The human being is at bottom a wild, horrible animal. We know it merely in its bridled and tame state, which we call civilization, and this is why we are shocked by the occasional eruptions of its nature. But where and when the lock and chain of lawful order happen to fall away and anarchy breaks out, then it shows what it is.
Der Mensch ist im Grunde ein wildes entsetzliches Thier. Wir kennen es bloß im Zustande der Bändigung und Zähmung, welcher Civilisation heißt: daher erschrecken uns die gelegentlichen Ausbrüche seiner Natur. Aber wo und wann einmal Schloß und Kette der gesetzlichen Ordnung abfallen und Anarchie eintritt, da zeigt sich, was er ist.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Monday, March 16, 2026
Human Nature
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 8, § 114 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway):