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5

 
SELECTED ESSAYS OF ARTHUR
SCHOPENHAUER.
SELECTED ESSAYS

OF

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER.

WITH A

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION AND SKETCH
OF HIS PHILOSOPHY.

BY

ERNEST BELFORT BAX,
Author of ‘‘ Handbook of the History of Philosophy,” ete.

LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS,
YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1891.
CHISWICK PRESS :—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
PREFACE.

“HE following selection of pieces from the two volumes
of Miscellaneous Essays, called by Schopenhauer
“Parerga and Paralipomena,” have been made with a
view of meeting the taste alike of him that is specially in-
terested in philosophy and of the “ general reader.” Some
of the essays included in this present volume have been
translated before by Mr. Bailey Saunders, and published
by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein, & Co. I may state that
the renderings here given have been made without any
reference whatever to Mr. Saunders’s work, which I have
purposely abstained from consulting. In translating the
German author, my aim has been to combine as strict a
literality as was possible with a retention of the flavour
of the original style in equivalent English idioms. At
the same time I have always leant rather toward the side
of over-literality than that of mere paraphrase. The
introductory memoir and sketch of Schopenhauer’s philo-
sophy will, it is hoped, serve to render the meaning of
some passages clearer than they would otherwise be to a
reader who might take the book up without any previous
knowledge of the system to which they belong, in its
general aspect.
CONTENTS.

PREFACE .
The Life and Philosophy of Schopenhauer

Essays :—

Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and Real .

Fragments of the History of Philosophy ,

On Philosophy and its Method

Some Reflections on the Antithesis of Thing-i in- -itself and
Phenomenon . Z : , 5 ‘ .

Some Words on Pantheism

On Ethics

On the Doctrine of the Tndlesteietibility ata our true N: tutte
by Death ‘ , :

On Suicide

Contributions to the Doctrine of the ication and N ea:
tion of the Will-to-live . ‘ j

On the Metaphysics of the Beautiful and on | Aisthetios

On Thinking for Oneself ‘ ‘ :

On Reading and Books

On Women

INDEX

PAGE

ix

34
162

Is2
191
195

240
257

263
274
318
329
338

353
THE LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF
SCHOPENHAUER.

HE great literary exponent of modern Western pessi-
mism, as he is usually deemed, was born in the

old Hanseatic town of Dantzic, the 22nd of February,
1788. He was of Dutch descent on both sides. His
mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, subsequently became a
novelist of considerable, though ephemeral, note. It was
by a mere fluke that the subject of our sketch, Arthur
Schopenhauer, was not born in England. His father, a
Dantzic merchant of considerable means, had all the
eighteenth century enthusiasm for English institutions,
and the additional connection with Englishmen, which re-
sidence in the commercial towns of the Baltic brought with
it, especially at that time. He was accordingly anxious
that his son should be born on British soil, and to this end
undertook a tour with his wife, having London as its goal,
in the summer of 1787. Before the time of birth arrived,
however, Johanna was seized with a violent longing to re-
turn home; and accordingly the future philosopher was
ushered into the world, by birth as well as by parentage, a
German. The only revenge the old merchant could take
upon fate was in the name of his son—Arthur—which was
bestowed on account of its cosmopolitan character, at least as
regards the three leading nationalities of Western Europe.
In 1793 the old “free town” was annexed by Prussia,

a circumstance which involved the departure of the
x THE LIFE AND

Schopenhauers. For father Heinrich Schopenhauer was
possessed with great ideas of Hanseatic independence, and
the stern municipal republicanism which attached to it.
They settled at Hamburg, where Heinrich set up @ new
business, which he conducted for twelve years. It was here
that Arthur Schopenhauer spent his lehajahre. Old Hein-
rich Schopenhauer destined his son to follow his own call-
ing. In pursuance of this idea young Schopenhauer was
educated. In 1797 he was taken by his father to Paris,
and subsequently boarded in the house of a merchant of
Havre, Grégoire by name, where he remained for two
years, being educated in companionship with the son of his
host. At the expiration of this time he returned to Ham-
burg, attending a private school for three years. Schopen-
hauer junior had, however, never taken kindly to the idea
of a mercantile career, and his wishes now definitely
turned towards literature, his tastes in this direction bemg
fostered by the literary society he met at his father’s
house, and to which his mother was greatly addicted. His
father, after much entreaty, gave his partial consent, and
thought of purchasing a canoury for his son; but the pro-
ject fell through, and he reverted once more to his original
idea, obtaining the son’s reluctant acquiescence by the
bribe of a lengthened sojourn in France and England, to
be enjoyed first.

Early in 1803, accordingly, the family took their de-
parture from Hamburg for Calais and London. While
in London, Schopenhauer was placed at the boarding-
school of a clergyman at Wimbledon. He found the
mechanical discipline extremely irksome to him, and, more
than all, the religious training imparted in this establish-
ment. There is a passage in one of his letters in which he
indicates his disgust, in no measured language, of the
atmosphere of cant and hypocrisy which at that time, and
for long after, permeated every department of English life,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xi

which concludes: ‘“‘ When will the light of truth burn
through these darknesses?” He recurs to the subject
several times in the course of his miscellaneous writings,
and always in the same strain of inexpressible loathing
and contemptuous indignation. At the end of the year the
family left England for Paris, touring their route, during
the early part of 1804, through provincial France to
Switzerland, and ultimately to Vienna. In September
young Arthur found his way with his mother alone, his
father having gone back to Hamburg, to his native place.
Here he entered the office of a Dantzic merchant, and
seriously endeavoured to fulfil his pledge to his father at
the desk. After a few months, however, he changed the
Dantzic office for a Hamburg one; but every month made
it more and more apparent that his heart was not in the
ledger, the number of moments stolen from business
during business hours, in the interest of his books (other
than ledgers), were such as to lead to serious remonstrance
on the part of his superiors.

Just at this time an event occurred, however, which
broke up the Schopenhauer household. On the fifth of
April, 1805, his father, who had for some little time pre-
viously shown signs of aberration or failing of intellect,
was found in the canal, having precipitated himself from
the upper story of an overhanging building, the universal
suspicion being that the case was one of suicide. This
was a great blow to Arthur, who, in spite of their disagree-
ment on the knotty point as to the choice of a profession,
was devotedly fond of his father. Though now more or
less free to follow his own inclinations, he did not do so
immediately, but went back to the drudgery he abhorred,
solely, as it would seem, to show his respect for the dead.
For two long years he endured it. His mother after a few
months—the business complications tending the realiza-
tion of the effects of her late husband having been settled,
xii THE LIFE AND

and being in consequence possessed of a sufficient income—
improved the situation by retiring to Weimar, which was
then at its zenith as the literary metropolis of Germany.
She here became an associate of the circle which centred in
Goethe, and began her career as a novelist. Differences
between the mother and son became manifest in the course
of correspondence, but did not prevent the former at length
giving her consent to a final renunciation of the counting-
house. At the beginning of 1807, therefore, Schopenhauer
began to devote himself seriously to study. In June he
settled at Gotha, and, although in his twentieth year, did
not disdain to take his place in the gymnasium of that
town with a view to acquiring a thorough classical train-
ing. A lampoon on one of the masters compelled his
retirement, however, and he went to join his mother at
Weimar. In the latter place he pursued his classical
studies, but became more than ever estranged from his
mother. It soon became impossible for them to live in the
same house. Arthur’s inadaptability to the somewhat
ceremonious etiquette of the Weimar salon did not tend to
improve matters. The petty spite which only too often
displayed itself at a later stage in his gibings at the
academical philosophers of his time, at this period found
vent in jealousy of the literary renown of his parent.
The disgust at the frivolity which was indicated, as it
seemed to him, in his mother’s conduct, and more espe-
cially at the ease with which he thought the memory of his
father had been forgotten, no doubt contributed to this ;
but we must in the main ascribe Schopenhauer’s conduct
to his constitutional failmg. On attaiming his majority,
and with it the small income of some thousand thalerg
(£150), Schopenhauer determined to enter the University
of Géttingen. He here enrolled himself as a student of
medicine, not so much with a view to practising, as for the
sake of having a faculty. He attended for over a year
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xiil

most of the classes in physical science. It was not till
some months later that his distinctive leaning towards
philosophy showed itself, when he began to attend the
lectures of Schulze, the author of “ Mnesidemus,” and a
great man in his day.

Schulze advised him to study Plato and Kant, advice
which he religiously followed for some time, to the neglect
of other thinkers. In the summer of 1811 Schopenhauer
went to the newly-established University of Berlin ; here
he attended Schleiérmacher’s lectures on the History of
Philosophy, the following year he also heard Fichte.
Already at this time his hatred and jealousy of Academic
Philosophy and philosophers began to show itself. Fichte
especially came in for his attacks, as may be seen from his
student’s note-books of the lectures. These exhibit the
silly petulance which too often disfigure his later work.
In 1813 came the disastrous campaign of Napoleon in
Russia, and the attempt of North Germany to shake off
the power of the invader. After the battle of Lutzen

, Schopenhauer left Berlin, reaching Rudolstadt, a small

principality adjoining Weimar. Here he wrote his first
dook, “The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient

“Reason.” Its appearance occasioned the joke on the part of

his mother, that the title sounded as though it would only
interest apothecaries, to which Arthur made the retort,
that it would be read when all her romances were forgotten,
It was a thin volume, and at the time created no notice.
Shortly after the publication, Schopenhauer had the rash-
ness to try the experiment once again of living with his
mother at Weimar. This visit proved the occasion of a
final rupture with Johanna Schopenhauer, whom he never
saw again. At Weimar at this time, however, he entered
upon a closer acquaintance or friendship with Goethe than
he had done previously. The special occasion of it was his
strongly expressed sympathy for Goethe in his squabble
xiv THE LIFE AND

with the Newtonians on the subject of the celebrated
“theory of colours” (Farben lehre).

Proceeding northward to Dresden, Schopenhauer de-
veloped his optical theories as well as his general philosophy
in the latter town during the ensuing months. It was here
that his pessimism became accentuated and formulated.
Schopenhauer claimed to be the first modern who had dealt
philosophically with the sexual impulse, which was one of
the turning points of his philosophy, the sexual act being
the typical illustration of the affirmation of the Will-to-live.
But of this more anon, when we come to speak of Schopen-
hauer’s philosophy in general. The belief in the inherent
possibility and the practical necessity of a philosophy
had already begun to lead him to plan out a coherent
system. It was of a different nature from the con-
temporary academical systems of Fichte, Schelling, and
Hegel, in that, while no less than theirs purporting to be
a metaphysic, it was nevertheless not like theirs founded
on a logical deduction, but claimed to have grown together
piece by piece as the fruit of observation and reflection on
the phenomena of nature and man. Schopenhauer, in
other words, took his stand on a different side of the
« critical” philosophy of Kant to that of his contemporaries
of the chair. Kant’s division of the first part of the
“Critique of Pure Reason” into “The Transcendental
Aisthetic,” and ‘“‘The Transcendental Dialectic,” was the
basis of a divergence of view in German philosophy, of
which the antithesis between Schopenhauer and Hegel is
the most salient expression. While the philosophers of the
“ chair” took their stand on the Transcendental Analytic
aud Transcendental Dialectic, Schopenhauer took his on
the Transcendental Aisthetic. For the former, the formal
activity of thought—the category or concept—was the
ultimate principle and starting-point of philosophy. With
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. XV

Schopenhauer, on the contrary, this was not ultimate, but
derived from the, for him, deeper, non-logical principle of
Will. Art thus, in a sense, stood nearer philosophy than
science with Schopenhauer. “ Art,” he writes at this time,
“is not, like science, merely concerned with the reasoning
powers, but with the innermost nature of man, in which
each must count merely for what he is in reality. Now
this will be the case with my philosophy, for it is intended
to be philosophy as art.” ... “The mere faculty of dis-
covering the sequence of conceptions, the combining, in
short, of antecedents and consequents, though it may make
a great scholar and scientist, will never make a philosopher,
just as little as it will make a poet, a painter, or a musician.”
Schopenhauer was at this time largely occupied with a
perusal of the works of the French materialist writers of
the last century, especially of Helvétius. The Upanishads
in a Latin version also absorbed a good deal of his time,
and contributed much material towards his own philosophy.
He speaks of it as the noblest reading in the world, and as
his highest consolation.

By 1818 the great philosophical work was already all
but finished, and Schopenhauer wrote to the publisher
Brockhaus, of Leipsic, offering it to him as the exposition
of a new philosophical system. Terms were arranged, and
an edition of eight hundred copies agreed upon. But
Schopenhauer chafed at the delay of the printers, and this
finally culminated in the writing of a discourteous and
quasi-libellous letter to Brockhaus, demanding a portion
of the honorarium, and calling upon him to name a date
for the completion of the publication “ with all the sincerity
of which he was capable.” Brockhaus declined to act
otherwise than in accordance with the terms of the agree-
ment. He also wrote further letters to Schopenhauer,
abusing him in well-set terms for what he deemed his in-
sulting conduct, which letters remained unanswered by
Xvi THE LIFE AND

the latter. The volume saw the light towards the close of
1818, being dated for the following year, and bearing the
title, “The World as Will and Presentment,” in four
books, with an appendix containing a criticism on the
philosophy of Kant. The work proved a failure, as the
“Fourfold Root” had done; and Schopenhauer some years
afterwards, on demanding an account as to the sale of his
book, received a reply that a great part of the edition had
been disposed of as waste paper.

Before the book had issued from the press Schopenhauer
was in Italy, refreshing himself with the southern sun,
after his four years’ labour on what he deemed his life-
work. It was a time of all others when a re-awakened
interest in archeological research generally, and especially
in that of the classical lands, was making itself felt—the
time of Niebuhr and of Von Humboldt, of Thorwaldsen
and of Bunsen. But Schopenhauer sympathized with none
of these. The researches into the origins of Christianity
which occupied his college friend at Gdéttingen, Bunsen,
had no attractions for him. Just as little did he care for
the new conceptions of history which were dawning, and
which found their first expression in Niebuhr’s demolli-
tion and partial reconstruction of the earlier Roman history.
To Schopenhauer, for whom the valley of the Ganges was
the one and only original source of the religious instinct,
Christianity was unspeakably abhorrent. Historical re-
search was uninteresting to him for the simple reason that
he admitted no philosophy of history, no law in history,
not even a tendency, but the mere fortuitous play of indi-
vidual desire and caprice, substantially the same at one
time as at another, and differing only in the superficial
forms of its manifestation. For classical literature and
art, on the other hand, he had a keen enthusiasm, an enthu-
siasm which had its obverse side in the systematic deprecia-
tion of medieval art, especially Gothic architecture, Italy
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xvii

was, just at this time, “ the fair land of exiles” from the con-
ventionalities of society in the more northern countries of
Europe. Byron, Shelley, Scott, and other lesser lights of
English imaginative literature, were languishing, rhapso-
dizing, or sight-seeing in Venice, Florence, Rome, and else-
where. Goethe had only recently been there, and there were
plenty of other Germans, intoxicated with the “ romantic”
movement now springing into life, with whom Schopen-
hauer had the opportunity of quarrelling. He kept a
diary during all this time, in which were set down sundry
reflections on life and things of the partly platitudinary
and partly paradoxical nature, so characteristic of all the
meditations of our Neo-Buddhist on things in general.

At Naples he received a letter from his only sister, who
was a few years his junior, containing a report of the

. , publication of his book, and also the welcome information

that Goethe, in spite of his general repulsion to purely
speculative literature, had dipped into it, and discovered
two passages to his liking, one in the fourth part, which
contained Schopenhauer’s views on art, and the other a
passage in which he proclaims self-realization as the end
of life. While at Milan, on his return home, a less welcome
letter from his sister reached him, containing the informa-
tion that the Dantzic house, in which his mother and sister
had invested their means, had failed. Schopenhauer, who
was himself involved to the extent of 8,000 thalers in the
affair, was at first sympathetic, and prepared to stand by
his relatives. But on hearing that they had precipitately
agreed to accept the first offer made, of a composition of
thirty per cent., he became disgusted, and not even the
satisfaction he might have derived from seeing therein a
confirmation of his theories as to the business incapacity
of women, sufficed to prevent an enduring rupture. He
himself resolutely stuck to his guns, refusing anything less
than seventy per cent. down in settlement of claims. This
b
XViil THE LIFE AND

he communicated to the firm indicated, ina letter, in which
he states it to be his duty to defend his patrimony, at the
same time justifying his attitude on quasi-philosophical
grounds. He did not oppose the action of the other creditors,
and hence the agreement with them was signed in the
summer of 1821. The following month he sent in the first
of his acceptances, and in less than a year all his three bills
were paid up with interest. The amount gained or saved by
his dexterous manipulation was partially lost afterwards,
however, through an unlucky investment in Mexican Bonds.

Schopenhauer next went to Heidelberg, and from thence
to Dresden to arrange his affairs, the hope inspiring him
all the time of obtaining a university appointment. Just
now the universities were regarded by the governments uf
Germany, in the full flood of the reaction represented by
the Holy Alliance, as hotbeds of sedition. This made little
difference to Schopenhauer, whose want of appreciation of
history was only equalled by his contempt for politics and
all public movements. For him the individual was all in
all. The political atmosphere therefore was no hindrance
to his applying, as he hoped with success, for a post of the
kind. He first turned his attention to Berlin, and in
writing to one of the professors there on the subject, he
declares that what interests him alone are the things which
concern every man at all times and in all places, and that
so long as he has the means and opportunity of study, and
of elaborating his ideas and communicating them to the
world, he is satisfied, no matter what the outward circum-
stances of his age and country may be. To Berlin accord-
ingly he went, and after the usual formalities—presentation
of copies of his books, a lecture delivered before the Senate,
followed by an oral examination—he was admitted to the
post of privat-docent or extraordinary professor. Thus
empowered, in the summer semester of 1820 he began a
course of lectures on philosophy. This, like his books,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xix

proved a complete and utter failure ; his audience dwindled
to nothing before the end of the term, and Schopenhauer
never again tried his luck in this direction. He was
perhaps partly himself to blame for the so completely
disastrous collapse of his scheme, inasmuch as he had tried
conclusions with the great philosophical giant who was
then at the height of his renown. Schopenhauer was
literally crushed beneath the weight of Hegel. The former
had had the temerity to choose the lecture hour of his
famous colleague for his own course. From this time
forward dates the bitter and malignant attitude of Schopen-
hauer towards the great master of speculative thought.
The silly ebullitions of spite which recur again and again,
in season and out of season, marring the pages of Scho-
penhauer’s Essays, and more than one specimen of which
will be found in the following pages, are so puerile as to
excite nothing else than pity for the man of unquestion-
able power who could descend to them. It is only fair to
say that Schopenhauer, possessed as he was with a morbid
mania of suspicion, probably really believed his failure to
have been due to the machinations of his arch-enemy, as he
considered the author of the‘ Phenomenologie.” Asa matter
of fact it is extremely improbable that Hegel ever once
gave so much as a passing thought to the obscure privat-
docent and his course, so far as jealousy was concerned.

A review of his book in the “ Litterateur-zeitung” of
Jena next drew Schopenhauer into a furious squabble with
the editor. In the course of the year 1821 he fell into a
dispute subsequently ending in an unsuccessful litigation,
this time not with any academical or literary opponent, but
with a friend of his landlady. He complained to the latter
on one occasion of having found three strange women con-
versing immediately outside the two rooms he occupied,
and received the assurance that such a thing should not
occur again. A few days afterwards, on returning home
xx THE LIFE AND

from his walk, he found the three women again in the
same position. He ordered them to retire, but one of them,
a seamstress, who occupied a room at the top of the stairs,
refused. Schopenhauer thereupon went back into his
room, and after waiting a few minutes returned to the
charge, and finding her still in the same position, he seized
her by the waist and violently flung her out, at the same
time using an expression more energetic than parliamentary,
and followmg up her ejection by flinging after her the
work she was engaged on, together with the implements of
her calling. The case, which came into court, and was de-
fended by Schopenhauer himself, was decided in his
favour after the lapse of some months. The plaintiff how-
ever appealed, and Schopenhauer, who wished to get away
to Switzerland and Italy, did not stop for the hearing, and
was condemned undefended to a moderate fine. After
being absent in Italy during the whole winter, he returned
northwards, making a lengthened stay at Gastein, and in
August he was back at Dresden, remaining there some
eighteen months, and occupying himself the while with
sundry literary projects, including a translation of Hume’s
philosophical works, albeit this never got beyond the
preface. In the spring of 1825 he was recalled to Berlin
to square accounts with the redoubtable spinster, who had
recently set up a fresh claim against him, on the ground
of permanent disablement from gaining her livelihood,
having been a consequence of the assault committed three
years previously. She now demanded a regular yearly
allowance as indemnity. The case had gone against him,
and the previous October he had been condemned in costs,
and ordered to pay the woman fifteen thalers a quarter
(about £9 a year) towards her maintenance. His im-
mediate object in going to Berlin now was to get the
verdict reversed. In this he was unsuccessful, and after
some months of litigious vexation the decree was made
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. Xxi

final in March of the following year. The woman herself,
who was over fifty years of age at the time, might have
furnished Schopenhauer with the theme for a dissertation
on the toughness of constitution possessed by the sex, or
as he might have put it, on the strength of the manifesta-
tion of ‘The Will-to-live ” enshrined in the female body.
Among other illnesses, she was prostrated by the cholera
when it appeared in North Germany a few years later, and
while strong men around her were succumbing in some
cases to what were apparently much lighter attacks, she
recovered, and survived for many a long year to enjoy the
receipt of the pension allotted to her by the law. But last
of all this woman died also, and on receiving official informa-
tion of the fact, Schopenhauer inscribed on the notice-paper
the significant and appropriate words, Obit anus abit onus.

Schopenhauer continued, notwithstanding his defeat in
the law-courts, to reside in Berlin for some years, leading a
solitary life, a favourite dog (he was devotedly attached to
animals) his only companion. He dined regularly at the
table d’héte of the Hotel de Russie, music and the drama
forming his chief relaxations during the time. Among
various other literary projects, he entertained an idea of
translating Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” ‘“ Prole-
gomena,” and “Critique of Judgment” into English, his
knowledge of which language was perfect. This too, how-
ever, after the passage of sundry letters between Berlin
and London, fell to the ground. In the summer of 1831
the cholera appeared in Berlin, one of its victims being, as
is well known, Schopenhauer’s great rival Hegel. Schopen-
chauer, who had a constitutional horror and terror of in-
fection, fled precipitately from the capital on the approach
of the enemy, and sought refuge in Frankfort-on-the-
Maine, which he never again quitted for any length of
time so long as he lived. Our thinker, who had a distinctly
superstitious vein in him, which, moreover, in no way con-
xxii THE LIFE AND

flicted with his philosophy, believed himself warned in &
dream that he should die of cholera if he remained.

On his arrival in Frankfort a feeling of isolation, and
consequent melancholy, owing to the sudden change from
familiar scenes, induced him to renew a correspondence
with his sister. Both mother and daughter had now
quitted Weimar, and Adele—such was the name of the
gister—had taken, like her mother, to the production of light
literature. But though a desultory correspondence was
resumed, he none the less remained estranged as before
from his two relatives as far as personal intercourse was
concerned. The next year, 1832, Schopenhauer removed
for a few months to Mannheim, which for some reason
he thought he should prefer to Frankfort as a place
of residence. The change, however, proved not to his
liking, and he returned to Frankfort. Among his re-
mains were found an accurately drawn up pro and contra
account respecting the two places, in which Frankfort
wins because of its greater life and facility of amusement,
its able dentists and “less bad physicians,” and last, but
not least, its ‘more Englishmen.” This, like many other
of the memoranda and notes of Schopenhauer, is written in
the English language. His life-work henceforward was
amplifying, commentating on, and illustrating his philo-
sophy as embodied in his “chief work,” as he is fond of
terming it. In his philosophy, as he repeatedly says, he
found occupation, instruction, and recreation—the fullness
of life—in short, his happiness, in so far as such was
possible to him.

For years his daily round was a perfectly regular one.
He rose at half-past seven, took his bath, at that time a
rare luxury in Germany, dressed, prepared and drank hig
coffee, gave instructions to his housekeeper not to inter-
rupt him till noon, and settled down to three or four
hours’ work, which he considered enough for continuous
intellectual application, whether in reading or writing.
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xXxill

At twelve o’clock he knocked off, took a turn at practising
on his flute, and at one o’clock dined at his hotel, which
was at first the “ Englischerhof,’ and in later years the
hotel “Zum Schwanen.” He seldom talked during or
after dinner, except when an especially cultivated or ap-
preciative guest happened to be sitting beside him. After
dinner he returned to his domicile, took his coffee, and
slept for an hour. He then read belles lettres till four
o’clock, being widely versed in English and French novelists.
At four, or a little after, Schopenhauer started for his
constitutional, accompanied by his dog. There had been
a succession of these dogs, mostly poodles, since his
student days. The poodle used to be called by the chil-
dren of the neighbourhood young Schopenhauer. Occasion-
ally, though rarely, an acquaintance took part in these
strolls. The philosopher walked rapidly, so rapidly that
few could keep up with him, for two hours on end. When
alone, he often stopped suddenly for a moment, if an idea
struck him, in order to note it down. On his return at six
o’clock, or thereabouts, he visited the reading-room, where
he regularly perused “ The Times.” At half-past eight he
took his supper, which consisted of a cold collation and
half a bottle of light wine. He then lit his long German
pipe, and read for an hour. Directly after he went to bed,
always believing in a long night’s rest. To the obvious
taunt which might have been applied to him that he did
not carry out his own ascetic ideal, he would have replied
that this could with no more reason be required of the
philosopher than of any other man. If the philosopher by
his insight could intellectually grasp the ideal of life and
set it down in theory, this did not imply any greater obli-
gation to realize it in his own person than in the case of
anyone else. He who drives fat oxen need not himself be
fat. The sculptor who produces a beautiful form may
himself be a Silenus. And conversely, we do not expect an
Adonis, just because he is an Adonis, to be also a Phidias.
xxiv THE LIFE AND

Schopenhauer published in 1836 a small volume on
“Will in Nature.” This was his first literary production
of any consequence since the completion of “‘ The World as
Will and Presentment ” in 1818. In it he collected various
recently discovered facts of physical science that he thought
corroborated the central positions of his philosophy, which
he always contended could be arrived at by an inductive
process. The new work, like its predecessors, failed to
arrest, much less to secure, public attention. He was much
disgusted at being known as the son of the novelist
Johanna Schopenhauer, rather than as the author of the
great philosophical system which should for ever solve the
riddle of life. In 1838 a learned society at Drontheim, in
Norway, offered a prize for the best essay on the question,
“Whether the freedom of the Will could be proved on the
testimony of consciousness?” Schopenhauer at once com-
peted, and early in the following year he received intimation
that his essay had won the prize. His delight at having,
after so many failures, at last secured a measure of success,
if not with the greater public, at least with a learned body
like the Swedish Academy, knew no bounds. So elated was
he, that he at once set about competing for another prize
for an essay on ‘The Foundations of Morality,’ which
had been offered the previous year by the Royal Danish
Academy of Copenhagen. The essay having been duly
finished and sent in, its author confidently awaited the
news of a second success, and was intensely disgusted
when he was apprized of the fact that his work had been
rejected on the grounds that it contained no adequate dis-
cussion of the relation of metaphysics to ethics; that the
alleged proofs of sympathy being the Foundation of
Morality were insufficient ; and lastly, which was worst of
all, that eminent philosopers had been treated without due
respect. Who these philosophers referred to were may be
imagined. Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel became more
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. XXV

than ever the incarnation, for him, of deceit, sophistry, and
low conspiracy to ignore him. The existent professors of
philosophy. who had mostly drunk at these fountain heads,
were carrying on, he was sure, the work of the arch-villain
Hegel. Both treatises were published in one volume in
1841, at Frankfort, with the title “The Two Fundamental
Problems of Ethics.” Three years after this the second
edition of “The World as Will and Presentment” was
issued from the press, without much change, except in the
appendix on the Kantian philosophy, where his views on
the relative merits of the first and second editions of the
“ Critique ” were for the first time set forth. The important
new feature was the addition of a commentary on the whole
in the form of a second volume, which actually exceeded
the first in bulk.

The days of 1848 brought Schopenhauer’s anti-political
and anti-social side into prominence. He was desperately
frightened lest he should lose his means in a general
overturn. His essentially individualist impulses, and his
views as to the functions of the “superior person” in the
economy of human life, naturally led him to hate the
populace—the sovereign canaille, as he called it. He saw
from his window the erection of barricades on the bridge
over the Maine, and his room was on one occasion used by
a party of Austrian troops as a citadel from which to open
fire on the insurgents in the street below. The disturbance
in the even tenor of his life, caused by the events of the
revolution, naturally intensified Schopenhauer’s bitterness
towards it; for an egoist he was and remained, from first
to last. We are not surprised, therefore, that he left a
large part of his fortune to the surviving relatives of those
who fell on the reactionary side. The general break-up,
however, of the previous conditions of German life, both
material and intellectual, of which the revolution of 1848
was an indication, told in favour of Schopenhauer’s literary
xxvi THE LIFE AND ,

claims. Disciples and admirers now began gradually to
drop in. First of all came the old “councillor ” of Mag-
deburg, Dorguth by name, who was the earliest to call
public attention to Schopenhauer in an exaggerated esti-
mate of his claims, embodied in a pamphlet, the first of a
series in the same style which ran on up to Dorguth’s
death in 1854, More important was the acquisition of the
popular writer on philosophical subjects, Julius Frauen-
stadt. The latter became the most useful and enthusiastic
exponent of Schopenhauer’s views, as well as for many
years his adviser in practical matters relating to publish-
ing, &c. In newspaper and review Frauenstidt was un-
tiring in asserting his master’s claims to recognition, and
in expounding and defending his philosophical positions.
His chief literary work in this connection was his “ Letters
on Schopenhauer’s Philosophy.’ But Schopenhauer, now
advancing to old age, was more than ever difficult to get on
with ; and a rupture of three years in the personal rela-
tions between master and disciple occurred, which was only
terminated a few months before the death of the former.
Adam von Doss, a Bavarian lawyer, also entered upon a
vigorous correspondence with Schopenhauer. Lintner, the
assistant editor of the “ Vossische Zeitung,” was converted
by a perusal of the “ Parerga,’”’ and paid especial attention
to the theory of music contained in Schopenhauer’s
system. He also collaborated with Frauenstidt, after
Schopenhauer’s death, in a work, the main object of which
was to defend the personal character of the master against
aspersions which had been thrown upon it. In 1853 the
well-known article of John Oxenford, the English dramatic
critic, entitled “Iconoclasm in German Philosophy,” was
published in the Westminster Review,” and Schopen-
hauer was for the first time introduced to the British
public. Other friends there were whom Schopenhauer
won, the most important being Dr. David Asher, who was
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xxvii

attracted by the pessimist’s musical speculations while a
teacher at Leipsic, and who subsequently became con-
nected with the publishing firm of his name; and last, but
not least, his biographer, Dr. Gwinner.

It was the “ Parerga and Paralipomena,” which was pub-
lished in 1851, that first gave Schopenhauer a reputation
with the general public. This, his last important work, was
the first to attain any immediate success. It was neverthe-
less declined at the outset by three publishers in succession,
and, as it was, his only payment for the copyright con-
sisted in a dozen copies of the book. The strange conglo-
meration of literary odds and ends on things in general
“caught on” almost at once, and led to a republication of
the essay on “ Willin Nature”’; to a third edition of “The
World as Will and Presentment”; and shortly before his
death, in 1860, to a re-issue of ‘The Two Fundamental
Problems of Ethics.” Schopenhauer’s chief pleasure in
his old age now became reading favourable notices of his
own works. His appetite for public applause was vora-
cious. Admirers were frequently attracted to the new
philosophy by special points. To some it was his musical
theories ; to others, those on sexual love; to others, again,
his views on mesmerism and hypnotism. But the incoming
throng of adherents, admirers, and interested readers was
almost entirely composed of the class known as ‘“ persons
of general culture.” The Universities still remained closed
to him, and few of those specially trained in them took
any interest in the new pessimism or its exponent. One
day he received a visit from an officer stationed at Magde-
burg, who informed him of the existence of a society
of admirers among the military of that city. The officer
stated that he himself had read nothing else but Schopen-
hauer for the past three years. In fact, in the last few
years of his life, Schopenhauer had become a celebrity
whom the curious passing through Frankfort desired to
XXVili THE LIFE AND

see. In 1855 he sat for his portrait to a French painter.
The next year he was painted by a German artist, a native
of Frankfort, while a little later his bust was modelled by
a young lady artist of Berlin. Still the evidences he ob-
tained of his renown did not keep pace with his vanity. He
could never read enough about himself. He repeatedly
laments that so much that had been written about him
must be escaping his notice. The first indication of any
academic interest in him was furnished by the University
of Leipsic, which in 1857 offered a prize for the best
critical essay on his system. About this time Schopen-
hauer saw his friend Bunsen for the last time. The short
visit the latter paid to Frankfort seems to have been the
occasion of a pleasant revival for both parties of old
student memories. The summer of 1860 showed consider-
able evidences of the results of old age. Schopenhauer’s
strong constitution no longer stood him in good stead.
Palpitation of the heart forced him to modify his constitu-
tionals. An attack of inflammation of the lungs, from
which he but slowly recovered, left him for a long time
prostrate. Recurrent seizures of faintness seemed to indi-
cate something radically wrong with his heart. Finally,
on the morning of the 21st of September, 1860, after having
riseu and partaken of his breakfast as usual, he was found
lying back dead on the sofa by his medical attendant, who
had come to pay what for some time now had been his
regular morning visit.

Schopenhauer has attracted as much interest by his per-
sonality as by his writings. As is sufficiently obvious, his
was a character of peculiar inadaptability to circumstances.
Few people could have got on with him, and, as a matter
of fact, he scarcely had an intimate friend throughout his
life. The least suggestion of derogation from the most
extravagant of his personal claims sufficed, especially in his
later years, to inspire him with the keenest resentment.
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xxix

Schopenhauer was, in short, as perfect a type as we could
well have of the completely self-centred egoist. Not that
he lacked genuine zeal for truth, or devotion to philosophy.
But these things were inseparable with him from zeal for
the applause and recognition of his own work, and devotion
to his own personality as such. That Schopenhauer was
not destitute of a certain sense of humour his writings
show. But certainly there was something lacking in his
feeling for the ridiculous, or otherwise he could never have
penned the comically arrogant passages concerning him-
self which he has done. It is a susceptibility to the comic
side of things which alone saves the man of greater ability
than the average from the expression of exaggerated
estimates of his own powers. An excessive personal sensi-
bility, leading at times to moroseness, an irritability of
temper which exaggerated trifles, and a personal vanity of
huge proportions, must, in short, be admitted as funda-
mental characteristics of the founder of the neo-pessimismn.
These things were associated with a timidity, a scenting
of danger from afar, which, though it may have been, as it
is with many, purely constitutional in its origin, yet was in
his case unquestionably fostered and nourished by the
excessive habit of self-concentration above alluded to.
Schopenhauer was in a constant state of alarm as to his
personal safety. He fled from the very name of an infec-
tious disease. He was so afraid of fire that he would only
live on the ground floor of the house; and his fear of
reverse of fortune was so great that he was in the habit of
concealing important business papers and other valuable
property, lest it should be stolen, under the harmless
label of “ materia medica.” Still there can be no doubt
whatever as to the sincerity of Schopenhauer’s belief in
his own mission, as the exponent of a new philosophy, or
rather as the expounder in the definite formule of Western
thought of the old semi-poetical philosophy of the East.
Xxx THE LIFE AND

Tur PuitosopHy or SCHOPENHAUER.

As he is never tired of insisting, Schopenhauer’s philo-
sophy is based upon the criticism of Kant. As already
hinted, there were two distinct possibilities of speculative
development contained in the Kantian metaphysic. Kant
had divided his system into Transcendental Aisthetic,
Transcendental Analytic, and Transcendental Dialectic.
The first contained an exposition of the conditions of pure
sensibility. These were for Kant the subsuming of the
blind sense impression, the resultant of the unknown thing-
in-itself under the forms of space and time. But to the
completed phenomenon of so-called common-sense reality
—to the object known as such—another element was
necessary, that, namely, of the pure activity of thought,
working through certain categories tabulated by Kant,
and deducible from the ultimate unity of the conscious-
ness. The exposition of the pure thought-conditions—as
opposed to those of pure sense—are set forth and discussed
in the second part of the “ Critique,” which Kant terms
“The Transcendental Analytic.” These two first parts of
the great work, since they deal, not with the completed
reality as we find it, but with the conditions which that
reality presupposes—with the elements which go to the
making of that reality rather than with the reality as a
whole—these two first parts of the “ Critique” are called
by Kant the “Theory of Elements” (“ elementarlehre”).
The remainder of the book consists in the so-called “ Tran-
scendental Dialectic.’’ This no longer deals with the elements
which go to the making or determination of reality in con-
sciousness, but with the ideas or assumptions which the
mind is compelled to super-impose on these, and which
hinge on the conceptions of the soul as a simple substance,
on the world as infinite in time and space, and on God as
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. XXX1

the self-containing principle of all reality and all possibility
of reality. The Sensibility, therefore, the faculty of receiving
impressions from without; the Understanding, the faculty
of working up these impressions into a coherent world
of objects; and the Reason, the faculty of carrying on
the process of thought-activity beyond the given world of
phenomena created by the synthesis of sensibility and
understanding, constitute for Kant the tripartite division
of consciousness in general, or knowledge, in the widest
sense of the word. Kant designated his system, therefore,
as ‘Theory of Knowledge,” inasmuch as it was an investiga-
tion into the conditions under which alone all knowledge
is possible.

Now while Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, especially the
first and third, had taken their stand in the main upon the
element of direct thought-activity deducible from the syn-
thetic unity of the consciousness, and had thus postulated
thought or intelligenceas the ultimate principle of all reality,
Schopenhauer thought he was able' to deduce the active,
formative principle of the world from something still deeper,
from a principle which was itself alogical, non-conscious—
albeit the source of consciousness—a principle he identified
with the so-called thing-in-itself, and the sense-impression
which, according to Kant, was its result. This principle he
further identified with Will, understanding by Will all
nisus, all impulse, of whatever character. The intelligence
is, therefore, a secondary principle, entirely subordinate to
the thing-in-itself, or Will, which manifests itself in all
Nature, being substantially the same whether in gravitation
orin humandesire. Willis for Schopenhauer the matter, the
intelligence, the form of Reality, but the two elements are
everywhere distinguishable in consciousness. In Schopen-
hauer’s first work, “The Fourfold Root,” he had endea-
voured to establish the proposition that all the Kantian
categories are ultimately deducible from that of Cause, and
XXxii THE LIFE AND

that this is itself a mode of the Will. “Adequate Cause” is
divided by Schopenhauer into a principle of being, doing,
acting, and knowing (essendi, fiendi,agendi, and cognoscendt).
The law of Adequate Cause expresses the ordered connection
between all our presentments, as determinable @ priori, by
virtue of which nothing can be self-existent and indepen-
dent of other things, but in order to be an object for our
consciousness it must stand in connection with the totality
of phenomena. But the manner of this connection differs
according to the nature of the object. Every presentment
which can become object for us falls under one or other of
four classes. The first class of possible objects of present-
ment is that of the completed empirical perception. The
primary form of this perception Schopenhauer makes, fol-
lowing Kant, to consist in space and time, the forms
respectively of the outer and of the inner sense. In this
class of objects it appears as the law of causality in the
narrower sense of the word. Schopenhauer calls it the
law of the adequate cause of becoming (principium rationis
sufficientis fiendi). A change in any object or objects pre-
supposes another, upon which it has followed, with absolute
necessity. Such a sequence is what we commonly call cause
and effect. The forms of causality in this sense are
mechanical cause, organic irritability, and psychical motive.
The first form, in which action and reaction are equal to
one another, governs the inorganic world with its mechani-
cal processes, the second governs the organic world with
its physiological processes, and the third governs the world
of thought and conscious action. The second class of
possible objects for a subject are constituted by concepts
or abstract presentments. This is the class coucerned with
the adequate cause of knowing (principium rationis sufficientis
cognoscendi), which proclaims that if a judgment is to express
an intelligent proposition it must have a sufficient reason,
hence it is termed true, truth consisting either in the
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. Xxxili

logical and formal correctness of judgments, or in their
adequacy for expressing a sensuous perception, which, in
so far as it is based on experience, constitutes empirical
truth. The third class of objects for the presentative
faculty is constituted by the formal element of the com-
pleted presentments, namely, the a priori given intuitions
of the forms of the external and the internal sense, space
and time. As pure perceptions they are distinguishable from
the completed objects of perception. They have the charac-
teristic that all their parts stand in one relation to each
other, in respect of which each of them is conditioned by
the other. In space, this relation is called position; in
time, sequence. From the latter number is directly de-
ducible. The law according to which parts of time and
space are determined is termed by Schopenhauer the law of
the adequate cause of being (principium rationis sufficientis
essend?). The fourth and last class of possible objects for the
faculty of presentment has its basis in the immediate object
of the internal sense, the subject which wills, but which is at
the same time object for the faculty of presentment, though
an object of a unique kind, being only given to the internal
sense, and, therefore, manifesting itself, not in space, but
in time alone. In respect of Willing, the law of cause pre-
sents itself as the law of sufficient reason of action, or as
the law of motivation (principium rationis sufficientis
agendi). In so far as motive is the external condition of
an action it belongs to causes of the same kind as those
mechanical ones considered under the first class of objects
of possible presentment. In this last class, therefore, the
circle is complete, since in it the first class merely evinces
itself as ultimately the same thing viewed from the extern al
side only. For motives are known to us not only from
without like other causes, but also from within, and in them,
therefore, we have the key to the mystery of the innermost
meaning of all other kinds of causation. Motivation is
c
XXXiv THE LIFE AND

simply causation seen from within. Such is, in brief out-
line, the subject-matter of Schopenhauer’s first philoso-
phical work. Those desirous of further information re-
specting it may consult the English translation, which
forms one of the volumes in Bohn’s Philosophical Library.

Schopenhauer’s “‘ chief work,” “ The World as Will and
Presentment,” is divided into four sections, of which the
first treats of The World as Presentment, in the sense of
empirical reality, the object of science; the second, of The
World as Will, that is, the will-to-live; the third, of The
World as Presentment, so to say in its second intention, as
Platonic Idea, the object of art; the fourth, lastly, of The
Will in its second intention, as purified from the lust of
life, and turned as it were against itself. The volume
ends with an appendix on the Kantian philosophy.

“The World is my Presentment.’ This proposition,
with which the first book begins, applies, says Schopenhauer,
to every living and knowing being, albeit in man alone
does it appear in the form of a reflective or abstract thought.
The sundering of consciousness into object and subject is
the only form under which any presentment, be it percep-
tive or conceptive, is possible or thinkable. The world
means simply the totality of objects existing in and for
a subject, of perceptions for a perceiver, in short, of
presentments ; the whole world and all that can possibly
belong to it is subject to this condition ; it is only there for
a subject, it is only a determination of a subject. The
essential and universal forms of the object belong, how-
ever, to the subject, as Schopenhauer with Kant insists,
and may, therefore, be distinguished a priori in conscious-
ness. The principle of adequate cause, as expounded by
Schopenhauer in the book above noticed, and at less length
here, is the general expression which embraces al] forms
of the object. Materialism errs, in that it ignores the fact
in question. The only valid standpoint consists in the
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. XXXV

recognition of the complete relativity involved in all pre-
sentment and in all thought. From this complete rela-
tivity, amounting with Schopenhauer to a dualism, Schopen-
hauer infers the prixs, or root-principle, to be something
other than intelligence or knowledge. The separation of
subject and object, and the law of cause which it implies,
involves us in an antinomy or contradiction. For although
metaphysically the existence of the world is dependent on
its being known by living beings, yet, physically, these
latter are themselves just as dependent on a chain of phy-
sical events, of causes and effects. into which they enter as
amere link. This antinomy finds its solution in the as-
sumption that the World as Presentment, that is, as sun-
dered into subject and object and subordinated to the
principle of cause, is only its external side, and that its
innermost being, its kernel, its root, in short, the “ thing-
in-itself”’ of Kant, is what we term, with reference to its
most direct and immediate manifestation, Will.

The second book treats of the objectivation of the Will.
The body is presented in a double manner to the subject
of knowledge, first as a mediate presentment, or object
among other objects, and subordinated to the law of causa-
tion, and secondly as that immediately known to each.
The act of the will and the movement of my body are not
two different conditions standing in the relation to each
other of cause and effect, but they are simply the same
thing viewed from a double side. The action of the body
is simply the act of will objectified. The question as to
whether the remaining phenomena of the world, as known
from the external side only, are acts of will or not, is
really identical with the question as to whether they are
reality or illusion. To answer it in the negative amounts
to a solipsism. This is indeed a sceptical sophism which
cannot be refuted, but, on the other hand, it is a theory
which no one holds outside a mad-house. Hence we are
XXxvi THE LIFE AND

perfectly justified in assuming that the phenomenon. mani-
fested in the being or action of our own body is a key to
that of all other phenomena in nature, although they are
only given in presentment from the outer side. This means,
that could we strip off their character of presentments in an
intelligence, of objects for a consciousness, what remained
over would be identical with that which in the case of
our body we term Will. The Will considered as thing-in-
itself is entirely distinct from the same Will as phe-
nomenalized, objectivized, or presented in consciousness, and.
is not subject to the conditions of the latter, which condi-
tions merely touch its objectivity. The will considered as
thing-in-itself is one and indivisible, though its objective
manifestations in the phenomenal world are infinite. But
these infinite manifestations, in so far as they are double-
sided like our own organism, and therefore real, are of a
mixed nature, and hence do not express the element of
objectivity or outwardness in its purity. The latter is
only to be found in the pure idea, which is at the root of
every class of phenomena, that is, in the system of Ideal
types, which constitute the successive stages in the objecti-
vation of the Will, as more or less confusedly reproduced
in the particular phenomena in which they express them-
selves. The most general forces of matter, such as
gravity, impenetrability, &c., represent the lowest phase
of the objectivation of the Will. Physical, chemical, and
organic forces supervene on these, and represent succes-
sively higher stages in the objectivation. Each stage
contests its place in space and time with the one below it,
This applies not only to the more important stages, but
also to the subordinate ones; for example, every higher
form of life has to battle for its place in nature with
those below it. As a consequence, it only expresses so
much of the idea as it has the force left in it to do
after this conflict has been decided in its favour. Time
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. XXxvii

and space as the principia individiationis have no immediate
influence on the ideas, which as pure objects stand over and
above the particulars or individuals in time and space
which more or less adequately, more or less inadequately,
embody them.

This doctrine is the basis of Schopenhauer’s “ theory of
art,” and is set forth in the third book of “The World as
Will and Presentment.” As we have seen, at one pole is
the Will as pure Subject; at the other is the Present-
ment as pure Object. Between these two positions—these
two modes of the noumenon or thing-in-itself—lies the
phenomenal world, with its participation in both, under
the conditions of Time, Space, and Causation in its four
forms. The idea (the Platonic Idea, as Schopenhauer
sometimes calls it), notwithstanding that it is not subject
to the conditions of time and space, and the categories of
cause, is nevertheless a form of knowledge—indeed, the
most universal form of knowledge—it is Presentment in
general. We can only attain through individual things to
a knowledge of the ideas they represent, in so far as a
change takes place in us—i.e., in the percipient or subject
of knowledge itself, by which the latter, in so far as it is
absorbed in the apprehension of the idea, ceases, pro hac
vice, to be individual, and becomes universal. This form
of knowledge belongs exclusively to the objectivation of
the will in its higher stages. In the first instance, the
intellect, or faculty of knowledge, is entirely there in the
service of the Will. But as the faculty of apprehending
the idea it is emancipated from this service, the pleasure
experienced in esthetic contemplation being, Schopenhauer
contends, will-less in its origin and nature. The capacity
for abstracting the intellect from the service of the Will is
the exclusive appanage of Man. With the animals the
intellect always remains the slave of the appetites—that
is, under the complete sway of the Will-to-live. Hence they
XXXVili THE LIFE AND

are incapable of zsthetic contemplation. For the art-con~-
sciousness demands that we should regard the Object pre-
sented apart from its why, its wherefore, its how, and its
when. In doing so, we approach the pure Platonic idea—
the ideal type of the Object considered in itself. The Sub-
ject for the nonce is emancipated from its ordinary desires
and impulses, apprehensions and interests, and becomes, so
to speak, raised to a higher potency of consciousness. It
is conscious no longer of the individual thing, but of the
eternal form.

The different branches of the fine arts represent the
different stages in the objectivation of the Will. The
lowest stage is that of architecture, which embodies the
idea of gravity, and the forces deducible from it—in short,
it expresses the Platonic idea of what appears in the phe-
nomenal world as mechanics. As we rise in the scale, the
natural forces expressed become more complex, and the
idea conveys with deeper meaning and greater precision
the truth of human life. For example, painting, which
deals directly with individuals or particulars, treats them
only as the representatives of a class. They are for the
artist not individuals, but types. The highest achieve-
ments of painting are to be found in medieval catholic art,
which portrays the figure of the saint in whom the Will-
to-live has died, and who has therefore already attained to
a foretaste of Nirvana. The same with poetry: the
highest manifestation of the poetic art is in tragedy.

Music stands on a different footing from the other arts,
inasmuch as it does not represent any one stage of the
Will’s manifestation like them, but is the direct embodi-
ment of the Will’s objectivity in general. Hence the
peculiar effect, unlike that of the other arts, which music
produces on minds susceptible to it. In music we have the
purest expression of the free play of emotion and impulse,
undetermined to any specific subject-matter. Schopen-
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xXxxix

hguer carries this idea out with much ingenuity as regards
both harmony and melody, the different registers, cadences,
rhythms, &c. Joy and sorrow, pure and simple, is, in
short, the burden of music. There is no material, as in the
other arts, which covers this central fact up, overloading it
with detail which obscures the real issue, but all is here
directly and obviously reducible to the blind impulse
which Schopenhauer terms “The Will-to-live.”

The fourth and last book of the “‘ World as Will and
Presentment ” treats of the Will-to-live as turning against
itself, as recognizing its own futility and denying itself.
This can only be attained by means of the insight that all
life issues in sorrow and pain; that the evil of the world
outbalances the good, and does so not accidentally but
necessarily. All Willing, Schopenhauer is fond of pointing
out, implies want, and all want implies suffering. Hence
so long as the Will is affirmed so long are evil and suffering
affirmed. The root of all life being Willing, and all Willing
implying the want of something which is not, as soon as
one want is satisfied another arising by the very necessities
of the case, it follows that the Will in us must be destroyed,
annihilated, before the blessed state of the extinction of
all Willing, and of the consciousness, which is in the
service of the Will, can be attained. A partial and tem-
porary satisfaction may be acquired by the transforma-
tion of the Will into pure objectivity, as in the art-con-
sciousness. But this is not enduring. We cannot continue
in this state for long, we are continually forced back into
that world in which the intellect, the intelligence, is in
the service of the Will.

Hence the final solution of the problem of life is to
be found, not in esthetics, but in ethics; it is to be
found, in short, in asceticism. The destruction of the
individual life is one thing, that of the Will-to-live is an-
other. In the first it is the phenomenon only which
xl THE LIFE AND

perishes, leaving the noumenon, the thing-in-itself, or
Will, remaining intact, and continuing to realize itself
immediately in another individual. For this reason suicide
is no solution of the difficulty, for the Will is affirmed in
the very act by which the life is destroyed. On the other
hand, once the Will is finally negated, the continuance of
the mere phenomenonal life for a time is quite a secondary
matter. The consequence of this, namely, self-starvation,
the absention, as in the case of the Hindoo yogis, from all
action on one’s own behalf tending to preserve life as
being the highest expression of an ascetic morality, is
obvious, and Schopenhauer does not shrink from it. The
great turning-point in the negation of the Will-to-live is
the triumph over the sexual impulse, the impulse which
directly leads to the affirmation of the Will in new indi-
viduals. The final stage is the triumph over the Will-to-
live as expressed in the instinct of self-preservation, that is,
in the desire for the continuance of the immediate per-
sonality concerned. The Hindoo ascetics above all, and
after them the Trappists, are Schopenhauer’s ideal. The
end of Schopenhauer’s philosophy is the complete extinction
of Will, and, as a natural consequence, of life itself, in all
human beings, which is, therefore, the ultimate goal of all
existence. The Will perishes, and the root of conscious-
ness being cut away, it withers and dies. The blessed
state of consciousless, Will-less extinction, the great Nothing
to which all Nature points, is then attained. Schopen-
hauer speaks of “the dark impression of that Nothing,
which looms as the final goal behind all virtue and holiness,
which we fear like children the darkness.” ‘Instead of
seeking to evade it,” he concludes, “as even the Indians
do by myths and meaningless words, or the Nirvana of the
Buddhists, we recognize the fact freely that what remains
after the complete abolition of the Will is for all those
who are immersed in the Will assuredly nothing. But
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xli

conversely, for those in whom the Will has turned against
and denied itself, this our so very real world, with all its
suns and galaxies, is also—nothing.”

The above is a brief, and therefore necessarily extremely
condensed, exposition of the leading principles of Schopen-
hauer’s philosophy. Its merits and its defects are not far
to seek for the philosophical student. Many, and some-
times deep, are the insights which we come across in all
Schopenhauer’s writings. The ingenuity with which he
fits his own acute observations on men and things, on
Nature and art, into his system, is sometimes quite startling.
This is especially noticeable in the third book of “The
World as Willand Presentment,” which contains his theory
of art. It is, in fact, on the artistic side that Schopen-
hauer has most directly influenced the world. His power
in determining the theories of Richard Wagner, and thus
indirectly in revolutionizing modern dramatic music, are
well known, although it is curious to note that Schopenhauer
himself did not appreciate the earlier works of Wagner,
which were the only ones with which he was acquainted.

The ethical side of Schopenhauer’s system has mainly
served as a quasi-philosophical stalking-horse for the
somewhat nebulous fin de siécle pessimism which is the
characteristic note of the modern ‘‘man of culture.” It
has been expanded and developed by many a litteratewr-
philosopher, its most systematic latter-day exponent being
Eduard Von Hartmann. Schopenhauer’s purely literary
merits as a writer of German are so great, that his books
have penetrated into circles where no other philosophical
literature obtains access. He has remained what he was
when he first began to be read, the popularizer of philosophy
for the general reading public. His theory is comparatively
easy of apprehension by the man of average general educa-
tion, who is not altogether destitute of speculative faculty
xhi THE LIFE AND

or cravings, but who does not want the trouble of thearduous
and sustained labour necessary to the thinking out of the
metaphysical problem in all its bearings, or to the adequate
comprehension of a thinker like Hegel. Schopenhauer’s
boasted clearness, on the other hand, is often the mere
clearness of superficiality. As it has been justly observed,
a mere specious illustration often serves the purpose of an
argument. It is a similar superficiality, wearing the ap-
pearance of depth and knowledge of life, and taking its
cue from the plausible but limited generalizations respect-
ing what is known as “human nature” derived from
observations of motives of men in the present day, and
during the short span of time we term history, which is
responsible for the cynicism so fashionable nowadays with
the man of the world. To the latter any other attitude
than that of cynicism and disbelief in “ human nature” is
evidence of mere infatuation, enthusiasm, or some other
amiable weakness. Your man of the world is just as little
able to entertain the suspicion that his cynicism is merely
a passing mood, having its origin in himself, and in the
particular phase of society which has given him birth, as
the ancients were to conceive the possibility of the anti-
podes. To such an attitude of mind the pessimism of
Schopenhauer is satisfactory, as supplying it with a quasi-
philosophical justification. The denial of all progress
and of any coherent development in human affairs, the
natural consequence of the postulation of the individual
as his own final telos, and the assertion in the most
accentuated form of the introspective ethics, which has
throughout history been the idealogical accompaniment of
individualism in material things, all this is eminently con-
genial to the modern “cultured” man of the world.

In metaphysics Schopenhauer represents an important,
and, as far as it goes, a well-grounded protest against one
tendency of the contemporary philosophy of his time, and
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xiii

especially of Hegel—the tendency, namely, to hypostatize
the mere thought-form or category. Kant, in his deduction
of the conditions under which all knowledge is possible,
had started from the primitive “unity of apperception,” as
he termed it, as expressed in the self-conscious act, “I
think.” This, which with Kant was merely one side of a
somewhat loosely connected theory, became with Fichte
and with Hegel the keystone of the whole. While with
Kant it had remained formal, with his successors it had
become material as well—the root-principle of the Concrete
or Real. In the “I think,” stress was laid with them, as
with Kant, on the “think.” This is most noticeable in
Hegel, where the I” is a mere determination of the Con-
cept, u.e., of thinking. Now Schopenhauer caught at this
one-sidedness, as it appeared to him, of the academic phi-
losophy, and stoutly affirmed the principle that thought, or
the logical, the “intelligible” principle in the constitution
of reality, presupposed and was dependent on an alogical
principle, which was identical with the thing-in-itself of
Kant, which Hegel had eliminated from his system; that
this was further identical with the Subject or “1” from
which concepts and the consciousness they bring with them
proceed—with the “I” which “thinks ”—and that this
“T” itself was merely another name for what under its most
generalized aspect we term Will.

The above is really the special significance of Schopen-
hauer’s system from a purely metaphysical standpoint,
His opposition to the principle with which Hegel started,
combined with the general bent of his mind, induced
Schopenhauer to reject the greatest of all results of the
German classical philosophy—a result to be found in
germ in Kant, which was carried a step further by
Fichte, and was perfected by Hegel—namely, the dia-
lectical method. He was deeply impressed with the ad-
vantages of induction, which he believed could be applied
xliv THE LIFE AND

to philosophy. This he had taken on as a part of his re-
action against German thought, and of his prepossession
in favour of the English empirical school. For him, there-
fore, the method which traces the unfolding of reality
through contradiction and its resolution, was nothing but
sophistry and a juggle of words, designed with the object
of throwing dust in the eyes of the German learned public.
Schopenhauer’s quasi-inductive method of supporting his
main thesis gave him the opportunity of bidding for
popular applause by that introduction of illustration and
plausible analogy, which has already been alluded to. The
severe logical analysis of the academic thinkers was alto-
gether repugnant to Schopenhauer’s turn of mind. When
he believed he had hit upon a deep metaphysical truth, he
cast about him for facts in Nature which he might use in
support of it. As a consequence, to the philosophical
student trained on another method, the continued reitera-
tion of the one fundamental proposition, all things are
Will, in a form but little varied in itself, and merely rein-
forced from various sides, is somewhat wearisome, and is
sometimes suggestive of Thales and his well-worn dictum,
‘all things are water.”

At the same time, one cannot deny to Schopenhauer a
certain genuine impartiality in the pursuit of truth. This
is proved by the fact that his independent thought some-
times leads unconsciously to conclusions in flagrant opposi-
tion to his own sentiments and antipathies. Take for in-
stance his utterances respecting the existing social system
to be found in odd corners of his essays, or his arguments
against ‘“ prescription” in vol. i., page 380, of “The World
as Will and Presentment,” and remember the bitterly re-
actionary sentiments of Schopenhauer in social and political
matters generally. Mood is also a powerful factor in in-
fluencing Schopenhauer’s utterances on various subjects of
practical interest. He can sometimes work himself up
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xlv

into a state of vehement indignation, as when referring
to English pietism and American negro slavery.
Notwithstanding the metaphysical truth enshrined in
Schopenhauer’s rehabilitation of the alogical element in
knowledge—experience, or reality—as against the panlogism
of Hegel and the academical school, and notwithstanding
the wonderful suggestiveness of many portions of his work,
especially his theory of art, it will be soon apparent to
the attentive student that the coherence of the system,
as a system, is very superficial. There is a good deal of
unexplained residuum in it. Schopenhauer never seems
quite clear as to the distinction between abstract and con-
crete, between element and whole or thing. For this reason,
notwithstanding his protestations of Monism, his system
really seems like a Dualism. According to his statement,
the Will as thing-in-itself would seem to be not merely a
basal element, but itself a concrete, a thing in the literal
sense of the word. On the other hand, Presentment as
Presentment seems to have likewise an independent
existence. Thus, in the Platonic idea, the object of art,
it exists apart art from the Will, inasmuch as the element

of of Willing, as su such, disappears, which would seem to

contradict the assumption that the essence of the thing-
in-itself is Will. Then, again, Schopenhauer never really
gets over the difficulty involved in his ethical doctrine, ac-
cording to which the Will-to-live can turn against and
negate itself. This implies, look at it as we may, on
Schopenhauer’s principles, the destruction of a substance,
The objection Schopenhauer himself was not unaware of,
and in dealing with it he practically admits willing to be
the mere attribute of a substratum in itself unknowable.
Yet, again, the individualism of Schopenhauer’s ethics in-
volves some further difficulties. The one Will which is the
soul of all things is in itself indivisible; it is merely as object
or phenomenon, as realizing itself in the conscious indi-
xlvi THE LIFE AND

vidual, under the forms of space, time, and causation, that
the element of number enters into it. If this be true it
cuts away the root of Schopenhauer’s introspective-indi-
vidualist ethics. For it is either wholly present in each
individual or not. In either case the negation of the Will-
to-live within him, as conscious and deliberate act on the
part of any one individual as individual, cannot possibly
affect the noumenon or thing-in-itself, which is identical in
all individuals. To admit that it could do so would be to
admit that very solipsism, that denial of reality as ex-
pressed in Willing to external things, against which
Schopenhauer protests when discussing his theory of know-
ledge. No act of the phenomenal, conscious individual,
on the principles of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics, can in
the least affect the root-principle of the Will which ez
hypothesi manifests itself equally in all individuals. So
long as one is left who dies unconverted, that is, without
having of definite purpose renounced the Will-to-live, all
things remain as they were before, since there can in this
sense be no question of degree as to the affirmation or
denial of the Will. Either it is all there, or it is completely
and absolutely abolished. Whether it survives and is
affirmed in the consciousness of one individual or of a
thousand trillions of individuals, cannot make the slightest
difference in the case of that for which plurality in the last
resort has no meaning. The only way out of this difficulty
for Schopenhauer, and that a not very successful one it
must be admitted, would have been to have postulated the
act of renunciation as performed once for all by the delibe-
rate and unanimous consent of all conscious beings, and
to have held this out as the goal of history. But to have
done so would have been to surrender the individualism
which covers Schopenhauer’s whole ethical theory, and to
have got again into line, albeit in an opposite direction,
with the notion of human evolution and historical pro-
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. xlvil

gress, and for this the individualism of Schopenhauer’s
temperament was too strong.

As regards the whole question of Pessimism versus
Optimism, it is extremely difficult for the man of to-day to
realize that the problem involves an antinomy, and is
therefore unanswerable, simply because it is wrongly
stated. The problem is stated in terms of individual
feeling as measured by quantity, while its subject-matter
really transcends individual feeling, and is incommen-
surable. It is asked, Does the amount of pleasure expe-
rienced by the organic individual—an average individual
being assumed—exceed, on the whole, the sum of pain
experienced by the same individual or not? It is further
asked with reference to the said individual, Does this
in the natural course of things tend to become greater
or less? The question then arises as to quality, ex-
pressed in the well-known conundrum whether the pig
happy would be preferable to Socrates miserable. In all
these ways of putting the problem, it is the organic indi-
vidual, the present conscious unit, (and his immediate
pleasures or pains,) which is alone taken into consideration.
Looked at in this way the question is answered by different
persons differently, according to character, circumstance,
mood, &c., and each, whichever side he takes up, can find
support in plausible illustrations. An array of facts can
be adduced in favour of the one side or of the other. In
all this, however, the real gist of the question is more often
than not missed. All the time, moreover, the assumption
is made that the organic individual is the self-sufficient
and final arbiter in the matter. Viewed from this point of
view it cannot be denied that pessimists have the best of
it as a general rule, but their assumption, like that of the
consistent sceptic as to the reality of the external world—
that solipsist who so often reappears in the history of phi-
losophy—is given the lie to by the facts of existence, not-
xviii THE LIFE AND

withstanding plausible, and from one point of view unan-
swerable, theoretical arguments. The average conscious
being does prefer existence to non-existence. This is a fact
which remains to be explained. The philosophical pessi-
mist, like Schopenhauer, explains it on the theory of illusion.
The illusion has first to be pierced and seen through by
the intellectual insight before emancipation from the illu-
sion is possible. The answer to Schopenhauer as regards
such an explanation might be, that when it is seen through
intellectually the illusion is clung to notwithstanding.
Schopenhauer himself is a case in point, for judged of from
his purely individualistic point of view it is no mere argu-
mentum ad hominem to taunt him with his own character
and life as a disproof of his theory. It would surely not
be unfair to assume that the man who, on his own showing,
had more than any other man in Western Europe, by dint
of intellectual insight, seen through the delusion as to the
worth of life, and recognized self-destruction through
ascetic privation as its highest end, ought to have prac-
tically realized his doctrine in his own person. That
precisely he of all men had perhaps more than usual regard
for the preservation of his own life under conditions of the
greatest material comfort he could obtain, while those who
have followed out the ascetic ideal to its practical conse-
quences have been in many cases, perhaps in most cases,
ignorant persons, actuated avowedly only by superstitious
motives, certainly does not lend any colour or support to
the theory on which Schopenhauer insists, to wit, that in-
tellectual conviction of their futility tends to lead men to
the renunciation of the pleasures of life, and ultimately
life itself.

May not the strength of the practical conviction that life
is worth living, in defiance of all theoretical proofs that it
is not, afford evidence of the inaccuracy of Schopenhauer’s
assumption that pain is positive and pleasure negative, and
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER, xlix

also some confirmation of the fact that the significance of
the individual is not exhausted within the limits of his
own personality? This latter point is brought out more
particularly by a consideration of the question of quality
in pleasure or happiness. From the standpoint of pure
Hedonism, that is, of a theory which merely balances plea-
sures and pains quantitatively, there can be no doubt
whatever the choice must be in favour of being a contented
swine rather than a discontented genius. Similarly a
fortiori it must be quite plain that the greatest sum of
animal enjoyment conceivable for the healthy man may
possibly, nay, will probably, be greater in amount for the
individual who experiences it than the highest amount of
pleasure to be derived by the man of correspondingly
vigorous intellectual powers and refined tastes from in-
tellectual things. But yet we have an unshakable con-
viction, the reverse of which is, in fact, taken seriously,
unthinkable, that there is something preferable in the one
to the other ; that the difference of quality upsets all cal-
culations based on mere quantity—in other words, that the
question of mere pleasure and pain, taken in the abstract
and referred to the individual also regarded abstractly,
simply involves us in a circle from which there is no escape,
but which does not get us any further forward in the solu-
tion of the problem of human life taken in the conezete.
Mere pleasure or happiness, considered abstractly, may for
practical purposes be regarded asa proximate end, and, in a
similar way, the individual considered in himself, and apart
from the social life and progress into which he enters,
may also for practical purposes be regarded as a proximate
end to himself. But we must never forget that so long
as we regard things in this way we are dealing with
abstractions which appear very differently when viewed
from the standpoint of the meaning of the world and human
nature considered as a real synthesis. In proportion as
d
1 THE LIFE AND

this proximate aim assumes the form for us of a supreme
end, we are living on a lower plane, since we are un-
mindful of the point of view from which the individual
personality becomes a mere component or element of a
larger whole. This position is most fully seen in the per-
sonality which we describe as criminal, or immoral in the
true sense of the word, that is, anti-social. But it is also
characteristic in a lesser degree of the commonplace man
of the world. The aim of the introspective morality, the
morality, that is, whose sign-manual throughout history is
the ideal of personal holiness, as attained through the mere
negation of the individual, his impulses and desires, has
been to change this per saltum by means of asceticism.
But in asceticism the egoistic point of view is not really
abandoned, but is merely inverted. Self-denial for self-
denial’s sake belongs intrinsically just as much to the
egoistic attitude as the mere self-indulgence of the liber-
tine. In both cases the individual is viewed as end, that
is, he is considered abstractly. The really higher point of
view which transcends both these attitudes alike, is that
which recognizes the personality and its immediate plea-
sure and pain as indeed constituting a proximate or
immediate end, that is, a necessary stage, which, though
not ultimate, is none the less an essential element in
any higher end to which we may aspire; and which further
recognizes that the only lasting and effective manner in
which what we may term the abstract egoistic instincts
can be abolished is in the identification by the sheer neces-
sity of circumstances of individual pleasure and pain—in
short, individual interest, in the narrower sense, with the
interest of the whole of human society. The lower or
anti-social impulses, then, so to speak, abolish themselves.
To borrow Schopenhauer’s phraseology, the affirmation of
the Will-to-live in the individual becomes absorbed in,
and identical with, the affirmation of the Will-to-live of
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. li

humanity asa whole. The strain of antagonism between
the two, which from the lower standpoint seemed absolute,
disappears. This is a stage, however, at which the ethical
and economical problems intersect. I merely refer to it
here as indicating the fallacy of estimating pleasure and
pain, happiness and unhappiness, in terms of quantity
merely, and with exclusive reference to the individual.
Whether the abolition by the transformation of social con-
ditions of the antagonism at present existing between indi-
vidual and social interest is the prelude to a cycle of evo-
lution, the end of which will be the transference of the
characteristics of personality from the organic individual
to the social individual (as we may term it), understanding
by this a given society in its collective capacity, is a ques-
tion which, extravagant and even incomprehensible though
it may seem to many, nevertheless forces itself irresistibly
upon one in reflecting on the problem as to the meaning
of human life as we know it, and which opens up a vista
of unknown possibilities, before which arguments drawn
from our own limited data shrink into nothing.

On the question as to the tendency of progress towards
an increase of happiness or the reverse, many reflections
may be and have been made. The observation of the
limited period passed through between the younger world
and to-day, seems to indicate rather a change in the distri-
bution of the relative happiness and misery of the world
than any increase or diminution of either. The case seems
to be expressed by such a fact as this, for example: the
hardships of the medieval serf, the acute and devastating
epidemics of the Middle Ages, the ever-present possibilities
of fire and sword, the torture-chambers of the feudal castle
and of the inquisition, the recurrent famines continually im-
minent in one locality or another—all these things have
been mitigated, and some have passed away altogether.
But they have been replaced by the ever-present mass of
li THE LIFE AND

misery of the present day, as represented by the proletariat
of our large towns, and by all that our modern polariza-
tion of the extremes of wealth and poverty implies.
Similarly, the naive exuberance of animal spirits and un-
restrained enjoyment of the Middle Ages, work-days and
holidays alike, has vanished, and its place has been taken
by the subdued bourgeois equanimity of the suburban
villa, or the vapid inanities of the London season and its
drawing-rooms. Still, all this affords us no valid grounds
for the induction as regards future change, the conditions
of which must necessarily be entirely different.

The fact is, the antithesis between what in its most com-
prehensive aspect we designate by the words good and
evil must continue in some form or shape, since they are
elements mutually implicated in every Real. As to the in-
crease or decrease of the one relatively to the other, we can
only judge indirectly ; the state of the case being, that all
specific, that is, realized evil, necessarily passes away—that
what is permanent is merely, so to say, the abstract cate-
gory, evil-in-general undetermined to any specific content.
But although at first sight the same is true of the opposite,
namely, of the good, yet the case is not precisely identical, for
while the preponderance of the specific or concrete evil to be
eliminated appears at the beginning of a cycle of progress,
or of a specific dialectical movement of evolution, the pre-
ponderance of “the good ” attained through its elimination,
as expressed in the reality of the cycle in question, invariably
appears as the endandcompletion of that cycle. Thisimplies,
as will be readily seen, a “point” in the evolutionary process,
as always given in favour of the “good.” It implies, that is,
that the trend of progress is towards the “good,” though the
approximation may be entirely of an asymptotic character.
A reflection of this kind may indeed destroy extravagant
optimism, and cause the youthful enthusiasm of those who
are satisfied with nothing less than a perfection, which,
PHILOSOPHY OF SCHOPENHAUER. hin

when closely viewed, is simply meaningless, because ab-
stract, and hence in its nature unrealizable, to be “ sicklied
o’er with the pale cast of thought.” Yet for the more sober-
minded enthusiast it is none the less a consolation the more
valuable as resting on a philosophical truth which cannot
be taken away from him, to feel that the end of every
evolutionary cycle implies an increase of happiness as
against its beginning. This good, or happiness, it is true—
this victory of Ormuzd over Arhiman—is not enduring, in-
asmuch as its very conditions contain the nidus of a further
and distinct evil of its own, unknown before, and which
sooner or later makes its presence evident. But, neverthe-
less, in spite of this, the fact remains that in the moment of
realization there is a positive and real increment of good or
of happiness over the opposing principle. The old “evil”
is destroyed, the new is as yet unrealized. To this process
of the continual absorption of specific evil or misery in
infinitely changing shape, by good or happiness, also in
infinitely changing shape and on a progressively higher
level, we can assign no end.

The foregoing are considerations which Schopenhauer
might have seen but did not, and which, if he had seen,
would certainly have modified his philosophico-ethical
conclusions.
SKETCH OF A HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE
OF THE IDEAL AND REAL.

ESCARTES is rightly deemed the father of modern

philosophy, and this in a special, as well as a general
sense, inasmuch as he placed the reason on its own feet by
teaching men to use their own brains, in the place of which
the Bible had previously served on the one hand, and
Aristotle on the other. But in a more special and a nar-
rower sense he was this also; since he was the first to
bring the problem upon which philosophy has mainly
turned to consciousness—the problem of the Ideal and
Real—i.e., the question as to what in our knowledge is
objective, and what is subjective; in other words, what
might be ascribed by us to other things, and what we
must ascribe to ourselves. Images do not arise in our
brain as it were arbitrarily from within, nor do they pro-
ceed from the connection of our own thoughts—hence they
must spring from an external cause. But these images
are immediately known to us—they are given. Now what
relation do they have to things existing completely sepa-
rate from, and independent of us, and which are in some
way the cause of these images? Have we any certainty
at all that such things exist? or even if this be so, that
the images afford us any clue to their nature? This is
the problem, and in consequence the main endeavour of
philosophers has been for the two past hundred years to
separate by a correctly-drawn line of cleavage—the Ideal,

B
2 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

i.e., that which belongs solely to our knowledge as such,
from the Real, ¢.e., that which exists independently of it,
and thus to determine the relation of each to the other.
Certainly neither the philosophers of antiquity, nor yet
the schoolmen seem to have arrived at a clear conscious-
ness of this fundamental problem of philosophy, although
we find a trace of it, as Idealism, and even as the doctrine
of the Ideality of time, in Plotinus, in Enneas IIL,
Lib. VIL., cx., where he teaches that the soul has made
the world by its transition from eternity into time. He
there says, for instance, ov ydp reg abrov rovTouv Tov mavTos
rémoc, i) Wwyh. (Neque datur alius hujus universi locus,
quam anima) also dei dé oby EhwSey ric Wuyfic AapBavery
Tov xpdvoy Howep ovde TOY aidva exeEt z£w Tov ovroc. (Oportet
autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere, quem-
admodum neque aeternitatem ibi extra id, quod ens appel-
latur.) Here it will be seen we have a distinct statement
even of Kant’s ideality of time. And in the following
chapter otroc 6 Biog Tov ypdvov yevva’ C6 Kai elonrar Gua
TOdE TH TavTe yeyovévat, Ore Wuxi abroy pera TOBE TOU TaYTOC
tyévynoev. (Haec vita nostra tempus gignit: quamobrem
dictum est, tempus simul cum hoc universo factum esse :
quia anima tempus una cum hoc universo progenuit.) Never-
theless, this problem clearly recognized, became the specially
characteristic subject of modern philosophy after the neces-
sary reflection had been awakened in Descartes, who was
impressed with the truth that we are immediately limited
to our own consciousness, and that the world is given us
merely as presentment (Vorstellung). With his well-known
dubito, cogito, ergo sum, he sought to accentuate the sole
certainty of the subjective consciousness in contradistinc-
tion to the problematical nature of everything else, and to
declare the great truth that the only real, and uncondi-
tionally given, is self-consciousness. Strictly considered,
his celebrated proposition is the equivalent of that from
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 3

which I started, “The world is my presentment.’ The
only difference is, that his proposition accentuates the im-
mediateness of the subject; mine, the mediateness of the
object. Both propositions express the same thing from
two sides. They are the “reverses” of each other, stand-
ing in much the same relation as the law of inertia and
that of causality, as expounded by me in the preface to
my “Ethics.” (‘The two ground-problems of ‘ Ethics,’
treated in two academical prize essays by Dr. Arthur
Schopenhauer.” Frankfurt-am-Main, 1841, p. xxiv; 2nd
edition, Liepzig, 1860, p. xxiv.) Certainly, since his time,
Descartes’ proposition has been often enough repeated,
owing to the mere feeling of its importance, and without a
clear understanding of its special sense and purport. (See
Descartes’ ‘“‘Meditationes,” Med. ii. p. 14.) He it was, then,
who discovered the chasm which lies between the Subjec-
tive or Ideal, and the Objective or Real. This insight he
clothed in the form of a doubt as to the existence of the
outer world ; but by his inadequate solution of this doubt
—to wit, that the good God would not deceive us—he
showed how deep and difficult to solve the problem was.
Meantime, this scruple had been introduced into philo-
sophy by him, and could not fail to continue to work dis-
turbingly till its final settlement. The consciousness that
without thorough knowledge and understanding of the
distinction which had been discovered, no certain and sufii-
cient system would be possible, has been from that time
ever present, and the question could no longer be shirked.

In order to solve it, Malebranche invented his system of
occasional causes. He grasped the problem in its whole
range more clearly, seriously, and deeply than Descartes
(“Recherche de la Vérité,” Livre ITI., seconde partie). The
latter had accepted the reality of the outer world on the
credit of God; and it was curious enough that while the
other theistic philosophers sought to demonstrate the
4 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

existence of God from the existence of the world, Descartes,
on the contrary, determines the existence of the world
from the existence and trustworthiness of God—it is the
cosmological demonstration turned round. Even here,
going a step farther, Malebranche teaches that we see
all things immediately in God. This is certainly to ex-
plain an unknown by a still more unknown. Moreover,
according to him, we not only see all things in God, but
God is the sole activity therein, so that physical causes are
only apparently such—they are mere “ causes occasionnelles,”
(Rech. d. 1. Vér.,” Liv. VI., seconde partie, ch. ii.) We
have here, therefore, in all essentials, the Pantheism of
Spinoza, who seems to have learnt more from Malebranche
than he did from Descartes.

