wisdom of life

Chapter 4 Basic Divisions

Aristotle divides the benefits that can be obtained in life into three categories-external things, the human soul and the human body.Now I just keep his rule of thirds.I think the fundamental difference that determines the fate of mortals lies in three things, they are:
1) Man himself, that is, that which belongs to man's personality in the broadest sense.It thus includes a person's health, strength, appearance, temperament, moral character, spiritual intelligence and their potential development.

2) The extraneous things that a person owns, that is, property and other possessions.

3) The appearance that a person shows to other people, which can be understood as: the appearance that a person presents in the eyes of other people, that is, how people view him.The perception of others can be divided into reputation, status and reputation.

The first difference between people is determined by nature, so it can be inferred that these differences have a more fundamental and profound effect on people's happiness or unhappiness than the second and third differences. Radical influence—for the difference between the latter two contents is only due to artificial divisions.The advantages that man has in himself, such as a great mind or a great heart, are compared with the advantages of status, birth (even princely, noble birth), good wealth, etc., as a real king is compared with the stage of a drama. Like pretending to be a king.Epicurus[1]'s first disciple, Mencedorus, titled one of his chapters in his work: "The cause of our happiness lies in ourselves, not in ourselves. In addition." Indeed, for a person's happiness, and even for his entire way of existence, the most important thing is obviously the inner quality of the person himself, which directly determines whether the person can obtain inner happiness, because the inner quality of the person is Pleasure or inner pain is above all the product of human feelings, wills and thoughts.But everything outside man himself exerts only an indirect influence on his happiness.Therefore, the same external thing and the same situation have different effects on each of us; everyone in the same environment lives in a different world.For what is directly related to a person is the person's view of things, his feelings, and his volitional activities.External things can only work if they stimulate his above-mentioned things.What kind of world each person lives in depends first on the person's understanding of the world.The world is different because of the differences in the mind and spirit of each person.Therefore, everyone's world is barren, shallow and superficial, or rich, interesting and full of meaning - it depends on the individual's mind.For example, many people envy others for discovering and encountering interesting things in their lives. In fact, the former should envy the latter's endowment for understanding things.It is due to their talent to understand things that what they have experienced has a certain charm in their descriptions.This is because what is significant to a man of rich thought is but a dull scene in the ordinary world to a man of superficial and vulgar mind.This is especially evident in the many poems by Goethe and Byron which are based on real events.Dumb readers will envy the poet's pleasurable experiences more than his great imagination--an imagination capable of turning the ordinary into something great and beautiful.In the same way, a tragic scene witnessed by a melancholy temperament appears to an optimist as an interesting conflict, while an insensitive person sees it as a matter of indifference.All of this is based on the fact that real life, that is, every moment experienced right now, is made up of two parts: the subject and the object—although the subject and the object are closely related and indispensable, as if they together constitute Oxygen and hydrogen of water.When faced with exactly the same object, different subjects mean that the constituted reality is completely different, and vice versa.From this it follows that the combination of the most beautiful and best object with a dull, inferior subject can only produce an inferior reality, as is the case with viewing beautiful landscapes in bad weather, or photographing them with a poorly blurred camera.Or, to put it more plainly: Just as each person is confined in his own skin, so is each person confined in his own consciousness.One can only live directly in one's own consciousness.Therefore, the external world is of little help to him.On stage, actors play a variety of roles: servants, soldiers, or princes and generals.However, the differences between these characters are only superficial and superficial, and the core under these superficial phenomena is the same; they are all actors who are pitiful, painful and troubled.The same is true in real life.The different status and wealth possessed by each person endow individuals with different roles, but the inner happiness of each person will not produce corresponding differences due to the different external roles.On the contrary, these people are also miserable creatures full of pain and troubles.The specific content of worries and worries varies from person to person; but their form, that is, their essence, is similar; the degree of pain and worry varies, but these differences do not match the differences in people's status and wealth, nor do they That is, it does not match the role played by each person.For human beings, everything that exists and happens always exists and happens directly in his consciousness, so obviously, the composition of human consciousness is the primary key.In most cases, subject consciousness is more important than the images and forms presented in consciousness.Everything that is beautiful and interesting, reflected in a dull mind of a fool, becomes dull.Cervantes, by contrast, wrote his Don Quixote in a simple prison cell.The objective part that constitutes reality is in the hands of destiny and therefore changeable; but the subject part is our self and so, by its very nature, is immutable.Therefore, in spite of the constant external changes throughout a man's life, his character remains the same, just as the theme remains the same despite a series of variations.No one can escape from their individuality.Just like those animals, no matter what environment people put them in, they still cannot escape the unchangeable narrow limitations set by nature for them.This explains things like why our efforts to make our pet animals happy should be kept within a narrow range, determined by the nature of animals and the limitations of their consciousness.The same is true for people.The happiness that a person can get that belongs to him has been determined from the beginning by his personality.The extent of a man's psychic powers especially determines decisively his ability to appreciate the higher pleasures.If the man's psychic faculties are rather limited, no effort from outside—nothing other people or luck can do for him—will take him beyond mere mediocre, animalistic pleasures. range.He can only enjoy sensual pleasures, low society, vulgar consumption and leisurely family life.Even education—if education is of any use—does not, on the whole, do much to broaden our spiritual horizons.For the highest, most varied, and most enduring pleasures are those of the mind, though we do not fully realize this when we are young; People's innate spiritual thinking ability.From this it becomes clear how much our happiness depends on ourselves, that is, on our individuality.But for the most part, we're just thinking about luck, or possessions, or how we appear to other people.In fact, luck will get better sometimes, and even if we are rich inside, we will not have too many requirements for luck.In contrast, a dull-headed man remains dull-headed all his life, and a fool dies a fool even though he is in heaven surrounded by the beauties of heaven.So Goethe said:

