Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 1.djvu/435

THE ASSERTION AND DENIAL OF THE WILL. 393 them endurable at all. For as a fish is only at home in water, a bird in the air, a mole in the earth, so every man is only at home in the atmosphere suitable to him. For example, not all men can breathe the air of court life. From deficiency of proper insight into all this, many a man will make all kinds of abortive attempts, will do violence to his character in particulars, and yet, on the whole, will have to yield to it again; and what he thus painfully attains will give him no pleasure; what he thus learns will remain dead; even in an ethical regard, a deed that is too noble for his character, that has not sprung from pure, direct impulse, but from a concept, a dogma, will lose all merit, even in his own eyes, through subsequent egoistical repentance. Velle non discitur. We only become conscious of the inflexibility of another person's character through experience, and till then we childishly believe that it is possible, by means of rational ideas, by prayers and entreaties, by example and noble-mindedness, ever to persuade any one to leave his own way, to change his course of conduct, to depart from his mode of thinking, or even to extend his capacities: so is it also with ourselves. We must first learn from experience what we desire and what we can do. Till then we know it not, we are without character, and must often be driven back to our own way by hard blows from without But if we have finally learnt it, then we have attained to what in the world is called character, the acquired character. This is accordingly nothing but the most perfect knowledge possible of our own individuality. It is the abstract, and consequently distinct, knowledge of the unalterable qualities of our own empirical character, and of the measure and direction of our mental and physical powers, and thus of the whole strength and weakness of our own individuality. This places us in a position to carry out deliberately and methodically the role which belongs to our own person, and to fill up the gaps which caprices or weaknesses