Altogether, one might wonder that Pantheism did not
gain a complete victory over Theism even in the seven-
teenth century, seeing that the most original, the most
beautiful, and the most thorough-going European presenta-
tions of it (for assuredly none of them will bear com-
parison with the Upanishads of the Vedas) all saw the
light in that age, to wit, Bruno, Malebranche, Spinoza, and.
Scotus Erigena, the last of whom, after he had remained
for many centuries lost and forgotten, was recovered at
Oxford, and in 1681, four years, that is, after Spinoza’s
death, for the first time saw the light in print. This
seems to prove that the insight of individuals cannot pro-
duce its effect, so long as the spirit of the time is unripe
for its acceptance, for in our days, Pantheism, although
only presented in the eclectic and confused rechauffé of
Schelling, has become the dominant mode of thought with
scholars, and even with persons of ordinary culture. This
is because Kant had preceded, and with his overthrow of
theistic dogmatism, had prepared the ground, in conse-
quence of which the spirit of the time was ready for it, as
a ploughed field is ready for the seed. In the seventeenth
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 5

century, on the other hand, philosophy forsook this path,
and arrived accordingly on the one side, at Locke, for
whom Bacon and Hobbes had prepared the way, and on
the other at Christian Wolff, through Leibnitz. These two
were dominant therefore in the eighteenth century, espe-
cially in Germany, although latterly only in so far as they
had been absorbed by syncretistic eclecticism.

The profound conception of Malebranche gave the im-
mediate occasion to Leibnitz’s system of harmonia praesta-
bilita, the widely extended fame and high consideration of
which in his time, affords a confirmation of the fact that
it is the absurd which makes the easiest success in the
world. Although I cannot pretend to have a clear notion
of the monads of Leibnitz, which are at once mathe-
matical points, corporate atoms, and souls, yet it seems to
me unquestionable that such an assumption once decided
upon might serve to spare us all further hypothesis for
the explanation of the connection between Ideal and Real,
and to settle the question in the sense that both are
already fully identified in the monads (for which reason,
in our days, Schelling, as originator of the system of
identity, has displayed a particular relish for it). Never-
theless, it did not please the eminent philosophizing
mathematician, polyhistor, and politician to use it for the
purpose; but he saw fit to specially formulate a pre-esta-
blished harmony to this end. The latter furnishes us with
two totally distinct worlds, each incapable of acting in any
way on the other (“ Principia Philos,” § 84, and “ Examen
du Sentiment du P. Malebranche,” p. 500, sq. of the
“(Euvres de Leibnitz,” published P. Kaspe), each the en-
tirely superfluous duplicate of the other, but both of
which, once for all there, run exactly parallel, and keep
time with each other to a hair; the originator of both
having from the first established the exactest harmony
between them, so that they proceed thenceforward.in the
6 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

most beautiful manner. We may observe, by the way,
that the harmonia praestabilita may perhaps be best made
comprehensible by a comparison with the stage, where
very often the “ influcus physicus”’ is only apparently pre-
sent, since cause and effect are connected simply by means
of a pre-established harmony of the stage-manager ; as,
for instance, when the one shoots and the other falls
a tempo. Leibnitz has presented the matter in its mon-
strous absurdity in the crassest manner, and in brief,
§§ 62, 63 of his “ Theodicy.” And yet with the whole
dogma he does not even have the merit of originality,
since Spinoza had already clearly enough presented the
harmonia praestabilita in the second part of his “ Ethics,”
i.e.,in the 6th and /’th propositions, together with their
corollaries, and again in P. V., prop. 1, after he had in
the 5th proposition of P. IL, stated in his own manner
the so very cognate doctrine of Malebranche, that we see
all in God.*

Malebranche is, therefore, alone the originator of this
whole line of thought which Spinoza as well as Leibnitz,
each in his own way, has utilized and modified. Leibnitz,
indeed, might very well have dispensed with it alto-
gether, since he has already forsaken the simple fact
which constitutes the problem, 7.e., that the world is given
us immediately as our presentment, in order to substitute
for it the dogma of a corporeal world and a spiritual
world, between which no bridge is possible; at the same
time interweaving the question of the relation of our pre-
sentment to the things in themselves with that of the
possibility of the motion of the body by the will, and then

1 «Eth.,” P. II., prop. 7: Ordo et connexio idearum idem est,
ac ordo et connexio rerum. P. V., prop. 1: Prout cogitationes
rerumque ideae concatenantur in Mente, ita corporis affectiones,
seu rerum imagines ad amussim ordinantur et concatenantur in
Corpore. Also P. II., prop. 5.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 7

solving both together by means of his harmonia praesta-
bilita, (“Systéme nouveau de la Nature,” in Leibnitz ;
“Opp. ed. Edmann,” p. 123; Brucker, ‘‘ Hist. Ph.,” tom. iv.,
p. 1. 425.) The monstrous absurdity of his assumption
was placed in the clearest light even by his own contem-
poraries, particularly by Bayle, who showed the conse-
quences which flowed from it (see also in Leibnitz’s smaller
writings, translated by Huth, anno 1740, the observation
on page 79, where even Leibnitz himself is obliged to
expose the preposterous consequences of his own doctrine).
Nevertheless, the very absurdity of the assumption to
which a thinking head was driven by the problem in
hand, proves the magnitude, the difficulty, the perplexity
of it, and how little it can be got rid of, and the knot be
cut, by its mere repudiation, such as has been ventured
upon in our days.

Spinoza again starts immediately from Descartes, hence,
at first in his character of Cartesian he even retains
the dualism of his teacher and assumes accordingly a
substantia cogitans and a substantia extensa, the one as sub-
ject the other as object of knowledge. But later, when he
stood on his own feet, he found that both were one and the
same substance viewed from different sides; on the one
side conceived as a substantia extensa on the other as a
substantia cogitans. This is as much as to say that the
distinction of the thinking and extended, or soul and body,
is an unfounded one and therefore inadmissible ; so that
nothing more ought to be said about it. He nevertheless
retains it, since he is untiring in repeating that both are
one. To this he adds, as it were by a mere sic etiam that
Modus extensionis et idea illius modi una eademque est res
(‘ Eth.” P.IL., prop. 7, schol.) ; by which he means that our
presentment of bodies and these bodies themselves are one
and the same. The sic etiam, however, is an insufficient
transition to this, since it does not by any means follow
8 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

from the fact that the distinction between mind and body
or between the presenting and the presented is unfounded,
that the distinction between our presentment and an
objective and real, existing outside the same—the main
problem, that is, that was started by Descartes—is also
unfounded. The presenting and the presented may be
perfectly well homogeneous, and yet still the question re-
mains how I am with certainty to infer from presentments
in my head as to the existence of beings in themselves that
are independent of theformer. The difficulty is not that on
which Leibnitz (e.g., ‘‘ Theodic,” Part I. § 59) would make it
mainly turn, to wit, that between the assumed souls and the
corporeal world as between two wholly heterogeneous kinds
of substances no sort of reciprocal action could take place
—for which reason he denied physical influence ; for this
difficulty is merely a consequence of rational psychology
and only requires to be discarded as a fiction, as is done by
Spinoza; and besides this, there is the argumentum ad
hominem against the maintainers of this doctrine, that their
own dogma that God, who is a spirit, has created and
continuously governs the corporeal world implies that
spirit can act immediately on bodies. The abiding diffi-
culty is rather the Cartesian, that the world, which is only
given us immediately, is simply an ideal world, a world,
that is, consisting of presentments in our brain ; while we,
over and above this, undertake to judge of a real world
existing independently of our presentment. Spinoza
then, in so far as he abolishes the distinction between sub-
stantia cogitans and substantia eatensa has not solved the
problem but, at most, rendered physical influence again
admissible. But this is insufficient to solve the difficulty
for the law of causality is demonstratively of subjective
origin. But even if it sprang from external experience it
would still merely appertain to the ideally given world that
is in question. Hence, in no case can it furnish a bridge be-
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 9

tween the absolutely objective and the subjective, but it
is rather, merely the band which connects phenomena with
one another. (See “ Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,”
vol. ii. p. 12.) And nevertheless, in order more nearly to
explain the above adduced identity of extension and pre-
sentment, Spinoza postulates something which is contained
alike in the view of Malebranche and Leibnitz. In accor-
dance with Malebranche, namely, we see all things in God:
rerum singularium ideae non ipsa ideata, sive res perceptas,
pro causa agnoscunt, sed ipsum Deum, quatenus est res
cogitans, (‘‘ Eth.” P.II., pr. 5); and this God is also at the
same time the real and active principle therein, even with
Malebranche. The mere fact, however, of Spinoza affixing
to the world the name Deus explains nothing, in the last
resort. But at the same time there is with him, as with
Leibnitz, an exact parallelism between the extended and the
presented world: ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et
connexio rerum (P. II. pr. 7), and other similar passages.
This is the harmonia praestabilita of Leibnitz; only that
here the objectively existing world and the presented world
are not entirely separated as with the last mentioned,
merely corresponding to one another by virtue of a harmonia
regulated in advance and from outside, but they are really
one and the same. We have here, therefore, in the first
place, a thorough-going Realism in so far as the existence
of the things exactly corresponds to their presentment in
us, both being one; we cognize accordingly the things in
themselves—they are in themselves extensa as they appear
as cogitata ; in other words, in our presentment of them,
they appear as eatensa (here, too, it may be remarked, by the
‘way, is the origin of Schelling’s identity of the Real and
Ideal). All this is, properly speaking, based on mere
assertion. The exposition is already rendered unclear by
the ambiguity of the word Deus which is used in a wholly
improper sense; hence, it loses itself in obscurity and
10 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

comes in the end to nec impraesentiarum haec clarius posswm
explicare. But the want of clearness in the exposition
arises always from a want of clearness in the understanding
and thinking out of the philosopher. Vauvenargues said
very truly, la clarté est la bonne fot des philosophes (see
“ Révue des deux Mondes,” 1853, 15 Aout, p. 685). What
in music is the “ pure section” is in philosophy complete
clearness, which is the conditio sine qua non without the
fulfilling of which everything loses its value, and we are
compelled to say quodcumque ostendis mihi sic incredulus
odt. Tf, in the ordinary affairs of practical life one has to
carefully avoid misunderstanding by clearness, how much
the less ought one to express oneself incomprehensibly in
the very abstruse, difficult, and wellnigh ‘impenetrable
subjects of thought, which constitute the problems of
philosophy ? The obscurity complained of in the doctrine
of Spinoza, is owing to his not proceeding in a straight-
forward manner from the nature of things as he finds
them; but from Cartesianism, and accordingly from all
sorts of traditional conceptions, such as Deus, substantia,
perfectio, etc., which he was concerned to bring in a round-
about way into harmony with truth. He often expresses the
best ideas only indirectly, continually speaking per ambages
and almost allegorically, as in the 2nd part of the “ Ethics.”
On the other hand, Spinoza expresses an unmistakable
transcendental idealism amounting to, at least, a general
recognition of the truth clearly expounded by Locke and
still more by Kant, as to the real distinction between the
phenomenon and the thing itself, and the recognition that
only the first is knowable by us. As instances of this may
be consulted, “ Eth.,” P. II. prop. 16, with the 2nd corollary ;
prop. 17, schol.; prop. 18, schol.; prop. 19; prop. 23,
where it is extended to self-knowledge; prop. 25, which
expresses it clearly, and finally as résumé, the corollary to
prop. 29, which distinctly says that we can neither know
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. It

ourselves nor the things, as they are in themselves, but only
as they appear. The demonstration of prop. 27, P. IIL, ex-
presses the matter the clearest, at least in the beginning.
Respecting the relation of the doctrines of Spinoza to those
of Descartes I may recall here what I have said on the sub-
ject in the World as Will and Presentment: vol. ii., p. 639
(8rd ed. p. 739). The fact of his starting from the con-
ceptions of the Cartesian philosophy, has not only been the
occasion of much obscurity and misunderstanding in the
exposition of Spinoza, but he has thereby been led into
many flagrant paradoxes, obvious fallacies, and indeed
absurdities and contradictions. In this way his doctrine
which contains so much that is true and excellent has
acquired a highly undesirable addition of simply indigest-
able matter, so that the reader is divided within himself
between admiration and vexation. But, in the aspect con-
sidered here, the chief fault of Spinoza is that he has drawn
his line of cleavage between the Ideal and Real, or the Sub-
jective and Objective world, from a false standpoint. Ez-
tension, namely, is in no wise the opposite of presentment,
but lies wholly within the latter.

We perceive things as extended, and, in so far as they are
extended, they are our presentment. But whether, inde-
pendently of our presentment, anything is extended, or
indeed whether anything exists at all is the question and
the original problem. This was solved later by Kant, and
in so far, with indisputable accuracy, in the sense that ex-
tension or space lies entirely in the presentment; in other
words, that it depends on the latter, inasmuch as the whole
of space is its mere form; and therefore, independently of
our presentment, no extended can exist, and most certainly
does not exist.

Spinoza’s line of cleavage is accordingly drawn wholly on
the ideal side; he has taken his stand on the presented
world, regarding the latter, indicated by its form of exten-
12 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sion, as the Real, and therefore as existing independently
of its possibility of presentment, i.e., in itself. He is
on this ground, therefore, quite right in saying, that
that which is extended and that which is presented—z.e.,
our presentment of bodies and these bodies themselves
—are one and the same (P. IL. prop. 7, schol.). For
assuredly the things are presented as extended and are only
as extended, presentable—the world as presentment and the
world in space is wna eademque res ; this we can fully admit.
But were the extension, quality of the things-in-themselves,
our perception would then be a knowledge of things-in-
themselves, which is what he assumes, and in which con-
sists his Realism. Since, however, he does not ground or
prove this, to wit, that our perception of a spacial world
involves a spacial world independent of this perception, the
fundamental problem remains unsolved. This arises, how-
ever, from the fact, that the line of cleavage between the Real
and Ideal, the Objective and the Subjective, the Thing-in-
itself and the Phenomenon, is not correctly drawn. On
the contrary, as has been said, the cleavage, being in the
middle of the Ideal, Subjective, Phenomenal side of the
world—that is, drawn through the world as presentment—
splits the latter into the extended or spacial and our pre-
sentment of the same, whereupon much trouble is taken
to show that both are only one, as indeed they are.

Just because Spinoza holds entirely by the Ideal side of
the world, inasmuch as he thought to find the Real in the
extended belonging thereto, and as, in consequence, the
perceivable is the only Real without us, and the knowing
(cogitans) is the only Real within us, so he, from another
side, casts the only true Real, the Will, into the Ideal,
which he makes a mere modus cogitandi, even identifying
it with the judgment. As to this consult “ Eth.” P. IL, the
proofs of the props. 48 et 49, where we read: Per volun-
tatem intelligo affirmandi et negandi facultatem ; and again:
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 13

Concipiamus singularem aliquam volitionem, nempe modum
cogitandi, quo mens affirmat, tres angulos trianguli equales
esse duobus rectis, whereupon the corollary follows: Voluntas
et intellectus unum et idem sunt.

Spinoza has, generally, the great fault of purposely mis-
using words for the designation of conceptions which
throughout all the world bear other names, and of taking
from these the meaning which they everywhere have.
Thus he calls “God” what is everywhere termed “ World;”
“Justice” what is everywhere termed ‘“ Power,” and
“Will” what is everywhere termed “Judgment.” We
are fully justified as regards this, in recalling the Hetman
of the Cossacks in Kotzebue’s ‘‘ Benjowskij.”

Berkeley, although certainly later, and with the know-
ledge of Locke, went logically farther in this problem than
the Cartesians, and was thereby the originator of the proper
and true Idealism, that is, of the knowledge, that that in
space which is extended and which fills it, in short, the
perceivable world generally, can only have an existence as
such, in our presentment ; and that it is absurd, and even
contradictory, to attribute to it a further existence outside
of all presentment, and independently of the knowing sub-
ject, and thereby to assume a matter existing in itself.*

1 With laymen in philosophy, to whom many doctors of the
same belong, one ought never to use the word “ Idealism,”
because they do not know what it means, and carry on with it all
sorts of nonsense. They understand by “Idealism” at times
“ Spiritualism,” and at times something or other which is opposed
to Philistinism, and are confirmed and strengthened in this view
by ordinary men of letters. The words ‘‘Idealism” and “‘ Realism”
are not anything and everything, but have their fixed philoso-
phical meaning. Those who mean something else should employ
another word.

The opposition of ‘‘Idealism” and ‘Realism ” concerns the
Known, the Object, while that between Spiritualism and Mate-
rialism, concerns the Knowing, the Subject. (Modern ignorant
muddlers confound Idealism and Spiritualism. )
14 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

This is, indeed, a true and deep insight, but his
whole philosophy consists in nothing else. He hit upon
the Ideal and separated it completely; but he did not
know where to find the Real, about which he troubled
himself but little, expressing himself respecting it only
occasionally, piecemeal, and inadequately. God’s Will
and Omnipotence is with him the immediate cause of the
phenomena of the perceivable world, i.e., of all our present-
ments. Real existence only accrues to knowing and willing
beings, such as we ourselves are; hence these constitute,
together with God, the Real. They are spirits, that is,
knowing and willing beings, for willing and knowing he
regarded as inseparable. He has this also in common
with his predecessors, that he regards God as better known
than the present world, and deems a reduction to him an
explanation. His clerical, and, indeed, episcopal position
laid altogether too heavy chains on him, and limited him
to a narrow circle of thought with which he could never
come into conflict. Hence he could go no farther, but
true and false had to learn to mutually accommodate them-
selves in his head as well as they could. This remark,
indeed, may be extended to the works of all these philoso-
phers, with the exception of Spinoza. The Jewish Theism,
undmenable to any test, dead to all research, and hence
‘appearing really as a fixed idea, planting itself in the way
of truth at every step, vitiates them all; so that the evil
which it produces here in the theoretical sphere, may be
taken as a pendant to that which it has produced through-
out a thousand years in the practical—I mean in the shape
of religious wars, inquisitions, and conversions of nations
by the sword. The closest affinity between Malebranche,
Spinoza, and Berkeley is unmistakable. We see them all
proceeding from Descartes, in so far as they retain and
seek to solve the fundamental problem presented by him
in the form of a doubt as to the existence of the outer
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 15

world; concerned as they are to investigate the separation
and connection of the world which is Ideal, subjective or
given solely in our presentment, and the Real or objective,
which is independent of it, and, therefore, existing in itself.
As we have said, therefore, this problem is the axis on
which the whole of modern philosophy turns. Locke dis-
tinguishes himself from these philosophers in that, probably
because be stands under the influence of Hobbes and
Bacon, he attaches himself as closely as possible to ex-
perience and the common understanding, avoiding as far
as may be hyperphysical hypotheses. The Real is for him
Matter, and without turning his attention to the Leibnitzean
scruple as to the impossibility of a causal connection
between the immaterial, thinking, and the material, ex-
tended substance, he at once assumes physical influence
between matter and the knowing subject. In this he pro-
ceeds with rare deliberation and honesty so far as to confess
that possibly knowing and thinking substance itself might
also be matter (“On the Human Understanding,” L. IV., ¢.
8, § 6). This it was, which procured for him later the
repeated praise of the great Voltaire, and in his own time,
on the other hand, the malicious attacks of a cunning
Anglican priest, the Bishop of Worcester." With him the

1 There is no church which dreads the light more than the
English, because no other has such great pecuniary interests at
stake, its incomes representing £5,000,000 sterling, which is more
by £40,000 than those of the whole of the remaining Christian
elergy in both hemispheres taken together. On the other hand,
there is no nation which it is so painful to see thus methodistically
stupefied by this most degrading superstition than the English,
who outstrip all the rest in intelligence. The root of the evil
is that in England there is no ministry of public instruction,
for which reason the latter has remained hitherto in the hands of
parsondom, which has taken care that two-thirds of the nation
shall not be able to read and write ; and which even from time to
time ventures with the most ludicrous impudence to yelp at
natural science. It is, therefore, a human duty to infuse into
16 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Real, i.e, Matter, generates in the knowing subject by
“Impulse,” that is, contact, presentments, or the Ideal
(Ibid. L. IL, ¢ 8, § 11). -We have here, therefore, a
thoroughly massive Realism, calling forth contradiction by
its very exorbitance, and giving occasion to the Berkeleyan
Idealism, whose special origination is, perhaps, to be
found when Locke at the end of § 2 of the 31st chapter
of the 2nd book with such a surprising absence of
reflection, says, among other things: Solidity, Eatension,
Figure, Motion and Rest, would be really in the world, as
they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive
them or not. For as soon as one considers the matter one
must recognize the above as false, in which case the
Berkeleyan Idealism stands there and is undeniable. In
the meantime Locke does not overlook the chasm between
the presentments in us and the things existing inde-
pendently of us,in short, the distinction of Ideal and Real ;
in the end, however, he disposes of it by arguments of
sound but rough common sense, and by appealing to the
sufficiency of our knowledge of things for practical purposes
(Ibid., L. IV., ¢. 4 et 9), which obviously has nothing to
do with the question, and only shows how very inadequate
to the problem Empiricism remains. But even his Realism

England light, rationalism, and science, through all conceivable
channels, in order that these best fed of all priests may have their
handiwork put an end to. When Englishmen of culture, on the
continent, display their Jewish Sabbatarian superstition and other
stupid bigotry, we ought to meet it with unconcealed mockery—
until they be shamed into common sense. For it is a scandal for
Europe, and should be tolerated no longer. Hence one ought
never, even in ordinary life, to make the least concession to the
English ecclesiastical superstition ; but, wherever it puts in an
appearance, to meet it immediately with a most energetic protest.
For the effrontery of the Anglican priests and their votaries is
even, at the present day, quite incredible, and must be banished to
its own island, that it may thus be compelled to play the réle of the
‘owl by day whenever it ventures to let itself be seen on the continent.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 17

leads him to limit that in our knowledge which involves
the Real, to the qualities inhering in the things as they
are in themselves, and to distinguish these from our mere
knowledge of them or from that which merely pertains to
the Ideal—terming the latter accordingly secondary, but
the former primary qualities. This is the origin of the
distinction between thing-in-itself and phenomenon, which
becomes so important later on in the Kantian philosophy.
In Locke, then, we have the true genetic point of connection
between the Kantian doctrines and the earlier philosophy.
The former were stimulated and more immediately occa-
sioned by Hume’s sceptical criticisms of Locke’s doctrines ;
while, on the other hand, they have only a polemical
relation to the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy.

The above primary qualities, which are exclusively the
determinations of the things-in-themselves, and which
hence appertain to these outside and independently of
our presentment, resolve themselves entirely into such as
cannot be thought away, namely, extension, impenetra-
bility, figure, motion or rest, and number. All the re-
mainder are recognized as secondary, that is, as creations
of the action of those primary qualities on our organs of
sense, and consequently as mere feelings in these; such
are colour, tone, taste, smell, hardness, softness, smooth-
ness, roughness, etc. These, therefore, have no similarity
whatever with the quality in the thing-in-itself which
excites them, but are reducible to the primary qualities as
their causes, such alone being purely objective and really
part of the existing things (Ibid., L. L, ¢. 8, § 7, seqq.).
Our conceptions of these latter are therefore really true
copies, which accurately reproduce the qualities that are
present in the things-in-themselves (lc. § 15). I wish
the reader joy who really feels here the reductio ad absur-
dum of Realism. We see then that Locke deduces from
the nature of the things-in-themselves, whose present-

c
18 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

ments we receive from without, that which accrucs to the
action of the nerves of the sense-organs, an easy, compre-
hensible, and indisputable consideration. ut Kant later
on made the immeasurably greater step of also deducing
what belongs to the action of our brain (that incomparably
greater nervous mass); whereby all the above pretended
primary qualities sink into secondary ones, and the as.
sumed things themselves into mere phenomena, but the
real thing-in-itself, now stripped of these qualities, re-
mains over as an entirely unknown quantity, a mere x,
This assuredly requires a difficult and deep analysis, and
one which has long to be defended against the attacks
alike of misunderstanding and lack of understanding.
Locke does not deduce his primary qualities of things,
and does not give any further ground why only these and
no others are purely objective, except that they are in-
destructible. Now if we investigate for ourselves why he
declares some qualities of things which work immediately
on the sensibility, and consequently come directly from
without, not to be present objectively, while he concedes
objectivity to those which, as has since heen recognized, pro-
cecd, from the special functions of our intellect, we find the
reason to be that the objectively-perceiving consciousness
(the consciousness of other things) necessarily requires a
complex apparatus, as the function of which it appears,
and consequently that its most essential ground-determi-
nations are fixed from within. In this way the universal
form or mode of perception from which alone the o prigri
knowable can proceed, presents itself ax the warp of the
perceived world, and accordingly appears ax that which is
absolutely necessary, unexceptional, and in no way to be
got rid of; sothat it stands as the condition of « verything
else in its manifold variety. This is admitted to be, im-
mediately, time and space, and that which follows from
them, and is only possible through them. In theme) ves
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDBAL AND REAL. 19

time and space are empty. If anything is to come within
them, it must appear as matter, that is, as an activity: in
other words, as causality, for matter is through and through
simply causality: its being consists in its action, and vice
versa it is but the objectively-conceived form of the
understanding for causality itself. ¢* On the Fourtold Root
of the Principle of Cause,” 2nd ed. p. 77: Srd ed. p. 82: as
also * World as Will and Presentment.” 2nd ed., vel. i,
p. Mand vol. in, pp. 48. 49; Srd ed. vel. i. p. 10, and
vol. i, p. 62.) Honce it comes that Locke's primary
qualities are merely such as cannot be thought away—a
fact which itself clearly enough indicates their subjective
origin, as proceeding immediately from the construction
of the perceiving apparatus—and he therefore holds for
absolutely objective precisely that which, as function of
the brain, is much more subjective than the sense-feel-
ing, which is oceasioned, or at least more directly deter-
mined, from without.

In the meantime it is interesting to see how through all
these various conceptions and explanations, the problem
started by Descartes respecting the relation between the
Ideal aud the Real becomes ever more developed and
clarified, and the truth thus promoted. It is true this
was favoured by the circumstances of the time, or, more
correctly, of nature, which, in the short space of two cen-
turies, gave birth to and ripened half-a-dozen thinking
heads in Europe. By the gift of fortune, in addition, they
were enabled, in the midst of a grevelling world struggling
after advantage and pleasure, te fellow their noble calling
undisturbed by the velping of priests, or the foolish talk
and ecaballing of the contemporary professors of philo-
sophy,

Now Locke, in accordance with his strict empiricism,
had deduced the knowledge of the causal relation trom
experience, while Hume did net dispute, as he ought to
20 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

have done, this false assumption, but immediately over-
shot the mark by the observation, correct in itself, that
experience can never give us anything more than a mere
sequence of things wpon one another, sensibly and imme-
diately, and never a proper consequence and action—t.e., a
necessary interconnection. It is well known how the
sceptical objection of Hume was the occasion of Kant’s
incomparably deeper investigations into the subject, which
led him to the result that space and time, no less than
causality, are known by us a priori, that is, lie in us
before all experience, and hence belong to the subjective
side of knowledge. From this it follows farther, that all
those primary, that is, absolute qualities of things, which
Locke had assigned to them, since they are all composed
of pure determinations of time, of space, and of causality,
cannot belong to the things-in-themselves, but to our
mode of knowledge of the same, and consequently are to
be counted to the Ideal and not to the Real. The final
consequence of this is that we know the things in no
respect as they are in themselves, but solely in their pheno-
mena. The Real, the thing-in-itself, therefore remains
something wholly unknown, a mere x, and the whole
perceivable world accrues to the Ideal as a mere present-
ment, a phenomenon, which nevertheless, even as such, in
some way involves the Real, as thing-in-itself.

From this standpoint I, finally, have made a step, and
believe that it will be the last; because I have solved the
problem upon which, since Descartes, all philosophizing
turns, in that I reduce all being and knowledge to the two
elements of our self-consciousness, in other words, to some-
thing beyond which there can be no further principle of
explanation, since it is the most immediate and therefore
ultimate. I have called to mind, what indeed results from
the researches of all my predecessors, which I have here
noticed, to wit, that the absolute Real or the thing-in-itself
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 21

can never be given us directly from without, in the way of
mere presentment, since it is inevitably in the nature of
the latter only to furnish the Ideal; while, on the contrary,
since we ourselves are indisputably Real, the knowledge of
the Real must in some way or other be derivable from
within our own nature. And in fact it here appears, in an
immediate manner in consciousness, as will, The line of
cleavage between the Real and the Ideal falls therefore,
with me, in such wise that the whole perceivable and
objectively-presented world, including every man’s body,
together with time, space, and causality, in other words,
together with the extended of Spinoza, and the matter of
Locke, belongs as presentment to the Ideal. But in this
case the Will aloneremains as the Real,and this the whole of
my predecessors, thoughtlessly and without reflection, had
thrown into the Ideal as a mere result of presentment and
of thought, Descartes and Spinoza having even identified
it with the judgment.’ Ethics is therefore with me directly
and incomparably more closely knit to metaphysics than
in any other system, and thus the moral significance of
the world and of existence is more firmly fixed than ever.
But Will and Presentment are fundamentally distinct,
inasmuch as they constitute the ultimate and basal opposi-
tion in all things in the world and leave nothing remain-
ing over. The presented thing and the presentment of it are
the same, but only the presented thing, and not the thing
in itself. The latter is always Will, it matters not in what
form it may appear in presentment.

1 Spinoza, I.c. ; Descartes, ‘‘In meditationibus de prima philo-
sophia,” Medit. 4, p. 28.
22 SCHOPENILAVER’S ESSAYS.

APPENDIX.

EADERS who are familiar with what has passed for
philosophy in Germany, in the course of the present
century, may perhaps be surprised not to find mentioned in
the period between Kant and myself, either the Fichtean
Idealism or the system of the Absolute Identity of the Real
and Ideal, since they seem specially to belong to our
subject. But I have not been able to include them, simply
because, in my opinion, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are no
philosophers, inasmuch as they fail in the first requirement
of the philosopher, earnestness and honesty of research.
They are mere sophists; they wanted to seem and not to
be, and have sought, not the truth, but their own interest
and advancement in the world. Places from governments,
honoraria from students and booksellers, and as means to
this end as much sensation and effect as possible from their
sham philosophy—such were the guiding stars and in-
spiring genii of these disciples of wisdom. Hence they
have not passed the entrance-examination, and so cannot be
admitted into the honorable company of the thinkers of the
human race.

Meanwhile, they have excelled in one thing, and that is,
in the art of turning the head of the public and of making
themselves pass for what they were not, which requires
talent, indeed, but not philosophical talent. That they
were incapable of effecting anything solid in philosophy
was owing, in the last resort, to the fact that their intellect
was not free, but remained in the service of the Will; and
in this case, though the intellect can indeed achieve much
for this or that purpose, it can do nothing for philosophy
any more than for art. For these lay down as their first
THE DOCTRINE OF THE. IDEAL AND REAL. 23

condition, that the intellect should act on its own account,
and during the time of this activity should cease to be in
the service of the will, that is, to have the objects of one’s
own personality in view; but when it is itself active, simply
of its own motion, it, in accordance with its nature, knows
no other purpose than the truth. Hence it does not suttice,
in order to be a philosopher, which means lover of wisdom
(this being nothing else than truth), to love the truth in so
far as it harmonizes with one’s own interest, or with the
will of superiors, or the dogmas of the church, or the preju-
dices or tastes of contemporaries; as long as one remains in
this position, one is only a géAavrog and no gidocopoc. For
this title of honour is well and wisely conceived, in that it
imphes that one should love the truth earnestly and with
one’s whole heart, and therefore unconditionally, without
reserve before everything, and in case of necessity even to
the defiance of everything. The reason is to be found in
the fact above indicated that the intellect has become /ree,
in which case it does not even know or understand any
other interest than that of truth; the consequence being,
that one then acquires an irreconcilable hatred against all
lying and deception, no matter what garb they may wear. In
this way we are not very likely to get on well in the world,
but all the more in philosophy. On the other hand, it isa
bad auspice for the latter, if proceeding avowedly from the
investigation of truth, we begin, thereupon, to say farewell
to all uprightness, honesty, and thoroughness, and are only
concerned to make ourselves appear what we are not. In
this case one assumes, like the above three sophists, now a
false pathos, now an artificially high earnestness, now a
mien of infinite superiority, in order to dazzle where one
despairs of being able to convince; one writes without con-
sideration, because, only thinking of writing, one saves one’s
thought up for the purpose of writing; one seeks now to
inculcate palpable sophisms as demonstrations, now to
24 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

propound hollow and senseless logomachy for deep
thoughts; one invokes intellectual intuition or the abso-
lute thought and self-movement of conceptions; one
challenges expressly the standpoint of “reflection,” that
is, of rational thought, straightforward consideration, and
honest presentation, in other words, the proper and normal
use of the reason generally; one expresses a boundless
contempt for the “philosophy of reflection,” by which
name is designated every connected course of thought
which deduces consequences from principles, such as has
constituted every earlier philosophy; and accordingly, if
one is only provided with sufficient audacity, and en-
couraged by the pitiable spirit of the age, one expresses
oneself in some such manner as follows: “It is not
difficult to see that the mode of stating a proposition,
adducing reasons for it and refuting its opposite in the
same way, by reason, is not the form which truth can
assume. Truth is the movement of itself within itself,”
etc. (Hegel, preface to the “ Phenomenology of the Mind,”
p. lvii., in the complete edition, p. 36.) I think it is not
difficult to see that whoever puts forward anything like
this, is a shameless charlatan, who is anxious to befool
simpletons, and who observes that he has found his people
in the Germans of the nineteenth century.

If accordingly, under pretence of hurrying to the temple
of truth, one hands over the bridle to the interests of one’s
own person, which looks sideways towards altogether diffe-
rent guiding stars, such for instance as the tastes and
foibles of contemporaries, the religion of the land, but
especially toward the purposes and hints of the governing
powers—Oh, how then can one expect to reach the high,
abrupt, bald rock on which stands the temple of truth?
One may easily attach to oneself, by the sure bond of
interest, a crowd of genuinely hopeful disciples, hopeful,
that is, for protection and places, who may apparently
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 25

form a sect, but really a faction, and by whose united
stentorian voices one may be proclaimed to all the four
winds as a sage without parallel—the interest of the person
is satisfied, that of truth betrayed.

All this explains the painful feeling which seizes one,
when, after the study of real thinkers, such as have been
above described, one turns to the writings of Fichte and
Schelling, or indeed to the audaciously daubed nonsense
of Hegel, produced as it is with a boundless, though justi-
fied, confidence in German folly." With the former one
had always found an honest investigation of truth, and as
honest an endeavour to communicate their thoughts to
others. Hence he who reads Locke, Kant, Hume, Male-
branche, Spinoza, Descartes, feels himself elevated and
pleasurably impressed. This is effected by contact with a
noble mind, which has thoughts and awakens thoughts.
The reverse of this takes place in reading the above-men-
tioned three German sophists. <A straightforward person
who opens one of their books and then asks himself
whether this is the tone of a thinker who would teach
or of a charlatan who would deceive, cannot remain five
minutes in doubt about it; so much does everything here

1 The Hegelian sham wisdom is the true millstone in the head
of the student in ‘‘ Faust.” If one wishes intentionally to make a
youth stupid and completely incapable of aj] thought, there is no
more approved means than the industrious study of the original
works of Hegel ; for these monstrous piecings together of words,
which abolish and contradict one another, so that the mind tor-
ments itself in vain to think anything thereby, till it finally
collapses exhausted, gradually destroys its capacity of thinking so
completely that from that time forward hollow phrases count with
it for thoughts. Add to this, the fancy accredited to the youth by
the word and example of all persons in authority that the above

‘logomachy is true and lofty wisdom. Should a guardian ever be
concerned lest his wards should become too clever for his plans, he
may avert this misfortune by inculcating an industrious study of the
Hegelian philosophy.
26 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

breathe of dishonesty. The tone of quiet investigation
characterizing all previous philosophy is exchanged for that.
of unshakable certainty such as is common to charlatanry
of every kind in all time, but which in this case claims to
rest on immediate intellectual intuition, or on thought
which is absolute, that is, independent of the subject and
its fallibility. From every page, from every line, speaks
the endeavour to hoodwink, to deceive, the reader, now by
dazzling to disconcert him, now by incomprehensible
phrases and flagrant nonsense to stun him, now by
audacity of assertion to befool him, in short, in every
possible way to throw dust in his eyes and to mystify him.
Hence the feeling which discovers itself in the transition
in question in respect of the theoretical, may be compared
with that which in respect of the practical he has, who
coming from a society of honourable men, finds himself in
a haunt of swindlers. How worthy a man, in comparison
with such, is that Christian Wolff, so undervalued and
ridiculed by these three sophists! He had, and furnished
real thoughts, but they only word-images, and phrases for
the purpose of deceiving. The truly distinguishing character
of the philosophy of this whole, so-called, Post-Kantian
school, is dishonesty, its element is the blue ether and
personal ends its goal. Its exponents are concerned to
seem, not to be,—they are therefore sophists, not philo-
sophers. The mockery of future generations, extending
itself to their votaries, and then oblivion, awaits them.
With the tendency of these persons, as above indicated, is
connected, we may say in passing, the scolding and abusive
tone which, as an obligato accompaniment, pervades all
Schelling’s writings. If this were not so, if honesty rather
than pretentiousness and emptiness had been at work,
Schelling, who is without doubt the most gifted of the
three, might at least have occupied the subordinate rank in
philosophy of an eclectic of passing service. The amalgam
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. QT

which he prepared from the doctrines of Plotinos, of
Spinoza, of Jakob Béhme, of Kant, and of the natural
science of modern times, might for a while have filled the
vacancy produced by the negative results of the Kantian
philosophy, until a really new philosophy had come forward
and properly afforded the satisfaction required by the
former. He has more particularly used the natural science
of our century to revive the abstract pantheism of Spinoza.
Spinoza had, without any knowledge of nature, philo-
sophized out of abstract conceptions, and, without knowing
the things themselves properly, had erected the edifice of
his doctrines. To clothe this dry skeleton with flesh and
blood, and, as well as might be, to communicate life and
motion to it by the application of the natural science
which has since then developed, although often done with
a false application, is the undeniable service of Schelling in
his philosophy of nature, which is also the best of his
multifarious attempts and new departures.

Just as children play with weapons intended for serious
purposes, or other tools of grown-up persons, so the three
sophists we have under consideration have dealt with the
subject here treated of, thus furnishing the grotesque
pendant to two centuries of laborious investigations on the
part of serious philosophers. After Kant had more than
ever accentuated the great problem of the relation between
the self-existent and our presentments, and thereby brought
it much nearer its solution, Fichte starts up with the as-
sertion that there is nothing behind the presentments,
these being no more than products of the knowing sub-
jects, of the Ego. While seeking in this way to outbid
Kant, he produced a mere caricature of the latter’s philo-
sophy, inasmuch as, by the continuous application of the
method so much vaunted by these three pseudo-philo-
sophers, he abolished the Real altogether, and left nothing
but the Ideal remaining. Then came Schelling, who, in
28 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

his system of the absolute identity of the Real and Ideal,
declared the whole distinction of no account, and main-
tained the Ideal to be also the Real, that both were one.
In this way he attempted to throw again into confusion
what had been so carefully, and, by a process of such slow
and gradually developed reflection, separated. (Schelling,
“On the Relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the
Fichtean,” pp. 14-21.) The distinction of Ideal and Real
is crudely denied, in imitation of the above criticised error
of Spinoza. At the same time, even the monads of Leib-
nitz,—that monstrous identification of two absurdities,
namely, of the atoms and of the indivisible original and
essentially knowing individuals, termed souls—are again
brought forward, pompously apotheosized, and pressed
into the service. (Schelling, ‘Ideas for the Philosophy of
Nature,” 2nd ed., pp. 38, 82.) Schelling’s philosophy of
nature bears the name of the philosophy of identity, be-
cause, walking in the footsteps of Spinoza, it does away
with three distinctions which the latter had also done
away with, to wit, that between God and the world, that
between body and soul, and, finally, that between Ideal and
Real, in the perceived world. The last distinction, how-
ever, as has been above shown, in the consideration of
Spinoza, in no way depends on the two others. On the
contrary, the more it is brought into prominence, by so
much the more the two others are rendered doubtful, for
while it is based on a simple act of reflection, they are
based on dogmatic demonstrations, which Kant has over-
thrown. In accordance with all this, metaphysic was
identified by Schelling with physic, and hence, to a mere
physical-chemical diatribe, the high-sounding title of
“concerning the world-soul” was affixed. All those pro-
perly metaphysical problems, which untiringly impress
themselves upon the human consciousness, were to be
silenced by a crude denial clothed in strong assertions.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 29

Nature is here just because it is, of itself and through it-
self ; we bestow upon it the title God, and therewith it is
disposed of, and he who asks for anything more is a fool.
The distinction between subjective and objective is a mere
invention of the schools, like the whole Kantian philo-
sophy, whose distinction of a priori and a posteriori is also
of uo account, our empirical perception of itself supplying
us with the things-in-themselves, etc. Let the reader con-
sult “On the Relation of the Philosophy of Nature with
the Fichtean,” pp. 51 and 57, as also p. 61, where ridicule
is expressly heaped on those “who are astounded to find
that not is nothing, and cannot sufficiently wonder that
anything really exists.” We see, therefore, that with Herr
von Schelling everything seems to explain itself. At
bottom, however, this sort of talk is only a veiled appeal
in pompous phraseology to the so-called sound, but more
correctly rough, understanding. For the rest, I may recall
here what I have said in the second volume of my chief
work, at the beginning of chapter xvii. Significant for
our subject and very naive is the passage on p. 69, in the
book of Schelling’s just quoted from: ‘‘ Had empiricism
completely attained its object, its opposition to philo-
sophy, and therewith philosophy itself, as special sphere or
kind of science, would disappear; all abstractions would
dissolve themselves in the direct, ‘friendly,’ perception ;
the highest would be the sport of pleasure and innocence,
the most difficult easy, the most senseless sensible, and
man might read joyfully and freely in the book of nature.”
This would certainly be very nice! but it is not the case
with us. Thought does not let itself be shown the door
in this manner. The serious old Sphinx with its riddle
lies immovably there, and does not dash itself off the rock
because you explain that it is a spectre. As, therefore,
Schelling himself observed later that the metaphysical
problem cannot be got rid of by dictatorial assertions, he
30 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

gives us a genuinely metaphysical essay in his treatise on
freedom, which is, however, a mere piece of imagination, a
conte blew, whence it comes that the style, whenever it
assumes the tone of demonstration, has a decidedly comical
effect.

By his doctrine of the identity of the Ideal and the Real,
Schelling has accordingly sought to solve the problem, set
going by Descartes, dealt with by all great thinkers, and
finally accentuated in the strongest manner by Kant, by
cutting the knot, that is, by denying the opposition be-
tween the two. With Kant, from whom he professed to
start, he came in consequence into direct contradiction.
Meanwhile he had at least held fast the original and
special sense of the problem, which concerns the relation
between our perception and the being and essence in
themselves of the things which present themselves in the
former. But because he got his doctrines chiefly out of
Spinoza, he adopted from the latter the expressions thought
and being, which designated the problem very badly,
and gave occasion later on to the maddest monstrosities.
Spinoza had attempted, with his doctrine that substantia
cogitans et substantia eatensa una eademque est substantia,
que jam sub hoc jam sub illo attributo comprehenditur (ii. 7,
Sch.), or, scilicet mens et corpus una eademque est res, que
jam sub cogitationis, jam sub extensionis attribute concipitur
(ui. 2, Sch.), to abolish the Cartesian opposition of body
* and soul; he may also have recognized that the empirical
object is not distinct from our presentment of it. Schel-
ling adopted from him the expressions thought and being,
which he gradually substituted for those of intwition
(perception), or rather intuited (perceived), and the thing-
in-itself (“ New Journal of Speculative Physic,” vol. i, Ist
article, “Further expositions,” ete.). For the relation of
our perception of things to their being and essence in them-
selves is the great problem whose history I have here
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 31

sketched ; that of our thoughts, i.e. conceptions, is a dif-
ferent one, for these are, quite obviously and undeniably,
mere abstractions from that which is perceptively known,
having arisen through the arbitrary thinking away, or
letting fall, of some qualities, and retention of others; and
to doubt that this is so would ever occur to any reason-
able man." These conceptions and thoughts, which con-
stitute the class of non-perceptive presentments, never have
therefore an immediate relation to the nature and being
of the things-in-themselves, but are always mediate, that
is, under the mediation of perception; it is the last-men-
tioned which on the one side furnishes for them the
matter, and on the other stands related to the things-in-
themselves, that is, to the unknown true nature of the
things which is objectivized in perception.

The inexact expression borrowed by Schelling from
Spinoza was used subsequently by the spiritless and taste-
less charlatan Hegel, who in this respect appears as
Schelling’s hanswurst, and distorted, so far as to make
thought itself, in the narrower sense, namely, as concep-
tion, identical with the nature of the things-in-themselves.
That, therefore, which is thought in abstracto, should, as
such and immediately, be one with that which is objectively
present in itself, and logic should, accordingly, be the true
metaphysic; in which case we should only require to
think or to let our conception have free course in order to
know how the world without is absolutely constituted. Asa
natural consequence, every brain-phantasm would be at once
true and real. Since, therefore, ‘the madder the better” was
the motto of the philosophasters of this period, the absur-
dity in question was supported by a second, to wit, that it
was not we who thought, but that the conception alone
and without our help completed the thought-process, which

1 “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Cause,” § 26.
32 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

is therefore called the dialectical self-movement of the
conception, and counts for a revelation of all things in et
extra naturam. But this humbug was based upon another,
equally resting on the misuse of words, and which was,
indeed, never clearly stated, though it undoubtedly lies
behind. Schelling had, according to Spinoza’s procedure,
entitled the world “God.” Hegel took this in its literal
sense. Now since this word properly signifies a personal
being, embracing, together with other qualities altogether
incompatible with the world, that of omniscience, this was
also transferred by him to the world, in which it could
naturally obtain no other place than in the empty head of
men who only require to give their thoughts free play
(dialectical self-movement) in order to reveal all the
mysteries of heaven and earth, as in the absolute galli-
mathias of the Hegelian dialectic. One art this Hegel has
certainly understood, namely, how to lead the Germans by
the nose. But that is no very great one. We see with
what tricks he was able to hold the learned world of Ger-
many for thirty years. That the professors of philosophy
still treat these three sophists seriously, and hold it for
important to assign them a place in the history of philo-
sophy, happens only because it belongs to their gagne-pain,
in that they obtain thereby material for elaborate disserta-
tions, verbal and written, on the history of the so-called
Post-Kantian philosophy, in which the opinions of the said
sophists are elaborately expounded and seriously considered.
From a reasonable point of view, one has no business to
concern oneself at all with what these persons, in order to
seem something, brought to market, unless it were that it
should be deemed desirable for the scribblings of Hegel to
be kept in the chemists’ shops as a physically active
vomitive, the disgust they excite being really quite peculiar,
But enough of them and their originator, whose glorifica-
tion we will leave to the Danish Academy of Sciences,
THE DOCTRINE OF THE IDEAL AND REAL. 33

which has recognized in him a swmmus philosophus, in its
sense of the word, and hence requires him to be treated
with respect, a fact brought out in the judgment appended
to my prize essay on the foundations of morality, as a
lasting memorial, and which, no less on account of its
acuteness than of its memorable honesty, deserves to be
rescued from oblivion, if only that it furnishes a remarkable
confirmation of Labruyére’s beautiful saying: Du méme
fonds, dont on néglige un homme de mérite, Von sait encore
admirer un sot.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF
PHILOSOPHY.

Section 1.
On the Same.

O read, instead of the original works of philosophers,

all sorts of expositions of their doctrines, or history

of philosophy generally, is as though one should get some
one else to masticate one’s food. Would anyone read the
history of the world if it were possible for him to behold
the interesting events of ancient times with his own eyes?
But, as regards the history of philosophy, such an autopsy
of the subject is really possible for him, to wit, the original
writings of philosophers; in which he may none the less,
for the sake of shortness, limit himself to well-chosen
leading chapters, especially inasmuch as they all teem
with repetitions, which one may just as well spare one-
self. In this way, then, he will learn to know the essential
in their doctrines, in an authentic and unfalsified form,
while from the half-dozen histories of philosophy annually
appearing he merely receives as much of it as has entered
the head of a professor of philosophy, and, indeed, as it
appears there. Now it is obvious of itself, that the thoughts
of a great mind must shrink up considerably in order to
find a place in the three-pound brain of a parasite of
philosophy, from which they emerge again clothed in the
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 35

contemporary jargon of the day, and accompanied by his
sapient reflections. Besides this, it must be considered
that the money-making history-writer of philosophy can
hardly have read a tenth part of the writings which he
reports. Their real study demands the whole of a long
and laborious life, such as formerly, in the old industrious
times, the brave Brucker devoted to them. But what can
such persons, who are detained by continuous lectures,
official duties, vacation tours and dissipations, and who, for
the most part, come forward with their histories of philo-
sophy in their earlier years, have thoroughly investigated ?
Add to this, that they are anxious to be pragmatical, and
claim to have fathomed and to expound the necessity of
the origin and the sequence of systems, and even to judge,
correct, and dominate over the earnest and genuine philo-
sophersofformer times. How could it be otherwise than that
they should copy the older ones, and each other, and then,
in order to hide this, make matters worse by endeavouring
to give them the modern tournure of the current quin-
quenium, pronouncing upon them, likewise, in the same
spirit? On the contrary, a collection of important passages
and essential chapters of all the leading philosophers,
made by honest and intelligent scholars, conscientiously
and in common, arranged in a chronologically-pragmatic
order, much in the same way as formerly Gédicke, and,
after him, Ritter and Preller, have done with the philosophy
of antiquity, although much more completely—in short, a
universal chrestomathy accomplished with care and a know-
ledge of the subject—would be very useful.

The fragments which I here give are at least not
traditional, that is, copied; they are, rather, thoughts
occasioned by my own study of the original works.
36 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Section 2.
Pre-Sokratic Philosophy.

The Eleatic philosophers are the first who became con-
scious of the opposition between the perceived and the
thought, gaudpeva and vooipera. The latter alone was
for them the true being, the tvrwc dv. Respecting this,
they maintain that it is one, unchangeable and immovable ;
not so, however, with the gacvouévore, that is, with the per-
ceived, appearing, empirically given, of which it would.
have been absurd to maintain anything of the kind—hence
the so misunderstood proposition refuted by Diogenes in
his well-known manner. They already distinguished, there-
fore, between appearance, gavopevor, and the thing-in-itself,
évroc ov. The last-mentioned could not be sensuously per-
ceived, but only comprehended by thought, and was accord-
ingly known as voovpevor (Arist., ‘ Metaph.,” i., 5, p. 986, et
“ Scholia,” edit. Berol., pp. 429,430, et 509). In the“Scholia
to Aristotle” (pp. 460, 586, 544, et 798), the work of Par-
menides, ra kara ddfav is mentioned. This, then, would
have been the doctrine of the phenomenon, physics, which
would, without doubt, have implied another work, ré xar’
dAnSetar, the doctrine of the thing-in-itself, or metaphysic.
Respecting Melissos, indeed, a scholium of Philoponos
says: é€y rote mpocg ahnSeiav Ev civar Aéyav TO bv, Ev TOIG TpdE
ddtay dvo (should be rodda) pnoiv efvar. The opposition to.
the Eleatics, and probably called forth by them, is Hera-
kleitos, who taught the ceaseless movement of all things, as
they taught their absolute immobility. He took his stand,
therefore, on the gacrépevoy (“ Arist. d. Ceelo,” iii. 1, p. 298,
edit. Berol.). He calledforth thereby as his opposite, Plato’s
doctrine of Ideas, as appears from the statement of Aristotle
(“ Metaph.,” p. 1078).

It is noteworthy that we find the comparatively few
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 37

main propositions of the Pre-Sokratic philosophers which
have been preserved, numberless times repeated in the
writings of the ancients, but very little beyond them ; as,
for instance, the doctrines of Anaxagoras, of the vote and
of the Gpotomepiac; that of Empedokles, of gidia cal
veixoc and the four elements; that of Demokritos and
Lukippos, of the atoms, eid@Aorc ; that of Herakleitos, of the
continuous flux of all things ; that of the Eleatics as above
explained; that of the Pythagoreans, of the numbers, of
metempsychosis, &c. It may well be, therefore, that this
was the sum ofall their philosophizing ; for we find also in
the works of the moderns, e.g., of Descartes, Spinoza, Leib-
nitz, and even Kant, the few fundamental propositions of
their philosophies numberless times repeated; so that all
these philosophers would seem to have adopted the motto
of Empedokles, who may also have been a lover of the sign
of repetition, dig cal rpic ro Kady (see Sturz., ‘‘ Empedocl.
Agrigent.,” p. 504).

The two dogmas Anaxagoras started stand in close con-
nection. mdvra év maou is, namely, a symbolical designa-
tion of the dogma of the homoiomeroi. In the primal
chaotic mass, accordingly, the partes similares (in the phy-
siological sense) of all things were present in their com-
pleteness. In order to their differentiation, and to their
combination into specifically distinct things (partes dis-
similares), it required a vovc to arrange and to form them,
who, by a selection of the elements, reduced confusion
to order, since this chaos contained the most complete
mixture of all substances (“Scholia in Aristot.,” p. 337).
Nevertheless the vovc had not brought the first separation
to complete perfection, and therefore in everything was
contained the elements of everything else, although in a
lesser degree: waduy yao may év wavre pewixrac (Ibid.).

Empedokles, on the other hand, instead of the number-
less homoiomeroi, had only four elements, from which the
38 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

things proceeded as products, not as with Anaxagoras as
educts. The negating and separating, that is ordering,
réle of the vote is, according to him, played by gAia kat
veixoc, love and hate. Both of these are very much better.
For here not the intellect (voc) but the will (gAéa Kal
veixoc) has the ordering of things assigned to it, and the
variety of substances are not, as with Anaxagoras, mere
educts, but real products. While Anaxagoras makes
them realized by a separating understanding, Empedokles
does so by a blind impulse, t.e., a knowledgeless will.
Empedokles is altogether a thorough man, and his
gidla cat vetcoc has for its basis a deep and true appereu.
Even in inorganic nature we see the elements unite and
separate, seek or flee from each other, according to the laws
of elective affinity. But those that show the strongest
disposition to unite themselves chemically, which can only
be effected in a state of fluidity, assume an attitude of the
most decisive electrical antagonism when they come into
contact with one another in a solid state—now they
separate in opposed and mutually hostile polarities, now
they again seek and embrace each other ; and what, I ask, is
that polar antagonism which appears throughout all nature
in the most diverse forms, other than a continually renewed
quarrel, upon which the earnestly-desired reconciliation
follows? So gira cai veixog is everywhere present, and,
according to circumstances, first one and then the other
displays itself at different times. We ourselves even may
be immediately impressed in a friendly or a hostile sense
with any human being that comes near us—the disposi-
tion to either is there and waits on circumstances. It
is only prudence that induces us to tarry on the indifference-
point of impartiality, which is also, be it said, the freezing-
point. In the same way, the strange dog which we approach
is ready at once to adopt the friendly or the hostile key, and
changes easily from barking and growling to wagging, and
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 39

vice versd. What lies at the foundation of this all-pene-
trating phenomenon of the gAca cal veixog is assuredly, at
bottom, the great primal opposition between the unity of
all natures, according to their being in themselves and
their complete distinction in the phenomenon, which has for
its form the principium individuationis. Similarly, Empe-
dokles recognized the doctrine of atoms, already known to
him, as false, and taught on the contrary the infinite
divisibility of bodies, as Lucretius tells us (lib. i, v.,
747, &e.).

But above all things in the doctrines of Empedokles, his
decided pessimism is noteworthy. He has fully recognized
the misery of our existence, and the world is for him as
much as for the true Christian a vale of sorrows,” Arne Aeepor.
He compares it, indeed, like Plato later, to a dark cavern, in
which we are immured. In our earthly existence he sees a
state of banishment and misery, and the body is the prison of
the soul. These souls were once in a state of infinite happi-
ness, and have through their own fault and sins reached the
present wretchedness, wherein they, by sinful conduct, more
and more entangle themselves, getting involved in the
circle of metempsychosis ; while, on the contrary, by virtue
and moral purity, to which the abstinence from animal
food belongs, and by renunciation of earthly enjoyments
and wishes, they may again attain to their previous condi-
tion. Thus the same primal wisdom which constitutes
the basal thought of Brahmanism and Buddhism, and even
of true Christianity (by which is not to be understood the
optimistic Jewish-Protestant rationalism), was also brought
into consciousness by this ancient Greek, who completes
the consensus gentium on the subject. That Empedokles,
whom the ancients throughout designated a Pythagorean,
received this view from Pythagoras is probable, particularly
as at bottom it is shared by Plato, who was also under
the influence of Pythagoras. Empedokles declares his
40 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

adherence most distinctly to the doctrine of metempsy-
chosis, which is connected with this view of the world.
The passages in the ancients which, together with his own
verses, bear witness to this conception of Empedokles, are
to be found collected, with great industry, in Sturzzi,
“Empedocles Agrigentinus,” pp. 448-458. The opinion
that the body is a prison and life a condition of suffering
and purification from which we are released by death, if
we are but quit of the soul-wandering, is shared by
Egyptians, Pythagoreans, and Empedokles, together with
the Hindoos and Buddhists. With the exception of
metempsychosis it is also contained in Christianity.
Diodorus Siculus and Cicero also bear witness to the
above views of the ancients. (See ‘‘ Wernsdorf de metem-
psychosi veterum,” p. 31, and “ Cicero fragmenta,” p. 299
[‘Somn. Scip.,” 310, 319, ed. Bip.]) Cicero does not indi-
cate in these passages to what philosophical school they
belong, but they would seem to be remains of Pythagorean
wisdom.

In the remaining doctrines of these Pre-Sokratic philo-
sophers there is also much that is true to be pointed out, of
which I will give some illustrations.

According to the cosmogony of Kant and Laplace—which
has received a practical confirmation, a posteriori, in the
observations of Herschel, and which Lord Ross is con-
cerned, to the consolation of English clericalism, again to
render doubtful by means of his giant telescope—the
planetary systems form themselves by the condensation of
slowly coagulating and then revolving luminous nebule,
and thus, after thousands of years, Anaximenes is justified
when he declared air and vapour for the primal elements of
all things (“Schol. in Arist.,” p. 514). At the same time,
also, Empedokles and Demokritos received confirmation,
for they, like Laplace, explained the origin and constitution
of the world from a vortex dévn (“ Arist. Op.” ed. Berol., p.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 41

295, et “ Scholia,” p. 351), at which Aristophanes (“‘ Nubes,”’
v. 820) mocks asa blasphemy; just as do the English priests
to-day over the Laplacian theory, they being anxious re-
specting their benefices, as they always are when a new truth
comes to light. Our modern chemistry indeed carries us
back to the Pythagorean philosophy of numbers: ra yap
madn cai ai tec rev dopey tov Ev roc oboe waSmv TE Kal
EEewy airca, olov To CemAadatov, To exitpiToy, To Hurodvoy (“Schol.
in Arist.,” p. 543 et 829). That the Kopernican system was
anticipated by the Pythagoreans is well known; it was
even known to Kopernicus himself, who drew his chief ideas
from the well-known passage on Hiketas, in Cicero’s “ Ques-
tionibus Acad.” (ii., 39), and from Philolaos in Plutarch,
“De placitis Philosophorum” (lib. iii.,¢.13). This important
insight was afterwards rejected by Aristotle, in order that
he might put his whims in the place of it, as to which, see
below, § 5 (compare “ World as Will and Presentment,” ii.,
p- 342 of the 2nd ed.; ii., p.390, 3rd ed.). Even Fourier’s
and Cordier’s discoveries on the heat in the interior of the
earth are confirmations of the doctrines of the ancients :
Edeyor of MuSaydpetoe rip eivar énucoupytxoy mepi TO pégov Kat
kévtpov rie yijc ro avalddzror THY yay Kal Gworoeody (“ Schol, in
Arist.,” p. 504). And in consequence of these discoveries,
the crust of the earth to-day is looked upon as a thin layer
between two media (atmosphere and hot fluid metals and
metalloids) whose contact would occasion a conflagration
that would annihilate that crust, also confirming the
opinion in which all the ancient philosophers agree, and
which is shared even by the Hindoos (“ Lettres édifiantes,”
‘édit. de 1819, vol. vii., p. 114) that the world will finally be
consumed by fire. It is also deserving of mention that, as
may be seen from Aristotle (“ Metaph.,” i., 5, p. 986), the
Pythagoreans, under the name of déka doxai, had conceived
the yn and yang of the Chinese.

That the metaphysics of music, as explained by me in
42 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

my chief work (vol. i., § 52, and vol. ii., chap. 39), must be
regarded as an exposition of the Pythagorean philosophy
of numbers, I have already shortly indicated, and will here
somewhat further explain—presupposing, at the same
time, in the reader an acquaintance with the passages re-
ferred to. In accordance with the above, melody expresses
all movements of the will such as are made known in
human consciousness, that is, all affections, feelings, dc. ;
harmony, again, denotes the ladder of the objectivation of
the will in the rest of nature. Music is, in this sense, a
second reality, which runs entirely parallel with the first,
although it is of quite another kind and character, so that
while it has a complete analogy it has no similarity with
it—music, as such, existing only in our auditory nerves and
brain. Outside these, or in itself (understood in the
Lockean sense), it consistsin mere relations of tones, directly,
that is, in respect of quantity, im rhythm, and im respect
of quality, in the intervals of the scales, which rest on
the arithmetical relations of vibrations; in other words,
numerical as it is in its rhythmical element, so is it also
in its harmonic element.

The whole nature of the world, therefore, as well of the
microcosm as of the macrocosm, may be certainly expressed
by mere numerical relations, and is, therefore, reducible to
these. And in this sense Pythagoras was right in placing
the proper nature of things in numbers. But what now
are numbers? Relations of succession whose possibility
is based on time.

When one reads what is said about the number-philo-
sophy of the Pythagoreans in the “ Scholia to Aristotle”
(p. 829, ed. Berol.), one might be led to the supposition,
that the use of the word Adyoc in the introduction to the
gospel ascribed to John, so strange and mysterious and
verging on the absurd, as also the earlier and analogous
passages in Philo, originate in the Pythagorean philosophy
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 43

of numbers, from the signification, that is, of the word
Adyoc in the arithmetical sense, as numerical relation,
ratio numerica. Such a relation constitutes, with the
Pythagoreans, the innermost and indestructible essence of
every being; in other words, its first and original principle
dex; whence of everything might be said, ey doyy iv 6
Adyoc. It should be noted also that Aristotle says (“ De
Anima,” i. 1): ra rd9n Noyor Evvdoé eioe, et MOX: buev yap
Abyoe eidoc rov mpayparoc. One is also reminded here of
the Adyoe orepparcxoc of the Stoics, to which I shall shortly
return.

According to Jamblichos’ biography of Pythagoras, the
latter owed his education chiefly to Egypt, where he re-
mained from his twenty-second to his fifty-sixth year, and,
indeed, to the Egyptian priests. Returning in his fifty-
sixth year, he had conceived the project of founding a kind
of priestly state, in imitation of the Egyptian temple
hierarchies, of course, with the modifications necessary to
Greeks ; and though he did not succeed in this in his father-
land, Samos, he did, to a certain extent, in Krotona. Now,
as Egyptian culture and religion, without doubt, came
from India, as is proved by the sanctity of the cow, together
with a hundred other things (“ Herod.,” i, 41), this
would also explain the regulation of Pythagoras respecting
abstinence from animal nourishment, especially the prohibi-
tion of slaughtering oxen (Jambl., “ Vit. Puith.,” ¢. 28, §
150), as also the consideration for all animals which is
enjoined ; similarly, also, his doctrine of metempsychosis,
his white robes, his eternal mystification, which gave rise
to symbolical modes of speech, and even extended itself to
mathematical theorems; yet, again, the foundation of a
priestly caste, strict discipline and much ceremonial, the
worship of the sun (c. 35, § 256), and many other things.’

‘It may be well to remind the reader that Schopenhauer’s
statements as to the origin of Egyptian civilization are in no way
4A SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

His most important astronomical principles he had also
from the Egyptians. Hence the priority of his doctrine of
the inclination of the ecliptic was disputed by (Enopides,
who had been with him in Egypt. (Consult, as to this,
the conclusion of the 24th chapter of the 1st book of the
“Eklogues of Stob#os,” with Heeren’s note from Dio-
dorus.) For the rest, when one looks through the elemen-
tary notions of astronomy collected by Stobeos from all
the Greek philosophers (especially lib. i., c. 25), one finds
that they have produced mere absurdities, with the single
exception of the Pythagoreans, who, as a‘rule, are quite
correct. That this ig not their own invention, but comes
from Egypt, is not to le doubted. The well-known pro-
hibition of Pythagoras respecting beans is of purely
Egyptian origin, and merely a superstition derived from
thence, since Herodotus (ii., 37), relates that in Egypt the
bean is considered unclean and abhorred, so that the priests
will not even tolerate the sight of it.

That the doctrine of Pythagoras is a decided pantheism
is proved as conclusively as briefly by a sentence of the
Pythagoreans, preserved by Clement of Alexandria, con-
tained in the “ Hortatio ad gentes,” the Doric dialect of
which points to its genuineness: Obx droxpimreov ovée rove
apugiroy MuSaydpar,o6 paciv’ O pev 2206 cic? x! ovro¢ CE OvYX, We
Tiveg UMOVOOUELY, EKTUC TAC CLuKOoUHaLOC, AAA’ Ev adT|, Odoc EV
bdy 7! KUKAW, EwioKoTOG Taaac ‘yevéaToc, Kpaow TwY Oho’ hel
Or, Kat epyarac TOY avTOU CUYdpwY Kal Epywy amayTwY eV
oipavy gwarnp, Kal TavTwY TauTHpP, vouc Kal Puyume TH Oy
KuKAg, wavtoy Kivasec. (See “Clem. Alex. Opera,” tom. i,

borne out by the results of recent research. The coincidences
mentioned by Schopenhauer might be extended to most early
civilizations, and do not by any means give colour to the far-
fetched hypothesis of the borrowing of the ancient Egyptian cul-
ture from India, The Egyptian civilization is undoubtedly of
greater antiquity than the Indian.—Tr.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 45

p. 118, in “Sanctorum Patrum Oper. Polem.,” vol. iv.,
Wirceburgi, 1778.) It is good, namely, to convince one-
self at every opportunity that, properly speaking, Theism
and Judaism are exchangeable terms.

According to Apuleius, Pythagoras got as far as India,
and was even instructed by the Brahmins. (See Apuleius,
“ Florida,” p. 180, ed. Bip.) I believe, nevertheless, that the
assuredly considerable wisdom and knowledge of Pytha-
goras consisted, not so much in what he thought, as in
what he learnt, was not so much his own, that is, as of
foreign origin. This is confirmed by a saying of Hera-
Kleitos (* Diog. Laert.,” lib. vili., ¢. 1. § 5). Otherwise he
would have written it down in order to rescue his thoughts
from oblivion; while, on the other hand, what was learnt
from abroad was safe enough at the fountain-head.

SEcTION 3.
Sokrates.

The wisdom of Sokrates is an article of philosophic
faith. That the Platonic Sokrates was an ideal and there-
fore poetical person, who enunciated Platonic thoughts, is
perfectly clear, but in the Nenophontic Socrates there is
not precisely very much wisdom to be found. According
to Lukian (‘ Philo. Pseudes,” 24), Sokrates had a fat
belly, which does not belong to the signs of genius. But
it is just as doubtful as to the high mental powers of all
those who have not written. and hence also of Pythagoras.
A great mind must gradually recognize his calling and
his position toward humanity, and consequently attain to
the conviction that he does not belong to the flock, but to
the shepherds—to the educators, that is, of the human
race. But from this the obligation becomes clear not to
A6 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

limit his immediate and certain action to the few which
chance brings into his neighbourhood, but to extend it to
humanity, in order that it may reach the exceptions, the
elect, in the latter. But the only organ with which one
speaks to humanity is writing; verbally one addresses
only a number of individuals, and therefore anything so
said, remains, as far as the human race is concerned, a
private matter. For such individuals are generally a bad
soil for the best seed, which either does not influence
them at all, or else what it produces rapidly degenerates.
The seed itself, therefore, must be preserved, and this
cannot be done through tradition, which is falsified at
every step, but solely through writing, the only true pre-
server of thoughts. Add to this, that every deep-thinking
mind necessarily has the impulse, for the sake of its own
satisfaction, to retain its thoughts and reduce them to the
greatest possible clearness and definition, and consequently
to embody them in words. But this is only perfectly at-
tained in writing, for the written delivery is essentially
different from the verbal, since it alone admits the highest
precision, concision, and the most pregnant brevity, thus
becoming a pure ektypos of thought. In consequence of
all this, it would be a marvellous conceit in any thinker to
wish to leave the most important invention of the human
race unutilized. For this reason, it is hard for me to
believe in the really great intellect of those who have
not written. Iam rather disposed to hold them to have
been mainly practical heroes, who effected more by their
character than by their brains. The majestic authors of
the “ Upanishads of the Vedas” have written, though the
“Sanhita of the Vedas,” consisting as it does merely of
prayers, may originally have been only verbally propa-
gated.

Between Sokrates and Kant many parallels may be
drawn. Both reject all dogmatism; both profess a com-
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 47

plete ignorance in matters of metaphysic, and make their
speciality the clear consciousness of this ignorance. Both
maintain that the practical, that which man has to do and
to forbear, is, on the other hand, perfectly certain of itself
without any further theoretical foundation. Both had the
fortune, that their immediate successors and declared dis-
ciples broke away from them precisely on these principles,
and, elaborating a metaphysic, established thoroughly
dogmatic systems ; and further, that these systems turned
out very diverse, and yet all agreed in maintaining that
they started from the doctrines of Sokrates or Kant, as
the case might be. As I am myself a Kantian, I will here
notify my relation to him in one word. Kant teaches that
we cannot know anything beyond experience and its pos-
sibility. I admit this, but maintain that experience itself,
in its totality, is susceptible of an explanation which I
have endeavoured to give by deciphering it like a
writing, and not, as with all earlier philosophers, by under-
taking to transcend it by means of its mere forms, a
method Kant had proved to be invalid.

The advantage of the Sokratic method, as we learn it
from Plato, consists in that the foundation of the proposi-
tions, which are intended to be proved by the collocutor
or opponent, are admitted singly before their consequences
are seen. Since, however, in a didactic delivery in con-
tinuous speech, consequences and grounds are able to be
seen at once, one would attack them if they did not please
one. Meanwhile, among the things which Plato would
impose upon us is this—to wit, that by means of the appli-
cation of this method, the Sophists and other fools had in
all innocence let Sokrates prove to them that they were
such. This is incredible ; it is much more likely that, at the
last quarter of the way, or as soon as they noticed what he
was driving at, they would, by manceuvres denying what
had previously been said, intentional misunderstandings,
48 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

and such other tricks:and dodges as are employed instinc-
tively by dishonesty desirous of justifying itself, have
spoilt the artificially-planned game of Sokrates and torn
his net, or they would have become so rude and insulting,
that he would have found it advisable to save his skin
betimes. For why should not the Sophists have under-
stood the method by which everyone can make himself
equal to everyone else, and for the moment bring himself
to the level of the greatest intellectual eminence—namely,
insult? The low nature indeed feels an instinctive inclina-
tion to this as soon as it begins to detect intellectual
superiority.

Section 4,
Plato.

Already in Plato we find the origin of a certain false
dianoiology, which is put forward with a secret meta-
physical purpose, namely, for the behoof of a rational
psychology and a doctrine of immortality depending on
it. It has proved itself again and again as a deceptive
doctrine of the toughest vitality, dragging on its existence
as it has throughout the whole of ancient, medieval, and
modern philosophy, till Kant, the all-destroyer, finally
knocked it on the head. The doctrine here referred to is
the rationalism of theory of knowledge with its meta-
physical purpose. It may be summed up shortly as fol-
lows: That which knows in us is an immaterial substance,
fundamentally distinct from the body, called Soul; the
body being a hindrance to knowledge. Hence all know-
ledge through the senses is deceptive, the only true, accu-
rate, and certain knowledge being that which is free and
removed from all sensibility (i.e. from all perception), in
other words, pure thought, or that which functions exclu-
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 49

sively by means of abstract conceptions. For this instructs
the soul entirely by its own methods, and consequently
will work best after it is separated from the body, that is,
after we are dead. In such wise, therefore, dianoiology
plays into the hands of rational psychology to the benefit
of its doctrine of immortality. This doctrine which I have
here summed up, we find fully and clearly in the “ Phado,”
chap. x. It is somewhat differently conceived in the
“Timeus,” from which Sextus Empiricus expounds it
very precisely and clearly in the following words: Tadaé
Tig Tapa ToIc puotkore KuALerar Cota mept TOU Ta OMota TaY
opotwy eivac yrwoornd. Mox: Taare dé, év ro Tipaiy,
mpoc Tapacrasty Tov dowmaror eivar THY WuKnY, TO abry yévee
Tic amodeiEewe Kéypnra. Ei yap i péev dpacle, gnor, dwrdc
avriauBavouery, evSuc Ears Qwroerdyc, ty O€ akon dépa meTANY=
Mévoy kpivouaa, Sep EaTe THY gwrijv, EVIVE dEpoELore Sewpetrat,
4) 6€ dodpnore arpove yvwpilovea TavTwe ort drmoEdne, Kal f
yedouc yvAove, xuAEHC’ Kar avayxyy Kal } Puy? Tag dowparoug
idéac AapBavovea, kaSdwep rac Ev roicg apeSpotg Kai rag év
Toic Tépact Twv cwparwy (that is, pure mathematics) yiveraé
rec dowparoc (“ Adv. Math.,” vii., 116 et 119). (Vetus que-
dam, a physicis usque probata, versatur opinio, quod similia
similibus cognoscantur.—Mox: Plato, in Timeo, ad pro-
bandum, animam esse incorpoream, usus est eodem genere
demonstrationis: “nam si visio,” inquit, “ apprehendens
lucem statim est luminosa, auditus autem aérem percussum
judicans, nempe vocem, protinus cernitur ad aéris accedens
speciem, odoratus autem cognoscens vapores, est omnino va-
poris aliquam habens formam, et gustus, qui humores,
humoris habens speciem; necessario et anima, ideas susci-
piens incorporeas, ut que sunt in numeris et in fimibus
corporum, est incorpored.’’)

Even Aristotle admits this argument, at least hypotheti-
cally, where, in the first book of the “De Anima” (c. i),
he says that the separate existence of the soul would be

E
50 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

thereby constituted if any manifestation in which the body
had no part accrued to it, and that such a manifestation
seemed above all things to be Thought. But if even this
is not possible without perception and imagination, it can-
not obtain without the body (ei éé gore kai ro voeiv gavracia
ric, I) py dvev pavraciac, ovK évdéyour’ Gy obde TovTO dvev
cwparoc eivac). Yet Aristotle does not even admit the
above conditions, which are the premisses of the argu-
mentation, in so far, namely, as he teaches, what was later
formulated in the proposition, nihil est in intellectu, quod
non prius fuerit in sensibus. (See, as to this, “ De Anima,”
iii.,8.) Even he saw, therefore, that all that is purely and
abstractly thought has first borrowed its entire material
and content from the perceived. This also disturbed the
Schoolmen, and hence, even in the middle ages, men en-
deavoured to prove that there are pure cognitions of
reason—that is, thoughts having no reference to any
images; in other words, a thought which draws all its
material from itself. The efforts and controversies on this
point are to be found collected in Pomponasius, who de-
rives his main argument from them. In order to answer
the requirement spoken of, the universalia and the cogni-
tions @ priori, conceived as ceterncee veritates, had to serve.
The development which the matter received through Des-
cartes and his school I have already explained in the
elaborate observation appended to the § 6 of my prize
essay on the foundation of morals, in which I have ad-
duced the valuable original words of the Cartesian De la
Forge—for one finds the false doctrines of a philosopher as
a rule expressed the clearest by his disciples, since these
are not, like the master himself, concerned to keep in the
background as much as possible those sides of his system
which might betray its weakness, inasmuch as they have
no fear about it. But Spinoza opposed to the whole
Cartesian dualism his doctrine substantia cogitans et sub-
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 51

stantia extensa wna eademque est substantia, que jam sub
hoc, jam sub illo attributo comprehenditur, thereby showing
his great superiority. Leibnitz, on the other hand, re-
mmained exquisitely on the path of Descartes and ortho-
doxy. But this again called out the, for philosophy, so
thoroughly healthy endeavour of the excellent Locke, who
finally plunged into the investigation of the origin of con-
ceptions, and made the phrase no innate ideas, after he had
carefully expounded it, the foundation of his philosophy.
The French, for whom his system was worked out by
Condillac, proceeded much farther in the matter on the
same basis, inasmuch as they put forward and urged the
proposition, penser, c’est sentir. Taken absolutely, this
proposition is false, but there lies this truth in it, that
all thought in part presupposes feeling as ingredient of
the perception which furnishes for it its material; in part
it is no more than feeling conditioned by corporeal organs.
As the latter, namely, is conditioned by the nerves of
sense, so is the former by the brain, and both consist in
nervous activity. Yet even the French school does not
hold closely by this proposition, but only with a meta-
physical—in this case a materialistic—purpose, just as
their Platonic, Cartesian, Leibnitzian opponents had only
held the false proposition that the only accurate know-
ledge of things consists in pure thought, also with a
metaphysical object, in order thereby to prove the imma-
teriality of the soul. Kant alone leads us away from both
these false paths, and from a quarrel in which neither
party, properly speaking, proceeds honestly to the truth.
The two sides both profess dianoiology, but their attention
is really turned to metaphysic, and hence they falsify the
dianoiology. Kant says: “ Certainly there is a pure know-
ledge from reason, that is, cognitions @ priori, which pre-
cede all experience, and consequently also a Thought,
which does not owe its material to any knowledge by
52 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

means of the senses.” But even this knowledge a priori,
although not drawn from experience, has only worth and
validity for the sake of experience ; for it is nothing else
but the awareness of our own knowledge-apparatus and its
modus operandi (brain-function), or, as Kant expresses it,
the form of the knowing consciousness itself, which re-
ceives its material primarily through the empirical know-
ledge, with which it is connected by means of the sense
feeling, and without which it is empty and useless ; whence.
his philosophy is termed the “Critique of pure Reason.”
Therewith all the above metaphysical psychology falls to
the ground, and with it falls all Plato’s pure activity of
the soul. For we see that knowledge without the per-
ception which is brought about through the body has no
material, and that therefore the knowing subject, as such,
is nothing but a mere empty form without the presuppo-:
sition of the body, even setting aside the fact that all
thought is a mere physiological function of the brain as
digestion is of the stomach.

If then, accordingly, Plato’s doctrine of isolating know-
ledge and keeping it pure from all communication with
the body, the senses and perception, is shown to be pur-
poseless, mistaken, and even impossible, we may, notwith-
standing, regard my doctrine, that only the intuitive
knowledge kept pure from all community with the will
attains the highest objectivity, and therefore perfection, as
the true analogue of the same. Respecting this I refer
the reader to the third book of my chief work.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 53

Section 5.
Aristotle.

