A Writer's Notebook (10 page)

There are no feminine characteristics more marked than a passion for detail and an unerring memory. Women can give
you an exact and circumstantial account of some quite insignificant conversation with a friend years before; and what is worse, they do.

Pain is hurtful and the notion that pain ennobles is absurd. Nietzsche with his glorification of suffering is like the fox in the fable who had lost his tail. His argument that pain strengthens the character resolves itself into the fact that a man who has suffered wants revenge. What he takes for strength is merely the pleasure he finds in inflicting upon others the anguish he has himself endured.

Our conduct toward our fellow-men is determined by the principle of self-preservation. The individual acts toward his fellows in such and such a manner so as to obtain advantages which otherwise he could not get or to avoid evils which they might inflict upon him. He has no debt toward society; he acts in a certain way to receive benefits, society accepts his useful action and pays for it. Society rewards him for the good he does it and punishes him for the harm.

It is not in a cathedral, or confronted with any mighty human work, that I feel the insignificance of man; then I am impressed rather with his power; his mind seems capable of every feat, and I forget that he is an insignificant creature crawling on a speck of mud, the planet of a minor sun. Nature and art, even against one's will, persuade one of the grandeur of man; and it is only science that reveals his utter insignificance.

Science is the consoler and the healer of troubles, for it teaches how little things matter and how unimportant is life with all its failures.

To eschew pleasures because they are fleeting or are followed by satiety is as stupid as to refuse to eat because one's appetite is soon appeased and after one has satisfied it one is not hungry.

It is quite as difficult to fit one's practice to one's precepts as to fit one's precepts to one's practice. Most people act in one way and preach in another. When the fact is brought to their notice, they assert that it is their weakness, and that their desire is to act up to their principles. That is pretence. People act according to their inclinations and adopt principles; because these are generally at variance with their inclinations they are ill-at-ease and unstable. But when they force themselves to act up to their principles and suppress their inclinations, there is no hope for them—but in heaven.

That generosity is almost always praised above justice shows that people assess qualities by their value to themselves. The just man who gives none more than his due is disliked rather than admired.

One of the most absurd statements imaginable is that because pleasures cannot be expressed in mathematical terms, they must be worthless.

The position of the individual towards society is the same as that of individual towards individual. When A. helps B. to build a house on the understanding that B. will help A. when occasion arises, B. performs his part of the contract so that he may afterwards get the benefit he requires.

Because a man does not state in so many words the reason that leads him to some action, it does not follow that he is led by no reason. Because he does not even know the reason, it does not follow that there is none. And giving himself one, he may be again mistaken and give the wrong one.