Ordinary society is... very like the kind of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note... In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you have a precise illustration of the effect of most people’s minds. How often there seems to be only one thought there! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds—why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. ... Put a great many men together, and you may get some result—some music from your horns!

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Ordinary society is... very like the kind of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note... In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you have a precise illustration of the effect of most people’s minds. How often there seems to be only one thought there! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds—why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. ... Put a great many men together, and you may get some result—some music from your horns!" in the context of "Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9" to mean that wisdom is timeless.