The main characteristic of Aristotle may be said to have
been pre-eminent acuteness, combined with circumspection,
power of observation, many-sidedness, and want of depth.
His conception of the world is tame, although acutely
worked out. Depth of thought finds its material in our-
selves ; acuteness has to receive it from without if it is to
have any data. But at that time the empirical data were,
on the one hand few, and on the other false. For this
reason the study of Aristotle is nowadays not very profit-
able, while that of Plato remains so in the highest degree.
The want of depth complained of in Aristotle is naturally
most apparent in his “ Metaphysic,” where mere acuteness
will not, as elsewhere, suffice; hence, in the latter, he is
least satisfactory. His ‘“‘ Metaphysic” is, for the most part,
a conversation as to the philosophies of his predecessors,
which he criticises and refutes from his standpoint, mostly
from isolated sayings, without penetrating their meaning,
and somewhat like one who breaks windows from the out-
side. He propounds few or no dogmas of his own, or at
least not in a connected manner. That we are indebted to
his polemic for a great part of our knowledge of the older
philosophies, is an accidental service. He is most hostile
to Plato precisely where Plato is entirely right. The
“ideas” of the latter return like something which he can-
not digest again and again into his mouth; he is resolved
not to admit their validity. Acuteness suffices in the
empirical sciences; hence Aristotle has a pre-eminently
empirical bent. But inasmuch as, since his time, expe-
rience has made such progress as to stand to its then state
‘in the relation of adult age to childhood, the empirical
54 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sciences cannot, to-day, be directly very much advanced
by the method and the specially scientific attitude which
characterized him and was started by him, though indi-
rectly they may be. In zoology, however, he is still, at
least in some respects, of direct use. His empirical bent
in general gives him the disposition to continually dissi-
pate himself. He is apt, accordingly, to spring so easily
aside from the line of thought which he had begun, as to
be almost incapable of following out any line of thought
for long and to the end, in the capacity for which consists
precisely the faculty of deep thought. On the contrary,
he is always starting problems, but only touching them,
and proceeding at once, without solving them or even
thoroughly discussing them, to something else. Hence
his reader often thinks, “ Now it’s coming,” but it does
not come ; and hence it often appears, when he has stirred:
a problem and followed it out a short way, that the truth
has been hanging upon his lips, when suddenly he is off
to something else and leaves us in doubt. For he cannot
keep to anything, but springs from that which he intended
to something different which occurs to him at the moment,
as a child lets a toy fall in order to seize another it has
just seen. This is the weak side of his intellect; it is the
vivacity of superficiality. It is the explanation of why,
although Aristotle was a highly systematic head, since
from him proceeded the separation and classification of
the sciences, nevertheless his exposition is throughout
deficient in systematic arrangement, and we miss therein
a methodical progress, namely, the separation of the dis-
similar and collocation of the similar. He deals with
things as they occur to him without having previously
thought them out and sketched a clear plan of them; he
thinks with a pen in his hand, a method which, though it
is a great facility for the writer, is a great grievance for
the reader. Hence the planlessness and insufficiency of
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 55

his exposition ; hence the reason why he comes back a hun-
dred times to the same thing, simply because something
foreign to it had come in between ; hence the reason why he
cannot keep to a subject, but goes from the hundredth to
the thousandth; hence it is that he leads, as above de-
scribed, the reader, anxious for the solution of the problem
mooted, about by the nose; hence it is that, after having
devoted several pages to a subject, he begins his investiga-
tion suddenly from the beginning with AdBwpev obv &AnY
dpyiy ric oxéewc, and this six times in one work; hence
the motto, quid feret hic tanto dignum promissor hiatu,
applies to so many of the exordiums of his books and
chapters; hence, in a word, is he so often confused and
unsatisfactory. In exceptional cases he has certainly done
things differently, as, for instance, the three books of
“Rhetoric,” which are throughout a model of scientific
method, and indeed exhibit an architectonic symmetry
which may well have been the original of the Kantian.
The radical antithesis of Aristotle, alike in his mode of
thought as also in his exposition, is Plato. The latter
holds fast to his leading thought as if with an iron hand,
follows out its thread, be it never so thin, in all its ramifi-
cations, through the labyrinths of the longest dialogues,
and finds it again after all episodes. One sees from this
that he had fully and ripely thought out his subject, and
had planned an artistic arrangement for its exposition, be-
fore he started to write. Hence, every dialogue is a planned
work of ‘art, all of whose parts have a well-thought-out
connection, though it is often purposely hidden for a time,
and whose frequent episodes often lead back, unexpectedly
and of themselves, to the leading idea, after it has been
made clear by them. Plato always knew, in the full sense
of the word, what he wanted and intended; although for
the most part he does not carry through the problems to a
decisive issue, but is satisfied with their thorough-going
56 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

discussion. We need not much wonder, therefore, if some
accounts, especially in Allian (“ Var. Hist.,” ii., 19, iv., 9,
&e.), state that between Plato and Aristotle considerable
personal want of harmony was displayed; also that Plato
now and then spoke somewhat disparagingly of Aristotle,
whose unsteadiness, flashiness, and levity, though it was
connected with his polymathy, was quite antipathetic to
Plato. Schiller’s poem, “Breadth and Depth,” may be
applied to the antithesis between Aristotle and Plato.

In spite of this empirical mental attitude, Aristotle was,
nevertheless, no logical and methodical empiricist; hence
he had to be overthrown and driven out by the true father
of empiricism, Bacon of Verulam. Anyone who wants to
properly understand in what sense and why the latter was
the opponent and conqueror of Aristotle and his method,
has only to read the books of Aristotle, “De degeneratione et
corruptione.” Here he will find a true a priori treatment of
nature, one which seeks to understand and explain its pro-
cesses from mere conceptions; a particularly bad instance
is furnished in 1. ii., c. 4, where a chemistry is constructed
a priori. Bacon, on the other hand, appeared with the
advice not to make the abstract, but the perceptual ex-
perience, the source of the knowledge of nature. The
brilliant result of this is the present high state of the
natural sciences, from which we look down, with a piteous
smile, on these Aristotelian vexations of spirit. In this
respect it is very remarkable that the above-mentioned
books of Aristotle disclose, quite plainly even, the origin of
scholasticism ; indeed the quibbling, word-juggling method
of the latter is already to be met with there. For the
same purpose the books “ De ccelo” are also very useful, and
therefore worthy of being read. Even the first chapters
are a good sample of the method of seeking to determine
and to know the essence of nature from mere conceptions,
and the failure is here obvious. It is there proved to us in
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 57

chap. viil., from mere conception and locis communibus,
that there are not several worlds, and in chap. xii. it is
similarly speculated as to the course of the stars. It isa
logical reasoning from false conceptions, a quite special
nature-dialectic, which undertakes, from certain universal
axioms, which are supposed to express what is reasonable
and proper, to decide a priori what nature is and how it
must act. In seeing such a great, indeed stupendous, in-
tellect such as, after all said and done, Aristotle remains,
entangled so thickly in errors of this sort, which main-
tained their validity till a few hundred years ago, it is pre-
eminently plain to us how very much humanity owes to
Kopernicus, Kepler, Galilei, Bacon, Robert Hook, and
Newton. In chaps. vii. and viii. of the second book, Aris-
totle expounds to us his whole absurd arrangement of the
heavens: The stars cleave fast to the revolving hollow
globe; sun and planets to similar nearer ones; the friction
of revolving produces light and heat; the earth stands, it is
expressly said, still. All this might pass if there had not
already been something better; but when he himself, in
chap. xiii., presents to us the entirely correct views of the
Pythagoreans on the form, place, and motion of the earth
in order to reject them, it can hardly fail to arouse our in-
dignation. This will rise when we see from his frequent
polemic against Empedokles, Herakleitos, and Demokritos,
how all these had much more correct insight into nature,
and had even attended to experience better, than the barren
talker that we have before us. Empedokles had, indeed,
already taught a tangential force arising from revolution
and acting in opposition to gravity (ii., 1 et 13, also the
“Scholia,” p.491). Far removed from being able to estimate
this at its true value, Aristotle does not even admit the
correct views of these ancients on the true significance of
above and below, but here also takes his stand on the
vulgar opinion which follows the superficial appearance
58 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

(iv., 2). But we have further to bear in mind that these
his views found recognition and circulation, superseding
all that was earlier and better, and so became, later on,
the foundation of Hipparchus, and afterwards of the
Ptolemaic cosmology, with which mankind had to content
itself till the beginning of the sixteenth century, to the
great advantage, doubtless, of the Jewish-Christian religious
dogmas, which are at bottom incompatible with the Koper-
nican cosmology. (For how should there be a God in
heaven when there is no heaven ?) Theism, when seriously
meant, necessarily presupposes the division of the world
into heaven and earth; on the latter men run about, in
the former sits the God who rules them. Butif astronomy
takes the heaven away, it has taken the God with it also;
it has, that is to say, so extended the world that there is
no room left for God. But a personal being, such as every
God must necessarily be, who has no place, but is every-
where and nowhere, can merely be spoken of, but not
imagined, and therefore not believed in. To the extent, ac-
cordingly, to which physical astronomy is popularized,
theism must wane, however much it may have been im-
pressed upon men by an unceasing and pompous preaching.
The Catholic Church rightly recognized this at once, and
accordingly persecuted the Kopernican system ; as regards
which it is childish to wonder and shriek over the crushing
of Galilei, for omnis natura vult esse conservatrix sut.
Who knows whether a secret knowledge, or at least pre-
sentiment, of this congeniality of Aristotle to the doctrines of
the Church, and of the danger averted by him, did not con-
tribute to the overweening adoration of him in the middle
ages P Who knows whether many a one, stimulated by his
accounts of the older astronomical systems, had not secretly
penetrated these truths long before Kopernicus, who, after
many years of hesitation, and with the intention of separating
himself from the world, finally ventured to proclaim them ?
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 59

Section 6.
Stoics.

A very beautiful and pregnant conception with the
Stoics, is that of the Adyoc orepuarixdc, although more
complete accounts respecting it than those which have
come down to us might be desired (“ Diog. Laert.,” vii.,
136; “ Plut. de Plac. Phil.,” i, 7; “Stob. Eel.” i., p. 372).
Thus much is clear, however, that what was understood
thereby was that which in the successive individuals of a.
kind asserted and preserved its identical form, inasmuch
as it passes over from the one to the other; as, for in-
stance, the conception of the species embodied in the seed.
The Logos spermaticus is accordingly the indestructible
element in the individual, that, namely, through which it
is one of a species representing and maintaining it. It is
that by virtue of which the death which annihilates the
individual does not touch the kind, which makes the indi-
vidual continuously present in spite of death. Hence we
might translate Adyoc omepparixde as the magical formula
which at all times calls this form into the phenomenon.
Nearly related to it is the conception of the forma sub-
stantialis of the Schoolmen, through which the inner prin-
ciple of the complex of all the qualities of every natural
being is thought ; its antithesis is the materia prima, the
pure matter, destitute of all form and quality. The soul
of man is just his forma substantialis. What distinguishes
both conceptions is, that the Adyog orepmarixoc accrues
solely to living and procreating beings, but the forma sub-
stantialis to inorganic beings also. The one refers, more-
over, directly to the individual, the other directly to the
kind ; both, on the other hand, are obviously related to
the Platonic idea. Explanations of the forma substan-
60 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

tialis are to be seen in “Scotus Erigena de Divis. Nat.,”
lib. iii, p. 189 of the Oxford edition ; in “‘ Giordino Bruno,
della Cosa,” dial. 3, p. 252 seqq, and developed at length
in the “ Disputationibus Metaphysicis” of Suarez (disp. 15,
sect. 1), that genuine compendium of the whole scholastic
wisdom, where one should seek its acquaintance rather
than in the bald placidity of soulless German professors
of philosophy, the quintessence of all shallowness and
tediousness.

One chief source of our knowledge of the Stoic ethics is
the very complete presentation of them preserved for us
by Stobseus (“ Ecl. Eth.,” 1. 2, ¢. vii.), in which one may
flatter oneself that one possesses, for the most part,
verbal extracts from Zeno and Chrysippos. If this be
correct, it is not calculated to give us a high opinion of the
spirit of these philosophers, seeing that it is a pedantic,
pedagogic, eminently bald, incredibly empty, flat and spirit-
less exposition of the Stoic morality, without force and
life, and without valuable, striking, or noble thoughts.
Everything in it is deduced from mere conceptions, and
not drawn from reality and experience. Mankind is ac-
cordingly divided into orovéaio: and gavdox, virtuous and
vicious ; to the former is attributed everything good, to the
latter everything bad, all things appearing in consequence
black and white, like a Prussian sentry-box. Assuredly
these dull school-exercises will not bear comparison with
the energetic, powerful, and well-thought-out paragraphs
of Seneca.

The dissertations of Arrian on the philosophy of Epicte-
tus, composed some four hundred years after the origin of
the Stoa, give us no reliable information as to the true
spirit and the special principles of the Stoic ethics, for the
book is unsatisfactory both as to form and content.
Firstly, as regards the form, one misses in it every trace
of method, of systematic treatment, and even of orderly
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. O61

progression. In chapters tacked on to one another without
order and connection, it is untiringly repeated that one
should pay no attention to anything that is not the ex-
pression of our own will, and that therefore everything
that otherwise moves men should be regarded completely
without interest ; this is the Stoic arapatia. That, namely,
which is not é@' jiv would also not be mpdc jac. This
colossal paradox, however, is not deduced from any prin-
ciples at all, but the most extraordinary opinion of the
world is required of us without any ground being given
for it. Instead of this we find endless declamations in
ceaselessly recurring phrases and turns of expression.
For the consequences of these wonderful maxims are ex-
pounded in the most complete and vivid manner, and we
accordingly have described how the Stoics make something
from nothing at all. Meanwhile, everyone who thinks
differently is unceasingly abused as a slave and a fool.
But one hopes in vain for the indication of any clear and
adequate ground for the assumption of this remarkable
mode of thought, although such would have more effect:
than all the abuse and declamations of the whole thick
book. As it is, it is a true Capuchin’s sermon, with its
hyperbolic descriptions of the Stoic apathy, its incessantly
repeated panegyrics of the holy fathers Kleanthes, Chry-
sippos, Zeno, Krates, Diogenes, Sokrates, and its abuse of
all who differ from them. To such a book is certainly suited
the planless and desultory nature of the whole contents.
What the heading of a chapter indicates is only the sub-
ject of its beginning; at the first opportunity a jump is
made, and, as far as the nexus idearwm is concerned, we
pass from the hundredth to the thousandth. So much as
to form.

As regards the content, it is the same; and even if we
overlook the fact that the foundation is entirely wanting,
it is at all events not genuine and thoroughly Stoical, but
62 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

has a strong foreign admixture, which smacks of a Chris-
tian-Jewish source. The most undeniable proof of this is
the theism which is to be found on every side and is also
the support of the ethics; the Cynics and the Stoics act
here on behalf of God, whose will is their guiding-star ;
they are devoted to him, hope in him, &. The genuine
original Stoa is quite foreign to all this; God and the
world are there one, and nothing is known of a God who
thinks, wills, commands, and provides for men. Not alone
in Arrian, however, but in most of the heathen philosophic
writers of the first Christian century, we see the Jewish
theism, destined ere long to become a popular creed in
Christianity, already peering through, just as to-day there
peers through the writings of scholars the pantheism
native to India, which is also destined hereafter to pass
over into the popular belief. Ex oriente lua.

For the reasons above given, the ethic here expounded
is not purely Stoical. Many of its maxims are, indeed,
mutually incompatible, hence no ground-principles common
to it can be mentioned. In the same way Cynicism is
entirely falsified by the doctrine that the Cynic should be
such chiefly for the sake of others, namely, in order to act
upon them by his example as commissioned by God, and
in order by mixing in their affairs to guide them. Hence
it is said, “In a city where there were only wise men, no
Cynic would be necessary ;” and, in the same way, that he
should be healthy, strong, and cleanly, in order not to repel
people. How far is this from the self-satisfaction of the
old genuine Cynics? It is true Diogenes and Krates were
the domestic friends and advisers of many families; but
that was secondary and accidental, and in no wise the
purpose of Cynicism.

Arrian has therefore entirely lost sight of the properly
fundamental idea of Cynicism as of the Stoic ethics;
indeed he does not even seem to have felt the need of
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 63

them. He preaches self-renunciation because it pleases
him, and perhaps it only pleases him because it is difficult
and opposed to human nature, while in the meantime the
preaching is easy. He did not seek for the grounds of
self-renunciation ; hence one thinks, now one is listening to
a Christian ascetic, now again toa Stoic. For the maxims
of both often concur, but the principles on which they rest
are quite different. I refer the reader in this matter to
my chief work (vol. i., § 16, and vol. ii., chap. xvi.), where
for the first time the true spirit of Cynicism as of the
Stoa is systematically expounded.

The inconsistency of Arrian presents itself, indeed, in a
ridiculous manner, in that he, with his countless times re-
peated description of the Stoic, always says: ‘‘ He blames
no one, complains neither of Gods nor of men, scolds no
one,” while at the same time his whole book is throughout
conceived in a scolding tone, which often descends to
abuse.

Notwithstanding all this, there are here and there
genuine Stoic thoughts to be met with in the book, which
Arrian or Epictetus had derived from the ancient Stoics ;
and similarly Cynicism is in some of its features tellingly
and vividly depicted. In places there is also much sound
common sense, as well as descriptions, drawn from life, of
man and his doings. The style is easy and flowing, but
very bald.

That Epictetus’ ‘Encheiridion” is also composed by
Arrian,as A. Wolfassured us in his lectures, I do not believe.
It has much more spirit in fewer words than the disserta-
tions, is instinct throughout with sound sense, has no empty
declamations, no ostentation, is concise to the point, and
moreover written in the tone of a well-meaning friend
giving his advice; while, on the other hand, the disserta-
tions speak mostly in a scolding and execrating tone. The
content of both books is, on the whole, the same; only
64 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

that the “ Encheiridion”’ has very little of the theism of the
dissertations. Perhaps the “ Encheiridion ” was Epictetus’
own compendium, which he dictated to his hearers, but
the dissertations the manuscript copied from the free dis-
course by his commentator Arrian.

SECTION 7.
Neoplatonists.

The reading of the Neoplatonists requires much patience,
since they fail entirely as regards form and style. Far
better than the others in this respect is Porphyry. He is
the only one who writes clearly and connectedly, so that
one reads him without repulsion.

The worst, on the contrary, is Iamblichos, in his book “De
Mysteriis Egyptiorum,” which is full of crass superstition
and crude demonology, besides being conceited. He has,
it is true, another as it were esoteric opinion on magic and
theurgy, but his statements concerning this are only flat
and insignificant. On the whole, he is a bad and turgid
writer, limited, distorted, grossly superstitious, confused,
and unclear. One sees plainly that what he teaches has by
no means arisen from his own reflection, but that they are
foreign, often only half-understood, but all the more
strenuously asserted dogmas; hence, also, he is full of
contradictions. But the book in question is now denied to
be by Iamblichos, and I am inclined to agree with this
opinion when I read the long extracts from his lost works
preserved by Stobzus, and which are incomparably better
than the book “ De Mysteriis,” containing as they do many
good thoughts of the Neoplatonic school.

Proklos, again, is a dry, bald, insipid talker; his com-
mentary to Plato’s “ Alkibiades,” one of the worst of the
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 65

Platonic dialogues, which, moreover, may be ungenuine, is
the baldest, most diffuse piece of insipidity in the world.
Over every, even the most insignificant, word of Plato’s
there is endless talk, and a deep meaning is sought therein.
What by Plato was said mythically and allegorically is
taken in its literal sense and in a spirit of rigid dogmatism,
everything being twisted into the superstitious and the
theosophical. It is, nevertheless, not to be denied, that in
the first half of this commentary some very good ideas are
to be met with, though they probably more strictly belong
to the school than to Proklos himself. It is a highly im-
portant proposition that closes the fasciculum primum partis
prime: al rav Wuyav epécec Ta peysora auvreovoe mpos
rove Blove, Kai ov mAarromévore eEwSer Eoikapev, GAN ef
iavrev mooBdddoper Tac aipéoecc, Kab'de Sid lwpev (animorum
appetitus [ante hanc vitam concepti] plurimam vim habent in
vitas eligendas, nec extrinsecus fictis similes sumus, sed
nostra sponte facimus electiones, secundwm quas deinde
vitas transigimus). This certainly has its root in Plato,
and approaches Plato’s doctrine of intelligible character,
standing high above the dull and narrow theories of the
freedom of the individual will, that can always do thus and
otherwise, with which our professors of philosophy—the
catechism for ever before their eyes—content themselves
up to the present day. Augustine and Luther, for their
part, had called in aid election by grace. That was good
enough for those God-given times, when people were ready,
if it pleased God, to go to the devil in God's name; but in
our time refuge can only be taken in the aseity of the will,
and it must be acknowledged that, as Proklos has it, ob
mrarropévore ELwev eoikaper.

Plotinos, finally, the most important of all, is very un-
equal, and the various “ Enneads” are of extremely diverse
value and content; the fourth is excellent. Exposition
and style are, however, for the most part, very bad with

F
66 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

him; his thoughts are not ordered nor previously con-
sidered, but he writes them down just as they come.
Porphyry in his biography tells us of the loose careless
way in which he set to work. Hence his bald tedious
ditfuseness and confusion often overcomes all patience, so
that one wonders how such stuff could have come down to
the modern world. He usually has the style of a pulpit
preacher, and as the latter sets forth the gospel, so he sets
forth the Platonic doctrines. At the same time, what
Plato has said mythically or half metaphorically, he drags
down to intentional prosaic seriousness, and chews at the
same thought for hours without adding anything to it from
his own resources. In this he proceeds authoritatively, and
not demonstratively, speaking throughout ea tripode ; ex-
plains the matter as he thinks it to be, without attempting
to lay any foundation for it. And yet there are great, im-
portant, and pregnant truths to be found in his works, and
these he certainly understood himself, for he is by no
means without insight; for which reason he undoubtedly
deserves to be read, and richly rewards the patience neces-
sary thereto.

The explanation of these characteristics of Plotinos I
find in the fact that he and the Neoplatonists generally are
not properly philosophers, are not original thinkers, but
that what they expound is an alien, traditional doctrine,
notwithstanding that it has been well digested and assimi-
lated by them. It is, namely, Indo-Egyptian wisdom,
which they sought to embody in the Greek philosophy, and
as a suitable connective tissue—a conduit or menstruum
for this—they use the Platonic philosophy, especially those
parts of it which branch off into the mystical. To the
Indian origin, through Egypt, of the Neoplatonic dogmas,
the All-One doctrine of Plotinos testifies directly and un-
mistakably, as we find it admirably presented in the fourth
“Ennead.” Even the first chapter of the first book of the
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 67

latter, zepi ovaiac Wuyic, gives in great brevity the ground-
doctrines of his whole philosophy of the vy}, which is
originally one, and is only sundered into many by means
of the corporeal world. Particularly interesting is the
eighth book of this “ Ennead,” which shows how the Wyn
has reached this state of multiplicity by a sinful striving.
It carries, accordingly, a double guilt; firstly, that of its
descent into this world, and secondly, that of its sinful
deeds in the same; the former it expiates by its temporal
existence generally, the latter, which is the less important,
by transmigration (c. 5). This is obviously the same
thought as the Christian original sin and particular sin.
But above all worthy of being read is the ninth book,
where, in chap. iii., e¢ raoar at Yuyai pia, from the unity of
the above world-soul, among other things, the wonders of
animal magnetism are explained, especially the phenomenon
even now observed, that the somnambule hears a softly
spoken word at the greatest distance, though this, of course,
requires a chain of persons standing en rapport with her.
With Plotinos, moreover, there appears, probably for the
first time in Western philosophy, the Idealism already long
current in the East, inasmuch as it is taught (“ Enn.,” iii.,
1. 7, c. 10) that the soul has made the world in its process
from eternity into time with the explanation: ob ydp rw
aurov roves rou wavroc Tomoc, n Puy (neque est alter hujus
universi locus, quam anima), while the ideality of time is
expressed in the words: det dé ob« EkwSev ric Wuyiic Nau Bavery
Tov ypdvoy, HowEp OvVdE TOY alwva Exet ELw TOV byToC (oportet
autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere). That
éxei (hereafter), is the opposite of év3dée (here), and a very
favourite conception with him, which he more nearly ex-
plains by kéopoc vonrdc and Kdopoc alaSyréc, mundus intelli-
gibilis et sensibilis, also by ra ava, cai ra cdrw. The ideality
of time receives, in chapters xi. and xii., very good elucida-
tion. Attached thereto is the beautiful explanation, that
68 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS,

we, in our temporal condition, are not what we ought to be
and might be; hence, that we always expect better things
of the future, and look towards the fulfilment of that which
is wanting to us, whence arises the future and its condition
time (c. 2 et 3), A further confirmation of the Indian
origin is afforded us by Iamblichos (‘« De Mysteriis,” sect. 4,
c. 4 et 5), in his exposition of the doctrine of Metempsy-
chosis, where also may be found (sect. 5, c. 6), the doctrine
of the finite liberation and salvation from the bonds of
birth and death, Wuyiic KaSapatc, Kal redelware, Kal f) ao TIS
yevécewe draddayi, and (¢. 12) 716 €v ratc Ovoiaic wip jpac
aArod\vEl THY Tie yEevegEews Osopor, in other words, the promise
contained in all Indian religious books, which is designated
in English by final emancipation or salvation. In addition
to this there is, lastly (a. a. 0., sect. 7, c. 2), the account of
an Egyptian symbol which represents a creative God sitting
on the lotus; obviously the world-creating Brahma sitting
on the lotus-flower, corresponding to the navel of Vishnu,
as he is frequently represented, e.g., in Langles, “ Monu-
ments de l’Hindoustan,” vol. i., ad p. 175; in Coleman’s
“Mythology of the Hindus,” tab. 5, &c. This symbol is
extremely important as a sure proof of the Hindu origin of
the Egyptian religion, as, in the same respect, is the report
also given by Porphyry “De Abstinentia,” lib. ii., that in
Egypt the cow was holy, and might not be slaughtered.
Even the circumstance related by Porphyry in his life of
Plotinos, that the latter, after he had been for many years
the disciple of Ammonius Saccas, had intended going with
the army of Gordian to Persia and India, but was prevented
by the overthrow and death of Gordian, indicates that the
doctrines of Ammonius were of Indian origin, and that
Plotinos had intended, at last, to acquire them more purely
from their source. The same Porphyry furnished a com-
plete theory on Metempsychosis, which is conceived entirely
in the Indian spirit, although impregnated with the
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 69

Platonic Psychology ; it is given in the Stobeos “ Eclogues,”
li, ¢. 52, § 54.

Secrion 8.
The Gnostics.

The Cabalistic and Gnostic philosophies, with whose
originators, as Jews and Christians, Monotheism stood in
the forefront, are attempts to get rid of the flagrant con-
tradiction between the production of this world by an al-
mighty, all-good, and all-wise being, and the sadly deficient
construction of the same world. They introduce, therefore,
between the world and the world-cause a series of inter-
mediate beings, by whose fault a decline, and thereby the
world, has arisen ; hence they roll off the fault, as it were,
from the sovereign on to his ministers. This proceeding
had already been indicated in the myth of the fall, which
is in every way the culminating point of Judaism. These
beings are, with the Gnostics, the 7Ajeoua, the exons, the
thy, the demiurgos, &c. The series was lengthened at
pleasure by each Gnostic.

The whole proceeding is analogous to that whereby, in
order to modify the contradiction involved in the assumed
connection and reciprocal action of a material and imma-
terial substance in man, physiological philosophers have
sought to interpose mediate essences, such as nervous
fluidity, nervous ether, vital spirits, and so forth. Both
seek to hide what they are not able to abolish.
70 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

SEctTion 9.
Scotus Erigena.

This remarkable man affords us the interesting spectacle
of the struggle between recognized and apprehended truth
and local dogmas, fixed by early indoctrination and grown
beyond the reach of all doubt, or at least of all direct
attack, side by side with the endeavour proceeding from a
noble nature to reduce to harmony, by some means or
other, the dissonance which had thus arisen. This can
indeed only happen, in so far as the dogmas are turned,
twisted, and where necessary distorted, until nolentes vo-
lentes they fit into the recognized truth, which remains the
dominating principle, but is, notwithstanding, obliged to
go about in a strange and uncomfortable garb. Erigena
knows how to carry out this method, and his great work, “De
Divisione Nature,” is a complete success until at last he
has to make up his account with the origin of evil and of
sin, together with the threatened pains of hell, when he
comes to grief, more particularly in the optimism which is
a consequence of his Jewish Monotheism. He teaches in
the fifth book the return of all things to God, and the
metaphysical unity and indivisibility of all humanity, and
even of all nature. The question now arises, where does
sin remain? It cannot be with God. Where is hell, with
its endless pains, such as have been promised ? Who is to
go there? Humanity is saved, and that in its entirety.
The dogma here remains unconquerable. Erigena writhes
miserably through diffuse sophisms, which turn in the end
on words, and is finally driven to contradiction and absur-
dity, especially since the question as to the origin of sin
has inevitably crept in, and yet the latter can neither lie in
God nor in the will created by him, since otherwise God
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 71

would be the originator of sin, which last point he sees
clearly (see p. 287 of the Oxford editio princeps of 1681).
He is now driven to absurdities: sin must have neither a
cause nor a subject: malwm incausale est . . . penitus in-
causale et insubstantiale est (Ibid.). The true cause of this
stumbling-block is, that the doctrine of the emancipation
of humanity and the world, which is obviously of Indian
origin, presupposes the Indian doctrine according to which
the origin of the world (this Sansara of the Buddhists) is
itself evil, proceeding, namely, froma sinful act of Brahma,
which Brahma, again, we ourselves are, for the Indian
mythology is everywhere transparent. On the contrary, in
Christianity this doctrine of the emancipation of the world
had to be based on the Jewish Theism, where the Lord
not only made the world, but afterwards found it very
good: mavra cada diay. Hine ille lacrime: hence arise
those difficulties which Erigena fully recognized, although
he, in his age, did not venture to attack the evil by the
root. Meanwhile he has the Hindustanic mildness. He
rejects the eternal damnation and punishment asserted by
Christianity. All creatures rational, animal, vegetable,
and lifeless must, according to their inner essence, in the
necessary course of nature, attain to eternal happiness, for
they have proceeded from the eternally good. But only
for the saints and righteous is the complete unity with
God, Deificatio. For the rest, Erigena is sufficiently
honest as not to hide the great embarrassment in which
the origin of evil places him; he expounds it clearly in the
passage quoted in the fifth book. As a matter of fact, the
origin of evil is the rock on which Theism, no less than
Pantheism, splits, for both imply Optimism. But evil and
sin, both in their fearful magnitude, are not to be explained
away, while the threatened punishments for the latter
only increase the former. Whence all this, now, in a world
which is either itself a God, or the well-intentioned work
72 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

of a God? If the theistic opponents of Pantheism exclaim
against it, “What! all evil, terrible, abominable entities
are God?” the Pantheists may reply: ‘“ How! all these
evil, terrible, abominable entities have been produced by a
God de gaieté de ceur.’ We find Erigena in the same
difficulty in the other work of his which has come down to
us, viz., in the book, ‘‘De Predestinatione,” which neverthe-
less is far inferior to the “De Divisione Nature,” and
where he appears, not in the character of philosopher, but
of theologian. Here also he plagues himself miserably
with contradictions having their ultimate ground in the
fact that Christianity is founded on Judaism. But his
endeavours place them only in a still clearer light. God
is all, all and in all, and has made all; thus much is
fixed, “consequently also sin and evil.” This inevitable
consequence has to be got rid of, and Erigena finds him-
self necessitated to put forward the most miserable word-
juggles. If evil and sin are not, then nothing is—not
even the devil! Or else free-will is to blame for it. God
has indeed created this, but created it free, and therefore
it concerns him not what it does afterwards. For it was
free, that is, it could act so and otherwise; it might there-
fore be just as well good as bad. Bravo! but the truth is
that free being and created being are two mutually de-
structive and therefore contradictory qualities; hence the
assumption that God has created beings, and has at the
same time imparted to them freedom of will, is as much as
to say that he has created them, and at the same time he
has not created them. For operari sequitur esse, i.e. the
effects or actions of any possible thing can never be any-
thing else than the consequences of its nature, which is
only known through them. Hence a being, in order to be
free in the sense here required, must have no nature, that
is, must be nothing, or, in other words, must both be and
not be at once. For what is must also be something ; an
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 73

existence without essence cannot even be thought. If a
being is created, it is created as it is created, and therefore
it is badly created if it is badly created, and badly created
if it acts badly, i.e., its effects are bad. As a consequence
the guilt of the world, which is just as little to be ex-
plained away as its evil, always shifts itself back on its
originator, and Scotus Erigena, like Augustine before him, is
pitiably occupied in endeavouring to relieve him of it.

Tf, on the other hand, a being is morally free, it cannot
have been created, but must have aseity, that is, must be
an original thing existing by virtue of its own power and
completeness, and not referable to another. Its existence
is then its own act of creation, which unfolds and expands
itself in time, exhibiting once for all the distinct character
of this being, which is, nevertheless, its own work, for all
of whose manifestations the responsibility rests upon itself
alone. If, now, a being is responsible for its action—if it
is to be accountable—it must be free. Thus, from the
responsibility and imputability which our conscience de-
clares, it follows very certainly that the will is free, but
from this, again, that it is the original thing itself, and
hence, that not merely the action, but also the existence
and essence of man are his own work. Respecting all this
I refer the reader to my treatise on the freedom of the
will, where it will be found completely and irrefutably
expounded. For this reason the professors of philosophy
have sought, by the most complete silence, to boycott this
crowned prize-essay of mine. The guilt of sin and evil
necessarily falls from nature back on its author. But if
the latter is Will manifesting itself in all its phenomena,
the guilt has come back to the right man; if, on the con-
trary, it is a God, the origin of sin and evil contradict his
divinity.

In reading Dionysius Areopagita, to whom Hrigena
so often refers, I have found that the former is in every
74 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

respect his prototype. The pantheism of Erigena, as well
as his theory of sin and evil, are to be found, in their main
features at least, already in Dionysius, although Dionysius
only indicates what Erigena has developed, expressed with
boldness, and expounded with fire. Erigena had infinitely
more genius than Dionysius, but Dionysius had given him
the material and the direction of his reflections, and con-
sequently prepared the way for him. That Dionysius is
ungenuine does not affect the question, since it is indiffe-
rent what the author of the book “ De Divinis Nominibus”
was called. As he, in the meantime, probably lived in
Alexandria, I believe that, in a roundabout way unknown
to us, he was the channel through which a drop of Indian
wisdom may have reached Erigena, since, as Colebrooke
has observed in his treatise on the philosophy of the
Hindus (in Colebrooke’s ‘‘ Miscellaneous Essays,” vol. i.,
p. 244), the proposition ITI. of the “ Karika of Kapila” is to
be found in Erigena.

Section 10.
Scholasticism.

I should place the properly distinctive character of
Scholasticism in that its chief criterion of truth is Scrip-
ture, to which one may always appeal from every con-
clusion of reason. To its specialities belongs, that its
style has throughout a polemical character. Every investi-
gation is soon transformed into a controversy, whose pro
et contra generate new pro et contra, and thereby furnish
its material, which without it would soon run dry. The
hidden ultimate root of this speciality consists, however, in
the antagonism between Reason and Revelation.

The reciprocal justification of Realism and Nominalism,
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 75

and thereby the possibility of the so long and obstinately.
fought-out quarrel, may be rendered intelligible in the
following way.

I call the most diverse things red if they have this
colour. Obviously red is a mere name by which I de-
signate this phenomenon, no matter where it appears.
In the same way all common notions are mere names to
designate qualities appearing in diverse things. These
things, on the contrary, are the actual and real, so that.
Nonunalism is obviously right.

On the other hand, when we observe that all those
actual things, of which alone reality can be predicated,
are temporal, and consequently pass away, while the
qualities, as red, hard, soft, life, plant, horse, man, which
these names signify, continue to exist irrespective of this,
and consequently are always there, we find that the quali-
ties which these names designate by means of common
conceptions, are conceived through their indestructible
existence, and therefore have reality, which is consequently
to be attributed to the conceptions, and not to the par-
ticular being, whence it follows that Realism is right.

Nominalism leads directly to Materialism, for after the
removal of all qualities matter alone remains in the last
resort. If conceptions are mere names, and the singular
things the Real, their qualities as partaking of their
singular nature would be transient. There remains, there-
fore, as that which continues, which is real, only matter.
But, strictly speaking, the justification of realism above
given does not belong to it, but to the Platonic doctrine of
ideas, of which it is the extension. The eternal forms and
qualities of natural things, iy, it is which subsist through
all change, and to which therefore a reality of a higher
kind is to be attributed than to the individuals in which
they display themselves. On the contrary, this cannot be
conceded to the mere abstractions, which are not per-
76 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

ceivable. What, for example, is the Real in such con-
ceptions as “relation, difference, separation, injury, inde-
terminateness,” &c. ?

A certain relation, or at least a parallelism, of apposi-
tions is discernible when one places Plato against Aristotle,
Augustine against Pelagius, the Realists against the
Nominalists. One might even assert that there is a cer-
tain kind of polar repulsion of thought manifested here,
which, by a most extraordinary coincidence, expressed itself
for the first time, and most decisively, in two very great
men, who happened to be contemporary, and to live near
each other.

Section 11.
Bacon of Verulam.

In another and more specially definite sense than that
indicated, the express and intentional antithesis to Aristotle
was Bacon of Verulam. The former, namely, had for the
first time systematically expounded the correct method of
attaining from universal to particular truths, in other
words, the way downwards, which is the same as the
syllogism, the organum Aristotelis. On the other hand,
Bacon exhibited the way upwards, in so far as he ex-
pounded the method of attaining from special to general
truths. This is induction in contradistinction to deduc-
tion, and its exposition is the novwm organuwm, which
expression, chosen in opposition to Aristotle, says in effect,
—‘Itis quite a different manner of attacking the subject.”
The error of Aristotle, or rather the error of the Aris-
totelians, lay in the assumption that they already pos-
sessed all truth—that truth, namely, is contained in their
axioms, to wit, in certain a priori propositions, or proposi-
tions which count for such, and that, in order to gain
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 77

particular truths, deduction from the former is all that is
necessary. An Aristotelian instance of this is given in the
books “De Ceo.” Bacon shows, on the contrary, with
justice, that the above axioms did not have such a content,
that the truth did not lie at all in the system of human know-
ledge at that time in vogue, but rather outside it, and that
therefore it was not to be developed from it, but had to be
introduced into it, and that as a consequence universal
and true propositions of a great and rich content had first
to be won through induction.

The Schoolmen, led by Aristotle, thought, we will in
the first place establish the universal; the particular will
flow therefrom, or may afterwards find a place therein as
it can. We will, therefore, first of all establish what
accrues to the ens, to the thing in general. The speciality
of particular things may afterwards be gradually added,
and of course through experience, but the latter can never
alter anything in the universal. Bacon said, rather, we
will in the first instance learn to Imow the individual
things as completely as possible, then we shall at last
know what the thing in general is.

Meanwhile, Bacon is inferior to Aristotle in so far as
his method, leading upwards, is never so accurate, certain,
and infallible as that of Aristotle, leading downwards.
Indeed, Bacon himself has, in his physical investiga-
tions, set aside the rules of his method as given in the
“New Organon.”

Bacon’s attention was chiefly turned to physical science.
What he did for this, to wit, beginning from the be-
ginning, Descartes did immediately afterwards for meta-
physics.
73 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Section 12,
The Philosophy of the Moderns.

In the arithmetic books the accuracy of the solution of
an example is wont to be announced by the balancing of
the same, that is, by the fact that no remainder is left.
With the resolution of the riddle of the world it is similar.
All systems are sums which do not balance; they leave a
remainder, or, if a chemical simile be preferred, an unre-
solved deposit. This consists in that, if one draws a
correct conclusion from their premisses, the results do not
answer to the real world lying before us, but rather that
many sides of it remain on the hypothesis quite inex-
plicable. Thus, for example, with the materialistic
systems, which make the world arise from a matter pos-
sessed of simply mechanical qualities and in accordance
with their laws, neither the complete and remarkable adapta-
bility of ends to means in nature, nor the existence of
consciousness in which this same matter is first presented,
agree. This then is their remainder. With the theistic
systems, on the contrary, and not more so with the pan-
theistic, the overweening physical evils and the moral
obliquity of the world cannot be brought into harmony.
These, therefore, stand over as a remainder, or lie as an
unresolved deposit. It is true that in such cases there is
no lack of sophisms, or, where necessary, of mere words
and phrases in order to cover up such remainders, but
such devices will not hold water for long. Individual
errors in the reckoning are then sought for, since the sum
will not balance, until finally it is obliged to be confessed
that the starting-point has been wrong. If, again, the
thorough-going consequence and harmony of all the pro-
positions of a system be accompanied at every step by a
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 79

similar thorough-going harmony with the world of expe-
rience, without any discord being audible between the two,
this is the criterion of its truth, the required balancing of
the arithmetical sum. In the same way, if the starting-
point has been false, it is as much as to say that from the
beginning the matter has not been seized by the right end,
whereby one is afterwards led from error to error, for in
philosophy, as in many other things, everything turns on
whether one seizes it by the right end. But the pheno-
mena of the world which have to be explained present
countless ends to us, of which one only can be the right
one; they resemble an intricate tangle of thread, with
many false end-threads hanging from it. He who finds
out the right one can disentangle the whole. But one
there is which disentangles itself easily from the others,
and from this it may be known that it is the right end.
One may also compare it to a labyrinth, which offers a
hundred entrances, opening out into corridors, all of
which, after various long and intricate windings, finally
lead out again, with the exception of a single one, whose
windings really take us to the centre, where the idol
stands. If one has hit upon this entrance one will not
fail to find the way, but one can never attain to the goal
by any other. Ido not conceal my opinion that only the
Will in us is the right end of the thread-tangle, the true
entrance to the labyrinth.

Now Descartes proceeded on the example of the meta-
physics of Aristotle and the conception of substance, and
therewith we see also all his successors accommodate them-
selves. He assumed, however, two kinds of substance, the
thinking and the extended. These were supposed to act
on one another through the influaus physicus, which soon
proved itself to be his remainder. It took place, namely,
not merely from without inwards, in the presentment of
the corporeal world, but also from within outwards, be-
80 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

tween the Will (which was unhesitatingly assigned to
thought) and the actions of the body. The closer rela-
tions between these two kinds of substance were the main
problem on account of which such great difficulties arose,
and in consequence of which men were driven to the system
of causes occasionelles and of the harmonia prestabilita,
after ‘the spiritus animales, which had sufficed for the
matter with Descartes, would no longer serve.’ Male-
branche, for instance, holds the influzus physicus for un-
thinkable; but in this he does not take into consideration
that the same thing is assumed without question in the
creation and direction of the corporeal world by a God
who is also a spirit. He replaces it therefore by the cause
causionelle and nous voyons tout en Diew—here lies his re-
mainder. Spinoza, also, treading in the footsteps of his
teacher, proceeded from the above conception of substance
just as though it were a given thing. He nevertheless
declared both kinds of substance, the thinking and ex-
tended, for one and the same, whereby the old difficulty
was avoided. For this reason, however, his philosophy
was chiefly negative, hinging on a mere negation of the
two great Cartesian antitheses, for he also extended his
identification to the other antithesis erected by Descartes,
God and the World. The latter was nevertheless, properly
speaking, a mere mode of teaching or form of presentation.
It would have been too offensive to have said straight out:
“Tt is not true that God has made this world, but it exists
by its own perfection of power ;” hence he chose an indi-
rect phrase, and said: “ The world itself isGod;” to main-

‘ For the rest, the spiritus animales occur already with Vanini,
“De Nature Arcanis,” dial. 49, as a well-known thing. Perhaps
their originator is Willisius (‘‘ De Anime Brutorum,” Geneva, 1680,
p. 35 sq.). Fleuron, “‘ De la vie,” ii., p. 72, ascribes them to Galen.
Even Iamblichos in Stobzos (‘‘Eclog.,” 1. i, e. 52, § 29) quotes
them pretty clearly as a doctrine of the Stoics.
A

FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 81

tain which would never have occurred to him, if, instead
of proceeding from Judaism, he had started straightfor-
wardly from nature itself. This phrase served at the same
time to give his doctrines the appearance of positivity,
though they are at bottom merely negative ; and he there-
fore leaves the world unexplained, in that his doctrines
issue in: “The world is because it is; and is as it is
because it so is.” (With this phrase Fichte was accus-
tomed to mystify his students.) The deification of the
world, arisen in the above manner, did not admit of any
true ethics, and was, besides, in flagrant contradiction with
the physical evils and the moral recklessness of this world.
Here, then, is Spinoza’s remainder.

The conception of substance from which Spinoza starts,
he regards, as already said, as something given. He, in-
deed, defines it according to its ends, but he does not
trouble himself as to its origin. For it was Locke who,
shortly after him, propounded the great doctrine that a
philosopher, who wishes to deduce or demonstrate any-
thing from conceptions, has in the first place to investigate
the origin of such conception; for its content and what
follows therefrom is determined entirely by its origin, as
the source of all knowledge attainable by means of the
same. But had Spinoza investigated the origin of this
conception of substance, he must have found at last that
it is simply matter, and therefore that the true content of
the conception is nothing other than its essential and a
priori assignable qualities. Indeed, everything attributed
by Spinoza to his substance finds its confirmation in
matter, and only there; it is uncaused, that is, causeless,
eternal, singular, and unique, and its modifications are
extension and consciousness, the latter, of course, as the
exclusive quality of the brain. Spinoza is therefore an
unconscious materialist, yet the matter, which, when
carried out, realizes and empirically confirms his con-

G
82 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

ceptions, is not the falsely-assumed and atomistic matter
of Demokritos and of the later French materialists, which
has none but mechanical qualities, but a correctly-con-
ceived matter, with all its inexplicable qualities attached
to it; for this distinction I refer the reader to my chief
work, vol. ii., chap. xxiv., p. 815 sqq. (8rd ed., p. 357 sqq.).
This method of assuming the conception of substance un-
noticed, in order to make it the starting-point, we find
already with the Hleatics, as may especially be seen from the
Aristotelean book “De Xenophane,” &c. For Xenophanes
also proceeds from the éy, that is, from substance, and
its qualities are demonstrated without its previously being
questioned or its being asked whence he has his know-
ledge of such a thing. If this had been done it would
clearly have appeared what he was really speaking about,
that is, what perception ultimately lies at the foundation
of his conception and imparts to it reality, and in the end
it would have been seen to be matter only, of which all
that he says is true. In the following chapters on Zeno
the coincidence with Spinoza extends itself even to the
style and the expression. One can therefore scarcely refrain
from assuming that Spinoza had known and used this
work, since at his time Aristotle, even though attacked by
Bacon, still stood in high reputation, and good editions
with Latin version were to be had. In this case Spinoza
would be a mere resuscitator of the Eleatics as Gassendi
was of Epicurus. We see once more, then, how extremely
rare in any department of thought or knowledge is the
really new and wholly original.

The above procedure of Spinoza on the conception of
substance, moreover, rests, especially in its formal aspect,
on the false assumption which he had taken over from his
teacher Descartes, and he in his turn from Anselm of Can-
terbury, to wit that evistentia could proceed from essentia,
i.e., that from mere conception an existence could be de-
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 83

duced which would accordingly be a necessary one; or, in
other words, that by virtue of the nature or definition of
something merely thought, it should be necessary that it
should be no longer something merely thought, but some-
thing really existent. Descartes had applied this false
assumption to the conception of the ens perfectissimum ;
but Spinoza took that of substantia or causa sui (which
latter expresses a contradictio in adjecto); see his first
definition, which is his toeérov Wevdoc in the introduction of
the “ Ethics,’ and then proposition 7 of the first book.
The difference between the basal conceptions of both
philosophers consists almost entirely in expression, but
their employment as starting-points, that is as given, is
with the one as with the other founded on the mistake of
making a perceptual arise out of an abstract presentment ;
while in truth all abstract presentment arises from the
perceptual, and is therefore based on the latter. We have
here, therefore, a fundamental derepov xpdrepor.

Spinoza encumbered himself with a special difficulty by
calling his one and only substance Deus, for since this
word was already in use for the designation of quite
another conception, he had continually to fight against
misunderstandings which arose from it; the reader, in-
stead of the conception assigned to it by Spinoza’s first
explanations, always attaching to it that which it other-
wise signifies. If he had not employed the word he would
have been relieved of long and tedious expositions in the
first book. But he did so in order that his doctrines might
find less opposition, an object in which he nevertheless
failed. In consequence, a certain double sense pervades
his whole exposition, which one might in a manner term
allegorical, especially as he adopts the same plan with one
or two other notions, as already observed (in the first
essay). How much clearer, and consequently better,
would his so-called Ethics have turned out if he had
84 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

spoken straightforwardly what was in his mind, and called
things by their name; and if he had presented his thoughts,
together with their grounds, in an upright and natural
manner, instead of making them appear laced-up in the
Spanish boots of propositions, demonstrations, scholia and
corollaries, in a garb borrowed from geometry, which, in-
stead of giving to philosophy the certainty of the former,
loses all significance as soon as geometry, with its con-
struction of conceptions, ceases to stand inside it, whence
the motto here applies, cucullus non facit monicum.

In the second book he expounds the two modes of his
one substance as extension and presentment (eztensio et
cogitatio), which is obviously a false division, since exten-
sion exists only for and in presentment, and ought there-
fore to have been, not opposed, but subordinated, to the
latter.

Spinoza everywhere expressly and emphatically sounds
the praises of letitia, and sets it up as condition and
sign of every praiseworthy action, while he rejects uncon-
ditionally all tristitia—although his Old Testament might
have told him, ‘Sorrow is better than laughter, for by
the sadness of the countenance the heart is made glad”
(Ecclesiastes vii. 3)—he does all this merely for love of
logicality, for if this world is a God, it is an end to itself,
and must glorify and rejoice at its own existence—saute
marquis! Semper merry, nunquam sad! Pantheism is
essentially and necessarily optimism. This compulsory
optimism forces Spinoza to many other false consequences,
among which the absurd and very often monstrous results
of his moral philosophy take the first rank, rising indeed
in the sixteenth chapter of his “Tractatus Theologico-
Politicus” to true infamy. On the other hand, at times
he leaves the consequences out of sight, where they would
have led to correct views, as for instance in his as un-
worthy as false deliverances about animals. (‘“ Eth.,” pars.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 85

IV., appendices, cap. 26, et ejusdem partis, prop. 37,
Scholion). He speaks here, as a Jew knows how, according
to the first and ninth chapters of Genesis, so that we, who
are accustomed to purer and worthier doctrines, are over-
powered by the fetor judaicus. Dogs he seems not to
have known at all. To the monstrous proposition with
which the twenty-sixth chapter referred to opens, preter
homines nihil singulare in natura novimus, cujus mente
‘gaudere et quod nobis amicitia, aut aliquo consuetutinis
genere jungere possumus, the best answer is given by a
Spanish literateur of our day (Larva, pseudonym Figaro
in “ Doncel,’” ¢. 33), el que no ha tenido un perro, no sabe lo
que es querer y ser querido (He who has never kept a dog
does not know what it is to love and be loved). The
cruelties which, according to Colerus, Spinoza for his
amusement and amid hearty laughter was accustomed to
practise on spiders and flies, coincide only too well with
the propositions here attacked, as also with the chapters
of Genesis referred to. Notwithstanding all this, Spinoza’s
“ Ethica” is without doubt a mixture of false and true,
of the admirable and the bad. Towards the end, in the
‘second half of the last part, we see him in vain endea-
vouring to make himself clear to himself. He cannot do
it, and therefore nothing remains for him but to become
mystical, as happens here. But in order not to be unjust
to this certainly great mind we must consider that he had
too little before him, hardly more than Descartes, Male-
branche, Hobbes, and Giordano Bruno. The basal philoso-
phical conceptions were as yet insufficiently worked out,
the problems inadequately ventilated.

Leibnitz started similarly from the conception of sub-
stance as a given thing, but kept chiefly before him the
fact that it must be indestructible. For this purpose it
must be simple, since everything extended is divisible, and
hence destructible; it was, consequently, without exten-
86 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sion, and therefore immaterial. There remains then no
other predicates for his substance than the spiritual ones
of perception, thought, and desire. He assumed a number
of such simple, spiritual substances, which, although they
are themselves unextended, lie at the foundation of the
phenomenon of extension ; hence he defines them as formal
atoms and simple substances, and bestows upon them the
name monads. These, therefore, lie at the foundation of
the phenomenon of the corporeal world, which is, accord-
ingly, a mere appearance without proper and immediate
reality, such merely accruing to the monads, that remain
within and behind it. The phenomenon of the corporeal
world is, notwithstanding, on the other side, in the per-
ception of the monads (i.e., those that really perceive,
which are very few, most of them continuously sleeping)
brought about by virtue of the pre-established harmony,
which the central monad produces entirely alone and at
its own cost. We here get somewhat into the dark. But,
however this may be, the connection between the mere
thoughts of these substances and the really and in itself
extended, is regulated by a pre-established harmony of the
central monad. Here one might say all is remainder.
Meanwhile, in order to deal justly with Leibnitz, we must
remind the reader of the way of regarding matter, which
Locke and Newton had made current, whereby namely
matter exists as absolutely dead, purely passive, and
will-less, merely endowed with mechanical forces, and only
subordinated to mathematical laws. Now Leibnitz rejects
the atoms and the purely mechanical physics in order to
put in its place a dynamical, in all of which he prepared
the way for Kant. (See “ Opera,” edit. Erdmann, p. 694.)
He recalls in the first place the formas substantiales of the
schoolmen, and attains accordingly to the insight, that
even the merely mechanical forces of matter, besides
which, at that time, scarcely any others were known or
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 87

admitted, must have something spiritual at their founda-
tion. But he did not know how to make this clear to
himself otherwise than by the extremely unhappy fiction
that matter consisted of simple souls, which were at the
same time formal atoms, and which, although existing for
the most part in a state of unconsciousness, nevertheless
possessed an analogon of the perceptio and the appetitus.
This consequently misled him, so that he, like all the rest,
made Knowledge the foundation and conditio sine qua non
of everything spiritual rather than Will, the priority due
to which I have been the first to vindicate, everything in
philosophy being thereby turned round. In the meantime
Leibnitz’s endeavour to base spirit and matter on one and
the same principle deserves recognition. One might even
find therein a presentiment as well of the Kantian as of
my own doctrines, but guas velut trans nebulam vidit. For
his Monadology is based on the idea that matter is no-
thing in itself, but merely phenomenon, and that therefore
the ultimate ground of even its mechanical action must
not be sought in the purely geometrical, that is in what
belongs to the phenomenon, such as extension, motion,
figure, &c., and hence that impenetrability is not a mere
negative quality, but the manifestation of a positive force.
The opinion of Leibnitz we have praised is expressed most
clearly in some of his smaller French writings, as the
Systéme nouveau de la nature, &c., which are collected from
the “ Journal des Savans ” in the edition of Ditens, in the
edition of Erdmann, and in the letters, &c. (Erdmann,
pp. 681-95.) There is also to be found a well-chosen col-
lection of cognate passages of Leibnitz on pp. 335-40 of
his “ Smaller philosophical writings, translated by Kohler
and revised by Huth,” Jena, 1740.

But we see throughout this whole chain of strange dog-
matic theories one fiction continually being brought to the
support of another, just as in practical life one lie makes

x
88 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

many others necessary. At the bottom of it lies Descartes’
division of all existence into God and world, and of man
into spirit and matter, to the last of which everything else
is counted. To this must be added the error, common to
him and to all philosophers who have ever yet been, of
placing the final ground of our being in knowledge rather
than in will, in other words, in making the latter the
secondary, and the former the primary. These, then, were
the original errors against which nature and the reality of
things protested at every step, and to save which, the
spiritus animales, the materiality of animals, the occasional
causes, the seeing all things in God, the pre-established
harmony, the monads, optimism, and all the rest of it, had
to be invented. With me, on the contrary, where things
are seized by the right end, everything fits in of itself,
everything appears in its proper light, no fictions are re-
quired, and simplex sigillum veri.

Kant was not directly touched by the substance pro-
blem—he had got beyond it. With him the conception of
substance is a category, that is, a mere form of thought
a priori. By this, in its necessary application to sensible
perception, nothing is known as it is in itself; hence the
being which is at the foundation of bodies no less than of
souls is in itself one and the same. This is his doctrine.
It paved the way for me to the insight that each one’s
body is only the perception of his will arising in his brain,
a relation which, extended afterwards to all bodies, Te.
sulted in the resolution of the world into Will and Pre-
sentment.

The conception of substance, however, which Descartes,
true to Aristotle, had constituted the leading conception of his
philosophy, and with whose definition, accordingly (although
in the fashion of the Eleatics), Spinoza also starts, pro-
claims itself, when subjected to more rigorous and honest
investigation, as a higher but unjustified abstractum of
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 89

the conception of matter, which, by the way, also includes
the supposititious child, immaterial substance, as I have
already explained in my “ Criticisms of the Kantian Philo-
sophy,” pp. 550 sqq. of the 2nd ed. (8rd ed. 528-31 sqq.).
But apart from this the conception of substance is invalid
as the starting-point of philosophy, because it is in all
cases an objective one. Nothing objective is, for us, more
than mediate ; the subjective alone is the immediate. This
must not be passed over, therefore, but must be made the
absolute starting-point. Descartes has certainly done
this ; indeed, he was the first who recognized it, and hence
with him a new epoch in philosophy opens. But he does
it merely preliminarily at the first starting off, after which
he at once assumes the absolute objective reality of the
world on the credit of the veracity of God, and from this
time forward philosophises in an entirely objective manner.
In this he is guilty, in addition, of a noteworthy cirewlus
vitiosus. He demonstrates the objective reality of the ob-
jects of all our perpetual presentments from the existence
of God as their author, whose veracity does not admit of
his deceiving us. But the existence of God himself he de-
monstrates from the innate presentment which we are sup-
posed to have of him as the all-perfect being. “IU com-
mence par douter de tout, et finit par tout croire,” says one
of his countrymen of him.

It was Berkeley who first showed himself in true earnest
with the subjective starting-point, and who irrefutably ex-
plained the indispensable necessity of it. He is the father
of Idealism, which is the foundation of all true philosophy,
and which has since then at least been universally retained
as a starting-point, although every successive philosopher
has made his own modifications and variations of it. Thus
-even Locke started from the subjective, in that he ascribed
a great part of the qualities of bodies to our sense-impres-
sion. It is to be observed, however, that his reduction of
90 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

all qualitative difference, as secondary qualities, to merely
quantitative, to wit, to size, figure, position, &c., as the sole
primary or objective qualities, is at bottom the doctrine of
Demokritos, who similarly reduced all qualities to the
figure, composition, and position of atoms; as may be
clearly seen from Aristotle’s “ Metaphysics,” book 1., chap.
4, and from Theophrastus’ “ De Seusu,” chap. 61-65. Locke
was, in so far, a resuscitator of the Demokritean philosophy,
as Spinoza was that of the Eleatics. He also really paved the
way for the succeeding French materialism. By his pre-
liminary distinction between subjective and objective ele-
ments in perception, he led directly up to Kant, who,
following his direction and track in a much higher sense,
was enabled to sunder the subjective purely from the ob-
jective, by which process indeed so much accrued to the
subjective, that the objective only remained as a kind of
dark point, a something not farther recognisable—the thing
in itself. I have now reduced this to the being which we
discover in our self-consciousness as Will, and I have
therefore again returned to the subjective source of know-
ledge. It could not happen otherwise, for, as already said,
the objective is never more than the secondary, namely a
presentment. Hence, therefore, we must not seek the
innermost kernel of our being, the thing in itself, without
us, but within us, in other words, in the subjective side, as
the only immediate. To this must be added that with the
objective we can never attain toa point of rest, to an ulti-
mate and original point, because we are there in the domain
of presentments, and these are altogether and essentially
subordinated to, and have for their form, the law of causa-
tion in its four aspects, for which reason every object falls
under and presupposes the requirements of the former.
For instance, an assumed objective absolute carries with
it the destructive questions, Whence? and Why? before
which it must give way and fall. It is otherwise when we
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 91

sink ourselves in the still, albeit obscure, depths of the
subject. Here we are certainly threatened with the danger
of falling into mysticism, and we must therefore only draw
from this source what is actually true, compassable by each
and all, and consequently undeniable.

The Dianoiology, which, as the result of investigations
since Descartes, was current until Kant, may be found ex
résumé and expounded with niéive clearness in Muratori,
“ Della Fantasia,” chaps. 1-4 and 13; Locke there appears
asa heretic. The whole is a nest of errors, by which it
may be seen how very differently I have conceived and pre-
sented it, after having had Kant and Cabanis for predeces-
sors. The above entire Dianoiology and Psychology is based
on the false Cartesian dualism. Everything must now in
the whole work, per fas et nefas, be reduced to it, including
many correct and interesting facts which are introduced.
The whole procedure is interesting as a type.

Section 13.
Some further observations on the Kantian Philosophy.

There is a passage in Pope which would be very suit-
able as a motto for a critique of pure reason. It was
written about eighty years earlier, and says: ‘Since it is
reasonable to doubt most things, we should most of all
doubt that reason of ours which would demonstrate all
things.”

The true spirit of the Kantian philosophy, its leading
idea and true sense, may be conceived and presented in
many ways. Such various modes of expressing the matter
are adapted, according to the variety of mind, to open out
to this one or that the true understanding of these deep
and therefore difficult doctrines. The following is one
92 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

more attempt of this nature, in which I seek to infuse my
clearness into Kant’s depth.’
Mathematics is based on perceptions, on which its de-
monstrations support themselves; but because these per-
ceptions are not empirical, but are a priori, its doctrines
are apodeictic. Philosophy, on the contrary, has, as the
given element from which it proceeds, and which imparts
to its demonstrations necessity (apodeicticity), mere con-
cepts. For it cannot at once stand on the footing of simple
empirical perception, inasmuch as it undertakes to explain
the universal, not the particular, of things, its object being
to lead beyond the empirically given. There remains
nothing for it, then, but universal concepts, in so far as
these are not perceptual or purely empirical. Such con-
cepts must then furnish the foundation of its doctrines
and demonstrations, and it must start from them as from
-something present and given. Philosophy is accordingly
a science from mere concepts, while mathematics is a science
from the construction (perceptual presentment) of its con-
cepts. Strictly speaking, however, it is only the demon-
strations of philosophy which proceed from mere concepts.
This cannot, like the mathematical, proceed from a percep-
tion, because such would have to be either purely a priori
or empirical ; but the latter gives no apodeicticity, and the
former furnishes only mathematics. If it intends, there-
fore, to support its doctrines by any sort of demonstration,
this must consist in the correct logical consequence from
coneepts at its foundation. Things had gone quite smoothly
in this direction throughout the long period of Scholas-
ticism, and even in the new epoch founded by Descartes,
so that we see Spinoza and Leibnitz pursuing this method.
At last it occurred to Locke to investigate the origin of

7 T remark here, once for all, that the pagination of the first
edition of the ‘‘Critique of Pure Reason” which I here quote
from, is also appended to the Rosenkrantz edition.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 93

concepts, the result he arrived at being that all universal
concepts, however abstract they may be, are derived from
experience, that is, from the existent, sensuously perceivable,
empirically real world, or else through inward experience
such as the empirical self-observation of each offers, in
short, that their whole content is derived from these two,
and consequently can never furnish more than what outer
or inner experience has placed there. From the fore-
going it ought in strictness to have been inferred that
they can never transcend experience, that is, can never
lead to the goal; but Locke went, with the principles de-
rived from experience, beyond experience.

In elaborate antithesis to his predecessors, and by way
of correction of the Lockean doctrines, Kant showed that
there are indeed some conceptions which make an excep-
tion to the above rule, that is, which do not spring from
experience. But that these are at the same time partly
derived from the pure, that is @ priort given intuition
of space and time, and partly constitute the special func-
tions of our understanding itself, for the sake of their
use in the experience which regulates itself according to
them. Their validity only extends accordingly to possible
experience of which sense is always the medium, inasmuch
as they are only determined to generate this in us, together
with its regular course; in other words they, themselves
contentless, receive all material and content solely from
sensibility, in order thereby to produce experience—but.
apart therefrom have neither content nor significance, in-
asmuch as they are only valid under the pre-supposition of
perception resting on sense-feeling, and refer essentially to
this. It follows from the above that they cannot supply
us with clues to lead us beyond all possibility of experience,
and from this again that metaphysics as the science of that
which lies beyond nature, that is, beyond the possibility of
experience, is impossible.
94 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

As now the one element of experience, namely, the uni-
versal, formal, and regulative, is knowable a priori, and
therefore rests on the essential and regulative functions of
our own intellect, while the other, namely the particular,
material, and accidental, arises from sense-feeling, it follows
that both are of subjective origin. Hence it also follows
that experience, in its totality, together with the world
presented therein, is a mere phenomenon, that is, something
which, directly and immediately, is only existent for the
subject knowing it. But this phenomenon, nevertheless,
points to a thing in itself lying at its foundation, but which,
as such, is absolutely unknowable. These are the negative
results of the Kantian philosophy.

I must here call attention to the fact, that Kant speaks
as though we were only perceiving subjects, and had no
datum outside the presentment, while we certainly possess
another in the Will within us, which is toto genere distinct
from the former. It is true he also took this into con-
sideration, yet not in the theoretical, but only in the prac-
tical philosophy, from which with him it is quite separated,
in other words, simply and solely in order to establish the
fact of the pure and moral significance of our action, and
thereupon to found a moral faith, to counterbalance our
theoretical ignorance and the impossibility of all theology
which follows therefrom.

Kant’s philosophy in contradistinction, and indeed in
antithesis to all others, is also designated as transcendental
philosophy, or more accurately, transcendental idealism.
The expression “transcendent” is not of mathematical,
but of philosophical origin, since it was familiar to the
scholastics. It was first introduced into mathematics by
Leibnitz, in order to designate quod algebrae vires trans-
cendit, that is all operations, which common arithmetic
and algebra do not suffice to complete, as, for instance, to
find the logarithm of a number, or vice versd, or to find the
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 95

trigonometric functions of an arc, purely arithmetically, or
vice versd, and generally for all problems which are only to
be solved by a calculus carried out to infinity. But the
schoolmen designate as transcendent, such concepts as were
more universal than the ten categories of Aristotle, and
even Spinoza uses the word in this sense. Giordano
Bruno (‘‘ De la Causa,” &c., dial. iv.), calls those predicates
transcendent which are more universal than the distinction
of corporeal and incorporeal substance pertaining to sub-
stance generally. They concern, according to him, those
common roots in which the corporeal is one with the in-
corporeal, and which is the true original substance; he
even sees in this a proof that such must exist. Now Kant
understands by transcendental, in the first place, the recog-
nition of the a priori, and therefore the merely formal in
our knowledge as such, i.e., the insight that such know-
ledge is independent of experience; indeed that this pre-
scribes the unalterable rule, according to which it must
proceed—such insight being at the same time bound up
with the understanding why such knowledge is and ac-
complishes this, to wit, because it constitutes the form of
our intellect, and is, in consequence, of subjective origin.
Only Criticism of Pure Reason is, accordingly, transcen-
dental. In opposition to this he calls transcendent the use,
or rather the misuse, of the above purely formal element in
our knowledge outside the possibility of experience ; which
he also terms hyperphysical. Transcendental, therefore,
means in short, ‘“ before all experience,” transcendent, ‘“ be-
yond all experience.” Kant it will be seen only admits
Metaphysic as Transcendental Philosophy, that is, as the
doctrine of the form contained in our knowing conscious-
ness as such, and of the limitation thereby disclosed, by
virtue of which the knowledge of things in themselves is
impossible for us, since experience can furnish nothing but
mere phenomena. The word “metaphysical” is, however,
96 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

not synonymous with “ transcendental.” Everything that
is a priori certain, but which concerns experience, is termed
by him metaphysical, whereas the doctrine that it is only
on account of its subjective origin, and as purely formal,
that it is a priori certain, is alone called transcendental.
Transcendental is the philosophy which brings to one’s
consciousness that the primary and most essential laws of
this world which is presented to us have their root in our
brain, and for this reason can be known a priori. It is
called transcendental, because it passes beyond the whole
given phantasmagoria to its origin. Hence, as already
said, the criticism of pure reason, and especially the
Critical (i.e., Kantian), philosophy, is alone transcendental; *
metaphysical, on the other hand, are the “ foundations of
natural science,” also those of the “ doctrine of Virtue,” &c.

The conception of a transcendental philosophy, however,
may be taken in a deeper sense, if one undertakes to con-
centrate therein the innermost spirit of the Kantian philo-
sophy, and somewhat in the following manner. That the
whole world is only given us, in a secondary manner, as
presentment or image in our head, as brain-phenomenon,
while our own Will is given immediately in self-conscious-
ness, and hence a separation, or indeed an opposition exists
between our own existence and that of the world—all this
is @ mere consequence of our individual and mere animal
existence, with the abolition of which it falls away. But
until then it is impossible for us to get rid in thought of
that fundamental and original form of our consciousness,
which is implied in the separation of subject and object,
since all thinking and presenting presupposes it. Hence
we count it for the all-essential and fundamental nature of
the world, while it is in reality only the form of our animal

? The ‘Critique of Pure Reason” has transformed ontology into
dianoiology.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 97

consciousness and the phenomena occasioned by the same.
But from this arise all those questions, as to beginning,
end, boundary, and origin of the world, our own continu-
ance after death, &c. They rest accordingly on a false
assumption, which attributes to the thing-in-itself what
are only presentments occasioned by an animal, cerebral
consciousness, and assumes this to be the original and ulti-
mate nature of the world. Such is the sense of the Kantian
expression—“‘ all such questions are transcendent.” They
are, indeed, not merely subjectively, but in and for them-
selves, that is objectively, susceptible of no answer. For
they are problems which wholly disappear with the aboli-
tion of our cerebral consciousness and the opposition based
upon it, and are, nevertheless, stated as though they were
independent of it. For example, he who asks whether he
continues after his death, sets aside, in hypothesi, his animal
brain-consciousness, and asks, notwithstanding, as to the
existence of something which presupposes this, inasmuch
as it rests on its form, namely, subject and object, space
and time—to wit as to his individual continuance. Now
philosophy, which brings all these conditions and limita-
tions, as such, to distinct consciousness, is transcendental,
and, in so far as it vindicates for the subject, the universal
ground determinations of the objective world, it is transcen-
dental Idealism. It will gradually be seen that the pro-
blems of Metaphysics are only in so far insoluble, as a
contradiction is contained in the questions themselves.
Transcendental Idealism, in the meantime, does not dis-
pute the empirical reality of the existing world, but says
only that it is not unconditioned, since it has our brain-
function, from which the forms of perception, time, space,
and causality arise, for its condition, and that therefore this
empirical reality itself is only the reality of an appearance.
If a multitude of existences manifest themselves therein, of
which one is always passing away and another is arising,
H
98 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

and we know, that only by means of the percept-form of
space, plurality, and only by means of that of time, de-
struction and origination, is possible, we recognize that such
a process has no absolute reality, i.e., that it does not be-
long to the beings-in-themselves, which manifest them-
selves in that appearance. If we could withdraw these
forms of knowledge, as glass from the kaleidoscope, we
should have, to our astonishment, a single and enduring
world before us, untransitory, unalterable, and amid all
apparent change, perhaps even right down to its indivi-
dual determination, identical. In accordance with this
opinion, the following three propositions may be stated :—

(1) The sole form of reality is the actual ; in it alone the
real is immediately met with and contained in its complete-
ness and fulness.

(2) The true Real is independent of time and therefore,
in every point of time, one and the same.

(8) Time is the percept-form of our intellect, and hence
foreign to the things-in-themselves.

These three propositions are at bottom identical. He
who clearly sees their identity, no less than their truth, has
made great progress in philosophy, inasmuch as he has
grasped the spirit of transcendental Idealism.

How rich indeed in consequences is Kant’s doctrine
of the ideality of space and time, dryly and tastelessly as
he has expounded it. On the contrary, nothing results
from the pompous, pretentious and purposely incompre-
hensible jargon of the three notorious sophists, who have
drawn off from Kant the attention of a public that was
unworthy of him. Before Kant, it may be said, we were
in time, now time isin us. In the first case time is Real,
and we, like everything else that falls within it, are con-
sumed by it. In the second case time is Ideal, but lies in
us. The question respecting the future after death thus
at once collapses. For if I am not, time is no more. It is
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 99

only a deceptive illusion which shows me a time proceeding
without me, after my death. All three divisions of time,
past, present and future, are similarly my product, belong
to me and not I to one any more than to another of them.
Again, another consequence which may be drawn from the
proposition that time does not belong to the essence of the
things-in-themselves, would be this, that in one sense the
past is not past, but that everything which has ever really,
ever truly been, must still be, since time only resembles a
stage-waterfall, which seems to stream down, but, being
simply a wheel, never moves from its place. Ihave already
in my chief work long ago compared, ina manner analogous
to this, space to a glass cut into facets, which shows us that
which exists singly in countless reproduction. If unde-
terred by the danger of becoming visionary, we plunge
still deeper into the matter, it might appear to us as though,
by a very vivid presentation of our own remote past, we
received an immediate confirmation of the fact, that time
does not touch the true being of things, but is only inter-
polated between their being and us as a mere medium of
perception, after the removal of which all would again be
there ; as also, on the other hand, our true and living faculty
of memory, in which this long past maintains an unwithered
existence, bears witness to something within us that does
not alter, and consequently, which is not within the domain
of time.

The main tendency of the Kantian philosophy is to place
before us the complete diversity of the Ideal and Real after
Locke had already broken ground. In the first place one
can say, the Ideal is the perceptual figure displaying itself
spacially, with all the qualities perceivable in it, while the
Real is the thing by, in, and for itself, independent of its
being presented in the head of another or its own. But
the boundary between them is difficult to be drawn, and
yet it is precisely this upon which the question turns.
100 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Locke had shown that everything in the former which is
figure, colour, sound, smoothness, roughness, hardness,
softness, cold, heat, &c. (secondary qualities) are merely
Ideal, and therefore do not belong to the thing in itself,
inasmuch as the being and nature of the thing is not given
therein, but only its action, and indeed a very one-sided
definite action, an action, namely, on the quite specifically
determined receptivity of our five sense-organs, by virtue
of which, for instance, sound does not act on the eye, nor
light on the ear. The action of bodies on the organs of
sense consists in that it sets the latter in a state of activity
peculiar to them, almost in the same way as when I pull a
thread which sets a mechanism in play. As the Real,
which belonged to the thing in itself, Locke left standing,
extension, form, impenetrability, motion, or rest, and num-
ber, which he therefore termed primary qualities. Now
Kant demonstrated, subsequently, with infinitely superior
insight, that even these qualities do not belong to the ob-
jective nature of the things or to the things in themselves,
and therefore cannot be absolutely Real, since they are con-
ditioned by space, time and causality, and that these in
their turn, according to their whole order and construction,
are given us before all experience, and are exactly known;
and hence that they most reside in us preformed, as much
as the specific kind of the receptivity and activity of each
of our senses. In accordance with this I have said that
these forms are the part taken by the brain in perception
as the specific sense-feelings are of the respective sense-
organs.’ Even according to Kant the purely objective, the
nature of things which is independent of our presentment
and its apparatus, which he calls the thing-in-itself, that

‘ As it is our eye which produces green, red, and blue, so it is
our brain which produces time, space, and causality (whose ob-
jectivised abstractum is matter). My perception of a body in
space is the product of my sense and brain function with x
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 101

is, the properly Real in contradistinction to the Ideal, is
something totally distinct from the figure which presents
itself to us in perception and to which, inasmuch as it is,
independent of space and time, properly speaking, neither
extension nor duration is to be attributed, although it im-
parts the power of existence to all that possesses extension
and duration. Spinoza has comprehended the subject in
its general aspect, as may be seen from “ Eth.,” p. ii., prop.
16, with the 2nd coroll.; also prop. 18, Schol.

The Lockean Real, in opposition to the Ideal, is at
bottom matter, stripped indeed of all its qualities, which
he casts on one side as secondary, that is as conditioned by
our sense-organs, for it is, per se, an extended, &c., existent,
of which the presentment in us is the mere reflex or copy.
As to this, I may recall that I (in the “Fourfold Root,”
2nd ed., p. 77; 3rd ed, p. 82, and at less length in “ The
World as Will,” &c., Presentment, 2nd ed., vol.i., p. 9, and
vol. i, p. 48; 8rd ed., vol. i, p. 10; vol. ii, p. 52) have
explained that the nature of matter consists simply in its
action, that matter is nothing but causality, and that con-
ceived as such every special quality, that is, every specific
kind of action, is abstracted from it, so that it remains
action or pure causality, deprived of all the other defini-
tions, causality in abstracto ; to which place, for a more
thorough understanding of the matter, I ask the reader to
refer. But Kant had already taught, although it was I
who gave the first correct demonstration of it, that all
causality is only a form of our understanding, and there-
fore, only exists for the understanding and in the under-
standing. We see then the supposed Real of Locke, matter,
in this way retreats entirely into the Ideal, and therewith
into the subject, that is, exists only in the presentment and
for the presentment. Kant, by his presentment, certainly
deprived the Real, or thing-in-itself, of its materiality, but
with him it remained a completely unknown x. I have at
102 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

last demonstrated the true Real, or the thing-in-itself,
which alone has a real existence independent of the pre-
sentment and its forms, to be the Will in us, which had
been hitherto inconsiderately reckoned to the Ideal. It
will be seen, therefore, that Locke, Kant and I stand in
close connection, inasmuch as we represent in the space of
nearly two hundred years, the gradual development of a
coherent, unified, process of thought. David Hume may be
considered as a connecting link in this chain, although
properly speaking, only so far as the law of causality is
concerned. In respect of his influence I have to complete
the above exposition with the following.

Locke, no less than Condillac, and the disciples who trod
in his footsteps, have elaborated the fact that the feeling
which enters into an organ of sense requires a cause of the
same outside of our body, and that the differences of such
action (sense-impression) also presuppose differences in the
cause, whatever these may be; whence the above indicated
distinction between primary and secondary qualities pro-
ceeds. With this they end, and an objective world in
space stands ready made for them, composed of things in
themselves, but which are colourless, odourless, soundless,
neither warm nor cold, &c., and nevertheless, extended,
figured, impenetrable, movable and numerical. But the
axiom itself, by virtue of which the transition from the
inner to the outer, and accordingly the whole derivation
and installation of the things-in-tbemselves has taken
place, namely, the law of causality, they, like all earlier
philosophers, have assumed to be self-evident, and re-
quiring no proof of its validity. Upon this point Hume
directed his sceptical attack, inasmuch as he placed the
validity of this law in doubt. For experience, from which,
according to this philosophy, all our cognitions are derived,
can never supply us with the causal connection itself, but
only with the mere succession of states in time, in other
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 103

words, never with a consequence, but only with a mere
sequence, which, as such, must always be accidental, and
never necessary. This argument, so antagonistic to common
sense, yet not easily to be refuted, occasioned Kant to in-
vestigate the true origin of causality, which he found to
lie in the essential and innate form of our understanding
itself, that is, im the subject and not in the object, since it
was not first brought to us from without. But by this the
whole objective world of Locke and Condillac was drawn
back into the subject, since Kant had shown the clue to it
to be of subjective origin. For the rule is now found to
be just as subjective as the sense-impression, according to
which it is to be conceived as the effect of a cause, which
cause it alone is, that is, perceived as the objective world.
For the subject merely assumes an object without itself im
consequence of the peculiar characteristic of its intellect,
which to every change presupposes a cause, and therefore
only projects it, as it were, out of itself in a space prepared
for this purpose, this in its turn being a product of its own
original construction, as well as of the specific impression
on the sense-organs, at the instance of which the whole
procedure takes place. The above Lockean objective world
of things-of-themselves, had therefore been changed by
Kant into a world of mere phenomena in our knowledge-
apparatus, and this the more completely, since the space in
which they present themselves, as also the time in which
they pass, was proved by him to be undeniably of subjec-
tive origin.

