28 Dec “La terre est couverte de gens qui ne meritent pas qu’on leur parle” Voltaire
For this tendency is not, as I have said, a purely natural one; it does not come into existence as a direct need of human nature; it is rather the effect of the experience we go through, the product of reflection upon what our needs really are; proceeding, more especially, from the insight we attain into the wretched stuff of which most people are made, whether you look at their morals or their intellects. The worst of it all is that, in the individual, moral and intellectual shortcomings are closely connected and play into each other’s hands, so that all manner of disagreeable results are obtained, which make intercourse with most people not only unpleasant but intolerable.
Hence, though the world contains many things which are thoroughly bad, the worst thing in it is society. Even Voltaire, that sociable Frenchman, was obliged to admit that there are everywhere crowds Of people not worth talking to:
la terre est couverte de gens qui ne meritent pas qu’on leur parle.
[Letter to Cardinal de Bernis, 26 June 1762]
And Petrarch gives a similar reason for wishing to be alone— that tender spirit! so strong and constant in his love of seclusion. The streams, the plains and woods know well, he says, how he has tried to escape the perverse and stupid people who have missed the way to heaven:
Cercato ho sempre solitaria vita
(Le rive il sanno, e le campagne, e i boschi)
Per fuggir quest’ingegni sordi e loschi,
Che la strada del ciel hanno smarrita.
[Francesco Petrarca, sonnet 259]
Parerga and Paralipomena
Arthur Schopenhauer
