The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer | Page 8

men will act like the jailer who, when he found that his prisoner had
performed the laborious task of taming a spider, and took a pleasure in
watching it, immediately crushed it under his foot: _l'animal méchant
par excellence_! This is why all animals are instinctively afraid of the
sight, or even of the track of a man, that _animal méchant par

excellence_! nor does their instinct them false; for it is man alone who
hunts game for which he has no use and which does him no harm.
It is a fact, then, that in the heart of every man there lies a wild beast
which only waits for an opportunity to storm and rage, in its desire to
inflict pain on others, or, if they stand in his way, to kill them. It is this
which is the source of all the lust of war and battle. In trying to tame
and to some extent hold it in check, the intelligence, its appointed
keeper, has always enough to do. People may, if they please, call it the
radical evil of human nature--a name which will at least serve those
with whom a word stands for an explanation. I say, however, that it is
the will to live, which, more and more embittered by the constant
sufferings of existence, seeks to alleviate its own torment by causing
torment in others. But in this way a man gradually develops in himself
real cruelty and malice. The observation may also be added that as,
according to Kant, matter subsists only through the antagonism of the
powers of expansion and contraction, so human society subsists only
by the antagonism of hatred, or anger, and fear. For there is a moment
in the life of all of us when the malignity of our nature might perhaps
make us murderers, if it were not accompanied by a due admixture of
fear to keep it within bounds; and this fear, again, would make a man
the sport and laughing stock of every boy, if anger were not lying ready
in him, and keeping watch.
But it is _Schadenfreude_, a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of
others, which remains the worst trait in human nature. It is a feeling
which is closely akin to cruelty, and differs from it, to say the truth,
only as theory from practice. In general, it may be said of it that it takes
the place which pity ought to take--pity which is its opposite, and the
true source of all real justice and charity.
Envy is also opposed to pity, but in another sense; envy, that is to say,
is produced by a cause directly antagonistic to that which produces the
delight in mischief. The opposition between pity and envy on the one
hand, and pity and the delight in mischief on the other, rests, in the
main, on the occasions which call them forth. In the case of envy it is
only as a direct effect of the cause which excites it that we feel it at all.
That is just the reason why envy, although it is a reprehensible feeling,
still admits of some excuse, and is, in general, a very human quality;
whereas the delight in mischief is diabolical, and its taunts are the

laughter of hell.
The delight in mischief, as I have said, takes the place which pity ought
to take. Envy, on the contrary, finds a place only where there is no
inducement to pity, or rather an inducement to its opposite; and it is just
as this opposite that envy arises in the human breast; and so far,
therefore, it may still be reckoned a human sentiment. Nay, I am afraid
that no one will be found to be entirely free from it. For that a man
should feel his own lack of things more bitterly at the sight of another's
delight in the enjoyment of them, is natural; nay, it is inevitable; but
this should not rouse his hatred of the man who is happier than himself.
It is just this hatred, however, in which true envy consists. Least of all
should a man be envious, when it is a question, not of the gifts of
fortune, or chance, or another's favour, but of the gifts of nature;
because everything that is innate in a man rests on a metaphysical basis,
and possesses justification of a higher kind; it is, so to speak, given him
by Divine grace. But, unhappily, it is just in the case of personal
advantages that envy is most irreconcilable. Thus it is that intelligence,
or even genius, cannot get on in the world without begging pardon for
its existence, wherever it is not in a position to be able, proudly and
boldly, to despise the world.
In other words,