But with all this, Kant, no less than Locke, allowed the
thing-in-itself to exist, i.e., admits something to exist inde-
pendent of our presentments, which only furnish us with
phenomena, and which lies at the foundation of these
phenomena. Here, then, lay the Achilles’ heel of his
philosophy, which had, by the demonstration of its incon-
sequence, to forfeit the recognition it had already obtained
104 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

as being of unconditioned validity and truth ; but in the
last resort it was, nevertheless, unjustly treated in this
respect. For certainly the assumption of a thing in itself
behind the phenomena, of a real kernel under so many shells,
is in no wise untrue. The denial of it would be indeed
absurd. It is only the way in which Kant introduced this
thing-in-itself, and sought to unite it with his principles,
which was faulty; at bottom it was only his exposition
(this word taken in its most comprehensive sense) of the
matter, and not the matter itself, which succumbed to his
adversaries. In this sense it might be maintained that
the argumentation made valid against him was, strictly
speaking, addressed only ad hominem, not ad rem. As-
suredly the Indian proverb finds an application here: “ No
lotus without a thorn.” Kant was guided by the deeply-
felt truth that behind every phenomenon a being in itself
lies, from which it receives its subsistence; in other words,
that behind the presentment something presented lies.
But he undertook to deduce this from a given presentment
itself by the addition of certain laws known to us a priori,
and which, because they are a priori, cannot be deduced
from something independent and distinct from the pheno-
menon or presentment; and hence for this purpose one
must strike out another way. The inconsistencies in
which Kant involved himself by the fallacious path he had
taken in this respect, were demonstrated to him by G. E.
Schultze, who, in a clumsy and diffuse manner, expounded
the matter, at first anonymously in “ Aenesidemus”’ (espe-
cially pp. 374-81), and subsequently in his “Critique of
Theoretical Philosophy” (vol. ii., p. 205), against which
Reinhold took up Kant’s vindication, although without
any special result ; so that haec potuisse dici, et non potuisse
refelli has its application.

I will here clearly set forth once for all in my way the
truly essential of the matter, that which lies at the root of
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 105

the whole controversy independently of Sehultze’s way of
conceiving it. A strict deduction of the thing-in-itself
Kant has never given, but he has inherited it from his
predecessors, especially Locke, and has retained it as some-
thing, the existence of which was not to be doubted, since
it was strictly self-evident; indeed, he was bound to do
this to a certain extent. According to Kant’s discoveries
our empirical knowledge contains an element which is
demonstrably of subjective origin, and another element of
which this is not the case; the latter remains therefore
objective, there being no ground for holding it to be sub-
jective. Kant’s transcendental Idealism denies, accord-
ingly, the objective nature of things or their reality as
independent of our perception, in so far as the a priori in
our knowledge extends, but not farther, because the ground
for the denial does not reach farther. What lies outside
he allows to remain, that is, all such qualities of things as
cannot be constructed a priori. For the whole nature of
the given phenomena, namely, of the corporeal world, is
in no wise determinable by us a priori, but is merely the
universal form of its phenomenon, and this may be re-
duced to space, time, and causality, together with the
totality of the laws of these three forms. On the other
hand, the indeterminate residuum present throughout all
these a priori existent forms, in other words, that which
pertains to chance, is precisely the manifestation of the
thing-in-itself. Now the empirical content of the pheno-
mena, i.e., every closer determination of the same, every
physical quality appearing in them, cannot be known
otherwise than as a posteriori. These empirical qualities
(or rather their common source) remain therefore the
thing-in-itself, as the manifestation of its special nature
through the medium of the above a priori forms. This
a posteriori, which in every phenomenon appears, as it
were, clothed in the a priori, but yet imparting to every
106 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

being its special and individual character, is accordingly
the matter of the phenomenal world in contradistinction to
its form. Now, since this matter is in no way deducible
from the forms of the phenomenon inherent in the subject,
so carefully sought out by Kant and so certainly demon-
strated by the sign of a priority, but rather remains after
the abstraction of everything flowing from these, thereby
proving itself a second perfectly distinct element of the
empirical phenomenon, and a foreign addition to these
forms; and at the same time, since it proceeds in no wise
from the caprice of the knowing subject, but rather stands
in opposition thereto—for these reasons, Kant did not
hesitate to leave the matter of the phenomenon to the
thing itself, and therefore to regard it as coming wholly
from without, on the assumption that it must come from
somewhere, or as Kant expressed it, have some ground.
But as we cannot isolate such qualities as are known only
a posteriori, nor conceive them as separated and purified
from those which are certain a priori, but on the other
hand, as they always appear enveloped in these latter,
Kant teaches that we can know the existence of things in
themselves, but nothing else about them; we can know
that they are, but not what they are. The nature of things
in themselves remains therefore, for him, an unknown
quantity, an y. For the form of the phenomenon clothes
and hides the nature of the thing-in-itself in all cases.
We can say this at most—since the above a priori forms
accrue to all things as phenomena, without distinction,
proceeding as they do from our intellect, but the things at
the same time show considerable diversity—that which
determines this difference, that is, the specific variety of
things, is the thing-in-itself.

Looked at in this way, Kant’s assumption and presup-
position of the things in themselves, notwithstanding the
subjectivity of all our forms of knowledge, seems to be
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 107

perfectly justified and well grounded. It is, nevertheless,
shown to be untenable when its only argument, namely,
the empirical content in all phenomena, is narrowly tested
and traced back to its origin. It is certain that in em-
pirical knowledge and its source, perceptual presentment,
there is a matter which is independent of its form, which
is known to us a priori. The next question is, as to
whether this matter is of objective or subjective origin,
since only in the first case can it ensure for us the thing-
in-itself. If we pursue it, therefore, to its origin, we find
this nowhere else but in our sense-impression. For it is a
change occurring in the retina of the eye, in the nerves of
the ear, or at the ends of the fingers, which induces the
perceptual presentment, and thus first sets in play the
whole apparatus of our forms of knowledge, which lie
ready a priori, the result being the perception of an ex-
ternal object. On the change being felt in the sense-
organ, the law of causality is at once applied by means of
a necessary and indispensable function of the understand-
ing @ priori. The above, with its @ priori certainty and
necessity, points to a cause of this change which, since it
does not stand in the arbitrary power of the subject,
appears to it as something external. This quality receives
its significance primarily by means of a form of space,
which is added by the intellect itself for the purpose, the
necessarily presupposed cause thereby appearing percep-
tually as an object in space bearing the alterations effected
by it in our sense-organs, as though they were properties
of the thing-in-itself. This whole process may be found
adequately and thoroughly expounded in my treatise on
the ‘‘Law of Cause,’ § 21. But the sense-impression,
which constitutes the starting-point of the process and
furnishes undeniably the whole matter of empirical per-
ception, is something altogether subjective, and as the entire
knowledge-forms, by means of which the objective per-
108 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

ceptual presentment arises out of this matter and is pro-
jected externally in accordance with Kant’s correct demon-
stration, are uo less of subjective origin, it is clear that
the matter, as well as the form of perceptual presentment,
arises from the subject. Our whole empirical knowledge
is accordingly resolved into two elements, both of which
have their origin in owrselves, namely, in the sense-impres-
sion and in the forms given a priori, that is, in the forms
embedded in the functions of our intellect or brain, time,
space, and causality, to which Kant had added eleven
other categories of the understanding, demonstrated by
me, however, as superfluous and inadmissible. If the
above be correct, perceptual presentment and our empirical
knowledge resting on it, in truth furnish no data for con-
clusions as to things in themselves, and Kant was not
justified on his principles in assuming such. The Lockean
philosophy, like all earlier philosophies, had taken the law
of causality as absolute, and was thereby justified in con-
cluding from the sense-impression to the existence of real
things external to and independent of us. This passage
from the effect to the cause is, however, the only way to
attain from the internal and subjectively given to the ex-
ternal and objectively existent. Kant therefore, after he
had vindicated the law of causality for the Inowledge form
of the subject, found this way no longer open to him.
He had himself, moreover, often enough warned us against
making a transcendent use of the category of causality,
that is, a use extending beyond experience and its possibility.

In point of fact the thing-in-itself is never to be arrived
at in this way, nor otherwise by that of pure objective
knowledge, which always remains presentment, and as such
has its root in the subject, and can never furnish anything
really distinct from the presentment. But the thing-in-
itself can only be arrived at by shifting the standpoint,
that is, by instead of, as previously, starting from that
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 109

which presents, once for all starting from that which is
presented. But this is only possible in one single thing
which is attainable by us all from within as well as from
without, and is thereby given in a double manner: it is
our own body which, in the objective world, exists as pre-
sentment in space, and at the same time proclaims itself
as Will in our own self-consciousness. Thereby is furnished
the key at once to the understanding of all its actions and
motions produced by external causes (here motives), which
without this internal and immediate insight into its essence,
would remain just as incomprehensible and inexplicable as
the changes occurring according to natural laws and as
manifestations of natural forces, in those other bodies which
are only given to us in objective perception ; and hence to
that of the permanent substratum of these actions, that
wherein these forces have root, to wit the body itself. This
immediate knowledge, which each one has of the nature
of his own phenomenon, given him like all others only in ob-
jective perception, must thereupon be transferred analogi-
cally to the remaining phenomena, which are really the only
ones that can properly be said to be given, and becomes
then the key to the knowledge of the inner nature of things,
or, in other words, of the things-in-themselves. One could
only attain to this by a way quite different from pure ob-
jective knowledge, which remains mere presentment, by
taking the self-consciousness of the subject, which always
appears as animal individual, to aid, and by making it the
exponent of the consciousness of other things, 1.e., of the per-
ceptive intellect. This is the way which I have followed,
and it is the only right one, the narrow gate to truth.

But instead of men striking out this way, Kant’s expo-
sition was confounded with the essence of the subject, and
jt was believed that with the former the latter was refuted ;
what in reality were mere argumenta ad hominem, were
believed accordingly to be argumenta ad rem, and in con-
110 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sequence of these Schultzian attacks Kant’s philosophy was
declared untenable. The field was now open for the sophists
and wind-bags. The first to set up in this line was Fichte,
who, because the thing-in-itself had come into discredit,
straightway proceeded to construct a system without any
thing-in-itself, and therefore rejected the assumption of
anything but what was our presentment pure and simple,
making the knowing subject all in all, or at least making
it produce everything from its own resources. For this
purpose he did away at once with the essential and valuable
in Kant’s doctrines, the distinction between a priori and a
posteriori, and thereby that between the phenomenon and
the thing-in-itself, inasmuch as he declared everything to
be a priori, while being naturally without any proof of
such a monstrous assumption, he offered us partly sophis-
tical and partly absurd sham demonstrations, whose futility
hid itself under the garb of depth and of the assumed in-
comprehensibility arising therefrom. He laid claim, more-
over, openly and audaciously, to intellectual intuition, in
other words, to inspiration. For a public destitute of all
power of judgment, and unworthy of Kant, this certainly
sufficed. Such a public held self-assumption for excellence,
and immediately declared Fichte to be a much greater
philosopher than Kant. At the present day, indeed, there
are not wanting philosophical writers who are anxious to
foist the false fame of Fichte, now become traditional, on
to the new generation, and quite seriously assure us that
what Kant merely attempted Fichte had accomplished,
and that he was properly the right man. These gentle-
men, by their Midas-judgment, expose their entire incapa-
city to understand Kant, and indeed lay bare so palpably
their deplorable ignorance, that it is to be hoped the rising
and finally disillusionised generation will guard themselves
from destroying their time and brains with the countless
histories of philosophy and other writings produced by
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 111

them. I take this opportunity of recalling a little work,
from which it may be seen what impression Fichte’s per-
sonal appearance and ways made on an unprejudiced con-
temporary. It is called the “ Cabinet of Berlin Characters,”
and appeared in 1808 without indication of place of print-
ing; it is said to be by Buchholz, but as to this I am not
certain. With it may be compared what the jurist Anselm
Von Feuerbach, in the letters issued in 1852 by his son,
says about Fichte ; as also “ Schiller’s and Fichte’s Corre-
spondence,” 1847 ; from all of which a correct idea may be
formed of this sham philosopher.

It was not long before Schelling, worthy of his prede-
cessor, trod in Fichte’s footsteps, which he nevertheless
forsook in order to proclaim his own invention, the absolute
identity of the objective and subjective, or the Ideal and
Real, which would imply that all which great minds like
Locke and Kant, had, with incredible expenditure of acute-
ness and consideration, separated, should be again dissolved
in the broth of his said absolute identity. For the doctrines
of the two former thinkers may be very suitably designated
as those of the absolute diversity of the Ideal and Real, or of
the subjective and objective. But now things went farther
from confusion to confusion, by Fichte having introduced
incomprehensibility of speech, and having put the appear-
ance of depth in the place of thought, the seeds being
scattered which were to result in one corruption after
another, and finally in that total demoralisation of philo-
sophy, and, through philosophy, of all literature which has
appeared in our day.

After Schelling followed a philosophical creature of
ministers, the great philosopher Hegel, manufactured
from above with a political but miscalculated purpose, a
flat, commonplace, repulsive, ignorant charlatan, who, with
unparalleled presumption, conceit, and absurdity, pasted
together a system which was trumpeted by his venal ad-
112 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

herents as immortal wisdom, and by blockheads really
taken for it, whereby such a perfect chorus of admira-
tion arose as had never before been known.’ The extended
intellectual influence thus violently acquired by such a
man had as its consequence the ruination of the learning
of a whole generation. The admirer of this pseudo-philo-
sophy has the mockery of posterity in store for him, a
mockery which is already preluded by the delightfully
audible laughter of neighbours. For should it not sound
delightful to my ears when the nation, whose learned caste
has for thirty years spurned my labours as worth nothing
and less than nothing, not even a passing glance, should
have the reputation among its neighbours of having revered
and even deified throughout these thirty years, as the
highest and most unheard-of wisdom, what is wholly bad,
absurd, nonsensical, and subservient merely to material
ends? I ought, I suppose as a good patriot, to go my
way in the praise of the Germans and of Germanism, and
rejoice to have belonged to them and to no other nation ?
But it is as the Spanish proverb says: Cada uno cuenta de
la feria, como le va en ella (Everyone reports respecting the
fair, according as it has fared with him there). Go to the
Democolacs and get yourself praised. Well-developed, un-
wieldly, minister-bepuffed, nonsense-mongering charlatans,
without intellect and without merit, such as these belong
to the Germans, not men like myself! Such is the testi-
mony which I have to give them in parting. Wieland
(Letters to Merck, p. 239) calls it a misfortune to be born
a German; Birger, Mozart, Beethoven, and others would
have agreed with him; I also. It rests upon the fact
that copdr eivae det ro emeyvwoduevoy Tov coder, or il n’y a
que Vesprit qui sent Pesprit.?

1 The reader may refer to the preface to my ‘‘ Fundamental

Problems of Ethics.”
2 Nowadays the study of the Kantian philosophy is of especial
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 113

To the most brilliant and meritorious sides of the Kan-
tian philosophy, belongs incontestably the Transcendental
Dialectic, by which he has so far rased speculative theology
and psychology from their foundations, that since then no
one has been able, even with the best intentions, to set
them up again. What a blessing for the human mind!
For do we not see, throughout the whole period from the
revival of the sciences to Kant, that the thoughts of even
the greatest men receive a twist, indeed are often com-
pletely distorted, in consequence of these two absolutely
sacred presuppositions, which cripple all intellect, which
are removed from all investigation, and therefore dead
to it? Are not the first and most essential convictions
respecting ourselves and all things twisted and falsified,
if we start with the presupposition that everything is
produced and ordered from without, according to the
notions and preconceived purposes of a personal and there-
fore individual being? In the same way the fundamental
essence of man is assumed to be a thinking essence, and to
consist of two wholly heterogeneous parts, which have
come together and been soldered together without know-
ing how, and had to accommodate themselves to each
other as well as they could, in order to be again for
ever severed, nolentes volentes? How powerfully Kant’s
critique of these fancies and of their grounds has acted
upon all the sciences, is obvious from the fact that since
then, at least in the higher German literature, these pre-
suppositions appear only in a figurative sense, and are no
longer seriously made, being left for popular literature
and for the professors of philosophy, who earn their bread

use in teaching us how low, since the “‘ Critique of Pure Reason,”
philosophical literature has sunk in Germany—so much do his pro-
found investigations shame the recent crude twaddle, in perusing
which one might fancy one saw on the one side hopeful theological
candidates and on the other barbers’ assistants.

I
114 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

by them. Our works on natural science keep themselves
especially free from them, while, on the contrary, the
English, by aiming at them in their modes of expression
and diatribes, or else by apologies, lower themselves in our
eyes.’ Immediately before Kant, indeed, things were
quite different in this respect; we see, for instance, even
the eminent Lichtenberg, whose early education was pre-
Kantian, in his treatise on physiognomy, earnestly and
with evident conviction adhering to this antithesis of soul
and body, and thereby injuring his cause.

He who has estimated the high value of the Transcendental
Dialectic, will not find it superfluous if I here deal with it
somewhat more in detail. In the first place, therefore, I
lay before those who know and interest themselves in the
critique of reason, the following essay on the critique of
rational psychology, as it is presented in its entirety in
the first edition—for in the following editions it appears
castrated. The argument which is there criticized, p. 361,
sqq. under the title “paralogism of the personality,”
ought to be quite otherwise conceived and therefore criti-
cised. For Kant’s certainly profound exposition is not
only too subtle and difficult to be understood, but it may
also be objected to it, that it assumes the object of self-
consciousness, or in Kant’s language, of the internal sense,

1 Since the above was written things have changed with us. In
consequence of the resuscitation of the time-honoured and already
ten times exploded materialism, philosophers from the druggist’s
shop and dispensary have appeared, people who have learnt
nothing but what belongs to their trade, and who quite inno-
cently and niively, as though Kant had just been born, dispute
over ‘‘ body and soul” and their relation to each other, and indeed
(credite posteri !) prove the seat of the said soul to be in the brain.
Their audacity deserves the retort, that one must have learnt
something to be justified in entering on such discussions, and that
they would do more wisely not to expose themselves to unpleasant
references to apothecaries’ shops and catechism.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 115

suddenly and without further justification, as the object
of an alien consciousness, or indeed of an external percep-
tion, in order thereupon to judge it according to the laws
and analogies of the corporeal world. Two distinct times
are even allowed to be assumed (p. 363), the one in the
consciousness of the judged, the other in that of the
judging subject, which do not coincide. I would give the
argument in question, from the personality, quite another
turn, and present it accordingly in the two following
propositions :—

1. One can establish a priori respecting all motion in
general, no matter of whatever kind it may be, that it is
primarily perceptible by the comparison with something
resting ; whence it follows that the course of time, with all
that is in it, could not be perceived were it not for some-
thing that has no part in it, and with whose rest we com-
pare its motion. It is quite true that we here judge
according to the analogy of motion in space; but space
and time must always serve mutually to explain each
other. For this reason also we have to imagine time
under the figure of a straight line in order to apprehend it
perceptually, to construct it @ priori. In accordance there-
with, we cannot imagine that if everything in our con-
sciousness at once and together moved forward in the flux
of time, that this forward movement would nevertheless
be perceptible, but in order to this we must assume some-
thing fixed, past which time with its content flows. For
the perception of the external sense, this is accomplished
by matter as the enduring substance under the change of
accidents, as Kant also explains in the demonstration to
the “first analogy of experience,” p. 183 of the 1st edit.
In this very place, however, he commits the insupportable
blunder, already criticised by me elsewhere, and which
contradicts, moreover, his own doctrine, of saying that it is
not time that flows, but only the phenomena in time.
116 SCHOPENHAURR'S ESSAYS.

That this is fundamentally false is proved by the tived
certainty implanted in us all, that if all things in heaven
and on earth suddenly stood still, time would continue
its course undisturbed thereby: so that if nature were
later on again to get under way, the question as to the
length of the previous pause would be capable in itself of
a perfectly exact answer, Wore it otherwise, time would
have to stand still with the watch, or when the latter got
too fast. go along with it. But precisely this relation,
together with our certainty a priord respecting it, preves
incontrovertibly that time has its course, and therefore its
essence, in our head and not outside of us, In the realm
of external intuition, as To have said, the enduring is
matter; with our argument from the personality the argu-
ment ison the other hand respecting the perception of the
internal sense, iv whieh that of the external is again taken
up. T said, therefore, that if our conciousness with its
entire content moved forward uniformly in the stream of
time, we could not be aware of this motion, For this, then,
there must be something iu the consciousness that is itself
immovable. But this cannot be anything other than the
knowing subject itself which contemplates, unmoved and
unaltered, the course of time and the change of its content.
Before its: gaze lite pursnes its course like a drama. We
shall be sensible how little part it has itself in this course
if in old age we reeall vividly to ourselves the scenes of
youth and childhood.

2. Internally in self-consciousness, or to spoak with Kant,
through the internal sense, L only know in time. But ob-
jectively considered, nothing permanent can exist in mere
time, since such implies a duration, but this a simultancity
and this again space, (‘Tho justification of this proposition
will be found in my treatise on The Law of Cause.” § 18,
besides in The World as Will and Presentinent,”” 2nd ed.,
vol. i, § 4 pp. 10 and 11, and p. 681, 8rd ed. pp. 10 and
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 117

11, and 560.) Notwithstanding all this, I find myself as
a matter of fact as the substratum of the same, which
endures, that is, which ever remains, in spite of all change
in my presentments, which is related to the presentments
as matter is to its changing accidents, and consequently
no less than the latter deserves the name of substance, and
since it isnot spacial and therefore unextended, that of simple
substance. Since now, as already said, no permanency can
take place in mere time by itself alone, but the substance in
question is perceived on the other hand, not by the exter-
nal sense and consequently not in space, we must, in order
as against the flux of time to think it as permanent,
assume it as something lying outside time and say accord-
ingly, all object lies in time, but the specially knowing
subject, not. As now outside time there is no cessation or
end, we should have in the knowing subject a permanent,
albeit neither spacial nor temporal, and therefore inde-
structible, substance.

In order then to demonstrate the argument from the
personality, as thus stated, to be a paralogism, one should
have to say that the second proposition of the same takes
an empirical act to aid—to which this other may be
opposed—that the knowing subject is bound up with life,
and indeed with waking, that its continuance during both
in nowise proves that it can exist apart from them. For
this actual permanence, during the period of the conscious
state, is far removed, even toto genere distinct, from the per-
manence of matter (the origin and sole realization of the
conception substance), which we know in perception, and
in which we discern a priori not merely its actual duration,
but its necessary indestructibility, and the impossibility of
its annihilation. Yet it is according to the analogy of this
truly indestructible substance that we would wish to assume
a thinking substance in ourselves, which would then be
certain of an endless continuance. But apart from the
118 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

fact that this latter would be an analogy with a mere
phenomenon (matter), the error which the dialectical reason,
in the above demonstration, commits, consists in that it
treats the permanence of the subject, throughout the change
of all its presentments in time, like the permanence of the
matter given to us in perception, and accordingly includes
both under the conception of substance. Everything which
it, although under the condition of perception, can pre-
dicate of matter a priori, especially continuance through
all time, can be attributed to the pretended immaterial
substance, and this although the permanence of the latter
only rests upon the fact that it is assumed as existing in
no time at all, let alone in all times, and as a result the
conditions of perception, in consequence of which inde-
structibility is predicated of matter a priori, are here ex-
pressly abolished, especially the spacial. But on this
precisely rests (as has been shown in the above quoted
passages of my writings), the permanence of the same.

As to the demonstrations of the immortality of the soul,
from its assumed simplicity and consequent indissolubility,
by which the only possible kind of decay, the dissolution of
the parts, is excluded; it may be said generally that all
laws respecting origination, dissolution, change, continu-
ance, &¢., which we know either a priori or a posteriori, are
only valid of the corporeal world given us objectively, and
also conditioned by our intellect. As soon, therefore, as we
depart from this, and talk of immaterial essences, we have
no longer any justification for applying those laws and rules
in order to maintain whether the origination and dissolution
of such essences is possible or not, for here every clue fails
us. In this connection, all such proofs of immortality
from the simplicity of the thinking substance are invalid.
For the amphiboly lies in that an immaterial substance is
spoken of, and then the laws of material substance are in-
terpolated in order to be applied to it.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 119

In the meantime the paralogism of the personality, as I
have apprehended it, gives in its first argument the demon-
stration a priori that something permanent must lie in our
consciousness; and in the second argument it proves the
same thing a posteriori. Taken altogether, it will seem that
the truth which, according to the rule, lies at the foundation
of every error, rational psychology included, has its root in
the above. This truth is, that even in our empirical con-
sciousness an eternal point can assuredly be shown, but
only a point, and only shown fo be, without the material for
any further demonstration being derived from it. I refer
here to my own doctrines, according to which that is the
knowing subject which knows all, but is not itself known.
We therefore conceive it as the fixed point past which
time, with its presentments, flows, the very course of time
being only known in opposition to something permanent.
I have called this the point of contact of the object with
the subject. The subject of knowledge is, with me, like
the body whose brain-function it objectively presents, a
phenomenon of the will, which, as the only thing-in-itself,
is here the substratum of a correlate of all phenomena,
that is, of the subject of knowledge.

If we now turn to rational cosmology we find pregnant
expressions, in its antinomies, of the perplexity arising
from the law of cause, perplexities which have from time
immemorial forced men to philosophize. To emphasize
this in another, clearer, and less complex manner than has
been done by Kant, is the object of the following exposition,
which, unlike the Kantian, is not merely dialectical, opera-
ting with abstract concepts, but which applies itself imme-
diately to the perceptive consciousness.

Time can have no beginning, and no cause can be primal.
Both are a priovi certain, and therefore undeniable, for all
beginning is in time, and therefore presupposes time, and
every cause must have a previous one behind it, whose
120 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

effect it is. How, then, could a first beginning of the world
and the things therein have ever taken place? (The first
verse of the Pentateuch would seem a petitio principti, and
this in the most literal sense of the term.) On the contrary,
if a first beginning had not been, the real present would
not be now, but would be long past, for between it and the
first beginning we must assume some time, however
limited, but which—if we deny the beginning, in other
words, if we push it back to infinity—is also pushed back
to infinity. But even if we assume a first beginning, this
does not assist us in the last resort, for we have thereby
arbitrarily cut off the causal chain, after which we shall im-
mediately find mere time itself a difficulty. The ever-re-
newed question, namely, “ why this first beginning did not
take place earlier?” will follow it up farther and farther
through time, whereby the chain of causes lying between
it and us is carried up higher and higher, so that it can
never be long enough to reach down to the actual present,
and accordingly it will have always not yet reached the
present. But this is contradicted by the fact that the pre-
sent is really there, and constitutes indeed our only datum
for the reckoning. The justification of the foregoing in-
convenient question arises from the fact that the first be-
ginning as such, implies no preceding cause, and therefore
might just as well have occurred trillions of years earlier.
For if it required no cause for its occurrence, it did not
have to wait for any, and must accordingly have taken
place infinitely sooner, since there existed nothing to prevent
it. For as nothing need precede the first beginning as its
cause, so nothing need precede it as its hindrance ; it has,
therefore, to wait for nothing, and never comes soon
enough. It matters not in what point of time we fix it,
we can never see why it should not have existed much
sooner. This, therefore, pushes it ever farther back, for
since time itself can have no beginning, there is always an
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 121

infinite time elapsed up to the present moment, so that the
throwing backward of the beginning of the world is always
endless, every causal chain from it to us proving too short,
the consequence being that we never reach from it to the
present time. Hence it comes that a given fixed point of’
connection (point d’attache), fails us, and therefore we have
to assume such a one arbitrarily, but it always vanishes
before our hands backwards into infinity. And so it also
happens that when we posit a first beginning and proceed
therefrom we never attain from it to the present time.

If, on the other hand, we start from the really given
present we never attain, as already indicated, to the first
beginning. For every cause to which we proceed must
always be the effect of a previous one, which finds itself in
the same case and can reach no end. The world is there-
fore now beginningless, like infinite time itself, in the
contemplation of which our imaginative faculty is wearied,
and our understanding receives no satisfaction.

These two opposite views may be compared to a stick
of which one end, it matters not which, may be easily
grasped, while the other extends itself for ever into infinity.
The essential of the matter may be resumed in the propo-
sition that time, which is absolutely infinite, must always
be too great for a world conceived as finite. But at bottom
the truth of the “antithesis” of the Kantian antinomy is
confirmed thereby, for if we proceed from that which is
alone certain and really given, the beginninglessness of
time results. On the other hand, the first beginning is
merely an arbitrary assumption, which cannot be united
as such, with what we have said is the only certain
and real, the present. For the rest we must regard these
considerations as disclosing the absurdities ensuing from
the assumption of the absolute reality of time, and conse-
quently as confirmations of the main thesis of Kant.

The question as to whether the world is bounded in
122 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

space or is unbounded, is not per se transcendent, but
rather empirical, since the question always lies within the
realm of possible experience, the reduction of it to reality
being only forbidden us by our own physical conformation,
A priori there is here no demonstrably certain argument,
either for the one or for the other alternative, so that the
question really resembles an antinomy, inasmuch as with
the one as with the other assumption considerable difficul-
ties present themselves. A bounded world in infinite space
vanishes, let it be ever so large, to an infinitely small
quantity, and one asks what is the remaining space there
for? On the other hand, one cannot conceive that no
fixed star should be the farthest in space. It may be
observed, by the way, that the planets of such a star would
only have a starry heaven at night during a half of their
year, during the other half a starless heaven, which would
certainly make a very uncanny impression on the inhabi-
tants. The foregoing question, therefore, may be thus ex-
pressed, “Is there a fixed star whose planets stand in this
predicament or not?” Here it evinces itself as obviously
empirical.

In my critique of the Kantian philosophy, I have shown
the whole assumption of the antinomies to be false and
illusory. With due consideration, however, every one
will at once recognize it as impossible that concep-
tions, correctly drawn from phenomena and their a priori
certain laws, should, when combined according to the
laws of logic into judgments and conclusions, lead to
contradictions. For if this were the case, contradic-
tions would have to lie in the perceptually-given phe-
nomenon itself, or in the regulative connection of its
members, which is an impossible assumption. For the
perceptual, as such, knows no contradiction at all; the
latter term has in respect of it no meaning or significance,
since it exists merely in abstract knowledge or reflection.
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 123

One can perfectly well, either openly or covertly, assume
something and at the same time not assume it, in other
words, contradict one’s-self, but something real cannot at
the same time both be and not be. The opposite of the
foregoing, Zeno the eleatic certainly sought to prove with
his well-known sophisms, as also Kant with his antinomies.
I therefore refer the reader to my critique of the latter.

Kant’s service to speculative theology has already been
generally touched upon. In order to emphasize it still more
I will now as shortly as may be, endeavour to make the essen-
tial of the matter as comprehensible as possible in my way.

In the Christian religion the existence of God is a thing
pre-supposed and raised above all discussion. This is only
natural, for it is essential thereto, and is in this case based
upon revelation. I regard it therefore as a blunder of the
Rationalists when they attempt in their dogmas to demon-
strate the existence of God otherwise than from the Scrip-
tures. They in their innocence do not know how dan-
gerous is this amusement. Philosophy, on the other hand,
is a science, and as such has no articles of faith. In
philosophy, therefore, nothing may be assumed as existent,
except either what is directly given in experience, or what
is demonstrated by indubitable arguments. The latter
people certainly long believed themselves to be in the pos-
session of, when Kant disillusionized. the world on this
point, and so decisively demonstrated the impossibility of
such proofs, that since then no philosopher in Germany
has again attempted to resuscitate them. Herein Kant
was perfectly justified, and what he did was of the highest
service, for a theoretical dogma which presumes to stamp
every one who refuses to admit its validity as a rogue,
deserves once for all to be seriously put to the test.

The case of the assumed demonstration is as follows.
Inasmuch as the reality of the existence of God cannot be
shown by empirical reasoning, the next step should pro-
124 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

perly be to establish its possibility, in the course of doing
which one would encounter enough difficulties. But, in-
stead of this, its necessity was undertaken to be proved,
1.e. it was undertaken to demonstrate God as necessary
essence.

Now necessity, as I have often shown, is never anything
more than the dependence of a consequence on its cause,
in other words, the appearance or positing of the effect
because the cause is given. To this end accordingly the
choice lay between the four forms of the principle of cause
demonstrated by me, and of these the two first only were
found to be admissible. There arose therefore two theo-
logical demonstrations, the cosmological and the ontologi-
cal, the first derived from the principle of the ground of
Becoming (cause), the other from that of the ground of
Knowing. The first seeks to establish the necessity re-
ferred to as physical according to the law of causality,
inasmuch as the world is conceived as an effect which
must have a cause. To this cosmological demonstration
the assistance and support of the physico-theological is
added. The cosmological argument is most powerfully
expressed in the Wolffian version of it, which is as follows:
“Tf any thing at all exists, there exists an absolutely
necessary Being.” By this is to be understood either that
which is itself given, or the first of the causes through
which it attains to existence. The latter is then assumed.
This demonstration has obviously the weakness of being a
conclusion from the consequence to the cause, to which
form of conclusion logic refuses all claim to certainty. It
ignores the fact which I have often pointed out, that we
can only think any thing as necessary in so far as it is
effect, not in as far as it is cause of another given thing.
Besides, the law of causality when applied in this way
proves too much. For if it would carry us from the world
back to its cause, it does not allow us to remain by this,
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 125

but leads us further back still to the cause of the cause,
and so onward and remorselessly onward in infinitum.
This is involved in its very nature. We are in the posi-
tion of Goethe’s magician’s apprentice, whose imp began
indeed at. command, but refused to leave off again. Add
to this that the force and validity of the law of causality
only extends to the form of things and not to their matter.
It is the clue to the change of forms and nothing more;
the matter remains untouched by all their coming and
going, a fact which we discern before all experience, and
therefore know with certainty. Finally, the cosmological
demonstration is upset by the transcendental argument
that the law of causality is demonstrably of subjective
origin, and therefore merely applicable by our intellect to
phenomena, and not to things in themselves.*

As already said, the physico-theological demonstration
is given as a subsidiary aid to the cosmological, in order

1 Looking at things realistically and objectively, it is as clear
as the noonday that the world maintains itself. Organic beings
subsist and propagate themselves by virtue of their own inward
and original vital force. Inorganic bodies bear in themselves the
forces of which physics and chemistry are the mere description,
and the planets proceed in their course from inward powers by
virtue of their inertia and gravitation. The world, therefore, re-
quires no one outside itself for its subsistence, for it is Vishnu ;
but to say that this world in time with all its indwelling forces has
not always been, but has been produced from nothing by a foreign
power existing outside it, is a wholly superfluous supposition
which nothing can confirm, more particularly as all its forces are
bound up with matter, the origination and the destruction of which
we cannot even so much as think. This conception of the world
reaches back to Spinozism. That men in their uttermost need
have everywhere conceived beings which control the forces of
nature and their course, in order to appeal to such, is perfectly
natural. Greeks and Romans, however, were content to leave
the matter with the control of its own sphere by each divinity ; it
never occurred to them to assert that any one of them had made
the world and the forces of nature.
126 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

that it should afford confirmation, substantiation, plausi-
bility, colour, and form to the assumption introduced by
the former. But it can only come in with the presupposi-
tion of the first demonstration, the explanation and amphi-
fication of which it is. Its procedure consists in that it
raises the already presupposed cause of the world to a
knowing and willing being, inasmuch as by induction from
the many effects which may be explained by such a cause
it seeks to establish this cause. But induction can at most
afford strong probability, certainty never. Besides, as
already said, this whole demonstration is conditioned by
the previous one. But if one goes more closely and
seriously into this favourite physico-theology,-and tests it
in the light of my philosophy, it is seen to be the carrying-
out of a fundamentally false view of nature, which degrades
the immediate phenomenon or objectivation of the will to
a mere mediate one, and thus instead of recognizing in
natural existences the original, primarily powerful, know-
ingless, and therefore infallibly certain action of the will,
it explains it as something merely secondary, only pro-
duced by the light of knowledge and the clue of motives;
and accordingly it conceives that which has been produced
from within outwards as something becarpentered, be-
modelled, and moulded from the outside. For if the Will
as thing in itself, which is not in any sense Presentment,
emerges in the act of its objectivation from its originality
into Presentment, and we assume that what displays itself
in this presentment is something brought about in the
world of presentment itself ; in other words, in consequence
of knowledge, then certainly it appears only possible by
means of an immeasurably perfect knowledge, a knowledge
which comprehends at once all objects and their connec-
tion—in short, as a work of the highest wisdom. As to
this point I refer the reader to my treatise on “ Will in
Nature,” especially pp. 43-62 of the Ist ed. (pp. 35-54
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 127

2nd ed., pp. 37-58 8rd ed.), under the heading “Com-
parative Anatomy,” and to my chief work, vol. ii., be-
ginning of cap. 26.

The second theological demonstration, the ontological,
as stated, does not take the law of causality, but the
principle of the ground of knowledge as its clue, whereby
the necessity of the existence of God becomes here a
logical one. It is sought here, namely, to deduce the
existence from the conception of God by a mere analytical
judgment, in such wise that it is not possible to make this
conception the subject of a proposition in which this
existence is denied, by making such denial contradict the
subject of the proposition. This is logically correct, but
it is also a very obvious and only too transparent con-
juror’s trick. After having by using the concept “ per-
fection” or “reality” as a handle to be employed as ter-
minus medius, the predicate of existence is introduced into
the subject it cannot fail that it is afterwards found there
again, and is exposed by means of an analytical judgment.
But the justification for establishing the whole concept is
in nowise proved thereby; on the contrary, it is either
excogitated in a purely arbitrary manner, or introduced
through the cosmological demonstration, according to which
everything turns on purely physical necessity. Christian
Wolff seems indeed to have seen this, for in his metaphysics
he has only made use of the cosmological argument, and
expressly takes note of the fact. The ontological demon-
stration will be found carefully investigated and estimated
in the second and third edition of my treatise on the
“Fourfold Root of the Principle of Adequate Cause,” § 7,
and to this I refer the reader.

The two theological demonstrations mutually support
each other, but cannot stand any the more on that ac-
count. The cosmological has the advantage that it takes
account how it has come by the conception of a God, and
128 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

by its adjunct the physico-theological demonstration seeks
to make this demonstration probable. The ontological,
on the other hand, is quite unable to prove how it has
come by its conception of the most real of all essences,
and in consequence either alleges it to be innate or bor-
rows it from the cosmological demonstration, and seeks to
uphold it by imposing-sounding talk of the Being which
cannot be thought of except as existing, whose existence
lies already in its conception, &c.

In the meantime, we shall not deny the merit of acute-
ness and subtlety to the invention of the ontological
demonstration if we consider the following. In order to
explain a given existence, we point to its cause, in respect
of which it then appears as something necessary, and this
serves as its explanation. But this way leads, as already
sufficiently shown, to a “regressus in infinitum,” and can
never, therefore, attain the something final which would fur-
nish a fundamental ground ofexplanation. The case would
be otherwise if the existence of any being could be really
deduced from its essence, that is, from its mere concept or
definition. For then, indeed, it would be known as some-
thing necessary (by which here as elsewhere is only meant
that “which follows from its cause”) without thereby
being bound to any thing other than its own concept—in
other words, without its necessity being merely transitory
and momentary, itself being again conditioned, and so on,
leading to an infinite series as is always the case with
causal necessity. The mere ground of knowledge would
then have transformed itself into a ground of reality, that
is, into a cause, thereby excellently qualifying itself to
serve as the final, and hence certain, point of attachment
for all causal series, in which case we should have what
we sought.

Butwe have seen above that all this is illusory, and it looks
as if Aristotle himself had been desirous of avoiding such
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 129

a sophistication when he said, rd 6é elvat obk ovoia ovdére,
ad nullius ret essentiam pertinet existentia (Analyt. post.
ii. 7).

Without troubling himself about this, Descartes, follow-
ing Anselm of Canterbury, who had already led the way to
a similar line of thought, posited the conception of God as
one which fulfilled the requirement—Spinoza, however, that
of the world as the only existing substance which could be
causa sui, i.e., quae per se est et per se concipitur quamobrem
nulla alia re eget ad existendum, conferring on the world
so established the title God, honoris causa, in order to
satisfy everyone. But it is always the same tour de passe-
passe, which endeavours to palm off the logically necessary
as a real necessary, and which, together with other similar
deceptions, at last gave occasion to Locke’s great investiga-
tion into the origin of concepts, with which the foundation
of the critical philosophy was laid. A more detailed ex-
position of the procedure of both dogmatists is contained
in my treatise on the “ Principle of Cause,” 2nd and 3rd
ed., §§ 7 and 8.

After Kant by his critique of speculative theology had
given the latter its death blow,’ he had to seek to modify the
impression produced by this, and to apply, as it were, a
soothing medicine or anodyne; the procedure of Hume was
analogous, who in the last of his, as readable as irrefutable,
“Dialogues on Natural Religion,” explains to us that the
whole thing has merely been a joke, an ewercitium logicum.
In the same way Kant gave as substitute for the demon-
stration for the existence of God, his postulate of the
practical reason, and the moral theology arising therefrom
which without any claim to objective validity, so far as
knowledge or the theoretical reason was concerned, should
have complete validity in respect of conduct, or for the

1 Kant discovered, namely, the alarming truth that philosophy
must be something other than Jewish mythology.
K
130 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

practical reason, whereby a belief without knowledge might
be founded—so that at all events people should have
something in hand. His exposition, properly understood,
says nothing else than that the assumption of a just God
rewarding and punishing after death is a useful and suffi-
cient regulative scheme for the explanation of the serious
ethical significance felt to belong to our conduct, as also
for the regulation of this conduct itself. He set up, as it
were, an allegory of the truth, so that in this respect, which
alone has any significance in the last resort, his assump-
tion might take the place of the truth, even though theo-
retically or objectively it was not to be justified. An
analogous scheme of similar tendency, but of much
greater validity, stronger plausibility, and consequently
more immediate worth, is the dogma of Brahminism of a
rewarding or punishing Metempsychosis, according to
which we must at some time be reborn in the form of every
being that has been injured by us, in order to suffer the
same injury. Kant’s moral theology must be taken in the
sense indicated, remembering at the same time that he
himself dare not express himself so plainly as is here done
on the real state of affairs, but in setting up the monstrosity
of a theoretical doctrine of merely practical validity reckoned
on the granum salis of the wiser sort. The theological and
theosophical writers of a later time far removed from the
Kantian philosophy, have endeavoured for the most part
to give the matter the appearance as though Kant’s moral
theology were a real dogmatic Theism, a new proof of the
existence of God. Yet it is not so by any means, but is
only valid inside the moral sphere, merely for the assistance
of morality, and not a straw’s breadth further.

Not even the professors of philosophy allowed themselves
to be satisfied with this for long, although they were placed
in conspicuous embarrassment by Kant’s critique of specu-
lative theology, for they had from of old recognized it as
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 131

their special calling to demonstrate the existence and attri-
butes of God, and to make Him the chief subject of their
philosophising. When, therefore, Scripture teaches that
God nourishes the ravens in the field, I must also add,
and the professors of philosophy in their chairs. Even
now-a-days, they assert with perfect coolness that the
Absolute (well-known as the new-fangled title for God)
and its relation to the world is the proper subject of philo-
sophy, and to define this more closely, and to paint it with
their imagination, exercises them now as before, for as-
suredly the governments which provide money for such
philosophising desire to see good Christians and zealous
Church-goers come out of the philosophical class-rooms.
How must it then have suited these gentlemen of the
lucrative philosophy when Kant upset the concept by the
proof that all demonstrations of speculative theology are
untenable, and that all cognitions concerning their chosen
theme were simply impossible for our intellect? At first
they tried to help themselves by their well-known method
of ignoring, and afterwards by contesting, but this did not
answer in the long run. They next threw themselves upon
the assertion that the existence of God was indeed in-
capable of any demonstration, but that it did not require
any ; for it was obvious, indeed the most established fact
of the world, which we could not doubt since we had a
“divine consciousness” within us, our reason being the
organ for the immediate knowledge of supernatural things,
and our instruction on this point being derived immediately
from it, whence it was therefore called Reason! (Iearnestly
beg the reader to consult respecting this my treatise on the
“Principle of Cause,” 2nd and 3rd edit., § 34, as also my
“Fundamental Problems of Ethics,” pp. 148-154, finally
also my “Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy,” 2nd ed.,
pp. 584-584, 3rd. ed., pp. 617-618.)

As regards the genesis of this divine consciousness we
132 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

have recently received a remarkable pictorial illustration,
to wit, an engraving displaying a mother placing her three-
year old child with folded hands and in a kneeling position
against the bed, for the purpose of praying, certainly a
frequent occurrence constituting the genesis of the divine
consciousness. For it is not doubtful that when the brain
in the earliest stages of its growth, and at the tenderest
age is so moulded, the “ divine consciousness ”’ will grow as
firmly imbedded in it as though it were really inborn.
According to others the reason merely furnishes suggestions
while others again possess intellectual intuitions. There
were, still further, those who invented Absolute Thought,
i.e., @ Thought by which man did not require to look
around him at the things, but which determined in Divine
Omniscience how they were to be once for all. This is un-
doubtedly the most convenient of all the foregoing inven-
tions. They one and all seized upon the word “ absolute”
which is nothing but the cosmological demonstration in
nuce, or rather so strongly compressed that it has become
microscopic and invisible, and thus is allowed to pass un-
noticed, and as such is proclaimed as something requiring
no explanation. For in its true form it dare no longer
show itself after the Kantian examen rigorosum—as I have
already shown at greater length in the 2nd edition of my
treatise on ‘‘The Principle of Cause,” p. 36 (8rd ed.,
p. 37), and also in my criticism of the Kantian philosophy,
2nd. ed., p. 544 (8rd ed., p. 574). I do not know who
was the first who fifty years ago made use of the trick of
smuggling in under this comprehensive word Absolute the
exploded and proscribed cosmological demonstration, in-
cognito, but the dodge was well suited to the capacities of
the public, for up to this day the word “ absolute” passes
current as true coin.’

* Schopenhauer in this and similar passages forgets that his own
“Will,” which is continually realising itself in the phenomenal
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 133

In short, in spite of the critique of the reason and its de-
monstrations, the professors of philosophy have never failed
in authentic accounts of the existence of God and his rela-
tion to the world in the detailed exposition of which in their
eyes philosophy properly consists. But in the words of
the proverb, “ copper money, copper wares;’’ this God re-
quirmg no explanation of theirs has neither hand nor
foot, and for this reason they keep Him hidden behind a
mountain, or rather behind a noisy edifice of words, so
that scarcely a sign of Him is visible. If one could only
compel them to explain themselves clearly as to what is to
be understood by the word God we should be able to see
whether it required no explanation. Not even a natura
naturans (into which their God often appears to pass) re-
quires no explanation since we find Leukippus, Demokritos,
Epikurus, and Lukretius constructed a world without any
such ; and these men, with all their errors, were worth a
great deal more than a legion of weather-cocks whose trade-
philosophy turns round with the wind. But a natura
naturans is a long way from being God. In the conception
of such the truth is merely contained that behind the
ever-fleeting and restlessly changing phenomena of the
natura naturata an imperishable and untiring force must
lie hidden by virtue of which the former is continually re-
newing itself, since it remains untouched by the dissolution
of things. As the natura naturata is the subject of physics,
so is the natura naturans that of metaphysics. This shows
us that we ourselves ultimately belong to nature, and con-
sequently, know less of natura naturata than of natura
naturans—that we are the nearest and the clearest, and

world, is itself as much the ‘‘ Absolute” as the ‘‘Idea” was to
Hegel, the “Identity” to Schelling, or the ‘‘ Universal Ego” to
Fichte. His diatribes against the word ‘‘absolute” are merely
illustrations of his frequent outbursts of somewhat childish spleen
against the academical philosophers. [TR.]
134 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

indeed that we possess in ourselves the only specimen of
it to which access can be obtained from within. Now in-
asmuch as a serious and exact reflection upon ourselves
discloses the Will as the core of our being, we have in this
an immediate revelation of the natura naturans, which we
are accordingly justified in transferring to all other beings
which are only one-sidedly known tous. We attain thereby
to the great truth that the natura naturans, or the thing-
in-itself is the Will in our own heart, while the natura
naturata, or the phenomenon, is the presentment in our
head. But even apart from this result it is sufficiently
obvious that the mere distinguishing of a natura naturans
and a natura naturata is not only not Theism, but is not even
Pantheism ; for even to the latter, if it is not to be amere
manner of speaking, the addition of certain moral qualities
is necessary, which clearly do not accrue to the world, e.g.,
goodness, wisdom, blessedness, &c.

For the rest, Pantheism is a conception which destroys
itself, for the conception of a God presupposes as its essen-
tial correlate that of a world distinct from him. If, on
the other hand, the world takes over his réle, there remains
an absolute world without God, and hence Pantheism is
only a euphemism for Atheism. But this last expression
in its turn also contains a subreption, since it assumes at
the outset that Theism requires no explanation, whereby
it dexterously evades the afirmanti incwmbit probatio, while
it is rather the so-called Atheism that has the just primi
occupantis, and has therefore to be first driven out of the
field by Theism. I allow myself here the observation that
men came into the world uncircumcised, and therefore not
as Jews. But even the assumption of some cause of the
world distinct therefrom is not Theism. Theism requires
not only a cause distinct from the world, but an intelligent,
a knowing and willing, that is a personal, in short,an indivi-
dual cause ; such a cause alone does the word God connote,
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 135

An impersonal God is no God at all, but merely a mis-
applied word, a misconception, a contradiction in adjecto, a
shibboleth for professors of philosophy who, after having
given up the thing, are anxious to smuggle in the word.
The personality, on the contrary, that is, the self-conscious
individuality which first knows, and then in accordance
with the knowledge wills, is a phenomenon known to us
solely from the animal nature which is present on our
small planet, and is so intimately connected with this that
we are not only not justified in thinking it as separate and
independent, but are not even capable of doing so. But to
assume a being of such a kind, as the origin of nature her-
self and of all existence is a colossal and daring conception
which would startle usif we heard it for the first time, and
if it had not by dint of earliest teaching and continuous
repetition become familiar to us as a second nature, I
might also say a fixed idea. Hence I may observe, by
the way, that nothing has so well accredited to me the
genuineness of Caspar Hauser as the statement that the
so-called natural theology which was expounded to him
did not seem to enlighten him as much as was expected.
To which may be added that he (according to the “ Letters
of Count Stanhope to the schoolmaster Meyer”) exhibited
an extraordinary reverence for the sun. But to teach in
philosophy that this theological notion requires no explana-
tion, and that the reason is only the capacity immediately
to comprehend the same and recognize it as true, is a
shameless proceeding. Not only has philosophy no right
to assume such a conception without the fullest demon-
stration, but it is by no means essential even to religion.
This is attested by the religion which counts the largest
number of adherents on earth, the ancient, highly moral,
indeed ascetic Buddhism,—whose adherents now number
three hundred and seventy millions,—a religion which also
maintains the most numerous body of clergy of any—in-
136 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

asmuch as it does not admit such a conception, but rather
expressly stigmatizes it, and is thus ex professo, according
to our notions, atheistic.’

According to the foregoing, Anthropomorphism is an
essential characteristic of Theism, and it is expressed not
merely in the human form nor even in human affections
and passions, but in the fundamental phenomenon itself,
to wit, in the one will furnished with an intellect for its
guidance, which phenomenon, as already said, is known to
us only in animal nature and most perfectly in human
nature, which is only thinkable as Individuality, and which
when it is endowed with reason is called Personality. This

1 The Zaradobura, the high priest of the Buddhists in Ara, in a
treatise on his religion which he gave to a Catholic Bishop, reckons
among the six damnable heresies the doctrine that a Being exists
who has created the world and all things in the world, and who is
alone worthy of worship. (‘‘ Francis Buchanan on the Religion of
the Burmas,” in ‘ Asiatic Researches,” vol. vi., p. 268.) It is
mentioned in the same series, vol. xv., page 148, viz., that the
Buddhists bow their head before no idol, giving as their reason
that the Primal Being interpenetrates all nature and consequently
is also in their heads. Similarly the learned Orientalist and
member of the St. Petersburg Academy, J. J. Schmidt, in his
“Researches in the domain of the Ancient History of Central
Asiatic Culture” (Petersburg, 1848), p. 180, says: ‘‘The system
of Buddhism knows no eternal uncreated single divine being exis-
tent before all time, and who created all things visible and in-
visible. This idea is quite foreign to it, and there is not the
slightest trace of it to be found in the Buddhist books. Just as
little is there a creation.” Where, then, is the “‘ divine conscious-
ness” of Kant and those professors of philosophy who pervert the
truth? How is it to be explained that the language of the Chinese,
who constitute about two-fifths of the whole human race, has no
expressions for God and creation? For this reason the first verse
of the Pentateuch could not be translated into Chinese to the
great perplexity of the missionaries whom Sir George Staunton
tried to assist by means of a book which he entitled, ‘“‘ An inquiry
into the proper mode of rendering the word ‘God’ in translating
the Sacred Scriptures into the Chinese language.” London, 1848,
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 137

is confirmed by the expression, “as truly as God lives ;”
He is indeed a living being, that is, one willing with know-
ledge. Hence a God requires a heaven in which he is
enthroned and whence he governs. Much more on this
account than because of the expression in the Book of
Joshua was the Kopernican system at once received with
distrust by the Church, and we find accordingly a hundred
years later Giordano Bruno as the champion at once of this
system and of Pantheism. The attempts to purify Theism
from Anthropomorphism, notwithstanding that they are
only meant to touch the shell, really strike at the inner-
most core. In their endeavour to conceive its object ab-
stractly they sublimate it to a dim cloud-shape whose out-
line gradually disappears entirely in the effort to avoid the
human figure; so that at last the whole childish idea
becomes attenuated to nothing. But besides all this the
rationalistic theologians, who are especially fond of these
attempts, may be reproached with contradicting the Holy
Scriptures, which say, “‘ God created man in his own image;
in the image of God created he him.” Let us then away
with the jargon of the professors of philosophy! There is
no other God than God, and the Old Testament is his
revelation—especially the book of Joshua. From the God
who was originally Jehovah, philosophers and theologians
have stripped off one coating after the other, until at last
nothing but the word is left.

One might certainly, with Kant, call Theism a practical
postulate, although in quite another sense to that which he
meant it. Theism is indeed no product of the Understand-
ing but of the Will. If it were originally theoretical, how
could all its proofs be so untenable? But it arises from
the Will in the following manner: the continual need with
which the heart (Will) of man is now heavily oppressed,
now violently moved, and which keeps him perpetually in
a state of fear and hope, while the things of which he
138 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

hopes and fears are not in his power—the very connection
of the chain of causes which produce them only being
traceable for a short distance by his intelligence—this
need, this constant fear and hope, causes him to frame the
hypothesis of personal beings on whom everything depends.
It is assumed of such that they, like other persons, are
susceptible to request and flattery, serviceand gift—in other
words, that they are more tractable than the iron Necessity,
the unbending, the unfeeling forces of nature, and the
mysterious powers of the world-order. At first, as is
natural, and as was very logically carried out by the
ancients, these Gods were many, according to diversity of
circumstances. Later on, owing to the necessity of bringing
sequence, order, and unity into knowledge, these Gods were
subordinated to one, which, as Goethe once remarked to me,
is very undramatic, since with a solitary person one can do
nothing. The essential, however, is the impulse of anxious
humanity to throw itself down and pray for help in its
frequent, bitter, and great distress and also in its concern
for its eternal happiness. Man relies rather on external
grace than on his own merit. This is one of the chief
supports of Theism. In order therefore that his heart
(Will) may have the relief of prayer and the consolation
of hope, his intellect must create a God ; and not conversely,
because his intellect has deduced a God, does he pray. Let
him be left without needs, wishes, and requirements, a
mere intellectual will-less being, and he requires no God
and makes none. The heart, that is the Will, has in its
bitter distress the need to call for almighty and conse-
quently supernatural assistance. Hence, because a God is
wanted to be prayed to he is hypostatised, and not con-
versely. For this reason the theoretical side of the theology
of all nations is very different as to the number and
character of their gods; but that they can and do help
when they are served and prayed to, thus much is common
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPILY. 139

to them all, since it is the point wpon which everything de-
pends. It is at the same time the birth-mark by which
the descent of all theology is recognizable, to wit, that it
proceeds from the Will, from the heart, and not from the
head or the intelligence, as is pretended. This is implied
also in that the true reason why Constantine the Great, as
also Chlodewig, the king of the Franks, changed their
religion, was that they hoped from their new god better
support in war. There are some few races which, pre-
ferring the minor to the major, instead of gods possess
mere spirits, who are prevented from doing harm by sacri-
fice and prayer. But the final result shows no great
ditference. The original inhabitants of the Indian penin-
sula and Ceylon, before the introduction of Brahminism
and Buddhism, appear to have been such races, and their
descendants would seem to have im part even nowa similar
cacodemonological religion, like many other savage peoples.
From this source springs the Kappuism which is mixed
with the Cinghalese religion, Buddhism. In the same way
the devil-worshippers of Mesopotamia, visited by Layard,
seem to belong to this category. Intimately connected
with the true origin of all Theism, as here expounded, and
equally proceeding from the nature of man, is the impulse
to bring sacrifices to his gods in order to purchase their
favour, or if they have already shown such, to ensure its
continuance or to buy off evils from them. (‘* Sancho-
niathonis fragmenta,” ed. Orelli, Lips., 1826, p. 42.) This
is the meaning of every sacrifice, and hence the origin and
support of every god; so that it may be said with truth
the Gods live upon sacrifice. For precisely because the
impulse to appeal to and to purchase the assistance of
supernatural beings, as the child of need and intellectual
limitation, is natural to man, for its satisfaction and re-
quirement he creates God tor himself. Hence the univer-
saulity of sacritice in all ages and with the most diverse
140 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

races, and its identity amid the greatest difference of
circumstance and of intellectual development. Thus, for
example, Herodotus relates that a ship from Samos through
the exceptionally advantageous sale of its cargo in Tartessus,
had acquired an unprecedented fortune, whereupon the
Samians expended the tenth part of it to the amount of
six talents on a large brazen and artistically worked vase,
which they presented in the Temple of Here. And asa
counterpart to these Greeks, we see in our days the
miserable nomad reindeer Lapp, with figure shrunk to the
dimensions of a dwarf, hiding his spare money in various
secret recesses of the rocks and glens, which he makes known
to no one except it be in his dying hour to his heir, and
even to him there is one such hiding-place which he never
reveals—that namely wherein he has secreted a treasure
brought as a sacrifice to the genius loci, the protecting
God of his territory (S. Albrecht Pancritius Hagringar,
“ Reise durch Schweden, Lappland, Norwegen, und Dane-
mark im Jahre 1850,” Konigsberg, 1852, p. 162). The
belief in gods thus has its roots in egoism. In Christianity
alone has the sacrifice proper disappeared, although in the
form of masses for souls, of cloister, church and chapel-
building, it is still there. For the rest, and especially with
Protestants, praise and thanksgiving have to serve as the
surrogate of sacrifice, and hence they are carried to the
extremest superlative even on occasions which to the out-
sider seem little suited thereto—a proceeding analogous to
that of the State which also does not always reward merit
with gifts, but sometimes with mere testimonials of honour,
thereby maintaining its continuance. In this respect
what the great David Hume says deserves to be recalled:
“Whether this god, therefore, be considered as their pecu-
liar patron, or as the general sovereign of heaven, his
votaries will endeavour by every art to insinuate them-
selves into his favour; and supposing him to be pleased,
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 141

like themselves, with praise and flattery, there is no eulogy
or exaggeration which will be spared in their addresses to
him. In proportion as men’s fears or distresses become
more urgent, they will invent new strains of adulation ;
and even he who outdoes his predecessors in swelling up
the titles of his divinity, is sure to be outdone by his
successors in newer and more pompous epithets of praise.
Thus they proceed, till at last they arrive at infinity itself»
beyond which there is no farther progress.” (“ Essays
and Treatises on several Subjects,” London, 1777, vol. ii.,
p. 429.) And again: “It appears certain that, though the
original notions of the vulgar represent the divinity as a
limited being, and consider him only as the particular
cause of health or sickness, plenty or want, prosperity or
adversity, yet when more magnificent ideas are urged upon
them, they esteem it dangerous to refuse their assent. Will
you say that your deity is finite and bounded in his perfec-
tion; may be overcome by a greater force; is subject to
human passions, pains, and infirmities; has a beginning,
and may have an end? This they dare not affirm, but
thinking it safest to comply with the higher enconiwms, they
endeavour, by an affected ravishment and devotion to ingra-
tiate themselves with him. As a confirmation of this we
may observe that the assent of the vulgar is, in this case,
merely verbal, and that they are incapable of conceiving
those sublime qualities which they seemingly attribute to
the Deity. Their real idea of him, notwithstanding their
pompous language, is still as poor and frivolous as ever.”
(Ibid., p. 432.)

In order to mitigate the heterodoxy of his “‘ Critique of all
Speculative Theology,” Kant added thereto not only moral
theology, but also the assurance that even though the
existence of God had to remain unproven, it would be just
as impossible to prove the opposite, an assurance with which
many have consoled themselves, without observing that he,
142 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

with pretended simplicity, ignored the affirmanti incwmbit
probatio, as also that the number of things whose existence
cannot be proved is infinite. He has naturally taken still
more care not to bring forward the arguments which might
be employed for an apagogic counter-demonstration when
once one ceased to adopt a merely defensive attitude, and
began to act on the aggressive. The proceeding would be
somewhat as follows :—

1. In the first place the unhappy constitution of a world
in which living beings subsist by mutually devouring each
other, the consequent distress and dread of all that has life,
the multitude and colossal magnitude of evil, the variety
and inevitability of grief often attaining to horror, the
burden of life itself hurrying forward to the bitterness of
death cannot honestly be reconciled with its being the work
of a united All-Goodness, All-Wisdom, and All-Power.
To raise an outcry against what is here said is just as easy
as it is difficult to meet the case with solid reasons.

2. There are two points which not only occupy every
thinking man, but also which the adherents of every reli-
gion have most at heart, and on which the streneth and
persistence of religion is based; firstly, the transcendent
moral significance of our conduct; and secondly, our con-
tinuance after death. When oncea religion has taken care
of these two points everything else is secondary. I will
therefore test Theism here in respect of the first, and later
on in that of the second point.

With the morality of our conduct Theism has a double
connection, viz., one a parte ante, and one a parte post, that
is, with respect to the causes and consequences of our
action. To take the last point first; Theism indeed gives
morality a support, albeit one of the roughest kind, one
indeed by which the true and pure morality of conduct is
fundamentally abolished, inasmuch as every disinterested
action is at once transformed into an interested one by
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 143

means of a very long dated but assured bill of exchange
which is received as payment for it. The God, viz., who
was in the beginning the Creator, appears in the end as an
avenger and paymaster. Regard for such an one can cer-
tainly call forth virtuous actions, but these are not purely
moral since fear of punishment, or hope of reward are their
motive, the significance of such virtue being reducible
rather to a wise and well-considered egoism. In the last
resort it turns solely on the strength of belief in unde-
monstrable things; if this is present no one will certainly
stick at accepting a short period of sorrow for an eternity
of joy, and the really guiding principle of morality will be
“we can wait.” But every one who seeks a reward for his
deeds, either in this or in a future world, is an egoist. If
the hoped-for reward escape him, it is the same thing,
whether this happens by the chance which dominates this
world, or by the emptiness of the illusion which builds for
him the future one. For these reasons Kant’s Moral
Theology, properly speaking, undermines morality.

Again, a parte ante, Theism is equally in contradiction
with morality, since it abolishes freedom and responsibility.
For with a being which in its existentia and essentia alike,
is the work of another, neither fault nor merit can be con-
ceived. Vauvenargues says very rightly: “ Un étre, quia
tout recu, ne peut agir que par ce quiluia été donne ; et tout la
puissance divine qui est infinie, ne saurait le rendre indépen-
dant” (“ Discours sur la Liberté,” see ‘‘huvres completes,”
Paris, 1828, tom. ii., p. 381). Like every other thinkable
being it cannot operate otherwise than according to its
nature, and make known this nature in its operations ; it is
created as we here find it. If it acts badly this comes from
the fact that it is bad, in which case the fault is not its
own, but His who made it. The originator of its existence
and its nature, to which we may add the circumstances in
which it has been placed, is inevitably the originator of its
144 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

conduct and its deeds, which are as certainly determined
by the former as the triangle is by two angles and a line.
The correctness of this argumentation has been very well
recognized and admitted by St. Augustine, by Hume, and
by Kant, while others have glossed over and timidly ignored
it, a point I have fully dealt with in my prize essay on the
“ Freedom of the Will,” p. 67, sq. (2nd ed., p. 66, sq.) In
order to elude this fearful and exterminating difficulty the
freedom of the Will, the liberum arbitrium indifferentic,
was invented, a theory which contains an utterly monstrous
fiction, and was therefore long ago discarded by all thinking
minds, but has perhaps never been so systematically and
thoroughly refuted as in the work just quoted. If, not-
withstanding, the common herd content themselves with
freedom of the Will—even the literary, the philosophical,
common herd—what matters that to us? The assertion
that a given being is free, that is, under given circumstances
can act thus and also otherwise, implies that it has an ewis-
tentia without any essentia, i.e., that it can be without being
something, in short, that it at the same time is and is not.
This, of course, is the acme of absurdity, but none the
less, good enough for people who seek not the truth but
their fodder, and hence will never allow anything to obtain
which does not suit the stuff, the fable convenu, on which
they live; ignoring suits their obtuseness better than re-
futing. And ought we to attach any weight to the opinions
of such Booxjpara, in terram prona et ventri obedientia ?
All that is is also something, has an essence, a nature, a
character, in accordance with which it must operate. It
must conduct itself (that is, act according to motive), when
the external occasions arise which call out its particular
manifestations. Whence it gets its actuality, its existentia,
there also it gets its construction, its essentia, since the
two, although distinguishable in conception, are not sepa-
rable in reality. But that which has an essentia, that is, a
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 145

nature, a character, a construction, can only act in accor-
dance therewith, and never otherwise. It is merely the
precise moment, and special form and manner of the
individual actions which are determined by the incoming
motive. That the creator made man free, that he gave him
an existentia without an essentia, in other words, an exis-
tence merely in abstracto, inasmuch as he left it to him to
be what he would, is an impossible proposition. On this
point I beg the reader to refer to § 20 of my treatise on the
“ Foundations of Morality.” Moral freedom and responsi-
bility, or accountability, necessarily presupposes Aseity.
Actions are always based on character, that is, they proceed
with necessity from the peculiar, and therefore unchange-
able structure of a being under the influence and according
to the measure of motive. Hence, if it is to be responsible,
it must exist originally by virtue of its own power. It
must, as regards its existentia and essentia, beits own work,
and the creator of itself, if it is to be the true creator of its
acts. Or, as I have expressed it in my two Prize Essays,
its freedom cannot consist in its Operari, but must reside
in its esse, for there it certainly is.

Since all this is not merely demonstrable a priori, but is
clearly taught us by daily experience, to wit, that every
one brings his moral character already complete into the
world with him, and remains unchangeably true to it to
the end, and since this truth is presupposed tacitly but
certainly in our practical life, inasmuch as everyone bases
his confidence or his misconfidence in another, once for all
on the traits of character that other has manifested—this
being so, one might wonder how, for about sixteen hundred
years, the opposite has been theoretically asserted and
taught, namely, that all men are in respect of morality
originally the same, and that the great diversity of their
conduct arises not from innate disposition and character,
and just as little from accidental circumstances and causes,

L
146 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

but, properly speaking, from nothing at all which nothing
at all receives the name of free-will. But this absurd
doctrine is made necessary by another, in the same way,
purely theoretical assumption with which it exactly hangs
together, namely, that the birth of man is the absolute
beginning of his existence, since he is created out of no-
thing (aterminus ad hoc). If now, under this presupposition,
life is to retain a moral significance and tendency, these
must have their origin in the course of it, and must indeed
originate from nothing, just as the supposed man himself
is from nothing; for every connection with a preceding
condition, a previous existence or a timeless act to which,
nevertheless, the immeasurable original and innate variety
of moral characters clearly points, remains once for all
excluded. Hence the absurd fiction of a free will. Truths,
it is well known, all stand in mutual connection; but
errors also are necessary to each other, just as one lie
requires a second, or as two cards stood up against one
another reciprocally support each other so long as nothing
overturns them both.

3. On the assumption of Theism it does not fare much
better with our continuance after death than with the
freedom of the will. That which has been created by
another has had a beginning of existence. Now that that
which for an infinite time has not been, should from all
eternity continue to be, is an outrageously bold assump-
tion. If at my birth I have come from nothing and been
created out of nothing, then it is the highest probability
that at death I shall again become nothing. Endless
continuance a parte post, and nothing a parte ante, do not
go together. Only that which is itself original, eternal,
uncreated, can be indestructable. (“ Aristoteles de Ccelo,”
i. 12, 282, a, 25 fg., and Priestley, on “Matter and Spirit,”
Birmingham, 1782, vol. i. p. 234.)

Those, therefore, may certainly be anxious in death who
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 147

believe that before thirty or sixty years they were a pure
nothing, and out of this nothing have proceeded as the
work of another, for they have the difficult task of as-
suming that an existence so arisen, notwithstanding its
late beginning, which has come about after the lapse of
an infinite time, will, nevertheless, be of infinite duration.
On the other hand, why should he fear death who re-
cognizes himself as the original and eternal being, the
very source of all existence, who knows that outside him
nothing, properly speaking, exists at all—he who closes
his individual existence with the saying of the Holy
Upanishads, he omnes creaturce in totum ego sum, et preter
me ens aliud non est, on his lips or even in his heart. He
alone, can with logical consistency, die peacefully. For, as
already said, aseity is the condition of immortality as of
accountability. In accordance with the foregoing, con-
tempt of death and the most complete indifference to, or
even joy in dying, is thoroughly at home’ in India.
Judaism, on the contrary, originally the sole and only
pure monotheistic religion, teaching a real God-creator of
heaven and the earth, has with perfect logicality no doc-
trine of immortality, and hence no recompense after death,
but only temporal punishments and rewards, whereby it dis-
tinguishes itself from all other religions, though possibly
not to its advantage. The two religions sprung from
Judaism, in so far as they took up the doctrine of immor-
tality, which had become known to them from other and
better religious teaching, and at the same time retained
the God-creator, acted illogically in doing so.’

1 The Jewish religion proper, as it is presented and taught in
Genesis and all historical books up to the end of Chronicles is the
coarsest of all religions, because it is the only one which has abso-
lutely no doctrine of immortality, not even a trace of it. Each
king, and each hero or prophet, when he died was buried with his

fathers, and therewith everything was finished. There is no trace
of any existence after death, every thought of the kind being as if
148 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

That, as already said, Judaism is the only pure mono-
theistic religion, i.e., one teaching that a God-creator 1s the

purposely banished. For instance, Jehovah’s long eulogy on King
Josiah closes with a promise of reward. This is as follows: idod
mpvoTiInpi oe mpdc Tove TaTépac cov, Kai MpooTESHoY TPOG TA prynpara
cov éy étpyvy (2 Chron. xxxiv. 28). And hence that he shall not
live to see Nebuchadnezzar. But there is no idea of another
existence after death, and thereby of a positive reward ; instead
of this it is a merely negative one—to die and to suffer no further
sorrow. When Jehovah had sufficiently utilized and tormented
his handiwork and plaything, he throws it away on to the dung-
heap—that is its reward. Precisely because the Jewish religion
has no immortality, and consequently knows no punishments after
death, Jehovah can threaten the sinner who prospers on earth
with nothing else except that he will punish his misdeeds in the
persons of his children and children’s children to the fourth gene-
ration, as may be seen from Exodus xxxiv. 7; and Numbers xiv.
18. This proves the absence of any doctrine of immortality.
Similarly a passage in Tobias, iii. 6, where the latter begs Jehovah
that he may die, d7we drodv3 Kai yévwpa yj. Nothing more,
there is no idea of an existence after death. In the Old Testa-
ment the reward promised to virtue is to live long on the earth
(e.g. Deut v. 16 and 33); in the Veda, on the contrary, it is not to
be born again. The contempt in which the Jews always stood
among contemporary peoples may in great measure have been
based on the poor character of their religion. What the Kohaleth
says, ch. iii. v. 19, 20, is the true sentiment of Jewish religion.
If sometimes, as in Daniel xii. 2, immortality is indicated, it is as
an imported foreign doctrine, as is evident from Daniel i. 4 and 6.
In the 2nd Book of Maccabees, ch. vii., the doctrine of immortality
appears plainly as of Babylonian origin. All other religions, those
of the Hindoos, as well Brahman as Buddhist, of the Egyptians,
Persians, even of the Druids teach immortality, and also, with
the exception of the Persian Zendavesta, metempsychosis. Even
Greeks and Romans had something post letum, Tartarus and
Elysium, and said :

“Sunt aliquid manes, letum no omnia finit
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.”
Propert. Eleg. iv. 7, v. 1 and 2.

The essential element of religion, as such, properly consists in the
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 149

origin of ali things, is a service which for unknown reasons
it has been sought to conceal by continually maintaining

assurance which it gives us that our true existence is not limited
to our life, but is infinite. This miserable Jewish religion not only
does not do this, but does not even attempt it. For this reason it
is the coarsest and worst of all religions, and consists merely of an
absurd and irritating Theism which has, as its outcome, that the
Kvupiog who has created the world, desires to be honoured ; hence
he is above all things jealous of other Gods, and if sacrifices are
made to them he gets enraged, and it goes badly with his Jews.
All these other religions and their Gods are stigmatized in the
Septuagint as BdéAvyya; but it is the immortalityless, coarser
Judaism which rather deserves this name. For it is a religion
without any metaphysical tendency. While all other religions
seek to illustrate to the people by symbols and parables the meta-
physical significance of life, the Jewish religion is entirely im-
manent, and furnishes nothing but a mere war-cry in fighting
other nations. The Jews are the chosen people of their God, and
he is the chosen God of his people. And that need trouble no one
else. On the other hand, the reputation cannot be denied to
Judaism of being the only really monotheistic religion in the
world; for no other can show an objective God the Creator of
Heaven and earth. When I observe, however, that the modern
European nations regard themselves to a certain extent as the heirs
of this chosen people of God, I can no longer conceal my contempt.

For the rest, the impression the study of the LXX. has left
upon me is a genuine love and inmost reverence for the péyac
Baowvtsde NaBovywddvocop, eventhough he acted perhaps too leniently
towards a people which had a God who gave or promised the terri-
tories of its neighbours, into the possession of which it came by
robbery and murder, and afterwards built for this God a temple
therein. Would that every people which has a God who makes
“Lands of Promise” of its neighbours’ territories, might speedily
find its Nebuchadnezzar, and its Antiochus Epiphanes too, and
that it might be dealt with without compunction !

{It may be desirable to remind the reader that much in the
above note is based upon what we now know to be a fundamen-
tally erroneous conception of the nature and meaning of early
religion. So far from its being true, as Schopenhauer implies, that
the essence of all other religions, except that of the Hebrews, lay
in a doctrine of personal immortality—all modern research goes to
150 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

and teaching that all nations reverence the true God, al-
though under other names. There is not merely much
wanting in this procedure, but everything. That Buddhism,
that is, the religion which, by possessing the greatest
number of adherents is the most important on earth, is
throughout expressly atheistic, is placed beyond a doubt
by the agreement of all unfalsified testimonies and original
documents. The Vedas also teach no God-creator, but a
world-goul called Brahm (neuter), of which the Brahma
sprung from the navel of Vishnu, with the four faces, and
forming part of the trimurti, is merely a popular personifi-
cation, in the very lucid manner of Hindoo mythology. It
represents obviously the generation, the arising of beings,
as Vishnu does their acme, and as Shiva does their de-

show that it is a notion which in all the most ancient forms of reli-
gion is either altogether absent, or at least entirely unimportant.
The Jewish religion was by no means peculiar in this respect. It
may be true, as Schopenhauer says, that the religious sentiment
is largely based on the idea that the significance of the individual
is not limited to his natural life, but Schopenhauer ignores the
fact that early ethics and religion were social, not personal. The
immortality, the true significance of the primitive man, lay in the
larger whole of his clan, tribe, people, of which he formed an ele-
ment. It was in this kinship, or group-society, that he in a special
sense lived, moved, and had his being. ‘‘ Future life’’ for him lay
in the continuance and prosperity of the society. If he thought at
all of any after existence of himself, it was only in a vague way,
as ‘‘ going down to his fathers,” ¢.¢., joining the band of ancestral
spirits who after death watched over the interest of the society
as they had done in life. The belief in, much more the importance
attached to individual immortality for its own sake, was of much
later growth, and even among the oriental races is seldom trace-
able at all farther back than the sixth or seventh, or at most
eighth century B.c. The Jews acquired it rather later than some
other of these races, but that is all that can be said of them in
this respect. Schopenhauer is also utterly unhistorical in assuming
the later post-exilian monotheism of the Jews as belonging to
them from the beginning.] [TR.]
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 151

struction. The generation of the world is moreover a sinful
act, like the world-incarnation of Brahm. The Ormuzd of
the Zendavesta has, as we know, Ahriman as his counter-
part, and both have proceeded from the immeasurable
time Zervane Akerene (if the ordinary view of this be cor-
rect). Similarly, in the very beautiful cosmogony of the
Pheenicians, written by Sanchoniathon, and preserved for
us by Philo Byblius, which is perhaps the original of the
Mosaic Cosmogony, we find no trace of Theism or world-
creation by a personal being. We see here, also, as in the
Mosaic Genesis, the original chaos sunk in night, but no
God appears commanding, “ Let there be light! let there be
this, and let there be that!” Oh, no! but jpdeSy 16 rvevpa
Trav idiwy apyev. The spirit fermenting in the mass em-
bodies itself in its own being, whereby a mixture of those
original elements of the world arises (and arises, indeed,
very effectively and significantly), from which, in conse-
quence of the longing, ré3oc, which, as the commentator
correctly observes, is the Eros of the Greeks, it develops
itself from the primeval slime, and out of this proceed,
finally, plants, and last of all intelligent beings, that is,
animals. For up to this time, as it is expressly stated,
everything went on without intelligence; aird dé voix
éylyvwoke riy Eavrov xriowv. Thus does it stand, adds
Sanchoniathon, in the Cosmogony written by Taaut, the
Egyptian. A more detailed Zoogony then follows upon
his Cosmogony. Certain atmospheric and terrestrial occur-
rences are described which really suggest the correct as-
sumptions of our modern geology. At last, after heavy
floods of rain, comes thunder and lightning, startled by the
crashing of which intelligent animals awake into existence.
«And there moves now on the earth and in the sea, male
and female.” Eusebius, whom we have to thank for this
fragment of Philo Byblius ( Preparat. Evangel.,” 1. ii., ¢.
10), justly accuses this cosmogony of atheism, which it is,
152 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

incontestably, like all and every theory of the origin of
the world, with the single exception of the Jewish. Inthe
mythology of the Greeks and Romans we find, indeed, God
as father of Gods, and sometimes also of men (although
these were rather the potter’s-work of Prometheus), but no
God-creator. For that later a few philosophers to whom
Judaism had become known, wanted to transform father
Zeus into such, does not affect the matter; just as little as
that Dante, without having sought his permission, identifies
him without scruple in his hell with Domeneddio, whose
unparalleled vengeance and cruelty is stigmatised and
pictured (e.g., c. 14, 70; ¢. 31,92). Finally (for everything
has been brought into requisition), the endlessly repeated
statement that the North American Indians worshipped
God, the Creator of heaven and earth, under the name of
the Great Spirit, and hence were pure Theists, is entirely
incorrect. This error has recently been refuted in a treatise
on the North American Indians, which John Scouler read
before a sitting of the London Ethnographical Society in
1846, and of which ‘“JVInstitut, Journal des Soci¢tés
Savantes,” sect. 2, Juillet, 1847, gives an extract. It says,
“When we are told in reports on the superstitions of the
Indians, about the Great Spirit, we are apt to assume that
it designates a conception agreeing with that which we
associate with it, and that their belief is a simple natural
Theism. But this interpretation is very far from correct.
The religion of these Indians is rather a pure Fetishism,
which consists in magical practices and incantations. In
the report of Tanner, who lived among them from child-
hood, the facts are trustworthy and remarkable, albeit very
different from the inventions of certain writers. One sees
from it namely, that the religion of the Indians is only a
Fetishism similar to that which was formerly met with
among the Finns, and is still among the Siberian tribes,
With the Indians dwelling eastward of the Mountains the
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 153

Fetish consists simply of any object, it matters not what,
to which mysterious qualities are attributed,” &c.

