session of great ability should be carefully concealed. The
consciousness of small intellectual power has just the opposite
effect, and is very compatible with a humble, affable and
companionable nature, and with respect for what is mean and wretched.
This is why an inferior sort of man has so many friends to befriend
and encourage him.

These remarks are applicable not only to advancement in political
life, but to all competition for places of honor and dignity, nay,
even for reputation in the world of science, literature and art. In
learned societies, for example, mediocrity--that very acceptable
quality--is always to the fore, whilst merit meets with tardy
recognition, or with none at all. So it is in everything.]

SECTION 35. Our trust in other people often consists in great measure
of pure laziness, selfishness and vanity on our own part: I say
_laziness_, because, instead of making inquiries ourselves, and
exercising an active care, we prefer to trust others; _selfishness_,
because we are led to confide in people by the pressure of our own
affairs; and _vanity_, when we ask confidence for a matter on which we
rather pride ourselves. And yet, for all that, we expect people to be
true to the trust we repose in them.

But we ought not to become angry if people put no trust in us: because
that really means that they pay honesty the sincere compliment of
regarding it as a very rare thing,--so rare, indeed, as to leave us in
doubt whether its existence is not merely fabulous.

SECTION 36. _Politeness_,--which the Chinese hold to be a cardinal
virtue,--is based upon two considerations of policy. I have explained
one of these considerations in my _Ethics_; the other is as
follows:--Politeness is a tacit agreement that people's miserable
defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be
ignored and not made the subject of reproach; and since these defects
are thus rendered somewhat less obtrusive, the result is mutually
advantageous.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--In the passage referred to
_(Grundlage der Moral_, collected works, Vol. IV., pp. 187 and 198),
Schopenhauer explains politeness as a conventional and systematic
attempt to mask the egoism of human nature in the small affairs of
life,--an egoism so repulsive that some such device is necessary for
the purpose of concealing its ugliness. The relation which politeness
bears to the true love of one's neighbor is analogous to that existing