The steps of life: further essays on happinessHilty, Karl
Philosophy
The steps of life: further essays on happiness
Hilty, Karl
Conduct of life; Happiness
It is an uncommonly pleasant thing, on the other hand, to have to
do with people who make their fellow-men feel comfortable in their
presence, who are always even-tempered, always friendly and ready to
help, never nervously unquiet or intrusive, rejoicing in the welfare
of others, sympathetic and consolatory in trouble. This does not
necessitate a clever mind; on the contrary, the very clever people
often lack just this quality, which, for the first time, would make all
their other qualities really useful and valuable.
At ordinary times it is very difficult to recognize real bravery. Yet
there is one unfailing sign. Brave people never enter a fight with
arrogance and are less afraid after a defeat than after a victory,
since every victory works some injustice to the opposing side; while
cowards show themselves arrogant after every victory. As to this
characteristic, a man best learns to know himself in his dreams. There
he sees himself as he is, being beyond the control of a better will
that does not depend upon merely physical and mental emotions.
A crafty shrewdness always lowers a man in our regard. We think of the
possibility of its being used against us. Therefore, as a proverb says,
“all foxes come to be skinned at last.” No one likes them, and in the
long run they lose their game.
Every man should perfect his own national type. When a man no longer
knows to which nation he belongs, he becomes an unedifying phenomenon.
Therefore dwellers on the border are often vacillating in their nature,
and polyglot speech is, as a rule, a mark neither of genius nor of
character. The most questionable people are those who mingle different
languages in a single sentence and who lack education besides.
Not very much, on the whole, is to be learned from the external
features of a man; the science of physiognomy is a deceptive one,
generally speaking. Yet a strong development of the lower part
of the face as contrasted with the upper, an insignificant chin,
expressionless eyes, an ever uneasy glance of the eye, and a habit of
speaking very loud in the case of women, portend nothing favorable.
Happily, these latter are never able to imitate the expression of
innocence.
The wide diffusion of photography has been very injurious for the
knowledge of human nature, since they usually make the photograph
a deceptive portrait, and one who sees it is, therefore, favorably
prepossessed.
As to human efficiency, it mostly depends upon a certain confidence a
man has with his contemporaries. God alone can give this, and, as a
rule, it appears late, in the case of men of real note. All the stones
must first be rejected by the builders before they can become the head
of the corner. This is the only right course for a man’s life to take,
and no sort of exertion can supply its place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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