The public, high and low,
Both always admit:

The greatest happiness that all living beings can have,
Only its own personality.

For human happiness, the subject is far more important than the object, and everything can prove this.Examples include: Hunger is the best spice, how hard it is for an aging man to fall in love with a young beauty, the lives of geniuses and saints, etc.Human health especially far outweighs all external advantages.Even a healthy beggar is indeed luckier than a sick king.A healthy, well-built physique, and the tranquility and cheerfulness of temper that result from it, and an understanding, active, clear, deep, capable of grasping things without error, and a mild, temperate will, and the resulting A clean conscience—all these advantages are irreplaceable by wealth and position.A man's self, that is to say, that inalienable inner quality that accompanies him when he is alone, and which no one else can take away, is clearly more important than any property he can possess and how he appears to others.A man of rich spirits is immersed in his own spiritual world and enjoys himself when he is alone; but for a stubborn man, continuous parties, theatres, and outings cannot drive away the tortured boredom.A good, gentle, temperate man takes pleasure in trouble; but a greedy, envious, mean man cannot be content with all his wealth.If a person can enjoy the pleasures brought by his own outstanding and distinctive spiritual personality, then most of the pleasures pursued by the general public are purely superfluous to him, even a kind of trouble and burden .

Thus Horace [2], speaking of himself, says:

Ivory, marble, pictures, silver basins, statues, purple garments,
Many people regard them as essential,
But some people don't bother with these things.

When Socrates saw the luxury goods on sale, he said: "There are so many things I don't need!"

It is our own personality that is most important and crucial to our well-being in life, because our personality is enduring, it plays a role in every situation; besides, it is different from the The second and third benefits, the preservation of these benefits can only be left to fate, but one's own personality will not be deprived.Compared with the relative benefits of the last two items, our own value can be said to be absolute.From this it follows that it is much more difficult to influence and deal with a person by external means than is commonly supposed.Only the mighty time can exercise its power: man's physical and spiritual advantages are gradually worn away by time, and only man's moral temperament is not affected by time.In this respect, property and other people's opinions certainly appear to be more advantageous.Because time does not directly take away these benefits.Another advantage of the last two benefits is that because they are in the position of objects, their nature determines that anyone can get them, at least people have the possibility of possessing these benefits.In contrast, there is really nothing we can do about things that belong to the subject—they are given to people as "divine rights" and are fixed for life.Therefore, Goethe said:
on the day you came into the world;
The sun receives greetings from the planets,
You then follow eternally,

Let the law of your birth thrive,
You are you, you cannot escape yourself,
Thus have the Shibels and the Prophets said;

Neither time nor strength can break,

The formed, already living form.

The only thing we can do is to make the best possible use of our established personalities.Therefore, we should follow the direction that suits our personality, strive for the development that suits our personality, and avoid everything else.Therefore, we must choose the status, occupation and lifestyle that match our personality.