In accordance with all this, the opinion here in question
has to make way for its opposite, to wit, that only one very
small and unimportant nation, despised by all contempo-
rary nations, and living alone amongst them all without the
belief in a continued existence after death, but nevertheless
selected for the purpose, has possessed a pure monotheism,
or the knowledge of the true God ; and this, moreover, not
through philosophy, but only through revelation, as was
indeed suitable ; for what value would a revelation have
which only taught one what one knew without it? That
no other nation has ever conceived such an idea must accor-
dingly contribute to our estimate of the revelation.

Section 14.

Some Observations on my own Philosophy.

There is scarcely any philosophical system so simple and
constructed out of such few elements as my own; a fact
rendering it readily comprehensible at a glance. This results
from the complete unity and consistency of its fundamental
positions, and is certainly a favourable augury for its truth,
truth being allied to simplicity amdove 6 rij¢ aXnSelac Aoyoe
épv. Simplex sigillum veri. My system might be signalized
as immanent dogmatism, since its doctrines, although dog-
matic. do not transcend the given world of experience,
but merely explain what the latter is, by analyzing it into
its ultimate elements. The old dogmatism overturned
by Kant (and not less the air-bubbles of the three modern
University-Sophists), is transcendent in that it passes be-
yond the world, to explain it by something foreign thereto :
154 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

it makes the world the consequence of a cause which is
inferred from itself. My philosophy, on the other hand,
began with the doctrine that cause and effect possess
meaning solely within the world, and that only under the
pre-supposition of it are there causes and effects ; inas-
much as the principle of cause in its four modes is merely
the most universal form of the intellect, and that in this
alone, as its true locus mundi, the objective world exists.

In other philosophical systems, the consequence is reached
through a chain of propositions. But this necessarily de-
mands that the special content of the system be present in
the very earliest of these propositions ; whereby the rest, as
derived from them, can scarcely appear otherwise than
monotonous, poor, empty, and tedious, being simply a
development and repetition of what was contained in the
original premises. This unhappy consequence of demon-
strative deduction is most felt in Christian Wolf; but even
Spinoza, who strictly followed this method, was unable en-
tirely to escape its drawbacks, although his genius knew
how to compensate for them. My doctrines, on the other
hand, do not, for the most part, rest on a chain of syllo-
gisms, but immediately on the sensible world itself, and
the strict consequence, as visible in my own, as in any other
system, is, as a rule, not simply arrived at by a logical
process, but is rather the natural agreement of doctrines,
necessarily resulting from their being based, in their en-
tirety, on intuitive cognition, i.e.,on the sensible perception
of the one object, successively contemplated from different
sides, or in other words, on the real world, which in all its
phenomena is subject to the consciousness wherein it pre-
sents itself.

For this reason I have never had a care as to the mutual
consistency of my doctrines ; not even when some of these
appeared to me inconsistent, as was the case for some time;
for the agreement came afterwards of itself in proportion
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 155

to the numerical completeness of the doctrines ; consistency
in my case being nothing more than the consistency of
reality with itself, which, of course, can never fail. This is
analogous to when, on looking at a building for the first
time on one side only, we fail to understand the symmetry
of its parts, yet feel perfectly sure that it is not wanting, but
will be visible to us on the completion of our view. But
the above consistency is a perfectly certain one, because of
its origination, and because it stands under the continual
control of experience; while that which is deduced, and
whose validity is derived from syllogisms, may easily be
found false in some particular; should, for instance, a
member of the long chain be ungenuine, loosely fitted, or
otherwise faulty in its construction. My philosophy ac-
cordingly has a wide basis, on which everything stands
immediately and, therefore, firmly ; while other systems
resemble lofty towers, where if one support breaks, the
whole edifice falls to the ground. The foregoing may be
summed up in the statement that my philosophy has arisen,
and is presented, in an analytic rather than a synthetic
manner.

I may adduce as a special characteristic of my philoso-
phizing, that I seek everywhere to arrive at the foundation
of things, and that I am not satisfied till I have found the
ultimate given reality. This is in accordance with the
natural bent of my mind, which renders it wellnigh im-
possible for me to rest in any more general and abstract
and, therefore, undetermined knowledge, in mere concep-
tions, least of all in mere words; but drives me forward
till I have the final basis of all conceptions and propositions
which is always an intuitive one, exposed before me, and
which I then must either leave as an ultimate phenomenon,
or, if possible, resolve it into its elements, but either way,
follow out the essential nature of the thing to its utter-
most. On this account, it will be recognized one day
156 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

(though certainly not during my lifetime) that the hand-
ling of the same subject by any earlier philosopher is tame
as compared with mine. Mankind has learnt much from me
that will never be forgotten, and my writings will not pass
into oblivion.

Theism also assumes the world to be the production of
a Will—a Will that guides the planets in their orbits, and
calls forth nature upon their surface. But theism, in
childish fashion, places this Will outside the Universe,
and only allows it to operate indirectly on the things,
namely, through the medium of cognition and matter, in a
Human manner; while with me the Will works not so
much on things, as in them; they themselves being indeed
naught else but its visible manifestation.

This agreement proves, however, that we cannot regard
the original of things in any other light than as Will.
Pantheism calls this ever-active Will that is in things by
the name of God; an absurdity frequently and strongly
enough exposed by me. I have designated it the Will to
live; because this expresses the finality of our knowledge
on the subject. The above relation of the Mediate to the
Immediate presents itself also in the sphere of Morals.
The Theists would have a reconcilation between what one
does and what one suffers, and so would I. But they make
this take place through the medium of time, and the inter-
position of a Judge and Avenger. I, on the other hand,
immediately, since I demonstrate the same being in the
actor and the sufferer. The moral consequences of Chris-
tianity to the most extreme Asceticism are present with
me, but based on the reason and the connection of things ;
while in Christianity they are supported by mere fables.
The belief in these is daily waning ; people will, therefore,
be forced to turn to my philosophy. The Pantheists can
have no seriously-meant morality, since they regard every
thing as equally divine and excellent. It has often been
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 157

made a reproach to me that in philosophy, namely theo-
retically, I have represented life as miserable and no way
to be desired; it should be remembered, however, that
practically, he who lays little store by his life is praised,
nay admired, and he who is careful and troubled as to its
preservation is despised. My writings had scarcely begun
to awaken the curiosity of some persons before the ques-
tion of priority arose with reference to my fundamental
thought, it being represented that Schelling had once said,
“ Willis Beimg;” and anything else of this kind which
could be adduced. With regard to this matter, it may be
observed that the root of my philosophy is already present
in the Kantian, especially in Kant’s doctrine of empirical
and intelligible character, but above all, in that whenever
Kant brings the thing-in-itself nearer the light, it always
appears through its veil as Will; a point to which I have
expressly called attention in my “ Critique of the Kantian
Philosophy,” and have said accordingly that my philosophy
is no more than its complete thinking-out. It is not to be
wondered at then, if the philosophizings of Fichte and
Schelling, who equally started from Kant, also show traces
of the same fundamental idea ; although they there appear
without consequence, connection, or development, and there-
fore may be regarded as a mere foretaste of my doctrines.
But, in general, as regards this point, it may be remarked
that every great truth before its discovery is announced
by a previous feeling, a presentiment, a faint outline as in
fog, and an unavailing attempt to grasp it; simply because
the progress of the time has prepared it. It is, therefore,
preluded by disjointed utterances. But he alone, who has
recognized a truth from its causes, and thought it out to
its consequences, developed its whole content, cast his eyes
over the extent of its domain, and after this, with a full
consciousness of its value and importance, clearly and con-
nectedly expounded it, he alone is its originator. When,
158 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

on the other hand, it happens on some occasion or other,
to have been expressed either in ancient or modern times,
with a half consciousness, almost as an utterance in sleep,
and is hence to be found only if expressly looked for, it
has little further significance, even though it stand there
totidem verbis, than if it were there merely totidem litteris.
Just as the finder of a thing is he, who knowing its value,
picks it up and keeps it ; and not he who chances to take it
into his hand, and let it fall again ; or, once more, Columbus
is the discoverer of America, and not the first shipwrecked
sailor the waves cast up there. This is precisely the
meaning of the Donatian pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
Had my critics desired to establish an effective priority
against me on the strength of such chance sayings, they
should have sought farther back when, for instance, they
might have adduced Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. IL, ¢.
17): mponyetra roivuy mavrwy 76 BovdecSae ai yap AoyeKai
Suvapec Tov BotrAEoIar Scaxovor wepvKacr (Velle ergo omnia
antecedit : rationales enim facultates sunt voluntatis minis-
tre (“ Sanctorum Patrum Opera Polemica,” vol. v. Weiss-
burghi, 1779; “ Clementis Alex. Opera,” tom. ii., p. 804) ;
as also Spinoza: Cupiditas est ipsa unius cujusque natura,
sewessentia (“ Eth.,” p.iil., prop. 57) and before: Hic conatus,
cum ad mentem solam refertur, Voluntas appellatur ; sed
cum ad mentem et corpus simul refertur, vocatur Appetitus,
qui proinde nihil aliud est, quam ipsa hominis essentia (p.
ui., prop. 9, schol., and finally, p. iii. Defin. I., explic.)
Hevetius remarks with great justice: II n’est point de
moyens que Venvieux, sous Vapparence de la justice, n’emploie
pour dégrader le mérite. . . . C'est Penvie seule qui nous
fait trouver dans les anciens toutes les décowvertes modernes.
Une phrase vide de sens, ow du moins inintelligible avant ces
découvertes, suffit pour faire crier au plagiat (“« De l Esprit,”
iv. 7). There is one more passage in Helvetius I shall
take the liberty of recalling, having reference to the matter
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 159

in question, the quotation of which I must beg the reader
not to lay down to vanity and arrogance, but simply to
bear in mind the justice of the thought expressed and con-
sider whether or not something in it will be found capable
of application to myself. Quiconque se plait a considérer
Cesprit humain voit, dans chaque siécle, cing ow six hommes
@esprit tourner autour de la découverte que fait Vhomme de
génie. Si Vhonneur eu reste ad ce dernier, c'est que cette
découverte est, entre ses mains, plus féconde que dans les mains
de tout autre ; cest qwil rend ses idées avec plus-de force et de
netteté ; et qu’enfin on voit toujours d la maniére différente,
dont les hommes tirent parti d’un principe ou d’une décou-
verte & qui ce principe au cette découverte appartient (“ De
l’Esprit,” iv. 1).

As a consequence of the old, irreconcilable war, that has
everywhere and always been waged by incapacity and stu-
pidity against intellect and understanding—hby legions on
the one side against individuals on the other—he who
brings to light anything valuable and genuine has to fight
a hard battle with incompetence, dulness, depraved taste,
private interests and envy, all in that worthy alliance, re-
specting which Chamfort says: en examinant la ligne des
sots contre les gens d’esprit on croirait voir une conjuration de
valets pour écarter les maitres. In my case there was, in
addition, an unusual enemy engaged ; the greater part of
those, whose business it was to guide public opinion in my
department, were appointed and paid to propagate and to
laud to the very skies that worst of all systems—the
Hegelian. But this cannot succeed if one is determined
that the good shall produce its effect, even though it be
only ina measure. The above may explain to my future
readers the, to them, otherwise unaccountable fact, that I
have remained as unknown to my own contemporaries as
the man in the moon. It must be acknowledged, notwith-
standing, that a system of thought which, in the absence
160 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

of any participation on the part of others, has been able to
engage its originator throughout a long life unceasingly
and cheerfully, and to spur him on to unremitting and un-
rewarded labour, possesses in itself a testimony to its value
and its truth. Destitute of any encouragement from out-
side, the love of my work alone has through the many days
of my life upheld my endeavours, and not allowed me to
tire. I have, therefore, looked with contempt on the noisy
celebrity of the worthless. For upon my entry upon life
my genius laid before me this choice, either to acknowledge
the truth, but therewith to please no one; or, like others,
to teach falsehood with support and applause; and the
choice was not difficult for me. Accordingly, the fortune
of my philosophy was the opposite of that of the Hegelian,
so entirely so, indeed, that one may regard them both as
the opposite sides of the same sheet, according to the con-
struction of both philosophies. Hegelianism, devoid alike
of truth, clearness, and intelligence, nay, of human under-
standing, and in addition appearing in the shape of the
most sickening Gallimathias that had ever been heard of,
was a subsidized and privileged academical philosophy,
consequently a species of nonsense which supported its
author. My philosophy appearing simultaneously with it
had, indeed, all the qualities which it lacked; but it was
not cut out for any ulterior purposes, was not at all suited
at that time for the chair, and, therefore, as the expression
is, there was nothing to be made out of it. It followed
then, as day follows night, that Hegelianism was the flag to
which all ran, while my philosophy found neither applause
nor adherents; but was rather with a uniform purpose
completely ignored, treated with silence, and where possible
smothered, because through its presence the above miser-
able game would have been spoilt, as shadows on the wall
are by the incoming daylight. Hence I became the Iron
Mask, or as the excellent Dorguth says, the Kaspar-Hauser
FRAGMENTS OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 161

of the professors of philosophy: shut out from air and
light that no one might see me, and that my natural
claims might not be recognized. Now, however, the Man
who should have been killed by the silence of the pro-
fessors of philosophy is again risen from the dead, to the
great consternation of the professors of philosophy, who
do not know at all what face they shall assume.
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD.’

HE ultimate basis on which all our cognitions and

sciences rest, is the inexplicable. Every explanation

leads back to this by means of more or less intermediate

stages; as in the sea the plummet finds the bottom, now

in greater, now in lesser depths, but must nevertheless

everywhere reach it at last. This inexplicable falls to the
share of Metaphysics.

Almost all men unceasingly think they are this and this
man (r¢ &ySpwroc), together with the corollaries which re-
sult therefrom. On the other hand, that they are Man in
general (6 dyvSowmoe), and the corollaries which follow from
this, scarcely ever occurs to them, but is nevertheless the
main point. The few who pay more attention to the latter
than to the former proposition are philosophers. But the
tendency of the others is reducible to the fact that they
never see anything in the things except the particular and
individual, and not their universality. Only the more
highly gifted see more or less, according to the degree of
their intelligence, the universal in particular things. This
important distinction interpenetrates the whole faculty of
knowledge so far indeed that it extends itself down to the
intuition of the most every-day objects ; hence, in the highly

1 The following essays are from the second volume of the
“Parerga and Paralipomena,” and are headed ‘Detached yet
systematically arranged thoughts on many different subjects.”
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 163

gifted head these are other than in the ordinary head.
This grasp of the universal in the particular, which always
presents itself, is coincident with that which I have called
the pure Will-less Subject of Knowledge, and have postu-
lated as the subjective correlate of the Platonic Idea. This
is proved because, when directed on the universal, the intel-
ligence may remain will-less, while, on the contrary, the
objects of the Will lie in particular things ; for which reason
the intelligence of animals is strictly limited to these par-
ticulars, and accordingly their intellect remains exclusively
in the service of their will. The above direction of the
mind to the universal is the indispensable condition of
genuine achievements in philosophy, poetry, and in the arts
and sciences generally.

For the intellect in the service of the Will, that is, in
practical use, there are only particular things. For the
intellect which pursues art and science, in other words,
which is active for its own sake, there are only universalities,
whole kinds, species, classes, Ideas, of things, for even the
creative artist wishes to present the Idea, that is, the kind
in the individual. This comes about because the Will is
turned directly merely to individual things; these are,
properly speaking, its objects, for these alone have empiri-
cal reality. Concepts, classes, species, can, on the contrary,
become objects only very indirectly. Hence the common
man has no sense for universal truths. But genius over-
looks and misses the individual element. The compulsory
occupation with the particular, as such, in so far as it
constitutes the matter of practical life, is an irksome
bondage.

The two first conditions of philosophizing are these:
firstly, to have the courage to set one’s heart upon no
question ; and, secondly, to bring all that which is obvious
in itself to clear consciousness in order to comprehend it as
164 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

problem. Finally, in order, properly-speaking, to philoso-
phize, the mind must be truly at leisure. It must pursue
no purposes, and thus not be led by the Will, but give
itself over undividedly to the teaching which the perceptive
world and its own consciousness impart to it. Now pro-
fessors of philosophy are concerned as to their personal
use and advantage, and what leads thereto; there the
serious point for them lies. For this reason they fail
altogether to see so many obvious things, indeed do not
so much as once come to reflection on the problems of
philosophy.

The poet brings pictures of life, human character, and
situations before the imagination, sets everything in motion,
and leaves it to everyone to think into these pictures, as
much as his intellectual power will find for him therein.
On this account he can satisfy men of the most diverse
capacities, even fools and wise men at the same time.
Now the philosopher does not bring in the same way life
itself, but the completed thoughts which he has abstracted
from it, and demands that his reader should think just in
the same way, and just as far as he himself, and his public
is, in consequence, very small. The poet may therefore
be compared to him who brings the flowers, the philosopher
to him who brings the quintessence.

Another great advantage which poetical achievements
have over philosophical is this, that all poetical works can
stand without hindrance to each other side by side; while
a philosophical system has hardly come into the world,
but it contemplates the destruction of all its brothers, like
an Asiatic sultan on ascending the throne. For as there
can only be one queen in a beehive, so there can only be
one philosophy on the order of the day. Systems are of
as unsociable a nature as spiders, of which each sits alone
in its web, and sees how many flies will let themselves be
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 165

caught in it, but only approaches another spider in order
to fight it. Thus, while the works of poets pasture peace-
fully next each other like lambs, those of philosophers are
born ravening beasts, and their destructive impulses are
even directed primarily against their own species, like those
of scorpions, spiders, and the larve of certain insects.
They come into the world like the armed men from the
seed of Jason’s dragons’ teeth, and have till now like
these mutually exterminated each other. This battle has
already lasted more than 2,000 years. Will a final victory
and lasting peace ever result from it?

In consequence of its essentially polemical nature, this
bellum omnium contra omnes of the philosophical systems,
it is infinitely more difficult to obtain recognition as phi-
losopher than as poet. The work of the poet demands
nothing further from the reader than to enter into the
series of the writings which amuse or elevate him, and the
devotion of some few hours to them. The work of the
philosopher, on the contrary, is intended to revolutionize
his whole mode of thought; it requires of him that he
shall acknowledge all he has learnt and believed in this
department to be error, his time and trouble to be lost,
and shall begin again from the beginning. It, at most,
leaves some rudiments of its predecessor standing in order
to build its foundation upon them. To this is added that,
in every teacher of an already existing system, it has a
professional opponent, and that sometimes even the state
takes a philosophical system that pleases it under its pro-
tection, and by the help of its powerful material resources
prevents the success of any other. Again, one must con-
sider that the size of the philosophical public is propor-
tioned to that of the poetical, as the number of people who
want to be taught to those who want to be amused, and
one will be able to judge, quibus auspiciis a philosopher
makes his entry. It is indeed true, on the other hand,
166 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

that it is the applause of thinkers of the elect of all periods
and all countries without difference of nation which re-
wards the philosopher ; the multitude gradually learns to
reverence his name on the strength of authority. In ac-
cordance with the foregoing, and on account of the slow
but deep effect of the progress of philosophy on which the
whole human race proceeds, since thousands of years the
history of philosophers goes with that of kings, and counts
a hundred times fewer names than the latter. Hence it is
a great thing to procure for one’s own name an enduring
place therein.

The philosophical writer is the guide, and his reader is
the wanderer. If they are to arrive together they must,
above all things, start together; that is, the author must
take his reader to a standpoint which they have in
common; but this can be no other than that of the em-
pirical consciousness which is common to all of us. Let
him, then, grasp him firmly by the hand, and see how
high above the clouds he can attain, step by step, along
the mountain path. This is how Kant proceeds. He
starts from common experience, as well of one’s own self
as of other things. How mistaken it is, on the other hand,
to seek to start from the standpoint of an assumed intel-
lectual intuition of hyperphysical relations, or processes,
or even of a reason which perceives the supersensible, or
of an absolute, self-thinking Reason. For all this means
starting from the standpoint of not directly communicable
cognitions, when therefore even at starting the reader does
not know whether he is near his author, or miles distant
from him.

Conversation with another, and serious meditation and
inward contemplation of the things, is as a machine to a
living organism. For only in the latter case is everything
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 167

cut from one piece, or as it were played in one key, whereby
alone it can acquire clearness, intelligibility, and true co-
herence—in fact, unity. Otherwise, heterogeneous pieces
of very different origin are stuck together, and a certain
unity of movement is forced, which often unexpectedly
stops. It is only oneself that one understands perfectly ;
others only half, for one can at most attain to community
of concepts, but never to the perceptual point of view
lying at their foundation. Hence deep philosophical truths
are never brought to light by way of common thinking in
dialogue. Such, however, is very serviceable as practice to
the hunting up of problems, to their ventilation, and after-
wards to the testing, controlling, and criticising of the
proposed solution. Plato’s dialogues are composed in this
sense, and accordingly the second and third academies which
issued from his school took on a more and more sceptical
direction. As form for the communication of philosophical
ideas the written dialogue is only serviceable where the
subject admits of two or more wholly different or even
opposite views respecting which the judgment of the reader
shall either remain suspended or which, taken together,
shall lead to a complete and accurate understanding of the
matter. To the first case belongs the refutation of objec-
tions raised. The dialogue form chosen for this purpose
must, however, be genuinely dramatic; in that the diffe-
rences of opinion are laid bare to their foundations and
thoroughly worked out. There must really be two speak-
ing. Without this, it is, as is mostly the case, mere idle

play.

Neither our knowledge, nor our insight, will be ever
specially increased by the comparison and discussion of
what has been said by others; for that is always like
pouring water from one vessel into another. Only by the
contemplation of things oneself, can insight and knowledge
168 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

be really increased; for it alone is the living source, always
ready, and always at hand. It is curious to see how would-
be philosophers are for ever occupied with the first method,
and seem not to know the other at all, being always con-
cerned with what this one has said and with what that one
may have meant. So that they are, as it were, perpetually
turning old casks upside down in order to see whether
some drop may not have remained behind, while the living
well-spring lies neglected at their feet. Nothing so much
as this betrays their incapacity, or gives the lie more to
their assumed mien of importance, depth, and originality.

Those who hope to become philosophers by the study of
the history of philosophy ought to conclude from it that
philosophers, like poets, are only born, and that, indeed,
much more rarely.

A curious and unworthy definition of philosophy which
even Kant gives, is that it isa science of mere concepts.
For the whole property of concepts is only what has been
placed in them after it has been begged and borrowed from
perceptual knowledge, the real and inexhaustible source of
insight. Hence a true philosophy cannot be spun out of
mere abstract concepts, but must be founded on observa-
tion and experience, inner no less than outer. It is not by
attempts at the combination of concepts such as has been
so often practised, but especially by the sophists of our
time, by Fichte and Schelling, and in its worst form by
Hegel (in Morals also by Schleiermacher) that any good
will be achieved in philosophy. Like art and poetry, it
must have its source in our perceptual view of the world.
Moreover, however much the head ought to have the
upper hand, it must not be treated so cold-bloodedly, but
that at last the whole man with head and heart should
come into action, and be stirred throughout. Philosophy
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 169

is no algebraic formula. Vauvenargues is right when he
says: Les grandes pensées viennent du cewr.

Considered as a whole, the philosophy of all times may
be conceived as a pendulum which swings from side to side
between Rationalism and Illuminism, that is, between the
employment of the objective and subjective sources of
knowledge.

Rationalism, which has for its organ the intellect, origi-
nally determined for the service of the Will, and therefore
directed outwards, appears first as Dogmatism, as which it
maintains a completely objective attitude. Then it changes
to Scepticism, and becomes in consequence finally Criti-
cism, which undertakes to settle the dispute by a con-
sideration of the subject ; in other words, it becomes trans-
cendental philosophy. I understand by this, every philo-
sophy which starts from the proposition that its nearest
and most immediate object is not the world of things, but
only the human consciousness of the things, and that this,
therefore, can never be left out of consideration. The
French call this rather inexactly the méthode psychologique,
in opposition to the méthode purement logique, by which
they understand, without more ado, the philosophy pro-
ceeding from objects, or objectively thought concepts, in
short, Dogmatism. Having reached this point, Rationalism
attains to the knowledge that its organon apprehends only
the phenomenon, and does not reach the ultimate inner and
original essence of things.

At all its stages, but most of all here, Iluminism asserts
itself as its antithesis. Illwminism, which essentially turned
inwards has as its organon internal illumination, intellec-
tual intuition, higher consciousness, immediately-cognising
Reason, divine consciousness, &c., and which contemns
Rationalism as the “light of nature.” If a religion, it is
Mysticism, its root-failing being that its knowledge is not
170 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

mediate; partly because for the internal perception there
is no criterion of the identity of the objects of different
subjects; partly because such a knowledge would have to
be communicated by language, but the latter, which has
arisen for the sake of the knowing faculty of the Intellect,
as directed outwards by means of its own abstraction, is
quite unsuited to express those internal states which are
different from it, and which form the material of Tlumi-
nism. The latter must, therefore, construct a language
of its own, which again, for the reason above given, does
not work. Not being mediate a knowledge of this kind is
undemonstrable, the consequence being that Rationalism
again enters the field hand in hand with Scepticism.
Tlluminism is already discoverable in certain places in
Plato; but it appears more distinctly in the philosophy of
the Neo-Platonists, the Gnostics, in that of Dionysius
Areopagita, as also in Scotus Erigena ; among the Mahom-
medans in the doctrines of the Sufi ; in India it is domi-
nant in the Vedanta and Mimansa; but most distinctly of
all in Jacob Behme, and all the Christian Mystics. It
always appears when Rationalism has run its course with-
out attaining its goal. Thus it came towards the end of
the scholastic philosophy and in opposition thereto, espe-
cially among the Germans, as the Mysticism of Tauler, and
the author of the “German Theology” amongst others.
And, similarly, in modern times as opposition to the Kan-
tian philosophy in Jacobi and Schelling, also in Fichte’s
last period. Philosophy, however, must be mediate know-
ledge, hence Rationalism. I have accordingly, at the close
of my own philosophy, indicated the sphere of Iluminism
as present, but have taken special care not to place so
much as a foot upon it. On the contrary, Ihave not even
attempted to give the final clues to the existence of the
world, but only went as far as was possible on the objec-
tive Rationalistic path. I have left the ground free for
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 171

Tlluminism to solve all problems in its own fashion, with-
out its coming in my way, or having to polemicize against
me.

Meanwhile a hidden Iluminism may often enough he at
the basis of Rationalism, to which the philosopher looks as
to a hidden compass, while he only admits that he steers
his course by the stars, that is, the external objects which
he clearly before him, and that he takes them alone into his
reckoning. This is admissible, since he does not undertake
to communicate the immediate knowledge, his communica-
tions remaining purely objective and rational. Such may
have been the case with Plato, Spinoza, Malebranche, and
some others; it does not concern any one, for it is the
secret of their own breast. But the noisy invocation of
intellectual intuition, and the barren narration of its con-
tent, with the claim for its objective validity, as in the case
of Fichte and Schelling, is shameless and abominable.

For the rest, Illuminism is a natural, and in so far a
legitimate, attempt to fathom the truth. For the intellect
directed outwards, as mere organon for the purposes of the
Will, and consequently merely secondary, is nevertheless
only a part of our entire human nature. It belongs to the
phenomenon, and its knowledge merely assumes the pheno-
menon, which is there only for its own sake. What can
be more natural than that when we have failed to succeed
with the objectivity-knowing intellect we bring into play
our whole remaining being—which is also Thing-in-itself,
and as such pertains to the true nature of the world,
and consequently must bear within it the solution of all
problems—in order to seek help from it, just as the
ancient Germans, when they had played away everything
else, finally staked their own persons. But the only correct
and objectively-valid way of carrying this out is that we
apprehend the empirical fact of a Will proclaiming itself
172 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

in our inmost being, and constituting our only nature,
and apply it to the explanation of our objective, external
knowledge, as I have accordingly done. The way of
Tlluminism, on the other hand, for the reasons above
explained, does not lead to this goal.

Mere cleverness suffices for the sceptic but not for the
philosopher. Meanwhile scepticism is in philosophy what
opposition is in Parliament; it is as beneficial as it is
necessary. It is always based on the fact that philosophy
is not capable of evidence of such a kind as Mathematics ;
just as little as the man is capable of the tricks of animal
instinct which are also certain a priori. Hence scepticism
will ever be able, as against every system, to lay itself in
the other scale. But its weight will at last become so little
against the other that it will no more hurt it than the
arithmetical quadrature of the circle, which is also only
approximative.

That which one knows has a double value, if at the same
time one admits oneself not to know that which one does
not know. For thereby the former is free from the sus-
picion to which one exposes it if, like for instance the
Schellingites, one proposes also to know what one does not
know.

Every one forms certain propositions which he holds for
true without investigation, declarations of reason. Such
propositions he could not bring himself seriously to test,
since this would involve his calling them in question for
the nonce. They have come into this unshakeable credit
with him because ever since he began to speak and to
think he has heard them perpetually spoken of, and they
have thereby become indoctrinated into him. Hence his
habit of thiking them is as old as his habit of thinking
at all; they have grown up into his brain. What is here
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 173

said is so true that it would, on the one hand, be superfluous,
and on the other, of doubtful desirability, to substantiate
it with examples.

No conception of the world which has arisen from an
objective perceptual apprehension of things, and which
has been logically carried out, can be entirely false; it is in
the worst case only one-sided, as for instance complete
Materialism, absolute Idealism, &c. They are all true,
but they are equally so—consequently their truth is only
relative. Every such conception is true, namely, only from
a particular standpoint; just as a picture only displays a
landscape from one point of view. But if one lifts oneself
above the standpoint of such a system one recognizes the
relativity of its truth, that is, its onesidedness. Only the
Inghest standpoint which overlooks and takes into account
all, can furnish absolute truth. It is true accordingly
when I, for example, conceive myself as a mere natural
product arisen in time, and destined to complete destruc-
tion—after the manner of the Koheleth.

But it is equally true that everything that was or will
be, I am, and that nothing exists outside me. It is just as
true when I, after the manner of Anakreon, place the
highest happiness in the enjoyment of the present time,
but it is equally true when I recognize the wholesomeness
of suffering, and the nothingness, nay, the injuriousness of
all pleasure, and conceive death as the object of my
existence.

All this has its reason in that each view logically carried
out is only a perceptual and objective apprehension of
nature translated into concepts, and thereby fixated; but
nature, i.e, the perceptual, never lies nor contradicts itself
since its essence excludes any such thing. Where, there-
fore, contradiction and lie are, there are thoughts which
have not sprung from objective apprehension—e.g., op-
174 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

timism. But an objective apprehension may be incomplete
and one-sided ; it then requires completion, not refutation.

People are never tired of reproaching Metaphysics with
its small progress in view of the great progress of the
Physical sciences. Even Voltaire exclaims: O méta-
physique! nous sommes aussi avancés que du tems des
premiers Druides (“Mel. d. phil.” ch. 9). But what
other science has like it always had as a hindrance an
antagonist, ew officio, a paid fiscal prosecutor, a king’s
champion in full armour, to attack it defenceless and
weaponless? It will never show its true powers, never be
able to make its giant-strides, so long as it is required of
it with threats, that it shall suit itself to dogmas cut out
with a view to the small capacity of the great mass. They
first bind our arms, and then mock us because we cannot
accomplish anything.

Religions have seized upon the metaphysical faculties of
men, which they first of all lame by the early instilling of
their dogmas, respecting which they taboo all free and un-
prejudiced expressions of opinion, so that free research
respecting the most important and interesting of problems,
respecting man’s existence itself, is in part directly for-
bidden, in part indirectly hindered, being rendered subjec-
tively wellnigh impossible by mutilation, and thus the
most noble of man’s faculties lies in fetters.

In order to make us patient under contradiction, and
tolerant of views opposed to our own, nothing is, perhaps,
more powerful than the remembrance how often we have
successively held quite opposite views on the same subject,
and have changed them repeatedly, sometimes indeed
within a very short period, how we have rejected and
again taken up, now this opinion, now its opposite, accord-
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 175

ing as the subject presented itself to us, now in one, now
in another light.

In the same way there is nothing more calculated to
procure acceptance with another for our contradiction of
his own opinion than the phrase, “I used to think the
same myself, but,” &c.

A fallacious doctrine, whether founded on a false opinion
or sprung froma bad intention, is only designed for special
circumstances, and consequently for a certain time; but
the truth is for all time, even though it may be misunder-
stood or smothered for a while. For as soon asa little light
comes from within, or a little air from without, someone
will be found to proclaim or to defend it. For since it
has not originated in the interests of any party, every
superior mind will be its champion at any time. It
resembles the magnet which always and everywhere points
to an absolutely definite part of the compass; the false
doctrine, on the contrary, resembles a statue which points
with the hand towards another statue, but once removed
from it loses all significance.

What stands most in the way of the discovery of truth
is not the false appearance proceeding from the things and
leading to error, nor even directly the weakness of the
understanding; but it is the preconceived opinion, the
prejudice which, as a bastard 4 priori, opposes itself to the
truth, and then resembles a contrary wind which drives
the ship back from the direction in which the land lies, so
that rudder and sail work in vain.

I comment as follows on Goethe’s verse in “ Faust’”’:

‘¢ What thou hast inherited from thy fathers
Inherit it in order to possess it.”
176 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

That which thinkers have discovered before us, it is of
great service and value for ourselves to discover by our own
means, independently of them, and before we know them,
for one understands what one has thought out for oneself
much more thoroughly than what one has learnt, and
when one afterwards finds it with these predecessors, one
receives an unhoped-for confirmation, speaking strongly
for its truth, from an independent and recognized authority.
In this way one gains confidence and assurance to champion
it against every opponent.

When, on the other hand, one has found something first
of all in books, and then attained the same result by one’s
own reflection, one never knows for certain that one has
thought and reasoned this out oneself, and not merely
been the echo in one’s feelings, or one’s speech, of these
predecessors. But this makes a very great difference in
respect to the certainty of the matter. For in the latter
case it may happen that one has erred with one’s prede-
cessors owing to one’s preoccupation with them, just as
water readily takes to a ready-made course. If two persons,
each for themselves, make a calculation and reach the
same result, the result is certain, but not when the calcula-
tion has merely been looked-through by the other.

It is a consequence of the construction of our Intellect,
sprung as it is from the Will, that we cannot help con-
ceiving the world either as end or as means. The first
would assert that its existence was justified by its essence,
and was definitely preferable to its non-existence. But
the knowledge that it is only a place of struggle for suffer-
ing and dying beings renders this idea untenable. Again,
the infinity of Time already passed does not admit of its
beimg conceived as means, for every end to be obtained
would long ago have been accomplished. From this it
follows that the foregoing application of the natural pre-
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD, 177

supposition of our intellect to the whole of things, or to
the world, is transcendent, that is, it is valid in the world,
but not of the world. This is explicable from the fact that
it arises from the nature of an Intellect, which as I have
shown has itself arisen for the service of an individual
Will, i.e., for the attainment of its objects, and hence
being exclusively concerned with ends and means, neither
knows nor conceives of any thing else.

When we look outwards, where the immeasurableness of
the world and the countlessness of its beings display them-
selves to us, oneself as mere individual shrinks up to no-
thing and seems to vanish. Carried away by the immensity
of mass and number, one thinks further that only the
philosophy directed outward, that is, the objective philo-
sophy, can be the right way, and to doubt as to this never
occurred to the oldest Greek philosopher.

Let us now look inwards. We find, in the first place,
that every individual takes an immediate interest only in
himself, indeed that his self he takes more to heart than
all else put together ; which comes from the fact that he
knows himself immediately but everything else only me-
diately. If one adds to this that conscious and knowing
beings are thinkable solely as individuals, and that beings
without consciousness have only a half, a mere mediate exis-
tence, it follows that all proper and true existence obtains
only in the individual. If, finally, one considers that the
object is conditioned by the subject, and that, therefore,
this immeasurable outer world has its existence only in the
consciousness of knowing beings and, consequently, is bound
up with the existence of individuals which are its bearers,
so much so that in a sense it may be looked upon as a
mere equipment, an accident of the always individual con-
sciousness; if one, I say, keeps all this in view one is
driven to the opinion that only the philosophy which is

N
178 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

directed inwards proceeding from the subject as imme-
diately given—in other words, that of the modern, since
Descartes—is on the right way, and that the Ancients have
overlooked the main points. But one first receives the
complete conviction of this, when turning within upon
oneself, one brings to one’s consciousness the feeling of
origination which lies in every knowing being. More than
this, everyone, even the most insignificant human being,
finds in his simple self-consciousness himself as the most
real of all beings, and recognizes necessarily in himself the
true centre of the world, the ultimate source of all reality.
And does this ultimate consciousness lie? Its most power-
ful expression is to be found in the words of the Upani-
shad: hee omnes creaturcee in totum ego sum, et preter me
ens aliud non est, et omnia ego creata feci ( Oupnekh,”’ 1., p.
122), which is certainly there the transition to Mluminism,
or indeed, to Mysticism. This is, therefore, the result of
contemplation directed inwards; while that directed out-
wards shows us as the goal of our existence—a heap of
ashes.'

Respecting the division of philosophy, which is of special
importance with regard to its exposition, it should, from
my point of view, be treated as follows:

Philosophy, indeed, has experience for its subject, but
not, like the other sciences, this or that definite experience,
but experience itself generally and as such, according to
its possibility, its range, its essential content, its inner and
outer element, its form and matter. That philosophy must

' Finite and infinite are concepts, having significance merely in
respect of time and space, inasmuch as both these are infinite, é.e.
endless, as also infinitely divisible. If we apply these two con-
cepts to other things it must be to such things as fill space and
time, and can participate in their qualities. From this it may be
judged how great is the abuse which philosophasters have in this
century carried on with these concepts.
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 179

assuredly have empirical foundations, and not be spun out
‘of purely abstract conceptions, I have adequately explained
in the second volume of my chief work, chap. xvii., pp.
180-185 (8rd ed., 199 seg.), and have given a short ré-
sumé of it above. Hence it follows further that the
first thing which it has to contemplate must be the
medium in which experience-in-general presents itself,
together with its form and construction. This medium
is presentment, knowledge, in short, intellect. For this
reason every philosophy must begin with the investiga-
tion of the faculty of knowledge, its forms and its laws,
as also its validity and limits. Such an investigation
will, therefore, be a Philosophia prima. It falls asunder
into the consideration of the primary, i.e., perceptual pre-
sentments, which part may be called Dianoiology, or doc-
trine of the Understanding ; and into the consideration of
the secondary, i.e., abstract presentments, together with
the order of their treatment as logic, or doctrine of Reason.
This universal part conceives, or rather represents, that
which was formerly termed Ontology, and which was put
‘forward as the doctrine of the most universal and essential
qualities of things in general, and as such; inasmuch as
what only accrues to things in consequence of the form and
nature of our faculty of presentment—-since all essences to
be apprehended by the latter must present themselves in
accordance therewith, whereby they bear certain characteris-
tics common to them all—were held to be the; qualities of
the things in themselves. This may be compared to attri-
buting the colour of a glass to the objects seen through it.
The philosophy following upon such investigation is in
the narrower sense of the word Metaphysics, since it not
only teaches us to know that which is actually present,
nature conceived in its order and connection, but it appre-
hends it as a given, though in some way, conditioned phe-
‘nomenon, in which a being distinct from itself, in other
180 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

words, the thing-in-itself, displays itself. This it en-
deavours to learn more closely, the means thereto being
partly the bringing together of outer and inner experience ;
partly the attainment of an understanding of the whole
phenomenon by a discovery of its meaning and connection,
to compare the reading of the hitherto indecipherable
characters of an unknown writing. In this way it attains
from the appearance to the thing appearing, to that which
is hidden behind it, hence ra wera 7a gvowa. It may be
divided in consequence into three parts:

Metaphysic of Nature,
Metaphysic of the Beautiful,
Metaphysic of Morals.

The deduction of this division, however, presupposes
Metaphysics. For this points to the thing-in-itself, the
inner and ultimate essence of the phenomenon, as our
Will. Hence, after a consideration of it as presented in
external nature, Metaphysic investigates its quite different
and immediate manifestation in ourselves, whence proceed
the Metaphysic of Morals. But, previously to this, the
completest and purest apprehension of its external or ob-
jective phenomenon is taken into consideration which
gives us the Metaphysic of the Beautiful.

Rational Psychology, or doctrine of the soul, there is
not; for, as Kant has proved, the soul is a transcendent,
and as such, an undemonstrated and unjustified hypos-
tasis, so that the antithesis of “spirit and nature” is left
for the Philistines and Hegelians. The essence in itself
of the human being can only be understood in conjunction
with the essence in itself of all things, that is, of the
world. Hence Plato, in the ‘“ Phedrus” makes Socrates
put the question in a negative sense: Puyie oby pow akinc
AOyou KaTavojoae Ole Cuvaroy eivar dvEv THe TOU GXov ovoewc ;
(Anime vero naturam absque totius natura sufficienter cog-
ON PHILOSOPHY AND ITS METHOD. 181

nosct posse existimas?) The Microcosm and the Macrocosm
reciprocally explain each other, whereby they evince them-
selves as essentially the same. This consideration, con-
nected with the inner side of man, interpenetrates and
suffuses the whole of Metaphysic in all its parts, and can-
not, such being the case, again appear separately as Psy-
chology. Anthropology, on the other hand, as an empirical
science has its justification, but it is partly anatomy and
physiology, partly mere empirical Psychology, that is, a
knowledge of the moral and intellectual manifestations and
peculiarities of the human race, as also of the variation of
individuals in this respect, derived from observation. The
most important part of it is, nevertheless, necessary as
empirical material to be taken up and worked out by the
three parts of Metaphysic. What remains over requires
fine observation and intelligent apprehension, indeed, a
contemplation from a somewhat higher standpoint, I mean
from that of a certain superiority, and is, therefore, only to
be enjoyed in the writings of specially gifted minds, such as
Theophrastus, Montaigne, Larochefoucauld, Labruyére,
Helvetius, Chamfort, Addison, Shaftesbury, Shenstone,
Lichtenberg, &c., but is not to be sought nor to be endured
in the compendiums of unintelligent, and therefore intelli-
gence-hating, professors of philosophy.
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE ANTITHESIS
OF THING-IN-ITSELF AND PHENOMENON.

HING-IN-ITSELF signifies the existent indepen-

dently of our perception, in short, that which pro-

perly is. This was, for Demokritus, formed matter. It

was the same at bottom for Locke; for Kant it was = x;
for me it is Will.

How entirely Demokritus took the matter in the above
sense, and hence belongs at the head of this exposition, is
confirmed by the following passage from “Sextus Empi-
ricus” (Adv. Math. 1. vii. § 185), who had his works before
him, and for the most part, cites verbally from them:
Anuoxpirog Ce Ori per dvacoer Ta davopeva raic aisShoeory, Kai
Tourwy Neyer pnoey daiverdar Kar’ adySeav, adda povoy Kara
Cofav’ aAnSec b&€ Ev Toic ovoLy bmapyev TO ardpmouc eivae
cai xevdv, &c. (Demokritus autem ea quidem tollit, que
apparent sensibus, et ex tis dicit nihil ut vere est apparere,
sed solum ex opinione; verum autem esse in iis, que sunt,
atomos et inane.) I recommend the reader to look over
the whole passage where also the following occurs: éreq
vuv oloy éxaoroy Earty, i} OK EoTLY, Ov oUVieuEr (vere quidem
nos, quale sit vel non sit unumquodque, neutiquam intelli-
gimus), also: éren ofov Exacroy (tort) yeyvwoxery év aroog
gore’ (vere scire quale sit unum quodque, in dubio est). All
this is as much as to say: “ We do not know the things
as they may be in themselves, but only as they appear,”
and opens up the series starting from the most decided
OF THING-IN-ITSELF AND PHENOMENON, 183

Materialism but leading to Idealism, which closes with
me. A surprisingly clear and definite distinction between
the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon, even in the Kantian
sense, we find in a passage of Porphyry which Stobeos has
preserved (“Eclog.,” L. I, ¢. 48, Fragm. 3). It says, Ta
Karnyopoupeva Tov aioSnrov Kal évidov adnSec éore ravra, TO
Tavrn Elva dvaTepopnuevor, TO weraPAnroy etvar, &C. Tow dé
ovrwe bvrog Kal kad airo voeornxdrog abrod, rd Eivar del év
EauT@ (Opvpevoy’ waautwe To Kara rabra éyerv, &e.

As we only know the surface of the earth, and not the
great solid mass of the interior, so we know nothing what-
ever empirically of things and the world, but only of their
phenomenon, i.e., their surface. The exact knowledge of
this is Physics taken in its widest sense. But that this
surface presupposes an interior which is not mere surface,
but has a cubic content, is, together with the conclusions
as to its nature, the subject of Metaphysics. To attempt
to construct the nature of things in themselves, according
to the laws of the mere phenomenon, is an undertaking
which may be compared to the attempt to construct from
mere surfaces and their laws the stereometric body. Every
transcendent dogmatic philosophy is an attempt to con-
struct the thing-in-itself according to the laws of the
phenomenon which results similarly to that of attempting
to cover two absolutely dissimilar figures with one another,
which must always miscarry, since turn them as one will
now this, now that, corner projects.

Inasmuch as every being in nature is at the same time
a phenomenon and a thing-in-itself, that is, natura naturata,
and natura naturans, it is capable of a double explanation,
a physical and a metaphysical. The physical is always
from the cause; the metaphysical always from the Will ;
for this it is which displays itself in consciousless nature
184 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

as natural force, higher up as vital force, but in animal
and man receives the name Will. Taken strictly, in a
given human being the degree and the direction of his in-
telligence, and the moral construction of his character,
might possibly be purely physically produced, the first,
viz., from the structure of his brain and nervous system,
together with the circulation of the blood which affects it,
the latter from the structure and combined action of his
heart, cellular system, blood, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys,
intestines, genital organs, etc., but for this would certainly
be requisite a much closer acquaintance with the laws
which regulate the rapport du physique au moral than even
Bichat and Cabanis possessed. Both would then be redu-
cible to more distant physical causes, to wit, the structure of
his parents, since these could only furnish the germ of a
being like themselves, but not of a higher and better one.
Metaphysically, on the other hand, the same human being
must be explained as the phenomenon of his own perfectly —
free and original Will, which has created in him the corre-
sponding intellect. Hence all his deeds, however neces-
sarily they proceed from his character, in conflict with the
given motive (and this again appears as the result of his
corporisation), are nevertheless to be wholly attributed to
him. Metaphysically, moreover, the distinction between
him and his parents is not an absolute one.

All understanding is an act of presenting, and remains,
therefore, essentially within the domain of presentment ;
but since this only furnishes phenomena it is limited to
the phenomenon, where the thing-in-itself begins the
phenomenon leaves off, consequently also the presentment,
and with this the understanding. But its place is here
taken by the existent itself, which is conscious of itself ag
Will, Were this self-consciousness immediate we should
have a completely adequate knowledge of the thing-in-
OF THING-IN-ITSELF AND PHENOMENON. 185

itself. But because it is thereby rendered possible that
the Will creates this organic body, and by means of part
of the same an intellect, and finds and recognizes itself
first through this, in self-consciousness as Will—it follows
that this knowledge of the thing-in-itself is primarily con-
ditioned by the separation of a knowing and a known, and
then by the form of time, which is inseparable from the
cerebral self-consciousuess, and that it is hence not completely
exhausted and adequate. (Compare chap. xviii. in 2nd vol.
of my chief work.)'

With this is connected the truth presented by me in my

' The distinction between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon
may be expressed as that between the swdjective and objective
essence of a thing. Its pure subjective essence is the thing-in-
itself, but this is no object of knowledge. For in order to be such
it is essential that it should always be present in a knowing con-
sciousness as its presentment, and what displays itself there is
the objective essence of the thing. This is accordingly object of
knowledge, but as such it is mere presentment, and as it can only
become so by means of a presentment-apparatus which must have
its own structure and the laws resulting therefrom, it is a mere
phenomenon which must connect itself with the thing-in-itself.
This obtains also where there exists a self-consciousness, that is,
a self-cognizing I. For this also knows itself only in its intellect,
tc. its apparatus of presentment, and indeed through the external
senses as organic form, by the internal as Will whose acts it sees
as simultaneously repeated by that form as the latter is by its
shadow, whence it concludes as to the identity of both and terms
the result I. But on account of this double knowledge, as well as
on account of the great proximity in which the intellect here
stands to its source or root, the Will, the knowledge of objective
being, that is, of the phenomenon, differs here much less from the
subjective or thing-in-itself than in the case of knowledge by
means of the external sense or the consciousness of other things in
opposition to self-consciousness. For to this, in so far as the in-
ternal sense alone cognizes it, the form of time alone cleaves, and
no longer that of space and time together, time therefore and the
separation of subject and object is all that divides it from the
thing-in-itself.
186 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Essay on “ Will in Nature,” under the heading * Physical
Astronomy,” p. 86 (2nd ed., p. 79; 8rd ed., p. 86) :—that
in proportion to the clearness with which a process or rela-
tion may be comprehended, does it pertain to the mere
phenomenon and not to the thing-in-itself.

When we observe and contemplate any natural being,
as for instance an animal, in its existence, life, and action,
it stands before us, in spite of all that zoology and zootomy
teach respecting it, as an impenetrable mystery. But does
nature, then, from mere obstinacy remain eternally dumb
to our questioning? Is it not like everything great, open,
communicative, and even naive? Can its answer, there-
fore, fail from any other reason than because the question
was wrongly put, was onesided, proceeded from false
assumptions, or, perhaps, even contained a contradiction ?
For is it easy to think that a connection of causes and
consequences could obtain where it must eternally and
essentially remain undiscovered? That assuredly not.
But it is unfathomable, because we search for causes and
effects in a region to which this form is foreign, and hence
we pursue the chain of causes and effects on an entirely
wrong tack. We seek to attain the inner essence of nature,
namely, which confronts us in every phenomenon on the
lines of the principle of cause—whereas this is the mere
form with which our intellect apprehends the pheno-
menon, 2.e., the surface of things, and we expect by this
means to get beyond the phenomenon. But within the
range of the phenomenon it is useful and sufficient. For
example, the actuality of a given animal may be explained
from its generation. This in the last resort is no more
mysterious than the sequence of any other, even the
simplest effect, from its cause, since even in such a case
the explanation abuts ultimately upon the incomprehensible.
The fact that in generation a few middle links in the chain
OF THING-IN-ITSELF AND PHENOMENON. 187

of connection fail us makes no difference essentially, for
even if we had them we should still come back to the in-
comprehensible. All this is because the phenomenon
remains phenomenon and does not become thing-in-itself.

The inner essence of things is foreign to the principle of
cause. It is the thing-in-itself, and that is pure Will. It
is because it wills and it wills because it is. It is the
simple Real in every being.

The fundamental character of all things is perishability.
We see everything in nature from the metal to the organism
consuming and destroying itself, partly by its very exis-
tence, partly by conflict with something else. How could
nature endure the maintaining of its form, and the renew-
ing of its individuals, the countless repetition of its life
process throughout an endless time without tiring, if its
own innermost core were not timeless, and hence completely
indestructible, a thing-in-itself of a kind quite other than
its phenomena—a metaphysical thing quite distinct from
the physical thing? This is the Will in ourselves and in
all things.

We complain of the obscurity in which we live without
understanding the connection of existence in the whole, and
above all, not even of our own self with the whole ; so that
not only is our life short, but our knowledge is exclusively
limited to it, since we can neither look backward beyond
our birth, nor forward beyond our death, and hence our
consciousness is but a flash of lightning that momentarily
illumines the night. It would seem, indeed, as though a
spiteful demon had closed up for us all further knowledge
that he might enjoy our embarrassment. But this com-
plaint is, properly-speaking, unjustified, for it springs from
an illusion which is brought about by the fallacious opinion
that the totality of things has proceeded from an intellect,
188 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

consequently, existed as mere presentment before it became
real; and that accordingly having arisen from knowledge,
it must be also accessible to knowledge, and penetrable and
exhaustible by it. But, in truth, the matter stands rather
thus, that all that which we complain that we do not know
is known to no one, is indeed in itself not knowable, i.e.,
not presentable. For the presentment in the domain of
which all knowledge lies, and to which therefore all know-
ledge refers, is only the external side of existence, a secon-
dary added thing, something that is, which was not neces-
sary to the maintenance of things generally, in other words,
of the world-whole, but merely to the maintenance of indi-
vidual animal beings. Hence the existence of things in
general and as a whole, appears only per accidens in know-
ledge and, therefore, in a very limited manner; it only
forms the background of the picture in the animal con-
sciousness where the objects of the Will are the essential,
and occupy the first place. There arises now, by means of
this accident, the whole world in space and time, that is,
the world as presentment, which has no existence of this
kind outside knowledge. Its internal essence, on the other
hand, that which is existent in itself, is quite independent
of this kind of existence. But since, as already said, know-
ledge is only there for the sake of the maintenance of each
animal individual, so its whole structure, all its forms, as
time, space, &c., are merely there for the purposes of such
an individuai. But the latter merely requires the knowledge
of relations between particular phenomena, and in no way
those of the nature of the thing and of the world-whole.
Kant has proved that the problems of metaphysics which
disturb every one more or less, are capable of no direct, of
no sufficient solution whatever, but are based in the last
resort on the fact that they have their origin in the forms
of our intellect, time, space and causality, while this intel-
lect is merely designed to supply the motives to the indi-
OF THING-IN-ITSELF AND PHENOMENON, 189

vidual will, i.e., to show it the objects of its willing together
with the ways and means to attain them. When, however,
this intellect is abusively turned to the nature of things-in-
themselves, to the totality and the complex of the world,
the aforesaid forms pertaining to it of the co-existence suc-
cession and causation of all possible things give birth to
the metaphysical problems as, for instance, of origin and
purpose, beginning and end of the world, and of one’s own
self, of the destruction of the latter by death, or of its con-
tinued duration in spite of it, of the freedom of the Will,
&c. Let us conceive these forms as once abolished, and a
consciousness of the things as, nevertheless, present—these
problems would then be not, indeed, solved, but would
have entirely vanished, and their expression would have no
more meaning. For they take their origin entirely from
these forms, which are designed not for the understanding
of the world and of existence, but merely for an under-
standing of our personal ends.

This whole consideration affords us an explanation and
objective justification of the Kantian doctrines, which were
only justified by their founder from the subjective side,
viz., that the forms of the understanding are merely of
immanent, not transcendent, application. One might, in-
stead of the above, also say the intellect is physical, not
metaphysical, i.e., as it has grown out of the Will as per-
taining to its objectivation, it is there also only for its
service; that this merely obtains in nature, and not in any-
thing lying outside of it. Every animal possesses (as I
have explained and substantiated in ‘‘ Will in Nature ’’)
its intellect obviously only for the purpose of finding and
obtaining its food, and its degree is determined thereby.
With Man it is not otherwise, only that the greater diffi-
culty of his maintenance, and the infinitely greater number
of his wants has here made a much higher degree of intellect
necessary. It is only when this is exceeded, through an
190 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

abnormity, that the perfectly freesurplus remains over which,
if considerable, is called genius. In the first instance, such
an intellect as this is truly objective only; but it can
easily go so far that it may become to a certain extent
even metaphysical, or at least endeavour to be so. For
precisely in consequence of its objectivity, nature itself, the
totality of things, becomes its object and its problem. For
nature here first begins properly to perceive itself as some-
thing which is and yet might not be, or which might be
otherwise, while in the ordinary, merely normal, intellect
it does not clearly perceive itself, just as the miller does not
hear his mill, nor the perfumer smell his shop. It seems
to require no explanation; the intellect is involved in it.
Only in certain clearer moments is it aware of it, and be-
comes almost frightened at it, but this soon passes off.
How much such normal heads are ever likely to achieve in
philosophy, however numerously they congregate, is easy
to see. If, on the contrary, the intellect were originally
and by constitution metaphysical, it could further philo-
sophy like every other science, especially with united
forces,
SOME WORDS ON PANTHEISM.

NE might illustrate allegorically and dramatically
the controversy carried on at the present time
among the professors of philosophy respecting Theism and
Pantheism, by a dialogue which took place in the pit of a
theatre at Milan during the performance. The one inter-
locutor, convinced that he is in the great and celebrated
Marionette Theatre of Girolamo, admired the art with
which the director has arranged the marionettes and
guides their play. The other says, on the contrary, “ Not
at all! That they were in the Theatro della Scala, that
the director and his associates were playing themselves,
and were concealed really in the persons before them;
—and that the poet was also playing.”

It is delightful to see how the professors of philo-
sophy coquet with Pantheism as with a forbidden thing
which they have not the heart to seize. Their attitude in
this respect I have already described in my essay on “ The
university-philosophy,” which reminds one of Bottom the
weaver in “The Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It is, in-
deed, a sour piece of bread, the bread of the professors of
philosophy ! One has first to dance to the pipe of ministers,
and when one has done that satisfactorily, one may still be
fallen upon from outside by those wild men-eaters the real
philosophers, who are capable of pocketing and running off
with one, in order to produce one opportunely as a pocket-
pulcinello to give zest to their expositions.
192 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Against Pantheism I have chiefly this objection only,
that it says nothing. To call the world God is not to ex-
plain it, but only to enrich language with a superfluous
synonym of the word “ world.” Whether it says “ the world
is God,” or “the world is the world,” comes to the same
thing. If indeed we start from God as the given thing to
be explained, and say, “God is the world,” there we have
to a certain extent an explanation, in so far as we return
from the unknown to the known; still it is only a verbal
explanation. But if we start from the really given, viz.,
the world, and say “the world is God,” it is as clear as
daylight that we have said nothing thereby, or that at
least ignotum is explained per ignotius ; hence Pantheism
pre-supposes Theism as having preceded it. For only in
go far as one starts with a God, and therefore has him
already in advance, and is intimate with him, can one
finally bring oneself to identify him with the world, in
order to put him on one side in a decent manner. We
have not started impartially from the world as the thing
to be explained, but from God as the given thing; after
we did not know what to do with the former, the world
had to take over hisvéle. This is the origin of Pantheism.
For on a first and impartial view it would never occur to
anyone to regard the world asa God. It must obviously
be a very ill-advised God who knew no better amusement
than to transform himself into a world such as this: into
a hungry world, in order there to endure misery, suffering,
and death, without measure or end, in the shape of count-
less millions of living, but anxious and tormented beings,
who only maintain themselves for a while by mutually de-
vouring each other: e.y., in the shape of six million Negro
slaves, who daily on the average receive sixty million blows
of the whip on their bare bodies, and in the shape of three
million European weavers who, amid hunger and misery,
feebly vegetate in stuffy attics or wretched workshops, &e.
SOME WORDS ON PANTHEISM. 193

That would indeed be a pastime for a God! who as such
must be accustomed to things very different.

The supposed great progress from Theism to Pantheism,
if taken seriously and not merely as a masked negation, as
above suggested, is accordingly, a progress from the un-
proven, and hardly thinkable to the actually absurd. For
however unclear, vacillating, and confused may be the con-
ception which one associates with the word God, two pre-
dicates are at all events inseparable from it—the highest
power and the highest wisdom. But that a being armed
with this should have placed himself in the position above
described, is an actually absurd idea; for our position in
the world is obviously such as no intelligent, let alone an
all-wise being, would place himself in. Theism, on the
other hand, is merely unproven, and even if it is difficult
to conceive that the infinite world should be the work of a
personal, and therefore individual being, such as we only
know from animal nature, it is nevertheless not exactly
absurd. For that an almighty and, at the same time, an
all-wise being should create a tormented world is always
conceivable, although we may not know the wherefore of
it. Hence, even if we attribute to him the quality of the
highest goodness, the incomprehensibility of his judgment
is always the refuge by which such a doctrine escapes the
reproach of absurdity. On the assumption of Pantheism,
however, the creating God is himself the endlessly tormented,
and on this small earth alone dies once in every second, and
this of his own free will, which is absurd. It would be
much more correct to identify the world with the devil, as
has been actually done by the venerable author of “The
German Theology,” inasmuch as on p. 93 of his immortal
work (according to the restored text, Stuttgart, 1851), he
says: “Therefore are the evil spirit and nature one, and
when nature is not overcome there also is the evil one not
overcome.”

0
194 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

The Pantheists obviously give to the Sansara the name
God. The Mystics, on the other hand, give the same name
to the Nirwana. Of this, however, they relate more than
they know, which the Buddhists do not do; and hence
their Nirwana is but a relative nothing. The Synagogue,
the Church, and Islam use the word God in its proper and
correct sense.

The expression one often hears nowadays, “the world is
end to itself,” leaves undecided whether it is to be explained
by Pantheism or by mere Fatalism, but allows it at all
events only a physical and no moral significance, since on
the assumption of this latter the world always presents
itself as means to a higher end. But this notion that the
world has only a physical and no moral significance is the
most hopeless error that has ever sprung from the per-
versity of the human mind.
ON ETHICS.

Po. truths may have much external signifi-
cance, but they are wanting in internal significance.
The latter is the privilege of intellectual and moral truths,
which have as their theme the highest stages of the ob-
jectivation of the Will, while the former have only the
lowest. For instance, if we attain to certainty as to what
is now merely supposition, to wit, that the sun at the
equator produces thermo-electricity, this the magnetism of
the earth, and this again the polar light, these truths
would be of much external significance, but internally
poor. Examples of internal truths are not only furnished
by high and truly spiritual philosophizings, but also by
the catastrophe of every good tragedy ; also indeed by the
observation of human conduct in the extreme expressions
of its morality and immorality, in other words, of its evil
and goodness. For in all this the essence appears whose
phenomenon the world is, and at the highest stage of its
objectivation brings to light its innermost core.

That the world has merely a physical, and no moral
significance, is the greatest, the most pernicious, the fun-
damental error, the true perversity of opinion, and is at
bottom that which faith has personified as Anti-Christ.
Nevertheless, and despite all religions, which one and all
maintain the contrary, and seek to explain it in their
mythical fashion, this root-error never quite dies out, but
196 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

ever and again raises its head anew, till universal indigna-
tion compels it once more to hide it.

But certain as is the feeling of a moral significance of
the world and of life, its explication and the unravelling
of the contradiction between it and the course of the
world is, nevertheless, so difficult, that it was reserved for
me to expound the true only genuine and pure, and there-
fore everywhere and at all times operative foundation of
morality, together with the goal to which it leads. In
this I have the reality of moral progress too much on my
side, that I need fear ever again to be superseded and
displaced by another.

As long, however, as my Ethics remain unnoticed by
the professors, the Kantian moral principle obtains at the
universities, and among its various forms that of the
“Dignity of Man” is now the most accepted. I have
already exposed its emptiness in my essay on the “ Foun-
dation of Morality,” § 8, p. 169 (2nd ed., 166). For this
reason we say only thus much here on this point. If one
were to ask on what this pretended dignity of man rested,
the answer would come to saying that it rested on his
morality. Thus the morality rests on the dignity, and the
dignity on the morality. But apart from this, the con-
ception of dignity seems to me to be only ironically ap-
plicable to a being so sinful in will, so limited in intellect,
so easily injured, and so feeble in body as man:

“Quid superbit homo? cujus conceptio culpa,
Nasci poena, labor vita, necesse mori!”

I would therefore postulate the following rule in opposi-.
tion to the aforesaid form of the Kantian moral principle:
Do not attempt in the case of any man with whom you
come in contact an objective valuation of him as to worth
and dignity; hence do not take into consideration the
badness of his will, nor the limitation of his under-
ON ETHICS. 197

standing, nor the perversity of his ideas, for the first can
easily evoke hatred, the last contempt against him; but
bear in mind only his sufferings, his need, his anxiety, his
pains. In this way we shall continually feel ourselves
related to him, sympathize with him, and instead of
hatred or contempt, experience that sympathy with him
which is the only ayarn to which the Gospel admonishes
us. The standpoint of sympathy is alone suited to pre-
vent hatred or contempt arising towards him, and not
certainly the opposite one of seeking after his pretended
dignity.

The Buddhists, in consequence of their deeper ethical
and metaphysical insights, do not start from cardinal
virtues, but from cardinal vices, as the antitheses or nega-
tions of which the cardinal virtues first appear. According
to J. J. Schmidt’s “ History of the Eastern Mongolians,”
p. 7, the cardinal vices of the Buddhists are lust, idleness,
anger, and greed. But probably pride ought to stand in
the place of idleness, as given in the “ Lettres édifiantes et
curieuses,” edit. de 1819, vol. vi., p. 872; envy or hatred
being there added as a fifth. For my correction of the
statement of the highly deserving J. J. Schmidt, its agree-
ment with the doctrines of the Sufis, who were certainly
under the influence of Brahmism and Buddhism, speaks
strongly in favour. For these also postulate the same
cardinal vices, and indeed very effectively, pairwise, so that
lust appears related to greed, and anger to pride. (See
Tholuck’s “ collection of blossoms from Oriental Mysticism,”
p. 206.) We already find lust, anger, and greed in the
Bhagavat Gita (xvi. 21), postulated as cardinal vices,
which attests the great age of the doctrine. Similarly in
the “Prabodha-Chandrodaya,” a philosophico-allegorical
drama, extremely important for the Vedanta-philosophy,
these three cardinal vices also appear as the three generals
198 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

of the King Passion in his war against King Reason.’ As
the cardinal virtues opposed to the above cardinal vices,
modesty and generosity, together with mildness and hu-
mility, would result.

If we compare with these deeply-conceived oriental root-
ideas of ethics the so-celebrated and so-many-thousand-
times-repeated cardinal virtues of Plato, justice, bravery,
moderation, and wisdom, we shall find them to be without
a clear guiding root-conception, and therefore superficially
chosen, and in part even clearly false. Virtues must be
qualities of the Will, but wisdom belongs directly to the
intellect. The cwgpooivn, which is translated by Cicero
Temperantia, and in German Missigkeit (moderation), is a
very indeterminate and ambiguous expression, under which
many things may be brought, such as reflection, abstinence,
holding one’s head up; it comes probably from cov tyey
TO gpoveiv, or as Hierax says in “ Stobeus” (Flor. tit. J.,
§ 60, vol. i. p. 184, Gaisf.) . . . Tadrny tiv aperiy cwppo-
ouvny éxddecav awrnpiay ovcav dpovnoéwc. Bravery is no
virtue at all, although it may sometimes be the servant or
tool of virtue ; albeit it is equally ready to serve the cause
of the greatest unworthiness, being, properly speaking, a
mere characteristic of temperament. Geuliux (‘ Ethica, in
preefatione,”) rejected the cardinal virtues of Plato and
postulated these: diligentia, obedientia, justitia, humilitas ;
obviously a bad selection. The Chinese name five cardinal
virtues: sympathy, justice, politeness, knowledge, and up-
rightness (“Jouwmn. Asiatique,” vol. ix. p. 62). “Sam,
Kidd, China” (London, 1841, p. 197), calls them benevo-
lence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and sincerity, and
gives an exhaustive commentary on each. Christianity

+ “Krishna Micra, Prabodha-Chandiodaga, or, the Birth of
the Conception, a theological-philosophical drama.’’ Translated
from the Sanskrit and introduced by a preface by Rosenkranz.
1842
ON ETHICS. 199

has no cardinal, but only theological virtues: faith, love,
and hope.

The point at which the moral virtues and vices of men .
first part is the above antithesis of our fundamental atti-
tude towards others, which either takes on the character
of envy or of sympathy. For these two diametrically
opposite characteristics every man bears within himself,
since they spring from the unavoidable comparison of his
own state with that of another; and accordingly, as the
result affects his individual character, will the one or the
other quality become his fundamental attitude of mind
and the source of his conduct. Envy builds up the more
firmly the wall between thou and I; for sympathy it be-
comes thin and transparent; sometimes, indeed, it is
thrown down altogether, in which case the distinction be-
tween I and not-I vanishes.

Bravery, as discussed in the foregoing, or rather the
courage which lies at its foundation (for courage is only
bravery in war) deserves a closer investigation. The
ancients reckoned courage among the virtues and cowardice
among the vices; but the Christian moral sense, which is
directed towards well-wishing and suffering, and whose
doctrine forbids all enmity, properly indeed all resistance,
does not involve this, and hence it has disappeared with the
moderns. We must nevertheless admit that cowardice is not
easily compatible with a noble character if only on account of
the excessive concern for one’s person which betrays itself
therein. Courage is reducible to the fact that one willingly
encounters evils threatened at the present moment, in order
to avoid greater ones looming in the future, while cowardice
does the opposite. Now patience is of the former character,
since it consists in the clear consciousness that there are
greater evils than the present ones which might be brought
on by the violent flying from or warding off of these.
200 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Courage would therefore bea form of patience, and because
it is this which enables us to endure privations and self-
conquest of every kind, so, by means of it, courage is at least
akin to virtue.

But perhaps it admits of a higher mode of contemplation.
One might reduce all fear of death to a want of that natural
and therefore merely felt metaphysic by virtue of which
man bears within himself the certainty that he exists just
as much in all things, yes, in all things, as in his own person,
the death of which need therefore little concern him. From
this certainty, accordingly, arose the heroic courage and
consequently (as the reader may remember from my
Ethics) from the same source as the virtues of justice and
human love. This certainly means seizing the matter from
above; nevertheless it is not easily to be explained other-
wise why cowardice appears contemptible, and personal
courage, on the contrary, noble and sublime. For one
cannot see from any lower standpoint why a finite indivi-
dual who is himself all—is himself indeed the fundamental
condition of the existence of the rest of the world—should
not put the maintenance of himself before all else. An
exclusively immanent, that is purely empirical explanation,
inasmuch as it could only be based on the utility of courage,
would be insufficient. From this it may have arisen that
Calderon pronounces a sceptical but significant view of
courage, when he denies its reality, and does this indeed out
of the mouth of an old wise minister as against his young
King :—

“Que aunque el natural temor,
En todos obra igualmente,
No mostrale es ser valiente,

Y esto es lo que hace el valor.”
La hija det aire, P. (I. tom. 2.

“ For although natural fear is active in the same way inall
men, one is brave in so far as one does not let it be seen,
ON ETHICS. 201

and this indeed constitutes bravery.” (‘The Daughter of
the Air,” part. ii., A. 2.)

Respecting the above-mentioned differences between the
estimation of courage among the ancients and among the
moderns it must, however, be taken into consideration that
the ancients understood by virtue, virtus, dper), every
excellence, every quality praiseworthy in itself, whether
moral or intellectual, or, indeed, merely corporeal. But
after that Christianity had demonstrated the ground-
tendency of life to be moral, moral excellencies alone were
thought of under the conception of virtue. Meanwhile we
find the earlier sense in the older Latinists and even in the
Italian, as is proved by the well-known meaning of the
word virtuoso. Learners ought to have their attention
especially directed to this extended range of the conception
Virtue among the ancients, as otherwise it may easily give
rise to a secret perplexity in them. To this end I particu-
larly recommend two passages preserved for us by Stobeeus ;
the one apparently emanating from the Pythagorean Meto-
pos in the first chap. of his ‘ Florilegium,” § 64 (Vol.i., p. 22,
Gaisf.), where the capacity of each member of our body for
apery is explained, and the other in his “Eclog. eth.” I. IL,
cap. 7, (p. 272, ed. Heeren). It there speaks as follows .
axurorépou aperny AEyersat Kay’ fy aroreNEiy dipioroy Umddnna
dbvara. (Sutoris virtus dicitur secundum quam probum
calceum novit parare.) This explains why virtues and vices
are spoken of in the Ethics of the ancients and find no place
in our own.

Just as the place of bravery among the Virtues is doubt-
ful so is that of avarice among the Vices. Only one must
not confound it with the greed which is directly expressed
by the Latin word avaritia. We will therefore for the nonce
allow the pro and contra to be brought forward and heard,
so that the final judgment may be left to each reader.
202 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

A. Avarice is not a vice, but its opposite, extravagance,
which arises from an animal limitation to the present time
against which the future, existingas it does merely in thought,
can attain no power, and is based on the illusion of the
positive and real value of sensuous pleasures. Future want
and suffering are accordingly the price for which the spend-
thrift purchases these vacuous, fleeting, and often imaginary
pleasures, or feeds his empty, brainless conceit in the pos-
turings of the parasites who laugh at him behind his back,
and in the astonishment of the common people and of those
envious of his magnificence. For this reason one ought to
fly from him as from one plague-stricken, and after we have
discovered his vice to break with him as soon as possible ;
so that we may not have, later, when the consequences
appear, either to help to bear them, or to play the réle of
the friends of Timon of Athens. In the same way it is not
to be expected that he who has thoughtlessly run through
his own fortune will leave untouched that of another when
it comes into his hands; but as Sallust has very rightly
put it, sat profusus, alient appetens (Catil. c. 5). Hence
extravagance leads not merely to poverty but through this
to crime; the criminals from the well-to-do classes have
almost all become so in consequence of extravagance.
Truly does the Koran say (Sure 17, v. 29): “ Spendthrifts
are brothers of Satan.” Avarice, on the contrary, has super-
fluity in its train, and when is this undesirable? But that
must surely be a good vice that has good consequences. The
avaricious man, namely, proceeds from the correct principle
that all pleasures act merely negatively and that hence a
happiness compounded of them is a chimera, and that on the
contrary pains are positive and very real. Hence he denies
for himself the former, in order the better to secure himself
against the latter, so that sustine abstine are its maxims.
And since he further knows how inexhaustible are the
possibilities of misfortune, and how countless the paths of
ON ETHICS. 203

danger, he takes his measures against them, in order,
if possible, to surround himself with a threefold wall of
defence. Who could say then where precautions against
accidents begin to be excessive? Only he who knew where
the tricks of fortune attain their end. And even if precau-
tions are excessive, this mistake at most brings harm
to himself, not to others. Will he never have need of the
treasures he hoards up? In this case they will accrue
at some time to the benefit of others to whom nature has
given less forethought. That until then money has been
withdrawn from circulation is no harm, for money is not an
article of consumption ; it is a mere representative of real,
useful goods, not such itself. Ducats are at bottom them-
selves mere reckoning counters; it is not they which have
value, but that which they represent, and this cannot be
withdrawn from circulation. Besides, through his reten-
tion of the money, the value of that which remains in circu-
lation is by so much raised. If, as is sometimes main-
tained, many misers at last come to love money directly for
its own sake, so, on the other hand, and just as certainly
does many a spendthrift love the spending and wasting of
money for its own sake. But friendship, or, indeed,
relationship with the miser, is not only without danger but
desirable, since it may bring the greatest advantages. For
at all events those nearest to him reap the fruits of his
self-restraint after his death. But even during his life
there is, in cases of great need, something to be hoped
from him—more at least than from the penniless spend-
thrift who is helpless and in debt. Mas da el duro, que el
desnudo (“The hard-hearted man gives more than the
naked”) says a Spanish proverb. In consequence of all
this, avarice is no vice.

B. It is the quintessence of the vices! If physical plea-
sures seduce man from the right path, his sensuous nature,
the animal within him, is to blame. Carried away by ex-
204 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

citement, and overpowered by the impression of the
moment, he acts without consideration. When, however,
through bodily weakness or old age he has reached a stage
at which the vices which he could never forsake, finally
forsake him, in that his capacity for sensual enjoyments
has died out, the intellectual appetite survives the fleshly,
and he turns to avarice. Money, which is the representa-
tive of all the good things of the world—which is their
abstractum—is now the withered stem to which his dead
appetites cling, as egoism in abstracto. They regenerate
themselves henceforth in the love of mammon. Out of the
fleeting sensuous appetite a well considered and calculating
appetite for money has developed itself, which like its
object is of symbolical nature, and like it also is indestruc-
tible. It is the stiffnecked love of the enjoyments of the
world, as it were outliving itself, the perfected inconverti-
bility, the sublimated and spiritualized lust of the flesh,
the abstract focus in which all lusts centre, to which it is,
therefore, related as the universal concept to particular
things. Avarice, accordingly, is the vice of age, as extra-
vagance is that of youth.

The disputatio in utramque partem just heard is as-
suredly suited to force as to the juste miliew morality of
Aristotle. The following consideration is also favourable
thereto.

Every human perfection is akin to a fault into which it
threatens to pass over; and conversely every fault is akin
to a perfection. Hence the mistake respecting a man in
which we are often landed, rests upon the fact that at the
beginning of our acquaintance we confound his faults with
their kindred perfections, or vice versd. The prudent man
thus seems to us cowardly, the economical man avaricious ;
the spendthrift seems liberal, the discourteous man straight-
forward and upright, the blockhead endowed with a noble
self-confidence, &c.
ON ETHICS. 205

He who lives among men feels himself ever anew tempted
to the assumption that moral badness and intellectual in-
capacity are closely connected, since they spring directly
from one root. But that this is not so, I have conclusively
shown in the second volume of my chief work, chap. xix.,
No. 8. The foregoing illusion, which merely arises from
the fact that both are often found together, is entirely to
be explained from the very frequent appearance of both,
in consequence of which it often happens to them that
they have to dwell beneath the same roof. But it is
not to be denied, however, that they play into one an-
other’s hands to reciprocal advantage, whence is brought
about the so unedifying appearance which only too many
men offer, and the world goes as it goes. Stupidity is
especially favourable to the clear exposure of falseness,
meanness and malice; while prudence understands better
how to conceal this. And how often, on the other hand,
the perversity of the heart prevents man from seeing truths
to which his understanding would be quite equal.

