But, on the other hand, this high degree of intelligence is rooted in a high degree of susceptibility, greater strength of will, greater passionateness; and from the union of these qualities comes an increased capacity for emotion, an enhanced sensibility to all mental and even bodily pain, greater impatience of obstacles, greater resentment of interruption;—­all of which tendencies are augmented by the power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole range of thought, including what is disagreeable.  This applies, in various degrees, to every step in the long scale of mental power, from the veriest dunce to the greatest genius that ever lived.  Therefore the nearer anyone is, either from a subjective or from an objective point of view, to one of those sources of suffering in human life, the farther he is from the other.  And so a man’s natural bent will lead him to make his objective world conform to his subjective as much as possible; that is to say, he will take the greatest measures against that form of suffering to which he is most liable.  The wise man will, above all, strive after freedom from pain and annoyance, quiet and leisure, consequently a tranquil, modest life, with as few encounters as may be; and so, after a little experience of his so-called fellowmen, he will elect to live in retirement, or even, if he is a man of great intellect, in solitude.  For the more a man has in himself, the less he will want from other people,—­the less, indeed, other people can be to him.  This is why a high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.  True, if quality of intellect could be made up for by quantity, it might be worth while to live even in the great world; but unfortunately, a hundred fools together will not make one wise man.

But the individual who stands at the other end of the scale is no sooner free from the pangs of need than he endeavors to get pastime and society at any cost, taking up with the first person he meets, and avoiding nothing so much as himself.  For in solitude, where every one is thrown upon his own resources, what a man has in himself comes to light; the fool in fine raiment groans under the burden of his miserable personality, a burden which he can never throw off, whilst the man of talent peoples the waste places with his animating thoughts.  Seneca declares that folly is its own burden,—­omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui,—­a very true saying, with which may be compared the words of Jesus, the son of Sirach, The life of a fool is worse than death[1].  And, as a rule, it will be found that a man is sociable just in the degree in which he is intellectually poor and generally vulgar.  For one’s choice in this world does not go much beyond solitude on one side and vulgarity on the other.  It is said that the most sociable of all people are the negroes; and they are at the bottom of the scale in intellect.  I remember reading once in a French paper[2] that the blacks in North America, whether free or enslaved, are fond of shutting themselves up in large numbers in the smallest space, because they cannot have too much of one another’s snub-nosed company.