the
future.
* * * * *
A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in
winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills,
they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together
again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of
huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off
by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way
the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be
mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of
their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be
the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness
and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told--in
the English phrase--_to keep their distance_. By this arrangement the
mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then
people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers
to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get
pricked himself.
***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESSAYS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER;
STUDIES IN PESSIMISM***
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