However, let no one be too proud, since every one, even
the greatest genius, is unquestionably limited in some
sphere of knowledge, and thereby proclaims his relationship
with the essentially perverted and absurd human race.
Each one bears something morally bad within him, and
even the best, the noblest character, will surprise us at
times by individual traits of badness, in order, as it were,
to indicate its kinship with that human race in which
every degree of unworthiness and cruelty occurs. For pre-
cisely owing to this bad within him, this evil principle, he
was compelled to become a man. And for this same reason
the world is exactly that which my true mirror of it has
shown it to be.

In spite of all, however, the differences between men
remain incalculably great, and many a one would be
shocked if he saw another as he himself is. O for an
206 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Asmodeus of morality who not alone made roofs and
walls transparent to his favoured one, but the veil of
the Presentment spread out over all falseness, hypocrisy,
double-facedness, lying and deception, and who would let
him see how little true honesty is to be found in the world,
and how often, even where one least expects it, behind all
the virtuous outworks, secretly and in the innermost recess
unrighteousness sits at the helm. Hence come the four-
footed friendships of so many of the better kind of men,
for on what indeed should one refresh oneself from the
endless deceit, falseness, and cunning of men if it were
not for the dogs into whose faithful countenance one may
look without distrust ? Our civilized world is then only a
great masquerade. One meets there knights, parsons,
soldiers, doctors, advocates, priests, philosophers, and what
not! But they are not what they represent themselves ;
they are mere masks under which are hidden as a rule
money-makers. One will assume the mask of justice
which he has borrowed from his advocate, merely in order
to crush another ; a second, with the same object, chooses
the mark of public weal and patriotism ; a third that of
religion, of purity, of faith ; many a one has for a variety
of purposes donned the mask of philosophy, of philan-
throphy, etc. Women have less choice ; they mostly employ
the mask of purity, of bashfulness, domesticity, and
modesty. There are, moreover, universal masks with no
special character, as it were, the dominos that one meets
with everywhere. To this character belong strict integrity,
politeness, disinterested sympathy, and grinning friend-
ship. Manufacturers, commercial men, and speculators,
only are, for the most part, hidden behind all these masks.
In this respect the merchants constitute the only honour-
able class, for they alone admit themselves to be what
they are; they go about unmasked, and, therefore, stand
low in rank. It is very important to be taught early in
ON ETHICS. 207

youth that one is living in a masquerade. For otherwise
many things will be unable to be understood and come at;
but one will stand before them puzzled, and the longest
he who eui ex meliori luto dedit precordia Titan. Such is
the favour which baseness finds, the neglect which merit
even the rarest and the greatest suffers from the men of
its department, the detestation of the truth, and of great
capacities, the ignorance of the learned in their own branch
that genuine wares are almost always despised, and the
merely apparent sought after. The youth should, there-
fore, be taught that in this masquerade the apples are of
wax, the flowers of silk, the fish of paste, and all is trifling
and jesting ; and that of those yonder whom he sees so
earnestly engaged with each other, the one gives nothing
but false wares, and the other pays for them with counters.

But more serious considerations are to be brought for-
ward and worse things told. Man is at bottom a wild,
horrible creature. We know him merely as broken in and
tamed by what we call civilization, and hence the occasional
outbreaks of his nature shock us. But where and when the
padlock and chain of legal order fall off and anarchy enters,
then he shows himself what he is. He who in the mean-
time without this opportunity would like to inform himself
thereupon, can acquire the conviction from hundreds of
ancient and modern narratives, that man yields in cruelty
and pitilessness to no tiger and no hyena. An important
instance from modern times is furnished by the answer
which the British anti-slavery Society received to its ques-
tions as to the treatment of the slaves in the slave-holding
states of the North American Union from the North
American Anti-Slavery Society in the year 1840: ‘Slavery
and the internal slave trade in the United States of North
America, being replies to questions transmitted by the
British Anti-Slavery Society to the American Anti-Slavery
Society in London, 1841.” This Book constitutes one of
208 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

the heaviest indictments against human nature. No one
will lay it aside without horror, few without tears. For
what the reader has heard or imagined or may have dreamt,
as to the unhappy state of the slaves or of human harshness
and cruelty in general, will seem insignificant to him when
he reads how those devils in human shape, those bigoted
church-going, strict sabbath-observing scoundrels, espe-
cially the Anglican parsons among them, treat their mno-
cent black brethren who by injustice and violence have
come into their devil’s claws. This book, which consists of
dry but authentic and substantiated accounts, inflames
all human feeling to such a degree that with it in the hand
one could preach a crusade for the conquest and punish-
ment of the slave-holding States of North America. For
they are a disgrace for all humanity. Another example
from the present time—for the past will not seem to many
any longer valid—is contained in Tschudi’s “ Travels in
Peru,” 1846. In the description of the treatment of the
Peruvian soldiers by their officers.” But we do not require to
seek for examples in the new world, that reverse side of the
planet. In the year 1848 it came to light that in England
within a short space of time, there had been not one, but a
hundred cases in which a husband poisoned a wife, or a
wife a husband, or both together their children, or slowly
tortured their children to death by hunger or bad treat-
ment, merely to receive from the burial clubs the funeral
expenses guaranteed to them in case of death, for which
purpose they bought a child into several, sometimes as
many as twenty of such clubs. See on this matter the
“Times,” 20th, 22nd, 23rd Sept., 1848, which journal
merely on this account presses for the abolition of burial

' A most recent instance may be found in Macleod’s ‘‘ Travels
in Eastern Africa’’ (2 vols., London, 1860), where the unheard of,
cold, calculating, and truly devilish cruelty with which the Por-
tuguese in Mozambique treat their slaves is narrated.
ON ETHICS. 209

clubs. It repeats the same charge in the strongest manner
on the 12th Dec., 1853.

Reports of this kind certainly belong to the blackest
pages in the criminal annals of the human race, but the
source of them, and of everything similar, is nevertheless the
inner and inborn nature of man, this car’ éLoyv, this God of
the Pantheists. There rests directly in every one a colossal
egoism which overleaps the boundaries of justice with the
greatest ease, as daily life teaches on a small scale,
and history at every page on a large scale. Does
there not lie, indeed, in the recognized necessity of the so
anxiously-watched European equilibrium, the confession
that man is a wild beast, which as soon as it has espied a
weaker one near it, infallibly falls upon it? And do not we
daily receive the confirmation of this in a small way? But
to the limitless egoism of our nature there allies itself yet
again the store of hatred, anger, envy, rancour, and malice
present more or less in every human breast, and collected
like the poison in the gland of the snake’s tooth and only
awaiting the opportunity to free itself, and then like an un-
chained demon to ramp and rage. If no great opportunity
for it presents itself it will at last use the smallest, en-
larging it by its imagination,

“ Quantulacunque adeo est occasio, sufficit ire.”

Juv. Sat., xiii. v. 183.
and will then carry things as far as it can and dare. We
see this in daily life where such eruptions are known under
the expression “to pour out one’s gall on something.” It
has been observed, moreover, that when it has met with
no resistance the subject of it finds himself much better
after it. That anger is not without pleasure Aristotle
has observed: 76 opyifeaSau jou (‘ Rhet.” JI, 11, IL, 2),
where he also quotes the passage from Homer which
declares anger to be sweeter than honey. But one does
not devote oneself con amore merely to anger, but also

P
210 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

to hatred, which is related to it as the chronic to the acute
disease.
“* Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure :
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.”
Byron, Don Juan, ¢. xiii. 6.

Gobineau (“Des races humaines”) has called man
Vanimal méchant par excellence, which people take offence at
because they feel it touches them. But he is right, for man
is the only animal which causes others pain without any
further object than that of doing so. The other animals
never do it otherwise than to satisfy their hunger or in the
heat of conflict. Although it is said of the tiger that
he kills more than he eats, yet he strangles everything with
the intention of eating it so that it is a case merely to be
expressed by the French phrase ses yeux sont plus grands
que son estonac. No animal ever tortures for the sake of
torturing but man, and this constitutes the devilish cha-
racter in him which is far worse than the merely animal.
We have already spoken of the matter on a great scale, but
on the small it is no less clear, as everyone has daily oppor-
tunity of observing. For instance, two young dogs are
playing with one another—a peaceful and pretty sight—
and a child of three or four years comes upon the scene;
the child will almost inevitably strike in violently with its
whip or stick and thereby show it is already l’animal
méchant par excellence! Even constant purposeless teasing
and mischief spring from this source. For example, if one
has expressed one’s dislike of something disturbing, or
some other small unpleasantness, people will not be wanting
who will bring it about for that very reason—animal
méchant par excellence! This is indeed so certain, that one
has to be careful of expressing one’s annoyance at small
discomforts ; as also on the other hand, one’s gratification
at any trifle. For in the latter case they are likely to do
as the jailor who as soon as he discovered that his prisoner
ON ETHICS. 211

had completed the difficult task of taming a spider and
found pleasure in it, at once crushed it: U'animal méchant
par excellence! Hence all animals instinctively fear the
look or indeed even the trace of man, the animal méchant
par excellence. Instinct does not deceive here; for only
man hunts prey which is neither useful to him nor injures
him.’

There really resides in the heart of each of us a wild
beast which only waits the opportunity to rage and rave in
order to injure others, and which if they prevent it, would
like to destroy them. Hence arises all the pleasure in
fighting and war; and it is this which gives the under-
standing, its special keeper, always enough to do to over-
come and to hold it in some measure within bounds. One
may indeed call it the radical evil, with which those
for whém a word takes the place of an explanation may be
contented. But I say it is the Will to live which, em-
bittered more and more by the constant sorrows of existence,
seeks to lighten its own suffering by causing the same to
others. In this way it gradually develops genuine malice
and cruelty. One may also observe in this connection that
as, according to Kant, matter only obtains by the anta-
gonism of expansive and contractive force, so human society
only exists through that of hatred or anger or fear.
For the ferocity of our nature would probably make every
one a murderer at once were it not mingled with the neces-

1 Schopenhauer might have instanced in this connection the ten-
dency of officialism, which is always eager to snatch at any excuse
—some paltry abuse, real or imagined—for depriving the public of
some little privilege which may happen to have been accorded.
If access to some building or private grounds has been permitted,
those regulating them will be certain, sooner or later, to pretend
that because a small boy has perhaps on one occasion plucked a
flower or scratched his name on a wall or a tree, that it is neces-
sary the use of the building or grounds should be restricted or
withdrawn.—TR.
212 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sary dose of fear to hold it within bounds, and this again
would make it the mock and plaything of every child
if anger were not ready to hand, and keeping watch.

But the worst trait in human nature is the malicious
pleasure in mischief which is nearly akin to cruelty, and
indeed distinguishes itself therefrom only as theory from
practice, and which appears generally where sympathy
ought to find a place, sympathy, as its opposite, being the
only true source of all genuine righteousness and human
love. In another sense envy is opposed to sympathy in so far
namely as it is called forth by the opposite occasion. Hence
its opposition to sympathy rests directly on opportunity,
and displays itself in feeling also as a consequence of this.
Hence moreover envy, although to be condemned, is at
least capable of an excuse and eminently human, while the

-mere pleasure in mischief is diabolical and its mockery the
laughter of hell. It presents itself, as already said, just
where sympathy should appear ; envy, on the contrary, only
there where no occasion for the latter exists, but rather for
its opposite, and as this opposite it arises in the human
breast, and is therefore in so far a human emotion ; I fear,
indeed, that no one will be found entirely free from it.
For that Man in looking upon alien enjoyment and posses-
sion should feel his own want the more bitterly is natural
and indeed inevitable; only it ought not to excite his
hatred against the more fortunate, but precisely in this
envy properly-speaking consists. But envy should least of
all find a place where, not the gifts of fortune, or of chance,
or the favour of others but where that of nature is the cause
of them, since everything inborn rests upon a metaphysical
basis, thatis, has a justification of a higher kind, and is, so
to say, of God’s grace. But unfortunately with envy it is
exactly opposite. To personal advantages it is most irre-
concilable ; hence understanding, and even genius, have at
first to beg for forgiveness of the world, wherever they are
ON ETHICS. 213

not in a position to venture proudly and boldly to despise
the world. When, namely, envy has been excited merely
by riches, rank, or power, it is often damped by egoism,
. Inasmuch as the latter sees, that in certain cases help,
enjoyment, assistance, protection, advantage, &c., is to be
hoped for, or that at least by association with it one is
illumined by the reflection of its importance and may even
enjoy honour. There is, moreover, always the hope of at
sometime or other attaining these good things oneself. On
the other hand with natural gifts and personal excellences
such as, with women beauty, with men intellect, the envy
directed upon them derives no consolation of the one kind
or hope of the other, so that nothing remains for it but to
hate those so privileged, bitterly and irreconcilably. Hence
its only wish is to take revenge on its object. But in this
it finds itself in the unfortunate position that all its blows
fall powerless as soon as it appears that they have pro-
ceeded from it. Hence it hides itself as carefully as secret
sins of lust, and is an inexhaustible inventor of devices,
tricks, and dodges in order to mask and conceal itself so
that it may wound its object unseen. The excellences, for
example, which consume its heart it will ignore with the
most innocent mien, it will not see them nor know them, it
will never have noticed or heard of them, and will show
itself a past master in dissimulation. With the greatest
refinement it will entirely overlook the brilliant qualities
which gnaw at his heart, seemingly as though they were in-
significant, it will be quite unaware of them and have
opportunely quite forgotten them. But it will above all
things be concerned carefully to remove by secret machina-
tion all opportunity for these excellences to show them-
selves and become known. It will then eject from the
darkness blame, mockery, contempt and calumny, like the
toad that spits forth its poison from its hole. None the
less will it enthusiastically praise insignificant men, or the
214 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS,

mediocre, or the bad, in the same class of achievement. In
short it becomes a Proteus in stratagem in order to wound
without showing itself. But what does it avail? The prac-
tised eye recognizes it notwithstanding. Its fear and flight
before its object already betrays it, the object which stands
by so much the more alone, the more brilliant itis. For this
reason pretty girls have no female friends. Its hate with-
out any occasion betrays it, a hate which breaks out in the
most violent explosion at the least, often indeed, a merely
imaginary, occasion. For the rest, however widespread its
family may be, one recognizes it in the universal praise of
modesty, that sly virtue invented for the benefit of flat
commonplaceness, which nevertheless by the necessity that
displays itself of sparing mediocrity brings it rather into
the light. There can assuredly be nothing more flattering
for our conceit and our pride than the sight of envy lurk-
ing and carrying on its machinations in its hiding-place.
But one should never forget that where envy is, hate ac-
companies it, and one should guard against allowing the
envier to become a false friend. His discovery is therefore
of importance for our safety. One should therefore study
him in order to be up to his tricks, for he is everywhere to
be found, and always goes about incognito, or, like the
poisonous toad, lurks in dark holes. He deserves indeed
neither consideration nor sympathy, but let the motto be:

“‘No mortal envy can appease ;

*T were best to scorn her at your ease,
Thy fame and fortune are her pain ;
Thus in her torment find your gain !”

If, as we have here done, we keep human badness before
our mind’s eye, and feel inclined to be horrified at it, one
must cast a glance at the misery of human existence, and
again at the former, if one is shocked at this. We shall
then find that they keep each other in equilibrium, and
ON ETHICS. 215

shall become aware of eternal justice when we observe that
the world itself is the world-tribunal, and we shall begin
to understand why all that lives must pay the penalty of
its existence, first in life, and then in death. The malam
pene appears therefore in agreement with the malam culpe.
From the same standpoint our indignation at the intellec-
tual incapacity of the majority which so frequently disgusts
us in life becomes dissipated. Hence miseria humana,
nequitia humana and stultitia humana completely cover one
another in this Sansara of the Buddhists, and are of equal
amount. But if we once on special occasion keep one of
these in mind and sample it specially, it then seems to
exceed both the others in amount, but this is illusion and
merely the consequence of their colossal range.

Everything proclaims this Sansara, but more than any-
thing the human world in which, morally, badness and
baseness, intellectually, incapacity and stupidity, dominate
to a frightful degree. Nevertheless, there appear in it,
sporadically perhaps, but yet surprising us ever, anew,
phenomena of honesty, of goodness, of nobility, as also of
great understanding of the thinking intellect, and even of
genius. These never become quite extinct, they glitter at
us like isolated shining spots from out the great dark
mass. We must take them as a pledge that a good and
saving principle is hidden in this Sansara, which can mani-
fest itself, and fill and free the whole.

The readers of my Ethics know that the foundation of
morals rests with me finally on the truth which has its ex-
pression in the Veda and Vedanta in the established
mystical formula Tat twam asi (this art thou), which is
pronounced with reference to every living thing, be it man
or animal, and is there termed the Maha-vakya.

One may, indeed, regard conduct in accordance there-
with, as for instance benevolence, as the beginning of
216 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

mysticism. Every benevolent action practised from a pure
motive proclaims that he who practises it stands in direct
contradiction to the phenomenal world in which other indi-
viduals are entirely separate from himself, and recognizes
himself as identical with them. Every quite disinterested
service is accordingly a mysterious action, a mysteriwm ;
and hence in order to give an explanation of it men have had
to take refuge in all sorts of fictions. After Kant had re-
moved from Theism all other supports he merely left it this
one, namely, that itafforded the best explanation of the above
and all mysterious actions similar to it. He admitted it
accordingly as a theoretically unprovable, but for practical
purposes valid assumption. But that he was altogether
serious in this I am inclined to doubt. For to support morals
by means of Theism is equivalent to reducing them to egoism :
although the English, like the lowest classes of society with
us, do not see the possibility of any other foundation.

The recognition above referred to, of one’s own true
essence in a strange individuality manifesting itself ob-
jectively appears especially clear and beautiful in those
cases where a human being already hopelessly sacrificed,
concerns himself with anxious care and active zeal for the
welfare and rescue of others. There is a well-known story
in this connection of a servant girl, who at night, in the
courtyard, being bitten by a mad dog, giving herself up
for lost, seizes the dog, drags it into the stable, and locks
it up there that no one else might become its victim.
Similarly that incident in Naples which Tischbein has
perpetuated in one of his water-colour drawings. Flying
before the lava as it streams towards the sea, a son carries
his old father on his back; but as at last only a narrow
strip of land divides the two destructive elements, the
father tells his son to lay him down in order that he may
save himself by running, since otherwise both would be
lost. The son obeys, and as he goes throws a last parting
ON ETHICS. 217

look at the father. This is represented in the picture. Of
this kind also is the historical fact which Walter Scott
depicts with masterly hand in “ The Heart of Midlothian,”
chapter i., where of two delinquents condemned to death
the one who by his clumsiness had been the cause of the
capture of the other, successfully frees him in the church
after the death sermon, by vigorously overpowering the watch
without making any attempt for himself. We may reckon
also in this connection, although it may offend the occi-
dental reader, the often reprinted engraving of a soldier
already kneeling to be shot zealously driving back his dog,
who is running towards him, with a handkerchief. In all
cases of this kind we see an individual who is approaching
his immediate personal destruction with complete certainty,
thinking no more of his own preservation and directing
his whole care and endeavour to the preservation of another.
How could the consciousness more clearly express itself
that this destruction is only that of a phenomenon, and is
therefore itself phenomenon, while the true essence of the
perishing being remains untouched, continues in the other,
in which even now, as its action shows, it so clearly recog-
nizes itself! For how, if this were not so, but if we hada
being before us in the throes of real annihilation, could
such a one by the supreme exertion of its last powers show
such an intense interest in the welfare and continuance of
another ?

There are indeed two opposite ways in which to become
conscious of one’s own existence: firstly, in empirical in-
tuition as displayed from the outside as an infinitely small
being in a world limitless in time and space; as one among
the thousand millions of human beings which run to and
fro on this earth for a very short time, renewing them-
selves every thirty years; secondly, in so far as one sinks
oneself within oneself and becomes conscious of being
all in all and in very deed the only real being, which
218 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sees itself again in the other given it from without, as in
a mirror. Now the first mode of knowledge embraces
merely the phenomenon mediated through the principium
individuationis, but the other is an immediate conscious-
ness of itself as the thing-in-itself—is a doctrine in which
I, as regards the first part, have Kant with me, but in both
the Vedas. The simple objection to the latter mode of
knowledge is that it presupposes that one and the same
being can be in different places at the same time. But
although, from the empirical standpoint, this is the most
palpable impossibility and, indeed, absurdity, it remains,
notwithstanding, perfectly true of the thing-in-itself; be-
cause this impossibility and absurdity merely rests on the
forms of the phenomenon which constitute the principium
individuationis. For the thing-in-itself, the Will-to-live,
is in every being, even the least—is present whole and un-
divided as completely as in all that ever were, are, and
will be, taken together. On this is based the fact that
every being, even the least, says to himself, Dum ego salvus
sim pereat mundus. And in truth if all other beings
perished, in this one that remained, the whole essence in
itself of the world, uninjured and unlessened, would laugh
at its destruction asat a play of jugglery. This is certainly
a conclusion per impossibile to which one is equally justi-
fied in opposing the opposite that if any being, even the
least, were wholly destroyed the whole world would
perish with it. In this sense the mystic Angelus Silesius
says:

‘‘T know that not one moment can God live from me apart
If I to nothingness am brought, His spirit must depart.”

But in order that this truth, or at least the possibility,
that our own self may exist in other beings whose con-
sciousness is separate and distinct from ours, may be seen
to some extent even from the empirical standpoint, we
ON ETHICS. 219

only require to recall to mind the magnetized somnambules
whose identical I after they are awakened knows nothing
of all that which a moment before they have themselves
said, done, and suffered. The individual consciousness
therefore is so entirely phenomenal a point, that even in
the same I, two such may arise, of which the one knows
nothing of the other.

Considerations, however, like the foregoing retain in our
Judaized west a strange appearance; but not so in the
fatherland of the human race, in that land where an
entirely different faith dominates, a faith in accordance
with which even to-day, after the burial, the priests before
all the people and with the accompaniment of instruments
chant the Veda Hymn which begins:

“The embodied spirit which has athousand heads, athou-
sand eyes, a thousand feet, hasits root in the human breastand
interpenetrates at once the whole earth. This being is the
world and all that was and will be. It is that which grows
by nourishment and which confers immortality. Such is
its greatness, and hence it is the most noble embodied
spirit. The elements of this world constitute one part of
his being and three parts are immortality in heaven.
These three parts have raised themselves from the world ;
but the one part has remained behind and isj that which
(by transmigration) enjoys and does not enjoy the fruits
of good and evil deeds,” &&. See Colebrooke on ‘“ Religious
Ceremonies of the Hindoos,” in vol. v. ‘“ Asiatic Re-
searches,” p. 845 of the Calcutta edition, also in his
“Miscellaneous Essays,” vol. i., p. 167.

If one compares such hymns with our hymn-books it
will no longer be wondered at that the Anglican Mis-
sionaries on the Ganges do such bad business, and with
their sermons on their “maker”! made no impression

1 «Maker ” is the German ‘‘ Macher,” and like this appears
often in composition, ¢.g., watchmaker, shoemaker, &c. Our
220 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

upon the Brahmin. He however who would enjoy the
pleasure of seeing how forty-one years ago an English
officer boldly and emphatically opposed himself to the
absurd and shameless pretensions of these gentlemen should

“maker” (in French it would be rendered “‘notre faiseur”) is in
English writings, sermons, and in ordinary life a very usual and
favourite expression for “‘God” which I beg the reader to note as
supremely characteristic for the English conception of religion.
But how the Brahmins trained in the doctrine of the holy Veda and
the Vaisia which zealously follows it, as indeed the whole of the
Indian people penetrated by the belief in Metempsychosis and
mindful of it in every event of life—how they must feel when such
conceptions are endeavoured to be forced on them, the educated
reader may easily judge! To pass from the eternal Brahm which
is in all and each, suffering, living and hoping for emancipation, to
that ‘‘maker” out of nothing, is truly a severe requirement.
They will indeed never be persuaded that the world and man area
machine made from nothing. With great justice the admirable
author of the book eulogized below in the text, says on page 15:
“The endeavours of the missionaries will remain fruitless; no
Hindoo worthy of any respect will ever pay any attention to their
exhortations ;” similarly p. 50, ‘‘ To hope that they, penetrated by
these opinions, in which they live and move and have their being,
will ever give them up in order to accept the Christian doctrine is,
according to my firm conviction, an idle expectation.” Also page
68: ‘ And if to this work the whole Synod of the English Church
were to put its hand it would assuredly not succeed except by
absolute compulsion in converting one man out of a thousand of
the whole Indian population.” How accurate this prophecy has
been is proved now forty-one years later by a long letter in ‘The
Times ” of November 6th, 1849, signed ‘‘ Civis,” which, as appears
fromthe contents, emanates from a man who has long lived in India.
It says among other things: ‘‘ Not a single instance has become
known to me that a man in India of whom we could in any way
be proud has been converted to Christianity. I have not known
one case that was not calculated to serve as a reproach to the faith
which he accepted and as a warning to the faith which he re-
nounced, The proselytes which have hitherto been made, few as
they are, have merely served therefore to frighten away others
from following their example.” After this letter had been contra-
ON ETHICS. 22t

read, “ The Vindication of the Hindoos from the Asper-
sions of the Rev. Claudius Buchanan, with a refutation of
his arguments in favour of an ecclesiastical establishment
in British India; the whole tending to evince the excel-
lence of the moral system of the Hindoos; by a Bengal
Officer. Lond. 1808.” The author there explains with
rare independence the advantages of the doctrines of the
Hindoo faith over those of the European. The little work,
which in German would fill about five sheets, deserves still
to be translated, for it expounds better and more honestly
than any other known to me the benevolent practical in-
fluences of Brahminism, its effect on life and on the people
—very differently to the reports emanating from clerical
pens which for that very reason deserve little credence,
but agreeing notwithstanding with what I have heard
verbally from English officers who have spent half their
life in India. In order to know how jealous and furious is
the Anglican Church, trembling for its benefices, at Brah-
Minism, one should have heard the loud bellowing which
some years ago the bishops raised in Parliament, continued

dicted there appeared in substantiation of it in ‘‘The Times” of
November 20th a second signed ‘‘ Sepaher,” which stated : ‘‘ I have
served over twelve years in the Presidency of Madras, and during
this long time I have never seen a single individual who had heen
converted even nominally from Hindooism or from Islam to the:
Protestant religion. I entirely agree therefore with ‘Civis’ and
believe that almost all officers of the army will bear a similar tes-
timony.” Vehement contradiction followed this letter also, but I
believe that if it did not emanate from missionaries, it did at all
events from their cousins ; at least the opponents were very godly.
Hence if even all that they adduced was not without foundation,
still I attach more faith to the unprejudiced witnesses quoted
above. For with me as far as England is concerned the red coat
obtains more confidence than the black, and everything which is
there said in favour of the Church, that wealthy and comfortable
sinecure of the penniless younger sons of the entire aristocracy, is.
co ipso suspicious to me.
222 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

for months together, and as the East Indian authorities, as
usual on such occasions, showed themselves unyielding, set
up again and again, and all merely because the English
authorities, as was only fair in India, displayed some
external signs of honour toward the ancient venerable
religion of the country—e.g., that when the procession of
the gods passed by, the watch with the officer at its head
came out and saluted with a roll of the drum; also that
a red cloth was furnished to cover the Car of Juggernaut,
&c. The latter has really been done away with together
with the pilgrim dues which were raised in connection with it
in order to please these gentlemen. In the meantime the
independent drivelling of these self-styling right-reverend
holders of benefices and surplices over such things, together
with the quite medieval manner, which nowadays sounds
so rough and brutal, in which they expressed themselves,
also the bitter annoyance which it caused them that Lord
Ellenborough, in 1845, brought back in a triumphal pro-
cession to Bengal and gave up to the Brahmins the Gate
of the Pagoda of Sumenaut destroyed by Mahmud the
Gahznewid ; all this, I say, lets us suppose that it is not
unknown to them how much the majority of Europeans who
live long in India are predisposed in their hearts towards
Brahminism and how they only shrug their shoulders at the
religion, as at the social prejudices, of Europe. “ That
all falls off like scales after one has lived two years in
India,” said such a one to me on one occasion. Hvena
Frenchman, that very obliging and cultivated gentleman
who about ten years accompanied the Dewardussi (vulgo
Bayaderes) to Europe, as I was speaking with him respect-
ing the religion of the country, exclaimed immediately
with fiery enthusiasm, “ Monsieur, c’est la vrai religion !”
It is nevertheless extremely droll, by the way, to see the
comfortable smiling self-sufficiency with which certain
servile German philosophasters, as also some cut and dried
ON ETHICS. 223

Orientalists, look down from the heights of their ratio-
nalistic Judaism, upon Brahminism and Buddhism. To
such mediocrities I would seriously venture to propose an
engagement with the apes’ comedy at the Frankfort Fair,
if indeed the successors of Hanuman would tolerate them
amongst them. ‘

I think that if the Emperor of China or the King of
Siam and other Asiatic monarchs concede to the European
power the permission to send missionaries into their
lands they would be quite justified in doing so, only under
the condition that they might send exactly as many Buddhist
priests with equal rights into the European land in ques-
tion, choosing for this purpose naturally those who were
previously well instructed in the particular European lan-
guage with which they had todo. We should then have
before our eyes an interesting competition, and see which
of them achieved the most.

Even the fantastic and sometimes quaint Hindoo myth-
ology as it to-day, no less than thousands of years ago,
makes up the religion of the people, is, if one goes to the
root of the matter, only the allegorized (ie., clad in
images, and so personified and mythisized as to be suited
to the capacity of the people) doctrine of the Upani-
shads, which every Hindoo, according to the measure of
his powers and education, either feels, or has a presenti-
ment of, or seeing through it, clearly understands ; while
the coarse and narrow-minded English reverend mocks
and blasphemes it as idolatry, in the belief that he
alone is in the right box. The purpose of the Buddha
Sakya Muni, on the contrary, was to separate the kernel
from the shell, to free the high doctrine itself from all
admixture with images and gods, and to make its pure
content accessible and comprehensible even to the peo-
ple. In this he succeeded wonderfully, and hence his
religion is most excellent, and represented hy the greatest
224 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

number of adherents upon earth. He can say with
Sophocles :

— Yeotc pev Kav 6 undiy wy opod
Koaroc Karaxrycair’* tyw Oé Kai diya
kKetvwy TéT0LWa TOUT EmtomacELY KNEOC.

Ajas, 767-69.

Christian fanaticism, which seeks to convert the whole
world to its faith, is irresponsible. Sir James Brooke
(Rajah of Borneo), who colonized and, for a time, ruled a
portion of Borneo, delivered an address in September,
1858, at Liverpool, before a meeting of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel—that is, the centre of Missions—
in which he said: “You have made no progress with the
Mahomedans, and with the Hindoos you have made no
progress at all, but are precisely at the point where you
were on the first day on which you set foot in India”
(“ Times,” 29th September, 1858). The emissaries of the
Christian faith have nevertheless shown themselves very
useful and praiseworthy in another direction, since some of
them have furnished us with excellent and complete reports
on Brahmanism and Buddhism, and true and careful
translations of the holy books such as could only have been
possible to have been done con amore. I dedicate the fol-
lowing rhyme to these worthy persons:

“¢ As teachers ye went thither,
As pupils ye came hither,
From the unveiled sense

Fell what ye took from hence.”

We may, therefore, hope that there will be a time
when all Europe will be purified from Jewish mythology.
The century has perhaps come, in which the peoples of
Asia springing from the Japhetic stem will again receive
the holy religions of their home, for after long wandering
from the path they are again ripe for them.
ON ETHICS. 225

After my prize essay on “ Moral Freedom” it can remain
doubtful to no thinking man that this is to be sought for
nowhere in nature, but only outside of nature. It is
a metaphysical fact, but in the physical world an impossi-
bility. Nevertheless our individual acts are in no sense
free. But the individual character of each is to be regarded
as his free act. He himself is such, because he once for all
wills to be such. For the Will exists in itself even in so far
as it appears in an individual: it constitutes, that is to
say, the original and fundamental Will of the same, inde-
pendent of all knowledge, because preceding it. From
knowledge it receives merely the motives by which it suc-
cessively develops its essence, and makes itself known, or
becomes visible ; but it is itself as lying outside time, un-
changeable so long as it exists at all. Hence each one,
since as such he exists only once, and under the circum-
stances of his time, but which on their side appear with
strict. necessity, can never do anything else but precisely
what he does now. The entire empirical course of the
life of a man is accordingly, in all its events, great and
small, as necessarily predetermined as the works of a
clock. At bottom this arises from the fact that the manner
in which the aforesaid metaphysically free act comes into
the cognizing consciousness is a preception which has time
and space for its form, by means of which the unity and
indivisibility of that act displays itself as torn asunder into
a series of states and events which follow the clue of the
principle of cause in its four forms—and this is termed
necessity. But the result is a moral one, viz. this; by that
which we do we know what we are, in the same way that
by that which we suffer we know what we deserve.

From this it follows further that the individuality does
not rest alone on the principio individuationis, and hence
is not through and through mere phenomenon, but that it
has its root in the thing-in-itself, in the will of the indi-

Q
226 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

vidual, for even his character is individual. How deeply
its roots penetrate here belongs to those questions whose
answer I do not undertake; but it deserves here to be
borne in mind that even Plato in his way presents the
individuality of each as his own free act, since he makes
him to be born in consequence of his heart and character,
such as he is, by means of Metempsychosis (“‘ Pheedr.,”
p. 825 sq. vol. x. ed. Bip.; ‘De legib.” x. p. 106, ed. Bip.).
Even the Brahmins on their side express the unchange-
able determination of the inborn character mythically, in
that they say that Brahma has in the generation of every
man impressed his action and his suffering in written
characters upon his skull, im accordance with which his
course of life must follow. They point to the notches of
the sutures of the skull bones as this writing. The con-
tent of it is a consequence of his previous life and conduct
(see “ Lettres Edifiantes,” 1819, vol. vi. p. 149, and vol. vii.
p. 1385). This insight appears to lie at the foundation
of the Christian (even Pauline) dogma of salvation by
grace.

Another consequence of the above, which entirely con-
firms it empirically, is that all genuine merits, moral as
well as intellectual, have not merely a physical, or other-
wise empirical, but a metaphysical origin, are accordingly
a priori and not a posteriori—that is, are innate, and not
acquired, and consequently have their root not in the mere
phenomenon, but in the thing-in-itself. Hence each one
only accomplishes that which at bottom already in his
nature—that is, in his innate nature—is irrevocably fixed.
Intellectual capacities, indeed, require cultivation as many
natural products require direction in order to be enjoyable
or otherwise useful. But as here no direction can replace
the original material, there also not. For this reason all
merely acquired, learnt, affected qualities—in other words,
qualities a posteriori, moral no less than intellectual—are,
ON ETHICS. 227

properly speaking, ungenuine, empty appearance without
content. Following as this does from a correct metaphysic,
it is taught by a deeper glance into experience. It is
evidenced, indeed, by the great weight which all lay on
physiognomy and the external appearance—that is, the
innateness of every man in any way distinguished—and
hence by their eagerness to see him. The superficial, indeed,
and for good reasons, the commonplace natures will be of the
opposite opinion, in order to be able to console themselves
in what they lack that it will come in good time. This
world is, therefore, not merely a battle-ground for whose
victories and defeats prizes will be distributed in the
future, but it is itself already the last judgment in which
each brings with him reward and shame according to his
merits ; and Brahminism and Buddhism, in so far as they
teach Metempsychosis, do not know any thing different.

The question has been mooted as to what two men who had
each grown up quite alone in the wilderness and who met
each other for the first time would do. Hobbes, Pufendorf,
and Rousseau have answered it in opposite senses. Pufen-
dorf believed they would meet each other lovingly; Hobbes,
on the contrary, inimically ; Rousseau that they would pass
each other by in silence. All three are right and wrong;
for here precisely the immeasurable diversity of the innate
moral dispositions of individuals would show itself in so
clear a light that we should here have, as it were, the rule
and measure of them. For there are men with whom the
look of man at once excites a hostile feeling, inasmuch as
their innermost being expresses itself “not I!” And others
there are with whom this look at once excites friendly
interest ; their innermost being says “I once more!” In
between there lie numberless degrees. But that we are in
this chief point so fundamentally different is a great
problem, indeed a mystery. Respecting this a priority of
228 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

the moral character, the book of the Dane, Bastholm, “ His-
torical Contributions towards Knowledge of the Savage
State” affords material for a variety of reflections. It
surprises him that the intellectual culture and moral good-
ness of nations exhibit themselves as quite independent of
each other in that the one is often to be found without the
other. We shall explain this from the fact that moral
goodness does not in any sense arise from reflection, the
development of which is dependent upon intellectual
culture ; but directly from the Will itself, whose structure
is innate and which is in itself incapable of any improve-
ment through culture. Bastholm describes most nations
as very vicious and bad. He has, on the other hand, from
certain savage peoples the most generally excellent charac-
teristics to report, as from the Orotchyses, the inhabitants
of the island Sawu, the Tumguses, and the Pelew-Islanders.
He then attempts to solve the problem whence it comes
that particular races are so exceptionally good while all
their neighbours are bad. It seems to me it may be
explained from the fact that since the moral qualities of the
father are hereditary, that in the above cases such an
isolated race has arisen from one family and, therefore,
sprung from the same ancestor, who happened to have
been a good man, and has maintained itself unmixed. The
English have often reminded the North Americans on the
occasion of unpleasant incidents, such as repudiation of
state debts, robber enterprises, &c., that they are descended
from an English criminal colony, although this is only true
of a small portion of them.

It is wonderful how the individuality of every man (i.e,
this determinate character with this determinate intellect)
precisely determines like a penetrating die, all his actions
and thoughts down to the most insignificant; in conse-
quence of which the whole course of life, that is, the ex-
ON ETHICS. 229

ternal and internal history of the one turns out so totally
different from that of the other. As a botanist knows the
whole plant from one leaf ; as Cuvier constructed the whole
animal from one bone; so from one characteristic action of
@ man one can attain to a correct knowledge of his
character and thus, to a certain extent, construct him from
it. Even if this action concerns a trifle it is possible, indeed
it then often succeeds best, for in more important things
people take more care, but in trifles they follow their na-
ture without much consideration. Hence the accuracy of
Seneca’s saying: Argumenta morum ex minimis quoque licet
capere (Ep. 52). If any one show in such things by an
absolutely reckless egoistic conduct that just views of
things are foreign to his heart, one ought not to trust him
with a single groschen without adequate security. For
who will believe that he who in all other matters which do
not touch property shows himself daily unjust, that one
whose boundless egoism everywhere peeps out from the
small actions of ordinary life for which he is not called to
account, like a dirty shirt out of the holes in a ragged
jacket—that such a one will be honourable in matters of
meum and tuwm without any other impulse than that of
Justice ? He who is inconsiderate in small things will be
without scruple also in great. He who leaves small traits
of character unnoticed has himself to thank if he afterwards
learns to know the character in question to his own disad-
vantage from the great. On the same principle one should
also at once break, even with so-called good friends, if they
betray, be it only in trifles, a malicious or bad or low
character, in order thereby to avoid their bad turns on a
larger scale, which only await the opportunity to produce
themselves. The same applies to servants. One should
always think, “better alone than among traitors.”

The foundation and propedeutic of all knowledge of men
is the conviction that the conduct of man as a whole and
230 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

essentially is not guided by his reason and its dictates.
Hence no one becomes this or that because he has the wish
to be so, however strong it may be; but his action proceeds
from his innate and unchangeable character, is more closely
and in detail determined by motives, and is consequently
the necessary product of these two factors. One may
accordingly compare the conduct of men to the course of a
planet which is the result of the tangential and centripetal
force which accrues to it by the operation of its sun, the
former force representing the character, the latter the in-
fluence of motives. This is almost more than a mere
metaphor, inasmuch, namely, as the tangential force from
which the motion properly proceeds while it is limited by
gravitation is, taken metaphysically, the Will displaying
itself in the body in question.

He who has understood this will also see that we, pro-
perly speaking, never have more than a supposition as to
what we shall do in a future position of affairs, although
we often regard this as an intention. If, for example,
a man in consequence of a proposal has, with perfect
honesty, and even quite willingly incurred the obligation
upon the occurrence of certain events still in the future to
do this or that, it is not by any means assured thereby that
he will fulfil it unless he be of such a nature that his pro-
mise given, of itself and as such, would be always and
everywhere a sufficient motive for him, in that it, by means
of his regard for his honour, acted upon him as a foreign
compulsion. But apart from this what he will do on the
occurrence of those circumstances may, nevertheless, be
foreseen with perfect certainty solely from a correct and
exact knowledge of his character and of the external cir-
cumstances under whose operation he has come. This is
indeed very easy if one has ever seen him once in a similar
position ; for he will infallibly do the same a second time,
pre-supposing that on the first occasion he had known the
ON ETHICS. 231

circumstances accurately and completely, for as I have often
remarked: causa finalis non movet secundum suum esse
reale, sed secundum esse cognitum (Suarez, “disp. metaph.
disp.” xxiii., sect. 7 ef 8), what, namely, he has not known
or understood the first time could not operate upon bis will.
Just as an electrical process stops, if some isolating body
intercepts the action of a conductor. The unchange-
ability of character and the necessity of action proceed-
ing from it impresses itself with uncommon clearness
upon him who on some occasion has not conducted himself
as he ought, inasmuch as he has perhaps failed in decision
or firmness, or courage, or other qualities demanded by the
moment. Now after it is over he knows and honestly
regrets his wrong conduct and thinks, perhaps, “If only
that occurred to me again I would act differently !” It does
occur to him again, the same thing happens, and he acts
again exactly as before,—to his great astonishment. (Com-
pare “ World as Will and Presentment,” ii., p. 226, et seq. ;
3rd ed. ii. p. 251, et seg.) By a long way the best expla-
nation of the truth here under discussion is furnished
us by Shakespeare’s dramas. For he was penetrated by it
and his intuitive wisdom speaks it in conereto on every
side. I will, notwithstanding, here exemplify it in a
case in which it stands out with special clearness, although
without intention and affectation, since he as a true artist
never starts from conceptions except obviously in order
to satisfy the Psychological truth as he apprehended it
perceptually and immediately, unconcerned that it would
be by few rightly regarded and understood, and without
any presentiment that in Germany dull and stupid persons
were destined to appear who would elaborately explain that
he had written his pieces in order to illustrate moral com-
mon-places. What I here refer to, is the character of the
Earl of Northumberland which we see carried through
three tragedies, without his appearing as a leading per-
232 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sonage, but only in a few scenes which are distributed over
fifteen acts, so that he who does not read with all his atten-
tion the character displayed between such long intervals
may easily lose sight of its moral identity, notwithstanding
the firmness with which the poet has kept it in view. He
makes this Earl everywhere enter with noble knightly mien,
use a language suited thereto, and has even put into his
mouth at times very beautiful and even sublime passages,
since he is so far removed from doing as Schiller does who
is fond of painting the devil black, and whose moral ap-
proval or disapproval sounds through the very words of the
characters portrayed by him. But with Shakespeare and
also with Goethe each one, so long as he is present and
speaks, is perfectly right even if he be the devil himself.
Compare, in this respect, the Duke of Alva with Goethe
and with Schiller. We make the acquaintance of the Earl
of Northumberland already in “Richard II.” where he is
the first to stir up a conspiracy against the King in favour
of Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., whom he also (act
ii., scene 3,) personally flatters. In the following act he
suffers a correction because, speaking of the King, he simply
said “ Richard,” but gives the assurance, however, that it was
only done for the sake of brevity. Soon afterwards his
cunning speech moves the King to capitulation. In the
following act he treats him in the act of abdication with
such hardness and contempt that the unhappy broken
monarch for once loses patience and exclaims, “Devil!
thou plaguest me already before I am in hell.” At the
conclusion he reports to the new King that he has sent the
decapitated heads of the adherents of the former to London.
In the following tragedy, “ Henry IV.,” he sets a con-
spiracy on foot in the same way as before, against the new
King. In the fourth act we see the rebels united, pre-
paring themselves for the great battle of the following day
and waiting impatiently for him and his army division.
ON ETHICS. 233

There comes finally a letter from him; he is himself ill
and could not trust his men to any one else; they should,
however, courageously continue and proceed bravely to the
attack. They do it, but are considerably weakened by his
absence, are completely beaten, most of their leaders are
taken, and his only son, the heroic Hotspur, falls by the hand
of the Crown Prince. Again, in the following piece, the
“Second Part of Henry IV.,” we see him plunged into’ the
wildest rage by the death of this son and madly breathing
out revenge. Hence he stirs up the rebellion afresh; the
leaders of it assemble themselves once more. As these, in
the fourth act, have to fight the decisive battle, and only
await his joining himself to them, there comes a letter ;
he has not been able to collect sufficient forces, and will
therefore, for the present, seek his safety in Scotland,
but wishes their heroic undertaking from his heart the
best success. Upon this they surrender themselves to the
King under an agreement which is not kept and they perish.

So far, then, from the character being the work of rational
choice and reflection, the intellect has nothing more to do
with its conduct than to hold up motives before the will.
But then it must, as mere onlooker and witness, observe
how from its effect on the given character the course of
life shapes itself, all the processes of which when correctly
considered occur with the same necessity as the movements
of a clock-work, on which point I refer my readers to my
prize essay on “ Freedom of the Will.” The illusion of a
complete freedom of the Will, which nevertheless obtains
here, with every single action, I have there reduced to its
true significance and its origin, and thereby indicated the
active cause of it, to which I will only here add the final
cause in the following teleological explanation of the above
natural illusion. The freedom and originality which in
truth alone accrue to the intelligible character of a man,
the mere apprehension of which by the intellect is his
234 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

course of life, appear to attach to every particular action, |
and so the original work is for the empirical consciousness
apparently repeated anew in every particular action. Our
course of life receives thereby the greatest possible moral
vouréSnotc, since all the bad sides of our character become
in this way first really perceptible to us. Conscience,
namely, accompanies every action with the commentary,
“thou mightest act differently,” although its real meaning
is, “thou mightest be another man.” Now since, on the
one hand, by the unchangeability of character, on the other
by the strict necessity whereby all the circumstances in
which he is successively placed occur, the course of life of
each is precisely defined from A to Z; but notwithstand-
ing one life will in all its conditions, subjective as well
as objective, turn out incomparably happier, nobler, and
worthier than the other. This leads, if one does not wish
to eliminate all justice, to the assumption axiomatic in
Brahminism and Buddhism, that no less the subjective
conditions with which, as the objective conditions under
which each one is born, are the moral consequences of a
previous existence.

Macchiavelli, who does not seem by any means to have
concerned himself with philosophical speculations, is by
virtue of a penetrating acuteness of his so unique intellect
led to the following truly deep-thinking utterance which
presupposes an intuitive knowledge of the entire necessity
by which with given characters and motives all actions
take place. He begins the prologue “Clitia” with it: “Se nel
mondo tornassino i medesimi uomint, come tornano i medesimit
casi, non passarebbono mai cento anni, che noi non ci trovas-
simo un altra volta insieme, a fare le medesime cose, che hora.
(“If the same men re-appeared in the world as the same
events re-appear, a hundred years would never pass with-
out our finding ourselves again together, doing the same
things as we are doing now.”) A reminiscence, however, of
ON ETHICS. 235

what Augustine says (“De Civitate Dei,” libr. xii. c. 18)
seems to have led him on to this.

The Fate (the civaouévn) of the ancients is nothing else
than the assurance brought to consciousness, that all that
happens is firmly bound by a causal chain, and therefore
happens with strict necessity, and that accordingly the
future is already perfectly fixed, is determined certainly
and exactly, and that as little can be changed in it as in the
past. It is only the foreknowledge of it that can be looked
upon as fabulous in the fatalistic myths of the ancients, if
we eliminate the possibility of clairvoyance and second
sight. Instead of trying to set aside the fundamental
verity of fatalism by stupid talk and empty evasions, one
should rather try to recognize and to understand it clearly,
for it is a demonstrable truth which furnishes us with an
important datum for the understanding of our so enigma-
tical existence.

Predestination and fatalism are not in the main distinct,
but only in that the given character and the determination
of human action which comes from without, proceed, the
former from a knowing, the latter from a knowingless
being. In the result they are the same: that happens
which must happen. The conception of a moral freedom is,
on the contrary, inseparable from that of origination. For
that a being is the work of another, but in its willing
and acting is free notwithstanding, may be said with words,
but not comprebended in thought. He, namely, who called
it into being from nothing has thereby also created and
determined its nature, that is, all its qualities. For one can
never create without creating something—that is, a being
precisely determined throughout, and in all its qualities.
But from these qualities which are thereby determined flow
afterwards with necessity its entire manifestations and de-
fects, inasmuch as these are simply the same qualities
brought into play, which only required a stimulation from
236 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

without in order to manifest themselves. As man is so
must he act, and thus fault and merit cleave not to his
individual acts, but to his essence and being. Hence Theism
and the moral responsibility of man are incompatible, be-
cause responsibility always falls back upon the author of
the being as the place where it has its centre of gravity.
It has been in vain attempted to throw a bridge between
these two incompatibilities by means of the conception of
the moral freedom of man, for it always breaks down
again. The free being must also be the original being. If
our will is free our primary nature is so also, and con-
versely. Even the pre-Kantian dogmatism which would
have kept these two predicaments asunder was compelled
to assume two freedoms that, namely, of a first world-cause
for Cosmology, and that of the human will for morals and
theology. In accordance with this Kant also treats the
third no less than the fourth aptinomy of freedom.

In my philosophy, on the other hand, the straight-
forward recognition of the strict necessitation of actions
involves the doctrine that, even in consciousless beings,
that which manifests itself is Will, otherwise the action of
this obvious necessitation would be placed in opposition to
willing, if, namely, there were really such a freedom of
individual action, and this were not rather as strictly
necessitated as any other effect. On the other hand, the
same doctrine of the necessitation of the act of Will renders
it necessary that the existence and nature of man be itself
the work of his freedom—that is, of his Will—and that the
latter, therefore, has aseity. On the opposite assumption,
all responsibility would, as already shown, be done away
with ; and the moral, like the physical, world would be a
mere machine, which its outside artificer made to work for
his amusement. Truths thus all hang together, require
each other, complete each other, while error strikes itself
against every corner.
ON ETHICS. 237

Of what kind the influence is which moral teaching can
have on conduct, and what are its limits, I have sufficiently
investigated in my treatise on the foundation of Morality.
Essentially analogous to this is the influence of example,
which is nevertheless more powerful than that of teaching,
and therefore deserves a short analysis.

Example acts directly, either hindering or promoting.
The first when it determines the man to leave undone what
he would willingly do. He sees, namely, that others do
not do it, from which he infers in general that it is not
advisable, in other words, that it must bring danger to his
person, or his property, or his honour; to this he holds
and gladly sees himself relieved from independent investi-
gation. Or he sees that another who has done it has
suffered evil consequences from it. This is the terrifying
example. Example acts advantageously in two ways:
either in moving men to do what they would gladly leave
undone by showing them that its omission would bring
them into some danger or injure them in the opinion of
others ; or it acts so as to encourage them to do what they
would willingly do, but hitherto from fear of danger or
disgrace have left undone; this is the seductive example.
Lastly, example may bring to a man’s notice something
which would otherwise not have occurred to him. In this
case it obviously acts directly only on the intellect; the
effect on the Will is secondary and is, when it occurs,
brought about by an original act of judgment or by con-
fidence in him who sets the example. The entire very
powerful effect of example rests on the fact that the man
as a rule has too little faculty of judgment, often also too
little knowledge to explore his way himself, and hence he
is glad to tread in the footsteps of others. Every one
will therefore be the more open to the influence of ex-
ample the more he lacks the above two qualifications. The
guiding star of most men is, however, the example of others,
238 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

and their whole conduct in great things as in small, is re-
ducible to mere imitation; they don’t do the least thing
on their own judgment.! The cause of this is their horror
of every kind of reflection, and their well-grounded mis-
trust of their own judgment. At the same time this
bears witness to the surprisingly strong imitative tendency
of man, as also to his relationship to the ape. But the
mode in which the example acts is determined by the
character of each; hence the same example can act upon
one seductively and on the other repellently. Certain
social mispractices which, not previously existent, gradually
force their way, readily give us the opportunity of observing
this. On first noticing something of the kind, one thinks,
« Ah, how can he do it! How egoistic, how inconsiderate !
I will certainly take care that I will never do any such
thing.” Buttwenty others will think, “ Aha! he does that,
I may do it also.”

In a moral respect, example, like teaching, though it in-
deed promotes a civil or legal improvement, does not
nevertheless further the inner, which is properly the moral,
improvement. For it only acts as a personal motive, and
consequently under the presupposition of receptivity for
this class of motive. But it is precisely whether a character
is more receptive for this or that class of motive which is
decisive for its proper and true, but nevertheless always
innate, morality. Example acts in general advantageously
for the bringing into prominence of good and bad characte-
ristics, but it does not create them, and hence Seneca’s
utterance, velle non discitur, holds good here also. That the
innateness of all genuine moral qualities, of the good as of
the bad, suits the doctrine of Metempsychosis, of the Brah-
minists and Buddhists, according to which, “ The good and
the bad actions of a man follow him from one existence

' Imitation and habit are the impelling motives of most of the
actions of men.
ON ETHICS. 239

to another like his shadow,” better than Judaism, which
rather requires that man should come into the world as a
moral zero in order by virtue of an unthinkable liberi
arbitri indifferentie, that is, as a consequence of rational
reflection, to decide whether he wills to be an angel or
a devil, or whatever else may lie between them,—this I
know well enough, but do not trouble myself about it, for
my standard is the truth. Iam no professor of philosophy,
and therefore do not recognize my calling to consist in,
before all other things, making sure the fundamental ideas
of Judaism even if these should block the way for ever to
all and every philosophical cognition. Liberwm arbitrium in-
differenti, under the name of “ Moral Freedom,” is a very
favourite toy for the professors of philosophy which we
must leave to them—the deep-thinking, the honest and the
upright !
ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE INDESTRUC-
TIBILITY OF OUR TRUE NATURE
BY DEATH.

LTHOUGH I have treated this subject thoroughly
and in its connection in my chief work, I nevertheless
believe that a small selection of separate reflections upon
it, which always throw back some light on an exposition,
will not be without value for many.

One must read Jean Paul’s “Selina”’ in order to see how
an eminently great mind becomes the victim of the absur-
dities of a false conception, which he will not give up be-
cause he has set his heart upon it, but is all the same
perpetually disturbed by absurdities which he cannot digest.
It is the conception of the individual continuance of our
entire personal consciousness after death. Precisely the
fighting and struggling of Jean Paul proves that such con-
cepts compounded of the false and true are not, as is alleged,
wholesome errors, but are rather decidedly noxious. For
not only is the true knowledge—resting on the distinction
between appearance and the thing-in-itself—of the inde-
structibility of our proper nature as untouched by time,
causality, and‘change, made impossible by the false opposi-
tion of soul and body, as also by the raising of the whole
personality to a thing-in-itself which must eternally exist;
but this false conception cannot even be firmly held as the
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 241

representative of the truth, since the reason ever anew
rises indignant against the absurdity lying in it, and then
has to give up therewith the truth which is amalgamated
with it. For in the long run truth can only subsist in its
purity ; mixed up with errors it participates in their falli-
bility as the granite crumbles when its felspar is decayed,
although quartz and mica are not subject to such decay.
It goes badly therefore with surrogates of the truth.

When in daily intercourse it is asked by one of those
many people who wish to know everything, but do not
want to learn anything, as to continued existence after
death, the most suitable and indeed, in the first instance,
the most correct answer is: “ After your death you will be
what you were before your birth.” For it implies the
wrong-headedness of the demand that a species of exis-
tence which has a beginning shall be without end, besides
containing the implication that there may be two kinds
of being and two kinds of nothing according with it.
Similarly one might answer, ‘“‘ Whatever you will be after
your death, even if it be nothing, will be just as natural
and suitable to you’ as your individual organic existence is
now, thus you will have at most to fear the moment of
transition. Yes, since a mature consideration of the matter
affords the result, that complete non-existence would be pre-
ferable to an existence such as ours. Thus the thought of the
cessation of our existence, or of a time when we shall no
longer be, ought, as far as reason goes, to trouble us as little
as the thought of the time when we were not. But since
the existence is essentially a personal one the end of the
personality is not to be regarded as a loss.”

To him, on the contrary, who on the objective and em-
pirical path had pursued the plausible clue of materialism,
and now full of alarm at complete destruction by death
which confronts him therein, turns to us, we should perhaps

R
242 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

procure for him satisfaction in the shortest way and one
most suited to his empirical mode of thought, if we de-
monstrated to him the distinction between matter and the
metaphysical force which is always temporarily taking
possession of it; as, for example, in birds, where the homo-
geneous formless fluidity as soon as it attains the requisite
temperature, assumes the complicated and exactly deter-
mined shape of the genus and species of its bird. This is
indeed, to a certain extent, a kind of generatio equivoca,
and it is exceedingly probable that the hierarchical series
of animal forms arose from the fact that once in primitive
times and in a happy hour it overleapt the type of animal
to which the egg belonged, toa higher one. At all events
something distinct from matter appears here most promi-
nently, especially in that by the least unfavourable circum-
stance itcomes tonothing. In this way it becomes explicable
that after an operation that has been completed or sub-
sequently prevented it can deviate from it without injury,
a fact which points to a totally different permanence than
that of the persistence of matter in time.

If we conceive of a being which knew, understood, and
saw everything, the question whether we endure after
death would probably have no meaning for such a one,
since beyond our present temporal individual existence
enduring and ceasing would have no significance, and
would be indistinguishable conceptions. And accordingly
neither the concept of destruction nor that of continuance,
would have any application, since these are borrowed from
time, which is merely the form of the phenomenon. In
the meantime we can only think of the indestructibility of
this core of our phenomenon as a continuance of it, and
indeed, properly speaking, only according to the schema of
matter which under all changes of its form maintains it-
self in time. If we deny it this continuance we regard our
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 243

temporal end as an annihilation according to the schema of
form which vanishes when the matter in which it inheres
is taken away from it. Both are nevertheless peraBacce cic
&\Xo yévoc, that is, a transference of the forms of the pheno-
menon to the thing-in-itself. But of an indestructibility
which would be no continuance we can hardly form even
an abstract idea, since all perception by which we might
confirm it fails us.

In truth however the constant arising of new beings and
the perishing of those already existent is to be regarded as
an illusion produced by the apparatus of two polished lenses
(brain-functions), by which alone we can see anything.
They are called space and time, and in their reciprocal
interpenetration—causality. For all that we perceive under
these conditions is mere phenomenon ; but we do not know
the things as they may be in themselves, that is indepen-
dently of our perception. This is properly the kernel of
the Kantian philosophy which, together with its content,
one cannot too often call to mind in a period when venal
charlatanry has by its stupefying process driven philosophy
from Germany with the willing assistance of people for
whom truth and intelligence are the most indifferent things
in the world, and wage and salary the most important.

How can we suppose on beholding the death of a human
being that a thing-in-itself here comes to nothing? That
a phenomenon in time, that form of all phenomena, finds
its end without the thing-in-itself being thereby affected is
an immediate intuitive cognition of every man ; hence men
have endeavoured to give utterance to it at all times, in
the most diverse forms and expressions, but these are
all derived from the phenomenon in its special sense and
only have reference thereto. Everyone feels that he is
something different from a being who has once been created
from nothing by another being. In this way the assurance
244 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

arises within him that although death can make an end of
his life it cannot make an end of his existence. Man is
something else than an animated nothing ; and the animal
also. He who thinks his existence is limited to his present
life regards himself as an animated nothing. For thirty
years ago he was nothing and thirty years hence he will be
again nothing.

The more clearly one is conscious of the transience,
nothingness and dream-like nature of all things, by so
much the more clearly is one conscious also of the eternity
of one’s own inner nature. For only in opposition to this
is the foregoing structure of things known, as the rapid
motion of the ship one is on, is only perceived when one
looks towards the fixed shore and not when one looks at
the ship itself.

The present has two halves, an objective and a subjective.
The objective alone has the perception of time for its form,
and hence rolls ceaselessly forward. From this arises our
vivid recollection of what is very long past, and the con-
sciousness of our imperishability, in spite of our knowledge
of the transience of our existence.

Everyone thinks that his innermost core is something
that the present contains and carries about with it. When-
ever we may happen to live we always stand with our con-
sciousness in the centre of time, never at its terminations;
and we might assume from this that everyone bore within
himself the immovable centre of infinite time. This is,
moreover, at bottom what gives him the confidence with
which he lives on without continual fear of death. But
whoever by virtue of the strength of his memory and
imagination can recall the most vividly the long past of his.
own life, will become more clearly conscious than others
of the identity of the now in all time. Perhaps, indeed,
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 245

this proposition is more correct taken conversely. But at
all events such a clearer consciousness of the identity of all
now is an essential requirement of the philosophic mind.
By means of it we apprehend that which is most fleeting—
the now—as the only persistent. He who is in this in-
tuitive way aware that the present moment, which is the
only form of all reality in the narrowest sense, has its
source in ws, and springs, that is, from within and not from
without, cannot doubt of the indestructibility of his own
nature. He will rather understand that by his death the
objective world, indeed, with the medium of its present-
ment, the intellect, perishes for him, but that this does not
touch his existence, for there was as much reality within as
without. He will say with complete understanding: eyo
giue TaY TO yeyovec, Kai dy, Kai eodperoy (* Stob. Floril. Tit.”
44, 42; vol. ii. p. 201).

He who does not admit this to be true must maintain
the opposite, and say: “Time is something purely objec-
tive and real, which exists quite independently of me. I
am only accidentally thrown into it, have only become
participant in a small portion of it, whereby I have attained
to a transient reality like thousands of others before me
who are now no more, and I shall also very soon be
nothing. Time, on the contrary, is the Real. It goes
further without me.”

In accordance with all this, life may certainly be regarded
as a dream and death as an awakening. But then the
personality, the individual, belongs to the dreaming and
not to the waking consciousness, for which reason death
presents itself to the former as annihilation. It is still, at
all events from this standpoint, not to be regarded as the
transition to a state entirely new and strange to us, but
rather only as the return to our original one, of which life
was only a short episode.

If in the meantime a philosopher should, perhaps, think
246 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

that he would find in dying a consolation peculiar to him
alone, or at least a diversion, and that then a problem
would be resolved for him which had so frequently occupied
him, we can only say that it will probably fare with him as
with one, who as he is about to find what he is seeking, has
his lantern blown out.

For in death the consciousness assuredly perishes, but
not by any means that which till then had produced it.
The consciousness namely rests immediately on the intel-
lect, but the latter on the physiological process. For it is
obviously the function of the brain, and hence conditioned
by the co-operation of the nerve and cellular system,
though more directly by the brain, which is nourished,
animated, and continuously agitated by the heart. It is
by the artistic and mysterious construction of the brain as
described by anatomy, but which physiology does not
understand, that the phenomenon of the objective world
and the trend of our thoughts is brought about. An
individual consciousness, that is, a consciousness as such,
cannot be conceived in an incorporeal being, since know-
ledge, the condition of every consciousness, is necessarily
brain-function—for the simple reason that the intellect
objectively manifests itself as brain. Now as intellect
appears physiologically—that is, in empirical reality or in
the phenomenon—as a secondary, as a result of the process
of life, so it is also psychologically secondary in opposition
to the Will which is alone the primary and ever the original.
The organism itself is really only the Will displaying itself
perceptually and objectively in the brain, and therefore in
its forms of space and time, as I have often explained,
especially in “ Will in Nature,” and in my chief work
(vol. ii. chap. xx.). Since, then, the consciousness is not
immediately dependent upon the Will, but this is con-
ditioned by the intellect, and this again by the organism,
there remains no doubt that consciousness is extinguished
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 247

by death, as also by sleep and swoons.’ But let us be con-
soled! For what kind of a consciousness is this? A
cerebral, an animal consciousness—one a little more highly
developed than that of the beasts, in so far as we have it
as regards all essentials in common with the whole series
of animals although it attains its summit in us. It is the
same, as I have sufficiently demonstrated, with respect to its
purpose and origin—a mere wnxary of nature, a means of
knowing how to help the animal nature to its requirements.
The state, on the contrary, into which death throws us
back is our original state—that is, it is the state peculiar
to our nature, whose original force displays itself in the
production and maintenance of the life that is now ceasing.
It is, in short, the state of the thing-in-itself in opposition
to the phenomenon. Now in this primal state such an
assistance as the cerebral, a cognition so extremely mediate,
and for this reason merely supplying phenomena, is with-
out doubt entirely superfluous; hence we lose it. Its dis-
appearance is the same as the cessation of the phenomenal
world for us, of which it was the mere medium, and can
serve for nothing else. If in this our original state the re-
tention of the animal consciousness were even offered us,
we should reject it as the lame man who is cured does the
crutch. He therefore who bemoans the loss in question of
this cerebral consciousness, which is merely phenomenal
and adapted to the phenomenal, is to be compared to the
converted Greenlanders who did not wish for heaven when
they heard that there were no seals there.

Moreover, all that is here said rests on the assumption
that we cannot even conceive of a now-conscious state ex-
cept as a knowing one, which therefore bears the root-form
of all knowledge—the separation of subject and object,

1 It would certainly be very pleasant if the intellect did not
perish with death: one would then bring the Greek which one
had learnt in this world all ready with one into the other.
248 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS. .

of a knowing and a known. But we have to consider that
this entire form of knowing and being known is conditioned
merely by our animal, and hence very secondary and
derived, nature, and is thus in no way the original state of
all being and all existence, which may therefore be quite
different, and yet not without consciousness. If then our
own present nature, so far as we are able totraceit toitscore,
is mere Will; and this in itself is a knowingless thing;
when through death we sacrifice the intellect, we are only
thereby transplanted into our original consciousless state,
which is therefore not simply consciousless, but rather above
and beyond this form—a state in which theantithesis of sub-
ject and object disappears, because here that which is to be
known would be really and immediately one with the
knowing, and thus the fundamental condition of all knowing
(which is precisely this opposition) would be wanting. Here-
with may be compared by way of elucidation “The World
as Will and Presentment,” vol. ii. p. 278 (8rd ed. 310). The
utterance of Giordano Bruno (ed. Wagner, vol. i. p. 287):
“La divina mente, e la wnita assoluta, senza specie alcuna é
ella medesimo lo che intende, e lo ch’ é inteso.”

Perhaps every one is now and then aware in his inner-
most heart of a consciousness that would be suited to an
entirely different kind of existence than this so unspeak-
ably beggarly, timely, individual one, occupied as it is al-
together with misery ; on which occasions he thinks that
death might lead him to such a one.

If we now in opposition to this mode of contemplation
which is directed inwards, again turn our attention out-
wards and apprehend the world displaying itself objectively,
death will then certainly appear to us a passage into no-
thing: But birth also none the less as a proceeding out of
nothing. The one like the other, however, cannot be un-
conditionally true since it only has the reality of the phe-
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 249

nomenon. That in some sense we should survive death is
really no greater miracle than that of generation which we
daily see before our eyes. What dies goes hence, where all
life comes from, its own included. In this sense the
Egyptians called Orchus Amanthus, which, according to
Plutarch (‘de Is. et Osir,” c. 29), signifies 6 AapBdvar cat
otc, “the taker and giver,” in order to express that
it is the same source into which everything returns and
from which everything proceeds. From this point of view
our life might be regarded as a loan received from death ;
sleep would then be the daily interest on this loan. Death
announces itself without any concealment as the end
of the individual, but in this individual lies the germ
of a new being. Hence nothing of all that dies, dies
for ever. But neither does anything that is born re-
ceive a fundamentally new existence. The dying perishes
but a germ remains over from which proceeds a new being
which now enters into existence without knowing whence it
comes and why it is exactly such as it is. This is the mys-
tery of the Palingenesis for the explanation of which the
42nd chapter of the 2nd volume of my chief work may
be consulted. It appears from this that all beings at this
moment living contain the true germ of all that will live in
the future, which are thus to a certain extent already there.
Similarly every animal existing in its full perfection seems
to cry out to us: ‘“ Why dost thou complain of the
perishability of the living ? How could I exist if all those
of my species which were before me had not died?”
However much, therefore, the pieces and the masks on the
stage of the world change, the Actors remain the same in
all. We sit together and talk and excite each other and
eyes gleam and voices become louder ; exactly so others have
sat thousands of years ago; it was the same, and they were
the same. Just so will it be thousands of years hence. The
arrangement owing to which we are not aware of this, is time.
250 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

One might very well distinguish Metempsychosis as the
passage of the entire so-called soul into another body—and
Palingenesis as the decomposition and reformation of this
individual, inasmuch as his Will persists and assuming the
shape of a new being receives a new intellect. Thus the
individual decomposes like a neutral salt, the basis of which
combines itself with another acid into a new salt. The
difference between Metempsychosis and Palingenesis which
Servius the commentator of Virgil assumes, and which is
shortly indicated in ‘“ Wernsdorffii dissertat de Metempsy-
chosi,” p. 48, is obviously fallacious and nugatory.

From Spencer Hardy’s ‘“‘Manual of Buddhism” (pp.
394-96 with which may be compared pp. 429, 440, 445, in
the same book), also from Sangermano’s “‘ Burmese Em-
pire” as well as from the “ Asiatic Researches,” vol. vi.,
p. 179, and vol. ix., p. 256, it appears that in Buddhism
an exoteric and esoteric doctrine obtains regarding con-
tinuance after death. The former is Metempsychosis as in
Brahminism but the latter is a Palingenesis much more
difficult of comprehension, which is very much in agreement
with my doctrine of the Metaphysical existence of the
Will, of the merely physical structure of the intellect, and
the perishability which accords with it. NHandtyyeveoia
occurs in the Old Testament.

But if, in order to penetrate deeper into the mystery of
Palingenesis we seek aid from the 48rd chapter of the
2nd vol. of my chief work, the matter, more closely con-
sidered, will appear to be that throughout all time the
male sex has been the bearer of the Will, the female of
the Intellect of the human race, whereby it receives per-
petual subsistence. Every one, therefore, has a paternal
and a maternal element, and as these are united in genera-
tion they are also separated in death, which is thus the end
of the individual. This individual it is whose death we so
much deplore with the feeling that it is really lost, since
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 251

it was a mere combination which irrevocably ceases.
But we must not forget in all this, that the trans-
missability of the Intellect of the mother is not so de-
cided and unconditioned as that of the Will of the father,
on account of the secondary and merely physical nature
of the intellect and its complete dependence on the organism,
not only in respect of the brain but also otherwise, as has
been shown by me in the chapter in question. I may
mention here by the way that I so far agree with Plato in
that he also distinguishes in his so-called soul, a mortal
and an immortal part. But he comes into diametrical
opposition with me and with the truth, in that he, after the
manner of all philosophers who have preceded me, regards
the intellect as the immortal, and the Will, that is, the seat
of the appetites and passions, as the mortal part; as may
be seen from the “ Timzus”’ (pp. 386, 387, 395, ed. Bip.).
Aristotle has the same idea.*

But though the physical may strangely and wonderfully
rule things by procreation and death, together with the
visible combination of individuals out of Will and Intellect
and their subsequent dissolution, yet the metaphysical prin-
ciplelying at its basis is of so entirely heterogeneous a nature
thatitisnotaffected by it, so on this point we may be consoled.

One can accordingly conceive every man from two oppo-
site points of view: from the one, he is an individual be-
ginning and ending in time, fleeting and transitory, cxds
dvap, besides being heavily burdened with failings and pains.
From the other, he is the indestructible original being
which objectivises itself in everything existent, and may,
as such, say, like the statue of Isis at Sais: éyw eluc wav

1 In the “De Anima” (I. 4, p. 408), his real opinion escapes
accidentally at the beginning that the vovc is the true and im-
mortal soul—which he confirms with fallacious assertions. Hatred
and love belong not to the soul, but to their organ the perishable

part,
252 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

ro yeyovec, kai dv, ai éoduevov. Such a being might indeed
do something better than manifest itself in a world like
this. For this is the finite world of sorrow and of death.
What is in it, and what comes out of it must end and die.
But what is not of it, and what never will be of it, pierces
through it, all-powerful like a flash of lightning, which
strikes upward, and knows neither time nor death. To unite
all these antitheses is properly the theme of my philosophy.

Short Concluding Dialogue.

Thrasymachos. To be brief, what am I after my death ?
be clear and precise.

Philalethes. Everything and nothing.

Thrasymachos. There we have it! as the solution of a
problem, a contradiction. The trick is played out.

Philalethes. To answer transcendent questions in the
language created for immanent knowledge may certainly
lead to contradictions.

Thrasymachos. What do you call transcendent and what
immanent knowledge? These expressions are indeed
known to me from my professor but only as predicates of
Almighty God, with which his philosophy, as was only
suitable, was exclusively concerned. If, namely, he remains
in the world he is immanent, but if he sits anywhere out-
side it he is transcendent. Only look, that is clear, that
is comprehensible! One knows what one has to hold by.
But your old-fashioned Kantian artificial language no
human being any longer understands. The time-conscious-
ness of the modern world, from the metropolis of German
sclence—

Philalethes (aside). German philosophical windbaggery.

Thrasymachos. —through a whole sucession of great men,
especially through the great Schleiermacher and the giant
intellect Hegel has been brought back from all that, or
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 253

rather, bas been brought so far forwards that it has left it
all behind and knows no more of it. So what do you mean
by it P

Phalalethes. Transcendent knowledge is that which pro-
ceeding beyond all possibility of experience seeks to deter-
mine the nature of things as they are in themselves. Im-
manent knowledge, on the other hand, is that which keeps
itself within the bounds of the possibility of experience,
and therefore can speak of phenomena. You as individual
end at your death, yet the individual is not your true and
ultimate nature, but rather merely a manifestation of it.
It is not the Thing-in-itself, but only its phenomenon which
displays itself in the form of time, and accordingly has a
beginning and end. Your true nature in itself knows
neither time, nor beginning, nor end, nor the limits of a
given individuality, and hence it can be excluded from no
individuality, but is there in each and all. In the first
sense you become by your death nothing; in the second
you are and remain all things. Hence I said that you,
after your death, would be everything and nothing. Your
question scarcely admits of a more correct answer in so
short a compass than this one, which, however, certainly
contains a contradiction ; because while your life is in time,
your immortality is in eternity. This may be termed
therefore an indestructibility without continuance, which
again results in a contradiction. But so it is when the
transcendent has to be brought into immanent knowledge,
for it sustains thereby a kind of violence, since it is misused
for that to which it was not born.

Thrasymachos. Do you hear, without the continuance of
my individuality, I would not give a single heller for all your
immortality.

Philalethes. But perhaps we may still do business to-
gether. Granted I guaranteed you the continuance of your
individuality but made it a condition that before its re-
254 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

awakening there was to be a perfectly consciousless death-
sleep of three months ?

Thrasymachos. That would do.

Philalethes. But since in a perfectly consciousless state
we have no measurement of time it is quite the same to us
whether while we lay in that death-sleep three months or
ten thousand years had passed. For we must accept the
one thing like the other on trust and faith, on awakening.
It must therefore be indifferent to you whether your indi-
viduality is given back to you after three months or after
ten thousand years.

Thrasymachos. In the last resort that cannot be denied.

Philalethes. But now if after the lapse of the ten thousand
years you were forgotten to be awakened, I believe that when
after so short an existence you had become accustomed to
so long a non-existence the misfortune would not be great.
But certain it is, that you could know nothing of it. And
you would be quite consoled as regards the question if you
knew that the secret machinery which maintains your
present phenomenon in motion had not ceased one moment
during those ten thousand years to produce and set in
motion other phenomena of the same kind.

Thrasymachos. So? And in this way you think to
swindle me out of my individuality by smooth talk, without
my noticing it? Iam not to be taken in in that way. I
have stipulated for the continuance of my individuality,
and no machinery and phenomena can console me for the
loss of it. It lies closest to my heart, and I will not part
from it.

Philalethes. You regard your individuality then as so
pleasant, excellent, perfect and incomparable that there
could be nothing preferable to it, and hence you would not
like to exchange it for any other, with which it might
be asserted that it was possible to live better and more
comfortably.
INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF OUR NATURE BY DEATH. 255

Thrasymachos. But surely my individuality, whatever it
is, is myself,

‘‘ Nothing in the world is above me,
For God is God and I am I.”

I, I, I desire existence! This it is which concerns me
and not an existence which has first of all to be proved to
me that it is mine.

Philalethes.—But consider the matter! What is it that
cries, “I, I, I desire existence,” that is, not you alone, but
everything, simply everything, that has a trace of conscious-
ness. Consequently this wish in you is precisely that which
is not individual, but common to all without distinction.
It does not spring from the individuality but from existence
generally, is essential to everything that exists, is indeed
that whereby it exists, and will accordingly be satisfied by
existence in general to which alone it refers, and not ex-
clusively by any determinate individual existence. For it is
not at all directed to the latter, although it always has the
appearance of being so because it cannot attain to conscious-
ness otherwise than in an individual being, and therefore
always seems to have reference to such. But this is a
mere illusion, to which indeed the crudity of the individual
cleaves, but which reflection can destroy and free us from.
That, namely, which so madly desires existence is merely
mediately the individual! Immediately, and properly
speaking, it is the Will to live in general, which is one and
the same in all. Now since existence itself is its free
work, is indeed its mere reflection—it follows that existence
cannot escape it, but it is provisionally satisfied by exis-
tence in general, so far that is to say, as it, the eternally
unsatisfied, can be satisfied. Individualities are the same
to it, it does not really concern itself with them, although
+o the individual who immediately only perceives it in him-
self, it seems to do so. In this way it is brought about
256 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

that the individual watches over his own existence with a
care which would not otherwise be, and thereby secures the
maintenance of the species. Hence it follows that the
individuality is no perfection but a limitation, and that
to be quit of it is no loss but rather a gain. Do not
cherish therefore an anxiety which would truly appear
childish and altogether ridiculous if you knew your own
nature thoroughly and to its foundation, to wit, as the
universal Will to live, which you are !

Thrasymachos. You yourself and all philosophers are
childish and quite ridiculous, and it is only for fun and
pastime that a staid man like myself occupies himself for
a quarter of an hour with this sort of fools. I have now
more important things to do, so good-bye!
ON SUICIDE.

