action---I mean, to win the reader's
sympathy after they have been put to paper.

But still it must not be forgotten that a true value attaches only
to what a man has thought in the first instance for his own case.
Thinkers may be classed according as they think cheifly for their own
case or for that of others. The former are genuine independent
thinkers; they really think and are really independent; they are the
true *philosophers*; they alone are in earnest. The pleasure and the
happiness of their existence consist in thinking. The others are the
*sophists*; they want to seem that which they are not, and seek their
happiness in what they hope to get from the world. They are in
earnest about nothing else. To which of these two classes a man
belongs may be seen by his whole style and manner. Lichtenberg is an
example of the former class; Herder, there can be no doubt, belongs
to the second.

When one considers how vast and how close to us is the problem of
existence---this equivocal, tortured, fleeting, dream-like existence
of ours---so vast and so close that a man no sooner discovers it than
it overshadows and obscures all other problems and aims; and when one
sees how all men, with few and rare exceptions, have no clear
conciousness of the problem, nay, seem to be quite unaware of its
presence, but busy themselves with everything rather than with this,
and live on, taking no thought but for the passing day and the hardly
longer span of their own personal future, either expressly discarding
the problem or else over-ready to come to terms with it by adopting
some system of popular metaphysics and letting it satisfy them; when,
I say, one takes all this to heart, one may come to the opinion that
man may be said to be *a thinking being* only in a very remote sense,
and henceforth feel no special surprise at any trait of human
thoughtlessness or folly; but know, rather, that the normal man's
intellectual range of vision does indeed extend beyond that of the
brute, whose whole existence is, as it were, a continual present,
with no consciousness of the past or of the future, but not such an
immeasurable distance as is generally supposed.

This is, in fact, corroborated by the way in which most men
converse; where their thoughts are found to be chopped up fine, like
chaff, so that for them to spin out a discourse of any length is
impossible.

If this world were peopled by really thinking beings, it could
never be that noise of every kind would be allowed such generous
limits, as is the case with the most horrible and at the same time
aimless form of it. If nature had meant for man to think, she would
not have given him ears; or, at any rate, she would have furnished
them with air-tight flaps, such as are the enviable possession of the
bat. But, in truth, man is a poor animal like the rest, and his
powers are meant only to maintain him in the struggle for existence;
so he must needs keep his ears always open, to announce of
themselves, by night as by day, the approach of the pursuer.



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