A person who is born with strong muscles and bones and looks like Hercules, if forced by external circumstances, needs to engage in some kind of sitting occupation, do some delicate and tedious handicrafts, or engage in study and research and other mental work—— These jobs required him to use his deficient faculties and his excellent physical strength--if this happened, the man would be depressed all his life.However, if a person has exceptionally outstanding intelligence, but his intelligence cannot be exercised and exerted, and he is engaged in a mediocre job that cannot fully display his intelligence; or, this job is simply a labor beyond his ability, then , the misfortune encountered by this person is even worse than that of the first person.So we must avoid overestimating our abilities, especially when we are young and vigorous, which is the rock in our lives.

One's own self has an overwhelming advantage over property and the opinion of others; it follows from this that it is wiser to focus on maintaining one's health and one's own talents than dedicating oneself to wealth.But we should not mistake this statement to mean that we should not be concerned with obtaining our necessities.But what is really called wealth, that is, excessive abundance, does not contribute much to our happiness.Therefore, many rich people feel unhappy, because these unhappy rich people lack real spiritual edification, knowledge, and therefore lack objective interest in things-and only these can make them capable engage in spiritual activities.Wealth has little effect on our real happiness, except that it satisfies our real and natural wants.On the contrary, in order to keep a large property, we have many unavoidable cares, which disturb our life of comfort and leisure.For people's happiness, the person himself is indeed more important than the wealth he owns, but ordinary people's pursuit of wealth is a thousand times more exciting than the pursuit of spiritual interest.Hence, we see many people toiling and toiling like ants, morning and night, thinking how to increase the wealth they already have.Once out of the narrow realm of making money, they know nothing.Their minds are blank, and they have no sense of everything other than making money.The highest pleasures of life--the spiritual pleasures--are out of reach for them.That being the case, they are left to sneak in for fleeting, sensual pleasures that take little time and cost a lot of money.In vain they substitute such amusements for spiritual enjoyment.At the end of their lives, if they are lucky, they actually earn a lot of money, which is the fruit of their life; and they leave it to their heirs to accumulate or spend it as they please.Such people, though they live their lives with serious seriousness, live a life of foolishness, like so many other foolish lives.

Therefore, the inner possession of a person is the most critical to the happiness of a person.Just as in most cases one is so impoverished within oneself, most of those who no longer have to struggle with the neediness of life are fundamentally unhappy.The situation is the same as that of those who are still struggling with the hardships of life.They have an inner emptiness, a sense of sluggishness, and an impoverished mind, which drives them to socialize.It was their kind that made up those social circles, "for birds of the same feather flock together" (Homer).They gather together to chase pastimes and entertainment.They begin with sensual pleasures, sensual pleasures, and end with absurdity and excess.Many dandies who have just stepped into their lives are desperate for extravagance, squandering most of their wealth in an unbelievably short period of time.The source of this attitude is indeed nothing but boredom--it stems from the above-mentioned poverty and emptiness of spirit.A rich boy who comes into this world with external wealth but internal poverty will try in vain to make up for the internal deficiency with external wealth; he longs for everything from without, which is like trying to strengthen himself with the sweat of a maiden. A man of old age.The inner poverty of man himself thus leads to the poverty of external wealth.

As for the importance of the other two life benefits, I don't need to emphasize them.The value of property is recognized today and needs no publicity.Compared with the second advantage, the third advantage has a rather ethereal element, because reputation, fame, status, etc. are all composed of other people's opinions.Fame, that is, a clean name, can be won by everyone; but social status is only attained by those who serve the government of the country;Of all these, reputation is the most precious thing; great fame is the most valuable thing that can be hoped for, and it is the golden fleece that only the favored ones can get.On the other hand, only a fool would put social status before property.In addition, the property, goods, reputation and prestige owned by people are in a so-called relationship of mutual influence and promotion.Peter Niss [3] said: "The property a person owns determines the value of this person in the eyes of others." form to help oneself acquire property.

注释
[1] Epicurus (before 341-before 270): Ancient Greek philosopher. - translator

[2] Horace (before 65-before 8): an outstanding poet in ancient Rome. - translator

[3] Peter Niss (?—66): An ancient Roman writer, the author of the novel "Satilicon" describing Roman society in the 1st century AD. - translator

(End of this chapter)