8 far as I see it is only the monotheistic, that is, the
Jewish religions, whose votaries regard suicide as a
crime. This is the more surprising as neither in the Old,
nor in the New Testament is there to be found any prohi-
bition, or even any decided disapproval of it. Teachers of
religion, therefore, have to base their condemnation of
suicide on philosophical grounds of their own, with which,
however, it goes so badly, that they seek to supply what in
their arguments lacks strength, by the vigour of their
expressions of disgust, that is, by abuse. We have to hear,
accordingly, that suicide is the greatest cowardice, that it is
only possible in madness, and similar twaddle, or even the
entirely senseless phrase that suicide is “ wrong,” whereas
obviously no one has a greater right over anything in the
world than over his own person and life. Suicide, as already
remarked, is even accounted a crime, and with it is allied,
especially in brutal, bigoted England, a shameful burial,
and the invalidation of the testament, for which reason the
jury almost always bring in a verdict of insanity. Let us
before anything else allow moral feeling to decide in the
matter and compare the impression which the report that
an acquaintance had committed a crime, such asa murder,
a cruelty, a fraud, a theft, makes upon us, with that of
the report of his voluntary death. While the first calls
forth energetic indignation, the greatest disgust, a demand
8
258 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

for punishment or for vengeance, the latter will excite only
sorrow and sympathy, mingled more often with an admi-
ration of his courage than with the moral disapproval
which accompanies a bad action. Who has not had
acquaintances, friends, or relations, who have willingly
departed from the world? And are we to think with
horror of each of these as of a criminal? Nego ac pernego.
I am rather of the opinion that the clergy should, once for
all, be challenged to give an account, with what right they,
without being able to show any biblical authority, or
any valid philosophical arguments, stigmatize in the
pulpit and in their writings an action committed by many
men honoured and beloved by us, as a crime, and refuse
those who voluntarily leave the world an honourable
burial—it should, however, be clearly understood that
reasons are required, and that no mere empty phrases or
abusive epithets will be accepted in place of them. The
fact that criminal jurisprudence condemnssuicideis no eccle-
siastically valid reason, besides being extremely ridiculous.
For what punishment can frighten him who seeks death?
If we punish the attempt at suicide, it is the clumsiness
whereby it failed that we punish.

The ancients, moreover, were a long way from regarding
the matter in this light. Pliny (‘‘ Histor. Nat.,” lib. 28,
c.1; vol. iv., p. 351 Ed. Bip.), says: Vitam quidem non
adeo eapetendam censemus, ut quoque modo trahenda sit.
Quisquis es talis, aeque norier, etiam cum obscoenus vixeris,
aut nefandus. Quapropter hoe primum quisque in remediis
anumi sui habeat: ex omnibus bonis, quae homini tribuit
natura, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte: idque in ea
optimum, quod illam sibi quisque praestare poterit.” He also
says (lib. 2, ¢. 7; vol. i, p. 125): “Ne Deum quidem posse
omnia. Nangque nec sibi potest mortem consciscere; si velit,
quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vitae poenis, etc. In
ON SUICIDE. 259

Massillia, and in the island of Chios, indeed, the hemlock
was publicly handed to him who could give sufficient
reasons for leaving life (“‘ Val. Max.,” 1. ii. ¢. 6, § 7 et 8).
And how many heroes and wise men of antiquity have not
ended their lives by a voluntary death! Aristotle indeed
says (Eth. Nicom.,” v.15) that suicide is a wrong against
the state, although not against one’s own person. Stobzeus,
however, in his exposition of the Ethics of the Peripatetics,
quotes the proposition (Ecl. eth. IT., ¢. 7, p. 286): Deverdy
32 rov Blo yiyveoSac roic pév ayaSoic ev rate yay arvylacc'
Tots d€ KaKots Kal év rate ayar evrvyiac. (Vitam autem re-
linguendem esse bonis in nimiis quidem miseriis, pravis vero
in nimium quoque secundis.) And in a similar way, p.
312: Ad cai yaphaev, Kai madoromjoerSa, kal rohirevoeaSac
etc., cat caSddov THY aperiy doxovvTa Kal pévery ev TO Biv,
kal méduv, ef déo1, more Oe avayKacs araddtayhoecSal, Tapie
mpovoycavra, etc. (Ideoque et uxorem ducturum, et liberos
procreaturum, et ad civitatem accessurum, etc. Atque omnino
virtutem colendo tum vitam servaturum, tum iterum, cogente
necessitate, relictarum, etc.).

We find suicide celebrated by the Stoics as a noble
and heroic deed, as might be confirmed by hundreds of
extracts, the strongest being from Seneca. Again, with
the Hindoo, as is well known, suicide often occurs as a
religious action, especially as widow burning, also as im-
molation beneath the wheels of the Car of Juggernaut, as
self-sacrifice to the crocodiles of the Ganges, or of the
holy pond of the temple, and otherwise. In the same way,
at the theatre, that mirror of life, where we see for example
in the celebrated Chinese piece “ L’Orphelin de la Chine”

1 On the Island of Chios it was also the custom that the aged
should voluntarily put themselves to death. See ‘ Valerius
Maximus,” lib. ii. c. 6; Heraclides Ponticus, ‘“‘Fragmenta de
Rebus Publicis,” ix. ; lian, ‘‘ Var. Hist.,” iii. 37 ; Strabo, lib.
x. cap. 5, § 6, ed. Kramer.
260 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

(trad. p. St. Julien, 1834,) almost all the noble characters
end by suicide without its beg anywhere indicated, or its
occurring to the onlooker, that they have committed a
crime. On our own stage, indeed, itis not otherwise, e.g.,
Palmira in Mahomet, Mortimer in Maria Stuart, Othello,
the Countess Terzky. Is Hamlet’s monologue the medita-
tion of a crime? It says certainly that if we were sure to
be absolutely destroyed by death it would, considering the
structure of the world, be unconditionally to choose. “But
there lies [sic tr.] the rub.” The reasons, however, against
suicide which have been put forward by the clergy of the
monotheistic, that is, Jewish religion, and the philosophers
who accommodate themselves to them, are feeble sophisms
easy of refutation. (See my ‘ Treatise on the Foundation
of Morals.” § 5.) Hume has furnished the most thorough-
going refutation of them in his ‘‘ Essay on Suicide,” which
first appeared after his death, and was immediately sup-
pressed by the shameful bigotry and scandalous priestly
tyranuy of England, for which reason only a very few copies
were sold, secretly and at a high price, so that for the pre-
servation of this and of another treatise of the great man,
we have to thank the Basel reprint: “‘ Essays on Suicide
and the Immortality of the Soul, by the late David Hume.
Basel, 1799. Sold by James Decker, pp. 124, 8vo.” But
that a purely philosophical treatise coming from one of the
first thinkers and writers of England, refuting the current
reasons against suicide, had in its native land to be
smuggled through like a forbidden thing, until it found
refuge abroad, redounds to the greatest shame of the
English nation. It shows at the same time the kind of
good conscience the Church has on this question. I have
pointed out the only valid moral reason against suicide in
my chief work, vol.i. § 69. It lies in that suicide is opposed
to the attainment of the highest moral goal, since it sub-
stitutes for the real emancipation from this world of
ON SUICIDE. 261

-gorrow, a merely apparent one. But from this mistake to
a crime, such as the Christian clergy seek to stamp it, is a
very long way.

Christianity bears in its innermost essence the truth
that suffering (the Cross) is the true purpose of life;
‘hence it rejects, as opposed to this, suicide, which antiquity,
from a lower standpoint, approved and even honoured.
The foregoing reason against suicide is, however, an ascetic
one, and as such only applies to a much higher ethical
standpoint than that which European moral philosophers
have ever occupied. But if we descend from this very high
standpoint there is no longer any valid moral reason for
condemning suicide. The extraordinarily energetic zeal of
the clergy of the monotheistic religions against it, which is
supported neither by the Bible nor by valid reasons, must
rest, it would seem, therefore, on a concealed basis. Might
it not be that the voluntary surrender of life is a poor
compliment for him who said ravra cada Nay ? Once more,
then, it would be the obligatory optimism of these reli-
gions which arraigns suicide in ‘order not to be arraigned
by it.

We shall find on the whole that as soon as the terrors
of life counterbalance the terrors of death man makes an
end of his life. The resistance to these terrors is neverthe-
less considerable; they stand as it were as warders before
the gate of exit. There is no one living perhaps who would
not have made an end of his life if this end were some-
thing purely negative, a sudden cessation of existence.
But there is something positive in it—the destruction of
the body. This frightens men back simply because the
body is the phenomenon of the Will-to-Live.

Meanwhile the struggle with these warders is not so
hard as a rule as it may seem to us from afar, and indeed
262 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

in consequence of the antagonism between intellectual and
corporeal sufferings. When, for instance, we suffer cor-
poreal pain severely and continuously, we are indifferent to
all other trouble; our recovery alone seriously concerns us.
Just in the same way severe mental sorrows make us un-
susceptible to corporeal—we despise them. Even if they
acquire the preponderance, this is a welcome diversion to
us, a pause in our mental suffering. It is this which makes
suicide easier, inasmuch as the corporeal pain associated
with it loses all importance in the eyes of one tortured by
excessive mental suffering. The above is especially notice-
able with those who are driven to suicide through a purely
morbid but none the less intense melancholy. It does not
cost such persons any self-conquest, they do not require to
form any resolution, but as soon as the keepers provided
for them leave them for two minutes they quickly make an
end of their life. When in disturbed, horrible dreams,
anxiety has reached its highest pitch, it brings us of itself
to awakening, and therewith all these horrors of a night
vanish. The same thing happens in the dream of life,
where also the highest degree of anxiety compels us to
break it off.

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment, a ques-
tion which we put to nature, and to which we wish to
compel the answer, to wit, what change the existence and
the knowledge of man experiences through death. But it
is a clumsy one, for it abolishes the identity of the con-
sciousness which should receive the answer.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE
AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION OF THE
WILL-TO-LIVE.

T is to a certain extent to be understood a priori, that is
to say, it is obvious of itself, that that which now pro-
duces the phenomenon of the world must also be capable of
not doing so, and therefore of remaining at rest—or, in
other words, that to the present dvagrody there must also be
a ovoro\y. If the first be the phenomenon of the Will-to-
Live the other will be phenomenon of the non- Will-to-Live.
This will be moreover essentially the same with the mag-
num Sakhepat of the Veda doctrine (in the “‘Oupnekhat,”
vol. i., p. 163), with the Nirvana of the Buddhists, also
with the éréyerva of the Neo-Platonists. As against cer-
tain silly objections I may observe that the negation of
the Will-to-Live in no way involves the destruction of a
substance, but the mere act of not-Willing—that which
hitherto has willed wills no more, since we know this Being,
the Will, as thing-in-itself merely in and through the act
of willing, it is impossible for us to say or to comprehend
what it is or does after having given up this act. Hence
the Negation is for us who are the phenomenon of the
Will a passage into nothing.
Between the ethics of the Greeks and the Hindoos there
is a sharp opposition. The former (with the exception of
Plato) has for its object to facilitate the leading of a happy
264 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

life, vitam beatam. The latter, on the contrary, the libera-
tion and emancipation from life altogether—as is directly
enunciated in the very first proposition of the Sankhya
Karika.

A similar, and, owing to its operating by means of the
senses, a stronger contrast will be perceived on contem-
plating the beautiful antique sarcophagus of the gallery of
Florence, whose reliefs represent the whole series of the
ceremonies of a wedding from the first offer until the time
when Hymen’s torch lights the way to the Thorus, if one at
the same time calls to mind the Christian coffin with its
black hangings in token of grief, and with the crucifix on
the top. The opposition is in the highest degree signifi-
cant. Both wish to console in death, each in an opposite
way, and each with justice. The one signifies the affirma-
tion of the Will-to-Live which life throughout all time
undoubtedly remains, however rapidly its forms may
change. The other indicates by the symbols, of sorrow
and death the negation of the Will-to-Live, and the eman-
cipation from the world where sorrow and death reign.
Between the spirit of Greco-Roman heathenism and that
of Christianity is the special opposition between the affirma-
tion and negation of the Will-to-Live—as regards which
Christianity in the last resort is right.

My philosophy stands in the same relation to all the
ethics of European philosophy as that of the New Testa-
ment to the Old, according to the ecclesiastical conception
of this relation. The Old Testament, namely, places man
under the domination of the Law which nevertheless does
not lead to emancipation. The New Testament, on the
other hand, declares the law insufficient, indeed breaks
away from it—Romans vii., Galatians ii. 3. It preaches,
on the contrary, the dominion of Grace which is to be at-
tained through faith, love of one’s neighbour, and complete
denial of oneself. This is the way to emancipation from
THE DOCTRINE OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE. 265

evil and from the world, for assuredly, in spite of all
rationalistic-protestant misrepresentations, asceticism is
peculiarly the soul of the New Testament; but this is pre-
cisely the negation of the Will-to-Live, and the above
transition from the Old Testament to the New, from the
dominion of the law to the dominion of faith, from justifica-
tion through works to salvation through the mediator, from
the dominion of sin and death to eternal life in Christ,
signifies sensu proprio, the transition from the merely
moral virtues to the negation of the Will-to-Live. All
the philosophical Ethics which have preceded me have re-
tained the spirit of the Old Testament with its absolute
(i.e., foundationless and goalless), moral law, and all its
moral commandments and prohibitions to which tacitly
the ruling Jehovah is added in thought, however diverse
may be the forms and statements of the matter. My
ethic, on the other hand, has basis, purpose, and goal. It
first of all demonstrates theoretically the metaphysical
basis of Justice and human love, and then points out the
goal to which these, when fully accomplished, must finally
lead. At the same time it admits straightforwardly the
undesirability of the world, and indicates the negation of
the Will as the way towards emancipation from the
former. It is therefore really conceived in the spirit of the
New Testament, while the rest hold in their entirety by
that of the Old, and accordingly issue theoretically in
mere Judaism—‘“ naked despotic theism.” In this sense
my doctrines might be called the true Christian Philosophy,
however paradoxical this may seem to those who do not
go to the root of the matter, but remain standing on the
surface.

He who is capable of deeper thinking will soon see that
human desires cannot first begin to be sinful at that point
where they, fortuitously crossing one another in their in-
dividual directions, occasion evil from the one and malice
266 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

from the other, side; but that, if this be so, they must be
originally and in their very essence sinful and accursed,
and that consequently the entire Will-to-Live must itself
be accursed. The horrors and misery with which the world
is full are then the necessary result of the sum of the
characters in which the Will-to-Live objectifies itself, to
which the circumstances occurring in the unbroken chain
of necessity supply motives—in other words, are the mere
commentary on the affirmation of the Will-to-Live (com-
pare “ German Theology,” ' p. 93). That our existence itself
implies a fault is proved by death.

A noble character will not readily complain of his fate,
but rather what Hamlet boasts of Horatio will be true of

him :
“For thou hast been

Ag one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.”

And this is explicable from the fact that such a one, recog-
nizing his own being also in others, and therefore as
sharing in their fate, beholds almost invariably round
about him harder fate than his own, for which reason he
cannot bring himself to complain of the latter. An ignoble
egoist, on the other hand, who limits all reality to him-
self, and regards others as mere wraiths and phantasms,
will take no interest in their fate, but will devote his whole
attention to his own, great sensitiveness and frequent com-
plaints being the result. It is precisely this recognition of
oneself in an alien phenomenon from which, as I have so
often proved, justice and human love directly proceed,
which leads finally to the surrender of the Will; for the
phenomenon in which this Will presents itself is so dis-
tinctly im a position of suffering, that he who extends him-
self to all such can no longer will its continuance—just as
one who takes all the tickets in a lottery must necessarily

1 Deutsche Theologia, Edited by Franz Pfeiffer, Stuttgart, 1851.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE. 267

suffer great loss. The affirmation of the Will presupposes
the limitation of self-conscientiousness to one’s own person,
and reckons on the possibility of a favourable career in life
from the hand of fortune.

If in our conception of the world we proceed from the
thing-in-itself—from the Will-to-Live—we shall find as its
kernel, as its greatest concentration, the act of generation
which presents itself as the first thing, the point of depar-
ture; it is the punctum saliens of the world-egg, its main-
spring. Whata contrast, on the other hand, if one proceeds
from the empirical world, the world of presentment, which
is given us as phenomenon! For here the aforesaid act pre-
sents itself as an altogether individual and special one of
subordinate importance—indeed, as a covert and secret
bye-concern which only creeps in; a paradoxical anomaly,
affording frequent material for laughter. It might even
strike us that the devil only wanted to hide his game
thereby, for coition is his currency, and the world his king-
dom. For who has not remarked how illico post coitum cachin-
nus auditur Diaboli ? which, to speak seriously, rests on the
fact that the sexual desire, especially when by fixation of a
particular woman it is concentrated into the passion of
love, is the quintessence of the whole rascality of this
noble world, for it promises so unspeakably, infinitely, and
extravagantly much, and performs so contemptibly little.

The share of the woman in generation is, in a certain
sense, more innocent than that of the man; in so far,
namely, as the latter gives the Will to the being about to
be procreated, the Will which is the primal sin, and hence
the source of all wickedness and evil, whilst the woman
gives the knowing faculty which opens the way to emanci-
pation. The act of generation is the World-focus, inas-
much as it says: “The Will-to-Live has affirmed itself
anew.” In this sense a well-known Brahmanic saying
268 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS,

laments: “Woe, woe! The Lingam is in the Yoni.”
Conception and pregnancy tell us, on the other hand, “ To
the Will is given once more the light of the Intellect,” by
means of which, it can again find its way out, and thus the
possibility of emancipation appears once more.

From this is to be explained the significant phenomenon,
that while any woman surprised in the act of generation
would like to sink into the ground for shame, yet notwith-
standing she will wear her pregnancy without a trace of
shame, and even with a kind of pride. Since in every
other case an infallibly certain sign is regarded as equiva-
lent to the thing signified, so here every other sign of the
completed coitus shames the woman in the highest degree ;
pregnancy alone does not do so. This is to be explained
in that, as above said, pregnancy in a certain sense brings
with it, or at least affords the prospect of, a purgation
from the guilt which has been contracted in the coitus.
Hence the coitus bears all the shame and disgrace in the
matter, while the pregnancy which is so nearly related to
it. remains pure and innocent, and indeed to a certain
extent honourable.

The coitus is chiefly the affair of the man, pregnancy
wholly that of the woman. From the father the child re-
ceives its Will, its character; from the mother its Intellect.
The latter is the emancipating principle, the former is the
binding principle. The symbol of the continuous existence
of the Will-to-Live, in time, in spite of all increase of light
through the Intellect, is the coitus; the symbol of the
light of the understanding, and indeed in the highest de-
gree of its clearness, which is ever anew allied to this Will,
keeping up the possibility of emancipation, is the renewed
birth of the Will-to-Live as Man. The sign of this is preg-
nancy, which goes about therefore in frankness and free-
dom, and indeed in pride, while the coitus slinks away like
a criminal.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE. 269

Some of the Church fathers have taught that even
marital cohabitation should only be allowed when it occurs
merely for the sake of the procreation of children, émi pdvy
mavooroig as Clemens Alex. (Strom. 1. iii. ¢. 11) says. (The
passages referring to the subject will be found collected in
P. E. Lind. de coelibatu Christianorum ec. 1). Clemens
(Strom. ili. c. 3) attributes this view to the Pythagoreans.
This is, however, strictly speaking, incorrect. For if the
coitus be no longer desired for its own sake, the negation
of the Will-to-Live has already appeared, and the propaga-
tion of the human race is then superfluous and senseless, in-
asmuch as its purpose is already attained. Besides, without
any subjective passion, without lust and physical pressure,
with sheer deliberation, and the cold-blooded purpose to place
a human being in the world merely in order that he should
be there—this would be such a very questionable moral
action that few would take it upon themselves ; one might
even say of it indeed that it stood in the same relation to
generation from the mere sexual impulse as a cold-blooded
deliberate murder does to a death-stroke given in anger.

The condemnation of all unnatural sexual pleasures is
based on the opposite ground; since though by these the
impulse is satisfied, that is, the Will-to-Live is affirmed,
propagation is eliminated through which alone the possi-
bility of the negation of the Will is maintained. From
this is to be explained that it was not before the appear-
ance of Christianity, whose tendency is ascetic, that pede-
rasty was recognized as a deadly sin.

A cloister is an assemblage of human beings who have
embraced poverty, chastity, obedience (i.e., the surrender of
the individual Will), and who seek through living together
to lighten partly the existence itself, but still more this state
of severe renunciation, since the sight of those holding like
views and surrendering themselves in a similar manner
270 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

strengthens their resolution and consoles them, inasmuch
as the companionship of common living, within certain
limits, is suited to human nature and affords innocent re-
creation amid many severe sacrifices. This is the normal
conception of the cloister. And who can call such a society
a union of fools and idiots, as one must do according to any
philosophy but mine ?

The inner spirit and meaning of the genuine cloister-life,
as of ascetism generally, is this: That one has recognized
oneself as worthy and capable of a better existence than
ours is, and desires to maintain and strengthen this con-
viction by despising what this world offers, by casting
away from us all its pleasures as worthless, by await-
ing the end of this our life deprived of its empty bait in
rest and confidence, in order that when at last the hour of
death comes we may welcome it as that of emancipation.
Saniassism has entirely the same tendency and significance,
as also the monasticism of the Buddhists. Certainly in no
case does practice so seldom conform to theory as in that
of Monasticism, simply because its fundamental conception
is so exalted, and abusus optimi pessimus. A true monk is
a being in the highest degree honourable. But in by far
the majority of cases the cowl is a mere mask, behind
which there is as little of the real monk as there is in one
at a masquerade.

The notion of devoting and surrendering the individual
Will entirely and without reserve to that of another is a
physical means of facilitating the negation of one’s own
Will, and therefore a suitable allegorical vehicle of the
truth.

The number of regular Trappists is indeed small, yet
notwithstanding this the half of mankind consists of wn-
willing Trappists. Poverty, obedience, lack of all enjoy-
THE DOCTRINE OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE. 271

ments, or even of the most necessary comforts, often com-
bined with compulsory chastity, or one brought about
through defect, is their lot. The distinction is merely that
the Trappists conduct the thing of their own free choice,
methodically and without hope of betterment, while the
other class are to be reckoned to that which I in my
zsthetic chapters have designated by the expression detrepoc
mote; to effect which nature has already'sufficiently taken
her measures through the fundamental principles of her
order, particularly if one reckons to the evils directly
springing from the latter those others which the dissension
and malice of man produce in war andin peace. But pre-
cisely this necessity of involuntary suffering for eternal
salvation is expressed in that saying of the Saviour
(Matth. xix. 24): “‘evxorwrepdr gore Kapmdov dea TouTHparos
pagidoc deOeir, 7 TAovGLOY Eig THY Bagedeiay Tov Jeou eiaed-

ev.” (“ Facilius est, funem ancorarium per foramen acus
transire, quam divitem regnum divinum ingredi.”) Those
there are who have taken their eternal salvation with
great seriousness, have voluntarily chosen poverty when
fate had denied it to them, and when they had been born
in wealth. Thus Buddha, Sakya Muni who, born a prince,
willingly took to the beggar’s staff; and Francis of Assisi,
the founder of the mendicant orders, who as a young
gallant at the ball where the daughters of the notables
were sitting together, when asked: “ Now Mr. Francis, will
you not soon find a choice amongst these beauties?” re-
plied, “I have selected for myself one much more beau-
tiful!” “Who?” “Lapoverta!” Upon which he soon
afterwards left everything, and wandered through the land
begging.

He who through such considerations has realized how
necessary to our salvation sorrow and suffering mostly are ;
he will recognize that we should envy others not so much
on account of their happiness as of their unhappiness.
272 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

For the same reason the stoicism of the view which
defies fate is indeed a good armour against the sorrows of
life, and serviceable for making the present better to
be borne; but it stands opposed to the true salvation.
For it hardens the heart. How shall this latter be
bettered by suffering, if, covered by a strong coating, it
does not feel it? For the rest, a certain degree of stoicism
is not very rare. It may be affected and turn out to be
bonne mine au mauvais jeu. Where, however, it is genuine,
it arises mostly from mere feelinglessness, from a lack of
energy, brightness, sensibility, and imagination, which are
requisite to a heartfelt sorrow. The phlegma and heavi-
ness of the Germans are especially favourable to this kind
of stoicism.

Unjust or malicious actions are, in respect of those who
perform them, signs of the strength of the affirmation of
their Will-to-Live, and accordingly of the distance which
separates them from the true salvation which consists in
its negation, and therewith in emancipation from the world;
and hence of the long school of understanding and of suf-
fering which they have to pass through before they reach it.
But in respect of him who has to suffer through the above
actions, they are, although physically an evil, metaphysi-
cally a good, and at bottom a benefit, since they help to
lead him to his true salvation.

World-Spirit. Here then is the measure of thy labour
and thy suffering; for this must thou exist as all other
things exist.

Man. But what have I from existence? If I am occu-
pied I have trouble; if I am unoccupied tedium; How
canst thou offer me for so much labour and so much
suffering such a miserable reward ?

World-Spirit. And yet it is an equivalent for all thy
THE DOCTRINE OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE. 273

troubles and all thy sorrows; and it is this precisely by
reason of its emptiness.

Man. Indeed? That really exceeds my powers of com-
prehension.

World-Spirit. I know it. (Aside.) Ought I to tell him
that the value of life consists exactly in that it teaches him
not to wish for it? For this highest dedication life itself
must prepare him.

If now, we can, through considerations such as the above,
that is to say from a very high standpoint, see a justifi-
cation for the sorrows of mankind, this does not extend to
the animals, whose sorrows, caused indeed in great measure
by human beings, but also without their co-operation, are
considerable. (Compare “‘ World as Will and Present-
ment,” 3rd ed., vol. ii., p. 404, seq.) The question there-
fore arises: Wherefore this tormented anxious Will in
such thousandfold shapes without the freedom of emanci-
pation which is conditioned by reflection? The suffering
of the animal world is to be justified merely from the fact:
that the Will-to-live, because out of itself in the phe-
nomenal world, finds nothing to hand, and since it is a
hungry Will must devour its own flesh. Hence the scale
of its phenomena, each step of which lives at the cost of
another. For the rest I refer the reader to my “ Contribu-
tions to the Doctrine of the Suffering of the World,” in
which will be found demonstrated that the capacity for
suffering in the animal is much less than in the man.
What might be added further than this might appear hypo-
thetical or even mythical, and may thus be left to the pri-
vate speculation of the reader himself.
ON THE METAPHYSICS OF THE BEAUTIFUL
AND ON ASTHETICS.

S I have entered with sufficient thoroughness in my
chief work into the subject of the Platonic ideas, and
their correlate the pure subject of knowledge, I should con-
sider it superfluous to return to it again here did I not bear
in mind that this is an investigation which has never been
undertaken in the same sense before me, for which reason
it is better to hold nothing back which might at some
time be welcome by way of elucidation. In this I of
course assume an acquaintance with the previous dis-
cussions.

The true problem of the Metaphysics of the Beautiful
may be very simply expressed: How is satisfaction and
pleasure in an object possible without any reference of the
same to our Will?

Everyone feels that pleasure and satisfaction in a thing
can only, properly speaking, arise in their relation to our
Will, or, as people are fond of expressing it, to our purposes;
so that pleasure without excitement of the Will seems to
be a contradiction. Nevertheless the Beautiful as such
obviously excites our satisfaction, our pleasure, without
having any reference to our personal ends, that is, to our
Will.

My solution has been that in the Beautiful we always ap-
prehend the essential and original forms of living and life-
less nature, in other words, Plato’s Ideas of it, and that
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 275

this apprehension has for its condition, its essential corre-
late, the Will-free Subject of Knowledge, i.e., a pure intelli-
gence without objects and purposes. In this way the Will
vanishes entirely out of the consciousness on the entry of an
Aisthetic apprehension, and Will alone is the source of all
our sorrows and sufferings. This is the origin of the satis-
faction and the pleasure which accompanies the apprehen-
sion of the Beautiful; it rests therefore on the withdrawal
of the whole possibility of suffering. Should it be objected
that the possibility of pleasure would also be abolished
thereby, it should be remembered that, as I have often ex-
plained, happiness, contentment, is of a negative nature,
merely the end of a suffering, and that pain is, on the con-
trary, positive. There remains thereforeon the disappearance
of all Willing from consciousness, the state of pleasure not-
withstanding, that is, the absence of all pain, and here even
the absence of the possibility of it, inasmuch as the individual
is transformed into a pure knowing and no longer willing
Subject, and, nevertheless, remains conscious of himself
and his activity as such. As we know, the World as Will is
the first (ordini prior) and the World as Presentment is
the second World (ordini posterior). The former is the
World of longing, and therefore of pain and thousandfold
woe. But the latter is in itself essentially painless ; be-
sides containing a noteworthy spectacle significant through-
out and at least amusing. Aisthetic pleasure consists in
its enjoyment. To become pure subject of knowledge
means to be quit of oneself. The pure subject of know-
ledge enters in when one forgets oneself by sinking oneself
entirely in the perceived objects, so that they alone remain
in the consciousness. But because, for the most part,

1 The complete satisfaction, the final quietude, the really desir-
able state, is only presented to us in imagery, in the work of art,
in the poem, in music. From this, however, one might acquire the
confidence that it must be existent somewhere.
276 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

men cannot do this, they are incapable of the purely objec-

tive apprehension of things, which constitutes the gift of
the artist.

 

Tf, however, the individual Will leaves the faculty of
presentment with which it is accompanied, free for a time,
and dispenses it entirely for the nonce from the service for
which it arose and exists, so that it leaves on one side
its care for the Will or its own person, which alone is
its natural theme, and hence its regular occupation,—yet,
notwithstanding this, does not cease to be energetically
active and to clearly apprehend the perceptual with full
attention,—it will then become perfectly objective, that
is, will become the true mirror of the object, or, more accu-
rately, the medium of the objectivation of the Will, which
presents itself in every object, whose innermost nature now
stands out in it the more completely and exhaustively as
the perception is longer kept up. In this way only arises
with the pure subject the pure object, i.e., the complete mani-
festation of the Will appearing in the perceived object,
which is precisely the Platonic idea of the same. But the
apprehension of such, demands that, in the contemplation
of an object, I should really abstract from its place in
time and space, and thereby from its individuality. For
it is this place, which is always determined by the law
of causality, which places me as individual in some sort
of relation to the said object ; hence only by getting rid of
this place the object becomes idea, and at the same time I
become pure subject of knowledge. For this reason every
painting, by the very fact that it fixes for ever the fleeting
moment, and thus takes it out of time, gives us not the in-
dividual but the idea, that which endures amid all change.
But the condition of the change supposed in subject-object,
is not only that the knowing faculty is withdrawn from its
original servitude and is left entirely to itself, but also that
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 277

it remains active notwithstanding with its whole energy, in
spite of the fact that the natural spur of its activity, the
impulse of the Will, now fails it. Here lies the difficulty,
and in this the rarity of the thing; because all our
thinking and doing, our hearing and seeing, by its nature
stands always mediately or immediately in the service
of our countless personal ends, greater and smaller, and
accordingly it is the Will which spurs on the knowing
faculty to the carrying out of its function, without which
impulse it is at once wearied. Moreover the knowledge
awakened by this impulse is quite sufficient for practical
life, and even for the special sciences, which are always
directed to the relations of things and never to their special
inner nature; hence all their cognitions proceed on the
clue of the principle of cause, which is the element of rela-
tions. Everywhere, therefore, where the question hinges
on the knowledge of cause and effect, or other forms of
ground and consequence, that is, in all branches of natural
science and of mathematics, as also of history or of in-
ventions, etc., the knowledge sought for must be a purpose
of the Will, and the more eagerly it strives after it the
sooner it will be attained. Similarly in affairs of State, in
war, in the business of finance or trade, in intrigues of
every kind, and so forth, the Will must first compel the
intellect by the intensity of its longing to strain all
its powers, in order, in the case in question, to get on
the exact track of all its grounds and consequences. It
is indeed astonishing how far the spur of the Will can
drive a given intellect beyond the accustomed measure
of its powers. Hence, for all distinguished achievements in
such things, not merely a clever or well-balanced head, but
also an energetic Will is required, which must first impel
the former to the laborious strain and restless activity with-
out which such achievements are not to be carried out.
Quite otherwise is it with the apprehension of the objec-
278 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

tive original nature of things which constitutes_.their
Platonic Idea, and must be at the foundation of, every
achievement in the fine arts. The Will, namely, which
was there so requisite and, indeed, indispensable, must
here remain entirely out of play; for here that only is valid
which the intellect achieves by itself, and out of its own
resources, and which it produces as a free-will offering.
Here everything must go of itself; the understanding
must be active without purpose, and consequently without
Will, For only in the state of pure cognition, where the.
Will and its purposes, and therewith the individuality, is
quite removed from the man, can that purely objective
perception arise in which the Platonic Ideas of things are
apprehended. But it must always be such an apprehen-
sion that precedes the conception, that is, the first intuitive
knowledge, which afterwards constitutes, properly speak-
ing, the true material and kernel, or as it were the soul,
of the genuine work of art, of a poem, or, indeed, of a true
philosophy. The unpurposed, unintentional, and, indeed,
partly unconscious and instinctive character which has
always been observed in works of genius, is the consequence
of the fact that the primal artistic knowledge is separate
and independent—a Will-free, Will-less knowledge. And
precisely because the Will is the true man, one ascribes this
knowledge toa being distinct from him—to wit, to a genius.
A knowledge of this kind has, as has often been explained
by me, not even the principle of cause for its clue, and is
in this respect the antithesis of the first. By virtue of its
objectivity the genius perceives by reflection all that which
others do not see. This gives him the capacity as poet, of
describing nature so realistically and vividly, or as painter
of portraying it.

In the carrying out of the work, on the other hand,
where the communication and presentation of what is
already known is the aim, the Will can and, indeed, must
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON STHETICS. 279

be again active, inasmuch as a purpose is present. The
principle of cause therefore dominates here once more,
in accordance with which artistic means are properly sub-
ordinated to artistic ends. Thus the painter is occupied
with the correctness of his drawing and the treatment of
his colours; the poet with the arrangement of his plan, and
subsequently with expression and metre.

But because the intellect has sprung from the Will it
presents itself objectively as brain—that is, as a part of the
body which is the objectivation of the Will. Because the
intellect is originally determined to the service of the Will
the activity natural to it is of the kind above described,
when it remains true to the natural form of its cog-
nitions expressed by the principle of cause, and is
brought into and maintained in activity by the Will, the
original element in man. On the contrary, knowledge of
the second kind is for it an unnatural and abnormal
activity: it_is conditioned, therefore, bya distinctly ab-
normal and hence very rare excess of intellect, and of its
objective phenomenon, the brain, over the rest of the
organism, and beyond that which the purposes of the Will
demand. Just because this excessive intellect is abnormal
the phenomena arising from it at times resemble madness.

The understanding is therefore untrue to its origin, the
Will. The intellect which has arisen merely for the service .
of the Will, and with almost all men remains in that
service, in which and in its product its life is consumed,
is in all the arts and sciences illegitimately used; and
in this use is placed the progress and the honour of the
Human Race. In another way it can even turn itself
against the Will, inasmuch asin the phenomena of holiness
it abolishes the latter.

For the rest, the above purely objective apprehension of
the world and of things which, as their primal cognition
lies at the foundation of every artistic, poetic, and purely
280 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

philosophical conception is, as well on objective as on sub-
jective grounds, only a passing one, partly because the requi-
site strain of attention cannot be maintained, partly because
the course of the world. does not allow of our remaining
throughout, like the philosopher, according to the definition
of Pythagoras, passive and indifferent spectators therein,
since each must co-operate in the great puppet-play of life,
and almost always feels the wire by means of which he is
connected with it and is set in motion.

As regards, however, the objective of such zsthetic_per-
ception—in other words, the Platonic Idea—this may be
described as that which we should have before us if Time,
the formal and subjective condition of our knowledge, were.
removed, like the glass out of a kaleidoscope. We see, for
example, the development of bud, blossom, and fruit, and
are astonished at the active force which never wearies of
carrying through this series anew. This astonishment
would leave us if we could recognize that in all this change
we only have the one and unalterable Idea of the plant
before us, which, as a unity of bud, blossom, and fruit, we
are incapable of perceiving, but are obliged to cognize by
means of the form of time, whereby the Idea is expounded
to our intellect in those successive states.

If one considers, that poetry, no less than the plastic
arts, invariably takes an individual for its theme, in order
to portray such with the greatest exactness, with all the
specialities of its individuality down to the most in-
significant; and if we then look back on the sciences
which work by means of conceptions, each of which is
represented by countless individuals, inasmuch as it de-
termines and indicates the speciality of its whole kind
once for all, we might on this consideration be inclined to
regard the pursuit of Art as insignificant, small, and even
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ZSTHETICS. 281

childish. But the essence of Art supposes that its one
case answers for thousands, since what it intends by the
careful and detailed portrayal of the individual is the
revelation of the Idea of its kind. So that, for example,
an event, a scene of human life described accurately and
fully, that is, with complete presentment of the individuals
involved therein, brings the Idea of humanity itself to our
knowledge in all its clearness and depth. For, as the
botanist plucks a single flower from the infinite wealth of
the plant-world, and then dissects it in order to demon-
strate to us the nature of the plant as such; so the poet
takes from the endless confusion of the tide of human life,
everywhere on-rushing with ceaseless motion, a single
scene, and sometimes even merely a mood or feeling, in
order to show us what the life and being of manis. For
this reason we find the greatest minds—Shakespeare and
Goethe, Raphael and Rembrandt—esteem it not unworthy
of themselves to present and realize for us a not even
striking mdividual in his whole speciality, down to the
smallest detail, with the greatest accuracy and the most
careful industry. For only perceptually is the special and
particular grasped. I have defined poetry, for the above
reason, as the art of setting the imagination in play through
words.

If one desires to feel immediately, and thereby to be-
come conscious of what an advantage perceptual knowledge
as the primary and fundamental has over the abstract, as
Art reveals more to us than any science can do, one should
contemplate either in nature, or through the medium of
Art, a beautiful and mobile human countenance beaming
with expression. What a much deeper insight than any
words, or than the abstractions they indicate, into the es-
sence of man, and indeed of nature generally, does not this
give us? It may be remarked here, by the way, that
what for a beautiful landscape is the sudden bursting
282 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

forth of sunshine from the clouds, such for a beautiful
face is the appearance of its laughter. Therefore, ridete,
puelle, ridete !

That, however, which makes a picture more readily than
a reality convey to us the apprehension of a (Platonic)
Idea,—in other words, that by which the picture stands
nearer the Idea than the reality does,—is, generally speaking,
this, that the work of Art is an object which has already
passed through a subject, and is hence for the mind what
animal nourishment—the already assimilated vegetable—
is for the body.

But more closely considered, the matter rests upon the
fact that the work of plastic art does not, like the reality,
show us something which only once exists and never again,
—the combination, namely, of this matter with this form,
which combination constitutes the concrete, the true indi-
vidual,—but that it shows us the form alone, which, if only
given perfectly and on all its sides, is the Idea itself. The
picture leads us, therefore, directly away from the indivi-
dual to the mere form. This separation of the form from
the matter of itself brings the presentment nearer the Idea.
Every image is such a separation, whether it be picture or
statue. Hence this separation, this severance of the form
from the matter, belongs to the character of an esthetic_
work of art, because its object is to bring us to a knowledge
of of a (Platonic) . Idea. It_is essential, therefore, tothe work
of art to give the form alone, without the matter, and to
do this indeed openly and avowedly. Herein lies the true
reason why wax figures make no esthetic impression, and
are therefore not works of art (in the esthetic sense);
although when well made they produce a hundred times
greater illusion than the best picture or statue can do;
and hence, if illusive imitation of the Real were the
purpose of Art, they would have to occupy the first rank.
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND On ZSTHETICS. 283

They seem, however, to give not mately the form, but the
matter as well, and hence produce the illusion that one
has the _thing itself before one. Thus, unlike the true
work of art, which leads us away from that which exists
only - once and never again, i.e. the individual, to that
which is there continuously through endless times, and in
endless number, in short, to the mere form or Idea; the
wax figure gives us apparently the individual itself, that,
namely, which exists once and never again, yet without the
only thing which lends to such a transitory existence its
value—to wit, without life. Hence the wax figure excites a
shudder, its effect being that of a stiff corpse.

One might imagine that it was only the statue which
gave the form without the matter, but the painting the
matter as well, inasmuch as by means of colour it imitates
the matter and its structure. This would only mean, how-
ever, the form understood in a purely geometrical sense,
which is not what was here meant. For in a philoso-
phical sense form is the antithesis of matter, and em-
braces, therefore, colour, surface, texture, and, in short, all
qualities.

The statue certainly is the only thing which gives the
geometrical form alone, displaying it in an obviously
foreign 1 matter—marble, thereby clearly isolating the form.
But the painting, on the | other hand, gives no matter at
all, but the mere appearance of the fora; not in the geo-
metrical but in the philosophical sense above stated. The
form itself is not even given by the painting, but the mere
appearance of the form, to wit, the mere effect on one sense,
that of sight, and even this only from one point of view.
The painting, therefore, does not so much as produce the
illusion that one has the thing itself, i.e., form and matter,
before one, the deceptive truth of the painting always
standing under certain admitted conditions of its mode of
presentment. For example, the picture, through the un-

 
284 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

avoidable falling away of the parallax of our two eyes,
shows the things as a one-eyed person would see them.
Thus even the painting only furnishes the form, while
it only presents the effect of the latter one-sidedly, that
is, for the eye alone. The above reasons why the work of
art raises us more easily than the reality to the appre-
hension of a (Platonic) Idea, will be found expounded in
the second volume of my chief work (chap. xxx., p. 370;
38rd ed., p. 420).

The following is akin to the foregoing considerations, in
which, in the meantime, the form is again to be understood
in a geometrical sense. Black copper-plate engravings
and etchings bespeak a nobler and more elevated taste
than coloured engravings and water-colours, though the
latter appeal more to the less cultivated taste. This is
obviously on account of the fact that the black representa-
tions give the form alone, as it were in abstracto, the ap-
prehension of which is (as we know) intellectual, that
is, a matter of the contemplative understanding. The
colour, on the other hand, is merely a matter of the sense-
organ, and, indeed, of a special arrangement in it (quali-
tative divisibility of the activity of the retina). In this
respect one may compare the coloured copper engraving
to rhymed verses, the black to those merely metrical; see
as regards these, the relation between them given in my
chief work (vol. ii., chap. xxxvii., p. 427; 3rd ed., p. 486).

That the impressions which we acquire in youth are so
significant, and that in the dawn of life everything appears
so idealistically, arises from the fact that then the indivi-
dual makes us first acquainted with its kind, which is quite
new to us, and that in consequence every individual repre-
sents its kind for us. We accordingly apprehend in it the
(Platonic) Idea of this kind, which beauty, as such,
essentially is.
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 285

“ Beautiful” (“ schin”) is undoubtedly connected with
the English to show, and ought therefore to be showy, that
which is to be seen, what shows well, what displays itself
well; in short, the strikingly visible, and therefore the clear
expression of significant (Platonic) Ideas.

“ Picturesque (‘‘ malerisch”) means at bottom the same
as “beautiful” (“schén”); for it is attributed to that
which displays itself in such wise, that it clearly proclaims
the Idea of its kind. It is for this reason suitable for the
representation of the painter, which is directed towards
the portrayal, the setting forth, of the Ideas which con-
stitute the objective in the Beautiful.

The Beauty and grace of the human form, in combina-
tion, are the clearest visibility of the Will on the highest
stage of its manifestation, and therefore the highest achieve-
ment of the plastic art. Meanwhile, assuredly, as I have
said (Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol.i., § 41),every natural
thing is beautiful; for instance, every animal. If this does
not appear obvious to us with some animals, it is because
we are not in a position to consider them purely objectively,
and thereby to apprehend their Idea, but are led away
from it by some unavoidable association of thoughts,
mostly in consequence of an obtrusive similarity, e.g., that
of the apes with man, whereby we do not apprehend the
Idea of the animal, but only the caricature of a man. In
the same way the similarity of the toad with filth and
slime seems to act. This does not, however, suffice to ex-
plain the unbounded revulsion, the horror and loathing,
which comes upon some persons at the sight of these
animals, as with others at that of spiders; which would
seem rather to have its foundation in a much deeper
and more mysterious metaphysical connection. The circum-
stance that formerly these animals have been wont to be
used for sympathetic cures (and evil charms), that is, for
286 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

magical purposes, confirms this opinion. Thus the fever
is driven away by a spider enclosed in a nut-shell, and
worn round the neck of the patient till it is dead ; or, in
the case of great danger of death, a toad is laid in the
urine of the patient, in a well-closed receptacle, and at
midday, precisely at the stroke of twelve, is buried in the
cellar of the house. The slow torture of such animals de-
mands, nevertheless, a punishment from eternal justice.
This, again, affords an explanation of the assumption that
he who practises magic makes himself over to the devil.

Inorganic nature, in so far as it does not consist in water,
when it displays itself without anything organic, has a
very sad and depressing effect upon us. Instances of
this are to be found in districts which merely afford
barren rock-scenery, especially the long rocky plane without
any vegetation near Toulon, through which the road to
Marseilles leads; the African deserts furnish such in-
stances on a larger scale and much more impressively,
The sadness which this impression of the inorganic makes
upon us arises from the fact that the Inorganic mass
exclusively obeys the law of gravity, according to the
direction of which everything lies. On_the other hand,
the appearance of vegetation pleases us directly and in a
very high degree; but naturally the more, the richer, the
more varied, the more extended, and the more it is left to
itself. The most immediate ground of this lies in that in
vegetation the law of gravity appears as superseded,_inas-
much as the plant-world lifts itself in an opposite direc-_
tion to that of gravitation. Therein the phenomenon of
life proclaims itself _as.a.new and_higher. order of things.
We ourselves belong to it; it is related to us, it is the
element of our existence. Our heart is therefore opened
by it. Primarily, then, it is its erect attitude which de-
lights us at once in the plant-world; hence a cluster of
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ZSTHETICS. 287

trees gains immensely if a pair of straight fir-trees shoot
their tops out from its midst. On the other hand, a pollard
has no longer such an effect upon us; a tree grown crooked
less than a straight one: the low-hanging branches of the
weeping-willow, succumbing as they do to gravity, have
procured it this name. Water does away with the sad-
ness of its inorganic character, to a great extent, by its
great mobility, which gives it an appearance of life, and
by its continual play of light; besides which, it is the
primal condition of all life, In addition to this, what so
delights us in the appearance of vegetable nature, is the
expression of rest, peace, and satisfaction which it bears ;
while animal nature mostly displays itself before us ina
state of unrest, of distress, and indeed of conflict. Hence
it is that it succeeds so readily in transforming us into the
state of pure cognition which frees us from ourselves.

It is surprising to see how vegetable nature, in itself of
the most commonplace and insignificant character, imme-
diately groups and displays itself beautifully and pictu-
resquely, when once it is removed from the influence of
human caprice. Thus it is with every spot which is re-
moved from, or which has not yet been reached by, culti-
vation, even though it only bears thistles, thorns, and the
commonest meadow flowers. On the other hand, in corn-
fields and market-gardens the esthetic of the plant-world
sinks to the minimum.

It has long been recognized, that every work intended
for human purposes—thus every utensil and every build-
ing—in order to be beautiful, must bear a certain simi-
larity to the works of Nature; but the error les in
thinking that this must be a direct one, and must lie im-
mediately in the forms, so that pillars should represent
trees, or even human figures; or vessels should be shaped
like shells, or snails, or the calices of flowers, and that
288 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

everywhere vegetable or animal forms should appear. The
similarity ought, on the contrary, to be not a direct but an
indirect one, i.e., should lie not in the forms, but in the
character of the forms, which may be the same even with a
complete difference in the forms themselves. Buildings
and utensils should accordingly not be imitated from
Nature, but created in the spirit of Nature. This is
the case when every thing and every portion of a thing
answers to its purpose so directly that it at once proclaims
it; which occurs, insofar as it achieves it by the shortest
route and in the most simple manner. This obvious adap-
tation of means to ends is the character of the product of
Nature; the Will it is true, in this case, works from
within outwards, and has mastered the whole of the
matter; while in the human work, acting from without,
it attains its object and expresses itself through the
medium of the perception, and even of a conception of the
purpose of the thing, and then through the overcoming of
an alien matter, a matter, that is, which originally expressed
another Will; but notwithstanding this, the given character
of the product of Nature may be retained therein. Ancient
architecture shows this in the exact proportion of its part
or member to its immediate purpose, which it naively
expresses in this manner, and in the absence of all pur-
poselessness—in direct opposition to the Gothic architec-
ture, which owes its dark and mysterious appearance pre-
cisely to its many purposeless ornaments and nick-nacks,
inasmuch as we attribute to them a purpose unknown to
us ; or, indeed, any completely decayed style of architec-
ture which, affecting originality, plays with the means of
art whose ends it does not understand by all sorts of un-
necessary twists and arbitrary frivolities; and the same
applies to antique vases, whose beauty arises from the fact
that they express in such a naive manner what they are in-
tended to be and to achieve. The same with the other uten-
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 289

sils of the ancients. One feels with them, that if Nature
had produced vases, amphora, lamps, tables, chairs, hel-
mets, shields, armour, &c., they would look like that. On
the other hand, look at the richly-gilded porcelain vessels,
together with the female dress, &c., of modern times,
which, in that it has exchanged the style of antiquity,
already introduced, for the miserable rococo style, has ex-
posed its contemptible spirit, and branded itself on the
forehead for all time. For this is by no means a small
thing ; but it stamps the spirit of our age. A confirma-
tion of it is given by its literature, the mutilation of the
German language by ignorant ink-slingers, who, in their
brazen impudence, treat it in the same way as Vandals
works of art, and are allowed to do so unpunished.

The origin of the fundamental idea for a work of art has
been very accurately described as a conception, for just as
procreation is to the origin of man, so is it the most
essential to it. And like the latter, it requires not so much
time as opportunity and mood. The Object in general,
namely, exercises, as it were, as male, a continuous act of pro-
creation on the Subject, thefemale. This is, however, only
fruitful at particularly happy moments, and with favoured
subjects. But when it is so, there arises out of it a new,
original thought, which lives on. And just as with physical
procreation, its fruitfulness depends much more on the
female than on the male side. If the latter (the Subject)
be in a receptive mood, almost every object now falling
within its apperception will begin to speak to it, i.e., to
create in it a vivid, penetrating, and original thought.
Hence, at times, the aspect of an unimportant object or
event has become the germ of a great and beautiful work
As, for example, Jacob Boehme, by the sudden glance at
tin vessel, was thrown into astate of illumination and intro-
duced into the innermost depths of Nature. Everything

U
290 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

turns at last everywhere on one’s own force; and as no
food or medicine imparts vital force, or can replace it, so
no book or study can supply the original mind.

An improvisator is a man who omnibus horis saptt, inas-
much as he carries about with him a complete and well-
assorted magazine of commonplaces of every kind, which
does prompt service for every want, according to the cir-
cumstances of the case and the opportunity, and affords
ducentos versos, stans pede in uno.

A man who undertakes to live by the grace of the
Muses, I mean from his poetical gifts, strikes me as being
like a girl who lives by her charms. Both alike profane,
for base livelihood, what should be the free gift of their
innermost. Both alike suffer an exhaustion, and both will
probably end disgracefully. Do not therefore degrade your
muse to a whore, but let

“T sing, as sings the bird
Who in the branches dwells

The song that from his throat is heard,
Reward that richly tells,”

be the motto of the poet. For poetic gifts belong to the
holidays not to the working-days of life. Hence, even
if they should be felt to be somewhat oppressed and
limited by an occupation which the poet carries on at
the same time, they may still prosper along with it; for
the poet does not need great acquirements and learning,
like the philospher ; indeed, poetic gifts are condensed by
the former just as they are diluted by too much leisure and
by being carried on ex professo. The philosopher, on the
contrary, cannot well carry on another occupation for the
foregoing reason ; and since money-making has other and
- well-known drawbacks to philosophy, on which account the
ancients made it the mark of the sophist in opposition to
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON STHETICS. 291

the philosopher, Solomon is to be praised when he says:
“ Wisdom is good with an inheritance, and rejoiceth a man
under the sun.”

That we have the Classics of antiquity, 7.e., minds whose
writings pass down through thousands of years in the un-
diminished glow of youth, is largely attributable to the
fact, that with the ancients the writing of books was not a

livelihood occupation. But by this alone is the fact to be

explained that there are no bad works of those Classics
alongside of the good ones—since they did not, like even
the best of the moderns, after the spirit had evaporated,
carry the phlegm to market, in order to turn it into
money.

Music is the true universal language everywhere under-
stood. Hence it is ceaselessly spoken, with much serious-
ness and zeal, and a significant and telling melody soon
finds its way round the globe; while one that is poor and
says nothing is soon hushed, and dies out—which proves
that the content of melody is very easily comprehensible.

It speaks, nevertheless, not of things, but simply of weal
and woe, which are the sole realities for the Will. Hence
it says so much to the heart, while to the head it has
directly nothing to say, and it is an abuse if this is required
of it, as happens in all programme-music, which is there-
fore unconditionally to be rejected, even although Hadyn
and Beethoven have been led astray by it—which Mozart
and Rossini, to my knowledge, never were. For expres-
sion of the passions is one thing, painting of things
another.

The grammar of this universal language is also regulated
in the most precise manner, although only since Rameau
laid the foundation. On the other hand, to decipher the
lexicon, I mean the undoubted significance of its content,
above referred to, i.e, to make comprehensible to the
292 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Reason, if only in general, what it is that music says, in
melody and harmony, and what it is talking about, this no
one has ever attempted to do, until I undertook it—
all which proves how extremely little men are disposed to
reflection and thought, and with what absence of con-
sideration they go through life. Their object is every-
where simply to enjoy, and that with as little expenditure of
thought as possible. Their nature is responsible for this.
Hence it appears so comical when they think they must
play the philosopher, as may be seen in the case of our
professors of philosophy with their magnificent works, and
the uprightness of their zeal for philosophy and truth.

Speaking generally and popularly, one may venture to
say music itself is melody, to which the world is the text.
But its special meaning was first given in my exposition of
music.

The relation, however, of the musical art to the specific
exterior always imposed upon it, such as text, action, march,
dance, religious or secular festivity, &c., is analogous to
the relation of architecture as fine art, that is, art directed
to purely esthetic purposes, with the real buildings which
it has to erect, and with the utilitarian purposes of which,
therefore, it has to attempt to combine its own. This it
does, in that it accomplishes these under the conditions
which the former impose upon it, and accordingly produces
a temple, a palace, an emporium, a playhouse, &c., in such
a way that it is at once beautiful in itself and suitable for
its end, and indeed proclaims this end itself through its
esthetic character. Music stands in an analogous though
not equally unavoidable servitude to the text, or to the
other realities imposed upon it. It must, in the first place,
adapt itself to the text, although it does not require
the latter, and indeed without it could move much more
freely. Yet it must not only accommodate its every note
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 293

to the length of its word and its meaning, but assume
throughout a certain homogeneity therewith, and bear the
character of the end arbitrarily imposed upon it, and
accordingly be ecclesiastical, operatic, military, dance
music, &c. But all this is as foreign to its nature as
human utilitarian considerations are to purely esthetic
architecture ; and hence both have to subordinate them-
selves to the foreign conditions imposed upon them. This
is almost always unavoidable in architecture, but not in
music, which moves freely in the concerto, the sonata,
and above all in the symphony, its noblest arena, on which
it celebrates its saturnalia.

The false path whereon our music is bent is analagous to
that which was pursued by the Roman architecture under
the later emperors, where the overloading with decorations,
partly concealed and partly perverted the simple and
essential proportions. It offers, that is, much noise, many
instruments, much art, but very few clear, penetrating, and
comprehensive ideas, in the shallow, say-nothing, melody-
less compositions of the present day; the same taste,
again, allows itself to be pleased with the unclear, aimless,
nebulous, incomprehensible and senseless literary style, the
origin of which is to be sought chiefly in our miserable
Hegelism and its charlatanry. In the compositions of the
present time more account is taken of harmony than of
melody. I am, on the contrary, of the opposite opinion,
and hold melody to be the kernel of music, to which har-
mony is related as the sauce to the roast meat.

Grand opera is not properly a creation of the pure
artistic sense, but rather of the somewhat barbaric notion of
the production of esthetic pleasure by means of a heaping
up of appliances, by the simultaneity of totally distinct
impressions, and the strengthening of the effect by the in-
crease of the operative masses and forces. Music, on the
294 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

contrary (as the most powerful of all the arts), is capable
by itself of completely occupying the mind receptive to it.
Its highest productions indeed, in order to be adequately
apprehended and enjoyed, require the whole undivided
and undistracted attention, in order that it may surrender
itself to them, and sink itself in them, so that it may
really understand the incredible inwardness of its language.
Instead of this, during the performance of a highly compli-
cated opera music, the mind is acted on through the
eye by means of a brilliant spectacle, fantastic images,
and gay impressions of light and colour, in addition to
which the plot of the piece occupies it. By all this it is
drawn away, distracted and deadened, and thus rendered
as little as possible receptive for the holy, mysterious, in-
ward language of tones. In this way, therefore, the attain-
ment of the musical purpose is directly counteracted.
In addition to these things comes the ballet, a spectacle
often more directed to lasciviousness than to esthetic
pleasure, and which besides, by the narrow range of its
materials, and the monotony arising therefrom, soon be-
comes to the last degree tedious, and thereby contributes
to exhaust the patience—especially since by the wearisome
repetition, often lasting a quarter of an hour, of the same
inferior dance-melody, the musical sense is fatigued and
deadened, so that, for the musical impressions of a more
serious and higher character which follow, there is no
more receptivity left.

It is possible, although a purely musical mind does
not require it, notwithstanding that the true language of
tones is self-sufficient, and demands no outside help, that
it may be associated with and superimposed upon words,
or even an action, carried out visibly, in order that our
perceptive and reflective intellect, which does not like to be
entirely idle, may obtain an easy and analogous occupation,
In this way, indeed, the attention is more firmly riveted
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON &XSTHETICS. 295

on the music, and follows it better; for a perceptual
image is to that which the tones proclaim in their uni-
versal imageless language of the heart, as the schema or as
an example is to a universal concept; such indeed may
enhance the impression of the music. It should never-
theless be held within the limits of the greatest simplicity,
for otherwise it directly counteracts the main musical
purpose.

The excessive heaping up of vocal and instrumental
parts in the opera acts indeed in a musical way, yet the
enhancement of the effect from the mere quartette to
the orchestra with its hundred parts, does not bear any
proportion to the increase of the means. For the chord
cannot have more than three, or in one case four, notes,
and the mind can never apprehend more at once, no matter
by how many parts in different octaves these three or
four notes may be given. From all this it is explicable
how a beautiful well-rendered music of four parts often
more deeply moves than the whole opera seria, whose
quintessence it furnishes, just as the drawing is some-
times more effective than the oil-painting. What, however,
depresses the effect of the quartette chiefly is, that the
extension of the harmony, that is, the distance of two or
more octaves between the bass and the lowest of the three
upper parts, such as from the depths of the double bass,
is always at the service of the orchestra, is wanting,
though the effect, even in this case, is immensely enhanced
if a powerful organ with a pedal reaching to the lowest
point of audibility plays the ground bass throughout, as is
the case in the Catholic church at Dresden. For only in
this way does the harmony produce its full effect. But
speaking generally, simplicity, which is usually attached
to truth, is an essential law of all art, of all that is beau-
tiful, of all intellectual representation ; at least it is always
dangerous to depart from it.
296 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Strictly speaking, one might call the opera an unmusical
invention for the sake of unmusical minds, into which
music has to be first impressed by a medium foreign to it;
for instance, as the accompaniment of a long spun-out
vapid love story and its wishy-washy poetry; for the
opera will not bear a condensed text full of intellect and
thought, because the composition cannot attain to such.
But to seek to make music merely the slave of bad poetry
is a false path, which Glick largely traversed, and hence
his opera-music, if we except his overtures, is not at all
enjoyable apart from the words. One might even say the
opera has become the curse of music. For not only must
the latter bend and accommodate itself in order to be
suited to the course and regulated procedure of a tasteless
fable; not only is the mind withdrawn and distracted from
the music by the childish and barbaric magnificence of the
scenery and costumes, by the tricks of dancers, and the
short skirts of ballet-girls; no, but even the song itself often
disturbs the harmony, inasmuch as the vor humana, which
musically regarded is an instrument like any other, will
not co-ordinate and accommodate itself to the other parts,
but tries to dominate absolutely. In the case of the
soprano or alto, indeed, this does very well, because in this
case the melody accrues to it essentially, and by nature.
But in bass and tenor solos, the leading melody belongs
mostly to the high instruments, in relation to which the
song stands out like an unduly loud harmonic part which
the melody seeks to outstrip. The accompaniment is
contrapuntally transferred to the upper register, quite
against the nature of music, in order to impart the
melody to the tenor or bass voice, the ear, notwithstanding,
always following the highest notes, namely, the accom-
paniment. I am really of the opinion that solo-arias with
orchestral accompaniment are only suited to the alto or
soprano, and that the men’s voices should therefore only
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 297

be employed in duet with the former, or in pieces of many
parts, unless they sing without any, or with a mere bass,
accompaniment. Melody is the natural privilege of the
highest voices, and must remain so. Hence it is, that when
in an opera a soprano-aria follows on a forced and artificial
baritone, or bass-aria, we are sensible at once of a satis-
faction at the accordance of the former with nature and art.
That great masters like Mozart and Rossini know how to
mitigate, or indeed to overcome, the above obstacle, does
not get rid of it.

The sung mass affords a much purer musical pleasure
than the opera, because there the words are mostly un-
perceived, or, by endlessly repeated hallelujahs, glorias.
eleisons, amens, &c., are reduced to a mere solfeggio, in
which the music, only retaining the general ecclesiastical
character, moves freely, and does not, as in the operatic
song, find itself compromised in its own sphere by miseries
of every kind. For this reason it can here develop all its
forces unhindered, inasmuch as it has not the depressing
puritanical or methodistical character of Protestant church-
music, which makes it, like the Protestant morality, crawl
on the earth—but soars freely with its great wings, like a
seraph. Masses and symphonies alone give unalloyed
and_perfect. musical enjoyment, while in the opera, music
tortures itself with the shallow drama and its pseudo-
poetry, and seeks to get on as well as it can with the alien
burden which has been laid upon it. The mocking scorn
with which the great Rossini at times has treated the text,
if not exactly to be commended, is genuinely musical. But
grand opera altogether, inasmuch as with its three hours’
duration it more and more biunts our musical suscepti-
bility, while at the same time the snail’s course of a mostly
very vapid action puts our patience to the test, is in itself
essentially of a wearisome nature. This defect can only be
overcome by the extraordinary excellence of the particular
298 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

performance, and therefore in this department only the
masterpieces are enjoyable, and everything mediocre is
abominable. The endeavour ought to be made to concen-
trate and contract the opera more, in order to limit it,
wherever possible, to one act and one hour. In the full
consciousness of this, they hit upon the bad device in the
“Teatro della Valle” in Rome, at the time I was there,
of making the acts of an opera and a comedy alternate
with each other. The longest duration of an opera ought
to be two hours ; that of a drama three hours, because the
attention and strain of mind required by the latter holds
out longer, since it tires us much less than the ceaseless
music, which at last becomes a nervous torture. For
the foregoing reasons the last act of an opera is, as a
rule, a penance to the audience, and a still greater one
to the singers and musicians. One might accordingly
think to have before one, here, a numerous assembly
met together for the purpose of self-discipline, and fol-
lowing it out with endurance to the end, for which
each has long silently sighed, with the exception of the
deserters.

The overture ought to prepare us for the opera in
announcing the character of the music, as well as the
course of the action ; this however should not be done too
explicitly and plainly, but only as we foresee coming events
in a dream.

A vaudeville may be compared to a man who parades in
clothes which he has picked up second-hand; every article
has already been worn by another, for whom it was made,
whom it fitted, and by which we notice, moreover, that
they do not belong to each other. It is like a harlequin’s
jacket, made of rags cut from the coats of honest people
and sewn together,—a true musical monstrosity which ought
to be forbidden by the police.
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON &STHETICS. 299

It is deserving of note, that in music the value of the
composition outweighs that of the performance, while of
tragedy it is exactly the converse which holds true.
Thus a thoroughly good composition, if only moderately
well (provided it be cleanly and correctly) performed, gives
us more enjoyment than the most admirable rendering of
a bad composition. On the other hand, a bad theatrical
piece, executed by the very best players, has much more
effect than the most admirable piece played by bunglers.

The function of an actor is to portray human nature
ac ccording to its most varied sides, in a thousand widely
differing characters, all however resting on the common
ground of of his individuality, which is given once for all, and
never never quite 1 to be extinguished. On this account he must
be himself a capable and quite complete specimen of
human nature, or at least not so defective or deteriorated
that, as Hamlet’s expression has it, ‘He would seem not
to as sede by Nature herself, but by one of her journey-
men.” Notwithstanding this, an actor will better portray
a character the nearer it stands to his own individuality,
and best of all, one which coincides with the latter; hence
even the worst player has one réle which he plays ell for
in it he is like a living face among masks.

A good actor requires (1) that he be a man who has the
gift of being able to turn his inside outwards; (2) that he
has sufficient imagination to conceive fictitious circum-
stances and events so vividly, that they move his innermost
being; (3) that he possess intellect, experience, and edu-
cation in a degree adequate to enable him sufficiently to
understand human characters and relations.

 

“The struggle of man with Fate,” which our vapid,
hollow, puffed-up, and sickly-sweet modern zsthetes, for
about fifty years past, have unanimously proclaimed as the
universal theme of tragedy, has for its assumption the
300 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

freedom of the will, that fad of all the ignorant, together
with the categorical imperative whose moral purposes or
commands have to be accomplished in spite of fate; in all
of which the aforesaid gentlemen find their edification.
But besides this, the above-assumed theme of the tragedy
is a ridiculous conception, if only because it would be a
battle with an unseen opponent, a fight in a fog, against
which, therefore, every blow struck would hit the air, and
into whose arms one would fall in attempting to evade
him, as happened to Lajus and @dipus. Fate, moreover,
is all-powerful, and hence to fight with it would be the_
most preposterous of all rashness, so that Byron is per-
fectly justified in saying—
“To strive, too, with our fate, were such a strife

As if the corn-sheaf should oppose the sickle.”
Don Juan, v. 17.

Shakespeare also understands the matter so—

“Fate, show thy force: ourselves we do not owe ;
What is decreed must be, and be this so!”
Twelfth Night, act i., the close.

Which verse it may be said, by the way, belongs to those
extremely rare cases in which poetry gains by translation—

“ Jetzt kannst du deine Macht, O Schicksal, zeigen;
Was sein soll muss geschehn, und Keiner ist sein eigen.”

With the ancients, the conception of fate is that of a
necessity hidden in the totality of things, which without
any consideration either for our wishes or prayers, our
guilt or desert, guides human affairs, and draws together by
its secret bond even things outwardly most independent
of each other, in order to bring them whither it will, so
that their apparently fortuitous coincidence is in a higher
sense necessary. As now by virtue of this necessity every-
thing is pre-ordained (fatum), a foreknowledge of the same
is possible through oracles, seers, dreams, &c.
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 301

Providence is the Christianized fate, in other words, fate
transformed into the purpose of God directed towards the
good of the world.

I regard the esthetic purpose of the chorus in tragedy
as, firstly, that side by side with the opinion which those
chief persons who are agitated by the storm of passions
have of things, that of quiet disinterested reflection
should also come to a hearing ; and secondly, that the
essential moral of the piece displayed successively in con-
creto throughout its action, should at the same time be
proclaimed as a reflection thereupon in abstracto, and con-
sequently in brief. Acting in this way, the chorus resem-
bles the bass in music, which, as a continuous accom-
paniment, allows us to perceive the fundamental note of
each single chord of the progression.

As the strata of the earth show us in their impressions
the forms of life of a world long past, which preserve
throughout countless thousands of years the trace of a
short existence, so the ancients have left us in their
comedies a true and lasting impression of their bright
life and activity, an impression so clear and exact, that it
gives the appearance as though they had done it with the
object of leaving as an inheritance to the latest posterity
at least a lasting picture of the beautiful and noble exis-
tence whose transitoriness they bewailed. If we again
fill out these hulls and forms, which tradition has delivered
to us, with flesh and bone by the presentation of Plautus
and Terence on the stage, this brisk life of the long past
will again rise up before us, in its freshness and bright-
ness, just as ancient Mosaic floorings, when wetted, stand
out again in their old colours.

The only genuine German comedy which has proceeded
from the nature and spirit of the nation, and which
302 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

portrays it, is, with the exception of the isolated instance
of Minna von Barnhelm, the drama of Iffand. The cha-
racteristics of these pieces are, like those of the nation
which they so truly depict, more moral than intellectual,
while the opposite might be alleged of the English and
French comedy. The Germans are so rarely original, that
one ought not, when once in a way they are so, to pitch
into them as Schiller and the Schlegels have done, who
have been unjust to Iffland, and have even gone too far
against Kotzebue. In the same way people are unjust to-
day towards Raupach, while they spend their applause
upon the trivialities of the most wretched twaddlers.

The drama generally as the most complete mirror of
human existence, has a three-fold climax in its manner of
apprehending it, and hence in its purport and pretensions,
At the first and the most frequent stage, it stops at the
merely interesting. Persons require our sympathy in
pursuing their own purposes which are similar to ours.
The action proceeds by means of the intrigue, the charac-
ters, and chance, wit and jest being the spice of the whole.
At the second stage the drama is sentimental; sympathy
with the hero, and indirectly with ourselves, is excited ; the
action becomes pathetic, but returns nevertheless to rest
and satisfaction at the conclusion. At the highest and
most difficult stage the end is the ¢tragical. Severe
suffering, the misery of existence, is brought before us, and
the nothingness of all human endeavour is here the final
result. We are deeply moved, and the revulsion of the
will from life is excited in us, either directly or as the
accompanying harmonic note.

The drama of political tendency coquetting with the
momentary whims of the sweet populace, that favourite
product of our modern litteratewrs, I have naturally not
taken into consideration ; such pieces soon lie, often in the
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ZSTHETICS. 303

following year, as dead as old almanacks. But this does
not trouble the litterateur ; for the appeal to his muse
contains only one prayer: “Give us this day our daily
bread.”

Every beginning is difficult, it is said. In the dramatic
art, however, the opposite holds good, every ending is
difficult here. This is confirmed by the numberless dramas
of which the first half goes well enough, but which then
become obscure, halting, uncertain, especially in the noto-
rious fourth act, and finally peter out either in a forced, or
in an unsatisfactory end, or in an end which everyone has
long foreseen—occasionally, indeed, as in “Emilia Galotti ”
—in one which produces indignation and sends the onlooker
home disgusted. This difficulty of the winding up rests
partly on the fact that it is always easier to entangle affairs
than to disentangle them; but partly also upon the fact,
that at the beginning we leave the poet carte blanche, while
at the end we make definite demands upon him. It has,
that is, to be either altogether happy or altogether tragical,
whereas human affairs do not readily take so decisive a
turn. Then, again, it must work out naturally, correctly, and
in an unforced manner, and yet in one foreseen by nobody.
The same applies to the epic and the romance. It is only
more apparent in the drama, owing to the more compact
nature of the latter, which increases the difficulty.

The ex nihilo nihil fit applies also to the fine arts. Good
painters have real human models to stand for their histo-
rical pictures, and take for their heads real faces drawn
from life, which they thereupon idealize, either according
to their beauty, or their character. Good novelists, as I
believe, do the same; they base the persons of their fic-
tions upon real human beings of their acquaintance, which
serve them as schemata, which they idealize and complete
im accordance with their purposes.
804 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

A romance will be of a so much higher and nobler kind
the more of inward and the less of outward life it portrays,
and this proportion will accompany all gradations of the
romance, as a characteristic sign, from “Tristram Shandy”
down to the roughest and most eventful knight or robber
story. “Tristram Shandy,” indeed, has hardly any action
at all, but how very little has the “New Heloise” and
“Wilhelm Meister”! Even “Don Quixote” has com-
paratively little, and that unimportant action, tending
more particularly to jest; and these four romances are the
crown of the whole department. Let us further consider
the wonderful novels of Jean Paul, and see how much of
inward they make to move on the narrowest foundation of
outward life. Even the romances of Walter Scott have a
considerable overweight of inward over outward life; and
the latter, indeed, is only brought in with the object of
setting the former in motion, while in bad romances it is
there for its own sake. Art consists in the fact, that with
the smallest possible expenditure of outward life, the in-
ward is brought out into the strongest relief, for the in-
ward is properly the object of our interest. The task. of.
the novelist is not to narrate great events, but to make
small ones interesting. :

I confess candidly that the great reputation of the
“Divina Comedia” seems to me exaggerated. The exces-
sive absurdity of the fundamental conception certainly has
great part in this, for in consequence of it, in the “ In-
ferno,” the most repulsive side of the Christian Mythology
is brought vividly before our eyes. Then, again, the ob-
scurity of the style and of the allusions contribute their
share :

Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur, amantque,
Inversis quz sub verbis latitantia cernunt.

At the same time, the often almost laconic terseness and
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 305

energy of the expression, and still more, Dante’s incom-
parable strength of imagination, are in the highest degree
remarkable. By virtue of this, he imparts to the deserip-
tion of impossible things a realistic truth, which is akin to
that of a dream ; for since he can have had no experience
of these things, it would seem as though he must have
dreamt them, in order to be able to paint them with
such life-like and obvious exactness. On the other hand,
what shall we say when, at the close of the eleventh canto
of the “Inferno,” Virgil describes the breaking of the day
and the setting of the stars, forgetting all the while that
he is in hell, and under the earth, and that not before the
close of this section will he guindi uscire a riveder le stelle ?
One finds, again, the same absurdity at the end of the
twentieth canto. Are we to suppose that Virgil carries a
watch, and hence knows what at the moment is going on
in heaven? This seems to me a still more serious lapsus
than the well-known one respecting the ass of Sancho
Panza of which Cervantes allowed himself to be guilty.
The title of the work of Dante is both original and
striking, and scarcely admits of a doubt that it is ironical.
A comedy! Truly the world would be that—a comedy for
a god whose insatiable lust for revenge and studied cruelty
glutted itself in the last act with the endless and purpose-
less torture of the beings which he has wantonly called
into existence, because, forsooth, they had not turned out
according to his mind, and because in their short life
they had done or believed otherwise than as he desired.
As against his unspeakable cruelty, moreover, all the crimes
so severely punished in the “Inferno” would not be worth
talking about; indeed, he himself would be far worse than
all the devils which we encounter in the “ Inferno,” inas-
much as these only act in his service, and by virtue of his
power. Father Zeus, therefore, will hardly covet the honour
of being identified with him without ceremony, as strangely
x
806 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

enough occurs in some places (¢.g., c. 14, v. 70; c. 31, v.
92); and indeed is reduced to absurdity in “Il Purga-
torio,” c. 6, v. 118: ““O sommo Giove, che fosti in terra
per noi crocifisso.” What indeed would Zeus say to it?
& mémo! The Russo-Slav character of the subjection
of Virgil, of Dante, and of everyone to his commands, and
the trembling obedience with which his ukases are every-
where received, is, to the last degree, repulsive. This
slavish spirit is, however (c. 38, v. 109-150), carried so far
by Dante himself in his own person, that he completely di-
vests himself of honour and conscience in one case, which he
notwithstanding relates with pride. Honour and conscience,
namely, count for nothing with him so soon as they inany
way interfere with the cruel decrees of Domeneddio.
Hence the promise firmly and openly given by him, in
order to obtain a confession, to pour a drop of assuagement
into the pain of one of these deliberately-planned and
cruelly-carried-out tortures; after the tortured one has
fulfilled the condition stipulated for by Dante, the latter,
in a manner destitute of honour and conscience, openly and
cynically breaks his promise in majorem Dei gloriam.
This he does, considering that any lessening of the pain
imposed by God, even where, as here, it only consists in
the wiping away of a frozen tear (although it was not ex-
pressly forbidden to him), would nevertheless be altogether
inadmissible, and hence he omits to do it, notwithstanding
the zeal with which only a moment before he had promised
and vowed it. In heaven such things may be the custom,
and may be praiseworthy, I know not, but on earth he who
acted in this way would be termed a rascal. We may see
here, let it be observed by the way, how badly it goes with
any morality which has no other basis than the will of
God, since then, as rapidly as the poles of an electro-
magnet may be changed, evil may become good, and good
evil. The whole “ Inferno” of Dante is, properly speaking,
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 307

an apotheosis of cruelty, and in the last canto but one lack
of honour and conscience is celebrated in an outspoken
manner—

‘That which is true, in every place
I speak with unashamed face.”

For the rest the matter would be, for the created, a
Divina Tragedia, and indeed without any end. Even
though the prelude which precedes it may be here and
there merry, it is nevertheless an altogether vanishing
quantity as against the endless duration of the tragical
part. One can hardly fail to think, that for Dante him-
self a secret satire lurks behind this doubtful world
order, for otherwise it would require a quite peculiar taste
to amuse itself with the painting of monstrous absurdities
and never-ending hangman’s scenes.

For me, my beloved Petrarch goes before all other
Italian poets. In depth and intensity of feeling, and in its
direct expression, which goes to the very heart, no poet in
the world has ever excelled him. Hence his sonnets,
triumphs, and songs are incomparably dearer to me than
the fantastic farces of Ariosto and the frightful trivialities
of Dante. The natural flow of his language, coming
straight from his heart, speaks quite otherwise to me than
the studied, and indeed affected, word-parsimony of Dante.
He has always been the poet of my heart, and will remain
so. That the super-excellent “present day’ undertakes to
speak disparagingly of Petrarch, confirms me in my
opinion. A superfluous confirmation of it may be obtained
by comparing Dante and Petrarch, as it were, in their
domestic attire, that is, in prose, if we place in juxtaposition
the beautiful books, so rich in thought and in truth, of
Petrarch, de vita solitaria, de contemtu mundi, consulatio
utriusque fortune, &c., together with his letters, with the
fruitless and tedious scholasticism of Dante. Finally,
308 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS,

Tasso seems to me not worthy to take his place as a fourth
beside the three great poets of Italy. Let us endeavour as
posterity to be just, even though we are unable to be so
as contemporaries.

That with Homer things always receive the predicates
which pertain to them all round and absolutely, but not
those which stand in any connection, or which have any
analogy, with what is going forward—that, for example, the
Achaians always appear as the armour-clad, the earth is
always termed the life-nourishing, heaven the wide, the
sea the wine-dark—this is a trait of objectivity in which
Homer stands alone. Like nature herself, he leaves the
objects unaffected by human events and moods. Whether
his hearers rejoice or grieve, nature goes her way undis-
turbed. To subjective men, on the other hand, when they
are sad, the whole of nature seems gloomy, &c. But it is
not so with Homer. Amongst the poets of our. time
Goethe is the most objective, Byron the most subjective.
The latter only speaks for himself ; and even in the most
objective styles of poetry, such as the drama and the
Epos, he describes himself in the hero.

Goethe is related to Jean Paul as the positive pole to the
negative.

Goethe’s Egmont is a man who takes life easily and
must suffer for his error. But by way of compensation,
the same character of mind allows him to take death
easily. The people’s scenes in “ Egmont” are the chorus.

Let me be permitted here a conjecture respecting the
masterpiece of Shakespeare, a conjecture which is indeed
very bold, but which I wish to lay before the judgment of
real scholars. In the celebrated monologue, “To be, or
not to be,” is the expression, ‘when we have shuffled off
this mortal coil,” which has been always found obscure
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND.ON ESTHETICS. 309

and puzzling, and never been properly explained. Ought
not “shuttled off” to have originally stood there? This
verb itself does not exist any longer; but the sense would
be, “when we have unravelled this coil of mortality, when
we have worked it off.” The slip of the pen might easily
arise.

