Whence vanity? Unamuno, Life 3.15
Unamuno
here makes a rather clever case for belief in immortality as
something that might improve our behavior, or at least keep it from
rapid degeneration. If we do not have that belief, if we can find no
hope of mattering beyond the circumstances we perceive here and now,
then (he says) we necessarily start committing ourselves to act with
the purpose of becoming famous (or at least notorious: infamy will
do!). In so doing, we neglect good things, good deeds especially,
that have no social reward. We seek to distinguish ourselves at the
expense of our decency. Decent people, you see, cannot care so much
about fame that they forget about honor, virtue, truth, and other
important and immaterial things.
Cuando
las dudas nos invaden y nublan la fe en la inmortalidad del alma,
cobra brío y doloroso empuje el ansia de perpetuar el nombre y la
fama, de alcanzar una sombra de inmortalidad siquiera. Y de aquí esa
tremenda lucha por singularizarse, por sobrevivir de algún modo en
la memoria de los otros y los venideros, esa lucha mil veces más
terrible que la lucha por la vida, y que da tono, color y carácter a
esta nuestra sociedad, en que la fe medieval en el alma inmortal se
desvanece. Cada cual quiere afirmarse, siquiera en apariencia.
Una
vez satisfecha el hambre, y ésta se satisface pronto, surge la
vanidad, la necesidad —que lo es— de imponerse y sobrevivir en
otros. El hombre suele entregar la vida por la bolsa, pero entrega la
bolsa por la vanidad. Engríese, a falta de algo mejor, hasta de sus
flaquezas y miserias, y es como el niño, que con tal de hacerse
notar se pavonea con el dedo vendado. ¿Y la vanidad qué es sino
ansia de sobrevivirse?
Acontécele
al vanidoso lo que al avaro, que toma los medios por los fines, y
olvidadizo de éstos, se apega a aquellos en los que se queda. El
parecer algo, conducente a serlo, acaba por formar nuestro objetivo.
Necesitamos que los demás nos crean superiores a ellos para creernos
nosotros tales, y basar en ello nuestra fe en la propia persistencia,
por lo menos en la de la fama. Agradecemos más el que se nos encomie
el talento con que defendemos una causa, que no el que se reconozca
la verdad o bondad de ella. Una furiosa manía de originalidad sopla
por el mundo moderno de los espíritus, y cada cual la pone en una
cosa. Preferimos desbarrar con ingenio a acertar con ramplonería. Ya
dijo Rousseau en su Emilio: «Aunque
estuvieran los filósofos en disposición de descubrir la verdad,
¿quién de entre ellos se interesaría en ella? Sabe cada uno que su
sistema no está mejor fundado que los otros, pero lo sostiene porque
es suyo. No hay uno solo que en llegando a conocer lo verdadero y lo
falso, no prefiera la mentira que ha hallado a la verdad descubierta
por otro. ¿Dónde está el filósofo que no engañase de buen grado,
por su gloria, al género humano? ¿Dónde el que en el secreto de su
corazón se proponga otro objeto que distinguirse? Con tal de
elevarse por encima del vulgo, con tal de borrar el brillo de sus
concurrentes, ¿que más pide? Lo esencial es pensar de otro modo que
los demás. Entre los creyentes es ateo; entre los ateos sería
creyente.» ¡Cuánta verdad hay en el fondo de estas tristes
confesiones de aquel hombre de sinceridad dolorosa!
When
doubts invade us, clouding over our faith in the soul's immortality,
the anxiety to perpetuate our name and fame grows apace, becoming
more potent and painful, driving us to seek any shadow of immortality
that presents. From this arises that tremendous fight to
distinguish oneself, to survive somehow in the memory of others and
of posterity―a fight more terrible than the struggle to survive, as
we see in the tone, color, and character it gives our society, which
has lost its medieval faith in the immortal soul. Every individual
wants to affirm himself, or at least to appear to.
Once
hunger is sated, and that happens soon, vanity arises: the
necessity―that is what it is―of imposing oneself on others, of
surviving through them. Man is accustomed to giving his life for the
bag, but he hands over the bag out of vanity. He puffs himself out,
taking pride even in his weakness and misery, like the child that
prances around waving a bandaged finger, seeking attention. And what
else is vanity but the anxious desire to outlive oneself?
The
vain and the greedy are alike in this: each mistakes means for ends,
which they forget entirely, and the result is that they become
utterly attached to whatever they have. Along the way to being
something, we are sidetracked, and our goal becomes to seem. We need
others to believe in our superiority so that we can believe in it
ourselves, making it the pillar of our faith in our own permanence,
or at least that of our reputation. We are more grateful to the
sycophant who praises the talent with which we defend a cause, than
we are to the man who recognizes the truth or humanity of that cause.
The modern world is rife with spirits of originality: each of us
looks to express the spirit of selfishness in some new thing. We
prefer novel mistakes to common success. As Rousseau already
observed, in his Émile (†): "Even
if philosophers were in a position to discover the truth, who among
them would care for it? Each knows that his system is no better
founded than the others, but he sustains it nevertheless, because it
is his own. As the philosophers learn to distinguish truth from
falsehood, there is not a single one willing to relinquish a lie he
has discovered for a truth encountered by someone else. Where is the
philosopher who would not gladly defraud the human race, for his own
glory? Who among them doesn't nourish in the secret corner of his
heart the sole object of distinguishing himself? What else could they
signify by their desire to rise above the crowd, to blot out the
brilliance of their fellow philosophers? The essential characteristic
they share is thinking unlike the others. Among believers, the
philosopher is an atheist; among atheists, he would become a
believer." How
much truth there is in the depths of these confessions, from a man of
painful sincerity!
---
(†) Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778) wrote the novel Émile to
outline his position on the proper way to educate children. He
regarded it as the most important of his writings, which were quite
influential in their day, among Europeans seeking enlightened
alternatives to medieval institutions that appeared inadequate to
meet modern challenges. Rousseau's life was a bit too
interesting, taking him from Geneva, Switzerland, where he was born
to a relatively prosperous Huguenot family, to northern Italy, where
he became Catholic, to France, where he lived unhappily as a
professional scholar and bureaucrat (though he did enjoy visiting
Venice in the latter capacity), to Switzerland, where he became
Protestant again, to France, where he met Hume, to Britain, where he
fell out with Hume, and finally back to France, where he eventually
died. Along the way he published many writings, made friends
and enemies (notably Diderot and Hume, as well as several
governments), and―as critics of Émile noted―failed
to raise or indeed to take any personal responsibility for his own
progeny. Unamuno may have this in mind with his remark about painful
sincerity, which alludes also to the book
of Confessions Rousseau published―a narrative of
his own life in the tradition of Saint Augustine.