What determines the measure of our happiness, in the first place and by nature, is what we are — our individuality — while what we have and what we represent play only an indirect role. In this case, indeed, the influence of personality is immediate, whereas that of the other elements remains mediated, delayed, subordinated to the effect of primary causes. This is why external events exert upon man only an indirect influence; in the last resort, man can be helped and made happy only by himself, more precisely by what he is within himself. Hence the same object strikes each of us from a different perspective, just as one and the same element of landscape presents itself differently to different eyes. What is most direct in man — what makes him happy or unhappy, what he has, what rejoices or troubles him, in short, the content of his consciousness — is the decisive thing. In this respect, the advantages of the external world weigh little; the surroundings, for instance, hardly matter compared with what we make of them. In the most unfortunate circumstances, the man endowed with a cheerful nature and an alert mind can find nourishment for his gaiety and his vivacity; on the contrary, for one who lacks these advantages, life, even with its gifts, imposes itself as a burden. This is why Horace said, in another sense, that the beautiful landscape depends but little on outward circumstances: "A wise man, even in a hut, can preserve his inner state; a fool, even surrounded by the wealth of a great lord, lives miserably." The taste for life, the joy or sorrow we experience, therefore depends far less on the outside than on our inner constitution. The cheerful man secretes his joy from within; the sombre man draws his boredom even from the gifts of fortune. All that exists outside us are excitations; it is within us that they become impressions. Finally, inner wealth, the fullness of the spirit, grows the more as we rise higher, as nature has treated us more generously; and at that summit it reaches a complete individuality, which manifests itself in a remarkable coincidence of subjective and objective life. Whoever is endowed with a rich individuality, above all with a great mind, stands apart from the world; others seek his society in vain; instead of a man, they find, to speak in Balzac's language, only a vulgar stereotype. Such is the fate of the head. Does not the outward destiny of such beings also deserve the name of solitude? Whereas ordinary people, whose nature is flat and dry — that is to say, tedious — find themselves, by an unhappy hazard, condemned to gather in society. For a man who has intellect and an upright heart displays in conversation, through fine and original remarks, intellectual riches that have no counterpart in the intellectual resources of the others; so that these exceptional beings are in society much what a master of music is in a choir of peasants. Such is the great motive of isolation found in individuals of the elite: solitude. Add to this that, nature being far more varied in superior types than in inferior ones, the discord that results with the rest of men, manifesting itself first in the commerce of minds, extends imperceptibly to the habits of life, even to the affections; so that these individualities, as they rise higher in the hierarchy, find themselves more and more isolated, until at last, at the top of the ladder, the feeling of solitude becomes complete and overwhelming. But those who in this respect occupy a lower rank know well that they are, as it were, made for the world; nature has destined them for society; they have neither the inner resources nor the leisure that lead one to seek retreat. Let the reader please note, in passing, that the need for solitude is entirely bound up with the personal worth of the individual: the man who loves himself little is also the one who feels least the need to isolate himself — like the eagles, which alone among birds love to perch on inaccessible heights; and like the stray dog, which prefers solitude. Thus Homer remarks somewhere that solitude is unbearable to the wicked man — and, he adds, still more unbearable to the wicked god. Finally, the richness of inner individuality makes the wise man, in his own right and so to speak, a world in miniature; he has no need, like the poor in spirit, of external societies and pleasures; he has no need, to keep himself in breath, to go seeking his entertainment abroad; but the man of poor soul, finding nothing in his own fund to express, seeks on every occasion the society of others. As for the happiness that springs from inner richness, it is for the common run of men an enigma; for the sage, on the contrary, it is the perpetual source of a noble enjoyment that knows neither satiety nor weariness. Such is, in the last analysis, why the condition of man's happiness is to find within himself the principal elements of his existence.