In Venice, in the Academy of Arts, there is a picture
under the fresco, painted on linen, which represents the
‘gods as enthroned upon clouds beside golden tables, and on
golden seats, and below, the guests hurled down, despised
and insulted, into the depths of night. Goethe certainly saw
this picture at the time when, on his first Italian journey,
he wrote “Iphigenia.”

History, which I always think of side by side with poetry
as its opposite (ioropovpévov—reronpevor), is for time
what geography is for space. The latter is, therefore, as
little as the former, a science in the proper sense, inasmuch
as it has for its object not universal truths, but only par-
ticular things—respecting which point I refer the reader to
my chief work, vol. ii., chap. xxxviii.

It has always been a favourite study with those who like
to learn something without undergoing the strain demanded
by the sciences properly so called, which bring the intellect
into requisition.

But it is more than ever beloved in our own time,
as proved by the countless history books yearly appearing.
He who, like myself, cannot avoid seeing in all history the
same thing continually,—just as in the kaleidoscope, at
every turn the same things always recur under other con-
ficurations,—will not be able to share this passionate
interest, although he will not blame it. It is only the
attempt of some to make history a part of philosophy,
or indeed to constitute it philosophy itself, in that they
810 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

imagine it can occupy the same place, that is tasteless and
absurd. As an explanation of the special attraction of
history for the greater public of all times, social inter-
course as it is current in the world may be regarded. It
consists, namely, as a rule, in that someone narrates some-
thing, and thereupon someone else narrates something else,
under which condition everyone is certain of the attention
of the rest. As here, so also in history, we see the mind
occupied exclusively with the particular as such. As in
science it raises itself, so also in every elevated conversation
the mind raises itself to the universal. This however does
not deprive history of its value. Human life is so short
and fleeting, and spread over such countless millions of
individuals, who plunge in crowds into the ever open maw
of the monster, oblivion, ever awaiting them, that it is a
very praiseworthy endeavour to save something of it, the
memory of the most important and the most interesting,
the leading events and prominent persons, from the general
shipwreck of the world.

From another point of view one might regard history as
a continuation of zoology, for while with the entire series of
animals the consideration of the species suffices, with man,
on the contrary, because he has individual character, indi-
viduals also, in conjunction with the individual events
which condition them, have to be studied. From this the
essential imperfection of history directly follows, as the
individuals and events are countless and endless. By the
study of them, the sum of that which is to be learnt is in
no wise lessened by all that one has learnt. In all sciences,
properly so called, a completeness of knowledge is at least
to be looked forward to. If the history of China and India
stood open before us, the endlessness of the material, the
mistakenness of the way, would reveal itself, and would
compel the student to see that one must recognize in the
one, the many ; in the single case, the rule; in the know-
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 311

ledge of mankind, the activity of peoples; but not that one
must heap together facts to infinity.

History from one end to the other relates simply of wars,
and the same theme is the subject of all the oldest works
of art, as also of the newest. But the origin of all war is
the desire to thieve; hence Voltaire justly says, Dans
toutes les guerres il ne s’agit que de voler. So soon, namely,
as a people feels an excess of force, it falls upon its neigh-
bours, in order that, instead of living by its own labour, it
may appropriate the result of theirs, be it merely such as
is already existing, or be it that of the future in addition,
to be acquired by subjugating them. This furnishes the
material for the world’s history and its heroic deeds. In
French dictionaries, under the word “gloire,” artistic
and literary fame should first be treated of, and then
under “gloire militaire” there should merely stand voyez
butin.

It would seem in the meantime, as though two very re-
ligious peoples, the Hindoos and the Egyptians, when they
felt an excess of force, did not for the most part employ it
on robber campaigns, or heroic deeds, but on buildings
which defy milleniums, and which make their memory
honourable.

To the essential imperfections of history above indi-
cated must be added, that the historic muse Klio is as
through and through infected with lying as a street pros-
titute is with syphilis. The new critical investigation of
history endeavours, indeed, to cure this, but only over-
comes, by means of its local applications, particular symp-
toms breaking out here and there, with which moreover
much quackery is mixed up to increase the evil. This is
the case more or less with all history—the sacred excepted,
as is obvious. I believe that the events and persons in
history resemble those that have really existed about as
much as the portraits of writers on the title-pages of their
312 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

books do for the most part, the authors themselves ; in
short, that they have only something of the outline, so as
to bear a feeble resemblance, often completely perverted
by one false feature, there often being no likeness at all.

Newspapers are the second hands of history. But the
second hand is mostly not only of baser metal than the
two others, but goes seldom correctly; the so-called ‘“lead-
ing articles” are the the chorus to the drama of contem-
porary events. Exaggeration of every kind is as essential
to journalism as to the dramatic art, for as much | as
possible must be made out of every « occurrence. Hence
all journalists are, by virtue of their handicraft, alarmists;
this is their way of making themselves interesting. They
resemble therein little aos, who when the slightest thing
stirs immediately set up barking loudly. One has accord-
ingly to measure the attention one pays to their alarm
trumpet, so that they may not disturb our digestion, and
we should know once for all that the newspaper is a mag-
nifying-glass, and this even in the best case, for very often
it is nothing more than a mere game of shadows on the
wall.

In Europe the history of the world is even yet accom-
panied by a quite peculiar chronological sun-dial, which in
pictorial representations of events allows us to recognize
every decade at the first glance. It stands under the
leadership of the tailor. (For example, an alleged portrait
of Mozart in his youthful years, displayed at Frankfort in
1856, I at once recognized as ungenuine, because the
costume belonged to a period twenty years earlier.) It is
only in the present decade that it has got disturbed, simply
because our own day does not possess originality enough
in order, like every other, to invent a mode of dress peculiar
to itself, but merely exhibits a masquerade in which
people go about as living anachronisms in all sorts of
costumes of previous periods long ago laid aside. Even
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON STHETICS. 313

the age immediately preceding had such originality as
was necessary to invent the dress-coat.

More closely viewed the matter stands thus. As every
man has a physiognomy in accordance with which we pro-
visionally judge him, so every age has one which is not
less characteristic. For the spirit of every time resembles
a sharp east wind, which blows through everything. Hence
we find its trace in all action, thought, writing, music, and
painting, and in the flourishing of this or that art. It im-
presses its stamp upon anything and everything; thus, for
example, we must have the age of phrases without sense,
as also that of music without melody, and of forms without
end and purpose. At best it is only the thick walls of a
cloister which can prevent the ingress of this east wind,
provided, that is, that it does not blow them down. Hence
therefore the spirit of a time imparts to it its outward
physiognomy. The architectural style always plays the
ground-bass to this ; in accordance therewith all ornaments,
vessels, furniture, implements of every kind, are modelled ;
and lastly, even the costume, together with the manner of
trimming the hair and beard.' The present age, as has
been said. bears upon it the stamp of characterlessness by
its want of originality in all these things. But the most
lamentable thing is, that it has chosen the rough, stupid,
and ignorant Middle Ages chiefly as its model, from which
it occasionally passes over into the time of Francis I. of
France, and even of Louis XIV.

' The beard as a semi-mask ought to be legally prohibited. It
is besides, as an indication of sex in the fore-front of the face,
obscene, and this is why it pleases women. It was always the
barometer of mental culture with the Greeks and Romans. Among
the latter Scipio Africanus was the first who shaved himself (Plin.
N. Hist., 1. vii., c. 59), and under the Antonines the beard ventured
to show itself again ; Charles the Great did not tolerate it ; but in
the Middle Ages it culminated in Henry IV. inclusive. Louis XIV.
abolished it.
314 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

How will its external side, preserved in pictures and
buildings, impress itself upon posterity? Its commercial
demokolaks dub it, with characteristic sounding name,
“modern times,” as if the present «ar éfoxyyy were a
present which had been prepared for by all the past, and
finally attained. With what reverence will posterity regard
our palaces and country-houses, erected in the > most. miser-
able rococo style of the time of Louis XIV.? But they
will scarcely know what to make of the counterfeits and
daguerreotypes of shoeblack-physiognomies with Socratic
beards, and of the mashers in the costume of Jewish
hucksters, which were current in my youth.

To the thorough-going tastelessness of this age may be
reckoned that, in the monuments which are erected to
great men, they are displayed in modern costume. For the
monument is erected to the ideal, not to the real person; to
the hero as such; to the bearer of this or that quality; to
the originator of such works or deeds; not to the man as
he struggled in the world, with all the weaknesses and
faults which belong to our nature clinging to him; and
just as these should not be glorified, so also his coat and
his trousers as he wore them should be as little com-
memorated. But as ideal man let him stand there in
human form, dressed simply in the manner of the ancients,
that is, halfnaked. Thus only is he suitable for sculpture,
which, since it turns upon the mere form, demands the
complete and undeteriorated human form.

And as I am talking of monuments, I will further
observe that it is a striking want of taste, indeed an
absurdity, to place the statue upon a pedestal from ten to
twenty feet high, where no one can ever clearly see it,
especially as it is generally of bronze, that is, blackish.
For seen from a distance it is not distinct, but if one
approaches, it rises so high up, that it has the clear sky
for a background, which dazzles the eye. In the Italian
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON ESTHETICS. 315

towns, especially in Florence and Rome, the statues stand
in great number in the open places and streets, but all on
quite low pedestals, in order that they may be distinctly
seen; even the colossal statues on Monte Caballo stand on
a low pedestal. Thus the good taste of the Italians main-
tains itself here. The Germans, on the contrary, are fond
of a high tradesman’s stand, with reliefs in illustration of
the hero represented.

My opinion on the collection of paintings of the old
Netherland school of Boisserée, now in Munich, may find a
place at the conclusion of this esthetic chapter.

A genuine work of art does not require, in order to be
enjoyable, the preamble of a history of art. With no class
of paintings, however, is this so much the case, as with
those here in question. We shall at all events first rightly
estimate their value when we have seen what painting was
before Johann van Eyck,—the style, namely, which pro-
ceeded from Byzantium, that is, on golden ground in
distemper, the figures without life and motion, stiff and
rigid, with massive aureoles containing the name of the
saint. Van Eyck as a real genius returned to nature, gave
to_the to the paintings a background, to the figures a life-like
attitude, demeanour, and grouping, to the physiognomies
expression and truth, and to the folds accuracy. In addi-
tion to this, he introduced perspective, and attained in
technical execution generally the highest possible perfec-
tion. His successors remained partly on this path, as
Schoreel and Hemling (or Memling), and partly returned
to the old absurdities. Even he himself was obliged to
retain as much of these absurdities as was, according to
ecclesiastical opinion, obligatory ; he had, for instance, still
to make aureoles and massive rays of light. But one sees
he has eliminated as much as he could. His relation
accordingly to the spirit of the time is always a fighting
316 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

one, just as with Schoreel and Hemling. They are con-
sequently to be judged of with reference to their time.
The latter is responsible for the fact that their productions
are chiefly pointless, and often tasteless, always stale and ec-
clesiastical, as for instance “ The Three Kings,’ ‘‘ The Dying
Virgin,” “St. Christopher,” “St. Luke painting the
Virgin Mary,” &. In the same way it is the fault of
their time that their figures hardly ever have a free and
true human attitude and mien, but throughout make the
ecclesiastical gestures, to wit, the forced, studied, humble,
crawling movements of the beggar. To this must be added,
that the above painters did not know the antique; and
hence their figures seldom have beautiful faces, mostly
ugly ones, and never beautiful limbs. The perspective of
the atmosphere is wanting ; the perspective of the line is
for the most part correct. They have all drawn from
nature, as it was known to them, for which reason the
expression of their faces is always true and honest, but
never has much point; and not one of their saints has a
trace of that sublime and preternatural expression on the
countenance, of true holiness, which the Italians alone
give—before all, Raphael, and Correggio in his earlier
pictures.

One might impartially criticise the paintings in question
thus: they have for the most part great technical per-
fection, in the representation of the real, of heads no less
than of drapery and material, almost as much as was
attained long afterwards, in the seventeenth century, by
the Netherland school proper. On the other hand, the
noblest expression, the highest beauty, and the truest
grace, remain foreign to them. But since these are the
end to which technical perfection is related as means, they
are not art-works of the first rank ; indeed they are not un-
conditionally to be enjoyed, for the imperfections adduced,
together with the pointless subjects, and the completely
ON THE BEAUTIFUL AND ON XSTHETICS. 317

ecclesiastical gestures, have always first of all to be de-
ducted, and set to the account of the time.

Their chief service, although only with Van Eyck and his
best pupils, consists in their illusive imitation of reality,
attained through a clear glance into nature, and an iron
industry in elaboration, as also in the vividness of their
colours, a service exclusively peculiar to them. With such
colours no painting has been done either before them or
after them; they are burning, and display the highest
energy of colour; hence these pictures, after well-nigh four
hundred years, look as if they were painted yesterday. If
only Raphael and Correggio had known these colours! But
they remained a mystery of the school, and are therefore
lost. They ought to be chemically investigated.
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF.

S the richest library unarranged is not so useful as a
very moderate one well arranged, so the greatest
amount of erudition, if it has not been elaborated by one’s
own thought, is worth much less than a far smaller
amount that has been well thought over. For it is
through the combination on all sides of that which one
knows, through the comparison of every truth with every
other, that one assimilates one’s own knowledge and gets it
into one’s power. One can only think out what one knows ;
hence one should learn something; but one only knows
what one has thought out.

One can only apply oneself of set purpose to reading and
learning, but not to thinking proper. The latter must,
that is, be stimulated and maintained, like fire by a
draught of air, by some interest in the subject itself, which
may be either a purely objective or a merely subjective
one. The latter is only present in the case of our personal
interest, but the former only for thinking heads by nature,
for which thought is as natural as breath, but which are
very rare. For this reason it is so little the case with most
scholars.

The distinction between the effect which thinking for
oneself, and that which reading has upon the mind, is
inconceivably great, hence it perpetually increases the
original diversity of heads, by virtue of which a man is
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 319

driven to the one or to the other. Reading imposes
thoughts upon the mind which are as foreign and hetero-
geneous to the direction and mood which it has for the
moment, as the seal is to the wax on which it impresses its
stamp. The mind suffers thereby an entire compulsion
from without, to think now this, now that, for which it has
no desire, and no capacity. In thinking for itself, on the
other hand, it follows its own natural impulse, as either
external circumstance or some recollection has determined
it for the moment. Perceptual surroundings, namely, do
not impress one definite thought upon the mind as reading
does, but merely give it material and occasion to think that
which is according to its nature and present disposition.
Hence much reading deprives the mind of all elasticity, as
a weight continually pressing upon it does a spring, and
the most certain means of never having any original
thoughts is to take a book in hand at once, at every spare
moment. This practice is the reason why scholarship
makes most men more unintelligent and stupid than they
are by nature, and deprives their writings of all success ;
they are, as Pope says—

‘« For ever reading, never to be read.”
Pope, ‘“‘ Dunciad,” iii., 194.

Scholars are those who have read in books; but thinkers,
geniuses, enlighteners of the world, and benefactors of the
human race, are those who have directly read in the book
of the world.

At bottom it is only our own fundamental conceptions
which have truth and life, for it is they alone that one
thoroughly and correctly understands. Alien thoughts
that we read are the remnants of another’s meal, the cast-
off clothes of a strange guest.

The alien thought arising within us is related to our own
320 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

as the impression in stone of a plant of the early world is
to the blooming plant of spring.

Reading is a mere surrogate for original thought. In
reading, one allows one’s own thoughts to be guided by
another in leading strings. Besides, many books are only
good for showing how many false paths there are, and how
seriously one may miss one’s way if one allows oneself to
be guided by them; but he whom genius guides, he, that is,
who thinks for himself, thinks of free will, thinks correctly
—he has the compass to find out the right way. One should
only read when the source of original thoughts fails, which
is often enough the case even with the best heads. Butto
scare away one’s own original thoughts for the sake of
taking a book in the hand is a sin against the Holy Ghost.
In this case, one resembles a man who runs away from free
nature in order to look at a herbarium, or to contemplate
a beautiful landscape in an engraving.

Even if sometimes one may find with ease in a book
a truth or an insight already given, which one has worked
out slowly, and with much trouble, by one’s own thinking
and combining; it is yet worth a hundred times more
when one has attained it through one’s original thought.
Only then does it become as integral part, as living
member, one with the whole system of our thoughts ; only
then does it stand in complete and firm cohesion with them,
is understood in all its grounds and consequences, bears
the colour, the shade, the stamp of our whole mode of
thought, and this because it has come at the precise time
that the need for it was present, and therefore sits firmly,,
secure from dispossession. Here accordingly Goethe’s ee |

‘* What thou hast inherited from thy fathers
Acquire it, in order to possess it,”

finds its most perfect application and explanation.
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 321

self-thinker, namely, learns the authorities for his opinions
afterwards, when they serve merely to confirm him in them
and for his own strengthening. The book-philosopher, on
the other hand, starts from them, in that he constructs
a whole for himself out of the alien opinions he has read
up, which then resembles an automaton that has been put
together of foreign material, while the former resembles a
living man. For in this case it has arisen like the living
man, since the outer world has impregnated the thinking
mind which has carried it, and given it birth.

Truth that has only been learnt cleaves to us like a limb
that has been stuck on—a false tooth, a waxen nose, or at
best like a genuine one of alien flesh. But that which has
been acquired by original thought resembles the natural
limb ; it alone really belongs to us. On this rests the dis-
tinction between the thinker and the mere scholar. Hence
the intellectual acquirement of the self-thinker is ke a fine
painting, which stands out life-like with accurate light
and shade, well-balanced tone, and complete harmony of
colour. The intellectual acquirement of the mere scholar,
on the contrary, resembles a large palette full of bright
colours, systematically arranged indeed, but without har-
mony, cohesion, and significance.

Reading means thinking with an alien head, not one’s
own. But to original thought, from which a coherent
whole, even if not a strictly rounded-off system, seeks
to develop itself, nothing is more injurious than too
great an influx of foreign thoughts through continual
reading. For these, each sprung from another mind,
belonging to another system, bearing another colour, never
of themselves flow together to form a whole of thought, of
knowledge, of insight, and conviction, but rather set up
a Babylonion confusion of tongues in the head, and rob the
mind which has been filled with them of all clear insight,

Y
322 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

and thus almost disorganize it. This state is noticeable
with many scholars, and the result is that they are behind
many unlearned persons in healthy understanding, accurate
judgment, and practical tact, the latter having always
subordinated to and incorporated with their own thought
what has come to them from without, through experience,
conversation, and a little reading. The scientific thinker
does this in a greater degree. Although he needs much
knowledge, and therefore must read much, his mind is
nevertheless strong enough to master all this, to assimilate
it, to incorporate it into the system of his thoughts, and so
to subordinate it to the organically coherent whole of a
magnificent insight, which is always growing. In this, his
own thinking, like the ground bass of the organ, perpetually
dominates all, and is never drowned by foreign tones, as is
the case with merely poly-historical heads, in which, as
it were, musical fragments from all keys run into one
another, and the fundamental note is no more to be heard.

People who have occupied their life with reading, and
who have derived their wisdom from books, resemble those
who have acquired a correct knowledge of a country from
many descriptions of travel. Such persons can give infor-
mation about much, but at bottom they have no coherent,
clear, fundamental knowledge of the structure of the
country. Those, on the contrary, who have occupied their
life with thought, resemble persons who have themselves
been in that country. They alone know, properly speaking,
what is in question, since they know the things there in
their connection, and are truly at home in them.

The ordinary book-philosopher is related to the self-
thinker as an historical investigator to an eye-witness.
The latter speaks from his own direct apprehension of the
matter. Hence all self-thinkers agree in the last resort,
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 323

and their diversity only arises from that of their stand-
point ; and where this does not alter anything they all say
the same. For they only put forward what they have ob-
jectively apprehended. I have often found propositions
which, on account of their paradoxical nature, I only brought
before the public with hesitation, to my agreeable surprise
repeated in the old works of great men. The book-philo-
sopher, on the contrary, reports what this one has said, and
what that one has thought, and what another has objected,
&c. This he compares, weighs, criticises, and thus seeks to
get at the truth of things, a point in which he strongly
resembles the critical historian. Thus, for example, he will
institute investigations as to whether Leibnitz had ever
been for a time at any period a Spinozist, &c. Conspicuous
instances of what is here said are furnished to the curious
admirer in Herbart’s ‘“ Analytical Explanation of Moral
and Natural Right,” as also in his “ Letters on Freedom.”
One might well wonder at the considerable trouble which
such a one gives himself, for it seems as though, if he would
only fix his eye on the subject itself, he would soon, by a
little self-thought, attain to the goal. But as to this, there
is one small hindrance, namely that it does not depend on our
will. One can always sit down and read, but not always
think as well. It is, namely, with thoughts as with men,
one cannot always have them called up at one’s pleasure,
but must wait till they come. Thought on a subject must
make an appearance of itself by a happy, harmonious con-
currence of the outward occasion with the inward mood
and interest ; and it is precisely this which will never occur to
the foregoing persons. The above finds its explanation even
in those thoughts which concern our personal interest. If
we under certain circumstances have to form a decision, we
cannot well sit down at any time we choose, think over the
reasons, and then decide; for often our reflections on the
subject will then precisely not hold, but wander to other
324 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

things, for which sometimes even the disinclination for the
circumstance is responsible. We should not therefore
attempt to force it, but wait till the mood comes of itself; it
will often do so unexpectedly and repeatedly, and every
different mood at a different time throws a new light on
the subject. This slow procedure it is which is understood
as maturity of judgment. For the thought must be dis-
tributed ; much that hasbefore been overlooked will thereby
be clear to us, and the disinclination will thereby be lost,
since things more clearly kept in view appear in general
much more endurable. In the same way, in theoretical de-
partments, the right time has to be waited for, and even
the greatest mind is not always capable of thinking for
itself. It will do well therefore to utilize the remainder of
the time for reading, which is, as already said, a surrogate
of original thought, and brings material to the mind, in
that another thinks for us, albeit invariably in a manner
which is not our own. For this reason one ought not
to read too much, in order that the mind may not become
accustomed to the surrogate, and thereby forget the thing
itself; in other words, that it shall not accustom itself to an
already trodden path, and by going along an alien track of
thought become estranged from its own. Least of all
ought one, for the sake of reading, to withdraw oneself en-
tirely from the view of the real world. For the occasion
and the disposition to original thought occur incomparably
more often here than in reading. For the perpetual, the
real, in its originality and power, is the natural object of the
thinking mind, and is able most easily to move it deeply.
If these considerations are correct, we shall not wonder
that the self-thinker and the book-philosopher are easily
to be recognized by their delivery ; the former by the stamp
of earnestness, directness, and originality, in the idiosyn-
crasy of all his thoughts and expressions; the latter, on
the contrary, in that everything is pieced together at
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 325

second hand, out of traditional notions and stuff that has
been raked up, and is thus flat and dull, like the impression
of an impression. His style, consisting of conventional,
banal phrases and current tags, resembles a small state
whose circulation consists solely in foreign money, because
it does not itself coin.

Mere experience can replace thought just as little as
reading. Pure empiricism is related to thinking as eatin g
is to digestion and assimilation. When the former boasts
that it alone, through its discoveries, has furthered human
knowledge, it is as though the mouth should boast that the
maintenance of the body was its work alone.

The works of all really competent heads distinguish
themselves from the rest by their character of decisiveness
and definiteness, together with the distinctness and clear-
ness springing therefrom, for such heads always know de-
finitely and distinctly what they want to express, be it
in prose, in verse, or in sounds. This decisiveness and
clearness is wanting in the rest, and in this they may be
at once recognized.

The characteristic sign of minds of the first order is the
immediateness of all their judgments. All that they bring
forward is the result of their own thinking, and every-
where proclaims itself as such by its delivery. They accor-
dingly, like princes, have an imperial immediacy in the
empire of mind; the rest are all mediatized, as may be
easily seen from their style, which has no original stamp.

Every true self-thinker thus resembles pro tanto a
monarch; he is immediate, and recognizes no one above
himself. His judgments, like the decisions of a monarch,
spring from his own supreme power, proceed directly from
himself. For just as little as the monarch does he accept
commands and authorizations, but lets nothing obtain that
326 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

he has not confirmed himself. The common herd of heads,
on the other hand, entangled in all sorts of opinions,
authorities, and prejudices, resemble the people who silently
obey his law and mandate.

Those persons who are so zealous and hasty in deciding
most questions by the quotation of authorities, are glad
when, instead of their own understanding and insight,
which is wanting, they can bring into the field someone
else’s. Their number is legion, for as Seneca says: “ Unus
quisque mavult credere, quam judicare.” In their contro-
versies, authorities are the universally chosen weapons.
With them they attack each other, and he who happens to
be mixed up in them is badly advised if he attempt to de-
fend himself with reasons and arguments. For against
these weapons they are horned Siegfrieds, dipped in the
flood of incapacity to think and to judge. They will
therefore hold up their authorities before him as an argu-
mentum ad verecundiam, and then cry Victoria !

In the realm of reality, however beautiful, happy, and
cheerful it may happen to be, we move ourselves con-
tinuously under the influence of an oppression, which has
ceaselessly to be overcome; while in the realm of thought
we are incorporeal spirits, without weight and without
trouble. There is, therefore, no happiness on earth like
that which a beautiful and fruitful mind in a happy hour
finds in itself.

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a loved
one. We deem that we shall never forget this thought,
and that this loved one can never become indifferent to us.
But out of sight, out of mind! The most beautiful thought
runs the risk of being irrevocably forgotten if it ig not
ON THINKING FOR ONESELF. 827

written down, and the loved one to be torn from us if she
has not been wedded.

There are many thoughts which have a value for him
who thinks them, but few only among them which possess
the power of acting through re-percussion or reflection,
that is, after they have been written down, to gain the
reader’s interest.

But as regards this, that only has true worth which one
has in the first instance thought out for oneself. One
may divide thinkers into such as at first think for
themselves, and such as at once think for others. The
former are the genuine self-thinkers in the double sense of
the word ; they are the true philosophers. For they alone
take the matter seriously. The pleasure and happiness of
their existence, indeed, consists in thinking. The others
are the sophists ; they wish to appear and seek their happi-
ness in that which they hope thereby to obtain from others ;
herein lies their seriousness. To which of these two classes
a writer belongs, may be easily recognized by his whole
style and manner. Lichtenberg is an example of the first
kind, Herder already belongs to the second.

If one considers how great and how near us is the pro-
blem of existence, of this ambiguous, tormented, fleeting,
dream-like existence; so great and so near, that as soon
as one is aware of it, all other problems and purposes are
overshadowed and hidden by it; and if one keeps before
one’s eyes how all men, with few and rare exceptions, are
never clearly conscious of this problem, seeming indeed not
to be possessed of it, but to trouble themselves rather
about anything else than about it, and are concerned
only for the present day, and for the scarcely longer span
of their personal future, either expressly declining the
328 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

problem in question, or willingly contenting themselves in
respect of it with any system of popular metaphysics ; when
one, I say, well considers this, one might almost be of the
opinion that man could only in a very general sense be
called a thinking being, and one might wonder at no trait of
thoughtlessness or simplicity, but rather recognize that
the intellectual scope of the average man, although it
indeed transcends that of the animal (unconscious of its
whole existence, future and past, and living, as it were, a
single present), but yet not so incalculably removed as
one is accustomed to imagine.

It is in accordance with the above, that in conversa-
tion one finds the thoughts of most men clipped as short
as chopped straw, and therefore not admitting of any
longer thread being spun out of them.

It would be impossible, moreover, if this world were
peopled by merely thinking beings, that noise of every
kind should be allowed and given such unlimited scope,
even the most horrible and purposeless. If nature had
intended man for thinking, she would never have given
him ears, or would at least, as with the bats, whom I envy
on this account, have furnished him with air-tight covers.
But he, like the rest, is in truth a poor creature, whose
powers are merely directed to the maintenance of his exis-
tence, for which reason he always requires open ears, which
unsolicited, and by night as well as by day, announce the
approach of the persecutor.
ON READING AND BOOKS.

GNORANCE first degrades a man when it is met with

in company with riches. The poor man is crushed by

his poverty and distress; his work takes the place of

knowledge with him, and occupies his thoughts. The rich,

on the contrary, who are ignorant, live merely for their

lusts, and resemble brutes, as may daily be seen. To this

is to be added further, the reproach that they have not

used their riches and leisure for that which gives them
their greatest value.

When we read, another thinks for us; we merely repeat
his mental process. It is as when in learning to write
the pupil follows with his pen the strokes that have been
made in pencil by the teacher. In reading, accordingly,
we are relieved of the greater part of the work of thinking.
Hence the perceptible relief when we pass from the occu-
pation of our own thoughts to reading. But while we
read, our head is, properly speaking, only the arena of
alien thoughts. Hence it is, that he who reads very much
and almost the whole day, amusing himself in the intervals
of his reading with thoughtless pastime, gradually loses
the capacity even to think, just as one who always rides
at last forgets how to walk. But such is the case with
many scholars; they have read themselves stupid. For
perpetual reading recurred to immediately at every free
moment cripples the mind more than perpetual work with
330 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

the hands, for with the latter one can always follow one’s
own thoughts. Just as a spring by the continuous pres-
sure of a foreign body loses its elasticity, so does the mind
through the continuous pressure of foreign thoughts. Just
as one injures the stomach by too much aliment, and
thereby damages the whole body, so the mind may be
clogged and suffocated by too much intellectual nourish-
ment. For the more one reads the fewer traces does what
is read leave on the mind. It is like a tablet on which
many things have been written over one another. It never
comes to rumination therefore; but it is only by this
that one makes what one reads one’s own. If one reads
incessantly, without afterwards thinking further upon it,
it does not take root, and gets for the most part lost. For
it is precisely the same with the intellectual nourishment
as with the corporeal; scarcely the fiftieth part of what
we take is assimilated, the rest passes off through evapora-
tion, respiration, or otherwise.

In addition to all this, thoughts reduced to paper are
nothing more than the footprint of a wayfarer in the sand;
one sees well enough the way which he has taken, but in
order to know what he saw on the way we must use our
own eyes.

There is no literary quality, as, for example, persuasive
power, wealth of imagery, the gift of comparison, bold-
ness, or bitterness, or brevity, or grace, or facility of
expression ; or again, wit, striking contrasts, a laconic
style, naiveté, &c., which we can acquire by reading authors
who possess such qualities. But we may nevertheless
call forth thereby these qualities in ourselves if we already
possess them as disposition, that is, in potentia, and bring
them to our consciousness ; we can see all that is to be done
with them, we can be strengthened in the inclination, or
ON READING AND BOOKS, 331

indeed in the courage to use them; we can judge by
instances of the effect of their application, and so learn the
right employment of them, after which we assuredly first
possess them in actu. This then is the only way in which
reading educates to writing, inasmuch as it teaches us the
use we can make of our own natural gifts, always suppos-
ing of course that we possess these; without them, on the
contrary, we can learn nothing by reading but cold, dead
mannerisms, and become arid imitators.

As the strata of the earth preserve the living beings of
past epochs in their order, so the shelves of libraries
preserve in their order past errors and their expositions,
which, like the former, in their time, were living enough
and made much noise, but exist now stiff and petrified,
only to be contemplated by the literary paleontologist.

Xerxes, according to Herodotus, wept at the sight of
his countless host, when he thought that of all these not
one would be in life after a hundred years. Who would
not weep at the sight of a thick catalogue, when he con-
siders that of all these books, after ten years, none will any
longer be alive ?

In literature it is not otherwise than in life. Wherever
one turns, one encounters immediately the incorrigible
common herd of humanity present everywhere in legions,
fillmg everything and defiling everything, like flies in
summer. Hence the number of bad books, those rank
weeds of literature, which withdraw the nourishment from
the wheat and choke it. They absorb, namely, the time,
the money, the attention of the public, which belong of
right to the good books and their noble purposes, while
they themselves are merely written with the intention of
bringing in money or procuring places; hence they are not
332 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

merely useless, but positively injurious. Nine-tenths of
our whole modern literature has no other purpose than to
swindle the public of a few thalers out of its pocket.
Author, publisher, and reviewer are in a conspiracy to do
this.

It isa mean and base, but not inconsiderable trick, which
the litterateurs, bread-and-butter writers and scribblers,
have succeeded in playing off on the good taste and the
true culture of the period, in that they have brought
things so far as to have the whole elegant world in lead-
ing-strings, so that the latter has been condemned to
read a tempo, to wit, that all must read the same thing,
and that the newest, in order to have material for conver-
sation in its circles. For to this end serve bad novels
and similar productions from once celebrated pens, as
formerly those of Spindler, Bulwer, Eugéne Sue, &c. But
what can be more miserable than the fate of such a belle-
tristic public, which deems itself in duty bound to read,
always to read, the latest scribblings of the most ordinary
heads who merely write for money, and are therefore
invariably to be had in crowds, and, in consequence, to
know the works of the rare and deep-thinking minds of all
times and countries merely by name! The belletristic
daily press is especially a cunningly devised plan to rob
the esthetic public of the time which it should devote for
the sake of its culture to the genuine productions in this
department, in order that it may accrue to the daily
twaddlings of these everyday minds.

Hence, in respect of our reading, the art not to read is
extremely important. It consists in that, what at all times
occupies the greater public, should for this very reason not
be taken in hand, as, for instance, political or ecclesiastical
pamphlets, novels, poems, &c., and this notwithstanding
that they make much noise, and reach many editions in
their first and last year of life. But rather let us remember
ON READING AND BOOKS. 333

that he who writes for fools will always find a large public,
and let us turn the always comparatively short time we
have for reading exclusively to the works of the great
minds of all times and peoples, which tower above the rest
of humanity, and which the voice of fame indicates as such.
These only really educate and instruct. We can never
read the bad too little, nor the good too often ; bad books
are intellectual poison, they destroy the mind. Because
people, instead of reading the best of all times, only read
the newest, writers remain in the narrow circle of circu-
lating ideas, and the age sinks ever deeper into the slough
of its own filth.

There are at all times two literatures which go along a
parallel course tolerably independent of each other ; areal,
and a merely apparent. The former grows to be enduring
literature, carried on by persons who live for science or
poetry ; it goes its way seriously and quietly, but with
exceeding slowness; produces in Europe scarcely a dozen
works in a century, which works however endure. The
other, carried on by persons who live on science or poetry,
goes ina gallop, amid the great noise and applause of those
interested, and brings yearly many thousand works to
market. But after a few years one asks, Where are they?
Where is their so early and so loud fame? One may
therefore designate the latter as the floating, the former as
the standing literature.

In the history of the world, half a century is always con-
siderable, since its material is always flowing on, inasmuch
as something is always happening. In the history of
literature, on the other hand, the same period of time is
often not to be reckoned at all, since nothing has hap-
pened, for clumsy attempts do not concern it. One is, in
this case, where one was fifty years before.

In order to make this clear, let us view the progress of
334 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

knowledge in the human race under the figure of a plane-
tary orbit. Let us then represent the deviations which it
mostly acquires after every important progress, by Ptole-
maic epicycles, after passing through each of which it is
again where it was before the deviation began. The great
heads, however, which really lead the race farther along
this planetary orbit, do not participate in the recurring
epicycle. From this is to be explained why the fame of
posterity is generally paid for by the loss of the applause
of contemporaries, and vice versé. Such an epicycle is, for
example, the philosophy of Fichte and Schelling, crowned
at its close by the Hegelian caricature of it. This epicycle
began from the last circle described by Kant, which I have
since again resumed in order to carry it farther. But in
the meantime the above sham philosophers, together with
sundry others, have passed through their epicycle, which is
now just completed, the public which has gone with them
having become aware that it finds itself precisely where it
was at starting.

With this progress of things is connected the fact that
we see the scientific, literary, and artistic spirit of the
age make a declaration of bankruptcy about every thirty
years. During such a period, the recurring errors have so
increased, that they collapse under the weight of their
absurdity, and at the same time the opposition to them
has strengthened. The position is now reversed; there
often follows now an error in the opposite direction. To
show this course of things in its periodical return would
be the correct pragmatical material of literary history, but
with that the latter troubles itself little. The data of
such periods, moreover, are, on account of their comparative
shortness, often difficult to bring together from distant
ages; and hence one can observe the matter most con-
veniently in one’s own age. If one requires an illustration
from the real sciences, one might take Werner’s “ Geology
ON READING AND BOOKS. 335

of Neptune.” But I stand by the illustration already given,
which lies nearest to us. There followed in German philo-
sophy upon the brilliant period of Kant, another imme-
diately after, in which the endeavour was not to convince
but to impress; instead of being deep and clear, to be bril-
liant and hyperbolical, but especially to be incomprehen-
sible; indeed, instead of seeking the truth, to intrigue. In
this way philosophy could make no progress. Finally, there
came the bankruptcy of this entire school and method.
For in Hegel and his consorts, the barefacedness of non-
sense on the one side, and of unconscientious glorification
on the other, together with the obvious intention of the
whole edifying procedure, reached such a colossal magni-
tude, that at last the eyes of all were opened to the whole
charlatanry ; and, as in consequence of certain disclosures,
protection from above was withdrawn from the concern, so
was also the applause. The Fichtian and Schellingian ante-
cedents of this most miserable of all philosophizings that
has ever been, were dragged by it into the abyss of dis-
credit. Thereby appears the complete philosophical in-
competence of Germany, during the first half of the cen-
tury following upon Kant, and yet, notwithstanding, we
boast in the face of foreign nations of the philosophical
gifts of the Germans, especially since an English writer
has had the malicious irony to call them a nation of
thinkers.

But he who desires to have confirmation from the
history of art of the general theory of epicycles here put
forward, need only consider the flourishing school of
sculpture of Bernini, in the last century, especially in its
French development, which represents, instead of antique
beauty, common nature, and instead of antique simplicity
and grace, French ball-room etiquette. It became bank-
rupt when, after Winckelmann’s criticism, there followed
the return to the school of the ancients. The first quarter
336 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

of this century again furnishes a confirmation from
painting, since it regarded the art as a mere means and
instrument of medieval religiosity, and hence chose eccle-
siastical subjects for its exclusive theme. These were
now treated by painters who lacked the true serious-
ness of that belief, but who, nevertheless, in consequence
of the delusion in question, took as models Francesco
Francia, Pietro Perrugino, Angelo da Fiesole, and similar
painters, and valued these even more highly than the
really great masters who followed them. In connection
with this craze, and because an analogous attempt had
made itself apparent at the same time in poetry, Goethe
wrote the parable ‘‘ Priest-play.” The latter school was
thereupon seen to be based on whims, became bank-
rupt, and there followed upon it the return to nature,
announcing itself in genre pictures, and scenes from life of
every kind, even though at times they ran into the common-
place.

In accordance with the course of human progress de-
scribed, is literwry-history, which is for the most part a
catalogue of a cabinet of abortions. The spirit in which
these preserve themselves the longest is swine-leather.
On the other hand, one does not require to seek for the
few successful births. They remain living, and one en-
counters them everywhere in the world, where they go
about immortal, in an ever-fresh youth. They alone con-
stitute the real literature referred to in the preceding
paragraph, a literature of whose history, poor in persona-
lities, we learn from youth upwards from all educated
persons, and not first of all from compendiums. Against
the monomania for reading literary history dominant now-
a-days, in order to be able to gossip about everything,
without properly knowing anything, I recommend an
extremely readable passage from Lichtenberg, vol. ii,
p. 302, of the old edition.
ON READING AND BOOKS. 337

I could wish, however, that someone would attempt once
in a way a tragical literary-history, in which he would de-
scribe how the different nations, each of which places its
highest prize in the great writers and artists whom it has
to show, have treated them during their lives. In this he
would bring before our eyes that endless struggle which
the good and genuine of all times and countries has had to
wage against the mistaken and bad which is always domi-
nant ; the martyrdom of almost alltrue enlighteners of man-
kind, of almost all great masters, in every department and
art, would be described ; he would bring before us how they,
with few exceptions, have languished without recognition,
without interest, without disciples, in poverty and misery,
while fame, honour, and riches were the lot of the un-
worthy in their calling ; how, in short, it has gone with
them, as with Esau, who hunted and killed game for his
father, while Jacob disguised in his cloak was at home
stealing his father’s blessing ; how, nevertheless, notwith-
standing all this, love for their cause kept them upright,
till at last the bitter struggle of such an educator of the
human race was accomplished, the undying laurel beckoned
to him, and the hour struck, which meant that for him
also—

“The heavy armour vanishes to a toy ;
Short is the sorrow, endless is the joy.”
ON WOMEN.

ETTER than Schiller’s well-meditated poem, “The
Dignity of Woman,” effective though it be by means
of antithesis and contrast, these few words of Jouy’s express
in my opinion, the true praise of women: ‘Sans les femmes,
le commencement de notre vie serait privé de secours, le miliew
de plaisir, et la fin de consolation.” Byron expresses the
same more pathetically in his “Sardanapalus”’ (act 1,
scene 2)—
“The very first
Of human life must spring from woman’s breast ;
Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quench’d by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman’s hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them.”

Both indicate the correct point of view as to the value of
women.

The very look of the female form teaches us that woman
is made neither for great intellectual nor corporeal labours.
She bears the guilt of life, not in doing, but in suffering;
in the pains of childbirth, the care for the child, subordi-
nation to the man, for whom she ought to be a patient and
cheerful companion. The severest sorrows, joys, and mani-
festations of power do not fall to her lot; but her life
should flow on more quietly, more insignificantly, and
more mildly than that of the man, without its being essen-
tially more happy or more unhappy.
ON WOMEN. 339

As nurses and educators of our first childhood, women
are suited, precisely in that they are themselves childish,
simple, and short-sighted, in a word, are their whole life—
grown-up children—a kind of middle step between the
child and the man, who is the true human being. Only
look at a girl, how for days together she plays with a
child, dances and sings with it, and think what a man
with the best intentions could accomplish in her place.
Nature has destined the girl to produce what in a dramatic
sense is called a startling effect, inasmuch as it has fur-
nished her for a few years with superabundant beauty,
fascination, and fullness, at the cost of her whole remaining
lifetime, in order that during these years she may be able to
conquer the imagination of a man to the extent that he shall
be so far carried away as to honourably undertake in some
form or shape the care of her for life ; a step for which mere
reasonable deliberation seems to give no adequate security.
Nature has accordingly armed the woman, like every other
creation of hers, with the weapons and instruments which
she requires for the assurance of her subsistence, and at
the time she requires it, a course in which she has pro-
ceeded with her usual economy. For as the female ant
after copulation loses the henceforth superfluous and, in-
deed, as regards breeding, dangerous wings, so after one or
two childbeds does the woman generally lose her beauty,
and probably for the same reason.

In accordance with the above, young girls regard their
domestic or business avocations in their hearts as a sub-
ordinate matter, or even as a mere joke. They deem love,
its conquests, and what stands in connection with them,
such as toilette, dance, &c., to be their only serious
calling.

The nobler and the more perfect a thing is, by so much
the later and more slowly does it attain to maturity. The
840 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

man hardly reaches the maturity of his reason and intellec-
tual powers before his eight-and-twentieth year, the woman
with her eighteenth. But she has a reason in accordance,
a very circumscribed one. Hence women remain their
whole life long, children, never see more than what is
nearest to them, cling to the present time, take the appear-
ance of things for the reality, and prefer trivialities to the
most important subjects. Reason is that, namely, by virtue
of which man does not, like the animal, live merely in the
present, but casts his eye over and considers the past and the
future, whence arises his foresight, his care, and his frequent
depression. The woman, in consequence of her weaker
intellect, participates less in the advantages, as in the dis-
advantages, which this brings with it. She is rather an in-
tellectual myope whose intuitive understanding sees dis-
tinctly what is near, but has a narrow range of vision, which
does not embrace the distant. Hence all that is absent,
past and future, affects women much more feebly than
ourselves, whence arises the tendency to extravagance so
much more frequent with them, and sometimes approach-
ing insanity. Women think in their hearts the destiny of
men to be to earn money, while their own is to get through
it, if possible during the lifetime of the man, at all events
after his death. That the man gives over to them his
earnings for housekeeping, strengthens them in this belief.
Notwithstanding the many disadvantages which it brings
with it, it has nevertheless the good side, that the woman
is more absorbed in the present than ourselves, and there-
fore enjoys it better, if it is at all endurable, from which
circumstance the special cheerfulness of woman proceeds,
and makes her suited to the recreation, and, in case of
need, consolation, of the man burdened with care.

In difficult crises, to take women into counsel, in the
manner of the ancient Germans, is by no means unad-
visable ; for their way of apprehending things is quite
ON WOMEN. 341

different from ours, more especially in that they like to
go the shortest way to the goal, and generally keep in
view what lies nearest them, which we, just because it
is immediately under our nose, generally overlook, in which
case we have need to be led back to it, in order to re-
gain the near and simple view. To this may be added
that women are decidedly more objective than we are, and
thus see no more in things than is really there; while
we, when our passions are excited, easily magnify the
existent, or add to it what is imaginary.

We may trace to the same source the fact, that women
have more pity, and therefore show more human love and
sympathy for the unhappy, than men ; while in the matter
of justice, honesty, and conscientiousness, they are behind
them. For in consequence of their weak intellect, the
actual, the perceptible, the immediately real, exercises a
power over them against which abstract ideas, permanent
maxims, firm determinations, consideration for the past
and the future, for the absent and the distant, can seldom
accomplish much. They have therefore the first and
most essential requisite of virtue, but they lack the
secondary and often necessary instrument. One might
compare them in this respect to an organism which
possessed indeed the liver but not the gall-bladder. I
refer the reader as to this to § 17 of my ‘ Treatise on
the Foundation of Morality.” In accordance with the
foregoing we find injustice as the fundamental failing of
the female character. It arises immediately from the
want of reason and reflection above alluded to, and is
assisted by the fact that they, as the weaker, are driven
by nature to have recourse not to force but to cunning ;
hence their instinctive treachery, and their irremediable
tendency to lying. For as nature has armed the lion with
claws and teeth, the elephant and the wild boar with
tusks, the bull with horns, and the sepia with ink which
342 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

blackens water, so has nature armed woman with power of
deception for her protection, and all the force with which
she has endowed the man, in the shape of corporeal strength
and reason, has been diverted in the woman into the form
of the above gift. Deception is therefore born in her, and is
almost as much the property of the stupid as of the clever
woman. To make use of it on every occasion is hence as
natural to her as it is to the animals in question when
attacked to employ their weapons, and she feels it, to a
certain extent, as making use of her right. For this reason
a perfectly true, unsophisticated woman is almost impos-
sible. For the same reason they see through deception in
others so easily, that it is not advisable to attempt it as
regards them. But from the fundamental failing indicated
and its accessories, arises falseness, disloyalty, treachery,
ingratitude, &. Women are much more often guilty of
judicial perjury than men, indeed it may be fairly ques-
tioned whether they ought to be allowed to take an oath.
The case has repeated itself everywhere, from time to time,
of ladies who wanted for nothing, going into a shop and
secretly pocketing and stealing something.

Young, strong, and fine men are called by nature for
the propagation of the human race, in order that the race
may not deteriorate. This is the fixed Wiix of nature,
and the passions of women are its expression. This law
takes the precedence in age and force of every other. Woe
therefore to him who so places his rights and interests that
they stand in the way of it; no matter what he says and
does, they will be mercilessly crushed on the first important
occasion. For the secret, unexpressed, and indeed uncon-
scious but inborn morality of women is: “ We are justified
in deceiving those who, because they barely provide for
us, the individual, think they have acquired a right over
the species. The structure and consequently the welfare of
ON WOMEN. 343

the species is placed in our hands by means of generation,
which immediately proceeds from us, and is entrusted to our
care; we will conscientiously manage it.” Women however
are by no means conscious of this first principle in abstracto,
but merely in concreto, and have no other expression for it
than their mode of action when the opportunity comes, in
which their conscience allows them generally more rest
than we might suppose, since they feel, in the darkest re-
cesses of their heart, that by the breach of their duty to the
individual, they have so much the better fulfilled that
towards the species, whose right is infinitely greater. The
more detailed discussion of this matter will be found in the
44th chapter of the second volume of my chief work.

Because in the last resort, women exist solely for the
propagation of the race, in which their destiny is exhausted,
they live altogether more in the species than in individuals ;
in their heart they regard the affairs of the species as
more serious than those of the individual. This gives to
their whole being and action a certain frivolity, and
altogether a fundamentally different direction from that
of the man, from which cause arises the so frequent and
almost normal want of agreement in marriage.

Between men there is by nature merely indifference, but
between women there is enmity even by nature. It comes
from the fact that the odium fiqulinum, which with men is
limited to their particular guild, with women embraces the
whole sex, since they have all only one trade. Even when
they meet one another in the street, they look at each other
like Guelfs and Ghibellines. Two women, moreover, on
their first acquaintance, encounter each other with more
embarrassment and dissimulation than two men in the like
case. Hence the mutual complimenting of two women
appears much more ridiculous than that of two men.
Further, while the man as a rule speaks with a certain
344 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

consideration and humanity, even to one who is far beneath
him, it is unbearable to see how proudly and brutally, for
the most part, an aristocratic woman conducts herself
towards one in a lower position, even though not in her
service, when she speaks to her. It may arise from the fact
that all distinction of rank is much more precarious with
them than with us, and can be altered and abolished much
more rapidly ; since while with us a hundred things come
into the scale, with them only one decides, to wit, which
man they have pleased ; as also from the fact that they, be-
cause of the onesidedness of their calling, stand much
nearer to one another than men do, and for this reason
seek to exaggerate class distinctions.

Only the male intellect befogged through the sexual
impulse could call that undersized, narrow-shouldered,
broad-hipped, and short-legged sex, fair ; for in the sexual
impulse resides its whole beauty. With more justice than
the fair sex, one might call the female the wnesthetic sex.
Neither for music nor for poetry nor for the plastic arts have
they really and truly any sense and receptivity, but they
merely ape it for the sake of making themselves attractive,
when they pretend and affect to have it. For they are capable
of no purely objective interest in anything whatever, the
reason of which is, as I take it, the following :—The man
strives in all for a direct mastery over the things, either by
understanding them or by compelling them. But the
woman is always and everywhere driven to a mere indirect
mastery, namely, by means of the man, whom alone she has
directly to master. It lies therefore in the nature of
women to regard everything solely as a means to win the
man, their interest in anything else whatever being never
more than a simulated one, a mere detour, which ends
in coquetry and aping. Hence Rousseau has truly said:
“Les femmes en général n’aiment aucune art, ne se con-
ON WOMEN. 345

naissent & aucun, et n'ont aucun génie” (Lettre a d’ Alem-
bert, note wx). Everyone indeed who has got beyond
appearances will have long since observed it. One need
only notice the direction and manner of their attention at
a concert, an opera, and a play; for instance, look at the
childish innocence with which during the finest passages of
the greatest masterpieces they continue their chatter. If
the Greeks in reality did not admit their women to the
drama they only did right; one would at least have been
able to hear something in their theatres. For our own time
one ought to add to the taceat mulier in ecclesia a taceat
mulier in theatro, or to substitute it and to place it in
large letters on the curtain of the theatre. One can expect
nothing else from women, when one considers that the
most eminent heads of the whole sex have never been
able to produce a single really great, genuine, and original
achievement in the fine arts, and have never once given the
world a work of lasting value. This is most striking as
regards painting, the technique of which is at least as
suited to them as it is to us, and which they pursue
industriously enough, but nevertheless have no single
great painting to show, for they are wanting in all
objectivity of mind, a thing that painting most directly
demands; they always remain in the subjective. This
accounts for the fact that the general run of them have
properly-speaking not even receptivity for it, for natura non
facit saltus. THuarte inhis, for the last three hundred years,
celebrated book, “Examen de ingenios para las sciencias,””’

1 Juan Huarte, “‘Examen de ingenios para las sciencias ” (Am-
beres, 1603), Prohemio, p. 6: ‘‘ La compostura natural, que la muger
tiene en el celebro, no es capaz de mucho ingenio ni de mucha sabi-
duria.” Cap. 15 (p. 382) : Quedando la muger en su disposicion
natural, todo genero de letras y sabiduria, es repugnanta a su
ingenio.” Cap. 15 (pp. 397, 398): ‘‘ Las hembras (por razon de la
frialdad y humedad de su sexo) no pueden alcangar ingenio pro-
346 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

denies to women all higher capacity. Individual and
partial exceptions do not alter the fact that women are and
remain, taken as a whole, the most inveterate and incurable
of Philistines. Hence it is, that owing to the absurd
arrangement that they share the position and title of the
man, they are the continuous spurs of his ignoble ambi-
tion; and what is more, owing to the same quality their
domination and influence is the ruination of modern
society. In respect of the first, one should take the saying
of Napoleon I. as a clue: “‘ Les femmes n’ont pas de rang,”
and for the rest Chamfort very rightly says: “Elles sont
faites pour commercer avec nos faiblesses, avec notre folie,
mais non avec notre raison. Il existe entre elles et les
hommes des sympathie @ épiderme, et trés-peu de sympathies
esprit d’dme et de caractére.” They are the sexus sequior,
the, in every respect backward, secondary sex, whose
weaknesses we should accordingly spare, but to show
honour to which is, to the last degree, ridiculous, and
lowers us in their own eyes. When nature split the human
race into two halves she did not make the division quite
through the middle. With all polarity, the distinction
between the positive and the negative pole is no merely
qualitative, but at the same time a quantitative one. It is
thus that the ancients and the oriental peoples regarded
women, and accordingly recognized much more correctly
the place belonging to them than we, with our old French
gallantry and tasteless woman-worship, that highest bloom
of Germano-Christian stupidity, which has only served to
make them arrogant and callous; so much so that one is
sometimes reminded of the holy apes in Benares, who, in the
consciousness of their holiness and invulnerability, deem
that anything and everything is permitted to them.
Woman in the west, especially “the lady,” finds herself

fundo: solo veemos que hablan con alguna aparencia de habilidad,
en materias livianas y faciles,” &c.
ON WOMEN. 34.7

in a false position. For woman, rightly termed by the
ancients the sexus sequior, is in no wise suited to be the
object of our honour and veneration, to carry her head
higher than the man or even to have equal rights with him.
The consequences of this false position we sufficiently see.
It would be very desirable therefore that even in Europe
this number two of the human race should be again re
ferred to her natural place, and that a term should be put
to the lady-nonsense, at which not only all Asia laughs,
but at which Greece and Rome would also have laughed.
The consequence of this in a social, civil, and political
connection, would be inconceivably advantageous. The
Salic Law as a superfluous truism, ought not to be at all ne-
cessary. The essentially European “lady ” isa being which
ought not to exist at all; but there ought to be housewives,
and girls who hope to become so, and who are therefore
educated, not to arrogance, but to domesticity and subordi-
nation. Precisely because there are ladies in Europe, the
women of the lower classes, that is, the great majority of
the sex, are much more unhappy than in the Hast. Even
Lord Byron says (“ Letters and Journals,” by Th. Moore,
vol. ii., p. 399): “ Thought of the state of women under the
ancient Greeks—convenient enough. Present state, a
remnant of the barbarism of the chivalry of the feudal ages
—artificial and unnatural. They ought to mind home,
and be well fed and clothed, but not mixed in society.
Well educated, too, in religion, but to read neither poetry
nor politics, nothing but books of piety and cookery.
Music, drawing, dancing, also a little gardening and
ploughing now and then. I have seen them mending the
roads in Epirus with good success. Why not, as well as
haymaking and milking?”

The European marriage laws treat the woman as the
equal of the man, in other words, proceed on an incorrect
348 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

assumption. In our monogamic continent marriage means
to halve one’s rights and to double one’s duties. When
the laws conceded equal rights to women with men, they
ought to have endowed them with a male reason. The
more, however, the rights and honours which the law
concedes to the woman outweigh the natural proportion,
by so much the more do they diminish the number of
women who really participate in these privileges, and take
from all the rest so much of their natural rights as they
have given the others in excess of them. For with the
unnaturally privileged position which the monogamic in-
stitution and the marriage laws connected with it impart
to the woman (inasmuch as they regard the woman through-
out as the full equivalent of the man, which she in no
respect is), prudent and judicious men are very often
cautious in making so great a sacrifice and entering upon
such an unequal compact. While, therefore, among the
polygamic nations every woman is cared for, with our mono-
gamic peoples the number of married women is limited, and
there remains a mass of unsupported women, who in the
higher classes vegetate as useless old maids, but in the
lower are forced to heavy labour, which is unsuited to them,
or else to become street-walkers, who lead a life as joyless as
disgraceful, but who are under such circumstances necessary
for the satisfaction of the male sex, and hence exist as a
publicly recognized order, with the special object of pre-
serving from seduction the women, favoured by fortune,
who have found husbands or hope to find them. In London
alone there are 80,000 of them. What else, then, are these
than women who have suffered the most fearful privations
in consequence of the monogamic institution-——real human
sacrifices on the altar of monogamy? All the women
above mentioned, who are placed in such a wretched posi-
tion, are the inevitable counterpart of the European lady
with her pretension and arrogance. For the female sex,
ON WOMEN. 349

considered as a whole, polygamy is therefore a real benefit.
On the other hand, no valid reason can be seen why a man
whose wife suffers from a chronic complaint, or remains
barren, or has become gradually too old for him, should
not take a second. What gains so many converts to the
Mormons seems to be precisely the surrender of this un-
natural monogamy. But besides the imparting of unnatural
rights to the woman, it lays upon her unnatural duties, the
neglect of which nevertheless makes her unhappy. For
many a man, namely, considerations of class or of means,
make marriage unadvisable, provided there are no brilliant
conditions attached to it. He will then wish to obtain a
wife under other circumstances which assure the lot of her
and her children. Let these be as fair as they may, as
reasonable, and as suited to the case, yet if she consents,
just because she has no position in the disproportionate
rights which marriage alone gives, she will, because
marriage is the basis of civil society, be in a certain degree
dishonoured, and have to lead an unhappy life, inasmuch
as human nature implies that we attach an exaggerated
value to the opinion of others. Supposing, on the other
hand, she does not consent, she incurs the danger of either
having to belong to a man who is repellant to her, or of
drying up as an old maid, for the period of her availability
is very short. As regards this side of our monogamic in-
stitution, the learned treatise of Thomasius, ‘De concubi-
natu,” is very well worth reading, inasmuch as one sees
from it that with all cultured peoples and at all times,
down to the Lutheran Reformation, the concubinate was
admitted, and indeed, to a certain extent, was a legally re-
cognized institution, which was merely overthrown from
this position by the Lutheran Reformation, which recog-
nized in its abolition one more means for the justification
of the marriage of the clergy, whereupon of course the
Catholic side could not remain behindhand.
350 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Polygamy is therefore not to be argued about, but is to
be taken as a fact everywhere present, the problem being
merely that of its regulation. For where are there real
monogamists? We all live, at least for a time, and the
most part always, in polygamy, for seeing that every man
requires several women, there is nothing juster than that
it should remain open to him, indeed that it should be his
duty, to provide for several women. In this way the
woman will be reduced to her just and natural stand-
point, as a subordinate being, and the lady, that mon-
strosity of European civilization and Germano-Christian
stupidity, with her ridiculous claims to respect and vene-
ration, will disappear from the world; there will only
exist women, but no more unfortunate women, of which
Europe is now full.

In Hindostan no woman is ever independent, but each
one stands under the guardianship of her father, or her
husband, or her brother, or her son, according to the laws
of Menu, chap. v., verse 148. That widows burn them-
selves on the corpse of their husbands is indeed shocking,
but that they should spend the fortune which the husband,
consoling himself that he was working for his children,
had acquired by the steady industry of his whole life, with
their lovers, is also shocking. Mediam tenuere beati. The
original mother’s love, as with animals so with man, is
purely instinctive, and hence ceases with the physical help-
lessness of the children. Henceforth there should come
in its place one based on habit and reason, but which
is often lacking, especially when the mother has not loved
the father. The love of the father for his children is of
another kind, and more enduring. It rests on a recogni-
tion of his own innermost self in them, and is therefore of
metaphysical origin. With almost all the ancient and
ON WOMEN. 851

modern peoples of the earth, even with the Hottentots,'
property is inherited solely through the male descendants.
In Europe only has this been departed from, and even there
not with the nobility. That the property hardly acquired
through great and long-continued labour and trouble by
men, should afterwards get into the hands of women, who, in
their foolishness, spend or otherwise waste it in a short time,
is as great as it is frequent an enormity, which ought to
be obviated by the limitation of the right of female inheri-
tance. It seems to me that the best arrangement would
be that women, whether as widows or as daughters, should
only inherit an income assured to them by hypothecation
during their lifetime, but neither land nor capital, unless
it were in the absence of all male descendants. The
acquirers of fortunes are men, not women. The latter are
therefore not entitled to the unconditioned possession of
them, more especially as they are incapable of managing
them. Women should never have the free disposal of in-
herited property, in the true sense of the term, that is,
capital, houses, and lands. They always require a guardian,
and hence they ought in no case to receive the guardianship
of their children. The vanity of women, even if it is not
greater than that of men, has this bad quality, that it is
entirely directed to material things, to wit, to their personal
beauty, and secondly, to glitter, state, and show, on which
account Society is so thoroughly their element. It makes
them more particularly disposed to extravagance owing to
their inferior intellect, for which reason an ancient writer
has said: vv ré ovvodey éore daravnooy dice (8S. Brunck,

‘ «Chez les Hottentots tous les biens d’un pere descendent &
l’ainé des fils, ou passent dans la méme famille au plus proches
des males. Jamais ils ne sont divisés, jamais les femmes ne sont
appelées & la succession.” Ch. G. Leroy, ‘‘ Lettres philosophiques
sur Vintelligence et la perfectibilité des animaux, avec quelques
lettres sur !homme.” Nouvelle edit., Paris, au X. (1802), p. 298.
852 SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

“ Gnomici Poetae Graeci,” v., 115). The vanity of men, on
the contrary, is often directed to non-material advantages,
such as intellect, learning, courage, &c. Aristotle, in
his “ Politics” (B. IL., ch. ix.), explains what great dis-
advantages to the Spartans had arisen from the fact that
with them too much was conceded to the women, since
they had the right of inheritance, of alienation, and generally
great license, and how much this had contributed to the de-
cline of Sparta. Was not the ever-growing influence of the
women in France, from the time of Louis XIIL., responsible
for the gradual deterioration of the court and government,
that produced the first Revolution, of which all succeeding
revolutions have been the consequences? In any case a
false position of the female sex, such as has its most acute
symptom in our ladydom, is a fundamental weakness in
the social state which, proceeding from its heart, must
spread its noxious influence over all parts.

That woman according to her nature is meant to obey,
may be recognized from the fact that every woman who
is placed in the, to her, unnatural position of complete
independence, at once attaches herself to some man, by
whom she lets herself be led and ruled, for the obvious
reason that she requires a master. If she is young it is a
lover, if she is old it is a confessor.
INDEX.

“ BSOLUTE, the,” contempt
< \ for the expression, 132.
Angelus Silesius, quotation from,

218.

Animal magnetism, 67.

Antagonism between Reason and
Revelation, 74.

Aristotle, ‘‘De Anima,” 49-50 ;
his ‘‘ Metaphysic,” hostility to
Plato, 53; want of systematic
arrangement, 54; his theory of
the solar system, 57; on the
immortal part of man, 251; on
suicide, 259.

Arrian, his dissertations on phi-
losophy of Epictetus, 60.

Art reveals more than science to

us, 281; adapts the forms of

nature, 288.

Astronomy, Greek notions of, col-
lected by Stobzeos, mere absur-
dities, Pythagorean alone cor-
rect, 44, 57.

Authorship not a means of liveli-
hood with the ancients, 291.

Avarice the vice of age, 204.

Bacon, true father of empiricism
and opponent of Aristotle, 56
the expounder of inductive phi-
losophy in opposition to Aris-
totle, 76; he did for physical

,

science what Descartes did for
metaphysical, 77.

Bastholm’s historical contribu-
tions towards knowledge of the
savage state, 228.

Beautiful, the, pleasure arising
therefrom, 275.

Beethoven, 291.

Belief in God, the desire of man-
kind for supreme help in dis-
tress, 138.

Berkeley, the originator of the
true idealism, 13, 89; God’s will
the cause of the phenomena of
the world, follows Descartes, 14.

Bernini’s school of sculpture, 335.

Boehme, Jacob, illuminism in,
170; an unimportant object
becomes germ of a great work,
289.

Brahma, the world proceeding
from a sinful act of, 71.

Brooke, Sir James, Rajah of
Borneo, address on Missions,
224.

‘Buchanan, Rev. Claudius, a
vindication of the Hindoos from
the aspersions of,” by a Bengal
Officer, 221.

Buddha ‘‘Sakya Muni ” chooses
poverty, 270.

Buddhism does not admit the

AA

 
354

conception of a personal God,
135, 136; it is expressly atheis-
tic, 150.

Buddhist’s ethical insight, 197.

Byron, quotation from Sardana-
palus, 338; quotation with
reference to woman’s position,
347. :

Cabalistie and Gnostic philoso-
phies, 69.

Calderon, quotation from
“‘Daughter of the Air,” 201.

Caspar Hauser, 135, 160.

Catholic Church, its opposition to
system of Kopernicus, 58.

Christian religion presupposes
existence of God, 123; con-
demns suicide, 261.

Circumstances define strictly the
course of action, 234.

Clemens Alexandrinus, quotation
from, 158.

Cloister, the life of the, 269.

Condillac works out Locke’s sys-
tem, 51; feeling in organs of
sense require an external cause,
102.

Constantine the Great and Chlo-
dowig’s change of religion, 139.

Cordier and Fourier’s discoveries
of heat in centre of earth, 41.

Correggiv, sublime expression of
countenance in, 316.

Courage a form of patience, 200.

Criticism of pure reason, 95.

Cuvier constructed whole animal
from one bone, 229.

Cynicism, 62, 63.

Death ends a man’s life but can-
not end his existence, 244; con-

 

SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

sciousness assuredly perishes in,
246.

Descartes, father of modern phi-
losophy, 1; his certainty of
subjective consciousnessagainst
the problematical nature of
everything else, 2; discovered
chasm between Ideal and Real,
38; metaphysics, 79, 80; divi-
sion of all existence into God
and the world, 88; assumes the
absolute objective reality of the
world on the credit of the vera-
city of God, 89.

Demokritos reduced all qualities
to position of atoms, 90; his
views of matter, 182.

Devil-worship, 139.

“ Dignity of man,” 196.

Dionysius Areopagita the proto-
type of Scotus Erigena, 73, 74.

“Divina Commedia,” 304-307.

“Don Quixote,” 304.

“ Eomont,” Goethe’s, 308.

Egyptian wisdom embodied in
Greek philosophy by the Neo-
platonists, 66, 68.

Eleatic philosophers first con-
scious of opposition between
“the perceived and_ the
thought,” 36.

“ Emilia Galotti,” 303.

Empedokles taught tangential
force of revolving bodies oppo-
sing gravity, 57; Pessimism,
39; holds doctrine of metem-
psychosis, 40.

“Enneads ” of Plotinos, 65, 66.

Envy, 212.

Epictetus, Arrian's dissertations
on, 60; Encheiridion, 63.
INDEX.

Ethics of Greeks and Hindoos
opposed to one another, 263.
Eusebius saved fragment of Philo
Byblius, 151.

Every age has its characteristics,
313.

Extravagance, a vice, ‘‘ Spend-
thrifts brothers of Satan,” 202.

“Fate” of the ancients, 235-300.

Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel,
mere sophists not true philoso-
phers, 22, 25; abolishes Real
and leaves Ideal alone remain-
ing, 27; his system, 110; con-
temporary opinions, ‘‘ Cabinet
of Berlin Characters,” Anselm
von Feuerbach, ‘‘ Schiller and
Fichte’s correspondence,” 111.

“Foundation of morality,” 196.

Fourier’s and Cordier’s discoveries
of heat in interior of earth, 41.

Free will, 73.

Functions of an actor, 299.

Generation, 267.

German comedy, 301.

“German Theology,” Pfeiffer’s
edition, 1851, quotation from,
193, 266.

Giordano Bruno, his use of the
word ‘‘ transcendent,” 95; the
champion of the Kopernican
system and Pantheism, 137 ;
utterance concerning ‘“‘ La di-
vina mente,” ete., 248.

Gliick, 296.

Gobineau, ‘‘Des races humaines,”’
210.

Haydn, 291.

Hegel’s ‘‘ Phenomenology of the |

 

355

Mind,” 24; contempt for, 32,
111, 160; Hegel, Schelling, and
Fichte mere sophists, 22-95.

Helvetius, quotation from, 158-
159.

Herakleitos in opposition to Ele-
atics, 36.

Herodotus relates that the Sa-
mians paid tribute to Here,
140.

Heroism, instances of, in those
approaching death, 216.

History is for time what geo-
graphy is for space, 309 ; cause
of its attraction for the public,
310.

Hobbes believes men naturally
inimical to one another, 227.
Homer, like nature, unaffected by

human events, 308.

Hume’s scepticism the occasion
of Kant’s deeper investigations,
20; connecting link between
Locke, Kant, and the author,
102; ‘‘Dialogues on Natural
Religion,” 129; quotation from,
140, 141; essay on suicide,
260.

Ideal and Real, attempts to sepa-
rate them, the main problem
of philosophy, 1, 19.

Ideality of time doctrine in Plo-
tinos and Kant, 2, 67.

Iffland, the drama of, 302.

“T]uminism” in philosophy of
Neo - Platonists and Jacob
Boehme, 170; a natural at-
tempt to fathom the truth, 171.

Intellect must be free, not sub-
servient to the will, 22, 23.
356

Jean Taul’s 240;
novels, 304.

Johann von Eyck, introduced per-
spective, 315; his colours, 317.

Judaism has no doctrine of im-
mortality, 147; the only real
monotheistic religion, 149.

Juggernaut, car of, respect shown
by East Indian Government to,
222.

“ Selina,”

Kant’s solution of question
whether anything exists at all,
11; distinetion between thing-
in-itself and phenomenon, 17 ;
theories of pure knowledge,
cognitions @ priort, 51; the
spirit of his philosophy, 91;
opposes Locke with the theory
that some conceptions do not
arise from experience, 93; his
philosophy designated as trans-
cendental, 94 ; service to specu-
lative theology, 123; his proof
thatall demonstrations of specu-
lative theology are untenable,
129; attempts to mitigate
heterodoxy of ‘‘ Critique of all
Speculative Theology,” 141,
142; admits theism as a theo-
retically unprovable but valid
assumption, 216.

Kopernican system anticipated
by Pythagoras, 41; opposed
by Catholic Church, 58.

Kotzebue, injustice towards, 302.

Laplace, his cosmogony, 40.

Lapp hides his money as sacrifice
to genius loci, 140.

Leibnitz, his system of monads, in
which Ideal and Real are fully

 

SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

identified, 5, 28, 86; Leibnitz-
Wolffian philosophy, 17; con-
ception of substance as a given
thing, which must be inde-
structible, 85; prepares the way
for Kant, 86.

Lichtenberg teaches antithesis of
soul and body, 114.

Life a loan from death, nothing
that dies dies for ever, 249.

Locke and Wolff dominant in
eighteenth century, Locke in-
fluenced by Hobbes and Bacon,
15; praised by Voltaire, 15 ;
disposes of distinction between
Idealand Real by rough common
sense, 16; founds his philosophy
on no innate ideas, 5; Condillac
worked out Locke’s system for
the French, 51; propounded
doctrine of investigating the
origin of conceptions, 81, 129;
feeling in organs of sense re-
quire an external cause, 102;
reasons that all concepts are
derived from experience, 93;
at one with Demokritos, 90.

“Logos ” in Gospel of John, 42.

Machiavelli on the entire neces-
sity of all actions, 234.

Malebranche, his system of occa-
sional causes, 3; teaches that
we see all things immediately
in God, 4, 9; originator of line
of thought adopted by Spinoza
and -Liebnitz, 6; follows Des-
cartes, 14.

Marriage laws in Europe, 347.

Memling followed Van Eyck,315.

Metaphysics, slow progress of,
174; what is taught by, 179.
INDEX.

Metempsychosis, theory of, by
Porphyry, 68, 130; held by
Empedokles, 40; doctrine of,
teaches innateness of all moral
qualities, 238 ; passage of soul
into another body, 250.

Minna von Barnhelm, 302.

Modern philosophy on the right
way, 178.

Mozart, 291, 297.

Munich, collection of old Nether-
land paintings at, 315.

Muratori in ‘‘ Della Fantasia”
treats Locke as a heretic, 91.

Music as explained by Pytha-
gorean philosophy of numbers,
41, 42; a universal language,
291.

Nature, depressing effect of inor-
ganic, 286; her forms adapted
to art, 288.

Neoplatonists, Porphyry, Jam-
blichos, Proklos, Plotinos, 64,
65.

New Heloise, 304.

Newspapers second-hands of his-
tory, 312.

Nirvana of Buddhists, 263.

Northumberland, Duke of, Shake-
speare’s personification, 231] ,233.

Opera, the, appeals to other than
the musical sense, 293, 294.
“VL’Orphelin de la Chine,” 259.

Painting, 283, 284; Netherlands
school of, 315.

Pantheism in seventeenth cen-
tury, 4; a euphemism for

atheism, 134; Giordano Bruno |

 

357

champion of, 137; objections
against, 192.

Petrarch, comparison of
Dante and Ariosto, 307.

Philo Byblius, preserved writing
of, Sanchoniathon, 151.

Philosophy, definition of, 168 ;
scepticism necessary in, 172;
conditions of mind for philo-
sophical investigation, 163;
philosopher and poet, 164;
philosopher and sophist, 327.

Physics, the exact knowledge of
phenomena, 183.

Plato, pure thought only source
of knowledge, doctrine in
“ Phaedo,” 49; the antithesis
of Aristotle, 55; his ethics,
198; ‘‘ Dialogues,” 167; Plato
and Aristotle, their views as to
the immortal part of man,
251.

Pliny, extract from, on suicide,
258.

Poet and philosopher, difference
between, 164.

Poetry, 280, 281.

Polygamy advocated, 350.

Pope, quotation from, 91.

Porphyry, report of Egyptian re-
ligion given by, 68; passage
preserved by Stobzeos, 183.

Psychology, 180, 181.

Pre-Socratic philosophers, Anaxa-
goras, Empedokles, Demokri-
tos, Leukippos, Herakleitos,
37.

Prejudice, worst enemy of truth,
175.

Progress of human knowledge
likened to Ptolemaic epicycles,
334.

with
358

Ptolemaic cosmology founded on
theory of Aristotle and Hippar-
chus, 58.

Pufendorf believed men to be
naturally friendly, 227.

Pythagoras, education of, in
Egypt according toJamblichos,
43; his doctrine decided Pan-
theism, 44.

Rameau defined the “ grammar”
of music, 291.

Rationalism, 169.

Raupach, injustice towards, 302.

Reading much deprives the mind
of elasticity, 319.

Realism and nominalism, 75.

Rossini, 291, 297.

Rousseau, believes men to be in-
different to one another, 227.
St. Francis d’Assisi chooses

poverty, 270.

Sanchoniathon, 139; wrote cos-
mogony of Pheenicians, 151.

‘‘Sanhita of the Vedas,” 46.

Sansara of the Buddhists, 215.

Schelling follows Fichte, 111; re-
vives abstract pan-theism of
Spinoza, 27; maintains identity
of Real and Ideal, 28; ‘‘ Willis
Being ” attributed to, 157.

Schmidt, J. J., History of the
eastern Mongolians, 197.

Schooreel, successor of Van Eyck,
315.

Schultz demonstrates Kant’s fal-
lacies in ‘‘ Aenesidemus” and
‘* Critique of Theoretical Philo-
sophy,” 104.

Scotus Erigena, recovered at Ox-
ford, 1681, 4; ‘*De Divisione

 

SCHOPENHAUER’S ESSAYS.

Nature,” 70; rejects eternal
damnation, 71; ‘‘ De Predesti-
natione,” 72.

Scouler, John, refutes theory of
North American Indians being
theists, 152.

Sculpture, 282, 283.

Sextus Empiricus, quotation ex-
pounding the teaching in ‘‘ Ti-
maeus,” 49.

Slavery in America, 207.

Socrates, the platonic, a different
person from the Xenophontic
Socrates, 45; and Kant, paral-
lel between, 46; Socratic
method as it is in Plato, 47.

Spinoza maintains that soul and
body are one, 7, 30; his ob-
scurity, 10; relations of his doc-
trines to those of Descartes,
his fallacies, 11; holds by the
ideal side of the world, 12; his
misuse of words, 13; his philo-
sophy chiefly negative, 80, 81;
an unconscious materialist, 81;
presumably acquainted with
writings of Xenophanes, 82;
called his one and only sub-
stance Deus, 83, 129; aresusci-
tator of the Eleatics, 82, 90.

Spirits and gods to be appeased
by sacrifice, 139.

Stobaeos, chief source of our
knowledge of stoic ethics, 60;
on suicide, 259.

Stoics, their conception of the
species embodied in the seed,
59 ; their ethics, 62.

Sufferings of animals, 273.

Suicide, a crime only in mono-
theistic religion, 257 ; advocated
by Stoics and Hindoos, 259.
INDEX.

Taaut, cosmogony of, 151.

Tasso, not worthy to rank as
fourth great Italian poet, 308.

Tastelessness of the age, 314.

Theism, visible in Arrian and
other heathen philosophers of
first century, A.D. 62; and
Judaism, exchangeable terms,
45.

Thrasymachos and Philalethes,
dialogue between, 252.

Time can have no beginning, 119.

“Tractatus Theologico Politicus,”
shows monstrous results of Spi-
noza’s moral philosophy, 84.

Transcendental Dialectic, 113,114.

Transcendental Idealism, 97.

Trappists, 270.

Treatment of great men by their
contemporaries, 337.

“Tristram Shandy,” 304.

Tschudi’s ‘‘ Travels in Peru,” 208.

Upanishads of the Vedas, 4, 46,
147, 178, 223.

Value of thought above book-
knowledge, 320-327.

Vaudeville, a musical monstro- |

sity, 298.

Vauvenargues, quotations from,
10, 143, 169.

Veda doctrine ‘“‘magnum Sak-
hepat,” 263.

 

359

Veda Hymn, 219.
Voltaire, quotation from, 174.

Walter Scott, 304.

War, the origin of the desire to
thieve, 311.

Wickedness natural to man above
all other animals, 210.

‘Wilhelm Meister,” 304.

Woltfand Locke dominant in 18th
century, 5; Wolff’s argument
‘if anything exists at all there
exists an absolutely necessary
Being,” 124-127.

Women should not be holders of
property, 351; their influence
cause of deteriorationof France,
352; regarded as grown-up
children, 339; their quick ap-
prehension, 340; their powers
of deception, 342; lack of artis-
tic sense, 344.

World considered as end or as
means, 176.

World, Spirit, and Man, dialogue,
270.

Will, alone real, 21; freedom of,
73, 144; the originator of the
will theory, 157 ; perishability
of all things but, 187.

Writing the only true preserver
of thought, 46.

Zendavesta, 148, 151.
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