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.