Schopenhauer: No Surrender | Counsels & Maxims 53

We should not tremble, even if the shattered heavens fall on us.
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Section 53 of Counsels and Maxims (1851)
0:00 Courage
1:31 No Surrender
3:35 Panic Terror
4:52 Comments
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Music: Among the Clouds, by Darren Curtis
Thumbnail Image: 1815 Portrait, By Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl - Schopenhauer-Archiv der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main, Public Domain, commons.wikime...
Schopenhauer Text:
Courage comes next to prudence as a quality of mind very essential to happiness. It is quite true that no one can endow himself with either, since a man inherits prudence from his mother and courage from his father; still, if he has these qualities, he can do much to develop them by means of resolute exercise.
In this world, where the game is played with loaded dice, a man must have a temper of iron, with armor proof to the blows of fate, and weapons to make his way against men. Life is one long battle; we have to fight at every step; and Voltaire very rightly says that if we succeed, it is at the point of the sword, and that we die with the weapon in our hand-on ne réussit dans ce monde qua la pointe de l'épee, et on meurt les armes à la main. It is a cowardly soul that shrinks or grows faint and despondent as soon as the storm begins to gather, or even when the first cloud appears on the horizon. Our motto should be No Surrender; and far from yielding to the ills of life, let us take fresh courage from misfortune:-Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. (Virgil, Aeneid, vi. 95)
As long as the issue of any matter fraught with peril is still in doubt, and there is yet some possibility left that all may come right, no one should ever tremble or think of anything but resistance,-just as a man should not despair of the weather if he can see a bit of blue sky anywhere. Let our attitude be such that we should not quake even if the world fell in ruins about us:-
Si fractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferient ruinae.
(Horace, Odes iii. 3.)
Our whole life itself-let alone its blessings-would not be worth such a cowardly trembling and shrinking of the heart. Therefore, let us face life courageously and show a firm front to every ill:-Quocirca vivite fortes Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus.
Still, it is possible for courage to be carried to an excess and to degenerate into rashness. It may even be said that some amount of fear is necessary, if we are to exist at all in the world, and cowardice is only the exaggerated form of it. This truth has been very well expressed by Bacon, in his account of Terror Panicus; and the etymological account which he gives of its meaning, is very superior to the ancient explanation preserved for us by Plutarch. He connects the expression with Pan the personification of Nature; and observes that fear is innate in every living thing, and, in fact, tends to its preservation, but that it is apt to come into play without due cause, and that man is especially exposed to it. The chief feature of this Panie Terror is that there is no clear notion of any definite danger bound up with it; that it presumes rather than knows that danger exists; and that, in case of need, it pleads fright itself as the reason for being afraid.