The Art of Having Something to Say 11: More Lichtenberg

"Dreams, the impartial outcome of our entire being. . ." And Other Aphorisms

7.1 To make known the weaknesses of the great is a kind of duty: in doing so one comforts thousands without doing the great any harm. D'Alembert's letter on Rousseau in the Mercure de France, September 1779, deserves to be better known.

*7.3 Herr Camper related that when a missionary painted the flames of Hell to a congregation of Greenlanders in a truly vivid fashion, and described at length the heat they gave out, all the Greenlanders began to feel a strong desire to go to Hell.

7.7 What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

7.10 Men who know well how to observe themselves and are secretly proud of it often rejoice at the discovery of a weakness in themselves when the discovery ought to disturb them. That much higher do many rate the professor over the man.

7.17 People find it harder to believe in miracles than in traditions of miracles, and many a Turk, Jew etc., who will now let himself be killed for his tradition would have remained very calm and composed had he been witness to the miracle when it happened . . .

7.21 The heroes of the poets of antiquity are very different from those in, e.g., Milton. They are brave, shrewd and wise, but seldom amiable or compassionate in the sense of our morality. Milton took his from the Bible. Does our Christian morality perhaps have its origin in a certain weakness, in a Jewish cowardice, while the other is founded on strength? Universal acceptability is perhaps only a fair chimera and something that will never be attained.

7.24 To make man as religion wants him to be resembles the undertaking of the Stoics: it is only another grade of the impossible.

7.27 How happily many a man would live if he concerned himself with other people's affairs as little as he does with his own.

7.31 A great genius will seldom make his discoveries on paths frequented by others. When he discovers things he usually also discovers the path to discovery.

*7.32 Popular presentation is today all too oten that which puts the mob in a position to talk of something without understanding it.

7.33 The plain style of writing is to be recommended if only because no honest man takes elaborate pains over what he says.

7.40 If someone left 100,000 Louis d'or to the greatest rogue in Germany, how many claimants there would be to the legacy!

*8.2 Among those things that have most made me smile is the idea entertained by certain missionaries of baptizing a whole yardful of proselytes with a fire-engine . . .

8.3 There is a great difference between believing something and being unable to believe its opposite. I can very often believe something without being able to prove it, just as I do not believe something without being able to refute it. The stance I adopt will be determined not by strict proof but by preponderance of evidence.

8.5 I believe the surest way of promoting the progress of mankind would be through the civilizing of the natural talents of the barbarian (who stands between the savage and the civilized man) by means of philosophy communicated by the polished reason of the civilized man. If the savage and the barbarian should ever vanish from the world it will be all up with us.

8.9 There are truths which go around so dressed up you would take them for lies, but which are pure truths nonetheless.

8.11 An imaginary incapacity can with timid people long play the role of a real one, in works of the head just as much as of the body.

*8.12 Because people have such a strong tendency to put things off and take things slowly, so that what ought to happen at five in the morning commonly takes place at six, you can count for certain on retaining the upper hand in any matter if you do everything without the slightest delay.

8.21 It is a great trick of oratory sometimes merely to persuade people when you could have convinced them; then they will ofen think they have been convinced when in fact all you are able to do is merely persuade them.

8.22 Nothing arouses the curiosity of youth more than fragments of useful knowledge interwoven into pleasing poetry. Thomson's Seasons is a masterpiece in this, and must have awoken a love of nature in many an Englishman.

8.24 One begets the idea, another is godfather at its baptism, the third begets children by it, the fourth visits it on its deathbed, and the fifth buries it.

8.25 Not only did he not believe in ghosts, he wasn't even aftraid of them.

8.32 Our false philosphy is incorporated in our entire language; we can, so to speak, not reason without reasoning falsely. We fail, to consider that speaking, regardless of what, is a philosophy . . . Our whole philosophy is rectification of colloquial linguistic usage, thus rectification of a philosophy, and indeed of the most universal and general . . .

8.34 One cannot too often reflect that the existence of a God, the immortality of the soul, and the like are things merely conceivable, not perceptible. They are combinations of ideas, thought-games, to which nothing objective needs to correspond. . . .

8.35 To say we perceive external objects is contradictory; it is impossible for man to go outside himself. When we believe we are seeing objects we are seeing only ourselves. We can really perceive nothing in the world except ourselves and the changes that take place in us. It is likewise impossible for us to feel for others, as it is customary to say we do; we feel only for ourselves. The proposition sounds a harsh one, but it is not when it is correctly understood. We love neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor child: what we love are the pleasant sensations they produce in us . . . Nothing else is at all possible, and he who denies this proposition cannot have understood it . . .

*8.36 Rational free-spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoitre the ground which they heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.

8.37 The ass seems to me like the horse translated into Dutch.

8.38 What am I? What shall I do? What can I believe and hope for? Eveything in philosphy can be reduced to this . . .

9.3 Where we experience no localized sensation, where we do not actually feel an impression on our organs of sense, we cannot reduce anything to bodily effects. If we were unable to close our eyes we would not know whether we see with our head or with our belly . . .

9.4 If the New Testament faithfully transmits the precepts of the Christian religion then the Catholic religion is hardly Christian . . . The Catholic religion received its present form during ages of the grossest ignorance; it is impossible for a man again permitted to employ his reason to continue to adhere to it - it can be maintained only by fire and sword.

*10.9 One use of dreams is that, unprejudiced by our often forced and artificial reflections, they represent the impartial outcome of our entire being. This thought deserves to be taken very much to heart.

10.20 Alas, he exclaimed when things went wrong, if only I had done something pleasantly wicked this morning I would at least know why I am suffering now!

*10.24 When in a dream I dispute with someone and he contradicts and instructs me it is I who am instructing myself, that is to say reflecting. This reflection thus presents itself in the form of conversation. Can we be surprised, therefore, if earlier people expressed their thoughts about the serpent (as with Eve) with: the serpent spoke to me. The Lord spoke to me. My spirit spoke to me. Since we do not know where we think, we can remove our thoughts to wherever we wish. Just as we can speak so that he who hears us believes the voice is coming from a third person, so we can think, too, as though we were being spoken to. Genius Sokratis, etc. What an astonishing amount may we not yet learn from dreams.