PERHAPS no one has ever seriously doubted that the ability to know and to pass an accurate judgment on men closely concerns our practical life; but whether a knowledge of human nature brings much happiness is a question on which opinions have always differed. While some declare that we really love men only so long as we do not know them, others (like the duke in Goethe’s “Tasso”) believe that it is only so long as we do not know men that we stand in fear of them; yet Goethe himself seems partly to retreat from this conception in another expression of his, where he says that while nothing is more interesting, indeed, than to learn to know men, yet one must take care not to know oneself.
For our part, we believe at the outset that all knowledge of human nature, even one’s own, can be but superficial, and that the real depths of the soul, and especially the limits of its possibilities for good and evil, God alone can fully know. But besides this, strange as it may sound at first, the knowledge of men rests upon a basis of pessimism joined with a considerable degree of love for human kind. If any one looks upon humanity as something great and superior (not so much in promise as in actual performance), he will, if he have some measure of wisdom, find himself in the end disillusioned by his life experiences. On the other hand, it is just as much a matter of experience, with those who have known mankind most perfectly, that they (Christ himself at the head) have always been friends to humanity; for though they do not look upon man as quite free and nobly born, yet they believe him destined to freedom and nobility of life. This gives them their power to love him, in spite of his faults; yes, we may go so far as to say, on account of his faults, just for the reason that love, in this world at least, feels within it an impelling necessity to pity, to save, to do good.
To understand men, therefore, we must first make sure that we love them, and we must be, to a very considerable degree, independent of them so far as our necessities go; for there must be as great an absence of self-interest as possible on our part. Whoever desires to get much out of men for his own advantage will always be blinded by his interests, and whoever finds men necessary to himself will always fear them. But the man who wishes to do something for them rather than receive something from them, can alone really learn to know what they are, and can tolerate that knowledge, even in its worst features, without hating men; every one else, who is not a weakling, easily falls into such a hatred of human kind. A thorough judge of men, without love, would in fact be intolerable; the aversion against such persons, who assert they are judges of men but who are at the same time haters of men, is a very natural one, for it is based on a law of self-defence. And so, you are not to use your knowledge of human nature as something on which to construct the edifice of your own happiness; but it is only in order that you may be the better able to further the happiness of others that you are to desire to learn how rightly to judge them. If you have any other purpose, you will never come to any considerable attainments in this art.
The first step in the knowledge of human nature, so far as it is at all attainable, is (quite contrary to Goethe’s view) self-knowledge and self-improvement; the second step is the resolve to learn to know men for their sake and not one’s own. But even so, we are not to expect a perfect knowledge of so complicated a being as man; he does not even succeed in understanding himself, or at the best gets only a partial insight late in life; and then, too, no one individual is quite like another. Rather, we must content ourselves with a certain number of the results of experience; some of these we will try, later on, to set before the reader.
The real secret of knowing human nature lies in possessing a pure heart innocent of self-conceit; such people gradually acquire a keenness of vision that pierces all the outer wrappings. The difficulty of understanding men does not spring from the subtleties of a science of “psychology,” but only from the difficulty of forgetting one’s own self. We do not get to know men from whom we have something to hope or to fear.
Even the prophetic gift is nothing else than a direct, intense insight into human affairs,—their causes and effects. Such power resides in every man who in large measure has set himself free from himself. But self-seeking is like a veil of mist to hinder this power of vision, which would otherwise be present.
An intercourse with men that rests upon a correct judgment of them is therefore learned, not so much by frequent association with the men themselves (as many believe), as through fellowship with God. If we have this, then for the first time we begin to look upon men, both the good and the evil, more with the just eyes of God; while, without trust in Him, we must always rely more or less on men and so suffer the disillusionments that will always follow.
In men, especially of the better sort, there is furthermore a necessity that they shall worship something. Those who are not able to worship anything transcendental throw a halo of fancy about certain men, and in this self-deception not only lose all ability really to understand men, but also work harm to those they reverence—if these are yet living and are themselves poor judges of men. Wherever belief in God is lacking, hero-worship, with all its detriments to the inner and outer freedom of humanity, is unavoidable.
Every one can test this for himself. Whenever he finds himself fully at peace with God, he at once becomes more indifferent toward men in that very particular in which men are ordinarily most valued; for he no longer cares for them for the sake of gaining some advantage. Indeed, if the desire of conferring advantage upon them did not remain, he feels that he could easily do without them altogether. For this reason all ancient and mediæval monachism, as well as all modern pessimism, are always somewhat suspicious in motive; for back of them lurks, for the most part, either chagrin at not receiving, or disinclination to give. Others, too, feel that this is so and are therefore, on the whole, none too well disposed to men who thus hold aloof.