This is not the only point of view from which the social impulse may
be regarded. On cold days people manage to get some warmth by crowding
together; and you can warm your mind in the same way--by bringing
it into contact with others. But a man who has a great deal of
intellectual warmth in himself will stand in no need of such
resources. I have written a little fable illustrating this: it may be
found elsewhere.[1] As a general rule, it may be said that a man's
sociability stands very nearly in inverse ratio to his intellectual
value: to say that "so and so" is very unsociable, is almost
tantamount to saying that he is a man of great capacity.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. The passage to which Schopenhauer
refers is _Parerga_: vol. ii. § 413 (4th edition). The fable is of
certain porcupines, who huddled together for warmth on a cold day;
but as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were
obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when
just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling
and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by
remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way,
the need of society drives the human porcupines together--only to be
mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of
their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be
the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness
and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told--in
the English phrase--_to keep their distance_. By this arrangement the
mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied,--but then
people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers
to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get
pricked himself.]