Constant craving for indiscriminate company is a sure sign of mental weakness.
Schopenhauer—a sour genius, BUT a genius—speaks contemptuously of the negroes herded in small rooms unable to get "enough of one another's snub-nose company." ——
If you enter a village or small town and want to find the man or youth of ability, do you look for him leaning over the village pool table, sitting on the grocery store boxes, lounging in the smelly tavern with other vacant minds?
Certainly not. You find him at work, and you find him by himself.
Think how public institutions dwarf the brains and souls of unhappy children condemned to live in them. No chance there for individual, separate development. Millions of children have grown up in such places millions of sad nonentities. ——
Here is what Goethe says:
"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in dem Strome der Welt." (Talent is developed in solitude, character in the rush of the world.)
You wonder why so much ability comes from the country—why a Lincoln comes from the backwoods while you, flourishing in a great city, can barely keep your place as a typewriter.
The countryman has GOT to be by himself much of the time whether he wishes to or not. If he has anything in him it comes out.
Astronomy, man's grandest study, grew up among the shepherds.
You of the cities never even see the stars, much less study them.